Cultural Brokerage in Premodern Islamic Societies

by Uriel Simonsohn (Editor), Luke Yarbrough (Editor)

Overview

When we speak of ‘Islamic societies’ or ‘Islamic civilisation’, we often imply that there is something distinctive about cultures wherever Islam is prominent. Yet historians have rarely examined in detail how these cultures that we call ‘Islamic’ were formed in relation to neighbouring ones. This volume addresses that gap by focusing on cultural brokerage: the process by which an individual mediates between different cultural spheres, transferring and translating ideas, practices and institutions across boundaries, often with lasting effects. The collection proposes a robust, historically grounded theory of cultural brokerage and demonstrates its significance for understanding the formation and evolution of culture in Islamic societies. It illustrates this theory with empirical case studies that range from early Islamic Egypt to early modern China, and from spheres as diverse as medicine, theology and art.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781399528689
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	02/28/2026
Series:	Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic History and Culture
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Uriel Simonsohn is Associate Professor at the University of Haifa. His books include A Common Justice: The Legal Allegiances of Christians and Jews under Early Islam (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) and Female Power and Religious Change in the Medieval Near East (Oxford UniversityPress, 2023). He is also co-editor and author of several publications focusing on inter-religious ties and encounters in the early and medieval Islamic periods.

Luke Yarbrough is Associate Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA. His books include Friends of the Emir: Non-Muslim State Officials in Premodern Islamic Thought (Cambridge UniversityPress, 2019) and The Sword of Ambition: Bureaucratic Rivalry in Medieval Egypt (New York UniversityPress, 2016).

Table of Contents

Abbreviations
Note on the Contributors
List of Illustrations

Introduction: Towards a Theory of Cultural Brokerage in Islamic Societies
Uriel Simonsohn and Luke Yarbrough

1. ‘Those Who Follow the Guidance’: Cross-Cultural Junctures in Early Islamic Documentary Conventions
   Eugenio Garosi
2. Christians Facing the Rise of Islam in the Levant: Places of Worship, Building Materials and Figural Images
   Mattia Guidetti
3. Transcultural Taste: Brokers of the Arab Cuisine
   Limor Yungman
4. Moving beyond Post-Colonial Approaches: Grammar as an Item of Cultural Brokerage between Byzantium and the Islamic World (Seventh to Eleventh Centuries)
   Maria Mavroudi
5. The Whirlpool at Work: Divine Attributes in a Polemical Milieu
   Sarah Stroumsa
6. The Arabic Translation of the Ghazālian Naṣīḥat al-mulūk: A Case Study in Intra-Cultural Brokerage
   Louise Marlow
7. ‘The Abode of Afrāsiyāb’: Muslim Cultural Brokers in Mongol Qaraqorum
   Michal Biran
8. Chinese Medicine as Tajriba in Medieval Iran: On Cultural Brokerage, Translation and Empire
   Jonathan Brack
9. Cultural Brokers between Persianate and Arab Islam: ʿAjamī-Ḥanafī Immigrants in the Mamlūk Sultanate
   Or Amir
10. The Cultural Brokerage of Nanjing’s Muslim Scholars and the Formation of Islamic Society in Premodern China
    Hua Tao
11. Trailing Clouds of Vagueness: On Cultural Transfers between Anthropology and History
    Dionigi Albera
12. Cultural Brokerage: Macro-historical Fluctuations of a Communicative Infrastructure
    Daniel G. König