Bøger udgivet af Gibb Memorial Trust

Mazandaran and Astarabad, originally published in 1928, gives an account of two remote and inaccessible Iranian provinces written by the diplomat and Persian scholar H. L. Rabino. Accompanied by a large-scale facsimile of the detailed original map.

Translation and analysis of a rare Russian survey of the khanate of Shirvan, now Azerbaijan, after its annexation by Russia in 1820.

These three plays display the kind of entertainment popular in medieval Egypt. This edition offers the complete text, edited over a long period by a number of scholars and provided with a critical apparatus. The language used entails great textual problems yet it rewards study, combining wit, dramatic entertainment and sophisticated poetry.

The Qur'an is the sacred book of Islam. For Muslims it is the word of God revealed in Arabic by the archangel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad, and thence to mankind. Originally it was delivered orally: traditional sources indicate that Muhammad always recited his message. He was a preacher; he delivered good news; and he warned; thus, the Qur'an is a collection of sermons, exhortations, guidance, warnings and pieces of encouragement. This new translation is unique. The result of decades of study of the text, of the traditional Muslim authorities and of the works of other scholars, special thought has been given to what the text would have meant to its original hearers. The traditional verse structure has been maintained, and where necessary verses have been further divided into sections to indicate where there are natural points for pause, and to emphasize the original oral nature of the text. This is the first translation of the Qur'an to adopt such an approach. The oral nature of the text presents problems for the translator, for recitation frequently gives the text a dimension that does not come across in silent reading. Some previous translators have introduced bridging phrases drawn from past commentators, resulting in interruptions to the flow of the text. Alan Jones's approach underlines the need for a sympathetic response to the oral and aural structures of the Arabic of the Qur'an. An introductory note to each sura provides some background material on the contents of the sura and its dating, and the notes are kept to a minimum. The translation is preceded by a brief Introduction describing the religion and culture of the Arabian peninsula, and the land and its peoples, in the years before Muhammad's birth. There is an account of his life: his early years in Mecca, the hijra, the migration to Medina, and his years there. And there is an account of the Qur'an and the transmission of the text. Alan Jones is a specialist in early Arabic literature, and the author of Early Arabic Poetry, two books of translations and commentary on pre-Islamic poetry. He has been a lecturer and teacher of Arabic at Oxford University for 43 years; now retired he is at work on a commentary to accompany this new translation of the Qur'an. A Festschrift, Islamic Reflections, Arabic Musings was published by Oxbow on behalf of the Gibb Memorial Trust, in his honour.

One of the problems pervading the study of medieval Islamic technology is the lack of surviving technical treatises. Tradition tended to be handed down by example and by word of mouth, and apprenticeships could last for decades. Fortunately, however, occasional treatises do exist. The treatise "e;On swords and their kinds"e; was written by the 9th century Muslim philosopher Ya'qub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi. This work was commissioned by a powerful patron of scholarship, the Abbasid caliph Mu'tasim, and the content of the treatise presumably reflects the ruler's general interest in his army and its equipment, and his specific interest in the technical aspects of sword production. In this work, Kindi discusses the difference between iron and steel, distinguishes different qualities of sword blade, and different centres of swordsmithing. He refers to the Indian Ocean trade in steel ingots and to the distinctive character of European swords of the period. He includes technical terms used by the makers, and distinguishes swords by their physical features - form, measurements, weight, watered pattern, sculptured details, or inlaid ornaments. This publication includes the text and a translation of Kindi's treatise, and a detailed commentary on the work. The volume also includes a translation of Friedrich Schwarzlose's work on swords, which is based on the hundreds of references to swords in early Arabic poetry. Written in German, this extraordinary compendium of information was first published some 120 years ago; this volume makes it available again, and for the first time in English.

The Saljuqnama is a historical work written around AD 1188 for Tughril III, the last of the Saljuq dynasty to rule in Iran. Zahir al-Din Nishapuri hoped to win favour at the court by presenting his history of the great early Saljuq kings and their less powerful successors in Western Iran to the young Sultan.

Domenico was the name taken by a rabbi and doctor from Safed in Palestine on his conversion to Catholicism in 1593. For some ten years he served as Third Physician to Sultan Murad III. In 1611 he wrote or more accurately dictated his Relatione della gran Citta di Constantinopli .

This book represents an explanation of the institution of hisba in medieval Islam, through one of the most used texts in the field. It includes a thorough translation of the text, written by a practising muhtasib, scholar and judge, together with accompanying biographical and bibliographical notes.

The author's talents spanned many disciplines and this is a collection of works on agriculture, animals, astrology, astronomy, biography, calendars, crops, genealogies, geography, grammar, lexicography, mathematics, medicine, taxes, timekeeping, warfare and weapons.

A two volume set comprising the critical notes and commentary provided by Nicholson to his edition and translation of Rumi's great poem on Islamic mysticism.

Professor Richard's work is based on part of a manuscript in the British Library concerned with the revenues and administration of the later Mughal Empire, and datable to the reign of the Emperor Bahadur Shah I (AD 1708-1712).

Murtada al-Zabidi was a Humanist scholar and a Muslim, whose twelfth-century writings are here examined in the context of their geographical and historical setting. The period when Zabidi was writing saw a shift in the balance of power from the Muslim empires to the Western world, reflected in the stories he told of his travels from India on to Cairo, across vast distances and coming across an extraordinary range of people. The five chapters in this work look at various aspects of Zabidi's life and times, the first one focusing on his life and career and forms a background to studies of his work. The second looks at Zabidi's writing and publishing and the third at his notes on his friends, teachers, students and acquaintances. Chapter four assesses his two largest works; his Arabic lexicon and his commentary on Gazzali's Ihya . Finally, chapter five explores his second major literary achievement, his large commentary on Gazzali's Ihya ulum al-din .

This book is about an aspect of mediaeval Arabic culture and literature known in Arabic as mujUn (roughly 'libertinism, licentiousness, frivolity, indecency, profligacy, shamelessness, impertinence', etc.)

The third of three volumes comprising an edition of the earliest manuscripts of Rumi's great poem of Islamic mysticism. Persian text.

Takhyil is a term from Arabic poetics denoting the evocation of images. It has a broad spectrum of connotations throughout classical philosophical poetics and rhetoric, and it is closely linked to the Greek concept of phantasia.

Islam as a cultural, intellectual, and religious venture appears in the popular imagination as a monolithic entity. Orientalists of the traditional ilk have tended to describe it in essentialist terms, whilst many fundamentalist Muslims themselves promote their construction of a pure and unadulterated Islamic past, to which they strive to return by purging foreign or unauthentic elements from their religion. Next to these attempts, another more traditional view sees the influence between the Western and the Islamic world in linear and teleological terms. Knowledge was transmitted, so to speak, from Alexandria to Baghdad, and hence to Toledo and Paris. The present volume challenges both these concepts regarding the development of Islamic cultures. To do justice to the complexity of structures within which the Muslim Middle Ages unfolded, it approaches the questions of interaction and influence through a novel conceptual framework, that of crosspollination. Instead of telling the story of the transmission of Western works from Greece via Islam into the Latin world, a number of case studies highlight the plurality of encounters between Islam and other adjacent cultures.

Academician Barthold's famous work begins in the late 7th century with the Muslim invasions of what became Russian Central Asia and carries the history of the region through the period of Abbasid centralization, that of the rise of local Muslim dynasties and successive phases of Turkish dominance down to the arrival of Chingiz Khan.

Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi's great poem, the Mathnawi is one of the best known and most influential works of Muslim mysticism. Nicholson's critical edition is based on the oldest known manuscripts, including the earliest, dated 1278 and preserved in the Mevlana Museum at Konya.