New Books in Medieval History

In Politics, Law, and Community in Islamic Thought: The Taymiyyan Moment (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Ovamir Anjum explores a timely topic, even though his focus is hundreds of years in the past. In order to present his topic Professor Anjum asks a series of foundational questions, such as: How have Muslims understood ideal government and political theology? What is the role of rulers in those politics? And what does it even mean to talk about “politics” as a category? In Anjum’s words “the relationship between Islam and politics in the classical age can neither be described as a formal divorce nor a honeymoon, but rather a tenuous and unstable separation of spheres of religious authority from political power that was neither justified in theory nor wholeheartedly accepted” (136). The “Taymiyyan Moment,” a rephrasing of the “Machiavellian Moment” comes during the life of the prodigious author, theologian, and jurist Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328). By honing in on Ibn Taymiyya’s magnum opus, Dar’ Ta’arud al-‘aql wa-l-naql (The Repulsion of Opposing Reason and Revelation)–not a political work, per se, but a theological one–Anjum reflects on, among other things, tensions between “community-centered” and “ruler-centered” visions of politics, and how scholars before Ibn Taymiyya had understood these ideas. Based on meticulous research of primary and secondary sources, Anjum’s monograph will likely encourage new scholarship on the post-classical era, including the impact of Ibn Taymiyya’s ideas on later generations, as well as interest among scholars from a variety of disciplines, ranging from History and Religious Studies, to Political Science and Law. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Known primarily as a travel writer thanks to the frequent assignment of her Diary in high school history and literature classes, Nun Abutsu was a thirteenth-century poet, scholar, and teacher, and also a prolific writer. Christina Laffin‘s new book explores Abutsu’s life and written works, taking readers in turn through... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the current political climate it might be easy to assume that Muslims in the ‘West’ have always been viewed in a negative light. However, when we examine the historical relationship between Muslims and their non-Muslim neighbors we find a much more complicated picture. In Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, c.1050-1614 (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Brian A. Catlos, professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado, offers the first comprehensive overview of Muslim minorities in Latin Christian lands during the Middle Ages. The book provides a narrative history of regional Muslim subjects in the Latin west, including Islamic Sicily, Al-Andalus, expansion in the Near East, the Muslim communities of Medieval Hungary, and portraits of travelers, merchants, and slaves in Western Europe. Here we find that Muslims often had great deal of agency in structuring the subject/ruler relationship due to the material and economic contributions they made to local communities. The second half of the book explores thematic issues that were shared across Muslims communities of the Mediterranean world. Catlos surveys ideological, administrative, and practical matters, including Muslim concern about legitimacy and assimilation, legal culture, and everyday social life in these multi-confessional communities. In our conversation we discussed the reign of Christian Spains, Norman rule, the adoption of Arabo-Islamic culture, Morisco hybridity, Islam in Christian imagination, the role of Muslim women, and everyday public religious life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When did groups in Kufa begin forming unique identities leading to the development of Shiism? Najam Haider, professor of Religion at Barnard College of Columbia University, answers this question in his book, The Origins of Shia: Identity, Ritual, and Sacred Space in Eighth-Century Kufa (Cambridge University Press, 2011). This study is a boon for those with research interests in early Shiism, or the history of Islam prior to the ninth century. In the first section of his book, Haider announces his intention to test literary narratives of the origins of Shiism: namely, if Shiism did, in fact, develop during the early 8th century and if it was the product of the merging of two distinct groups.To answer those questions he proposes to analyze the 8th-century Kufa traditions. Haider examines these traditions on the basis of their legal authorities and the composition of their narrative styles.He applies this method to three cases studies in the second section of his book: (1) the basmala in ritual prayer, (2) the use of qunÅ«t, a blessing or curse, in prayer, and (3) the prohibition of intoxicants. Each case study centers on ritual which Haider argues is a more determinative means of ascribing identity then an individual or group’s theology. Based on the results of these three case studies, Haider proposes a revised history of Shiism in his third section. Haider’s work stands out for the clarity of the questions he seeks to answer and the method he employs in doing so. Every chapter concludes with a concise summary of the major points and the entire work is filled with charts of data to help readers understand how the massive corpus of information he utilized was organized and categorized. Scholars will obviously benefit from its proposed revised history, but its readability makes it useful for undergraduates and laypersons. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Neoplatonists, including the 11th century Jewish philosopher-poet Solomon Ibn Gabirol, are often saddled with a cosmology considered either as outdated science or a kind of “invisible floating Kansas” in which spatiotemporal talk isn’t really about space or time. Sarah Pessin, Associate Professor of Philosophy and the Emil and Eva Hecht Chair in Judaic Studies at the University of Denver, is committed to upending these traditional readings. In Ibn Gabirol’s Theology of Desire: Matter and Method in Jewish Medieval Neoplatonism (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Pessin begins her reappraisal from the ground up, interpreting neoplatonist cosmo-ontology as a response to the Paradox of Divine Unity: of how God can be both complete yet also give way to that which is other than Himself. Pessin argues that Ibn Gabirol saw being and beings as emanating from God via a process of divine desire – a kind of pre-cognitive, essential yearning to share His goodness forward. This desire infuses the initial Grounding Element, a positive conception of matter that (contrary to standard views) is prior to and superior to soul and intellect and utterly distinct from Aristotle’s notion of Prime Matter. Pessin’s provocative book is full of surprising insights that reveal the richness of the ideas of a “completely mischaracterized” figure and period. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rebecca Williams‘ book Muhammad and the Supernatural: Medieval Arab Views (Routledge, 2013) is one of the newest additions to the Routledge Studies in Classic Islam series. Despite the Qur’anic proclamation that the only “miracle” which served as proof of Muhammad’s propethood was the Qur’an itself, miracles and supernatural events have been ascribed to Muhammad in numerous Islamic literary and intellectual genres. Professor Williams, of the University of South Alabama, delivers a unique and fresh look at the supernatural in Islam.Restricting her analysis to the works of Qur’anic exegesis and the biography, she focuses on four events in the life of Muhammad. Muhammad’s conception, his first occasion of public preaching, a vignette concerning a warning sent by one of Muhammad’s followers to the residents of Mecca prior to an attack, and a failed assassination attempt upon Muhammad’s life each contain some type of supernatural occurrence. Each of these events is connected to an important theme for Muslims in the medieval era, sex, politics, betrayal, and wrath, respectively. Professor William’s fascinating comparative investigation of the treatment of these supernatural occasions demonstrates important similarities and differences between these two scholars. Moreover, the reader becomes conscious of the milieu in which each scholar constructed their texts. While this is a significant contribution to the field of the study of Islam, the topics addressed are of great benefit to scholars of literature and folklore and its contents are accessible to a wide spectrum of readers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So many history books take for granted that a story about the past needs to focus on change (gradual or dramatic, transformative or subtle) as its motivating narrative and argumentative core. In A Sense of Place: The Political Landscape in Late Medieval Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2013), David Spafford... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In her book Animals in the Qur’an (Cambridge University Press, 2012), Sarra Tlili carefully addresses a complex issue. What does the Qur’an say about non-human animals? And their relationship to humans? Tlili begins her study by discussing conceptions of animals in various religions, in addition to Islam, and not just “Abrahamic” traditions. The remainder of the book focuses on the Qur’an, its presentation of animals, and a range of exegetical literature that treats the topic of animals in the Islamic holy text. Tlili also ventures into Arabic literature more broadly. She adroitly demonstrates that classical Muslim scholars did not understand non-human animals as existentially inferior, and notes societal shifts in the modern world with reference to anthropocentrism and privileging human existence. Tlili also provides a comprehensive appendix that lists a host of qur’anic names for animals, demonstrating the significance of her topic as well as the lexical challenge that scholars face. Sarra Tlili’s articulate prose reads smoothly, moreover, and gives the reader an incentive to explore this fascinating text. The monograph should interest specialists and non-specialists alike as it provides an accessible window into the rich world of Animals in the Qur’an. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Superstitions flourish in our world–think of the elaborate rituals of baseball players, or knocking wood to avoid tempting fate, or that bit of happiness (or relief) we might experience from finding a lucky (heads up only!) penny. Yet it is part of the mythology of modernity that ours is a “disenchanted” age (or at least so said German sociologist Max Weber in a famous 1918 lecture). Since the Enlightenment, there has been a tradition of invoking a superstitious Middle Ages as a supposed counterpoint to “our” own rationalized and intellectualized times (to paraphrase Weber). The Middle Ages was one of the historical entities against which European modernity in many senses constituted itself, and it continues popularly to be imagined as uniformly saturated with superstition.Yet as Michael D. Bailey‘s latest book, Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies: The Boundaries of Superstition in Late Medieval Europe (Cornell University Press, 2013) shows, that age had its own, highly developed, intellectually rigorous and contentiously debated notions of what was superstitious in practice and in thought. In the book, Bailey looks at how university-based academics and clerics, using the systematizing methods of scholasticism, formulated ideas about what was superstitious over two centuries–between, roughly, 1300 and 1500. He offers us, in other words, a history of evolving ideas of superstition and of what was considered superstitious by the most learned men of that era. Much as the category of superstition has been used to establish and manage putative boundaries between modern and not, late medieval scholars and clerics debated superstition–locating it in practices as varied as learned astrology, necromancy, and everyday medicinal charms–to patrol the shifting boundaries both of legitimate science and of proper religion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When I was an undergraduate, I was taught that merchants in early modern Western Europe were “proto-capitalists.” I was never quite sure what that meant. If it meant they traded property for money, yes. But that would make everyone who traded things for money over the past, say, 5,000 years, a “proto-capitalist.” If it meant that they thought of their property as capital to be used for maximizing profit, then no. As Martha C. Howell points out in her excellent Commerce Before Capitalism in Europe, 1300-1600 (Cambridge UP, 2010), early modern merchants–at least in the Low Countries–didn’t really think of their property as “capital” at all, and they certainly didn’t use it exclusively for the maximization of profit. Their idea of property was, according to Howell, as much medieval as modern. Essentially, they adapted received (medieval) categories of property to novel commercial conditions. The result was a unique hybrid of the old and new. In hindsight, their understanding of property might seem “proto-capitalist.” But really it was just the way they conceived of property. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices