Knowledge, Authority and Change in Islamic Societies : Studies in Honor of Dale F. Eickelman

Senior scholars of Islamic studies and the anthropology of Islam gather in this volume to pay tribute to one of the giants of the field, Dale F. Eickelman. In diversely arrayed, rigorous and compelling chapters, leading historians, anthropologists, and political scientists elaborate through their own original research on Dale’s unique contributions to the study of the modern Muslim world. Eickelman’s reflections on the diverse intellectual traditions of Muslim societies and the scholars and laypersons who enact them remain defining as a framework for intellectual inquiry into the modern Muslim world and the profound changes that are transpiring within it.

Contributors are Jon W. Anderson, el-Sayed el-Aswad, Simeon Evstatiev, Allen James Fromherz, Harvey E. Goldberg, Gilles Kepel, Mandana Limbert, Simon O’Meara, Abdelrhani Moundib, Muhammad Khalid Masud, Nadav Samin, Susan Slyomovics, Jenny White and Muhammad Qasim Zaman.

Allen James Fromherz, Ph.D. (2006), is Professor of Middle East, Gulf and Mediterranean History at Georgia State University where he directs the Middle East Studies Center. He is the author of The Almohads, Rise of an Islamic Empire (IB Tauris), Ibn Khaldun, Life and Times (Edinburgh), The Near West (Edinburgh), Qatar, A Modern History (Georgetown) and is editor of The Gulf in World History (Edinburgh, 2018). He is also President of the American Institute for Maghrib Studies AIMS (2015-2021).

Nadav Samin is a historian of the modern Middle East. He is the author of Of Sand or Soil: Genealogy and Tribal Belonging in Saudi Arabia (Princeton), as well as numerous journal articles. He has taught at Dartmouth College, New York University, Hunter College (CUNY), and elsewhere. Mr. Samin received his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University in 2013, and is an Affiliate of the Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore.