This book is an important and original study of medieval Arabic theories of poetics. It examines the commentaries on Aristotle's Poetics by Alfarabi and Avicenna, placing them fully in the context of the Arabic development of Aristotle's logical theory. In this the author breaks new ground, showing how the philosophers justified the logical and moral power of poetics discourse. Its concern for philosophical issues in the Classical Arabic tradition distinguishes this book from other studies of literary theory.

The Buyid wazir Abū I-Faḍl Ibn al-'Amīd (died 970 A.D.) became famous as a poet and expert in epistolary literature (insą'), but also as a scholar and scientist. Until now our only source of information was from fragments and quotations in later literature. Fortunately, two Arabic manuscripts from the 12th and 13th centuries have been preserved containing seven letters which were sent to the Buyid emir 'Aḍudaddaula, and confirming posterity's high opinion of him. Moreover, they reveal the originality of a personality which, based on the knowledge of Greek and...

This work surveys all available evidence on Athenian settlements and settlers of the fourth century B.C., calling several conventional interpretations about them into question, through a rigorous preference for evidence over speculation.
Three chapters trace a chronology of events relating to the settlements, examine their personnel collectively, statistically, and individually, and discuss evidence for their political, economic, and religious institutions. Long appendixes establish improved texts of numerous inscriptions relevant to the topic and provide several kinds of data on more than...

This collection of articles by 14 Middle East historians is a pathbreaking work in the history of Middle Eastern women prior to the contemporary era. The collection seeks to begin the task of reconstructing the history of (Muslim) women's experience in the middle centuries of the Ottoman era, between the mid-seventeenth century and the early nineteenth, prior to hegemonic European involvement in the region and prior to the "modernizing reforms' inaugurated by the Ottoman regime.

This volume deals with the origins and rise of Christian pilgrimage cults in late antique Egypt. Part One covers the major theoretical issues in the study of Coptic pilgrimage, such as sacred landscape and shrines' catchment areas, while Part Two examines native Egyptian and Egyptian Jewish pilgrimage practices. Part Three investigates six major shrines, from Philae's diverse non-Christian devotees to the great pilgrim center of Abu Mina and a Thecla shrine on its route. Part Four looks at such diverse pilgrims' rites as oracles, chant, and stational liturgy, while Part Five brings in...

This book endeavors to identify and define the phenomenon of freethinking in medieval Islam, in particular as exemplified in the figures of the two most notorious intellectual heretics, Ibn al-Rāwandī (9th C.) and Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (10th C.). The development of Islamic freethinking is analyzed on the background of the paramount importance of prophetology in Islam. The book examines the image of the freethinkers in Islam and its connection to the legacy of late antiquity, and to the traditions about Indian and Sabian religions. The last chapters examine repercussions of...

This volume contains the critical edition with English translation of a richly-illustrated Arabic treatise on the construction of over one hundred various astronomical instruments, many of which are otherwise unknown to specialists. It was composed by Najm al-Dīn al-Misrī, a rather shadowy figure, in Cairo ca. 1330. The edition is accompanied by a detailed technical and historical commentary, which is framed as a self-standing essay on Islamic mathematical instrumentation. While this essay/commentary is mainly based on Najm al-Dīn's treatise, it also benefits from the...