"Our Place in Al-Andalus"

Author: Gil David Anidjar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Jewish literature
Languages : en
Pages : 826

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Book Description

"Our Place in Al-Andalus"

Author: Gil David Anidjar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Jewish literature
Languages : en
Pages : 826

Get Book Here

Book Description


Maimonides in His World

Maimonides in His World PDF Author: Sarah Stroumsa
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400831326
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
While the great medieval philosopher, theologian, and physician Maimonides is acknowledged as a leading Jewish thinker, his intellectual contacts with his surrounding world are often described as related primarily to Islamic philosophy. Maimonides in His World challenges this view by revealing him to have wholeheartedly lived, breathed, and espoused the rich Mediterranean culture of his time. Sarah Stroumsa argues that Maimonides is most accurately viewed as a Mediterranean thinker who consistently interpreted his own Jewish tradition in contemporary multicultural terms. Maimonides spent his entire life in the Mediterranean region, and the religious and philosophical traditions that fed his thought were those of the wider world in which he lived. Stroumsa demonstrates that he was deeply influenced not only by Islamic philosophy but by Islamic culture as a whole, evidence of which she finds in his philosophy as well as his correspondence and legal and scientific writings. She begins with a concise biography of Maimonides, then carefully examines key aspects of his thought, including his approach to religion and the complex world of theology and religious ideas he encountered among Jews, Christians, Muslims, and even heretics; his views about science; the immense and unacknowledged impact of the Almohads on his thought; and his vision of human perfection. This insightful cultural biography restores Maimonides to his rightful place among medieval philosophers and affirms his central relevance to the study of medieval Islam.

‘Our Place in al-Andalus’

‘Our Place in al-Andalus’ PDF Author: Gil Anidjar
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804741217
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
This book offers a reading of Andalusi, Jewish, and Arabic texts that represent the 12th and 13th centuries as the end of el-Andalus (Islamic Spain).

Perspectives on Maimonides

Perspectives on Maimonides PDF Author: Joel L. Kraemer
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1909821438
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
'It will allow students to possess a volume that will acquaint them with high standards of scholarship, showing at the same time that although so much has been said and written about Maimonides, it is still possible to come up with new and interesting insights into his life and works, which continue to be interpreted very differently by different scholars.' - Gad Freudenthal, Journal of Religious History

Performing al-Andalus

Performing al-Andalus PDF Author: Jonathan Holt Shannon
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253017742
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Performing al-Andalus explores three musical cultures that claim a connection to the music of medieval Iberia, the Islamic kingdom of al-Andalus, known for its complex mix of Arab, North African, Christian, and Jewish influences. Jonathan Holt Shannon shows that the idea of a shared Andalusian heritage animates performers and aficionados in modern-day Syria, Morocco, and Spain, but with varying and sometimes contradictory meanings in different social and political contexts. As he traces the movements of musicians, songs, histories, and memories circulating around the Mediterranean, he argues that attention to such flows offers new insights into the complexities of culture and the nuances of selfhood.

Space and Place in Jewish Studies

Space and Place in Jewish Studies PDF Author: Barbara E. Mann
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813552125
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Scholars in the humanities have become increasingly interested in questions of how space is produced and perceived—and they have found that this consideration of human geography greatly enriches our understanding of cultural history. This “spatial turn” equally has the potential to revolutionize Jewish Studies, complicating familiar notions of Jews as “people of the Book,” displaced persons with only a common religious tradition and history to unite them. Space and Place in Jewish Studies embraces these exciting critical developments by investigating what “space” has meant within Jewish culture and tradition—and how notions of “Jewish space,” diaspora, and home continue to resonate within contemporary discourse, bringing space to the foreground as a practical and analytical category. Barbara Mann takes us on a journey from medieval Levantine trade routes to the Eastern European shtetl to the streets of contemporary New York, introducing readers to the variety of ways in which Jews have historically formed communities and created a sense of place for themselves. Combining cutting-edge theory with rabbinics, anthropology, and literary analysis, Mann offers a fresh take on the Jewish experience.

The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise

The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise PDF Author: Dario Fernandez-Morera
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1684516293
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
A finalist for World Magazine's Book of the Year! Scholars, journalists, and even politicians uphold Muslim-ruled medieval Spain—"al-Andalus"—as a multicultural paradise, a place where Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived in harmony. There is only one problem with this widely accepted account: it is a myth. In this groundbreaking book, Northwestern University scholar Darío Fernández-Morera tells the full story of Islamic Spain. The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise shines light on hidden history by drawing on an abundance of primary sources that scholars have ignored, as well as archaeological evidence only recently unearthed. This supposed beacon of peaceful coexistence began, of course, with the Islamic Caliphate's conquest of Spain. Far from a land of religious tolerance, Islamic Spain was marked by religious and therefore cultural repression in all areas of life and the marginalization of Christians and other groups—all this in the service of social control by autocratic rulers and a class of religious authorities. The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise provides a desperately needed reassessment of medieval Spain. As professors, politicians, and pundits continue to celebrate Islamic Spain for its "multiculturalism" and "diversity," Fernández-Morera sets the historical record straight—showing that a politically useful myth is a myth nonetheless.

In the Light of Medieval Spain

In the Light of Medieval Spain PDF Author: S. Doubleday
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230614086
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
This volume brings together a team of leading scholars in Spanish studies to interrogate the contemporary significance of the medieval past, offering a counterbalance to intellectual withdrawal from urgent public debates.

Al-Andalus Rediscovered

Al-Andalus Rediscovered PDF Author: Marvine Howe
Publisher: Hurst & Company
ISBN: 9781849041614
Category : Africa, North
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Iberia is a special place of colliding myths over its Islamic past and the Christian reconquista, the Inquisition and massive expulsion of Muslims and Jews some five centuries ago. Long a land of emigrants and explorers, it has now become home to Europe's latest, rapidly growing Muslim communities. Al Andalus Rediscovered focuses on Iberia's new Muslims, including boatpeople, students, women and clerics, and how they are faring in a largely Roman Catholic region. Also featured are the Spanish and Portuguese officials, academics, NGOs and ordinary citizens who are trying to find better ways to integrate Muslims and other immigrants, despite domestic and European pressures for tougher counter-measures. Nor does Howe neglect the events of March 11, 2004, when Madrid was the site of the most devastating terrorist attack by Muslim extremists in Europe, or the stated ambition of Al Qaeda to recover Al Andalus for Islam. Her book seeks to answer the basic questions: whether an Iberian model of a humane immigration policy is possible in 'fortress' Europe and whether the partisans of the Andalusian spirit of tolerance and diversity can prevail at this time of economic hardship and heightened radicalism in both the Islamic World and the West.

New Babylonians

New Babylonians PDF Author: Orit Bashkin
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804782016
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
Although Iraqi Jews saw themselves as Iraqi patriots, their community—which had existed in Iraq for more than 2,500 years—was displaced following the establishment of the state of Israel. New Babylonians chronicles the lives of these Jews, their urban Arab culture, and their hopes for a democratic nation-state. It studies their ideas about Judaism, Islam, secularism, modernity, and reform, focusing on Iraqi Jews who internalized narratives of Arab and Iraqi nationalisms and on those who turned to communism in the 1940s. As the book reveals, the ultimate displacement of this community was not the result of a perpetual persecution on the part of their Iraqi compatriots, but rather the outcome of misguided state policies during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Sadly, from a dominant mood of coexistence, friendship, and partnership, the impossibility of Arab-Jewish coexistence became the prevailing narrative in the region—and the dominant narrative we have come to know today.