Raḍī al-Dī Ibn ṭāwūs (d. 664/1266 in Bagdad) was a major figure in the history of Shī'ī thought. He published works on subjects ranging from tradition (ḥadīth) and polemics to history and astrology. Ibn ṭāwūs was an avid bibliophile, and his various writings contain remarkably detailed information about the books that he owned or read. Kohlberg's book is divided into two main parts. The first surveys the life, working methods and literary output of Ibn ṭāwūs and offers an extended analysis of his...

This important Book of Dreams K. al-Manām by Ibn Abī al-Dunyā (d. 281/894), a compendium of 350 Muslim dream narratives in Arabic, is now critically edited for the first time. Although dream accounts are scattered throughout most genres of classical Arabic literature, K. al-Manām is the only extant treatise dedicated solely to this topic. With the aim to provide the pious Muslim with a code of behaviour, the book relates dreams that deliver clear messages, of the kind that can be followed with no need for interpretation. The scholarly introduction in English...

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...

The Conclusive Argument of God is the master work of Shāh Walī Allāh of Delhi (1762), considered to be the most important Muslim thinker of pre-modern South Asia. This work, originally written in Arabic, represents a synthesis of the Islamic intellectual disciplines authoritative in the 18th century. In order to argue for the rational, ethical, and spiritual basis for the implementation of the hadith injunctions of the Prophet Muhammad, Shāh Walī Allāh develops a cohesive schema of the metaphysical, psychological, and social knowledge of his time. This...

Since the publication in 1921 of Ignaz Goldziher's Die Richtungen der islamischen Koransauslegung, which includes a discussion of Imāmī exegesis, no comprehensive work on this topic has appeared. In the intervening years, important Imāmī commentaries on the Qur'ān have become available, making possible a reappraisal of the subject. The present study aims to contribute to this task, primarily by examining the features and methods of Imāmī exegesis. Principally, it offers a description and analysis of the major tenets of Imāmī doctrine, as...

This volume contains the Arabic translations of a lost treatise by Alexander of Aphrodisias (c. AD 200) On the Principles of the Universe with English translation, introduction and commentary. It also includes an Arabic and Syriac glossary. The introduction and commentary deal in detail with the manuscripts, the translators and the exegetical tendencies of the text, as well as with its reception in Arabic philosophy. The main theme of the work is the motion of the heavenly bodies and their influence on the physical world.

This book offers an annotated English translation of one of the earliest dispensatories ever written in the Arabic language, viz. the small version of the Aqrābāḏīn composed by the Nestorian physician Sābūr ibn Sahl (d. 869 CE). The translation is based on the edition of the Arabic text as published in volume 16 of the IPTS series, which in turn is based on the oldest handwritten witness of Arabic pharmacy known so far. The translation is framed by a detailed introductory study of the subject, and by various glossaries which make this important source...

This volume deals with the reception of Aristotle's Metaphysics in the masterpiece on metaphysics by Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, d. 1037 C.E.), one of the major exponents of Arabic philosophy: the Ilāhiyyāt (Science of Divine Things) of the Kitāb al-Sifā' (Book of the Cure), known in the Latin Middle Ages as Liber de Philosophia Prima sive Scientia Divina. The first part of the book (on the Arabic translations of the Metaphysics, al-Kindī and al-Fārābī) introduces the discussion of Avicenna's reshaping of the...

Using the most extensive collection hitherto of his published and unpublished writings, this volume provides a comprehensive, in-depth and interdisciplinary study of the ethical philosophy of al-Rāzī (1149-1210), a most outstanding and influential medieval philosopher-theologian. A complex picture emerges, across his philosophical, theological, ethical and juristic works, of a consistent and multi-layered ethical theory. Al-Rāzī departs from classical Ash'arī divine command ethics to develop both a consequentialist ethics of action, which seriously rivals Mu'tazili...

The Akhbārī School dominated the intellectual landscape of Imāmī Shiʿism between the Seventeenth and early Nineteenth Centuries. Its principal doctrines involved a reliance on scripture (primarily the sayings or akhbār of the Shiʿite Imams) and a rejection of the rational exegetical techniques which had become orthodox doctrine in Imāmī theology and law. However, the Akhbārīs were not simple literalists, as they are at times portrayed in secondary literature. They developed a complex theory of exegesis in which texts could be interpreted,...