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Memoirs of an Early Arab Feminist
The Life and Activism of Anbara Salam Khalidi
Anbara Salam Khalidi
Pluto Press, 2013

Memoirs of an Early Arab Feminist is the first English translation of the memoirs of Anbara Salam Khalidi, the iconic Arab feminist. At a time when women are playing a leading role in the Arab Spring, this book brings to life an earlier period of social turmoil and women's activism through one remarkable life.

Anbara Salam was born in 1897 to a notable Sunni Muslim family of Beirut. She grew up in 'Greater Syria', in which unhindered travel between Beirut, Jerusalem and Damascus was possible, and wrote a series of newspaper articles calling on women to fight for their rights within the Ottoman Empire. In 1927 she caused a public scandal by removing her veil during a lecture at the American University of Beirut.

Later she translated Homer and Virgil into Arabic and fled from Jerusalem to Beirut following the establishment of Israel in 1948. She died in Beirut in 1986. These memoirs have long been acclaimed by Middle East historians as an essential resource for the social history of Beirut and the larger Arab world in the 19th and 20th centuries.

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front cover of The Muslim Jesus
The Muslim Jesus
Sayings and Stories in Islamic Literature
Tarif Khalidi
Harvard University Press, 2001

This work presents in English translation the largest collection ever assembled of the sayings and stories of Jesus in Arabic Islamic literature. In doing so, it traces a tradition of love and reverence for Jesus that has characterized Islamic thought for more than a thousand years. An invaluable resource for the history of religions, the collection documents how one culture, that of Islam, assimilated the towering religious figure of another, that of Christianity. As such, it is a work of great significance for the understanding of both, and of profound implications for modern-day intersectarian relations and ecumenical dialogue.

Tarif Khalidi's introduction and commentaries place the sayings and stories in their historical context, showing how and why this "gospel" arose and the function it served within Muslim devotion. The Jesus that emerges here is a compelling figure of deep and life-giving spirituality. The sayings and stories, some 300 in number and arranged in chronological order, show us how the image of this Jesus evolved throughout a millennium of Islamic history.

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