In late spring 2020, a source I knew to be reliable called me with a story. The Dutch government had hacked into Jared Kushner’s phone and monitored him as he accessed a Dubai-based bank account. What was odd, the source said, was that the money in the account—hundreds of millions of dollars—had come from a bank in Azerbaijan. Most importantly, Kushner appeared to have transferred significant amounts of money from the Dubai account to other individuals, including a warlord, a mercenary and a one-time hit man. The story sounded preposterous, I told my source. And yet.
Six months later, I found myself speaking with someone else about the UAE government and their use of mercenaries in conflicts around the Middle East and Africa when I asked, on a whim, whether they knew anything about Kushner and bank transfers from a UAE account. My acquaintance grew quiet. Then they replied, “Yes.”

Over the next four years, I came to learn that, sometime in late 2017, the Netherlands Defense Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) made a startling discovery. A General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (GRU) operative, a dark web hacker specializing in stolen bank data, was traveling to the UK for an espionage mission. They reached out to the British government for permission to apprehend him when he arrived. The British agreed.

When the Russian national arrived in England, the Dutch informed him that he had two options: he could work for them against the GRU, or the British would arrest him. Once in UK government custody, the operative would be charged with espionage. If convicted, he would spend years in a British prison. The Russian chose to change his employer.

Later that year, the Russian operative gave the Dutch spies access to one of the GRU’s most sensitive assets. Located in Rostov, Russia, the GRU’s hacking and cyber team operated a remote server on which they stored some of their bounty. During their search through these secret files, the Dutch found something astonishing: screenshots of Jared Kushner’s iPhone.

In The Hague, the MIVD hacking team tried to reverse engineer the Russian penetration of Kushner’s iPhone. Kushner owned what was then the latest model, the iPhone X. Released in November 2017, it featured Face ID, a state-of-the-art security feature that Apple had promoted at its launch. The Dutch team had been trying to pick the phone’s door lock, so to speak, when it occurred to them that the Russians may have found an unlocked window to gain entry instead. Their hypothesis was correct. By early 2018, the MIVD had found a vulnerability in the iPhone that gave them access. The security exploit wasn’t perfect, however. Some malware allows a hacker to turn a victim’s phone into a microphone and video camera, turn the phone on or off, and pull and add files. The Dutch solution did not provide that level of access. Instead, when Kushner used the phone, they could see his screen. Almost as soon as they got inside, the intelligence service began capturing every image of Kushner’s screen as he used it, filing their own cache of surveillance on their internal computer servers.

As they monitored Kushner’s phone, they discovered he used it to log in to a UAE bank account. By the time the Dutch spies had visibility into the phone, the account had received hundreds of millions of dollars from a bank in Azerbaijan. Their initial assessment was that the bank account was affiliated with the government there.

For the MIVD hackers, the bank account became an intelligence mystery to unravel. Nearly everything they worked on had a tinge of Russian conspiracy. A little over a year into Trump’s first presidency, the MIVD, like FBI agents and federal prosecutors in Washington working on the Robert Mueller investigation, had only part of the story.

Kushner, UAE ruler Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ) and Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) of Saudi Arabia, converged at an auspicious moment. MBS wanted to be crown prince. MBZ wanted to blow up Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, and Kushner wanted both to help him force the Palestinians into a deal that Israel would accept. Despite the perception of his wealth, Kushner was not entirely financially independent of his parents, and the family business, Kushner Companies, faced a billion-dollar loan coming due on their trophy property, the Manhattan office building at 666 Fifth Avenue.

Early in the first Trump administration, MBZ and MBS offered to pay for a slush fund dedicated to helping the new administration with foreign policy goals. The idea was to help pay for Trump’s promised wall between Mexico and the US, for example, in an effort to secure a second term in the White House. The two Arab royals initially discussed with Kushner putting more than $10 billion into the effort. Within months, though, as MBZ pushed the Trump administration to help back MBS’s effort to become his country’s crown prince—and future king—the broader foreign policy slush fund idea fizzled. Instead, MBZ and MBS initially, and then MBZ alone, put at least $2 billion into at least two bank accounts for Kushner. It is unclear how the royals organized their $2 billion in combined payments, but they effectively split the cost. For the purposes of explanation, it is best to understand where and how each bank account was controlled.

Bank account Alpha was held at First Abu Dhabi Bank, the largest in the UAE, and was overseen by MBZ’s brother, Tahnoon bin Zayed, who served as the bank’s chairman. Beginning in 2017, the Saudis and Emiratis transferred roughly $750 million into the Alpha account. Alpha would be used as a foreign policy fund. This money would be overseen and partially managed by Kushner and MBZ, who, in their effort to strike a grand bargain to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, believed the region’s map needed to be redrawn.

“Jared was looking for shortcuts in his diplomacy,” a source who knew of the UAE’s deal with Kushner said. This person held discussions with both senior UAE and Israeli officials about the secret financial arrangement between Kushner, the UAE, and, at least initially, Saudi Arabia. “Jared promised MBZ that he’d push their agenda with Trump if they participated in a fund. He wanted normalization with Israel so that business could take off.” A slush fund—a shared pool of money for off-the-books diplomatic objectives—was a common form of Gulf Arab government corruption, this person explained. “The Emiratis and the Saudis do this once a year. A billion or two is nothing for them, and if it gets them what they want, it’s money well spent.”

The Alpha account looked like the funding source of a UAE government program, by which MBZ paid his bureaucrats their salaries or funded government-run schools. But how and through whom the money flowed into the Alpha account revealed that it was intended to remain secret, more akin to a covert and illicit scheme, given that it was managed in part by a senior advisor to the president of the United States.

The Dutch spies who monitored the Alpha account noted that all of it was sent by a bank in Azerbaijan in American dollars. Azerbaijan plays a unique role in money laundering. Its central bank maintains high levels of US dollars in its reserves but does not adhere to the highest standards of bank transparency. As a result, Azerbaijani banks have well-established but unadvertised practices of serving as way stations for large transfers, in which a foreign currency is exchanged for an equal amount in dollars. For a roughly 6 to 7 percent fee on the transaction, some Azerbaijani banks will accept a transfer from a client who wishes to move Saudi riyals or Emirati dirhams totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. The Saudi or Emirati client sends the money to the Azerbaijani bank, which then uses a different internal bank account to transfer the equivalent US dollars to the client’s requested destination. For auditors, this shadow trade can’t be discerned.

A shallow audit, as the Dutch tried while monitoring Kushner’s iPhone, revealed nothing more than what appeared to be an Azerbaijani government–linked bank account that sent hundreds of millions of dollars to an account in Dubai. But there was another aspect of the Alpha account that the Dutch couldn’t see or understand, one that helped reveal the secret purpose of the money. Kushner did not own the bank account at First Abu Dhabi Bank. He was a signatory for an account managed and owned by an Emirati charity.

When MBZ and MBS first began contributing to the Alpha account in 2017, the Watani Al Emarat Foundation, a UAE government-funded charity, was run by Dherar Belhoul Al Falasi. Al Falasi was a technocrat and a member of the Federal National Council, and friends with one of MBZ’s closest friends and advisors. As a result, Al Falasi and the Watani Foundation had a second mission. The charity was used as a cover to move money in support of the country’s secret military and intelligence operations overseas. Under the Watani cover, Al Falasi helped facilitate the UAE’s secret weapons-purchasing programs, one confidential source who had direct knowledge of the charity’s proliferation program revealed. This source said that the Emiratis believed that the program’s status as a charity made its international transactions less likely to be scrutinized and therefore served as a useful cover for funding MBZ and his brother’s secret wars.

MBZ and Tahnoon made Kushner a signatory on the Alpha account with Watani. As a signatory, Jared had access to it and could, in theory, make transactions, but it technically wasn’t his account. One way to view what Kushner did with the Alpha account is to imagine him as the director of the CIA. Had he been running the government entity that managed and ran secret foreign programs, maintaining the account, again, with presidential approval and congressional disclosure, Kushner’s conduct would have been within his job’s responsibilities. But he was not the director of the CIA, whose position is approved by the Senate and whose operations are overseen and accountable to Congress. Instead, Kushner was overseen only by his father-in-law, who, according to four senior Trump administration officials—two national security advisors, a White House chief of staff, and a former CIA director—were unaware of any presidential authorization for Kushner to access a foreign government bank account. (Kushner’s counsel, however, said Kushner did not make any agreements or arrangements with leaders or officials in foreign countries that were not agreed to by the President of the United States and in the best interests of the United States.)

Regardless of whether he was a signatory or the owner, Jared was required by federal government regulations and the Internal Revenue Service to disclose his access to the account. Unless disclosed to and approved by the US government and reported on his tax returns, Kushner’s access to the Alpha account may have violated US law. (A lawyer for Mr. Kushner denied that his client had any knowledge of or connection to Al Falasi, the Watani charity, or a UAE bank account and stated that he had complied with all legal requirements when dealing with foreign governments.)

In addition to the Alpha bank account, MBZ put money into at least one other account intended for Kushner. By the spring of 2018, the crown prince had moved roughly $1 billion to Israel via Azerbaijan for Kushner. We will refer to this account as the Beta bank account. It is unclear how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu first learned of MBZ’s money for Kushner, but a person briefed on the Beta account told me that the prime minister encouraged Kushner to have the money deposited in the Israeli Central Bank, in what would appear to be a government account. It is also unclear how Kushner used the money the UAE deposited into the Beta account for him, but according to the person with knowledge of the money, its allocation was for Kushner’s personal benefit. But as with the Alpha account, there were clues in the way the Beta account was managed.

Israel’s Central Bank does not operate personal accounts. The bank holds and transfers only government funds. The government accounts use a dual-key system, which requires two authorized individuals to make any transfers from the account as an oversight mechanism. Netanyahu required Kushner to inform him before making any transactions from the Beta account.

To do so, Kushner passed his messages through Ambassador David M. Friedman, who frequently met with Netanyahu. With the money in the Central Bank, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to connect MBZ’s payment to Jared. It is unclear if spies in the Netherlands had any indication of the Beta account. (Ambassador Friedman denied that he had any knowledge of, or involvement with, any UAE money made available to Kushner, or that he passed messages on Kushner’s behalf. “I know absolutely nothing about any of these allegations,” Friedman said, “and the specific allegations about me or my alleged involvement in this alleged scheme are 100% false.” Kushner’s counsel also said Kushner “has no idea” about any such account, and insisted that “there are no accounts and never were.”)

Apparently, Kushner faced the challenge of moving money from the Beta account in Israel to other accounts where he could have untraceable access to the funds. One person who worked with Kushner to move the money out of Israel said that much of it went to bank accounts in Cyprus before being moved elsewhere.

During Kushner’s secret financial arrangement with MBZ, he helped negotiate a third, altogether distinct account. As part of what was, at the time, a secret warming of diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE, Kushner helped negotiate an agreement by Israel to help defend the UAE from a major Iranian military attack. The UAE needed to cover the cost of the emergency defense, however, and the government secretly made another transfer to Israel’s Central Bank. This was something like a rainy-day defense fund. Combined, the three accounts represented a secret foreign policy negotiated by Kushner with the leaders of Israel, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Although Kushner’s position as senior advisor to the president was unpaid, he was an official government employee. Not only did his position require financial disclosures for ethics regulations, but each year he worked in the White House, he had to file both a public and confidential financial form, known as the Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure Report, also known as a 278e disclosure. Because he had access to classified government secrets, Kushner was required to disclose any bank account to which he had signatory—or beneficiary—access.

Kushner’s apparent betrayal of the public trust, however, went further than his failure to disclose the secret Alpha account in the UAE or the Beta account in Israel. By giving him access to roughly $2 billion, regardless of how the money was used, MBZ and MBS were paying for his influence within the US government. Any efforts he made to shape US policy that came from a foreign government that had provided him with money would make him an agent of a foreign power. US law requires citizens who lobby on behalf of a foreign power to declare themselves and the country they are working on behalf of to the Justice Department.

One former prosecutor who worked on the Mueller investigation said that if Kushner promised anything to MBZ and MBS in return for the money they offered him—even if it was just speaking to his father-in-law—he may have violated federal bribery laws, as well as the foreign agent statute. (Mr. Kushner’s lawyer denied that Kushner violated any laws while serving in the White House.)
From PRINCES AND THIEVES: Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed’s Secret Plot to Remake the Middle East by Matthew Cole. Copyright © 2026 by Matthew Cole. To be published by One Signal Publisher/Atria Books, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC.

https://www.vanityfair.com/story/jared-kushner-hacked-phone-secret-negotiations

Preview pdf link: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003726340/constructing-muslim-adversary-tomasz-pe%C5%82ech

Raymond of Aguilers’ Historia Francorum qui ceperunt Iherusalem is one of the most distinctive yet understudied eyewitness accounts of the First Crusade. This book reassesses Raymond not as a credulous visionary or partisan propagandist but as a learned author who transformed crusading experience into a coherent work of sacred history. It asks how his representation of Muslims functioned within a narrative shaped by theology, biblical exegesis, liturgy, and the political culture of the Provençal contingent.
Combining textual criticism, intellectual history, literary analysis, and quantitative evidence, the book reconstructs Raymond’s biography, authorship, manuscript tradition, chronology, language, and relationship to other First Crusade narratives. It introduces ‘xenophany’ as a framework for analysing how the Muslim adversary is made manifest through names, ethnic catalogues, accusations of paganism and blasphemy, depictions of warfare, and portraits of Muslim rulers. Rather than treating these images as failed ethnography, the study shows that they render the crusade intelligible as providential history: the enemy confirms Christian identity, divine judgement, and the justice of Frankish victory.

The book will appeal to scholars and advanced students of the crusades, medieval historiography, Latin literature, Christian–Muslim relations, religious violence, and the cultural history of the Mediterranean. Its close reading of a neglected eyewitness, combined with new arguments about authorship, reception, narrative technique, and theological meaning, offers a major reassessment of both Raymond of Aguilers and the textual construction of the First Crusade.

About the Author
Tomasz Pełech, PhD, is a researcher at the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland. His research focuses on the First Crusade, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, medieval kingship, and the political and religious culture of the Latin East, as well as Byzantium in the Komnenian period and Byzantine–Latin relations. He has published studies on crusade narratives, royal ideology, seals, diplomatic practice, and ecclesiastical institutions in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. He is the author of monographs on Anna Komnene’s Alexias (2016) and Raymond of Aguilers (2025) and is currently researching kingship and political culture in crusader Jerusalem.

PDF link

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003726340/constructing-muslim-adversary-tomasz-pe%C5%82ech

Preview pdf (54 pages):

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003277972/imperialism-multinational-banking-enrico-berbenni

Egypt’s central position in the Middle East made it enviable among leading imperialist powers, with competition unfolding across cultural, diplomatic, and economic spheres. Furthermore, the Egyptian case is of exceptional interest within the region because of the interplay of several countries and numerous colonies of foreigners. The Italian community, second in number only to the Greek, was deeply integrated in the Egyptian economy and society, yet existing historiography has largely overlooked the consequences of this multinational coexistence.
This book examines Italian economic initiatives in Egypt from the late nineteenth century to the Second World War, focusing in particular on the banking sector as the cornerstone of Italy’s economic strategy, both as a driver of investment and as a key instrument for broader economic expansion. Drawing on largely unpublished banking and diplomatic sources, the book traces the history of Italian banks in Egypt, from the first venture established in Alexandria in 1887 to the arrival of major Italian institutions in the early twentieth century. It explores both the ambitions and failures of Italian economic interests in a rapidly changing international context, exploring relationships between Western powers and Egyptian society during a period when growing nationalism would eventually force Britain to recognize Egyptian independence. It investigates projects by major Italian banks and the resident Italian community, analysing their links with other foreign colonies and the indigenous population.
The book is primarily aimed at business history scholars, particularly those interested in multinational banking and financial history, but will also appeal to readers interested in imperial history, minority communities, and international relations generally.

**Review**
“A masterful and original contribution to the study of imperialism and global finance, this book offers a nuanced, deeply researched account of Italian banking in Egypt, shedding new light on the interplay between economic power, geopolitics, and multinational enterprise”

– **Giuseppe De Luca**, *University of Milan, Italy*.
“Italian banks have been left out of the international literature on multinational banking. Enrico Berbenni expertly corrects this omission with the fascinating case of Egypt from the age of high imperialism to the Second World War. A must read for anyone interested in global finance”

– **Youssef Cassis**, *European University Institute*
“This book represents a significant and genuinely original contribution to the historiography of multinational banking and economic imperialism. It reconstructs with clarity and precision the Italian experience in Egypt, bringing into sharper focus the strategies, limits, and missteps of latecomer powers in the arena of international finance”
– **Pietro Cafaro**, *Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy*
**About the Author**
**Enrico Berbenni** is Associate Professor of Economic History at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy.

PDF link

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781003277972/imperialism-multinational-banking-enrico-berbenni

A groundbreaking expos of the secret conspiracy between Jared Kushner, the UAEs Mohamed bin Zayed (MBZ), and Saudi Arabias Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) to fund a hidden policy agenda, influence the Trump White House, and reshape the Middle Eastfrom the author of the remarkable (James Risen, Pulitzer Prize winner) Code Over Country.

Two crown princes, MBZ and his junior partner MBS, have long wielded great power and unfathomable amounts of money to forge their states as new powers in the Middle East. But to execute on their ambitions, they needed partnerswhich they found in the wildly ambitious son-in-law of President Donald J. Trump, Jared Kushner; notorious former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, who was gathering mercenary armies for rent; and a former CIA assassin, among other allies.

At the heart of this shocking story is a tenuous relationship with Israel to confront Iran and marginalize Palestine, and secrets the conspirators want to remain hidden, including bank accounts for Kushners use to advance his own agenda in the Middle East. The actions of MBZ and MBS have already resulted in a trail of disparate wreckage, both domestically and globally, encompassing interference in US presidential elections, Israels war of annihilation in Gaza, and the Israeli-US war with Iran. These consequences beg the question: Did the president himself know what was happening in his own White House?

Impeccably reported in his signature searing and unvarnished (Jeremy Scahill, New York Timesbestselling author) voice, Matthew Cole reveals these secret and dangerous relationships and the damage they have wrought to our democracy, providing an urgent and startling understanding of our recent history and foreign policy.

From the Back Cover
The shocking story of conspiracy to quash democracy in the US and abroad, from investigative journalist and the author of Code Over Country.

Matthew Cole’s riveting Princes and Thieves delivers a real-time exposé of the hidden forces and secret scandals that have been, and continue to be, at play in the Middle East, around the world, and within the United States of America itself. Featuring tough as nails mercenaries, ruthless royals, deadly assassins and inept moguls whose bizarre partnerships have devastating consequences, readers will be on the edge of their seats. At the heart of this shocking true story lies a secret slush fund financing actions that have already resulted in a trail of seemingly disparate wreckage. A startling reframing and understanding of our recent history and foreign policy, in these pages, Matthew Cole reveals how the truth is stranger than fiction.

About the Author
Matthew Cole is an investigative journalist and the author of Code Over Country: The Tragedy and Corruption of SEAL Team Six. He has covered national security for more than two decades, much of it focused on America’s clandestine wars and covert programs. He was previously an investigative producer for ABC and NBC News, and a longtime national security reporter for The Intercept. His other work has appeared in The New York Times, GQ, New York magazine, Salon, and ESPN. He has reported from more than twenty countries, across five continents.

The Noble Sanctuary

A first-of-its-kind book that explores the history and landmarks of the al-Aqsa mosque complex in Jerusalem
This project, which is photographed and produced by Bashar Tabbah, explores over 120 landmarks throughout the complex via beautiful documentary photography and thoroughly researched text provided by veteran scholar Dr.Robert Schick.

This book is forthcoming from Interlink Publishing -- Fall 2027
www.interlinkbooks.com

https://www.mapandlens.com/aqsa

I've been exploring the history of Shams al-Ma'arif, the Arabic esoteric text traditionally associated with Ahmad al-Buni, and I'm interested in how people approach it today.

What fascinates me is the intersection of Arabic intellectual history, letter symbolism, numerical systems, and the reputation the text has developed over time.

I'd be interested to hear from people who have studied the text or researched its manuscript history:

•⁠ ⁠How much do we know about its historical development and authorship?

•⁠ ⁠Which aspects of the text are most often misunderstood?

•⁠ ⁠Are there reliable scholarly resources you'd recommend to someone who wants to understand it in context?

I'm particularly interested in historical and analytical perspectives rather than sensational claims.

It was later removed and gifted by the Arabs to the Briton T. E. Lawrence. Lawrence, in turn, presented the wreath to the Imperial War Museum in London, England.

The inscription on the front of the wreath reads:

“This wreath was presented by His Majesty, the Emperor of Germany, Wilhelm II, in memory of his pilgrimage to the tomb of Saladin.”

It also bears the dedication:

“From one great Emperor to another.”

On the front, a Quranic verse (Surah Al-Ma'idah 5:13) is cited:

“Indeed, God loves those who do good.”

Maula Ali ibn Abi Talib AS was the cousin and son in law of Rasulullah ﷺ, the husband of Sayyida Fatima AS and the father of Imam Hasan, Imam Husayn, and Sayyida Zaynab salamullahi alayha. They were the fourth rightly guided Caliph, and one of the most prominent figures among the Ahlul Bayt.

⚪️As a sunni i deeply love Maula Ali as.They were the first person to accept Islam and the first child to pray Salah behind Nabi ﷺ. They were the one for whom Rasulullah ﷺ declared, “Whoever considers me his Mawla, then Ali is also his Mawla.” And Nabi ﷺ said to him “You are to me as Harun was to Musa, except that there is no Prophet after me.”

⚪️ Rasulullah ﷺ also compared him to Isa ibn Maryam AS in a narration warning that two groups would go astray concerning him,one would exceed in HATRED towards him, while the other would exceed in LOVE for him. It's also reported in Sahih muslim that Nabi saw said "None loves Ali except a momin and none hates Ali except a hypocrite "Just think about the status of this man, Maula Ali AS and the words Rasulullah ﷺ spoke concerning him. it was through Mawla Ali AS and Sayyida Fatima AS that the blessed lineage of Rasulullah ﷺ continued.

⚪️Rasulullah ﷺ said “Hasan and Husayn are the leaders of the youth of Paradise, and their father is better than them"

⚪️And when it comes to his courage, he was a man who stood at the forefront of the greatest battles of Islam,,Badr, Uhud, Khandaq and Khaybar, Neherwan... carrying the banner, facing formidable warriors, and proving his courage on the battlefield. His name is inseparable from these battles, and his bravery was not merely spoken about, it was demonstrated when Islam needed it most.

⚪️And then comes the zakhirah of narrations and hadiths concerning Maula Ali as.Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal has said,NO Companion had as many virtues narrated about him as Mawla Ali. Just imagine the zakhirah of hadiths and narrations concerning this man, and the countless virtues recorded about him.

This is why I consider Maula Ali as the most virtuous among the Sahaba. And honestly i can never do justice to Mawla Ali through my words, because how can a few sentences encompass a personality of such extraordinary virtue, courage and status?Whatever I say will always fall short of what Mawla Ali deserves, but I have still tried my best to express even a fraction of his greatness.

Bashar Tabbah talks to Zara Choudhary about his experience photographing and documenting the sacred sites and daily life of Jerusalem, the birth city of his father.

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT IN THIS EPISODE
Bashar’s first book on the architecture and history of Jordan
Visiting Jerusalem for the first time as a diasporic Palestinian
The Old City at night
Serenity of the Haram al-Sharif
West Bank Palestinians visiting al-Aqsa for the first time
Photographing the city under the pressure of occupation
‘Between Moments’ – photography book depicting the daily life of Jerusalem
Photographing sacred sites
Layers of history in the Old City
Accessing restricted areas of al-Aqsa; the Marwani section
Traditions associated with al-Aqsa
Architect of the Haram
Psychological tactics of the occupiers relating to the al-Aqsa complex
Lesser known sacred sites in Jerusalem; zawiyas
Mamluk era-tombs and Ottoman zawiyas repurposed as maintenance offices
The architecture of the Dome of the Rock
The resilience, faith and hope of the people of Jerusalem under occupation

Bashar Tabbah is an English-Levantine photographer based in Amman, Jordan, who focuses on cultural and religious heritage, particularly in the Islamic and Mediterranean worlds. With over 300 documented sites globally and 350 in Jordan, Bashar regards himself as a historical photographer and explorer who dabbles in a variety of photographic genres.
In 2018, Bashar published his first book, “A Map and a Lens: Jordan, Sights Unseen Stories Untold” exploring Jordan’s vast history in collaboration with writer Jane Taylor. His keen eye for detail and ability to capture the essence of each location in his photographs make this book a must-read for anyone interested in Jordan’s history, culture, and art.
Bashar’s most recent book, “Between Moments” is an art photography book consisting of images of daily life in old Jerusalem, specifically created to raise funds for Palestinian medical aid.

Link to podcast

https://sacredfootsteps.com/2026/10/16/podcast-photographing-jerusalem-bashar-tabbah/

Ibn al-Haytham, Galileo, and the Quranic Foundations of Scientific Inquiry
In Western history books, Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) is celebrated as a foundational figure of the Scientific Revolution, often described as the father of modern observational astronomy, classical physics, and the scientific method. Claudius Ptolemy, too, is widely recognised as one of the great figures in the history of science. Being Greek and this European, it feeds into the narrative of European intellectual greatness.
**“There is only one way for us to become great, and if possible, inimitable; and that is by imitating the ancients, and especially the Greeks... The beautiful nature which they formed was a product of the European spirit, which has always been superior.” **
Johann Joachim Winckelmann
The Muslim or Mohamadan was painted as a barbarian an uneducated and uncivilized heathen. Muslim Philosophers names were hidden behind latinized names.
Yet, behind the Latinised name Alhazen, many readers in the West may overlook another towering intellectual figure: Hasan Ibn al-Haytham (965–c. 1040), the Muslim polymath whose work helped shape the development of optics and scientific inquiry. Modern scholarship has explored the influence of Ibn al-Haytham on later European natural philosophers, including figures such as Roger Bacon, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton.
Crucially, Ibn al-Haytham was not merely a faithful preserver of Ptolemy’s ideas. Although he respected the achievements of the ancient astronomer, he was also prepared to challenge his assumptions, expose inconsistencies, and question whether mathematical models accurately represented physical reality.
Ibn al-Haytham’s Critique of Ptolemy
Among the problems Ibn al-Haytham addressed were:
The violation of uniform circular motion: Ptolemy’s equant model allowed a planet’s angular motion to remain uniform relative to an imaginary point rather than the centre of its circular path, raising questions about the physical principles underlying the model.
Mathematical models versus physical reality: Ibn al-Haytham questioned whether astronomical constructions that worked mathematically could adequately explain the actual motions of celestial bodies.
Discrepancies in astronomical measurements and models: He challenged aspects of Ptolemaic astronomy that he considered inconsistent or insufficiently supported by observation.
These criticisms were part of a broader intellectual tradition that refused to accept established authority without scrutiny. Ibn al-Haytham’s approach illustrates an important distinction: a mathematical model might produce useful predictions while still failing to provide a satisfactory physical explanation.
Centuries later, modern scholars also subjected Ptolemy’s astronomical work to searching criticism. In The Strange Case of Claudius Ptolemy, astronomer Robert R. Newton argued that Ptolemy had manipulated astronomical observations. Newton’s conclusions remain part of a wider scholarly debate about the reliability of ancient astronomical data.
Ptolemy’s Mathematical Models and the Problem of Physical Reality
Ptolemaic model
The underlying difficulty
Geocentric system
Earth occupies a central position in the overall cosmological model, although some circular paths are offset from Earth’s centre.
Equant point
The model achieves uniform angular motion relative to an imaginary point, rather than uniform motion around the actual centre of the circular path.
Epicycles
Small circles superimposed on larger circular paths help account for observed planetary motions, including retrograde motion. Their mathematical usefulness does not, by itself, establish a physical mechanism.
These models demonstrate that sophisticated mathematics is not necessarily equivalent to a complete physical explanation. The crucial question is whether a theory adequately accounts for the world it seeks to describe.
The Often-Overlooked Intellectual Foundations of Islamic Science
What is frequently overlooked in popular accounts of the Scientific Revolution is the potential significance of Islamic epistemology—the principles through which knowledge is acquired, verified, and evaluated—in shaping the intellectual culture of Muslim scholars.
Concepts such as ḍabṭ (precision and accuracy), systematic verification, intellectual scepticism, and itqān (excellence and the performance of work with care and perfection) were deeply valued in Islamic scholarly traditions. These ideals were cultivated in religious disciplines, including Hadith scholarship, jurisprudence, and Quranic studies, and they offer an important context for understanding the wider culture of learning in which Muslim philosophers and scientists worked.
The methods developed by religious scholars to assess reports, scrutinise transmitters, distinguish reliable knowledge from conjecture, and challenge unsupported claims provide a compelling point of comparison with the practices of Muslim natural philosophers. The extent to which particular methods were directly transferred between disciplines requires careful historical investigation, but the shared emphasis on accuracy, evidence, and critical scrutiny deserves serious attention.
Even terminology reflects the potential connections between these intellectual worlds. The concept of taqlīd, or following authority without independently establishing the evidence, was debated in religious scholarship and also became relevant to discussions of intellectual authority more broadly. Its appearance in different disciplines, however, does not by itself prove a direct transfer of methodology.
Education in the Islamic world was also closely connected to religious learning. Many scholars began their education by learning Arabic and studying the Quran, while religious institutions and scholarly networks provided important foundations for literacy, intellectual exchange, and the transmission of knowledge. Although educational pathways varied across regions and historical periods, religious learning formed a significant part of the wider intellectual environment in which many Muslim scientists emerged.
The Quranic Challenge to Blind Imitation
The Quran repeatedly calls upon people to question inherited assumptions, examine claims, and distinguish truth from conjecture.
In Surah al-Baqarah, Allah says:
“And when it is said to them, ‘Follow what Allah has revealed,’ they say, ‘Rather, we will follow that which we found our ancestors doing.’ Even though their ancestors understood nothing, nor were they guided?” (Quran 2:170)
This verse challenges the uncritical imitation of ancestors and inherited traditions. Its broader intellectual significance lies in the rejection of authority as a sufficient substitute for truth.
Another verse declares:
“Say, ‘Produce your proof, if you should be truthful.’” (Quran 2:111)
And in Surah al-Hujurat, Allah commands the believers:
“O you who have believed, if there comes to you a disobedient one with information, investigate, lest you harm a people out of ignorance and become, over what you have done, regretful.” (Quran 49:6)
These verses establish powerful principles of evidence, verification, and accountability. They do not constitute a modern scientific method in themselves, but they provide a religious and intellectual framework that can encourage believers to question unsupported claims rather than accept them merely because they are inherited or asserted by authority.
Prophetic Teachings on Knowledge and Excellence
The teachings of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ further reinforced the importance of learning and excellence.
The Prophet ﷺ said:
“Seeking knowledge is obligatory upon every Muslim.”
He also taught the principle of ihsān—excellence in one’s actions. In a related Hadith, the Prophet ﷺ said:
“Indeed, Allah has prescribed excellence in all things.” (Sahih Muslim)
These teachings helped establish the pursuit of knowledge and the conscientious performance of one’s work as important religious and ethical ideals. In the context of scientific inquiry, such values provide a meaningful framework for understanding the emphasis many Muslim scholars placed on precision, intellectual discipline, and the careful examination of evidence.
From Islamic Scholarship to the Scientific Revolution
The central argument is not that the ancient Greeks lacked intellectual sophistication or that every principle of modern science originated exclusively in the Muslim world. Greek thinkers developed powerful mathematical and philosophical traditions, and Ptolemy himself produced an extraordinarily influential astronomical system.
Rather, the contribution of Muslim scholars was not simply to preserve ancient knowledge, but also to interrogate, critique, refine, and extend it.
Through their work in mathematics, astronomy, optics, medicine, and philosophy, scholars in the Islamic world developed and transmitted bodies of knowledge that later became available to European intellectuals. Ibn al-Haytham’s investigations into optics, his criticism of inherited astronomical models, and his insistence on examining evidence exemplify this more active relationship with the intellectual heritage of antiquity.
The significance of this contribution lies not merely in the preservation of books, but in the development of methods for testing explanations, identifying errors, and subjecting claims to rational scrutiny and observation.
Although these methods evolved across multiple cultures and centuries, the intellectual achievements of the Islamic Golden Age formed an important part of the historical background to the European Scientific Revolution.
Conclusion: Beyond the Eurocentric Narrative
The familiar story of the Scientific Revolution often begins with Galileo, Copernicus, Bacon, Kepler, and Newton. Yet the intellectual history connecting the ancient world to early modern Europe is much richer than this sequence of European names suggests.
Ibn al-Haytham stands as a powerful example of the scientific and philosophical achievements of the Islamic world. His willingness to question Ptolemy, investigate the limitations of established theories, and subject claims to systematic scrutiny challenges the simplistic notion that Muslim scholars merely preserved Greek knowledge for Europe.
The deeper question is whether we can fully understand the emergence of modern science without examining the intellectual culture that developed in the Islamic world—and the religious, philosophical, and scholarly traditions that helped shape it.
The Quranic emphasis on evidence, verification, and the rejection of blind imitation offers a compelling perspective through which to explore this history. Recovering that dimension of the past does not require diminishing Greek or European achievements. It requires recognising the wider, interconnected history of human knowledge and giving Muslim intellectuals their rightful place within it.

Algeria's complex colonial landscape serves as the backdrop for a deep dive into the intersection of race, Islam, and capitalism. Dr. Muriam Haleh Davis unravels how the French colonial state weaponized Islam as a racial category to structure economic inequalities. The conversation expands into the enduring legacy of Frantz Fanon, exploring the complex dynamics of national liberation and third-world revolutionary aspirations. Uncovering a rich, often-overlooked intellectual history, the discussion highlights the Algerian scholars and philosophers who actively fought to define their own nationhood.

00:00 Introduction
01:43 An Intellectual Journey to Algeria
04:40 Connecting Religion and Capitalism
06:50 Defining Racial Capitalism
10:59 Ideological Threats in the Cold War
12:50 Citizenship and the Colonial Status of Islam
17:22 Economic Policies of Settler Colonialism
23:05 Early Strains of Algerian Nationalism
28:36 Beyond the Mythology of Frantz Fanon
39:05 An Accident of History
43:31 Theory Production from the Global South
45:35 The Circuits of Intellectual Production
48:54 Highlighting Overlooked Algerian Scholars

Muriam Haleh Davis is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she directs the Center for the Middle East and North Africa. She is the author of Markets of Civilization: Islam and Racial Capitalism in Algeria (Duke University Press, 2022) and the co-editor of North Africa and the Making of Europe: Governance, Institutions, and Culture (Bloomsbury Press, 2018). She is currently working on a second book, Decolonizing Sociology: State-Building and Knowledge Production in the Maghreb, which examines how intellectuals in North Africa appropriated and transformed the discipline of sociology after independence. She is co-chair of the editorial committee for MERIP (Middle East Research and Information Project) and co-editor of the Maghreb Page for Jadaliyya. She holds an MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown, an MA in Culture and Theory from UC Irvine, and a PhD in History from NYU (2015). She has been a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence and a fellow at IMéRA in Marseille.

السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته،

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بارك الله فيكم وجزاكم الله خيرًا!

Today, a widespread perception in parts of Western society is that Islam has no place in the modern West. Islam is too often portrayed as a barbaric, backward religion, its sacred text dismissed as incompatible with modernity, and its historical legacy reduced to terrorism, beheadings and extremism.
But what if this narrative overlooks one of the most consequential intellectual developments in human history?
In The Quranic Revolution of Knowledge and The Alchemist of Hearts, we explore a very different story: the profound contribution of Islamic civilisation to the development of European thought and the emergence of the modern scientific world.
At the heart of this story stands a remarkable man: Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham ([965–1040](tel:965-1040)), the Muslim scholar whose work helped transform not only the study of light and vision, but the very way humanity investigates the natural world.
His masterpiece, Kitāb al-Manāẓir — the Book of Optics — challenged established assumptions about vision and light. Rather than accepting the authority of ancient thinkers uncritically, Ibn al-Haytham combined mathematical reasoning, geometrical analysis, observation and experiment to test explanations of natural phenomena.
His achievement was not merely that he advanced the science of optics. More significantly, he demonstrated how a disciplined empirical method could be applied to the investigation of nature more broadly.
This method was deeply compatible with a central Quranic insistence: claims must be supported by proof.
“Produce your proof, if you are truthful.”
— Qur’an 2:111
This demand for evidence became an important intellectual principle in the Islamic tradition. During the Islamic Golden Age, Muslim scholars applied it across a wide range of disciplines, including medicine, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy and the study of nature. Claims were not to be accepted merely because they were ancient, authoritative or intellectually elegant. They had to be examined, supported and, where necessary, rejected.
Ibn al-Haytham’s scientific paradigm emerged from a creative synthesis of Islamic epistemology and ancient scientific thought. He inherited the mathematical and philosophical achievements of earlier civilisations, but transformed them through a new insistence on testing claims against evidence.
In doing so, he did not merely propose another theory of vision. He used observation and experiment to challenge and falsify the ancient theory of extramission — the belief that vision occurred because rays travelled outward from the eye towards objects.
This is what sets Ibn al-Haytham apart from the great thinkers of antiquity. Ancient scholars made extraordinary contributions to mathematics, astronomy, medicine and natural philosophy, but Ibn al-Haytham developed and applied a remarkably systematic working method for testing theories through observation, experiment and mathematical analysis.
His analysis helped establish a new model of scientific inquiry: theories should not be accepted simply because they are ancient, authoritative or intellectually elegant. They must be examined, tested and, where necessary, rejected.
This is why Ibn al-Haytham should be remembered not only as the father of optics, but as one of the earliest and most important fathers of empirical science.
His Book of Optics became a landmark in the history of scientific thought and was translated into Latin during the medieval period, helping transmit his ideas into Europe. His intellectual legacy reached far beyond a single discipline, contributing to the wider tradition of empirical investigation that later scholars inherited and developed.
Centuries later, Isaac Newton (1643–1727) would revolutionise physics and establish principles that became foundational to classical mechanics. Newton’s famous words, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants,” have come to symbolise the cumulative nature of scientific progress.
Newton was undoubtedly a giant. But Ibn al-Haytham had already achieved something profoundly important: he had developed a working empirical method capable of testing and falsifying theories about the natural world.
Newton built upon a scientific tradition that had been transformed by this earlier Muslim advancement beyond the science of antiquity. The historical relationship between their work is complex, and we should not claim that Newton simply learned his entire method from Ibn al-Haytham. Nevertheless, Ibn al-Haytham’s legacy formed part of the intellectual inheritance that reached later European scholars and helped shape the development of modern science.
The giant who helped change the way humanity studied nature was a Muslim.
And this raises a deeper question: what intellectual and spiritual world produced a scholar of such extraordinary vision?
Ibn al-Haytham lived in a civilisation in which the pursuit of knowledge flourished alongside religious devotion, philosophical inquiry, mathematics and the study of nature. In our interpretation, the Islamic worldview provided an important intellectual and spiritual framework within which the investigation of creation could be understood as a meaningful pursuit of truth.
The Quranic demand for proof — “Produce your proof, if you are truthful” — was not confined to religious argument. It became part of a broader culture of intellectual accountability: claims required evidence, explanations required justification, and knowledge required disciplined inquiry.
This is the deeper argument of The Quranic Revolution of Knowledge: that Islamic civilisation did not merely preserve fragments of ancient learning. Its scholars critically examined, developed and transformed inherited knowledge, making original contributions that helped shape the intellectual foundations of later scientific progress.
Ibn al-Haytham could scarcely have imagined the applications his method would eventually make possible. Yet the principles he advanced — observation, experimentation, mathematical analysis and the testing of theories against evidence — now underpin fields ranging from physics and medicine to engineering, astronomy and modern technology.
And The Alchemist of Hearts explores the complementary dimension of this legacy: the inner transformation of the human being through faith, knowledge and the purification of the heart.
Together, these works challenge the assumption that Islam and modern civilisation stand on opposite sides of an intellectual divide.
The history of science is a history of ideas crossing borders, languages and generations. The modern world was not built by one civilisation alone. It emerged through the accumulated efforts of countless minds, including Muslim scholars whose achievements deserve to be understood and remembered.
So let us return to our question:
If Ibn al-Haytham had never written his Book of Optics, would Newton’s understanding of light have developed in precisely the same way?
We cannot know.
But we can ask a more historically meaningful question: how different might the history of science have been if Ibn al-Haytham had never transformed the study of nature through his empirical method?
And why, then, are so few people aware of this extraordinary legacy?
It is time to rediscover the Muslim giant who helped humanity learn not only how to understand light, but how to investigate the world itself.

Opens Saturday, 7 November 2026

V&A South Kensington
Cromwell Road
London, SW7 2RL

Link:

https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/constantinople-to-istanbul-one-city-two-empires