8 research outputs found
Sa‘īd b. Ḥasan, biographical notes through the prism of Masālik al-Naẓar
The Islamic polemical tract Kitāb Masālik al-Naẓar reveals much about its author, the Jewish apostate Sa‘īd b. Ḥasan. Sa‘īd plunges into diverse polemic themes, including some with which he is poorly acquainted, and uses sources from all three Abrahamic faiths, showing greater familiarity with Jewish sources than with the Qur’ān. The discussion explores Sa‘īd’s treatment of various issues in Muslim-Jewish polemics through the prism of his important polemical tract, Masālik al-Naẓar, and takes one of the first steps toward lifting Sa‘īd out of his undeserved obscurity in scholarship
A Turke turn'd Quaker: conversion from Islam to radical dissent in early modern England
The study of the relationship between the anglophone and Islamic
worlds in the seventeenth century has been the subject of increas-
ing interest in recent years, and much attention has been given to
the cultural anxiety surrounding “Turning Turke”, conversion from
Christianity to Islam, especially by English captives on the Barbary
coast. Conversion in the other direction has attracted far less
scrutiny, not least because it appears to have been far less com-
mon. Conversion from Islam to any form of radical dissent has
attracted no scholarship whatsoever, probably because it has been
assumed to be non-existent. However, the case of Bartholomew
Cole provides evidence that such conversions did take place, and
examining the life of this “Turke turn’d Quaker” provides an insight
into the dynamics of cross-cultural conversion of an exceptional
kind