Table Of Contentnnnnnnnnnnn
The Great
Encyclopedia of
Islam
contents
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About the Editors and Contributors ix List of Illustrations and Maps xv
Preface xvii Acknowledgments xix Introduction xxi Chronology xxxvii
ENTRIES A TO Z 1
Bibliography 725 Index 731
about the editors and contributors
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Series Editor
J. Gordon Melton is the director of the Institute for the Study of American
Religion in Santa Barbara, California. He holds an M.Div. from the Garrett
Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University. Melton is
the author of American Religions: An Illustrated History, The Encyclopedia
of American Religions, Religious Leaders of America, and several
comprehensive works on Islamic culture, African-American religion, cults,
and alternative religions. He has written or edited more than three dozen
books and anthologies as well as numerous papers and articles for scholarly
journals. He is the series editor for Religious Information Systems, which
supplies data and information in religious studies and related fields. Melton
is a member of the American Academy of Religion, the Society for the
Scientific Study of Religion, the American Society of Church History, the
Communal Studies Association, and the Society for the Study of
Metaphysical Religion.
Volume Editor
Juan E. Campo, associate professor of religious studies at the University of
California, Santa Barbara, holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of
Chicago’s History of Religions program. He specializes in the comparative
study of the cultural formations of Islam in the Middle East and South Asia,
sacred space and pilgrimage, and political Islam in the contexts of
modernity. His research has taken him to Egypt, where he has lived, studied,
or taught for nearly six years, as well as India, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain,
Turkey, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Israel. Professor Campo’s first
book, The Other Sides of Paradise: Explorations in the Religious Meanings
of Domestic Space in Islam, won the American Academy of Religion’s
award for excellence, in 1991. He has edited or contributed articles to a
number of leading reference works, including Merriam-Webster’s
Encyclopedia of World Religions, Encyclopedia of the Qur’an, and the
Macmillan Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World. His current
projects include a comparative study of modern Muslim, Hindu, and
Christian pilgrimage.
Contributors
Fahad A. Alhomoudi holds a Ph.D. from McGill University. He is the vice
dean of academic research at al-Imam Muhammad bin Saud Islamic
University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He specializes in Islamic thought and
Islamic law, with a focus on its origins. He is the author of
ix K Encyclopedia of Islam
Protecting the Environment and Natural Resource in Islamic Law (published
in Arabic, 2004). He has presented numerous scholarly papers on topics such
as Islamic law and the modern state: conflict or coexistence? and a critical
study of the translations of Hadith terminology.
Jessica Andruss earned an M.A. in religious studies at the University of
California, Santa Barbara, and is now a Ph.D. candidate at the University of
Chicago’s Divinity School. Her area of specialization is in medieval Jewish
and Muslim scriptural exegesis.
Jon Armajani earned a Ph.D. in religious studies with a focus in Islamic
studies and Near Eastern studies from the University of California, Santa
Barbara. His areas of expertise include modern Islam and Muslim-Christian
relations. He is the author of Dynamic Islam: Liberal Muslim Perspectives in
a Transnational Age and assistant professor in the Department of Theology
at the College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University in Minnesota.
Reza Aslan is assistant professor at the University of California, Riverside
and author of No god, but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam.
He is also a research associate at the University of Southern California’s
Center on Public Diplomacy. His commentaries on Islam and the Middle
East have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the
Washington Post, and the Boston Globe. He has also appeared on a number
of major network and cable news programs.
A. Nazir Atassi is assistant professor of history at Louisiana Tech University.
He received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He
specializes in Islamic and Middle Eastern history, with a focus on early
Islamic society.
Anna Bigelow is assistant professor of religious studies at North Carolina
State University. She received a Ph.D. from the University of California,
Santa Barbara, in 2004. Her research focuses on South Asian Islam,
especially interreligious relations and shared religious spaces. Her current
book project is called Sharing the Sacred: Devotion and Pluralism in
Muslim North India.
Vincent F. Biondo III is assistant professor of religious studies at California
State University in Fresno. He received a Ph.D. from the University of
California, Santa Barbara. His specialization is the religious traditions of the
West, with a focus on Islam in America and Great Britain. He is author of
several articles and coeditor of Religion in the Practice of Daily Life
(forthcoming).
Stephen Cory received a Ph.D. in Islamic history from the University of
California, Santa Barbara. His specialty is the history of North Africa and
Islamic Spain during the late medieval and early modern periods. He is
currently an assistant professor in history and religious studies at Cleveland
State University.
David L. Crawford is assistant professor of sociology and anthropology at
Fairfield University. He received a Ph.D. from the University of California,
Santa Barbara. He specializes in the study of the societies of North Africa
with a focus on the Amazigh people of Morocco. He is the author of
Amazigh Households in the World Economy: Labor and Inequality in a
Moroccan Village and a number of articles and chapters on contemporary
Moroccan society and politics.
Maria del Mar Logrono-Narbona received a Ph.D. in history, with a focus on
modern Middle Eastern history, from the University of California, Santa
Barbara. She specializes in the transnational connections between Syrian and
Lebanese diasporas in Latin America during the first half of the 20th
century. She is currently visiting professor at Appalachian State University,
North Carolina.
Caleb Elfenbein is a Ph.D. candidate in religious studies at the University of
California, Santa Barbara. He specializes in Islamic studies, with a focus on
Islam in colonial and postcolonial societies.
Kenneth S. Habib is an assistant professor in the music department of the
California Polytechnic
About the Editors and Contributors xi J
State University, San Luis Obispo. His Ph.D. in ethnomusicology is from the
University of California, Santa Barbara, with specializations in Middle
Eastern and American popular music. He also has taught music at Pomona
College and the University of California, Santa Barbara, taught Arabic at
Santa Barbara City College, and served as assistant to the director of the
Middlebury College Arabic School.
Aysha A. Hidayatullah is a Ph.D. candidate in religious studies at the
University of California, Santa Barbara. Her dissertation research examines
newly emerging forms of feminist theology in Islam. She has written on a
number of topics concerning gender and sexuality in Islam, including the life
of Mary the Copt, the prophet Muhammad’s Egyptian consort.
Josh Hoffman is a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Santa
Barbara, where he specializes in modern Middle Eastern history. His fields
of expertise also include premodern Middle Eastern history, global/world
history, nationalism, political Islam, international law, and human rights.
Shauna Huffaker is on the history faculty at the University of Windsor,
Canada. She holds an M.A. from the School of Oriental and African Studies
in London and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her
specialization is in Islamic history, with a focus on social history during the
Middle Ages.
Amir Hussain holds a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. He is associate
professor in the Department of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount
University. He specializes in the study of Islam, with a focus on
contemporary Muslim societies. He is the author of Oil and Water: Two
Faiths, One God. His commentaries and interviews on contemporary Islam
have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the
Washington Post, and the Christian Science Monitor.
John Iskander is director of the Near East/North Africa Division of Area
Studies at the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State in
Washington, D.C. He holds a Ph.D. in Islamic studies from the University of
California, Santa Barbara. His research interests include medieval Islamic
history, Muslim-Christian relations, and modern Egyptian saints.
Linda G. Jones received a Ph.D. in the history of religions from the
University of California, Santa Barbara, with a focus on medieval Islam and
Christianity in Spain and North Africa. She has edited and coauthored (with
Madeleine Pelner Cosman) the Handbook to Life in the Middle Ages. She is
currently Juan de la Cierva Researcher at the Spanish National Research
Council (Department of Medieval Studies) in Barcelona, Spain.
Heather N. Keaney is an assistant professor of history at American
University in Cairo. She received a Ph.D. from the University of California,
Santa Barbara. She specializes in debates on religiopolitical legitimacy in
Islamic history and historiography. She has published “The First Islamic
Revolt in Mamluk Collective Memory: Ibn Bakr’s (d. 1340) Portrayal of the
Third Caliph Uthman” in Ideas, Images, and Methods of Portrayal: Insights
into Classical Arabic Literature and Islam, edited by Sebastian Gunther.
Jeffrey Kenney received a Ph.D. in religious studies from the University of
California, Santa Barbara. He is a specialist in Islam and the author of
Muslim Rebels: Kharijites and the Politics of Extremism in Egypt. He is
currently a professor at DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana.
Ruqayya Yasmine Khan received a Ph.D. from the University of
Pennsylvania. She is a specialist in Islamic studies. Her book Self and
Secrecy in Early Islam is forthcoming from the University of South Carolina
Press (Studies in Comparative Religion). She is currently an associate
professor at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.
Nuha N. N. Khoury is associate professor of the history of art and
architecture at the University
K xii Encyclopedia of Islam
of California, Santa Barbara. She specializes in the history of Islamic
architecture and urbanism, medieval Islamic iconography, and modern Arab
art. Her research has appeared in Muqarnas: An Annual on Islamic Art and
Architecture, the International Journal of Middle East Studies, and the
Journal of Near Eastern Studies. She also contributed to Autobiography in
Medieval Arabic Tradition, edited by Dwight Reynolds.
Max Leeming is on the religion faculty of Vassar College, where she teaches
Islamic studies and the history of religions, with a focus on sacred space in
the Islamic Middle East.
Laura Lohman received a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and
specializes in the music of the Middle East. Her research on Egyptian singer
Umm Kulthum appears in Music and the Play of Power in the Middle East,
North Africa and Central Asia (Ashgate). She is an assistant professor of
music at California State University, Fullerton, where she is completing a
study of the singer’s late career and reception history (Wesleyan University
Press).
Gregory Mack is a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute of Islamic Studies at
McGill University. He holds an M.A. from the University of Toronto. His
specialization is Islamic law; his research presently focuses on legal reforms
in the Middle East.
Garay Menicucci is the associate director of the Office of International
Students and Scholars at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has
a Ph.D. in Middle East history from Georgetown University. He is a past
editorial committee member and author for the Middle East Report and
teaches an introduction to Middle East studies and Arab cinema at the
University of California, Santa Barbara. He has also organized and led
several summer seminars in Egypt and Jordan for California K-12 teachers
and administrators, funded by Fulbright-Hays Group Projects grants.
Tara Munson is a Ph.D. student in religious studies at the University of
California, Santa Barbara. She specializes in the study of Pacific Rim
religions, with a focus on the Philippines.
Kathleen M. O’Connor is assistant professor of religious studies at the
University of South Florida. She specializes in Islamic studies, with focuses
on Islam in the African American community, Islamic medicine, and folk
religion. She has published articles and chapters on Islamic healing systems
and African American Islam, and contributed to the Encyclopedia of the
