Demonizing the Queen of Sheba
Demonizing the Queen of Sheba

Author: Jacob Lassner

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1993-12-08

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9780226469157

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Over the centuries, Jewish and Muslim writers transformed the biblical Queen of Sheba from a clever, politically astute sovereign to a demonic force threatening the boundaries of gender. In this book, Jacob Lassner shows how successive retellings of the biblical story reveal anxieties about gender and illuminate the processes of cultural transmission. The Bible presents the Queen of Sheba's encounter with King Solomon as a diplomatic mission: the queen comes "to test him with hard questions," all of which he answers to her satisfaction; she then praises him and, after an exchange of gifts, returns to her own land. By the Middle Ages, Lassner demonstrates, the focus of the queen's visit had shifted from international to sexual politics. The queen was now portrayed as acting in open defiance of nature's equilibrium and God's design. In these retellings, the authors humbled the queen and thereby restored the world to its proper condition. Lassner also examines the Islamization of Jewish themes, using the dramatic accounts of Solomon and his female antagonist as a test case of how Jewish lore penetrated the literary imagination of Muslims. Demonizing the Queen of Sheba thus addresses not only specialists in Jewish and Islamic studies, but also those concerned with issues of cultural transmission and the role of gender in history.

Continuity and Change in Medieval Persia
Continuity and Change in Medieval Persia

Author: A.K.S. Lambton

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 1988-01-01

Total Pages: 444

ISBN-13: 1438409974

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Continuity and often violent change in medieval Persia are revealed in this detailed study of aspects of Persian history during three turbulent centuries (1040–1335 A.D.). An extensive introduction provides the chronological framework for this examination of the vital areas of administrative, economic, and social history. This book is a major contribution from the pen of a scholar whose knowledge of the sources of the history of Islamic Persia and of the country itself is hardly to be matched by any living Western scholar. Lambton provides an astonishing amount of information and also uniquely deep insights into Persian history and society.

In Praise of Songs
In Praise of Songs

Author: Cynthia Robinson

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2002-01-01

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 9789004124530

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This study argues, based on primary sources, in favor of meaning in nonfigural ornament, and thus contributes to a debate central to the study of Islamic art. It also brings new material from the Andalusi poetic corpus in classical Arabic to another of Medieval Studies' central discussions, the "Troubadour Question."

Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History. Volume 2 (900-1050)
Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History. Volume 2 (900-1050)

Author: David Thomas

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2010-12-17

Total Pages: 787

ISBN-13: 9004216189

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Christian-Muslim Relations, a Bibliographical History 2 (CMR2) is the second part of a general history of relations between the faiths. Covering the period from 900 to 1050, it comprises a series of introductory essays, together with the main body of more than one hundred detailed entries on all the works by Christians and Muslims about and against one another that are known from this period. These entries provide biographical details of the authors where known, descriptions and assessments of the works themselves, and complete accounts of manuscripts, editions, translations and studies. The result of collaboration between leading scholars in the field, CMR2 is an indispensable basis for research in all elements of the history of Christian-Muslim relations.

Muslim Perceptions and Receptions of the Bible
Muslim Perceptions and Receptions of the Bible

Author: Camilla Adang

Publisher: Lockwood Press

Published: 2019-07-24

Total Pages: 497

ISBN-13: 1948488213

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The articles brought together in this volume deal with Muslim perceptions and uses of the Bible in its wider sense, including the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament as well as the New Testament, albeit with an emphasis on the former scripture. While Muslims consider the earlier revelations to the People of the Book to have been altered to some extent by the Jews and the Christians and abrogated by the Qurʾān, God's final dispensation to humankind, the Bible is at the same time venerated in view of its divine origin, and questioning this divine origin is tantamount to unbelief. Muslim scholars approached and used the Bible for a variety of purposes and in different ways. Thus Muslim historians regularly relied on biblical materials as their primary source for the pre-Islamic period when discussing the creation as well as the history of the Israelites and the prophets preceding Muḥammad. Authors seeking to polemicize against Jews and Christians were primarily interested in the presumed biblical annunciations of Muḥammad and his religion and / or in perceived contradictions and cases of internal abrogation in the Bible. These various concerns resulted from and had an impact on the ways in which Muslim authors accessed the scriptures.

Muslim Writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible
Muslim Writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible

Author: Camilla Adang

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-09-20

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9004451218

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Muslim Writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible deals with the way in which Judaism and its holy scriptures were viewed by nine medieval Muslim writers representing different genres of Arabic literature: Ibn Rabban al-ṭabarī, Ibn Qutayba, al-Ya‘qūbī, Abū Ja‘far al-ṭabarī, al-Mas‘ūdī, al-Maqdisī, al-Bāqillānī, al-Bīrūnī and Ibn ḥazm. After an introductory chapter on the reception of Biblical materials in early Islam and a presentation of the authors under review, the book focuses on their knowledge of Judaism and the text of the Hebrew Bible, and subsequently discusses issues frequently debated between Muslims and Jews, namely, the claim that the Torah contains references to Muḥammad, and the assertion that the Torah has been both abrogated and falsified. In the appendix, texts by Ibn Qutayba and al-Maqdisī are offered for the first time in an English translation.

Muslim Perceptions of Other Religions
Muslim Perceptions of Other Religions

Author: Jacques Waardenburg

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1999-08-19

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 0195355768

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Since its inception, Islam and its civilization have been in continuous relationships with other religions, cultures, and civilizations, including not only different forms of Christianity and Judaism inside and outside the Middle East, Zoroastrianism and Manicheism, Hinduism and even Buddhism, but also tribal religions in West and East Africa, in South Russia and in Central Asia, including Tibet. The essays collected here examine the many texts that have come down to us about these cultures and their religions, from Muslim theologians and jurists, travelers and historians, and men of letters and of culture.

Journal
Journal

Author: Asiatic Society (Kolkata, India)

Publisher:

Published: 1879

Total Pages: 592

ISBN-13:

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Making Mongol History
Making Mongol History

Author: Kamola Stefan Kamola

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2019-08-05

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 147442144X

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This book examines the life and work of Rashid al-Din Tabib (d. 1318), the most powerful statesman working for the Mongol Ilkhans in the Middle East. It begins with an overview of administrative history and historiography in the early Ilkhanate, culminating with Rashid al-Din's Blessed History of Ghazan, the indispensable source for Mongol and Ilkhanid history. Later chapters lay out the results of the most comprehensive study to date of the manuscripts of Rashid al-Din's historical writing. The complicated relationship between Rashid al-Din's historical and theological writings is also explored, as well as his appropriation of the work of his contemporary historian, `Abd Allah Qashani.