Western Biblical scholarship has existed as a historical
enterprise independent from church and synagogue as far back as the
eighteenth century. Western study of the Qurʾān, however, has more
recent roots, with interest taking hold in the early...
Is the Qurʾān an exclusively Islamic text? In this talk,
Angelika Neuwirth, Member
(2009) in the School of Historical Studies, contends that it is
both Islamic and late antique. Before the Qurʾān was recognized as
Muslim scripture it was...
From the very beginning of its existence, the Muslim world
practiced and developed an elaborate legal system meant to control
and to judge all aspects of life . . . This system, known as
sharia, was based on the Qurʾān, an immutable
divine...
To what extent did Islamic freethinking contribute to the
development of Western Radicalism in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries? Or how far were Islamic and European freethinking simply
parallel developments on the basis of similar heritages...
In the 1660s and onward, the Radical Enlightenment pushed for
full freedom of thought, religious freedom, and personal liberty
together with democracy and the principle of equality. In this
public lecture, Jonathan Israel,
Andrew W. Mellon Professor...
Arabia seems to have been a much more developed place than most
Islamicists (myself included) had ever suspected—not just in the
north and south, but also in the middle. We are beginning to get a
much more nuanced sense of the place, and again it is...
This is an abridged version of an interview conducted at the
Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, in
connection with the Shii Studies Research Program, supported by
Carnegie Foundation, on March 28, 2019. Etan Kohlberg is
an...
