Arabs and Arabists

Arabs and Arabists
Author: Alastair Hamilton
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 450
Release: 2021-11-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004498206

Arabs and Arabists contains nineteen selected articles by Alastair Hamilton on the Western acquisition of knowledge of the Arab and Ottoman world in the early modern period. The first essays are on Arabs who visited Europe and gave instruction to Western Arabists, and on Europeans who either visited the Arab (or the Ottoman) world in search of manuscripts and information or who, like Franciscus Raphelengius, Isaac Casaubon and Adriaen Reland, studied it at a distance and remained in the West. These are followed by a section on the actual study of the Arabic language in Europe, and above all the creation of the first Arabic-Latin dictionaries, and another on the European study of Islam and Western translations of the Qur’an.

Latin Palaeography

Latin Palaeography
Author: Bernhard Bischoff
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 360
Release: 1990-04-12
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780521367264

This work, by the greatest living authority on medieval palaeography, offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date account in any language of the history of Latin script. It also contains a detailed account of the role of the book in cultural history from antiquity to the Renaissance, which outlines the history of book illumination. Designed as a textbook, it contains a full and updated bibliography. Because the volume sets the development of Latin script in its cultural context, it also provides an unrivalled introduction to the nature of medieval Latin culture. It will be used extensively in the teaching of latin palaeography, and is unlikely to be superseded.

Arabic Manuscripts

Arabic Manuscripts
Author: Adam Gacek
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2009-06-24
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 9047443039

Arranged alphabetically by subject and/or concept, the present handbook has been conceived, for convenience sake and quick reference, as an aid to students and researchers who are often puzzled or even sometimes intimidated by the ‘mysterious’ world of Arabic manuscripts and the technical language that goes with it. A companion volume to the recently published The Arabic Manuscript Tradition (2001) and its Supplement (2008), the vademecum comprises some 200 entries of varying lengths dealing with almost all aspects of Arabic manuscript studies (codicology and palaeography). It is richly illustrated with specimens from manuscripts and expertly executed drawings. The main sequence is followed by a number of appendices covering abbreviations, letterforms, sūrah-headings, major reference works and a guide to the description of manuscripts, as well as charts of major historical periods and dynasties.

Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West

Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West
Author: Daniel G. König
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 451
Release: 2015-11-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 0191057010

Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West provides an insight into how the Arabic-Islamic world perceived medieval Western Europe in an age that is usually associated with the rise and expansion of Islam, the Spanish Reconquista, and the Crusades. Previous scholarship has maintained that the Arabic-Islamic world regarded Western Europe as a cultural backwater at the periphery of civilization that clung to a superseded religion. It holds mental barriers imposed by Islam responsible for the Muslim world's arrogant and ignorant attitude towards its northern neighbours. This study refutes this view by focussing on the mechanisms of transmission and reception that characterized the flow of information between both cultural spheres. By explaining how Arabic-Islamic scholars acquired and processed data on medieval Western Europe, it traces the two-fold 'emergence' of Latin-Christian Europe — a sphere that increasingly encroached upon the Mediterranean and therefore became more and more important in Arabic-Islamic scholarly literature. Chapter One questions previous interpretations of related Arabic-Islamic records that reduce a large and differentiated range of Arabic-Islamic perceptions to a single basic pattern subsumed under the keywords 'ignorance', 'indifference', and 'arrogance'. Chapter Two lists channels of transmission by means of which information on the Latin-Christian sphere reached the Arabic-Islamic sphere. Chapter Three deals with the general factors that influenced the reception and presentation of this data at the hands of Arabic-Islamic scholars. Chapters Four to Eight analyse how these scholars acquired and dealt with information on themes such as the western dimension of the Roman Empire, the Visigoths, the Franks, the papacy and, finally, Western Europe in the age of Latin-Christian expansionism. Against this background, Chapter Nine provides a concluding re-evaluation.

Arabic Versions of the Pentateuch

Arabic Versions of the Pentateuch
Author: Ronny Vollandt
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 347
Release: 2015-03-10
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9004289933

This work offers a seminal research into Arabic translations of the Pentateuch. It is no exaggeration to speak of this field as a terra incognita. Biblical versions in Arabic were produced over many centuries, on the basis of a wide range of source languages (Hebrew, Syriac, Greek, or Coptic), and in varying contexts. The textual evidence for this study is exclusively based on a corpus of about 150 manuscripts, containing the Pentateuch in Arabic or parts thereof.

Christians in Al-Andalus 711-1000

Christians in Al-Andalus 711-1000
Author: Ann Rosemary Christys
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2013-01-11
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1136127305

Our current image of the Christian population of al-Andalus after AD711 reflects the way history has been written. The Christians almost disappeared from the historical record as the historians of the conquering Muslims concentrated on the glories of the Ummayads.This book reconsiders, through their own words, the fate of the Christians of al-Andalus. The texts discusses two chronicles in Latin on the fate of Hispania, the problematic accounts of Christian martyrs in Cordoba, a Muslim historian's account of how his Christian ancestors survived the conquest and other texts reflecting the acculturation of Christians into Islamic society.

Christian Martyrs Under Islam

Christian Martyrs Under Islam
Author: Christian C. Sahner
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2020-03-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 069120313X

A look at the developing conflicts in Christian-Muslim relations during late antiquity and the early Islamic era How did the medieval Middle East transform from a majority-Christian world to a majority-Muslim world, and what role did violence play in this process? Christian Martyrs under Islam explains how Christians across the early Islamic caliphate slowly converted to the faith of the Arab conquerors and how small groups of individuals rejected this faith through dramatic acts of resistance, including apostasy and blasphemy. Using previously untapped sources in a range of Middle Eastern languages, Christian Sahner introduces an unknown group of martyrs who were executed at the hands of Muslim officials between the seventh and ninth centuries CE. Found in places as diverse as Syria, Spain, Egypt, and Armenia, they include an alleged descendant of Muhammad who converted to Christianity, high-ranking Christian secretaries of the Muslim state who viciously insulted the Prophet, and the children of mixed marriages between Muslims and Christians. Sahner argues that Christians never experienced systematic persecution under the early caliphs, and indeed, they remained the largest portion of the population in the greater Middle East for centuries after the Arab conquest. Still, episodes of ferocious violence contributed to the spread of Islam within Christian societies, and memories of this bloodshed played a key role in shaping Christian identity in the new Islamic empire. Christian Martyrs under Islam examines how violence against Christians ended the age of porous religious boundaries and laid the foundations for more antagonistic Muslim-Christian relations in the centuries to come.

Islamic Literature in Spanish and Aljamiado

Islamic Literature in Spanish and Aljamiado
Author: Gerard Wiegers
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2023-12-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004624236

This important work is an historical study of the Islamic writings in Spanish and Aljamiado (Spanish in Arabic script) of the Muslim minorities in medieval Christian Spain, the Mudejars and Moriscos. On the basis of both Christian sources, such as archival documents and the writings of John of Segovia, and Islamic sources in Spanish and Arabic, this book focuses on the life and writings of Yça Gidelli (ca 1450), religious authority of the Mudejar community of Segovia (Castile). Of crucial importance for the history of Islamic Spanish literature, Yça's best-known work is a Spanish translation of the Qur’ān made at the request of bishop John of Segovia (d. 1458). This study follows the early history of Islamic writings in the vernacular (13th-14th centuries), continues with a description of Yça's writings and biography, and finally deals with his influence on Moriscos in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The Lost Libraries of Tunis

The Lost Libraries of Tunis
Author: Laura Hinrichsen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2024-08-19
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3111343634

Only little is known about the book culture of Tunis, although the city had been a centre for teaching and learning throughout Ḥafṣid rule in Ifrīqiya (c. 1230 to 1574). The libraries of Tunis are considered lost since the sack of the city by the armies of the emperor Charles V in the summer of 1535. This study reconstructs for the first time the original holdings of Tunis' medieval libraries and shows what can still be learned from these recovered fragments. An in-depth analysis of a wide range of texts and artefacts shows that the Ḥafṣid libraries were looted and their collections redistributed, mostly among European collectors. The Lost Libraries of Tunis brings Early Modern scholarship on Arabic texts and language into context by utilising the manuscripts from Ifrīqiya as a source to map the interest in, and scholarship on, Arabic manuscripts in Early Modern Europe. With an art-historical and sociohistorical interpretation of the reconstructed manuscript corpus, The Lost Libraries of Tunis challenges views accepted among Islamic art historians and describes a dynamic and vivid regional book culture of the Maghreb embedded in the wider Arabic manuscript tradition, precisely showing strong interaction and exchange.