Stephen P. Blake – författare

From 1400 to 1750, Asian capital cities were often ruled in such a way that they became symbols of the power and influence their emperors extended over their states at large. These 'sovereign cities' became the empire in miniature. Shahjahanabad is the first study of a pre-modern Indian city (Old Delhi) as a sovereign city. Stephen Blake explores the way in which the emperors' and nobles' palaces and mansions dominated the landscape; how cultural life revolved around that of the emperors and their families; and how the households of the great men also dominated the urban economy and controlled a large percentage of state revenue. This study thus illuminates how Asian capitals were not the great amorphous agglomerations described by Marx and Weber. Instead they were urban communities with their own distinctive style and character, dependent on a particular kind of state organization.

It was the astronomers and mathematicians of the Islamic world who provided the theories and concepts that paved the way from the geocentric theories of Claudius Ptolemy in the second century AD to the heliocentric breakthroughs of Nicholas Copernicus and Johannes Kepler in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Algebra, the Arabic numeral system, and trigonometry: all these and more originated in the Muslim East and undergirded an increasingly accurate and sophisticated understanding of the movements of the Sun, Moon, and planets. This nontechnical overview of the Islamic advances in the heavenly sciences allows the general reader to appreciate (for the first time) the absolutely crucial role that Muslim scientists played in the overall development of astronomy and astrology in the Eurasian world.

The prophet Muhammad and the early Islamic community radically redefined the concept of time that they had inherited from earlier religions' beliefs and practices. This new temporal system, based on a lunar calendar and era, was complex and required sophistication and accuracy. From the ninth to the sixteenth centuries, it was the Muslim astronomers of the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires who were responsible for the major advances in mathematics, astronomy and astrology. This fascinating study compares the Islamic concept of time, and its historical and cultural significance, across these three great empires. Each empire, while mindful of earlier models, created a new temporal system, fashioning a new solar calendar and era and a new round of rituals and ceremonies from the cultural resources at hand. This book contributes to our understanding of the Muslim temporal system and our appreciation of the influence of Islamic science on the Western world.