Wolfhart Heinrichs’ Essays and Articles on Arabic Literature: General Issues, Terms is the first of two volumes which showcases a great number of Heinrichsʼ writings on his central field of research: Arabic literature. This volume specifically looks at poetry and rhetoric, and their indigenous theories and terminologies. Wolfhart Heinrichs (1941-2014) was James Richard Jewett Professor of Arabic at Harvard University. He is remembered as a significant adviser to Fuat Sezginʼs fundamental Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, and as an editor of and contributor to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second edition, and, most importantly, as an author of many independent studies on Arabic literature, many of them ground-breaking in the history of Arabic philology. He is also known for his studies on Semitic Linguistics and Islamic Jurisprudence. This volume collects relevant bibliographical data, offers an introductory essay on the author by his distinguished student, Michael Cooperson (UCLA), and provides a selection of Wolfhart Heinrichs’ essays. The articles in this volume deal with general issues in the field, central to pre-modern Arab and Islamic culture, and their concepts and terminologies. An index of classical authors, book-titles, and technical terms concludes the volume. This volume and the accompanying volume will appeal to students and researchers in the field of Arabic and Islamic Studies, and particularly to those interested in Arabic literature.

Wolfhart Heinrichs’ Essays and Articles on Arabic Literature: Authors, Semitic Studies, and Islamic Jurisprudence is the second of two volumes which showcase a great number of Heinrichs’ writings on Arabic literature, Semitic Studies, and Islamic Jurisprudence. Wolfhart Heinrichs (1941-2014) was James Richard Jewett Professor of Arabic at Harvard University. He is remembered as a significant adviser to Fuat Sezginʼs fundamental Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, and as an editor of and contributor to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second edition, and, most importantly, as an author of many independent studies on Arabic literature, many of them ground-breaking in the history of Arabic philology. He is also known for his studies on Semitic Linguistics and Islamic Jurisprudence. This volume collects relevant bibliographical data, offers an introductory essay on the author by his distinguished student, Michael Cooperson (UCLA), and then presents reprints of his articles and essays. These include the remainder of Heinrichsʼ contributions to Arabic literature, dealing with a number of classical Arabic authors, to Semitic Studies in general (among them Aramaic and Neo-Aramaic), and to Rhetoric as used in Islamic Jurisprudence and in the game of scholarly debate (jadal). An index of classical authors, book-titles, and technical terms concludes the volume. This volume and its companion will appeal to students and researchers in the fields of Arabic Literature, Semitic Studies, and Islamic Jurisprudence.

This book deals with medieval Jewish authors who wrote in Arabic, such as Moses Maimonides, Judah Halevi, and Solomon Ibn Gabirol, as well as the Hebrew translations and commentaries of Judaeo-Arabic philosophy. It brings up to date a part of Moritz Steinschneider's monumental ""Die hebraeischen Uebersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher ""(The Hebrew Translations of the Middle Ages and the Jews as Transmitters), which was first published in 1893 and remains to this day the authoritative account of the transmission and development of Arabic and Latin, and, by way of those languages, Greek culture to medieval and renaissance Jews.

In the work presented here, Steinschneider's bibliography has been updated, some of his scholarly judgments have been judiciously revised and an exhaustive listing of pertinent Hebrew manuscripts and their whereabouts has been provided. The volume opens with a long essay that describes the origin and genesis of "Die Hebraeischen Ubersetzungen," and with Steinschneider's prefaces to the French and German versions of his work.

This publication is the first in a projected series that translates, updates and, where necessary, revises parts of Steinschneider's bio-bibliographical classic. Historians of medieval culture and philosophy, and also scholars of the transmission of classical culture to Muslims, Christians, and Jews, will find this volume indispensable."

 This book deals with medieval Jewish authors who wrote in Arabic, such as Moses Maimonides, Judah Halevi, and Solomon Ibn Gabirol, as well as the Hebrew translations and commentaries of Judaeo-Arabic philosophy. It brings up to date a part of Moritz Steinschneider’s monumental Die hebraeischen Uebersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher (The Hebrew Translations of the Middle Ages and the Jews as Transmitters), which was first published in 1893 and remains to this day the authoritative account of the transmission and development of Arabic and Latin, and, by way of those languages, Greek culture to medieval and renaissance Jews.  In the work presented here, Steinschneider’s bibliography has been updated, some of his scholarly judgments have been judiciously revised and an exhaustive listing of pertinent Hebrew manuscripts and their whereabouts has been provided. The volume opens with a long essay that describes the origin and genesis of Die Hebraeischen Übersetzungen, and with Steinschneider’s prefaces to the French and German versions of his work.  This publication is the first in a projected series that translates, updates and, where necessary, revises parts of Steinschneider’s bio-bibliographical classic. Historians of medieval culture and philosophy, and also scholars of the transmission of classical culture to Muslims, Christians, and Jews, will find this volume indispensable.

In the Western imagination, Islamic cultures are dominated by dogmatic religious norms that permit no nuance. Those fighting such stereotypes have countered with a portrait of Islam's medieval "Golden Age," marked by rationality, tolerance, and even proto-secularism. How can we understand Islamic history, culture, and thought beyond this dichotomy? In this magisterial cultural and intellectual history, Thomas Bauer reconsiders classical and modern Islam by tracing differing attitudes toward ambiguity. Over a span of many centuries, he explores the tension between one strand that aspires to annihilate all uncertainties and establish absolute, uncontestable truths and another, competing tendency that looks for ways to live with ambiguity and accept complexity. Bauer ranges across cultural and linguistic ambiguities, considering premodern Islamic textual and cultural forms from law to Quranic exegesis to literary genres alongside attitudes toward religious minorities and foreigners. He emphasizes the relative absence of conflict between religious and secular discourses in classical Islamic culture, which stands in striking contrast to both present-day fundamentalism and much of European history. Bauer shows how Islam's encounter with the modern West and its demand for certainty helped bring about both Islamicist and secular liberal ideologies that in their own ways rejected ambiguity-and therefore also their own cultural traditions. Awarded the prestigious Leibniz Prize, A Culture of Ambiguity not only reframes a vast range of Islamic history but also offers an interdisciplinary model for investigating the tolerance of ambiguity across cultures and eras.

In the Western imagination, Islamic cultures are dominated by dogmatic religious norms that permit no nuance. Those fighting such stereotypes have countered with a portrait of Islam’s medieval “Golden Age,� marked by rationality, tolerance, and even proto-secularism. How can we understand Islamic history, culture, and thought beyond this dichotomy? In this magisterial cultural and intellectual history, Thomas Bauer reconsiders classical and modern Islam by tracing differing attitudes toward ambiguity. Over a span of many centuries, he explores the tension between one strand that aspires to annihilate all uncertainties and establish absolute, uncontestable truths and another, competing tendency that looks for ways to live with ambiguity and accept complexity. Bauer ranges across cultural and linguistic ambiguities, considering premodern Islamic textual and cultural forms from law to Quranic exegesis to literary genres alongside attitudes toward religious minorities and foreigners. He emphasizes the relative absence of conflict between religious and secular discourses in classical Islamic culture, which stands in striking contrast to both present-day fundamentalism and much of European history. Bauer shows how Islam’s encounter with the modern West and its demand for certainty helped bring about both Islamicist and secular liberal ideologies that in their own ways rejected ambiguity—and therefore also their own cultural traditions. Awarded the prestigious Leibniz Prize, A Culture of Ambiguity not only reframes a vast range of Islamic history but also offers an interdisciplinary model for investigating the tolerance of ambiguity across cultures and eras.