This volume explores aspects of religious culture in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Arabian Peninsula across Late Antiquity – the period of dynamic and historically crucial developments, culminating in the emergence of Islam. While it would be impossible to provide an exhaustive examination of the topic in a single volume, it is the main aim of this book to further stimulate scholarly research on the Late Antique context of the origins of Islam and the history of early Arab-Muslim culture.

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.

Die folgende Studie beschäftigt sich mit der Rezeption Konstantins in der arabischen Historiographie, sowoh christlicher- als auch muslimischerseits. Eine genauere Analyse der Texte wird zeigen, wie die Geschichte des ersten christlichen Kaisers eine Projektionsfläche für Identitätskonstrutkionen werden konnte, auch über Religionsgrenzen hinaus.

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.