O ye Gentlemen explores two vital strands in Arabic culture: the Greek tradition in science and philosophy and the literary tradition. They are permanent and, though drawing on Islam as a dominant religion, they are by no means dependent on it. That the strands freely interweave within the broader scope of Schrifttum is shown by more than thirty essays on subjects as varied as the social organisation of bees, spontaneous generation in the Shiʿite tradition, astronomy in the Arabian nights, the benefits of sex, precious stones in a literary text, the virtue of women in Judaeo-Arabic stories, animals in Middle Eastern music and the transmission of Arabic science and philosophy to the medieval West.

Wolfhart Heinrichs’ Essays and Articles on Arabic Literature: General Issues, Terms is the first of two volumes that showcase a great number of Heinrichsʼ writings on his central field of research: Arabic literature. This volume specifically looks at poetry and rhetoric, and their indigenous theories and terminologies. Wolfhart Heinrichs (1941-2014) was James Richard Jewett Professor of Arabic at Harvard University. He is remembered as a significant adviser to Fuat Sezginʼs fundamental Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums; as an editor of and contributor to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second edition; and, most importantly, as an author of many independent studies on Arabic literature, many which were groundbreaking in the history of Arabic philology. He is also known for his studies on Semitic linguistics and Islamic jurisprudence. This volume collects relevant bibliographical data, offers an introductory essay on the author by his distinguished student Michael Cooperson (UCLA), and provides a selection of Wolfhart Heinrichs’ essays. The articles in this volume deal with general issues in the field that are central to pre-modern Arab and Islamic culture, and their concepts and terminologies. An index of classical authors, book titles, and technical terms concludes the volume. This volume and the accompanying volume will appeal to students and researchers in the field of Arabic and Islamic Studies, and particularly to those interested in Arabic literature.

Avicenna is the greatest philosopher of the Islamic world. His immense impact on Christian and Jewish medieval thought, as well as on the subsequent Islamic tradition, is charted in this volume alongside studies which provide a comprehensive introduction to and analysis of his philosophy. Contributions from leading scholars address a wide range of topics including Avicenna's life and works, conception of philosophy and achievement in logic and medicine. His ideas in the main areas of philosophy, such as epistemology, philosophy of religion and physics, are also analyzed. While serving as a general introduction to Avicenna's thought, this collection of critical essays also represents the cutting edge of scholarship on this most influential philosopher of the medieval era.

While the transmission of Greek philosophy and science via the Muslim world to western Europe in the Middle Ages has been closely scrutinized, the fate of the Arabic philosophical and scientific legacy in later centuries has received less attention, a fault this volume aims to correct. The authors in this collection discuss in particular the radical ideas associated with Averroism that are attributed to the Aristotle commentator Ibn Rushd (1126-1198) and challenge key doctrines of the Abrahamic religions. This volume examines what happened to Averroes’s philosophy during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Did early modern thinkers really no longer pay any attention to the Commentator? Were there undercurrents of Averroism after the sixteenth century? How did Western authors in this period contextualise Averroes and Arabic philosophy within their own cultural heritage? How different was the Averroes they created as a philosopher in a European tradition from Ibn Rushd, the theologian, jurist and philosopher of the Islamic tradition?

Henry of Ghent, who taught in the theology faculty in Paris from c. 1275 until his death in 1293, was an original, pivotal, and influential thinker. Henry’s theories on a wide range of theological and philosophical topics led to a transformation of scholastic thought in the years shortly after the death of Thomas Aquinas. The Companion to Henry of Ghent is an introduction to his thought. It first addresses the historical context of Henry: his writings, his participation in the events of 1277, and Muslim philosophical influences. The volume continues with an examination of his theology, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. It concludes with an examination of two authors whom he influenced: John Duns Scotus and Pico della Mirandola. Contributors include: Amos Edelheit, Juan Carlos Flores, Bernd Goehring, Ludwig Hödl, Tobias Hoffman, Jules Janssens, Marialucrezia Leone, Steven Marrone, Martin Pickavé, Roland Teske, SJ, Robert Wielockx, Gordon Wilson

The latest in the series based on the popular History of Philosophy podcast, this volume presents the first full history of philosophy in the Islamic world for a broad readership. It takes an approach unprecedented among introductions to this subject, by providing full coverage of Jewish and Christian thinkers as well as Muslims, and by taking the story of philosophy from its beginnings in the world of early Islam all the way through to the twentieth century. Major figures like Avicenna, Averroes, and Maimonides are covered in great detail, but the book also looks at less familiar thinkers, including women philosophers. Attention is also given to the philosophical relevance of Islamic theology (kalam) and mysticism--the Sufi tradition within Islam, and Kabbalah among Jews--and to science, with chapters on disciplines like optics and astronomy. The book is divided into three sections, with the first looking at the first blossoming of Islamic theology and responses to the Greek philosophical tradition in the world of Arabic learning. This 'formative period' culminates with the work of Avicenna, the pivotal figure to whom most later thinkers feel they must respond. The second part of the book discusses philosophy in Muslim Spain (Andalusia), where Jewish philosophers come to the fore, though this is also the setting for such thinkers as Averroes and Ibn Arabi. Finally, a third section looks in unusual detail at later developments, touching on philosophy in the Ottoman, Mughal, and Safavid empires and showing how thinkers in the nineteenth to the twentieth century were still concerned to respond to the ideas that had animated philosophy in the Islamic world for centuries, while also responding to political and intellectual challenges from the European colonial powers.

This unparalleled Companion provides a comprehensive and authoritative guide to Islamic law to all with an interest in this increasingly relevant and developing field. The volume presents classical Islamic law through a historiographical introduction to and analysis of Western scholarship, while key debates about hot-button issues in modern-day circumstances are also addressed. In twenty-one chapters, distinguished authors offer an overview of their particular specialty, reflect on past and current thinking, and point to directions for future research. The Companion is divided into four parts. The first offers an introduction to the history of Islamic law as well as a discussion of how Western scholarship and historiography have evolved over time. The second part delves into the substance of Islamic law. Legal rules for the areas of legal status, family law, socio-economic justice, penal law, constitutional authority, and the law of war are all discussed in this section. Part three examines the adaptation of Islamic law in light of colonialism and the modern nation state as well as the subsequent re-Islamization of national legal systems. The final section presents contemporary debates on the role of Islamic law in areas such as finance, the diaspora, modern governance, and medical ethics, and the volume concludes by questioning the role of Sharia law as a legal authority in the modern context. By outlining the history of Islamic law through a linear study of research, this collection is unique in its examination of past and present scholarship and the lessons we can draw from this for the future. It introduces scholars and students to the challenges posed in the past, to the magnitude of milestones that were achieved in the reinterpretation and revision of established ideas, and ultimately to a thorough conceptual understanding of Islamic law.

Insights into power, spectacle, and performance in the courts of Middle Eastern rulers In recent decades, scholars have produced much new research on courtly life in medieval Europe, but studies on imperial and royal courts across the Middle East have received much less attention, particularly for courts before 1500AD. In the Presence of Power, however, sheds new light on courtly life across the region. This insightful, exploratory collection of essays uncovers surprising commonalities across a broad swath of cultures. The pre-modern period in this volume includes roughly seven centuries, opening with the first dynasty of Islam, the Umayyads, whose reign marked an important watershed for Late Antique culture, and closing with the rule of the so-called “gunpowder” empires of the Ottomans and Safavids over much of the Near East in the sixteenth century. In between, this volume locates similarities across the Western Medieval, Byzantine and Islamicate courtly cultures, spanning a vast history and geography to demonstrate the important cross-pollinations that occurred between their literary and cultural legacies. This study does not presume the presence of one shared courtly institution across time and space, but rather seeks to understand the different ways in which contemporaries experienced and spoke about these places of power and performance. Adopting a very broad view of performances, In the Presence of Power includes exuberant expressions of love in Arabic stories, shadow plays in Mamluk Cairo, Byzantine storytelling, religious food traditions in Christian Cyprus, advice, and political and ethnographic performances of power.

The study of Islamic philosophy has entered a new and exciting phase in the last few years. Both the received canon of Islamic philosophers and the narrative of the course of Islamic philosophy are in the process of being radically questioned and revised. Most twentieth-century Western scholarship on Arabic or Islamic philosophy has focused on the period from the ninth century to the twelfth. It is a measure of the transformation that is currently underway in the field that, unlike other reference works, the Oxford Handbook has striven to give roughly equal weight to every century, from the ninth to the twentieth. The Handbook is also unique in that its 30 chapters are work-centered rather than person- or theme-centered, in particular taking advantage of recent new editions and translations that have renewed interest and debate around the Islamic philosophical canon. The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Philosophy gives both the advanced student and active scholar in Islamic philosophy, theology, and intellectual history, a strong sense of what a work in Islamic philosophy looks like and a deep view of the issues, concepts, and arguments that are at stake. Most importantly, it provides an up-to-date portrait of contemporary scholarship on Islamic philosophy.

"This book introduces readers to Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (known as Rhazes in Latin), one of the most innovative and divisive figures of the early philosophical tradition in the Islamic world. It attempts to reconstruct his notorious theory of "five eternals" which posited four principles alongside God for the creation of the world, which led Razi to be charged with heresy by other authors. Other topics discussed in depth include his medical works, his alchemical theories, his works on ethics, and his controversial views on religion and prophecy"--