Jon Hoover, Associate Professor of Islamic Studies, University of Nottingham
''Laura Hassan's Ashʿarism Encounters Avicennism: Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī on Creation is the first extended study of the post-Avicennan philosopher and theologian Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī. The work truly fills a lacuna in the literature, and does so in a clear and philosophically engaging way. The issue of the world's age, which is at the core of Hassan's work, was unquestionably one of the most hotly debated topic in the medieval Islamic intellectual world. Hassan not only contextualizes that debate in order to explain al-Āmidī's own evolving position and then complete turn-around, but also integrates discussions of possibility, necessity, atomism and even the nature of post-Avicennan physics into her narrative. This is a wonderful book, which I strongly recommend for anyone interested in Islamic philosophy and theology at the end of the classical period.''
Jon McGinnis, Professor of Classical and medieval Philosophy, University of Missouri, St. Louis
...Hassan’s book is a valuable and certainly very insightful contribution to furthering our understanding not only of al-Āmidī’s thought on creation in particular, but the intricate ways in which different intellectual traditions in classical Islam reacted to each other.
Hannah C. Erlwein Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany, in the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, March 2022.
...a perceptive intellectual biography of a unique and interesting thirteenth-century Islamic philosophical theologian.
Hassan provides a thorough survey of the intellectual ecosystem which al-Āmidī; inhabited, which is both comprehensive of the theological tradition preceding him, and rich with informative references to its key figures and arguments.
Here, the reader receives a well-organized, comprehensive, and deeply informative education; not only on al-Āmidī;, but also on the philosophical devel-opments underlying the classical and early post-classical Islamic conversation over what it means for the cosmos to have been ‘created’, and how to understand that fact as a premise in our inference to the existence of a Creator. Given its historic breadth, its informative reference to the major figures, and its clear, detailed, and philosophically acute analyses of the concepts and arguments involved in the creation debate, the book would make for an excellent primary text for advanced courses on Islamic philosophy and theology.Edward Moad, Qatar University, Journal of Islamic Studies 2022, pp. 1-4.
... [we] salute the effort made by Laura Hassan who, despite the complexity of the literature, has successfully managed to demonstrate the connections between Ashʿarism and Avicennism in the thought of Āmidī concerning the creation of the world.
Ilyass Amharar, Post-doctorant Aix Marseille Université, in IREMAMISLAMOLOGIE, DROIT, PHILOSOPHIE, SCIENCES, 2022.
