{"title":"“The Intellect is a Point and a Circle”: A Case Study in the Textual Relationship of Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī’s Kitāb al-Maqālīd and the Longer Theology of Aristotle","authors":"A. Treiger","doi":"10.1163/2212943x-bja10004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2212943x-bja10004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In his ground-breaking monograph Early Philosophical Shiism: The Ismaili Neoplatonism of Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī, Paul Walker has pointed out parallels between al-Sijistānī’s Kitāb al-Maqālīd and the Longer Theology of Aristotle – an augmented version of the Theology of Aristotle preserved mainly in Judeo-Arabic manuscripts and a sixteenth-century Latin translation. This raises the question of whether it is al-Sijistānī who cites the Longer Theology, or the unknown author of the Longer Theology who cites al-Sijistānī, or whether the two rely on a common source. Walker opts for the third solution: a common source used by both al-Sijistānī and the Longer Theology. The present contribution focuses on one of the parallels between al-Sijistānī’s Kitāb al-Maqālīd and the Longer Theology, demonstrates that Walker is indeed correct in postulating such a common source, and shows that this common source contained some of the most significant ideas for al-Sijistānī’s Ismāʿīlī Neoplatonism: the idea that the Word (al-kalima) mediates between the Creator (“Originator,” al-mubdiʿ) and the Intellect, that the Intellect is united with the Word, that the Word is “non-being” (lays), and several others. The article comments on the possible nature of this common source and on how the Longer Theology sheds light on the origins of al-Sijistānī’s Ismāʿīlī Neoplatonism.","PeriodicalId":92649,"journal":{"name":"Intellectual history of the Islamicate world","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87147153","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Falconry at Medieval Islamicate Courts: Open-Air Practice and Backstage Knowledge","authors":"A. Akasoy","doi":"10.1163/2212943x-12340007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2212943x-12340007","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Falconry at Islamicate courts of the pre-Ottoman period involved a complex set of practices, traditions and institutions. Evolving as part of the royal hunt from the late Umayyad period onwards, it included a body of scientific, mostly medical literature from early Abbasid times. A corpus of falconry poetry developed from around the same time. In Fatimid contexts, falconry images appear prominently in the visual arts. In Mamluk times, the connection between hunting with birds of prey and fighting becomes more pronounced. The present article discusses the significance of Islamicate courts which offered singular conditions for the multi-layered and cumulative nature of falconry as an elite and highly symbolic practice. Insofar as these details are known, it also takes the various human agents involved in courtly falconry into account.","PeriodicalId":92649,"journal":{"name":"Intellectual history of the Islamicate world","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83234217","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Strange Affliction from Abroad: The Ottoman Chief Imperial Physician Ḥayātīzāde’s Treatise on the Polish Plait (Plica Polonica)","authors":"Sara Nur Yıldız","doi":"10.1163/2212943x-12340009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2212943x-12340009","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Plica polonica was an early modern disease construct affecting the scalp and hair. Initially associated with Polish populations, the affliction spread throughout southern Europe, as the Ottoman chief imperial physician Ḥayātīzāde’s (d. 1103/1691) treatise on plica polonica indicates. Through a close reading of Ḥayātīzāde’s treatise, this paper explores how the Ottomans responded to a changing disease landscape shaped by the movement of people through warfare and enslavement. It argues that textual medical knowledge circulating in the Mediterranean region was modified according to local sociopolitical and cultural concerns. Ḥayātīzāde recast new Latin medical knowledge not just linguistically but also culturally to fit an Ottoman courtly context. The Ottoman court served as a locus not only for the dissemination of new medical knowledge; it was also a permeable contact zone populated by physicians and translators associated with trans-Danubian political elites. Ḥayātīzāde’s treatise was the product of entangled Ottoman Turkish and Latin learning and knowledge practices shaped in a world of transimperial agents.","PeriodicalId":92649,"journal":{"name":"Intellectual history of the Islamicate world","volume":"2011 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82603470","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Revisiting the Question of Literary Patronage under the Early Safavids","authors":"Theodore S. Beers","doi":"10.1163/2212943x-12340005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2212943x-12340005","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article reviews an old debate in Persian literary history surrounding the judgment of early modern poetry and, in particular, the legacy of the Safavid dynasty, and argues that a few of the questions over which scholars once disagreed have not been resolved to the extent that might be suspected. The general narrative that prevailed for most of the twentieth century, in which Persian lyric poetry of the early modern era was criticized as decadent and the Safavids were denounced for having abandoned their traditional duty to promote arts and letters, is now rightly considered obsolete. As the field has developed a more mature approach to these issues, however, the question of patronage at the Safavid court has been set aside more than it has been settled. We still have not reached a comprehensive understanding of the transformations that took place in Persian literary culture from the tenth/sixteenth century onward. The migration of scores of Iranian poets to Mughal India is recognized as a key development, but the impact of the contemporary situation in Safavid lands – including, perhaps, a relative lack of patronage – merits reconsideration.","PeriodicalId":92649,"journal":{"name":"Intellectual history of the Islamicate world","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90152189","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Local Knowledge for a Prince: A Maqāma on the Miracles of Water","authors":"Maurice A. Pomerantz","doi":"10.1163/2212943x-12340003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2212943x-12340003","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article discusses the Maqāma Miyāhiyya (A Maqāma on the Waters) of al-Ḥasan b. Abī Muḥammad al-Ṣafadī as an example of a work that offers geographical knowledge about well-known places to a courtly circle of recipients. The maqāma is found in al-Ṣafadī’s collection of thirty maqāmāt, the Maqāmāt Ǧalāliyya, which was dedicated to the famed ruler of Hama, al-Malik al-Muʾayyad Abū l-Fidāʾ (672/1273–732/1332). The Maqāma Miyāhiyya discusses the rivers of the Mamluk domains in quantitative terms (a comparison of their weights) and then juxtaposes this section with a long poem in raǧaz meter describing the magical properties of springs, lakes, and rivers in Mamluk territory. As such, it represents the way al-Ṣafadī employed local geographical knowledge that he gained through his experience as an administrator in courtly contexts.","PeriodicalId":92649,"journal":{"name":"Intellectual history of the Islamicate world","volume":"40 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77168199","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rethinking Poetry as (Anti-Crusader) Propaganda: Licentiousness and Cross-Confessional Patronage in the Ḫarīdat al-qaṣr","authors":"M. Keegan","doi":"10.1163/2212943x-12340002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2212943x-12340002","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 It is sometimes assumed that the poetry of the Crusader period was part of a concerted propaganda effort to rouse Muslims to fight and to legitimate Muslim rulers in the eyes of other Muslims by portraying them as ascetic, Sunni revivalists focused on Jihad. Based on samples from the Ḫarīdat al-qaṣr wa-ǧarīdat ahl al-ʿaṣr, a massive 6th/12th-century adab anthology by ʿImād al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī, this article argues for a different understanding of both the content and the circulation of this period’s poetry. I show that poetry was not addressed to a “public,” but rather was a form of elite communication in which social identity was performed, negotiated, and consolidated. Furthermore, ʿImād al-Dīn’s anthology does not marginalize Shiʿite voices or insist on portraying rulers as ascetics. I trace the origins of these assumptions and show that levity, licentiousness, and Shiʿites were all celebrated in the poetic discourses of the 6th/12th century.","PeriodicalId":92649,"journal":{"name":"Intellectual history of the Islamicate world","volume":"20 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87258029","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Princess at Work: Historical Knowledge from Inside the Mughal Court","authors":"Anna Kollatz","doi":"10.1163/2212943x-12340006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2212943x-12340006","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This contribution considers a group of texts that have already been widely used as sources to reconstruct the history of events and for research into the legitimation and representation of power during the Mughal period. Here, however, the texts are read as figurative elements of an intellectual process. Can intertextual narratological analysis be used to draw conclusions about the intellectual contexts in which these texts originated? This article examines two historiographical texts that emerged in close temporal and spatial proximity to each other. Through a narratological case study, it examines the extent to which approaches to historiography and the representation of human – and especially female – agency are consistent or divergent in the Humāyūnnāma by Gulbadan Bīgum and the Akbarnāma by Abū l-Faḍl, who used the former text as a source for his project.","PeriodicalId":92649,"journal":{"name":"Intellectual history of the Islamicate world","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87843383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Copies of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣūfī’s Book on the Star Constellations as Patronage Objects and Their Properties","authors":"Hamid Bohloul, S. Brentjes","doi":"10.1163/2212943x-12340008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2212943x-12340008","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In this paper we discuss a number of copies of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣūfī’s Book on the Star Constellations with the aim to elucidate which of them can be justifiably called “patronage object” and which properties they share. We argue that such an object is always a material, not merely an intellectual product. Thus, the analysis of the patronage status of a scientific work needs to go beyond its scholarly content and narrative performance and include features of execution, purpose and addressee of copying and acts of re-appropriating the work on its various scholarly, cultural and political levels. We present a few examples to demonstrate the usefulness of such a holistic approach to the question of what is a patronage object in the mathematical sciences.","PeriodicalId":92649,"journal":{"name":"Intellectual history of the Islamicate world","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89236821","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Does a Mamluk Sultan Hold Religious Authority? Quranic Exegesis and ḥadīṯ Scholarship in Late Mamluk Courtly maǧālis","authors":"Christian Mauder","doi":"10.1163/2212943x-12340004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2212943x-12340004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The article critically reexamines the notion of Mamluk rulers being uninterested in religious affairs and the authority a supreme religious status could bestow. It shows that, with the late Mamluk ruler Qāniṣawh al-Ġawrī (r. 906/1501–922/1516), at least one Mamluk sultan laid claim to religious authority through his participation in courtly processes of knowledge production and transmission in his learned maǧālis. These efforts culminated in the attempt to portray al-Ġawrī as “the sultan of scholars and verifiers (sulṭān al-ʿulamāʾ wa-l-muḥaqqiqīn)” and “the sultan of the truly insightful (sulṭān al-ʿārifīn).” Al-Ġawrī used the scholarly status conveyed through these titles to re-affirm a decidedly Sunni interpretation of prophetic traditions and the Quran, thus setting himself apart from many of the so-called “millennial sovereigns” of his time whose claims for spiritual leadership often marked a break with traditional Sunni concepts of political rule and religious authority.","PeriodicalId":92649,"journal":{"name":"Intellectual history of the Islamicate world","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89661056","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Production and Transmission of Knowledge in Islamicate Courts of the Middle and Early Modern Periods","authors":"Christian Mauder","doi":"10.1163/2212943x-12340001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/2212943x-12340001","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":92649,"journal":{"name":"Intellectual history of the Islamicate world","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-08-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90809182","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}