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Nineteenth-century philologist and Biblical critic William Robertson Smith famously concluded that the sacred status of holy places derives not from their intrinsic nature but from their social character. Building upon this insight, Mecca and Eden uses Islamic exegetical and legal texts to analyze the rituals and objects associated with the sanctuary at Mecca. Integrating Islamic examples into the comparative study of religion, Brannon Wheeler shows how the treatment of rituals, relics, and territory is related to the more general mythological depiction of the origins of Islamic civilization. Along the way, Wheeler considers the contrast between Mecca and Eden in Muslim rituals, the dispersal and collection of relics of the prophet Muhammad, their relationship to the sanctuary at Mecca, and long tombs associated with the gigantic size of certain prophets mentioned in the Quran. Mecca and Eden succeeds, as few books have done, in making Islamic sources available to the broader study of religion.
Relating the Muslim understanding of Moses in the Qur'an to the Epic of Gilgamesh, Alexander Romances, Aramaic Targums, Rabbinic Bible exegesis, and folklore from the ancient and medieval Mediterranean, this book shows how Muslim scholars authorize and identify themselves through allusions to the Bible and Jewish tradition. Exegesis of Qur'an 18:60-82 shows how Muslim exegetes engage Biblical theology through interpretation of the ancient Israelites, their prophets, and their Torah. This Muslim use of a scripture shared with Jews and Christians suggests fresh perspectives for the history of religions, Biblical studies, cultural studies, and Jewish-Arabic studies.
Karya-karya puisi sufistik Syaikh Isma’il al-Minangkabawi adalah di antara karya ulama Nusantara yang berupaya menunjukkan sisi orisinalitasnya melalui kekayaan ide sufistik dan juga gaya bahasanya. Dari aspek gagasan sufistiknya, seperti terlihat dalam karya Syofyan Hadi ini, ajaran Tarekat Naqshabandiyah yang dikembangkan Syaikh Isma‘il al-Minangkabawi tidak hanya sekedar adopsi utuh dari ajaran Tarekat Naqshabandiyah Khalidiyah yang diterimanya di Jabal Qubays sebagai pusat dan basis utama transmisi ajaran tarekat Naqshabandiyah di Dunia Islam, ketika ajaran tarekat ini dikembangkan di Nusantara, Syaikh Isma‘il al-Minangkabawi berusaha menghadirkan formulasi dan warna baru dalam kon...
On the basis of a detailed analysis of the archaeological evidence and of the written documentation, this book examines the origins and the development of the fortification of Shayzar, especially between the 10th and the 13th centuries.
In Babel: Political Rhetoric of a Confused Legacy, Samuel L. Boyd offers a new reading of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9. Using recent insights on the rhetoric of Neo-Assyrian politics and its ideology of governance as well as advances in biblical studies, Boyd shows how the Tower of Babel was not originally about a tower, Babylon, or the advent of multilingualism, at least in the earliest phases of the history and literary context of the story. Rather, the narrative was a critique against the Assyrian empire using themes of human overreach found in many places in Genesis 1-11. Boyd clarifies how idioms of Assyrian governance could have found their way into the biblical text, and how t...
This volume examines the background to the rise of Islam. The opening essays consider the broad context of nomad-sedentary relations in the Near East; thereafter the focus is on the Arabian peninsula and the history of the Arab peoples. The following papers set out the political and economic structures of the pre-Islamic period, and are concerned to trace the evolution of religious beliefs in the area, looking in particular at the role of local traditions and the impact of Jewish and Christian influences.
The ‘Alawis, or Alawites, are a prominent religious minority in northern Syria, Lebanon, and southern Turkey, best known today for enjoying disproportionate political power in war-torn Syria. In this book, Stefan Winter offers a complete history of the community, from the birth of the ‘Alawi (Nusayri) sect in the tenth century to just after World War I, the establishment of the French mandate over Syria, and the early years of the Turkish republic. Winter draws on a wealth of Ottoman archival records and other sources to show that the ‘Alawis were not historically persecuted as is often claimed, but rather were a fundamental part of Syrian and Turkish provincial society. Winter argues ...
"A Land Flowing with Milk and Honey" examines how the promised land of Israel has been seen and interpreted differently over the course of Jewish history by those who call it home and by the many other individuals and cultures it has affected. The first glimpse of the promised land was God's description to Moses of "a land flowing with milk and honey." Since that time, the land has been more than a geographical or political entity. Visions of Israel have proliferated—uniting, dividing, and inspiring individuals and societies for thousands of years. The fourteen contributors to this volume draw upon a variety of scholarly disciplines to consider how and why Israel has been interpreted in so...