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This book provides a modern historical study of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq from 2003 to 2013, against a background analysis of the origins and ecclesiological development of the Chaldean community from the sixteenth century onwards. The book offers an insight into the formation of Chaldean ecclesiological identity and organisation in the context of the Chaldeans as a community originating from the ecclesial traditions of the Church of the East and as an Eastern Catholic Church in union with the Holy See. The book argues for the gradual and consistent development of a Chaldean identity grounded and incarnated in the Mesopotamian-Iraqi environment, yet open to engaging with cultures ...
Through its missionary, pedagogical, and scientific accomplishments, the Society of Jesus-known as the Jesuits-became one of the first institutions with a truly "global" reach, in practice and intention. The Oxford Handbook of the Jesuits offers a critical assessment of the Order, helping to chart new directions for research at a time when there is renewed interest in Jesuit studies. In particular, the Handbook examines their resilient dynamism and innovative spirit, grounded in Catholic theology and Christian spirituality, but also profoundly rooted in society and cultural institutions. It also explores Jesuit contributions to education, the arts, politics, and theology, among others. The v...
Modern Chaldeans are an Aramaic speaking Catholic Syriac community from northern Iraq, not to be confused with the ancient Mesopotamian civilization of the same name. First identified as 'Chaldean' by the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century, this misnomer persisted, developing into a distinctive and unique identity. In modern times, the demands of assimilation in the US, together with increased hostility and sectarian violence in Iraq, gave rise to a complex and transnational identity. Faced with Islamophobia in the US, Chaldeans were at pains to emphasize a Christian identity, and appropriated the ancient, pre-Islamic history of their namesake as a means of distinction between them and other immigrants from Arab lands. In this, the first ethnographic history of the modern Chaldeans, Yasmeen Hanoosh explores these ancient-modern inflections in contemporary Chaldean identity discourses, the use of history as a collective commodity for developing and sustaining a positive community image in the present, and the use of language revival and monumental symbolism to reclaim association with Christian and pre-Christian traditions.
The Society of Jesus began a tradition of collecting books and curating those collections at its foundation. These libraries were important to both their European sites and their missions; they helped build a global culture as part of early modern European evangelization. When the Society was suppressed, the Jesuits’ possessions were seized and redistributed, by transfer to other religious orders, confiscation by governments, or sale to individuals. These possessions were rarely returned, and when, in 1814, the Society was restored, the Jesuits had to begin to build new libraries from scratch. Their practices of librarianship, though not their original libraries, left an intellectual legacy which still informs library science today. While there are few European Jesuit universities left, institutions of higher learning administered by the Society of Jesus remain important to the intellectual development of students and communities around the world, supported by large, rich library collections.
Within the broad contours of Islamic traditions, Muslims are enjoined to fast during the month of Ramadan, they are invited to a disciplined practice of prayer, and they are offered the Quran as the divine revelation in the most beautiful verbal form. But what happens if Muslims choose not to fast, or give up prayer, or if the Quran's beauty seems inaccessible? When Muslims do not take up the path of piety, what happens to their relationships with more devout Muslims who are neighbors, friends, and kin? Between Muslims provides an ethnographic account of Iraqi Kurdish Muslims who turn away from devotional piety yet remain intimately engaged with Islamic traditions and with other Muslims. Andrew Bush offers a new way to understand religious difference in Islam, rejecting simple stereotypes about ethnic or sectarian identities. Integrating textual analysis of poetry, sermons, and Islamic history into accounts of everyday life in Iraqi Kurdistan, Between Muslims illuminates the interplay of attraction and aversion to Islam among ordinary Muslims.
This work represents the current and most relevant content on the studies of how Christianity has fared in the ancient home of its founder and birth. Much has been written about Christianity and how it has survived since its migration out of its homeland but this comprehensive reference work reassesses the geographic and demographic impact of the dramatic changes in this perennially combustible world region. The Rowman & Littlefield Handbook of Christianity in the Middle East also spans the historical, socio-political and contemporary settings of the region and importantly describes the interactions that Christianity has had with other major/minor religions in the region.
Text Linguistics of Qur'anic Discourse is an in-depth investigation of the fabric of Qur'anic Discourse. It unravels the texture of the macro Qur'anic text; its cohesion and coherence systems; the notions of intertextuality, semantic relatedness, and thematic sequentiality; the macro textual features of ellipsis, repetition, and argumentation structure; and the contextual, co-textual, grammatical, and semantic factors involved in the macro Qur'anic text. This book is a valuable and methodologically consistent learning and teaching academic resource for universities worldwide in this intriguing new discipline. Through its methodologically coherent discussion and in-depth analysis that is hinged upon modern European text linguistics, Text Linguistics of Qur'anic Discourse provides an insight into the newly established discipline of text linguistics, and explores the different layers of the macro Qur'anic text as an academic requirement.
This literary-historical book draws out and sheds light upon the mechanisms of "the ideological work" that the Arabic Majnūn Laylā story performed for ‘Abbāsid urbanite, imperial audiences in the wake of the disappearance of the "Bedouin cosmos." The study focuses upon the processes of primitivizing Majnūn in the romance of Majnūn Laylā as part of the paradigm shift that occurred in the ‘Abbāsid empire after the Greco-Arabian intellectual revolution. Moreover, this book demonstrates how gender and sexuality are employed in the processes of primitivizing Majnūn. As markers of "strangeness" and "foreignness" in the ‘Abbāsid interrogations of the multiple categories of ethnicity,...
This book narrates the battles, conquests and diplomatic activities of the early Muslim fighters in Syria and Iraq vis-à-vis their Byzantine and Sasansian counterparts. It is the first English translation of one of the earliest Arabic sources on the early Muslim expansion entitled Futūḥ al-Shām (The Conquests of Syria). The translation is based on the Arabic original composed by a Muslim author, Muḥammad al-Azdī, who died in the late 8th or early 9th century C.E. A scientific introduction to al-Azdīʼs work is also included, covering the life of the author, the textual tradition of the work as well as a short summary of the textʼs train of thought. The source narrates the major his...
Das vorliegende Buch widmet sich dem Phänomen der Kathedrale, denn Kathedralen stellen Referenzbauten in der Entwicklung der Weltchristenheit dar. Im Fokus steht der Kathedralenbau in seinen jeweiligen historischen Kontexten als ein ästhetisches Mittel des Christentums zur umfassenden Welterschließung. Ebenfalls zur Sprache kommen die Spannungen und Konflikte, von denen diese Welterschließung begleitet ist: zwischen West und Ost, zwischen den unterschiedlichen Konfessionen, zwischen christlicher Mission und klerikalen bzw. kolonialistischen Anmaßungen, zunehmend auch die Spannungen zwischen Religion und nachaufklärerischer Säkularität. Abschließend wird die Entwicklung des Dombaus als ein Paradigma der Konfessionsgeschichte für die Folgezeit sichtbar gemacht, und zwar im größeren Kontext des sich etablierenden christlichen Fundamentalismus bzw. eines Christentums diesseits der traditionellen Konfessionen einerseits und der sich abzeichnenden Krisen des Religiösen in den europäischen Volkskirchen andererseits.