This catalogue describes over 2,000 Arabic manuscripts acquired by the Princeton University Library since the 1950s, providing information on an important collection of Arabic works, many of which were previously unknown or unrecorded. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The 'mirror for princes' genre of literature offers advice to a ruler, or ruler-to-be, concerning the exercise of royal power and the wellbeing of the body politic. This anthology presents selections from the 'mirror literature' produced in the Islamic Early Middle Period (roughly the tenth to twelfth centuries CE), newly translated from the original Arabic and Persian, as well as a previously translated Turkish example. In these texts, authors advise on a host of political issues which remain compelling to our contemporary world: political legitimacy and the ruler's responsibilities, the limits of the ruler's power and the limits of the subjects' duty of obedience, the maintenance of social stability, causes of unrest, licit and illicit uses of force, the functions of governmental offices and the status and rights of diverse social groups. Medieval Muslim Mirrors for Princes is a unique introduction to this important body of literature, showing how these texts reflect and respond to the circumstances and conditions of their era, and of ours.

Makdisi's important work traces the development and organisational structure of learning institutions in Islam, and reassesses scholarship on the origins and growth of the Madrasa.

Philosophical Theology in Islam studies the later history of the Ashʿarī school of theology through in-depth probings of its thought, sources, scholarly networks and contexts. Starting with a review of al-Ghazālī’s role in the emergence of post-Avicennan philosophical theology, the book offers a series of case studies on hitherto unstudied texts by the towering thinker Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī as well as specific philosophical and theological topics treated in his works. Studies furthermore shed light on the transmission and reception of later Ashʿarī doctrines in periods and regions that have so far received little scholarly attention. This book is the first exploration of the later Ashʿarī tradition across the medieval and early-modern period through a trans-regional perspective. Contributors: Peter Adamson, Asad Q. Ahmed, Fedor Benevich, Xavier Casassas Canals, Jon Hoover, Bilal Ibrahim, Andreas Lammer, Reza Pourjavady, Harith Ramli, Ulrich Rudolph, Meryem Sebti, Delfina Serrano-Ruano, Ayman Shihadeh, Aaron Spevack, and Jan Thiele.

Introduction / Judith Pfeiffer & Sholeh A. Quinn -- |t The Mongol world empire. -- |t World-conquest and local accomodation: threat and blandishment in Mongol diplomacy / |r Peter Jackson -- |t "Stuck in the throat of Chingīz Khān:" envisioning the Mongol conquests in some Sufi accounts from the 14th to 17th centuries / |r Devin de Weese -- |t The Qongrat in history / |r İsenbike Togan -- |t References to economic and cultural life in Anatolia in the letters of Rashīd al-Dīn / |r Zeki Velidi Togan, trans. Gery Leiser -- |t Autonomous enclaves in Islamic states: temlîks, soyurghals, yurdluḳ-ocaḳlıḳs, mâlikâne-muḳâṭaʿas and awqāf / |r Halil İnalcık -- |t The early Persian historiography of Anatolia / |r Charles Melville -- |t Aḥmad Tegüder's second letter to Qalāʼūn (682/1283) / |r Judith Pfeiffer -- |t The age of Timur. -- |t A note on the life and works of Ibn ʿArabshāh / |r R.D. McChesney -- |t On the Persian original Vālidiyya of Khvāja Aḥrār / |r Eiji Mano.

In Arabic and Islamic studies, the subject of variance in general and that of textual variation in particular has not been investigated exhaustively so far. In the present book the variation in texts of the “closed transmission” will be studied, focusing on a small corpus of didactic and model poems, with a view to establishing what degree of text stability and change was allowed by the medium manuscript. Categories of variance (relating to work-titles, text, number of verses and their sequence, page-layout, context) and the means of controlling them in the manuscripts of the poems are identified and detailed descriptions of the copies are given. The monograph also includes a presentation of some major traits of the cultural background to the study of Arabic didactic poetry and of its dissemination in which memorization has played a crucial role. The intended readers,editors and other users of manuscripts, are helped to acquaint themselves with the methods employed in the manuscripts to control variation and they are given an overview of the large spectrum of Arabic didactic poetry and of its place in the traditional culture of learning in Islamicate societies.