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"This third edition of Ira M. Lapidus's classic A History of Islamic Societies has been substantially revised to incorporate the insights of new scholarship and updated to include historical developments in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Lapidus's history explores the beginnings and transformations of Islamic civilizations in the Middle East and details Islam's worldwide diffusion to Africa; Spain; Turkey and the Balkans; Central, South and Southeast Asia; and North America, situating Islamic societies within their global, political, and economic contexts. It accounts for the impact of European imperialism on Islamic societies and traces the development of the modern national state system and the simultaneous Islamic revival from the early nineteenth century to the present. This book is essential for readers seeking to understand Muslim peoples"--

First published in 1988, Ira Lapidus' A History of Islamic Societies has become a classic in the field, enlightening students, scholars, and others with a thirst for knowledge about one of the world's great civilizations. This book, based on fully revised and updated parts one and two of this monumental work,describes the transformations of Islamic societies from their beginning in the seventh century, through their diffusion across the globe, into the challenges of the nineteenth century. The story focuses on the organization of families and tribes, religious groups and states, showing how they were transformed by their interactions with other religious and political communities. The book concludes with the European commercial and imperial interventions that initiated a new set of transformations in the Islamic world, and the onset of the modern era. Organized in narrative sections for the history of each major region, with innovative, analytic summary introductions and conclusions, this book is a unique endeavour

In recent decades there has been an extraordinary flourishing of transnational and global Islamic movements. Most of these are religious reform and missionary movements; some are political networks working to form Islamic states. Yet on closer examination we find that universalistic Islamic movements are almost always embedded in national state and parochial settings. Muslim, and national, ethnic, tribal and local identities blend together. This blending of universalistic and particularistic affiliations has deep‐rooted precedents in Islamic history. The original Muslim community of Medina represented a monotheistic vision encadred in a community of clans. The universal empire of the Caliphate gave rise to schools, brotherhoods, and sectarian communities. Sufi reform teachings of the late seventeenth to the twentieth century defined Islamo‐tribal movements. In the twentieth century universalistic Islamic reformism inspired nationalism and anti‐colonialism. The paper concludes with some comments on the mechanisms by which historical and cultural precedents are carried into modern times.

Describes different Islamic fundamentalist organizations, and attributes their success to lack of economic opportunity for many Muslim youth; denies the existence of a monolithic, anti-Western, Islamist force. Discusses Hamas, international Islamic organizations, use of terrorism by Islamists, return to traditional religious and community values, and other issues.

The present role of Islam in Middle Eastern politics is not a continuation but a reconstruction of the historical paradigms. In the premodern era, there were two Islamic paradigms. One was of an integral state and society unified under the political and moral leadership of a charismatic religious teacher; the other, of a society divided between state and religious institutions and differentiated political and religious elites, the latter being the custodians of the true Islam. The second tradition made room for purely secular monarchical concepts and a secular political culture. In the modern era, the historical Islamic paradigms have little influence on state formation. Even the avowedly Islamic states do not really hark back to the past but represent, for the most part, contemporary national states appealing to a new concept of national-state Islam.