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This collection of interdisciplinary essays on a unique work by a physician and political figure in 12th-century Spain and North Africa casts important light on the social and intellectual history of the period and breaks new ground in the critical assessment of medieval Arabic literary works.
The World of Ibn ṭufayl consists of ten essays by scholars in different fields in Arab-Islamic studies on Ibn ṭufayl's ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, one of the most extraordinary works of medieval Arabic literature, and a text with important dimensions in social and intellectual history, literature, mysticism, philosophy, medicine and science. Most of the essays were presented at a groundbreaking conference at the Wellcome Institute in London, which marked the first attempt at a critical assessment of any medieval Arabic text by drawing together scholars from widely varying fields. The studies cast light on numerous aspects of social and intellectual life in North Africa and Spain in medieval Islamic times, and explore important aspects of the textual intercommunication between author and audience.
A volume of eleven innovative essays on cultural production in medieval Castile, blending original archival work with a rigorous consideration of comparative methodology for the study of religions and languages in contact.
This book is the first archival study of the Mudejar or conquered Muslim community of Xàtiva from 1240 until 1327. It is a long overdue model study of the largest and most important Mudejar community in the kingdom of Valencia.
This collection of essays reveals the diversity of the impact on late medieval and Golden Age Spanish literature of the socio-religious dichotomy that came to exist between conversos (New Christians), who were perceived as inferior because of their Jewish descent, and Old Christians, who asserted the superiority of their pure Christian lineage.
Front Lines documents the literary practices of imperial Spain's common soldiers. The epic poems, chronicles, ballads, and autobiographies that these soldiers wrote at the front provide a critical view from below on state violence and imperial expansion.
This book is the outcome of a close study of the Ricote Valley and its famous Sufi Ibn Sab'in. Its purpose is to disclose more of the historical and comparative data. Arab Spaniards have created a glorious human story that lasted for centuries within the scope of the Mediterranean culture. However, a lot of the history of the Ricote Valley is only written in Spanish and still not in English. Andalusian scientists moved from the region of Murcia to the heart of the Islamic world. Their move had quite a deep effect. Among these scientists was the great Sufi philosopher, Muhammad Ibn-'Abdul-Haq known as Ibn- Sab'in (d. 669 H. = 1270 AD), who came from the Ricote Valley. He is the originator of the deep philosophical approach in dealing with highly humanistic Sufi thought, and the author of the magnificent treatise Al-Kalam 'ala Al-Masa'il Al-Siqqilliyya, in which he answered the philosophical questions that Frederick II, the Emperor of Sicily, sent to Muslim scientists in the Mashreq and the Maghreb.
This book investigates the transmission of knowledge in the Arab and Islamic world, with particular attention to the translation of material from Greek, Persian, and Sanskrit into Arabic, and then from Arabic into Latin in medieval Western Europe. While most modern scholarly works have addressed contributions of Muslim scholars to the modern development of translation, Labeeb Ahmed Bsoul bases his study on Arabic classical literature and its impact upon modern translation. He focuses on the contributions made by prominent classical Christian and Muslim scholars, showcasing how their works and contributions to the field of knowledge are still relevant today.
This volume commemorates the career of Richard Fletcher and his remarkable contribution to our understanding of the medieval world. The seventeen papers included here reflect the three main areas of Fletcher's scholarly endeavours: Church and society in medieval Spain; Christian-Muslim relations, and the history of the post-Roman world.
This book is the first account of the period to consider both Christian and Muslim Spain. The author discusses the various societies, cultures and governments of Muslim and Christian Iberia in the centuries of their critical confrontation. Beginning with the disintegration of the caliphate at Cordoba in the early eleventh century, the book traces the decline of the Muslim taifa states, and describes and explains their conquest, first by the Murabit, and then the Muwahhid fundamentalist Muslim empires of North Africa. Bernard Reilly describes the rising Christian kingdoms of Leon-Castilla, Aragon, Barcelona and Portugal and shows how they were engaged in a struggle on several fronts. As they vied with one another for control of the old Islamic stronghold of the center and north, they were also in continuous conflict with the Murabit and Muwahhid rulers, while striving to come to terms with the French, the Papacy and the Italian maritime powers.