In A History of Water Engineering and Management in Yemen, Ingrid Hehmeyer describes the three-way relationship between water, land, and humans from ancient to medieval and premodern times. As illustrated in case studies from four sites, individual ecosystems necessitated different engineering and management approaches in order to make good use of the scarce water resources for both irrigated agriculture and domestic consumption. Material remains and written sources provide the evidence for a comprehensive examination of continuity and change; technical and managerial struggles, failures,...

Winner of the 2021 Sheikh Zayed Book Award (category: Arab Culture in Other Languages) Browse a preview of Arabic Oration: Art and Fuction. In Arabic Oration: Art and Function, a narrative richly infused with illustrative texts and original translations, Tahera Qutbuddin presents a comprehensive theory of this preeminent genre in its foundational oral period, 7th-8th centuries AD. With speeches and sermons attributed to the Prophet Muḥammad, ʿAlī, other political and military leaders, and a number of prominent women, she assesses types of orations and themes, preservation and...

The phonetical and phonological interpretation of Hittite is exceptionally complicated. This is due to the data being accessible only through a writing system symbolizing the spoken chain by signs, which does not prejudge the sound form of the units represented, nor the relations of linearity they maintain with each other. This book is the first comprehensive study of Hittite phonology conducted from a descriptive perspective and the first to use the results of experimental phonetics and phonological typology. In spite of problems probably destined to remain unsolved, this study...

In Kanišite Hittite Alwin Kloekhorst discusses the ethno-linguistic make-up of Kaniš (Central Anatolia, modern-day Kültepe), the most important Anatolian mercantile centre during the kārum-period (ca. 1970-1710 BCE), when Assyrian merchants dominated the trade in Anatolia. Especially by analysing the personal names of local individuals attested in Old Assyrian documents from Kaniš, Alwin Kloekhorst demonstrates that the main language spoken there was a dialect of Hittite that was closely related to but nevertheless distinct from the Hittite language as spoken in the later Hittite...

An online, Open Access version of this work is also available from Brill. A Literary History of Medicine by the Syrian physician Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah (d. 1270) is the earliest comprehensive history of medicine. It contains biographies of over 432 physicians, ranging from the ancient Greeks to the author’s contemporaries, describing their training and practice, often as court physicians, and listing their medical works; all this interlaced with poems and anecdotes. These volumes present the first complete and annotated translation along with a new edition of the Arabic text showing the...

Ottoman-Southeast Asian Relations: Sources from the Ottoman Archives, is a product of meticulous study of İsmail Hakkı Kadı, A.C.S. Peacock and other contributors on historical documents from the Ottoman archives. The work contains documents in Ottoman-Turkish, Malay, Arabic, French, English, Tausug, Burmese and Thai languages, each introduced by an expert in the language and history of the related country. The work contains documents hitherto unknown to historians as well as others that have been unearthed before but remained confined to the use of limited scholars who had access to the...

In World History as the History of Foundations, 3000 BCE to 1500 CE, Michael Borgolte investigates the origins and development of foundations from Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages. In his survey foundations emerge not as mere legal institutions, but rather as “total social phenomena” which touch upon manifold aspects, including politics, the economy, art and religion of the cultures in which they emerged. Cross-cultural in its approach and the result of decades of research, this work represents by far the most comprehensive account of the history of foundations that has hitherto...

Working with manuscripts has become a digital affair. But, are there downsides to digital photos? And how can you take advantage of the incredible computing power you have literally at your fingertips? Cornelis van Lit explains in detail what happens when manuscript studies meets digital humanities. In Among Digitized Manuscripts you will learn why it is important to include a note on the photo quality in your codicological description, how to draw, collect, and publish glyphs of paleographic interest, what standards (such as TEI and IIIF) to abide by when transcribing a text, how to write...

In The Shīʿīs in Palestine Yaron Friedman offers a survey of the presence of Shīʿism in the region of Palestine (today: Israel) from early Islamic history until the contemporary period. It brings to light many pieces of information and interesting developments that are not widely known, in addition to the general point that, contrary to common belief, the Shīʿī community has played a significant role in the history of Palestine. The volume includes a study of Shīʿī shrines in Palestine, as well as showing the importance of these Muslim sites and holy towns in Palestine in the...

This handbook aims mainly at an analytical documentation of all the known textual remnants and the preserved artifacts of Arabic shadow theatre, a long-lived, and still living, tradition — from the earliest sightings in the tenth century to the turn of the twentieth century. The book consists of three main parts and a cluster of appendixes. Part One presents a history of Arab shadow theatre through a survey of medieval and premodern accounts and modern scholarship on the subject. Part Two takes stock of primary sources (manuscripts), published studies, and the current knowledge of various...