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From the Greeks to the Arabs and Beyond written by Hans Daiber, is a six volume collection of Daiber’s scattered writings, journal articles, essays and encyclopaedia entries on Greek-Syriac-Arabic translations, Islamic theology and Sufism, the history of science, Islam in Europe, manuscripts and the history of oriental studies. The collection contains published (since 1967) and unpublished works in English, German, Arabic, Persian and Turkish, including editions of Arabic and Syriac texts. The publication mirrors the intercultural character of Islamic thought and sheds new light on many aspects ranging from the Greek pre-Socratics to the Malaysian philosopher Naquib al-Attas. A main concer...
Cities, Texts and Social Networks examines the experiences of urban life from late antiquity through the close of the fifteenth century, in regions ranging from late Imperial Rome to Muslim Syria, Iraq and al-Andalus, England, the territories of medieval Francia, Flanders, the Low Countries, Italy and Germany. Together, the volume's contributors move beyond attempts to define 'the city' in purely legal, economic or religious terms. Instead, they focus on modes of organisation, representation and identity formation that shaped the ways urban spaces were called into being, used and perceived. Their interdisciplinary analyses place narrative and archival sources in communication with topography...
Scholars and analysts seeking to illuminate the extraordinary creativity and innovation evident in European medieval cultures and their afterlives have thus far neglected the important role of religious heresy. The papers collected here - reflecting the disciplines of history, literature, theology, philosophy, economics and law - examine the intellectual and social investments characteristic of both deliberate religious dissent such as the Cathars of Languedoc, the Balkan Bogomils, the Hussites of Bohemia and those who knowingly or unknowingly bent or broke the rules, creating their own 'unofficial orthodoxies'. Attempts to understand, police and eradicate all these, through methods such as the Inquisition, required no less ingenuity. The ambivalent dynamic evident in the tensions between coercion and dissent is still recognisable and productive in the world today.
The Normans have long been recognised as one of the most dynamic forces within medieval western Europe. With a reputation for aggression and conquest, they rapidly expanded their powerbase from Normandy, and by the end of the twelfth century had established themselves in positions of strength from England to Sicily, Antioch to Dublin. Yet, despite this success recent scholarship has begun to question the ’Norman Achievement’ and look again at the degree to which a single Norman cultural identity existed across so diverse a territory. To explore this idea further, all the essays in this volume look at questions of Norman traditions in some of the peripheral Norman dominions. In response t...
Syriac Christianity developed in the first centuries CE in the Middle East, where it continued to flourish throughout Late Antiquity and the Medieval period, while also spreading widely, as far as India and China. Today, Syriac Christians are found in the Middle East, in India, as well in diasporas scattered across the globe. Over this extended time period and across this vast geographic expanse, Syriac Christians have built impressive churches and monasteries, crafted fine pieces of art, and written and transmitted a sizable body of literature. Though often overlooked, neglected, and even persecuted, Syriac Christianity has been – and continues to be – an important part of the humanisti...
This book examines the premodern encounter between the three monotheistic religions through the unique prism of a premodern literary work—The Parable of the Three Rings—a poignant and charming tale of a father who had three sons and one precious ring. By tradition he was to bequeath the ring to his heir, but he loved his three sons equally — so he had two new rings made, crafted to be indistinguishable from the original, and on his deathbed gave a ring to each son. The narrator explains that the father is God, and his sons are the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims, each believing themselves to be the sole upholders of the true religion. A historical and literary study, the book offers a comprehensive discussion of the various guises of the Parable, from the early Middle Ages onwards, and highlights its capacity to reflect openness and pluralism in the interfaith encounter.
This book focuses on the conceptualization of the court, palace and ruler of the Umayyad Caliphate of al-Andalus. Western terminology still plays a normative role in the representation of foreign courts, determining concepts that fit poorly into chronologies with their own dynamics and specificities, which is the case of Muslim courts. While Court Studies is a well-developed field for modern Western societies, Muslim medieval courts lack a consistent field of research. Sources elaborate a specific terminology for medieval Muslim court societies. In the specific case of the Umayyad Caliphate of al-Andalus, the court is usually articulated as Bāb Suddat al-Khalīfa (“The door of the Sudda o...
Islamic thought is the most beautiful result of a multicultural dialogue. Islamic culture became a bridge between antiquity, Iranian scholars, Syriac and Arabic Christians and the Latin Middle Ages. Its richness of ideas, its plurality of values can contribute to the requirements of modern plurality. The monograph aims at a historical and bibliographical survey of the qurʾānic and rational world-view of early Islam, of the period of translations from Greek into Syriac and Arabic, and of the impact of Islamic thought on the Latin Middle Ages. Critical reflexions of Muslim scholars stimulated new scientific ideas and make us aware of the contribution of Islam to humanity.
Christian-Muslim Relations, a Bibliographical History 2 (CMR2) is the second part of a general history of relations between the faiths. Covering the period from 900 to 1050, it comprises a series of introductory essays, together with the main body of more than one hundred detailed entries on all the works by Christians and Muslims about and against one another that are known from this period. These entries provide biographical details of the authors where known, descriptions and assessments of the works themselves, and complete accounts of manuscripts, editions, translations and studies. The result of collaboration between leading scholars in the field, CMR2 is an indispensable basis for research in all elements of the history of Christian-Muslim relations.
Gathering the proceedings of a symposium organized on the occasion of the 900th anniversary of the qāḍī Ibn al-ʿArabī’s (d. 543/1148) passing, this volume brings together a diverse array of contributions highlighting his legacy, his relationship with his master al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111), his unparalleled role in the transmission of Islamic knowledge in al-Andalus, and his lasting impact on various disciplines, including ḥadīth, theology, Islamic law, Quranic exegesis, legal theory, grammar, adab, and Sufism. This book, written by internationally recognized scholars, not only commemorates the scholarly legacy of Ibn al-ʿArabī but also illustrates how his intellectual teachings h...