THE LOST LEGACY OF CHRISTIANITY : AN ARAB CONTEXTUAL THEOLOGY UNDER THE ABBASID CALIPHATE FOR MODERN MISSIONARIES AND DHIMMI CHURCH NO. 2

This chapter deals with how the Islamic historical writing of the Middle Period developed directly from the early Islamic tradition, and its legacy remained deeply inscribed into the ways history was written and represented between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. However, as historians started to develop new styles and new genres, they turned to previously neglected aspects of the past, their social profile changed, and the writing of history became a more self-conscious, and to some degree self-confident, cultural practice. Most importantly, those issues that had motivated earlier historians, such as the legitimacy of the Abbasid Caliphate, declined in significance and historians of the Middle Period turned to new and more diverse subjects.

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Openbaring as principium theologiae

In die Skriflig/In Luce Verbi ◽

10.4102/ids.v27i1.1442 ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 27 (1) ◽

Author(s):

M. A. Kruger

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Contextual Theology ◽

World Religions ◽

General Revelation ◽

Reformed Churches ◽

The Relationship ◽

Point Of Departure ◽

The Universe

Theological renewal regarding different theological disciplines as well as the complete theological encyclopedia has lately been debated worldwide. Likewise, the Reformed Churches in South Africa are in a process of reconsidering the traditional reformed theological encyclopedia. This task can, however, not be fulfilled unless the basic issues are not also reconsidered. This article focuses on revelation as the principium theologiae. The line of argumentation centres round the fundamental confession in article 2 of the Belgian Confession. The truth implicit in this article, and accepted by the Reformed Churches, stresses that God can be known through his creation, sustenance and government of the universe, but He can be known more convincingly by studying holy Scripture. To prove this point of departure, Romans 1-4 and Romans 10 are discussed. The distinction between special and general revelation, contextual theology and the relationship to world religions and H. Bavinck's concept of the principium theologiae are also considered.

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Plague and the Fall of Baghdad (1258)

Medical History ◽

10.1017/mdh.2021.3 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 65 (2) ◽

pp. 157-177

Author(s):

Nahyan Fancy ◽

Monica H. Green

Keyword(s):

Fourteenth Century ◽

Thirteenth Century ◽

Disease Outbreaks ◽

Epidemic Disease ◽

Late Medieval ◽

Western Asia ◽

Abbasid Caliphate ◽

Historical Accounts ◽

A Minor

AbstractThe recent suggestion that the late medieval Eurasian plague pandemic, the Black Death, had its origins in the thirteenth century rather than the fourteenth century has brought new scrutiny to texts reporting ‘epidemics’ in the earlier period. Evidence both from Song China and Iran suggests that plague was involved in major sieges laid by the Mongols between the 1210s and the 1250s, including the siege of Baghdad in 1258 which resulted in the fall of the Abbasid caliphate. In fact, re-examination of multiple historical accounts in the two centuries after the siege of Baghdad shows that the role of epidemic disease in the Mongol attacks was commonly known among chroniclers in Syria and Egypt, raising the question why these outbreaks have been overlooked in modern historiography of plague. The present study looks in detail at the evidence in Arabic sources for disease outbreaks after the siege of Baghdad in Iraq and its surrounding regions. We find subtle factors in the documentary record to explain why, even though plague received new scrutiny from physicians in the period, it remained a minor feature in stories about the Mongol invasion of western Asia. In contemporary understandings of the genesis of epidemics, the Mongols were not seen to have brought plague to Baghdad; they caused plague to arise by their rampant destruction. When an even bigger wave of plague struck the Islamic world in the fourteenth century, no association was made with the thirteenth-century episode. Rather, plague was now associated with the Mongol world as a whole.

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