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Medieval Arabic Historiography is concerned with social contexts and narrative structures of pre-modern Islamic historiography written in Arabic in seventh and thirteenth-century Syria and Eygpt. Taking up recent theoretical reflections on historical writing in the European Middle Ages, this extraordinary study combines approaches drawn from social sciences and literary studies, with a particular focus on two well-known texts: Abu Shama’s The Book of the Two Gardens, and Ibn Wasil’s The Dissipater of Anxieties. These texts describe events during the life of the sultans Nur-al-Din and Salah al-Din, who are primarily known in modern times as the champions of the anti-Crusade movement. Hirschler shows that these two authors were active interpreters of their society and has considerable room for manoeuvre in both their social environment and the shaping of their texts. Through the use of a fresh and original theoretical approach to pre-modern Arabic historiography, Hirschler presents a new understanding of these texts which have before been relatively neglected, thus providing a significant contribution to the burgeoning field of historiographical studies.
Winner of the 2012 BRISMES book prize. How the written text became accessible to wider audiences in medieval Egypt and Syria. Medieval Islamic societies belonged to the most bookish cultures of their period. Using a wide variety of documentary, narrative and normative sources, Konrad Hirschler explores the growth of reading audiences in a pre-print culture.The uses of the written word grew significantly in Egypt and Syria between the 11th and the 15th centuries, and more groups within society started to participate in individual and communal reading acts. New audiences in reading sessions, school curricula, increasing numbers of endowed libraries and the appearance of popular written literature all bear witness to the profound transformation of cultural practices and their social contexts.
In Alliances and Treaties between Frankish and Muslim Rulers Michael Köhler presents a fully integrated study of Frankish-Muslim diplomacy in the period from the First Crusade through to the thirteenth century. It is a ground-breaking study that challenges preconceived notions of the relations between Frankish and Muslim rulers in the Middle East. Commonly portrayed as an era of conflict, the period appears here as one in which conventions of diplomatic cooperation were commonplace. This book is one of the few works in the fields of Crusader Studies and Middle Eastern Studies that draws to the same extent on Arabic and Western sources; two textual traditions that have usually been studied in isolation from each other.
In Medieval Muslim Historians and the Franks in the Levant seven leading scholars examine the historical writings of seven medieval Muslim historians whose works provide the core chronographical texts for reconstructing the events of the crusading period, 1097-1291. Each chapter examines the life of and influences on each historian, their overall writings, and their historical works related to the Crusades. Each historical text is examined for the current state of modern research, the sources and working method of the author, and its use and relevance for crusader studies and other fields of research. This volume will be of use to anyone studying the events of the Crusades, of Islamic History, or of Arabic Historiography in the medieval period. Contributors include: Frédéric Bauden, Niall Christie, Anne-Marie Eddé, Konrad Hirschler, Alex Mallett, and Françoise Micheau, Lutz Richter-Bernburg
The written text was a pervasive feature of cultural practices in the medieval Middle East. At the heart of book circulation stood libraries that experienced a rapid expansion from the twelfth century onwards. While the existence of these libraries is well known our knowledge of their content and structure has been very limited as hardly any medieval Arabic catalogues have been preserved. This book discusses the largest and earliest medieval library of the Middle East for which we have documentation "e; the Ashrafiya library in the very centre of Damascus "e; and edits its catalogue. This catalogue shows that even book collections attached to Sunni religious institutions could hold r...
In Die Rifāʽīya spürt Boris Liebrenz der Buchkultur des Osmanischen Syrien (16. - 19. Jahrhundert) durch den Fokus der einzig überlebenden Privatbibliothek der Epoche nach. Er fragt nach der Produktion und Transmission von Wissen sowie dem sozialen Hintergrund der Leserschaft im Zeitalter der Handschrift. Studien der arabischen Bibliotheksgeschichte haben oft nur das Mittelalter in den Blick genommen und basierten fast ausschließlich auf literarischen Quellen. Dies ist die erste Monographie, die eine einzige Region während der Osmanischen Periode in den Fokus nimmt und deren auf uns gekommene Handschriften und Notizen ihrer Leser und Besitzer systematisch als dokumentarische Quelle be...
In The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction, Muhsin J. al-Musawi offers a groundbreaking study of literary heritage in the medieval and premodern Islamic period. Al-Musawi challenges the paradigm that considers the period from the fall of Baghdad in 1258 to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1919 as an "Age of Decay" followed by an "Awakening" (al-nahdah). His sweeping synthesis debunks this view by carefully documenting a "republic of letters" in the Islamic Near East and South Asia that was vibrant and dynamic, one varying considerably from the generally accepted image of a centuries-long period of intellectual and literary stagnation. Al-Musawi argues tha...
Die Beiträger des Bandes haben es sich zum Ziel gesetzt, den umfangreichen Bestand an Handschriftenfragmenten, der sich in der Qubbat al-khazna von Damaskus befindet, in der Geschichte des Mittleren Ostens zu verorten. Ebenso wie ihr berühmtes Pendant, die Geniza in Kairo, wurde die Qubba im 19. Jahrhundert "entdeckt", doch ihre 200.000 Fragmente fanden in der Forschung bisher nur geringe Aufmerksamkeit. Ein internationales und interdisziplinäres Team von Wissenschaftlern hat sich nun zusammengefunden, um die faszinierende Geschichte dieser Sammlung zu skizzieren und die außergewöhnlichen multilingualen, multireligiösen und multiscripturalen Artefakte, die sie beinhaltet, zu erfassen. Dieses Buch ist grundlegend für jene, die an Handschriftenstudien, Philologie und an der Geschichte des Mittleren Ostens interessiert sind.