This tribute to Charles J. Adams from colleagues and students includes essays on numerous aspects of Islamic civilization, beginning with early Islam down to the modern period. The Qur'ān receives the attention of five authors: Andrew Rippin focuses on references to the pre-Islamic Hanīfs, while Issa Boullata traces poetic citation in Qur'ānic exegesis. Sulami's commentary is discussed by Gerhard Böwering, and Hallaq draws attention to the unique place the Qur'ān occupied in Shātibī's legal theory. Finally, W.C. Smith looks at the Qur'ān from a comparativist perspective.
Ulrich Haarmann and Donald P. Little deal, respectively, with the attitudes of medieval Egyptians towards the Pyramids, and the nature of Sūfī institutions under the Mamluks. Mehdi Mohaghegh, Hasan Murad and Paul Walker treat philosophical and theological issues, while Eric Ormsby analyzes the structure of experience in Ghazali.
Sajida Alvi explores the religious writings of the eighteenth-century Indian scholar Panīpatī, and Üner Turgay examines Circassian immigration to the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. Orthodoxy and aberrancy in the Ithna 'Asharī tradition is the subject of Savory's article, and the notion of literature in Arab and Islamic culture is treated by Wickens. Finally, Bernard Weiss compares Islamic and Western conceptions of law.