Le savant et son époque à travers sa correspondance Seeger A. Bonebakker (1923-2005) et quelques notes sur Ḫalīl b. Aybak al-Ṣafadī (696-764/1297-1363)

This article proposes a survey of two great scholars’ in Arabic literature correspondences: a European of the 20th century, Seeger Adrianus Bonebakker, who is of special interest for us because he bequeathed all of his great library, personal notes and correspondence to Università Ca’ Foscari, and a subject of study of the former, Ḫalīl b. Aybak al-Ṣafadī, great littérateur and scholar of the first century of the Mamluk period. Letters sent and received are preserved in both cases and are primary sources on their network, but also on their personal life, personality and methodology

The Abbasid “Golden Age”: An Excavation

The application of a Hegelian rise-and-fall narrative to the history of Arabic literature has been erroneously attributed to Ibn Khaldūn and his successors, though it can more probably be traced back to Hammer-Purgstall’s Literaturgeschichte der Araber (1850). Although this paradigm has long been out of favor, its disappearance leaves us without a ready answer to the question of what (if anything) was distinctive about what is still sometimes called the early Abbasid golden age. The prominence of this era in later memory is here traced to the adoption of paper, which supported, on the one hand, the simplification and vulgarization of Arab language, lore, and religion; and on the other, the appearance of the first reliably contemporary eyewitness accounts in Arabic literature. These productions made the period the first Islamic space to be imaginable in almost granular detail, as well as the source of much of what we know about antecedent “Arab” and “Islamic” history. These features gave the period an outsized place even in the pre-modern Arabic tradition. They also made it available for popularization by Jurjī Zaydān, whose Taʾrīkh al-tamaddun al-islāmī (1902-1906) proved formative of later attitudes in Arabic-language scholarshi

Ħarsa ġdida lejn ir-rakkont tal-Ħimjari dwar Malta

It-test tal-Ħimjari hu deskrizzjoni ta’ Malta miktub, abbażi ta’ rapporti minn għejun eqdem, mill-ġeografu Għarbi l-Ħimjari, li aktarx li miet fis-seklu erbatax.peer-reviewe

Two Abbasid trials: Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal and Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq

According to Ḥanbalī sources, the imam (d. 855) did not capitulate to the 'Abbāsid Inquisition. In modem times, a persuasive argument has been made that he must have done so; otherwise, he would never have been released. Yet a comparison of Ibn Ḥanbal's trial with that of Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq (d. 873) suggests that the `Abbāsid caliphs, when asked to judge suspected heretics, made their decisions based on reasons of state rather than dogmatic grounds. Against this background, the trial report of Ḥanbal b. Isḥāq can be read as a plausible account of why the caliph al-Mu'taṣim might have released Ibn Ḥanbal despite the latter's defiance of the Inquisition.Según las fuentes ḥanbalíes, el imām Ibn Ḥanbal (m. en 855) no capituló ante la inquisición 'abbāsí. En tiempos recientes, sin embargo, se tiende a pensar que sí debió capitular porque si no, nunca habría sido liberado. Sin embargo, una comparación del proceso de Ibn Ḥanbal con el de Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq (m. 873), indica que los califas 'abbāsíes, cuando tenían que juzgar a un sospechoso de herejía, lo hacían más bien basados en razones de estado que en motivos dogmáticos. En este contexto, en la narración del proceso recogido por Ḥanbal b. Isḥāq, puede leerse una explicación plausible de por qué el califa al-Mu'taṣim puede haber liberado a Ibn Ḥanbal a pesar de que éste desafiara a la Inquisición

Wolfhart P. Heinrichs

On January 23, 2014, we lost a teacher, a mentor, and a friend. Wolfhart P. Heinrichs was born on October 3, 1941, into a family of philologists. His father H. Matthias was a Germanist, and his mother Anne a scholar of Old Norse who attained a full professorship at the Freie Universität in Berlin at the age of 80