Der Autor erforscht die Anwendungsdynamiken des islamischen Rechts (fiqh) in wandelnden Kontexten anhand der Werke von Hayreddin Karaman, einem beruhmten islamischen Rechtsgelehrten in der Turkei. Dabei analysiert er die Entwicklungen chronologisch seit dem Beginn in der Prophetenperiode und die wissenschaftlichen Entfaltungen der Nachfolgezeit bis in die sakulare Postmoderne. Anhand der diachronischen Forschungsmethode untersucht der Autor die innovative fiqh-Anwendung bei Karaman und zeigt seine Methode auf. Es geht hierbei um die Anknupfung an die Tradition und die daraus gewonnene Innovation in ihrem wissenschaftlich-argumentativen Diskurs. Auf kritischer Grundlage begegnet Karaman den Herausforderungen eines innovativen Aufschwungs in der sakularen Postmoderne.

The Records of Mazu and the Making of Classical Chan Literature explores the growth, makeup, and transformation of Chan (Zen) Buddhist literature in late medieval China. The volume analyzes the earliest extant records about the life, teachings, and legacy of Mazu Daoyi (709-788), the famous leader of the Hongzhou School and one of the principal figures in Chan history. While some of the texts covered are well-known and form a central part of classical Chan (or more broadly Buddhist) literature in China, others have been largely ignored, forgotten, or glossed over until recently. Poceski presents a range of primary materials important for the historical study of Chan Buddhism, some translated for the first time into English or other Western language. He surveys the distinctive features and contents of particular types of texts, and analyzes the forces, milieus, and concerns that shaped key processes of textual production during this period. Although his main focus is on written sources associated with a celebrated Chan tradition that developed and rose to prominence during the Tang era (618-907), Poceski also explores the Five Dynasties (907-960) and Song (960-1279) periods, when many of the best-known Chan collections were compiled. Exploring the Chan School's creative adaptation of classical literary forms and experimentation with novel narrative styles, The Records of Mazu and the Making of Classical Chan Literature traces the creation of several distinctive Chan genres that exerted notable influence on the subsequent development of Buddhism in China and the rest of East Asia.

Sayings of the Prophet Muhammad, wielding an authority second only to the Qur'an. The words of Muhammad (d. 11/632), God's messenger and prophet of Islam, have a special place in the hearts of his followers. Wielding an authority second only to the Qur'an, Muhammad's hadith are cited by scholars as testimonial texts in a vast array of disciplines-including law, theology, metaphysics, poetry, grammar, history, and medicine-and are quoted by Muslims to one another in their daily lives. Assembling Muhammad's words has been a major preoccupation for scholars throughout the fourteen centuries since his death, resulting in an abundance of compilations. Among the legally-grounded collections, which aimed to guide the community in its practice of religious law and ritual worship, one which stands out in particular is Light in the Heavens (Kitab al-Shihab) by al-Qadi al-Quda'i, a Shafi'i judge in the Fatimid court in Egypt. The collection's overall conceptualization is distinctively ethical and pragmatic, and offers humanitarian lessons and practical insights with universal appeal. From North Africa to India, generations have used Light in the Heavens as a teaching text for children as well as adults, and many of its 1200 sayings are familiar to individuals of diverse denominations and ethnicities. For Muslims-who consider Muhammad's teachings the fount of wisdom and the beacon of guidance in all things, mundane and sublime-these sayings provide a direct window into the inspired vision of one of the most influential humans to have walked the Earth. A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

For countless generations families have lived in isolated communities in the Godavari Delta of coastal Andhra Pradesh, learning and reciting their legacy of Vedas, performing daily offerings and occasional sacrifices. They are the virtually unrecognized survivors of a 3,700-year-old heritage, the last in India who perform the ancient animal and soma sacrifices according to Vedic tradition. In Vedic Voices, David M. Knipe offers for the first time, an opportunity for them to speak about their lives, ancestral lineages, personal choices as pandits, wives, children, and ways of coping with an avalanche of changes in modern India. He presents a study of four generations of ten families, from those born at the outset of the twentieth century down to their great-grandsons who are just beginning, at the age of seven, the task of memorizing their Veda, the Taittiriya Samhita, a feat that will require eight to twelve years of daily recitations. After successful examinations these young men will reside with the Veda family girls they married as children years before, take their places in the oral transmission of a three-thousand-year Vedic heritage, teach the Taittiriya collection of texts to their own sons, and undertake with their wives the major and minor sacrifices performed by their ancestors for some three millennia. Coastal Andhra, famed for bountiful rice and coconut plantations, has received scant attention from historians of religion and anthropologists despite a wealth of cultural traditions. Vedic Voices describes in captivating prose the geography, cultural history, pilgrimage traditions, and celebrated persons of the region. Here unfolds a remarkable story of Vedic pandits and their wives, one scarcely known in India and not at all to the outside world.

'To read Ka is to experience a giddy invasion of stories - brilliant, enigmatic, troubling, outrageous, erotic, beautiful' The New York Times 'Who?' - or 'ka' - is the question that runs through Roberto Calasso's retelling of the stories of the minds and gods of India; the primordial question that continues to haunt human existence. From the Rigveda to the Upanishads, the Mahabharata to the life of Buddha, this book delves into the corpus of classical Sanskrit literature to re-imagine the ancient Indian myths and how they resonate through space and time. 'The very best book about Hindu mythology that anyone has ever written' Wendy Doniger 'Dazzling, complex, utterly original ... Ka is his masterpiece' Sunday Times

Neelima Shukla-Bhatt offers an illuminating study of Narsinha Mehta, one of the most renowned saint-poets of medieval India and the most celebrated bhakti (devotion) poet from Gujarat, whose songs and sacred biography formed a vital source of moral inspiration for Gandhi. Exploring manuscripts, medieval texts, Gandhi's more obscure writings, and performances in multiple religious and non-religious contexts, including modern popular media, Shukla-Bhatt shows that the songs and sacred narratives associated with the saint-poet have been sculpted by performers and audiences into a popular source of moral inspiration.
Drawing on the Indian concept of bhakti-rasa (devotion as nectar), Narasinha Mehta of Gujarat reveals that the sustained popularity of the songs and narratives over five centuries, often across religious boundaries and now beyond devotional contexts in modern media, is the result of their combination of inclusive religious messages and aesthetic appeal in performance. Taking as an example Gandhi's perception of the songs and stories as vital cultural resources for social reconstruction, the book suggests that when religion acquires the form of popular culture, it becomes a widely accessible platform for communication among diverse groups. Shukla-Bhatt expands upon the scholarship on the embodied and public dimension of bhakti through detailed analysis of multiple public venues of performance and commentary, including YouTube videos.
This study provides a vivid picture of the Narasinha tradition, and will be a crucial resource for anyone seeking to understand the power of religious performative traditions in popular media.

In Reclaiming Jihad: A Qur'anic Critique of Terrorism, ElSayed Amin presents a detailed critique of institutional and legal definitions of terrorism. He engages the Qur'an exegetical tradition, both classical and contemporary, to critique key verses of the Qur'an that have been misread to establish violence as a relational norm between Muslims and non-Muslims. This pioneering work is a sustained scholarly attempt to separate Islamic jihad, as well as the notion of armed deterrence, from modern terrorism through the examination of the 9/11 terrorism attacks, and it proposes legal proscriptions for terrorism from the Qur'an, on the basis of its political, social and psychological impacts.

Written in the early eighth century, the "Kojiki" is considered Japan's first literary and historical work. A compilation of myths, legends, songs, and genealogies, it recounts the birth of Japan's islands, reflecting the origins of Japanese civilization and future Shinto practice. The "Kojiki" provides insight into the lifestyle, religious beliefs, politics, and history of early Japan, and for centuries has shaped the nation's view of its past. This innovative rendition conveys the rich appeal of the "Kojiki" to a general readership by translating the names of characters to clarify their contribution to the narrative while also translating place names to give a vivid sense of the landscape the characters inhabit, as well as an understanding of where such places are today. Gustav Heldt's expert organization reflects the text's original sentence structure and repetitive rhythms, enhancing the reader's appreciation for its sophisticated style of storytelling.

"The Book of Zohar" (The Book of Radiance) is an ageless source of wisdom and the basis for all Kabbalistic literature. Since its appearance nearly 2,000 years ago, it has been the primary, and often only, source used by Kabbalists. For centuries, Kabbalah was hidden from the public, which was considered not yet ready to receive it. However, our generation has been designated by Kabbalists as the first generation that is ready to grasp the concepts in The Zohar. Now, we can put these principles into practice in our lives. Written in a unique and metaphorical language, "The Zohar" enriches our understanding of reality and expands our worldview. However, this text should not be read in an ordinary fashion. We should patiently and repeatedly read and think about each sentence as we try to penetrate the authors feelings. We should read it slowly and try to extract the nuances of the text. Although the text deals with one subject only --how to relate to the Creator --it approaches it from different angles. This allows each of us to find the particular phrase or word that will carry us into the depths of this profound and timeless wisdom.

The nature and reliability of the ancient sources are among the most important issues in the scholarship on the Dead Sea Scrolls. It is noteworthy, therefore, that scholars have grown increasingly skeptical about the value of these materials for reconstructing the life of the Teacher of Righteousness. Travis B. Williams' study is designed to address this new perspective and its implications for historical inquiry. He offers an important corrective to popular conceptions of history and memory by introducing memory theory as a means of informing historical investigation. Charting a new methodological course in Dead Sea Scrolls research, Williams reveals that properly representing the past requires an explanation of how the mnemonic evidence found in the relevant sources could have developed from a historical progression that began with the Teacher. His book represents the first attempt in Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship to integrate history and memory in a comprehensive way.

The Inner Chapters are the oldest pieces of the larger collection of writings by several fourth, third, and second century B.C. authors that constitute the classic of Taoism, the Chuang-Tzu (or Zhuangzi). It is this core of ancient writings that is ascribed to Chuang-Tzu himself.

The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies innovatively combines the ways in which scholars from fields as diverse as philosophy, psychology, religious studies, literary studies, history, sociology, anthropology, political science, and economics have integrated the study of Sikhism within a wide range of critical and postcolonial perspectives on the nature of religion, violence, gender, ethno-nationalism, and revisionist historiography. A number of essays within this collection also provide a more practical dimension, written by artists and practitioners of the tradition. The handbook is divided into eight thematic sections that explore different 'expressions' of Sikhism. Historical, literary, ideological, institutional, and artistic expressions are considered in turn, followed by discussion of Sikhs in the Diaspora, and of caste and gender in the Panth. Each section begins with an essay by a prominent scholar in the field, providing an overview of the topic. Further essays provide detail and further treat the fluid, multivocal nature of both the Sikh past and the present. The handbook concludes with a section considering future directions in Sikh Studies.

In Deuteronomy and the Judaean Diaspora Ernest Nicholson challenges the widely accepted view that Deuteronomy was the 'book of the law' described in 2 Kings 22-3 as the basis of king Josiah's cultic reformation in 621 BCE. He argues that the notice in this narrative that Josiah abolished the rural, local altars throughout Judah and supposedly relocated their priests to Jerusalem is based upon a misreading. Rather, he contends, Deuteronomy derived from thinkers and writers who lived among the Judaean exiles in Babylonia in the sixth century, and in significant ways represents a break with pre-exilic Israelite religion occasioned by the urgent need to confront the challenges to national identity and cultural survival of the Judaean Diaspora community. Leading features of the book such as its zealous monolatry, its self-presentation as 'scripture', its concept of the relationship with God as covenanted choice, its pervasive fear of religious encroachment, its character as 'oppositional' literature-these and other themes of the book suggest such a provenance. Issues arising include, for example, information from Babylonian sources, some of it new, about the Judaean exiles, how Israel is characterised in the book, kingship, evidence of the emergence of a body of prophetic 'scripture'. Two final chapters examine the 'Deuteronomistic History' (Joshua-2 Kings) and show that (contrary to some interpretations) it is not 'historiography' such as is represented by, for example, Herodotus' Histories, and that theodicy rather than an interest in the past as a field of critical study best describes its genre.

Most scholars believe that the numerous similarities between the Covenant Code (Exodus 20:23-23:19) and Mesopotamian law collections, especially the Laws of Hammurabi, which date to around 1750 BCE, are due to oral tradition that extended from the second to the first millennium. This book offers a fundamentally new understanding of the Covenant Code, arguing that it depends directly and primarily upon the Laws of Hammurabi and that the use of this source text occurred during the Neo-Assyrian period, sometime between 740-640 BCE, when Mesopotamia exerted strong and continuous political and cultural influence over the kingdoms of Israel and Judah and a time when the Laws of Hammurabi were actively copied in Mesopotamia as a literary-canonical text. The study offers significant new evidence demonstrating that a model of literary dependence is the only viable explanation for the work. It further examines the compositional logic used in transforming the source text to produce the Covenant Code, thus providing a commentary to the biblical composition from the new theoretical perspective. This analysis shows that the Covenant Code is primarily a creative academic work rather than a repository of laws practiced by Israelites or Judeans over the course of their history. The Covenant Code, too, is an ideological work, which transformed a paradigmatic and prestigious legal text of Israel's and Judah's imperial overlords into a statement symbolically countering foreign hegemony. The study goes further to study the relationship of the Covenant Code to the narrative of the book of Exodus and explores how this may relate to the development of the Pentateuch as a whole.

Moshe Simon-Shoshan offers a groundbreaking study of Jewish law (halakhah) and rabbinic story-telling. Focusing on the Mishnah, the foundational text of halakhah, he argues that narrative was essential in early rabbinic formulations and concepts of law, legal process, and political and religious authority. The book begins by presenting a theoretical framework for considering the role of narrative in the Mishnah. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, including narrative theory, Semitic linguistics, and comparative legal studies, Simon-Shoshan shows that law and narrative are inextricably intertwined in the Mishnah. Narrative is central to the way in which the Mishnah transmits law and ideas about jurisprudence. Furthermore, the Mishnah's stories are the locus around which the Mishnah both constructs and critiques its concept of the rabbis as the ultimate arbiters of Jewish law and practice. In the second half of the book, Simon-Shoshan applies these ideas to close readings of individual Mishnaic stories. Among these stories are some of the most famous narratives in rabbinic literature, including those of Honi the Circle-drawer and R. Gamliel's Yom Kippur confrontation with R. Joshua. In each instance, Simon-Shoshan elucidates the legal, political, theological, and human elements of the story and places them in the wider context of the book's arguments about law, narrative, and rabbinic authority. Stories of the Law presents an original and forceful argument for applying literary theory to legal texts, challenging the traditional distinctions between law and literature that underlie much contemporary scholarship.