In the 9th century, a secret sect of the Ismā‘īlīs -- known in the Middle Ages under the name of Fatimids -- arose to play a prominent role in the history of the Near East. Their supreme head today is the Agha Khan. In this mesmerising book, Heinz Halm describes the early history of the Fatimids, from the founding and spread of the secret society to the rise of the caliphal dynasty to power in North Africa and the founding of Cairo, their capital.
Condensing research concerning questions of religion which encompass the social history of ideas and the religious uses of language, this book deals with three questions: the relationship of the Mishnah to Scripture, the relationship of the religious ideas people hold to the world in which they live, and the religious meaning of the formalization of language that characterizes the Mishnah in particular. In discussing how the Mishnah relates to Scripture - in the (later) mythic language of Rabbinic Judaism: "the oral Torah" to "the written Torah" - a complete analysis is presented, based on a systematic application of a single taxonomic program. Then an examination is made of how the stages in the unfolding of the Halakhah of the Mishnah relate to the principal events of the times, which delineate those stages. Here focus is given to those pre-70 C.E. components of the Halakhah that later come to the surface in the Mishnah, but discussion extends to the periods from the destruction of the Temple in 70 C.E. to the Bar Kokhba War, concluded in ca. 135 C.E., then from the reconstruction, 135 C.E., to the closure of the Mishnah, 200 C.E. Finally attention is given to methods of interpreting the rhetorical forms of the Mishnah in the context of the social culture laid bare by the socio-linguistics of the documents concerned. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.
This volume provides all the known Old Syriac Inscriptions from Edessa and surrounding Osrhoene from the first three centuries C.E. with translations, commentary, chapters on language, script and history, word indices, and a bibliography.
The individual character of Kingdom of Kush has often been overshadowed by the overwhelming cultural presence of its neighbour Egypt. This handbook in our series "Handbuch der Orientalistik/Handbook of Oriental Studies" for the first time presents a comprehensive survey of the rich textual, archaeological and art historical evidence for this Middle Nile Region Kingdom of Kush. Basing itself both on the evidence and scholarly literature, this work discusses the emergence of the native state of Kush (after the Pharaonic domination in the 11th century B.C.), the rule of the Kings of Kush in Egypt (c. 760-656) and the intellectual foundations and political history of the Kingdom in the Napatan (7th - 3rd centuries) and Meroitic (3rd century B.C. - 4th century A.D.) periods.
Naher und Mittlerer Osten sind und bleiben auf absehbare Zeit ein Brennpunkt der Weltpolitik. David Gardner gibt einen fundierten Überblick über diese Krisenregion. Scharfsichtig, und vor unbequemen Wahrheiten nicht zurückschreckend, schöpft seine Analyse aus einer grossen geschichtlichen Kenntnis und langjährigen persönlichen Erfahrung vor Ort. Mit der neuen US-Regierung und ihrer Politik im Nahen und Mittleren Osten muss es eine Neubewertung dessen geben, was Realpolitik im Nahen und Mittleren Osten bedeuten kann und soll. Die traditionellen politischen Muster, Israel unterstützen, ein Netzwerk verlässlicher Machthaber knüpfen, die Saudis besänftigen, den Islamismus unterdrücken, sind im 21. Jahrhundert, so Gardner, nicht mehr tragbar.
