Pre-modern Islamic World Research Articles

Multilingualism from the perspective of the medieval Islamic vision of language

Abstract Arabic holds a cardinal position within Islamic civilisation, where it enjoys the status of sacred language for its direct connection to the Revelation and for the role attributed to it by the Revelation itself. However, not only does the Qur’an mention the existence of other languages and put them in relation with different divine messages, but also the providential nature of language diversity is explicitly maintained by the Holy Book of Islam. This theology of multilingualism represented the theoretical and symbolic framework within which the premodern Islamic world conceptualized language diversity. By looking at the works of philosophers, historians, poets, and religious masters from different parts of the Islamic world, we will try to understand how premodern authors viewed multilingualism, explained the existence of different languages, and accordingly engaged in plurilingual practices. Plurilingual practices provided the fertile ground on which various vernaculars, often bereft of any former written tradition (let alone literary prestige), could be transformed into full-fledged literary languages and become part of the wide Islamic language family. This process of incorporation of the multiple languages, encountered by the Islamic civilisation in its expansion, gave rise, throughout the Islamic world, to complex multilingual societies where individuals were frequently plurilingual and able to accommodate language diversity in flexible, creative, and, as reflected in literary productions, even aesthetic ways. In some cases, like the Andalusian context, such linguistic incorporation even involved romance vernaculars with significant consequences for their destiny as future modern European literary languages.

Islamic Medievalism and Mobility in Mathias Énard's Street of Thieves

ABSTRACTSet against the backdrop of the Arab Spring uprisings, Jihadist extremism, and the neoliberal exploitation of the Global South, Mathias Énard's 2012 novel Street of Thieves (Rue des voleurs) follows the fortunes of Lakhdar, a young man from Tangier who finds himself living as an undocumented migrant in Barcelona's notorious Carrer d’En Robador, the Street of Thieves. Lakhdar's misadventures are shaped by regional and global forces which have compelled Moroccan nationals to seek political and economic asylum in Mediterranean Europe. Although Street of Thieves is strikingly contemporary, this essay explores the novel's medievalism: its contrasting of the grim present with the premodern Islamic world as an era of sophistication, mobility and cultural exchange. The essay focuses on Lakhdar's preoccupation with his fellow Tangier native Ibn Battuta, the fourteenth‐century traveler and writer whose life becomes a frame through which Lakhdar views his own. It argues that contrary to the current tendency to view Ibn Battuta's world as a precursor to modern globalised culture, Énard's novel invokes cosmopolitan Islamic premodernity to comment on the turmoil of the modern Islamosphere and the harm done to the Islamicate world by Western neo‐colonialism and neoliberalism.

Exploring the Ethnicity and Social Condition of Muslim Calligraphers: A Short Note on Two Scribes from the Horn of Africa in the Mamlūk Period

Thus far, very little is known of the social origin and position of scribes and calligraphers in the premodern Islamic world. The difficulty in finding data on the biographies and activities of the professional practitioners of calligraphy in historiographical works is probably one of the main causes of this regrettable situation. Taking as a starting point the results of some previous groundbreaking research, the present article gathers scattered information retrieved from different sources about two calligraphers from the Horn of Africa that lived and worked in the Middle East during the Mamlūk period. In the analysis of these two cases, it is hoped that some light will be shed on the presence of calligraphic masters from the Horn in the Arab world from which may be gained, on a more general level, a better picture of the personalities of calligraphers in the Islamic world.

Finding the Faqīhāt: women’s legal scholarship and biography in premodern Morocco

ABSTRACTThis article examines women’s lives, scholarship, and memory in premodern Morocco through the life of Umm Hani al-ʿAbdusi (d. 1456). Biographical sources describe Umm Hani as a faqīha (legal scholar), placing her in an elite category of women who engaged with Islamic law at the level of legal interpretation. Tracing Umm Hani’s inclusion in biographical works over 500 years, this study demonstrates the respected space she occupied in these collections, as well as how her memorialisation evolved in the late twentieth century, reflecting the increased interest in women’s historical participation in Moroccan society. Rather than discounting the traces preserved in the sources as evidence of women’s lack of participation, this study argues that we should take these glimpses as hints at what might have been, what women’s lives and learning could have looked like outside of the biographical mentions recorded by men and institutional structures dominated by male scholars. Moreover, Umm Hani’s preservation in the sources stakes out a precedent for women’s interpretive authority in Islamic law in the premodern Islamic world.

Future Avenues in the Study of Islamic Law

In his essay, Najam Haider calls for “more cohesive and integrated scholarly engagement with the pre-modern Islamicate world.” To that end, the author urges scholars to creatively engage and treat legal texts as valuable sources for understanding the social and political predicates of Islamic societies. For example, tracing the creation and migration of legal texts across regions can yield valuable insights into multiple ideas and ideologies across the pre-modern Islamic world, as a part of a larger intertextual world where scholars study all actors in Islamic history as interacting with, complementing, and arguing against one another.

Sur la question des langues dans l’Islam oriental

Abstract This paper deals with the theme of the coexistence of different languages in the pre-modern Islamic world. Starting from an analysis of the concept of “Islamic language” as it was singled out by Alessandro Bausani, it traces the evolution of scholarship concerning language as a historiographical subject. With the help of samples from their literary production, some authors will be examined here, moving from the anthropological dualism of Firdawsī to reach the Ottoman era, when plurilingualism proved to be most successful, both in the domain of politics and in the culture. In this sense, the twentieth-century emergence of nationalisms produced a rupture which implied radical changes, and even the loss of a whole intellectual heritage.

Ritual Time, Civil Time, and Cosmic Time: Three Co-Existing Temporalities in Premodern Islamic Society

Abstract Most studies on time in the premodern Islamic world have focused on philosophical and theological aspects of time. The present article concentrates on time practices in daily life. Iconic for Muslim time practices are the five daily prayers, the weekly Friday prayer, the yearly fasting in the month of Ramaḍān, and the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime. They all have the character of a time-out from everyday routine and are well characterized by the term “ritual time.” For work, business and administration, the day and night are divided into twelve hours each, the seasonal hours. It is appropriate to call that “civil time.” Besides these two forms of time practices, a third is based on astrological concepts. The daily changing aspects which the moon forms with the sun and the planets are taken as favorable or unfavorable signs for particular actions, and enabled the individual to organize his or her life in accordance with the heavenly bodies. It seems apt to call that “cosmic time.”

Slaves for Pleasure in Arabic Sex and Slave Purchase Manuals from the Tenth to the Twelfth Centuries

Abstract Women probably made up the majority of the slave population in the medieval Islamic world, most of them used for domestic service. As men were legally permitted to have sexual relations with their female slaves, enslaved women could be used for sexual service. Erotic compendia and sex manuals were popular literature in the premodern Islamic world, and are potentially rich sources for the history of sex slavery, especially when juxtaposed with legal writings. This article uses Arabic sex manuals and slave purchase manuals from the tenth to the twelfth century to investigate the attitudes toward sexual slavery during this period, as well as the changing ethnicities and origins of slaves, and the use of legal manipulations.

Historicizing Slavery in the Medieval Islamic World

As Nadia Maria El Cheikh has said of the harem in western scholarship on the premodern Islamic world, slavery and the slave trade have yet to be fully historicized. While scholars of Abbasid-era slavery have made tremendous contributions in this regard over the last two decades, there remain ample opportunities to expand the chronological and geographic scope of their work. What does it mean to historicize slavery in the medieval Islamic Middle East and why is it worth doing?

Gazing Geometries: Modes of Design Thinking in Pre-Modern Central Asia and Persian Architecture

The architecture of the pre-modern Islamic world broadly identifies itself with geometric design. In erecting buildings, architects-engineers of the Islamic world utilized distinct modes of geometric projections vital to the spatial conception of the building. These representations identify three modes of design drawings: plans, revetments/vertical surfaces, and reflected ceiling plans. This paper will discuss these modes of drawings and their unique role in relation to the architectural “design thinking” traditions. Much has been examined regarding two-dimensional Islamic geometric patterns (girih), but little exists in terms of a comprehensive framework investigating various modes of geometric drawings in relation to formal, spatial, and tectonic conceptions of the architectural space. This paper fills a critical gap in the literature about Islamic architecture and examines this topic through primary resources and original pamphlets.

Before scientia sexualis in Islamic culture: ‘ilm al-bāh between erotology, medicine and pornography

Although sexuality is a theoretical concept not invented until the nineteenth century, sexual matters have of course been discussed in premodern cultures, though under other labels. In the premodern Islamic world, traditional jurisprudence (fiqh) with its inclusion of the thematic fields of ‘marriage’ (nikāh) and ‘ritual purity’ (tahāra) offered an opportunity to speak about the details of sexual life. In addition, premodern Islamic culture had a separate science concerned with sexual intercourse. ‘Ilm al-bāh, as it was called (bāh being the Arabic word for coitus), was a hybrid discipline in which different scientific concepts and literary genres were intermingled. But since all available information on sexual matters has been accumulated under the umbrella of this discipline, it can be considered a precursor to modern sexual science. Whereas most of what has been published about ‘ilm al-bāh in the West until now is limited to mere bibliographical surveys, this paper shall offer a more theoretical appraisal of this field of knowledge which also takes into account the epistemological shifts over the last decades in the historiography of sexuality.

Gendered Limitations on Women Property Owners: Three Women of Early Modern Cairo

AbstractWomen’s rights to be independent property owners in the pre-modern Islamic world can be overemphasized. This article explores the legal frameworks and social and familial customs that limited women’s ability to act as autonomous property owners in late Mamluk and early Ottoman Egypt. Three case studies of early modern women of different socio-economic status demonstrate how these limitations come into focus only when women’s ownership of property is tracked over the long term. These case studies and supporting material are drawn from sales and waqf endowment documents held at the Egyptian National Archives and the Archives of the Ministry of Religious Endowments.

Dreaming across Boundaries

Edited by Louise Marlow, this anthology consists of twelve articles on thehistory of dreams and their interpretation in an array of historical Muslimsettings. A number of well-known hadiths support the idea of ProphetMuhammad communicating with Muslims through dreams, and earlierbooks and articles have established the existence of “a dominant, if notentirely uncontested, tradition of [dream] interpretation” common to muchof the premodern Islamic world (p. 3). The articles address variations on thiscore discourse specific to the cultural, sectarian, and disciplinary orientations of the original actors. Beyond this goal of discursive specificity,Marlow notes two themes as having guided her selection: “the complexprocess of translation whereby a personal visionary experience assumes theform of a literary, narrative account accessible to, and subject to interpretationby, an audience” (p. 9); and the “ways in which the leveling and potentiallysubversive effects of dreams were countered by their integration intohierarchical or normative systems” (p. 8). While the articles are arranged ina roughly chronological order, they are considered here according to theirsociohistorical, literary, and intellectual-historical orientations ...

Organizing Knowledge: Encyclopaedic Activities in the Pre-Eighteenth Century Islamic World. Gerhard Endress

The contributions in this volume offer the first comprehensive effort to describe and analyse the collection, classification, presentation and methodology of information in the knowledge society of mediaeval Islam in the disciplines of religious and legal learning, as well as the rational sciences of Hellenistic origin - philosophy, mathematical and medical sciences. The volume begins with a general discussion of the concept of encyclopaedia. Successive chapters explore the bases of authority in the institutions of religion and law; biographical literature and handbooks of law; compendia of scientific and philosophical learning based on Iranian and Greek sources; and the more specialised expositions of mathematics and philosophy. The special character of Muslim institutions, their teaching traditions and syllabi is also put into perspective. This is a reference work for the principal genres of 'enyclopaedic' outlines and manuals - biography, legal handbooks, historiography of knowledge transmission, cosmography, and the philosophical sciences - and a major contribution to the literary and intellectual history of scholarly writing in the pre-modern Islamic world.

Cities in the Pre-Modern Islamic World: The Urban Impact of Religion, State and Society * Edited by AMIRA K. BENNISON and ALISON L. GASCOIGNE

Cities in the Pre-Modern Islamic World: The Urban Impact of Religion, State and Society * Edited by AMIRA K. BENNISON and ALISON L. GASCOIGNE

Image against Nature

Although the use of portable amulets and talismans in the pre-modern Islamic world is well documented, little is known about their monumental counterparts. Despite this neglect, references to apotropaia and talismans designed to offer protection from pests such as pigeons, snakes and scorpions are common in descriptions of medieval architecture in Arabia, Egypt, Syria and Iran. In many cases these consisted of pre-Islamic zoom-orphic spolia set at entrances and gateways. The function and nature of these images find close analogies in Byzantium, where antique statuary was also ascribed a talismanic value. In both cultural spheres, this value is predicated upon the ability of the image to invert or negate the power of the imaged, a function to which antique figural spolia may have been especially well suited.

THE STUDY OF PAINTING AND THE ARTS OF THE BOOK

essays in this volume are revised versions of papers first presented at the conference, The Making and Reception of Painting in the Pre-Modern Islamic World, held in May 1999 under the auspices of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University. Over two days, the speakers presented new research on various topics about painting and the arts of the book in the pre-modern Islamic world. Despite the breadth suggested by the conference's title, the majority of papers reflect a critical mass of scholarship that has grown up around painting and the arts of the book in Iran, Central Asia, and the Middle East, and within a literary milieu that was predominantly Persian, in the so-called classical period of Persian painting, spanning the fourteenth through the sixteenth century. Some of the essays dealt with earlier periods or expanded the geographical boundaries to offer perspectives on the art tradition in its formation and in its later reception as a cultural construct. division of this volume's essays into four categories reflects the organization of the conference.' As defined at the conference's inception, the categories encompass, first, the materials and methods used for book production; second, the conception and realization of painting; third, theories of painting and aesthetics; and fourth, later responses to paintings and books. By providing a thematic framework, these categories allowed a critical discussion of the physical and written sources that extended beyond the specifics of individual papers to question methods used to study manuscript painting and generally accepted scholarly paradigms and the foundations of arguments. critical insights of the four discussants-Yves Porter, Marianna Shreve Simpson, Irene Winter, and Gillru Necipoglu-greatly added to the debate. From its formative stages, Persian painting in both manuscripts and single-sheet images quickly emerged as a principal subject of scholarly interest, alongside the equally developed categories of architecture, ceramics, and carpets. Significant space was allocated to painting and the arts of the book in the first exhibitions of this century; indeed, some of them displayed painting to the exclusion of all other arts.2 But it has been quite a long time since a conference was devoted exclusively to painting and the arts of the book, and this r quires some comment. Chang s in the scholarship on Islamic art and architecture, as well as in pedagogy, have been reflected in the conf rences of recent years. A few-for example, a recent conference on the exhibition and collection of Islamic art,3 and another about pre-modern Islamic palaces4--were organized along thematic lines. Conferences on the art and architecture of the

Local scholars in a global work: Andalusi biographical dictionaries in Ḥajjī Khalīfa’s "Kashf al-ẓunūn"

Este artículo se centra en el análisis del género literario de las ṭabaqāt como parte de un proyecto que pretende analizar por qué, cómo y cuándo las obras compuestas en el Occidente islámico (al-Andalus y el Magreb, entendido aquí como la región geográfica situada al oeste de Egipto) encontraron un espacio fuera del lugar donde fueron redactadas, creciendo su interés por ellas en otras regiones el mundo islámico. La difusión de obras de este género fuera del área geográfica para la cual habían sido escritas implica la existencia de un interés dentro el mundo académico que las componía. En este artículo analizaré qué diccionarios biográficos andalusíes fueron incluidos en uno de los repertorios bibliográficos más famosos del mundo islámico, Kašf al-ẓunūn, escrito por Kātib Çelebī (m. 1067/1657), con el fin de arrojar luz no solo al caso particular del Occidente islámico, sino también de forma más general a la discusión acerca de las dinámicas locales/globales de transferencia de conocimiento de la época pre-moderna en el mundo islámico.