Handbook of Medieval Studies: Terms - Methods - Trends

Handbook of Medieval Studies Volume 1

Handbook of Medieval Studies Terms - Methods - Trends Edited by Albrecht Classen

Volume 1

De Gruyter

ISBN 978-3-11-018409-9 e-ISBN 978-3-11-021558-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Handbook of medieval studies : terms, methods, trends / edited by Albrecht Classen. p. cm. ISBN 978-3-11-018409-9 (alk. paper) 1. Middle Ages - Historiography. 2. Middle Ages - Study and teaching. 3. Literature, Medieval - History and criticism. 4. Middle Ages - Bibliography. 5. Medievalists - Biography. I. Classen, Albrecht. D116.H37 2010 940.1072-dc22 2010040766

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

쑔 2010 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/New York Typesetting: Dörlemann-Satz GmbH & Co. KG, Lemförde Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ⬁ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

V

Table of Contents

Table of Contents Volume 1: Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

XV

Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

XXV

Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

LXVII

List of Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . LXXVII

Main Topics and Debates of the Last Decades and their Terminology and Results Arabic and Islamic Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Arab West (Thomas F. Glick) . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Arab East (Mark David Luce) . . . . . . . . . . . . . Arabic Literature (Mark Pettigrew) . . . . . . . . . . . . Archeology and History of Art in Pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia (Matteo Compareti) . . . . . . . . . . Classical Persian Literature (Mark David Luce) . . . . . . Islamic Philosophy (Alessandro Cancian) . . . . . . . . . Islamic Theology (Livnat Holtzman) . . . . . . . . . . . Natural Sciences in the Islamic Context (Glen M. Cooper) Qur’anic Studies (Erik S. Ohlander) . . . . . . . . . . . . Shi’ism (Alessandro Cancian) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Archaeology in Medieval Studies (Christopher Landon) . Art History (Elina Gertsman) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Astronomical Instruments (David A. King) . . . . . . . . Bakhthinian Discourse Theory, Heteroglossia (Stephen M. Carey) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Biblical Exegesis (Frans van Liere) . . . . . . . . . . . . . Botany (Alain Touwaide) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Byzantine Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Byzantine Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Byzantine Art and Architecture (Sophia Germanidou) . . Byzantine Philosophical Treatises (Georgi Kapriev) . . .

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3 6 14

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25 38 46 56 69 81 93 104 117 126

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131 137 145

181 185

Table of Contents

Byzantine Sciences (Alain Touwaide) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Byzantine Theology (George Arabatzis). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Classics and Mythography (Gregory Heyworth) . . . . . . . . . . . . . Codicology and Paleography (Alain Touwaide) . . . . . . . . . . . . . Communication (Albrecht Classen) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Computer-Based Medieval Research (with an Emphasis on Middle High German) (Ulrich Müller) . . Conversion (Matthew J. dal Santo) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cornish Literature (Brian Murdoch). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Crusades Historiography (Andrew Holt) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Deconstruction in Medieval Studies (Maurice Sprague) . . . . . . . . Diplomatics (Theo Kölzer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Disability Studies (Julie Singer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Editing of Medieval Texts (Craig Baker) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . English Studies (Robin Gilbank) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Enlightenment Perspectives on the Middle Ages (Reinhold Münster) Epigraphy (Walter Koch) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Eschatology (Peter Dinzelbacher) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Everyday Life in Medieval Studies (Valerie L. Garver) . . . . . . . . . . Feminism (Barbara Stevenson) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Folklore in Medieval Studies (Salvatore Calomino) . . . . . . . . . . . Formalism (Scott L. Taylor) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . French Studies (Wendy Pfeffer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Friendship and Networks (Walter Ysebaert) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gender Studies (Hiram Kümper). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . German Studies (Francis G. Gentry) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Heraldry (Heiko Hartmann) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hermeneutics and Textual Criticism (Raymond J. Cormier) . . . . . . Historical Studies (Andrew Holt) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Historiography of Medieval Medicine (Carrie Griffin). . . . . . . . . Historiography of Medieval Science (Sarah Powrie) . . . . . . . . . . Iberian Studies (James A. Grabowska) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Icelandic, Danish, and Old Norse Studies (Russell Poole) . . . . . . . Inter-/Crosscultural Studies (Barbara Stevenson) . . . . . . . . . . . . Interdisciplinarity in Medieval Studies (Gerhard Jaritz). . . . . . . . Intertextuality and Comparative Approaches in Medieval Literature (Sarah Gordon) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Irish Studies (William Sayers) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Italian Studies (Claudia Boscolo) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Japan, Medieval (Barbara Stevenson). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

VI 195 240 253 266 330 343 353 369 379 393 405 424 427 450 468 489 506 525 540 550 558 565 580 594 602 619 624 639 651 666 678 685 706 711 716 727 738 749

VII

Table of Contents

Jewish Studies (Jean Baumgarten) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Law in the Middle Ages (Scott Taylor) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Legal Historiography (German) (Gerald Kohl) . . . . . . . . . . . Manuscripts: Past and Present Approaches (Susan Noakes) . . . Marxist Approaches to Medieval Studies (Sarah Gordon) . . . . . Masculinity Studies (Daniel F. Pigg) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Material Culture (Mark Cruse) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Medievalism (Ulrich Müller). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Medievalism in Modern Children’s Literature (Siegrid Schmidt) . Mentalities in Medieval Studies (David F. Tinsley) . . . . . . . . . Metrology (Moritz Wedell) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Museums and Exhibitions (Siegrid Schmidt) . . . . . . . . . . . . Music in Medieval Studies (James Zychowicz) . . . . . . . . . . . . Mysticism (Debra Stoudt). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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756 771 788 807 822 829 836 850 866 874 897 919 931 939

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967

Volume 2: Narratives of Technological Revolution (Adam Lucas) . . . Narratology and Literary Theory in Medieval Studies (Jonathan M. Newman) . . . . . . . . New Philology (Susan Yager) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Numismatics (Rory Naismith) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Occitan Studies (Michelle Bolduc) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Performance of Medieval Texts (Ulrich Müller) . . . . . . . Pharmacy (Alain Touwaide) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Philosophy in Medieval Studies (Stephen Penn) . . . . . . . Political Theory in Medieval Studies (Scott L. Taylor) . . . . Popes and Papacy (Frances Parton) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Popular Religion / Spirituality in Medieval Studies (Daniel E. O’Sullivan) . . . . . . . . . Post-Colonialism in Medieval Studies (James Tindal Acken). Queer Studies (Forrest C. Helvie). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Race and Ethnicity (Diane Auslander) . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rediscovery of the Middle Ages (Late 18th Century / Turn of the Century) (Berta Raposo) Religious Studies (The Latin West) (Peter Dinzelbacher) . . . Research Institutes, Archives, and Libraries for the Middle Ages (Gertrud Blaschitz) . . . . . . . . . . Scripts (Peter A. Stokes) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Semiotics of Culture (Sarah-Grace Heller) . . . . . . . . . . .

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990 999 1007 1023 1039 1056 1090 1111 1122

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1129 1137 1142 1155

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VIII

Table of Contents

Slavic Studies (Marta Deyrup) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Social Constructionism (Daniel F. Pigg) . . . . . . . . . . . Social and Economic Theory in Medieval Studies (Harry Kitsikopoulos) . . . . . . . . . . Social History and Medieval Studies (Harry Kitsikopoulos). Technology in the Middle Ages (Thomas F. Glick) . . . . . The Term ‘Middle Ages’ (Hiram Kümper) . . . . . . . . . . . Text and Image in the Middle Ages (James Rushing) . . . . Theology (Christian) (Leo D. Lefebure) . . . . . . . . . . . . Time Measurement and Chronology in Medieval Studies (Camarin M. Porter) . . . . . . . . . . Transfer of Knowledge (Alain Touwaide). . . . . . . . . . . Utopias / Utopian Thought (Heiko Hartmann) . . . . . . . Welsh Studies (Andrew Breeze) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . 1253 . . . . . . 1264 . . . . . .

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1270 1292 1305 1310 1319 1339

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1350 1368 1400 1409

Aesthetics (Mark Cruse) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Allegory (Bettina Full) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Author (Michelle Bolduc) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Body (Scott Pincikowski) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chivalry (John A. Geck) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Comic (Sarah Gordon) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Contrafacture (Daniel E. O’Sullivan). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Curialitas (Courtliness) (Gregory Heyworth) . . . . . . . . . . . Discourse (Karen K. Jambeck) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Fictionality (Stephen Mark Carey) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frontier, Transgression, Liminality (Waltraud Fritsch-Rößler). Game (Maurice Sprague) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gestures (Klaus Oschema). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Images (Gerhard Jaritz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Laughter (Waltraud Fritsch-Rößler) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Memory (Paula Leverage) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mouvance (Roy Rosenstein) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Parody (Sarah Gordon) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Prosopography (Christian) (K.S.B. Keats-Rohan) . . . . . . . . Ritual and Performance (Gerhard Jaritz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . Space and Nature (Christopher Clason) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Text (Mark Cruse) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Transcendental (George Arabatzis) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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1421 1430 1440 1450 1459 1468 1478 1482 1488 1500 1504 1508 1513 1520 1524 1530 1538 1548 1552 1559 1563 1576 1582

Important Terms in Today’s Medieval Studies

IX

Table of Contents

Typology (Heiko Hartmann) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1589 Violence (Scott Pincikowski) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1593

Textual Genres in the Middle Ages Adversus-Iudaeos Literature (Hiram Kümper) . Art Manuals (Flavio Boggi). . . . . . . . . . . . . Autobiography and Biography (Julie Singer) . . Ballads, Songs, and Libels (Christian Kuhn) . . . Bestiaries, Aviaries, Physiologus (Renee Ward) . . Bibles (Popular) (Brian Murdoch) . . . . . . . . . Books of Hours (Elina Gertsman) . . . . . . . . . Calendars, Islamic (Simone Cristoforetti) . . . . . Cantigas de amigos (Samuel G. Armistead) . . . . Ceremonial Texts (Christine Maria Grafinger) . . Chansons de geste (Stephen Mark Carey) . . . . . Charms and Incantations (Russell Poole) . . . . Charters (Philip Slavin). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chronicles (Graeme Dunphy). . . . . . . . . . . . Cookbooks (Timothy J. Tomasik) . . . . . . . . . . Courtesy Books (Klaus Oschema) . . . . . . . . . Debate Poetry (Patricia E. Black). . . . . . . . . . Dictionaries / Glossaries (Albrecht Classen) . . . Didactic and Gnomic Literature (Russell Poole) Dits (Steven Millen Taylor) . . . . . . . . . . . . . Drama (John A. Geck) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Encyclopedias (Nadia Margolis) . . . . . . . . . . Financial and Tax Reports (Georg Vogeler). . . . Glosses (Frans van Liere) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gospel Harmonies (Heiko Hartmann) . . . . . . Hagiographical Texts (Michelle M. Sauer) . . . . Heroic Epics and Sagas (Hermann Reichert) . . . Historical Romances (Jaime Leaños) . . . . . . . Kharjas (Samuel G. Armistead) . . . . . . . . . . .

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1605 1607 1614 1618 1634 1642 1647 1652 1657 1660 1683 1700 1706 1714 1722 1728 1735 1742 1750 1755 1760 1767 1775 1785 1791 1798 1807 1831 1840

Volume 3: Lapidaries (Rosmarie Thee Morewedge) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1845 Last Wills (Hiram Kümper) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1862 Latin Comedies (Gretchen Mieszkowski) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1872

X

Table of Contents

Legal Texts (Hiram Kümper) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Letters (Christian Kuhn) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Letter Collections (Latin West and Byzantium) (Walter Ysebaert) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Minnereden (Maurice Sprague). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Miracle Narratives (Daniel E. O’Sullivan) . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mirrors for Princes Islamic (Mark David Luce) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Western (Cristian Bratu) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Notarial Literature (Edward D. English). . . . . . . . . . . . . . Numismatic Literature (Rory Naismith) . . . . . . . . . . . . . Papal Bulls (Herwig Weigl) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Penitentials and Confessionals (Michelle M. Sauer) . . . . . . . Pharmaceutical Literature (Alan Touwaide) . . . . . . . . . . . Political Treatises (Vasileios Syros) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Prayer Books (Elina Gertsman). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Proverbs (Rosmarie Thee Morewedge) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Religious Lyrics (Daniel E. O’Sullivan) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Schoolbooks (Michael Baldzuhn). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Scientific Texts: Artes Liberales and Artes Mechanicae (with Emphasis on Anglophone Research) (Carrie Griffin) Sermons (Robert W. Zajkowski) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Short Verse Narratives (Norris J. Lacy) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sisterbooks (David F. Tinsley) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Travelogues (Maria E. Dorninger) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Trobadors, Trouvères, Minnesinger (Ulrich Müller) . . . . . . Villancicos (Samuel G. Armistead) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Visionary Texts (Elizabeth Boyle) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . World Maps ( Jens Eike Schnall) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . 1878 . . . . 1881 . . . . 1898 . . . . 1905 . . . . 1911 . . . . . . . . . . . .

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1916 1921 1950 1956 1963 1968 1979 2000 2021 2026 2056 2061

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2069 2077 2086 2093 2102 2118 2128 2131 2136

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2145 2150 2153 2160 2165 2170 2176

Key Figures in Medieval Studies from ca. 1650 to 1950 (selection) Adler, Guido (Pieter Mannaerts) . . . . . . . . Árni Magnússon (Jens Eike Schnall) . . . . . . Auerbach, Erich (Bettina Full). . . . . . . . . Baer, Yitzhak (Philip Slavin) . . . . . . . . . . Barbi, Michele (Beatrice Arduini). . . . . . . . Bédier, Joseph (Craig Baker) . . . . . . . . . . Benecke, Georg Friedrich (Gertrud Blaschitz)

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XI Besseler, Heinrich (Pieter Mannaerts). . . . . . . . . Bezzola, Reto Raduolf (Mark Cruse) . . . . . . . . . Billanovich, Giuseppe (David Lummus) . . . . . . . Bischoff, Bernhard (Hiram Kümper) . . . . . . . . . Bloch, Marc (Nadia Margolis) . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bodmer, Johann Jakob (Maurice Sprague) . . . . . . Borst, Arno (Judith Benz). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bosl, Karl (Stephen Mark Carey) . . . . . . . . . . . . Boyle, Leonard Eugene (Christine Maria Grafinger) . Branca, Vittore (Federica Anichini) . . . . . . . . . . Braune, Wilhelm (Joshua M. H. Davis) . . . . . . . . Brunner, Otto (Judith Benz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Burdach, Konrad (Gertrud Blaschitz) . . . . . . . . . Cappelli, Adriano (Christine Maria Grafinger) . . . . Cardini, Franco (Daniel Rötzer) . . . . . . . . . . . . Castro (y Quesada), Américo (Samuel G. Armistead) . Chenu, Marie-Dominique (Leo D. Lefebure) . . . . . Cleasby, Richard (Marc Pierce) . . . . . . . . . . . . Cohen, Gustave (Nadia Margolis) . . . . . . . . . . . Contini, Gianfranco (Beatrice Arduini) . . . . . . . . Curtius, Ernst Robert (Alexander Sager) . . . . . . . D’Ancona, Alessandro (Claudia Boscolo) . . . . . . . Docen, Bernhard Joseph (Maurice Sprague) . . . . . Donaldson, E. Talbot (Kathy Cawsey) . . . . . . . . Dopsch, Alfons (Valerie L. Garver) . . . . . . . . . . . Duby, Georges Michel Claude (Carol R. Dover) . . . Duhem, Pierre (Sarah Powrie) . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ehrismann, Gustav Adolph (Alexander Sager). . . . Ewert, Alfred (Craig Baker) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Faral, Edmond (Anne Latowsky). . . . . . . . . . . . Frappier, Jean (Raymond J. Cormier). . . . . . . . . . Fuhrmann, Horst (Karina Marie Ash). . . . . . . . . Funkenstein, Amos (Yossef Schwartz). . . . . . . . . Furnivall, Frederick James (Kathy Cawsey) . . . . . Ganshof, François-Louis (Valerie L. Garver) . . . . . Gerbert, Martin (Christine Maria Grafinger) . . . . . Gilson, Etienne (Daniel Rötzer) . . . . . . . . . . . . Gollancz, Sir Israel (Stephen Penn) . . . . . . . . . . Grabar, André (Linda Marie Rouillard) . . . . . . . . Grabmann, Martin (Yossef Schwartz) . . . . . . . . .

Table of Contents

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2180 2186 2190 2193 2195 2199 2204 2208 2212 2215 2219 2223 2226 2230 2231 2236 2240 2242 2245 2249 2253 2258 2260 2263 2267 2271 2276 2280 2283 2289 2292 2294 2297 2300 2304 2309 2311 2315 2320 2323

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Grimm, Jacob Ludwig Karl, and Grimm, Wilhelm Karl (Scott E. Pincikowski) . . . . . . . . . Gurevich, Aron Iakovlevich (Elena Lemeneva) . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hagen, Friedrich Heinrich August Wilhelm von der (Christopher R. Clason) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Haupt, Moriz (Gertrud Blaschitz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Heer, Friedrich (Peter Dinzelbacher) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hibbard, Laura Alandis (Linda M. Rouillard). . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hilka, Alfons (Wendy Pfeffer and Albrecht Classen) . . . . . . . . . . . . Hilton, Rodney Howard (Candace Barrington) . . . . . . . . . . . . . Holmes, Urban Tigner, Jr. (Nadia Margolis) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Holthausen, Ferdinand (Marc Pierce) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Huizinga, Johan (Tracy Adams) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . James, Montague Rhodes (Mark Cruse) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jeanroy, Alfred-Marie-Henri-Gustave (Beverly J. Evans) . . . . . . . Jónsson, Finnur (Russell Poole) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Junius F. F., Franciscus (Jens Eike Schnall and Robert K. Paulsen) . . . . Kane, George J. (Marilyn Sandidge) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kantorowicz, Ernst Hartwig (Roberto Delle Donne) . . . . . . . . . . Katz, Jacob (David Graizbord) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ker, Neil Ripley (Peter A. Stokes) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ker, W. P. (Barbara Stevenson) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kibre, Pearl (Carrie Griffin) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kittredge, George Lyman (Kathy Cawsey) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Klaeber, Friedrich (Helen Damico) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Klibansky, Raymond (Sarah Powrie) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kuhn, Hugo Bernhard (Markus Stock) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kuhn, Sherman M. (Marc Pierce) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kurath, Hans (Marc Pierce). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kuttner, Stephan (Scott L. Taylor) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lachmann, Karl Konrad Friedrich Wilhelm (Stephen Mark Carey) . Ladner, Gerhard B. (Christine Maria Grafinger) . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lagarde, Georges de (Scott L. Taylor) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lamprecht, Karl Gotthard (Christopher R. Clason) . . . . . . . . . . . Lassberg, Joseph Maria Christoph, Freiherr von (Maurice Sprague) Leclerq, Jean (Daniel J. Watkins) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Le Goff, Jacques Louis (Carol R. Dover) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lehmann, Paul (Alison Beringer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lejeune, Rita (Kevin B. Reynolds). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Lewis, C. S. (Jason Herman) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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XIII Lexer, Matthias von (Graeme Dunphy) . . . . . . . Liepe, Wolfgang (Albrecht Classen) . . . . . . . . . Loomis, R. S. (Amy L. Ingram) . . . . . . . . . . . . Lot, Ferdinand (Amy L. Ingram) . . . . . . . . . . . Lowe, Elias Avery (Peter A. Stokes) . . . . . . . . . . Lubac, Henri de (Michael Johnson) . . . . . . . . . Luick, Karl (Jerzy Wełna) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Maier, Anneliese (Sarah Powrie). . . . . . . . . . . Maitland, Frederic William (Janice M. Bogstad) . . Malkiel, Yakov (Samuel G. Amistead) . . . . . . . . Mallet, Paul-Henri (Jens Eike Schnall) . . . . . . . Manitius, Max (Alison Beringer) . . . . . . . . . . . Manly, John Matthews (Anita Obermeier) . . . . . Massmann, Hans Ferdinand (Maurice Sprague). . Maurer, Friedrich (Brian Murdoch) . . . . . . . . . Menéndez-Pidal, Ramón (Kimberlee Campbell) . . Meyer, Marie-Paul-Hyacinthe (Anne Latowsky). . Mitteis, Heinrich (Albrecht Classen). . . . . . . . . Mohr, Hans Wolfgang Julius (Ulrich Müller) . . . Müllenhoff, Karl Victor (Maurice Sprague). . . . . Murray, J. A. H. (Marc Pierce) . . . . . . . . . . . . Mustanoja, T. (Kirsti Peitsara) . . . . . . . . . . . . Nardi, Bruno (David Lummus). . . . . . . . . . . . Noreen, Adolf Gotthard (Marc Pierce) . . . . . . . Ohly, Ernst Friedrich (Graeme Dunphy) . . . . . . Paris, Gaston Bruno Paulin (Daniel E. O’Sullivan) Paul, Hermann (Marc Pierce) . . . . . . . . . . . . Pfeiffer, Franz (Gertrud Blaschitz) . . . . . . . . . . Prawer, Joshua (Philip Slavin). . . . . . . . . . . . Rajna, Pio (Claudia Boscolo) . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reese, Gustave (Beverly J. Evans) . . . . . . . . . . Rico Manrique, Francisco (Enrico Santangelo) . . . Riquer Morera, Martín de (Kimberlee Campbell). . Robertson, D. W. (Jason Herman) . . . . . . . . . . Robinson, Fred Norris (Anita Obermeier) . . . . . Rougemont, Denis de (Linda Marie Rouillard) . . . Ruh, Kurt (Freimut Löser and Ulrich Müller) . . . . . Runciman, Sir Steven (Robert W. Zajkowski) . . . . Sapegno, Natalino (Enrico Santangelo) . . . . . . . Sapori, Armando (Christine Maria Grafinger) . . . .

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Scherer, Wilhelm (Maurice Sprague). . . . . . . . . . . . . Schlegel, August Wilhelm (Christopher R. Clason) . . . . . Schlegel, Friedrich (Berta Raposo). . . . . . . . . . . . . . Schoepperle Loomis, Gertrude (Karina Marie Ash) . . . . Schramm, Percy Ernst (Janos M. Bak) . . . . . . . . . . . Schultz, Alwin (Gertrud Blaschitz) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Schwietering, Julius (Heiko Hartmann). . . . . . . . . . . Sievers, Georg Eduard (Russell Poole). . . . . . . . . . . . Simrock, Karl Joseph (Christopher R. Clason) . . . . . . . . Skeat, Walter William (Kathy Cawsey) . . . . . . . . . . . Southern, R. W. (Amy Ingram) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Spitzer, Leo (Bettina Full) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stengel, Edmund Ernst (Andreas Meyer) . . . . . . . . . . Strauch, Philipp (Albrecht Classen) . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tellenbach, Gerd (Christine Maria Grafinger) . . . . . . . . Tolkien, John Ronald Ruel (Katharina Baier) . . . . . . . Traube, Ludwig (Francesco Roberg) . . . . . . . . . . . . . Vilmar, August Friedrich Christian (Marc Pierce) . . . . Vinaver, Eugène (Amy L. Ingram) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wackernagel, Karl Heinrich Wilhelm (Maurice Sprague) Waddell, Helen (Robin Gilbank) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Weber, Gottfried (Waltraud Fritsch-Rößler) . . . . . . . . . Wehrli, Max (Heiko Hartmann) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . White, Lynn Townsend, Jr. (Candace Barrington) . . . . . Whitelock, Dorothy (Ben Snook) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wright, Joseph (Marc Pierce). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Young, Karl (Regula Meyer Evitt). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Zingerle, Ignaz Vinzenz (Gertrud Blaschitz) . . . . . . . . Zumthor, Paul (Tracy Adams) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Introduction The present reference work aims to fill a significant lacuna in scholarship that I will address throughout this introductory article, and subsequently in a critical survey of the relevant resources in our field. As a Handbook, it wants to make available detailed and meticulous surveys of the state of art in Medieval Studies and to reflect upon the historical development of our field in its myriad manifestations (research areas, terms, topics, figures, methods, theories, etc.). After all, the Middle Ages continue to create a lot of excitement both within the academy and outside, and we are, it seems, on a positive growth curve, particularly now in the early 21st century, considering the astounding proliferation of critical editions, translations, and interpretations that flood the book market. The history of research in all kinds of areas in Medieval Studies constitutes an essential component in our understanding of where we have come from and where we will probably turn to in the near future. More precisely, any of our comments on and interpretations of any phenomenon in the Middle Ages depends considerably on the scholarly context past and present. Evaluations change, the foci on specific periods, genres, figures, themes, etc. vary, and new theoretical concepts have considerable influence on how we view the medieval past. Much fundamental work was produced already in the 19th century, whether we think of critical editions, individual studies, bibliographies, and other kinds of databases. But each discipline or subject matter has been examined from many different perspectives since then, both in light of various theoretical models and through the kaleidoscopic lens of a multitude of methodologies. Some of these approaches have maintained their validity until today, others have been dismissed, and the intense debate continues until today how best to examine the Middle Ages critically. It is not uncommon to realize that older scholarship still has to tell us a lot even now, or once again, if carefully viewed in light of what medieval voices revealed in reality.1 The relevance and meaning of specific statements in medieval documents and our

1 See the entry on “Religious Studies” by Peter Dinzelbacher for excellent insights in this regard. Another illuminating example proves to be the discussion of Lynn Townsend White Jr.’s contribution to the history of technology (see Candace Barrington’s article on White).

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reading of medieval art objects, architectural designs, and musical compositions, to mention just a few areas of scholarly investigations in Medieval Studies, have changed and continue to be in flux even today, depending on new approaches, readings, interpretations, perspectives, critical lenses, and methodologies. In other words, as in most other academic fields, the process of learning, criticizing, re-evaluating, re-assessing, canonizing, and deconstructing the very canon proves to be endlessly ongoing because we are all part of the same large scholarly discourse, or rather, we create this discourse and determine its continuous development.2 But this process requires regular review and substantive analysis, which the present Handbook hopes to provide both for the present and future generations of scholars in Medieval Studies. Total completion cannot be achieved, and comprehensive coverage of all aspects would be elusive, but the present Handbook covers a considerable breadth of a multitude of research fields. As my own criticism of previous efforts in this field will indicate (see the following survey article on the relevant reference works in Medieval Studies), the very ideal that carries such efforts seems to be almost elusive and deceptive because we can only hope to capture a faint sense of what life in the Middle Ages was really like. We can read what some philosophers had to say, and we can ponder the meaning of specific statements by poets, artists, composers, and preachers, but how easily do we fall prey to a myopic perspective, either because of our lack of comprehensive approaches, or because the texts and works by their contemporaries have not survived. A full understanding seems impossible however, wherefore the concept of discourse, as developed by Michel Foucault,3 promises a good alternative since it does not require a complete coverage of what people thought, said, and argued about at a specific time, yet takes into account the widest array of statements and reflections that constituted that discourse. In this sense, we always need to probe what the dominant discussion at a specific time can reveal about specific topics, ideas, and concerns. The entries in our Handbook do not focus primarily on the medieval discourse, but on the scholarly discourse since the late 18th century, tracing the growth of the important disciplines particularly over the last hundred years, outlining what we know, what is being discussed, and how we have approached the critical issues at stake.

2 I examine the larger implications at much greater length in my introductory article. 3 Michel Foucault, L’ordre de discourse: Leçon inaugurale au Collège de France prononcée le 2 décembre 1970 (Paris: Gallimard, 1971).

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The goal pursued in this Handbook does not consist in an attempt to compete with such seminal reference works as the Lexikon des Mittelalters or the Dictionnaire de Spiritualité. Instead, the question pursued here focuses on how individual subject matters have developed in historical-scholarly terms over time. What were the various methodological approaches to specific themes, and what source materials were regarded as most relevant? What primary documents have been seen as truly relevant at what time and by whom for what purposes? In fact, all these questions allow us to probe not only further into the history of the Middle Ages at large, they also facilitate a much better understanding of how we have learned to understand the medieval world from our modern perspectives, if not how we have misunderstood it. The term ‘history’ in our context only means the specific time frame, not the narrow discipline of Historical Studies. Medieval Studies embrace virtually each and every field of human activities and ideas, whether literature, fashion, the arts, religion, technology, agriculture, banking, or architecture. But this amazing spectrum also proves to be a remarkable challenge, hence, after all, the need for encyclopedic treatments of that period. There are four different categories of entries that make up this Handbook of Medieval Studies. First the major topics of disciplinary nature come into play, such as Feminism, German Studies, English Studies, Art History, Crusade Studies, Queer Studies, and Islamic Art. Next contributors examine specific terms that have influenced Medieval Studies deeply, such as curialitas, frontier, game, rhetorics, satire, irony, and violence.4 The third group consists of articles covering the wide range of textual genres prevalent in the Middle Ages, though even here I had to make compromises and leave lacunae for a number of reasons, though I would have preferred a comprehensive coverage. However, to aim for totality would have been hubris, and no encyclopedia or lexicon has ever achieved such a goal. The truly critical ap-

4 There are, of course, numerous reference works on critical and literary terms relevant for all of world literature, see, for instance, Henri Morier, Dictionnaire de poétique et de rhétorique, 2nd augmented and rev. ed. (1961; Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998); The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, ed. Alex Preminger and T. V. F. Brogan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); Wendell V. Harris, Dictionary of Concepts in Literary Criticism and Theory, Reference Sources for the Social Sciences and Humanities, 12 (New York, Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood Press, 1992); Ross Murfin and Supryia M. Ray, The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms, 3rd ed. (1997; Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin, 2009); Metzler Literatur Lexikon: Begriffe und Definitionen, orig. ed. by Günther and Irmgard Schweikle, ed. Dieter Burdorf, 3rd completely rev. ed. (1984; Stuttgart: Metzler, 2007).

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proach requires selection, discrimination, prioritization, and categorization, and this is the case in our Handbook as well. Finally, the fourth group deals with some of the key figures in Medieval Studies, that is, both the grandfathers and founders in our field, and major scholars who deeply influenced their academic discipline at least until 1950, and in a number of cases even beyond that.5 There was no way to draw an artificial line of separation a few years after the end of the Second World War, so I chose a flexible approach in this regard. Some scholars enjoyed a very long career, others only a short one, but those who became active really only after ca. 1960 are not considered here (here disregarding one or two where the circumstances justified it). After all, it was not possible, with very few exceptions, to take into consideration the last thirty and forty years of research in terms of individual participants because it would have inundated all reasonable limits for such a reference work. The emphasis hence rests on those figures who laid the foundations and have continued to be deeply influential in their specific areas of investigations until today because of their seminal work.6 The overall purpose of our reference work consists of an effort to outline the major steps in the history of research since the 19th century (in some cases since the 18th century). The articles covering the scholarly disciplines, technical terms, and textual genres are supposed to trace in a concise, yet not too skeletal fashion, who the major players were, what significant positions and schools dominated the respective field, who published the most seminal studies, who provoked major debates and influenced the discourse, and then to determine what the most critical issues have been in the evolution of each discipline. Readers should not expect to be presented with a comprehensive bibliography; instead the entries address a more substantive need, that is, to learn quickly how research on, say, the history of astronomy, medicine, German Studies, Gender Studies, Arabic literature, Biblical exegesis, Crusade Studies,

5 For an impressive and comprehensive overview of the major historians in our field, now see John Burrow, A History of Histories: Epics, Chronicles, Romances and Inquiries from Herodotus and Thucydides to the Twentieth Century (New York: A. A. Knopf, 2007); Rüdiger vom Bruch and Rainer A. Müller, Historikerlexikon: von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 2nd rev. and expanded ed. (1991; Munich: Beck, 2002). Cf. also Norman F. Cantor, Inventing the Middle Ages: the Lives, Works, and Ideas of the Great Medievalists of the Twentieth Century (New York: W. Morrow, 1991). 6 Rewriting the Middle Ages in the Twentieth Century, ed. Jaume Aurell and Francisco Crosas (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), contains biographies of some of the most important medievalists from England, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, the United States, and Italy.

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hermeneutics, etc., has developed over time. Likewise, in the next category, the entries cover critical terms that have been highly influential in Medieval Studies, and again the intent was to provide an overview of how each term underwent crucial transformation and how it has been used in Medieval Studies over the last hundred to two hundred years or so. Similarly, the categories of ‘genres’ and of ‘figures’ pursue the same concept. I had hoped to incorporate as much non-European research and research topics as possible, and I am rather pleased with the present result, despite all kinds of shortcomings. Particularly the research on the worlds and cultures of Asian, African, and Arabic societies in the Middle Ages could not be dealt with as exhaustively as I would have liked, either because the task itself – and this actually applies to all aspects covered or, alas, left out – was too challenging, or because of certain natural limits that we all have in reaching out to the wide world of scholarship in those, at least for scholars in the Western world, somewhat remote areas and far beyond the scope of our traditional area of expertise. The reality of academic and other professional demands made it impossible for a number of contributors to submit their promised work either in time or at all. So, horribile dictu, ‘Religion’, for example, is not as extensively covered by itself as I would have wished, but there is an entry on ‘Theology in Medieval Studies.’7 Overall, there are certain problems that cast this matter in a different light. The history of Christianity represents a huge field for which many different lexica and encyclopedias have already been published (see the following survey article). To do justice to the many branches of research on medieval religion would require a separate Handbook, for which there is no space here. Admittedly, there is a separate entry on Jewish religion, and even here severe challenges surface immediately. But despite the erroneous assumption of a monolithic medieval Christianity, the number of individual groups, orientations, interpretations, institutions, organizations, and even whole churches is legion.

7 I am particularly grateful to Peter Dinzelbacher for accepting this entry at the last minute, so to speak, after a previous author had suddenly withdrawn. See also Dinzelbacher’s excellent book series “Handbuch der Religionsgeschichte im deutschsprachigen Raum in 6 Bänden.” The individual volumes have not appeared in a chronologically linear progression; instead vol. 1 appeared in 2008, vol. 2, by contrast, already in 2000: Peter Dinzelbacher, Hoch- und Spätmittelalter. Mit einem Beitrag von Daniel Krochmalnik (Paderborn etc.: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2000). Apart from the historical overview, he discusses the media of how faith was conveyed, the world of imagination, spiritualization of concrete, earthly space, spiritualization of time, sacred performance, sacred words, and spirituality of human beings. Krochmalnik examines Jewish spirituality at the same time.

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All articles were written independently, and ultimately the quality of the content was the authors’ individual responsibility. Of course, as the editor I have made my utmost effort to guide, to probe, to correct, to suggest, and to add information as much as possible, but overall I had to trust the contributors in having made their own best judgment in selecting the most important publications, editions, and reference works in their specific areas. Formally, I have tried to streamline every entry as much as possible, but absolute conformity could not be achieved because of the vast differences in individual contributors’ approaches, styles, and methods, and also because of the differences of the various disciplines. For instance, scholarly literature on the history of medieval law or on prosopography had to be dealt with in structural terms that are different than in the research fields of medieval Occitan or German Studies, for instance. In general, and it is worth repeating this to make it absolutely clear what the objectives were and what was realistic altogether, comprehensiveness or an exhaustive treatment of every aspect in the medieval world, has not been possible right from the start. Nevertheless, I hope that the present result offers at least an approximation of the overarching goal. Above all, we are providing important overviews of the history of research in a wide array of fields, stretching, for instance, from Byzantine architecture to German legal historiography, and beyond. Some disciplines proved to be just too demanding and too extensive, or no contributor could be found to meet the challenge, who had the time, or who was willing to volunteer for this massive enterprise. The field of medieval law would have required a whole cohort of experts, but I am pleased that at least one contributor deals with a broad overview of legal historiography, whereas another focuses on the history of German medieval law. The same can be stated for almost all other areas, so I must beg indulgence from the future readers of this Handbook. It can provide guidance only so far, yet the current result promises to establish a solid groundwork for the wide discipline of Medieval Studies. After all, whenever we begin to investigate any aspect of the Middle Ages, irrespective of the specific angle we might pursue, immediately a plethora of new perspectives, topics, texts, works, etc. opens up almost limitlessly. In a way I also beg the reader for his/her indulgence if a specific entry is missing because circumstances beyond my control made it impossible to cover everything to the extent desirable. Perhaps some of the shortcomings can be addressed and dealt with in a second edition or in a future volume with addenda. The deeper we analyze a topic, the more sub-genres, sub-fields, sub-categories etc. tend to emerge, and then require careful and detailed critical

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Introduction

treatment. That is, however, exactly one of the critical limits that could not be breached without excessive, highly time-consuming efforts to the detriment of all other contributions. I prefer to have at least published a fragmentary Handbook of Medieval Studies that covers the majority of fields, terms, genres, and key figures than none. The bibliographical information in the main body of the text in each entry is mostly provided in a truncated manner, though this should still allow the user to trace and find each individual reference in the library with ease. By contrast, the last section then offers the full information. The titles of book series and the volume numbers, however, have always been left out. For the large topics, it was not practical to force the contributors to follow a very stringent model, so there is a certain variety of structures applied. By contrast, the entries of figures follow by and large the same pattern. After a general introduction about the person’s significance comes his or her biography. The next section deals with the scholar’s publications, and the subsequent one focuses on the impact the scholar has had on his or her field. The entry concludes with a list of the scholar’s major publications, and with a short bibliography of the relevant reference works. There are mostly six categories for these biographical entries, but some authors have collapsed one or two for practical reasons. The entries on genres and terms pursue more of a chronological perspective, but the emphasis here rests, just as in the category of topics, on the internationality of research. Contributors were strongly encouraged to consider not only secondary literature published in English, but to take into account all (!) relevant material, whether in Spanish, French, Italian, German, Dutch, Swedish, etc. Everyone has linguistic limitations, of course, but I believe that the contributors have made good to excellent attempts to be as inclusive as possible. After all, Medieval Studies are an interdisciplinary discipline by default, and there is truly an international community of Medievalists, many of whom I have had the pleasure of getting involved in this Handbook. Having said all that, I have only left the pleasant task of expressing my great gratitude to many different individuals involved in this massive project. Without the numerous contributors this project would never have been possible, of course, but I am particularly thankful for the consistently high caliber of their work. I am very thankful to the University of Arizona Alumni Foundation for giving me a small grant to support me in my endeavors. I am grateful to my research assistant, Courtney Johnson, University of Arizona, for her help in the last stages, and I must also extend my thanks to the editorial staff at Walter de Gruyter in Berlin, especially Christine Henschel and Markus Polzer. Johanna Kershaw, Oriel College, Oxford University, provided excellent

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translations of some of the articles. My greatest gratitude, however, goes to Heiko Hartmann, erstwhile editorial director at de Gruyter, who had first conceived of this plan and approached me several years ago, proposing that I assume this daunting task. I hope that the present result will meet at least most of the expectations and more or less serve the needs of our discipline outlined above. Despite all my trepidations regarding the feasibility of editing such a massive reference work, I am firmly convinced of its usefulness and of the importance in charting a field that has grown so vigorously from the late 18th century to the early 21st century, that is, today. The fact that such a reference work still can be published by a major academic press indicates clearly what I indicated at the beginning and what I will continue to examine in the introductory survey article. Despite many challenges of linguistic, institutional, administrative, financial, and even political nature, Medieval Studies are doing very well both in the academy and outside, and they continue to provide a major framework of learning and a source of inspiration for anyone interested in Western civilization and the related cultures. Of course, we would not be what we are today without the Middle Ages, and any modern university that claims to live up to minimal standards of current academics, especially in the Humanities, will have to acknowledge first and above all the fundamental significance of Medieval Studies both for teaching and research. Hence I would like to salute my own academic home, The University of Arizona, for providing me with some financial support and free time, including a one-semester sabbatical, to accomplish the goal of preparing such an extensive reference work. However, I need to emphasize as well that I basically worked without any staff and only very little supplemental financial support. Fortunately, many colleagues who contributed to this project were so gracious to alert me to problems or to provide additional information, but the ultimate responsibility for the entire Handbook rests on me, of course. If the long-term editing process has taught me anything, it is the absolute need to work in an interdisciplinary fashion in Medieval Studies. In this sense, as I believe, this field sets a standard for many other disciplines. Almost ironically, Medieval Studies have much to offer for the future of the academy.8 Presentism, as Kathleen Biddick called this phenomenon, deeply

8 I would like to express my gratitude to Pieters Maennerts (Research Foundation–Flanders / Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), for valuable last minute input. My thanks also go out to many other colleagues whose names are mentioned in the final footnote to my “Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies” article.

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impacts all our research of the Middle Ages. Jaume Aurell and Francisco Crosas offer the following observation: “Presentism dominates over preterism, its opposite, in our relations with the medieval period, because we are capable of identifying the Middle Ages more as a mirror than as a mirage. Presentism brings us closer to the period studied, no matter how distant it may be, but it undoubtedly also has the possibly perverse effect of anachronistically applying the parameters of present culture in analysing it.”9 Of course, we have all vested interests, and our modern concerns in a way always direct and influence our investigation of the past. Nevertheless, Medieval Studies represent truly interdisciplinary approaches and have demonstrated over decades and centuries the degree to which sound philological, historical, art-historical, socio-economic and other research methods can yield highly significant and trustworthy results. The present Handbook strives to provide a comprehensive overview of this long-term struggle, and as much as we are dwarfs standing on the shoulder of giants, we hope one day to offer the necessary support for future generations to look further and deeper than we have been able to do today. Finally, I have tried to be as comprehensive as possible in covering all the major topics, terms, genres, and figures relevant for our field. But the reader will certainly notice some lacunae, basically unavoidable and painful in the case of an encyclopedic reference work like this Handbook. But overall, I believe, most important topics are represented here, and if not, then there were painstaking and also difficult circumstances beyond my control.

9 Rewriting the Middle Ages, 11. See also Katheleen Biddick, The Shock of Medievalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998), 83; William H. Dray, “Some Varieties of Presentism,” id., On History and Philosophers of History, Philosophy of History and Culture, 2 (Leiden and New York: Brill, 1989), 164–89; Matthew Davidson, “Presentism and the Non-Present,” Philosophical Studies 113.1 (2003): 77–92; Craig Bourne, A Future for Presentism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006).

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Survey of Fundamental Reference Works in Medieval Studies Albrecht Classen1

We can only concur with Joseph R. Strayer’s assessment from 1982 that “Interest in the Middle Ages has grown tremendously in the last halfcentury” (ix), and we would have to add nothing but that this growth has amazingly proliferated since then, now more than a quarter of a century later. This growth has occurred both in quantitative and also in qualitative terms, considering the impressive extent of topics covered by medievalists today, as richly documented by major and minor conferences, symposia, and workshops all over the world, such as at the Medieval Institute of Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, or at the University of Leeds, the University of Cologne, the Centro di Studi sull’alto medioevo of Spoleto, etc. The sheer output of academic and non-academic books on the Middle Ages is truly staggering, and the range of topics dealt with seems almost endless, whether we think of political history, literary history, history of fashion, architecture, music, history of technology, everyday life, religion, philosophy, the relationship between man and animals or man and nature, travel, transportation, communication, the experience of death, sickness, birth, love, marriage, money, spirituality, or heresy. Whereas, in previous decades, scholarship tended to focus on Western Europe primarily, today we have learned to recognize the tremendous influence from many different cultures and the impact of the contacts between the Christian and the Muslim world, not to forget the vast and deeply learned Jewish culture within the heartland of medieval Europe. As Strayer emphasizes, “it has become impossible to ignore the Byzantine, Jewish, and Muslim contributions. They were the sources from which Western Europe drew its material and intellectual luxuries – silks and spices, algebra and astronomy – and even an undergraduate finds 1 In deliberate contrast to all the entries in this Handbook of Medieval Studies, this introduction always provides the full bibliographical information, which explains the appearance of a regular apparatus with footnotes in the traditional format.

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himself confronted by references to the scholars and techniques of these civilizations.”2 Whether the chronological demarcation of the Middle Ages still should be, for its beginning phase, at ca. 500 and, for its waning, or autumn, to borrow Johan Huizinga’s term, around 1500 C.E., respectively, might be questioned today. After all, we have learned even more than had former generations of scholars to recognize the important continuation of countless traditions from the world of antiquity to the early Middle Ages, and also from the 15th century to the world of the Reformation and the Renaissance, if not beyond. But this is a matter of recent explorations once again and should not necessarily concern a Handbook of Medieval Studies that is trying to take stock of what we know about that period today from various perspectives. Nevertheless, this should be kept in mind for many of the entries in this Handbook because literary, philosophical, economic, artistic, and religious traditions continued certainly far beyond the somewhat artificial milestone of 1500, and indeed throughout the entire Ancien Régime until 1789 (in France) or 1917 (in Russia), such as in the case of the Mirror of Princes, a highly popular didactic genre instructing rulers about how to govern and how to live an honorable, virtuous life that continued to be written and to be published far into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The enormous quantity of facts and data determining that past world is so huge, indeed, that only an encyclopedia might really accomplish the task of summarizing all relevant information, for individual scholars can no longer hope to deal with the entire universe of the medieval world all by themselves. But facts alone do not tell the whole story, and they can be rather deceiving in that we have learned just too many times how much so-called “facts” were primarily the product of imagination, wishful thinking, or simply of an ideological program. Moreover, scholars have always been victim to the selective nature of the surviving evidence, regularly produced by the winners of history, the dominant class or social group, and many times by male scribes and artists to the disadvantage of their female counterparts or minority groups within their society. The number of pertinent chronicles is legion, and they are what they are, that is, attempts by individuals to come to terms with their own past as they perceived it, some injecting a strong dose of subjectivity, others striving for as much objectivity as possible. Chronicles

2 Dictionary of the Middle Ages, ed. Joseph R. Strayer, vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1982), ix. It consists of 13 vols., the last vol. and the index having appeared in 1989. An important supplement volume followed in 2004, see below.

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are texts in the first case, and hence subject to some of the same limitations as many literary texts.3 The only reasonable approach to Medieval Studies can be, to state the obvious, a critical one, informed both by traditional and contemporary theoretical concepts, methodologies, and interpretive tools. We have to be critical with regard to the sources, to the proper evaluation, and to our full understanding of their meaning, an approach that already characterized the high point of the Middle Ages when rationality entered the philosophical discourse during the 12th century.4 This critical approach, however, has ever been subject to ideological influences, interpretations, and even subjective interests/agendas. Schools of thought have regularly formed and dominated intellectual life. Academia is not an institution free of value systems and programmatic principles. Of course, here I am preaching to the converted, but all this still needs to be observed and reviewed, nevertheless. Medieval libraries are filled with falsifications, and individuals and political parties even then tried their hardest to undermine their opponents’ position, esteem, authority, and power, or simply to hold on to their own property, whether properly acquired or ill secured.5 Poets competed against each other, and so did artists and composers. Scholars, theologians, medical doctors, teachers, and architects argued and polemicized hard and bitterly, which also determined the sources we have left about and from them. Our modern attempts to gain some kind of understanding requires a careful balancing of how we evaluate the documents, always keeping in mind that they represent subjective perspectives.6

3 Graeme Dunphy is currently editing a comprehensive encyclopedia on this genre, Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). 4 Edward Grant, Good and Reason in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 5 Robert F. Berkhofer III, Day of Reckoning: Power and Accountability in Medieval France. The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Fälschungen im Mittelalter: Internationaler Kongress der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, München, 16.–19. September 1986, Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 33 (Hanover: Hahn’sche Buchhandlung, 1988–1990). 6 A great example for the excellent results that we can achieve if we consider as many different voices within one discourse, especially in the field of religious competitions since late antiquity when the bitter conflicts among Christians, Jews, and Muslims really began, now proves to be Alexandra Cuffel’s superior and well researched Gendering Disgust in Medieval Religious Polemic (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), see my review in Mediaevistik, forthcoming.

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Again, all that would not need to be stated here once again, yet it sheds important light on the ever-present necessity to evaluate where we stand today vis-à-vis the sources and the various interpretations. Neither a lexicon nor a dictionary, let alone an encyclopedia with its much more ambitious scope, normally reflects such problems. Only occasionally do we observe more specific attempts to outline the history of research, although that history informs us as much about the past as the actual sources and documents. Considering the absolutely overwhelming amount of information available today about almost any aspect of medieval life in material and intellectual/ spiritual terms, we need both an encyclopedic approach and a critical approach. The primary purpose of this Handbook of Medieval Studies, which I will illuminate in greater detail below, consists of offering such critical overviews, which will lay the foundations for future research considering that the readers will be able to learn of the major stepping stones in each respective field, avoiding the often observable dilemma of reinventing the wheel when we investigate specific aspects in medieval history, language, culture, literature, technology, economics, and agriculture. To aim for the goal of grasping the whole medieval universe, that is, to try to be a ‘Renaissance man,’ an ‘uomo universale,’ with regard to the Middle Ages, would amount to hubris in light of some 1000 years of medieval history, more than three dozen of distinctly spoken languages, and a huge geographical expanse and cultural and ethnic diversity determining medieval Europe. Just as in so many other fields of academic investigations, the more we know today about the medieval world, the more we have also to realize how limited this very knowledge truly is because it has grown almost exponentially, both horizontally and vertically over the last two hundred years.7 Interdisciplinarity proves to be a conditio sine qua non for modern Medieval Studies, whether we deal with the experience of love, death, friendship, fear, God, or natural disasters and catastrophes. Violence, hatred, contempt or fear of the other, persecutions of minorities, or wars against enemies often find their explanations in fundamental concepts common among all people. 7 Surprisingly, just such an attempt was made by Karl Bertau, Schrift–Macht–Heiligkeit in den Literaturen des jüdisch-christlich-muslimischen Mittelalters, ed. Sonja Glauch (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2005); for some critical comments, see my review in Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 42, 1 (2007): 155–59. Basically, Bertau draws most of his information from the Lexikon des Mittelalters and tries to establish global intercultural links without a thorough grounding in most of the cultures, languages, and documents dealt with. Hence, the number of problems of his approach is legion, unfortunately.

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Since the early Middle Ages, for instance, if not considerably earlier, the representatives of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam fought against each other drawing from deep-seated and commonly shared feelings of disgust of bodily effluents, especially blood and the excrements. The polemics launched against each other were surprisingly similar and indicate that Christians knew fairly well what Jewish thinkers argued, and vice versa, and the same applies to the Muslims and their religious counterparts.8 Simply put, the more complex the image that we can sketch of the medieval world or parts of it becomes, the more accurate it actually emerges, even though the vast diversity of aspects pertaining to any of those huge topics threatens to make us not to see the forest for just too many trees. Strayer and his colleagues aimed at North American high school and college students, and scholars, which represents a considerable challenge concerning how to design the individual articles, offering solid and in-depth information, yet without overpowering the individual readers who obviously would have very different backgrounds, interests, and abilities. Strayer noted, however, that the Dictionary would provide “definitions and explanations of medieval terms and ideas that arise in their reading. Those at the university level will find further information on the people, events, and concepts of the Middle Ages. Finally, there is the specialist, and every medievalist is a student throughout his career, for the deeper digs, the wider the gaps. By combining previously fragmented areas of Medieval Studies, the Dictionary enables the scholars and others to survey the field quickly, offering them a singular means of coordinating the various branches of medieval scholarship into an accessible and coherent whole” (x). The problems with this three-pronged approach are self-evident and have often been pointed out by critics who find this Dictionary at times too superficial and simplistic, and particularly too much focused on the English Midlands, Normandy, or the Île de France, neglecting, above all, social-historical, mental-historical, and spiritual-religious aspects, as William Chester Jordan commented in the “Preface” to a supplement volume from 2004 edited by himself.9 This additional volume laudably tries to address many of 8 See the excellent study by Alexandra Cuffel, Gendering Disgust in Medieval Religious Polemic. The author impressively commands all the relevant languages and displays an amazing knowledge of the specific sources in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and Arabic, not to mention various medieval vernacular languages. Cf. now John Sewell, ‘The Son Rebelled’, Laughter in the Middle Ages, ed. Albrecht Classen, forthcoming. 9 Dictionary of the Middle Ages: Supplement, 1, ed. William Chester Jordan (New York, Detroit, San Diego, et al.: Thomson Gale, 2004), vii.

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the concerns that had been voiced regarding the original conceptual design of the Dictionary, adding many new perspectives, themes, topics, and subject matters relevant for the Middle Ages that have surfaced in the scholarly investigations during the last decades and continued to evolve in the international academic discourse as significant for our full comprehension of that past world. Most noteworthy might be the articles on “Medievalism” and on “race,” which suggest some new approaches scholarship has pursued in the recent decades. After all, our field is in constant flux, reflecting new methodologies, concepts, theoretical approaches, and perceptions. In fact, this supplement volume impressively indicates the vibrancy and innovative character of Medieval Studies at large, whether we think of minority groups, poverty, intra-religious exchanges, the history of mentality, the history of everyday life, or the history of emotions. But despite all those attempts to internationalize and to open up our field to the widest possible range of research topics, we continue to be severely hampered by linguistic challenges, a lack of communication, and access to the primary sources, not to mention the disciplinary boundaries that limit us excessively to very narrow and specific research agendas, as if medieval poets or chroniclers, for instance, had pursued a similarly narrow viewpoint as we do today. To put it bluntly, taking into account an extreme situation, medieval scholarship published in the Far East, whether China, Japan, or Korea, normally remains inaccessible to European scholars, and vice versa. But we do not have to go so far as to realize how limited we all are because most medievalists outside of the following areas are not particularly, or not at all, versed in Scandinavian, Dutch, Finnish, Hungarian, or Gaelic, to mention just a few languages. Major contributions to Medieval Studies have been produced by Russian or Polish colleagues, but there does not seem to be a good linguistic bridge to Western languages, unless we can rely on a translation into any of the major languages spoken in the West (and always the other way around as well). Sadly, this linguistic limitation also emerges even within Western Europe, if we think of the many Anglophone, Francophone, or Iberophone scholars who cannot read German, Danish, Flemish, Czech, or even Italian, and vice versa. And there are many more languages that we ought to understand in order to do justice to the actual needs and demands of our academic discipline. I like to think that Latin continues to be a lingua franca, at least among the experts, though we do not speak it anymore, except, perhaps, in the Vatican, among Latin teachers, and Neo-Latin scholars. At least a certain degree of reading ability common among us all still might be the norm, irrespective

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of the specialized field within Medieval Studies. By the same token, what languages were known among medieval and early-modern poets? Most of them could probably not understand more than one or two languages other than their mother tongue, although exceptions must also have existed, particularly among poets, travelers, and artists. After all, as we increasingly begin to fathom, there was, for example, a steady stream of Indian, Persian, and Arabic literature into medieval Europe, as a considerable corpus of late-medieval verse or prose narratives indicates (e.g., Barlaam and Josaphat).10 Many translators were involved, however, even then, which ultimately made the international transfer of literary themes and motifs possible, and this probably on a much broader basis than has been previously assumed, though many details still escape us because Western medievalists do not know the complimentary material produced in the east, and vice versa. How could we expect, for instance, a 15th-century scholar working on Dutch or Slavic literature to know anything about Persian or Indian literature transmitted through many different channels and languages? In other words, there remains much work to be done, though on a more comparative and interdisciplinary level than ever before. And, to return to the issue of Latin, we must strive to reinvigorate the modern study of this lingua franca commonly used in the Middle Ages by the political elite, the Church, and the administration. Otherwise, despite the best efforts at making medieval texts available to modern readers through translations, the access to the vast depository of medieval documents will be in danger.11 The editors of the famous German Lexikon des Mittelalters, with the first fascicle of the first volume having appeared in 1977, the ninth, and last volume in 1998, aimed specifically at the scholar and intend to provide detailed and in-depth information about history, culture, and everyday life (‘lifestyles’ in their words) of the entire medieval world on the basis of written

10 Albrecht Classen, “Kulturelle und religiöse Kontakte zwischen dem christlichen Europa und dem buddhistischen Indien während des Mittelalters: Rudolfs von Ems’ Barlaam und Josaphat im europäischen Kontext,” Fabula 41, 3/4 (2000): 203–28. See also Sabine Obermaier, Das Fabelbuch als Rahmenerzählung: Intertextualität und Intratextualität als Wege zur Interpretation des Buchs der Beispiele der alten Weisen Antons von Pforr, Beihefte zum Euphorion, 48 (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2004). 11 Paul Freedman, “Medieval Studies,” Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Supplement 1, ed. William Chester Jordan (New York, Detroit, et al.: Thomson Learning, 2004), 383–89; especially 388.

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documents and visual objects.12 They realized, of course, as many other editors before them, that the spectrum of our current understanding of the Middle Ages has expanded so much that no individual scholar would be in a position any longer to gain a more or less complete overview and understanding of that world and culture. Most impressively, the Lexikon offers erudite articles about a seemingly inexhaustible range of topics, themes, ideas, people, works, and objects from the Middle Ages.13 But this Lexikon also intends to reach out to a general readership, which necessarily forced a (too) clean separation of the actual presentation of the topic covered in each entry and the relevant research literature (X).14 Moreover, the editors were faced with the difficult decision: how to limit the range of aspects because there might not be an end in sight. Consequently, they decided not to exclude any particular area, “da das der Überzeugung, ein Gesamtbild der mittelalterlichen Epoche könne nur unter Einschluß aller uns überlieferten Erscheinungsformen mittelalterlichen Lebens vermittelt werden, widersprochen hätte” (XI; because this would have contradicted the conviction that a comprehensive picture of the medieval period could be conveyed only if all forms of medieval life that have survived until today would be included). This challenge, however, could not be met for the countless numbers of medieval art works, which are therefore dealt with more collectively in a type of topography of art (“Kunsttopographie”). Mindful of these complex parameters, the Lexikon deliberately takes into account also those worlds and cultures located at the margin of the European Latin world, including the Byzantine Empire, the Arabic-Islamic kingdoms, and the Ottoman Empire. Moreover, the editors underscore that the history of medieval Jewry represents an integral aspect of medieval European history at large, irrespective of, or rather also because of, countless pogroms, persecutions, and expulsions (XI), that sometimes blind us to the intensive cohabitation and collaboration of both religious groups in everyday-life situations,

12 Lexikon des Mittelalters, 9 vols. (Munich and Zurich: Artemis Verlag, 1980–1998), a separate volume with the index appeared in 1999. By now it already seems high time to produce an updated, revised, and expanded edition because Medieval Studies make such rapid progress. 13 However, there are inexplicable gaps, such as the absence of a lemma on the Inquisition or on chess. 14 When one resorts to the digital version of the Lexikon, available on a CD-ROM, the bibliography appears in a separate window only after one has clicked on the respective button, which visually distances the text even further from the critical apparatus.

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in scholarship, and medicine. Insofar as many medieval Europeans sought contacts with distant lands, including Mongolia, China, the Philippines, and India, relevant entries have been added to this Lexikon. As to the chronological framework, the editors defined as their historical period the time between 300 and 1500 C.E., meaning that late antiquity and then also the period until the end of the 15th century are considered here as well. The editors do not deny that the Middle Ages continued to hold sway well after 1500, actually extending even to the 18th century in some specific areas, but the turn from the 15th to the 16th century actually represents a decisive turning point in history that would allow us to determine the end of the Middle Ages from many viewpoints (XII). The cultural-historical lexicon for the Nordic Middle Ages, Kulturhistorisk Leksikon for Nordisk Middelalder fra vikingetid til reformationstid (CulturalHistorical Lexicon for the Nordic Middle Ages, from the Time of the Vikings to the Age of the Protestant Reformation), first published between 1956 and 1978, with a second (identical) edition in 1980, also needs to be considered here as a major reference work.15 Each article provides in-depth information about a wide range of topics, including religion, law, agriculture, crafts, literature, social conditions, architecture, painting, sculpture, nutrition, cooking, etc., accompanied by excellent bibliographies. The editors have made every effort to meet their own theoretical goal of truly addressing cultural history in the Middle Ages, whether the respective articles deal with “Arbeidsfest” (workers’ holidays), “Bergsprivilegier” (mining privileges), “Biskop” (Bishop), or “Vindue” (window), “Vinhandel” (wine trade), or literary topics such as Volsunga saga. There are no lemmata on historical persons/characters, however. Appropriate for the targeted audiences, the articles are written in Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian. It would have been helpful, however, if at least the entry titles had been translated into English or German. Those unfamiliar with any of the Scandinavian languages, can now turn to a newer one-volume encyclopedia dealing with that world, Medieval Scandinavia, ed. by Phillip Pulsiano, who extended the time frame a bit further into the past, beginning roughly with the Migration Period, but ending likewise with the time of the Protestant Reformation. The range of themes is considerably broader, at least far beyond ‘cultural history’ per se, and includes such aspects as “Cosmography,” “Eddic Poetry,” “Graves,”

15 Kulturhistorisk Leksikon for nordisk Middelalder fra vikingetid til reformationstid, ed. by a whole gremium of scholars from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. 2nd ed. 20 vols., with one supplement vol. and one vol. for the register (1956–1978; Viborg, Denmark: Rosenkilde og Bagger, 1980–1982).

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“Homilies,” “Land Tenure and Inheritance,” “Outlawry,” “Reliquaries,” and “Saints’ Lives.” Although addressing a wider audience, each article is appropriately accompanied by a solid bibliography, avoiding the usual shortcoming of Anglophone publications to include only English titles for an English-reading group of users of this type of reference work.16 Slavic scholarship has also produced an excellent reference work for the Middle Ages, particularly the comprehensive Lexicon Antiquitatum Slavicarum: Summarium Historiae Cultus Humanitatis Slavorum, published in Polish.17 Scholars in neighboring countries have, of course, made many attempts to come to terms with the Middle Ages in their own areas, see, for example, A Handbook for Slavic Studies, ed. by Leonid Ivan Strakhovsky (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), which is, however, not at all limited to the Middle Ages.18 See also Slovar’ srednevekovoi kul’tury, ed. Aron Akovlevich Gurevich; M. Andreev, Summa culturologiae. 2nd ed. (2003; Moscow: Rosspen, 2007); and Derzhava Riurikovichei: slaviane, Rus, Rossiia: entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ v shesti tomakh, ed. V(ladimir). V(olfovich). Boguslavskii, 6 vols. (Tula: Russkii leksikon, 1994–).19 Similarly as the Nordic cultural history, Kulturhistorisk Leksikon for Nordisk Middelalder fra vikingetid til reformationstid, especially in the Lexicon Antiquitatum Slavicarum the following topics are covered: culture, social and economic conditions, literature, linguistics, archeology, anthropology, art, religion, politics, and historical events of the Slavic peoples from their origin to the end of the 12th century. The contributors do not only deal with the cultures

16 Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. Phillip Pulsiano, co-ed. Kirsten Wolf (New York and London: Garland, 1993). 17 Słownik starorytno ´sci słowianskich: ´ Encyklopedyczny zarys kultury Słowian od czasów najdawniejszych, ed. Władysław Kowalenko, Gerard Labuda, and Tadeusz Lehr-Spławi nski ´ (with changing editors), 8 vols. (vol. 8 ed. by Antoni G‰siorowski, Gerard Labuda, and Andrzej We˛ dzki), Institutum Scientiae Rerum Slavicarum Academiae Scientiarum Polonae (Wrocław, Warsaw, and Cracow: Zakład Narodowy imienia Ossolinskich-Wydawnictwo ´ Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1961–1996). 18 See also Georgij Petrovic Fedotov, The Middle Ages: The 13th to the 15th Centuries, ed. John Meyendorff, The Russian Religious Mind, 2 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966). 19 Cf. Kirilo-metodievska entsiklopediia v tri toma, ed. Boniu Angelov, Petur Nikolov Dinekov, Dimitur Simeonov Angelov, and Liliana Grasheva, 4. vols. (Sofiia: Izd-vo na Bulgarska akademiia na naukite, 1985–2003); Sima M Cirkovic, Leksikon srpskog srednjeg veka = The Lexicon of Serbian Middle Ages (Beograd: Knowledge, 1999). I have not been able to examine all these reference works through autopsy.

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and histories of the Slavs, but also with those of peoples in contact or in neighborhood with them. Moreover, we find countless entries on locations, figures, objects, rituals, performances, texts, art works, music instruments, epitaphs and inscriptions, foodstuff, countries, tribes, territories, and archeological finds. Occasionally there are also larger topics covered, such as monastic movements, charters, the church, feudalism, trade (including with slaves), and many others. The initial goal had been to publish two volumes only, which determined the usual length of entries, but since the Lexicon then grew to eight volumes, the articles accordingly increasingly gained in length and depth. They are accompanied by most useful bibliographies. There are numerous illustrations, tables, and maps. Other attempts to update this Slavic Lexicon and to produce an equivalent in German, for instance, failed, see, for example, Enzyklopädie zur Frühgeschichte Europas, ed. Joachim Herrmann and Gerard Labuda (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1980), of which only a sample fascicle appeared. See also Enzyklopädie zur Geschichte des östlichen Europas (6.–13. Jahrhundert), ed. Christian Lübke and Andrzej Wêdzki (Greifswald: n.p., 1998; only the letter ‘A’ was covered).20 But we have now Siegfried Tornow’s Was ist Osteuropa? Handbuch der osteuropäischen Text- und Sozialgeschichte von der Spätantike bis zum Nationalstaat. Slavistische Studienbücher, Neue Folge, 16 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005). The author deals with the Slavic world from prehistory to the present, focuses on the languages in Eastern Europe, the expanding influence of Christian missionaries, the emergence of sacred languages and scripts, education and culture, and the various text genres used in Eastern Europe. Above all, he covers the history of Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, in the age of Humanism, and the Protestant Reformation, in the Baroque, Enlightenment, the 19th, and in the 20th century. The extensive and international bibliography provides an excellent research tool. A most important reference work of recent date proves to be Wieser Enzyklopädie des europäischen Ostens, ed. Günther Hödl and Lojze Wieser, together with Feliks J. Bister et al. (Klagenfurt: Wieser, 1999–); vol. 18: Selbstbild und Fremdbilder der Völker des europäischen Ostens (Image of Self and Images of Foreigners by the Peoples in the European East), ed. Karl Kaser and Martin Prochazka, section 3: Dokumente-Abteilung (Klagenfurt: Wieser, 2006). See also vol. 10: Lexikon der Sprachen des europäischen Ostens, ed. Milosˇ Okuka with Gerald Krenn (Klagenfurt: Wieser, 2002). I have not been able to autopsy this new reference work, but it promises to emerge as a 20 See also Maciej Gotwski, Komizm w polskiej sztuce gotyckiej (Warsaw: Panstwowe ´ Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1973).

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most significant data base for all studies focused on Eastern Europe in many different fields, from the Middle Ages until today.21 Although the major historical lexicon Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe does not limit itself at all to the Middle Ages, it still contains a wealth of relevant articles, whether we turn to the topic “Bauer” (farmer), “Bildung” (education), “Christentum” (Christianity), “Monarchie” (monarchy), “Natur” (Natur), or “Politik” (politics).22 If we use the entry for “Zivilisation, Kultur” (civilization, culture) as an example, we can quickly gain an idea how this monumental reference work is structured and where its true value lies, and this also for Medieval Studies. The author of this article, Jörg Fisch, begins with a global discussion of culture, then turns to ancient Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages, whereas the term ‘civilization’ was unknown in those times. Instead, it emerged, first exclusively in its Latin form, only in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, that is, in the wake of Humanism, and then was translated into the various vernaculars. Subsequently, Fisch takes his readers to the history of culture in the following centuries.23 Although the subtitle of this huge lexicon focuses on “political-social” language in Germany, the contributors regularly take all of European intellectual history into view, which is particularly prevalent in the period of the Middle Ages, and so is regularly covered here as well. In this context we need to refer to another fundamental reference work that is unfortunately much too little known outside of the Germanophone world despite its extraordinary scholarly value: the Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte (Handbook of the German Legal History). Initiated by the famous Germanist Wolfgang Stammler in 1960, this Handbook was edited by him and the legal historians Adalbert Erler and Ekkehard Kaufmann until Stammler’s death in 1965. Vol. 5, edited by Erler (deceased), Kaufmann, Dieter Werkmüller, and Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand, appeared in 1998. Although the emphasis rests on the Germanic aspects of legal history, particularly Roman Law and most neighboring laws have also been consulted. The historical time frame is not at all limited to the Middle Ages, in fact it extends down to the late 20th century, but medievalists will still be 21 I would like to thank Jerzy Strzelczyk, Instytut Historii, Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza, Poznan, ´ Poland, for his help in identifying and understanding these important publications. 22 Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, ed. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck, 8 vols. (Stuttgart: E. Klett, 1972–1999). 23 Jörg Fisch, “Zivilisation, Kultur,” Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, vol. 7, 1992, 679–774.

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exceedingly well served by this reference work. Each article is composed by an individual contributor, each followed by a solid bibliography.24 A second, completely revised edition is currently in progress, ed. by Albrecht Cordes, Heiner Lück, and Dieter Werkmüller (2004–). The most erudite and comprehensive reference work for medieval German literature proves to be the famous Verfasserlexikon, also founded and published by Wolfgang Stammler,25 and completely revised and expanded in the second edition under the leadership of Kurt Ruh, together with Gundolf Keil, Werner Schröder, Burghart Wachinger, and Franz Josef Worstbrock. Here the complete corpus of texts written by authors in the German Middle Ages, along with a considerable selection of authors writing in Latin, is dealt with most comprehensively. Stammler had already set the tone when he insisted on incorporating also authors of historical, philosophical, theological, legal, medical, and scientific texts and treatises.26 The editors additionally included writers from antiquity and the Middle Ages who exerted considerable influence on German literature, such as Aristotle, Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, Boethius, Bonaventura, etc. Similarly, Middle Dutch authors, insofar as their impact was noticeable in medieval German literature, were also included. The editors, closely following Stammler’s guidelines, tentatively drew a line at ca. 1480 for Latin literature when humanism developed more strongly, but the major historical date really serving as a milepost was the government of Emperor Maximilian I (1493–1519). Many text traditions, such as the late-medieval drama, continued well into the 16th century. The most important editorial decision for this Verfasserlexikon consists in the inclusion of the manuscript tradition with exact call numbers and references to the locations where the manuscripts are housed. Furthermore, we are informed about critical editions, interpretations, and bibliographical and historical studies pertinent for each topic, author, genre, text, etc. As in the case of virtually all encyclopedic enterprises, once a dictionary or lexicon has been completed, supplemented volumes become necessary, and this was the case with the Verfasserlexikon as well.27 There is no doubt that future ex24 Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, ed. Adalbert Erler and Ekkehard Kaufmann, co-founded by Wolfgang Stammler. Vol. 5 ed. Adalbert Erler (†), Ekkehard Kaufmann, and Dieter Werkmüller, with the philological assistance of Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand, 5 vols. (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1971–1998). 25 Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, ed. Wolfgang Stammler, 5 vols. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1933–1955). 26 Vol. 1, “Vorrede,” V–VII; here V. 27 See also the supplement to the Dictionary of the Middle Ages, cf. above.

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pansions of the general scope of texts to be covered here, new discoveries, new critical editions, and interpretations, hence new perspectives and realizations will one day require a third edition.28 Medieval French literature is also treated rather comprehensively in the Dizionario critico della letteratura francese, ed. by Franco Simone, but this work comprises the entire history of French literature.29 Of more interest to the medievalist is the excellent volume on Le Moyen Age, edited by Robert Bossuat, Louis Pichard, and Guy Raynaud de Lage, in the Dictionnaire des lettres françaises/Le Moyen Age, substantially updated since the 1960s under the editorship of Geneviève Hasenohr and Michel Zink.30 It mirrors, in many ways, though still limited by size, the Verfasserlexikon; it also offers qualified articles on related subjects, such as “Courtoisie,” “Musique au Moyen Âge,” or “Troubadours,” and many more. See also Dictionnaire des littératures de langue française, ed. Jean-Pierre Beaumarchais, Daniel Couty, and Alain Rey, 3 vols. (Paris: Bordas, 1984). The same constraints apply to the Dizionario enciclopedico della letteratura italiana,31 containing, overall, good entries, along with bibliographies. In fact, there is a plethora of similar dictionaries for Spanish, English, or Portuguese, for instance, but I believe that in terms of scholarly breadth, depth, and fundamental research presented, not to for-

28 Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, 2nd, completely new ed. by Kurt Ruh, together with Gundolf Keil, Werner Schröder, Burghart Wachinger, and Franz Josef Worstbrock, 10 vols. (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1977–1996; supplement fascicles 1–5 as vol. 11: 2000–2004; Handschriftenregister (Register of Manuscripts), ed. Christine Stöllinger-Löser, vol. 12: 2006; Register der Drucke. Sonstige Textzeugen, Initien: vol. 13: 2007). 29 Dizionario critico della letteratura francese, ed. Franco Simone, 2 vols. (Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice, 1972); see also The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French, ed. Peter France (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). 30 Dictionnaire des lettres françaises, ed. Georges Grente. Ed. entièrement rev. et mise à jour sous la direction de Geneviève Hasenohr et Michel Zink (1951; Paris: Fayard 1992). The volume on Le Moyen Age appeared in 1964. See also the useful Dictionnaire du Moyen Âge, ed. Claude Gauvard, Alain de Libera, and Michel Zink, Série “Quadrige” 386 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002). It contains 1790 truly relevant entries on concepts and practices/customs such as “intuition,” “cénobitisme,” “courtoisie,” “cuisine,” “dot,” “encyclopédisme,” “lois somptuaires,” “pauvreté,” “peinture,” “regalia”, etc., as well as on people, places, movements, and events in Europe and the Middle East in the fields of history, literature, art history, law, philosophy, etc. I would like to express my gratitude to Nadia Margolis, Mount Holyoke, for pointing out this dictionary to me. 31 Dizionario enciclopedico della letteratura italiana, ed. Giuseppe Petronio, 6 vols. (Bari: Gius. Laterza & Figli; Rome: Unione Editoriale, 1966–1970).

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get the clarity of presentation, the Verfasserlexikon certainly serves as an ideal model for the study of any other language and culture in medieval Europe.32 A major attempt to address this desideratum was made by Hans Robert Jauss and Erich Köhler when they launched the book series “Grundriss der romanischen Literatur des Mittelalters” in 1972, which is incomplete until today. It was supposed to replace the book series “Grundriss der romanischen Literatur des Mittelalters,” ed. by Gustav Gröber (Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1897–1906), and has, indeed, accomplished much, though the project has been riddled by many technical problems that make it rather cumbersome and difficult to utilize it easily and efficiently. Vol. 1, Généralités, ed. by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1972), outlines the overarching plan. Following this overview, vol. 2 covers lyrical genres; vol. 3: the epic romances; vol. 4: courtly romances; vol. 5: short verse narratives; vol. 6: didactic, allegorical, and satirical literature; vol. 7: the age of Dante, Boccaccio, and Petrarch; vol. 8: 14th- and 15th-century French literature; vol. 9: 14th- and 15th-century Spanish literature; vol. 10: 14th- and 15th-century Italian literature; vol. 11: historiographical literature from the origin to 1500; vol. 12: medieval theater; and vol. 13: a synthesis, chronology, and index. Each volume consists of individual articles composed by experts in the specific fields, writing in the various Romance languages. One of the most comprehensive reference works for the history of literature both on a global level, but then also, specifically, focusing on the Middle Ages, was the “Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft,” ed. Oskar Walzel, the first volume of which focused on Die altgermanische Dichtung, by Andreas Heusler (Wildpark-Potsdam: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft Athenaion, 1926). Of course, the passing of time required the publication of a completely new handbook, which was edited by Klaus von See, beginning with a volume on Altorientalische Literatur by Wolfgang Röllig (Wiesbaden: Akademische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1978). Von See edited the volume on Europäisches Frühmittelalter. Neues Handbuch der Literaturwissenschaft, 6 (1985), followed by Henning Krauss, who edited Europäisches Hochmittelalter (vol. 7, 1981), and by Willi Erzgräber, who edited Europäisches Spätmittelalter 32 There are, of course, massive biographical dictionaries for almost all European countries, see, for instance, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, ed. Alberto M. Ghisalberti, 70 vols. (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1960–2004), but they are not specifically geared for medievalists, though they are often also most helpful for them. For space limitations, I abstain from listing some of the major reference works; by the same token, I will not examine the many excellent dictionaries for medieval languages here.

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(vol. 8, 1978). The highly interdisciplinary character of these volumes deserves to be praised, and to elucidate it following I will outline briefly the topics covered in the last volume as an example: European literature in its political, social, and religious context (Willi Erzgräber); Dante and the Italian literature of his time (August Buck); late-medieval German epic narratives (Kurt Ruh); short verse narratives (Oskar Roth); English secular romances (Dieter Mehl); Langland, Gower, and Chaucer (Erzgräber); literature composed by representatives of the Teutonic Knights (Hans-Georg Richert); English saints’ legends (Theodor Wolpers); German lyric poetry (Alfred Karnein); medieval popular ballads in the Germanic context (Ernst Erich Metzner), French lyric poetry from Gauillaume de Machaut to Jean Marot (Klaus Heitmann); Middle English secular poetry (Wolpers); etc.33 But one of the most comprehensive, and still ongoing project focusing on world literature, including the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, must be mentioned as well, the “Dictionary of Literary Biography,” which began with a volume on The American Renaissance in New England, ed. Joel Myerson (Detroit, MI: Gale Research Company, 1978), and most recently issued a volume on Castilian Writers, 1200–1400, ed. George D. Greenia and Frank A. Domínguez (2008). Here each author and/or text finds philologically and critically sound treatment, beginning with a survey of the manuscript tradition, followed by a bibliography of the translation/s and edition/s, then by a full discussion of the content and/or significance of the author, and concluding with a list of references of secondary studies. Numerous illustrations of manuscripts, statues, paintings, etc. accompany the individual articles.34 Certainly a huge field of research, medieval Latin literature and its dissemination and reception throughout the subsequent centuries until today are remarkably well covered by Spazio letterario del medioevo.35 But the reader

33 There are, of course, many multi-volume literary histories in other languages, see, for a rather obscure example, Otto Maria Carpeaux, História da literatura ocidental, 8 vols. (Rio de Janeiro: O Cruzeiro, 1959–1966). 34 Another example would be: German Writers and Works of the High Middle Ages: 1170–1280, ed. James Hardin and Will Hasty, Dictionary of Literary Biography, 138 (Detroit, Washington, DC, and London: Gale Research, 1994). 35 Spazio letterario del medioevo, ed. Guglielmo Cavallo, Claudio Leonardi, Enrico Menestò, Piero Boitani, Mario Mancini, and Alberto Vàrvaro, 5 vols. (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1992–1998). Vol. I covers the broad topic of text production; vol. II focuses on the dissemination of texts; vol. III deals with the reception of texts (history of reception); vol. IV is concerned with the modern perception of the Middle Ages from Humanism to Romanticism, Realism, and the modern

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faces the problem of little transparency insofar as s/he has to plough through a massive amount of information displayed in lengthy narratives that do not necessarily make it easy to identify and comprehend the crucial information. Nevertheless, the critical discussion of the specific authors, texts, and aspects in general is soundly based on the relevant research literature, coupled with solid references to the important manuscripts. Some of the major medieval authors have also been dealt with in encyclopedic fashion, such as Dante, see the Dante Encyclopedia, ed. Richard H. Lansing and Teodolinda Barolini (New York and London: Garland, 2000), or Geoffrey Chaucer (see All Things Chaucer: An Encyclopedia of Chaucer’s Works, ed. Shannon L. Rogers [Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood Press, 2007]). The world of King Arthur in its countless literary, artistic, and also cinematographic manifestations is impressively covered by The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, ed. Norris J. Lacy, Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, 931 (1986; New York and London: Garland, 1996). Francis G. Gentry, Winder McConnell, Ulrich Müller, and Werner Wunderlich edited a comparable reference work for the most important Middle High German epic poem, the Nibelungenlied, The Nibelungen Tradition: An Encyclopedia (New York and London: Routledge, 2002). Similar publications exist also for many other genres, topics, and writers, but for our purpose suffice this short list. The enormous interest in the Middle Ages among the academic and nonacademic audience in the modern world also finds expression in smaller, more pragmatic reference works, such as Joseph Dahmus’s Dictionary of

time, including film, theater, television, opera, and the arts. Vol. V contains an extensive chronological overview (with specific data), and a bibliography of medieval Latin literature using a chronological system, concluding with Pietro d’Abana (1250/57–1315/18). In many respects, most of the above mentioned reference works, such as the Literatur des deutschen Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, provide an important basis, combined with more recent primary and secondary literature. The bibliography is followed by an alphabetical index, an index of names and noteworthy topics, and index with passages cited, an index of manuscripts cited in the previous volumes, an index of the studies cited in the bibliographies following each entry, and an index of the bibliography itself. Overall, these 5 volumes (actually 6 because vol. 1 is divided into two) represent most important critical surveys and analyses. Unfortunately, because published in Italian, many international medievalists do not seem to be familiar with it, and many non-Italian libraries do not own a copy. World-wide only sixty-six research libraries currently hold a copy. I would like to thank Peter Dinzelbacher for pointing out this major reference work to me.

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Medieval Civilization,36 which contents itself with offering only short explanations of terms, names, places, concepts, objects, and texts. There is no bibliography anywhere, not even in a cumulative list that might have been included at the end of the volume. But Dahmus intended his work really as a dictionary, hence there would be no need for a scholarly apparatus because of the pragmatic purpose of this reference work. The two-volume Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, edited by André Vauchez in conjunction with Barrie Dobson and Michael Lapidge (2000),37 represents a considerable improvement, both in scope and depth, particularly with regard to the brief bibliographies that are added to each entry. These are limited to about five to eight titles, though they often also contain only one to two references. The editors are fully aware of the tremendous progress Medieval Studies have witnessed, as illustrated by the outstanding International Medieval Bibliography and Medioevo Latino. Moreover, as they hasten to add, “This rapid growth is accompanied by a renewal of methods and approaches that has affected every medieval discipline, from history and art history to archaeology, philosophy and musicology” (vii). Their purpose, therefore, was “to harvest and publish the fruits of this rich growth, to which most of the contributors to the Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages have themselves contributed” (ibid.). True to the ideals of good encyclopedists, André Vauchez and his colleagues made every possible effort to address also the culture and history of those people who did not subscribe to Christianity, that is, Jews, Muslims, and “pagan” people, including Lithuanians, Lapps, Cumans, and Mongols (ibid.). Nevertheless, the focus still rests on the Christian world of medieval Europe, though this extends for them from Iceland and Vinland in modernday Canada to Ethiopia and Central Asia. This encyclopedia is primarily driven by the goal “to help Europeans of the third millennium identify with an inheritance that still marks their way of life and some of whose aspects still charm them, but whose meaning escapes them. With this intention, we have deliberately given a privileged place to philosophy, theology, spirituality, liturgy and iconography” (ibid.). Encyclopedias focused on the Middle Ages, but considerably smaller in scope include, for instance, the Encyclopedia of the Medieval World, ed. by 36 Joseph Dahmus, Dictionary of Medieval Civilization (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company; London: Collier Macmillan Publisher, 1984). See also the quite useful publication by Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Medieval Wordbook (New York: Facts On File, 1996). 37 Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, edited by André Vauchez in conjunction with Barrie Dobson and Michael Lapidge (Paris: Editions du Cerf; Cambridge: James Clarke & Co.; Rome: Città Nuova, 2000).

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Edward D. English (2005),38 which also offers some further readings for each article, but again severely limits the number of titles and focuses, instead, simply on the factual information without problematizing anything. A special perspective finds most welcome consideration in the encyclopedia on women in the Middle Ages, attempting to encompass non-Western cultures (China, Japan, India, even some Aztec) in addition to the more familiar Western European topics – these too with some new approaches – edited by Katharina M. Wilson and Nadia Margolis, and also, though narrower in scope, Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia, edited by Margaret Schaus (New York and London: Routledge, 2006).39 The series “Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages” concentrates on a variety of specific cultural aspects, or groups of people, in the Middle Ages, such as Medieval Jewish Civilization and Medieval Islamic Civilization, and treating many other ‘national’ entities or identities from an encyclopedic perspective.40

38 Encyclopedia of the Medieval World, ed. Edward D. English (New York: Facts On File, 2005). 39 Women in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Katharina M. Wilson and Nadia Margolis, 2 vols. (Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood Press, 2004). Schaus’s encyclopedia also appeared in the series “The Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages” as no. 14. 40 Medieval Jewish Civilization: An Encyclopedia, ed. Norman Roth (New York and London: Routledge, 2003); Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia, ed. Josef W. Meri, 2 vols. (New York and London: Routledge, 2006). As Meri emphasizes in the introduction, “Such fundamental questions as to what Islamic civilization is and what Muslims did to contribute to European understanding of the sciences, mathematics, arts, literature, philosophy, and government remain largely unanswered. What was the nature of ‘interfaith’ relations in the Islamic world, and what roles did Jews and Christians play in medieval Islamic societies?” xi). Clearly, despite its enormous progress, Medieval Studies continue to open up many unchartered areas and there is no end in sight as to what we still need to learn about that world. For other relevant encyclopedias, see also Medieval Italy: An Encyclopedia, ed. Christopher Kleinhenz, 2 vols. (New York and London: Routledge, 2004); earlier volumes include Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. Phillip Pulsiano (New York and London: Garland, 1993); Medieval France: An Encyclopedia, ed. William W. Kibler and Grover A. Zinn (New York and London: Garland, 1995); Medieval England, ed. Paul E. Szarmach, M. Teresa Tavormina, and Joel T. Rosenthal (New York and London: Garland, 1998); Medieval Germany: An Encyclopedia, ed. John M. Jeep (New York and London: Garland, 2001); and Medieval Iberia: An Encyclopedia, ed. E. Michael Gerli (New York and London: Routledge, 2003). See also The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval England, ed. Nigel Saul (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

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Though of an older vintage, and primarily focused on a summary of factual knowledge, Aryeh Grabois’s Medieval Civilization (1980) still seems to serve its purpose very well even today,41 especially because of its unique emphasis on civilization on a broad scale, extending considerably beyond the medieval European latinitas. As Grabois notes, “the fact remains that most of mankind did not inhabit Western Europe, nor was civilization by any means confined to this part of the world. The Islamic culture, for example, reached a higher level of achievement than that of Western Europe before the 13th century, and cannot be ignored in an encyclopedia of the Middle Ages. Nor is it possible to leave out the great Oriental civilizations – those of India, China and Japan – which, isolated from the Western and Middle Eastern world, achieved great heights. While a similar compendium on the classical world can concentrate on the Mediterranean region, an encyclopedia of medieval civilization must be almost universal in scope” (7). Grabois’s scholarly position still can be fully approved today and demands our respect: “Perhaps there is no better way of demonstrating the universality of the medieval world than by studying the continuous interrelationships in the intellectual and scientific fields, wherein, on the foundations of the classical heritage, Christians, Jews, Moslems and Orientals taught and learned from each other, despite their political and religious animosities” (8). In this regard, the Encyclopaedia Judaica proves to be an invaluable resource, at least as far as Jewish culture and history are concerned.42 The contributors to The Medieval World, edited by Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson, took upon themselves the task of expanding on that notion of universality and interdisciplinarity and to deepen the encyclopedic ap-

41 Aryeh Grabois, The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Medieval Civilization (Jerusalem: The Jerusalem Publishing House, 1980); trans. as Enzyklopädie des Mittelalters. Deutsche Übersetzung von Michael Toch. Wissenschaftliche Redaktion der deutschen Ausgabe von Peter Dinzelbacher (1981; Zurich: Atlantis, 1988). See also Die visuelle Weltgeschichte des Mittelalters, ed. Edmund Jacoby (Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 2005); Medieval Panorama, ed. Robert Bartlett (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2001; trans. into various languages). 42 See the very impressive, broadly designed, yet detail-oriented Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., Fred Skolnik, Editor in Chief, Michael Berenbaum, Executive Editor, 22 vols. (1972; Detroit, New York, et al.: Thomson Gale, 2007). One of its worthy predecessors was the English-language Jewish Encyclopedia, 12 vols. (New York and London: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1901–1906). Berenbaum identifies also successful Hebrew and Russian efforts to publish comparable, though always much smaller publications, vol. 1, 15. All these reference works, however, are not specifically geared toward the Middle Ages, yet also include them in multifarious ways.

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proach considerably, focusing on (I) identities: selves and others, (II) beliefs, social values, and symbolic order, (III) power and power structures, and (IV) on elites, organizations, and groups.43 The problem here rests in the highly selective treatment of specialized topics in the form of lengthy articles, which cumulatively might achieve the desired goal, but still fall short of the ideal to examine that period comprehensively. Again, however, such a lofty goal seems to elude all of us too easily, yet the critical issue affecting most such scholarly enterprises needs to be addressed. Smaller dictionaries of the Middle Ages have appeared in most European languages, such as the linguistic Diccionario medieval español: desde las Glosas Emilianenses y Silenses (s. X) hasta el siglo XV, ed. Martín Alonso, 2 vols. (Salamanca: Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca, 1986) and the more specialized Diccionario español de textos médicos antiguos [Spanish Dictionary of Ancient Medical Texts], bajo la dirección de María Teresa Herrera, 2 vols. (Madrid: Arco Libros, 1996), which clearly signals how much that cultural-historical period is regarded as a cornerstone of Western civilization in every country. And recently there are serious attempts (once again) to provide encyclopedic overviews for individual regions and countries in Europe, including the Middle Ages, such as The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales, ed. John Davies, Jigel Jenkins, Menna Baines, and Peredur I. Lynch (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2008). Although the Middle Ages constitute only one relatively small aspect among many pertinent to the entire history, culture, politics, and religion of Wales, the information offered spans many different themes, objects, works, monuments, texts, and figures from that period, accompanied by good maps, illustrations, photos. Shockingly, however, there is no bibliography, neither for the individual entries nor cumulatively because such matters have been “deemed impractical” (xxv). A unique perspective on the world of the Middle Ages is pursued in the encyclopedia dedicated to Trade, Travel, and Exploration in the Middle Ages, edited by John Block Friedman and Kristen Mossler Figg, who approach their task from a global perspective, defining their task as providing an “introduction to the history of travel, exploration, discovery, and mercantile activity in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the New World.” Moreover, considering the specific nature of their reference work, they also underscore the innovative and interdisciplinary nature of their enterprise which comes as by default because of their topic: “The encyclopedia has a cross-disciplinary focus that promotes the integration of historical, scientific, and literary per43 The Medieval World, ed. Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson (London and New York: Routledge, 2001).

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spectives, provides a synthetic view of parallel developments in East and West, and encourages immediate connections …”44 Medieval literature on a very broad scale is covered by the Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature, ed. by Jay Ruud (2006). This scale extends well into the Asian realm, including India, China, Japan, and Korea, whereas Africa and the Americas have been excluded because the medieval texts from those worlds have mostly survived only in oral traditions. And the written sources are modern renditions of the ancient material. Although each entry is accompanied by a short bibliography (with varying length), the editor really aims at English-speaking students, which also explains the greater emphasis on Old and Middle English literature. Unfortunately, instead of providing a solid overview as to which literary texts might really be the truly centrally important ones from the point of view of most recent research, Ruud has used as his guidelines “popular anthologies of world literature, of Western literature, and of English literature.” Consequently, he has “included entries from texts that are often used in introductory college or advanced high school classes, since the primary intended reading audience for this book comprises beginning students in these kinds of classes and their instructors who seek some background information.”45 Of course, this fully legitimizes his approach, and we should not look for higher, more scholarly goals, when they were not pursued in the first place. In fact, Ruud’s encyclopedia serves an excellent purpose and will provide a solid springboard for a possible cohort of future medievalists because these articles offer concisely written introductions, clear definitions, and all the necessary background information for readers of that age level.46

44 Trade, Travel, and Exploration in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. John Block Friedman and Kristen Mossler Figg (New York and London: Garland, 2000), vii. 45 Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature, ed. Jay Ruud (New York: Facts on File, 2006), v. 46 There are actually many similar encyclopedic enterprises for the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, see, for example, Lexikon der Renaissance, ed. Günter Gurst, Siegfried Hoyer, Ernst Ullmann, and Christa Zimmermann (Leipzig: VEB Bibliographisches Institut, 1989); A Concise Encyclopaedia of the Italian Renaissance, ed. J. R. Hale (London: Thames and Hudson, 1981). Similar publications can certainly also be found in Italian, Spanish, French, and other languages, but they do not need to be cited all. The four-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, ed. Hans J. Hillerbrand, 4 vols. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), however, is a must to all interested in late-medieval and early-modern religious history.

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Most recently Gert Melville and Martial Staub tried their hands once again at this enormous and difficult task, editing a two-volume Enzyklopädie des Mittelalters, downloadable also as an e-book one time upon purchase of the print copy, addressing a German-speaking audience in which they asked their contributors to examine aspects far beyond the traditional concept of history and literary history.47 Other reference works are also being made available in electronic form, and we might soon witness a revolution in publishing of reference works in the near future deeply affecting Medieval Studies at large. In contrast to common approaches to the medieval world, the editors have not simply listed all kinds of topics as possibly relevant for medieval society from a historical perspective. Instead, along with a cohort of outstanding European medievalists, they collectively examine the world of the Middle Ages in a systematic fashion, above all, and thereby as comprehensively as possible. They discuss, at first, the structure of medieval society, then turn to social formations, kinship organizations, interaction and communication, faith and knowledge, finally, in the second volume, to literature, the visual arts and music, economy, technology, living spaces and conditions, and conclude with a section on the complex of events and regional history. Impressively, here the world of technology and production (agriculture and industry/craftsmanship) enjoys just as much attention as literature, the arts, and religion. But despite all the depth and detail provided in the individual contributions, this encyclopedia basically reiterates and summarizes our current knowledge and deliberately refrains from engaging in a more critical examination of the issues at stake although this was its explicit goal. Of course, in this sense Melville’s and Staub’s approach does not differ much, if any at all, from all previous efforts to create an encyclopedia covering that time and culture. Frankly, not much more can or should be expected from them as editors of an encyclopedia, though the question always looms large – what justifies the publication of yet another reference work, if the previous ones still meet all the demands and summarize appropriately and fully the current level of knowledge about the past? Most cumbersome, here the entire bibliography is placed at the very end of the second volume, without any possibility for the reader to grasp where the individual authors stand with regard to specific issues or positions in current scholarship, as if positivism still were 47 Enzyklopädie des Mittelalters, ed. Gert Melville and Martial Staub, 2 vols. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2008), see my review, forthcoming in Mediaevistik.

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en vogue. Somewhat simplistically, the editors emphasize that they hope to appeal to the curiosity of an interested reading public, without defining at all what that means at large and what the implications might be as to the scholarly approaches for the composition of the individual entries. After all, Medieval Studies have grown so much over the last century that we have reached today a level of complexity and controversy in the interpretation of virtually every aspect in the Middle Ages that it almost seems impossible to make any simple and straightforward claims or to argue naively regarding the proper interpretation of a poem or a romance. In fact, I would almost submit that we might be beyond the point at which the publication of encyclopedias was still possible and feasible in practical terms, unless we re-conceptualize the genre altogether, refraining from plainly stating what the basic facts might have been. Actually, do we even believe that the Middle Ages, or any other culture and world, can be defined and described in straightforward terms? Do we not have to accept the fundamental discursive nature of virtually all manifestations of human life, and this also then, perhaps only five hundred years ago? And did not those who dominated that discourse determine what documents were created, what art works were commissioned, and what chronicles were written? The problem with this and all other encyclopedias rests in the assumption that the knowledge about the Middle Ages can be easily and factually summarized, which also applies to any other period in human history. We know, perhaps more than we would like to, how much our perception and understanding of that past age is significantly constructed by modern interests, or dominant viewpoints in the past, and at any rate today often determined by mythical thinking, as best represented, for instance, by the modern notion of the medieval chastity belt – both a satirical object and topic developed in the late Middle Ages and a mythical concept about the medieval past created in the modern world.48 And there are countless other examples of mythical thinking concerning the Middle Ages, as the volumes published by Ulrich Müller and Werner Wunderlich forcefully indicate, which in a way 48 For a typical example of how the myth has become ingrained in modern thinking, without any solid historical foundation or textual evidence, reflecting almost nothing but contemporary, basically uninformed and unreflected assumptions about the ‘dark’ Middle Ages, and this even among serious and highly respected scholars, see Vern L. Bullough, “Chastity Girdles,” Human Sexuality: An Encyclopedia, ed. id. and Bonnie Bullough (New York and London: Garland, 1994), 107. By contrast, see now Albrecht Classen, The Medieval Chastity Belt: A The Myth-Making Process, The New Middle Ages (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England, and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

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also pursue encyclopedic goals.49 Whether we think of some of the major rulers, such as Charlemagne, the Crusades, then of specific locations, places, mountains, rivers, islands, poets, composers, magicians and sorcerers, we have always to realize how much modern notions have infused all those icons from the past, in a way colonizing them in order to gain a grasp on their meaning for us today. Most importantly, the myth of the ‘dark ages’ needs to be dispelled over and over again, especially because popular publishers like to perpetuate this notion because it appeals, in an intricate yet foolish fashion, to base instincts among modern audiences that prefer gruesome but fictional stories about a barbaric past over complex, sophisticated, yet scholarly accounts that seriously try to gain a full and critical understanding of events, people, texts, art works, and developments in the Middle Ages.50 Certainly, many aspects of the medieval world would have to be identified as barbaric, as primitive, as lacking in sophistication, culture, hygiene, etc. in comparison with those standards we are used to today. But any critic could raise similar charges even against the Western world in the 21st century resorting to different sets of criteria, such as the number of civilian casualties in modern wars, or ‘collateral damage’ in military parlance, the rate at which prisoners have been and continue to be tortured (see Guantanamo Bay), and the enormous contradiction between amazing and rapid advances in modern science and technology and the wide-ranging and extensive belief in superstition, magic, including religious explanations of the origin of our world, such as ‘Intelligent Design.’ At any rate, the term ‘Dark Ages’ does not help in any constructive fashion to comprehend the Middle Ages and only evokes Romantic, fanciful, titillating, horrifying, and deliberately shocking notions about a world that has been very little understood and continues to challenge us in our episte-

49 Ulrich Müller and Werner Wunderlich, ed., Mittelalter-Mythen, vol. 1 (St. Gallen: UVK Fachverlag für Wissenschaft und Studium, 1996), with a focus on: Herrscher, Helden, Heilige (Rulers, Heroes, Saints). Vol. 5, focusing on Burgen, Länder, Orte (Castles, Countries, Places), which seems to have concluded the series, appeared in 2008. 50 See the excellent contributions to Misconceptions About the Middle Ages, ed. Stephen J. Harris and Bryon Lee Grigsby, Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and Culture, 7 (New York and London: Routledge, 2008). Unfortunately, in many cases when the arguments reach a critical point, the authors tend to break off and wrap up their discussion too quickly. And the bibliographical references, though certainly not brief, often lack some of the most important studies, particularly those not published in English.

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mological quest, constantly requiring further investigations. In this sense, our Handbook of Medieval Studies hopes to provide important stepping stones in this global endeavor by looking backwards, taking stock of where we are today and what might be, though this is not specifically the intent pursued here, the new directions of research in Medieval Studies. I strongly concur in this regard with Graeme Dunphy’s lucid and critical analysis of the term ‘Dark Ages’ as an ideological construct that could be applied to any period in the past depending on the particular interests pursued by those who either denigrate a special time or culture, or simply ignore it as not worthy their attention – a strategy that had already begun in the Italian Renaissance, if we think of Petrarch’s contemptuous comments about the literature composed prior to his own time.51 All this is not to say that there are no real facts available about the medieval world, but all those that we tend to rely on have been viewed through myriad lenses both in the past and in the present, hence the constant growth of new interpretations, approaches, methodologies, and perceptions. After all, throughout the entire Middle Ages, as in other periods, people, institutions, social groups, alliances, federations, and factions have made great effort to gain power and influence, to hold on to their authority and wealth, and to protect their property. Falsification was the name of the game, as historians have recognized for a long time, which means that we have to regard 51 Graeme Dunphy, “Literary Transitions, 1300–1500: From Late Medieval to Early Modern,” Early Modern German Literature: 1350–1700, ed. Max Reinhart, The Camden House History of German Literature, 4 (Rochester, NY, and Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2007), 43–87; 43–87, here 43: “If we compare the high medieval writings of Walther von der Vogelweide or Wolfram von Eschenbach with the Reformation writings of Martin Luther or Ulrich von Hutten, the cultural gulf that opens up before us seems enormous, leaving the impression that the intervening years were ones of rapid transition. But when we acknowledge that a full three centuries lie between these two familiar landmarks, we realize that the rate of change was doubtless no faster than in any other literary epoch. If the period from the mid-thirteenth century to the end of the fifteenth may be called a transition, it is because the early thirteenth and early sixteenth centuries are established coordinates in the discipline of literary history.” See also Lucie Varga, Das Schlagwort vom Finsteren Mittelalter, Universität Wien, Seminar für Wirtschafts- und Kulturgeschichte. Veröffentlichungen, 8 (1983; Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1978). I particularly like Richard Raiswell’s wonderful article “The Age Before Reason,” Misconceptions About the Middle Ages, 124–34. Reinhold Münster illustrates convincingly in his contribution to this Handbook (“Enlightenment Perspectives of the Middle Ages”) how much the 18th-century discourse on the meaning and relevance of medieval texts and art works shaped and determined modern perceptions of the Middle Ages.

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any statement from that time, whether in a chronicle or in a letter, in a poem or in a liturgical drama, with great care, and we really need to read between the lines. Simply put, we need to interpret them critically. Often it seems that we know considerably less about the real world in the Middle Ages than all the encyclopedias, dictionaries, and lexicons pretend to convey. Ironically, however, Melville and Staub claim to have published an encyclopedia based on a critical concept, which essentially only means that they have subdivided the major topics and specified in greater detail the individual subject matters for a more detailed examination. For them, the ‘critical approach’ finds its expression in the fact that they have granted each author considerable freedom in developing his/her topic according to their own orientation. Ultimately, then, there is no specific or noticeable attempt to examine their subject matter from a truly critical perspective. The history of research, as they perceive it, remains hidden in a rather selective, hardly international, and certainly not comprehensive bibliography. This is not to say that the authors would have ignored to cite some of the most seminal studies, but even here, in the bibliographies, the dominant emphasis on scholarly publications in German is evident because of the narrow target of this twovolume encyclopedia, a relatively sophisticated German reading audience outside of academia. Ultimately, the allegedly critical approach is actually missing because the editors cannot decide – which also might be the virtue and pragmatic strength of their publication – whom their reference work should serve above all. Can an encyclopedia actually aim for a critical treatment of its topics, or should it not rather try to digest, synthesize, summarize, and analyze the current level of knowledge and present it in a comprehensive manner? Intriguingly, the history of Medieval Studies as an academic field of research, particularly during the formative years in the late 19th century, proves to be almost as interesting as the study of the Middle Ages itself especially because here we observe how much our discipline – in its widest ramifications, whether we think of the history of fashion, of architecture, literature, foodstuff, arms, social history, or history of music52 – has been and 52 Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Friedrich Blume, 17 vols. (Kassel: Bärenreiter-Verlag, 1949–1986; 2nd ed. by Ludwig Finscher, 10 vols. [Sachteil] and 17 vols. [Personenteil], Kassel and New York: Bärenreiter; Stuttgart: Metzler, 1994–2007); the Neues Handbuch der Musikwissenschaft, ed. Carl Dahlhaus and Hermann Danuser, 13 vols. (Wiesbaden: Athenaion; Laaber: Laaber Verlag Müller-Buscher, 1980–1995; The New Grove of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie and John Tyrell, 20 vols. (London: Macmillan; Washington, DC: Grove’s Dictionary of Music, 1980); 2nd ed., 29 vols. (New York: Grove, 2001); the Dizion-

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will be truly determined by outstanding scholarly individuals, by multinational approaches, by a noteworthy gender balance (even in the older days), and by interdisciplinarity.53 ario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti, ed. Alberto Basso, 4 vols. (Turin: UTET, 1983–1984): le biografie, 8 vols. (Turin: UTET, 1985–1988); i titoli e i personaggi, 3 vols. (Turin: UTET, 1999). See also Diccionario de la música española e hispanoamericana, ed. Emilio Casares Rodicio, 10 vols. (Madrid: Sociedad General de Autores y Editores, 1999–2002). 53 Medieval Scholarship: Biographical Studies on the Formation of a Discipline, vol. 1: History, ed. Helen Damico and Joseph B. Zavadil (New York and London: Garland, 1995); vol. 2: Medieval Scholarship: Biographical Studies on the Formation of a Discipline: Literature and Philology, ed. Helen Damico, with Donald Fennema and Karmen Lenz (New York and London: Garland, 1998); vol. 3: Philosophy and the Arts (New York and London: Garland, 2000). See also the Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing, ed. Kelly Boyd, 2 vols. (London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1999). Further, see Harry Ritter, Dictionary of Concepts in History. Reference Sources for the Social Sciences and Humanities, 3 (New York, Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood Press, 1986); Marnie Hughes-Warrington, Fifty Key Thinkers on History. Routledge Key Guides (London and New York: Routledge, 2000). For the history of German philology, see Klaus Weimar, Geschichte der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft bis zum Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Fink, 1989); Lothar Bluhm, Die Brüder Grimm und der Beginn der Deutschen Philologie: Eine Studie zu Kommunikation und Wissenschaftsbildung im frühen 19. Jahrhundert, Spolia Berolinensia, 11 (Hildesheim: Weidmannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1997); Rewriting the Middle Ages in the Twentieth Century, ed. Jaume Aurell and Francisco Crosas (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005). See also the contribution to this Handbook by Berta Raposo (“Rediscovery of the Middle Ages”), and A History of Arthurian Scholarship, ed. Norris J. Lacy, Arthurian Studies (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006). Andrew E. Mathis, The King Arthur Myth in Modern American Literature (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland, 2002), also offers fascinating perspectives regarding the great popularity of medieval literature in the United States. One remarkable case of a medieval myth that still holds sway over modern fantasies and continues to influence modern media, politics, and quasi-religious groups concerns the Hohenstaufen Emperor Frederick II. Friedrich Nietzsche, just to mention one example, went so far as to identify him as a medieval superman who provided a role model for modern people. Stefan George adored Frederick as a global ruler who had been the only one capable of bridging the perennial divides between Orient and Occident; hence also between the various religions and cultures. Personalities such as Berthold von Stauffenberg (brother of Claus von Stauffenberg who attempted to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944) and Ernst Kantorowicz adulated this medieval emperor as a mythical figure that could heal and overcome all conflicts in the present time. David Abulafia tried to deconstruct this myth with his biography from 1988 (Frederick II: a Medieval Eemperor, London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1988), but the Frederick myth has even grown ever since, particularly in Apulia and Sicily; see now Hubert Houben, Kaiser Friedrich II. (1194–1250): Herrscher, Mensch und Mythos (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2008), 176–228.

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Recently, Jane Chance published a most welcome biographical dictionary of women medievalists from Elizabeth Elstob (1683–1756) to Caroline Walker Bynum (1941–), which promises to inject the long-needed ‘feminization’ of Medieval Studies.54 But encyclopedias are not always the best medium through which to observe this intensive and complex development in the academic field of Medieval Studies from the late 18th century until today. Nevertheless, and this was the purpose of the investigation until here, the history of a specific type of encyclopedias also sheds important light on the general position of the subject matter both within the framework of scholarship and in light of public responses to it. In this sense, Strayer’s efforts more than 25 years ago were most remarkable, both for the specific accomplishments then and for the inspiration until today to produce and publish new encyclopedias, perhaps with a more narrow focus, or with a specific readership in mind. And they have spawned many comparable scholarly enterprises, though then always in much slimmer proportions. Henry Loyn, for instance, to parallel Grabois’s project, attempted to create an encyclopedic overview of a Middle Ages as “an age of real advance in every field, of political and social evolution, of intellectual and artistic creativity, and of commercial and scientific progress.”55 Without going into further details, we can be certain that similar publications focusing on the Middle Ages have appeared in many other languages as well.

54 Women Medievalists and the Academy, ed. Jane Chance (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2005), xxvii. 55 H. R. Loyn, The Middle Ages: A Concise Encyclopædia (London: Thames and Hudson, 1989); Sachwörterbuch der Mediävistik, ed. Peter Dinzelbacher (Stuttgart: Kröner, 1992); see also Deno J. Geanakoplos, Medieval Western Civilization and the Byzantine and Islamic Worlds: Interaction of Three Cultures (1968; Lexington, MA, and Toronto: D. C. Heath and Company, 1979). There are, of course countless other books that outline the history of the Middle Ages in brief sketches, but in this reference work we find at least the refreshing emphasis on the intercultural connectivity of Western with Eastern Europe and the Middle East. The various compendia, such as the Cambridge Medieval History, do not need to be mentioned here separately. For smaller, encyclopedic volumes, see The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Middle Ages, vol. II: 950–1250, ed. Robert Fossier. Trans. Stuart Airlie and Robyn Marsack (1982; Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Debating the Middle Ages: Issues and Readings, ed. and introd. Lester K. Little and Barbara H. Rosenwein (Malden, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell Publisher, 1998); Reading Medieval Culture: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Hanning, ed. Robert M. Stein and Sandra Pierson Prior (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005).

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Other scholars editing encyclopedias have turned their attention to those periods that are intimately connected with the Middle Ages, but represent, in one way or the other, transitional phases, such as the time between the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of early-medieval Europe, most noteworthy here the Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde, founded by Johannes Hoops,56 or the early-modern world from 1450 to 1789, commonly identified as the Renaissance and the Baroque.57 In other words, there is always a need for a critical review of the state of art of a study area in specific intervals so as to perceive more clearly the rungs in the ladder of research over decades, if not centuries. Otherwise we might no longer be able to see the forest for all the trees, and could run the risk of ignoring some of the most seminal studies, editions, concepts, and ideas developed by our predecessors. We do not want to reinvent the wheel, but it seems that every new generation turns its attention away from the accomplishments of previous ones and tries to chart its own map as if the beacons had not be established already a long time ago. No self-respecting medievalist, for instance, would admit his or her ignorance of Ernst Robert Curtius’s European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, first published in 1948, but there is little engagement with his profound insights in current scholarship, and those who acknowledge his ‘classical’ contributions to comparative literature, both

56 Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde, 2. völlig neu bearbeitete und stark erweiterte Auflage unter Mitwirkung zahlreicher Fachgelehrter, ed. Heinrich Beck, Herbert Jankuhn, et al., 33 vols. (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1973–2007). Not comparable at all, but for specific purposes certainly useful is Michael Frassetto, Encyclopedia of Barbarian Europe: Society in Transformation (Santa Barbara, CA, Denver, CO, and Oxford: ABC Clio, 2001). It seems rather problematic to approach such a huge task all by oneself, as in this case. The number of lacunae and desiderata is considerable, but each entry is accompanied by a short bibliography of English-language studies only, including translations. Frassetto does not indicate what kind of audience he intends to address, but it certainly seems to be specifically Anglophone, and mostly the general readership. 57 Europe 1450 to 1789: Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World, ed. Jonathan Dewald, 6 vols. (New York, Detroit, et al.: Thomson Learning, 2004), which contains solidly researched and extensive articles accompanied by mostly good bibliographies. See also Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, ed. Thomas G. Bergin and Jennifer Speake (New York and Oxford: Facts on File, 1987); Gordon Campbell, The Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), which is also single-authored, with the accompanying problems, as in the case of Frassetto’s encyclopedia. Much more impressive proves to be the Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, ed. Paul F. Grendler, 6 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1999).

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ancient and medieval, early-modern and modern, are mostly unaware of its original date of publication.58 Moreover, we also have to pay attention to major encyclopedias and reference works in such fields as anthropology, sociology, musicology, art history, medicine, religion, philosophy, etc., insofar as they concern the Middle Ages.59 In particular, I would like to point out the famous Dictionnaire de spiritualité, along with related encyclopedias.60 Particular mention deserves the 58 Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. from the German by Willard R. Trask. With a New Afterword by Peter Godman. Bollingen Series, XXXVI (1948; trans. 1953; 1983; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); see also Albrecht Classen, “Ernst Robert Curtius and the Topos of the Book. The Impact of an Idea on Modern Philological Research,” Leuvense Bijdragen 87, 1–2 (1998): 59–78. 59 See Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Handwörterbuch für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft, dritte, völlig neu bearbeitete Auflage, ed. Kurt Galling, together with Hans Freiherr von Campenhausen, Erich Dinkler, et al., 6 vols., 1 vol. for the index (1909–1913; 2nd ed. 1927–1932; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1957–1965); vierte, völlig neu bearbeitete Auflage, ed. Hans Dieter Betz et al., 9 vols. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998–2007); The Encyclopedia of Christianity, ed. Erwin Fahlbusch, Jan Mili cˇ Lochman, John Mbiti, Jaroslav Pelikan, and Lukas Vischer. Currently vol. 1–4; vol. 5 forthcoming (Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans; Leiden, Boston, and Cologne: Brill, 1999–2005); based on the German Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon, ed. Heinz Brunotte and Otto Weber, 3rd ed. Erwin Fahlbusch (orig. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1956–1961; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986–1997); cf. also Sacramentum Mundi: An Encyclopedia of Theology, ed. Karl Rahner SJ, and Juan Alfaro, SJ, Alberto Bellini, et al., 6 vols. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968–1970; orig. in German). Invaluable also proves to be the Theologische Realenzyklopädie, ed. Gerhard Krause and many collaborators, 36 vols. (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1977–2004). It is accompanied by two vols. of a Gesamtregister (2006–2007), one vol. with abbreviations and acronyms (1994), and one vol. with an index of the complete work (1998). 60 Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique, doctrine et histoire, publié sous la direction de Marcel Viller, S.J., assisté de F. Cavallera, et J. de Guibert, S.J., avec le concours d’un grand nombre de collaborateurs, 17 vols. (Paris: G. Beauchesne et ses fils, 1937–1995). Vol. 17 (1995) consists of the “Tables Générales.” This dictionary proves to be so important because of its comprehensive coverage and the bibliographies attached to each article, many of which consist of older research that still holds great value but is often ignored today. See also the valuable Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, contenant l’exposé des doctrines de la théologie catholique, leurs preuves et leur histoire, commencé sous la direction de A. Vacant et E. Mangenot, continué sous celle de É. Amann. 3rd ed., 15 vols. (1902; Paris: Librairie Letouzey et Ané, 1930–1950, with three volumes for the Tables Générales, 1951–1972). A major research tool also proves to be the Enciclopedia Cattolica, 12 vols. (Vatican City: L’Enciclopedia Cattolica e Il Libro Cattolico, 1948–1954);

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Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, ed. by Alfred Baudrillart, Albert Vogt, and Urbain Rouziès, with the first volume having appeared in 1912 (Paris: Letouzey et Ané), which is still in the process of being completed, having currently reached the letter ‘k’ (ed. R. Aubert, Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 2004), and which is by now also available online for a charge. It provides highly detailed information about significant personalities, locations, and historical events relevant for the history of the Christian Church. See also the excellent Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. Walter Kasper with Konrad Baumgartner, Horst Bürkle, et al., 11 vols. (Freiburg, Basel, Rome, and Vienna: Herder, 1993–2001). Though the individual entries are considerably shorter, they cover a much broader thematic spectrum and offer more bibliographical references of more recent date.61 The history of the early Christian Church from the time of Jesus to ca. 600 C.E. is well served by the Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, ed. Everett Ferguson, together with Michael P. McHugh, Frederick W. Norris, and David M. Scholer (New York and London: Garland, 1990). Here we find detailed information about doctrines, practices, liturgy, heresies, locations, persons, countries, concepts, texts, terms, and art work, and each entry is most pleasantly accompanied by a detailed bibliography.62 Most useful and highly insightful prove to be the handbook of (in fact not only) German superstition, Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, and the encyclopedia of the fairy tale, Enzyklopädie des Märchens. The fact that they have been published in German has unfortunately meant that many intersee also the English version, New Catholic Encyclopedia, 14 vols. (New York, St. Louis, San Francisco, et al.: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1967; Index: vol. XV, 1967; Supplement: 1967–1974: vol. XVI, 1974; Supplement: Change in the Church: vol. XVII, 1979). In all these encyclopedias, the articles regularly conclude with helpful bibliographies. Most recently, the publishing house Brill has launched a huge new Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastique on its website, in 2008, consisting of 30 volumes and 70,000 entries. I have not yet been able to autopsy this dictionary. 61 See also The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, based on the third ed. of the Realencyklopädie founded by J. J. Herzog, and ed. by Albert Hauck, prepared by Samuel Macauley Jackson with Charles Colebrook Sherman and George William Gilmore, 12 vols. (New York and London: Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1908–1912). Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, ed. Albert Hauck, 21 vols., 3rd and expanded ed. (1896–1913; Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, 1969); see also The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F. L. Cross. Sec. ed. id. and E. A. Livingstone (1958; London, New York, and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1974). 62 The editors also include a general bibliography for topics such as patrology, the rise of Christianity, the popes, and archeology (viii).

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national scholars are either not familiar with them or cannot utilize the treasure trove of specific information contained in them.63 Certainly, both deal with the global world of superstition and fairy tales throughout times, but a vast percentage of the material in both areas is anchored in the Middle Ages. Art historians are exceedingly well served, here disregarding numerous other encyclopedias for the entire history of art world-wide throughout time, with the Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie64 and with the encyclopedia for the Iconography of Christian Art, originally edited in German, and translated into English, to name just two major reference works.65 Then there are also the useful lexica on animal symbolism in the Middle Ages, which involves iconography, religion, mentality, art history, and other disciplines.66 From here we also need to consider quickly the world of architecture, so magisterially represented by Sir Banister Fletcher’s A History of Architecture, 19th ed. John Musgrove, with John Tarn and Peter Willis (London: The Royal

63 Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, ed. Hanns Bächtold-Stäubli, together with E. Hoffmann-Krayer. Handwörterbücher zur deutschen Volkskunde. Abteilung I: Aberglaube, 9 vols. (Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1927–1938/1941; vol. X: Register: 1942); Enzyklopädie des Märchens, ed. Kurt Ranke, together with Hermann Bausinger, Wolfgang Brückner, et al. Since Vol. 5 (1987): ed. Rolf Wilhelm Brednich (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1977–; vol. 12, fascicle 3 (up to the letters Su …) appeared in 2007). 64 Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, ed. Engelbert Kirschbaum, 8 vols. (Rome, Freiburg, et al.: Herder, 1968–1976). 65 Gertrud Schiller, Ikonographie der christlichen Kunst, 5 vols. 3rd ed. (1966; Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1966–1991); Iconography of Christian Art, trans. Janet Seligman, 2 vols. (Greenwich, CT, and New York: Graphic Society, 1971). See also Louis Réau, Iconographie de l’art chrétien, 3 vols. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955–1959). But there are many other similar reference works for art history, such as Erhard Aeschlimann and Paolo D’Ancona, Dictionnaire des miniaturistes du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance dans les différentes contrées de l’Europe, 2nd rev. and expanded ed. (Milan: U. Hoepli, 1949); Michèle Beaulieu and Victor Beyer, Dictionnaire des sculpteurs français du moyen âge (Paris: Picard, 1992); see also the useful encyclopedia for French castles, Charles Laurent Salch and Dominique Martinez, Dictionnaire des châteaux et des fortifications du Moyen Age en France (Strasbourg: Éditions Publitotal, 1979), and Edward G. Tasker, Encyclopedia of Medieval Church Art, ed. John Beaumont (London: B. T. Batsford, 1993). 66 Sigrid and Lothar Dittrich, Lexikon der Tiersymbole: Tiere als Sinnbilder in der Malerei des 14.–17. Jahrhunderts. Studien zur internationalen Architektur- und Kunstgeschichte, 22 (Petersberg: Imhof, 2004); see also Clemens Zerlin, Lexikon der Tiersymbolik: Mythologie, Religion, Psychologie, ed. Wolfgang Bauer (Munich: Kösel, 2003). There are many other reference works for symbols that are, however, too general to be cited here.

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Institute of British Architects and The University of Architecture, 1987; the 20th ed. was edited by Dan Cruickshank, together with Andrew Saint, Peter Blundell Jones, Kenneth Frampton; assistant editor Fleur Richards; Oxford and Boston: Architectural Press, 1996; the latest ed., 20a, appeared in 1998).67 Reflecting its more pragmatic approach in the first place, in its original 1896 edition, this monograph carried the subtitle: for the student, craftsman and amateur, being a comparative guide of the historical styles from the earliest period. Fletcher’s extraordinary reference work proves to be invaluable until today, excelling through its wealth of illustrative material (photos and drawings, including blueprints, detailed information about individual buildings, designs, architects, styles, and history of architecture).68 The long list of re-editions and lately also of translations into other languages has proven the enormous durability and foundational value of this magisterial reference work. What, then, by contrast, is the purpose of the present Handbook of Medieval Studies with its own claim on a certain encyclopedic approach? I have begun discussing this question in the introduction to this Handbook, but we need to pursue this topic further in the present context. Are there not already enough reference works available (see above)?69 Would there not be the great

67 Now see also Günther Binding and Susanne Linscheid-Burdich, together with Julia Wippermann Planen und Bauen im frühen und hohen Mittelalter nach den Schriftquellen bis 1250 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2002). 68 See also, though a bit dated, Russell Sturgis, A History of Architecture, 4 vols. Vol. 3–4 by A. L. Frothingham (New York: The Baker & Taylor Company, vol. 1: 1906; vol. 2: 1909; vol. 3–4: Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1915); David Watkin, A History of Western Architecture (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1986). There is, of course, a legion of similar studies of older and more recent vintage, both in English and in many European languages; see, for instance, Barbara Borngässer Klein and Rolf Toman, Geschichte der Architektur: von der Antike bis in die Gegenwart; photographs by Achim Bednorz (Bath: Parragon, 2008). 69 The subsequent cultural periods are also gaining in interest both among the academic and the lay audience, see, for instance, Encyclopedia of the Renaissance, ed. Paul F. Grendler, 6 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1999). Looking back, we also discover massive efforts to cover specific events in the past through quasi encyclopedic writing, see, for example, Kenneth M. Setton, A History of the Crusades, 2 vols. (Madison, Milwaukee, and London: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1969). The volume on The Middle Ages in the series obviously for younger readers: The History of the Ancient & Medieval World, ed. Henk Dijkstra. Vol. 9 (New York, Toronto, and Sydney: Marshall Cavendish, 1969), proves to be beautifully illustrated. Many publications focus on world history, including the Middle Ages, and march through thousands of years, claiming to cover a solid stretch of human history from the stone age to the present, such as Chronology of European His-

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danger of repeating what others have done already, if not to perfection, but at least highly comprehensively and in depth? All the criticism raised against some of the earlier publications would sound hollow, if not hypocritical, if the present publication did not try to set new standards and pursue innovative goals. In fact, the simple answer to the questions raised at first would have to be an unconditional ‘yes,’ but even if the goal would be to produce another encyclopedia focusing on the Middle Ages, we could at least point out huge differences between older and newer works, and since scholarship is continuously advancing, there is no doubt that we are in need of new broad surveys and summaries of our current knowledge perhaps every ten or twenty years. Nevertheless, the primary purpose of this new Handbook of Medieval Studies does not follow this path. Instead, the overarching and principle goal consists of examining the history of scholarship and of our understanding of how we have reached the current level of our knowledge about all kinds of subject matters, people, topics, texts, works, etc. We are, after all, as Bernard of Chartres pointed out in the 12th century, as John of Salisbury had summarized in his Metalogicon, and as this survey illustrates, nothing but dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants.70 Yet, despite our small size, we are still positioned high up and can today see further than those giants, or than cohorts of previous generations of medievalists upon whose findings we base our own research and thus reach our own goals.71 This is not meant to belittle our predecessors; on the contrary, we pay tribute

tory 15,000 B.C. to 1997, ed. John Powell, 2 vols. (Chicago and London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1998). There are countless other encyclopedias for ancient history, the world of Islam, the Near and Far East, and so forth. Actually, in the last decade or so publishers all over the world have produced so many encyclopedias and similar reference works about premodern history, culture, and literature that one wonders who still might be able to gain a critical perspective faced with such a flood of factual, or rather almost no longer so factual, literature, written very much in the vein of late 19th-century positivist Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886). 70 R[ichard] W[illiam] Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), 203. For the actual quote, see John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, ed. J. B. Hall and K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio mediaevalis, 98 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991), 116. 71 Regarding this topic and its implications for us, see Walter Haug, “Die Zwerge auf den Schultern der Riesen: Epochales und typologisches Geschichtsdenken und das Problem der Interferenzen,” id., Strukturen als Schlüssel zur Welt: Kleine Schriften zur Erzählliteratur des Mittelalters (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1989), 86–109, esp. 89–92 (orig. 1987).

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to their great accomplishments and build on their knowledge to further our own understanding. The field of research in the Middle Ages is still fairly young, barely two hundred years old, including some philologists who had begun to explore the history of medieval literature, religion, and philosophy already in the late 18th century, if not before. The 19th century witnessed an incredible surge in scholarship, and today Medieval Studies, a term originally coined by David Knowles for an inaugural lecture at the University of Cambridge in 1947,72 are practiced all over the world, focusing on virtually every aspect of human life and the human mind. We might scoff at some of the older text editions or histories of literature, but we would not be where we are today without them. This also applies to the history of art, history of technology, history of architecture, and other fields. As Paul Freedman has already observed: Although the nature of what is called medieval studies thus depends to some extent on academic organization and other external influences, some degree of interdisciplinary collaboration is essential to comprehending the medieval period. From the seventeenth century onward such great undertakings as the medieval Latin dictionary of Charles du Cange, the Bollandist project of describing the lives of the saints, or Jean Mabillon’s De re diplomatica have required an immense range of sources. The importance of literary, numismatic, and philological evidence was recognized early on, as was the peculiar way in which the Middle Ages has left more written records than the classical era but in a more disorganized fashion. The significance of religious controversy in forwarding pursuit of medieval texts and interpretations also meant that, from the beginning, fields, methods, and the use of sources could not be narrowly limited.73

Medieval Studies in a way have also witnessed, and responded to, all those ideological shifts and changes that have determined modern humanistic scholarship at large, whether we think of positivism, Geistesgeschichte (intellectual history), explication de texte, immanent, or close, reading, Marxism, structuralism, deconstructionism, feminism, Gender Studies, postcolonialism, Queer Studies, etc.74 Some of those have left a deep impact also on the 72 Paul Freedman, “Medieval Studies,” 383. Knowles specifically evoked a similar inaugural lecture given in 1944 by his predecessor, Z. N. Brooke, “The Prospects of Medieval History,” but by widening his own perspective, Knowles laid the theoretical foundation for the highly interdisciplinary nature of Medieval Studies today. 73 Paul Freedman, “Medieval Studies,” 383. 74 Some of the best reflections on the impact of theory on Medieval Studies can be found in Paul Strohm’s Theory and the Premodern Text, Medieval Cultures, 26 (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000). See also the contributions to The Future of the Middle Ages: Medieval Literature in the 1990s, ed. William

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way how we view and approach the Middle Ages, others less so, but all of them have affected our field as well which seems to grow in leaps and bounds at least in terms of scholarship. The same observation might not hold true for teaching the Middle Ages, and in fact there are many warning signs because basic knowledge necessary for the study of that past world (medieval Latin, paleography, manuscript studies, liturgy) is taught to smaller and smaller groups of students wherever we look all over the world, even if the popular interest in the Middle Ages, also expressed in growing general education classes, not to speak of countless medieval fairs, festivals, concerts, costumes, games, etc., is steadily growing. The introduction to Medieval Studies, edited by James M. Powell first in 1976, and in a second edition in 1992, clearly signals how much we have to realize the necessity to have a solid command of many different disciplines in order to carry out comprehensive and well-grounded research in our field, especially when the focus rests on history and manuscript studies. The contributors to Powell’s volume deal with Latin paleography (James J. John), diplomatics (Leonard E. Boyle), numismatics (Philip Grierson), archeology (David Whitehouse), prosopography (George Beech), computer-assisted analysis of the statistical documents of medieval society (David Herlihy), medieval chronology R. Dean Ware), medieval English literature (Paul Theiner),75 Latin philosophy (Edward A. Synan), medieval law (Kenneth Pennington), medieval science and natural philosophy (Edward Grant), tradition and innovation in medieval art (Wayne Dynes), and

D. Paden (Gainesville, Tallahassee, et al.: University Press of Florida, 1994); Modernes Mittelalter: Neue Bilder einer populären Epoche, ed. Joachim Heinzle (Frankfurt a. M.: Insel Verlag, 1994); The Future of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Problems, Trends, and Opportunities for Research, ed. Roger Dahood, Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998); Medieval German Voices in the 21st Century: The Paradigmatic Function of Medieval German Studies for German Studies. A Collection of Essays, ed. Albrecht Classen, Internationale Forschungen zur Allgemeinen und Vergleichenden Literaturwissenschaft, 46 (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Editions Rodopi, 2000). See now Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages: Translating Cultures, ed. Ananya Jahanara Kabir and Deanne Williams, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 75 It remains entirely elusive once again why, in this context, medieval literature is exclusively identified with English literature. For another rather disappointing example, see Theodore L. Steinberg , Reading the Middle Ages: An Introduction to Medieval Literature (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Co., 2003), who includes The Tale of Genji and Jewish literature, but entirely ignores Iberian, Latin, or German medieval literature, not to mention mystical literature at large.

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medieval music (Theodore Karp).76 Of course, here as well numerous lacunae mar the overall picture, such as the absence of liturgical studies,77 of the investigation of foodstuff,78 of weapons and armies, fortifications, and castles,79 and of Byzantine Studies, including respective prosopography of the various areas.80 This list could be easily expanded, but it would be ultimately futile because the history of people in the Middle Ages, their culture, mentality, private and public life, etc. found expression in a myriad of material and spiritual manifestations that no one can cover in totality. Can the teaching of the Middle Ages ever live up even only to a small portion of the global expectations? But let us not sink into a jeremiad over daily woes here and there in academia, since they are often quite the same that can be heard in other fields of the Humanities generally, and have been voiced for a long time (if not for ever). Concerns about the survival of Medieval Studies within the university are legitimate because we do not directly produce money when teaching the Middle Ages; instead we seem only to create costs for the institutions of higher learning. This also applies to all other fields under this vast umbrella, and 18th-century Spanish literature is not necessarily faring considerably better than 16th-century French literature, 3rd-century Roman architecture, ancient Greek philosophy, etc. I hasten to add, however, that this might ea-

76 Medieval Studies: An Introduction, ed. James M. Powell, 2nd ed. (1976; Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1992). 77 See, for instance, Cyrill Vogel, Medieval Liturgy: An Introduction to the Sources, revised and trans. William G. Storey and Niels Krogh Rasmussen, with the assistance of John K. Brooks-Leonard, NPM Studies in Church Music and Liturgy (1966; Washington, DC: Pastoral Press, 1986). 78 Melitta Weiss Adamson, Food in Medieval Times. Food through History (Westport, CT, and London: Greenwood Press, 2004); Ernst Schubert, Essen und Trinken im Mittelalter (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006). 79 Jean-Denis G. G. Lepage, Castles and Fortified Cities of Medieval Europe: An Illustrated History (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Company, 2002); id., Medieval Armies and Weapons in Western Europe: An Illustrated History (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Company, 2005); id., The Fortifications of Paris: An Illustrated History (Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Company, 2006). 80 Robert Browning, The Byzantine Empire (New York: Scribner, 1980); Cyril A. Mango, Byzantium and Its Image: History and Culture of the Byzantine Empire and Its Heritage, Varirorum Reprints, CS 191 (London: Variorum Reprints, 1984); The Oxford History of Byzantium, ed. id. (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); see also the multi-volume Prosopographical Lexicon of Byzantine History and Civilization, ed. Alexes G. C. Savvides, Benjamin Hendrickx, Alicia J. Simpson, Thekla Sansaridou-Hendrickx (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007 [1st vol.], 2008 [2nd vol.]–).

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sily constitute a fallacious conclusion depending on the criteria we use to determine the true cost effectiveness of individual subject matters or research areas (faculties) at any given university over a long period and considering the wider social implications and the value of educating our younger generations at large. There are no valid arguments – and here I am, unavoidably, preaching to the converted – to downplay the significance of the Middle Ages for a solid education in the Humanities, both today and in the future. In fact, as Bruce Holsinger has discovered, the medieval intellectual world continues to hold sway over the postmodern world insofar as most of the leading theoreticians of our time, whether Barthes, Foucault, or Derrida, but so also Panofsky, Habermas, and others, apparently received their fundamental philological training through an in-depth exposure to that world.81 Leaving aside common laments (justified or not), we witness a growing number of excellent critical investigations done in Medieval Studies, without facing any neglect in the traditional and still fundamental areas of philology and editorial work. Depending on one’s viewpoint, we are also fortunate in gaining access to more and more medieval texts from all kinds of languages and cultures through translations, which has a tremendous impact on the way how we can teach the Middle Ages. Further, there are efforts all over the world to make medieval manuscripts available in digital form, which provides us with unheard of new possibilities to carry out detailed and comparative research based on the original documents. Moreover, we also realize a slow but steady rapprochement of the various disciplines, considering the important, though still somewhat tentative collaboration of historians, art historians, musicologists, and literary historians, to mention just a few subject areas. Synergies are of greatest importance if they can be created meaningfully and effectively.82 Of course, there needs to be some common ground, shared interest, significant parallels and similarities, which are not hard to come by if we look carefully. But we do not know enough of each other, and are mostly ignorant regarding how each individual field has evolved over decades, if not centuries. Collaboration and interdisciplinary activities require shared 81 Bruce Holsinger, The Premodern Condition: Medievalism and the Making of Theory (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2005); see also Michael Johnson’s entry on Henri de Lubac in the present volume. 82 In fact, there exists a new review journal titled just that: Synergies Inde, ed. Vidya Vencatesan, whose special issue (no. 2 [2007]), honoring renowned French medievalist Jean Dufournet, devotes itself “Aux sources du dialogue des cultures: Regards croisés sur le Moyen Age en France et en Inde” (Mumbai: Revue du Gerflint, 2007). I appreciate Nadia Margolis’s pointing out this review to me.

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ground, and this ground can be established by looking at the foundational work that has been done in each area of research from the earliest days until the present. Of course, this would not be the conditio sine qua non for efforts to bring together colleagues from different disciplines to investigate topics of broader, hence shared, nature, yet each from his or her individual perspective. For instance, in order to understand how medieval people viewed children or old people we need to consult both chronicles and art objects, literary texts and musical pieces.83 After all, the history of mentalities, one of the most probing and innovative fields of research in Medieval Studies, requires a most comprehensive investigation of medieval culture, drawing all available information from a wide gamut of perspectives for the understanding of people’s mentality, that is, psychological conditions and motivations, desires, fears, and hopes.84 The same now also applies to cultural and anthropological approaches to Medieval Studies (Culture Studies), to Gender Studies, and also, though perhaps to a slightly lesser extent, Queer Studies and psychological approaches. We would also have to consider the latest methodological and theoretical approach determined by the interest in the human senses and the ability to perceive external signals via the various sensory organs, as reflected by medieval writers and artists.85 Albeit not encyclopedic in its format, the journal Annales: Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, founded by Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch (1929, originally as Annales d’histoire économique et sociale), deserves mention here. Ferdi83 Shulamith Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages (London and New York: Routledge, 1990); Childhood in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: The Results of a Paradigm Shift in the History of Mentality, ed. Albrecht Classen (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2005); Old Age in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Interdisciplinary Approaches to a Neglected Topic, ed. Albrecht Classen, Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 2 (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2007). 84 Europäische Mentalitätsgeschichte: Hauptthemen in Einzeldarstellungen, ed. Peter Dinzelbacher, Kröners Taschenausgabe, 469, 2nd rev. and expanded ed. (1993; Stuttgart: Kröner, 2008). See also Hans-Werner Goetz, Moderne Mediävistik: Stand und Perspektiven der Mittelalterforschung (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 1999). 85 Again, see Goetz, Moderne Mediävistik; and C. M. Woolgar, The Senses in Late Medieval England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006). Cf. also Emotions and Sensibilities in the Middle Ages, ed. C. Stephen Jaeger and Ingrid Kasten, Trends in Medieval Philology, 1 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2003); Lachgemeinschaften: kulturelle Inszenierungen und soziale Wirkungen von Gelächter im Spätmittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Werner Röcke and Hans Rudolf Velten, Trends in Medieval Philology, 5 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2005); Elke Koch, Trauer und Identität: Inszenierungen von Emotionen in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters, Trends in Medieval Philology, 8 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2006).

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nand Braudel (Mediterranean World and Philip II [1949; New York: Harper and Row, 1962) was another important member. Although they cover all centuries, this school’s adherents have added much to multidisciplinary Medieval Studies, perhaps best known through the work of Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie.86 More modern descendants are Pierre Nora, whose monumental Lieux de Mémoire (Realms of Memory) volumes contain valuable information on medieval myths carrying over into post 18th-century French culture (7 vols., Paris: Gallimard, 1984–1992) and have been translated into several languages, as was the case with the studies published by the founders and leading members of the Annales. Legal and religious documents can essentially contribute to our global understanding of such issues that are indeed most important for medieval society at large, even though they seem to fall, at first sight, into the category of private life, or everyday history.87 Sexuality, one of the most pervasive issues that have troubled and excited people throughout the ages, cannot be adequately studied through the narrow lens of the historian alone, for instance, not to speak of the medievalist working in the area of religion and the arts.88 But the collective of medievalists in the widest possible range of disciplines promise to meet some of the challenges to build on past accomplishments and to forge a path toward future Medieval Studies.89 So, we are taking

86 Montaillou, village occitan de 1294 à 1324 (Paris: Gallimard, 1975). Now see Autour de Montaillou, un village occitan: histoire et religiosité d’une communauté villageoise au Moyen Age: actes du colloque de Montaillou, 25–26–27 août 2000, ed. Anne Brenon et Christine Dieulafait; sous la direction de Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (Castelnaudla-Chapelle: L’Hydre éditions, 2001). 87 Brilliant in the broad approach, opening up a new window into a specific, heretofore mostly ignored aspect of medieval society, but astonishingly naive and uncritical, prove to be the contributions to A History of Private Life, ed. Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby, 5 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987–1991). 88 Sexuality in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age: New Approaches to a Fundamental Cultural-Historical and Literary-Anthropological Theme, ed. Albrecht Classen, Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, 3 (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 2008). 89 I would like to thank the following colleagues for their critical comments, suggestions, and corrections: Peter Dinzelbacher (Werfen/Salzburg), Heiko Hartmann (Berlin), Herwig Weigl (Vienna), Graeme Dunphy (Regensburg), Nadia Margolis (Mount Holyoke College, MA), Wendy E. Pfeffer (University of Louisville, KY), Raymond Cormier (Longwood University, Farmville, VA), Klaus Oschema (Heidelberg), Ulrich Müller (Salzburg), and Pieter Mannerts (Research Foundation–Flanders/Katholieke Universiteit Leuven). I am very grateful for all their observations, corrections, additional information, and above all for

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stock here, as comprehensively as possible, but in this process we also hope to lay the foundation for much more interdisciplinary research, traditionally a hallmark of Medieval Studies, and this also in the coming decades and centuries. With the help of this Handbook we can expect to meet the challenges of critical approaches to medieval research in the widest context. Knowing fully where we have come from and what the current state of research proves to be, we will be empowered to pursue our studies further on a more advanced level. More boldly, we might even claim that such a Handbook can be the springboard for all future Medieval Studies insofar as the past has always informed the present, and our knowledge of this process translates into the catalyst for future efforts, investigations, and interpretations.

their encouragement and support. Their help also strongly indicates the way how Medieval Studies will probably proceed in the future, relying much more on interdisciplinary, collaborative, and comparative research and approaches.

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Abbreviations

Abbreviations ABäG ABD ABGB ABMHRA ACIMP

ACPQ ADB AdM AE AEM AfD AfdA AfMw AHDLMA AHR AHVKB AJ AJS Review AK AKAWB Al-Qantara ALR Annales.HSS APSR AS ASNSL ASNSP (CLF)

Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik The Anchor Bible Dictionary Allgemeines Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch Annual Bulletin of the Modern Humanities Research Association Atti del convegno internazionale su Marsilio da Padova (Padova,18–20 settembre 1980) [Medioevo 5 (1979] American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie Annales du Midi American Ethnologist Anuario de estudios medievales Archiv für Diplomatik Anzeiger für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur Archiv für Musikwissenschaft Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen âge American Historical Review Archi des historischen Vereins des Kantons Bern The Archaeological Journal Association for Jewish Studies Review M. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Tavistock, 1972) Abhandlungen der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin Revista de estudios árabes Allgemeines Landrecht Annales. Histoire, Sciences sociales American Political Science Review American Speech Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa

Abbreviations

ASP ASQ AUU B.C.E. BBAL BCLSMP BEC BEO BIHR BIRHT BISI BJHP BJMES BMGS BMHG BPM BSOAS ByzZ C.E. CCCM CCM CCSL CEHE CFMA CHJ ChR CL CMA CN CNRS cols. CPh CSEL CT

LXVIII Arabic Sciences and Philosophy Arab Studies Quarterly Språkvetenskapliga sällskapets i Uppsala förhandlingar. Acta Societatis Linguisticae Upsaliensis Before Common Era Biografie e bibliografie degli accademici lincei Bulletin de la classe des lettres et des sciences morales et politiques (Académie royale de Belgique) Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes Bulletin d’Études Orientales Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research Bulletin de l’Institut de recherche et d’histoire des Textes Bulletino dell’Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medioevo e Archivio Muratoriano British Journal for the History of Philosophy British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies Bijdragen en Mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschap Bulletin de philosophie médiévale Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London Byzantinische Zeitschrift Common Era Corpus Christianorum, continuatio mediaeualis Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina The Cambridge Economic History of Europe Classiques français du Moyen Age Cambridge Historical Journal Chaucer Review Comparative Literature Concilium Medii Aevi Cultura Neolatina Centre National de Recherche Scientifique columns Classical Philology Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Canterbury Tales

LXIX CUP D. Hist. DA DBE DDJb DFS DMA DP DR DSAM DTÖ durchges. DVE DVG DVjs E&S ed. EdM EETS EH EHR EI.2 EJ (1) EJ (2) ELLMA ELP ENC EQ erg. erw. Est ÉT fasc.

Abbreviations

Cambridge University Press Deutsche Historiker Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie Deutsches Dante-Jahrbuch Dalhousie French Studies Dictionary of the Middle Ages M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Pantheon, 1977). Duquesne Review Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique: Doctrine et histoire Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich durchgesehen De Vulgari Eloquentia De Vlaamse Gids Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte Essays and Studies edited or editor Paul Lehmann, Erforschung des Mittelalters, vols. I–V (Stuttgart: Anton Hirsemann, 1959–1962). Early English Text Society Encyclopedia of Historians The English Historical Review The Encyclopaedia of Islam, second edition (Brill: Leiden 1960–2004) Encyclopaedia Judaica, first edition, (Jerusalem: Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971–1972) English Journal European Literature in the Latin Middle Ages Einleitung in die lateinische Philologie, ed. Fritz Graf (Stuttgart and Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1997). École nationale des chartes Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an ergänzt erweitert English Studies École de théologie fascicle

Abbreviations

FFC FMSt FSt GALex GCFI GLLM GLQ GQ

GRLMA

GRM Habil.schr. HAD

HEI History HJb HLF HPS HPT HRG

HS HSMS HVjS HZ IASL IC id. IGL IJCT

LXX Folklore Fellows’ Communications Frühmittelalterliche Studien French Studies (Oxford) A Greek and Arabic Lexicon Giornale Critico della Filosofia Italiana Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters. Vols. 1–3 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1911–1931). Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies Theodor Nöldeke et al., Geschichte des Qorans, (1860–1938, rpt. 3 vols. in 1, Hildesheim: Olms, 1961) Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters, ed. Hans Robert Jauss and Erich Köhler (Heidelberg: Winter, 1968–) Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift Habilitationsschrift The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ed. D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, D. and H. Hamilton (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001) History of European Ideas History. The Journal of the Historical Association Historisches Jahrbuch Histoire littéraire de France Hebraic Political Studies History of Political Thought Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, ed. Adalbert Erler, Ekkehard Kaufmann and Dieter Werkmüller, 5 vols. (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1971–1998) M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: Introduction (New York: Vintage, 1990). Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies Historische Vierteljahrsschrift Historische Zeitschrift Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur Islamic Culture idem Internationales Germanistenlexikon 1800–1950 International Journal of the Classical Tradition

LXXI IJMES IMB IOS IRMAE

ITS JAOS Jb. d. BAdW Jb. JEGP JHI JKAWLSK

JMEMS JMH JNES JÖBG JPSR JQS JR JRAS JSJT LA LCI LexMA

LGB2

Liber Floridus

Abbreviations

International Journal of Middle East Studies International Medieval Bibliography Israel Oriental Studies Ius Romanum Medii Aevi, auspice Collegio antiqui iuris studiis provehendis (Milano: Giuffrè, 1961ff.) Irish Texts Society Journal of the American Oriental Society Jahrbuch der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Jahrbuch Journal of English and Germanic Philology Journal of the History of Ideas Jaarboek/Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen, Letteren en Schone Kunsten van België Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies Journal of Medieval History Journal of Near Eastern Studies Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinischen Gesellschaft Jewish Political Studies Review Journal of Qur’anic Studies Journal of Religion Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought L’Alighieri Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie Lexikon des Mittelalters, vols. I–VI (Munich and Zürich: Artemis, 1980–1993); vols. VII–IX (Munich: LexMA Verlag, 1995–1998); Registerband (Stuttgart and Weimar: J. B. Metzler, 1999) Lexikon des gesamten Buchwesens, 2nd ed. Severin Corsten, Günther Pflug, and Friedrich Adolf Schmidt Künsemüller (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1995). Bernhard Bischoff and Suso Brechter, ed., Liber Floridus. Mittellateinische Studien Paul Lehmann zum 65. Geburtstag (St. Ottilien: Eos Verlag der Erzabtei, 1950).

Abbreviations

LiLi LM

loc. cit. LSE LThK

MA MA&R MAevum

MCDA MED Medieval Latin

Medioevo MedPers MET MF MGH MGWJ MGWJ MHG MHJ MiB Milde and Schuder MIÖG Misc. Med. MKVA MlatJb

LXXII Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik Karl Langosch, Lateinisches Mittelalter. Einleitung in Sprache und Literatur (1963; Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983). loco citato Leeds Studies in English Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. Walter Kasper, 3rd revised ed., 11 vols. (Freiburg i. Br.: Herder, 1993–2001). Le Moyen Âge Die Musik des Mittelalters und der Renaissance Medium Ævum Marsilio da Padova (Padova, 18–20 settembre 1980) [Medioevo 5 (1979] Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, ed. Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer (London: Sage, 2001). Middle English Dictionary Medieval Latin: An Introduction and Bibliographical Guide, ed. F. A. C. Mantello and A. G. Rigg (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996). Medioevo. Rivista di storia della filosofia medievale Medieval Perspectives Medieval English Theatre Die Musikforschung Monumenta Germaniae Historica Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums Middle High German The Medieval History Journal Musikgeschichte in Bildern Wolfgang Milde and Werner Schuder, ed., De captu Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung Miscellanea Medievalia Mededelingen Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België, Klasse der Letteren Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch

LXXIII MLN MLR MMIS MP MR MRS ms/mss. MTSC MTSR MW N. F. NCMH NDB NH NM NOHM NRCF

OEN OUP PAAJR PAAJR PBB PG PIASH PIASH PL PM PMLA Poetics Today Poetics Today PPM

Abbreviations

Modern Language Notes Modern Language Review Medieval and Modern Irish Series Modern Philology Medioevo Romanzo Medieval and Renaissance Studies manuscript/manuscripts Medieval Technology and Social Change Method and Theory in the Study of Religion Muslim World Neue Folge New Cambridge Medieval History Neue Deutsche Biographie Nederlandsche Historiebladen Neuphilologische Mitteilungen New Oxford History of Music Nouveau recueil complet des fabliaux, ed. Willem Noomen and Nico van den Boogaard, 10 vols. (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1983–2001) Old English Newsletter Oxford University Press Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research Paul und Braune Beiträge = Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur Patrologia Graeca Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Science and Humanities Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Science and Humanities Patrologia Latina Patristica et Medievalia Publications of the Modern Language Association Poetics Today. A Journal for Analysis of Literature and Communication Poetics Today: A Journal for Analysis of Literature and Communication Pensiero Politico Medievale

Abbreviations

PPTSL PQ PT PUF QFIAB QS R RAN RB RBA RBPh RC RCPR RDM REB RÉJ RES rev. RF RHC RHD RHDF Rhetorica RhM RHPR RIDC RLA RMS RORD RP RPA RPh RR RSF RSO RSPT RTh

LXXIV Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society Library Philological Quarterly Political Theory Presses Universitaires de France Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken Quaderni storici Romania Rendiconti dell’Accademia di Archeologia, Lettere e Belle Arti di Napoli Revue bénédictine Revue belge d’archéologie et d’histoire de l’art Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire Revue Celtique Revue Critique de Philologie Romane Revue des Deux Mondes Revue des Études Byzantines Revue des Études Juives Review of English Studies revised Romanische Forschungen Recueil des Historiens des Croisades Revue d’histoire du droit Revue historique de droit français et étranger Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, Theologie und Philosophie Revue d’histoire et philosophie religieuse Rivista Internazionale di Diritto Comune Romance Languages Annual Reading Medieval Studies Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama Review of Politics Revue de philosophie ancienne Romance Philology Romanic Review Rivista di Storia della Filosofia Revista degli Studi Orientali Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques Revue Thomiste

LXXV RUB SAC SATF Scand. Econ. Hist. Rev. SD SF SFI SH SI SMC SNPL SO SP sqq. SSD

TAPA TRE TRHS TS überarb. UNC unveränd. Viator Vivarium VL vol. VSWG WW YWES ZCPh ZfdA ZfdPh

Abbreviations

Revue de l’Université de Bruxelles Studies in the Age of Chaucer Société des anciens textes français Scandinavian Economic History Review Studi Danteschi Studi francesi Studi di filologia italiana Scripta Hierosolymitana Studia Islamica Studies in Medieval Culture Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature Symbolae Osloenses Studies in Philology sequentes Sign, Sentence and Discourse: Language in Medieval Thought and Literature, ed. Julian Wasserman and Lois Roney (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1989). Transactions of the American Philological Association Theologische Realenzyklopädie Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Theological Studies überarbeitet University of North Carolina unverändert Viator. Medieval and Renaissance Studies Vivarium. A Journal for Mediaeval Philosophy and the Intellectual Life of the Middle Ages Deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon volume Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte Wirkendes Wort The Year’s Work in English Studies Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie

LXXVI

Abbreviations

ZfrP ZNR ZP ZRG, Germ. Abt. ZRG, Kan. Abt.

Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie Zeitschrift für Neuere Rechtsgeschichte Zeitschrift für Politik Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte/Germanistische Abteilung Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte/Kanonistische Abteilung

LXXVII

List of Contributors

List of Contributors Acken, James Centre for Medieval Studies, Canada Adams, Tracey University of Auckland, New Zealand Anichini, Federica The College of New Jersey, Ewing Arabatzis, George Academy of Athens, Greece Armistead, Samuel G. University of California, Davis, CA Ash, Karine Marie Los Angeles, CA Auslander, Diane P. Graduate Center, City University of New York Baier, Katharina Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany Bak, Janos Central European University, Budapest, Hungary Baker, Craig Laval Université, Quebec, Canada

Baldzuhn, Michael Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Germany Barrington, Candace Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, CT Bashir, Hassan Texas A&M University at Qatar, Qatar Bashir, Shahzad Stanford University, CA Baumgarten, Jean Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, France Berindeanu, Florin Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH Benz, Judith Juniata College, Huntingdon, PA Beringer, Alison Colgate University, Hamilton, NY Black, Patricia California State University, Chico, CA

LXXVIII

List of Contributors

Blaschitz, Gertrud Institut für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der Frühen Neuzeit der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Krems, Austria Boggi, Flavio University College Cork, Ireland Bogstad, Janice M. University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, WI

Cawsey, Kathey Dalhousie University Halifax, Canada Clason, Christopher Rochester Hills, MI Classen, Albrecht The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ Clivio, Gianrenzo Toronto, Canada

Bolduc, Michelle University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, WI

Compareti, Matteo Stra (Venezia), Italy

Boscolo, Claudia Royal Holloway University of London, UK

Cooper, Glen M. Brigham Young University, Provo, UT

Boyle, Elizabeth University of Cambridge, UK

Cormier, Raymond Longwood University, VA

Bratu, Cristian Baylor University, Waco, TX

Cruse, Mark Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ

Calomino, Salvatore Madison, WI

D’Alessio, Nuncio The University of Texas, Austin, TX

Campbell, Kimberlee Harvard University, Cambridge, MA

Dal Santo, Matthew University of Cambridge, UK

Cancian, Alessandro Foundation for Dialogue Among Civilizations, Geneva, Switzerland Carey, Stephen Mark Oakland University, Rochester, MI

Damico, Helen University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM Dangler, Jean Tulane University, New Orleans, LA

LXXIX Davis, Joshua University of Central Missouri, Warrensburg, MO Delle Donne, Roberto Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Italy De Ventura, Paolo The University of Birmingham, UK Deyrup, Marta Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ Dines, Ilya Jerusalem, Israel Dinzelbacher, Peter Werfen/Salzburg, Austria Dorninger, Maria E. Universität Salzburg, Austria Dover, Carol Georgetown University, Washington D.C. Dunphy, Graeme Universität Regensburg, Germany Egger, Christoph Universität Wien, Austria English, Edward D. University of California, Santa Barbara, CA

List of Contributors

Evans, Beverly State University of New York-College at Geneseo, Geneseo, NY Evitt, Regula Meyer Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO Fritsch-Rößler, Waltraud Universität Innsbruck, Austria Full, Bettina Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Germany Fynn, Jeffrey Paul Tolland, CT Garver, Valerie L. Northern Illinois University, Dekalb, IL Geck, John A. Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, Canada Gentry, Francis G. Spring Mills, PA Germanidou, Sophia Kalamata, Greece Gertsman, Elina Southern Illinois University School of Art and Design, Carbondale, IL Gilbank, Robin University of Wales, UK

LXXX

List of Contributors

Glick, Thomas F. Boston University, Boston, MA Gordon, Sarah Utah State University, Logan, UT Graizbord, David The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ Grabowska, Jim Minnesota State University, Mankato, MN Grafinger, Christine Maria Biblioteca Vaticana, Città del Vaticano Griffin, Carrie University College Cork, Ireland Grosse, Max Universität Tübingen, Germany Grove, Jonathan University of Cambridge, UK Harbison, Robert Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY Hartmann, Heiko Freie Universität Berlin, Germany Haywood, Louise University of Cambridge, UK Heller, Sarah-Grace Ohio State University, Columbus, OH

Herman, Jason The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ Heyworth, Gregory University of Mississippi, MS Hollengreen, H. Laura University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ Holt, Andrew Starke, FL Holtzman, Livnat Bar-Ilan University, Israel Horowitz, Jeannine University of Haifa, Greece Huda, Qamar-ul Washington D.C. Ingram, Amy Northern Illinois University, Dekalb, IL Jaques, R. Kevin Indiana University, Bloomington, IL Jambeck, Karen K. Western Connecticut State University, Danbury, CT Jaritz, Gerhard Central European University, Hungary Johnson, Michael A. University of Texas at Austin, TX

LXXXI Kapriev, Georgi St. Kliment Ochridski University, Bulgaria Keats-Rohan, K.S.B. Oxford University, UK King, David Universität Frankfurt, Germany Kitsikopoulos, Harry New York University, New York, NY Koch, Walter Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, Germany Kölzer, Theo Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Germany

List of Contributors

Leanos, Jaime University of Nevada, Reno Lefebure, Leo D. Georgetown University, DC Lemeneva, Elena Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto, Canada Leverage, Paula Purdue University, W. Lafayette, IN Löser, Freimut Universität Augsburg, Germany Lucas, Adam Department of Aboriginal Affairs, Surrey Hills, NSW, Australia Luce, Mark David University of Chicago, IL

Kohl, Gerald Universität Wien, Austria

Lummus, David Stanford University, CA

Kümper, Hiram Universität Vechta, Germany

Macierowski, Edward M. Benedictine College, Atchison, KS

Kuhn, Christian Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Germany

Mack, Gregory McGill University, Canada

Lacy, Norris J. Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA Latowsky, Anne University of South Florida, Tampa

Mannaerts, Pieter Research Foundation – Flanders, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium Margolis, Nadia Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA

LXXXII

List of Contributors

Marner, Dominic University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada Meyer, Andreas Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany Meyer Evitt, Regula Colorado Springs, CO Mieszkowski, Gretchen University of Houston-Clear Lake, Houston, TX Morewedge, Rosmarie Binghamton University, NY Müller, Ulrich Universität Salzburg, Austria

Niederkorn-Bruck, Meta Universität Wien, Austria Nijhuis, Letty University College Cork, Ireland Noakes, Susan University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN Obermeier, Anita University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM O’Brien, Juliet Princeton University, NJ O’Sullivan, Daniel E. The University of Mississippi, MS

Münster, Reinhold Universität Bamberg, Germany

Ohlander, Erik S. Indiana University, Purdue University, Fort Wayne

Munson, Marcella Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL

Oschema, Klaus Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany

Murdoch, Brian University of Stirling, Scotland, UK

Paddock, Mary Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Blacksburg, VA

Murray, K. Sarah-Jane Baylor University, Waco, TX Nagi, Joseph UCLA, Los Angeles, CA Naismith, Rory Cambridge University, UK

Parra Membrives, Eva Universidad de Salamanca, Spain Parton, Frances Cambridge University, UK Paulsen, Robert Universität Freiburg i.Br., Germany

LXXXIII

List of Contributors

Peitsara, Kirsti University of Helsinki, Finland

Reichert, Hermann Universität Wien, Austria

Penn, Stephen University of Stirling, Scotland, UK

Reinhart, Max University of Georgia, Athens, GA

Pettigrew, Mark Queens College, City University of New York Pfeffer, Wendy University of Louisville, Louisville, KY

Reynolds, Kevin York University, Toronto, Canada Rezakhani, Khodadad UCLA, Los Angeles, CA

Pierce, Marc University of Texas, Austin, TX

Rider, Jeff Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT

Pigg, Daniel The University of Tennessee at Martin, Martin, TN

Roberg, Francesco Hessisches Staatsarchiv Marburg, Germany

Pincikowski, Scott E. Hood College, Frederick, MD

Rodíguez-Velasco, Jesús University of California, Berkeley, CA

Poole, Russell University of Western Ontario, Canada Porter, Camarin University of Wisconsin at Madison, Madison, WI Powrie, Sarah St. Thomas More College, Saskatchewan, Canada Raposo Fernández, Berta Universidad de Valencia, Valencia, Spain

Rötzer, Daniel Paris-Lodron-Universität Salzburg, Austria Rosenstein, Roy The American University of Paris, France Rouillard, Linda Marie The University of Toledo, Toledo, OH Rushing, James Rutgers University, Camden, NJ

LXXXIV

List of Contributors

Sager, Alex University of Georgia, Athens, GA Sandidge, Marilyn Westfield State University, MA Santangelo, Enrico Università di Torino, Italy Sauer, Michelle M. University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND Sayers, William Cornell University, Ithaca, NY Schmidt, Siegrid Universität Salzburg, Austria Schnall, Jens Eike Universität Freiburg i.Br., Germany Schwartz, Yossef Tel Aviv University, Israel Singer, Julie Washington University, St. Louis, MO

Stevenson, Barbara Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA Stock, Marcus University of Toronto, Canada Stokes, Peter University of Cambridge, UK Storey, Wayne Indiana University, Bloomington, IN Stoudt, Debra Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA Syros, Vasileios University of Chicago, IL Taylor, Scott L. Pima Community College, Tucson, AZ Taylor, Steven Millem Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI

Slavin, Philip Yale University, New Haven, CT

Tinsley, David University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA

Snook, Ben Selwyn College, London, UK

Tomasik, Timothy Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, IN

Sprague, Maurice Universität Salzburg, Austria

Touwaide, Alain National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.

LXXXV Vallerani, Massimo Università degli Studi di Torino, Italy Van Liere, Frans Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI Vogeler, Georg Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, Germany Vogtherr, Thomas Universität Osnabrück, Germany Ward, Renée University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada Wedell, Moritz Universität Zürich, Switzerland Weigl, Herwig Universität Wien, Austria

List of Contributors

Wełna, Jerzy Warsaw University, Poland Whitford, David Victoria, Canada Yager, Susan Iowa State University, Ames, IA Ysebaert, Walter Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Research Foundation-Flanders, Belgium Zajkowski, Robert Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, Binghamton University, NY; Hudson Valley Community College, NY Zychowicz, James Madison, WI

List of Contributors

LXXXVI

1

Main Topics and Debates of the Last Decades and their Terminology and Results

2

3

The Arab West

A The Arab West A. Introduction The Arab West is a cultural area that conventionally includes the Maghrib (Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, but usually not Libya), Sicily and al-Andalus (Islamic Spain and Portugal). The three Maghrib countries then acquired in the course of the 19th century a distinctive historiographical overlay due to French colonization that imparted idiosyncratic views of social organization (the importance of autonomous Berber “cantons”) and political organization (opposition of territory controlled by the state – bled al-makhzen – versus that under tribal control (land of dissidence, bled al-siba). B. History of Research. North Africa A series of important monographs in French formed the basis of modern North African historiography: Robert Montagne, Les Berbères et le Makhzen dans le sud du Maroc, 1930; Emile Félix Gautier, Le passé de l’Afrique du nord: Les siècles obscurs (1937); Robert Brunschvig, La Berbérie orientale sous les Hafsides (1940); Hady R. Idris, La Berbérie orientale sous les Zirides (1962). Gautier and Montagne argued similar points, that Morocco had never been unified because of the prevalence of free Berber “cantons” (Montagne), or that unification never happened because of a millennial struggle between sedentary peoples (Berbers) and nomads (Arabs and Arabized Berbers) (Gautier). Gautier’s argument, fascinating but hyperbolic, is based to an extent on the hypothesis of the 14th-century polymath, Ibn Khaldun, on the role of sedentary – nomad conflict in the rise and falls of dynastic states (in his Muqaddimah and Kitab al-‘Ibar). Reevaluation of the nature of Berber society was largely the work of anthropologists, especially Jacques Berque (Structures sociales du Haut-Atlas, 1955); and Ernest Gellner (Saints of the Atlas, 1969), both of whom had immense influence on historians. A landmark in urban history was Roger Le Tourneau’s Fès avant le protectorat (1949), which however perpetuated the notion of a city-based society dating back to the early Middle Ages.

The Arab West

4

C. al-Andalus The 19th-century Spanish historiography of Islamic Spain was vitiated by an inability to distinguish between race and culture and therefore to assume that indigenous Hispano-Romans converted to Islam somehow remained “Spanish” in culture. This essentialist approach was first attacked by Américo Castro (The Structure of Spanish History, 1954; revised as The Spaniards, 1971), who first made the case that the culture of al-Andalus was a normative Arabo-Islamic one; and then definitively by Pierre Guichard (Al-Andalus: Estructura antropológica de una sociedad islámica en Occidente, 1976), who provided the social mechanism by which indigenous peoples were assimilated into Arabo-Muslim culture, and, at the same time, demonstrated (most importantly through a study of tribal toponyms) the tribe-based nature of settlement. The first comprehensive narrative history of al-Andalus was written by the Dutch Arabist Reinhart Dozy (Histoire des Musulmans d’Espagne: jusqu’à la conquête de l’Andalousie par les Almoravides, 1861), a political history that extended only through the Almoravid period. The next was by Evariste Lévi-Provencal, in the form of an updated version of Dozy’s Histoire, with the same title (1932). However this political narrative was accompanied by an influential volume on the social and economic history of al-Andalus (L’Espagne musulmane au XIème siècle: Institutions et vie sociale, 1932). Because the kingdom of Granada lasted 250 years longer than the heartland of Islamic Spain, it has a distinctive historiography. The standard histories are Rachel Arie, L’Espagne musulmane au temps des Nasrides (1973); and L. P. Harvey, Islamic Spain, 1250–1500 (1990). The notion of social organization underlying much of this literature was a tacit adaptation of the bled al-makhzen/bled al-siba model to al-Andalus, under the assumption that the polity of the emirate, caliphate and independent kings alike was one of centralized control, punctuated by tribal rebellions. One of the problems of western Islamic historiography – especially that of al-Andalus – is the lack of Arabic documentation. As a result there has been methodologically interesting work, using Christian archival documentation for the reconstruction of aspects of Islamic history: Olivia R. Constable, who made use of Genoese notarial archives to document Italian trade with al-Andalus (Trade and Traders in Muslim Spain: The Commercial Realignment of the Iberian Peninsula, 900–1500, 1994), Charles Du Fourcq (L’Espagne catalane et le Magrib au XIIIe et XVe siècles, 1965), using documents from the Archives of the Crown of Aragon to reconstruct relations between the Catalonia and the Magrib; and the entire literature of the Christian resettlement of al-Andalus,

5

The Arab West

using land partition documents (Libros de repartimiento) to reconstruct the social and agricultural organization of Islamic Spain (see Glick, From Muslim Fortress to Christian Conquest, 1996, ch. 6). D. Medieval Archeology In the 1980s, a new approach to Andalusi society was adumbrated by a new wave of medieval archeologists who reexamined the social structure of al-Andalus from the perspective of Guichard who in an important study of fortifications together with André Bazzana and Patrice Cressier (Les chateaux ruraux d’Al-Andalus, 1990), replaced the older tacit paradigm of rural social organization with a new one, based on free tribal settlements under the protective wing of “castle-refuges” (husun) that were inhabited only in times of unrest. A huge investment of energy was spent over the next ten to fifteen years on identifying castle/village complexes. The paradigm was subsequently somewhat modified by Miquel Barceló and his students at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, who demonstrated convincingly that water systems, not castles, were the central organizing feature of such settlement complexes. A model study is given by Helena Kirchner (La construcció d’un espai pagès a Mayurqa (1997), who demonstrates the relationship between systems of irrigation canals and tribal settlements. E. Current Trends The wave of enthusiasm that carried the new medieval archeology for twenty years seemingly dissipated around 2000, or rather, its energies were devoted to regional syntheses. Representative works are Guichard’s on Valencia (Les Musulmans de Valence et le reconquete, 1990); Rafael Azuar on Alicante and the Islamic kingdom of Denia (Denia islámica: arqueología y poblamiento, 1989), and Virgilio Martínez Enamorado on Málaga (Al-Andalus desde la periferia: la formación de una sociedad musulmana en tierras malagueñas, 2003). Methodologically what is notable about these syntheses is that their sources are both documentary and archeological. There has also appeared a kind of revanchist retrieval, although also regionally delimited and with an archeological basis, of the older line of “continuism” that stressed continuity of culture and social organization from Roman through early Islamic times (see Sonia Gutiérrez, La cora de Tudmir, de la antigüedad tardía al mundo islámica: poblamiento y cultura material, 1996).

The Arab East

6

Select Bibliography Arabs and Berbers: From Tribe to Nation in North Africa, ed. Ernest Gellner (Lexington: Heath, 1972); Pierre Guichard, Al-Andalus, 711–1492 (Paris: Hachette, 2000); Thomas F. Glick, From Muslim Fortress to Christian Castle (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995; revised as Paisajes de conquista, Valencia: University of Valencia Press, 2006); Abdelmajid Hannoum, Colonial Histories, Post-Colonial Memories: The Legend of the Kahina (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2001); Michel Terrasse, Islam et Occident méditerranéen: de la conquête aux Ottomans (Paris: CTHS, 2001).

Thomas F. Glick

The Arab East A. General Introduction The Arab East can be defined as the regions including modern day Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and the eastern portion of Turkmenistan. The Arab conquests of these regions began in the third decade of the 7th century and continued through the middle of the 8th century. In the 7th century, these lands were under the influence of three major powers: the Sasanian Empire in Persia, the T’ang dynasty in China and the Gupta dynasty in India. The Sasanian Empire encompassed Iraq, Iran, southwestern and northern Afghanistan and parts of Turkmenistan. On its western and northern frontiers, it bordered the Byzantine Empire, which controlled the Levant, the Caucasus and Asia Minor. Its northeastern boundaries were roughly defined as south of the Oxus River and the western bank of the Murghab River and the great Ghuzz Desert. Its easternmost province, Khurasan was less settled and expanded and contracted with the times. It comprised four main administrative centers in Marw, Abrashahr (Nishapur, modern day Mashhad), Herat and Balkh. The military command for the region was based in Marw, in present day Turkmenistan. Sijistan (Sistan), the region presently comprising portions of southeast Iran, northwestern Pakistan and southwestern Afghanistan had been nominally under Sasanian rule. Its easternmost boundary was Bust, situated at the confluence of the Helmand and Arghandab rivers. Further to the east the local rulers were aligned with the Indian Empire. North of the Oxus River (Transoxiana) were Khwarazm, which bordered the southern shore of the Aral Sea and Sogdia, which occupied the Oxus –

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Jaxartes Basin. Sogdia was a federation of loosely allied Iranian city-states that were nominally under Chinese suzerainty. The major city-states of Sogdia were Paykand, Bukhara and Samarqand. Further north in Ushrusana was Shash, near present day Tashkent. The peoples of this region were primarily of Iranian stock with a mixture of Turkic speaking peoples. B. The Righteous Caliphs (632–661 C.E.) The Arabs quickly colonized Iraq during this period. The two garrison towns of Basra and Kufa were established and soon became cities that experienced massive Arab emigrations. They were the main bases of operation from which campaigns to the east were launched. Under the caliph Umar (r. 634–644 C.E.), raids were launched into Persia. Persian resistance against the Arabs continued through the caliphate of Uthman (r. 644–656 C.E.). The Arabs established garrisons and appointed governors in the major cities and relative calm prevailed. The Arab governors of Iraq administered the eastern lands from Basra and reported to the caliph in Damascus. They were largely responsible for appointing governors in the east. The furthest frontier on the eastern border of the newly emerged Arab Empire was called Khurasan. This region comprised the former Sasanian province of Khurasan as well as Sijistan (Sistan) and Transoxiana beyond the Oxus. These three regions known as “Greater Khurasan” are the main focus of this article. The Makran and Sind were conquered by the Arabs in the early 8th century, but they remained backwaters during the period which concerns us. The Arabs quickly subdued Sasanian Khurasan and Sijistan. They raided as far east as Kabul and the Sind. Treaties were negotiated with the individual rulers of the major towns and cities of Khurasan and annual tributes were agreed upon. The local rulers were responsible for the collection and payment of this tribute. The Arabs did not maintain a large physical presence there during this period. Initially, after campaigning, they typically returned to Basra in Iraq. Due to this and internal Arab upheavals, such as the assassinations of the caliphs Umar, Uthman and Ali, the Khurasanis frequently used these periods of Arab unrest to rebel. This resulted in additional Arab campaigns, which necessitated the renegotiation of treaties. C. Umayyad Period (661–750 C.E.) Under the Umayyad caliph Muawiya (r. 661–680 C.E.), 50,000 soldiers and their dependents were sent to colonize Khurasan in 671 C.E. The majority of this group settled in the administrative capital of Khurasan, Marw. In 673 C.E., the Arabs mounted campaigns, which crossed the Oxus into Trans-

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oxiana (Ar. Ma wara al-nahr), where they attacked the Sogdian city-states. These campaigns resulted in an enormous amount of booty, but the treaties established there were short-lived. Rebellions continued until the governorship of Qutayba b. Muslim (705–714 C.E.). Qutayba launched a sustained campaign against the Sogdians with the military support of local levies. Paykand was completely destroyed and Bukhara and Samarqand were subjugated and Arab garrisons were stationed in these cities. Qutayba’s campaigns extended as far east as Kashgar. Qutayba’s conquests proved to be superficial. The Sogdians allied themselves with the western Turks, whose power had surged and during the last portion of Umayyad rule, Transoxiana was nearly lost to the Arabs. Sijistan was plagued with rebellion and Umayyad control was effectively restricted to the two major cities of Zaranj and Bust. In 736 C.E., in an effort to hold Greater Khurasan together, the Umayyad governor, Asad b. Khalid moved the administrative capital from Marw to Balkh. The majority of the population of Greater Khurasan did not convert to Islam. Religiously, the area was extremely diverse with a Zoroastrian majority and Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Manichaean and pagan minorities. Among the Arabs and new converts, tribal, political and sectarian differences were rife. These divisions among the Muslims coupled with continued rebellion weakened Umayyad authority. An anti-Umayyad movement had begun around 720 C.E. Its propaganda concentrated on the populations of Khurasan and finally in 746 C.E., the Abbasid Revolution under the leadership of Abu Muslim al-Khurasani began there. It quickly gained success in Khurasan and toppled Umayyad authority there and spread westward into Persia and Iraq. Continued victories propelled the movement into Syria and in 750 A. D. the Umayyads were defeated and the Abbasid dynasty was established. Abu Muslim al-Khurasani retained control of Khurasan and reestablished Muslim control over Transoxiana. However, in 755 C.E., he was assassinated by the Abbasid caliph, al-Manur, who appointed his own governor to Khurasan. D. The Abba¯ sid High Caliphate (750–833 C.E.) The establishment of the Abbasid dynasty was a turning point in the history of the Arabs and Islam. Previously, Arab Umayyad rule had dominated. Non-Arabs converting to Islam became clients (mawali), which made them “honorary Arabs.” However, their status was not equal to that of the Arabs. After the Abbasid revolution, things began to change. The capital of the empire was moved from Damascus to Baghdad and the victorious Khurasanis, who were a mixture of Arabs and Persians obtained a special status in the

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government. Non-Arabs increasingly attained high offices and positions of authority. The Umayyads heavily exploited Greater Khurasan. The Arab governors had amassed great wealth and did little to improve the infrastructure or public services. With the establishment of a new “Muslim dynamic,” trade increased and cities along the trade routes grew and prospered. While the majority of the population remained non-Muslim until the late 10th century, the number of new converts to Islam grew, as did the number of religious scholars. Arab religious scholars were no longer an overwhelming majority and a growing class of non-Arab scholars writing in Arabic flourished. The second half of the 8th century was a period of cultural and religious synthesis. The Arabs in the east became more assimilated into the overall society while for a period of three hundred years the Persians abandoned Middle Persian and adopted Arabic as their administrative, liturgical and literary language. The Arab conquests set into motion the conditions that led to the emergence of New Persian after this period. New Persian was written in a modified form of the Arabic script and included a large number of Arabic loan words. It developed an Islamic literature and gradually became the dominant Iranian language replacing Sogdian as the lingua franca of Central Asia. As the Arabs became more Persianized, the Persians became more Arabized. Additionally, the Turks, who had traditionally adopted Sogdian as their written language, replaced it with new Persian (Dari). However, Dari did not begin to emerge as a literary language until the 10th century. The Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad experienced a major schism in the beginning of the 9th century, which ultimately resulted in the loss of the east to Arab authority. Upon his death in 809 C.E., Harun al-Rashid’s son, al-Amin, became caliph and his son, Mamun, became the governor of Khurasan. A rift developed between the two brothers and a civil war ensued. Mamun, who governed from Marw, eventually triumphed. Born of a Persian mother, he was at home in the east and had seriously pondered moving the capital of the empire from Baghdad to Marw. However, rebellions in the western portions of the empire forced him to decide whether he wanted to be the governor of Khurasan or the caliph of the Arab Empire. In 819 C.E., he moved to Baghdad. The Abbasid reign from its beginnings in 750 C.E. through the caliphate of Mamun is generally known as the period of the High Caliphate. After this time, Arab authority in the east rapidly declined. Mamun appointed governors to Khurasan but none were able to govern it well or keep the peace. Finally, in 821 C.E., Tahir b. al-Husayn, a trusted general of Mamun of Persian origin was appointed to Khurasan. He reestablished order and soon became a patron of Arab learning. Politically, he estab-

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lished his autonomy from Baghdad and Arab rule and founded his own dynasty, the Tahirids (821–873 C.E.). TheTahirids were the last rulers in the east to make a pretense of being Arab. The successors of the Tahirids in the east, in the late 9th century and the early 10th century, the Saffarids from Sijistan and the Samanids in Transoxiana and Khurasan were ethnically Persian and actively patronized things Persian while promoting Islam. Arab control over the east ended. Subsequent dynasties of the Ghaznavids and Saljuqs were ethnically Turkish but culturally Persian. The Arab caliphs ruling from Baghdad gradually lost control of their once large empire that fragmented into a number of different states. The caliphs were unable to reclaim their past political power and eventually became only figureheads. The institution of the caliphate continued in Baghdad until 1258, when the Mongols invaded and killed the last Arab caliph. E. History of Research Scholarship on the Arabs in the East has primarily concentrated on the Umayyad dynasty and specifically the causes of the Abbasid revolution. Gerlof Van Vloten and Julius Wellhausen led this research in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Europe. Van Vloten’s Recherches sur la domination arabe, le chi’isme et les croyances messianiques sous les Omayyades (1894) perceived the Abbasid revolution as a Persian nationalist movement, which struggled against repressive taxes and social inequality in order to overthrow the Arab oppressors. He believed the revolution was energized by the rise of Shi’ism and the expectation of a liberator or messiah. Wellhausen supported Van Vloten’s views; however, in opposition to Van Vloten, he saw the revolution as having its roots in Islam rather than Persian nationalism. Julius Wellhausen’s The Arab Kingdom and Its Fall appeared in 1902. It was the first critical work to use Tabari’s History of the Prophets and the Kings and the first presentation of an Islamic subject using modern historical method. Wellhausen, as a product of his age, was concerned with nations, states and persons and the struggle between them for power. This preoccupation with politics and nationality completely disregarded economics. Wellhausen saw the Umayyad dynasty as essentially an Arab kingdom. He further forwarded the belief that the empire had become factionalized along north/south (Qays/Yaman) Arab tribal lines during the Islamic era. His views established the paradigm that remained virtually unassailed, for more than 70 years. Wellhausen closely and critically examined his and their sources. He favored the earliest ones. He strongly believed that the literary tradition should be subjected to intense criticism and analyzed for contradictions and biases. Wellhausen’s works were followed by a number of modern

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scholars, who advanced scholarship in the field by collating and editing critical editions of important manuscripts. European institutions had continued to collect Arabic manuscripts from the Middle East, Central Asia and India. As these works were described and catalogued a major effort began to produce critical editions of them. In these pursuits, Vasily Barthold, Hamilton A. R. Gibb and Richard N. Frye figured prominently. Vasily Barthold was a polymath. He was one of the first scholars to critically use both Arabic and Persian sources in his research. He saw the Umayyad period as one of exploitation. He believed that the Arabs had no real administrative aims and that they were content to maintain control over the Khurasani Arab population while extracting taxes and tribute from all. The rapid succession of Umayyad governors and their acquisition of vast fortunes proved this point to him. Barthold’s major contribution to this early phase of Islamic history was his groundbreaking work on the history and geography of Central Asia. He was meticulous and systematically identified cities, towns and landmarks throughout Central Asia, utilizing a variety of scientific methods and incorporating archaeological and numismatic findings. He was a prolific writer, who wrote primarily in Russian and German. His works were considered so important that his major work, Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion (1900) was translated into English from the Russian with Barthold’s collaboration by Hamilton A. R. Gibb in 1928. Hamilton A. R. Gibb continually added to the prior studies of his colleagues. In examining Greater Khurasan, he contrasted a highly decentralized Transoxiana with the centralized former Sasanian realm of Khurasan proper and he stressed that their social and political systems had developed independently. He viewed Qutayba b. Muslim’s conquests in Transoxiana as superficial and held that Sogdian resistance to the Arabs was based on commercial interests and their tradition of regional independence. He highlighted the roles of Asad b. Abdullah and Nasr b. Sayyar at the end of the Umayyad period in trying to right injustices and unify the frontier by bringing the Arabs and mawali closer together. He tried to demonstrate that once the Arabs began to focus on trade that resistance decreased dramatically. Gibb was one of the first to utilize Chinese sources. His major work on this subject is The Arab Conquests in Central Asia (1923). Gibbs other works focus on Islam, literature and the interaction of Islamic societies with other cultures. Richard N. Frye concentrated on examining all facets of ancient Persia. While others had primarily focused on changes that were ushered in with the Arabs and Islam, Frye maintained the point of view, that the Persians were a dominant and changing force. Some of his major works are The Golden Age of Persia: the Arabs in the East (1975), Islamic Iran and Central Asia (1979) and The

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History of Bukhara (1954). Frye took special effort to inform us as to what sources on the subject have apparently been lost to time. C. E. Bosworth’s contribution to the study of the Arabs in the East must also be mentioned. Wellhausen and Gibb examined the East as a whole. Barthold had concentrated on Central Asia and Frye on Iran. Bosworth’s contributions are in geography and particularly on Sijistan (Sïstan). His Sïstan Under the Arabs, (1968) greatly complements the study of the Arabs and the East. These six scholars comprise what has been termed as the classical school of thought. Our understanding of Umayyad Khurasan has been shaped by their seminal works. Together they have provided a firm historiographical and geographical knowledge of this period, while advancing textual criticism and exploring all available sources. F. The Revisionists In the absence of an abundance of detailed information on the causes and factors leading up to the Abbasid revolution (747–750 C.E.), a new school grew up. The common thread linking the two schools has been an emphasis on the discontent in Khurasan caused by oppressive taxes for all, the assimilation of the Arabs into Khurasani society and their subsequent loss of political status, coupled with constant ongoing inter-tribal rivalries. The ruling dynasty was viewed as mostly impious and wrongly guided. The chronicles of Tabari, Ibn al-Athir, al-Baladhuri, Ibn A’tham and Ya’qubi provided the foundation for these ideas. The discovery of new sources such as the anonymous Akhbar dawlat al-Abbasiya and Tarikh al-Khulafa, and other works have helped to feed the fire of an ongoing classical versus revisionist battle. M. A. Shaban’s radical interpretation of the character of the Abbasid revolution in his Islamic History, C.E. 600–750 (A.H. 132): A New Interpretation (1971) attacked the classical school and claimed that the Arabs had no interest in war, opposed taxes, resented the Persian elite in charge of collecting taxes and were fully assimilated with the local population and were sympathetic to conversion. He saw the Abbasid revolution as primarily Arab, emerging out of Marw, as a result of lost status and privilege. He viewed the revolution as a three-way struggle between old military, new military and settlers. He dismissed the existence of tribal rivalries and transformed the north/south (Qays/Yaman) rivalries into ideological parties with common political, social and economic interests. He claimed the northern Arabs (Qays) were advocates of expansionist policies, while the southerners (Yaman) were proponents of assimilationist ones. He further claimed that there were few converts to Islam at this time.

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Shaban’s theories caused quite a stir when they were published. They challenged Wellhausen’s paradigm. However, Shaban’s work has not withstood the critical scrutiny of scholarship. His theories were more interpretation than fact, and his use of the sources was fairly loose. However, while he is faulted for a lack of good scholarly practices, his fresh approach to the subject was much needed. His revisionist school grew to include Daniel Dennett (Conversion and the Poll Tax in Early Islam, 1950), Farouk Omar (The Abbassid Caliphate: 132/750–170/786, 1969), Moshe Sharon (Black Banners from the East: the Establishment of the Abbasid State: Incubation of a Revolt; and Revolt: the Social and Military Aspects of the Abbasid Revolution, 1983), and Jacob Lassner (Islamic Revolution and Historical Memory: an Inquiry into the Art of Abbasid Apologetics, 1986). All of them asserted the Arabness of the Abbasid revolution and minimalized the role of the Persians. G. Recent Scholarship In the wake of the classical and revisionist schools, there has been a search for new sources that could shed more light on our rudimentary understanding of this period. Again, the main interest for this period has been the Abbasid revolution and the proving or disproving of the various theories of Wellhausen and Shaban. Two others scholars, Saleh Said Agha (The Revolution which Toppled the Umayyads: neither Arab nor Abbasid, 2003) and Fukuzo Amabe (The Emergence of the Abbasid Autocracy: the Abbasid Army, Khurasan and Adharbayjan, 1995) have introduced studies, which systematically examined the ethnic character of the Abbasid revolution and questioned the Abbasid dynasty claim. Agha focused on demographics and convincingly established the varied ethnic composition of the Abbasid revolution, deconstructing Shaban. Amabe in his collection of essays examines the Qays-Yaman dispute and agrees with Shaban as to its political nature in Syria but finds that the tensions in Khurasan had nothing to do with the Syrian ones. Additionally, he has convincingly disputed Shaban’s claim of the limited numbers of troops enrolled in the payrolls and that the old military (muqatila) were all dismissed from the rolls and replaced by Syrians and new troops. Finally, both Agha and Amabe have shattered Shaban’s theory that the majority of revolutionaries came from Marw and that no propagandists (da’is) operated outside of it. The debates, rebuttals and different interpretations of the events culminating in the Abbasid revolution have provided an abundance of opinions and used a variety of approaches. Both the classical and revisionist schools have fueled a continual series of studies, but none of them have approached the subject by examining Khurasan as a whole, from the advent of Islam until

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the Abbasid revolution. Scholars will continue to search for new sources on this subject. As more and more manuscripts are described and catalogued each year, it is possible that more pieces of this puzzle will be found. Select Bibliography Salih Sa’id Agha, The Revolution which Toppled the Umayyads: Neither Arab nor Abbasid (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003); Fukuzo Amabe, The Emergence of the Abbasid Autocracy: The Abbasid Army, Khurasan and Adharbayjan (Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 1995); Vasily V. Barthold, Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion (London: Luzac & Co., 1928); Clifford E. Bosworth, Sistan Under the Arabs: From the Islamic Conquest to the Rise of the Saffarids, 30–250/651–864 (Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1968); Richard N. Frye, The Golden Age of Persia: The Arabs in the East (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1975); Hamilton A. R. Gibb, The Arab Conquests in Central Asia. (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1923); M. A. Shaban, Islamic History: A new Interpretation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1971); Gerlof van Vloten, Recherches sur la domination arabe, le chi’isme et les croyances messianiques sous les khalifat Omayyades (Amsterdam: J. Muller, 1894); Julius Wellhausen, Das arabische Reich und sein Sturz (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1902).

Mark David Luce

Arabic Literature A. Introduction Throughout the Middle Ages, Arabic was employed by millions of Arabs and Muslims, not only as a scriptural language, but also as a shared medium of scholarly and literary communication. Accordingly, medieval Arabic literature was a rich and diverse tradition. This article provides an overview of the formation of the medieval literary canon and a survey of major trends in the study of Arabic literature from the 19th century to the present. The modern Arabic term adab signifies both “good manners” and “literature” in its specialized sense (poetry, drama, and artistic prose). In the Middle Ages, however, adab had a broader semantic range, conveying conduct and manners, knowledge and refinement, and, especially, the kind of socialization expected of secretaries, courtiers, and intellectuals. Adab writings, by extension, were those that contributed to this socialization, works that were both aesthetically pleasing and instructive. (For a full discussion of this term, see Seeger Bonnebakker, “Adab and the concept of belles-lettres,” The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: ^Abbasid Belles-Lettres, ed. Julia Ash-

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tiany et al., 1990, 16–30.) The focus of this article is the study of secular belles-lettres, but it is important to remember that in the Middle Ages, practically all non-technical writings were expected to be composed according to contemporary standards of adab. B. The Legacy of Medieval Literary Scholarship Modern scholarship on medieval Arabic literature has adopted much of the conceptual framework of literary categorization formulated in the Middle Ages. In particular, the medieval canon, with its attendant aesthetic judgments and assumptions, has had a lasting influence. Until relatively recently, modern scholars have devoted little attention to those texts regarded as inferior or marginal in the Middle Ages. The first and most fundamental criterion for determining the “literariness” of a text was its linguistic register. Early in the Islamic era, Arab linguists became concerned with the question of diglossia, the perceived corruption of formal, fully inflected Arabic into various uninflected regional dialects. With a few notable exceptions, sub-literary status was assigned to compositions in colloquial dialects. Poetry was the premier literary genre in the Middle Ages. Despite its pagan religious milieu, the orally transmitted poetic tradition of the preIslamic era (al-jahiliyya, literally, “the age of ignorance”) was especially admired and regarded as a rich repository of linguistic and cultural information. The most famous canonical collection, the mu^allaqat (“the pendants” or “hanging odes”), consists of exemplars of the qasida, a formal, polythematic, monorhymed ode, by the most highly esteemed pre-Islamic poets. Much medieval criticism was prescriptive, dwelling on ideals and models for imitation and codified norms (^umud al-shi^r, “the pillars of poetry”). Pre-Islamic poetry, the mu^allaqat especially, provided such models. The traditional periodization of Arabic literature after the coming of Islam is loosely based on dynastic shifts and perceived changes in poetic style. The early Islamic period (622–660) and the reign of the Umayyad caliphs (660–750) is generally viewed as a transitional phase. The rise of the ^Abbasid caliphate (750–1258), signaled a definitive break with the tribal, nomadic past. The panegyrical ode (madih) had served a tribal function in pre-Islamic Arabia, but became an important medium of state propaganda in the caliphal era. Its most celebrated proponents were Abu Tammam (d. 846), alBuhturi (d. 897), and al-Mutanabbi (d. 965). Shorter forms, notably the ghazaliyya (love poem) and khamriyya (wine-song), both frequently set to music, became popular in less formal court contexts. Medieval critics perceived marked differences in style and tone between pre-Islamic poetry and that of

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the ^Abbasid period. Badi^ (“innovative new style”), a trend towards complex rhetorical embellishment that came into fashion in the early 9th century, became a key means of distinguishing the ‘modern poets’ (al-muhdathun) from the ‘ancients’ (al-qudama#). In the later Middle Ages, poetry became increasingly imitative, hence the modern distinction between the ‘classical’ period (the ^Abbaasid caliphate) and the ‘post-classical’ period (beginning after the Mongol conquest of Baghdad in 1258). Artistic prose was largely an innovation of the caliphal era, although brief narratives in the form of first-person reports (akhbar) recording important tribal events had been transmitted since pre-Islamic times. Reports of this sort, considered nonfictional, became the basis of historiography and biography. Of special significance were the hadith reports that inscribed the deeds and utterances of the prophet Muhammad. In the ^Abaasid period, reports were sometimes embedded in essays, such as those of al-Jahiz (d. 869?), and included in large compilations of short narratives on a variety of subjects. The most famous were literary anthologies: Ibn Qutayba’s (d. 889) ^Uyun al-akhbar (“Choice Anecdotes”), Ibn ^Abd Rabbihi’s (d. 940) Al-^Iqd alfarid (“The Precious Necklace”), and Abu al-Faraj al-Isfahani’s (d. 967) Kitab al-aghani (“Book of Songs”). Other compilations of this sort fell into an endless variety of sub-genres: histories, biographical dictionaries, manuals of etiquette, Fürstenspiegels, accounts of wonders and marvels, and so on. For the most part, prose narratives were expected to have a reliable chain of transmission and to deal with (plausibly) real events. Those fictional narratives that were tolerated were instructive allegories or sophisticated (therefore edifying) satires. An early experiment in this area was Ibn al-Muqaffa^’s (d. 757) Kalila wa-Dimna (“Kalila and Dimna”), a translation of animal fables from Pahlavi. The most popular fictional form of the Middle Ages was the maqama, a picaresque genre in rhymed prose developed by al-Hamadhani (d. 1008) and al-Hariri (d. 1122) and imitated up until the early 20th century. Medieval literary scholarship was prolific and remarkably introspective. The study of Arabic literary history depends on vast Medieval anthologies, commentaries, biographical and bibliographical compendia, and other resources. Medieval terms and conceptual categories – genres, modes, rhetorical terms, and so on – have, by and large, been adopted by modern scholars. Modern scholarship has also inherited a certain geographic bias (focusing particularly on the urban centers of the Fertile Crescent), and the traditional primitivist aesthetic that favored early ‘classic’ texts over later innovations. Naturally, issues that were of particular interest to medieval commentators and critics have continued to play a prominent role in the study of Arabic literature.

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C. The 19th Century: Discovery and Rediscovery Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 is often cited as the first significant cultural encounter between modern Europe and the Arab world, and an important catalyst for scholarly activity on both sides of the Mediterranean. Not incidentally, it was also the first significant military encounter, marking the beginning of European imperialist ambitions in the Middle East. Throughout most of the 19th century, scholarship on Arabic literature, both among Arab intellectuals and Orientalists, consisted mainly of collecting, cataloguing, editing, and publishing texts. In the early 19th century, modernization programs in the Arabic-speaking Middle East coincided with a new interest in classical literature. By midcentury, this interest had grown into a broad literary and cultural movement, al-Nahda (the “Revival” or “Renaissance”), which represented, among other things, a growing awareness among Arabs of their shared cultural heritage (al-turath). Al-Nahda was contrasted with ^Asr al-inhittat, a perceived “Period of Stagnation” or ‘Dark Ages’ (from the late Middle Ages through the Napoleonic invasion), characterized, politically, by the rule of non-Arab dynasties, and artistically, by an ostensible decline in originality. As Ottoman authority waned and European colonial activity intensified, al-Nahda became identified with both a revival of interest in medieval culture on the one hand, and rapid westernization on the other. Al-Nahda is chiefly associated with Egypt and the Levant, where the principle encounters with Europe took place. While the translation, imitation, and assimilation of European literary genres in the Arab world has been widely studied, far less attention has been devoted to the process by which classical Arabic literature became an object of study in the modern Arab world. (See, however, Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798–1939, 1962; and Jack A. Crabbs, The Writing of History in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, 1984).The degree to which classical Arabic literature was ‘rediscovered’ in the 19th century is open to debate. Certainly some classical genres and authors had never ceased to be widely appreciated and studied in both the eighteenth and 19th centuries. The most dramatic development was not ‘rediscovery’ but wide distribution brought about as printing supplanted manuscript culture. In 1822, the Khedive Muhammad ^Ali established the Bulaq Press in Cairo as part of his modernization project. Although the Bulaq Press specialized in technical manuals and translations of European textbooks, it published editions of Alf Layla wa-layla (“The Thousand and One Nights”) and Ibn al-Muqaffa^’s Kalila wa-Dimna in 1822, soon followed by other medieval literary works. Protestant missionaries and the Jesuits set up presses in the Levant, and by the end of the century, most major Arab cities had presses. Newspapers and journals also published classical as

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well as contemporary literature, and soon became important fora for cultural dialogue. Some early contributors to al-Nahda include the Egyptian educator and translator Rifa^a al-Tahtawi (1801–1871), who advocated and supervised the publication of heritage texts at Bulaq, the Egyptian poet Ibrahim al-Dasuqi (1811–1883), an editor at the same press, and the Lebanese Christian poet Faris al-Shidyaq (1804–1887), an editor at the British Arabic press in Malta who later established an Arabic press in Istanbul. Butrus al-Bustani (1819–1883), a Lebanese Christian journalist and linguist, compiled the first modern Arabic dictionary (Muhit al-muhit, 1867–1870) and contributed to the first modern Arabic encyclopedia (Da#irat al-ma^arif, 1876–1882). The study of the Arabic heritage, including classical literature, became increasingly institutionalized with the foundation of national libraries and colleges, such as the Egyptian Dar al-kutub and Cairo Teacher’s College (both established in 1870). Efforts to preserve and disseminate the great works of the past involved constant negotiation with contemporary issues. It was chiefly modernists and reformers who guided the revival. Muhammad ^Abduh (1849–1905), the celebrated Islamic modernist, religious scholar, and educational reformer, introduced the study of classical Arabic literature at al-Azhar (Cairo’s medieval college of Islamic studies). This radical attempt to inject a ‘liberal arts’ program into al-Azhar’s hidebound religious curriculum scandalized ^Abduh’s colleagues, but inspired a new generation of Egyptian intellectuals (including Taha Husayn, on whom see below). Another prominent Arab academic, Luwis Shaykhu (Le Père Louis Cheikho, 1859–1927), a Lebanese Jesuit and professor at the University of Saint-Joseph, Beirut, played a greater role in preserving the classical canon than any other figure of al-Nahda. Shaykhu collected manuscripts and published critical editions of an amazing range of medieval texts, many of which are still used today. His Kitab shu^ara al-Nasraniyya (“Anthology of Christian Poets,” 1890) was an early (and contentious) study of Christian ‘identity literature.’ In Europe, Arabic studies were overshadowed by biblical and classical studies. The limited number of orientalists who did research in Arabic were rarely specialists, and many were adventurous amateurs rather than academics. Arabic was generally taught as if it were a dead language. Arabic studies did not coalesce into an institutionalized field of study until the end of the century (see Johann Fück, Die arabischen Studien in Europa, 1955; and Victor Chauvin, Bibliographie des ouvrages arabes et relatifs aux Arabes publiées dans l’Europe chrétienne de 1810 à 1883, 4 vols., 1892–1909.) Only a handful of medieval Arabic texts had been adequately edited and published before the 19th century, and few linguistic resources were available

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in Europe. Orientalists of the first half of the century laid much of the groundwork for further study, including a series of reliable grammars and various dictionaries and lexica. Gustav Flügel (1802–1870) edited a number of valuable sources for literary history, including Hajji Khalifa’s massive 17th-century bibliography of oriental manuscripts, Kashf al-zunun (in Latin translation as Bibliographicum et Encyclopaedicum, 1835–1858), an edition of Ibn al-Nadim’s 10th-century bibliography Kitab al-Fihrist (1871–1872) and a concordance to the Qur#an (Concordantiae Corani arabicae, 1842). One of the towering figures of late 19th- and early 20th-century orientalism was Ignaz (Ignác) Goldziher (1850–1921), best known for his groundbreaking work in Islamic studies (Muhammedanische Studien, 2 vols., 1888–1890, rpt. 1961), but also a pioneer in the study of Arabic literature (Abhandlungen zur arabischen Philologie, 2 vols., 1896–1899). Although an ever increasing number of literary texts were available to orientalists by the end of the century, aesthetic appreciation of medieval Arabic literature was often subordinated to philological interests and broad ethnographic generalizations. On one extreme, literary works were viewed as little more than sources of raw linguistic data, or, at best, as pedagogical aids (e.g. de Sacy’s Chrestomathie arabe, 1806; and two editions of Alf layla wa-layla, “The Thousand and One Nights” [designated Calcutta I (1814–1818) and Calcutta II (1839–1842)], both intended for linguistic study). On the other extreme, the idea that the study of Arabic literature represented a means of understanding ‘Oriental’ manners and customs exercised great appeal in the 19th century. This ethnographic approach had been introduced by Barthélémy d’Herbolet in his Bibliothéque orientale (1697), an early and largely anecdotal encyclopedia of Middle Eastern culture and history that was widely read in the 18th century. In the 19th century, this approach was adopted in such works as Edward Lane’s detailed study of culture and everyday life in Egypt, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (1836), and the notes to his translation of Alf layla wa-layla (later published separately under the title Arabian Society in the Middle Ages, ed. Stanley Lane-Poole, 1883). For the most part, both Arab and Orientalist scholars of the 19th century were guided by the tastes of medieval critics and anthologists, and evinced a similar reverence for the medieval canon. One interesting case of divergent evaluation deserves special notice. The variable assortment of Märchen collected under the title of Alf layla wa-layla (“The Thousand and One Nights,” often translated as “The Arabian Nights”) had been regarded as an entertaining but ultimately frivolous and sub-literary work in the Arab world. In Europe, a French translation by Antoine Galland was published between 1704 and 1717 (Les Mille et une nuits), and immediately captured the public

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imagination. What began as exoticist curiosity in the 18th century turned into a mania in the 19th. Several editions were published (including the Bulaq edition, 1822), along with numerous translations (the best known are Edward Lane’s bowdlerized and compulsively annotated translation, The Thousand and One Nights, 3 vols., 1838–1841; and Richard Burton’s eccentric and bawdy translation, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, 10 vols., 1885). As a result of all of this attention, “The Arabian Nights” remains the most famous work of medieval Arabic literature in the West. (On its history and reception, see Robert Irwin, The Arabian Nights: A Companion, 1995; and The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia, ed. Ulrich Marzolph and Richard van Leeuwen, 2 vols., 2004.) D. The 20th Century: Revolution and Re-evaluation 19th-century scholarship produced a sizable body of linguistic reference works and reliably edited literary texts. By the turn of the 20th century, Arabic literature had come to be recognized as an isolated object of study. Two watershed events of the 20th century, Taha Husayn’s challenge to the traditional canon and Edward Said’s postcolonial critique of Orientalism, helped to define the field and open the way for a variety of critical perspectives and methodologies. Both in Europe and the Arab world, literary history dominated the early part of the century. Notable surveys include Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs, 1907; Jurji Zaydan, Tarikh adab al-lugha al-^arabiyya (“The History of Arabic-language Literatures”), 4 vols., 1911; Ignaz (Ignác) Goldziher, Arab irodalom rövid történte, 1912 (translated as A Short History of Classical Arabic Literature, 1966); Clément Huart, Histoire de la literature arabe (1923); Sir Hamilton Gibb, Arabic Literature, An Introduction, 1926; Carlo Nallino, La littérature arabe des origines à l’époque de la dynastie umayyade, 1950; Régis Blanchère, Histoire de la littérature arabe des origines à la fin du XVe siècle de J-C, 3 vols., 1952–1966). Two especially ambitious projects of this sort are Shawqi DAYF’s, Ta#rikh al-adab al-^Arabi (“The History of Arabic Literature,” 10 vols., 1960–1995); and the Cambridge History of Arabic Literature (commonly abbreviated CHAL), consisting of six volumes, each composed of articles by experts in particular subjects and sub-disciplines: Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period, ed. A. F. L. Beeston et al., 1983; ^Abbasid BellesLettres, ed. Julia Ashtiany et al., 1990; Religion, Learning and Science in the ^Abbasid Period, ed. M. J. L. Young et al., 1990; Modern Arabic Literature, ed. M. M. Badawi, 1992; The Literature of Al-Andalus, ed. Maria Rosa et al., 2000; and Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period, ed. Roger Allen, 2006. Other relatively recent contributions are Wolfhart Heinrichs, ed., Neues Handbuch

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der Literaturwissenschaft, vol. 5: Orientalisches Mittelalter, 1990; and Roger Allen, The Arabic Literary Heritage, 1998. In Europe, this interest in literary history coincided with a broader Orientalist project, the compilation of The Encyclopaedia of Islam, edited by Martin Theodor Houtsma and Arent Jan Wensinck, 4 vols., 1913–1938, printed in English, French, and German (now abbreviated EI1). This became a landmark reference work for Orientalists in a variety of fields, though it placed greater emphasis on Islamic history and civilization than on literature. The Encyclopaedia of Islam represented a major international effort, but Arab and Muslim contributors were largely excluded. The project was later repeated on an even grander scale with The New Encyclopaedia of Islam (EI2), 1954–, which remains one of the central reference texts for Arabists. Another important reference project was Carl Brockelmann’s Geschichte der arabischen Literatur (GAL) (2 vols., 1898–1902, 3 supplementary vols. 1937–1942, rev. ed. 1943–1949), a master catalog of books and manuscripts in Arabic, mostly culled from European manuscript catalogs, with brief biographical entries. Brockelmann’s work has since been supplemented by Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums (GAS), 12 vols., 1967–2000. Along with surveys of Arabic literature came specialized studies of particular periods, authors, and genres. Most of these were still fairly descriptive and conventional, with a strong philological emphasis. In Europe, one area that received special attention was Sufi mystical poetry (e.g., Reynold Alleyne Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Mysticism, 1921; and Louis Massignon’s highly eccentric and largely discredited study La passion d’al-Hallaj martyr mystique de l’Islam, 1925). In 1925, the British Arabist D. Samuel Margoliouth disputed the authenticity of pre-Islamic poetry, the cornerstone of the traditional canon of Arabic literature (“Origins of Arabic Poetry,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society [1925]: 417–49). The next year, the Egyptian academic, critic, and author Taha Husayn published his controversial work Fi al-shi^r al-jahili (“On Pre-Islamic Poetry,” 1926), a far more elaborate study that not only contested the origins of pre-Islamic poetry but also questioned the integrity of the Qur#an. The reliability of 8th-century transmitters and collectors of pre-Islamic poetry had long been held suspect, even in the Middle Ages, but no one had suggested that the entire pre-Islamic corpus needed to be reevaluated. Because of the book’s religious implications, it was immediately banned (later to be republished with considerable revisions). Husayn was tried, though not convicted, on charges of apostasy. Husayn approached every topic with gusto and bombast. Few current scholars of Arabic poetry now agree with Husayn’s absolutist iconoclasm,

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although most would admit that it is impossible to determine how much of the pre-Islamic corpus is genuine. Rather than the specific thesis of Fi al-shi^r al-jahili, it was Husayn’s willingness to question received wisdom that had lasting impact, particularly on Arab critics. Taha Husayn was not alone in being both a critic and a litterateur: interpretation and reinterpretation of the classical Arab-Islamic heritage was a cultural project in which artists, poets, academics, and professionals all participated (see David Semah, Four Egyptian Literary Critics, 1974). Some prominent contributors included the Egyptian cultural historian Ahmad AMIN, the Egyptian critic Shawqi Dayf, and the Palestinian critic Ihsan ^ABBAS. By mid-century, Arab critics had begun to experiment in surprising ways. The Egyptian academic and feminist author Suhayr al-Qalamawi wrote one of the first serious Arabic studies of “The Thousand and One Nights” (Alf layla wa-layla, 1943). The Egyptian critic Muhammad al-Nuwayhi applied psychological criticism to the works of one of the most famous ^Abbasid poets in Nafsiyyat Abi Nuwas (“The Psychology of Abu Nuwas,” 1953). Muhammad Ghunaymi Hilal, another prominent Egyptian critic of the 1950’s, introduced comparative literature as an approach to classical Arabic literature, in particular, in comparison with Persian literature. The Egyptian intellectual and chief ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood, alSayyid Qutb, in his 30-volume exegesis of the Qur^an (Fi zilal al-Qur#an, “In the Shade of the Qur^an” [1966, numerous reprints]), offered sophisticated literary insights in the context of a traditional genre of Islamic scholarship. After World War II, Western scholarship changed in two major ways. First, a significant number of European scholars immigrated to the United States, where Middle Eastern studies began to flourish. Second, interpretive studies of specific aspects of Arabic literature began to replace general, descriptive surveys. Examples include Charles Pellat’s seminal study of the 9th-century essayist al-Jahiz, Le milieu basrien et la formation de Yâhiz,1953; and, a bit later, Andras Hamori’s formalist study, On the Art of Medieval Arabic Literature, 1974; and generic surveys, such as Lois Giffen, Theory of Profane Love Among the Arabs, 1971; and Gregor Schoeler, Arabische Naturdichtung, 1974. The literature of al-Andalus, often considered derivative by Arab critics, received much attention from Western Arabists, who were especially interested in possible Arab-Islamic influence on medieval European conceptions of ‘courtly love’ and the troubadour tradition (Angel González Palencia, Historia de la literatura arábigo-española, 1945; Alois R. Nykl, Hispano-Arabic Poetry and its Relations with the Old Provençal Troubadors, 1946). The publication of the Palestinian-American academic Edward Said’s unabashedly polemical and provocative Orientalism (1978) proved to be an-

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other pivotal moment in the development of Arabic studies in the 20th century. The thesis of Orientalism is that European scholarly, literary, and artistic representations of the ‘orient’ (the Arab world especially) came to constitute a hegemonic discourse that both legitimized and participated in European imperialist projects in the Middle East. It should be noted that Orientalism touches only tangentially on studies of Arabic literature, but as a general indictment of Western scholarship on the Middle East, it prompted much soul-searching and questioning of assumptions. Now considered a foundational text of post-colonialist criticism, Orientalism still inspires bitter controversy (see Maxime Rodinson, La fascination de l’Islam, 1980, a critical review of orientalist scholarship from a Marxist perspective; and a recent, caustic critique of Said: Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 2006). E. Recent Trends The influence of Orientalism has been felt in several ways in Arabic studies. Not only has it forced scholars in a variety of fields, including Arabic literature, to re-evaluate the history of European scholarship on the Middle East and Islam, but it has also raised the question of intellectual agency: how can Western scholars free themselves from the established Orientalist discourse and its Eurocentric premises? One response to this question has been to create a shared scholarly space in an attempt to integrate more Arab scholars into Western academic institutions. Taha Husayn and many of his contemporaries were also ‘cross-over’ scholars in a sense, forming bridges between European and Arabic intellectual communities, but the bulk of their publications were in Arabic, composed for an Arab readership. Now, in Western Europe and especially in the United States, Arabic literature is increasingly interpreted and taught by Arab scholars who publish in both Arabic and European languages. It could be argued that this solution does not fully address the problem of Eurocentrism, in that Arab scholars are still required to relate to the West on its own terms. Be that as it may, ‘cross-over’ scholars have played a key role in facilitating dialogue. With the influx of Arab scholars in the West, Arabic literary studies have experienced a shift in emphasis from the medieval heritage to modern literature. More often than not, early 20th-century literary histories treated Arabic literature as a fixed medieval corpus. The widespread study of modern Arabic literature has led to a breakdown in the perceived barrier between medieval and modern traditions. Many scholars work in both fields. One recent and innovative survey, Roger Allen’s The Arabic Literary Heritage (1998), begins with a polemical challenge to traditional periodization, and is organ-

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ized according to a generic scheme that explores continuities between medieval and modern Arabic literature. Similarly, the new Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature (ed. Julie Meisami and Paul Starkey, 1998) includes entries on both medieval and modern Arabic literature. The latest volume of The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature (Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period, ed. Roger Allen, 2006) examines literary production during ^Asr al-inhiittat, the supposed ‘Dark Age’ that has, in the past, been understudied. Arabic Studies in the West have been slow to incorporate contemporary literary theory. Philological, historical-biographical, and belletrist studies still abound, but since the 1980’s, formalist approaches have prevailed. The profound influence of structuralism, especially, is evident in the frequency of such terms as ‘poetics’ and ‘structural analysis’ in the titles of modern studies. In many cases, structuralist (and post-structuralist) analyses have contributed new perspectives on old topics and debates (prominent examples include Ferial Ghazoul, The Arabian Nights: A Structural Analysis, 1980 [later revised and expanded as Nocturnal Poetics: The Arabian Nights in Comparative Context, 1996]; Fedwa Malti-Douglas, Structures of Avarice: The Bukhala’ in Medieval Arabic Literature, 1985; Abdelfattah Kilito, L’auteur et ses doubles: essai sur la culture arabe classique, 1985; and Stefan Sperl, Mannerism in Arabic Poetry, 1989). Western literary theory has had significant impact on scholarship in the Arab world, predominantly through the influence of Western-educated Arab scholars, but it is also from the Arab world that some radical revisions and re-interpretations of Western theory have emerged. In this respect, the avant-garde Syrian poet and critic Adunis (also: Adonis, the pen-name of ^Ali Ahmad Sa^id) has proven to be one of the most original and challenging modern critics of the Arabic poetic tradition (works include Al-Thabit wa-al-mutahawwil [“The Static and the Dynamic”], 3 vols., 1974; and Muqaddima li-al-shi^r al-^arabi, 1986 [translated as An Introduction to Arab Poetics, trans. by Catherine Cobham, 1990]). Medieval literary criticism and rhetorical theory have long been of interest to Arab scholars (e.g. Muhammad Mandur, al-Naqd al-manhaji ^ind alArab [“Systematic Criticism among the Arabs, 1948]; Ihsan ^Abbas, Tarikh alnaqd al-adabi ^ind al-^Arab [“The History of Literary Criticism among the Arabs,” 1971]; and Kamal Abu Deeb, Al-Jurjani’s Theory of Poetic Imagery, 1976). Although Vincente Cantarino’s Arabic Poetics in the Golden Age, 1975, and Wolfhart Heinrich’s “Literary Theory: The Problem of Its Efficiency” (in Arabic Poetry: Theory and Development, ed. G.E. von Grunebaum, 1973, 19–69) represent two fairly early European studies, Western interest in medieval poetics largely coincided with the rising theoretical awareness of the 1980’s and 1990s (e.g., G. J. H. van Gelder, Beyond the Line: Classical Arabic

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Literary Critics on the Coherence and Unity of the Poem, 1982; Suzanne P. Stetkevych, Abu Tammam and the Poetics of the ^Abbasid Age, 1991; and Margaret Larkin, The Theology of Meaning: ‘Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani’s Theory of Discourse, 1995). Select Bibliography Among the most important developments in the study of medieval Arabic literature is a new disruption of traditional assumptions regarding canon. Classical prose, traditionally overshadowed by poetry, has received more notice (see Stefan Leder and Hilary Kilpatrick, “Classical Arabic Prose Literature: a Researchers’ Sketch Map,” Journal of Arabic Literature 23 [1992]: 2–26), as have formerly taboo subjects, such as homoerotic literature (Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Literature, ed. Jerry W. Wright and Everett K. Rowson, 1997). Contemporary scholars have begun to explore areas almost wholly ignored by medieval critics and anthologists, such as popular drama and theater (Shmuel Moreh, Live Theatre and Dramatic Literature in the Medieval Arabic World, 1992) and folk-epics (see Dwight Reynolds’s study of the modern epic tradition, Heroic Poets, Poetic Heroes: The Ethnography of Performance in an Arabic Oral Epic Tradition, 1995; and M. C. Lyons, The Arabian Epic, 3 vols., 1995). Alf layla wa-layla, the object of so much European fascination, now enjoys serious study from Arab scholars as well (in addition to works mentioned above: Muhsin MAHDI’s critical edition, The Thousand and One Nights (Alf layla wa-layla) from the Earliest Known Sources, 2 vols., 1984; and Muhsin Jasim MUSAWI, Mujtama^ Alf layla wa-layla [“The Society of the Thousand and One Nights”], 2000). Compositions in colloquial dialects have also received more attention, especially the zajal, a form of popular strophic poetry that developed in al-Andalus that has become the center of a modern debate over Arabic and European cultural influences in Muslim Spain (see Samuel Stern, Hispano-Arabic Strophic Poetry, 1974; Federico Corriente, El Cancionero hispanoárabe, 1984; and James T. Monroe, “Which Came First, the Zajal or the Muwa ˇs ˇsaha?” Oral Tradition 4 [1989]: 38–64).

Mark Pettigrew

Archeology and History of Art in Pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia A. Historical Introduction During late antiquity, the vast area corresponding to Iran and Central Asia was very different from its present composition not only from the political point of view but also ethnically and culturally. In fact, before the coming of Islam, the territory from Mesopotamia to the border with China was inhabited by Iranian-speaking peoples who professed local forms of a religion commonly known as Zoroastrianism (or Mazdeism) and whose holy scripts

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are collected in the Avesta. In modern political terms, that area covered the territories of Iran (or Persia), Afghanistan, the ex-Soviet republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kirgizistan and southern Kazakhstan and also some parts of the Uighur Autonomous Province of Xinjiang (China) corresponding to the Tarim Basin (the “Western Regions” of Chinese authors). The Tarim Basin was inhabited by Iranians in Khotan and Tumshuk, and also by Tokharians (a population related to Indo-European peoples): they all adopted Buddhism and left important artistic and literary traces before the coming of the Uighur Turks and islamization. The Amu Darja (or Oxus for the Greeks) always constituted a natural border between the area traditionally controlled by Persia and Transoxiana, that is to say, the land beyond the Oxus or, for the Arab authors, Ma Wara al-Nahr (“what is beyond the river”). Persia constituted certainly the main state entity ruled by the powerful Sasanian Dynasty (226–642) that was continuously at war with the RomanByzantine Empire on the western border and the nomads along its oriental fringes (Touraj Daryaee, “Sasanian Persia (ca. 224–651 C.E.),” Iranian Studies 31, 3–4 (1998): 431–61; Touraj Daryaee, Sasanian Iran (224–651 CE): Portrait of a Late Antique Empire, 2008; Touraj Daryaee, Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire, 2009; Richard Nelson Frye, “The Political History of Iran under the Sasanians,” The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 3 (1): The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods, ed. Eshan Yarshater, 1986, 116–80; Michael Moroni, “Sasanians,” The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. IX, ed. Clifford Edmund Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W. P. Heinrichs, and G. Lecomte, 1997, 70–83; Klaus Schippmann, Grundzüge der Geschichte des Sasanidischen Reiches, 1990; Joseph Wiesenhöfer, La Persia antica, 2003; Beate Dignas and Engelbert Winter, Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity: Neighbours and Rivals, 2007). The Central Asian regions mentioned above represent historico-geographical terms rather than political ones and, in fact, they have never been unified as it happened for Persia. For some time the Sasanians controlled part of Central Asian such as Margiana (in modern Turkmenistan), Bactriana-Tokharestan (between southern Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and northern Afghanistan) and Sogdiana (between southern Uzbekistan and western Tajikistan), but, apparently, not Chorasmia (corresponding to the Autonomous Region of Karakalapkistan, in northern Uzbekistan) although they were continuously open to the invasions of the nomads coming from the steppe. Archeological investigations in the first two regions have revealed a strong presence of Buddhism, too, while Chorasmia and Sogdiana mainly followed the local form of Zoroastrianism (exactly like in Persia). The invasions of the mysterious Kidarites and Hephtalites from the steppes from the 4th to the 6th

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centuries caused great loss to the Sasanian Empire which managed to re-conquer those oriental territories only during the reign of Khosrow I Anoshirwan (531–579) (Frantz Grenet, “Regional Interaction in Central Asia and Northwest India in the Kidarite and Hephtalite Periods,” Indo-Iranian Languages and People, ed. Nicholas Sims-Williams, 2002, 203–24). This Sasanian sovereign was Justinian’s main antagonist and also the initiator of a sort of “Persian Renaissance.” He not only started a series of fiscal and monetary reforms in order to give stability to the kingdom but also secured the frontiers by continuously fighting the Sasanians’ main enemies along the western and the eastern borders (Andrea Gariboldi, Il regno di Xusraw dall’anima immortale: Riforme economiche e rivolte sociali nell’Iran sasanide del VI secolo, 2006). His apogee was reached with the victory over the Hepthalites, achieved together with his new allies, the Western Turks, who soon turned into yet another menace for Persia. The Turks controlled most of Central Asia and, in the end, conquered also Bactriana-Tokharestan. The hegemony over Sogdiana allowed the Turks to control the so-called “Silk Road” since the Sogdian merchants were the main traders active on the caravan routes between Persia and China (Étienne De La Vaissière, Histoire des merchands sogdiens, 2002). During the war with Byzantium for the control of the caravan and maritime trade routes, Khosrow I even extended a Sasanian protectorate over Yemen (Janos Harmatta, “The Struggle for the ‘Silk Route’ Between Iran, Byzantium and the Türk Empire from 560 to 630 A.D,” Kontakte zwischen Iran, Byzanz und der Steppe im 6.–7. Jahrhundert, ed. Csanád Bálint, 2000, 249–52; Paul Yule, Himyar: Late Antique Yemen, 2007, 45–55) while most of the eastern Arabian Peninsula was already under his jurisdiction (Derek Kennet, “The Decline of Eastern Arabia in the Sasanian Period,” Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy, 18.1 [2007]: 86–122). With the coming of the Tang Dynasty (618–906), the whole of the Turkish domain soon fell into Chinese hands while Khosrow II Parvez (590–628) could extend the Sasanian Empire at the maximum of its length invading Byzantine and Turkish territories on both western and eastern fronts. Initially his relationships with the Byzantines were good since Emperor Maurice (582–602) had helped him against the rebel general Bahram Chobin between 590–91. After the assassination of Maurice and his family by the rebel Phocas (602–610), Khosrow II invaded the Byzantine Empire with two armies led by the Sasanian generals Shahvaraz and Shahin who directed themselves towards Egypt and Anatolia respectively, although the sources are very enigmatic on this point (Matteo Compareti, “Presenza sasanide in Africa,” Intorno all’iranica fenice/samand: un progetto di sintesi per il volo del Pegaso iranico tra Ponto, Alessandretta e Insulindia, ed. Gianroberto Scarcia and Matteo

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Compareti, 2003, 39–51, for an electronic version in English see http:// www.transoxiana.com.ar/0104/sasanians.html). He also sought to annex to Persia the Lakhmid kingdom (southern Iraq), after the imprisonment and execution of its last king: al-Numan III (Daniel T. Potts, The Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, vol. II, 1990, 252–53). In the meantime, the Sasanian general of Armenian origins Sambat defeated the enemies of Persia in the east incorporating into the Sasanian Empire the regions which had once belonged to the Hephtalites and Turks (called in Armenian sources indistinctively Kushans). The enthronement of Heraclius (610–641) at Byzantium produced some changes in the conduction of the war against the Sasanians and, in fact, peace was declared after the assassination of Khosrow II by one of his sons in 628. In that period, the borderline between the two empires was established more or less as it was before the long war which had exhausted both antagonists. After the death of Khosrow II no other Sasanian Emperor could rule on a unified territory until the enthronement of Yazdigard III (632–651) who, however, was defeated by the Arabs and forced to abandon Persia. The last representatives of the Sasanians lived exiled at the Tang court where they were received friendly by the Chinese Emperor (Matteo Compareti, “The Last Sasanians in China,” Eurasian Studies, II/2 [2003]: 197–213). The relatively quick invasion of the Arabs in Persia and Transoxiana between the 7th and 8th centuries radically changed the cultures of those regions which slowly started to be converted to Islam and became almost completely turcized (Parvaneh Pourshariati, Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran, 2007). Such historical facts are now well-known especially regarding Sogdiana (Yuri Karev, Samarcande et le Sughd au début de l’Islam (VIIe–IXe siècle): histoire politique et transformations sociales, forthcoming). With the islamization of Iranian lands local authors also started to write about their ancient history which could be reconstructed mainly through external sources, the archeological investigation and the study of numismatics (Carlo G. Cereti, “Primary Sources for the History of Inner and Outer Iran in the Sasanian Period,” Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 9 [1995–1997]: 17–71). B. Art History and Archeological Investigation Despite the scarcity of direct written sources, the artistic production of Iran under the Sasanians and pre-Islamic Central Asia is quite well-known for different reasons. The history of research has been magisterially presented by L. Vanden Berghe, regarding Sasanian monuments, and by S. Gorshenina and C. Rapin for Central Asia (Luis Vanden Berghe, “Historique de la découverte et de la recherche,” Catalogue Bruxelles, 1993, 13–18; Svetlana

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Gorshenina and Claude Rapin, De Kaboul à Samarcande: Les arquélogues en Asie centrale, 2001). Monumental rock reliefs and architectural remains particularly concentrated in the region of Fars (south-western Iran) constitute undeniable evidence of the grandeur of Iran under the Sasanians (Remy Boucharlat, “L’architecture sassanide,” Catalogue Paris, 2006, 47–50; Luis Vanden Berghe, “La sculpture,” Catalogue Bruxelles, 1993, 71–88; E. Haerinck, “Les reliefs rupestres,” Catalogue Paris, 2006, 35–8; Dietrich Huff, “Architecture sassanide,” Catalogue Bruxelles, 1993, 45–61). Unfortunately, most of the relics newly found in Iran come from fortuitous recoveries or from the antiquary market and not from scientific excavations which have come to a stop after the Revolution of 1979 and have only very recently started to be reconsidered by local archeologists. On the other hand, the remarkable pieces of information about Central Asia in Late Antiquity are mostly due to archeological activity which continued practically uninterrupted from the Soviet period to present days. An enormous amount of publications on such topics has already been presented and this is not the place to reconsider them in detail. Here, all we can do is mention some important titles. Furthermore, two great European exhibitions in 1993 (Catalogue Bruxelles, 1993: Splendeur des Sassanides. L’empire perse entre Rome at la Chine [224–642], curator Bruno Overlaet) and 2006 (Catalogue Paris, 2006: Les Perses sassanides. Fastes d’un empire oublié [224–642], curator Françoise Demange) have been entirely dedicated to the Sasanians and, especially, to their artistic production. The bibliography given in those two catalogues should be integrated with excellent entries published in the Encyclopaedia Iranica by Dietrich Huff (“Archaeology. iv. Sasanian,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. II, 1987, 302–8; Dietrich Huff, “Architecture. iii. Sasanian,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. II, 1987, 329–34) and Prudence Oliver Harper (“Art in Iran. v. Sasanian,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. II, 1987, 585–94), although something more can now be added both from the point of view of monumental and minor arts. In fact, a new Sasanian rock relief attributed to Shapur I (241–72), has recently been discovered at Rag-e Bibi, in western Afghanistan (Frantz Grenet, “Nouvelles découvertes sur la période sassanide en Afghanistan,” L’art d’Afghanistan de la préhistoire à nos jours. Nouvelles donnais, 2007 85–94) and also some new pieces of Sasanian stone statues and figurative capitals have been found in Iran (Matteo Compareti, “Iconographical Notes on Some Recent Studies on Sasanian Religious Art (with an Additional Note on an Ilkhanid Monument by Rudy Favaro),” Annali di Ca’ Foscari, XLV, 3 (2006) 163–200; Matteo Compareti, “Fragmentary Sasanian Sculptures Recently Found in Iran,” Papers in Honour of Professor Biancamaria Amoretti Scarcia’s 65th Birthday, ed. Daniela Bredi and Leonardo Capezzone, 2008, 9–19).

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Monumental art of the Sasanian period received particular attention by Iranian scholars who published remarkable studies, such as the book on ancient Iranian bridges (also those traditionally attributed to Roman prisoners) by Muhammad-Ali Mokhlessi, written in Persian (Pol-ha-ye Qadimi-e Iran [Ancient Bridges of Iran], 1998). Massoud Azarnoush managed to publish the results of several studies which had been initiated before the Revolution in Iran. Two of the most interesting publications are dedicated to the excavations of Hajiabad (The Sasanian Manor House at Hajiabad, Iran, 1994) and the monumental temple of Kangavar (Massoud Azarnoush, “Kangavar: Un temple séleucide d’Anahita deviant un monument sassanide,” Dossiers d’archéologie. Empires perses: d’Alexandre aux Sassanides, 243 (1999), 52–53). An important volume which comprises a list of the caravanserais in Iran, in some cases, also dated to the Sasanian period, has been compiled by Muhammad Y. Kyani and Wolfgang Kleiss (Iranian Caravanserais, 1994). A Polish archeological team led by Barbara Kaim recovered a sacral building which could be attributed to the Sasanian period at Mele Hayram, in the southern part of today’s Turkmenistan (“Un temple du feu sassanide découvert à Mele Hairam (Turkménistan Méridional),” Studia Iranica, 31, II, 2002, 215–30). These temples belong to the “fire temple” typology which is not yet very well-known from the archeological point of view, even though numerous hints can be found in Classical literature on Persia. Strangely enough, wallpaintings did not receive the deserved consideration in the above-mentioned catalogues although – at least according to some Classical authors – they should have had a relevant role in Sasanian art. Probably, this attitude was due to the extremely fragmentary state of all those paintings which could be attributed to the Sasanian period. The recent discovery of Sasanian wall paintings at Gor (Fars) and their first analysis by the well-known archeologist D. Huff will probably change such an attitude after their publication (Dietrich Huff, “Formation and Ideology of the Sasanian State in the Context of Archaeological Evidence,” The Sasanian Era: The Idea of Iran, vol. 3, ed. Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis and Sarah Stewart, 2008, 48–49). In any case, an excellent article by A. de Waele now provides all information on this aspect of Persian art already considered by experts like Boris Marshak (Boris I. Marshak, “Pre-Islamic Painting of the Iranian Peoples and Its Sources in Sculpture and the Decorative Arts,” Peerless Images: Persian Painting and Its Sources, ed. Eleanor Sims, with Boris I. Marshak and Ernst J. Grube, 2002, 7–19; An de Waele, “The Figurative Wall-Painting of the Sasanian Period from Iran, Iraq and Syria,” Iranica Antiqua XXXIX [2004]: 339–81). Information about Sasanian mosaics (displaying strong Hellenistic elements) can also be found in the two catalogues already mentioned. Beautiful figu-

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rative stucco panels – possibly dating from the 5th century – have been found during agricultural works in Bandyan (northern Khorasan). Despite their fragmentary state, the panels are among the most interesting Sasanian stucco ever recovered: the scenes represented there have been identified as hunts and battles against the Hephtalites (Medi Rahbar, “Découvert d’un monument d’époque sassanide à Bandian, Dargaz (Nord Khorassan). Fouilles 1994 et 1995,” Studia Iranica 27.2 [1998]: 213–50). The excavations at Bandyan have recently shown more interesting results since a fire altar and graffiti were discovered there. A field which yielded very interesting results is represented by inscribed seals and sealings (or bullae) belonging to relevant people of Sasanian upper classes although, once more, only few of them were recovered in Iran in controlled excavations around Shiraz. The best introduction to Sasanian seals was published by R. Gyselen in the two catalogues mentioned above. Recently, the same author has presented a collection of seals and sealings embellished with armored cavalrymen very similar to the one in the great grotto at Taq-e Bostan. The study of their inscriptions revealed that their owners were important military chieftains who served the Sasanian sovereigns. Written sources of the Islamic period reported about the division of the Persian Empire into four quadrants and the seals are even more important since they are contemporary to the Sasanians (R. Gyselen, The Four Generals of the Sasanian Empire: Some Sigillographic Evidence, 2001). Another aspect of Sasanian production which can partly compensate for the lack of direct sources is represented by numismatics. The investigations by R. Göbl are still valid although the project of publication of a systematic catalogue will soon give a more detailed idea of Sasanian coinage. Up to now, the catalogue focuses on the first sovereigns. M. Alram has offered a view of the situation on early Sasanians numismatics introducing also a new type of coin which shows Shapur I receiving the homage of the defeated Roman Emperor as it can be observed in his rock reliefs (Michael Alram, Maryse Blet-Lemarquand, and Prods O. Skjærvø, “Shapur, King of Iranians and Non-Iranians,” Des Indo-Grecs aux Sassanides: Données pour l’histoire et la géographie historique. Res Orientales, XVII, 2007, 11–40; M. Alram, “Early Sasanian Coinage,” The Sasanian Era: The Idea of Iran, vol. 3, ed. Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis and Sarah Stewart, 2008, 17–30). Several monuments mentioned above represent the periphery of the Sasanian Empire while, as it is now clear, the court exerted a monopoly on the production of some luxury items, exactly as it was the case in Byzantium. Metalwork always constituted an important good among ancient Iranians who used it for diplomatic exchanges, as their recovery together with the rich outfits of those peoples in contact with the Sasanians, Bactrians and Sogdians, seems to suggest. Once

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more, archeological excavations can rarely give an idea of the Sasanian central production. The main collections of Sasanian metalwork and also the list of those few plates recovered during archeological excavations are collected now in a richly-illustrated article by Prudence Oliver Harper, certainly the main scholar in the field of ancient Persian toreutic (“Sasanian Silver Vessels: The Formation and Study of Early Museum Collection,” Mesopotamia and Iran in the Parthian and Sasanian Periods: Rejection and Revival c. 238 BC-AD 642: Proceedings of a Seminar in Memory of V. G. Lukonin, ed. John Curtis, 2000, 46–56). Most likely, textile manufactures were also directly controlled by the court but we do not yet have a clear idea about Sasanian taste since all the previous studies were based on the observation of the repertoire at Taq-e Bostan which, unfortunately, cannot be considered a typical Sasanian monument (Karel Otavsky, “Zur kunsthistorische Einordnung der Stoffe,” Entlang der Seidenstraße: Frühmittelalterliche Kunst zwischen Persien und China in der Abegg Stiftung, ed. Karel Otavsky, 1998, 119–214). From the iconographical point of view just one linen and wool fragment kept in the Benaki Museum (Athens) could be considered Sasanian, although, once more, it is a textile coming from the antiquary market (Matteo Compareti, “A Possible asanian Textile Fragment in the Benaki Museum (Athens),” Scritti in Onore di Giovanni M. D’Erme, ed. Michele Bernardini and Natalia Tornesello, 2005 289–302; Matteo Compareti, “Sasanian Textile Art: An Iconographic Approach,” Studies on Persianate Societies 3 [2005]: 143–63. See also: David H. Bivar, “Sasanian Iconography on Textiles and Seals,” Central Asian Textiles and Their Contexts in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Regula Schorta, 2006, 9–21). Unfortunately, the few data about Sasanian potteries which had to rely on Japanese excavations at Daylaman (Northern Iran, see: Namio Egami, Shinji Fukai, and Seiichi Masuda, Dailaman, vol. II, 1966; Toshihiko Sono and Shinji Fukai, Dailaman, vol. III, 1968), French ones at Susa (Miriam Rosen-Ayalon, La poterie islamique, 1974) and Italian ones at Ctesiphon (in Iraq, not far from Baghdad, see: Roberta Venco Ricciardi, “Pottery from Choche,” Mesopotamia 2 (1967): 93–104; Roberta Venco Ricciardi, “Sasanian Pottery from Tell Mahuz (North Mesopotamia),” Mesopotamia 5/6 [1970–1971]: 427–82) did not help much and their analysis still only shows partial results (Robert Wenke, “Imperial Investments and Agricultural Developments in Parthian and Sasanian Khuzestan: 150 BC to AD 640,” Mesopotamia 10/11 [1975/1976]: 31–221; John Alden, “Excavations at Tal-i Malyan. Part I. A Sasanian Kiln,” Iran 16 [1978]: 79–86; Maurer Trinkaus, “Pottery from the Damghan Plain, Iran: Chronology and Variability from the Parthian to the Early Islamic Periods,” Studia Iranica 15.1 [1986]: 23–88).

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In conclusion, in accordance with what P. Harper and G. Scarcia have recently said about Sasanian art, there was never a rupture between the past and the artistic production of Late Antiquity Iran (Prudence Oliver Harper, In Search of a Cultural Identity: Monuments and Artifacts of the Sasanian Near East, 3rd to 7th Century AD, 2006; Prudence Oliver Harper, “Image and Identity: Art of the Early Sasanian Dynasty,” The Sasanian Era. The Idea of Iran, vol. 3, ed. Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis and Sarah Stewart, 2008, 71–87; Gianroberto Scarcia, “La Persia dagli Achemenidi ai Sasanidi 550 a.C.–650 d.C.,” Gianroberto Scarcia and Giovanni Curatola, Iran: L’arte persiana, 2004, 9–125). On the contrary, monumental art and also minor arts continued and renewed ancient Iranian traditions already known by the Parthians (and rooted in the much more ancient culture of Mesopotamia) with the clear borrowings of Roman-Byzantine elements, especially in the last part of the Sasanian period. This has been observed by some scholars some of which have come to very curious conclusions: Philip Lozinsky, for example, even claimed that Sasanian art did not exist at all (“The Phoenix Mosaic from Antioch: a New Interpretation,” Fifth International Colloquium on Ancient Mosaics, 1995, 135–42). As it is now well-known, Sasanian culture exerted a deep influence on the whole artistic production of the Islamic world and had an echo also in Byzantium, “barbaric” Europe and the Caucasus (Klaus Schippmann, “L’influence de la culture sassanide,” Catalogue Bruxelles, 1993, 131–41). Among the typical Sasanian elements which received great attention abroad, one should mention the so-called Senmurv or “winged dog with peacock tail.” According to most recent investigations such a composite monster would instead represent the royal glory of the Sasanians bestowed by Ahura Mazda (Matteo Compareti, “The So-Called Senmurv in Iranian Art: A Reconsideration of an Old Theory,” Loquentes linguis: Linguistic and Oriental Studies in Honour of Fabrizio A. Pennacchietti, ed. Pier Giorgio Borbone, Alessandro Mengozzi, and Mauro Tosco, 2006, 185–200). In fact, as an expression of a divine concept, it was later largely adopted by Muslims and Byzantines, too. Another typical Sasanian decorative element mainly used as a pedestal supporting human busts or other subjects is the beribboned spread wings. Scholars have concentrated especially on its origins and on the fact that, most likely, it is a borrowing or a development of something which pre-dates the Sasanians. On the crowns of Sasanians sovereigns and in some other places (like on the textile of the Benaki Museum), spread wings are used to support astronomical elements: this is particularly clear in the coins (Andrea Gariboldi, “Astral Symbology on Iranian Coinage,” East and West 54.1–4 (2004): 31–53. Among the Christians of the Sasanian Empire, especially concentrated in the Caucasus, beribboned spread wings very often

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support the cross. This suggests that, most likely, the astronomical elements on Sasanian crowns could be associated with the Zoroastrian religion followed at court (M. Compareti, “Tra il Palatino e Limburgo: considerazioni su alcune stele armene di età pre-islamica,” Acculturazione e Disadattamento, ed. Daniele Guizzo, forthcoming 2009). Regarding the situation in Central Asia at the dawn of the Arab invasion, the archeological data mostly relate to Sogdiana while Margiana, BactriaTokharistan, Chorasmia and the Tarim Basin are better known during earlier periods. Cooperation of local archeological teams with Russian, French, Italian, German, Japanese and Australian colleagues will certainly (and hopefully) result in interesting findings which, at least at the moment, mainly focus on the period between the end of the Parthian and the beginning of Sasanian dominion. In any case, the best publication still remains a collective study (in Russian) by several scholars who have worked on the field since the 1950s (Srednjaja Azija i Dal’nij Vostok v epohu Srednevekovyja: Srednjaja Azija v rannem srednevekov’e, 1999). This volume should be consulted together with related entries in the Encyclopaedia Iranica (Guitty Azarpay, “Art in Iran. vi. Pre-Islamic Eastern Iran and Central Asia,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. II, 1987, 595–603; Victor M. Masson, “Archaeology. v. Pre-Islamic Central Asia,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. II, 1987, 308–17; Galina A. Pugachenkova, “Architecture. iv. Central Asia,” Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol. II, 1987, 334–39) and with Boris A. Litvinskij’s most recent book in French (La civilisation de l’Asie Centrale antique, 1998). The results of French excavations mainly in Uzbekistan together with papers by Russian authors are now collected in a great volume (Les arts de l’Asie centrale, gen. ed. Pierre Chuvin, 1999). More curious readers can find a great selection of Central Asian sites and topics organized as entries in an excellent Italian publication edited by Ciro Lo Muzio, the Enciclopedia dell’arte antica classica ed orientale. Secondo supplemento 1971–1994. Central Asian paintings have also been carefully studied in a more recent Italian volume with special focus on the Sogdian production (Chiara Silvi Antonini, La pittura dell’Asia Centrale da Alessandro Magno all’Islam, 2003). Bamyan was certainly one of the main Buddhist centers of today’s Afghanistan, and Sasanian elements can be observed especially in paintings which were, unfortunately, lost in great number (Deborah Klimburg-Salter, The Kingdom of Bamyan, 1989). In the area where the great Buddhas once stood, very promising archeological excavations have started under the coordination of Z. Tarzi, Afghanistan’s main archeologist whose expertise also comprises the study of Chinese sources on Bamyan (Zemaryalai Tarzi, “Les résultats des fouilles du ‘monastère oriental’ à la fin de la IIIe campagne en 2004,” L’art d’Afghanistan de la préhistoire à nos jours: Nouvelles

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donnais, 2007, 98–124). A complete catalogue of items from the National Museum of Kabul is now available (Francine Tissot, Catalogue of the National Museum of Afghanistan 1931–1985, 2006). Many old pictures constitute an invaluable help to observe even those objects now irreparably destroyed during the terrible last years in the history of that tormented country. Sogdiana main sites dating from the 7th and 8th centuries are Penjikent (Western Tajikistan), Afrasyab (ancient Samarkand), Varakhsha and Paykand (not far from Bukhara). Unfortunately, the recent passing away of the two leaders of the archeological mission at Penjikent and Paykand and distinguished scholars, B. I. Marshak and G. L. Semenov, caused not only a loss for the whole scholarly community, but also a stop in the field work, which, as it has recently been announced, will be continued by another team of archeologists. Penjikent has received the name of “Pompei of Central Asia,” especially for the numerous wall paintings discovered there whose main scenes represent Rostam legendary adventures, religious scenes and also tales from Esopos’s repertoire and the Panchatantra (Boris I. Marshak, Legends, Tales, and Fables in the Art of Sogdiana, 2002). The site of Paykand, in the western part of historical Sogdiana, has been studied especially from the urban and architectural point of view although some paintings belonging to different periods have been recovered (Gregori L. Semenov, “Dwelling Houses of Bukhara in the Early Middle Ages,” Eran ud Aneran. Studies presented to Boris I. Marshak on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday, ed. Matteo Compareti, Paola Raffetta, and Gianroberto Scarcia, 2006, 555–69, for the electronic version see http://www.transoxiana.org/EranArticles/semenov.html). Not far from Bukhara there is the big site of Varakhsha, possibly a fortified mansion of the Bukhar Khudat (“Lord of Bukhara”) during the pre-Islamic period. There, archeological investigations have not been carried out for a long period of time which is a pity, bearing in mind the remarkable findings of the last century. Very recently, A. Naymark wrote a stimulating paper on the site and suggested a new interpretation of its wall paintings (Aleksandr Naymark, “Returning to Varakhsha,” The Silk Road Newsletter, 1/2 (2003): 9–22, for the electronic version see http://silkroadfoundation.org/newsletter/december/ varakhsha. htm). Among the sites of that region, Afrasyab has probably received the greatest attention by scholars of Sogdian art in the last years since new studies reopened the problem of the interpretation of the scenes represented on the walls of the so-called “Hall of the Ambassadors.” As it is now almost universally accepted, the four walls represent important festivities connected with calendrical matters of the Sogdians, Chinese, Indians and, possibly, Turks. The artists who realized those paintings, probably around 660 AD, must clearly have had in mind concepts about calendrical calcu-

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lation and the culture of neighboring kingdoms in contact with Sogdiana just before the coming of the Arabs, when the whole of Transoxiana was (mainly nominally) under Tang protectorate. Several papers on Afrasyab “Hall of the Ambassadors” are now collected in the proceedings of a conference focusing on those paintings (Royal Nauruz in Samarkand: Proceedings of the Conference Held in Venice on the Pre-Islamic Paintings at Afrasiab, Suppl. 1 to Rivista degli Studi Orientali LXXVIII, ed. Matteo Compareti and É de La Vaissière, 2006). It is not improbable that the Uzbek-French archeological team working on the site of Afrasyab will increase our knowledge about the site in the near future (Paul Bernard, Frantz Grenet, and Massud Isammidinov, Fouilles de Samarkand et de Sogdiane, vol. I: Travaux de la Mission Archéologique Franco-Ouzbèke à Afrasiab. 1989–2007, 2009. Other Sogdian sites are at present investigated thanks to the cooperation of local authorities and experts with foreign expeditions. A German team under the supervision of M. Mode and S. Stark is currently investigating another promising site in Ustrushana (northern Tajikistan), an historical region of Sogdian language and culture. The main focus of the mission is to come to a better understanding of the passage from the pre-Islamic to the Islamic period with great attention to Chinese sources (Markus Mode, “Archaeological Glympses of Ustrushana,” electronic version at: http://www.orientarch.uni-halle.de /sfbs86/c5/ustru/ indexe.htm). Also, an Italian mission supervised by M. Tosi is collaborating with the Uzbeks at the castle of Kafir Kala where numerous Sogdian bullae, seals and coins have been discovered in the last years. Kafir Kala is a very promising site since it might have been the residence of the king of Samarkand known in Islamic sources as Revdad. Among the numerous findings, the sealings of Kafir Kala represent a unique corpus within Central Asian archeology but, unfortunately, a complete publication is not yet available (Sara Cazzoli and Carlo G. Cereti, “The Sealings of Kafir Kala: Preliminary Report,” Ancient Civilizations from Schytia to Siberia 11.1–2 (2005): 133–64). A presentation of the project and its goals can be found on the following website: http://www3.unibo.it/archeologia/ricerca/scavi/caauzbekistan/ uzbe.htm. Seals, together with coins, always represent an important source of direct information. Unfortunately, their study is not as well coordinated as it is the case for Sasanian numismatics and seals. Among the few sealings one could mention Kanka, that is to say, the area of ancient Tashkent (G. I. Bogomolov and J. I. Burjakov, “Sealings from Kanka,” In the Land of the Gryphons: Papers on Central Asian Archaeology in Antiquity, ed. Antonio Invernizzi, 1995, 217–37). Studies on Central Asian coins are numerous and mainly in Russian, although some interesting papers have recently appeared in English (Joe Cribb, “Money as a Maker of Cultural Continuity and

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Change in Central Asia,” After Alexander: Central Asia before Islam, ed. Joe Cribb and Georgina Hermann, 2007, 333–75). Much attention has been devoted to Central Asian textiles mainly from private collections and antiquary markets. Many specimens are considered to be Sogdian products since very similar decorations appear on the robes worn by Sogdian people on mural paintings from Penjikent. Few fragments have been found during the excavations in Sogdiana itself while other textiles considered to be the product of Sogdian weavers who lived abroad have been found in great quantity in the Tarim Basin, in what is now Xinjiang Autonomous Province (China). The Abegg-Stiftung Textil Museum at Riggisberg (Switzerland) has on display one of the main collections of Central Asian textiles and has already published most of its material on two occasions (Entlang der Seidenstraße: Frühmittelalterliche Kunst zwischen Persien und China in der Abegg Stiftung, ed. Karel Otavsky, 1998; Central Asian Textiles and Their Contexts in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Regula Schorta, 2006). The region of the Tarim Basin has always been a matter of Chinese archeology although in the last years there have been some initiatives by European and Japanese teams. Among the most interesting results there are the excavations by a Swiss team supervised by Christopher Baumer which led to the discovery of previously unknown 7th-century Buddhist wall paintings at Dandan Oylyk, in the area of ancient Khotan. Those paintings are particularly interesting for the mix of local, Indian, and Iranian (most likely Sogdian) iconographical elements used in the depiction of some problematic divinities (Christopher Baumer, Southern Silk Road: In the Footsteps of Sir Aurel Stein and Sven Hedin, 2000). Even though the artifacts in the huge area corresponding to Central Asia mainly come from scientific excavations, there is still a big gap in the comprehension of that region as a whole unity. Future investigations might facilitate a different approach to the study of one of the most important regions of the Eurasian continent for its role as a crossroad of cultures and civilizations during the very problematic period of late antiquity. In the last years some publications devoted to Tarim Basin archeological investigations have appeared, but the presentation of the material is almost entirely in Chinese (A Grand View of Xinjiang’s Cultural Relics and Historical Sites, 1999). Among the most interesting archeological discoveries of the last years one must not forget to mention the 6th-century funerary monuments that belonged to important Sogdians which have been found in the area around Xi’an (China). Although they reflect in all probability the production of Chinese artists for rich Sogdian immigrants, their decorative elements include many Zoroastrian themes extremely useful for the understanding of similar images found in Central Asia. Further, they present in many cases inscrip-

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tions in Chinese and the respective languages of the deceased ones revealing more interesting information (Les Sogdiens en Chine, ed. Éric Trombert and É. de La Vaissière, 2005; Boris I. Marshak, “La thématique sogdienne dans l’art de la Chine de la seconde moitié du VIe siècle,” Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 1 (2001): 227–64; Judith A. Lerner, Aspects of Assimilation: The Funerary Practices and Furnishings of Central Asians in China, 2005). The site where they were found used to be, most likely, a cemetery for foreigners: more than forty graves have been localized, and future investigations will surely offer fresh material for the study of ancient Central Asian civilizations in contact with China in late antiquity. Select Bibliography Guitty Azarpay, Sogdian Painting: The Pictorial Epic in Oriental Art (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1981); History of Civilizations of Central Asia, vol. II: The Development of Sedentary and Nomadic Civilizations: 700 BC to AD 250, ed. János Harmatta (Paris: Unesco, 1994); History of Civilizations of Central Asia, vol. III: The Crossroads of Civilizations: AD 250 to 750, ed. Boris Litvinsky (Paris: Unesco, 1996); Les Perses sassanides: Fastes d’un empire oublié (224–642), Françoise Demange (curator) (Paris: Paris Musée: Suilly-la-Tour and Findakly, 2006); Splendeur des Sassanides: L’Empire perse entre Rome at la Chine [224–642], Bruno Overlaet (curator) (Brussels: Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, 1993); Srednjaja Azija i Dal’nij Vostok v epohu Srednevekovyja: Srednjaja Azija v rannem srednevekov’e (Moscow: Nauka, 1999); Les arts de l’Asie centrale, gen. ed. Pierre Chuvin (Paris: Citadelles et Mazenod, 1999); Emires Perses d’Alexandre aux Sassanides, Dossiers d’Archéologie, 243, may 1999.

Matteo Compareti

Classical Persian Literature A. General Introduction Classical Persian literature only developed as a written medium in the 10th century C.E. Pahlavi or Middle Persian had been the written language of the Sasanian Empire. However, when the Arabs conquered its territories in the 7th century C.E., written Pahlavi was only maintained by the Zoroastrian clergy and by clerks and scribes employed by the Arabs to maintain the state records. For more than two hundred years, the Persian literary tradition ceased, as Persian writers wrote in Arabic. During this two hundred year hiatus, numerous Persian works from different genres were translated into Arabic.

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A slow process of Arabization and Islamization took place after the Arab conquest of Persia. Arabic vocabulary made its way into spoken Persian and gradually the Arabic script was adopted and adapted to accommodate all the sounds of Persian. Although this “New Persian” (Dari) emerged as a new medium of communication, it was not accepted as a serious alternative to Arabic, which was the lingua franca of the Islamic Empire. Arabic retained its preeminence as the major written medium. Paradoxically, the Arab conquests had played a major role in promoting this New Persian, which in the Arab East or Greater Khurasan (eastern Persia, Khurasan and Transoxiana) became the preferred language, overshadowing Sogdian and Khwarazmian. This linguistic phenomenon was initially confined to the east and it only gained currency at a much later date in western Iran. Written Persian only began to be commonly used in the second half of the 9th century in Greater Khurasan. Persian prose was deemed suitable only for propaganda and amusing stories. However, poetry was promoted and patronized at court. B. Persian Poetry The mechanics of Persian poetry strictly conformed to the rules of Arabic prosody. It can be divided into two forms: narrative and lyrical. Narrative poetry manifested itself in the form of the mathnavi (rhyming couplet), a form that was known to the Arabs but little used by them, due to their love of the monorhyme. The Persians developed this form for a number of purposes and themes, but utilized it especially for epics, romances and later, for didactic mystical works. Although mathnavis were first written in the 10th century, the most memorable mathnavis were not written until the 11th century during the Ghaznavid dynasty. Firdawsi’s Shahnama, the national epic poem of Persia, recounts the tales of the kings of Iran from the earliest times. It was completed in 1010 A.D. This was followed by Asadi Tusi’s Garshasp-Nama and other epics. The mathnavi popularized many romances such as Warqa va Gulshah, Wis va Ramin and the famous romances popularized by Niãami (1140–1209), such as Layli va Majnun, Khusraw va Shirin and Haft Paykar. Sana’i (d. 1130) was the first to use the mathnavi as a means of mystical teaching. The use of the mathnavi by the great sufi masters became standard practice as demonstrated by Farid al-Din ’Attar’s (1140–1230) The Conference of the Birds, Jalal al-Din Rumi’s (1207–1273) famous Mathnavi, and Jami’s (d. 1492) Haft Awrang and a multitude of others. Lyric poetry began by imitating the formal ode or the qaæida of the Arabs. The qaæida was often a panegyric to a patron but was also used for eulogies, elegies, satires, and religious instruction. One of the earliest masters of the

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qa#ida was Rudaki (d. 941). The 11th century is considered the period for the perfection of the Persian qa#ida, by the master poets Manuchirhi (d. 1040), Farrukhi (d. 1038) and ’Unsuri (d. 1050). The Sufi masters Sana’i, ’Attar and Rumi also used them later for their mystical poetry. The lyric ghazal replaced the qa#ida in popularity in the 13th century. The ghazal was a monorhymed shorter ode of between 5 and 15 lines. Its theme was primarily on earthly or divine love. Sa’di (d. 1292) and Hafiz (d. 1390) both from Shiraz are considered the masters of this form. The quatrain or ruba’i (ruba’iyyat pl.) with the rhyme pattern of AABA is the only true purely Persian poetic form. It is epigrammatic and lends itself well to political satire. This form was popularized by Fitzgerald’s translations of the ruba’iyyat of ’Umar Khayyam. A much larger variety of poetic forms exist in Persian poetry but the main forms are the mathnavi, qa#ida, ghazal and ruba’i. Classical Persian poetry before the modern era produced three distinctive styles (sabk) in its development: Khurasani, ’Iraqi and Hindi. The earliest Khurasani style is distinct for it use of simple and pure language almost devoid of Arabic loan words. Cultural and linguistic borders diffused with the advent of the ’Iraqi style. Poetry acquired a new technical dexterity and artifice that utilized a greatly expanded vocabulary with many Arabic loan words. By the 15th century, the Hindi style had evolved into a very aestheticized and highly stylized form. C. Persian Prose During the Samanid period (875–999) in Greater Khurasan Persian was adopted as the official language of government. By the mid-10th century, a number of Persian translations of Arabic works were commissioned. The Ghaznavids (977–1186) succeeded the Samanids in the early 11th century. In the court of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazna (998–1030), Persian poetry flourished but Arabic prose dominated. A number of Persian histories were written during this period, such as the anonymous History of Sistan and the histories of Bayhaqi and Gardizi. Also for the first time a sufi manual, the Kashf-i Mahjub was written in Persian by Hujviri. While new Persian was adequate to tell narrative stories and to relate history, most scholars and the educated elite still found Persian inadequate to clearly and precisely articulate their ideas. Arabic remained supreme. However, early efforts were made to write scientific and philosophical works in Persian, but one of the major obstacles to this was the lack of a standardized vocabulary. The great physician and polymath Ibn Sina [Avicenna] (d. 1037) wrote the majority of his works in Arabic but he helped further the development of Persian scientific prose by writing a number of works in Persian.

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Under the Saljuq Turks (1038–1194) the Persians of the Iranian plateau, Khurasan and Transoxiana were reunited for the first time in centuries and enclaves were established in Anatolia, where Persian culture and poetry flourished at court. This political union facilitated the standardization of classical Persian in western Iran at the expense of local dialects. It also coincided with the beginnings of a period that fused Khurasani and Iraqi cultures. Persian prose borrowed anything that it could from Arabic and became very ornate and full of repetitive rhyming. With the passing of the 12th century, Persian emerged fully developed, having adopted the stratagem of allowing one hundred percent of the Arabic language to be used in prose writings. As stated earlier, in the 8th century a large number of Middle Persian works were translated into Arabic. These stories were fictional frame stories, written for the elite and were very popular at court. These stories now re-entered the body of Persian literature, slightly altered and skewed to Islamic values written in a new Persian. The most notable of this genre are the animal tales of Kalila va Dimna that were originally taken from the Sanskrit Panchatantra. Later a number of romances and heroic tales such as the Sindbad-Nama and Bakhtiyar-Nama emerged, as did collections of anecdotes such as Muhammad ’Awfi’s Jawami’ al-Hikayat. Additionally popular stories traditionally told by storytellers orally were preserved in prose and often translated into other languages such as Turkish. This article has limited itself to the classical Persian literary tradition, primarily in Persia and Central Asia. However, Persian flourished in the early period of the Ottoman Empire before the emergence of Ottoman Turkish. In the 16th century, the Mughals established themselves in India, where Persian was the court language. A very large literary tradition continued on for centuries and produced many famous poets, litterateurs and historians. British India maintained Persian as the administrative language. D. History of Research Western Scholars Critical modern scientific methodologies for the study of classical Persian literature first emerged in Europe. Unfortunately space restrictions allow only a handful of contributors to be mentioned here. Sir William Jones (1746–1794). Sir William was a brilliant philologist who studied law and then moved to British India, where he was appointed to the Supreme Court of Bengal. He is credited with being one of the first influential pioneers in comparative linguistics and Indo-European Studies. Based in Calcutta, Jones was instrumental in founding the Asiatic Society of

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Bengal in 1784. The Society exists to this day and has published thousands of articles and monographs on virtually every subject. The Society’s journal and publications provided a forum for discussion and a place to publish. The press in Calcutta published a large number of Persian works even before presses became prevalent in Persia. While Jones translated a number of Persian works into English, his major contribution to the study of Persian was the establishment of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. Edward G. Browne (1862–1926) became the first professor of Persian at Cambridge University. Prior to his appointment, he traveled to Persia to buy books and manuscripts for the university. Subsequently, he wrote the four volume Literary History of Persia (1902, 1906, 1920 and 1924), which was the first modern work of its kind. Browne’s work has remained the definitive work; however, other surveys such as those published by Jan Rypka, Allesandro Bausani and Zabih Allah. Safa have supplemented it and included new information. His study was the most comprehensive, but Browne was very subjective in some of his judgments of Persian literature. For example, later poetry was judged as being too ornate and/or florid for Western tastes. Reynold A. Nicholson (1868–1945) was a colleague of Browne at Cambridge and was noted for his interests in Islamic Studies. He specialized in Sufism. While he wrote equally on Arabic literature, including a Literary History of the Arabs (1907), in the field of Persian literature his studies of the works of Jalal al-Din Rumi are considered to be a major contribution to the field. He produced the first critical edition of the Mathnavi (1925–1940) and his eight-volume translation and commentary were the first of their kind in English. Gilbert Lazard (1920–) was a professor of Iranian languages at the Sorbonne and then the Director of Iranian Studies. He has made many major contributions to the study of Iranian languages. He has emerged as one of the world authorities on the “New Persian Renaissance.” His works on the first Persian poets of the 9th and 10th centuries were groundbreaking and his collaborations with major scholars such as Zabih Allah Safa, Henri Massé and Roger Lescot to create an anthology of Persian poetry from the 11th to the 20th centuries has been of major importance. Additionally he has translated many Persian works and revised major translations such as J. Mohl’s Shahnama (1846–1848). Iranian Scholars Four Iranian scholars pioneered modern scientific methods and began to produce critical textual editions for the first time. They were Muhammad Qazvini, Muhammad ’Ali Furughi, Sayyid Hasan Taqizada and ’Ali

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Akbar Dihkhuda. The combined scholarly contributions of these four men were enormous and built a firm foundation for scholarship. However, Qazvini was one of the prime movers. Muhammad Qazvini (1877–1949) was a ground breaker in methods of textual editing and criticism and had a major influence on these distinguished scholars: Malik al-Shu’ara’ Bahar, Badi’a al-Zaman Furuzanfar, Muhammad Taqi Mudarris Razavi, Muhammad Parvin Gunabadi and Mahmud Farrukh. In 1904, he was invited by his brother to England to see the great museums and manuscript collections. He stayed in Europe for 36 years. He edited a number of important Persian works that expanded scholars understanding of Persian poetics and the early classical literary movement. His collected articles comprised more than ten volumes. ’Abbas Iqbal (1896–1955). He was sent to Paris at the age of 28 where he studied at the Sorbonne and met Qazvini. When he returned to Iran he taught at the University of Tehran. He authored more that 200 articles and 45 books on literature, history and geography. He was instrumental in establishing Yad-i gar (1944–1949) as a serious research journal. Ibrahim Pur Daud (1886–1968) translated the Avesta (1964) in 9 volumes and researched and taught ancient Iranian customs, languages and history at the University of Tehran. A large number of outstanding scholars studied under him. Muhammad Taqi Bahar (Malik al-Shu’ara Bahar) (1886–1951) sought to research unknown areas in Persian history and literature. He was one of the best poets of 20th-century Iran but also became the most outstanding scholar of Persian literary historiography. His seminal three-volume work Stylistics (Sabk shinasi [1942]) meticulously traced the development of Persian prose writing from the earliest times up until the 20th century. Bahar’s study essentially documents the evolution of the written language from one that was purely Persian through a process of Arabization. He breaks this development down into four historical periods and into six distinct prose styles. Besides this work and his own poetry, his critical edition of the anonymous History of Sistan (Tarikh-i Sistan [1935]) was one of the first of a multitude of critical editions of important literary works to be published in Iran. Parviz Natal Khanlarli (1913–1990): He wrote numerous works on Persian literature and language such as Sh’ir va hunar (1967), Tarikh-i Zaban-i Farsi (1970) and Dastur-i Zaban-i Farsi (1972). He was a poet in his own right. He served as the Director of the Shahnama Foundation and the Iranian Cultural Foundation and was instrumental in establishing the Iranian Academy of Arts and Literature of Iran.

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Zabih Allah Safa (1911–1999) was an influential professor at Tehran University and will be remembered for his famous and monumental eightvolume literary history of Iran (Tarikh-i adabiyat dar Iran [1956–1991]). Muhammad Reza Shafi’i Kadkani (1939–) remains one of the most outstanding Iranian literary critics, and expert on Sufism whose in-depth studies in poetics, genres, and imagery continue to inspire aspiring scholars. A few of his works are Suvar-i khayal dar sh’ir-i Farsi (1971), Guzidah-yi ghazaliyat-i Shams (1974), Avaz-i bad va baran (1998) and Chashidan-i ta’m-i vaqt (2006). E. Past Trends in Scholarship In Iran the manuscript tradition had thrived. Large numbers of scribes were employed to copy texts. Because of the large numbers of people engaged in this activity and their varied degrees of education and expertise, the quality of the subsequent copies varied greatly. Similarly, because manuscripts were largely commissioned, they did not necessarily include a text or work in its entirety. Additionally, there was nothing that compelled a scribe to remain totally faithful to the text. For example, a line of poetry might be omitted or replaced because it was considered too sexually explicit. Textual changes often occurred for sectarian reasons and differences between Sunni and Shi’i Muslims. This practice led to adding curses after the names of certain individuals, who were often reviled by extreme Shi’ites. Specialized texts presented major difficulties for those unfamiliar with the subject matter and /or the vocabulary. It has only been one hundred years since critical textual editing of classical texts began. This movement was at odds with existing publishing practices that often took inexcusable liberties with the texts. The list of scholars and medievalists who have made lasting contributions to Persian literature is truly too long to list. In the past two centuries, the prevailing views of both Europeans and Iranians have been that the rise of Persian literature had its roots in the nationalistic desires of the Persian peoples to throw off the yoke of their Arab oppressors. This fit well with the 19th-century European understanding of nationalism. In the early 20th century, the Iranians experienced the Constitution period, where nationalism, independence and democratic government were major concerns. Iranians studied abroad before the establishment of modern universities in Iran and learned scientific research methods while at the same time studying their ancient languages and literatures in foreign universities. In the 1930’s after the establishment of Tehran University, the Faculty of Literature graduated scores of excellent scholars. Muhammad Reza Shah, the last Shah of Iran

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worked diligently to instill a sense of nationalism in the population. Huge sums of money were invested in projects, which promoted Persian culture and literature. As a result of this legacy, the predominant view of the development of Persian has been one focusing on nationalism and things deemed Persian. F. Current Trends The Iranian revolution in late 1979 has influenced the study of classical Persian literature. A reaction against the former Shah’s policy of secularization and a reemphasis of Islam, Arabic, and specifically Shi’i Islam has changed the direction of government funding. While Persian literature remains important, projects focusing on religious themes receive more funding. Iran’s political isolation has adversely affected scholarly intellectual exchanges. Travel and study opportunities have decreased. Because of these situations, scholarly studies published in Iran are less available than in the past and some important research has gone unnoticed. However, the political isolation of Iran has had a positive effect on other aspects of the study of classical Persian literature. It has sparked an increase in the study of the Persian literature of Mughal India and also in Central Asia. Currently, the study of modern Persian literature is the fastest growing area. This includes Iranian writers along with an ever-growing body of authors belonging to the Iranian diaspora. As mentioned earlier, the study of classical Persian literature has and has had too many outstanding scholars to list separately. Scholarship has concentrated on firmly defining the characteristics of both poetry and prose during the various historical periods and analyzing the linguistic development of the literature. A number of surveys of Persian literature have been published since Browne’s Literary History. They have tried to update omissions, mistakes and discoveries made since Browne’s time but have little to offer by way of interpretation or analysis. Studies on particular poets, litterateurs or genres have been published, as have many definitive critical editions with insightful analysis. Scholars and bibliographers such as Iraj Afshar have worked unceasingly to describe and produce catalogues of newly catalogued manuscripts. Many lesser known periods and poets have come to light in detailed studies in specialized areas, such as in Isma’ili Studies. There is a need to produce more studies that are interdisciplinary and interpretive but this appears to be the growing trend. Additionally, there is a great need for better translations of the classic poets. In this area Dick Davis’s translations of the Shahnama and other works serve as an inspiration to others.

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Select Bibliography Arthur J. Arberry, Classical Persian Literature (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1958); Malik al-Shu’ara, Muhammad Taqi Bahar, Sabk-Shinasi, ya Tarikh-i Tatavvur-i Nashr-i Farsi baray-i Tadris dar Danishkadah-i va Dawrah-i Duktur-i Adabiyat, 3 vols. (Tehran: Chapkhanah-i Khudkar, 1958); Edward G. Browne, A Literary History of Persia, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1902, 1906, 1920, and 1924); Gilbert Lazard, Les premiers poètes persans (IXe-Xe siècles): Fragments rassemblés, édités et traduits, 2 vols. (Tehran: Institut franco-iranien; Paris: Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient, 1964); Gilbert Lazard, Roger Lescot, and Zabih Allah Safa, Anthologie de la poésie persane XIe-XXe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1964); Julie Meisami, Structure and Meaning in Medieval Arabic and Persian Poetry: Orient Pearls (London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003); Reynold A. Nicholson, The Mathnawi of Jalalu’ddin Rumi, 8 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1925); Antonio Pagliaro and Allesandro Bausani, Storia della letteratura persiana (Milan: Nuova Accademia Editrice, 1960); Jan Rypka, Iranische Literaturgeschichte (Leipzig: Otto Harassowitz, 1959); Zabih Allah Safa, Tarikh-i Adabiyat dar Iran, 5 vols. (Tehran: Kitabfurush-i Ibn Sina, 1954–1984).

Mark David Luce

Islamic Philosophy A. Introduction Muslim philosophy has a history that precedes of ten odd centuries the interest devoted to it from Western academic practices. If its very name testifies the alien origin of the notion, it is nonetheless true that Muslims partially relinked it to indigenous sources. As a matter of fact, Muslim philosophy, while sharing a great deal of features with its Greek ancestor, has developed along specific lines, so that it is easy for Muslim thinkers to watch at their philosophical tradition as no less than an influential branch of Islamic religio-intellectual building. As pointed out by Henry Corbin (Histoire de la philosophie islamique, 1964), the source of Muslim philosophical meditation is two-fold: Greek and Quranic. On the one hand, theoretical questions were raised at the beginning of Islam, when early Muslims and companions used to address the Prophet asking for explanations on religious and practical matters. On the other hand, early conquests brought Muslims into contact with alien civilizations, bearers of different forms of knowledge, of whom ruling classes promptly became admirers, giving birth to a wide translation movement that represented one of the most remarkable cultural phenomena of the 9th and

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10th centuries (Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ^Abbasid Society, 1988). This encounter exerted an inestimable influence on the developement of Islamic philosophy, in all its aspects. If the first philosophers of the Muslim world (albeit not all confessionally Muslim) were basically Neoplatonicists, endorsing a particular Platonic spiritualism nurtured in Aristotelian logic (although some thinkers were not devoid of influences arising from Greek scepticism), the contribution of meditation on the fact of divine Revelation added their methodology a specific gist. Throughout Islamic history, the terms used to define philosophy and their meaning varied from one period to another, and also depending on the environment in which the debates occurred. The most common terms, used with a slight semantic difference, had always been hikma (literally meaning “wisdom”), and falsafa, a calque from the original Greek. Not strictly relegated in philosophical practice, methodology of philosophy entered other intellectual areas, such as dialectic theology (kalam), jurisprudence (fiqh), grammar, historiography and Sufism. Meanwhile, as the term falsafa has always been quite limited in use, in that it is referred to the practice of dialectical reasoning, hikma is often related to many kinds of wisdom, be it that of the Sufis, theologians, or philosophers, etc. Following Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s classification (The Meaning and Concept of Philosophy in Islam, 2001), the definitions of Greek origin most common among Islamic philosophers are: 1) The knowledge of all existing things qua existents (ashya’ al-mawjuda bi-ma hiya mawjuda); 2) The knowledge of divine and human matters; 3) Taking refuge in death, thus love of death; 4) The arts of arts and science of sciences; 5) Love for wisdom. But beside these definitions, one should not forget the religious nature of Muslim philosophy; the neat distinction between philosophy and theology originated in the West on the grounds of a “secularization” that is largely unknown to the world of Islam. Thus, searching for a determinate boundary separating mystical speculation, spiritual experience, and prophetic philosophy, would inevitably result in a frustrating and pointless enterprise. Classical Western handbooks on Islamic philosophy had long referred to the matter in terms of Arabic philosophy. Heir to medieval scholastic tradition, this wording must be definitly rejected, and no serious Islamicist, nor

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informed historian of philosophy, uses it any longer. As a matter of fact, not only early Muslim philosophers were not homogeneously Arabs, but a number of leading medieval thinkers composed their works completely in Persian. If one observes that even major philosophers such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna for the Latin Middle Age) composed many remarkable works in the language of Iran, the above mentioned inconsistency becomes even more evident. Several subdivision patterns have been proposed for Islamic philosophy that emphasize local priorities, confessional elements, or typological considerations. But all of these tend to focus on particular aspects and, lacking a whole encompassing view, underplay or don’t consider at all characters and themes whose importance and centrality cannot be ignored. Subdivisions of macro-periods seem to be more effective in providing a reliable picture. The first period extends from the origins to the death of Averroes (Ibn Rushd, d. 1198). It is, after all, the most studied and best known period of Muslim philosophy. The death of Averroes seals the era of the classical philosophy in Islam, marking the decline of philosophical theorization in the Western lands of Islam, and the subsequent eclipse of the Latin Avicennism in Europe. Meanwhile, hailing from the Easten lands of the Arab world, having Syrian cities as main centers, a renaissance of mystical Avicennism was radiating in the direction of non-Arab East. It is the period of the “metaphysics of Sufism,” i. e., the attempt (that actually represented a great success and a momentous epistemological turn in the history of Islamic thinking) to express in a systematic fashion the details of the mystical path toward God, and the knowledge of self as knowledge of God. It is, this second period, the time of the diffusion of Akbarian metaphysics in Persia and, therefrom, in the Indian Subcontinent, by the Persian pupils of its originator, Muhyi al-Din Ibn ‘Arabi (d. 1240). The third and the fourth perisods overlap, if not in nature of the discourse, at least in time. The former coincides with the Safavid philosophical renaissance. In 1501, a chiliastic military-religious order moving from Azerbaijan entered Iran and, after conquering the major cities, declared Twelver Shi’ism to be the official religion of the newly-instituted Safavid reign, named after Safi al-din Ardabili (d. 1334), the founder of the order. The new rule attracted scholars and theologians that animated schools and theological seminaries, that eventually became major centers of propagation and discussion of the post-Akbarian mystical philosophy. It is the period of the great summa of Mulla Sadra Shirazi (d. 1641), whose influence spread to the Qajar era and up to the last decades of the 20th century.

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The last period is that of the modern philosophy, resumed as an intellectual weapon in all the Muslim world against the influence of the West. After the decolonization and in the midst of the globalization era, Muslim thinkers partially abandoned third-worldist and nativist rhetoric and began introducing in their discourse the key-elements of democracy, secularism, postmodernism, human rights. B. History Given the particular position of Muslim philosophy in transmitting Greek philosophical knowledge to the Latin Middle Ages, modern academic interest in it bears some similarities – and up to quite recent times, even a number of its flaws – with that of the European first translators and commentators. In the contest of medieval transmission of Islamic thought, several stages can be observed. The interest began during the 12th century, as a taste for Islamic matters was rather common in Europe. It is the time of the translations of Gerard of Cremona and his colleagues at the cathedral of Toledo. This wave testifies a marked interest in Neoplatonic cosmology and psychology, with the translations of works by Al-Farabi, the Brethern of Purity (Ikhwan al-safa’), and other important Muslim Neoplatonicists. Later, Western scholastics desired to understand Aristotle in the translation by Ibn Rushd. Translations carried out during the Renaissance, when a fresh interest in Arabic emerged anew, represent the link between medieval scholastic translations and the rise of a modern academic scholarship. The first European chair in Arabic was established in Paris in 1535, and was assumed by Guillaume Postel, while in 1584 an Arabic press was set up in Rome and a second chair in Arabic appeared at the beginning of the 17th century in Leiden. By and large, the most important personality in the field of Islamic philosophy was the English Arabist Edward Pocock (1604–1691), who collected original manuscripts and published, among other noteworthy works (about which see Hans Daiber, “The Reception of Islamic Philosophy at Oxford in the 17th Century,” 1994), Ibn Tufayl’s philosophical novel Hayy ibn Yaqzan (1671). Pocock’s editions remained standards until the 19th century. The rise of Islamic philosophy as a modern topic of inquiry and teaching in Western universities at the end of the 18th century also marked the end of a period in which Muslim thinkers were regarded as central as the Greeks in the culture of humanity. As a matter of fact, while the Western areas of the Muslim world were facing the lower point of their decline and, in confronting with colonial enterprises were developing the first embryo of modernist and reformist religious thinking, contemporary Persian Neoplatonicism was prospering almost ignored by European acedeme.

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While editorial activity grew in quantity and quality, a certain number of scholars began being known as experts in European, Jewish, and Islamic medieval philosophy, but by far the most important character was Ernest Renan (1823–1892), whose ideas about the relative conceptual independence of Muslim thinking, although often driven by prejudice, represented a fresh look. It is also the age of the Orientalist erudition, with the systematic recording of material for research carried out by, among others, German Orientalists such as Gustav Flügel and Ferdinand Wüstenfeld. Illuministic tendencies, with all the implications in terms of ethnocentrism and historical evolutionism, came to a more moderate approach by the end of the 19th century, while the amount of primary sources made available through critical editions and translations allowed fairly good introductory texts being written, published, and achieving wide circulation, as in the case of Ignaz Goldziher’s compendium Die islamische und die jüdische Philosophie (1909). From this time on, academic knowledge of Islamic philosophy has found a remarkable expansion, both in terms of edition of fundamental texts and of publication of original interpretive and introductory studies. In Daiber’s phrasing, “European and Arab-Islamic secondary literature […] has now become too extensive to keep track of” (Bibliography of Islamic Philosophy, 1999, XXV). Most major universities around the world, both in Europe and in the Americas, has established chairs in History of Islamic or Muslim Philosophy, and the second half of the 20th century witnessed an impressive increase of excellent works, by then dissociated from the antiquated idea of the end of philosophy in the Muslim world coinciding with the death of Averroes. C. Research As already stated, Muslim philosophy scholarship didn’t begin in a proper fashion before the 19th century. The first important work in the field is Amable Jourdain’s Recherches critiques sur l’âge et l’origine des traductions d’Aristote et sur les documents grecs ou arabes employés par les docteures scholastique (1819). However, scholars usually mention Ernest Rénan’s classic Averroês et l’averroïsme (1852) as the most influent text in the field, at least until Goldziher’s seminal study, Beitrag zur Geschichte der muhammedanischen Theologie (1884), which represented – as the rest of his publications – a very competent and insightful research, for that period quite an advanced work. Coeval of Goldziher, another standard compendium of Islamic philosophy is Tjitze J. de Boer’s Geschichte der Philosophie in Islam (1901), translated into English two years later.

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About two decades later, an ambitious study written by the German Orientalist Max Horten was published in Munich: Die Philosophie des Islam in ihren Beziehungen zu den philosophischen Weltanschauungen des westlichen Orients (1924). Unfortunately, this study is even more dated than its predecessors, in that Horten’s attempt to render Islamic philosophical notions and categories with the ideas of late-medieval scholasticism and contemporary philosophy, results in a distorted picture of its object. The influence of the late 19th century, expecially of Nietzsche, and of the phenomenalism of Edmund Husserl, is too evident to prevent Horten’s study from ending up in obscuring original texts. However, the overall state of the field was by far more healthy than one might argue by the dated work of Horten. In fact, the number and quality of general introductions and learned monographs was flourishing. But it was not before end of the Second World War that major contributions were published and knew wide circulation. Miguel Cruz Hernandez’s Historia de la filosofia española: Filosofia hispano-musulmana appeared in 1957, and though concerned first of all with Islamic philosophy in Spain, it is nonetheless informative in other areas. Another classic and still influential work is W. Montgomery Watt’s Islamic Philosophy and Theology (1962), but a major turning point, both in methodology and in scope, was Henry Corbin’s History of Islamic Philosophy. Written in collaboration with Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Osman Yahya and published in 1964 by Franch major publisher Gallimard, it has been translated into a number of languages (including Arabic and Persian). The project was completed by Corbin alone in a somewhat abridged version that gives account of the later Eastern tradition of Islamic philosophy. The approach is quintessentially phenomenological and reflects the particular taste for Twelver Shi’ism of the author. Though very popular, this major work is not void of flaws, specially in the overemphasis of the mystical attitude of Shi’ism. It is anyhow true that the project of the French philosopher was not limited to the narrow universe of Islamologists: his aim was to put again in a fruitful “operational” communication the two worlds of living Islamic Neoplatonicism and Western philosophy. One other unappreciable result of Corbin’s effort with Muslim philosophy, carried on also by the series Bibliotheque Iranien, published in Tehran and Paris by the French Research Institute of Tehran, is that it caused a rebirth of research and academic study of philosophy in Iran itself, accompained by a flourishing of insightful and high quality publications. Meanwhile, general introductions continued to be published (a full list is provided in Daiber’s 1999 bibliographical study; see below); among them, possibly the most often cited and used in university classes is Majid

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Fakhri’s A History of Islamic Philosophy (1970), also translated into various languages and republished in a 1983 revised and updated version. By the 1980s, Islamic philosophy was already an important subject of inquiry, whose momentum is testified by chapters devoted to Islamic philosophers in works on medieval thought and in encyclopedias. In spite of this, as recognized by most scholars, there is still a great deal of work to be done, especially in editing unpublished works and bringing to light manuscripts still buried in libraries and private collections, notably those of the Subcontinent. In recent years, following the development of the discipline, important contributions have been added to the specialist literature. Among them, a voluminous bibliographical study that is bound to become standard tool for resaerch in the field is Hans Daiber’s Bibliography of Islamic Philosophy (1999). Its two volumes provide an impressive list of publications (articles, monographs, translations, critical editions, etc.) both in alphabetical and thematic order, accompained by insightful remarks. Another general work that must be mentioned and explained in some detail is History of Islamic Philosophy, ed. Seyyed Hosseyn Nasr and Oliver Leaman (1996). It encompasses general introductory essays on the origins, influences, concepts, and schools of the early Islam, followed by a section on individual philosophers of the East and the West of Muslim world. The list is as follows: (Eastern) Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, al-Razi, al-^Amiri, the Ikwan al-Safa’, Ibn Sina (plus an article by Nasr in his “Oriental philosophy”), Ibn Mishkawayh, al-Ghazzali; (Western) Ibn Masarrah, Ibn Bajjah (the Latin Avempace), Ibn Tufayl, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Sab^in, and Ibn Khaldun. The fourth section is devoted to the mystical tradition and the reciprocal interplay between Sufism and philosophy. The section devoted to the later Islamic philosophy presents contributions on the major philosophers that were ignored in the early academic literature: Nasir al-din al-Tusi, the “school of Esfahan” (Mir Damad and Mulla Sadra), and Shah Waliullah of Delhi. The work includes an important and groundbreaking section on Jewish philosophy, added as a pivotal interlocutor to medieval Islam. The second part of the work (pp. 783–1180) enumerates the articulations of Muslim philosophy (metaphysics, logic, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, etc.), and attempts to present some later interpretations. A geographical criterion is also adopted in the chapters (pp. 1037–1142) devoted to Islamic philosophy in the modern Islamic world and to some interpretations in the West.

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D. Conclusion To draw a satisfactory picture of the state of the art in the study of Islamic philosophy is a difficult, if not simply impossible, task; the variety of approaches, the multiplicity of schools, methodologies, and interpretations, and the fluid state of research – all this give an uncomfortable sense of fuzziness to those who whish to keep track of the lines of the progress. Nevertheless, some sort of description may be attempted by looking at the past tendencies and the paths of continuity and change. During the Middle Ages, Islam in general was referred to as the archenemy of Christianity, but the attitude of medieval Europe toward it was ambivalent. This ambivalence was fostered by the centrality of “the Arabs” in the transmission of ancient knowledge. As demonstrated by Italian historian Franco Cardini in his The Invention of the Enemy (L’invenzione del nemico, 2006), the relation was one of attraction/repulsion: during the 12th century, in some respects, taste for Arabism was even somewhat fashionable, and the “Saracens” were considered as good-hearted fellows deceived by a false and evil religion. It is difficult to deny that these obscuring and partial views had influenced most Western modern scholars until recently. Despite this, the same urgency to understand Muslim thought, along with the humanist cry ad fontes!, later merged with the Neo-Thomist approach, fostered the efforts by some excellent scholars, like Louis Massignon (Opera minora, 1969), Etienne Gilson (Le philosophe et la théologie, 1960), Louis Gardet (L’islam, religion et communauté, 1967; with Georges Anawati, Introduction à la theologie musulmane, 1948), Giulio Basetti Sani, (Per un dialogo cristiano-musulmano, 1969) and others. Spain, dominated for seven centuries by Muslim rulers, had one more reason to be concerned with Islam, and in fact the same Catholic inspiration, corroborated by a sense of “Spanish identity,” is evident in the work of such Spanish scholars as Miguel Asin Palacios (La escatologia musulmana en la ‘Divina Comedia’, 1919; El Islam cristianizado: Estudio del sufismo a través de las obras de Abenárabi de Murcia, 1931) Missionary concerns (today milded by a genuine urgency for religious dialogue) animate on the other hand the Jesuites revolving around the Pontificia Università Gregoriana and the PISAI (Pontificial Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies). This shows that a Catholic academic school is still active, even though not as influential as in the past. The other relevant and somehow long standing influence, albeit not referable to as a “school” by its own right, is that played by outstanding scholars of Jewish origin (Ignaz Goldziher, Saul Horovitz, Georges Vajda, Paul Kraus, Richard Walzer, and others), as such working indipendently from mainstream Christian school. The whole of these influences is noticeable along

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all academic production on Islamic philosophy, even if not explicitly recognized. As remarked by Oliver Leaman (“Orientalism and Islamic Philosophy,” History of Islamic Philosophy, ed. Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Oliver Leaman, 1996, 1143–48), one major turning point was the publication of Edward Said’s seminal study Orientalism (1978). Even if a central stream of scholars in Islamic philosophy (notably the traditionalists influenced by René Guénon and the French school of Corbinian phenomenologists, who sought to study Islam from within, many also becoming Muslims), had already rejected Orientalist views and approaches as biased and incoherent, Said’s argument projected the problematization of the Western discourse about the Other in a wider arena, working out a critical appoach that exposed to criticism the whole history of modern Western rationality. By the end of the 1980s, new epistemologies in approaching Islamic philosophy were not limited to the somehow elitist (even if quite influential) environment of traditionalists. A few words must be said in some detail about the influence of Henry Corbin’s in the field of Islamic philosophy. It has already been observed how the editorial and scholarly effort he carried out in Iran contributed to the reawakening of the study of traditional philosophy in that country. The activities of the Imperial Academy of Philosophy (suppressed after the 1979 Revolution and reopened under the name of Institute of Hikma and Philosophy – Anjoman-e hekmat wa falsafe), lead by Corbin’s associate Sayyed Hossein Nasr – a Muslim philosopher himself – succeded in giving the theories of the philosophia perennis of the other Nasr’s mentor Fritjhof Schuon a sound academic standing, thus providing traditionalist epistemology (for many reasons opposed by Corbin) a more solid ground. But the originality of Corbin’s approach to Islamic philosophy is not limited to the role he played in connecting different universes. As pinpointed by the chapter devoted to him by Pierre Lory in Nasr and Leaman’s edited work (“Henry Corbin: His Work and Influence,” 1996, 1149–55), besides having instituted a new scholarly paradigm in interpreting Muslim philosophical texts, he proposed original reflections on themes scarcely focused on by scholars both in Muslim world and in the West. Hermeneutical emphasis on such themes as angeology and “imaginal” dimension of existence, prophetology, the “suffering God,” and the paradox of religious monotheism, figures among his achievements and provides useful material for further discussion. Although his influence must not be overemphasized, and the core of his personal project (providing Western philosophers with modern philosophy to reflect on and giving Islamic modern Neoplatonism a protagonist role in the scene of

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world philosophy) may be considered partially failed, it is nevertheless true to say that, through his work, Muslim philosophy has not remained unknown to many contemporary famed philosophers, notably, for example, Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben. A late rediscovery of Islamic philosophy occurred also among political philosophers, as is the case with Leo Strauss’s and his school’s somewhat biased use of Al-Farabi thought (see his essay “Farabi’s Plato,” Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume: On the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Saul Lieberman et al., 1945, 357–93, and Muhsin Mahdi’s Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy, 2001). An idea of the variety of approaches and the range of academic study of Islamic philosophy might be obtained by looking at Nasr and Leaman’s edited work: it is easy to notice how this field has grown from the time of the first general introductions, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Scholars from all over the world, employing different methodologies and drawing from various experiences, participate in the discourse, and scholars from different Muslim countries are represented quite well. To end with, it is not useless to hint at new media and the coming of the “fast age.” As all fields of knowledge, Islamic philosophy and its study are not exempted from the possiblities and the risks implied by the fast growth of the internet and the increasing availability of specialized literature in the web. Even though the time when a serious and rigorous research can be carried out by simply relying on electronic resources is still to come, and web-based knowledge suffers a dramatic lack of authoritativeness, it is undeniable that the web is already an indispensable tool of work for most scholars, and not only of the new generation. Websites containing high-quality information (like www.muslimphilosophy.com), permanent seminaries or annual conferences (as www.mullasadra.org), personal pages and blogs of scholars (www.mullasadra. blogspot.com; www.uga.edu/islam/philosophy/html) and electronic libraries providing direct access to major works of Muslim philosophers, both in the original languages and in translations, are quickly and steadily growing. The importance of these is bound to encounter a rapid and progressive growth in the next years. Select Bibliography Roger Arnaldez, Averroes: A Rationalist Islam (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000); David B. Burrel, Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986); Arabic Philosophy and the West: Continuity and Interaction, ed. Therese-Anne Druart (Washington, DC: Georgetown University, 1988); Majid Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983); Dimitri Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 1988); Oliver Leaman, An Introduction to Medieval Islamic Philos-

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ophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Oliver Leaman, An Introduction to Classical Islamic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Jules L. Janssens, An Annotated Bibliogrphy in Ibn Sina (1970–1989) Including Arabic and Persian Publications and Turkish and Russian References (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1991); Parviz Morewedge, Neoplatonism and Islamic Thought (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992); Seyyed Hosseyn Nasr, An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1993); William Montgomery Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology. An extended Survey (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1985); Harry A. Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976).

Alessandro Cancian

Islamic Theology A. General Definition Islamic theology, which is one of the branches of Islamic religious sciences, is mostly referred to as ^ilm al-kalam (the science of kalam), and in short kalam. Kalam is usually translated as “theology,” although this rendering does not express well its scholastic methods. The term “speculative theology” conveys in a better way the nature of the theological discussions of the mutakallimun (doctors of Kalam), who used logical argumentation in order to prove some of the principles of religion (Georges C. Anawati, “kalam,” The Encyclopedia of Religion, XIII [1987], 231–42). Kalam is only one of the two major trends in Islamic theology. The other trend is that of traditionalist theology (^ilm al-usul, the science of theological principles). Since the scholastic methods of kalam had a tremendous impact on medieval thinkers within the circles of traditionalist Islam, and also on Jewish and Christian thinkers (Harry Austryn Wolfson, Repercussions of the Kalam in Jewish Philosophy, 1979) this survey dedicates its lion’s share to kalam. Nevertheless, the difference between kalam and Islamic traditionalist theology is also addressed here, since the boundaries between these two trends were never definite, especially after the emergence of the Ash^ari school in the first half of the 10th century. The terms kalam and traditionalist Islam refer to Sunni Islam, which is the main body of opinion in Islamic thought. Unless otherwise stated, the schools of kalam and the main thinkers mentioned in this survey are Sunnis (Louis Gardet, “^ilm al-kalam,” EI, 2nd ed., vol. III [1971], 1141–50). The use of discursive arguments is Kalam’s salient feature, which is mostly reflected in the discussions on the existence of God and the creation of

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the world. In these questions the kalam uses the proof from accidents, which is based on the doctrine of atoms (the major works on these questions are Shlomo Pines, Beiträge zur islamischen Atomenlehre, 1936; id., trans. Michael Schwarz, Studies in Islamic Atomism, 1997; Herbert A. Davidson, Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God in Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy, 1987). Kalam has also a lot to do with apologetics. Influenced by Hellenistic philosophical and theological thought, it uses various rationalistic tools in order to defend Islamic doctrines and uproot what it perceives as heretical concepts, infiltrated Islamic thought (D. D. de Lacy O’Leary, Arabic Thought and Its Place in History, 1939). Thus, it is tightly connected to the term ^aqida (pl. ^aqa#id), which stands for belief, creed or article of faith (William Montgomery Watt, Islamic Creeds, 1994). The goals of kalam, as the mutakallimun themselves define it in a report given by the Ash^ari theologian Al-Ghazali (d. 1111), are “to grasp the unity of God, and study the essence of God and His attributes” (Ihya# ^Ulum al-Din [The Revival of Religious Sciences], I [n.d.], 25). The theologian al-Jurjani (d. 1413) expands kalam’s definition to dealing with divine justice and eschatology (Kitab al-Ta^rifat, [The Book of Definitions], ed. Gustav Flügel, 1969 [photocopy of the Leipzig 1845 ed.], 194). Thus, kalam aims to back up various articles of faith, whose origins are to be found in the Qur#an and hadith (i.e. prophetic traditions), by using analytical methods. B. The Origins of Kala¯ m The common use in the Arabic language of the word kalam is word, words, or speech. How this term came to indicate Islamic speculative theology is an issue not fully revealed or discovered. There is an almost general agreement within the ranks of modern scholarship, that the dialectical technique of kalam was borrowed from early Christian theology (Carl Heinrich Becker, “Christliche Polemik und islamische Dogmenbildung,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und verwandte Gebiete 27 [1912]: 175–95; rpt. in: id., Islamstudien, 1924–1932, 432–49, trans. Mark Muelhaeusler, “Christian Polemic and the Formation of Islamic Dogma,” Muslims and Others in Early Islamic Society, ed. Robert Hoyland, 2004, 241–58; Josef van Ess, Anfänge muslimischer Theologie: zwei antiqadaritische Traktate aus dem ersten Jahrundert der Hipra, 1977; id., “The Beginnings of Islamic Theology,” The Cultural Context of Medieval Learning, ed. J. E. Murdoch and E. D. Sylla, 1975), while pointing out Greek (Josef van Ess, “The Logical Structure of Islamic Theology,” Logic in Classical Islamic Culture, ed. Gustav E. von Grunebaum, 1970; Ibrahim Madkour, “La Logique d’Aristote chez les mutakallimun,” Islamic Philosophical Theology, ed. Parviz Morewedge, 1979, 58–70) and Syriac (Michael A.

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Cook, “The Origins of Kalam,” BSOAS 43 [1980]: 32–43) texts as possible sources of inspiration (Francis Edward Peters, “The Origins of Islamic Platonism: the School Tradition,” Islamic Philosophical Theology, ed. Parviz Morewedge, 1979, 14–45; Louis Gardet, “Aux débuts de la réflexion théologique de l’Islam,” ibid., 46–59). In the same vein, it has been suggested that kalam was used to translate into Arabic the different meanings of the Greek terms logos or dialexis (Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalam, 1976) or the Syriac memra (Frithiof Rundgren, “Über den griechischen Einfluß auf die arabische Nationalgrammatik,” AUU 2.5 [1976]: 119–44). C. The Exponents of Kala¯ m The exponent of kalam was called mutakallim (lit. speaker, pl. mutakallimun). The mutakallimun are described by both Latin and Hebrew medieval thinkers. The Hebrew designation ha-medabberim and the Latin loquentes were derived from the literal meaning of mutakallim (Lawrence V. Berman, “kalam,” EJ, 1st ed. X [1971]: 701–03). The mutakallimun were engaged not only in articulating the fundamentals of Islam in an analytic language, but also in polemics of both political and religious nature (Shlomo Pines, “A Note on an Early Meaning of the Term Mutakallim” IOS 1 [1971]: 224-40; rpt. in: id., Studies in the History of Arabic Philosophy, 1996). The first mutakallimun did not belong to a specific school. Their teachings, if they had ever been written, did not survive, and only fragments of their views have been preserved, mostly in the rich Arabic heresiographical literature written from the 9th century onward. The early mutakallimun were very cautious in not revealing the foreign sources of their doctrines. Later mutakallimun, when citing the views of their predecessors, did not actually know the foreign roots of their doctrines (Richard M. Frank, “Remarks on the Early Development of the Kalam,” Atti del terzo congresso di studi arabi e Islamici, Ravello 1–6 settembre 1966 [1967], 315–29). D. The Schools of Kala¯ m In the end of the 7th century emerged a group of mutakallimun, who were adherents of the principle of free will, as opposed to the strict predestinarian view, which was held by traditionalist theologians. This group, the Qadariyya (Carlo Alfonso Nallino, “Sul nome dei Qadariti,” RSO 7 [1918]: 461–66), was the forerunner of the Mu^tazila, which is the most known kalam school (Joseph van Ess, “Kadariyya,” EI, 2nd ed., IV [1974]: 368–72; Henri Laoust, Les Schismes dans l’Islam, 1965). The Mu^tazila (Carlo Alfonso Nallino, “Sull’origine del nome dei Mu^taziliti,” RSO 7 [1918]: 429–54) flourished as two separate schools in

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Basra and Baghdad from the first half of the 8th century until the middle of the 11th century (Louis Gardet and M. M. Anawati, Introduction à la théologie musulmane, 1948). The Mu’tazili theses survived in Zaydi-Shi^i Islam until the present day, but not in Sunni Islam (Wilferd Madelung, Der Imâm al-Qâsim ibn Ibrâhim und die Glaubenslehre der Zaiditen, 1965). The rival school of the Mu^tazila is the Ash^ariyya, founded in Basra in the first half of the 10th century. The eponym of the Ash^ariyya, Abu al-Hasan alAsh^ari (d. 935) was a former Mu’tazili, who used the rationalistic tools of the Mu^tazila in order to defend the doctrines of traditional Islam and to defeat the Mu^tazila (Ahmad AmIn, Duha al-Islam [The Forenoon of Islam], I–III, 1952; id., Fajr al-Islam [The Dawn of Islam], 1978; William Montgomery Watt, The Formative Period of Islamic Thought, 1973). Another important theological school is the Maturidiyya-Hanafiyya, established as a definite school in central Asia in the 11th century. Its eponym is Abu Mansur al-Maturidi (d. 944) from Samarqand (Wilferd Madelung, “al-Maturidi,” EI, 2nd ed., VI [1991]: 846–47). The heresiographic literature, written from the 11th century mainly by Ash^ari theologians, mentions a great number of other kalam schools, whose existence is questionable (Michael Schwarz, “Can We Rely on Later Authorities for the Views of Earlier Thinkers?” IOS 1 [1971]: 241–48). E. Kala¯ m and Traditional Theology Most of the activity of the mutakallimun was in the inner circles of Islam, mainly against Sunni traditionalist theologians. Kalam’s dialectical discourse, which gives precedence to human reason in the process of perceiving God and the world, is supposedly antithetical to Islamic traditional theology, which declares to draw its authority solely from Divine revelation, prophetic traditions and the teachings of the ancestors of the Muslim community. These epistemological questions were discussed by both the mutakallimun and the traditionalist theologians. Further points of dispute between the two trends were the question of God’s unity, the nature of Divine attributes, anthropomorphism, predestination and free will (William Montgomery Watt, Predestination and Free Will in Early Islam, 1948; Daniel Gimaret, Théories de l’acte humain en théologie musulmane, 1980), theodicy (Eric L. Ormsby, Theodicy in Islamic Thought, 1984), eschatology, the status of prophecy and the essence of the Qur#an as God’s uncreated speech (Jan R. T. M. Peters, God’s Created Speech, 1976). The division between mutakallimun and traditionalist theologians never was clear-cut, since kalam’s methods had a huge impact upon traditionalist theologians. Consequently, the latter embraced rationalistic argumen-

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tations in their works and public debates (Binyamin Abrahamov, Islamic Theology- Traditionalism and Rationalism, 1998). Among traditionalist theologians, the group called Hanabila after their eponym Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 855) is the most conspicuous (Henri Laoust, “Ahmad ibn Hanbal,” EI, 2nd ed., I [1960]: 272–7; id., “Hanabila,” EI, 2nd ed., III [1971], 158–62). F. Theology and the Qur#a¯n The Qur#anic text inspired the molding and refining of theological notions and formulae elaborated not only in theological treatises and kalam manuals but also in Qur#an exegeses (tafsir pl. tafasir), written by prominent theologians such as Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 1210) and Ibn al-^Arabi (d. 1240). The Qur#an exegete Ibn Kathir (d. 1372) based his tafsir on the theological and jurisprudential teachings of Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328). The main theological themes in the Qur#an are surveyed and discussed in research on Qur#anic studies (Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Quran, 1980; Tilman Nagel, “Theology and the Qur#an,” EQ V [2006]: 256–75; Binyamin Abrahamov, “Theology,” The Blackwell Companion to the Qur’an, ed. Andrew Rippin, 2006, 420–33). Among the theological concepts refined from the Qur#anic text are predestination and free will (Toshihiko Izutsu, God and Man in the KoranSemantics of the Koranic Weltanschauung, 1964), human responsibility (Andrew Rippin, “Desiring the Face of God,” Literary Structures of Religious Meaning in the Qur#an, ed. Issa Boullata, 2000), creation (Husam Muhi Eldin alAlousi, The Problem of Creation in Islamic Thought – Qur#an, Hadith, Commentaries and Kalam, 1968), anthropomorphism (Binyamin Abrahamov, Anthropomorphism and Interpretation of the Qur#an in the Theology of al-Qasim ibn Ibrahim, Kitab al-Mustashrid, 1996), and ethics (Daud Rahbar, God of Justice: a Study in the Ethical Doctrine of the Qur#an, 1960). G. Theology and H. adı¯ th Hadith literature, which is the narrative of the Prophet Muhammad’s life and practices, contains numerous statements of Muhammad and some of his Companions (sahaba), serving as a starting point for theological debates. While traditionalist theologians used hadith literature as a locus of their religious thought (Livnat Holtzman, “Human Choice, Divine Guidance and the Fitra Tradition – The Use of Hadith in Theological Treatises by Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya,” Ibn Taymiyya and His Times, ed. Yossef Rapoport and Shahab Ahmed (2010), the credibility of this literature was questioned by rationally inclined theologians who tended to discredit this literature (Roger Arnaldez, Grammaire et théologie chez Ibn Hazm de Cordoue, 1956). Hadith literature covers almost every topic in theological thought,

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such as God’s transcendence and anthropomorphic depictions of God (Daniel Gimaret, Dieu à l’image de l’homme: les anthropomorphismes de la sunna et leur interprétation par les théologiens, 1997), predestination and free will (Joseph van Ess, Zwischen Hadi© und Theologie: Studien zum Entstehen prädestinatianischer Überlieferung, 1975; Louis Gardet, Dieu et la destinée de l’homme, 1967; Geneviève Gobillot, La Fitra – La Conception originelle – ses interprétations et fonctions chez les penseurs musulmans, 2000; Helmer Ringgren, Studies in Arabian Fatalism, 1955), ethics (Majid Fakhry, Ethical Theories in Islam, 1991), creation (Ernst Behler, Die Ewigkeit der Welt – Problemgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zu den Kontroversen um Weltanfang und Weltunendlichkeit im Mittelalter, 1965; Iysa Bello, The Medieval Islamic Controversy Between Philosophy and Orthodoxy, 1989), eschatology (David Cook, Studies in Muslim Apochalyptic, 2002) and the nature of the Qur#an (Wilfred Madelung, “The Origins of the Controversy Concerning the Creation of the Koran,” Orientalia Hispanica 1 [1974]: 504–25). H. Kala¯ m and Philosophy Kalam is not based on philosophical speculation per se, in spite of the resemblance of kalam’s set of conceptions and areas of interest to that of Muslim philosophy (falsafa). It has been claimed, however, that kalam should not be disregarded as an apologetic discipline, since it shares areas of interest with Islamic philosophy (Richard M. Frank, “Kalam and Philosophy: A Perspective from One Problem,” Islamic Philosophical Theology, ed. Parviz Morewedge, 1979, 71–95). Kalam accepts the Islamic dogma. Thus, the mutakallimun challenged the philosophers, among other groups within Islam, and labeled them as heretics. The most famous attempt to attack philosophy is the Ash^ari theologian al-Ghazali’s (Algazel, d. 1111) Tahafut al-Falasifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers, ed., trans. and annot. Michael Marmura, 2000). A rebuttal of al-Ghazali’s argumentation is Ibn Rushd’s (Averroes, d. 1198) Tahafut al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence, ed., trans. and annot. Simon van den Bergh, 1978). I. History of Research The history of research in the field of Islamic theology is in many senses similar to the history of Islamic studies in general. The study of kalam is a sub-discipline of the studies of Islamic history and philology. The interest of European scholars in Islamic theology dates as early as the establishing of the University of Leiden in 1575. The earliest scholarly efforts at studying Islam were characterized by comparing and judging Islamic doctrines in the light of Christian doctrines (Robert Caspar, A Historical Introduction to Islamic Theology, 1998). In other words, the study of Islam was not perceived as a scholarly

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field in its own right. The change occurred in the early 19th century along with the scholarly efforts taken by European and Muslim scholars in cataloguing, classifying, and publishing Arabic manuscripts in critical and uncritical editions. As the publication of manuscripts of heresiographical works and theological treatises advanced, kalam was dealt not only in general surveys on Islam (Ignaz Goldziher, Vorlesungen über den Islam, rev. 2nd ed. 1925, trans. Andras and Ruth Hamori, Introduction to Islamic Theology and Law, 1981; Alfred von Kremer, Geschichte der herrschenden Ideen des Islams, 1868), but also in the frame of monographs, thus shaping the study of Islamic theology as an independent discipline. Research on Islamic theology in the late 19th century and the early th 20 century is characterized by a reliance on heresiographic literature, whose nature (see “sources”) dictates a descriptive historical approach. The European researchers, trained for the most part in philology and history and not in philosophy and theology as such, tended to deal more with the history of theological trends and less with the teachings of Islamic theologians. The historical approach is well reflected, for example, in the works of Julius Wellhausen (Das arabische Reich und sein Sturz, 1902, trans. Margraet Graham Weir, The Arab Kingdom and its Fall, 1927; Die religiös-politischen Oppositionsparteien im alten Islam, 1901, trans. R. C. Ostle and S. M. Walzer, The Religio-Political Factions in Early Islam, 1975). All the relevant entries of the first edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, published between 1913–1936, reflect the historical approach, which dominated Western research in the field of Islamic theology (Duncan Black Macdonald, “Kadariya”; id., “kalam”; id, “al-Maturidi”; Arent Jan Wensinck, “al-Ash^ari”; Ignaz Goldizher, “Ahmad ibn Hanbal”; Henrik Samuel Nyberg, “Mu^tazila” – all available in the convenient version: Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam, ed. H. A. R. Gibb and J. H. Kramers, 1995). The relevance of these early studies is defied time and again, although their importance as introductory works to the study of the history of Islamic theology still exists. Research approaches still relevant today are those focusing on a methodological close reading of theological texts. A representative example is Harry Austryn Wolfson’s comprehensive work on the origins of kalam (Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalam, 1976). Wolfson’s method of conjecture and verification, which he called “a hypotheticodeductive method,” paved the way to researches concentrating on the theological texts, in which references to political developments, if they exist at all, are provided merely as an aid of understanding the developments in theology. The definitive study of the early phase of the formation of Islamic theology is Josef van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert

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Hidschra: Eine Geschichte des religiösen Denkens im frühen Islam, 1991–1995 (6 vols.). All the relevant entries of the second edition of EI, published between 1960–2004 (also as an online electronic version), reflect a close reading of a wider variety of published manuscripts than was available to the contributors of the first version. It has been claimed that the lion’s share of studies of Islamic theology from the second half of the 20th century was dedicated to the earliest period of kalam, while fewer studies were dedicated to theologians of the 11th century onward, with the one exception of the thought of the Ash^ari theologian Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (Algazel, d. 1111), whose works have been studied by Western scholarship for more than a century (Daniel Gimaret, “Pour un Rééquilibrage des études de la théologie musulmane,” Arabica 38 [1991]: 11–18). Nevertheless, from the 1980s, the tendency in research is to focus on the thought of theologians of the 11th century onward. The work of researchers of Islamic theology, although not specifically subjected to the harsh criticism pointed to Orientalists in general (Edward E. Said, Orientalism, 1978), should be understood and evaluated within the frame of European Orientalism with its faults and virtues (Jean Jacques Waardenburg, “Mustashrikun,” EI, 2nd ed., VII [1993]: 783–93). J. Sources The study of Islamic theology, as other branches of the Islamic religious sciences, depends upon the publication of original manuscripts in critical and uncritical editions. The two fundamental works in this area (Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Literatur, 1902–1942; Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, 1967) list manuscripts of Islamic Arabic works, theological works included, while providing essential biographical details on the authors of these works. Even today the task of publishing manuscripts of theological works is a major feature of research. Every newly published theological work often incites the interest of scholars to pursue the investigation in the direction which that work offers, while it sheds light on unknown aspects, trends, and ideas in Islamic theology. For example, in 1962 William Montgomery Watt wrote: “the earliest extant works of Sunnite theology in the strict sense are those of al-Ash^ari (d. 935)” (Islamic Philosophy and Theology, xii). Two years later, in 1964, Morris Seale published the first translation of Ahmad b. Hanbal’s (d. 855) al-Radd ^ala al-Jahmiyya wa-’l-zanadiqa (Responsa to two heretic sects), a theological work which precedes the works of al-Ash^ari in a century, thus contradicting Watt’s categorical statement quoted above (Morris S. Seale, Muslim Theology, 1964). This example demonstrates that the field of Islamic theology is far from being exhausted.

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Until the discovery of several original Mu^tazili works, heresiographic works dated as early as the 10th century were the main source for researchers in the 19th and 20th centuries to study the earlier trends of kalam and traditional theology. The major overviews on Islamic theology and particularly Mu^tazili theology written in the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century were based solely on heresiographic literature (for example, Israel Friedlaender, “The Heterodoxies of the Shi^ites in the presentation of Ibn Hazm,” JAOS 28 [1907]: 1–80; 29 [1909]: 1–183). The heresiographers, mostly Mu^tazili and Ash^ari mutakallimun, organized their works so that they were compatible with a tradition attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, in which he prophesied that the Muslim community would be divided into seventy-three sects, seventy-two of them inheriting Hell, and the surviving group going to Heaven. The heresiographers strove in finding seventy-three Islamic sects, thus counting as separate sects groups of people whose views differed only slightly from one another (Hellmut Ritter, “Philologika III: Muhammedanische Häresiographen,” Der Islam 18 [1929]: 34–59). A recognition of the mishaps of heresiography, a literature which provides only a partial picture of the teachings of theological trends as well as of their historical development, led to a pioneering attempt to study the molding of traditionalist theology based on the first Sunni ^aqa#id (creeds, articles of faith), dated from the 8th century (Arent Jan Wensinck, The Muslim Creed, 1932, re-ed. 1965). Nevertheless, only the discovery of original theological works or the reconstruction of such works based on later sources, enabled Western research to validate the biased descriptions of trends and thinkers as they appear in heresiographical literature (See the above-mentioned works of M. Cook and J. van Ess; Richard M. Frank, “The Neoplatonism of Pahm b. Safwân,” Museon 78 [1965]: 395–424) While numerous extant texts of the two major kalam trends in Islam, the Mu^tazila and the Ash^ariyya, enable scholars to depict Islamic scholastic tradition during the period of the Abbasid caliphate (750–1258 C.E.), the beginnings of that tradition during the Umayyad age (661–750 C.E.) are much harder to establish. The authenticity of a few epistolary texts and fragments belonging to the reign of Caliph ^Abd al-Malik (685–705 C.E.) (Joseph van Ess, “The Beginnings of Islamic Theology,” J. E. Murdoch and E. D. Sylla, eds. The Cultural Context of Medieval Learning, [1975], 87–111), has been challenged. It has been argued that these writings were pseudepigrapha from the late Umayyad times, some fifty years after the reign of ^Abd al-Malik (Michael Cook, Early Muslim Dogma, 1981).

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K. Mu^tazila Many researchers were drawn to deal with the Mu^tazila from the second half of the 19th century, and it is by all means the most studied theological school in Western research. The attraction to the Mu^tazila can be explained by the fact that several European scholars favored some of the views of this school. In 1865, Heinrich Steiner spoke of them as “the free-thinkers of Islam” (Heinrich Steiner, Die Mu^taziliten oder die Freidenker im Islam, 1865). This concept, enhanced by the views of prominent scholars like Ignaz Goldziher, and duplicated in dozens of works (for example, Henri Galland, Essai sur les Mo^tazélites: Les rationalistes de l’Islam, 1906; George Fadlo Hourani, Islamic Rationalism: the Ethics of ^Abd al-Jabbar, 1971), has dominated Western scholarship for decades. The image of Mu^tazilis as free-thinkers was mainly based on heresiographic literature. Nevertheless, in the late 1920s Henrik Samuel Nyberg, who discovered and edited Kitab al-Intisar (The Book of Triumph) by the Mu^tazili al-Khayyat (d. 912) a genuine Mu^tazili work, which remained the solely-known Mu^tazili work for decades, challenged this concept (Henrik Samuel Nyberg, “Zum Kampf zwischen Islam und Manichaismus,” Orientalistische Literaturzeitung 32 [1929]: 425–41). Henceforth, Mu^tazilis were portrayed as theologians and not as philosophers. Furthermore, the discovery of a large quantity of Mu^tazili sources in the 1960s, contributed to a considerable progress in studies relating the Mu^tazila. Nevertheless, studies written before that time and previously considered as corner-stones in the field, are now considered as outdated (for example, Albert N. Nader, Le système philosophique des Mu^tazila, 1956). The entry in The Encyclopaedia of Islam indeed provides an excellent overview of the updated approaches in research (Daniel Gimaret, “Mu^tazila,” EI, 2nd ed.,VII [1993]: 783–93) L. Ash^ariyya Although the Ash^ariyya (or Asha^ira) is the most important orthodox theological school, its history and origins have been little studied. This lacuna in research is opposed to the numerous published writings of Ash^ari theologians and the Ash^ari rich heresiographical literature. Researches based on Ash^ari material, mainly focus on themes and doctrines rather than on the history of the school. An indication to the little known on the history of the Ash^ari school is the very short entry in the Encyclopaedia of Islam (William Montgomery Watt, “Ash^ariyya,” EI, 2nd ed., I [1960]: 696). In this entry Watt summarizes the dominating view in Western research, according to which the Ash^ariyya was the dominant, if not the official, theological school in the 8th–14th centuries. This view appeared in a number of studies (Duncan

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Black Macdonald, Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence and Constitutional Theory, 1903; Arthur Stanley Tritton, Muslim Theology, 1947; Louis Gardet and M. M. Anawati, Introduction à la théologie musulmane, 1948; W. Montgomery Watt, The Formative Period of Islamic Thought, 1973), and was contested in the works of George Makdisi (“Muslim Institutions of Learning in Eleventh-Century Baghdad,” BSOAS 24 [1961]: 1–56; id., “Ash^arî and the Ash^arites in Islamic Religious History,” SI 17 [1962]: 37–80; 18 [1963]: 19–39; The Rise of Colleges, 1981). M. Ma¯turı¯ diyya- H. anafiyya Not much was known on the Maturidiyya-Hanafiyya before the discovery of Abu Mansur al-Maturidi’s Kitab al-Tawhid (The Book of Unity) (by Joseph Schacht, “New Sources for the History of Muhammadan Theology,” SI 1 [1953]: 23–42; the manuscript was published by Fathallah Kholeif in 1970, and the authenticity of the manuscript was challenged by Daniel Gimaret, Théories de l’acte humain en théologie musulmane, 1980 and discussed by M. Sait Özrevali, “The Authenticity of the Manuscript of Maturidi’s Kitab al-Tawhid,” Turkish Journal of Islamic Studies 1 [1997]: 19–29). Western research perceived this school as parallel to the Ash^ariyya (Ignaz Goldziher, Vorlesungen über den Islam, 1925; Arthur Stanley Tritton, Muslim Theology, 1947; Louis Gardet and M. M. Anawati, Introduction à la théologie musulmane, 1948), however without sufficient collaborating textual evidences. Different aspects in al-Maturidi’s thought are discussed in several researches (J. Meric Pessagno, “Intellect and Religious Assent: the view of Abu Mansur al-Maturidi,” MW 69 [1979]: 18–27; id., “Irada, Ikhtiyar, Qudra, Kasb – The View of Abu Mansur al-Maturidi,” JAOS 104,1 [1984]: 177–91; id., “The Uses of Evil in Maturidian Thought,” SI 60 [1984]: 59–82). N. H. ana¯bila The traditionalist Hanbali school has been neglected for years by western research, although the life and personality of its eponym, Ahmad ibn Hanbal, were discussed in length for more than a century (Walter Melvil Patton, Ahmad ibn Hanbal and the Mihna, 1897; Michael Cooperson, Classical Arabic biography. The Heirs of the Prophets in the Age of al-Ma#mun, 2000; Nimrod Hurvitz, The Formation of Hanbalism: Piety into Power, 2002; Chistopher Melchert, “The Adversaries of Ahmad ibn Hanbal,” Arabica 44 [1997]: 234–53). The Hanabila who, according to their own avowal in numerous writings, had given precedence to the Quranic text and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, and rejected the excessive use of rationalistic methods, were perceived by Western scholarship as ultra-conservative or worse, as a

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mob (Goldziher, op. cit.; Macdonald, op. cit.; Henri Lammens, L’islam: croyances et institutions, 1926; trans. E. Denison Ross, Islam: Beliefs and Institutions, 1968). An insufficient treatment of Hanbali manuscripts and an exclusive reliance on Ash^ari heresiography contributed to that unjustified image. The pioneering work of Henri Laoust (Essai sur les doctrines sociales et politiques de Taki-d-Din Ahmad b.Taimiya, 1939) has paved the way for researches on the Hanabila, revealing a theological system combining logical kalam argumentations with the traditional sources (George Makdisi, “Hanbalite Islam,” Merlin L. Swartz ed., Studies on Islam, 216–274, Daniel Gimaret, “Theories de l’acte humain dans l’école Hanbalite,” Bulletin d’Etudes Orientales 29 [1977]: 157–78; Binyamin Abrahamov, “Ibn Taymiyya on the Agreement of Reason with Tradition,” MW 82.3–4 [1992]: 256–73; Wesley Williams, “Aspects of the Creed of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal: A Study of Anthropomorphism in Early Islamic Discourse,” IJMES 34 [2002]: 441–63; Jon Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya’s Theodicy of Perpetual Optimism, 2007). O. The Thought of Prominent Thinkers The most conspicuous developments in the field of Islamic theology are in reevaluation and reassessment of the thought of prominent theologians. It is far beyond the scope of this entry to introduce the entire research done on dozens of medieval Islamic theologians, and we shall have to do with three examples demonstrating the progress made in research with regard to the thought of prominent thinkers. Research on the Ash^ari theologian Abu al-Ma^ali al-Juwayni (d. 1085), known primarily as the teacher of Abu Hamid al-GhazalI (d. 1111), has progressed immensely with the publication of critical editions of his works (Abu al-Ma^ali al-JuwaynI, al-Irshad, trans. Jean-Dominique Luciani, 1938), translations (Léon Bercher, trans., Les Fondements du Fiqh, 1995; Paul Walker [trans.], A Guide to Conclusive Proofs for the Principles of Belief, 2000) and researches (Helmut Klopfer, Das Dogma des Imâm al-Haramain al-Djuwainî und sein Werk al-Aqîda al-nizâmîya, 1958; Tilman Nagel, Die Festung des Glaubens, 1988; Mohammed Moslem Adel Saflo, Al-Juwayni’s Thought and Methodology, 2000). These and other works established al-Juwayni’s unique contribution to the field of rational argumentations. In the case of Abu Hasan al-Ash^ari (d. 935), the eponym of the Ash^ari school of theology, whose works have been studied for more than a century (Wilhelm Spitta, Zur Geschichte Abu’l Hasan al-A ˇs^ari’s, 1876; Duncan Black Macdonald, Development of Muslim Theology, Jurisprudence and Constitutional Theory, 1903; Arthur Stanley Tritton, Muslim Theology, 1947; Louis Gardet and M. M. Anawati, Introduction à la théologie musulmane, 1948),

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the whole scope of his thought and its repercussions is far from being fully revealed (Binyamin Abrahamov, “A Re-examination of al-Ash^ari’s Theory of Kasb according to Kitab al-Luma^,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 1–2 [1989]: 210–21; Daniel Gimaret, La doctrine d’al-Ash^ari, 1990; Richard M. Frank, “Bodies and Atoms: the Ash^arite Analysis,” Islamic Theology and Philosophy, ed. Michael E. Marmura, 1984, 39–53, 287–293, just to mention a few. Al-Hasan al-Basri (d. 728), an ascetic whose views on free will were investigated at length (Hans Heinrich Schäder, “Hasan al-Basri- Studien zur Frühgeschichte des Islam,” Der Islam 14 [1925]: 1–75; Hellmut Ritter, “Studien zur Geschichte der islamischen Frömmigkeit: I. Hasan el-Basri,” Der Islam 21 [1933]: 1–83; Julian Obermann, “Political Theology in Early Islam: Hasan al-Basri’s Treatise on Qadar,” JAOS 55 [1935]: 138–62; Michael Schwarz, “The Letter of al-Hasan al-Basri,” Oriens 22 [1967]: 15–30), is considered to be a mile stone in Islamic theology, although the authenticity of teachings attributed to him has been questioned recently (Suleiman Ali Mourad, Early Islam between Myth and History: al-Hasan al-Basri and the Formation of his Legacy in Classical Islamic Scholarship, 2006). Select Bibliography Binyamin Abrahamov, Islamic Theology: Traditionalism and Rationalism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998); Robert Caspar, Traité de théologie musulmane (Rome: PISAI, 1987), trans. Penelope Johnstone, A Historical Introduction to Islamic Theology (Rome: PISAI, 1998); Josef van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra: Eine Geschichte des religiösen Denkens im frühen Islam (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1991–1995); Livnat Holtzman, “kalam,” EJ, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, 2nd ed., XI (2006), 729–31; Tilman Nagel, The History of Islamic Theology: From Muhammad to the Present [Geschichte der islamischen Theologie von Mohammed bis zur Gegenwart], trans. from German by Thomas Thornton, (Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2000 [Munich: C. H. Beck, 1994]); Gustav Pfannmüller, Handbuch der Islam-Literatur (Berlin and Leipzig: Walter de Gruyter, 1923); William Montgomery Watt, The Formative Period of Islamic Thought (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1973); Id., Islamic Philosophy and Theology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1962); Harry Austryn Wolfson, The Philosophy of the Kalam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976).

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Natural Sciences in the Islamic Context

Natural Sciences in the Islamic Context A. Introduction and Terminology Islamic civilization provides a rich field for the historian of science. History of Islamic science is a relatively young field, having developed only since World War II, with new discoveries being made regularly. Discussions of science in Islam in the past, and still to a certain extent within the generalist literature, have suffered from the shortcomings of the Orientalist paradigm, which holds as axiomatic the following: Islam is an inferior religion and culture to that of the Judaeo-Christian, and now secular West; and Islamic civilization was merely an intermediary between the classical Greeks and the Renaissance, then Enlightenment West. The consequences of this paradigm for scholarship are exemplified by the following untenable assertion that still appears, in one form or another, in the literature: science in Islam declined beginning in the 11th century and eventually died out, either due to the forces of religious conservatism, or to Mongol invasions, or both. The present historical outline, which re-addresses these and other conclusions, owes much to George Saliba (Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance, 2007), the most recent overall re-assessment of the subject. How to designate the science of Islamic civilization in English is a problem. The Arabic word for “science” ‘ilm means an intellectual discipline generally, much like German Wissenschaft. Several terms have been employed by scholars to designate the scientific tradition of Islamic civilization, among them: “Arabic science” and “Islamic science.” The former has the advantage of referring to the linguistic tradition, but which ignores important works written in Persian; the latter, preferred by the present author, emphasizes the dominant culture and civilization within which these scientific activities took place. B. Historical Outline An Islamic scientific tradition began during the period of the 7th-century conquests, as Muslims came into closer contact with Byzantium and Iran. The translation of the administrative apparatus from Greek and Persian into Arabic and the displacement of the former bureaucratic class, which began during the reign of caliph ‘Abd al-Malik (r. 685–705), precipitated social factors that drove the pursuit of science for centuries, and led to the epochal Graeco-Arabic translation movement of the early Abbasid period (Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture, 1998; George Saliba, Islamic Science, 2007).

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The early Abbasid period (mid-8th to 10th c.) presented increased opportunities for scientists to be useful to the needs of society. The presence of three astrologers assisting in the founding of Baghdad (762 C.E.) attests to the existence of an established astronomical tradition by that time, as astrology required advanced technical ability in applied mathematical astronomy. Progress in the sciences was motivated by competition for positions at court. A climate of scrutiny was fostered, which encouraged scientists to be as precise as possible, and even affected translations into Arabic. For example, the translation of Ptolemy’s Almagest involved a critical reading and correction of the text, updating it to then current observations and methods, such as the substitution of the newly invented trigonometric functions for Ptolemy’s chord tables. The concentration of wealth in Baghdad and the motivation of the regime to possess the fruits of science and technology ensured the presence of the best scientists at the capital. Among them were the Banu Musa, three brothers (“Sons of Musa”), who used their positions and fortunes to advance the sciences, both through patronizing translations from accomplished translators such as Hunayn ibn Ishaq (d. 873), who commanded large fees, and through original research. By the mid-9th-century, Islamic scientists had attained a level of competence that enabled them to devise wholly new disciplines and sub-disciplines. Astronomers distanced themselves from the astrological aspects of their field, redefining the discipline as a purely descriptive science (‘ilm al-hay’a “the science of the configuration [of the heavenly bodies]”). Focusing on physical structure alone made the physical inconsistencies of the Ptolemaic system obvious, the solution of which became a major concern of Islamic astronomers for several centuries, described below. In mathematics, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (d. ca. 850) devised the science of algebra, which was advanced much farther by Ghiyath al-Din Jamshid ibn Mas’ud al-Kashi (d. 1429) and Omar Khayyam (d. 1131). The practical needs of navigation and religion, in determining prayer times and the direction of Mecca, led to the invention of spherical trigonometry. Astronomical instruments, such as the astrolabe, were developed. A portable analog computer containing a model of the heavens, the astrolabe was used for a variety of calculations, including timekeeping, astrological horoscopes, and the sighting of stars. Following a long period of critique, Islamic astronomy began to reach maturity in the late 13th century at the Maragha observatory in northwestern Iran. Nasir al-Din al-Tusi (d. 1274), Mu’ayyad al-Din al-‘Urdi (d.1266) and several other scientists revised planetary models in the course of their observations. The tradition of reform continued down well past the 15th century,

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and some of the mathematical models developed in this tradition by Ibn alShatir (d. 1375) and others found their way into the work of Nicholas Copernicus (d. 1543). Islamic physicians, though based in Greek medicine, made original contributions to medical thought, and exerted a formative influence on the European medical tradition. Greek humoral pathology in the Hippocratic and Galenic traditions became dominant, reaching its fullest expression in the Canon of Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (d. 1037). The Canon was attractive both to Islamic and Western medical scholars, because it presented essentially Galenic medicine in an easier to use format than that of the ancient Master. Although originating in Christendom, under Islam the hospital became a more sophisticated institution, a place of treatment of the sick and wounded, an asylum for the mentally ill, a hospice for the dying, and a facility for medical instruction. One of the most enduring examples was the Mansuri hospital of Cairo, established in 1284 and which functioned through the 19th century. The translations from Arabic to Latin were especially important for the creation of a medical curriculum in late medieval and Renaissance Europe. The major translation centers were in Salerno and Toledo. The Canon eventually became central to medical instruction in the Italian universities. Nancy Siraisi has shown that the Canon continued to be used in the Italian universities well after Greek medical texts had become available, and after the new medical discoveries as part of the scientific revolution (Avicenna in Renaissance Italy: The Canon and Medical Teaching in Italian Universities After 1500, 1987). In the earlier period of the Arabo-Latin translations (11th–12th c.), the Latin West benefited not only from Arabic versions of ancient Greek scientists and philosophers, but also directly from the translated contributions of scientists such as Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) (d. 1039) and Ibn Sina (d. 1037) and philosophers such as al-Ghazali (Algazel) (d. 1111) and Ibn Rushd (Averroës) (d. 1198). C. History of the Discipline The discipline of history was important to Muslim scholars from the early period of Islam, since they understood their civilization to be the heir to the empires of the ancient world and to their intellectual legacies, especially that of the Greeks. They further understood the Christian Greeks to be special rivals of Islam, since the still powerful Byzantine Empire was the greatest political and ideological obstacle for Islam. Therefore, the appropriation of Greek science was seen as a kind of victory for Islam, in particular since the Byzan-

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tines – then wracked by theological controversy and economic upheaval – had little interest in it (Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture, 1998). Although credit for the invention of history of science as a discipline is given to the modern West, scholars within Islam from early times recognized the epochal significance of their science, and attempted to account for it historically. The Islamic tradition of scholarship about its own science is rich and sophisticated, but has remained largely unknown to non-specialists. Beginning toward the end of the Graeco-Arabic translation period, when a scientific culture was already flourishing in Islam, works of intellectual biographies of prominent scientists and thinkers began to appear in Arabic. The development of this genre is related to that of the biographies used by the Traditionist scholars to verify reports about the Prophet for the use of jurists in applying Islamic Law. The Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadim (d. 995) toward the end of the translation era, and the ‘Uyun al-anba’ fi tabaqat al-atibba’ of Ibn Abi ‘Usaybi’a (d. 1269), well into the supposed era of decline, for example, were biographical encyclopedias of the intellectuals active in their eras, which provide modern scholars with rich insight into the development of scientific activity in Islam. The number of lives and works recorded shows that during the lifetimes of these authors there was already a critical mass of practicing scientists and physicians that they could write about. This fact is strong evidence in favor of the existence of a true scientific culture in Islamic civilization. An example of a mature Islamic historical self-consciousness is found in the works of Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406). In the introduction to his History, he outlines a sociological and economic approach to historical analysis (The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans. Franz Rosenthal, 1958). The work contains lengthy discussions of the sciences and their place within Islamic civilization, a fact that reflects the importance he placed on these activities, which he characterized as the epitome of the activities of civilized man, whom God has created and endowed with the gift of rational thought. The pseudo-sciences of astrology and alchemy he refutes, primarily because they are not open to public scrutiny. He understood that science can exist only in sedentary cultures, and that it is disrupted when urban centers have been disturbed by war or famine. Regarding the decline of science in the Islamic world, Ibn Khaldun observed that science had declined in some regions such as Baghdad, which he attributed to its destruction by the Mongols (1258). However, he left open the possibility that decline might occur at different times and for different reasons, suggesting that there was no uniform decline of science in Islamic civilization.

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D. Criticisms of Greek Science Scientific research in Islam was driven by a sophisticated historical consciousness, the product of a well-developed scientific tradition. This began as a critique of the Greek sciences and ultimately led to advances in the sciences far beyond the Greek legacy. The competitive climate of Baghdad encouraged this critical stance, as each scientist sought to outdo his rivals. In time, the critique became more clarified and precise, resulting in many new discoveries. In connection with the critique, there arose a genre called shukuk “doubts” (cf. dubitationes), that first appeared in the treatise Doubts about Galen, by Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi (Rhazes) (d. 925), in which he attacked Galen’s medical doctrines. The shukuk genre was a register of doubts and difficulties with scientific works of the past, which provided practicing scientists with a place to begin fresh approaches to old problems, without repeating the mistakes of their predecessors. This genre implies the existence of a continuous high-level scientific culture and tradition. In the astronomical tradition, about a century later, Abu ‘Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) (d. 1039) wrote his Doubts about Ptolemy, in which he catalogued all the elements of Ptolemaic astronomy that were physically inconsistent or impossible, among other aspects of Ptolemaic science. Ibn al-Haytham’s work led directly to the greatest reform of Ptolemaic astronomy, in the Maragha tradition, mentioned earlier. The tradition of criticism of Greek medicine has been less studied than astronomy, perhaps because it provides less clear-cut examples than the exact sciences. Nevertheless, there are scattered examples of observations by Islamic physicians that disagree with Galen’s doctrines. For example, ‘Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi (d. 1231), observing many human skeletons during a famine in 1200, failed to find the features of the lower jaw and sacrum bones that Galen had described. The Syrian physician Ibn al-Nafis (d. 1288) working in Cairo, failed to find the porosity of the cardiac septum described by Galen, through which the blood was supposed to pass from the venous to the arterial systems. He proposed instead the “pulmonary transit” whereby blood passes between systems via the lungs. It is too much to conclude, as some modern scholars have done, that this discovery is a direct precursor to William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation (1628) or to Michael Servetus’s earlier theological musings (1553) (Nancy Siraisi, Medieval & Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice, 1990, covers both Islamic and medieval European medical traditions. Peter E. Pormann and Emilie Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine, 2007, is the most recent discussion of the Islamic medical tradition).

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E. Modern Scholarship Although Western scholars have been interested in Arabic scientific writings as part of their own research agendas, from the 11th century down through the Renaissance, a systematic effort to study the history of science in Islam per se did not begin until the 20th century. The pioneer researcher in the history of this subject was George Sarton (d. 1956), who was also the founder of the history of science in general as a modern academic discipline. Sarton made the scholarly world aware of the work of Arabic scientists, and he provided an initial rough chronology of the subject. Although Sarton’s monumental Introduction to the History of Science (1927–1948; 3 vols.) is, on the whole, an outdated survey, it facilitated many subsequent discoveries. History of Islamic science became a respected field in the post-WWII era through the researches of Edward S. Kennedy (Studies in the Islamic Exact Sciences, 1983), Abdelhamid I. Sabra (see below), David A. King (see below), Willy Hartner (Oriens-Occidens: Ausgewählte Schriften zur Wissenschafts- und Kulturgeschichte, 2 vols., 1968–1984), George Saliba, and others. For a broadranging survey of the various sub-fields of Islamic science, see Roshdi Rashed (Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, 1996). The discipline began with a surprise: Edward S. Kennedy’s accidental discovery in the 1950’s of the debt of Copernicus to Islamic predecessors, as well as subsequent research by Hartner and others, awakened scholars to a wealth of new material in the period of the supposed “decline” of Islamic science, although their announcement was greeted in the West by some with hostility. The very idea that Copernicus might have derived a crucial idea from Islamic thinkers is rejected by many without giving the evidence a hearing. It is very likely that Byzantine émigré scholars in Italy who contributed to the Western Renaissance brought key ideas of Islamic science with them, including knowledge of Ibn al-Shatir’s work in astronomy, on which Copernicus’s astronomy is partly based. These Byzantine scholars, products of the Palaeologan Renaissance that was partly inspired by contacts with the Islamic world, most likely derived their knowledge of Islamic astronomy from men such as Gregory Chioniades (d. 1302), who traveled into Muslim lands to study astronomy, then returned and established an astronomical research center at Trebizond. David Pingree, Maria Mavroudi, and others have begun to investigate Islamic-Byzantine connections. (David Pingree, The Astronomical Works of Gregory Chioniades, 2 vols., 1985, 1986; Maria Mavroudi, A Byzantine Book on Dream Interpretation: The Oneirocriticon of Achmet and Its Arabic Sources, 2002). There are multiple facets to the history of Islamic science, and many of the founding scholars of the discipline are still living. Those active in the

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study of scientific instruments are mainly David A. King and his students, including François Charette and Benno van Dalen (François Charette, Mathematical Instrumentation in Fourteenth-Century Egypt and Syria: The Illustrated Treatise of Najm al-Din al-Misri, 2003; From China to Paris: 2000 Years Transmission of Mathematical Ideas, ed. Benno van Dalen, 2002). David King’s monumental two volume survey of Islamic scientific instruments has recently appeared (In Synchrony with the Heavens: Studies in Astronomical Timekeeping and Instrumentation in Medieval Islamic Civilization, 2005). Abdelhamid I. Sabra has written extensively about Islamic optics, as well as about science in Islam generally (The Optics of Ibn Al-Haytham: Books i-iii: On Direct Vision. 2 vols., trans. Abdelhamid I. Sabra, 1989). One of his students, F. Jamil Ragep, published an edition and study of the important Tadhkira of al-Tusi (Nasir al-Din al-Tusi’s Memoir on Astronomy (al-tadhkira fi ^ilm al-hay’a), 2 vols., 1993). Another, Elaheh Kheirandish, has published on the tradition of optics in Islam (The Arabic Version of Euclid’s Optics (Kitab Uqlidis fi Ikhtilaf al-Manazir), 2 vols., 1999). David Pingree made groundbreaking contributions to the study of Islamic astrology, and has shown important interconnections between Greek, Sasanian, Indian, Byzantine, and Arabic sources (“Indian Reception of Muslim Versions of Ptolemaic Astronomy,” in Ragep, ed., Tradition, Transmission, Transformation, 1996, 471–85). One of the pioneer historians of Islamic astronomy was Aydin Sayili, whose The Observatory in Islam: And Its Place in the General History of the Observatory (1960, rpt. 1981) is a classic in this field. George Saliba has devoted his career to the study of planetary theories in Islam, and the transmission of Islamic science to Europe (A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories During the Golden Age of Islam, 1994). His students Ahmad Dallal and Robert G. Morrison have written about Islamic planetary theory, and the latter has also written about the connection between astronomy and religion (Ahmad S. Dallal An Islamic Response to Greek Astronomy, 1995; Robert G. Morrison, Islam and Science: The Intellectual Career of Nizam al-Din al-Nisaburi, 2007). Another student of Saliba’s (and of D. Gutas’s also), the author of the present article, is a Graeco-Arabist active in the study of the transmission of medicine and astronomy between the Greek and Arabic traditions (Glen M. Cooper, Galen’s Critical Days in the Graeco-Arabic Tradition, Ashgate, forthcoming). George Saliba’s major contribution has been to present a fresh scenario about the beginnings of science in Islam and its later transmission to the West, which can explain more than predecessor theories (Saliba, Islamic Science, 2007). One of George Saliba’s key insights is the role of the nonArabic-speaking diwan administrators, displaced after ‘Abd al-Malik’s re-

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forms, mentioned earlier, who sought to restore their lost positions by using their knowledge of the sciences along with their native fluencies in the older languages (Syriac and Persian) to acquire even greater competence in these sciences in order to make themselves indispensable to the government. Thus he has shown that scientific expertise became a means to powerful court positions, such as personal physician or astrologer to the caliph himself. Roshdi Rashed, J. Lennart Berggren, and Jan P. Hogendijk have published extensively and made important discoveries about Islamic mathematics. Sonja Brentjes has written about Euclid’s Elements in Islam (J. Lennart Berggren, Episodes in the Mathematics of Medieval Islam, 1986; Roshdi Rashed, Les mathématiques infinitésimales du IXe au XIe siècle, vol. V: Ibn al-Haytham: Astronomie, géométrie sphérique et trigonométri, 2006; Jan P. Hogendijk, Ibn al-Haytham’s Completion of the Conics, 1985. Sonja Brentjes, “An Exciting New Arabic Version of Euclid’s Elements: MS Mumbai, R.I.6,” Revue d’histoire des mathématiques 12, fascicule 2 (2006): 169–97). In Islamic medicine, there are several recent important studies. Nancy Siraisi has written about the influence of Islamic medicine in Europe in the late medieval and early Renaissance period (Nancy Siraisi, Medieval & Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice, 1990). A selection of this scholarship includes: Manfred Ullmann, Die Medizin im Islam, 1970; Gotthard Strohmaier, Von Demokrit bis Dante: Die Bewahrung antiken Erbes in der arabischen Kultur, 1996; Emilie Savage-Smith, “The Practice of Surgery in Islamic Lands: Myth and Reality,” The Year 1000: Medical Practice at the End of the First Millennium, ed. Peregrine Horden and Emilie Savage-Smith, 2000, 308–21; Michael Dols, Majnun: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society, Oxford 1992; Françoise Micheau and Danielle Jacquart, La médecine arabe et l’Occident médiéval, 1990. Bernard R. Goldstein and Y. Tzvi Langermann have written about Islamic science in the Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic tradition. Charles Burnett’s subjects deal with subjects that include astrology and the transmission of Islamic science into Latin. Juan Vernet, Julio Samsó, Merce Comes, and others have researched science in Islamic Spain. Donald R. Hill wrote a fundamental text on Islamic technology and engineering. S. Nomanul Haq has studied the alchemical tradition in Islam, especially the figure of Jabir ibn Hayyan (Geber). (Bernard R. Goldstein, The Astronomy of Levi ben Gerson (1288–1344), 1985; Y. Tzvi Langermann, The Jews and the Sciences in the Middle Ages, 1999; Charles Burnett, Scientific Weather Forecasting in the Middle Ages: The Writings of Al-Kindi (with Gerrit Bos), 2000; Juan Vernet, Historia de la ciencia española, 1975; Julio Samsó, Islamic Astronomy and Medieval Spain, 1994; Donald R. Hill, Islamic Science and Engineering, 1994;

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S. Nomanul Haq, Names, Natures, and Things: The Alchemist Jâbir ibn Hayyân and His Kitâb al-Ahjâr (Book of Stones), 1994). The Graeco-Arabic translations are being studied as an historical phenomenon (Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture, 1998), and in lexical detail (Gerhard Endress and Dimitri Gutas, A Greek and Arabic Lexicon (GALex): Materials for a Dictionary of the Mediaeval Translations from Greek into Arabic, 1992–present). One of Dimitri Gutas’s insights in these publications is a reassessment of the translation movement. His careful attention to the sources ruled out the special role that Western scholarship has often attributed to the caliph al-Ma’mun (r. 813–833 AD) such as single-handedly beginning the Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement and sponsoring science in response to a dream about Aristotle, or as part of his rationalist theological pet project, Mu‘tazilism. Furthermore, there are journals and a newsletter that publish research. For example, Michio Yano publishes a journal, SCIAMVS: Sources and Commentaries in Exact Sciences, that includes articles about the exact sciences. SUHAYL: Journal for the History of the Exact and Natural Sciences in Islamic Civilization is published by the University of Barcelona. F. Jamil and Sally Ragep maintain a bulletin (http://islamsci.mcgill.ca/) for the Commission on History of Science & Technology in Islamic Societies, part of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science, which provides a great service to the field, keeping scholars informed of conferences and research. Scholars publish in the following journals, among others: Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, Early Science and Medicine, Journal for the History of Arabic Science, and Journal for the History of Astronomy. F. Current Issues and Future Trends, Challenges Once the obstacle of the outmoded paradigm about the rise and decline of Islamic science has been superseded, the major challenge to scholarship in this subject is the inaccessibility of source texts. Primary sources were written in languages, such as Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, which, most still in manuscript form, are scattered in libraries and private collections all over Europe and the Muslim world. Finding aids, such as Fuat Sezgin (Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, 1967–1984, 9 vols.), are a great help in locating extant manuscripts, but occasionally new manuscripts come to light and mistakes in existing catalogues are discovered, and there does not yet exist an effective way to share this information between scholars. Furthermore, the most useful of these, Sezgin’s, is rendered less useful in that it does not extend past 430 AH (1038–1039 C.E.). The decision to end there was perhaps influenced at the outset by the former paradigm of decline of Islamic science,

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which seems odd, for even Sarton much earlier was aware of significant scientific activity in the Islamic world during the period after this cutoff date, described above. However, by the time volume 6 appeared (1978), Sezgin had become aware of the creative science in the later period, of Maragha and the new planetary models. A new paradigm has appeared, arguing that scholars ought to view the sciences not by isolated language or culture, but in an entire region of sibling cultures, as part of an “Islamo-Christian” civilization (Richard W. Bulliet, The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization, 2004). The increasingly obsolete designation “Judaeo-Christian civilization,” although acknowledging the debt to Jewish civilization, inaccurately excludes Islam from the historical scenario. Bulliet’s useful paradigm enables one to understand the varied transformations of science in the greater Mediterranean region as part of a long intercultural tradition, with various collateral descendants – language, cultural, religious, and political differences notwithstanding. Earlier scholars, eager to find connections on the basis of superficial evidence, were hindered by what is now referred to as the “Myth of Gondeshapur” (Arabic: Jundaysabur). The narrative is as follows: Gondeshapur in southwest Iran had become an outpost of Hellenism, a haven for intellectual and religious refugees from the persecutions of Emperor Justinian (d. 565) and other Christian Roman emperors. There these intellectuals – so the narrative proceeds – established an academy of translation, hospitals, libraries, etc. The Abbasid caliph al-Ma’mun (d. 833) then engaged the services of one of the Syrian Bakhtishu^ family of physicians, who brought all of this knowledge and tradition to Baghdad, where the Hellenistic tradition then continued. This Western scholarly reconstruction was an attempt to account for the transmission, by providing a ready resource for the Graeco-Arabic translations. The problem with this account is that it is based on one late source; there is no other evidence except supposition. Another tendentious antiChristian account, by the philosopher al-Farabi (d. 950), tries to show how the sciences, persecuted by Christian empire, found a home and intellectual freedom only under Islam. The reality is somewhat more complex, and infinitely more interesting (Saliba, Islamic Science, 2007). G. Science and Religion Islamic civilization provides a rich source for the study of the relationship between science and religion in society. The usual Western view is that science and religion necessarily are in conflict, for which the notorious “Galileo affair” is cited as an example. Islamic civilization, on the other hand, offers many examples of non-antagonistic, even constructive relationships

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between scientists and the religious establishment. The old Western paradigm of Islamic science suggested that science had lost the battle against the religious forces, and eventually died out in Islam. While it is true that religion forced some Greek-derived disciplines such as astronomy to redefine themselves, more often scientists served religion, as for example religious scholars – many of the scientists were also legal scholars or theologians, or time-keepers of the mosque, a famous example being Ibn al-Shatir (d. 1375), of Damascus. And it is also clear that science never completely died out as claimed, and that there was a continuous, though perhaps uneven, tradition down well into Ottoman times. There have been a few recent studies of the connection between knowledge and religion in Islam, such as Morrison (Islam and Science: The Intellectual Career of Nizam al-Din al-Nisaburi, 2007). H. The End of the Sciences in Islam? A major question that has been asked by some scholars since the study of Islam began in earnest in the 19th century, and one that continues to be of interest to the public is this: If there were so many leading scientists in Islamic civilization during the “golden age” of Islamic civilization, and then science vanished – how and why did it disappear? The early Western orientalists proposed reasons for the failure of the Islamic world to sustain its lead in the sciences: Ernest Renan (1823–1892), Max Weber (1864–1920), Gustave E. von Grunebaum (1909–1972) advanced essentializing, reductive, or simply racist reasons for the ultimate failure of Islam to maintain its lead in science. More sophisticated (but still essentializing and reductive) scenarios have been advanced since, including: 1) the conflict between science and the religious establishment; 2) the negative influence of al-Ghazali’s (d. 1111) devastating attack on Greek thought; 3) the inherent inferiority of the Islamic religion; and, 4) the dominance of the non-rational aspects of Islam, etc. In the West, the trend has been (and still is to some degree) to apply methods and paradigms derived from the issues and particulars of Western society and its history to Islam (Michael Mitterauer, Warum Europa? Mittelalterliche Grundlagen eines Sonderwegs, 2003). The results have often been distortions, if not caricatures of their subject, for example, in the application of Weber’s theories to Islam. The Orientalist-inspired paradigm of decline has implications beyond the Western academy as well: some contemporary scholars from the Muslim world, having been educated in the West and having been imbued with the earlier distorting paradigms about science, have written about their native scientific traditions in the terms bequeathed them

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from the West. Careful attention to the scholarship of George Saliba (Islamic Science, 2007) and his colleagues can help to reverse this trend. There were, in fact, major changes in the Islamic world in the several centuries since the beginning of the supposed decline in the 11th century, and the period of these Orientalists in the 19th century. It has become increasingly known, beginning in the 1950’s through the pioneering work of Kennedy (Studies in the Islamic Exact Sciences) and others, that original science continued to be produced well into the 16th century, and probably beyond. Furthermore, many pre-colonial era Western scholars knew this to have been the case, since, due to the research of Saliba, it is now understood that several European thinkers were reading the works of Arabic scientists and philosophers well into the Renaissance and beyond, searching for useful material for their own research. They or their agents scoured the Middle East in search of scientific texts in which they expected to find material to assist them in their own scientific projects, not unlike the manner in which 9th-century Arabic translators sought out Greek texts (Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture, 1998). No less a figure than John Locke studied the works of Ibn Tufayl (d. 1185), and early aspects of his own epochal philosophy was formatively influenced thereby (Gül A. Russell, “The Impact of the Philosophus Autodidactus: Pocockes, John Locke and the Society of Friends,” The ‘Arabick’ Interest of the Natural Philosophers in Seventeenth-Century England, ed. G. A. Russell, 1994, 224–65. See also Gül A. Russell, The Mind as a ‘tabula rasa’: John Locke and the Arabic Philosophus Autodidactus, forthcoming). Furthermore, it is now better understood how the economics of a society are interconnected with the extent of scientific practice that a given society can support. Some reasons for the decline in Islamic science must be sought outside of that civilization, in the significant economic changes that have occurred in the West after the Renaissance – changes that dramatically altered the balance of technology, trade and intellectual exchanges between these societies. Two of the most important of these events – discussed by Saliba – were, first, the discovery of the New World and, next, the discovery of a direct water route to the actual Indies. The former produced, through the exploitation of human and natural resources, tremendous wealth in Europe that was used to drive a scientific and technological revolution. The latter adversely affected the economy of the Middle East, which had long benefited from overland trade along the Silk Route, and was now mostly cropped out of the picture. The history of science in Islam is an exciting young field, attracting talented scholars. There are formidable challenges as is the case with all new disciplines, but the field is wide and ripe for the scholarly harvest, provided

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one is equipped with the proper tools. This field forces scholars to jettison old and cherished stereotypes of European cultural (or racial) superiority or uniqueness. It forces all scholars to confront their own intellectual heritage in fresh ways that reveal the inter-cultural nature of the great scientific movements and discoveries of the past. Select Bibliography Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbasid Society (2nd–4th/8th–10th Centuries) (London and New York: Routledge, 1998); Jan P. Hogendijk and Abdelhamid I. Sabra, ed., The Enterprise of Science in Islam: New Perspectives (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2003); Tradition, Transmission, Transformation: Proceedings of Two Conferences on Pre-Modern Science Held at the University of Oklahoma, ed. F. Jamil Ragep, Sally P. Ragep, and Steven Livesey (Leiden: Brill, 1996); Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, ed. Roshdi Rashed, 3 vols. (London and New York: Routledge, 1996); George Saliba, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (Cambridge, MA, and London: The MIT Press, 2007); Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums, 9 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1967–1984); Manfred Ullmann, Die Medizin im Islam, ed. B. Spuler, Handbuch der Orientalistik (Leiden and Cologne: E. J. Brill, 1970).

Glen M. Cooper

Qur’anic Studies A. Introduction Qur’anic Studies refers to the post-Enlightenment historical-critical study of the Qur’an qua text as well as, beginning in the mid-20th century, critical reflection upon the text’s relationship, meaning and possible significance to broader issues concerning Islamic history, historiography, the development of intellectual and religious traditions (especially law) in Islam’s formative period (7th through 9th centuries) and, with the contemporary postmodern turn in the humanities, its relevance for larger questions concerning the interpretation of issues related to what might properly be described as sociocultural history. After a brief terminological definition, this entry covers, in a necessarily broad manner, the history, development and major trends in this field from its inception in mid-19th-century Germany to the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, the latter of which has witnessed the publication of a work of major significance for Qur’anic Studies, the Encyclopaedia of the Qur’an

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(ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe, 6 vols., 2001–2006; hereafter EQ). Given both its broad topical range and bibliographical thoroughness, it is with the EQ that any inquiry into the history of research in Qur’anic Studies should begin. As such, this entry assumes that it would be superfluous to reference other sources concerning the development of the field beyond the relevant entries in the EQ. B. The Qur’an The Qur’an, literally ‘recitation’, refers to the fixed, orally preserved, and written text understood by Muslims to be the ipsissima verba of God revealed piecemeal to the historical founder of Islam, Muhammad ibn ‘Abdullah (570–632), in and around the cities of Mecca and Medina (Yathrib) in the northwestern littoral of the Arabian peninsula from around 610 until shortly before his death in 632. Unarguably the preeminent unifying force among Muslims across time and space, both historically and phenomenologically speaking, the Qur’an has stood at the center of Islam as a religious system and, followed by the Hadith and various institutional, textual, and learned traditions associated with the activities of the corporate body of Muslim religious scholars, has served as the basic source and reference for matters of law and theology, of state and polity, of ritual, social, and cultural life in uniquely far-reaching and historically significant ways. Beyond the well-attested practice of memorization and oral transmission among Muhammad and his companions, although the Islamic sources admit traditions concerning the written transcription of portions of the Qur’anic text via dictation during his lifetime as well as the compilation of privately circulated codices shortly following his death, generally the Muslim tradition has maintained that the consonantal text of the Qur’an as known today was codified about two decades following the death of Muhammad during the latter half of the reign of the Caliph ‘Uthman (r. 644–56). Compiled in order to quell disputes over variant readings of the text which had broken out between various troop contingents stationed outside of the Arabian peninsula, along with the official promulgation of this new codex (copies of which were sent to the newly established Iraqi garrisons of Kufa and Basra as well as to Damascus with one copy being kept in Medina) the Caliph ordered all competing codices destroyed. While descriptions of competing redactions are preserved in classical Muslim Qur’anic scholarship, by both fact of history and force of convention any reference to the “Qur’an” is necessarily a reference to the ‘Uthmanic text, the textus receptus, ne varietur. Roughly about the length of the Greek New Testament, the Qur’an is organized into 114 sections or chapters (Ar. sura), each of which is further

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subdivided into a varying number of verses (Ar. aya), with the exception of the opening chapter the suras being arranged in more-or-less decreasing order of length. Cast in an elevated, rhymed Arabic prose, the Qur’an is not marked by a straightforward thematic or narrative arrangement, but rather weaves together eschatological monitions, theological pronouncements, terse narratives concerning previous prophets, words of consolation to Muhammad and his community, admonitions and polemics directed against their enemies and prescripts concerning moral, cultic and civil matters. Its substantive content mirrors themes found in the normative Biblical tradition and the apocryphal and midrashic writings of Judaism and Christianity as well as topics associated with the non-scriptural tribal religion(s) of preIslamic Arabia. Written in a considerably defective orthography, by the first half of the 10th century a standard number (seven, ten, or fourteen) of variant systems of reading came to be applied to the basic consonantal skeleton of the ‘Uthmanic text, o