Islam
Ottoman Dress and Design in the West
Those of you who have known me for a long, long time might remember that I once wrote a proposal for a book on how Islam influenced Western culture in fundamental ways.(1) Those of you who’ve known me even longer know that my dissertation was titled Building the Orient of the Imagination: Excess, Confusion…
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Twenty Times As Good As a Man?–Sultan Raziya
[WARNING: For the next few weeks, it’s going to be all women warriors (and occasionally Women Warriors) all the time here at the Margins as we lead up to my publication date of February 26. I’ll try to keep the My Book! My Book! to a minimum and focus on the stories instead, but I…
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The Blackbird Sings
Several weeks ago My Own True Love and I had the pleasure of hearing a musician* play the oud and talk about its role in the multi-cultural mixing pot that was Islamic Spain. I sat and nodded my head in agreement as he talked about the spread of the oud through the Islamic world, and…
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