{"title":"Well Begun Is Only Half Done: Tracing Aristotle's Political Ideas in Medieval Arabic, Syriac, Byzantine, and Jewish Sources","authors":"S. Panagopoulos","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2014.915123","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2014.915123","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42974,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masaq-Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean","volume":"2 1","pages":"230 - 232"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2014-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77879342","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Slave Girls of Baghdad: The Qiyān in the Early Abbasid Era","authors":"M. Dhada","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2014.915115","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2014.915115","url":null,"abstract":"̇ ih ̇ h ̇ atihā wajhān (p. 27); yuqāl anna should be yuqāl inna (p. 32); baʿs ̇ should be baʿd ̇ (p. 57). The bibliography is quite impressive as far as the formal study of the Arabic text is concerned (catalogues, manuscripts, biographies). However, works on the issues of agents and causality are missing. The reader would have appreciated seeing references to previous research on agents in Islamic theology and philosophy by J. Obermann, L. Gardet, M. Fakhry and S. Vasalou. Vasalou’s study Moral Agents and their Deserts: The Character of Muʿtazilite Ethics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008) could have helped the author to frame his discussion. These minor criticisms do not detract in any way from the overall quality of this book, however. The author enriches the library of Muʿtazilı̄ studies with this fine critical edition and study of Kitāb al-Muʾaththirāt. Moreover, the book also fills a gap in the field of later Muʿtazilı̄ treatments of agents and helps to make more distinguishable the division into early, classical and later Muʿtazilı̄ thought. The study also increases awareness of the Yemeni-Zaydı̄ context of Muʿtazilı̄ kalām. Certainly, Muslim intellectual historians, theologians, philosophers and specialists in legal hermeneutics should welcome this publication.","PeriodicalId":42974,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masaq-Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean","volume":"33 1","pages":"221 - 223"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2014-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83872601","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Latin Renovatio of Byzantium. The Empire of Constantinople (1204–1228)","authors":"S. Panagopoulos","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2014.915124","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2014.915124","url":null,"abstract":"writing in the Iberian Peninsula. To sum up, this is a very important volume about the preservation of the political thought of Plato and Aristotle in non-Western contexts and sources. Vasileios Syros is correct to state at the end of his prologue that classical political thought flourished and evolved in the Near and Middle East during the Middle Ages. This reviewer strongly believes that every scholarly library should have a copy of this book.","PeriodicalId":42974,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masaq-Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean","volume":"59 1","pages":"232 - 234"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2014-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91304000","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Neo-Platonism in Ibn Khaldūn's Poetics","authors":"G. Lelli","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2014.915110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2014.915110","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article analyses the presence of Neo-Platonic ideas in the poetics of Ibn Khaldūn's (1332–1406). It particularly focuses on the sixth part of the Muqaddima, in which Ibn Khaldūn presents the Arab-Islamic system of knowledge. I argue that Ibn Khaldūn analyses poetry in terms of a peculiar kind of knowledge and that his views on poetry are largely dominated by a Neo-Platonic paradigm, deriving from Avicenna's Psychology and Sufism. I focus on four topics: the “weak” rational position of poetics among the sciences of logic; the rhetorical norm of muṭābaqa (“conformity” between “words” and “ideas”, and between “speech” and the “requirement of the situation”), the musical norm of talāʾum (appropriateness of note combinations) and the notion of poetical “models” (uslūb; pl. asālīb). My conclusion is that the Muqaddima provides the modern reader with a precious longue-durée overall view of pre-modern Arab-Islamic poetics.","PeriodicalId":42974,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masaq-Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean","volume":"3 1","pages":"196 - 215"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2014-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82606365","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Western Medicine for the Masters of Damascus: Benvenutus Grapheus's Experimenta","authors":"Jonathan Rubin, Cornelia Linde","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2014.915108","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2014.915108","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article examines a rediscovered work by the thirteenth-century physician Benvenutus Grapheus de Iherusalem. Surviving only in a late medieval German translation, it contains select recipes and medical procedures. The study of this compilation offers new insight into two important aspects of Benvenutus's life: It provides a more precise dating for his activities, and clarifies at least one facet of his connection to the Levant. An analysis of Benvenutus's sources, most notably the Antidotarium Nicolai but also the Circa instans, confirms the assumption of previous scholars that he had studied at the Salernitan school of medicine. This article also shows that, at least in this particular case, practitioners trained within the Arabic medical tradition did not view Western medicine as a priori inferior.","PeriodicalId":42974,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masaq-Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean","volume":"27 1","pages":"183 - 195"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2014-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79304456","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Acerca del hielo en el islam medieval","authors":"Pedro Buendía","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2014.915107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2014.915107","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The history of ice in medieval Arab societies is obscured behind a mosaic of a variety of references and scholarly citations. Beyond al-Qalqashandī's reference to organised ice trafficking in fourteenth-century Mamluk Egypt, we do not have conclusive evidence on the origin and use of ice as a consumer product. In this paper we trace its presence based on three genres of references: historical and literary quotations, medicine and literature pertaining to food. These references allow us to consider the extent of ice consumption in the Arab world before the ninth century, as well as the existence of an organised trade throughout the Middle Ages from that time. However, contrary to the Persian world, with its well-documented Iranian yakhchals, we still know virtually nothing about ice-houses in medieval Arab societies. We also know very little about the profession of the thallāj or ice-seller, or whether the widespread consumption of ice that originated in Spain in the sixteenth century was in fact a legacy of an earlier trade in al-Andalus.","PeriodicalId":42974,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masaq-Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean","volume":"6 1","pages":"168 - 182"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2014-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79347167","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A History of Muslim Sicily","authors":"J. Nawas","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2014.915122","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2014.915122","url":null,"abstract":"logical evidence on Indian Ocean port cities such as Aden, demonstrating how their role as entrepôts simultaneously connected them to and separated them from their hinterlands. Fortifications served the purpose of capturing trade and taxes from their competitors in the Indian Ocean, rather than insulating the cities from the sea (p. 120). Yossef Rapoport’s study of a unique set of maps of the Mediterranean produced in the fifth/eleventh century in Fāt ̇ imid Egypt shows the degree to which military conflict between the Fāt ̇ imids and the Byzantine Empire at the time was linked to deeper commercial processes of competition and connection. Following Udovitch, Rapoport argues that “the expansion in international commerce along the [... ] Mediterranean was [... ] driven by thriving production centers and markets in the southern shores” (p. 183). The maps that accompany this chapter contain a wealth of naval intelligence reflecting a forgotten shared maritime culture that by the end of the century had been disrupted by the Crusades (pp. 207–8). In all of these studies, normative texts are juxtaposed with literary and archival material to reveal new particulars, or cases of micro-history, as much as they reveal subjectivities. The cumulative effect is to problematise the assumptions that usually govern our understanding of the Islamic past, in which rupture rather than continuity distinguished the Jāhilı̄ from the Islamic periods, hostility characterised relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims, and fear of the sea led to the eclipse of ports by their hinterlands. Although this volume is a tribute by former students to their teacher, it should serve as a guide to future students on the merits of solid historical scholarship.","PeriodicalId":42974,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masaq-Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean","volume":"14 1","pages":"228 - 229"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2014-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81671417","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sultans' Paradise: The Royal Necropolis of Shāla, Rabat1","authors":"P. Nagy","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2014.915103","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2014.915103","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The following study concerns Shāla, which was the necropolis of the Marīnid rulers from 683/1284 to 752/1351. The Islamic buildings on the site have rarely received scholarly attention, although these edifices – despite their delapidated condition – are among the most important constructed by the dynasty. One of my main aims is to re-establish the buildings' chronological sequence, using the written and archaeological evidence, including publications about the site written in Arabic, which have hardly been considered so far. I also address the meaning and aims behind structure erected for each founder, which, in my view, have been misinterpreted by previous scholarship. In summary, this article attempts to revise our knowledge about the site.","PeriodicalId":42974,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masaq-Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean","volume":"26 1","pages":"132 - 146"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2014-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86545126","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Histories of the Middle East: Studies in Middle Eastern Society, Economy and Law in Honor of A. L. Udovitch","authors":"S. Hamdani","doi":"10.1080/09503110.2014.915121","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/09503110.2014.915121","url":null,"abstract":"who “brought the vague individual into the realm of angelic cognition” (p. 291). Bearing in mind the idea of the angelic applied to ancient categories of knowledge, it is fascinating to then approach Fumo’s analysis of late-medieval English work on Ovid for its own inquiry into medieval readers’ philosophies. As Black asks how Avicenna’s work – itself deeply concerned with angels’ cognitive power and their relations with people – meets with new arguments from Christian interlocutors, so Fumo asks how English writers used ekphrasis and manuscript illumination to introduce moralising dimensions into ancient texts. This gives the reader the opportunity to take a schematic long view: what theological and philosophical impulses were at play in medieval Europe and reveal themselves most distinctly when writers work directly with Classical texts to produce a new intellectual frame? In other words, what ideological work does medieval transformation perform? There are, of course, a great many other critical questions that readers from a range of disciplines might draw from the volume, an observation that speaks well of the project overall. If there is one revision to be suggested, it is for more argumentative work from the contributors, so that questions are met with answers, even if provisional. A group of accomplished scholars such as these might offer eighteen provocative studies, but in some cases the essays describe research without producing a set of analytical statements that coalesce into a thesis. Overall, however, the volume is a solid achievement, broad in scope and admirably reaching out across disciplines. It is encouraging to think that the research group at the helm of this project will continue its valuable work in organising workshops and publishing scholarship.","PeriodicalId":42974,"journal":{"name":"Al-Masaq-Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean","volume":"57 1","pages":"226 - 228"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2014-05-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74476473","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}