Russian Subject, Muslim Monarch: Sovereignty and Scribal Culture in Colonial Bukhara
What did it mean for an emir to rule as an absolute Muslim monarch while his realm was a protectorate of the Russian tsar?
Zubair’s Bookshelf
Non-fiction for the intellectually curious —largely from the radiant realms of the East. Let the illumination begin!
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Palimpsests Past and Present: The Sufis and Sultans of the Maklī Necropolis, 1380–1660
Why did sultans and saints alike choose to be buried on a windswept plateau above the Indus delta?
Philosophy in the Islamic World, Volume 4-2: 19th–20th Centuries: Türkiye, Iran, and South-Asia
What became of philosophy in the lands of the Ottomans, the Qajars, and the Mughals’ heirs as they collided with modernity?
Islamic Intellectual History in the Mughal Era
Was the Mughal world really an age of intellectual decline or one of the most dynamic centers of Muslim scholarship on earth?
The Medieval Debate on Money and Interest: A Comparative Perspective on Ethics and Economics
Why did both the Qur’an and the medieval Church condemn the taking of interest on loans?
The Perks of Being a Bookworm: The Science of the Benefits of Reading
Could learning to read actually raise your IQ, sharpen your memory, and even improve your ability to recognize faces?
The Bookshop: A History of Bookselling from the Dawn of Print to the Twenty-First Century
Where did the bookshop as we know it actually come from, and why did it take five centuries after Gutenberg for it to emerge?
The Orange Trees of Marrakesh: Ibn Khaldun and the Science of Man
Six centuries before modern social science, how did a fourteenth-century Muslim judge come to write the world’s first structural history?
Reading Reflections - Defeating Jihad: the Winnable War, by Sebastian Gorka
Reviewed by Zubair Qamar @Zubair's Bookshelf
Astrology through History: Interpreting the Stars from Ancient Mesopotamia to the Present
Why did the Inquisition first summon Galileo not for Copernicanism, but for his ideas about astrology?