Adam Sabra – författare

The study of poverty and charity in Islamic history has made significant advances and Adam Sabra's book represents a full-length treatment of the subject. By focusing on Mamluk Cairo, the author explores the attitude of medieval Muslims to poverty - why and how did they give alms - and the experience of being poor in an Islamic society. He also considers the role of pious endowments (waqfs) in providing food, education and medical care to the poor of medieval Egypt. This is a fascinating account of a world far removed from the affairs of emirs and ulama usually the traditional province of Mamluk studies. This trend, in conjunction with the comparisons the author affords of poverty and destitution in Europe and China during the same period, will entice a broad range of scholars from within the field and beyond.

The study of poverty and charity in Islamic history has made significant advances and Adam Sabra's book represents a full-length treatment of the subject. By focusing on Mamluk Cairo, the author explores the attitude of medieval Muslims to poverty - why and how did they give alms - and the experience of being poor in an Islamic society. He also considers the role of pious endowments (waqfs) in providing food, education and medical care to the poor of medieval Egypt. This is a fascinating account of a world far removed from the affairs of emirs and ulama usually the traditional province of Mamluk studies. This trend, in conjunction with the comparisons the author affords of poverty and destitution in Europe and China during the same period, will entice a broad range of scholars from within the field and beyond.

These two volumes offer a collection of the short treatises of two influential Egyptian religious scholars of the sixteenth century. Abū al-Ḥasan Muḥammad al-Bakrī (898-952/1492-1545) and his son Muḥammad ibn Abī al-Ḥasan al-Bakrī al-Ṣiddīqī Sibṭ Āl al-Ḥasan (930-94/1524-86), who lived between Cairo and Mecca, authored numerous texts on Sufism and Ḥadīth. Abū al-Ḥasan’s works include forty-eight collections of forty ḥadīths, a work on voluntary poverty, an early defense of the consumption of coffee in Sufi ritual, his Ḥizb and his Waṣīya. Muḥammad al-Bakrī’s treatises focus on spiritual instruction, the ritual of samāʿ, Sufi theology, including the author’s rejection of waḥdat al-wujūd, commentary on poems by Ibn al-Fāriḍ and ʿAlī Wafā, and a number of prayers, especially for the Prophet, among other topics. Together they provide insights into the religious trends current in the Arabophone provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century. Furthermore, since the Bakrīs were revered from West Africa to South Asia, these texts are important for the study of the early modern Islamic cosmopolis.