A study of the shaping of political and social institutions in Baghdad by an Iranian Shiite dynasty that re-established the Caliphate on a new footing as the powerless symbol of authority and legitimacy.

A study of the development of political and social institutions in Baghdad, center of the Abbasid Caliphate, in that neglected period between Abbasid collapse and the coming of the Seljuk Turks. Three brothers, Daylemite mercenaries from the southern Caspian succeeded in establishing a dynasty that lasted nearly a century, controlling Iraq, a good part of Iran and the Gulf. The period has been labled the "Iranian intermezzo" but careful examination shows that the dynasty shaped the basic institutions to which the Seljuks would fall heir: the chief amirate, the system of army fiefs and the bureaucracy. It was a period of profound change and dislocation which fostered an open and creative cultural atmosphere. The Caliphate, bereft of power, was re-established as the center of authority and legitimation.

Following the tradition and style of the acclaimed Index Islamicus, the editors have created this new Bibliography of Art and Architecture in the Islamic World. The editors have surveyed and annotated a wide range of books and articles from collected volumes and journals published in all European languages (except Turkish) between 1906 and 2011. This comprehensive bibliography is an indispensable tool for everyone involved in the study of material culture in Muslim societies.

In Varieties of Muslim Experience, anthropologist Lawrence Rosen explores aspects of Arab Muslim life that are, at first glance, perplexing to Westerners. He ranges over such diverse topics as why Arabs eschew portraiture, why a Muslim scientist might be attracted to fundamentalism, and why the Prophet must be protected from blasphemous cartoons. What connects these seemingly disparate features of Arab social, political, and cultural life? Rosen argues that the common thread is the importance Arabs place on the negotiation of interpersonal relationships—a link that helps to explain actions as seemingly unfathomable as suicide bombing and as elusive as Quranic interpretation. Written with eloquence and a deep knowledge of the entire spectrum of Muslim experience, Rosen’s book will interest not only anthropologists and Islamicists but anyone invested in better understanding the Arab world.

In the last two decades of the 20th century, theorising on modernity has entered a new stage. The former dichotomy between an active West exporting its successful model of modernity on a global scale and passive non-Westerners gratefully implementing this model in their own societies has been challenged by critical anthropology and postcolonial studies, and further elaborated upon within social theory. This volume focuses on Europe and the Islamic world as two historically constructed geo-civilisational domains, and shows that modernity was not achieved in splendid isolation in Europe, but in the tensions and conflicts within the «transcultural space» between Europe and Islam. The impact of Islam as a complex civilising tradition on the making of Europe, and vice versa, impinged on the building of political, religious and scientific institutions and discourses. These sustained a continuous process of drawing, adjusting and transgressing symbolic and geo-political boundaries between the two civilisational realms, from medieval rivalries to present-day migration-related conflicts. This volume assembles seven contributions by historians and sociologists covering the whole of the modern era and focusing on the notion of a transcultural space and the discussion of revised concepts concerning the genesis and shape of modernity. In so doing, they try to escape both the apories of cultural relativism and the militancy of the «clash of civilizations».