HS-SS Library Book Conversation

The December Historical Studies–Social Sciences Book Talk will feature a discussion on current scholarship on rational theology among Muslims and Jews, unexplored manuscript repositories in Yemen, Russia, and elsewhere, and the importance of a cross-denominational perspective in the study of intellectual history of the Near East.

The books that will be discussed are Dāwūd al-Muqammaṣ Twenty Chapters / Sarah Stroumsa (Brigham Young University, November 2016), Al-Ṣāḥib Ibn ʿAbbād Promoter of Rational Theology: Two Muʿtazilī kalām texts from the Cairo Geniza / ed. by Wilferd Madelung and Sabine Schmidtke (Brill, November 2016), and al-Maḥajjah al-bayā' fī ucūl al-dīn / Ḥusām al-Dīn ʻAbd Allah bin Zayd al-ʻAnsī (d: 447H) (Zaydī theology in 7th/13th century Yemen) edited by Hassan Ansari and Sabine Schmidtke (Tehran, Mīrās Maktūb, 2015).

The talk will also feature commentaries by Sarah Stroumsa, Alice and Jack Ormut Professor Emeritus of Arabic Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Hassan Ansari, Member in the Institute's School of Historical Studies; and Sabine Schmidtke, Professor in the School.