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
Ẓafarnāma-yi Khusrawī : Sharḥ-i ḥukmrawāyi-yi Sayyid Amīr Naṣrallāh Bahādur Sulṭān b. Ḥaydar /
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Ẓafar-nāma is the title of a number of Persian works, in poetry or prose, mostly in glorification of some ruler or dynasty. As examples one could cite the Ẓafarnāmā-yi Tīmūrī (9th/15th cent.), the Ẓafarnāma-yi Shāh Jahān (11th/17th cent.), or the Ẓafarnāma-yi Kābūl (13th/19th cent.). The anonymous Ẓafarnāma-yi Khusrawī published here clearly stands in that tradition. Composed in 1279/1862-63, it was written with the purpose of recording the major events and achievements in the reign of the Manghit ruler of Bukhara, Amīr Sayyid Naṣrallāh b. Ḥaydar (reg. 1257-77/1841-60), preceded by an account of the happenings that led to his coming to power. The Manghits of the Khanate of Bukhara were a Turco-Mongolian dynasty that ruled over Transoxania between 1756 and 1920. The present work gives a detailed, insider account of many of the events that shaped the history of the region halfway the nineteenth century. As such, it is an invaluable and much-needed source of information.
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1 online resource. :
9789004402201
9789649073347
The Yemeni manuscript tradition /
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The Yemeni Manuscript Tradition contributes to the study of the manuscript codex and its role in scholastic culture in Yemen. Ranging in period from Islam's first century to the modern period, all the articles in this volume emerge from the close scrutiny of the manuscripts of Yemen. As a group, these studies demonstrate the range and richness of scholarly methods closely tied to the material text, and the importance of cross-pollination in the fields of codicology, textual criticism, and social and intellectual history. Contributors are: Hassan Ansari, Menashe Anzi, Asma Hilali, Kerstin Hünefeld, Wilferd Madelung, Arianna D'Ottone, Christoph Rauch, Anne Regourd, Sabine Schmidtke, Gregor Schwarb and Jan Thiele.
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1 online resource (xi, 305 pages) : illustrations (chiefly color) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004289765 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Rasāʾil-i Fārsi-yi Jurjānī : Rasāʾil-i kalāmī, taʾlīf ḥudūd-i qarn-i nuhum-i hijrī /
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From the time that ʿAlī b. Mūsā al-Riḍā (d. 203/818) was designated to be the successor of al-Maʾmūn b. Hārūn al-Rashīd (d. 218/833) and then murdered shortly after that, various Shīʿa groups have been at odds with whoever opposed their claim to leadership in Islam. The author of the Persian dissertations contained in the present volume, the otherwise unknown Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn b. Sadīd al-Dīn Jurjānī (ca. 9th/15th cent.), clearly issues from this polemic tradition. Reading his work, it is clear that Jurjānī had a full command of all the theological registers to be played upon in a traditional sectarian debate. This is especially the case for the first treatise in this collection, in which he opposes such movements as the Ashʿarīs, the Ḥanbalīs, the Ismāʿīlīs, and the Sufis. The treatises that follow, too, are all about religious dogma ( ʿaqāʾid ), with some of them showing clear signs of thematic, not to say temporal, association.
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1 online resource. :
9789004401846
9789645568175
Nāmahā va munshaʾāt-i Jāmī /
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Regarded by many as the last great mystical poet of medieval Persia, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 898/1492) spent the greater part of his life in Herat. As a student, he excelled in every subject he engaged in and appeared destined for an academic career. But then, in his early thirties, he went through a spiritual crisis that ended in him joining the Herat branch of the mystical Naqshbandiyya order, led by the charismatic Saʿd al-Dīn Kāshgharī (d. 860/1456). A protégé of three successive Timurid rulers in Herat, Jāmī's wide network of friendships and relations extended from spiritual and literary circles through the political to the academic. With 39.000 lines of verse and over 30 prose works to his name, Jāmī's literary production is quite overwhelming. The present volume, containing 433 of his letters and messages, bears witness to his great yet modest personality, his social engagement, and the expanse and variety of his network.
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1 online resource. :
9789004401839
9789646781313
Takmila-yi Nafaḥāt al-uns /
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Regarded by many as the last great mystical poet of medieval Persia, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 898/1492) spent the greater part of his life in Herat. As a student he excelled in every subject he engaged in and appeared destined for an academic career. But then, in his early thirties, he went through a spiritual crisis that ended in his joining the Herat branch of the mystical Naqshbandiyya order, led by the charismatic Saʿd al-Dīn Kāshgharī (d. 860/1456). A protégé of three successive Timurid rulers in Herat, Jāmī's wide network of friendships and relations extended from spiritual and literary circles through the political to the academic. With 39.000 lines of verse and over 30 prose works to his name, Jāmī's literary production is impressive. In his biographical handbook on Sufi masters, the Nafaḥāt al-uns , Jāmī did not mention himself. This is why his student ʿAbd al-Ghafūr Lārī (d. 912/1506) wrote this biographical supplement to it.
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1 online resource. :
9789004408098
9786002031334
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.
Looking back at al-Andalus : the poetics of loss and nostalgia in medieval Arabic and Hebrew literature /
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Looking Back at al-Andalus focuses on Arabic and Hebrew Literature that expresses the loss of al-Andalus from multiple vantage points. In doing so, this book examines the definition of al-Andalus' literary borders, the reconstruction of which navigates between traditional generic formulations and actual political, military and cultural challenges. By looking at a variety of genres, the book shows that literature aiming to recall and define al-Andalus expresses a series of symbolic literary objects more than a geographic and political entity fixed in a single time and place. Looking Back at al-Andalus offers a unique examination into the role of memory, language, and subjectivity in presenting a series of interpretations of what al-Andalus represented to different writers at different historical-cultural moments.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [171]-180) and index. :
9789047442721 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
On the elucidation of some symptoms and the response to them : (formerly known as On the causes of symptoms) /
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The present consilium, commonly known as De causis accidentium, after the Latin translation by John de Capua, was, like the earlier consilium On the Regimen of Health, composed by Maimonides at the request of al-Malik al-Afḍal Nūr al-Dīn Alī, Saladin's eldest son. As a result of not adopting the lifestyle and dietary recommendations in On the Regimen of Health, al-Afḍal may have continued to suffer from a number of afflictions, amongst them hemorrhoids, depression, constipation, and, possibly, a heart condition. The consilium was written after 1200, the year in which al-Afḍal was deposed and banished from Egypt permanently, but probably not long before 1204, the year in which Maimonides died.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004398801
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
Sheikh Ahmadu Bamba : selected poems /
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While in exile in Gabon (1895-1902), Sheikh Ahmadu Bamba marked a historic moment with his poetry of resilience, pivotal to the cultural and religious transformation of the Murīds of Senegal. The qaṣāʾid (poems) included in this annotated edition, most of them hymns of praise to the qualities of Allāh and the Prophet Muḥammad, and professions of faith that demonstrate how to realize the precepts found in the Qur'ān, display the underlying elements of Sheikh Ahmadu Bamba's imaginative energy and poetic vision. They reveal a unifying poetic purpose and exemplify Ṣūfī literary traditions in subject matter, form, and versification and aim to explore the deepest regions of mysticism in search of the divine truth.
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Translated from the Arabic. :
1 online resource (xxi, 205 pages) : illustrations, maps. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004339194 :
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.
Sabʿ rasāʾil /
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The history of Islamic philosophy was shaped by many great thinkers over a long period of time. As is well known, the Persianate world played an important role in this, almost from the very beginning. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the city of Shiraz saw the rise of a number of thinkers who together came to represent the 'School of Shiraz' in philosophy. A major figure in this school was Jalāl al-Dīn Dawānī (d. 908/1502-03). A specialist in theology and philosophy, Dawānī's fame reached much beyond the confines of Shiraz, from the Ottoman empire all the way to the Indian subcontinent. Dawānī's religious proclivities have been subject of debate, the question being if he ever really was a Sunnī. It is therefore not without significance that the present volume should contain two works by him on Sunnī philosophical theology as well as three other texts of unmistakeably Shīʿī signature.
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Added t. pages in Roman script: Sabʻ Rasāʻil / ʻAllāmah Jalāl al-Dīn al-Dawānī and Mullā Ismāʻīl al-Xāǰūʼī al-Iṣfahānī :
1 online resource. :
9789004402393
9789646781504
From al-Andalus to Khurasan : documents from the medieval Muslim world /
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As in many areas of pre-modern history, the study of medieval Islamic history has been critically hindered by the lack of available evidence. Unlike many parallel fields, however, the shortage of contemporary documentary evidence for medieval Islam has less to do with the survival of documents and archives as with their accessibility. A rich documentary legacy survives, but because of its inaccessibility and unfamiliarity to all but the most specialised scholars in the field, it has remained sadly underutilised. This volume contributes to the redressing of that problem. It collects papers given at the conference "Documents and the History of the Early Islamic Mediterranean World," including editions of unpublished documents and historical studies, which make use of documentary evidence from al-Andalus, Sicily, Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, Syria and Khurasan. For more titles about Papyrology, please click here .
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index :
9789047411734 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
A Qurʼān commentary by Ibn Barrajān of Seville (d. 536/1141) :Īḍāḥ al-ḥikma bi-aḥkām al-ʻibra = Wisdom deciphered, the unseen discovered = Kitāb Īḍāḥ al-ḥikmah bi-aḥkām al-ʻibrah /...
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A Qurʾān Commentary by Ibn Barrajān of Seville (d. 536/1141) is a critical Arabic text edition of a medieval Muslim Qurʾān commentary entitled, Īḍāḥ al-ḥikma bi-aḥkām al-ʿibra ( Wisdom Deciphered, the Unseen Discovered ). The annotated Arabic text is accompanied by an analytical introduction and an extensive subject index. This Qurʾān commentary is Ibn Barrajān's last and most esoteric work, and as such offers the most explicit articulation of his mystical and philosophical doctrines. It synthesizes his teachings, drawn from a wide array of Islamic disciplines, and provides a link between early Sufism and Muslim mysticism in medieval Spain (Andalusia). The Īḍāḥ moreover is the earliest known work of its kind to make extensive use of Arabic Biblical material as proof texts for Qurʾānic doctrines.
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1 online resource (64, 956 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004295391 :
1567-2808 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Maḥbūb al-qulūb. Volume 2 : Al-Maqāla al-thāniya fi aḥwāl ḥukamāʾ al-Islām wal-ʿulamāʾ al-aʿlām wal-udabāʾ al-kirām mimman lahum al-iʿtināʾ bi-shaʾnihim wal-iʿtibār bi-kalāmihim /...
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In the Islamic world, the writing of biographical reference works has a very long tradition. In the field of philosophy and other rational sciences such as medicine, one could, for example, mention Isḥāq b. Ḥunayn's (d. 298/910) Taʾrīkh al-aṭibbāʾ wal-ḥukamāʾ or Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa's (d. ca 668/1270) ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ fī taʾrīkh al-aṭibbāʾ . The present two-volume biographical dictionary of philosophers and physicians of all times thus continues a centuries-old tradition. Its author, Quṭb al-Dīn Ishkawarī Lāhijī (d. ca. 1088-95/1677-78), was a student of the great Safavi thinker and founder of the School of Isfahan in philosophy, Mīr Dāmād (d. 1041/1631). This is also obvious from his spiritually-orientated, inclusive understanding of the various actors and episodes in the history of philosophy. Written in classical Arabic, at times sprinkled with his native Persian, it distinguishes itself from earlier dictionaries in that it also contains many of the author's own philosophical opinions. 2 vols; volume 2.
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1 online resource. :
9789004402287
9789646781757
An eleventh-century Egyptian guide to the universe : the Book of curiosities /
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Acquired by the Bodleian Library in 2002, the Book of Curiosities is now recognized as one of the most important discoveries in the history of cartography in recent decades. This eleventh-century Arabic treatise, composed in Egypt under the Fatimid caliphs, is a detailed account of the heavens and the Earth, illustrated by an unparalleled series of maps and astronomical diagrams. With topics ranging from comets to the island of Sicily, from lunar mansions to the sources of the Nile, it represents the extent of geographical, astronomical and astrological knowledge of the time. This authoritative edition and translation, accompanied by a colour facsimile reproduction, opens a unique window onto the worldview of medieval Islam. An extensive glossary of star-names and seven indices, on birds, animals and other items have been added for easy reference.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004256996
Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum Palaestinae addendum : squeezes in the Max van Berchem collection (Palestine, Trans-Jordan, Northern Syria) : squeezes 1-84 /
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During his research of the Arabic inscriptions in the Middle East at the end of the 19th century, Max van Berchem collected many squeezes of inscriptions. These squeezes are stored in the archives of the Fondation Max van Berchem in Geneva. The present publication wishes to present a scholarly record of these squeezes, many of which represent inscriptions that do no longer exist. This publication is the first of, hopefully, two addenda which will constitute a full record of one of the few treasures left by the great epigrapher in his archives. For many students of Arabic epigraphy these squeezes afford the only opportunity to have a close glimpse of the originals as possible, and learn about their contents with the aid of the photographs and studies which accompany them in this volume.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [179]-181) and indexes. :
9789047420736 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Commerce, Culture, and Community in a Red Sea Port in the Thirteenth Century : The Arabic Documents from Quseir /
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This book is the first comprehensive study of the Arabic documents uncovered in Quseir, Upper Egypt, during the 1980s. The hundreds of paper fragments shed light on activities and operations of a family shipping business on the Red Sea shore in the thirteenth century. Part One is an introductory essay on historical and cultural context of these documents. The three chapters deal with, respectively, the "Sheikh's house," where the documents were found, the Red Sea commerce as reflected in the trade activities around the house, and aspects of popular culture as revealed through the texts. Part Two comprises a critical edition of eighty-four Arabic texts, the majority of which have never been published before, with translation and commentary.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047404972
9789004137479
Tafsīr-i Shahristānī al-Musammā bi-Mafātīḥ al-asrār wa-maṣābīḥ al-abrār. Volume 2 /
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Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Shahristānī (d. 548/1153) was a prominent historian of religions who was well-versed in Islamic theology and the sciences of the Qurʾān. He is mostly known for his Kitāb al-milal wal-niḥal , a ground-breaking history of religions, his Kitāb muṣāraʿat al-falāsifa , a critical exposition of the philosophy of Avicenna (d. 428/1037)-later refuted by Naṣīr al-Dīn Tūsī (d. 672/1274) in his Maṣāriʿ al-muṣāriʿ -and the Mafātīḥ al-asrār wa-maṣābīḥ al-abrār , his partial Qurʾān commentary contained in the present two volumes. The Mafātīḥ al-asrār was written in the final years of Shahristānī's life and clearly bears the stamp of Ismailism, a branch of Shīʿism to which he had been introduced as a young man by his teacher in Qurʾānic studies in Nishapur, Abu ʼl-Qāsim al-Anṣārī (d. 512/1118). Even if the Mafātīḥ al-asrār is a work that remained unfinished, it is a fine and rare specimen of the richness of Ismaili taʾwīl . 2 vols; volume 2.
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1 online resource. :
9789004402300
9789648700435