Asceticism and Exegesis in Early Christianity


Book Description

From the beginning many of the early Christian communities led an ascetic lifestyle, although a good number of New Testament texts do not seem suitable for justifying radical ascetic and encratite practice. The question thus arises how the different forms of asceticism could be justified on the basis of those scriptures.The articles of the volume focus on the interpretation and application of New Testament texts in various ascetic milieus and in the works of several early Christian authors and on the reception history of New Testament texts either supporting or resisting an ascetic relecture.




Routledge Revivals: Medieval Islamic Civilization (2006)


Book Description

Islamic civilization flourished in the Middle Ages across a vast geographical area that spans today's Middle and Near East. First published in 2006, Medieval Islamic Civilization examines the socio-cultural history of the regions where Islam took hold between the 7th and 16th centuries. This important two-volume work contains over 700 alphabetically arranged entries, contributed and signed by international scholars and experts in fields such as Arabic languages, Arabic literature, architecture, history of science, Islamic arts, Islamic studies, Middle Eastern studies, Near Eastern studies, politics, religion, Semitic studies, theology, and more. Entries also explore the importance of interfaith relations and the permeation of persons, ideas, and objects across geographical and intellectual boundaries between Europe and the Islamic world. This reference work provides an exhaustive and vivid portrait of Islamic civilization and brings together in one authoritative text all aspects of Islamic civilization during the Middle Ages. Accessible to scholars, students and non-specialists, this resource will be of great use in research and understanding of the roots of today's Islamic society as well as the rich and vivid culture of medieval Islamic civilization.




Al-Maqrīzīs Traktat über die Mineralien


Book Description

Der kurze Traktat al-Maqāṣid al-saniyyah li-maʿrifat al-aǧsām al-maʿdiniyyah des berühmten ägyptischen Geschichtsschreibers al-Maqrīzī (gest. 845/1442) befasst sich mit der Klassifikation der Mineralien, ihren medizinischen Anwendungen sowie Theorien über ihre Entstehung. Käs legt hier erstmals eine kritische Textedition mit deutscher Übersetzung und ausführlichem Kommentar vor. Grundlage der Edition des arabischen Texts war in der Hauptsache ein Leidener Codex, der von al-Maqrīzī eigenhändig korrigiert und mit Glossen erweitert wurde. Ein Faksimile der Handschrift wird in diesem Band ebenfalls abgedruckt. Käs konnte nachweisen, dass der Traktat fast vollständig von den Enzyklopädien Ibn Faḍlallāh al-ʿUmarīs und al-Qazwīnīs abhängig ist. Die Inhalte der Mineralienkapitel dieser Werke lassen sich ihrerseits bis zu den frühen arabischen Naturphilosophen und ihren griechischen Vorläufern zurückverfolgen. The short treatise entitled al-Maqāṣid al-saniyyah li-maʿrifat al-aǧsām al-maʿdiniyyah by the famous Egyptian historiographer al-Maqrīzī (d. 845/1442) deals with the classification of minerals, their medicinal uses and theories of their coming into being. Käs presents for the first time a critical edition of this text along with a German translation and a detailed commentary. The edition of the Arabic text is mainly based on the Leiden codex corrected and enlarged by al-Maqrīzī himself. A facsimile of this manuscript is also provided in this volume. Käs was able to prove that the treatise depends almost exclusively on the encyclopedias by Ibn Faḍlallāh al-ʿUmarī and al-Qazwīnī. The contents of their chapters on minerals can in turn be traced back to the early Arabic natural philosophers and their Greek precursors.




The Epistle to the Hebrews


Book Description




Rediscovering the Islamic Classics


Book Description

The story of how Arab editors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries revolutionized Islamic literature Islamic book culture dates back to late antiquity, when Muslim scholars began to write down their doctrines on parchment, papyrus, and paper and then to compose increasingly elaborate analyses of, and commentaries on, these ideas. Movable type was adopted in the Middle East only in the early nineteenth century, and it wasn't until the second half of the century that the first works of classical Islamic religious scholarship were printed there. But from that moment on, Ahmed El Shamsy reveals, the technology of print transformed Islamic scholarship and Arabic literature. In the first wide-ranging account of the effects of print and the publishing industry on Islamic scholarship, El Shamsy tells the fascinating story of how a small group of editors and intellectuals brought forgotten works of Islamic literature into print and defined what became the classical canon of Islamic thought. Through the lens of the literary culture of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Arab cities—especially Cairo, a hot spot of the nascent publishing business—he explores the contributions of these individuals, who included some of the most important thinkers of the time. Through their efforts to find and publish classical literature, El Shamsy shows, many nearly lost works were recovered, disseminated, and harnessed for agendas of linguistic, ethical, and religious reform. Bringing to light the agents and events of the Islamic print revolution, Rediscovering the Islamic Classics is an absorbing examination of the central role printing and its advocates played in the intellectual history of the modern Arab world.




Deutsche Dichtungen


Book Description




Muslims on the Volga in the Viking Age


Book Description

The year 922 saw a series of remarkable face-to-face encounters in the steppes between Bukhara and the Middle Volga. Ibn Fadlan was an intrepid member of a diplomatic and religious mission from the distant caliphate in Baghdad to the ruler of the Volga Bulgars. His account gives a vivid eyewitness description of the peoples he came upon (whose appearance, rituals and filthy habits both fascinate and appal) and a famous depiction of a Viking Rus ship burial. It is unique testimony to burgeoning exchanges between several different cultures, and to the emergence of new political structures on the steppes. Yet the account survives only as part of a later composite work, raising questions of meaning and historical interpretation. This pioneering interdisciplinary study of Ibn Fadlan's text and the world he surveyed draws on a variety of specialists to give readers both 'the bigger picture' of cultural and economic change in Eurasia, Byzantium and the Muslim world, and hard facts, in the form of archaeological and numismatic data.




Aesthetic and Performative Dimensions of Alevi Cultural Heritage


Book Description

In diesem Band werden die ästhetischen und performativen Dimensionen des alevitischen Kulturerbes in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart in einem interdisziplinären Rahmen untersucht. Die Beiträge analysieren traditionelle wie gegenwärtige Entwicklungen im alevitischen Kulturleben, lokale wie transnationale Praktiken und berücksichtigen dabei Textquellen, moderne Adaptionen wie auch Materialität. Die Herangehensweisen der in unterschiedlichen Fachbereichen tätigen AutorInnen – darunter Robert Langer, Nicolas Elias, Sinibaldo De Rosa, Jérôme Cler, Judith Haug und Janina Karolewski – belegen die Komplexität der sozio-historischen und sozio-kulturellen Dynamiken. Der vorliegende Band soll Zugang gewähren zu einer komplexen Thematik, die zweifellos weitere Forschungen und Analysen verdient.




Between Jewish Posen and Scholarly Berlin


Book Description

The life of Philipp Jaffé (1819–1870), from his youth in Posen; his studies with Leopold von Ranke and career – as a close friend of Theodor Mommsen – at the pinnacle of historical scholarship in Berlin, first at the Monumenta Germaniae Historica and then, after his feud with Georg Heinrich Pertz, with his unprecedented 1862 appointment, while still a Jew, to a Berlin professorship; and on to his baptism in 1868 and suicide in 1870, was a life of transition between East and West and between Judaism and Christianity – and a life of devotion to scholarship, of loneliness, of success and of frustration. Forgotten today, except by medievalists who depend on his numerous editions of Latin texts, Jaffé was a central figure in the heydays of German scholarship. His career illustrates the working conditions of such scholars, their friendships and feuds, and also the limits that hemmed Jews in and the ways they could be overcome. This volume documents Jaffé’s life, accomplishments, and struggles, and also offers insight into his soul via more than two hundred of his letters (in German) – about half to his parents in Posen and half to colleagues around Europe, especially Pertz and Mommsen.




The Mediaeval Islamic Underworld


Book Description