Descargar Libros y Ebooks (PDF / EPUB)

La historia de los judíos

Autor: Simon Schama

Número de Páginas: 727

Una obra fundamental sobre una cultura, un pueblo y un mundo de uno de los historiadores más prestigiosos y estimulantes de la actualidad Simon Schama narra la historia de los judíos a lo largo de tres milenios, desde sus orígenes como una tribu en la Antigüedad hasta el presente; una historia única, de resistencia a la desaparición, de creatividad bajo opresión, alegría en medio de las desgracias y afirmación de la vida contra pronóstico. Schama recorre los siglos y los continentes, desde la India a Andalucia, de los bazares de El Cairo a las calles de Oxford; y visita lugares inimaginables: un reino judío en las montañas del sur de Arabia; una sinagoga siria recubierta por brillantes murales; las palmeras de los enterramientos judíos en la catacumbas romanas. Y logra que las voces se oigan nítidas: la severidad y el gozo de los autores de la Biblia, o la poesía amorosa de los aficionados al vino en un jardín de la España musulmana. En La historia de los judíos el Talmud arde en las calles de París, los patíbulos presiden las plazas del Londres medieval, un artesano mallorquín dibuja el mundo de nuevo; se encienden velas, se cantan salmos, se cargan mulas y...

Maimonides

Autor: T. M. Rudavsky

Número de Páginas: 240

A thorough and accessible introduction to Maimonides, arguably oneof the most important Jewish philosophers of all time. This workincorporates material from Maimonides’ philosophical, legal,and medical works, providing a synoptic picture ofMaimonides’ philosophical range. Maimonides was, and remains, one of the most influential andimportant Jewish legalists, who devoted himself to areconceptualization of the entirety of Jewish law Offers both an intellectual biography and an exploration of themost important philosophical works in Maimonides’ corpus Persuasively argues that Maimonides did see himself as engagedin philosophical dialogue Maimonides’ philosophy is presented in a way that isaccessible to readers with little background in either Jewish ormedieval philosophy Secondary readings are provided at the end of each chapter, aswell as a bibliography of recent scholarly articles on some of themore pressing philosophical topics covered in the book

Judíos y musulmanes en al-Andalus y el Magreb

Autor: Collectif

Número de Páginas: 245

Los estudios aquí reunidos versan sobre el contacto intelectual entre musulmanes y judíos que tuvo lugar en el Occidente islámico medieval. El eje crucial de dicho contacto fue la lengua árabe, pues la arabización de los judíos posibilitó la comunicación diaria y literaria entre dos comunidades. ¿En qué consistió esa comunicación en el campo intelectual? ¿Hasta qué punto las partes implicadas se vieron afectadas por igual? ¿Qué disciplinas se prestaron mejor a tal encuentro cultural? ¿Cuáles fueron los márgenes entre los que se canalizó este para asegurar el mantenimiento, dentro de su inevitable devenir, de las identidades culturales propias? Las respuestas a estas y otras preguntas conciernen a la función identitaria de la lengua, al desarrollo de la gramática hebrea y de la exégesis de los textos sagrados hebreos, a la poesía ascética y las expectativas mesiánicas, a la obra de autores tan destacados como al-Harizi, Maimónides, Ibn Jaldun e Ibn Adret. Si los especialistas encontrarán materia de interés en el libro, la aportación de la obra no se limita a esos campos, pues atañe al lector no especialista que sienta curiosidad por el apasionante...

Maimonides' Empire of Light

Autor: Ralph Lerner

Número de Páginas: 252

Much of the writing of and about the twelfth-century rabbi, philosopher, and theologian Moses Maimonides is addressed to an elite audience of philosophers and intellectuals. Here, Ralph Lerner's exploration of Maimonides' popular writings reveals that the education of the common man was one of the great teacher's chief concerns. Lerner describes the brilliant and sometimes wily ways in which Maimonides sought to break through the despair and superstition that gripped the Jewish people's minds, without sacrificing the dignity and core of his message. These writings—presented here in uncommonly accurate, mostly new translations—also reveal that Maimonides was willing to risk the scorn of his contemporaries to enlighten both his own and future generations. By addressing the writings of Maimonides' disciples, including Shem Tov ben Joseph Ibn Falaquera in the mid-thirteenth century and Joseph Albo in the fifteenth century, Lerner shows how this technique was passed on. In striking contrast to the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, Maimonides' enlightenment is premised on the inequality of understandings and other differences between the elite and the common people. Instead...

Leo Strauss and His Legacy

Autor: John Albert Murley

Número de Páginas: 960

With over 10,000 entries identifying work of hundreds of Strauss's students, and their students' students, this bibliography is the most--indeed, the only--comprehensive guide to published writing in the tradition of Leo Strauss. Murley includes Strauss's own complete bibliography and that of one of his most revered students, George Anastaplo.

Faith and Reason in the Reformations

Autor: Terence J. Kleven

Número de Páginas: 261

The five-hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation reawakened a long-standing and spirited conversation between philosophic science and religious faith, a conversation which continues to have consequences on how we understand both science and faith. This book brings scholars together to reflect on the topic of the Protestant Reformation, as well as the Roman Catholic Counter Reformation, the nature of science, and the unity of the Church. Five chapters in this collection represent five distinct theological formulations within Christianity; the other seven chapters are from a variety of historic, philosophic, and theological starting points on the topic. These twelve accounts range from theologies informed by the Classical Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle; medieval Jewish and Roman Catholic writers; Moses Maimonides and Thomas More; writers of the Protestant Reformation (Martin Luther, John Calvin, Richard Hooker, and William Shakespeare); the founders of modern science (Francis Bacon and T. H. Huxley), and the modern day theologies of Abraham Kuyper, Flannery O’Connor, H. R. Niebuhr, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Jew and Philosopher

Autor: Kenneth Hart Green

Número de Páginas: 293

This is the first book to deal with the Jewish thought of Leo Strauss. Known primarily as one of the leading contemporary political thinkers, this book reveals another side of Leo Strauss—as one of the most important Jewish thinkers of the present century. The author presents the Jewish thought of Leo Strauss as powerful, original, and provocative, but also as essential for grasping the true character of Strauss's thought. His Jewish thought may prove to be the key to the proper understanding of his philosophic thought as a whole.

Ibn Ḥazm of Cordoba

Autor: Camilla Adang , Maribel Fierro , Sabine Schmidtke

Número de Páginas: 826

This volume represents the state of the art in research on the controversial Muslim legal scholar, theologian and man of letters Ibn Ḥazm of Cordoba (d. 456/1064), who is widely regarded as one of the most brilliant minds of Islamic Spain. Remembered mostly for his charming treatise on love, he was first and foremost a fierce polemicist who was much criticized for his idiosyncratic views and his abrasive language. Insisting that the sacred sources of Islam are to be understood in their outward sense and that it is only the Prophet Muḥammad whose example may be followed, Ibn Ḥazm alienated himself from his peers. As a result, his books were burned and he was forced to withdraw from public life. Contributors are: Camilla Adang, Hassan Ansari, Samuel-Martin Behloul, Alfonso Carmona, Leigh Chipman, Maribel Fierro, Alejandro García Sanjuán, Livnat Holtzman, Samir Kaddouri, Joep Lameer, Christian Lange, Gabriel Martinez Gros, Luis Molina, Salvador Peña, Jose Miguel Puerta Vilchez, Rafael Ramón Guerrero, Adam Sabra, Sabine Schmidtke, Delfina Serrano, Bruna Soravia, Dominique Urvoy, Kees Versteegh and David Wasserstein.

Rashi's Commentary on the Torah

Autor: Eric Lawee

Número de Páginas: 497

Winner of the Jewish Book Council Nahum M. Sarna Memorial Award in Scholarship This book explores the reception history of the most important Jewish Bible commentary ever composed, the Commentary on the Torah of Rashi (Shlomo Yitzhaki; 1040-1105). Though the Commentary has benefited from enormous scholarly attention, analysis of diverse reactions to it has been surprisingly scant. Viewing its path to preeminence through a diverse array of religious, intellectual, literary, and sociocultural lenses, Eric Lawee focuses on processes of the Commentary's canonization and on a hitherto unexamined--and wholly unexpected--feature of its reception: critical, and at times astonishingly harsh, resistance to it. Lawee shows how and why, despite such resistance, Rashi's interpretation of the Torah became an exegetical classic, a staple in the curriculum, a source of shared religious vocabulary for Jews across time and place, and a foundational text that shaped the Jewish nation's collective identity. The book takes as its larger integrating perspective processes of canonicity as they shape how traditions flourish, disintegrate, or evolve. Rashi's scriptural magnum opus, the foremost work of...

Theophrastus

Autor: William Wall Fortenbaugh , Dimitri Gutas

Número de Páginas: 434

Theophrastus of Eresus was Aristotle's pupil and successor as head of the Peripatetic School. He is best known as the author of the amusing Characters and two ground-breaking works in botany, but his writings extend over the entire range of Hellenistic philosophic studies. Volume 5 of Rutgers University Studies in Classical Humanities focuses on his scientific work. The volume contains new editions of two brief scientific essays-On Fish and Afeteoro/o^y-accompanied by translations and commentary. Among the contributions are: "Peripatetic Dialectic in the De sensibus," Han Baltussen; "Empedocles" Theory of Vision and Theophrastus' De sensibus," David N. Sedley; "Theophrastus on the Intellect," Daniel Devereux; "Theophrastus and Aristotle on Animal Intelligence," Eve Browning Cole; "Physikai doxai and Problemata physika from Aristotle to Agtius (and Beyond)," Jap Mansfield; "Xenophanes or Theophrastus? An Aetian Doxographicum on the Sun," David Runia; "Place1 in Context: On Theophrastus, Fr. 21 and 22 Wimmer," Keimpe Algra; "The Meteorology of Theophrastus in Syriac and Arabic Translation," Hans Daiber; "Theophrastus' Meteorology, Aristotle and Posidonius," Ian G. Kidd; "The...

Ethics in Islam

Autor: Nuha Al-shaar

Número de Páginas: 267

Offering a new reading of Islamic ethical and political thought in the Būyid period (334-440/946-1048), this book focuses particularly on the philosopher Abū Hayyān al-Tawhīdī who lived in Baghdad and what is now western Iran. Ethics in Islam provides the first major treatment of al-Tawhīdī's ethics, political thought, and social idealism, investigating the complex influences that shaped this thought and especially his concept of friendship, which is analysed in the unique context of Būyid society. Al-Tawhīdī revives the value of friendship in politics. He introduces it as the best way to reform social and political order and as a means to the good life, to restrain passion and self-interest, to bring about cooperation and promote reason, and for action in opposition to religious zeal. Instead of seeing him as alienated from society, supposedly rejecting traditional Muslim beliefs, this book places him in his historical and intellectual contexts, and shows that while he was original in many ways, his outlook was firmly rooted in the Islamic culture in which he was educated. Contributing to modern discussions of Islam and political ethics, this book is of interest to...

A Vigilant Society

Autor: Javier Roiz

Número de Páginas: 328

Uncovers a fundamental change that took place in Western thinking, especially its departure from the Sephardic philosophy found in the Iberian Peninsula during the 13th century.

Founding Gods, Inventing Nations

Autor: William F. Mccants

Número de Páginas: 193

From the dawn of writing in Sumer to the sunset of the Islamic empire, Founding Gods, Inventing Nations traces four thousand years of speculation on the origins of civilization. Investigating a vast range of primary sources, some of which are translated here for the first time, and focusing on the dynamic influence of the Greek, Roman, and Arab conquests of the Near East, William McCants looks at the ways the conquerors and those they conquered reshaped their myths of civilization's origins in response to the social and political consequences of empire. The Greek and Roman conquests brought with them a learned culture that competed with that of native elites. The conquering Arabs, in contrast, had no learned culture, which led to three hundred years of Muslim competition over the cultural orientation of Islam, a contest reflected in the culture myths of that time. What we know today as Islamic culture is the product of this contest, whose protagonists drew heavily on the lore of non-Arab and pagan antiquity. McCants argues that authors in all three periods did not write about civilization's origins solely out of pure antiquarian interest--they also sought to address the social and ...

Between Jerusalem and Europe

Número de Páginas: 373

Between Jerusalem and Europe: Essays in Honour of Bianca Kühnel analyses how Jerusalem is translated into the visual and material culture of medieval, early modern and contemporary Europe, and in what ways European encounters with the city have shaped its holy sites. The volume also demonstrates methodological shifts in the study of Jerusalem in Western art by mapping the diversity of concepts that underlie imaginations of the city as an earthly presence and a heavenly realization, as a physical and a mental space, and as a unique location which is multiplied and re-imagined in numerous copies elsewhere. Contributors are Lily Arad, Pnina Arad, Barbara Baert, Neta B. Bodner, Iris Gerlitz, Anastasia Keshman Wasserman, Katrin Kogman-Appel, Ora Limor, Galit Noga-Banai, Robert Ousterhout, Yamit Rachman-Schrire, Bruno Reudenbach, Alessandro Scafi, Tsafra Siew, and Victor I. Stoichita.

From the Greeks to the Arabs and Beyond

Autor: Hans Daiber

Número de Páginas: 687

From the Greeks to the Arabs and Beyond written by Hans Daiber, is a six volume collection of Daiber’s scattered writings, journal articles, essays and encyclopaedia entries on Greek-Syriac-Arabic translations, Islamic theology and Sufism, the history of science, Islam in Europe, manuscripts and the history of oriental studies. The collection contains published (since 1967) and unpublished works in English, German, Arabic, Persian and Turkish, including editions of Arabic and Syriac texts. The publication mirrors the intercultural character of Islamic thought and sheds new light on many aspects ranging from the Greek pre-Socratics to the Malaysian philosopher Naquib al-Attas. A main concern is the interpretation of texts in print or in manuscripts, culminating in two catalogues (Vol. V and VI), which contain descriptions of newly discovered, mainly Arabic, manuscripts in all fields. Vol. I: Graeco-Syriaca and Arabica. Vol. II: Islamic Philosophy. Vol. III: From God’s Wisdom to Science: A. Islamic Theology and Sufism; B. History of Science. Vol. IV: Islam, Europe and Beyond: A. Islam and Middle Ages; B. Manuscripts – a Basis of Knowledge and Science; C. History of the...

Language, Gender and Law in the Judaeo-Islamic Milieu

Autor: Zvi Stampfer , Amir Ashur

Número de Páginas: 208

The articles in this volume focus on the legal, linguistic, historical and literary roles of Jewish women in the Islamic world of the Middle Ages. Drawing heavily on manuscript evidence from the Cairo Genizah, the authors examine the challenges involved in the identification and interpretation of women’s letters from medieval Egypt, the registers of women’s written language, the relations between Jewish women and the Muslim legal system, the conversion of women, visions of women in Hell and gendered readings in the aggadic tradition of Judaism.

Sur le chemin du palais - Réflexions autour de deux chapitres du Guide des égarés de Maïmonide

Autor: Dan-alexandru Ilies

Número de Páginas: 427

Moïse Maïmonide est probablement le plus important penseur du judaïsme médiéval. L'étude ici proposée consiste en une interprétation de quelques extraits essentiels de son chef d'oeuvre : le Guide des égarés. Elle est menée à travers une lecture de détail

Just Wars, Holy Wars, and Jihads

Autor: Sohail H. Hashmi

Número de Páginas: 451

Surveying the period from the rise of Islam in the early seventh century to the present day, Just Wars, Holy Wars, and Jihads is the first book to investigate in depth the historical interaction among Jewish, Christian, and Muslim ideas about when the use of force is justified. Grouped under the three labels of just war, holy war, and jihad, these ideas are explored throughout twenty chapters that cover wide-ranging topics from the impact of the early Islamic conquests upon Byzantine, Syriac, and Muslim thinking on justified war to analyzing the impact of international law and terrorism on conceptions of just war and jihad in the modern day. This study serves as a major contribution to the comparative study of the ethics of war and peace.

Leo Strauss's Defense of the Philosophic Life

Autor: Rafael Major

Número de Páginas: 230

Leo Strauss's What Is Political Philosophy? addresses almost every major theme in his life's work and is often viewed as a defense of his overall philosophic approach. Yet precisely because the book is so foundational, if we want to understand Strauss's notoriously careful and complex thinking in these essays, we must also consider them just as Strauss treated philosophers of the past: on their own terms. Each of the contributors in this collection focuses on a single chapter from What Is Political Philosophy? in an effort to shed light on both Strauss's thoughts about the history of philosophy and the major issues about which he wrote. Included are treatments of Strauss's esoteric method of reading, his critique of behavioral political science, and his views on classical political philosophy. Key thinkers whose work Strauss responded to are also analyzed in depth: Plato, Al-Farabi, Maimonides, Hobbes, and Locke, as well as twentieth-century figures such as Eric Voegelin, Alexandre Kojève, and Kurt Riezler. Written by scholars well-known for their insight and expertise on Strauss's thought, the essays in this volume apply to Strauss the same meticulous approach he developed in...

Le judaïsme maghrébin

Autor: Haïm Zafrani

Número de Páginas: 244

Enlightening Revolutions

Autor: Svetozar Minkov , Stéphane Douard

Número de Páginas: 416

The essays collected in this volume make a serious, enlightened contribution to the history of political philosophy. While offering striking new interpretations of crucial texts and events in the history of the West, they illuminate fundamental questions of politics, religion, and philosophy.

Interpretation and Allegory

Autor: Whitman

Número de Páginas: 529

Western literary, philosophical, and religious traditions from Plato and Paul to Augustine and Avicenna have utilized, exploited, or been subjected to allegorical interpretation. Naturally developing a composite picture of interpretive allegory from such a large landscape faces numerous difficulties. As the editor puts it, “to imagine a ‘definitive’ account of the theory and practice of allegorical interpretation in the West would require something of an allegorical vision in its own right.” With that caveat in mind, however, the international team of contributors—from a variety of disciplines—offers a “historical and conceptual framework” for understanding interpretive allegory in the West, from antiquity through the early and late medieval and renaissance periods, and from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. This publication has also been published in hardback, please click here for details.

The Significance of the Hypothetical in the Natural Sciences

Autor: Michael Heidelberger , Gregor Schiemann

Número de Páginas: 385

How was the hypothetical character of theories of experience thought about throughout the history of science? The essays cover periods from the middle ages to the 19th and 20th centuries. It is fascinating to see how natural scientists and philosophers were increasingly forced to realize that a natural science without hypotheses is not possible.

The Trias of Maimonides / Die Trias des Maimonides

Autor: Georges Tamer

Número de Páginas: 465

Jewish religion, Greek philosophy and Islamic thought mold the philosophy and theology of Maimonides and characterize his work as an excellent example of the fruitful transfer of culture in the Middle Ages. The authors show various aspects of this cultural cross-fertilization, despite religious and ethnic differences. The studies prompt thoughts on a question which is important for the present and the future: How may the different religions, cultures and concepts of knowledge continue to be conveyed in synthesis? The volume publishes the lectures given at the July 2004 international congress at the occasion of the 800th anniversary of Maimonides’ death.

Ibn Khaldun and the Social Sciences

Autor: Javad Tabatabai

Número de Páginas: 253

Arabic and European studies of Ibn Khaldun, the great medieval polymath, follow one of two paths. In one direction, scholars interpret his Prolegomena, written in 1377, as the point at which the new social sciences emerged. They identify Ibn Khaldun’s ‘new science of culture’ as sociology or as an ‘Islamic’ (or ‘Arab’) alternative to sociology. In the other direction, the interpretation of Khaldunian discourse is confined to the Islamic-Aristotelian paradigm of its time. The epistemological novelty of the Prolegomena is dismissed and the science of culture is perceived as a minor contribution to the Aristotelian curriculum. Charting a different path, Javad Tabatabai’s highly original Ibn Khaldun and the Social Sciences is an inquiry into the condition of the im-possibility of the social sciences in the Islamic-Aristotelian paradigm. Rather than identifying the science of culture as a forerunner of, or alternative to, sociology, it investigates the Prolegomena within the epistemological framework established by the social sciences. Javad Tabatabai theorizes the condition of im-possibility of the ‘scientific revolution’ as the ‘epistemic obstacle’ to...

Persian Historiography

Autor: Julie Scott Meisami

Número de Páginas: 332

Winner of the 1999 British-Kuwait Friendship Society Prize in Middle Eastern Studies. Described by the BKFS reviewer as "e;A ground-breaking work on a subject that has been almost totally neglected."e;"e;Why write history in Persian?"e; Persian historical writing has received little attention as compared with Arabic, especially as seen in the early (pre-Mongol) period. Within the larger context of the development of Islamic historiography from the tenth through the twelfth centuries, the case of Persian historical writing demands special attention. Discussions tend to concentrate on its sources in pre-Islamic Persian and in Arabic works, while the reasons for its emergence, its connections with Iranian and Arabic models, its political and cultural functions, and its reception, have been virtually ignored. This study answers these questions and addresses issues relating to the motivation for writing the works in question; its purpose; the role of the author, patrons and audiences; the choice of language and the reasons for that choice; the place of historical writing in the broader debate over the suitability of Persian for scholarly writing.

Ibn Miskawayh, the Soul, and the Pursuit of Happiness

Autor: John Peter Radez

Número de Páginas: 163

Ibn Miskawayh, the Soul, and the Pursuit of Happiness explores the moral philosophy and context of Ibn Miskawayh (932–1030), an advocate of the intellectually cultivated life with a strong religious bent. Though not necessarily a major innovator, he sought through his writings to provide a moral compass for turbulent times, much like thinkers such as Petrarch (1304–1374), Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), Francois Rabelais (1494–1553), Montesquieu (1689–1755) or more recently, Mortimer Adler (1902–2001). Despite the tumultuous times in which they lived, these thinkers offered the world hope through a humanism that cultivated both civic and moral character. Whether directly expressed in his moral philosophy or illustrated in the examples of renowned or notorious historical figures, Miskawayh’s core idea is that one’s character is much easier kept than recovered. In this book, John Peter Radez shows how Miskawayh stands out not only as one of Islam’s first ethicists, but also one of its true intellectuals: thinker, historian, codifier of the science of adab, and a truly happy sage who represented the best of his generation’s intellectual and cultural elite....

La pensée philosophique et théologique de Shahrastānī (m. 548/1153)

Autor: Diane Steigerwald

Número de Páginas: 394

Philosophy in the Renaissance of Islam

Autor: Kraemer

Número de Páginas: 370

The Art of Jihad

Autor: Malik Mufti

Número de Páginas: 242

Identifies and traces the evolution of a forgotten "realist" tradition in medieval Islamic political thought, and considers the prospects for its revival in the context of the contemporary Middle East. Now all but forgotten, there exists within medieval Islamic political thought a coherent "realist" tradition analogous to its Western counterpart. In The Art of Jihad, Malik Mufti begins by analyzing contemporary debates on jihad designed to highlight the lacuna occupied by realism in other cultures. He explicates the features of medieval Islamic realism; those it shares with realism everywhere-a focus on power, for example, or the ubiquity of human conflict-but also those features that are distinctive: its insistence on the political centrality of religion, its rejection of scientific certainty, its valorization of hierarchy, and its adherence to empire as the optimal ethico-political framework. These features are fleshed out through the writings of medieval political thinkers such as Ibn al-Muqaffa`, al-Jahiz, and the anonymous author of a seminal military manual, as well as political philosophers such as Ibn Rushd and Ibn Khaldun. Finally, Mufti explores the prospects for a...

The Meeting of Civilizations

Autor: Moshe Ma'oz

Número de Páginas: 277

The horrific acts of anti-Western and anti-Jewish terrorism carried out by Muslim fanatics during the last decades have been labelled by politicians, religious leaders and scholars as a 'Clash of Civilizations'. This book states that these acts cannot be considered an Islamic onslaught on Judeo-Christian Civilisation.

Human Conscience and Muslim-Christian Relations

Autor: Oddbjørn Leirvik

Número de Páginas: 340

Leirvik puts forward a discussion of how the notion of conscience may unite Muslim and Christians across religious divides, as well as examining the relation between selfhood and otherness in interfaith dialogue.

Sociedad vigilante y mundo judío en la concepción del Estado

Autor: Javier Roiz

Número de Páginas: 352

Este libro parte de una hipòtesis altamente sugestiva: en la Europa de los siglos XII a XIV, la existencia de las comunidades judìas sometidas al poder cristiano o musulmàn no fue obstàculo para que en su seno comenzara a madurar una nueva visión de lo público y una nueva teoría política. El autor propone la recuperación de aportaciones y herencias culturales queno sólo contribuyeron a crear una imagen de lo hispano -imagen que incluso se ha tratado de ocultar y de desfigurar-, sino a poner los cimientos de lo que más tarde se denominaría Europa. Esta obra contribuye a una recuperación de la "memoria histórica" que no se limita a dilucidar una desavenencia habida entre los miembros de la generación que nos precedí, sino a entender cómo ese y otros avatares históricos tienen sus raíces en un pasada cuya riqueza se dilapidó en lugar de aaprovecharse.

After Revelation

Autor: Marc Herman

Número de Páginas: 288

Reveals how medieval Jews developed religious law through contact with their Muslim neighbors After Revelation is the first study to integrate Jewish legal thought in the medieval Islamic world into its larger environment. Here, Marc D. Herman demonstrates that Jews were fully conversant in their contemporaries’ ideas about revelation, law, and legal interpretation. Bookended by the two luminaries of medieval Judaism—Saadia Gaon and Moses Maimonides—After Revelation is a comprehensive analysis of the legal theory that medieval Jews produced in Islamic lands, mostly in Arabic, and reveals previously unrecognized commonalities between Jewish and Islamic constructions of religious law. Herman tackles one of the central doctrines of post-biblical Judaism: that God had supplemented the written Hebrew Bible with an Oral Torah, a claim that remains central to Judaism to this day. Following this idea from Baghdad, to Kairouan, to Cordoba, and then to Cairo, he shows that the Oral Torah took many new forms in the medieval Islamic world. The variegated and fluid presentations of the Oral Torah, Herman argues, were inexorably embedded in society-wide discourses that blithely crossed...

Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures

Autor: Helaine Selin

Número de Páginas: 2428

Here, at last, is the massively updated and augmented second edition of this landmark encyclopedia. It contains approximately 1000 entries dealing in depth with the history of the scientific, technological and medical accomplishments of cultures outside of the United States and Europe. The entries consist of fully updated articles together with hundreds of entirely new topics. This unique reference work includes intercultural articles on broad topics such as mathematics and astronomy as well as thoughtful philosophical articles on concepts and ideas related to the study of non-Western Science, such as rationality, objectivity, and method. You’ll also find material on religion and science, East and West, and magic and science.

What is Islam?

Autor: Shahab Ahmed

Número de Páginas: 632

A bold new conceptualization of Islam that reflects its contradictions and rich diversity What is Islam? How do we grasp a human and historical phenomenon characterized by such variety and contradiction? What is "Islamic" about Islamic philosophy or Islamic art? Should we speak of Islam or of islams? Should we distinguish the Islamic (the religious) from the Islamicate (the cultural)? Or should we abandon "Islamic" altogether as an analytical term? In What Is Islam?, Shahab Ahmed presents a bold new conceptualization of Islam that challenges dominant understandings grounded in the categories of "religion" and "culture" or those that privilege law and scripture. He argues that these modes of thinking obstruct us from understanding Islam, distorting it, diminishing it, and rendering it incoherent. What Is Islam? formulates a new conceptual language for analyzing Islam. It presents a new paradigm of how Muslims have historically understood divine revelation--one that enables us to understand how and why Muslims through history have embraced values such as exploration, ambiguity, aestheticization, polyvalence, and relativism, as well as practices such as figural art, music, and even...

Judah Halevi’s Fideistic Scepticism in the Kuzari

Autor: Ehud Krinis

Número de Páginas: 177

As scepticism has rarely been studied in the context of the Arabic culture and its Judeo-Arabic sub-culture, it is small wonder that sceptical motifs of Judah Halevi’s classic theological The Kuzari (written ca. 1140) received very little scholarly attention so far. Thus, the present study seeks to shed light on Halevi’s wrestling with the dogmatic-rationalistic trends of his period from an angle of this much less studied perspective. As a by-product, this study is a contribution to the mainly uncultivated field of traces of scepticism in the Arabic culture.

The Collapse of the Eastern Mediterranean

Autor: Roni Ellenblum

Número de Páginas: 283

As a 'Medieval Warm Period' prevailed in Western Europe during the tenth and eleventh centuries, the eastern Mediterranean region, from the Nile to the Oxus, was suffering from a series of climatic disasters which led to the decline of some of the most important civilizations and cultural centres of the time. This provocative study argues that many well-documented but apparently disparate events - such as recurrent drought and famine in Egypt, mass migrations in the steppes of central Asia, and the decline in population in urban centres such as Baghdad and Constantinople - are connected and should be understood within the broad context of climate change. Drawing on a wealth of textual and archaeological evidence, Ronnie Ellenblum explores the impact of climatic and ecological change across the eastern Mediterranean in this period, to offer a new perspective on why this was a turning point in the history of the Islamic world.