Brian's Coffeehouse

So, you are about to start teaching at a public comprehensive university somewhere in the United States, quite possibly with a direction as ...

Is this thing on?

This semester is my second of assigning Nasir-i Khusraw's Book of Travels to my students in HIS 339: The Central Islamic Lands, 500-170...

Last Sunday I blogged about current views of the Covenant of Umar , which provided the framework in which Islamic jurisprudents considered ...

One of my projects this summer has involved the history of Christianity in the Persian Gulf, a little-known part of the broader history of M...

The article on this involves the regime's censorship, but the video game 1979 Revolution: Black Friday sounds like it has potential as a...

It has been clear for some time that one outcome of Syria's civil war will be an autonomous Kurdish region, much the way the Persian Gul...

The Economist has a useful summary of how reforms to the system of employer sponsorship of migrant laborers has improved wages and job mobi...

Among the best analyses of Iran's recent elections are those by Farideh Farhi and Shervin Malekzadeh .  The conduct of the elections th...

Ted Swedenburg's Memories of Revolt is primarily about the ways the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt in Palestine was remembered in later decades,...

The Economist calls attention to the fact that with Algeria's President Abd al-Aziz Bouteflika not seen in public for two years, many s...

Al-Monitor reports on Jordanian Christian men who convert to Islam so as get better divorce settlements: While a man who converts to Isl...

Israel is beginning to recruit Jordanian guest workers to replace Palestinians: On Dec. 2, Hebrew radio Kol Israel announced that the num...

Ben Carson is hardly the first person to claim the the pyramids were Joseph's granaries.  It was exceptionally common during the Middle ...

Last week, The National ran an article on archaeological work at Buraimi in Oman, which is believed to be the site of medieval Islamic Tuw...