Soon after Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals annulled Ataturk’s 1934 decision to convert Hagia Sophia into a museum, President Erdogan, flanked by the Turkish flag and a photo of the museum’s interior, delivered a speech…
The Maydan Podcast · History Speaks – Episode 9- Karbala and Nobility What does it mean to act with nobility in the face of certain loss? In this episode of History Speaks, host Roshan Iqbal speaks…
Introduction Founded by Abdul Qadir al-Jilani (d. 1166 A.D.[1]) in the 12th century in Baghdad, the Qadiri order has soon spread to and entrenched its status as a major Sufi order in South Asia, during…
CFP “Reclaiming History Islam and Cultural Patrimony in the 21st Century” Call for Proposals | AbuSulayman Center for Global Islamic Studies Annual Conference, April 24-25 2025, Fairfax, VA Over the past half-century, Muslim communities around the…
Croats are Catholic south Slavs with a distinct identity from their Orthodox and Muslim kin brothers, namely Serbs and Bosnians. The Kingdom of Croatia, which lasted from the tenth to twelfth centuries, was established along…
In 1863, Christopher Rhinelander Robert, a businessman dealing in local commerce, and Cyrus Hamlin, a missionary serving in Istanbul, collaborated to found the now-famous Robert College. Its name was taken from its benefactor, though it…
In 1960, when legendary jazz trumpeter Miles Davis released the album Sketches of Spain (listen here), a stunning work of fusion which went on to win a Grammy Award, he unwittingly (but intuitively) bridged a…
Maydan editors asked former students of the late Ottoman historian, Cornell Fleischer to reflect on his scholarship, personality, and impact. We remember Prof. Fleischer and his contributions fondly. Evrim Binbaş, University of Bonn What can…
In the aftermath of the Ottoman defeat in the Russo-Ottoman War (1876-77) and the subsequent Congress of Berlin (1878), an autonomous Bulgarian Kingdom was established. Although initially, most of present-day Bulgaria was still under Ottoman…
The Maydan Podcast · History Speaks EP5 – Law, Education, Ethics: Tazeen Ali with Aria Nakissa In this episode of History Speaks on the Maydan Podcast, Tazeen Ali speaks with Aria Nakissa about his…
The history of relations between Christians and Muslims in the Middle East -particularly in Bilād al-Shām– is older than that in almost any other part of the Islamic World.[1] So it should come as no…
Rachida Chih, Sufism in Ottoman Egypt: Circulation, Renewal and Authority in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (New York: Routledge, 2019). 180pp., $39.16 (paperback), ISBN: 9780367730451 | Reviewed by Ida Sofie Nitter “The university was where…
William Henry Abdullah Quilliam (1856–1932) was arguably the most prominent figure in nineteenth-century Islam in Britain. He declared his conversion publicly in 1887 and then for the next twenty years preached Islam in Liverpool, attracting…
Persian travelogue writing experienced a significant rise during Iran’s Qajar period, and Iranian travelers produced hundreds of travelogues in this era. These travelogues narrated journeys occurring both inside and outside of the country. Some focused…
The Al-Qaeda boogeyman in Bosnia ”10.000 mujahedeen in Bosnia and Herzegovina ready for a new Jihad.” This is how the headline of an article read in a leading Bosnian Serb newspaper in January 2019. It…