Traditional medical lore along with its practitioners - druggists and healers - survives in Yemen today. Owing to the country's rich biodiversity, the main body of the medicines is plant-based. This book features fourteen scholars from Europe, North America and the Middle East (three of them from Yemen) who represent both humanities and natural sciences. They address the topic of herbal medicines and their multifaceted applications within traditional Yemeni society across boundaries of disciplines, such as Islamic studies, history, social anthropology, pharmacy and agriculture. The approaches...

George Dimitri Sawa's Arabic Musical and Socio-Cultural Glossary of Kitāb al-Aghānī is the first comprehensive lexicographical study of Umayyad and early Abbāsid-era music theory and practices. It defines melodic and rhythmic modes, musical forms, instruments, technical terms and metaphors used in evaluating compositions and performances, and the emotional effects of ṭarab. It explains the processes of composition and learning, performance practice, musical change and aesthetics, and addresses the behavior of court musicians to help understand societal views...

This volume brings together articles on various aspects of the intellectual and social histories of Islamicate societies and of the traditions and contexts that contributed to their formation and evolution. Written by leading scholars who span three generations and who cover such diverse fields as Late Antique Studies, Islamic Studies, Classics, and Jewish Studies, the volume is a testament to the breadth and to the sustained, deep impact of the corpus of the honoree, Professor Patricia Crone. Contributors are: David Abulafia, Asad Q. Ahmed, Karen Bauer, Michael Cooperson, Hannah Cotton,...

The volume contains critical editions of the extant parts of two hitherto unknown theological works by the Būyid vizier al-Ṣāḥib b. ʿAbbād (d. 385/925), who is well known to have vigorously promoted the teaching of Muʿtazilī theology throughout Būyid territories and beyond. The manuscripts on which the edition is based come from Cairo Geniza store rooms. They consist of two manuscripts for each of the two texts--testimony to the impact of al-Ṣāḥib's education policy on the contemporaneous Jewish community in...