The spread of Islam

Assignment

Read selection from Donner, F. M.  The Early Islamic Conquests (in Coursepack).

Read Richard W. Bulliet, "Conversion Stories in Early Islam" (in Coursepack).

OR Read selection from Levtzion, Conversion to Islam (in Coursepack).

Resources

(For major works prior to 1980, see the bibliography at the end of Morony, "The Age of Conversions.")

Brett, Michael.  "The Islamization of Egypt and North Africa."  The First Annual Levtzion Lecture, delivered 12 January 2005.  Jerusalem:  The Nehemia Levtzion Center for Islamic Studies, 2006.  http://islam-center.huji.ac.il/publications_e.asp, 11/30/2006.  (Copy on file.)

Bulliet, Richard W.  "Conversion Stories in Early Islam."   In Michael Gervers and Ramzi Jibran Bikhazi, eds., Conversion and Continuity:  Indigenous Christian Communities in Islamic Lands Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries, 123-133.  Toronto:  Pontifical Insitute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990.  (Copy on file.  Includes translations of a dozen brief conversion stories.)

Bulliet, Richard W.  Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period:  An Essay in Quantitative History.  Cambridge, Mass., 1979.  (A seminal, much-disputed work which attempts to estimate the statistical chronology of conversions based on the date that Islamic names appear in genealogies.)

Donner, F. M.  The Early Islamic Conquests.  Princeton, 1981.

Gervers, Michael, and Ramzi Jibran Bikhazi, eds.  Conversion and Continuity:  Indigenous Christian Communities in Islamic Lands Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries.  Toronto:  Pontifical Insitute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990.  (A treasure trove of short articles.  Available through ILL, request ISBN 0888448090.)

Levtzion, N., ed.  Conversion to Islam.  New York, 1979.

Levtzion, N.  "Conversion under Muslim Domination:  A Comparative Study."  In Religious Change and Cultural Domination, ed. D. Lorenzen, 19-38.  Mexico City, 1981.

Little, Donald P.  "Coptic Converts to Islam During the Bahri Mamluk Period."  In Michael Gervers and Ramzi Jibran Bikhazi, eds., Conversion and Continuity:  Indigenous Christian Communities in Islamic Lands Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries, 263-288.  Toronto:  Pontifical Insitute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990.  (Copy on file.  On Christian bureaucrats who converted mainly to keep their jobs; notes the occasional drives to exclude Christians from public service, which demonstrate their continued involvement.)  

Morony, Michael G.  "The Age of Conversions:  A Reassessment."  In Michael Gervers and Ramzi Jibran Bikhazi, eds., Conversion and Continuity:  Indigenous Christian Communities in Islamic Lands Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries, 135-150.  Toronto:  Pontifical Insitute of Mediaeval Studies, 1990.  (Copy on file.  His bibliography Reviews Western theories about the history of conversion, and compares Bulliet's statistical estimates with accounts of conversions from literary sources, finding significant discrepancies.  Rather humorous and tongue-in-cheek.)