The proposed dissertation project contributes to the growing literature on the impact of religion on economic outcomes. It explores the differences across religious groups with respect to educational and occupational outcomes employing census data from Egypt, both individual-level data (1848-1868) and village/quarter-level data (1897-1927). The digitization of the (1848-1868) individual-level c...

In our review of the first volume in this series we introduced the medical scholar Dr. Plinio Prioreschi, the author of this marvelous narrative of the history of medicine, and listed the composition of this series of tomes for the benefit of the readers.[1] We do so again here for the same reason: • A History of Medicine — Volume I: Primitive and Ancient Medicine (2nd edition, 1995); 596 pages...

The Islamic world of preand early medieval Spain has elicited the interest of many religious and secular scholars because of the peaceful coexistence by diverse ethnic and religious communities. The Moorish presence in Spain is still a subject of debate. Was Islam beneficial to Spain? What course would history have taken without the Muslim presence? What are the lingering results of Spain’s rel...

Maribel Fierro’s motivating question is “[w]hy books dealing with specific subjects were written at times and in contexts.” Relying on a dataset compiled by Historia de los Autores y Transmisores al-Andalus (HATA), project she directs that aims to map the intellectual production of al-Andalus, author observes majority scholarship produced Andalusi scholars fiqh poetry texts. The former, argues,...

Historical research shows that many physicians experienced in medical sciences are also talented in art, literature and poetry. Avicenna was a sage who was skilled in poetry in addition to philosophy and medicine. He wrote two different types of poetry: those meant to be enjoyed for their literary qualities of novelty and imagination, and his didactic Urjuzeh. Didactic poems are different from ...

DRUG ADDIcTIoN, especially through the use of poppy (Papaver somniferum Linn.) and hemp (Cannabis sativa Linn.), is the main concern of this paper. Although the use of these two plants in medieval Islam was extensive, yet little has been written on this timely subject by historians of medicine and pharmacology. Consulting contemporary original sources, it is my hope to sketch a history of their...