Historiography of the History of Science in Islamicate Societies

Historiography of the History of Science in Islamicate Societies PDF

Author: Sonja Brentjes

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-09-05

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1000921417

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This book presents eight papers about important historiographical issues as debated in the history of science in Islamicate societies, the history of science and philosophy of medieval Latin Europe and the history of mathematics as an academic discipline. Six papers deal with themes about the sciences in Islamicate societies from the ninth to the seventeenth centuries, among them novelty, context and decline. Two other papers discuss the historiographical practices of historians of mathematics and other disciplines in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The central argument of the collected papers is that in addition and beyond the study of scientific texts and instruments historians of science in Islamicate societies need to pay attention to cultural, material and social aspects that shaped the scientific activities of the authors and makers of such texts and instruments. It is pointed out that the diachronic, de-contextualized comparison between methods and results of scholars from different centuries, regions and cultures often leads to serious distortions of the historical record and is responsible for the long-term neglect of scholarly activities after the so-called "Golden Age". The book will appeal in particular to teachers of history of science in Islamicate societies, to graduate students interested in issues of methodology and to historians of science grappling with the unresolved problems of how think and write about the sciences in concrete societies of the past instead of subsuming all extant texts, instruments, maps and other objects related to the sciences under macro-level concepts like Islam or Latin Europe. (CS 1114).

The Sciences in Islamicate Societies in Context

The Sciences in Islamicate Societies in Context PDF

Author: Sonja Brentjes

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-11-24

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1000987256

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This Variorum volume reprints ten papers on contextual elements of the so-called ancient sciences in Islamicate societies between the thirteenth and the seventeenth centuries. They address four major themes: the ancient sciences in educational institutions; courtly patronage of science; the role of the astral and other sciences in the Mamluk sultanate; and narratives about knowledge. The main arguments are directed against the then dominant historiographical claims about the exclusion of the ancient sciences from the madrasa and cognate educational institutes, the suppression of philosophy and other ancient sciences in Damascus after 1229, the limited role of the new experts for timekeeping in the educational and professional exercise of this science, and the marginal impact of astrology under Mamluk rule. It is shown that the muwaqqits (timekeepers) were important teachers at madrasas and Sufi convents, that Mamluk officers sought out astrologers for counselling and that narratives about knowledge reveal important information about scholarly debates and beliefs. Colophons and dedications are used to prove that courtly patronage for the ancient sciences continued uninterrupted until the end of the seventeenth century. Furthermore, these papers refute the idea of a continued and strong conflict between the ancient and modern sciences, showing rather shifting alliances between various of them and their regrouping in the classifications of the entire disciplinary edifice. These papers are suited for graduate teaching in the history of science and the intellectual, cultural and social history of the Middle East and for all readers interested in the study of the contexts of the sciences.

New Perspectives on the History of Islamic Science

New Perspectives on the History of Islamic Science PDF

Author: Muzaffar Iqbal

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-05-15

Total Pages: 558

ISBN-13: 1351914774

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Recent studies in the history of Islamic science based on the discovery and study of new primary texts and instruments have substantially revised the views of nineteenth-century historians of science. This volume presents some of these ground-breaking studies as well as articles which shed new light on the ongoing academic debate surrounding the question of the decline of Islamic scientific tradition.

Routledge Handbook on the Sciences in Islamicate Societies

Routledge Handbook on the Sciences in Islamicate Societies PDF

Author: Sonja Brentjes

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-01-24

Total Pages: 876

ISBN-13: 1351692690

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The Routledge Handbook on the Sciences in Islamicate Societies provides a comprehensive survey on science in the Islamic world from the 8th to the 19th century. Across six sections, a group of subject experts discuss and analyze scientific practices across a wide range of Islamicate societies. The authors take into consideration several contexts in which science was practiced, ranging from intellectual traditions and persuasions to institutions, such as courts, schools, hospitals, and observatories, to the materiality of scientific practices, including the arts and craftsmanship. Chapters also devote attention to scientific practices of minority communities in Muslim majority societies, and Muslim minority groups in societies outside the Islamicate world, thereby allowing readers to better understand the opportunities and constraints of scientific practices under varying local conditions. Through replacing Islam with Islamicate societies, the book opens up ways to explain similarities and differences between diverse societies ruled by Muslim dynasties. This handbook will be an invaluable resource for both established academics and students looking for an introduction to the field. It will appeal to those involved in the study of the history of science, the history of ideas, intellectual history, social or cultural history, Islamic studies, Middle East and African studies including history, and studies of Muslim communities in Europe and South and East Asia.

1001 Distortions

1001 Distortions PDF

Author: Sonja Brentjes

Publisher: Ergon Verlag

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783956501692

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This book reflects on debates among historians of science, medicine and technology as well as Islamicate societies about fundamental questions of how we think and write about the intellec-tual and technological past in cultures to which we do not belong any longer or never were a member of. These debates are occasioned by the manner in which amateurs have taken bits and pieces from our academic narratives and those of our predecessors, stripped them of their richness in detail and their often agonizing efforts to interpret these details, and rearranged them in simplifying and often misguided fashion as outdated stories about glory, success, pri-ority and progress. Our texts are accompanied by reflections of professional curators and mu-seum directors about the difficulties of translating academic research into representations that attract different groups of visitors. They are followed by experiences in northern Europe with Islamophobic adversaries of any narrative about Muslim contributions to the sciences, medi-cine and technologies, and in one of the Gulf States with alleged reformers of the political, economic and educational landscape of the sheikhdom and their use of such amateurish narra-tives for blocking efforts of critical questioning of such self-congratulatory representations.

Ibn Khaldûn's Philosophy of History

Ibn Khaldûn's Philosophy of History PDF

Author: Muhsin Mahdi

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-10-14

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 1317366352

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This book, first published in 1957, is the study of 14th-century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun, who founded a special science to consider history and culture, based on the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle and their Muslim followers. In no other field has the revolt of modern Western thought against traditional philosophy been so far-reaching in its consequences as in the field of history. Ibn Khaldun realized that history is more immediately related to action than political philosophy because it studies the actual state of man and society. He found that the ancients had not made history the object of an independent science, and thought it was important to fill this gap. A factual acquaintance with the conclusions of Ibn Khaldun’s reflections on history is not the same as the full comprehension of their theoretical significance. When these fundamental questions are answered, it becomes possible to pose the specific question of the relation of Ibn Khaldun’s philosophy of history, or his new science of culture, to other practical sciences and, particularly, to the art of history. After an exposition of the major trends of Islamic historiography, part of this book attempts to answer this question through the analysis of the method and intention of the sections of the ‘History’ where Ibn Khaldun himself examines the works of major Muslim historians, shows the necessity of the new science of culture, and distinguishes it from other practical sciences.

The Times of History

The Times of History PDF

Author: ?Az?z ?A?mah

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2007-01-01

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 9789637326738

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Historical categorization -- Tropes and temporalities of historiographic romanticism, modern and Islamic -- Islam and the history of civilizations -- Typological time, patterning and the past appropriated -- Chronophagous discourse: a study of the clerico-legal appropriation of the world in an Islamic tradition -- The muslim canon from late antiquity to the era of modernism -- History and narration in Arab historiography -- History of the future -- God's chronography and dissipative time -- Rhetoric for the senses: a consideration of Muslim paradise narratives -- Distractions of Clio: impasses and perspectives of historians' history -- Islamic political thought: current historiography and the frame of history -- Monotheistic monarchy -- Acknowledgements -- Index

The Book of Disputation: A Mudejar Religious-Philosophical Treatise against Christians and Jews

The Book of Disputation: A Mudejar Religious-Philosophical Treatise against Christians and Jews PDF

Author: Mònica Colominas Aparicio

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2024-06-17

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 9004695621

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This is the first critical edition and study of a unique and important Muslim polemic against Christians and Jews. The Book of Disputation was written in Arabic by a Mudejar (subject Muslim living under Christian rule in late medieval Iberia) and offers new insight into the cultural and intellectual life of this Muslim minority. The text advances arguments drawn from natural philosophy—largely from Aristotle and Averroes—along with more traditional revealed sources such as the Qurʾān and the Bible. Mudejar communities suffered a diminution of religious and political intelligentsia over time. This text, however, highlights the author's particular conception of the world as the creation of God in his defense of Islam, demonstrates the vitality of intellectual life among Muslims in medieval Christian Iberia, and documents the continued cultivation of natural philosophy within these Muslim communities.

Science & Islam

Science & Islam PDF

Author: Ehsan Masood

Publisher: Icon Books Ltd

Published: 2009-11-05

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 1848311605

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From Musa al-Khwarizmi who developed algebra in 9th century Baghdad to al-Jazari, a 13th-century Turkish engineer whose achievements include the crank, the camshaft and the reciprocating piston, Science and Islam tells the story of one of history’s most misunderstood yet rich and fertile periods in science: the extraordinary Islamic scientific revolution between 700 and 1400 CE.

Historiography of Mathematics in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Historiography of Mathematics in the 19th and 20th Centuries PDF

Author: Volker R. Remmert

Publisher: Birkhäuser

Published: 2016-12-08

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 3319396498

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This book addresses the historiography of mathematics as it was practiced during the 19th and 20th centuries by paying special attention to the cultural contexts in which the history of mathematics was written. In the 19th century, the history of mathematics was recorded by a diverse range of people trained in various fields and driven by different motivations and aims. These backgrounds often shaped not only their writing on the history of mathematics, but, in some instances, were also influential in their subsequent reception. During the period from roughly 1880-1940, mathematics modernized in important ways, with regard to its content, its conditions for cultivation, and its identity; and the writing of the history of mathematics played into the last part in particular. Parallel to the modernization of mathematics, the history of mathematics gradually evolved into a field of research with its own journals, societies and academic positions. Reflecting both a new professional identity and changes in its primary audience, various shifts of perspective in the way the history of mathematics was and is written can still be observed to this day. Initially concentrating on major internal, universal developments in certain sub-disciplines of mathematics, the field gradually gravitated towards a focus on contexts of knowledge production involving individuals, local practices, problems, communities, and networks. The goal of this book is to link these disciplinary and methodological changes in the history of mathematics to the broader cultural contexts of its practitioners, namely the historians of mathematics during the period in question.