Social Progress - Arabic Language, Culture, and Heritage

The Islamic Law of Pearling: Ritual Obligation and Economic Practice in the Arabian Gulf, ca. 1910-1940

Submitted by Munir on Fri, 08/12/2022 - 21:36

In the first half of the twentieth century, the legal landscape of the Arabian sheikhdoms was pluralistic and fragmented. The legal actors who settled disputes included local rulers, qāḍīs, pearl merchants, tribal shaykhs, and British officials. Drawing on fatwas and correspondence between religious scholars and notables in Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, Doha, Kuwait and Manama, I examine how Islamic law shaped pearling – the region’s central economic activity – during this critical juncture.

The Re-establishment of Mosul's city fabric: an approach to computational hybridization

Submitted by Munir on Fri, 08/12/2022 - 21:01

This paper aims out to analyze the confluence of spatial analysis and computational design strategies to support the reestablishment of Mosul's city housing fabric. According to a UN-Habitat report, Mosul suffered from catastrophic losses on an urban scale, resulting in a housing crisis that requires a large-scale response. However, the need for immediate shelters might lead to a rapid, uninformed reconstruction process, causing the loss of the architectural identity that the city accumulated over the years.

Siffin Arbitration Agreement and Statecraft in Early Islamic Political Documents

Submitted by Munir on Fri, 08/12/2022 - 10:23
In this article we study the different recensions of the Ṣiffīn Arbitration Agreement and classify them into six different versions. Despite the differences in length and language among them, we note that these can be traced to a source document. We then highlight the key features and terminology found in the different versions of the Ṣiffīn Arbitration Agreement and observe the striking parallels that they share with the covenants attributed to the Prophet Muḥammad.