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The Marvels Found in the Great Cities and in the Seas and on the Islands

Author: Sergey Minov

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2021-01-22

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 180064034X

This volume presents the original text, accompanied by an English translation and commentary, of a hitherto unpublished Syriac composition, entitled the Marvels Found in the Great Cities and in the Seas and on the Islands. Produced by an unknown East Syrian Christian author during the late medieval or early modern period, this work offers a loosely organized catalogue of marvellous events, phenomena, and objects, natural as well as human-made, found throughout the world. The Marvels is a unique composition in that it bears witness to the creative adoption by Syriac Christians of the paradoxographical literary mode of ‘aǧā’ib that enjoyed great popularity among their Arabic- and Persian-speaking Muslim neighbours. In this composition, the East Syrian author blends together a number of different paradoxographical traditions: some inherited from the earlier Christian works in Syriac, such as the Alexander Romance, some borrowed directly or indirectly from Muslim geographical and other works, and some, apparently, circulating as a part of local oral lore. Combining entertainment and didacticism, he provides his audience with a fascinating panorama of imaginary geography, which at the same time has unmistakable Christian features. This edition makes a fascinating Syriac work available to a wider audience, and provides detailed insights into the rich assortment of traditions creatively woven together by its author. Thanks to the combination of the original text, English translation and commentary, it will be of interest to scholars and readers alike.

The Marvels Found in the Great Cities and in the Seas and on the Islands

Author: Sergey Minov

Publisher:

Published: 2021-01-22

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 9781800640337

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This volume presents the original text, accompanied by an English translation and commentary, of a hitherto unpublished Syriac composition, entitled the Marvels Found in the Great Cities and in the Seas and on the Islands. Produced by an unknown East Syrian Christian author during the late medieval or early modern period, this work offers a loosely organized catalogue of marvellous events, phenomena, and objects, natural as well as human-made, found throughout the world. The Marvels is a unique composition in that it bears witness to the creative adoption by Syriac Christians of the paradoxographical literary mode of 'aǧā'ib that enjoyed great popularity among their Arabic- and Persian-speaking Muslim neighbours. In this composition, the East Syrian author blends together a number of different paradoxographical traditions: some inherited from the earlier Christian works in Syriac, such as the Alexander Romance, some borrowed directly or indirectly from Muslim geographical and other works, and some, apparently, circulating as a part of local oral lore. Combining entertainment and didacticism, he provides his audience with a fascinating panorama of imaginary geography, which at the same time has unmistakable Christian features. This edition makes a fascinating Syriac work available to a wider audience, and provides detailed insights into the rich assortment of traditions creatively woven together by its author. Thanks to the combination of the original text, English translation and commentary, it will be of interest to scholars and readers alike.

Armenia Through the Lens of Time

Author: Federico Alpi

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 566

ISBN-13: 9004527605

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When ancient philosophers meet mediaeval poetry and cinema, you are sure to get a unique perspective on a culture. Encounter Armenia through the Lens of Time for new insights into art, history, literature, language, and religion, penned by leading scholars of all ages.

Diachronic Variation in the Omani Arabic Vernacular of the Al-ʿAwābī District

Author: Roberta Morano

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2022-10-13

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 1800647247

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In this monograph, Roberta Morano re-examines one of the foundational works of the Omani Arabic dialectology field, Carl Reinhardt’s Ein arabischer Dialekt gesprochen in ‘Oman und Zanzibar (1894). This German-authored work was prolific in shaping our knowledge of Omani Arabic during the twentieth century, until the 1980s when more recent linguistic studies on the Arabic varieties spoken in Oman began to appear. Motivated by an urgent need to expand and reinforce our understanding of Omani Arabic, the book provides a linguistic analysis of the Omani vernacular spoken in the al-ʿAwābī district (northern Oman), based on the speech of fifteen informants recruited throughout the area. It also provides a comparative analysis of the new data with that collected by Carl Reinhardt in 1894. This comparison enables the reader to appreciate the extent of diachronic linguistic variation in the region, and also sheds light on the threats that such variation poses to Omani-specific linguistic features. Organised in four chapters, the book presents a sociolinguistic analysis of the Omani linguistic landscape followed by an examination of the phonology, morphology, and syntax of the al-ʿAwābī vernacular. Each chapter contains primary data collected by the author in situ compared, when applicable, with Carl Reinhardt’s materials. The appendix includes two sample texts extrapolated from the recordings, fourteen proverbs and one traditional song. This study will be of interest to those working in the fields of Omani Arabic, historical and comparative linguistics, translation and interpretation, or those with an interest in how languages develop over time.

New Perspectives in Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew

Author: Aaron D. Hornkohl

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2021-04-06

Total Pages: 806

ISBN-13: 1800641664

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Most of the papers in this volume originated as presentations at the conference Biblical Hebrew and Rabbinic Hebrew: New Perspectives in Philology and Linguistics, which was held at the University of Cambridge, 8–10th July, 2019. The aim of the conference was to build bridges between various strands of research in the field of Hebrew language studies that rarely meet, namely philologists working on Biblical Hebrew, philologists working on Rabbinic Hebrew and theoretical linguists. This volume is the published outcome of this initiative. It contains peer-reviewed papers in the fields of Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew that advance the field by the philological investigation of primary sources and the application of cutting-edge linguistic theory. These include contributions by established scholars and by students and early career researchers.

Diversity and Rabbinization

Author: Gavin McDowell

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2021-04-30

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 1783749962

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This volume contains Hebrew and Syriac text. Please, check that your e-reader supports texts set in left-to-right direction before purchasing the epub and azw3 editions of the book. This volume is dedicated to the cultural and religious diversity in Jewish communities from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Age and the growing influence of the rabbis within these communities during the same period. Drawing on available textual and material evidence, the fourteen essays presented here, written by leading experts in their fields, span a significant chronological and geographical range and cover material that has not yet received sufficient attention in scholarship. The volume is divided into four parts. The first focuses on the vantage point of the synagogue; the second and third on non-rabbinic Judaism in, respectively, the Near East and Europe; the final part turns from diversity within Judaism to the process of "rabbinization" as represented in some unusual rabbinic texts. Diversity and Rabbinization is a welcome contribution to the historical study of Judaism in all its complexity. It presents fresh perspectives on critical questions and allows us to rethink the tension between multiplicity and unity in Judaism during the first millennium CE. L’École Pratique des Hautes Études has kindly contributed to the publication of this volume.

Sefer ha-Pardes by Jedaiah ha-Penini

Author: David Torollo

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2022-08-03

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 1800647271

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This groundbreaking new work is the first full critical edition and English translation of the Hebrew book Sefer ha-Pardes [The Book of the Orchard], written at the end of the thirteenth century by the Provençal Jewish author Jedaiah ha-Penini. It is purportedly an example of musar: a compilation of wise epigrams and meshalim [parables] that teach moral lessons on different topics, such as the service of God, friendship, the deceitfulness of the world, medicine, logic, music, magic, and poetry. However, it is in reality a compendium of sayings that reveal the author’s personal views and feelings on a variety of religious topics, secular sciences, and their practitioners. David Torollo presents a fluent and illuminating English-Hebrew parallel text based on four sixteenth-century witnesses: three manuscripts and a printed edition. A rigorous study accompanies and contextualises the Hebrew work, exploring Sefer ha-Pardes’s transmission and reception in different places over time; its structure and content; its place in the intellectual environment and literary tradition of Provence; and possible lines of enquiry for future research. This essential new work offers a significant contribution to scholarship in the field of Medieval Hebrew Hispano-Provencal literature.

The Historical Depth of the Tiberian Reading Tradition of Biblical Hebrew

Author: Aaron D. Hornkohl

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2023-02-06

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13: 1800649827

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This volume explores an underappreciated feature of the standard Tiberian Masoretic tradition of Biblical Hebrew, namely its composite nature. Focusing on cases of dissonance between the tradition’s written (consonantal) and reading (vocalic) components, the study shows that the Tiberian spelling and pronunciation traditions, though related, interdependent, and largely in harmony, at numerous points reflect distinct oral realisations of the biblical text. Where the extant vocalisation differs from the apparently pre-exilic pronunciation presupposed by the written tradition, the former often exhibits conspicuous affinity with post-exilic linguistic conventions as seen in representative Second Temple material, such as the core Late Biblical Hebrew books, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Ben Sira, rabbinic literature, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and contemporary Aramaic and Syriac material. On the one hand, such instances of written-reading disharmony clearly entail a degree of anachronism in the vocalisation of Classical Biblical Hebrew compositions. On the other, since many of the innovative and secondary features in the Tiberian vocalisation tradition are typical of sources from the Second Temple Period and, in some cases, are documented as minority alternatives in even earlier material, the Masoretic reading tradition is justifiably characterised as a linguistic artefact of profound historical depth.

An Introduction to Andalusi Hebrew Metrics

Author: José Martínez Delgado

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2023-05-10

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 1805110691

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Throughout the last two centuries, Hebrew metrics was studied by leading linguists and specialists in medieval Hebrew poetry. Nowadays, it has disappeared from the academic discussion such that it is sometimes even difficult to find scansions or the name of the meter in new editions of poems. This book aims to rectify this gap, helping readers to understand the metric structure of this poetry in order to facilitate the work of editing and cataloguing those samples still in manuscript form for future editors. Delgado presents his view of Andalusi Hebrew metrics, as encountered in medieval manuals of Arabic and Hebrew metrics and scattered notes in the works of Andalusi Hebrew philologists. Whilst twentieth-century scholars spoke about the adaptation of Arabic metrics to Hebrew, he instead approaches these compositions by Andalusi Jews (10th-13th c.) as Arabic metrics written in Hebrew, thus emphasising how Hebrew poetry of the Andalusi Jews can help us to understand the general evolution of Arabic strophic poetry, and its experimental evolution, which is quite unlike classical and strophic Arabic poetry. This method respects the Hebrew vowel system, and does not necessitate alteration of word morphology, leaving the guttural letters quiescent (unless required by metrical license); nor does it necessitate guesses about metres that are not in the classical catalogue. Although the author has not found each and every classical metre from Andalusi Hebrew poetry included in this manual, they are all catalogued, either in case someone finds them in future or because they help us to comprehend the metrical structures that are characteristic of strophic poetry. As such, this monograph will be of great interest to scholars of Hebrew metrics.

Wonders and Rarities

Author: Travis Zadeh

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2023-01-10

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 0674258452

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Travis Zadeh revives the work of the thirteenth-century Persian scholar Qazwīnī, whose Wonders and Rarities was for centuries one of the most influential natural histories in the world. Inviting us to embrace anew Qazwīnī’s rationalized study of nature and magic, Zadeh dramatically revises the place of wonder in the history of Islamic thought.