Thesiss

The need to evacuate some cities is always there, due to natural disasters, war, or hazard materials or gases presence, and the privilege of hosting a special event is sought by almost every city in the world. During all this, the roads and all the accessible routes will be high…

This study argues that the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, served as a key connective node in the early modern world which served as a site of encounter between both pilgrims and empires constructing new and contested notions of imperial power and crafting both communities…

The Dissertation utilizes the concept of "Sacred Global Cities" to analyze Rome (Italy), Mecca (Saudi Arabia), and Jerusalem (Israel). It expands the notion of national imagined communities to include global imagined communities epitomized by Islam and Christianity. Looked at in…

This study investigates writings about "people of blights" ( ahl al-'ahat in Arabic) - a category that included physically different, disabled and ill individuals - that circulated among a group of Muslim male scholars connected by the social bonds of friendship and academic men…

The present dissertation examines the ways that human cultures create sacred landscapes. The cultural tool at work in the creation of sacred landscapes is narrative, a form hardwired into the human mind and central for developing identities. Because of the connection between nar…

This dissertation explores the presence of Christians in late sixth and early seventh century Mecca and Yathrib/Medina, from 565 to 625 C.E. These were the cities in which Muhammad lived and preached the message of Islam, and although the pre-Islamic polytheism of these cities h…