The Stone Woman is a complex story of the decline of the Ottomans and the rise of Christians in Europe. By abandoning the strong Turkish asabiyyah (social solidarity) and ignoring the prominent features of Islamic umran (civilisation), the Ottoman Empire fell, and the Christians gained power due to their advanced knowledge and strong social solidarity. As the fall of the Turks and the rise of the Christians occurred cyclically, the Cyclical Theory of the rise and fall of civilisations in Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah seems appropriate for the theoretical outline. It also explores how the Khaldunian concepts of asabiyyah and umran are related to Ali’s alternative history of the Christian-Muslim relations. The research concludes that Turkey has remained the center of the East-West conflict. The Middle East’s contemporary socio-political issues and ethnic strife originated in the Ottoman era.Keywords: Ibn Khaldun, Cyclic Theory, Ottoman Empire, Asabiyyah, Rise and Fall of Civilisations

Tariq Ali's Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree is the postmodern retelling of what happened to the Muslim civilization in Spain and how the Muslims fell from their grandeur in a cyclic mode of rising and fall. Due to the lack of social solidarity (Asabiyyah) and weak civilization (Umran), the Nasrid Empire in Granada became weak and was overrun by the stronger Christian civilization. Ibn Khaldun's Cyclic Theory of the rise and fall of civilizations from his Muqaddimah is applied as a major theoretical perspective and two of his key concepts, Asabbiyah and Umran are also discussed with reference to Ali's work. Ali's metafiction combines politics as well as the poetics of the postmodern culture and shows the relevance of Khaldunian ideas to the current metamorphosis in the Muslim World. The study deconstructs the Eurocentric notions of Muslim history and finds the trajectory of cultural conflicts of Christian-Muslim civilizations.

The Book of Saladin is Ali's metafictional retelling of the conquest of Jerusalem by Salah ad-Din Ayubbi and the rise of the Ayyubid Dynasty. Ali believes that by acquiring the desired social solidarity (Asabiyyah) and displaying the best elements of the Muslim civilization (Umran), Salah ad-Din raised the Ayyubid Dynasty to its grandeur. The fall of Christians and the rise of the Muslims happened in a cyclic mode; therefore, Ibn Khaldun's cyclic theory of the rise and fall of civilizations from his Muqaddimah suits to the theoretical framework of the present research. The study deconstructs the politics of Eurocentric perceptions about the history of crusades and traces the trajectory of the present socio-political conflicts in the Middle East. This paper concludes that for the sake of global peace, Christians and Muslims must liberate themselves from the roots of their bloody historical clashes especially the painful memories of the crusades.

In the postmodern age, under the effect of rapid means of communication and transportation, migration occurs and it has given rise to mutations in diasporic self. Ultimately, diasporic conflicting identity has become at the stake and diasporas often become an irreversible historical entity that leads to them towards home and homing desire. This paper explores the split identities of Arab-American diaspora in Darraj's prestigious literary work in the form of collection of short stories, Inheritance of Exile (2007). It also underpins how troubled relationship between the first and second generation of immigrants have impacted their dispersed identity. It also unearths the lives of immigrants, their pungent diasporic experience with split identity and its fragmentations; and then their inevitable survival in the migrated locations. The paper practices diaspora theory to analyze the novel through the model of Avtar Brah as a theoretical framework that is drawn according to the research methodology.