Canonization

Unraveling the complex dynamics that created and sustained the hegemony of the four principal schools of Sunni Islamic law necessarily requires an appreciation of the schools' historical genesis. This dissertation provides the first comprehensive account of the emergence and ear…

In the past forty years the fluid Uyghur muqam song tradition has been transformed into a cultural canon used to represent the Uyghur ethnic group within China and on the world stage. Traditional muqam performers have provided the magma of songs that scholars and politicians hav…

The two h[dotbelow]adith collections of al-Bukhari and Muslim, the S[dotbelow]ah[dotbelow]ih[dotbelow]ayn, are the most revered books in Islamic civilization after the Qur'An. This dissertation addresses how, when and why these two books achieved this status and identifies their…