Sibawayhi's principles

Sibawayhi, a non-Arab, was the first to write on Arabic grammar and the first to explain Arabic grammar from a non-Arab perspective.  Both Sibawayhi and his teacher al-Farahidi made the earliest and most significant formal recording of the Arabic language.

The restoration of sunnism

A study of the early history of Islamic law schools (s. madrasa, pl. madāris) and their professors in late Fāṭimid and Aiyūbid Egypt (495-647/1101-1249). It describes the origin and spread of these institutions, their teachers, and their role in the religious life of Egypt.

A reader of classical arabic literature

A Reader of Classical Arabic Literature is one of a very small group of resources in English for the teaching of intermediate and advanced level classical Arabic. Based on his lecture notes, the late Seeger Bonebakker designed a superb teaching text, which he then asked his UCLA colleague, Michae...

The political culture of the abbasid court, 279-324 a.h.

On generosity

The Ḥilyat al-kuramā', literally "The Ornament of the Magnanimous", was compiled in Cairo and Medina in the ninth/fifteenth century. This study of the work and its author is the first reliable critical edition of the Arabic text. An annotated English translation and glossaries make the text acces...

Muslim perceptions and receptions of the bible

The articles brought together in this volume deal with Muslim perceptions and uses of the Bible in its wider sense, including the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament as well as the New Testament, albeit with an emphasis on the former scripture.

Hadith, piety, and law

This volume brings together sixteen of Melchert’s articles, including those considered his most important as well as ones that are difficult to access. Originally published between 1997 and 2014, they are arranged chronologically under three rubrics - hadith, piety and law. The material is presen...

Arabic belles lettres

Arabic Belles Lettres brings together ten studies that shed light on important questions in the study of Arabic language, literature, literary history, and writerly culture.

Al-ma'mun, the inquisition and the quest for caliphal authority

The "inquisition" (Mihnah) unleashed by the seventh Abbasid caliph, 'Abdallah al-Ma'mun (r. 813-833), has long attracted the attention of modern scholars of the intellectual, political, and religious history of the early Abbasid era. Historians have seen it as the key to a wide array of puzzles a...