scholarly journals Il Libro come Maestro: Sufismo e Storia della Lettura nel Medioevo Islamico

1970 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 144-185
Author(s):  
Samuela Pagani

Between the end of the 8th/14th century and the beginning of the 9th/15th, the literate elites in Yemen and al-Andalus publicly debated the legitimacy and the educational function of Sufi books. In Yemen, where Ibn ʿArabī’s ‘school’ thrived, some jurists urged the ban of his books, while ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Jīlī and his associates extolled their educational virtue for Sufi novices. In al-Andalus, the debate focused on whether books could take the place of the master in Sufi education, an issue whose relevance was felt well beyond Sufi circles, prompting Ibn Ḫaldūn to join the discussion. These controversies, even though they were connected to specific local contexts, are significant in a general way because they offer evidence for the spread of private reading among Sufis in the later Middle Ages. To appreciate the historical importance of this, one should ask how far it is new and whether it is limited to Sufism. These two questions are addressed inthe first two parts of this article. The first part outlines key changes relating to Sufi literary output in the 12th and 13th centuries. In particular, it examines the tension between orality and writing within Sufism, and the ways in which the written transmission of mystical knowledge was controlled or repressed. The second part draws attention to shared paradigms of both esoteric and exoteric knowledge as the connection between private reading and innovation, and the preservation of oral symbolism in written transmission. Finally, the third part re-examines the 14th and 15th-century debates from the angle of the history of reading in medieval Sufism. The arguments exchanged in these debates bear witnesses to changes in reading practice linked to the shifting relationships between authority and knowledge in Islamic cultural history.

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Redacción CEIICH

<p class="p1">The third number of <span class="s1"><strong>INTER</strong></span><span class="s2"><strong>disciplina </strong></span>underscores this generic reference of <em>Bodies </em>as an approach to a key issue in the understanding of social reality from a humanistic perspective, and to understand, from the social point of view, the contributions of the research in philosophy of the body, cultural history of the anatomy, as well as the approximations queer, feminist theories and the psychoanalytical, and literary studies.</p>


Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov

The concluding chapter highlights how the cultural history of graphic signs of authority in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages encapsulated the profound transformation of political culture in the Mediterranean and Europe from approximately the fourth to ninth centuries. It also reflects on the transcendent sources of authority in these historical periods, and the role of graphic signs in highlighting this connection. Finally, it warns that, despite the apparent dominant role of the sign of the cross and cruciform graphic devices in providing access to transcendent protection and support in ninth-century Western Europe, some people could still employ alternative graphic signs deriving from older occult traditions in their recourse to transcendent powers.


Radiocarbon ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Dorota Dzierzbicka ◽  
Katarzyna Danys

ABSTRACT The paper presents and discusses a series of radiocarbon (14C) dates from a medieval Nubian monastery found on Kom H of Old Dongola, the capital of the kingdom of Makuria located in modern-day Sudan. The monastery was founded in the 6th–7th century AD and although it probably ceased to function in the 14th century, the site remained occupied until the beginning of the 15th century. The investigated courtyard of the monastery was in use from the 11th to the 14th century, as indicated by the ceramics and 14C analysis results presented here. The dates under consideration are the first published series of 14C dates from this site, which is of crucial importance for historical research on medieval Nubian Christianity and monasticism. They permit to begin building an absolute chronological framework for research on the archaeological finds from the site and region. A group of finds in particular need of such a framework are ceramics, and the implications of the 14C dates for pottery assemblages found in the dated contexts are discussed. The conclusions summarize the significance of the datings for the history of the site.


Traditio ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 257-286 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher S. Celenza

There are many still unstudied aspects of the cultural history of early Quattrocento Rome, especially if we consider the years before 1443, the date of the more or less permanent re-entry into the civitas aeterna of Pope Eugenius IV. The nexus between the still ephemeral papacy and the emerging intellectual movement of Italian Renaissance humanism is one of these aspects. It is hoped that this study will shed some light on this problem by presenting a document that has hitherto not been completely edited: the original will of Cardinal Giordano Orsini. As we shall see, this important witness to the fifteenth century provides valuable information on many fronts, even on the structure of the old basilica of Saint Peter. The short introduction is in three parts. The first has a discussion of the cardinal's cultural milieu with a focus on the only contemporary treatise specifically about curial culture, Lapo da Castiglionchio's De curiae commodis. The second part addresses the textual history of the will as well as some misconceptions which have surrounded it. The third part contains a discussion of the will itself, along with some preliminary observations about what can be learned from the critical edition of the text here presented for the first time.


1988 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Eva Subtelny

Periods of cultural florescence seem to coincide with times of political decline far too regularly in the history of medieval Iran and Central Asia for the link between them to be merely incidental. One of the most outstanding examples is the period of the rule of the Turko-Mongol Timurid dynasty in the 9th/15th century, which has been dubbed a “Timurid renaissance” by Western scholars. Another is the period of the political domination of the Buyid dynasty of Dailamite origin in the 4th–5th/10th–11th centuries, which Adam Mez popularized as the “renaissance of Islam.” Still another is the period of the Muzaffarid, Jalayirid, Sarbadarid, and Kartid kingdoms which arose in the 8th/14th century after the fall of the Mongol Ilkhanid empire. Although the appropriateness of the term “renaissance” as applied to the Timurid case in particular has raised reservations among scholars, it does underscore the point that his period was characterized by an extraordinary surge of activity in all areas of cultural and intellectual endeavor, something already noted by its contemporaries.


Author(s):  
Alessandra Gilibert

Vishaps are large-scale prehistoric stelae decorated with animal reliefs, erected at secluded mountain locations of the South Caucasus. This paper focuses on the vishaps of modern Armenia and traces their history of re-use and manipulations, from the end of the third millennium BCE to the Middle Ages. Since their creation at an unknown point in time before 2100 BCE, vishaps functioned as symbolic anchors for the creation and transmission of religious and political messages: they were torn down, buried, re-worked, re-erected, transformed and used as a surface for graffiti. This complex sequence of re-contextualisations underscores the primacy of mountains as political arenas for the negotiation of religious and ritual meaning.


2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 352-365
Author(s):  
Evgeny I. Zelenev ◽  
Milana Iliushina

This article is devoted to the study of the development of the theory and practice of jihad during the rule of the Circassian sultans in Egypt and Syria (1382–1517). The purpose of the study is to trace the development of key aspects of jihad, to identify features of its perception in the Mamluk state. An essential feature of the theory of jihad in the Mamluk period is the interpretation of jihad as farḍ al-ʿayn (the individual duty of every Muslim). While studying the theory of jihad, the authors rely on a holistic and balanced approach justified in the papers of M. Bonner and D. Cook and their interpretation of the concept of jihad, which has a centuries-old history of development and a sophisticated, multi-layered set of meanings. Another methodological basis of the present paper was the concept of minimalism and maximalism, developed by Yusef Waghid. The source base for the study of jihad theory is the works of Ibn al-Nahhas (d. 1411), a prominent philosopher of the Mamluk era. The interpretation of jihad as an individual duty of every Muslim, substantiated by Ibn al-Nahhas, was the foundation of the volunteer movement that developed in Egypt and Syria in the 15th century. The doctrine of jihad where the concepts of justice (al-‘adl) and truth (al-ḥaqq) play a key role, was used by the Mamluks and then by the Ottomans as a powerful ideological tool to manipulate the minds of Muslims. The relevance of the study is that the findings are not only true for the Middle Ages but are directly related to the present.


2021 ◽  
pp. 36-43
Author(s):  
Н.Е. Касьяненко

Статья посвящена истории развития словарного дела на Руси и появлению первых словарей. Затрагиваются первые, несловарные формы описания лексики в письменных памятниках XI–XVII вв. (глоссы), из которых черпался материал для собственно словарей. Анализируются основные лексикографические жанры этого времени и сложение на их основе азбуковников. В статье уделено внимание таким конкретным лексикографическим произведениям, как ономастикону «Рѣчь жидовскаго «зыка» (XVIII в.), словарям-символикам «Толк о неразумнех словесех» (XV в.) и «Се же приточне речеся», произвольнику, объясняющему славянские слова, «Тлъкование нεоудобь познаваεмомъ въ писаныхъ рѣчемь» (XIV в.), разговорнику «Рѣчь тонкословія греческаго» (ХV в.). Характеризуется словарь Максима Грека «Толкованіе именамъ по алфавиту» (XVI в.). Предметом более подробного освещения стал «Лексис…» Л. Зизания – первый печатный словарь на Руси. На примерах дается анализ его реестровой и переводной частей. Рассматривается известнейший труд П. Берынды «Лексикон славеноросский и имен толкование», а также рукописный «Лексикон латинский…» Е. Славинецкого, являющий собой образец переводного словаря XVII в. The article is dedicated to the history of the development of vocabulary in Russia and the emergence of the first dictionaries. The first, non-verbar forms of description of vocabulary in written monuments of the 11th and 17th centuries (glosses), from which material for the dictionaries themselves were drawn, are affected. The main lexicographical genres of this time are analyzed and the addition of alphabets on their basis. The article focuses on specific lexicographical works such as the «Zhidovskago» (18th century) the dictionaries-symbols of «The Talk of Unreasonable Words» (the 15th century). and «The Same Speech», an arbitrary explanation of slavic words, «The tlution of the cognition in the written», (the 14th century), the phrasebook «Ry subtle Greek» (the 15th century). Maxim Greck's dictionary «Tolkien names in alphabetical order» (16th century) is characterized. The subject of more detailed coverage was «Lexis...» L. Sizania is the first printed dictionary in Russia. Examples give analysis of its registry and translation parts. The famous work of P. Berynda «Lexicon of Slavic and Names of Interpretation» and the handwritten «Lexicon Latin...» are considered. E. Slavinecki, which is a model of the 17th century translated dictionary.


2012 ◽  
Vol 53 (6) ◽  
pp. 631-651
Author(s):  
Alina Nowicka-Jeżowa

Summary Based on earlier research, and especially Tadeusz Ulewicz’s landmark study Iter Romano- -Italicum Polonorum, or the Intellectual and Cultural Links between Poland and Italy in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (1999) this article examines the influence of Rome - in its role as the Holy See and a centre of learning and the arts - on Poland’s culture in the 15th and 16th century as well as on the activities of Polish churchmen, scholars and writers who came to the Eternal City. The aim of the article is to trace the role of the emerging Humanist themes and attitudes on the shape of the cultural exchange in question. It appears that the Roman connection was a major factor in the history of Polish Humanism - its inner development, its transformations, and the ideological and artistic choices made by the successive generations of the Polish elite. In the 15th century the Roman inspirations helped to initiate the Humanist impulse in Poland, while in the 16th century they stimulated greater diversity and a search for one’s own way of development. In the post-Tridentine epoch they became a potent element of the Poland’s new cultural formation. Against the background of these generalizations, the article presents the cultural profiles of four poets, Mikołaj of Hussów, Klemens Janicjusz, Jan Kochanowski, and Mikołaj Sęp Szarzyński. They symbolize the four phases of the Polish Humanist tradition, which draw their distinctive identities from looking up to the Roman model


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