Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands

Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands
Author: Konrad Hirschler
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2011-12-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0748654216

Winner of the 2012 BRISMES book prize. How the written text became accessible to wider audiences in medieval Egypt and Syria. Medieval Islamic societies belonged to the most bookish cultures of their period. Using a wide variety of documentary, narrative and normative sources, Konrad Hirschler explores the growth of reading audiences in a pre-print culture.The uses of the written word grew significantly in Egypt and Syria between the 11th and the 15th centuries, and more groups within society started to participate in individual and communal reading acts. New audiences in reading sessions, school curricula, increasing numbers of endowed libraries and the appearance of popular written literature all bear witness to the profound transformation of cultural practices and their social contexts.

A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture

A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture
Author: Konrad Hirschler
Publisher:
Total Pages: 612
Release: 2020
Genre: Manuscripts, Arabic
ISBN: 9781474476836

This work discusses the largest private book collection of the pre-Ottoman Arabic Middle East for which we have both a paper trail and a surviving corpus of the manuscripts that once sat on its shelves: the Ibn Abd al-Hadi Library of Damascus.

Medieval Damascus

Medieval Damascus
Author: Hirschler Konrad Hirschler
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 504
Release: 2016-02-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 1474408796

The written text was a pervasive feature of cultural practices in the medieval Middle East. At the heart of book circulation stood libraries that experienced a rapid expansion from the twelfth century onwards. While the existence of these libraries is well known our knowledge of their content and structure has been very limited as hardly any medieval Arabic catalogues have been preserved. This book discusses the largest and earliest medieval library of the Middle East for which we have documentation - the Ashrafiya library in the very centre of Damascus - and edits its catalogue. This catalogue shows that even book collections attached to Sunni religious institutions could hold rather unexpected titles, such as stories from the 1001 Nights, manuals for traders, medical handbooks, Shiite prayers, love poetry and texts extolling wine consumption. At the same time this library catalogue decisively expands our knowledge of how the books were spatially organised on the bookshelves of such a large medieval library. With over 2,000 entries this catalogue is essential reading for anybody interested in the cultural and intellectual history of Arabic societies. Setting the Ashrafiya catalogue into a comparative perspective with contemporaneous libraries on the British Isles this book opens new perspectives for the study of medieval libraries.

Sacred Landscape in Medieval Afghanistan

Sacred Landscape in Medieval Afghanistan
Author: Arezou Azad
Publisher: Oxford Oriental Monographs
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2013-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199687056

Afghanistan has played a crucial role in shaping the history of Islam. This book provides the first in-depth study of the sacred sites and landscape of medieval Balkh, in today's northern Afghanistan, in the five centuries from the Islamic conquests of the eighth century to the arrival of the Mongols in the thirteenth century.

The Arabic Print Revolution

The Arabic Print Revolution
Author: Ami Ayalon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2016-09-26
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1107149444

Ayalon explores the birth of Arab printing, publishing, dissemination methods, and mass readership during the formative phase from 1800 to 1914.

Palaces of Time

Palaces of Time
Author: Elisheva Carlebach
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2011-04-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 0674052544

Palaces of Time resurrects the seemingly banal calendar as a means to understand early modern Jewish life. Elisheva Carlebach has unearthed a trove of beautifully illustrated calendars, to show how Jewish men and women both adapted to the Christian world and also forged their own meanings through time.

Along the Silk Roads in Mongol Eurasia

Along the Silk Roads in Mongol Eurasia
Author: Michal Biran
Publisher: University of California Press
Total Pages: 355
Release: 2020-07-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520298756

During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Chinggis Khan and his heirs established the largest contiguous empire in the history of the world, extending from Korea to Hungary and from Iraq, Tibet, and Burma to Siberia. Ruling over roughly two thirds of the Old World, the Mongol Empire enabled people, ideas, and objects to traverse immense geographical and cultural boundaries. Along the Silk Roads in Mongol Eurasia reveals the individual stories of three key groups of people—military commanders, merchants, and intellectuals—from across Eurasia. These annotated biographies bring to the fore a compelling picture of the Mongol Empire from a wide range of historical sources in multiple languages, providing important insights into a period unique for its rapid and far-reaching transformations. Read together or separately, they offer the perfect starting point for any discussion of the Mongol Empire’s impact on China, the Muslim world, and the West and illustrate the scale, diversity, and creativity of the cross-cultural exchange along the continental and maritime Silk Roads. Features and Benefits: Synthesizes historical information from Chinese, Arabic, Persian, and Latin sources that are otherwise inaccessible to English-speaking audiences. Presents in an accessible manner individual life stories that serve as a springboard for discussing themes such as military expansion, cross-cultural contacts, migration, conversion, gender, diplomacy, transregional commercial networks, and more. Each chapter includes a bibliography to assist students and instructors seeking to further explore the individuals and topics discussed. Informative maps, images, and tables throughout the volume supplement each biography.

Barren Women

Barren Women
Author: Sara Verskin
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2020-04-06
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 311059658X

Barren Women is the first scholarly book to explore the ramifications of being infertile in the medieval Arab-Islamic world. Through an examination of legal texts, medical treatises, and works of religious preaching, Sara Verskin illuminates how attitudes toward mixed-gender interactions; legal theories pertaining to marriage, divorce, and inheritance; and scientific theories of reproduction contoured the intellectual and social landscape infertile women had to navigate. In so doing, she highlights underappreciated vulnerabilities and opportunities for women’s autonomy within the system of Islamic family law, and explores the diverse marketplace of medical ideas in the medieval world and the perceived connection between women’s health practices and religious heterodoxy. Featuring copious translations of primary sources and minimal theoretical jargon, Barren Women provides a multidimensional perspective on the experience of infertility, while also enhancing our understanding of institutions and modes of thought which played significant roles in shaping women’s lives more broadly. This monograph has been awarded the annual BRAIS – De Gruyter Prize in the Study of Islam and the Muslim World.