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The Religious and Spiritual Life of the Jews of Medina
In The Religious and Spiritual Life of the Jews of Medina Haggai Mazuz offers an account of the halakhic character of the Jewish community of Medina in the seventh century CE. Making use of a unique methodology of comparison between Islamic and Jewish sources, Mazuz convincingly argues that the Jews of Medina were Talmudic-Rabbinic Jews in almost every respect. Their sages believed in using homiletic interpretation of the Scriptures, as did the sages of the Talmud. On many halakhic issues, their observations were identical to those of the Talmudic sages. In addition, they held Rabbinic beliefs, sayings and motifs derived from the Midrashic literature. "The Religious and Spiritual Life of the...
History and Society during the Mamluk Period (1250–1517)
This volume is a collection of research essays submitted by fellows of the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg, an Advanced Center of Research in Mamluk Studies. It covers three themes, which correspond to the research agenda of the final three academic years of the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg. These were: environmental history, material culture studies, and im/mobility. The aim of the contributions is to overcome the disciplinary boundaries of the field and to engage in scholarly debates in Ottoman Studies, European history, archae-ology and art history, and even the natural sciences.
Nabonidus and the Queen of Sheba
Befitting her name, this book offers seven unique perspectives on the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon in 1 Kings 10. Although each theory stands alone and can be taken as a starting point for further investigation, the overall implication is that the Queen’s visit was not intended as a chronicle of some illustrious Arabian ruler seeking the king’s wisdom but rather, it was a reminder of the most castigated woman in the Hebrew Bible, Nitocris, wife of Nabonidus, King of Babylon (556-539 BCE). Two previous investigations, She Brought the Art of Women, and Arabian Sinai, set a new paradigm for the interpretation of the Song of Solomon and the exodus narratives, placing the stories of Abraham, Moses, and Solomon firmly in the 6th Century BCE. Nabonidus and Nitocris’ relationship was based on arcane rituals, secret initiations, and the drinking of a psychedelic, addictive potion; the “Queen of Sheba” epithet preserves this influence on the king as a caveat. Subsequent additions to the simple legend played with other associations to serve changing needs but the link to Nabonidus and Nitocris could never be lost, even if their original histories had been long forgotten.
Shared Identities
Received opinion imagines Judaism and Islam as two distinct religions interacting in the centuries following the death of Muhammad in the early seventh century. Tradition describes the relations between the two groups using such tropes as "symbiosis." In this revisionist work, Aaron W. Hughes instead argues that various porous and marginal groups-neither fully Muslim nor fully Jewish-exploited a shared terminology to make sense of their social worlds in response to the rapid process of Islamicization. What emerged as normative rabbinic Judaism on the one hand, and Sunni and ShiEven the spread of rabbinic Judaism, especially at the hands of Saadya Gaon (882-942 CE), was articulated Islamicall...
The Talmud's Red Fence
The Talmud's Red Fence explores how rituals and beliefs concerning menstruation in the Babylonian Talmud and neighboring Sasanian religious texts were animated by difference and differentiation. It argues that the practice and development of menstrual rituals in Babylonian Judaism was a product of the religious terrain of the Sasanian Empire, where groups like Syriac Christians, Mandaeans, Zoroastrians, and Jews defined themselves in part based on how they approached menstrual impurity. It demonstrates that menstruation was highly charged in Babylonian Judaism and Sasanian Zoroastrian, where menstrual discharge was conceived of as highly productive female seed yet at the same time as stemmin...
A Companion to Late Ancient Jews and Judaism
An innovative approach to the study of ten centuries of Jewish culture and history A Companion to Late Ancient Jews and Judaism explores the Jewish people, their communities, and various manifestations of their religious and cultural expressions from the third century BCE to the seventh century CE. Presenting a collection of 30 original essays written by noted scholars in the field, this companion provides an expansive examination of ancient Jewish life, identity, gender, sacred and domestic spaces, literature, language, and theological questions throughout late ancient Jewish history and historiography. Editors Gwynn Kessler and Naomi Koltun-Fromm situate the volume within Late Antiquity, e...
The Covenants of the Prophet Muḥammad
Through analysis of the Covenants of the Prophet Muḥammad, which pledge protection to diverse faith communities, this book makes a profoundly important contribution to research on early Islam by determining the Covenants’ historicity and textual accuracy. The authors focus on the Prophet Muḥammad’s relationship with other faith communities by conducting detailed textual and linguistic analysis of documents which have received little scholarly consideration before. This not only includes decrees of the Prophet Muḥammad, ‘Umar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib, and Mu‘āwiya ibn Abī Sufyān, but also of important Muslim rulers. They present their findings in relatio...
New Approaches to Human Dignity in the Context of Qur'ānic Anthropology
In recent years, the challenge of relating one’s own theological concept of man and his destiny to secular topics, such as the inviolability of human dignity, has generated a dynamic discourse about how Islamic anthropology can help cultivate and perfect the individual self and social ‘humanisation’. This anthology brings together contemporary Muslim and non-Muslim approaches to the secular notion of human dignity with reference to the Islamic tradition in general and the anthropology of the Qur’ān in particular. The collection presents approaches to Islamic theological anthropology, across a range of fields, especially with regard to the narrative of Adam and Iblīs, which occurs i...
Writing on the Wall
What ancient graffiti reveals about the everyday lives of Jews in the Greek and Roman world Few direct clues exist to the everyday lives and beliefs of ordinary Jews in antiquity. Prevailing perspectives on ancient Jewish life have been shaped largely by the voices of intellectual and social elites, preserved in the writings of Philo and Josephus and the rabbinic texts of the Mishnah and Talmud. Commissioned art, architecture, and formal inscriptions displayed on tombs and synagogues equally reflect the sensibilities of their influential patrons. The perspectives and sentiments of nonelite Jews, by contrast, have mostly disappeared from the historical record. Focusing on these forgotten Jews...
The Religious Polemics of the Muslims of Late Medieval Christian Iberia
The Religious Polemics of the Muslims of Late Medieval Christian Iberia examines the corpus of polemical literature against the Christians and the Jews of the protected Muslims (Mudejars). Commonly portrayed as communities in cultural and religious decay, Mònica Colominas convincingly proves that the discourses against the Christians and the Jews in Mudejar treatises provided authoritative frameworks of Islamic normativity which helped to legitimize the residence of their communities in the Christian territories. Colominas argues that, while the primary aim of the polemics was to refute the views of their religious opponents, Mudejar treatises were also a tool used to advance Islamic knowledge and to strengthen the government and social cohesion of their communities.
