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How is the complex history of the ancient Near East and Islamic
World brought to bear in contemporary political discourse? In this
book, Medieval Near Eastern historian Jacob Lassner explores the
resonance of ancient and medieval history in the political disputes
that dominate the contemporary Middle East. From identification
with ancient forbears as a method of legitimization and
nation-building, to tracing the deep history of the concept of
revolution in the Arab world, the author probes the historical
foundations of modern conflicts in the region. A medievalist, the
author takes the position that an appreciation of cultural history
is essential to understanding the debate surrounding the
Israel/Palestine conflict. In turn, the book identifies the
misappropriation and misunderstanding of the past, deliberate or
accidental, as key weapon in the ongoing conflict.
In Jews, Christians, and the Abode of Islam, Jacob Lassner examines
the triangular relationship that during the Middle Ages defined -
and continues to define today - the political and cultural
interaction among the three Abrahamic faiths. Lassner looks closely
at the debates occasioned by modern Western scholarship on Islam to
throw new light on the social and political status of medieval Jews
and Christians in various Islamic lands from the seventh to the
thirteenth centuries. Utilizing a vast array of primary sources,
Lassner shows just what medieval Muslims meant when they spoke of
tolerance, and how that abstract concept played out at different
times and places in the real world of Christian and Jewish
communities under Islamic rule.
Over the centuries, Jewish and Muslim writers transformed the
biblical Queen of Sheba from a clever, politically astute sovereign
to a demonic force threatening the boundaries of gender. In this
book, Jacob Lassner shows how successive retellings of the biblical
story reveal anxieties about gender and illuminate the processes of
cultural transmission.
The Bible presents the Queen of Sheba's encounter with King Solomon
as a diplomatic mission: the queen comes "to test him with hard
questions," all of which he answers to her satisfaction; she then
praises him and, after an exchange of gifts, returns to her own
land. By the Middle Ages, Lassner demonstrates, the focus of the
queen's visit had shifted from international to sexual politics.
The queen was now portrayed as acting in open defiance of nature's
equilibrium and God's design. In these retellings, the authors
humbled the queen and thereby restored the world to its proper
condition.
Lassner also examines the Islamization of Jewish themes, using the
dramatic accounts of Solomon and his female antagonist as a test
case of how Jewish lore penetrated the literary imagination of
Muslims. "Demonizing the Queen of Sheba" thus addresses not only
specialists in Jewish and Islamic studies, but also those concerned
with issues of cultural transmission and the role of gender in
history.
In order to understand the transition between the revolutionary
movement that propelled the Abbasids to power and the imperial
government that later took root, Jacob Lassner studies those
elements that served to shape the political attitudes and
institutions of the emerging regime during its formative years.
Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the
latest print-on-demand technology to again make available
previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of
Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original
texts of these important books while presenting them in durable
paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy
Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage
found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University
Press since its founding in 1905.
In order to understand the transition between the revolutionary
movement that propelled the Abbasids to power and the imperial
government that later took root, Jacob Lassner studies those
elements that served to shape the political attitudes and
institutions of the emerging regime during its formative years.
Originally published in 1980. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the
latest print-on-demand technology to again make available
previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of
Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original
texts of these important books while presenting them in durable
paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy
Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage
found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University
Press since its founding in 1905.
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Teaching the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Paperback)
Rachel S Harris; Introduction by Jacob Lassner; Contributions by Caitlin Carenen, Janice W. Fernheimer, Martin B. Shichtman, …
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R1,360
Discovery Miles 13 600
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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The Arab-Israeli conflict has become a touchstone of international
politics and a flash point on college campuses. And yet, how do
faculty teach such a contentious topic in class? Taught not only in
international relations, peace and conflict resolution, politics
and history, and Israel and Middle Eastern studies courses but also
in literature, sociology, urban planning, law, cinema, fine art,
and business-the subject guarantees wide interest among students.
Faculty are challenged to deal with the subject's complexity and
the sensitive dynamics it creates. The result is anxiety as they
approach the task and a need for guidance. Teaching the
Arab-Israeli Conflict edited by Rachel S. Harris is the first book
designed to meet this need. Teaching the Arab-Israeli Conflict
brings together thirty-nine essays from experienced educators who
reflect on the challenges of engaging students in college
classrooms. Divided into seven sections, these personal essays
cover a broad range of institutional and geographical settings, as
well as a wide number of academic disciplines. Some of the topics
include using graphic novels and memoirs to wrestle with the
complexities of Israel/Palestine, the perils of misreading in the
creative writing classroom as border crossing, teaching competing
narratives through film, using food to teach the Arab-Israeli
conflict, and teaching the subject in the community college
classroom. Each essay includes suggestions for class activities,
resources, and approaches to effective teaching. Whether planning a
new course or searching for new teaching ideas, this collection is
an indispensable compendium for anyone teaching the Arab-Israeli
conflict.
S. D. Goitein's magisterial five-volume work on Jewish communities
in the medieval Mediterranean world offers an unparalleled view of
how people lived, traveled, worshiped, and conducted their economic
and social affairs. Living under Muslim rule, the Jews became
increasingly urbanized and played a significant part in an
expanding world economy. As major actors in the flourishing
intellectual life of the period, they forged much of what
constitutes traditional Judaism today and served as a conduit of
Islamic learning to the Christian West. Goitein's masterpiece is
now abridged and reworked by Jacob Lassner in a single volume that
captures the essential narratives and contexts of the original. To
understand the value of this distillation, we need to picture the
remarkable, all-but-impenetrable cache of unique letters and
documents found by accident in a geniza, or repository of sacred
writings, in Old Cairo. These materials, unlike historical
chronicles and literary texts of the time, represent the living
experiences of people in a wide variety of settings throughout the
entire Mediterranean and stretching as far east as the Indian
subcontinent. Goitein explored and interpreted these texts as no
other scholar had. Lassner, in turn, makes Goitein's findings
available to a wide audience and then moves on to raise a host of
new and tantalizing questions about the Jews of the Geniza and the
relationship of their community to the hegemonic Muslim society.
How is the complex history of the ancient Near East and Islamic
World brought to bear in contemporary political discourse? In this
book, Medieval Near Eastern historian Jacob Lassner explores the
resonance of ancient and medieval history in the political disputes
that dominate the contemporary Middle East. From identification
with ancient forbears as a method of legitimization and
nation-building, to tracing the deep history of the concept of
revolution in the Arab world, the author probes the historical
foundations of modern conflicts in the region. A medievalist, the
author takes the position that an appreciation of cultural history
is essential to understanding the debate surrounding the
Israel/Palestine conflict. In turn, the book identifies the
misappropriation and misunderstanding of the past, deliberate or
accidental, as key weapon in the ongoing conflict.
|
Teaching the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Hardcover)
Rachel S Harris; Introduction by Jacob Lassner; Contributions by Caitlin Carenen, Janice W. Fernheimer, Martin B. Shichtman, …
|
R2,779
R2,487
Discovery Miles 24 870
Save R292 (11%)
|
Ships in 12 - 17 working days
|
The Arab-Israeli conflict has become a touchstone of international
politics and a flash point on college campuses. And yet, how do
faculty teach such a contentious topic in class? Taught not only in
international relations, peace and conflict resolution, politics
and history, and Israel and Middle Eastern studies courses but also
in literature, sociology, urban planning, law, cinema, fine art,
and business-the subject guarantees wide interest among students.
Faculty are challenged to deal with the subject's complexity and
the sensitive dynamics it creates. The result is anxiety as they
approach the task and a need for guidance. Teaching the
Arab-Israeli Conflict edited by Rachel S. Harris is the first book
designed to meet this need. Teaching the Arab-Israeli Conflict
brings together thirty-nine essays from experienced educators who
reflect on the challenges of engaging students in college
classrooms. Divided into seven sections, these personal essays
cover a broad range of institutional and geographical settings, as
well as a wide number of academic disciplines. Some of the topics
include using graphic novels and memoirs to wrestle with the
complexities of Israel/Palestine, the perils of misreading in the
creative writing classroom as border crossing, teaching competing
narratives through film, using food to teach the Arab-Israeli
conflict, and teaching the subject in the community college
classroom. Each essay includes suggestions for class activities,
resources, and approaches to effective teaching. Whether planning a
new course or searching for new teaching ideas, this collection is
an indispensable compendium for anyone teaching the Arab-Israeli
conflict.
In the Middle Ages, a varied and vibrant Islamic culture
flourished in all its aspects, from religious institutions to legal
and scientific endeavors. Lassner, Reisman, and Bonner detail how
all three montheist traditions are linked to the same sacred
history. They trace the most current scholarship on the Arabian
background to Islam, the prophet's early religious message and its
appeal. They the Qur'an and how it would have been understood by
the earliest generations of Muslims. How much does historical
memory come into play in current depictions of this early era?
Beyond religious institutions, Muslim scholars and scientists were
vital to both the transmission of knowledge from the Greek
civilization and to the uninterrupted progress of science. The
authors explore the role that non-Muslim minorities played within
this culture and they detail the splits within the Muslim world
that continue to this day.
Jews and Muslims in the Arab World highlights the effects of
historical memory on the Arab-Israel conflict, demonstrating that
both Jews and Arabs use stories of distant pasts to create their
identities and shape their politics. Whether real or imagined, the
past filtered through their collective memories has had and will
continue to have enormous influence on how Jews and Arabs perceive
themselves and each other. Jews and Muslims in the Arab World
describes the ways in which the past is absorbed, internalized, and
then processed among Jews and Arabs. The book stresses the
importance of historical imagination on the current evolving
political cultures, but does not claim that explanations from an
ancient past shed light on every aspect of contemporary events.
Medieval Jerusalem examines an old question that has recently
surfaced and given rise to spirited discussion among Islamic
historians and archeologists: what role did a city revered for its
holiness play in the unfolding politics of the early Islamic
period? Was there an historic moment when the city, holy to Jews,
Christians, and Muslims, may have been considered as the
administrative center of a vast Islamic world, as some scholars on
early Islam have recently claimed? Medieval Jerusalem also
emphasizes the city's evolution as a revered Islamic religious site
comparable to the holy cities Mecca and Medina. Examining Muslim
historiography and religious lore in light of Jewish traditions
about the city, Jacob Lassner points out how these reworked Jewish
traditions and the imposing monumental Islamic architecture of the
city were meant to demonstrate that Islam had superseded Judaism
and Christianity as the religion for all monotheists. Jacob Lassner
interrogates the literary sources of medieval Islamic
historiography and their modern interpreters as if they were
witnesses in a court of law, and applies the same method for the
arguments about the monuments of the city's material culture,
including the great archaeological discoveries along the south wall
of the ancient Temple Mount. Medieval Jerusalem will be of interest
to a broad range of readers given the significance of the city in
the current politics of the Near East. It will in part serve as a
corrective to narratives of Jerusalem's past that are currently
popular for scholarly and political reasons.
"The Middle East Remembered" is the latest work from one of the
most productive of Near Eastern historians, Jacob Lassner. The
essays and studies that make up this book seek to provide a deep
explanation for traditional Muslim and Jewish reactions to events
past and present. The volume is in many senses a meditation on the
art of history-writing in four crucial eras of the Near East: the
founding years of the Muslim community, the generation after the
Abbasid overthrow of the early Caliphate, the events leading to
collapse of Caliphal governance, and the end of traditional
historiographical models on the edge of modernity.
In the first of the book's three parts, Lassner examines what he
calls the stratigraphy of the text--he makes sense of the unusual
organization of medieval Islamic narrative. The second section
investigates issues such as work on city planning and on the
creation of imperial centers. The last portion studies the
interplay between Jewish and Muslim memory and the trading of
themes and ideas between the cultures.
Shorter studies in the volume have been revised, and the author
weaves new and complementary essays around them. Earlier work has
been transformed and made more available to the general public. The
style is accessible, and technical and arcane usages have been kept
to a minimum. Throughout there are flashes of the author's wry
humor.
Jacob Lassner is Philip M. and Ethel Klutsnick Professor of Jewish
Civilization, Northwestern University, and Professor of Middle East
History, Tel Aviv University.
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