Dar al-Islam

Using Stories:
 

Koran

Notes on using the story of Joseph from the Koran (12th Sura), by Laurence Michalak, Vice-Chair of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, U.C. Berkeley.  As part of our technology workshop ORIAS has expanded on these study questions with examples from the texts at http://www.geocities.com/htl_c/nov20.html.

http://etext.virginia.edu/koran.html
Electronic text of the Koran

http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/012.qmt.html
Three translations of the Joseph story set side by side

http://www.barghouti.com/folklore/
Palestinian Proverbs, Tales and Poetry.  Under "stories" link the  "Ataba & Zarief E-ttool" tale comes with useful notes. Unfortunately it was written up by someone not quite fluent in English and needs to be rewritten for student use.

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/OMACL/Cid/
El Cid text on-line

Nasreddin:

http://aton.ttu.edu/
The Archive of Turkish Oral Literature at Texas Tech University digital connection includes many translated stories including Nasreddin tales collected in Central Asia: http://aton.ttu.edu/watermarked/wmVol_01-14_Nasreddin_Hoca_and_the_999_Liras.pdf

Text: Watermelons, Walnuts and theWisdom of Allah and Other Tales of the Hoca, by Barbara Walker, you might like to look at these Nasreddin anecdotes and encourage your students to invent their own modern Nasreddin tales.

http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~dkbrown/
David K. Brown's Children's Literature site at the University of Calgary is a good general place to start looking for contemporary sources, folklore or fairy tale sites.  There is not much on longer heroic literature.

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook1d.html#General
Internet Medieval Sourcebook: Primary sources from the Islamic world including literature and religious documents

http://www.sfusd.k12.ca.us/schwww/sch618/islam/nbLinks/Islam_Literature_Poetry.html
Nick Bartel, 7th grade teacher at Horace Mann in S.F., put this page of annotated links on Islam together for his class.

http://score.rims.k12.ca.us/activity/islam/index.html
Lesson Plan by Judy Houson (Los Angeles)  for introducing Islamic culture. The "teacher's resources" has a good summary from the state standards" and the lesson is well-structured. I didn't find the links particularly useful, however.

http://almashriq.hiof.no/general/000/070/079/al-jadid/aljadid-magic.html
The Passion And The Magic: Distinctions Of Arabic Folktales, an article by Fatme Sharafeddine Hassan

http://wings.buffalo.edu/student-life/sa/muslim/isl/isl.html
The Muslim Students Association at the University at Buffalo has put together this useful Islamic MetaPage which distinguishes resources in Islamic culture and religion.

http://www.georgetown.edu:80/labyrinth/subjects/iberia/iberia.html
Medieval Iberian Links with information on some visuals and a good deal of scholarly information -- reading level is not  students friendly

An ORIAS page of general links on Islam.http://orias.berkeley.edu/Islam.html

 
http://www.albany.edu/jmmh/vol1no1/teach-islamic.html#literature
Corinne Blake is an assistant professor at Rowan University in New Jersey, where she teaches courses on Islam and the Middle East as well as world history. In 1998 she organized a panel on "Teaching with Technology: Middle East History and Politics" at the M.E.S.A. conference in San Francisco, and this site was developed for that.  It annotates the important resources for introductory Islamic studies at the undergraduate level which could also be useful for teachers.

The syllabus for her course on Islamic civilization can be seen at http://spider.rowan.edu/history/BLAKE/Islami~1.htm.
Some assignments she gives on her class page are:

Internet Assignment 1
Learn how to log onto the Internet (see me if you arehaving problems). Visit The Islam Page. Scroll down the page to skim through the list of sections and the listings of articles in each section. Click on at least five articles that interest you (each article should be from a different section) and skim the articles. Your journal entry (2-3 pages) should include a list of the articles you read and a general discussion of the site/articles that addresses the following questions. Be prepared to discuss this site in class!
 

Who wrote the articles? To what audience is the site/articles directed? Do the writers support their arguments? Do they acknowledge any opposing views or exhibit any biases?  What questions are left in your mind after reading the articles?  How do the articles add to your knowledge about the subject? How do they relate to material we've covered in the course? What did you like most about the site/articles? What did you like least?

Presentation I:
Go to http://www.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/techfak/ags/ti/personen/mfreeric/m/an/a_index.html, which is a hypertext version of 1001 Nights, translated by Sir Richard Burton. Read the "Intro Story" and the Conclusion as well as one of the stories listed. Each student will give a presentation about the story he/she read. In your presentation, give a BRIEF summary of the story you read, and discuss what you think it reveals about Abbasid culture and/or society.
 

http://www.ourdialogue.com/
This question-answer site on Islam from Arab NEWS, Jeddah covers practically all topics.

Maps and Timelines:

http://www.hyperhistory.com/online_n2/History_n2/a.html
Map of the spread of Islam

Using Visuals
See Nick Bartel's site above for his links and comments on Joseph visuals.

http://www.uca.edu/aarhms/
The American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain includes images of Islamic architecture of the Mediterranean basin as it appears all over the world, including a number of examples in California.

The ORIAS on-line lesson "Three Monotheistic Religions" includes a series of slides of important Islamic monuments and images.

Standards

California History/Social Science Content Standards http://www.cde.ca.gov/cdepress/Hist_SocSci_Stnd.pdf

Class working page of selected standards

History
Language Arts

Go Back to History Through Literature Homepage

Back to ORIAS Homepage.