Abbès Zouache

Far from being a simple Islamic reaction to the Crusades, or a monolithic ideology setting out a law of war imposing standards of behavior on all social actors, jihad is a phenomenon with multiple dimensions: religious, jurisprudential, ideological, military, political, economic, social, cultural and literary. The authors of the various contributions published in this volume have been invited to reflect on these multiple dimensions, with freedom to take a long-term view, and with freedom to question the a priori and historiographical or methodological presuppositions that often guide our work without our even realizing it.