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Recent Arab intellectual debates are often described as revolving around Arab-Islamic cultural heritage (turāth) and the role that it ought to play in modern society. This debate is standardly characterized as a confrontation between traditionalists and modernists, the former idolizing an ‘authentic’ heritage, the latter blaming traditionalism for Arab society’s inability to ‘modernize’. This study argues that this standard narrative has become overly dominant, making it impossible for different perspectives to be either voiced or heard. It calls for a critical review of how we think about contemporary Arab thought through an analysis of the progressive-linear temporal structure u...
The general field of study of this volume is the history and culture of the Mamluk Sultanate (1250–1517). It contains the proceedings of the First German-Japanese Workshop held at the Toyo Bunko in Tokyo, Japan. The authors write about a variety of topics from rural irrigation systems to high diplomacy vis à vis the Safavid empire and the Ottoman threat. The volume includes case studies of important personalities and families living in the centres of Mamluk power such as Cairo and Damascus as well as analyses of contemporary writers and their stance toward the ruling military class. Next to innovation in the field, this volume is an agenda of an increasing globalisation of scholarship that is fertilizing future research.
An innovative historical analysis of the intersection of religion and technology in making the modern state, focusing on bodily production and reproduction across the human-animal divide. In Milk and Honey, Tamar Novick writes a revolutionary environmental history of the state that centers on the intersection of technology and religion in modern Israel/Palestine. Focusing on animals and the management of their production and reproduction across three political regimes—the late-Ottoman rule, British rule, and the early Israeli state—Novick draws attention to the ways in which settlers and state experts used agricultural technology to recreate a biblical idea of past plenitude, literally a...
Tianyi Zhang offers in this study an innovative philosophical reconstruction of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī’s (d. 1191) Illuminationism. Commonly portrayed as either a theosophist or an Avicennian in disguise, Suhrawardī appears here as an original and hardheaded philosopher who adopts mysticism as a tool for philosophical investigation. Zhang makes use of Plato’s cave allegory to explain Suhrawardī’s Illuminationist project. Focusing on three areas—the theory of presential knowledge, the ontological discussion of mental considerations, and Light Metaphysics—Zhang convincingly reveals the Nominalist and Existential nature of Illuminationism and thereby proposes a new way of understanding how Suhrawardī’s central philosophical ideas cohere.
Philosophical Theology in Islam studies the later history of the Ashʿarī school of theology through in-depth probings of its thought, sources, scholarly networks and contexts. Starting with a review of al-Ghazālī’s role in the emergence of post-Avicennan philosophical theology, the book offers a series of case studies on hitherto unstudied texts by the towering thinker Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī as well as specific philosophical and theological topics treated in his works. Studies furthermore shed light on the transmission and reception of later Ashʿarī doctrines in periods and regions that have so far received little scholarly attention. This book is the first exploration of the later Ashʿarī tradition across the medieval and early-modern period through a trans-regional perspective. Contributors: Peter Adamson, Asad Q. Ahmed, Fedor Benevich, Xavier Casassas Canals, Jon Hoover, Bilal Ibrahim, Andreas Lammer, Reza Pourjavady, Harith Ramli, Ulrich Rudolph, Meryem Sebti, Delfina Serrano-Ruano, Ayman Shihadeh, Aaron Spevack, and Jan Thiele.
This project presents the hermeneutical approaches to the Qurʾān of the most prominent Qurʾānic scholars in Islamic intellectual history. Not only scholars who wrote commentaries on the Qurʾān in the narrow sense of the word (tafāsīr) are to be presented, but also those who dealt hermeneutically with the Qurʾān in various ways. The Handbook of Qurʾānic Hermeneutics is the first book that discusses all the hermeneutical fields of the Qurʾān. It will be published in seven volumes.
Ziel dieses Bandes ist, neue Akzente in der Mamlukenforschung zu setzen. Die Beiträge berühren eine Reihe spannender Themen: Heirat, Ehe und Scheidung, narrative Strategien in den Biogrammen hanbalitischer Richter, Wissensvermittlung, die zeitgenössische politische Ordnung, Wirtschaftswachstum, islamische Philosophie, die Präsenz der Zawawi-Gruppen in der Ayyubiden- und Mamlukenzeit sowie die Islamisierung von Ägypten und Syrien. Alle Beiträge tragen dazu bei, zu einem besseren, differenzierten Verständnis der Mamlukenzeit zu gelangen.Die Autorinnen und Autoren dieses Bandes, Fellows des Bonner Annemarie Schimmel Kollegs »History and Society of the Mamluk Era«, präsentieren in diesem Band die Ergebnisse ihrer am Kolleg durchgeführten Forschungen.
In this book, Doris Behrens-Abouseif responds to the Mamluk chroniclers whose loquacity regarding clothing matters demands our attention. Using a multiplicity of sources including chronicles, European and Muslim travel narratives, popular storytelling, legal treatises, literature, and poetry, Behrens-Abouseif delves into the details of Mamluk dress. Whether as a vehicle for the sultanate’s self-representation both internationally and domestically or as an expression of religious and social identities, status and wealth, female assertion, urban culture, and artistic creativity, clothing personified the broad Mamluk social spectrum. Replete with colorful anecdotes and copious illustrations, Dress and Dress Code in Medieval Cairo offers a lively and comprehensive study of this fascinating topic.
This collection is published in the Crusades Subsidia series in honour of Professor Adrian J. Boas, an archaeologist, historian and scholar who has contributed widely and significantly to the study and teaching of the Middle Ages. Professor Boas’ research encompasses the archaeology of the Latin East, military orders with particular emphasis on the Teutonic Order, material culture, architecture and medieval art, historiography and, not least, the Crusades and the Latin East. Exploring Outremer Volume I is a collection of 14 original essays by the leading scholars in the field on the history and archaeology of the Latin East. It covers several aspects related to the Crusades in general, but also deals with specific important points related to cities like Jerusalem, Acre and Famagusta. In addition, it presents original discussions related to warfare and topography, using both Latin and Arabic sources. This book will appeal to researchers and students alike interested in the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Cyprus, as well as the Crusades and Crusading Orders.