Edited by Andrew Rippin, a leading scholar of Islam, the volume covers the political, geographical, religious, intellectual, cultural and social worlds of Islam, and offers insight into all aspects of Muslim life including the QurтАЩan and law, philosophy, science and technology, art, literature, and film and much else. It explores the concept of an тАШIslamicтАЩ world: what makes it distinctive and how uniform is that distinctiveness across Muslim geographical regions and through history?