9 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
Persian Muslim theologian and philosopher — author of The Incoherence of the Philosophers and The Revival of the Religious Sciences — who attacked Aristotelian philosophy as incompatible with Islam and who integrated Sufism into orthodox Sunni theology — one of the most influential Muslim thinkers.
Persian physician and philosopher — author of the Canon of Medicine (Al-Qanun fi al-Tibb) and The Book of Healing — who synthesized Aristotelian philosophy with Islamic theology and whose Canon of Medicine was the primary medical textbook in Europe and the Islamic world for 500 years.
Janet Abu-Lughod's 1989 world-systems analysis of the 13th century global trading network — centered on the Islamic Middle East and connecting China, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Europe through overlapping trading circuits.
British-American scholar at Princeton — the most influential Western historian of the Islamic world — author of The Arabs in History, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, What Went Wrong — whose writings on Islam and the West influenced the neoconservative Middle East policy agenda.
American sociologist who wrote Before European Hegemony — arguing that a sophisticated world-system centered on the Islamic Middle East preceded and enabled the rise of European capitalism — challenging Wallerstein's Eurocentric world-systems theory.
Tenth Mansa (Emperor) of the Mali Empire — whose 1324 pilgrimage to Mecca (with 60,000 people and 12,000 slaves each carrying 4 pounds of gold) literally crashed the gold market in Cairo and introduced the world to West African wealth — the wealthiest individual in history by most estimates.
The Arabic-language collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled over several centuries — including Aladdin, Ali Baba, Sinbad the Sailor, and the frame story of Scheherazade — the greatest monument of Arabic narrative literature.
Afghan-American writer who wrote Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes and The Invention of Yesterday — providing accessible accounts of Islamic world history and world history through a narrative lens.
Islamic mystical tradition — emerging in the 8th century CE as an interiorizing movement within Islam — emphasizing direct experiential knowledge of God (gnosis — ma'rifa), love of the divine (mahabbah), purification of the self (nafs), and ultimately the annihilation (fana) of the individual self in God — the most poetically rich mystical tradition in the Abrahamic faiths.