‘Solving the rumūz ’: Mamlūk-era sources on alchemical symbolism

The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayri an the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition

The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayri an the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition

David J. Wasserstein, Coins as Agents of Cultural Definition in Islam, Poetics Today, Vol. 14, No. 2, Cultural Processes in Muslim and Arab Societies: Medieval and Early Modern Periods (Summer, 1993), pp. 303-322

Sigmund Freud haunts us, no doubt. But at a time when canons are being reexamined and intellectual genealogies (including hauntology) are being questioned, how relevant is it to excavate Freud and psychoanalysis more generally? Is it to undertake some sort of exorcism of our critical identifications, projections, and attachments vis-à-vis his work? There is a way, perhaps, to read Freud's text and our relation to it not in order to uncover Freud's truth or express loyalty to his theses and legacy. There is a way, no doubt, to enter through Freud's text not in order to find him at the end but precisely to lose him and upend in the process those readings that exclusively situate Freud within a specific genealogy of Western philosophy and theory.As a scholar of theory and literature, I grapple with these questions all the time, recognizing that the voices of the thinkers we study resonate deep within us and echo in our works. Psychoanalysis more specifically draws us to the text with the promise of illuminating the relation to the self and the other, and understanding the workings of desire, fantasy, and the relation to the past. Soon we realize that attaining this understanding is constantly deferred; what is gained instead is an appreciation for a reading practice that follows the trail of the hidden, the secret, and those wild connections that never coalesce. I point to this process in the literary theory seminar that I teach in comparative literature. Starting with Freud's Interpretation of Dreams (1899), I ask students to pay attention to Freud as a reader of texts regardless of his final interpretation and diagnoses. I invite them to notice his attempt at vulnerability—though failing according to Jacques Lacan and others—by allowing himself to free associate as he recalls and then interprets Irma's dream. The process of Freud's associations, unfolding across various myths and hermeneutical traditions, theories and hypotheses, is what interests me as a comparatist. This process that winds and meanders is also a reading practice that identifies conversations, exposes connections, and activates comparative frameworks that were hitherto unimaginable. At the end, there must be a way to turn the work of theory into a work of imagining, which is precisely what the two scholars with whom I engage here do.Reproducing conversations and tracing associations with no promise of closure or recognition are the main characteristics of Omnia El Shakry's The Arabic Freud: Psychoanalysis and Islam in Modern Egypt and Sarah Pinto's The Doctor and Mrs. A.: Ethics and Counter-Ethics in an Indian Dream Analysis. These scholars enter through the psychoanalytic portal but end up encountering mysticism and literature, Ibn ‘Arabi and the Mahabharata, Hindu socialist fantasies in 1940s Punjab, and criminology and psychology journals in 1940s Egypt. Each in her own way, they identify new intellectual constellations and texts that have never been read before or not in this way. In fact, they bring in these texts and devise reading practices directed at them that could not be reduced to the imposition of or resistance to Western concepts and methods and to the hegemonic place of the modern episteme in postcolonial imaginaries. These reading and critical practices, as they are being articulated and imagined in Pinto's and El Shakry's works, construct new objects and fields of study that connect time periods and locales and rewrite in the process the history of modernity from the perspective of the global South. Specifically, the reader discovers a language of subjectivity that draws on Islamic philosophy and mysticism and on Sanskrit myth and literature. Psychoanalysis, in the end, becomes misrecognized. The portal through which these scholars enter reveals an intellectual wonderland where Freud himself becomes irretrievable or absorbed consciously and unconsciously by psychological, national, and literary projects that connect Egypt to India and beyond.In Pinto's work, there is no production of an ethical subject but rather of a fictional one, moving from the Freudian text and couch into performances from Sanskrit mythology and their popular adaptations. Trained as a cultural anthropologist, Pinto tells the story of Mrs. A. and Dr. Satya Nand. She describes an encounter between analyst and analysand wherein the desire for knowledge and the proprietor of knowledge that Lacan theorized is no longer central. The analyst who recorded and anonymized his sessions with Mrs. A. is referred to as an “archivist” and “collaborator.” As their conversation opens up to a world of connections, fantasies, and political utopias, Mrs. A. and Dr. Nand engage in a form of creative imagining. The reader is brought into this conversation to listen, discover, and associate in new ways.Dr. Satya Nand, a psychanalyst trained in Britain, was trying to develop a therapeutic model that is not only adapted to the Indian context but one that is also universal. The heroine of his book The Objective Method (1947) is a patient known only as Mrs. A. An upper-class woman in her early twenties, Mrs. A. talks about her unhappy and childless marriage and household intrigues, discusses homosexuality and polyandry, and expresses admiration for Nehru and socialism. Pulling at the threads of Dr. Nand's text, Pinto reveals not so much a Dora-like case study or an attempt at “finding, naming, or fixing pathology but seeking a new way to talk about thinking and think about talking. It is a record of a conversation, and Satya Nand's translations of Mrs. A.’s words into his method are as apparent as the little, intimate performances that occurred in the room where they spoke.”1 Entering Dr. Nand's text, Pinto shifts the attention of the reader from the psychoanalytic encounter's models of talking and listening in a therapeutic context to a kind of exchange through which unfold histories of Hindu socialism and theories of a holistic self that draws on the Mahabharata and other cultural influences. The analyst-directed speech veers from revealing the truth of the subject in order to bring forth a new kind of telling, listening, and reading practice. Pinto leads her reader to hear differently, other things, and make new meaning.Mrs. A.’s daydreams and fantasies collected in Dr. Nand's book lose the Freudian subject itself, projecting it as a fiction that moves and signifies comparatively across multiple traditions: Where Hinduism and psychoanalysis are concerned, after decades and decades of what scholars like to call cross-fertilization, and given intertwined pre-histories mediated by roving ideas and narratives, does it even make sense to think of these domains as encountering each other, now, or in 1947? . . . Speaking, as Satya Nand did, from a world of literatures, places with their own canons, terminologies, and intellectual traditions, let alone myths, suggests creative ways of thinking that break through the weary line between the details of locations (ethnography) and concepts that might orient them. (127)Thus, Pinto's work breaks the stronghold of disciplinary linearity to suggest multiple and uneven ways of reading. What is revealed in the sessions allows us to imagine a different understanding of modernity that is simultaneously literary and political, performed in Dr. Nand's cabinet but also in the villages and households of 1940s Punjab.Equally breaking with a linear reading of influence and resistance vis-à-vis the Western episteme, El Shakry writes in The Arabic Freud, maps out the topography of modern selfhood and its ethical and epistemological contours in postwar Egypt. What does it mean, I ask, to think through psychoanalysis and Islam together, not as a ‘problem’ but as a creative encounter of ethical engagement? Rather than view Islamic discourses as hermetically sealed, or traffic in dichotomous juxtapositions between East and West, this book focuses on the points of intersection, articulation, and commensurability between Islamic discourses and modern social scientific thought, and between religious and secular ethics.2El Shakry explores how the encounter with psychoanalytic thought and writing produced a rethinking of Islamic mysticism and subject formation in postwar Egypt. Moving from the anxiety of influence to the ethics of the encounter—thinking of Édouard Glissant here—El Shakry's work allows us to sit with concepts and traditions and engage their development on their own terms.Trained as an intellectual historian, El Shakry aims at “understanding psychoanalysis ethnographically, not simply by provincializing psychoanalysis's European provenance, but rather by demonstrating the non-Western traditions and individuals who contributed to psychoanalysis as a body of knowledge that was always already hybridized with the discourse of the other” (11). Rather than applying psychoanalysis to Islam or examining the influence and reception of psychoanalysis and the work of Freud specifically, El Shakry tells instead the story of an interaction and an exchange that informed and shaped multiple traditions. Engaging with figures such as Ibn ‘Arabi and al-Taftazani, El Shakry reads psychoanalysis through Islamic mysticism and Islamic mysticism through psychoanalysis. The reader is brought into the comparative secret (Arabic, sir) of the historical and theoretical analysis. The reader is at times disoriented, creatively led to explore the division of the self in the Sufi tradition, losing sight of Freud and Lacan, coming back to them, connecting, and then diving again into an exploration that takes them on different journeys and associations. The writing is never direct; it circles and curls, rises and descends, following the rhythm of the nafs (the breath but also the self), meandering into its depths in the hope of revealing its secrets.Just like Sarah Pinto enters through the door that Dr. Nand opened in his chronicle of Mrs. A., El Shakry enters through the door of Yusuf Murad. Editor of Majallat ‘ilm al-nafs (Journal of Psychology), Murad was a key figure of psychology (Gestalttheorie, especially) and psychoanalysis in postwar Egypt. Continuing in the tradition of nahda thinkers such as Ahmed Faris al-Shidyaq,3 “In his midcentury dictionary, editor Yusuf Murad noted that he often returned to classical Arabic texts in order to create new translations for words and clear, precise, and capacious meanings” (65). The translation and engagement that Murad initiated have their place in the larger history of psychoanalysis and are not merely on its receptive end. El Shakry elaborates on Murad's rigorous and multifaceted engagement with psychology and philosophy thereby precluding the kinds of foreclosure that simplistic readings assume by painting the native as a passive receptor of European thought and knowledge. She portrays someone like Murad as translator and complicator of those very theories as he contributes to and potentially displaces their genealogies in the West. El Shakry's work exposes the superficial readings of Western knowledge and its effects on local contexts in the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere, portraying instead interactive and critical intellectual translations and in this case therapeutic models. Engaging with questions of the social through phenomenology and gestalt, Murad draws on the rich legacy of Islamic mysticism including al-Razi and Ibn ‘Arabi to think with psychoanalysis about the self, language, love, and subjectivity.El Shakry's thesis follows the course of critical nahda studies. The nahda, or Arab renaissance, which is associated with the project of Arab cultural and political modernity starting in the nineteenth century, simultaneously engages with Western knowledge and practices and Arab-Islamic ones. In this context, Majallat ‘ilm al-nafs and its editor Yusuf Murad express through translation, engagement, and critique a model of acknowledgment involving multiple intellectual traditions and subject formations. Ultimately, El Shakry argues that “it is not about the alleged modern presence or medieval absence of interiority, nor a simple narrative of modernity's claim to individual autonomy in the face of medieval heteronomy. Rather, what one finds in the modern period is a coexistence of autonomy and heteronomy, of the traditional practice of ethical self-attunement (tahdhib al-nafs) and the modern science of psychology (‘ilm al-nafs)” (60).El Shakry's work resonates with my reading of madness as junun but also as queerness and possession in Trials of Arab Modernity,4 and my engagement with the tradition, let's say, of akhbar (news, lore), integral to the understanding of the Arab blogosphere in Leaks, Hacks, and Scandals.5 The modern is not the negation of what precedes it, nor does it constitute a historical epistemic break as Michel Foucault would have it. In effect, multiple discourses continue to operate within modernity. Both in El Shakry and Pinto's works there is a rigorous deconstruction of the epistemological formations that lend themselves to hegemonic structures and models of reading especially psychoanalysis. In their works, the Freudian subject is engendered through the nafs of Ibn ‘Arabi and that of Shakuntala from the Mahabharata.Psychoanalysis as El Shakry and elsewhere Moneera al-Ghadeer6 argue is already in dialogue with the Arab-Islamic tradition, from Lacan's turn to Ibn ‘Arabi in his first seminar, to Freud's melancholia that could be traced to Avicenna's Canon on Medicine. This comparative trajectory adopted by El Shakry as well as by scholars such as Sahar Amer,7 Yoav Di-Capua,8 and others traces encounters and conversations that lead us to rethink what theory means. This is the kind of work I did in my reading of Arab modernity as a somatic condition, bringing al-Tahtawi and Walter Benjamin in conversation, reading al-Tahtawi through Benjamin and Benjamin through al-Tahtawi. This reading revealed that the modern could also be traced to a café in Marseilles, some thirty years before Charles Baudelaire's “À une passante,” wherein an Egyptian Imam turns to poetry as a repoussoir as he experiences fragmentation.9 Decolonizing psychoanalysis or theory more generally doesn't mean to extract or remove it in a futile quest for cultural or literary authenticity, but rather to take it on a journey that makes it lose itself, misrecognize itself, in the double meaning of the term. The comparative framework in El Shakry proliferates with critical associations. This proliferation makes connections when least expected and enables the deconstructive work to become truly generative, truly decolonial. The aim is to wonder, at the end, are we in Freud or in Ibn ‘Arabi?This comparative framework that can never reduce a complex and multifaceted relation between Arab-Islamic and European traditions allows us to rethink the question of modernity. The history of the subject and its trials and collapses at the intersection of literature and politics, East and West, the classical and the modern, is present in El Shakry's and Pinto's works as well. Modernity in its Western constellation involving the subject, the novel, and the nation-state to name a few is not produced in Europe and then imported to the global South but rather emerges in between, read from the perspective of a Sudanese village and its prodigal son who has returned after a long trip.10 To engage with this legacy is to look at selfhood and its development by examining the narratives and fictions of subjectivity and the genres to which these fictions give rise.More broadly, El Shakry's and Pinto's works raise the question of theory and of its application or histories beyond the Western context. Theory has been used or applied to the non-Western object—and to the object, period—be it a literary work or a cultural context or a time period. Theory has also been understood as a hegemonic structure that neutralizes or at least permanently reshapes in its own image works that are outside of its context. Few are those critics who are able to activate the kinds of dialogue that truly intervene in theoretical genealogies, excavating connections and stakes that reverberate beyond the particular trajectories with which theory is associated in its Euro-American context. This is the work that El Shakry, Pinto, and others do. It is meant to expose, upend, and imagine new intellectual trajectories and reading practices. Specifically, these practices deconstruct and decolonize epistemological formations not by extracting the foreign and framing its presence as a hegemonizing structure from psychology to madness to sexuality, but rather by initiating dialogues and identifying new critical trajectories. More important, as these practices meander and associate, they show vulnerability, which gives Freud's attempt at vulnerability in Interpretation of Dreams a new meaning. At a time when calls for purity in all forms unleash a violent and utopian cribble that seeks to split and isolate, El Shakry's and Pinto's works lead the way toward rigorous intellectual projects and political interventions.

Reviewed by: Cross Veneration in the Medieval Islamic World: Christian Identity and Practice under Muslim Rule by Charles Tieszen James H. Kane Tieszen, Charles, Cross Veneration in the Medieval Islamic World: Christian Identity and Practice under Muslim Rule (The Early and Medieval Islamic World), London, I. B. Tauris, 2017; hardback; pp. x, 229; R.R.P. US $95.00, £59.00; ISBN 9781784536626. Any satisfactory account of inter-religious dialogue and debate should illuminate the perspective of more than just one party to the discussion. Charles Tieszen's new book does this admirably. Drawing on a wide range of argumentative texts composed by both Christian and Muslim authors between the eighth century and the fourteenth, Tieszen provides a detailed and thoughtful analysis of how the idea and practice of cross veneration served as a kind of rhetorical whetstone against which writers on both sides of this medieval religious divide attempted to sharpen the truth claims of their respective faiths. Among the many insights of this valuable study is the conclusion that 'disputational literature' (p. 6) dealing with cross veneration was not penned simply to score points in esoteric theological debates. Rather, one of the key concerns of authors writing in this genre was to delineate the boundaries of their faith more clearly, and thereby reinforce the religious identity of their readers, in a milieu in which they believed it was in urgent need of strengthening. Such texts could therefore fulfil a hortatory and self-reflexive purpose just as readily as they could function as polemical weapons or apologetic instruments. Chapter 1 lays the foundation for the analysis with a lucid overview of defences of cross veneration against late antique pagan critics and in texts of the Adversus Judaeos tradition, which Tieszen argues left an enduring imprint on the arguments exploited by the Christian authors he goes on to discuss. One of these authors, John of Damascus, features prominently from the outset. Tieszen situates his work against the broader intellectual backdrop of debates regarding the worship of icons and symbols in the eighth-century Byzantine and Islamic worlds. Chapter 2 offers a particularly nuanced reading of John of Damascus's justification of cross veneration in his De haeresibus. In it, indirect 'counterattacks' in the works of Islamic authors such as 'Abd al-Jabbār (in 995) and Ibn Abī Ṭālib al-Dimashqī [End Page 203] (in 1321), and further rebuttals by the ninth-century East Syrian Christian writer 'Ammār al-Baṣrī, allow Tieszen to demonstrate how both Christians and Muslims manipulated the issue 'as a means for [religious] navigation […] and identification' (p. 45). Developing this theme, Chapter 3 elucidates in detail the ways in which various Christian authors moved beyond simply 'comparing Christian and Muslim piety […] [to] concentrate on offering explanations for their veneration of the cross' (p. 61). Tieszen suggests that many of these explanations, which foreground the symbolic nature of the cross and its inherent power, were designed to give Christians living in Islamic contexts 'a response to offer those Muslims with whom they were having [theological] discussions' (p. 90) and a way of buttressing 'the stability of their faith against the mounting pressures of Islam' (p. 91). Chapter 4 carries this argument even further with an analysis of some of the more innovative ideas in works by authors such as the ninth-century West Syrian theologian Abū Rā'iṭah al-Takrītī, who stressed the need to venerate unembellished (e.g. wooden) crosses, explained the cross as a Christian qiblah orienting worship towards God through Christ, and interpreted it as 'Christ's proxy on earth until he returns' (p. 104). Ideas such as these reinforced the notion of the cross as an essential distinguishing mark for Christians in the multireligious context of the medieval East. Choosing how to arrange the material in a study that focuses on 'texts spanning seven centuries' (p. 93) is far from straightforward. Though understandable, Tieszen's decision to structure his analysis thematically rather than chronologically does not always '[ease] the work readers must do in navigating through a large corpus of literature' (p. 15). Despite points of conceptual commonality, nonspecialist readers may be somewhat disoriented by his leaps from authors...

Reviewed by: Maimonides and the Merchants: Jewish Law and Society in the Medieval Islamic World by Mark R. Cohen Robert Brody Mark R. Cohen. Maimonides and the Merchants: Jewish Law and Society in the Medieval Islamic World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2017. 248 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009418000624 Mark Cohen's latest book focuses on the ways in which Maimonides's Mishneh Torah reflects the economic aspects of the society in which he lived, one in which—in contrast with the societies to which the authors of talmudic literature belonged—international trade and large-scale commercial enterprises filled a central role. Although I would count myself among those who tend, in Cohen's words, "to take the great codifier at his word when he insists in the Introduction to the Code and elsewhere that his work was simply a compilation … of rabbinic law up to his time and contained practically nothing new" (141), and would assert that this is an accurate characterization not only of Maimonides's view of himself but of the main thrust of his work, there is no doubt that his code includes some "updating" of talmudic law, an important aspect of which Cohen has revealed. In his opinion, Maimonides was motivated primarily by a desire to enable Jewish courts to deal satisfactorily even with cases not encompassed by earlier Halakhah in order to encourage Jewish merchants to settle their disputes in this framework rather than resorting to Islamic courts; this suggestion is plausible enough, although there is no direct evidence to support it (see inter alia pages 76, 94, and 101). The centerpiece of the volume is a study of Maimonides's treatment of a unique form of economic collaboration that predominated in the medieval Islamic world. Cohen calls this institution, which has been given various names by other researchers, şuḥba-agency. The essence of the arrangement is that each of two (rarely more) associates undertakes to execute without remuneration any commissions requested by his associate. Scholars who have written on the subject have often stressed the "informal" nature of this arrangement; Cohen, for example, emphasizes the fact that such an arrangement could be created orally, but in fact this was true of "formal" partnership agreements as well.1 In my opinion the most interesting features of this institution, from either an economic or a legal perspective, are two. First, when considered in isolation, each [End Page 458] commission executed by one associate on behalf of another appears to be a simple favor or act of friendship; it is only when the larger context is considered that the agent is seen to be compensated by the mutuality of the arrangement. Second, when merchants enter into a partnership they obviously cannot know in advance how much they will gain or lose as a result, but they do know that they are committing certain quantities of capital and labor and can expect to receive a given percentage of the profits or, at worst, to bear a certain percentage of the losses. In contrast, when they create a şuḥba-agency relationship neither partner has a clear idea of the obligations he is undertaking or the benefits he hopes to receive. The commissions he will be expected to perform on behalf of his associate and those that he will expect his associate to perform on his behalf will depend on future market conditions and economic opportunities. Nor was any effort made to set a financial value on the services that each associate performed on behalf of his colleague or to ensure that the exchange of unremunerated services was an equitable one. Cohen correctly emphasizes that Maimonides, like Saʿadiah Gaon a hundred and fifty years earlier, found a novel way to integrate this new sort of commercial arrangement into existing Halakhah, although it should be noted that neither author dealt explicitly with şuḥba-agency: each of them wrote in terms appropriate to a one-time commission, rather than a long-term and open-ended relationship.2 Saʿadiah's innovation was to treat the agent as a paid rather than an unpaid bailee; Maimonides's was to enable the merchant who commissioned the agent to impose an...

Abstract: Islamic Perspective on Knowledge and its Reflection on Science Education Activities in the Muslim World. The holy book of Islam, the Qur’an, is very clear about its support for scientific enterprises. This is supported further by the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad SAW. This strong doctrinal foundation found its historical manifestations in the so-called the golden age of Islam, where sciences flourished in the Muslim kingdoms. However, by the end of the medieval period, the Muslim zeal for sciences weakened for several reasons, which according to the writer resulting in the present day backwardness of Muslim countries in general in almost all branches of scientific activities. This paper attempts to discuss how knowledge and science are perceived by Islam and their implication for science education. Kata Kunci: Islam, ilmu pengetahuan, dan peradaban

Ibn Sina's contributions to epilepsy management: Innovations from the Islamic Golden Age.

The medieval Islamic Mediterranean was a significant hub for textile dyeing, not only due to its technical achievements but also because of its economic and commercial networks that played a defining role across the region and beyond. Compared to their European counterparts, Islamic states historically had broader access to dyestuffs, positioning themselves as key nodes in both production and interregional dyeing networks. Historical sources indicate that dyeing was a widespread economic activity throughout the Islamic world, from Egypt to al-Andalus, from the Maghreb to Anatolia. This study examines dyeing centers in the medieval Islamic Mediterranean, the organizational structures of dyers, their economic and social status, and the legal frameworks regulating their profession. By integrating historical records, legal documents, futuwwa manuals, waqf deeds, and archaeological findings, this research provides a comprehensive analysis of the role of the dyeing industry in medieval Islamic societies. The primary research question of this study is how the dyeing profession was positioned within the socio-economic framework of medieval Islamic societies and how its operational mechanisms were structured. Furthermore, it evaluates the relationship between dyers and governing authorities, as well as the legal and institutional mechanisms that regulated their activities. Previous studies have predominantly focused on specific textile centers, the procurement of dyestuffs, or the technical aspects of dye production. However, there is a notable gap in the literature regarding the institutional, legal, and socio-economic regulations governing the dyeing craft. By examining the position of dyers within medieval Islamic craft organizations and the legal frameworks shaping their profession, this study aims to address this gap. Synthesizing legal texts with historical narratives and archaeological findings, it offers a holistic perspective on the historical development of the dyeing industry and its impact on Islamic economies. Methodologically, this research utilizes a range of primary sources, including legal treatises, travelogues, and historical and geographical accounts, alongside secondary studies. Legal sources provide valuable insights into regulations imposed on dyers, covering taxation, occupational oversight, and commercial disputes. Historical chronicles and travel narratives offer extensive descriptions of the geographical distribution and economic significance of dyeing centers. Waqfiyya archives present evidence regarding the locations of dye workshops and their contributions to local economies, while archaeological findings confirm the material evidence of dye production and practices. The integration of these diverse sources facilitates a multidisciplinary approach that combines historical, legal, and archaeological perspectives. This study demonstrates that the dyeing profession was deeply embedded in the economic and social fabric of medieval Islamic societies. It highlights the professional organization of dyers within different communities, ranging from futuwwa and Ahi brotherhoods to the later development of guilds. Futuwwa manuals emphasize the ethical and spiritual dimensions of the craft, identifying legendary figures as patrons of dyers. Additionally, Islamic legal sources underscore the regulatory role of the ḥisbah institution in overseeing the dyeing profession. Muḥtasibs were responsible for monitoring dye quality, ensuring compliance with professional standards, and preventing fraudulent practices. In this context, ḥisbah treatises and ihtisab laws are examined to delineate the professional obligations of dyers. Another key finding of this study challenges the prevailing notion that dyeing was an exclusively Jewish profession. This widely accepted perspective is critically analyzed, and the study establishes that dyeing was not confined to any particular religious or ethnic group. The research underscores the significant role of Muslim dyers and emphasizes that assessments of the profession must consider regional and demographic variations. In conclusion, this study directly addresses the dyeing craft, which has often remained overshadowed within medieval textile studies. By integrating historical, geographical, legal, and archaeological sources, it provides a broad evaluation that extends from the placement of dye workshops to professional regulations, quality control mechanisms, and consumer protection measures. The findings highlight that the dyeing industry did not develop arbitrarily but rather within the framework of specific legal and social regulations, demonstrating its multicultural and dynamic nature.

This article will examine the thoughts of the caliph Harun al-Rasyid about the concept of Islamic education that he initiated. He succeeded in establishing the “Baitul Hikmah” library which became an icon in the golden age of Islam in the Abbasid Period. In fact, this library is a symbol of civilization and the center of Islamic world enlightenment for Western civilization. Interestingly, this library is also the center of translation and copying of ancient Greek, Persian and other intellectual legacies. This is evidence of the success of Harun al-Rasyid’s ideas in the world of Islamic education. This research uses descriptive analysis method to explain Harun al-Rasyid’s thoughts on Islamic education, then the content analysis method is used to find the basic ideas and concepts of development in the future. After conducting research, the authors conclude that the successful application of his thought to Islamic education cannot be separated from his great attention to science. Even with the advancement of science, the economy of the people at that time became advanced. This research is very important to be learned as through this research can discoverd a very brilliant thought of the great chaliph Harun al-Rasyid.

Islamic economic thought experienced significant development during the Islamic Golden Age, with Muslim scholars making major contributions to global economic knowledge. During this period, thinkers such as Al-Farabi, Ibn Khaldun, and Al-Ghazali introduced concepts focused on justice, social welfare, and a balance between material and spiritual needs. Through the translation of scholarly works, many Islamic economic concepts were transmitted to Europe, which was experiencing intellectual stagnation during the Dark Ages. This influence helped revive interest in economic thought in the West, particularly during the Renaissance. However, following the Islamic Golden Age, a substantial gap emerged in economic thought development between the Islamic world and the West. As the West progressed through the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism, Islamic economic thought faced a period of stagnation. This article examines the historical development of Islamic economic thought, the impact of knowledge transmission from the Islamic world to the West, and the relevance of Islamic economics in addressing modern economic challenges such as social inequality, financial crises, and the need for a more ethical and sustainable economic system.

Islamic civilization in the Middle Ages, the period of cultural, economic, and scientific development called the "Golden Age of Islam", has been a real source of pride for the Muslim world. As a high and dominant civil society, medieval Islamic civilization has now gone through the process of integration, where different cultures and minorities have merged into a single society with the condition that each of them preserves their own roots and creates a unique environment of coexistence. Several factors shaped coexistence in Islamic civilization. The first factor is the emergence of the Islamic religion in the 7th century. The second factor is the multitude of economic ties between the countries included in the Islamic world. Muslims understood that the basis of the economy was trade. The spread of Islam from the Middle East to China, from North Africa to the centres of Europe, developed trade. In the Middle Ages, Azerbaijan became one of the leading countries where trade developed due to its location at the crossroads of trade routes from East to West, which became important for the Caliphate. Thus, the multicultural environment created by the Arab Caliphate created a foundation for the development of trade in Azerbaijan, making this country an important point for the coexistence and welfare of peoples. The article studies the trade relations of Azerbaijan during the Middle Ages, the impact of the multicultural environment on trade, and the development of trade within the framework of the economic relations established with other countries. As for the research methods used in the study, a number of factors that play a key role in the economic development of Azerbaijan have been studied by preserving the principle of historicity, a comparative analysis of trade relations through historical-excursion.

This paper examines glassmaking in medieval Iberia from the point of view of technical literature, especially recipe books and alchemical treatises, in an attempt to assess to what extent this literary genre (if it is to be defined as such) may have affected, or have been affected by, technological developments in glassmaking between the eighth and sixteenth centuries. Iberian technical literature on the making of glass is put in connection with broader European and Mediterranean trends in the transmission of technical knowledge, the nature of scribal culture and the impact caused by the dissemination of the printing press. Ultimately, the paper aims to review the relationship that exists between the authors of technical literature and contemporary workshop practice, not only taking the written word as evidence, but also using the understanding provided by other fields of research, such as the study of the chemical characterization of medieval glass.

Science on Stage in Early Modern Spain

Quantitative data and collateral documents of the Bristol portion of the AHRC-funded project ‘Beyond the Book: Mass Reading Events and Contemporary Cultures of Reading in the UK, USA and Canada’, (2005-2008, grant number: 112166), a three-year interdisciplinary project. The study researched a selection of 21st-century reading events which employ mass media (TV and radio) and city-wide reading projects which employ the ‘One Book, One Community’ model. The primary aims of the transnational study were to investigate how mass reading events configure contemporary practices of reading and the cultural meanings of reading at local, national and international levels; to explain the uses and complexities of reading communities in different locations; to identify and analyse trans-national trends and differences in contemporary reading cultures and reading practices; and, to critique the popular function of literary fiction. The file contains the data collected from an online survey of readers in Bristol. Convenience sampling was employed. The survey was advertised through adverts in newspapers, on-line advertisements; flyers and bookmarks distributed through public library systems and cultural centres; via email through the research team’s formal and informal social and professional networks. The data includes reading choice, habits and practices; participation in broadcast and community book programming; and, basic demographic information (anonymised). The statistical data is deposited in .sav .csv and .por formats. Collateral material includes: Codebook and the Survey. Content was created between ca. 2006-01-06 and 2008-08-25. Content was saved 2008-10-31. http://www.beyondthebookproject.org/