Download or read book Sensibilities of the Islamic Mediterranean written by Robin Ostle and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2008-07-30 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the mountains of Lebanon to the shores of Turkey and North Africa, the Islamic Mediterranean has always been a dynamic cultural hub, where the stories and passions of East and West collide. In a sweeping survey spanning the first Arabic edition of the "Thousand and One Nights" to the novels of the 20th century, Robin Ostle pours through centuries of books, art and architecture to reveal what they tell us about the changing relationship between individual and society in this distinctive culture.In pre-modern literature, individuality was expressed through a series of comic subversions which, through their resolution, ultimately strengthened the social status quo. The great 19th century travelogues represented a more transgressive exploration of the boundaries of the self. This theme was continued in the cultural forms of the 20th century, with their emphasis on self-expression and emotional liberation, something increasingly defined in opposition to the state. "Sensibilities of the Islamic Mediterranean" unravels the emotions, ideas and power relationships which make up the cultural fabric of this fascinating region.
Download or read book Sensibilities of the Islamic Mediterranean written by Robin Ostle and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "When Englishman and Turk fell side by side in the killing fields of the Crimea, it was not the first time that Christian and Muslim blood was shed, and intermingled, in the cause of battling a common foe. It is fashionable today to talk of a 'clash of civilizations', and of an unbridgeable chasm between the Islamic world and Christendom. But in this bold and iconoclastic book Ian Almond demonstrates that in Europe, the heart of the west, Muslims and Christians were often comrades-in-arms, repeatedly forming alliances to wage war against their own faiths and peoples. As we read of savage battles, deadly sieges and many acts of individual heroism, we learn of Arab troops rallying in their thousands to the banner of a Christian emperor outside the walls of Verona. Of Spanish Muslims standing shoulder to shoulder with their Christian Catalan neighbours in opposition to Castilians. Of Greeks and Turks forming a steadfast bulwark against Serbs and Bulgarians, their mutual enemy. And of tens of thousands of Hungarian Protestants assisting the Ottomans in their implacable and terrifying march on Christian Vienna. As the author shows, any notion that 'Christian Europe' has long been opposed by a 'Muslim non-Europe' grossly misrepresents the facts of a rich, complex and - above all - shared history. The motivations for these interfaith alliances were dictated by shifting diplomacies, pragmatic self-interest and realpolitik, not by jihad or religious war. This insight has profound ramifications for our understandings of global politics and current affairs, as well as of religious history and the future shape of Europe."--Bloomsbury publishing.
Download or read book Mediterranean reconsidered written by Mauro Peressini and published by University of Ottawa Press. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays re-evaluates existing representations of the Mediterranean, providing a fresh, new and often critical perspective on the cultural, social and political processes that shape this region. Subjects such as; food traditions, music, alterity, and identity from Southern Europe to North Africa and the Middle East are examined.
Download or read book Sea of the Caliphs written by Christophe Picard and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-21 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “How could I allow my soldiers to sail on this disloyal and cruel sea?” These words, attributed to the most powerful caliph of medieval Islam, Umar Ibn al-Khattab (634–644), have led to a misunderstanding in the West about the importance of the Mediterranean to early Islam. This body of water, known in Late Antiquity as the Sea of the Romans, was critical to establishing the kingdom of the caliphs and for introducing the new religion to Europe and Africa. Over time, it also became a pathway to commercial and political dominion, indispensable to the prosperity and influence of the Islamic world. Sea of the Caliphs returns Muslim sailors to their place of prominence in the history of the Islamic caliphate. As early as the seventh century, Muslim sailors competed with Greek and Latin seamen for control of this far-flung route of passage. Christophe Picard recreates these adventures as they were communicated to admiring Muslims by their rulers. After the Arab conquest of southern Europe and North Africa, Muslims began to speak of the Mediterranean in their strategic visions, business practices, and notions of nature and the state. Jurists and ideologues conceived of the sea as a conduit for jihad, even as Muslims’ maritime trade with Latin, Byzantine, and Berber societies increased. In the thirteenth century, Christian powers took over Mediterranean trade routes, but by that time a Muslim identity that operated both within and in opposition to Europe had been shaped by encounters across the sea of the caliphs.
Download or read book Words Texts and Concepts Cruising the Mediterranean Sea written by Gerhard Endress and published by Peeters Publishers. This book was released on 2004 with total page 708 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The remarkable extension in depth and width of Muslim intellectual life can be fathomed and measured only against the background of what went on immediately before, and simultaneously elsewhere, or it will remain, in any real sense, unexplored." This statement by the late Franz Rosenthal is, in a sense, the red thread of the present volume which unites 35 articles by renowned scholars of Islamic Studies, Middle Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and various allied fields of research in honour of a scholar congenial to Franz Rosenthal and exemplary in his scientific carefulness and integrity: Dr Gerhard Endress, Professor of Oriental Philology and Islamic Studies at the Ruhr University Bochum. Central topics of the contributions include Arabic philosophy and its Greek sources and Latin reception, the history and historiography of Arabic-Islamic science, and Islamic concepts of language, knowledge, science and pedagogy. Other articles deal with qur'anic studies, Arabic lexicography and linguistics, the history of Middle Eastern civilizations, the medieval translation movements from Greek into Arabic and from Arabic into Latin as well as with political and eschatological theories of medieval Islam. Rooted in different scientific traditions and methodological approaches the studies collected in this Festschrift form a vivid and stimulating synopsis of more than 1000 years of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean intellectual, social and cultural history.
Download or read book Connected Stories written by Mohamed Meouak and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-06-06 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Concepts such as influence, imitation, emulation, transmission or plagiarism are transcendental to cultural history and the subject of universal debate. They are not mere labels imposed by modern historiography on ancient texts, nor are they the result of a later interpretation of ways of transmitting and teaching, but are concepts defined and discussed internally, within all cultures, since time immemorial, which have yielded very diverse results. In the case of culture, or better Arab-Islamic cultures, we could analyze and discuss endlessly numerous terms that refer to concepts related to the multiple ways of perceiving the Other, receiving his knowledge and producing new knowledge. The purpose of this book evolves around these concepts, and it aims to become part of a very long tradition of studies on this subject that is essential to the understanding of the processes of reception and creation. The authors analyze them in depth through the use of examples that are based on the well-known idea that societies in different regions did not remain isolated and indifferent to the literary, religious or scientific creations that were developed in other territories and moreover that the flow of ideas did not always occur in only one direction. Contacts, both voluntary and involuntary, are never incidental or marginal, but are rather the true engine of the evolution of knowledge and creation. It can also be stated that it has been the awareness of the existence of multidimensional cultural relations which has allowed modern historiography on Arab cultures to evolve and be enriched in recent decades.
Download or read book The Mediterranean Reconsidered written by Mauro Peressini and published by Gatineau, Québec : Canadian Museum of Civilization. This book was released on 2005 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays re-evaluates existing representations of the Mediterranean, providing a fresh, new, and often critical perspective on the cultural, social, and political processes that shape this important region. A wide range of subject matter, including music, food traditions, alterity, identity, and representation from Southern Europe to North Africa and the Middle East are examined by renowned scholars. The result is a fascinating discourse on the very character and idea of what constitutes the Mediterranean.
Download or read book Bibliography of Art and Architecture in the Islamic World 2 vols written by Susan Sinclair and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2012-04-03 with total page 1508 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the tradition and style of the acclaimed Index Islamicus, the editors have created this new Bibliography of Art and Architecture in the Islamic World. The editors have surveyed and annotated a wide range of books and articles from collected volumes and journals published in all European languages (except Turkish) between 1906 and 2011. This comprehensive bibliography is an indispensable tool for everyone involved in the study of material culture in Muslim societies.
Download or read book Dar Al Islam the Mediterranean the World System and the Wider Europe written by Peter Herrmann and published by Nova Publishers. This book was released on 2005 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the process of a 'wider Europe' (EU-Commission President Romano Prodi's 'ring of friends') that extends from Marrakech in Morocco to St Petersburg in Russia gathering speed, the growing rift between Europe and America also is about how to deal politically with the countries of the Mediterranean-Muslim world. The house of Islam (Dar al Islam) was pivotal to the European path to the Renaissance and to the re-discovery of classic Greek philosophy. The Mediterranean policy of the European Union aims at a positive and co-operative relationship with the region. A successful integration of the Mediterranean South would have tremendous and positive repercussions for regional and world peace. World-wide leading experts from the field of world systems analysis, economics, integration theory, political science, theology and area studies, agnostics, Christians, Jews and Muslims alike discuss the issue with European decision makers. The outcome is an interdisciplinary evaluation of this projected export of peace, co-operation, dialogue and stability in the framework of world centre-periphery relationships.
Download or read book Utopia and Civilization in the Arab Nahda written by Peter Hill and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-16 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the 'Nahda', a cultural renaissance in the Arab world, through the utopian visions of Arab intellectuals during the nineteenth century.
Download or read book Modern Arabic Literature written by Reuven Snir and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-02 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of Arabic literature is blossoming. This book provides a comprehensive theoretical framework to help research this highly prolific and diverse production of contemporary literary texts. Based on the achievements of historical poetics, in particular those of Russian formalism and its theoretical legacy, this framework offers flexible, transparent, and unbiased tools to understand the relevant contexts within the literary system. The aim is to enhance our understanding of Arabic literature, throw light on areas of literary production that traditionally have been neglected, and stimulate others to take up the fascinating challenge of mapping out and exploring them.
Download or read book Sea of Literatures written by Angela Fabris and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-12-18 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mediterranean studies flourish in literary and cultural studies, but concepts of the Mediterranean and the theories and methods they use are very disparate. This is because the Mediterranean is not a simple geographical or historical unity, but a multiplicity, a network of highly interconnected elements, each of which is different and individual. Talking about Mediterranean literature raises the question of whether the connectivity of Mediterranean literature can or should be limited in some way by constructing an inside and an outside of the Mediterranean. What kind of connectivity and fragmentation do literary texts produce, how do they build and interrupt references (to the real, to fictional forms of representation, to history, but also to other texts and discourses), how do they create and deny communication, and how do they engage with and reflect literary and non-literary concepts of the Mediterranean? These and other questions are considered and discussed in the over twenty contributions gathered in this volume.
Download or read book Recognition in the Arabic Narrative Tradition written by Philip Kennedy and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to Aristotle, a well-crafted recognition scene is one of the basic constituents of a successful narrative. It is the point when hidden facts and identities come to light-in the classic instance, a son discovers in horror that his wife is his mother and his children are his siblings. Aristotle coined the term 'anagnorisis' for the concept. In this book Philip F. Kennedy shows how 'recognition' is key to an understanding of how one reads values and meaning into, or out of, a story. He analyses texts and motifs fundamental to the Arabic literary tradition in five case studies: the Qur'an; the biography of Muhammad; Joseph in classical and medieval re-tellings; the 'deliverance from adversity' genre and picaresque narratives.
Download or read book Contrariness in Classical Arabic Literature written by Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-03-28 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his Beautifying the Ugly and Uglifying the Beautiful (Taḥsīn al-qabīḥ wa-taqbīḥ al-ḥasan) the prolific anthologist al-Thaʿālibī (d. 429/1038) offers a thematically arranged selection of Arabic poems and prose anecdotes or sayings with contrary or paradoxical purport, such as praise of miserliness, boredom, sickness, and death, or condemnation of generosity, intelligence, youth, and music. The book is both entertaining and informative, giving insight in premodern Arab and Islamic culture. It contains a new edition of the Arabic text and a complete English translation (the first in any language) with extensive annotation, preceded by an introduction with the necessary background of the genre.
Download or read book Hikayat Abi al Qasim written by Selove Emily Selove and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-12 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hikayat Abu al-Qasim, probably written in the 11th century by the otherwise unknown al-Azdi, tells the story of a gate-crasher from Baghdad named Abu al-Qasim, who shows up uninvited at a party in Isfahan. Dressed as a holy man and reciting religious poetry, he soon relaxes his demeanour, and, growing intoxicated on wine, insults the other dinner guests and their Iranian hometown. Widely hailed as a narrative unique in the history of Arabic literature, a ikA yah also reflects a much larger tradition of banquet texts. Painting a picture of a party-crasher who is at once a holy man and a rogue, he is a figure familiar to those who have studied the ancient cynic tradition or other portrayals of wise fools, tricksters and saints in literatures from the Mediterranean and beyond. This study therefore compares a ikA yah, a mysterious text surviving in a single manuscript, to other comical banquet texts and party-crashing characters, both from contemporary Arabic literature and from Ancient Greece and Rome.
Download or read book Words that Tear the Flesh written by Stephen Alan Baragona and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2018-01-22 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rhetorical trope of irony is well-trod territory, with books and essays devoted to its use by a wide range of medieval and Renaissance writers, from the Beowulf-poet and Chaucer to Boccaccio and Shakespeare; however, the use of sarcasm, the "flesh tearing" form of irony, in the same literature has seldom been studied at length or in depth. Sarcasm is notoriously difficult to pick out in a written text, since it relies so much on tone of voice and context. This is the first book-length study of medieval and Renaissance sarcasm. Its fourteen essays treat instances in a range of genres, both sacred and secular, and of cultures from Anglo-Saxon to Arabic, where the combination of circumstance and word choice makes it absolutely clear that the speaker, whether a character or a narrator, is being sarcastic. Essays address, among other things, the clues writers give that sarcasm is at work, how it conforms to or deviates from contemporary rhetorical theories, what role it plays in building character or theme, and how sarcasm conforms to the Christian milieu of medieval Europe, and beyond to medieval Arabic literature. The collection thus illuminates a half-hidden but surprisingly common early literary technique for modern readers.
Download or read book Emerging Subjectivity in the Long 19th Century Middle East written by Stephan Guth and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-06-04 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume revisits the "long 19th century" in the Middle East from the perspective of emerging subjectivity as a fundamentally new attitude of the individual vis-à-vis the World. Stephan Guth's holistic vision interprets emerging subjectivity as the key operator at the heart of the many aspects of the so-called Arab(ic) "Renaissance" (and corresponding movements in Turkish), like rationalism, critical analysis, political emancipation, reformism, moralism, and emotionalism, but also a new language, new genres, and new concepts. Guth's thoroughly philological approach demonstrates how a close reading of literary texts from the period, a cultural-psychological interpretation of linguistic phenomena and an etymology-informed look into conceptual terminology can contribute to a deeper understanding of what "modernisation" actually meant, deep inside the human beings' mind and psyche, in their meeting with a rapidly changing world. Twenty essays on language, literature, and key concepts reflect the author's life-long engagement with the culture of the period in question. The articles are glued together by a guiding narrative that assigns each treated aspect its place in the author's vision (which includes a global perspective).
