Download or read book Early Medieval Arabic written by Karin C. Ryding and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book in English on the founder of Arabic linguistic theory, this interdisciplinary collection explores the contributions to Arabic intellectual history of al-Khalil ibn Ahmad, (d. A.H. 175/A.D. 791). Conceived as a tribute to al-Khalil's influence on Arabic language sciences, this book provides a new and broader perspective on al-Khalil's talents, character, and fields of interest.
Download or read book The Rise of the Arabic Book written by Beatrice Gruendler and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Ornament of the World written by Maria Rosa Menocal and published by Back Bay Books. This book was released on 2009-11-29 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This classic bestseller — the inspiration for the PBS series — is an "illuminating and even inspiring" portrait of medieval Spain that explores the golden age when Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together in an atmosphere of tolerance (Los Angeles Times). This enthralling history, widely hailed as a revelation of a "lost" golden age, brings to vivid life the rich and thriving culture of medieval Spain, where for more than seven centuries Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together in an atmosphere of tolerance, and where literature, science, and the arts flourished. "It is no exaggeration to say that what we presumptuously call 'Western' culture is owed in large measure to the Andalusian enlightenment...This book partly restores a world we have lost." —Christopher Hitchens, The Nation
Download or read book Female Sexuality in the Early Medieval Islamic World written by Pernilla Myrne and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-11-14 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early Islamic world, Arabic erotic compendia and sex manuals were a popular literary genre. Although primarily written by male authors, the erotic publications from this era often emphasised the sexual needs of women and the importance of female romantic fulfilment. Pernilla Myrne here explores this phenomenon, examining a range of Arabic literature to shed fresh light onto the complexities of female sexuality under the Abbasids and the Buyids. Based on an impressive array of neglected medical, religious-legal, literary and entertainment sources, Myrne elucidates the tension between depictions of women's strong sexual agency and their subordinated social role in various contexts. In the process she uncovers a great diversity of approaches from the 9th to the 11th century, including the sexual handbook the Encyclopedia of Pleasure (Jawami' al-ladhdha), which portrayed the diversity of female desires, asserting the importance of mutual satisfaction through lively poems and stories. This is the first in-depth, comprehensive analysis of female sexuality in the early Islamic world and is essential reading for all scholars of Middle Eastern history and Arabic literature.
Download or read book Arabic Islamic Views of the Latin West written by Daniel G. König and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-11-05 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands written by Konrad Hirschler and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2011-12-20 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Arabian Drugs in Medieval Mediterranean Medicine written by Zohar Amar and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the impact of drugs introduced by the Arabs on medieval Mediterranean medicineFor more than one thousand years Arab medicine held sway in the ancient world, from the shores of Spain in the West to China, India and Sri Lanka (Ceylon) in the East. This book explores the impact of Greek (as well as Indian and Persian) medical heritage on the evolution of Arab medicine and pharmacology, investigating it from the perspective of materia medica a reliable indication of the contribution of this medical legacy.Focusing on the main substances introduced and traded by the Arabs in the medieval Mediterranean including Ambergris, camphor, musk, myrobalan, nutmeg, sandalwood and turmeric the authors show how they enriched the existing inventory of drugs influenced by Galenic-Arab pharmacology. Further, they look at how these substances merged with the development and distribution of new technologies and industries that evolved in the Middle Ages such as textiles, paper, dyeing and tanning, and with the new trends, demands and fashions regarding spices, perfumes, ornaments (gemstones) and foodstuffs some of which can be found in our modern-day food basket.Key FeaturesAssesses the assimilation of theoretical and practical Greek, Indian and Persian medicine into Arabic medical cultureReconstructs and presents a list of medicinal substances distributed by the Arabs as a result of their conquestsTells the stories of 33 new Arabic drugs within the context of their natural historyDescribes the contribution of the Arabs to the daily medieval cultural material (medicine, cosmetics, perfumery, dyeing of materials, industrial products and precious stones)Includes 35 colour illustrations
Download or read book Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times written by George F. Hourani and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1995-07-23 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this classic work George Hourani deals with the history of the sea trade of the Arabs in the Indian Ocean from its obscure origins many centuries before Christ to the time of its full extension to China and East Africa in the ninth and tenth centuries. The book comprises a brief but masterly historical account that has never been superseded. The author gives attention not only to geography, meteorology, and the details of travel, but also to the ships themselves, including a discussion of the origin of stitched planking and of the lateen fore-and-aft sails. Piracy in the Indian Ocean, day-to-day life at sea, the establishment of ancient lighthouses and the production of early maritime guides, handbooks, and port directories are all described in fascinating detail. Arab Seafaring will appeal to anyone interested in Arab life or the history of navigation. For this expanded edition, John Carswell has added a new introduction, a bibliography, and notes that add material from recent archaeological research.
Download or read book Egyptology The Missing Millennium written by Okasha El Daly and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-07-01 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Egyptology: The Missing Millennium brings together for the first time the disciplines of Egyptology and Islamic Studies, seeking to overturn the conventional opinion of Western scholars that Moslims/Arabs had no interest in pre-Islamic cultures. This book examines a neglected period of a thousand years in the history of Egyptology, from the Moslem annexation of Egypt in the seventh century CE until the Ottoman conquest in the 16th century. Concentrating on Moslem writers, as it is usually Islam which incurs blame for cutting Egyptians off from their ancient heritage, the author shows not only the existence of a large body of Arabic sources on Ancient Egypt, but also their usefulness to Egyptology today. Using sources as diverse as the accounts of travelers and treasure hunters to books on alchemy, the author shows that the interest in ancient Egyptian scripts continued beyond classical writers, and describes attempts by medieval Arab scholars, mainly alchemists, to decipher the hieroglyph script. He further explores medieval Arab interest in Ancient Egypt, discussing the interpretations of the intact temples, as well as the Arab concept of Egyptian kingship and state administration—including a case study of Queen Cleopatra that shows how the Arabic romance of this queen differs significantly from Western views. This book will be of great interest to academics and students of archaeology, Islamic studies and Egyptology, as well as anyone with a general interest in Egyptian history.
Download or read book A Handbook of Modern Arabic Historical Scholarship on the Ancient and Medieval Periods written by Amar S. Baadj and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-08-30 with total page 685 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Handbook of Modern Arabic Historical Scholarship on the Ancient and Medieval Periods presents 16 studies about modern Arab academic scholarship on the Ancient and Medieval Worlds covering disciplines as diverse as Assyriology and Mamluk studies as well as historiographical schools in the Arab World. This unique work is the first of its kind in any language. It is an important resource for scholars and students of the Ancient Near East and North Africa, Classical and Byzantine studies, and medieval Islamic history who would like to learn more about the work done by their colleagues in the Arab World in these fields over the last 7 decades and to benefit from Arabic secondary sources in their research. دليل الدراسات العربية الحديثة حول العصور القديمة والوسيطة يحتوي هذا الكتاب على 61 بحثا حول الدراسات الأكاديمية المتعلّقة بتاريخ العصور القديمة والوسيطة في العالم العربي، وتغطي هذه الأبحاث تخصصات علمية متنوعة منها الدراسات المسمارية والدراسات المملوكية، إضافةً إلى بعض المدارس التاريخية العربية المعاصرة. الكتاب فريد من نوعه والأول في كافة اللغات، ويُشكّل مصدرا هاما للباحثين والطلبة في دراسات الشرق الأدنى القديم وشمال إفريقيا في العصور القديمة والدراسات الكلاسيكية والبيزنطية والتاريخ الإسلامي الوسيط، وكذلك للمهتمين بعلمي التاريخ والآثار في الدول العربية. Contributors Emad Abou-Ghazi, Al-Amin Abouseada, Youcef Aibeche, Sidi Mohammed Alaioud, Abdulhadi Alajmi, Allaoua Amara, Lotfi Ben Miled, Brahim El Kadiri Boutchich, Usama Gad, Azeddine Guessous, Fayza Haikal, Hani Hamza, Laith Hussein, Nasir al-Kaabi, Khaled Kchir, Mohammed Maraqten, Amr Omar, Abdelaziz Ramadan.
Download or read book The Islamic Villa in Early Medieval Iberia written by Glaire D. Anderson and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2013 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Case study of Córdoban aristocratic estates during the Umayyad dynastic period (756-1031), synthesizing archaeological evidence unearthed from the 1980s up to 2009 with extant works of Andalusi art and architecture as well as evidence from medieval Arabic texts; incorporating material and insights from the fields of agricultural, economic, social and political history; and offering a fuller picture of secular architecture and social history in the caliphal lands and the Mediterranean.
Download or read book Narrating Muslim Sicily written by William Granara and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-06-27 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 902 the last Byzantine stronghold in Sicily fell, and the island would remain under Muslim control until the arrival of the Normans in the eleventh century. Drawing on a lifetime of translating and linguistic experience, William Granara here focuses on the various ways in which medieval Arab historians, geographers, jurists and philologists imagined and articulated their ever-changing identities in this turbulent period. All of these authors sought to make sense of the island's dramatic twists, including conquest and struggles over political sovereignty, and the painful decline of social and cultural life. Writing about Siqilliya involved drawing from memory, conjecture and then-current theories of why nations and people rose and fell. In so doing, Granara considers and translates, often for the first time, a vast range of primary sources - from the master chronicles of Ibn al-Athir and Ibn Khadun to biographical dictionaries, geographical works, legal treatises and poetry - and modern scholarship not available in English. He charts the shift from Sicily as 'warrior outpost' to vital and productive hub that would transform the medieval Islamic world, and indeed the entire Mediterranean.
Download or read book Lives of the Great Languages written by Karla Mallette and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-09-17 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part I: Group Portrait with Language -- Chapter 1: A Poetics of the Cosmopolitan Language -- Chapter 2: My Tongue -- Chapter 3: A Cat May Look at a King -- Part II: Space, Place, and the Cosmopolitan Language -- Chapter 4: Territory / Frontiers / Routes -- Chapter 5: Tracks -- Chapter 6: Tribal Rugs -- Part III: Translation and Time -- Chapter 7: The Soul of a New Language -- Chapter 8: On First Looking into Mattā's Aristotle -- Chapter 9: "I Became a Fable" -- Chapter 10: A Spy in the House of Language -- Part IV: Beyond the Cosmopolitan Language -- Chapter 11: Silence -- Chapter 12: The Shadow of Latinity -- Chapter 13: Life Writing.
Download or read book Arabic Literary Salons in the Islamic Middle Ages written by Samer M. Ali and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2010-11-15 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arabic literary salons emerged in ninth-century Iraq and, by the tenth, were flourishing in Baghdad and other urban centers. In an age before broadcast media and classroom education, salons were the primary source of entertainment and escape for middle- and upper-rank members of society, serving also as a space and means for educating the young. Although salons relied on a culture of oral performance from memory, scholars of Arabic literature have focused almost exclusively on the written dimensions of the tradition. That emphasis, argues Samer Ali, has neglected the interplay of oral and written, as well as of religious and secular knowledge in salon society, and the surprising ways in which these seemingly discrete categories blurred in the lived experience of participants. Looking at the period from 500 to 1250, and using methods from European medieval studies, folklore, and cultural anthropology, Ali interprets Arabic manuscripts in order to answer fundamental questions about literary salons as a social institution. He identifies salons not only as sites for socializing and educating, but as loci for performing literature and oral history; for creating and transmitting cultural identity; and for continually reinterpreting the past. A fascinating recovery of a key element of humanistic culture, Ali’s work will encourage a recasting of our understanding of verbal art, cultural memory, and daily life in medieval Arab culture.
Download or read book The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters written by Muhsin J. al-Musawi and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2015-04-15 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction, Muhsin J. al-Musawi offers a groundbreaking study of literary heritage in the medieval and premodern Islamic period. Al-Musawi challenges the paradigm that considers the period from the fall of Baghdad in 1258 to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1919 as an "Age of Decay" followed by an "Awakening" (al-nahdah). His sweeping synthesis debunks this view by carefully documenting a "republic of letters" in the Islamic Near East and South Asia that was vibrant and dynamic, one varying considerably from the generally accepted image of a centuries-long period of intellectual and literary stagnation. Al-Musawi argues that the massive cultural production of the period was not a random enterprise: instead, it arose due to an emerging and growing body of readers across Islamic lands who needed compendiums, lexicons, and commentaries to engage with scholars and writers. Scholars, too, developed their own networks to respond to each other and to their readers. Rather than addressing only the elite, this culture industry supported a common readership that enlarged the creative space and audience for prose and poetry in standard and colloquial Arabic. Works by craftsmen, artisans, and women appeared side by side with those by distinguished scholars and poets. Through careful exploration of these networks, The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters makes use of relevant theoretical frameworks to situate this culture in the ongoing discussion of non-Islamic and European efforts. Thorough, theoretically rigorous, and nuanced, al-Musawi's book is an original contribution to a range of fields in Arabic and Islamic cultural history of the twelfth to eighteenth centuries.
Download or read book Medieval Damascus written by Hirschler Konrad Hirschler and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-19 with total page 504 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Arabic Influences on Early Modern Occult Philosophy written by Liana Saif and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investigating the impact of Arabic medieval astrological and magical theories on early modern occult philosophy, this book argues that they provided a naturalistic explanation of astral influences and magical efficacy based on Aristotelian notions of causality.
