The Septuagint is the most influential of the Greek versions of the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. The exact circumstances of its creation are uncertain, but different versions of a legend about the miraculous nature of the translation have existed since antiquity. Beginning in the Letter of Aristeas, the legend describes how Ptolemy Philadelphus commissioned seventy-two Jewish scribes to translate the sacred Hebrew scriptures for his famous library in Alexandria. Subsequent variations on the story recount how the scribes, working independently, produced word-for-word, identical Greek versions. In the course of the following centuries, to our own time, the story has been adapted and changed by Jews, Christians, Muslims and pagans for many different reasons: to tell a story, to explain historical events and to lend authority to the Greek text for the institutions that used it. This book offers the first account of all of these versions over the last two millennia, providing a history of the uses and abuses of the legend in various cultures around the Mediterranean.

The eight hundred years between the first Roman conquests and the conquest of Islam saw a rich, constantly shifting blend of languages and writing systems, legal structures, religious practices and beliefs in the Near East. While the different ethnic groups and cultural forms often clashed with each other, adaptation was as much a characteristic of the region as conflict. This 2009 volume, emphasizing the inscriptions in many languages from the Near East, brings together mutually informative studies by scholars in diverse fields. Together, they reveal how the different languages, peoples and cultures interacted, competed with, tried to ignore or were influenced by each other, and how their relationships evolved over time. It will be of great value to those interested in Greek and Roman history, Jewish history and Near Eastern studies.

Focusing on Near Eastern history in Mamluk and Ottoman times, this book, dedicated to Michael Winter, stresses elements of variety and continuity in the history of the Near East, an area of study which has traditionally attracted little attention from Islamists. Ranging over the period from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century, the articles in this book look at the area from Istanbul down through Syria and Palestine to Arabia, the Yemen and the Sudan. The articles demonstrate the great wealth of the materials available, in a wide variety of languages, from archival documents to manuscripts and art works, as well as inscriptions and buildings, police records and divorce documentation. The topics covered are equally as varied and include Dufism, the festival of Nabi Musa, military organisations, doctors, and charity to name but a few.

Focusing on Near Eastern history in Mamluk and Ottoman times, this book, dedicated to Michael Winter, stresses elements of variety and continuity in the history of the Near East, an area of study which has traditionally attracted little attention from Islamists.

Ranging over the period from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century, the articles in this book look at the area from Istanbul down through Syria and Palestine to Arabia, the Yemen and the Sudan. The articles demonstrate the great wealth of the materials available, in a wide variety of languages, from archival documents to manuscripts and art works, as well as inscriptions and buildings, police records and divorce documentation. The topics covered are equally as varied and include Dufism, the festival of Nabi Musa, military organisations, doctors, and charity to name but a few.

The eight hundred years between the first Roman conquests and the conquest of Islam saw a rich, constantly shifting blend of languages and writing systems, legal structures, religious practices and beliefs in the Near East. While the different ethnic groups and cultural forms often clashed with each other, adaptation was as much a characteristic of the region as conflict. This volume, emphasizing the inscriptions in many languages from the Near East, brings together mutually informative studies by scholars in diverse fields. Together, they reveal how the different languages, peoples and cultures interacted, competed with, tried to ignore or were influenced by each other, and how their relationships evolved over time. It will be of great value to those interested in Greek and Roman history, Jewish history and Near Eastern studies.

The Septuagint is the most influential of the Greek versions of the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. The exact circumstances of its creation are uncertain, but different versions of a legend about the miraculous nature of the translation have existed since antiquity. Beginning in the Letter of Aristeas, the legend describes how Ptolemy Philadelphus commissioned seventy-two Jewish scribes to translate the sacred Hebrew scriptures for his famous library in Alexandria. Subsequent variations on the story recount how the scribes, working independently, produced word-for-word, identical Greek versions. In the course of the following centuries, to our own time, the story has been adapted and changed by Jews, Christians, Muslims and pagans for many different reasons: to tell a story, to explain historical events and to lend authority to the Greek text for the institutions that used it. This book offers the first account of all of these versions over the last two millennia, providing a history of the uses and abuses of the legend in various cultures around the Mediterranean.

This is a study of the caliphate as a political institution in Islamic Spain, from its inception in 316/939 until the disappearance of the Umayyads in Cordoba in 422/1031. David J. Wasserstein explores the caliphal claims of the Hammudid dynasty in the south of the peninsula, and examines the caliphal practices of two Slav rulers of the eleventh century. He shows that the caliphal insitution was not abolished at any stage, and that it served rulers throughout the eleventh century as, among other things, an important source of legitimacy. Professor Wasserstein's important new interpretation is thoroughly grounded not only in the documentary sources, but also in the little-studied and revealing numismatic evidence. This is a significant contribution both to the Islamic history of the Iberian Peninsula and to our understanding of the nature of the caliphate within Islam in general.

Islam has always had ambivalent relations with Judaism and Christianity, as also with Jews and Christians. The awkwardness of their character has been accentuated by the creation and perpetuation, on all sides, of partial and ill-intentioned images during the middle ages and by political developments in the modern period. Since the beginning of serious modern study of Islam in the west, these relations have found an important place in scholars' interest, partly because many of those in the west who have studied Islam have been Jews, with a natural attraction to an interest in those topics which affected Jews and other minorities in the Islamic environment. In this volume, we have tried to assemble a collection of papers which reflect something of the diversity of the problems offered by this range of relations. We have also attempted to reflect, in the variety of the papers and the topics discussed in them, the rich variety of approach adopted by scholars over the last century and a half of such study. Israel Oriental Studies has ceased publication with volume 20.