The Biography of Muḥammad : The Issue of the Sources /
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This book deals with the controversial value of the sources on which the biography of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, is based. Discussions on this topic have been going on for more than a century but it has become especially debated during the last two decades. This volume contains ten articles which are the outcome of an international colloquium on the issue. Part one of the book examines the development of the Muslim tradition concerning the life of Muhammad while the other part focuses on the historical reliability of the source material. The volume reflects not only the most recent methodological developments in the study of the life of Muhammad but also the improvement of its material-basis due to sources which have only recently become available or which have been neglected.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004452909
9789004115132
The Feats of the Knowers of God : (Manāqeb al-'ārefīn) /
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This is a 14th-century biography of the famous Persian mystic poet and 'Knower of God', Jalāl al-Dīn-e Rūmī, in the form of a large compendium of Sufi-style teaching stories. It was commissioned by a grandson about fifty years after Rūmī's death. The author-compiler, Aflākī, includes chapters on Bahā'-e Valad (Rūmī's father), Shams al-Dīn-e Tabrīzī (Rūmī's great love), Solṭān Valad and Amīr 'Āref (Rūmī's son and grandson), and other transmitters of the spiritual Heritage of the Mowlavī dervish order. The protagonists are portrayed as performing miracles and confronting critics and rivals. Circumstantial detail abounds, thus providing one of our few windows onto social and political life during the Saljūq and Mongol period in Asia Minor. The translation has an extensive index of persons and concepts to assist readers and students.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004491458
9789004121324
The Companions of the Prophet : A Study of Geographical Distribution and Political Alignments /
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This book deals with the settlement of te Companions outside Medina, and their involvement in the battle of siffīn, the battle that tore the early Muslim community apart. Based on five major biographical dictionaries written by the traditionists ( ahl al-ḥadīth ) of the 9th - 12th centuries, two lists are made: that of the Companions who settled in Iraq, Syria and Egypt, and that of those who were involved in the battle. Comparing the background of these two groups of Companions, the volume analyzes dividing line between the two camps. The use of a quantitative approach, and the use of the traditionists' works as the main source in the historical study of classical Islam is an important contribution to the book.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047401889
9789004129238
A companion to second-century Christian "heretics" /
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The book illuminates "the other side" of early Christianity by examining thinkers and movements that were embraced by many second-century religious seekers as legitimate forms of Christianity, but which are now largely forgotten, or are known only from the characteristics attributed to them in the writings of their main adversaries. The collection deals with the following teachers and movements: Basilides, Sethianism, Valentinus' school, Marcion, Tatian, Bardaisan, Montanists, Cerinthus, Ebionites, Nazarenes, Jewish-Christianity of the Pseudo-Clementines , and Elchasites. Where appropriate, the authors have included an overview of the life and significant publications of the "heretics," along with a description of their theologies and movements. Therefore, this volume can serve as a handbook of the second-century "heretics" and their "heresies." Since all the chapters have been written by specialists who wrestle daily with their research themes, the contributions also offer new perspectives and insights stimulating further discussion on this fascinating-but often neglected-side of early Christianity.
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1 online resource (xiii, 385 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047407867 :
0920-623X ; :
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
A companion to second-century Christian "heretics" /
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The book illuminates "the other side" of early Christianity by examining thinkers and movements that were embraced by many second-century religious seekers as legitimate forms of Christianity, but which are now largely forgotten, or are known only from the characteristics attributed to them in the writings of their main adversaries. The collection deals with the following teachers and movements: Basilides, Sethianism, Valentinus' school, Marcion, Tatian, Bardaisan, Montanists, Cerinthus, Ebionites, Nazarenes, Jewish-Christianity of the Pseudo-Clementines , and Elchasites. Where appropriate, the authors have included an overview of the life and significant publications of the "heretics," along with a description of their theologies and movements. Therefore, this volume can serve as a handbook of the second-century "heretics" and their "heresies." Since all the chapters have been written by specialists who wrestle daily with their research themes, the contributions also offer new perspectives and insights stimulating further discussion on this fascinating-but often neglected-side of early Christianity.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004186866 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The making of manhood among Swedish missionaries in China and Mongolia, c. 1890-c. 1914 /
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Over the last thirty years, issues of gender have been creatively explored within the field of mission studies. Whereas the life and work of female missionaries have been fruitfully reflected upon, male gender identity has often been understood as an unchanging category. This book offers a pioneering account of the relationship between missionary work and masculinity. By examining four individual men this study explores how self-making occurred within foreign missions, but also how conceptions of male gender informed missionary work. Changes that occurred in the lives of these men are placed within the broader context of how issues of gender were renegotiated within the contemporary missionary movement.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [173]-183) and index. :
9789047427544 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Seeing with both eyes : Ephraim Luntshitz and the Polish-Jewish renaissance /
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This is an integrated study of the revival of philosophical studies in 16th-century central-European Jewry focusing on seven major thinkers and especially on the intellectual development of Ephraim Luntshitz (1550-1619). Preoccupation with philosophy is traced through Moses Isserles, Solomon Luria, Mordecai Jaffe, Abraham Horowitz, Eliezer Ashkenazi, Maharal of Prague, and Ephraim Luntshitz. Analysis of these thinkers' intellectual affiliations is based on close analysis of their primary texts, of which a generous selection is provided in translation for the first time. This work advances the scholarly study of 16th-century Polish-Jewish culture, the Polish Jewish Renaissance, the philosophical interests of Ashkenazic Jewry, Jewish responses to Renaissance humanism and the Reformation, and the early-modern background for the 18th-century Jewish Enlightenment.
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1 online resource. :
"English and Hebrew titles of primary works": pages [xv]-xvi.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [215]-220) and index. :
9789047432746 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Mirʼāt al-quds (Mirror of holiness) : a life of Christ for Emperor Akbar : a commentary on Father Jerome Xavier's text and the miniatures of Cleveland Museum of Art, Acc. numbers 2...
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Emperor Akbar's exceptional interest in Christianity is reflected in many ways. Among these was his commissioning in 1602 of a Life of Christ from his guest, the Jesuit priest Jerome Xavier, thus marking a singular moment in the relations between one of the greatest Muslim rulers and Catholicism. This fascinating text-translated into English for the first time-draws mostly on Biblical and apocryphal sources, but also reveals that in order not to antagonize his Muslim hosts, Father Jerome occasionally made concessions in his work. Of the three illustrated copies, the one used in this study and now in the Cleveland Museum of Art is the most important. Its twenty-seven high-quality miniatures were inspired by the text itself, resulting in unique interpretations of episodes that often do not find parallels in a European context.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004215740 :
0921-0326 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
No North Sea : the Anglo-German evangelical network in the middle of the nineteenth century /
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This volume deals with those Christians who helped construct an international and inter-denominational evangelical network in western Europe in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Evangelical Alliance (est. 1846) institutionalised this ecumenical impulse. The Berlin Conference (1857) was the high-point of cross-border cooperation in those decades. The réveil in France and Switzerland and the Erweckung in Germany laid the groundwork for the Alliance in Europe. England, the motherland of the evangelical revival, provided a resource centre for continental evangelicalism. The chapters on the various missionary endeavours at home and abroad draw attention to the outward-looking, charitable and evangelistic character of evangelicals. Students of evangelicalism, the missionary movement and the ecumenical movement will find the book to be of particular importance.
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1 online resource (xxii, 286 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 267-281) and index. :
9789004320048 :
0924-9389 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Jewish Bishop and the Chinese Bible : Place of publication not identifiedJ. Schereschewsky (1831-1906) /
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A study of the life and times of Bishop Place of publication not identifiedJ. Schereschewsky (1831-1906) and his translation of the Hebrew Old Testament into northern vernacular (Mandarin) Chinese. Based largely on archival materials, missionary records and letters, the book includes an analysis of the translated Chinese text together with Schereschewsky's explanatory notes. The book examines his Jewish youth in Eastern Europe, conversion, American seminary study, journey to Shanghai and Beijing, mission routine, the translating committee's work, his tasks as Episcopal bishop in Shanghai and the founding of St. John's University. Concluding chapters analyze the controversial "Term Question" (the Chinese term for God) and Schereschewsky's techniques of translating the Hebrew text. Included are useful discussions of the Old Testament's Chinese reception and the role of this translation for subsequent Bible translating efforts.
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1 online resource (xvi, 287 pages, 8 pages of plates) : illustrations, maps. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 265-279) and index. :
9789004320024 :
0924-9389 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The missionary lives : a study in Canadian missionary biography and autobiography /
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This book is a survey of the life writings by and about Canadian missionaries at home and abroad, over the last one hundred and thirty years. A general missionary history of Canada appears first, to introduce separate chapters on the forms and themes of this body of literature. The critical problems presented by writing that has resisted modern and post-modern developments are discussed. Partial and fictional life writing, as well as marginal forms, are also explored. The book concludes with general statements about the whole of this literature and its effects. The first attempt at a comprehensive bibliography of Canadian missionary life writing is appended.
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1 online resource (xvii, 169 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 144-166) and index. :
9789004319998 :
0924-9389 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Reclaiming the women of Britain's first mission to West Africa : three lives lost and found /
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Reclaiming the Women of Britain's First Mission to Africa is the compelling story of three long-forgotten women, two white and one black, who lived, worked and died on the Church Missionary Society's first overseas mission at the dawn of the nineteenth century. It was a time of momentous historical events: the birth of Britain's missionary movement, the creation of its first African colony as a home for freed slaves, and abolition of the slave trade. Casting its long shadow over much of the women's story was the protracted war with Napoleon. Taking as its starting point a cache of fifty letters from the three women, the book counters the prevailing narrative that early missionary endeavour was a uniquely European and male affair, and reveals the presence of a surprising number of women, among them several with very forceful personalities. Those who are interested in women's life history, black history, the history of the slave trade and British evangelism will find this book immensely enjoyable.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789004387447 :
0169-9814 ;
The Literary coptic manuscripts in the A.S. Pushkin State Fine Arts Museum in Moscow /
: Includes facsimiles of original manuscripts, translations and commentary. : vii, 527 pages,192 pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cm. : Includes bibliographical references and indexes. : 9004095284
Pseudo-Cyril of Jerusalem on the life and the passion of Christ : a Coptic apocryphon /
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Pseudo-Cyril of Jerusalem's Coptic homily On the Life and the Passion of Christ is in fact a collection of apocryphal stories. Roelof van den Broek offers a critical edition of this text, with introduction, translation and notes. The text provides information about the worldly crafts of the apostles and Jesus' external appearance; it also contains a peculiar chronology of Holy Week (implying that Jesus was arrested on Tuesday evening) and a long story about Pilate's role in the trial of Jesus. The latter contains, int. al., letters by Pilate and Herod, discussions between Pilate and Jesus during a dinner they had together, and a description of the dreams of Pilate and his wife Procla and their explanation by Jesus.
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1 online resource (vi, 217 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 191-200) and indexes. :
9789004241978 :
0920-623X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Grey Falcon: The Life and Teaching of Shaykh ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī.
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In The Grey Falcon , Hamza Malik offers an account of the life and teaching of the twelfth century scholar and Sufi of Baghdad, and eponym of the Qadiri order, Shaykh ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (1077-1166). The question of whether Jīlānī was a Sufi, or simply a scholar appropriated by later Sufis as has been sometimes suggested, is tackled through an analysis of his three most popular works, the Ghunya li Ṭālibī Ṭarīq al-Ḥaqq , the Futūḥ al-Ghayb , and the Fatḥ al-Rabbānī . Malik identifies and presents Jīlānī's Sufi thought and theological stance, and furthermore attempts to paint a picture of the character and personality of Jīlānī, as might be ascertained solely from the works analysed.
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1 online resource. :
9789004383692
Dreams, Sufism and Sainthood, The Visionary Career of Muhammad al-Zawâwî.
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Based on Muhammad al-Zawâwî's extraordinary diary of 109 dream conversations with the Prophet Muhammad, this study provides a rare, intimate view of 15th-century North African Muslim life. The study reconstructs Zawâwî's lifestory over a critical ten-year period and examines his career as a sufi in the historical context of North Africa and Mamluk Cairo. Psychological aspects of Zawâwî's religious experience are thoroughly explored. The concluding chapter provides an introduction to the role of dreams and visions in medieval Islam. Particular attention is paid to the way Zawâwî and his successors used their visions to legitimate claims to being awliya' , or living saints.
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1 online resource. :
9789004378926