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English edition
Nov
2007
418 pp.
Paperback
15X23 cm
$27.50
LE 150.00
ISBN
978 977 416 130 8
For sale only in the Middle East
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Rites for the Dead
Funerals and the Afterlife in Early Islam
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Leor Halevi
A new look at the origins of Islamic burial practice
Through careful research of oral traditions, Islamic laws, and tombstone inscriptions, Leor Halevi examines death rites and their role in shaping Islamic society. Juxtaposing prescriptive texts against material culture, Halevi interprets highly contested sources from the early Islamic period in innovative ways. He argues that religious scholars produced the codes of funerary law not only to define the proper handling of a Muslim corpse but also to transform everyday urban interactions. Their aim was to establish a new social pattern in the cities of Arabia, Mesopotamia, and the eastern Mediterranean that distinguished Islamic funerals from those of Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians. A groundbreaking study, Rites for the Dead introduces a new understanding of the ascendance of Islam, the history of life and death in the Muslim world, and the relationship between law and Islamic society.
Leor Halevi is assistant professor of history at Texas A&M University. His work has won numerous distinctions, including fellowships from the Library of Congress and the American Council of Learned Societies as well as the Kerr Award for Best Dissertation in the Humanities from the Middle East Studies Association. His publications have appeared in Past & Present, History of Religions, and the Journal of the History of Ideas.
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Reviews
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“Rites for the Dead will be warmly welcomed by scholars and students of pre-modern Islam, including specialists in both history and religion, and will attract the attention of European medievalists and anthropologists as well. The topic is important, the scholarship solid and original, and the presentation elegant and lucid.” —Everett K. Rowson, New York University
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