Bestsellers and masterpieces

Bestsellers and masterpieces
Author: Heather Blurton
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 172
Release: 2022-08-16
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1526147475

Bestsellers and masterpieces: The changing medieval canon addresses the strange fact that, in both European and Middle Eastern medieval studies, those texts that we now study and teach as the most canonical representations of their era were in fact not popular or even widely read in their day. On the other hand, those texts that were popular, as evidenced by the extant manuscript record, are taught and studied with far less frequency. The book provides cross-cultural insight into both the literary tastes of the medieval period and the literary and political forces behind the creation of the ‘modern canon’ of medieval literature.

Picturing the Islamicate World

Picturing the Islamicate World
Author: Nadja Danilenko
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2020-10-26
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 9004440097

In Picturing the Islamicate World, Nadja Danilenko explores the message of the first preserved maps from the Islamicate world. Safeguarded in al-Iṣṭakhrī’s Book of Routes and Realms (10th century C.E.), the world map and twenty regional maps complement the text to a reference book of the territories under Muslim rule. Rather than shaping the Islamicate world according to political or religious concerns, al-Iṣṭakhrī chose a timeless design intended to outlast upheavals. Considering the treatise was transmitted for almost a millennium, al-Iṣṭakhrī’s strategy seems to have paid off. By investigating the Persian and Ottoman translations and all extant manuscripts, Nadja Danilenko unravels the manuscript tradition of al-Iṣṭakhrī’s work, revealing who took an interest in it and why.

Routledge Handbook on Turkish Literature

Routledge Handbook on Turkish Literature
Author: Didem Havlioğlu
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 623
Release: 2023-04-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000842339

This Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of Turkish literature within both a local and global context. Across eight thematic sections a collection of subject experts use close readings of literature materials to provide a critical survey of the main issues and topics within the literature. The chapters provide analysis on a wide range of genres and text types, including novels, poetry, religious texts, and drama, with works studied ranging from the fourteenth century right up to the present day. Using such a historic scope allows the volume to be read across cultures and time, while simultaneously contextualizing and investigating how modern Turkish literature interacts with world literature, and finds its place within it. Collectively, the authors challenge the national literary historiography by replacing the Ottoman Turkish literature in the Anatolian civilizations with its plurality of cultures. They also seek to overcome the institutional and theoretical shortcomings within current study of such works, suggesting new approaches and methods for the study of Turkish literature. The Routledge Handbook on Turkish Literature marks a new departure in the reading and studying of Turkish literature. It will be a vital resource for those studying literature, Middle East studies, Turkish and Ottoman history, social sciences, and political science.

مؤلّفات يوسف بن حسن بن عبد الهادي ومساهمته في حفظ التّراث الفكريّ

مؤلّفات يوسف بن حسن بن عبد الهادي ومساهمته في حفظ التّراث الفكريّ
Author: Said Aljoumani
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 579
Release: 2021-07-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004462929

On the basis of a newly discovered manuscript this book offers the most comprehensive bibliography of the enormous output of the fifteenth-century scholar Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī – enlarging our view of his scholarly contribution and correcting numerous mistakes in this regard. This book is thus essential reading for all those interested in the writerly world of Damascus and the scholarly world of the late fifteenth century, especially with regard to the Ḥanbalī tradition and ḥadīth scholarship. In particular, linking the titles of his books with the extant manuscripts in libraries around the world opens new perspectives to these scholarly worlds. At the same time this book offers a new framework to studying social history with reference to documents and the material culture of the book. في اكتشاف جديد لمخطوطة تسمية كتب يوسف بن حسن بن عبد الهادي، يُقدِّم سعيد الجوماني وكونراد هيرشلر أضبط قائمة ببليوغرافية بمؤلفاته الشخصيَّة وبخط يده؛ فنبَّهت هذه القائمة إلى جزءٍ من إنتاجه الفكري كان مجهولاً تماماً، وصححت الكثير من أخطاء القراءة في القوائم السابقة. ونشرها سيدعم الأبحاث العاملة بحقل حركة التأليف بدمشق والحياة الفكريّة فيها نهاية القرن التاسع الهجريّ، خاصّةً ما يتعلق بالتراث الحنبليّ وعلم الحديث. وسيفتح الربط بين المؤلفات المذكورة في تسمية الكتب من جهة ووقف كتب ابن عبد الهادي من جهة ثانية والمخطوطات الموجودة في مكتبات العالم من جهة ثالثة باباً جديداً إلى دراسة التراث الفكري في مدينة دمشق أواخر العهد المملوكي. وتقترح هذه الدراسة إطاراً جديداً لدراسة التاريخ الاجتماعي اعتماداً على الوثائق الشخصيَّة والهيئات الماديّة للمخطوطات الشخصيّة.

The Book in Mamluk Egypt and Syria (1250-1517)

The Book in Mamluk Egypt and Syria (1250-1517)
Author: Doris Behrens-Abouseif
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2018-10-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004387056

This book is the first to date to be dedicated to the circulation of the book as a commodity in the Mamluk sultanate. It discusses the impact of princely patronage on the production of books, the formation and management of libraries in religious institutions, their size and their physical setting. It documents the significance of private collections and their interaction with institutional libraries and the role of charitable endowments (waqf ) in the life of libraries. The market as a venue of intellectual and commercial exchanges and a production centre is explored with references to prices and fees. The social and professional background of scribes and calligraphers occupies a major place in this study, which also documents the chain of master-calligraphers over the entire Mamluk period. For her study the author relies on biographical dictionaries, chronicles, waqf documents and manuscripts.

The Rise of the Arabic Book

The Rise of the Arabic Book
Author: Beatrice Gruendler
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2020-10-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0674250265

The little-known story of the sophisticated and vibrant Arabic book culture that flourished during the Middle Ages. During the thirteenth century, Europe’s largest library owned fewer than 2,000 volumes. Libraries in the Arab world at the time had exponentially larger collections. Five libraries in Baghdad alone held between 200,000 and 1,000,000 books each, including multiple copies of standard works so that their many patrons could enjoy simultaneous access. How did the Arabic codex become so popular during the Middle Ages, even as the well-established form languished in Europe? Beatrice Gruendler’s The Rise of the Arabic Book answers this question through in-depth stories of bookmakers and book collectors, stationers and librarians, scholars and poets of the ninth century. The history of the book has been written with an outsize focus on Europe. The role books played in shaping the great literary cultures of the world beyond the West has been less known—until now. An internationally renowned expert in classical Arabic literature, Gruendler corrects this oversight and takes us into the rich literary milieu of early Arabic letters.

Arab Conquests and Early Islamic Historiography

Arab Conquests and Early Islamic Historiography
Author: Ryan J. Lynch
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2019-11-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1838604405

Winner of the 2021 Southeast Regional Middle East and Islamic Studies Society Book Prize Of the available sources for Islamic history between the seventh and eighth centuries CE, few are of greater importance than al-Baladhuri's Kitab Futuh al-buldan (The Book of the Conquest of Lands). Written in Arabic by a ninth-century Muslim scholar working at the court of the 'Abbasid caliphs, the Futuh's content covers many important matters at the beginning of Islamic history. It informs its audience of the major events of the early Islamic conquests, the settlement of Muslims in the conquered territories and their experiences therein, and the origins and development of the early Islamic state. Questions over the text's construction, purpose, and reception, however, have largely been ignored in current scholarship. This is despite both the text's important historical material and its crucial early date of creation. It has become commonplace for researchers to turn to the Futuh for information on a specific location or topic, but to ignore the grander – and, in many ways, more straightforward – questions over the text's creation and limitations. This book looks to correct these gaps in knowledge by investigating the context, form, construction, content, and early reception history of al-Baladhuri's text.

Historicizing Sunni Islam in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1450-c. 1750

Historicizing Sunni Islam in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1450-c. 1750
Author: Tijana Krstić
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 546
Release: 2020-09-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004440291

Articles collected in Historicizing Sunni Islam in the Ottoman Empire, c. 1450-c. 1750 engage with the idea that “Sunnism” itself has a history and trace how particular Islamic genres—ranging from prayer manuals, heresiographies, creeds, hadith and fatwa collections, legal and theological treatises, and historiography to mosques and Sufi convents—developed and were reinterpreted in the Ottoman Empire between c. 1450 and c. 1750. The volume epitomizes the growing scholarly interest in historicizing Islamic discourses and practices of the post-classical era, which has heretofore been styled as a period of decline, reflecting critically on the concepts of ‘tradition’, ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘orthopraxy’ as they were conceived and debated in the context of building and maintaining the longest-lasting Muslim-ruled empire. Contributors: Helen Pfeifer; Nabil al-Tikriti; Derin Terzioğlu; Tijana Krstić; Nir Shafir; Guy Burak; Çiğdem Kafesçioğlu; Grigor Boykov; H. Evren Sünnetçioğlu; Ünver Rüstem; Ayşe Baltacıoğlu-Brammer; Vefa Erginbaş; Selim Güngörürler.

Routledge Handbook on the Sciences in Islamicate Societies

Routledge Handbook on the Sciences in Islamicate Societies
Author: Sonja Brentjes
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 876
Release: 2023-01-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351692690

The Routledge Handbook on the Sciences in Islamicate Societies provides a comprehensive survey on science in the Islamic world from the 8th to the 19th century. Across six sections, a group of subject experts discuss and analyze scientific practices across a wide range of Islamicate societies. The authors take into consideration several contexts in which science was practiced, ranging from intellectual traditions and persuasions to institutions, such as courts, schools, hospitals, and observatories, to the materiality of scientific practices, including the arts and craftsmanship. Chapters also devote attention to scientific practices of minority communities in Muslim majority societies, and Muslim minority groups in societies outside the Islamicate world, thereby allowing readers to better understand the opportunities and constraints of scientific practices under varying local conditions. Through replacing Islam with Islamicate societies, the book opens up ways to explain similarities and differences between diverse societies ruled by Muslim dynasties. This handbook will be an invaluable resource for both established academics and students looking for an introduction to the field. It will appeal to those involved in the study of the history of science, the history of ideas, intellectual history, social or cultural history, Islamic studies, Middle East and African studies including history, and studies of Muslim communities in Europe and South and East Asia.