Reminders
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Book Recommendations from Dr. Jonathan Brown
Interested in books about Islam, Islamic history, and Islam & politics? Dr. Jonathan Brown offers some book recommendations for you to consider while at home.
Reading List:
- The Message of the Qur'an by Muhammad Asad
- The Road to Mecca by Muhammad Asad
- The Venture of Islam by Marshall Hodgson
- On the Muslim Question by Anne Norton
- Politics of the Veil by Joan Wallach Scott
- Islam and Liberal Citizenship by Andrew F. March
- Islamic Revival in British India by Barbara Daly Metcalf
- Islamic Art and Spirituality by Seyyed Hossein Nasr
- Ibn Fadlān and the Land of Darkness by Ibn Fadlān
- The Book of Contemplation: Islam and the Crusades by Usama Ibn Munqidh
- The Travels of Ibn Jubayr Translated by Roland Broadhurst
- The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveller of the 14th Century by Ross E. Dunn
- Westward Bound: Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb by Mushirul Hasan Letters by Mary Wortley Montagu
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. As-salamu alaykum everybody. I got asked to do some book recommendations. Okay, so where should we start? Oh, let's first start with, oh, this is an old book. See, look how this is falling apart. This is the message of the Qur'an, the translation of the Qur'an by Muhammad Asad, rahimahu Allah. And this is the first book I read. I actually started reading this before I became Muslim. And I've read the whole thing as I was becoming Muslim. And I remember I have this whole, these just many, many pages of notes on all the different verses as I read through. These are my, oh, my handwriting was a lot better back then. And it's a terrific translation. It has, of course, the Arabic text of the Qur'an, the actual Qur'an itself. And then next to it, his translation. And, you know, he has certainly his own opinion. He has some controversial views, but his footnotes are really useful. I mean, he's definitely leans toward kind of a rationalist, Mu'tazilite, modernist perspective. But for me, this is this translation was kind of my gateway into becoming Muslim, to being Muslim. And so it's close to my heart. And I recommend it. It's a useful, very useful translation. And actually useful to give people who are not Muslim, you know, it's kind of a good entryway for them. And then, and actually, while I'm at it, I can, this book, which I love, which I read, which is Muhammad Asad's book, The Road to Mecca, which is his kind of autobiography of the first part of his life from when he was a young Jewish newspaper correspondent in Vienna in the 19-teens and 20s to being a journalist in the Middle East, traveling around the Middle East to eventually becoming Muslim. And I think he died in 1992.
And yeah, so this is an amazing book. I read it at the same, in the same class I read the translation of the Quran for. And I, you know, the book has just stunned me and it was, it's moved me deeply. And I didn't look at it for 20 years, around 20 years, and then a few years ago for one of my classes, we read it, I signed it, we read it, I read it again. And it's just such a beautifully written book with also some great pictures in it. And, you know, it was just a joy, a voyage and a joy once again, to read through it and to do, he's an amazing, he's like Conrad in the sense that, you know, English was God knows what, like his fourth or fifth language. And yet he writes so beautifully in it. So I really recommend this book, The Road to Mecca. And then he has a sequel, which was written by him. And they kind of, I think, finished by his wife, his widow, after he died, called Homecoming of the Heart. Which is hard to get, which is available in Pakistan. And I think they sell it in the UK. Someone got it from the UK, which is very nice of him. Okay, let's see other things. Okay, let's see Islamic history. You can't go wrong with people. Let me get my little fan of cards here. Marshall Hodgson's Adventure of Islam. Three volumes. Tour de force of not only Islamic history, but world history. Marshall Hodgson was an incredible historian. He taught at the University of Chicago. He died in the 1970s, late 1970s. And this is a history of Islamic civilization. And also kind of a history of world history, world history, and especially meditations on the process of modernization and what that does, what's that done, what that's done to humanity. And the challenges it's presented. And I really recommend it. You learn a lot. It's a little bit dated, but you know, some of the details might be dated, but the overall structure is, I think, completely intact and valid.
And he introduces you to some fascinating concepts, like the idea of the Islamicate world, the world built on top of Islam, of Islamic civilization. He talked about Persianate civilization, of the kind of world of Persian language and literature and art that dominates the Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal, Indian, Central Asian worlds. And it goes all the way up to the modern period. But really, the first two volumes are just terrific. I can't say enough good stuff about this book. And it's a structure that I use still teaching all my classes. Okay, why not go with these books? These are some really good books, I think, on kind of issues of Islam in the West or Islam in Europe and Islam in the U.S. And this is Anne Norton's excellent book on the Muslim question. I really cannot recommend this book enough. She's a political scientist and a political philosopher. She teaches at University of Pennsylvania. And actually, she was a student of Fazlur Rahman at the University of Chicago. But she didn't mean that was sort of, I think, maybe one or two classes she took. But she was really into political philosophy and political science. So she wrote this book kind of about Muslims and Islam. But that's not usually what she writes about. But this is a really terrific book. And if you know, if you recognize it, it's sort of harking back to Marx's book on the Jewish question. And so what Anne Norton really argues, I think, very convincingly in this book is that the West's problems with Islam and Muslims are really not about Islam. Islam and Muslims is about the West's and Western people's and Western cultures, anxieties, internal anxieties and internal insecurities and inability to deal with difference and to deal with the other. So I really recommend this book.
Another excellent book, which is very specific to France, but it's just maybe almost, you know, 15 years old now or 12 years old or so now. But it's still an excellent book. Joan Wallach Scott's book, The Politics of the Veil, which is about Islam in France. And it's an excellent study of kind of the politics and cultural anxieties around Muslims and Islam in France and kind of how how law and state can be used to within the law and within the rules of the government and the rules of the game, so to speak, can be used to exclude people and to deny them rights in a society that's supposed to be protecting those rights. So I really recommend this book if you're interested in Islam in France, which is a great topic. OK. Oh, yeah. This is also kind of going along with that subject. Islam and liberal citizenship by my friend Andrew March. Very, very smart guy. One of the best and most rigorous thinkers I know and always a pleasure to engage with and talk with and read. And what this book is really about is, you know, Muslims, how do Muslims think about and how do Muslims ponder questions of belonging and citizenship in liberal states like Western Western polities? And it's a great resource for everything. When you're thinking about, you know, Islam and freedom of speech, Islam and rule of law, Islam and citizenship, Islam and loyalty to a non-Muslim state. What does it mean to be a citizen? And he kind of really does a terrific job of drawing on a lot of Islamic tradition and especially modern Islamic thinkers and trying to answer these questions. I mean, look, he even signed this for me. I'll be mad and from Abu Tamer, which is who's him? OK. And this is, you know, I haven't read this for a long time.
But, boy, is this a classic. Barbara Metcalf's book, Islamic Revival in British India, Deoband 1860 to 1900, is about the origins and founding of the Darul Udum Deoband in 1867 in North India and kind of about the intellectual and political context that led up to that and around it. And it's just a terrific introduction to kind of Islamic thought and the landscape, Islamic landscape of South Asia, of India and British India. I was saying she's really one of my role models for how to write. Like when I remember when I'm reading this, I said, she writes so clearly and she gives you so much information and it's so easy to receive and to ingest. And so that was when I was reading this, I remember I was a graduate student and said, I want to write like Barbara Metcalf. I was really happy one day I actually got to meet her and tell her that I was a big admirer. OK, now people wait. Now we're getting into. Well, first, another book, which is kind of random, but I loved this book. I love this book. And I read it. It was the summer of 1999. Oh, 1999. Back in the. Oh, I was just a young man back then. Yes, I read this traveling in Turkey and Egypt with my friend Charles Bartlett. Charles didn't come to Egypt when you went all around Turkey. That was way back in the day. And this is Islamic art and spirituality by Sayyid Hussain Nasser. And it's an amazing introduction to the kind of sentiment and feeling and aesthetic experience of Islamic art and philosophy, Islamic art. And I still assign parts of this for my classes and I really enjoyed it. OK, so now we're into one of my favorite things, which is travel literature. I love travel literature because you get to explore the world of the past through the eyes of hopefully somebody very observant.
And if that person is observant and accurate, you can also it's also kind of a history text. The first draft of history, the front lines of history. What are a couple of good books? Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness. This is a terrific book, which I picked up at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo. It was in a gift shop and I got it. I said, well, I already have Ibn Fadlan's text, but then this has so many other things. And I discovered this is a fascinating book. So I have been in Fadlan was an ambassador sent by the Abbasid caliph in the early nine hundreds to the Bulgars, the people who saw the steps of Russia who had converted to Islam. They want somebody to come and teach them more about Islam. Fortunately, he never unfortunately never reached there because of the weather. But on the way he met all these Vikings, Scandinavians, and actually a lot of what we know about some of the most in rich descriptions we have of the Scandinavians who settled the steps of Russia, the Kiva and Rus and those groups comes from Ibn Fadlan, including his amazing description of Viking funeral and their terrible hygiene. So then what's interesting is it goes on to with several other texts like Abu Nasr al-Qarnati, who is a 12th century traveler and one of the best. Al-Qarnati is my favorite medieval traveler. This guy is really descriptive. He gets you, tells you about his personal life, his family, his kids, his kids who die, his wife, his romantic involvements. And again, traveling into the steps of Russia and Central Asia. So it's kind of a collection of different Muslim travelers who traveled into the kind of North countries, Southern Russia, Central Asia, all packaged along with Ibn Fadlan. I really recommend this. Okay.
Samad bin Munkad, the book of contemplation, Islam and the Crusade, and this is a Paul Cobb, an excellent historian, I think also a university graduate, his translation of a Muslim scholar and gentleman and warrior fighting in the Crusades in the 1100s, the late 1100s. And his encounters with Franks, with the Crusaders and with other Muslims and his meditations on life and history and meaning and wisdom. And you actually get a very interesting glimpse at the Frankish, the ways of the Frankish Crusaders who come in with some really hysterical scenes where he's sort of like a little bit surprised by their hygiene and their, the men's lack of concern for their women's honor, which we were discussing in my class today. Okay. And look, these are obviously part of the same series, which I didn't realize until now. Ah, this is very good. The Travels of Ibn Jubair, this is a Muslim traveler from Andalusia, from Iberia, who travels to the kind of mushrook, the Middle East, Egypt, Hejaz, Syria, Iraq, Baghdad in the 1100s, late 1100s. And he has terrific descriptions of the Abbasid Caliphs and the Khatibs in the, in the Haram of Mecca and how they wear all black, wearing the colors of the Abbasids. And he makes fun of how everyone has names like Salahuddin and Jamaluddin, like the beauty of the religion and the Imaduddin, the pillar of the religion. He said, no, these people were, they're all full of it, except for the only person who has the right to say this is Salahuddin. He says Salahuddin actually has the right to call himself such a name. He's a big fan of Salahuddin. So this is an excellent, he also travels to Sicily, which is controlled by the Norman kingdom of Sicily, which is really interesting. He says in Sicily, the women all wear hijabs, even though they're Christian. Okay.
You can always read the Travels of Ibn Battuta, the world's greatest traveler. Originally from Tangier, traveled throughout North Africa, West Africa, sorry, the East, East Africa, the Pacific, the Indian ocean world. He worked for, lived for some 10 years in the Maldives as a judge there. He clearly had a good taste for nice vacation spots. The Middle East, Anatolia, Central Asia. He met the Khan of the Golden Horde. He met the second Sultan of the Ottoman dynasty in Vakil Orhan. That's where we have some information about the early Ottomans. He's actually from Ibn Battuta. He traveled through Iran. He traveled through India. He lived in India for, in Delhi for several years where he worked as a judge. Southeast Asia into China, a fascinating voyage. And this, so this is actually by a scholar named Ross Dunn. And it's kind of a summary of his travels and then he gives a lot of historical context. So it's like a book of Islamic history, but kind of doing it through the travels of Ibn Battuta. I really recommend it. It's an excellent book. And you can also read the original travels, which have been, most of which have been translated by Gibb, Hamilton Gibb. Okay. This is a terrific book, people. It's kind of the cover art is a little goofy, but this is Mirza Abu Talib, who's a, Persian speaking Indian Muslim scholar from Lucknow in North India. And he travels to Ireland and Britain in the very late 1700s and early 1800s. And he travels all the way back through France and Europe through the Ottoman Empire, Iraq, Iran, back to India. And his descriptions of England and Ireland are really, really fascinating. He also travels around to get there by going around South Africa.
So he gets a description of Cape Town in there and really amazingly rich description and great observations. And the last book I'll recommend, which is a terrific work I really recommend, is the letters of Lady Worley Montague. So she's a, well, there's not much of a cover here. Let me open it up for you. Okay. How about that? That's pretty good, isn't it? And the side is pretty, I'll show you the side. So Lady Worley Montague was the wife of the, she's British, the wife of the British ambassador to Istanbul, the Ottoman Empire. And she travels to the Ottoman Empire and lives there for several years in Istanbul in the early 1700s. And her, so what's really interesting about her, right, is that she's, she's like the female traveler. So she gets to go into the world, the woman's world of the Ottoman Empire. And boy, do you get a great description of, and she's really interesting, very, very smart. And she kind of, in one sense, she's, she really kind of bashes a lot of stereotypes. She's like, you know, the whole idea when Muslim women are oppressed is nonsense. They have tremendous amount of freedom. They have a lot of rights that even women in England in her time don't have. So she's, and she has a very kind of removed, calm, objective description, not sensationalistic. And she gets to become very good friends with a lot of Ottoman women and her description of their lives and their experiences is very interesting. And she's a terrific analyst and kind of thinker in her own right. And you get a lot of those insights in her book. In fact, she's the one who brought vaccination against smallpox. She brought that from the Ottoman Empire to England. She introduced the practice of vaccination to Britain. So anyway, those are some books that I really enjoy, have enjoyed, still enjoy. And I thought that I would tell you about them, you plural. And inshallah, I pray that everybody's doing well. Tough times. Shadduhaylkum. Shadduhaylkum, right?
Be tough. Hang in there. And salamu alaykum wa rahmatullah.
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