The course aims to provide an in-depth understanding of the main historical and cultural aspects of Islamic countries, examining the main stages of Arab history from pre-Islamic to Abbasid times, and then moving on to the transformations that have taken place in contemporary times to be able to acquire the tools to understand the formation process of today's Arab countries. Furthermore, the course is aimed at acquiring theoretical skills necessary for Islamic studies in order to understand contemporary Islamic society.

The main topics include:

Part I: Arabs and Islam at its origins
- The pre-Islamic era, Islamic revelation and the figure of Muhammad;
- The Arab conquests, The Caliphate and the Ben-guided period, with the Arab-Islamic expansion;
- The Umayyad Caliphate;
- The Abbasid Caliphate, the regional dynasties and the sultanate;
- Cosmopolitan Islam and the cultural elite
- The fall of the caliphate and the end of the classical era;

Part 2: Islamiyyat
- Dar al-Islam, colonialism and the contemporary world
- The Qur'an
- The hadiths
- Islamic law: sharia, fiqh and sources of law
- The personal status
- The dialectic between sharia and siyasa: the formation of modern Islamic law from the tanzimat period to the Second World War

Part 3: the modern and contemporary Arab world
- The formation of the Ottoman Sultanate;
- The Arab Mediterranean in the Ottoman era, with Ottoman-Turkish expansion and the decline of nomadism;
- The four major phases of contemporary Arab history:
1. the age of modernisation 1800-1920
2. The age of colonialism 1920-1945
3. The age of revolutions in the Arab world 1945-1979
4. The Restructuring of the Arab World 1979-2015
5. Country Case 1: Egypt from the Napoleonic campaign to the fall of the Mursi government in 2015
6. Country Case 2: Palestine from the 19th century to 2015.

Castro, Francesco, Il modello islamico, Giappichelli Editore, Torino, 2007, pp. 3-38, 87-114.
Guazzone, Laura, Storia contemporanea del mondo arabo. I paesi arabi dall’’impero ottomano ad oggi, Mondadori Università, Milano, 2016, pp.1-92, più un caso paese a scelta tra Algeria, Egitto, Palestina, Siria e Iraq.
Lapidus, Ira, Storia delle società islamiche. Le origini dell'islam. Secoli VII-XIII (Vol. 1), Einaudi, Torino, 1993, pp. 5-135.
Additional texts, video and audio materials will be provided in class by the lecturer.