Majmūʿa-yi rasāʾil : ʿAjāʾib aḥkām Amīr al-Muʾminīn, Dhikr al-khalāʾif wa-ʿunwān al-maʿārif, Faḍl al-ʿilm, Dhakhāʾir al-ḥikma, Mukhtaṣar-i Jāvidān khirad /...
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Today most oriental manuscript collections are kept in institutional and other (semi-) public libraries. Yet many of these collections were jumpstarted with the acquisition or donation of some private collection. Even now, private collections may still yield unexpected finds. A case in point is MS Tehran, National Library, Arabic 16574. This manuscript belonged earlier and until 1423/2002 to Sayyid Muḥsin Amīn ʿĀmilī, author of the famous biographical dictionary Aʿyān al-Shīʿa , and then to his son Sayyid Ḥasan Amīn, after whose death it devolved to the National Library of Iran. Compiled in 420/1029, this manuscript contains six medium-sized classical texts in Arabic from before ca. 390/1000. From among these, special mention must be made of an abbreviated version ( mukhtaṣar ) of Ibn Miskawayh's (d. 421/1030) gnomological work in Arabic, the Jāvidān khirad . Copied while Ibn Miskawayh was still alive, this abbreviation represents the oldest sample of the original text and certainly merits consideration in any future edition.
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1 online resource. :
9789004407312
9786002031990
Prophetic niche in the virtuous city : the concept of Ḥikmah in early Islamic thought /
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This book analyzes the concept of ḥikmah in early Islamic texts within a network of multiple conceptual interrelationships in the cross-disciplinary context of Muslim works, roughly up to al-Ghazali's lifetime. The word ḥikmah has a wide spectrum of connotations in these texts, because it basically contains all knowledge within human reach, and accordingly, received a range of diverse scholarly treatments. This work contextualizes ḥikmah in a nuanced fashion in the collective usage of early Muslim authors, mainly by lexicographers, exegetes, philosophers, and Sufis. For the first time in the field of Arabic and Islamic Studies, particularly in Islamic Philosophy and Sufism, this study explores the concept of ḥikmah in an all-embracing capacity. Ḥikmah is a central concept of Islamic thinking, related to almost all intellectual disciplines of Muslim scholarly tradition, but it has been insufficiently underlined and treated in earlier western scholarship.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [273]-281) and indexes. :
9789004191068 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Tarjuma-yi Anājīl-i arbaʿa /
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Mīr Muḥammad Bāqir Khātūnābādī (d. 1127/1715) was a Shīʿī scholar who entertained close relations with the Safavi ruler Shāh Sulṭān Ḥusayn (d. 1139/1726-27) in Isfahan. In the late 17th century, Isfahan was the center of international commerce and diplomacy in Persia. Besides serving the commercial interests of their homeland, some of the foreign representations also had missionaries in their ranks, with the obvious purpose of propagating Christianity among the local population. To this end, they also distributed Arabic copies of the Gospels. In those days, Isfahan was the scene of Christian-Muslim dialogue and polemics. The Persian translation of the Gospels published in this volume was made by Khātūnābādī on the order of Shāh Sulṭān Ḥusayn. It was meant to provide Muslim scholars with the necessary background for their debates. It is a critical, documented, almost scholarly translation, with all the weak points of the Gospels recorded in its margins.
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1 online resource. :
9789004401754
9789648700077
Materialien zur alten islamischen Frommigkeit /
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Arabic texts dating from the Third-4th/9th-10th centuries by the following five authors are here presented: Abū Shaykh al-Burjulānī, Ibrāhīm al-Khuttalī, Ibn al-Naḥḥās, Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Rūdhabārī and Ibn Ḥamakān. The texts appear in transliteration along with a German translation. Their chains of transmission (isnāds) are analyzed and parallels with other authors are noted. The subject dealt with throughout is mystical piety. These highly interesting materials throw light on Islamic mysticism's early stage of development.
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1 online resource (xxvii, 374 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [329]-335) and indexes. :
9789047443667 :
1875-0664 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Early Islam between Myth and History : Al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 110H/728CE) and the Formation of His Legacy in Classical Islamic Scholarship /
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This volume examines the process through which a historical character named al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī was transformed into a myth by several groups in medieval Islam. Al-Ḥasan lived in the city of Basra, southern Iraq, and was famed for his piety, which attracted to him a large number of disciples who went on to play important roles in the formation of several religious trends. The literary corpus (sayings, stories and letters) ascribed to him has been used as a window into early Islamic religious and intellectual thought. But as this study shows, this corpus was largely forged in different periods, in some cases even a thousand years after al-Ḥasan's death. It tells us more about the beliefs of those who forged the sayings, stories and letters rather than about al-Ḥasan's thought and time.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047416708
9789004148291
Al-Qand fī dhikr ʿulamāʾ Samarqand /
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In the Arabic literary tradition, biographies form a class of their own and have always been widely used. Whether about a single person or about some group, their shared objective was to provide an authoritative account of someone's lineage, social or literary career, academic or religious background or affiliation, or connection to some historic event. As examples one could mention Ibn Hishām's (d. 218/834) Sīrat Muḥammad rasūli ʼllāh , Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa's (d. 668/1270) Kitāb ʿuyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ , or Nūr al-Dīn al-Ṭūkhī's (d. ca 900/1494) Quḍāt Miṣr . The author of the present work, Najm al-Dīn al-Nasafī (d. 537/1142-43), was a long-time resident of Samarqand and widely known and respected as jurist. He wrote more than 30 works, in Persian and in Arabic. The present volume contains an inventory of ḥadīth scholars bearing some connection to Samarqand. Its importance lies mainly in the many names of people, places, and books which are otherwise entirely unknown.
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1 online resource. :
9789004402614
9789646781122
Muslim exegesis of the Bible in medieval Cairo : Najm al-Din al-Tufi's (d. 716/1316) commentary on the Christian scriptures /
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Najm al-Dīn al-Ṭūfī's (d. 716/1316) extraordinary commentary on the Christian scriptures has not received the scholarly attention it deserves. Illustrating the way in which the Bible was read, interpreted and used as a proof-text in the construction of early 14th century Muslim views of Christianity, his al-Ta'līq 'alā al-Anājīl al-arba'a wa-al-ta'līq 'alā al-Tawrāh wa-'alā ghayrihā min kutub al-anbiyā' (Critical Commentary on the Four Gospels, the Torah and other Books of the Prophets) is an invaluable treasure for the study of Muslim-Christian dialogue and its history. In Muslim Exegesis of the Bible in Medieval Cairo, Lejla Demiri makes this important and unusual work available for the first time in a scholarly edition and English translation, with a full introduction that places Ṭūfī in his intellectual context.
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1 online resource (xiv, 566 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004243200 :
1570-7350 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Defending the "people of truth" in the early Islamic period : the Christian apologies of Abū Rā̕̕iṭah /
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The apologetical writings of the Jacobite Christian, Abū Rā'iṭah al-Takrītī († c. 835) have remained relatively unknown in Western scholarship. Yet his engagement with Muslim questions about Christianity provides a significant insight into the theological debate between the two communities in the early ʿAbbāsid period. Abū Rā'iṭah's treatises take up many of the topics that become standard for Christian-Muslim apologetics: proofs of the true religion, the Trinity, the Incarnation, and Christian practices. In each case, he provides his reader with complex arguments in defense of Christian doctrines that can be used to convince both Muslims and wavering Christians of the truth of Christianity. This new Arabic edition and English translation seeks to contextualize Abū Rā'iṭah's important writings and to make the original texts available to modern scholars interested in all aspects of the early development of Muslim-Christian relations.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [359]-365) and index. :
9789047408550 :
1570-7350 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Al-Radd al-jamil : a fitting refutation of the divinity of Jesus /
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al-Radd al-jamīl attributed to al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) is the most extensive and detailed refutation of the divinity of Jesus by a Muslim author in the classical period of Islam. Since the discovery of the manuscript in the 1930's scholars have debated whether the great Muslim theologian al-Ghazālī was really the author. This is a new critical edition of the Arabic text and the first complete English translation. The introduction situates this work in the history of Muslim anti-Christian polemical writing. Mark Beaumont and Maha El Kaisy-Friemuth argue that this refutation comes from an admirer of al-Ghazālī who sought to advance some of his key ideas for an Egyptian audience.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004322806 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Ranks of the Divine Seekers: A Translation of Madārij al-Sālikīn bayna manāzil iyyāka naʿbudu wa-iyyāka nastaʿīn by Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 750/1351) : a Volume 2 /
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This is an unabridged, annotated, translation of the great Damascene savant and saint Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya's (d. 751/1350) Madārij al-Sālikīn . Conceived as a critical commentary on an earlier Sufi classic by the great Hanbalite scholar Abū Ismāʿīl of Herat, Madārij aims to rejuvenate Sufism's Qur'anic foundations. The original work was a key text for the Sufi initiates, composed in terse, rhyming prose as a master's instruction to the aspiring seeker on the path to God, in a journey of a hundred stations whose ultimate purpose was to be lost to one's self ( fanā' ) and subsist ( baqā' ) in God. The translator, Ovamir (ʿUwaymir) Anjum, provides an extensive introduction and annotation to this English-Arabic face-to-face presentation of this masterpiece of Islamic psychology.
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1 online resource :
9789004413429
Ibn ḥazm's Evangelienkritik : Eine methodische Untersuchung /
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The book presents a first attempt to investigate the criticism of the Gospels, hardly considered within the previous research work of the Islamic scholar Ibn ḥazm (d. 1064) referring to its methodological and socio-cultural background. After analysing the hardly accounted, however for the understanding of Ibn ḥazm's thought essential commentary about Aristoteles' logic, the raised reproaches by Ibn ḥazm against the Christians are discussed. The topics include falsification of the Gospels, the irrationality of their contents and of the whole Christian religion. In conclusion the question of the main purpose of its anti-Christian polemic arises in the light of the background of the special socio-political situation in Arabic Andalusia. It's a book written in a general way of understanding offering an interesting and new insight into the history of Islamic/Christian polemics.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004453494
9789004125278
Historicizing Sunni Islam in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1450-c. 1750 /
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Articles collected in Historicizing Sunni Islam in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1450-c. 1750 engage with the idea that "Sunnism" itself has a history and trace how particular Islamic genres-ranging from prayer manuals, heresiographies, creeds, hadith and fatwa collections, legal and theological treatises, and historiography to mosques and Sufi convents-developed and were reinterpreted in the Ottoman Empire between c. 1450 and c. 1750. The volume epitomizes the growing scholarly interest in historicizing Islamic discourses and practices of the post-classical era, which has heretofore been styled as a period of decline, reflecting critically on the concepts of 'tradition', 'orthodoxy' and 'orthopraxy' as they were conceived and debated in the context of building and maintaining the longest-lasting Muslim-ruled empire.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004440296
9789004440289
Christian doctrines in Islamic theology /
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By the tenth century Islamic theology had become an integrated system by which theologians constructed sophisticated accounts of the nature of the world and God's relationship with it. They also used it to establish proofs that Islam was the only rationally tenable form of belief, building these in part on proofs of the illogicalities in other faiths, including Christianity. Through excerpts from key works of the theologians al-Nashi' al-Akbar, al-Maturidi, al-Baqillani and ʿAbd al-Jabbar, this book shows how Muslim theologians in this period made use of Christian doctrines as examples of misguided thinking to help confirm the correctness of their own theology, and how among Muslim theologians Christianity had ceased to attract serious attention as a rival to Islam.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [379]-383) and index. :
9789047442059 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Khōjā of Tanzania : discontinuities of a postcolonial religious identity /
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The Khōjā of Tanzania, Discontinuities of a Postcolonial Religious Identity attempts to reconstruct the development of Khōjā religious identity from their arrival to the Swahili coast in the late 18th century until the turn of the 21st century. This multidisciplinary study incorporates Gujarati, Kacchī, Swahili, and Arabic sources to examine the formation of an Afro-Asian Islamic identity (jamatī) from their initial Indic caste identity (jñāti) towards an emergent Near Eastern imaged Islamic nation (ummatī) through four disciplinary approaches: historiography, politics, linguistics, and ethnology. Over the past two centuries, rapid transitions and discontinuities have produced the profound tensions which have resulted from the willful amnesia of their pre-Islamic Indic civilizational past for an ideological and politicized 'Islamic' present. This study aims to document, theorize, and engage this theological transformation of modern Khōjā religious identities as expressed through dimensions of power, language, space, and the body.
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1 online resource (xvii, 226 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004292888 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Nuzhat al-zāhid : Adʿiya-yi maʾthūr az imāmān-i maʿṣūm (ʿalayhim al-salām) bā tawḍīḥāt-i fārsi-yi sada-yi shishum /
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Together with Shaykh Ṭūsī's (d. 460/1067) Miṣbāḥ al-mutahajjid and ʿAlī al-Tamīmī's (early 6th/12th cent.) Dhakhīrat al-ākhira , the anonymous Nuzhat al-zāhid (ca. 600/1200) is among the oldest surviving testimonies of Duʿāʾ literature among the Shīʿa. As such, it can be regarded as a connecting link between Ṭūsī and the later tradition of Shīʿī Duʿāʾ literature, after Ibn Ṭāwūs (d. 664/1266). The Nuzhat al-zāhid is important because besides Ṭūsī's Miṣbāḥ it also uses other older sources, which often allows the author to provide much more detail than him, adding new material as well. In this sense, the Nuzhat al-zāhid can truly be regarded as a major reference in its field. It is a complete work, covering all the aspects of petitionary prayer in the life of the believer. Written in the sweet kind of language of its times, its explanations constitute a fine example of medieval Persian spiritual prose.
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1 online resource. :
9789004395305
9789645568397
Beyond death : the mystical teachings of ʻAyn al-Quḍāt al-Hamadhānī /
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The twelfth-century Iranian mystic 'Ayn al-Quḍāt al-Hamadhānī (d. 1131) wrote vividly of his explorations of death as a state of consciousness which he experienced while alive. This state and his visions of Doomsday and the innumerable non-corporeal worlds that lie past the world of matter confront him with paradoxical realities that upset the notional understanding of faith. The present book concerns itself with a discussion on the subject of death as it is viewed by one of the defining mystic scholars of medieval Iran. Based on medieval manuscripts and primary sources in classical Persian and Arabic, this book explores the significance of this important Iranian mystic and his insights on the nature of reality in light of death.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047427599 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Ẓāhirīs : their doctrine and their history : a contribution to the history of Islamic theology /
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Ignaz Goldziher wrote his book 'Die Zahiriten' in 1883. The English translation of this standard work on Islamic jurisprudence appeared in 1971. The book has been in print ever since. This new edition in the Brill Classics in Islam series shows that The Ẓāhirīs has not lost any of its actuality. The individual that adheres to the principles of madhhab al-Ẓāhir, the Islamic legal school, is called Ẓāhirī. Goldziher gives an extensive presentation of the Ẓāhirīte school, its doctrine and the position of its representatives within orthodox Islam. Ẓāhirism accepts only the facts clearly revealed by sensible, rational and linguistic intuitions, controlled and corroborated by Qurʾānic revelation. This history of Islamic theology sheds light on the Ẓāhirīte legal interpretation vis-à-vis other legal schools and gives an interesting insight in questions like 'are all prescriptions and prohibitions in Islamic law commanded or forbidden?'
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [212]-216) and index. :
9789047423881 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Frühe Šaiḫī- und Bābī-Theologie : Die Darlegung der Beweise für Muḥammads besonderes Prophetentum (Ar-Risāla fī Iṯbāt an-Nubūwa al-Ḫāṣṣa) /
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This book is an introduction to the literature and thought of the founders of the Shaykhiyya and the Bābiyyah, two important religious movements in nineteenth-century Iran. The first part is an overview of the thought of Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī and Kāẓim ar-Rashtī, the progenitors of the Shaykhiyya, with a focus on their religious and philosophical teachings. The second part is an analysis of the early writings of ʿAlī-Muḥammad Shīrāzī (the Bāb), the initiator of the Bābiyyah. It contains a survey of major concepts found in his works and addresses issues that have generated debate in the past, particularly the exact nature of his religious claim and its reception by his contemporaries. Finally, the book contains an edition of the Bāb's Treatise on Specific Prophethood. This is the first scholarly edition of a work by the Bāb to be published in the original language.
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Originally presented as A. Eschraghi's thesis (doctoral)--Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, 2003. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047406112
9789004140349
The book of noble character : critical edition of Makārim al-aklāq wa-maḥāsin al-ādāb wa-badāʼiʻ al-awṣāf wa-gharāʼib al-tashbīhāy, attributed to Abū Manṣūr al- Thaʻālibī (d. 429/1...
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This critical Arabic text edition of K. Makārim al-akhlāq wa-maḥāsin al-ādāb wa-badāʾiʿ al-awṣāf wa-gharāʾib al-tashbīhāt ( Book of Noble Character, Excellent Conduct, Admirable Descriptions, and Curious Similes ) is a substantial work of adab attributed to the prominent littérateur Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī (d. 429/1039) that consists of a short introduction and three chapters. The first chapter addresses acquiring noble character and excellent conduct ( al-taḥallī bi-makārim al-akhlāq wa-maḥāsin al-ādāb ); the second addresses shunning away from base character and ugly traits ( al-tazakkī ʿan masāwiʾ al-akhlāq wa-maqābiḥ al-shiyam ); and the third addresses admirable descriptions and curious similes ( badāʾiʿ al-awṣāf wa-gharāʾib al-tashbīhāt ). At the end of the text one finds a relatively large collection of widely circulating proverbs ( amthāl sāʾira ) that are alphabetically arranged. Makārim al-akhlāq is in essence an anthology of "good conduct" and of quotations suitable for social and literary discourse. It reflects the three ingredients of adab : behavior, literary culture, and learning. The work is introduced by an analytical study discussing the attribution of the work, the related genres, and the unique manuscript of the text.
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Critical edition.
Introduction in English. :
1 online resource (26, 274 pages) : some color illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789004300934 :
0929-2403 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Christian Muslim relations : a bibliographical history /
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Christian-Muslim Relations, a Bibliographical History 1 (CMR1) is the first part of a general history of relations between the faiths from the seventh century to the present. It covers the period from 600 to 1500, when encounters took place through the extended Mediterranean basin and are recorded in Syriac, Arabic, Greek, Latin and other languages. It comprises introductory essays on the treatment of Christians in the Qur'an, Qur'an commentaries, biographies of the Prophet, Hadith and Sunni law, and of Muslims in canon law, and the main body of more than two hundred detailed entries on all the works recorded, whether surviving or lost. 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, CMR1 is intended as a basic tool for research in Christian-Muslim relations.
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Includes indexes. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047443681 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.