Humanism, Culture, and Language in the Near East

Humanism, Culture, and Language in the Near East
Author: Georg Krotkoff
Publisher: Eisenbrauns
Total Pages: 466
Release: 1997-01-01
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1575060205

Essays by 33 colleagues, friends, and students of the Johns Hopkins University Arabist and linguist. Topics include (1) humanism, culture, and literature; (2) Arabic; (3) Aramaic; and (4) Afroasiatic.

Miskawayh's Tahḏīb al-aḫlāq

Miskawayh's Tahḏīb al-aḫlāq
Author: Ufuk Topkara
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2022-06-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0429016972

This book engages with the work of Miskawayh, a formative Islamic Philosopher in the 11th century, who is acknowledged as the founder of Islamic Moral Philosophy. Miskawayh’s The Refinement of Character (Tahḏīb al-Aḫlāq) draws from both ancient Greek philosophical tradition and Islamic thought, highlighting the concepts he integrated into what he argued to be the moral core of Islam. This book pursues a comparative study by analyzing and outlining the inherent philosophical concerns of the Aristotelian concepts of Happiness, Justice and Friendship, which are then brought into conversation with Miskawayh’s own concepualizations of them. While Tahḏīb al-Aḫlāq is deeply influenced by Aristotle’s ethics, Miskawayh employs not only a Platonizing interpretation of Aristotelian philosophy, but also incorporates traditions of Islamic thought. The study therefore concludes that Miskawayh is merely a transmitter of ancient Greek philosophy, as shown by both his critical survey of the material available to him and his own critical contributions. Essentially, Miskawayh attempted to harmonize philosophical and religious concepts of knowledge, demonstrating the interlinking of what are perceived as—at times detrimentally—incompatible positions. Ufuk Topkara illustrates how Aristotle’s Ethics are integrated, modified and at times adjusted to the broader narrative of Islamic thought and how Miskawayh’s discourse, albeit philosophical in nature, remains religious in its outlook. Providing clear insight into Miskawayh’s work, this book is ideal for students and scholars of Islamic Philosophy and Muslim Theology.

Geomodernisms

Geomodernisms
Author: Laura Doyle
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2005-11-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780253217783

Modernism as a global phenomenon is the focus of the essays gathered in this book. The term "geomodernisms" indicates their subjects' continuity with and divergence from commonly understood notions of modernism. The contributors consider modernism as it was expressed in the non-Western world; the contradictions at the heart of modernization (in revolutionary and nationalist settings, and with respect to race and nativism); and modernism's imagined geographies, "pyschogeographies" of distance and desire as viewed by the subaltern, the caste-bound, the racially mixed, the gender-determined.

The Morphophonological Development of the Classical Aramaic Verb

The Morphophonological Development of the Classical Aramaic Verb
Author: Joseph L. Malone
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 619
Release: 2020-05-04
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1646020154

This book offers a diachronic and synchronic account of the verb morphology and phonology of Aramaic from its initial appearance early in the first millennium B.C.E. until the second millennium C.E. Aramaic, a subfamily of Semitic, is closely related to Hebrew and the other Canaanite languages; together, the two subfamilies of Aramaic and Canaanite constitute the northwest branch of the Semitic phylum. In this study, Joseph L. Malone focuses on thirteen dialects of Aramaic, chosen from a candidate list of approximately twice that number. The specific varieties of Aramaic examined here are chosen to provide an optimal chronological and geographical range. In a similar vein, the finite verb serves as the subject of this study, based on the assumption that a thorough treatment of the verb will asymptomatically involve most of the patterns and processes that hold for the grammar as a whole. The tools of this study are drawn from standard generative linguistics, though care is taken to explicate these in more traditional terms where it is deemed necessary. This book is essential reading for linguists who study the Semitic language families, and in particular those interested in Northwest Semitic languages.

The Messianic Vision of the Pentateuch

The Messianic Vision of the Pentateuch
Author: Kevin S. Chen
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 357
Release: 2019-12-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830857974

Did Moses write about Jesus? Kevin Chen challenges the common view of the Pentateuch as focused primarily on the Mosaic Law, arguing instead that it sets forth a coherent, sweeping vision of the Messiah as the center of its theological message. Building on the work of John Sailhamer, Chen provides a fascinating study and an exegetical basis for a Christ-centered biblical theology.

Creative Resistance

Creative Resistance
Author: Sabine Damir-Geilsdorf
Publisher: transcript Verlag
Total Pages: 333
Release: 2020-04-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3839440696

During the uprisings of the Arab Spring between 2010 and 2012, oppositional movements used political humor to criticize political leaders or to expose the absurdities of the socio-political conditions. These humorous expressions in various art forms such as poetry, stand-up comedy, street art, music, caricatures, cartoons, comics and puppet shows were further distributed in the social media. This first comprehensive study of political humor in the uprisings explores the varieties and functions of political humor as a creative tool for resistance. It analyzes humorous forms of cultural expression and their impact on socio-political developments in different countries of the Middle East and North Africa with a special focus on the changing modes of humor.

Feminism and War

Feminism and War
Author: Robin Riley
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
Total Pages: 447
Release: 2013-04-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1848136684

Women across the globe are being dramatically affected by war as currently waged by the USA. But there has been little public space for dialogue about the complex relationship between feminism, women, and war. The editors of Feminism and War have brought together a diverse set of leading theorists and activists who examine the questions raised by ongoing American military initiatives, such as: What are the implications of an imperial nation/state laying claim to women's liberation? What is the relation between this claim and resulting American foreign policy and military action? Did American intervention and invasion in fact result in liberation for women in Afghanistan and Iraq? What multiple concepts are embedded in the phrase "women’s liberation"? How are these connected to the specifics of religion, culture, history, economics, and nation within current conflicts? What is the relation between the lives of Afghan and Iraqi women before and after invasion, and that of women living in the US? How do women who define themselves as feminists resist or acquiesce to this nation/state claim in current theory and organizing? Feminism and War reveals and critically analyzes the complicated ways in which America uses gender, race, class, nationalism, imperialism to justify, legitimate, and continue war. Each chapter builds on the next to develop an anti-racist, feminist politics that places imperialist power, and forms of resistance to it, central to its comprehensive analysis.

Perspectives on Israelite Wisdom

Perspectives on Israelite Wisdom
Author: John Jarick
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 524
Release: 2015-12-03
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567663175

This collection of essays examines the wisdom traditions of the Old Testament from a variety of angles. The slipperiness of the concept of 'wisdom literature', the transmission of 'wise' advice for living, rabbinic and patristic approaches to the Bible's wisdom traditions, and cutting-edge modern perspectives on such Old Testament books as Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes are all to be found here. In the tradition of the renowned previous volumes from the Oxford Old Testament Seminar - King and Messiah in Israel and the Ancient Near East (1998), In Search of Pre-Exilic Israel (2004), Temple and Worship in Biblical Israel (2005), and Prophecy and Prophets in Ancient Israel (2010)-this new volume again brings the scholarship of the Oxford Seminar, here focused on the rich subject of Old Testament wisdom traditions, to an international readership.

Shaping a Qur'anic Worldview

Shaping a Qur'anic Worldview
Author: Vanessa De Gifis
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 143
Release: 2014-04-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317817613

Exploring the subjectivity of the Qurʾān’s meaning in the world, this book analyses Qurʾānic referencing in Muslim political rhetoric. Informed by classical Arabic-Islamic rhetorical theory, the author examines Arabic documents attributed to the ʿAbbāsid Caliph al-Maʾmūn (r. 813-833), whose rule coincided with the maturation of classical Islamic political thought and literary culture. She demonstrates how Qurʾānic referencing functions as tropological exegesis, whereby verses in the Qurʾān are reinterpreted through the lens of subjective experience. At the same time socio-historical experiences are understood in terms of the Qurʾān’s moral typology, which consists of interrelated polarities that define good and bad moral characters in mutual orientation. Through strategic deployment of scriptural references within the logical scheme of rhetorical argument, the Caliph constructs moral analogies between paradigmatic characters in the Qurʾān and people in his social milieu, and situates himself as moral reformer and guide, in order to persuade his audiences of the necessity of the Caliphate and the religio-moral imperative of obedience to his authority. The Maʾmūnid case study is indicative of the nature and function of Qurʾānic referencing across historical periods, and thus contributes to broader conversations about the impact of the Qurʾān on the shaping of Islamic civilization. This book is an invaluable resource for those with an interest in Early Islamic History, Islam and the rhetoric of contemporary Middle East regional and global Islamic politics.

Cosmopolitan Civility

Cosmopolitan Civility
Author: Ruth Abbey
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2020-02-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1438477376

Essays reflecting on the prolific, pioneering, and wide-ranging scholarship of Fred Dallmayr. Prolific and pioneering, Fred Dallmayr has been an active scholar for over fifty years. His research interests include modern and contemporary political theory, hermeneutics, phenomenology, the Frankfurt School, continental political thought, democratic theory, multiculturalism, environmentalism, and cosmopolitanism. Dallmayr is also one of the founders of comparative political thought and his interest in non-Western political theory spans Chinese, Islamic, Indian, Buddhist, and Latin American traditions. In emulation of the vast interdisciplinary and international character of Dallmayr’s work, this book draws upon senior and emerging scholars from an array of disciplines and countries, with essays that are philosophical (in the Western and non-Western traditions), cultural and/or political, and international. Dallmayr himself responds to the essays in a concluding chapter. “This book is both unique and outstanding. In very few other volumes have I come across such cross-cultural, diverse, and high quality responses to an author’s work. It is truly rare to find a volume that is so broad ranging and at the same time clearly and coherently organized, just as it is rare to find a scholar of Dallmayr’s range and depth. He counts as one of the great humanists of our time, and this book is a richly merited tribute to him.” — Joseph Prabhu, editor of The Intercultural Challenge of Raimon Panikkar