Islamic Art, Literature, and Culture (The Islamic World)

By Kathleen Kuiper
Publisher: Rosen Education Service
Pages: 234, Date: 2009-12-20
ISBN-10 : 1615300198, Rar'd PDF 5 MB's Full

Introduction 7
The Islamic world contains a rich tradition of extraordinary literature and visual arts that stretches back for centuries. At various times, these arts have influenced— and been influenced by—Western literary and artistic traditions. Yet most Westerners know as little about Islamic literature and visual arts as they do about Islam itself.

Popular works such as The Thousand and One Nights and vague notions of tiled mosques or lavish palaces (frequently derived from Western fiction) are often the extent of Westerners’ knowledge of Islamic arts. Viewing Islamic art through the lens of such works is roughly akin to trying to understand the full scope of Western literature and visual arts through popular romance novels and fairy-tale castles.

The approach is neither realistic nor fair. This unenlightened view was shattered with the tragic events of September 11, 2001, when many Americans replaced their naive notions of the exotic Orient with an
outright rejection of a mostly unknown religion and all its worshippers. This attitude may be further exacerbated by the prejudice some feel toward the arts in general, that art has no connection to daily life and that it serves no useful purpose.

Yet if those notions are accurate, why are the arts so intimately interwoven with human history? The truth is that the creation and appreciation of art is an integral part of what it means to be human. Tens of thousands of years ago—long before writing existed—people painted pictures on cave walls and carved small figures. Before there was writing, there was spoken language, which storytellers used to create an oral tradition that was an essential means of transmitting the fundamental principles of human society and institutions.

The best among them could enthrall audiences with long, complex tales. After the invention of writing, many of these stories and poems were recorded, becoming some of the first works of literature....................................

Download Link or Mirror
.

Read More......

Book One - Two For The Masnavi, (Oxford World's Classics)

By Jalal al-Din Rumi
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Date: 2004-11-24, rar pdf 0.7 MB+0,82 MB

Description:
'The pen would smoothly write the things it knew But when it came to love it split in two, A donkey stuck in mud is logic's fate - Love's nature only love can demonstrate.' Rumi's Masnavi is widely recognized as the greatest Sufi poem ever written, and has been called 'the Koran in Persian'. The thirteenth-century Muslim mystic Rumi composed his work for the benefit of his disciples in the Sufi order named after him, better known as the whirling dervishes.

In order to convey his message of divine love and unity he threaded together entertaining stories and penetrating homilies. Drawing from folk tales as well as sacred history, Rumi's poem is often funny as well as spiritually profound. Jawid Mojaddedi's sparkling new verse translation of Book One is consistent with the aims of the original work in presenting Rumi's most mature mystical teachings in simple and attractive rhyming couplets.

Download Link
Books one
http://rapidshare.com/files/72703203/Rum_I0192804383.rar
http://ifile.it/hnjd3l8/86012___rum_i0192804383.rar

Books Two
http://rapidshare.com/files/72703300/Rum_II9780199212590.rar
http://ifile.it/nz0o4kt/86013___rum_ii9780199212590.rar
.

Read More......

Hadith as Scripture: Discussions on the Authority of Prophetic Traditions in Islam

By Aisha Y. Musa
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Pages: 224, Date: 2008-05-13
ISBN-10 : 0230605354, 698 KB pdf

Description:
This work explores the earliest extant discussions on the authority of the Hadith in Islam and compares them with contemporary debates. These lively and often polemical debates are mostly popular discussions in which Muslims from different backgrounds and cultures participate--making this topic relevant to Muslims in their daily lives, as well as a question of academic interest.

This is the first study to take into account both the earliest and most recent discussions of the oral tradition of the prophet Muhammad. The book also includes the first Western language translation of al-Shafi'i's Kitab Jima' al-'Ilm, which articulates arguments that were critical in establishing the position of the Hadith in mainstream Islam.

Download Link
.

Read More......

An English Translation of Akhwa-noos-Safa

by: Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʼ (Translated by Moonshee Syed Husain)
en | Military Male Orphan Asylum Press
106 pgs; P.1855
4.5 mb rar.ed bookmarked pdf, 106 pgs; P.1855 (pages 14 & 15 missing)


The Brethren of Purity (Arabic: اخوان الصفا; transliteration: Ikhwan al-Safa) were a mysterious organization, whose exact identity has never been clear. They were Persian & Arab Muslim philosophers in Basra, Iraq - which was then the seat of the Abbasid Caliphate - sometime during the 10th century CE.

Their esoteric teachings and philosophy are expounded in an epistolary style in the Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity (Arabic: Rasa'il Ikhwan al-safa'), a giant compendium of 52 epistles that would greatly influence later encyclopedias. A good deal of Muslim and Western scholarship has been spent on just pinning down the identities of the Brethren and the century in which they were active. This book is translation of their epistles on natural science.
Abū Hayyān al-Tawhīdī (d. 1023) in his Kitāb al-Imtā' wa'l-Mu'ānasa (written between 983 and 985), a collection of 37 seances at the court of Ibn Sa'dān, vizier of the Buyid ruler Samsam ad-Dawla, mentions about identities of founders of this heretic muslim group. Apparently, al-Tawhīdī was close to a certain Zaid b. Rifa'a, praising his intellect, ability and deep knowledge - indeed, he had dedicated his Kitāb as-Sadiq was-Sadaqa to Zaid - but he was disappointed that Zaid was not orthodox or consistent in his beliefs, and that he was, as Stern puts it:
...frequenting the society of the heretical authors of the Rasa'il Ikhwan as-Safa, whose names are also recorded as follows: Abu Sulaiman Muhammed b. Ma'shar al-Bisti al-Maqdisi, Abu'l-Hasan 'Ali b. Harun az-Zanjani and Abu Ahmad al-Mihrajani, and al-'Aufi. At-Tauhidi also reports in this connection the opinion expressed by Abu Sulaiman al-Mantiqi, his master, on the Rasa'il and an argument between a certain al-Hariri, another pupil of al-Mantiqi, and Abu Sulaiman al-Maqdisi about the respective roles of Revelation and Philosophy.[12]

Rasa’il Ikhwan al-Safa’ (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity) consist of fifty-two treatises in mathematics, natural sciences, psychology (psychical sciences) and theology. The first part, which is on mathematics, groups fourteen epistles that include treatises in arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, geography, and music, along with tracts in elementary logic, inclusive of: the Isagogue, the Categories, De Interpretatione, the Prior Analytics and the Posterior Analytics. The second part, which is on natural sciences, gathers seventeen epistles on matter and form, generation and corruption, metallurgy, meteorology, a study of the essence of nature, the classes of plants and animals, including a fable. The third part, which is on psychology, comprises ten epistles on the psychical and intellective sciences, dealing with the nature of the intellect and the intelligible, the symbolism of temporal cycles, the mystical essence of love, resurrection, causes and effects, definitions and descriptions. The fourth part deals with theology in eleven epistles, investigating the varieties of religious sects, the virtue of the companionship of the Brethren of Purity, the properties of genuine belief, the nature of the Divine Law, the species of politics, and the essence of magic.[3]

They define a perfect man in their Rasa'il as "of East Persian derivation, of Arabic faith, of Iraqi, that is Babylonian, in education, Hebrew in astuteness, a disciple of Christ in conduct, as pious as a Syrian monk, a Greek in natural sciences, an Indian in the interpretation of mysteries and, above all a Sufi or a mystic in his whole spiritual outlook". There are debates on using this description and other materials of Rasa'il that could help with determination of the identity, affiliation (with Ismaili, Sufism, ...), and other characteristics of Ikhwan al-Safa.

Download Link
.

Read More......

Midaq Alley

By Naguib Mahfouz

Publisher: Anchor
Pages: 304, Publication Date: 1992-01-01
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0385264763
rar'd pdf, 0.607 MB 

Description:
Never has Nobel Prize-winner Naguib Mahfouz's talent for rich and luxurious storytelling been more evident than in this outstanding novel, first published in Arabic in 1947. One of his most popular books (and considered by many to be one of his best), Midaq Alley centers around the residents of one of the teeming back alleys of Cairo.

Download Link

Read More......

The Book of Religion and Empire

A Semi-Official Defence and Exposition of Islam Written by Order at the Court of Caliph Al-Motevakkel..... Translated with a critical apparatus from an apparently Unique MS.

By Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari, , tr. by A. Mingana D.D.
Publisher: University Press
Number Of Pages: 198
Publication Date: 1922-01-01
6.3 mb rar.ed bookmarked djvu, P. 1922. To see bookmarks click on 'Outline' on left side of djvu page.

Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari (Persian: علی ابن سهل ربان طبری) (c. 838–c. 870 CE) was a Muslim hakim, scholar, physician and psychologist of Persian Jewish or Zoroastrian descent from Tabarestan, who produced the first encyclopedia of medicine. He was a pioneer of pediatrics and the field of child development. His stature, however, was eclipsed by his more famous pupil, Muhammad ibn Zakarīya Rāzi ("Rhazes").

Ali became an Islamic convert under the Abbassid caliph Al-Mu'tasim (833-842), who took him into the service of the court, in which he continued under Al-Mutawakkil (847-861). His father Sahl ibn Bishr was a famous Astrologer.
Ali ibn Sahl was fluent in Syriac and Greek, the two sources for the medical tradition of antiquity. His works are:

1. Firdous al-Hikmah ("Paradise of Wisdom"), which he wrote in Arabic. Called also Al-Kunnash was a system of medicine in seven parts, He also translated it into Syriac to give it wider usefulness. The information in Firdous al-Hikmah has never entered common circulation in the West because it was not edited until the 20th century, when Mohammed Zubair Siddiqui assembled an edition using the five surviving partial manuscripts. There is still no English translation.
2. Tuhfat al-Muluk ("The King's Present")
3. a work on the proper use of food, drink, and medicines.
4. Hafzh al-Sihhah ("The Proper Care of Health"), following Greek and Indian authorities.
5. Kitab al-Ruqa ("Book of Magic or Amulets")
6. Kitab fi al-hijamah ("Treatise on Cupping")
7. Kitab fi Tartib al-'Ardhiyah ("Treatise on the Preparation of Food")

Download Link
Rapidshare | ifile

Read More......

Teachings of Rumi (The Masnavi): The Spiritual Couplets of Jalaludin Rumi

by: Jalaludin Rumi

Publisher: Octagon Press, Limited
Number Of Pages: 330
Publication Date: 1994-06
Sales Rank: 164041
ISBN / ASIN: 0863040675
File Size : 969 KB | PDF

Book Description: The influence of Al-Ghazzali upon both the Christian and Islamic thinkers of the Middle Ages and beyond is being more and more widely documented. Known as "The Proof of Islam." Ghazzali finally won acceptance for Sufism in Islam, and his methods of argument and analysis powerfully impressed the schoolmen of the West, who imitated him extensively.

In the East, "Al-Ghazzali has been acclaimed by both Muslim and European scholars as the greatest Muslim after Muhammad" (Professor W. Montgomery Watt). Above all, Ghazzali was a Sufi, and The Alchemy of Happiness is his own abridgement, designed for the ordinary reader, of his colossal masterwork, The Revival of Religious Sciences.

Download Link :
Rapidshare.com

Read More......