Patricia Crone is professor of Islamic history at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Her publications include Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (Princeton University Press, 1987 [reprinted 2004], God's Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam (Cambridge University Press, 2003), and Medieval Islamic Political Thought (Edinburgh University Press, 2004; published in the United States as God's Rule: Government and Islam [Columbia University Press, 2004]).

Recent articles

The notion of jihad is one of the most contested in the modern Islamic and political lexicon. In a four-part essay, Patricia Crone makes it comprehensible: by identifying its textual sources, examining how early Muslims translated it into practice, asking how they made sense of it ethically, and exploring its contemporary relevance.

The early years of Islam compose an exciting field of current scholarship that is yielding fresh insights and understanding, says Patricia Crone, professor of Islamic history at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.