Nineteenth-century philologist and Biblical critic William Robertson Smith famously concluded that the sacred status of holy places derives not from their intri

Roads to Paradise: Eschatology and Concepts of the Hereafter in Islam offers a multi-disciplinary study of Muslim thinking about paradise, death, apocalypse, an

Explores how medieval Muslim theologians constructed a female gender identity based on an ideal of maternity and how women contested it. Conceiving Identities e

Abraham, the father of all believers, plays host to three strangers, one of whom is God, and thus sets an example for others to follow. Jews, Christians, and Mu

This masterful six-volume encyclopedia provides comprehensive, global coverage of religion, emphasizing larger religious communities without neglecting the worl