Intangible spirits and graven images : the iconography of deities in the pre-Islamic Iranian world /
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Winner of the the Roman and Tania Ghirshman Prize 2015 by the French Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. This prize was established in 1973 by the donation made by Roman Ghirshman, one of the prominent French archaeologists of Pre-Islamic Iran. It is awarded annually for a publication in the field of Pre-Islamic Iranian Studies. In Intangible Spirits and Graven Images , Michael Shenkar investigates the perception of ancient Iranian deities and their representation in the Iranian cults. This ground-breaking study traces the evolution of the images of these deities, analyses the origin of their iconography, and evaluates their significance. Shenkar also explores the perception of anthropomorphism and aniconism in ancient Iranian religious imagery, with reference to the material evidence and the written sources, and reassesses the value of the Avestan and Middle Persian texts that are traditionally employed to illuminate Iranian religious imagery. In doing so, this book provides important new insights into the religion and culture of ancient Iran prior to the Islamic conquest.
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Revision of the author's thesis--Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2013. :
1 online resource (xxii, 392 pages) : illustrations (some color) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004281493 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Social fabrics : inscribed textiles from Medieval Egyptian tombs /
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Social Fabrics looks at tiraz - highly prized textiles enhanced with woven, embroidered, or painted inscriptions in Arabic - to trace the structure of medieval Egyptian society during a transformative period. It reveals a story as interwoven and complex as these delicate objects themselves. A foundational introduction to the topic, this exhibition catalogue combines richly illustrated entries with essays on the history of Egypt at the time, the meaning and materiality of tiraz, and the history of collecting these objects in US institutions. Created throughout the region (including lands now in Iran, Iraq, and Yemen) in the centuries following the Arab Muslim conquest of Egypt, inscribed textiles were a visual form of communication in a society that was ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse. Those with inscriptions regulated by the government were particularly valued, proclaiming their owners' membership in the ruling elite.00Exhibition: Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, USA (22.01.-08.05.2022).
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Catalog of the exhibition on view at the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts, from January 22-May 8, 2022. :
x, 163 pages : illustrations (chiefly color), maps ; 26 cm. :
Includes bibliographical references (pages 148-161). :
9780300260090
The encoded Cirebon mask : materiality, flow, and meaning along Java's Islamic northwest coast /
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In The Encoded Cirebon Mask: Materiality, Flow, and Meaning along Java's Islamic Northwest Coast , Laurie Margot Ross situates masks and masked dancing in the Cirebon region of Java (Indonesia) as an original expression of Islam. This is a different view from that of many scholars, who argue that canonical prohibitions on fashioning idols and imagery prove that masks are mere relics of indigenous beliefs that Muslim travelers could not eradicate. Making use of archives, oral histories, and the performing objects themselves, Ross traces the mask's trajectory from a popular entertainment in Cirebon-once a portal of global exchange-to a stimulus for establishing a deeper connection to God in late colonial Java, and eventual links to nationalism in post-independence Indonesia.
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1 online resource (xvi, 374 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004315211 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Histories of the Middle East studies in Middle Eastern society, economy and law in honor of A.L. Udovitch /
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For four decades Abraham L. Udovitch has been a leading scholar of the medieval Islamic world, its economic institutions, social structures, and legal theory and practice. In pursuing his quest to understand and explain the complex phenomena that these broad rubrics entail, he has published widely, collaborated internationally with other leading scholars of the Middle East and medieval history, and most saliently for the purposes of this volume, taught several cohorts of students at Princeton University. This volume is therefore dedicated to his intellectual legacy from a uniquely revealing angle: the current work of his former students. The papers in this volume range chronologically from the period preceding the rise of Islam in Arabia to the Mamluk era, geographically from the Western Mediterranean to the Western Indian Ocean and thematically from the political negotiations of Christian and Islamic Mediterranean sovereigns to the historiography of Western Indian Ocean port cities.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004214736 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
A Mediterranean society : the Jewish communities of the Arab world as portrayed in the documents of the Cairo Geniza /
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"Published under the auspices of the Near Eastern Center, University of California, Los Angeles".
"Volume 6 by S.D. Goitein and Paula Sanders". :
6 volumes : illustrations, facsimiles, maps ; 24 cm. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
0520018672 (volume 2)
The decline of medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor : and the process of Islamization from the eleventh through the fifteenth century /
: Published under the auspices of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. : xvii, 532, [8] page of plates : illustrations, map (1 fold-out) ; 24 cm. : Includes bibliographical references and index. : 0520057538
A descriptive and comparative grammar of Andalusi Arabic /
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Andalusi Arabic is a close-knit bundle of Neo-Arabic dialects resulting from interference by Ibero-Romance stock and interaction of some Arabic dialects. These dialects are mostly Northern but there are also some Southern and hybrid ones, brought along to the Iberian Peninsula in the eighth century A.D. by an invading army of some thousands of Arab tribesmen who, in the company of a much larger number of partially Arabicized Berbers, all of them fighting men alone, succeeded in establishing Islamic political rule and Arab cultural supremacy for a long while over these lands. The study of Andalusi Arabic is of enormous interest to the Arabic dialectologist, as well as a subject of paramount importance to those concerned with the medieval literatures and cultures of Western Europe.
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1 online resource (xxii, 274 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004230279 :
0169-9423 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The 'Abbasid and Carolingian Empires : comparative studies in civilizational formation /
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Circa AD 750, both the Islamic world and western Europe underwent political revolutions; these raised to power, respectively, the ʿAbbasid and Carolingian dynasties. The eras thus inaugurated were similar not only in their chronology, but also in the foundational role each played in its respective civilization, forming and shaping enduring religious, cultural, and societal institutions. The ʿAbbāsid and Carolingian Empires: Studies in Civilizational Formation , is the first collected volume ever dedicated specifically to comparative Carolingian-ʿAbbasid history. In it, editor D.G. Tor brings together essays from some of the leading historians in order to elucidate some of the parallel developments in each of these civilizations, many of which persisted not only throughout the Middle Ages, but to the present day. Contributors are: Michael Cook, Jennifer R. Davis, Robert Gleave, Eric J. Goldberg, Minoru Inaba, Jürgen Paul, Walter Pohl, D.G. Tor and Ian Wood.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004353046 :
1929-2403 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Creating medieval Cairo : empire, religion, and architectural preservation in nineteenth-century Egypt /
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"This book argues that the historic city we know as Medieval Cairo was created in the nineteenth century by both Egyptians and Europeans against a background of four overlapping political and cultural contexts: namely, the local Egyptian, Anglo-Egyptian, Anglo-Indian, and Ottoman imperial milieux. Addressing the interrelated topics of empire, local history, religion, and transnational heritage, historian Paula Sanders shows how Cairo's architectural heritage became canonized in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book also explains why and how the city assumed its characteristically Mamluk appearance and situates the activities of the European-dominated architectural preservation committee (known as the Comiť) within the history of religious life in nineteenth-century Cairo. Sanders explores such varied topics as the British experience in India, the Egyptian debate over religious reform, and the influence of The Thousand and One Nights on European notions of the medieval Arab city ... this volume examines the unacknowledged colonial legacy that continues to inform the practice of and debates over preservation in Cairo."
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xv, 216 pages, [16] pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm. :
Includes bibliographical references (pages 188-206) and index. :
9774160959