SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.
The Abbasid Caliphate: A History
Illuminating account of the most influential force in the Muslim world from the eighth to the 13th centuries
GLOBAL FIRST: The Great Mosque of Samarra, completed in 851 by the Abbasid caliph Al-Mutawakkil, was at the time the world’s largest
JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones
A New Awakening: Adventures In British Jazz 1966 - 1971, G3, and Buck Owens
JAMES WALSH is moved by an exhibition of graphic art that relates horrors that would be much less immediate in other media
RON JACOBS welcomes the translation into English of an angry cry from the place they call the periphery
GUILLERMO THOMAS recommends a useful book aimed at informing activists with local examples of solidarity in action around the world
HENRY BELL is provoked by a book that looks toward, but does not fully explore the question of who gets to imagine the shapes of cities to come
WHY should anyone so much as glance at this academic, albeit fairly abbreviated, history of a religious-political entity which ceased to exist hundreds of years ago?
That’s a question addressed by Tayeb El-Hibri in this scholarly evaluation of the Abbasid dynasty and, in so doing, he constantly emphasises the valuable insights to be gleaned from such a study and the contemporary geopolitical relevance of the caliphate concept.
It is fair to say that a number of present-day Islamic and Islamist movements draw inspiration from the Abbasid caliphate as much as their reductionist view of the foundation society under the Prophet Mohammed.
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