World history as the history of foundations, 3000 BCE to 1500 CE /
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"In World History as the History of Foundations, 3000 BCE to 1500 CE, Michael Borgolte investigates the origins and development of foundations from Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages. In his survey foundations emerge not as mere legal institutions, but rather as "total social phenomena" which touch upon manifold aspects, including politics, the economy, art and religion of the cultures in which they emerged. Cross-cultural in its approach and the result of decades of research, this work represents by far the most comprehensive account of the history of foundations that has hitherto been published".
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004415089
Law and the Islamization of Morocco under the Almoravids : the Fatwās of Ibn Rushd al-Jadd to the far Maghrib /
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Law and the Islamization of Morocco under the Almoravids. The Fatwās of Ibn Rushd al-Jadd to the Far Maghrib investigates the development of legal institutions in the Far Maghrib during its unification with al-Andalus under the Almoravids (434-530/1042-1147). A major contribution to our understanding of the twelfth-century Maghrib and the foundational role played by the Almoravids, it posits that political unification occurred alongside urban transformation and argues that legal institutions developed in response to the social needs of the growing urban spaces as well as to the administrative needs of the state. Such social needs included the regulation of market exchange, the settlement of commercial disputes, and the privatization and individualization of property.
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Based on author's thesis (doctoral - Yale University, 2009) issued under title: The Fatwas of Ibn Rushd al-Jadd to the Far Maghrib. :
1 online resource (viii, 207 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 192-202) and index. :
9789004279841 :
1877-9808 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Markets and Marketing in Roman Palestine /
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The book presents a variety of topics relating to the market in Roman Palestine. The book deals with the main elements of commercial life - the different types of markets and the entities and figures that played a part in it. It portrays the process by which the flow of goods in the market occurs - from the end of the production process, via the entire range of middlemen, to the end user. A chapter is devoted to the pricing of merchandise in the economy of Roman Palestine. It offers a comprehensive framework which includes the techniques by which prices were determined and enforced. Other chapters deal with the image of the different market vendors, as viewed by the public and by the Jewish sages, and the commercial activity that took place in and around the synagogues. The book is based on a combination of rabbinic, literary and archaeological sources as well as epigraphic findings. It depicts the economy of Roman Palestine against the backdrop of the Roman Empire.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047416517
9789004140493
Households, Sects, and the Origins of Rabbinic Judaism /
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This book suggests a new approach to the social history of Jewish religious movements in the Second Temple and early Rabbinic periods. It argues that most of these movements and their traditions emerged within the context of complex interaction between traditional families and disciple circles. The first part of the book examines the development of Jewish religious movements during the Second Temple period. It culminates with the discussion of the Dead Sea Sect, which is analyzed as the first unambiguous example of a movement shifting from a social structure based on families to a social structure based on disciple circles. The second part of the book discusses the history of pharisaic and early rabbinic movements from a similar perspective. Topics covered in the book will be of interest to scholars of Judaism and Early Christianity.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047407768
9789004144477
Proximity to Power and Jewish Sectarian Groups of the Ancient Period : A Review of Lifestyle, Values, and Halakha in the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and Qumran /
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This book deals with the values, lifestyle and code of law of four Jewish sectarian groups in the Hellenistic and Roman (Second Temple) period, in the land of Israel. It reviews the groups according to their proximity to power, highlighting the fact that political involvement has a decisive impact on the life and development of these social groups. The groups under review, the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and Qumran, receive a new historical description, from the viewpoint of their proximity to power. The issue of what determines the course of a social group, whether normative or sectarian, is discussed, and the traditional terminology is re-examined. Original terminology is established. The first part of the book deals with the question of terminology, the available sources and the presentation of the different groups.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047408352
9789004146990
Intolerance, polemics, and debate in antiquity : politico-cultural, philosophical, and religious forms of critical conversation /
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In Intolerance, Polemics, and Debate in Antiquity scholars reflect on politico-cultural, philosophical, and religious forms of critical conversation in the ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, Graeco-Roman, and early-Islamic world. They enquire into the boundaries between debate, polemics, and intolerance, and address their manifestations in both philosophy and religion. This cross-cultural and inclusive approach shows that debate and polemics are not so different as often assumed, since polemics may also indicate that ultimate values are at stake. Polemics can also have a positive effect, stimulating further cultural development. Intolerance is more straightforwardly negative. Religious intolerance is often a justification for politics, but also elite rationalism can become totalitarian. The volume also highlights the importance of the fluency of minorities in the dominant discourses and of their ability to develop contrapuntal lines of thought within a common cultural discourse.
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Includes index. :
1 online resource. :
9789004411500
Forced conversion in Christianity, Judaism and Islam : coercion and faith in premodern Iberia and beyond /
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Focusing on the Iberian Peninsula but examining related European and Mediterranean contexts as well, Forced Conversion in Christianity, Judaism and Islam traces how Christians, Jews, and Muslims grappled with the contradictory phenomenon of faith brought about by constraint and compulsion. Forced conversion brought into sharp relief the tensions among the accepted notion of faith as a voluntary act, the desire to maintain "pure" communities, and the universal truth claims of radical monotheism. Offering a comparative view of an important yet insufficiently studied phenomenon in the history of religions, this collection of essays explores the ways in which religion and violence reshaped these three religions and the ways we understand them today.
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Includes index. :
1 online resource. :
9789004416826
Calendar, chronology, and worship : studies in ancient Judaism and early Christianity /
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This book takes as its theme the related issues of calendar, chronology and worship, as they were conceived and practised in ancient Jewish and early Christian times. After a general discussion of the way the three issues are related, there follow six chapters on the calendar, first the standard Jewish calendar, then the Qumran calendar (giving particular attention to the Book of Enoch and the Temple Scroll) and finally the Christian calendar - both the standard Christian calendar and that observed by the Montanists. Three chapters on chronology come next, one of them offering a chronological solution to a puzzling calendrical problem in the Dead Sea Scrolls, another relating Jewish eschatological expectations to New Testament teaching, and a third examining the chronological calculations of the Hellenistic Jew Demetrius, the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, and the Book of Jubilees. The three concluding chapters, on worship, include an investigation of the historical development of the Psalter and a careful survey of the relationship between ancient Jewish worship and early Christian. The book discusses a variety of issues that arise in modern biblical, intertestamental and patristic study, some neglected, some very controversial, and throws new light upon them.
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1 online resource (viii, 255 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047415473 :
0169-734X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Legal fiction s studies of law and narrative in the discursive worlds of ancient Jewish sectarians and sages /
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Ancient Jewish writings combine interpretive narratives of Israel's sacred history with legal prescriptions for a divinely ordered way of life. Two ancient Jewish societies have left us extensive textual corpora preserving interpenetrating legal and narrative interpretive teachings: the sectarian community of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the sage-disciple circles of the early Rabbis. This book comprises studies that explore specific aspects of the interplay of interpretative, narrative, and legal rhetoric with an eye to pedagogic function and social formation for each of these communities and for both of them in comparison. It addresses questions of how best to approach these writings for purposes of historical retrieval and reconstruction by recognizing the inseparability of literary-rhetorical textual analysis and a non-reductive historiography.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004201842 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Reading and re-reading Scripture at Qumran /
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In Reading and Re-reading Scripture at Qumran , Moshe J. Bernstein gathers more than three decades of his work on diverse aspects of biblical interpretation in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The essays range from broad surveys of the genres of biblical interpretation in these texts to more narrowly focused studies and close readings of specific documents. Volume I focuses on the book of Genesis, with a substantial portion being dedicated to studies of the Genesis Apocryphon and Commentary on Genesis A. Volume II contains several historical and programmatic essays, with specific studies focusing on legal material in the DSS and the pesharim. Under the former rubric, the documents known as 4QReworked Pentateuch, 4QOrdinancesa, 4QMMT, and the Temple Scroll are discussed.
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"These volumes contain thirty essays, written over the last thirty-three years (with the very large majority over the last two decades), focusing on or touching upon a variety of the ways that Scripture (what became what we have come to call the Hebrew Bible or TeNaKh) was read, interpreted, and employed at Qumran. All have been published before, including one essay that appeared in Hebrew originally and makes its first appearance here in English ... They have been edited only lightly"--Volume 1, page xii. :
1 online resource (2 volumes (xx, 744 pages)) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004248076 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Household archaeology in Ancient Israel and beyon d
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Despite the large number of well-preserved domestic contexts in Bronze and Iron Age sites, household archaeology has not been a common approach to studying the material culture of Ancient Israel. Until recently, the dictates of "Biblical Archaeology" led to a narrow set of questions that ignored issues such as gender, status and production within the household. The present volume, which grew out of a session at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research, attempts to redress this issue. The seventeen papers herein reflect innovative viewpoints on the theory and praxis of household archaeology in this region. The next step in household research is presented here, with the use of tailor-made data collection strategies designed to answer specific questions posed by household archaeology. \'The neglect of households and the archaeology of the activities of its members are ambitiously attended to in this volume. Its exceptional breadth of various modes of inquiry coupled with the application thereof justifies the household as a topic of discussion. I would highly recommend this book for institutions, libraries, scholars, and students interested in any aspect of daily life in the southern Levant, and I very much look forward to the future research projects it will inspire.\' Cynthia Shafer-Elliot, William Jessup University \'...as a whole the work is impressive, and most contributions are commendable for their sophistication in engaging interdisciplinary research in order to understand the nature and function of households in ancient Israel and surrounding areas.\' Carol Meyers, Duke University
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Papers from a session at the Annual Meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research held in Boston, Mass, Nov. 2008. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [391]-446) and index. :
9789004206267 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Cultural contact and appropriation in the Axial-Age Mediterranean world : a periplos /
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Karl Jaspers dubbed the period, 800-400 BCE, the Axial Age. Axial it was, for out of it emerged the idea of Greek culture, with its influence on Roman and later empires. Jaspers' Axial Age was the chrysalis of culturally-meaningful modernity. Trade expands intellectual horizons. The economic and political effects permeate such social domains as technology, language and worldview. In the last category, many issues take on an emotional freight - the birth of science, monotheism, philosophy, even theory itself. Cultural Contact and Appropriation in the Axial-Age Mediterranean World: A Periplos , explores adaptation, resistance and reciprocity in Axial-Age Mediterranean exchange (ca. 800-300 BCE). Some essayists expand on an international discussion about myth, to which even the Church Fathers contributed. Others explore questions of how vocabulary is reapplied, or how the alphabet is reapplied, in a new environment. Detailed cases ground participants' capacity to illustrate both the variety of the disciplinary integuments in which we now speak, one with the other, across disciplines, and the sheer complexity of constructing a workable programme for true collaboration.
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1 online resource (ix, 315 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 243-297) and indexes. :
9789004194557 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Christian identity amid Islam in medieval Spain /
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In Christian Identity amid Islam in Medieval Spain Charles L. Tieszen explores a small corpus of texts from medieval Spain in an effort to deduce how their authors defined their religious identity in light of Islam, and in turn, how they hoped their readers would distinguish themselves from the Muslims in their midst. It is argued that the use of reflected self-image as a tool for interpreting Christian anti-Muslim polemic allows such texts to be read for the self-image of their authors instead of the image of just those they attacked. As such, polemic becomes a set of borders authors offered to their communities, helping them to successfully navigate inter-religious living.
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1 online resource (x, 296 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004192294 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
On the art in the ancient Near East /
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This second volume of collected essays, complement to volume one, focuses upon the art and culture of the third millennium B.C.E. in ancient Mesopotamia. Stress is upon the ability of free-standing sculpture and public monuments not only to reflect cultural attitudes, but to affect a viewing audience. Using Sumerian and Akkadian texts as well as works, the power of visual experience is pursued toward an understanding not only of the monuments but of their times and our own. \'These beautifully produced volumes bring together essays written over a 35-year period, creating a whole that is much more than the sum of its parts...No library should be without this impressive collection.\' J.C. Exum
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047428459 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Through the eyes of the beholder : the Holy Land, 1517-1713 /
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The collection examines the view of holiness in the "Holy Land" through the writings of pilgrims, travelers, and missionaries. The period extends from 1517, the Ottoman conquest of Syria and Palestine, to the Franco-British treaty of Utrecht in 1713 and the consolidation of European hegemony over the Mediterranean. The writers in the collection include Christians (Orthodox, Protestant, and Catholic), Muslims, and Jews, who originate from countries such as Sweden, England, France, Holland, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, and Syria. This book is the first to juxtapose writers of different backgrounds and languages, to emphasize the holiness of the land in a number of traditions, and to ask whether holiness was inherent in geography or a product of the piety of the writers. Contributors are: Mohammad Asfour, Hasan Baktir, Richard Coyle, Judy A. Hayden, Nabil I. Matar, Joachim Östlund, Michael Rotenberg-Schwartz, Julia Schleck, Mazin Tadros and Galina Yermolenko.
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1 online resource (xvii, 237 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004236240 :
0929-2403 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Die Renaissance der Städte in Nordsyrien und Nordmesopotamien : Städtische Entwicklung und wirtschaftliche Bedingungen in ar-Raqqa und Ḥ̣arrān von der Zeit der beduinischen Vorherr...
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The period between 950 and 1150 A.D. is regarded as "turning point in the history of the Islamic Culture" from the Early Islamic to the Late Medieval civilization. What led to the urban decline in between and the later recovery? Ḥ̣arrān and al-Raqqa serve as paradigma for the development in Northern Syria and Northern Mesopotamia. The collapse of the ʿAbbasid state left the region cornered between Buyids, Fatimids and Byzantines to the nomadic tribes not acquainted with urban culture. After 1086 A.D., measures undertaken by the Seljuqs in order to safeguard their hegemony led to a renaissance of cities inspite of permanent power struggles and the crusades. They based their rule on fortified places. The financing of the army led to the distribution of land as fiefs ( iqtaʿ ) and subsequently to a dislodgement of nomads and a recultivation of former agricultural land. Cash money for the treasury was generated by skimming long distance trade; this in turn required public security on the roads. An analysis of the monetary circulation according to archaeological and literal evidence serves as measure for the economic recovery. A corpus of the coin production in al-Raqqa, ḥarrān and al-Ruha'/Edessa supplements the textual sources.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004492240
9789004122741
Avicenna in medieval Hebrew translation : Todros Todrosi's translation of Kitab al-najat, on psychology and metaphysics /
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In this volume, Gabriella Elgrably-Berzin offers an analysis of the fourteenth-century Hebrew translation of a major eleventh-century philosophical text: Avicenna's Kitāb al-Najāt (The Book of Salvation), focusing on the psychology treatise on physics. The translator of this work was Ṭodros Ṭodrosi, the main Hebrew translator of Avicenna's philosophical writings. This study includes a critical edition of Ṭodrosi's translation, based on two manuscripts as compared to the Arabic edition (Cairo, 1938), and an appendix featuring the section on metaphysics. By analyzing Ṭodrosi's language and terminology and making his Hebrew translation available for the first time, Berzin's study will help enable scholars to trace the borrowings from Todrosi's translations in Jewish sources, shedding light on the transmission and impact of Avicenna's philosophy.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004281974 :
0169-8729 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Origins of Islamic Jurisprudence : Meccan Fiqh before the Classical Schools /
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The current view among Western scholars of Islam concerning the early development of Islamic jurisprudence was shaped by Joseph Schacht's famous study on the subject published 50 years ago. Since then new sources became available which make a critical review of his theories possible and desirable. This volume uses one of these sources to reconstruct the development of jurisprudence at Mecca, virtually unknown until now, from the beginnings until the middle of the second Islamic century. New methods of analysis are developed and tested in order to date the material contained in the earliest compilations of legal traditions more properly. As a result the origins of Islamic jurisprudence can be dated much earlier than claimed by Schacht and his school.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004491533
9789004121317
Islam, the ancient near east and varieties of godlessness. collected studies in three volumes /
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Patricia Crone's Collected Studies in Three Volumes brings together a number of her published, unpublished, and revised writings on Near Eastern and Islamic history, arranged around three distinct but interconnected themes. Volume 3, Islam, the Ancient Near East and Varieties of Godlessness , places the rise of Islam in the context of the ancient Near East and investigates sceptical and subversive ideas in the Islamic world. Volume 1, The Qurʾānic Pagans and Related Matters , pursues the reconstruction of the religious environment in which Islam arose and develops an intertextual approach to studying the Qurʾānic religious milieu. Volume 2, The Iranian Reception of Islam: The Non-Traditionalist Strands , examines the reception of pre-Islamic legacies in Islam, above all that of the Iranians. The Qurʾānic Pagans and Related Matters The Iranian Reception of Islam: The Non-Traditionalist Strands
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1 online resource (xvii, 261 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004319318 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.