Miscellanea Arabica Et Islamica

Miscellanea Arabica Et Islamica PDF Author: F. de Jong
Publisher: Peeters Publishers
ISBN: 9789068315042
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Book Description
The volume contains twenty contributions to the fields of Arabic Linguistics, Islamic Law, and Arabic and Islamic thought. These are edited and often revised and enlarged versions of papers which were originally presented at the 15th Congress of the Union Europeenne des Arabisants et Islamisants, held at the University of Utrecht in September 1990. They were selected for publication in this volume because of their originality and substance. The diversity and richness of this collection reflects the scope of research in the fields of Arabic and Islamic studies in Europe today.

Concubines and Courtesans

Concubines and Courtesans PDF Author: Matthew S. Gordon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190622202
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Book Description
Concubines and Courtesans contains sixteen essays that consider, from a variety of viewpoints, enslaved and freed women across medieval and pre-modern Islamic social history. The essays bring together arguments regarding slavery, gender, social networking, cultural production (songs, poetry and instrumental music), sexuality, Islamic family law, and religion in the shaping of Near Eastern and Islamic society over time. They range over nearly 1000 years of Islamic history - from the early, formative period (seventh to tenth century C.E.) to the late Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal eras (sixteenth to eighteenth century C.E.) - and regions from al-Andalus (Islamic Spain) to Central Asia (Timurid Iran). The close, common thread joining the essays is an effort to account for the lives, careers and representations of female slaves and freed women participating in, and contributing to, elite urban society of the Islamic realm. Interest in a gendered approach to Islamic history, society and religion has by now deep roots in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies. The shared aim of the essays collected here is to get at the wealth of these topics, and to underscore their centrality to a firm grasp on Islamic and Middle Eastern history.

The Age of the Seljuqs

The Age of the Seljuqs PDF Author: Edmund Herzig
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0857725149
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 199

Book Description
From their ancestral heartland by the shores of the Aral Sea, the medieval Oghuz Turks marched westwards in search of dominion. Their conquests led to control of a Muslim empire that united the territories of the Eastern Islamic world, melded Turkic and Persian influences and transported Persian culture to Anatolia. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the new Turkic-Persian symbiosis that had earlier emerged under the Samanids, Ghaznavids and Qarakha-nids came to fruition in a period that, under the enlightened rule of the Seljuq dynasty, combined imperial grandeur with remarkable artistic achievement. This latest volume in The Idea of Iran series focuses on a system of government based on Turkic 'men of the sword' and Persian 'men of the pen' that the Seljuqs (famous foes of the Crusader Frankish knights) consolidated in a form that endured for centuries. The book further explores key topics relating to the innovative Seljuq era, including: conflicted Sunni-Shi'a relations between the Sunni Seljuq Empire and Ismaili Fatimid caliphate; architecture, art and culture; and politics and poetry.Istvan Vasary looks back in Chapter 1 to the early history of the Turks in the wider Iranian world, discussing the debates about the dating and distribution of the early Turkish presence in Central Asia, Iran and Afghanistan. NizaAZm al-Mulk is the subject of Chapter 2, in which Carole Hillenbrand subjects this 'maverick vizier' to critical scrutiny. While paying due credit to his extraordinary achievements, she does not shy away from concluding that his career illustrates the maxim that 'power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely'. A fitting antagonist for NizaAZm al-Mulk is the subject of Chapter 3, in which Farhad Daftary follows the career of the remarkable revolutionary leader Hasan-i SabbaAZh and the history of the Ismaili state-within-a-state that he founded with his capture of the fortress of Alamt in 1090. In Chapter 4 David Durand-Guedy examines the Seljuq Empire from the viewpoint of its (western) capital, Isfahan. He concentrates on the distinction between the parts of Iran to the west of the great deserts (and in close connection to Iraq and Baghdad) and the parts to the east, notably Khorasan, with its ties to Transoxiana and Tokharestan.Vanessa Van Renterghem in Chapter 5 challenges the long-held view that the Seljuq takeover of Baghdad represented a liberation of the Abbasid caliphs from their burden-some subordination to the heretical Buyids. Alexey Khismatulin in Chapter 6 presents a forensic examination of two important works of literature, casting doubt on the authorship of both the Siyar al-muluAZk attributed to NizaAZm al-Mulk and the NasAZhat al-muluAZk ascribed to al-GhazaAZlAZ. In Chapter 7 Asghar Seyed-Gohrab discusses the poetry of the Ghaznavid and Seljuq periods, demonstrating the poets' mastery of metaphor and of extended description and riddling to build suspense. The final chapter by Robert Hillenbrand shifts the focus from texts and literature to architecture and to that pre-eminent Seljuq masterpiece, the Friday Mosque of Isfaha

The Early History of Ismaili Jurisprudence

The Early History of Ismaili Jurisprudence PDF Author: Agostino Cilardo
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 178672460X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 269

Book Description
Researchers have shed light on the literary production of the Ismailis since the early 1930s. The cataloguing of these work has been carried out by Ivanow, Fyzee, Goriawala, Poonawala, Gacek, Cortese and de Bloise. Many works attributable to Ismaili scholars, however, are still unavailable either because they remain hidden in private collections or because they have not survived. Ismaili law, in particular, is still a largely unexplored field of study. Al-Qadi Abu Hanifa al-Nu'man is generally considered the founder and greatest exponent of Ismaili jurisprudence, Many of his works have been lost, and information on some others is scattered; yet other works remain in manuscript form, and only a few have been published. The present book is a critical edition and translation of al-Nu'man's Minhaj al-fara'id, based on its three known copies. It deals with the law of inheritance, one of the most complex in Islamic law. In comparing the Minhaj with two published works (the Da'a'im al-Islam and Kitab al-iqtisar) as well as a manuscript (Mukhtasar al-athar) of al-Nu'man, a significant doctrinal evolution clearly emerges, reflecting his early Maliki training and then his work under four Fatimid imams. Ismaili law is also compared with the doctrines of the Imami school as well as the legal system of the four Sunni schools. This book thus allows us to determine the time of the composition of the Minhaj al-fara id, the development and the originality of Ismaili jurisprudence, and its relation to other schools of law.

Locating Hell in Islamic Traditions

Locating Hell in Islamic Traditions PDF Author: Christian Lange
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004301364
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 383

Book Description
Islam is often seen as a religious tradition in which hell does not play a particularly prominent role. This volume challenges this hackneyed view. Locating Hell in Islamic Traditions is the first book-length analytic study of the Muslim hell. It maps out a broad spectrum of Islamic attitudes toward hell, from the Quranic vision(s) of hell to the pious cultivation of the fear of the afterlife, theological speculations, metaphorical and psychological understandings, and the modern transformations of hell. Contributors: Frederick Colby, Daniel de Smet, Christiane Gruber, Jon Hoover, Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Christian Lange, Christopher Melchert, Simon O’Meara, Samuela Pagani, Tommaso Tesei, Roberto Tottoli, Wim Raven, and Richard van Leeuwen.

Autour de la géographie Orientale, et au-delà

Autour de la géographie Orientale, et au-delà PDF Author: Laurence Denooz
Publisher: Peeters Publishers
ISBN: 9789042917996
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 580

Book Description
Le Professeur Jacques Thiry a enseigne l'arabe et la critique historique de textes arabes medievaux a l'Universite Libre de Bruxelles jusqu'en 2005. Son domaine de recherche privilegie fut incontestablement l'histoire et la geographie de la region saharienne. A travers ce recueil, ses collegues orientalistes belges tentent de rendre hommage a son travail en lui offrant les resultats de leurs recherches. Le fil conducteur de cet ouvrage est la geographie, theme cher au professeur Jacques Thiry, mais d'autres sujets sont egalement abordes: la dialectologie et la philologie arabes, certains aspects de l'islam et meme l'histoire coloniale belge. Nous avons egalement tenu a rassembler autour de ce travail specialistes du monde arabo-musulman et specialistes de l'Orient ancien, temoignant ainsi de l'activite des orientalistes belges dans leur ensemble.

Power and Architecture

Power and Architecture PDF Author: Joachim Bretschneider
Publisher: Peeters Publishers
ISBN: 9789042918313
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 262

Book Description
The idea that societies and rulers express their power through monumental architecture is not a new one, but this collection of essays, the result of a 2002 conference in Leuven, takes the arguement back to the very beginnings of monumental architecture in the Bronze Age Near East and Aegean, to ask if this process can be linked to a particular ...

Late Achaemenid and Hellenistic Babylon

Late Achaemenid and Hellenistic Babylon PDF Author: T. Boiy
Publisher: Peeters Publishers
ISBN: 9789042914490
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Book Description
This study presents the famous city of Babylon in its latest phase of occupation: from the end of the Achaemenid period (second half of the fourth century B.C.), during the reign of Alexander, the Successors, the Seleucid and Arsacid dynasty until the very end of cuneiform literature and other historical sources (around third-fourth century AD). It contains first of all a survey of the available Classical and Oriental sources (chapter 1), a topography of the city (chapter 2), an overview of political events and Babylon's role in the Empire (chapter 3). Furthermore Babylon's institutions (chapter 4), its social and economic (chapter 5), religious (chapter 6) and cultural (chapter 7) life are discussed. Finally, Babylon's legacy and its significance for later cultures appears in chapter 8.

Bits, Bytes, and Binyanim

Bits, Bytes, and Binyanim PDF Author: Arian J. C. Verheij
Publisher: Peeters Publishers
ISBN: 9789042907836
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Book Description
This study offers a new approach to one of the central elements of Hebrew and Semitic grammar, viz. the binyanim or conjugations. Using various quantitative methods, the book analyzes the complete verbal vocabulary of the Hebrew Bible as contained in the machine-readable text developed at the Werkgroep Informatica (Department of Biblical Studies, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam) focusing on morphological characteristics as well as on some basic semantic and syntactic features. It is argued, i.a., that the Qal should be regarded as the default binyan of the Hebrew Bible, and that the Pi` `el acts to some extent as a rival to the Qal. Among the features discussed, it is transitivity which emerges as the most important one. The author (1959) reads theology at the University of Amsterdam, specializing in Old Testament studies and Biblical Hebrew. After his 1990 Leiden PhD on a linguistic comparison of the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, he joined the Werkgroep Informatica in 1992.

Tribes and Territories in Transition

Tribes and Territories in Transition PDF Author: Eveline J. van der Steen
Publisher: Peeters Publishers
ISBN: 9789042913851
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Book Description
This volume deals with the transition from the Late Bronze to the Early Iron Age in the central East Jordan Valley, the period of the fall of the Egyptian New Kingdom, and of the birth of a new era, in which small kingdoms such as Ammon, Moab and Israel were born. A broad spectrum of sources is being reviewed: written evidence, excavations and surveys, and ethnographic sources from the 19th century and later. New archaeological evidence is being presented, including a report on the excavations of Tell el-Hammeh on the Zerqa. This evidence, written, material and ethnographical, is incorporated in a new model for the LB-IA transition in the region: a model that explains the events of this turbulent period as the precipitation of a tribal society, where the interactions of tribes and territories determined the political lay-out and shaped the kingdoms of the Iron Age.