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Biblical Studies, Ancient Judaism, Ancient Near East, Egyptology, Dead Sea Scrolls, Gnosticism & Manichaeism, Early Church & Patristics
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Abstract
This essay offers an experiment in chronological boundary crossing as way of addressing questions about continuity and change in Central Eurasia. It analyzes the violent transformations of holy sites in Altishahr (more widely known as Eastern Turkistan or southern Xinjiang), examining the 11th-century transition from Buddhist to Muslim rule alongside the 21st-century efforts of the People’s Republic of China to transform sacred Islamic sites into nationalist showpieces and “Silk Road” tourism sites. This juxtaposition calls into question prevailing understandings of the 11th -century transition as a simple refashioning of existing Buddhist sites into Islamic forms, while also placing current Chinese restrictions on Islamic holy sites in a broader historical perspective. Together, these 11th- and 20th century transformations show that shrines act as cultural arbiters, establishing routes by which change has entered Altishahr and stubbornly preserving not just older meanings, but also older ways of knowing. At the same time, they are places where the dynamics of continuous meaning creation come into clear view—where cultural change itself becomes an explicit part of the narratives that bind people together in supposedly stable identity groups such as religions and nations.
Abstract
Museum Cuficum Borgianum (Rome 1782) is one of Jacob Georg Christian Adler’s works which traditionally mark the birth of Arabic palaeography. Almost a century ago the Russian Arabist Ignatij Kratchovsky considered Arabic palaeography an indispensable branch of knowledge that needed to be acquired. In 2023, however, Arabic palaeography is a discipline at risk. Rarely included in Oriental studies programs, Arabic palaeography is often confused with calligraphy and is absorbed into other fields relating to the study of artefacts, whilst being a philology-based discipline with a historical vocation. This contribution seeks to stress the value of Arabic palaeography as an essential discipline in the curriculum of students and (future) researchers and its potentials to enlarge and deepen historical and art historical research.
Abstract
In the University of Glasgow Library’s copy of Pius II’s Epistolae familiares (Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 16 Sept. 1481), recorded on leaf 1–1v one can find a copy of a letter addressed to Pope Innocent VIII that starts with the heading “Soldanus pontifici Romano pro Restauracione Iunioris filii senioris Turchi”. The letter’s sender, who is referred to in the text as the “Sultan of Babylon”, was the Caliph of Cairo, al-Mutawakkil II (Abdul Aziz ibn Yaʿqub ibn Muhammad). The present text discusses the content of the letter and the issues regarding the question of its authorship. To ensure a comprehensive presentation of the argumentation, the paper not only discusses the content of the letter but also explores the wider context in which it was produced, situating it against the wider history of the Mamluk state and Mamluk diplomacy as well as the late medieval tradition of the exchange of correspondence (both real and fictitious) between the Christian and Muslim worlds. It needs underlining that not only has the content of the letter in question hitherto been substantially unknown to scholars, but the letter is furthermore the first discovered correspondent from an ʿAbbasid Caliph sent to the head of Western Christianity.
The paper offers a contribution to research on intercultural communication.
The paper comes with three appendices: a transliteration and a translation of the letter and a facsimile of the original record.