Gorgias Islamic Studies

Women in Islamic Biographical Collections: From Ibn Sa'd to Who's Who is a groundbreaking study of 40 bibliographical collections, dating from the 9th century to the present, investigating which type of woman Muslim scholars have deemed worthy of recording for posterity. The analysis clearly indicates that Muslim women have achieved prominence in certain fields at certain times.

A reprint of Peter Adamson's influential work The Arabic Plotinus.

Who of us has not wondered why a God with absolute attributes causes or allows evil in the world? This most puzzling issue, known as the problem of evil, received significant attention from Ibn Sina. In the present work, Dr. Inati argues that Ibn Sina provides seven theses to justify God's causing or allowing the presence of evil, and that only the thesis which relies on God’s omnipotence as defined by Ibn Sina eliminates the problem of evil in his philosophy. The book is an original piece of work and the first comprehensive study of Ibn Sina's Theodicy, which helped shape later Islamic and Christian treatments of the subject and left significant marks on the thought of major medieval philosophers, including Ibn Rushd, Aquinas and Suarez.

Muslims, Jews and Pagans examines in much detail the available source material on the 'Āliya area south of Medina on the eve of Islam and at the time of the Prophet Muḥammad. It provides part of the necessary background for the study of the Prophet's history by utilizing in addition to the Prophet's biographies, various texts about the history, geography and inhabitants of this area.

The Decisive Treatise is perhaps the most controversial work of Averroes (Ibn Rushd, 1126-1198) and belongs to a trilogy which boldly represent the philosophical contribution to Islamic theology of this famous Andalusian commentator on Aristotle. The Decisive Treatise is a fatwa (a legal opinion) that the judge, Averroes, promulgated for his fellow Malikite jurists in order to demonstrate that the study of philosophy is not only licit from the point of view of religious law, but even mandatory for the skilled people. However, many subjects are dealt with in this comparatively short book: An epistemology aimed to show that philosophical truth and religious truth are not in contradiction; a sociology of knowledge pointing out that humans are classified in three classes (philosophers, theologians, common folk); a Qur’anic hermeneutics suggesting how to approach philosophically the Holy Book in agreement with religious requirements and linguistic rules.

Patricia Crone reassesses one of the most widely accepted dogmas in contemporary accounts of the beginnings of Islam: the supposition that Mecca was a trading center. In addition, she seeks to elucidate sources on which we should reconstruct our picture of the birth of the new religion in Arabia.

Victorian perceptions of Islam were not monochrome; some saw beyond stereotypical images, others reproduced them. In this study, the accounts of six Victorians outline the contrast of the two perceptions. It suggests that presuppositions, not encounters per se, determine how we see cultural and religious others.

The History, Poetry, and Genealogy of the Yemen is the earliest known history of pre-Islamic Yemen. Attributed to the South Arabian historian ‘Abid b. Sharya al-Jurhumi, it recounts in prose and poetry six saga cycles of ancient personages and events of the Yemen. Here, two sagas, the dispersion of Sam’s descendants from Babel to the Yemen, and the destruction of the tribes of ‘Ad and Thamud, are translated with complete annotation. The tales of Luqman b. ‘Ad and his seven vultures, Sulayman and Bilqis, the Himyarite kings, and Tasm and Jadis are given in full synopses.

The heretofore unpublished Kitab al-Zina, virtually unknown in western scholarship, is a glossary of important Islamic terms by the 9th/10th-century Ismaili polymath Abu Hatim al-Razi. Some lament that Razi’s historical approach to etymology failed to catch on and that had it done so, the face of Arabic dictionary writing might have been altered for the better. His organization of material was uniquely Ismaili as he took pains to synthesize contradictory information into a harmonious whole. This study examines sections of Razi’s work with a view towards his contributions to the field of grammar and linguistics.

In recent years, the Qur’ān has come to the forefront of scholarly investigations in Islamic studies. However, the traditional interpretation of the book, commonly termed tafsīr, remains a vast, virtually untapped field of investigation. Many Muslims tend to ignore the material, seeing it as a storehouse of traditional restraints, and scholars frequently gloss over its importance as a historical record of the Muslim community, not appreciating the depth and breadth of the literature. The essays gathered here expose and explore various aspects of the field of tafsīr, and their potential for scholarly research.