教學大綱 Syllabus

Week 2 (9/22)         Before Islam: Arabian Peoples  (film)

 

Hoyland, R. Arabia and the Arabs from the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam. London, 2001, 13–84.

‘Discovery Channel Documentary on al-Ula “Architects of Ancient Arabia”’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8A0LpX7_yM

 

 

 

Week 4 (10/6)         Before Islam: Arabian Society, Economy, Languages, and Religions (Discussion)

 

Hoyland, R. Arabia and the Arabs from the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam. London, 2001, 85–166, 198–228.

Conrad, Lawrence I. “The Arabs.” In The Cambridge Ancient History. Volume XIV. Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, A.D. 425–600. Edited by Averil Cameron, Bryan Ward-Perkins, and Michael Whitby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 678–695.

 

Discussion

Choose one of the corpuses in: http://dasi.cnr.it/index.php?id=14&navId=0

Spend one hour or more studying the inscriptions and introduce three epigraphs from the database by answering the following questions

1. Which corpus did you examine? (include the url of the epigraphs)
2. What kind of text is found in these inscriptions?
3. What interests you in these inscriptions?
4. How do you find the languages in these inscriptions?
5. If you are leaving an inscription or graffiti on a rock or the surface of a building, what will that be?

 

 

 

Week 5 (10/13)       The Rise of Islam in Late Antiquity (Reading session)

 

Berkey, J. P. The Formation of Islam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, 3–49.

Finster, B. “Arabia in Late Antiquity: An Outline of the Cultural Situation in the Peninsula at the Time of Muhammad.” In The Qurʾān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qurʾanic Milieu. Edited by Angelika Neuwirth, Nicolai Sinai and Michael Marx. Leiden: Brill, 2010, 61–114. 

 

Reading Session

Tesei, Tommaso. “Heraclius’ War Propaganda and the Qurʾān’s Promise of Reward for Dying in Battle.” Studia Islamica 114, no. 2 (August 8, 2019): 219–247. https://doi.org/10.1163/19585705-12341397.

 

 

 

Week 6 (10/20)       Muḥammad and His Legacy (Discussion)

 

Kennedy, Hugh. The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates. London: Longman, 1986, 15–75.

Watt, M. Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961.

Ibn Ishaq (d. 767). The life of Muhammad: a translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah. Translated by A. Guillaume. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955.

 

Discussion

Read these two suggested texts with regards to the following questions:

1. What are the sources we can use to reconstruct the life of Muhammad?
2. What are the limits of the Muslim sources?
3. What are the benefits of applying source criticism to the sources concerning Muhammad’s life?
4. What do we actually know about Muhammad?

 

Cook, Michael. Muhammad. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983, 61–76

Crone, P., ‘What do we actually know about Muhammad?’, openDemocracy, 10 June 2008 (1st published 31 August 2006), http://www.opendemocracy.net/faith-europe_islam/mohammed_3866.jsp.

           

 

 

Week 7 (10/27)       The Qurʾān (Reading session)

 

Allen, R. An Introduction to Arabic Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 52–64.

Sonn, T. ‘Introducing.’ In The Blackwell Companion to the Qurʾān. Edited by A. Rippin. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishing, 2006, 3–17

 

Reading Session

The Qur’an, s. 18.

E. van Donzel and Claudia Ott, “Yād̲j̲ūd̲j̲ wa-Mād̲j̲ūd̲j̲”, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition,

Wensinck, A.J., “al-K̲h̲aḍir (al-K̲h̲iḍr)”, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition.

Ed., A. Abel and Abel, A., “Iskandar Nāma”, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition.

Paret, R., “Aṣḥāb al-Kahf”, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition.

 

 

Week 10 (11/17)    The Hadith (Reading session)

 

Brown, J.A. Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World. Oxford: One World, 2009, 1–15.

Shahab Ahmed, “HADITH i. A GENERAL INTRODUCTION,” Encyclopædia Iranica, XI/4, pp. 442-447, available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/hadith-i-intro (accessed on 30 December 2012).

 

Reading session

Brown, J.A. Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World. Oxford: One World, 2009, 197–239.

Bauer, Thomas, Hinrich Biesterfeldt, and Tricia Tunstall. A Culture of Ambiguity: An Alternative History of Islam. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021, 94–103.

 

 

 

Week 11 (11/24)    Islamic Law (Reading session)

Hallaq, Wael B. Sharīʻa: Theory, Practice, Transformations. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Melchert, Christopher. ‘Law’. In The Wiley Blackwell Concise Companion to the Hadith, ed. Daniel W. Brown (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2020), 205–221.

Reinhart, A. Kevin. ‘Jurisprudence’ In The Blackwell Companion to the Qurʾān. Edited by A. Rippin. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishing, 2006, 526–542.

 

Reading session

Bauer, Thomas, Hinrich Biesterfeldt, and Tricia Tunstall. A Culture of Ambiguity: An Alternative History of Islam. New York: Columbia University Press, 2021, 103–128.

Haider, Najam. “Contesting Intoxication: Early Juristic Debates over the Lawfulness of Alcoholic Beverages.” Islamic Law and Society 20, no. 1–2 (2013): 48–89.

 

 

 

Week 12 (12/1)       The Translation Movement (Discussion)

 

Bennison, A., The Great Caliphs: The Golden Age of the ‘Abbasid Empire, London, 2009, 158–202.

BBC Radio 4, ‘The Translation Movement’, In Our Time podcast, available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00dp4d8

Bennison, A. The Great Caliphs: The Golden Age of the ‘Abbasid Empire. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009, 158–202.

Gutas, D. Greek thought, Arabic culture: the Graeco-Arabic translation movement in Baghdad and early ʻAbbasid society (2nd-4th/8th-10th centuries). London: Routledge, 1998, 28–60.

Saliba, G. Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance. Cambridge: Mass., 2007, 1–129.

 

Discussion

1. What is the importance of the translation movement?
2. Can you think of an equivalent of the translation movement in another civilization?
3. To what extent the language we use determines how we think, analyse, and conceptualise?
4. If you were a translator during the translation movement, what kind of texts you would translate? Why?

 

 

 

Week 13  (12/8)      Islamic Medicine

 

Ebrahimnejad. H. ‘Medicine in Islam and Islamic Medicine.’ In The Oxford Handbook of the History of  Medicine. Edited by M. Jackson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

E. Savage-Smith, F. Klein-Franke, and M. Zhu. ‘Ṭibb’ in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition.

Al Jazeera English. ‘Science in a Golden Age - Al-Razi, Ibn Sina and the Canon of Medicine’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8HlFFDTBWQ

 

 

 

Week 14 (12/15)    Islamic Medicine  (Discussion)

 

Ebrahimnejad. H. ‘Medicine in Islam and Islamic Medicine.’ In The Oxford Handbook of the History of  Medicine. Edited by M. Jackson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

E. Savage-Smith, F. Klein-Franke, and M. Zhu. ‘Ṭibb’ in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition.

 

Discussion

Read these two suggested texts with regards to the following questions:

1. Outline the main ideas of Christopher Bürgel.
2. How convincing in your view is the division of secular and religious aspects in Bürgel’s discussion of ‘Arabic’ medicine?
3. To what extent Bürgel’s analysis is informed by Orientalism? Provide some examples.
4. What is a better approach to represent the medicine in the Islamic civilisation, in your view?

 

Burney, Shehla. “CHAPTER ONE: Orientalism: The Making of the Other.” Counterpoints 417 (2012): 23–39. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42981698.

Bürgel, J.Christoph. ‘Secular and Religious Features of Medieval Arabic Medicine.’ In Asian Medical Systems: A Comparative Study. Edited by Charles M. Leslie. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976, 44–62.

 

 

Week 15 (12/22)    Food and Culinary Culture (Reading session)

 

Gelder, G.J.H. van, “Ṭaʿām”, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition.

Beg, M.A.J., “Ṭabbāk̲h̲”, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition.

Waines, D., “Ṭabk̲h̲”, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition.

Rodinson, M., “G̲h̲id̲h̲āʾ”, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition.

Nawal Nasrallah, ‘Food Culture and History in the Middle East’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hZx53o4osc

 

            Reading Session

Ibn Sayyār al-Warrāq. Annals of the Caliphs’ Kitchens. Edited by Kaj Öhrnberg and Sahban Mroueh. Translated by Nawal Nasrallah. Leiden: Brill, 2007, 94–95, 1100–110, 116–119, 126–127, 149–152.

 

Further

Ibn Razīn al-Tujībī, and Nawal Nasrallah. Best of Delectable Foods and Dishes from Al-Andalus and al-Maghrib. Islamic History and Civilization, volume 186. Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2021.

Waines, David. In a Caliph’s Kitchen. London: Riad El-Rayyes Books, 1989.