Books by George Makdisi

A collection of articles concerned with the growth, topography and local history of Baghdad as one of the principal urban centres of the medieval world and a microcosm of much of the Islamic world at that time. The author develops the theme of authority and power.

A study of the schools of religious thought and legal learning in the medieval Islamic world and their defence of "orthodoxy". The articles also discuss the Islamic and Arabic contribution to the concepts of academic and intellectual freedom and to the development of scholasticism and humanism.

Makdisi's important work traces the development and organisational structure of learning institutions in Islam, and reassesses scholarship on the origins and growth of the Madrasa.

This biography of the Muslim scholastic and humanist Ibn 'Aqil sheds light on one of the most important periods of classical Islam, one which has had a significant impact on religious and intellectual culture in the Christian Latin West.