Aquinas’ Theory of Happiness and its Greek,Byzantine, Latin and Arabic Sources

Scholars have traditionally considered Aquinas’ theory of happiness as fundamentally Aristotelian. However, this interpretation does not seem an adequate characterization of Aquinas’ doctrine that appears as the result of the influence of several traditions. In interpreting Aristotle, Aquinas is influenced by two Byzantine Neoplatonic commentators of Aristotle – namely, Eustratius and Michael of Ephesus. In developing his theory, Aquinas tries to harmonize the Aristotelian perspective with Latin Neoplatonic notion of perfect happiness, put forward by Augustine, and both the Greek theory of the human intellect proposed by Pseudo-Dionysius and the Arabic doctrine of the human soul, expressed by the Liber De Causis. The Sententia libri Ethicorum provides the best opportunity to trace how Aquinas’ doctrine arises out of a dialogue between these different traditions.     

A Ṭā’ifa in Exile: Sayf al-Dawla and the Survival of the Banū Hūd

In 1145–1146, Sayf al-Dawla returned to al-Andalus to create an independent kingdom and return the Banū Hūd of Zaragoza to prominence. His task was a difficult one, not least because he’d spent a decade serving the Christian king Alfonso VII. After a year of campaigning, Sayf al-Dawla secured a base of support in Murcia. However, he died shortly after his coronation in a battle with Christian allies who were allegedly sent by Alfonso to help him. In addition to providing an explanation for the battle and his death, the article examines how Sayf al-Dawla promoted the legitimacy of his state through his coinage, adherence to Andalusī traditions, and a network of fellow exiles. It interprets the Zaragozan ?ā’ifa as a moveable faction rather than a fixed geographical entity and connects Sayf al-Dawla’s kingdom to later movements to demonstrate how his actions preserved the Banū Hūd’s prestige in Andalusī imaginations.     

“He Was a Muslim Knight Who Fought for Religion,Not for the World”. War and Religiosity in Islam: A Comparative Study between the Islamic East and West (Twelfth century)

In the second half of the twelfth century, the Maghreb and the Mashriq saw two new political and religious projects taking place, which shared a common reformist spirit. The Almohad movement and the process initiated by Zankī (r. 1127–1146) gave a crucial role to jihād, as well as introducing far-reaching religious reform, doing away with the supposed decadence that had taken hold in the years before. The combination of these two elements gave rise to a greater exchange between religiosity and war. A comparative analysis of Islamic sources from both east and west reveals this increase of religiosity in war in three different fields: the participation of religious elites in the armies; the rise in the use of rituals and religiosity while at war, by means of sermons, speeches and the use of “sacred” objects; and miraculous events related to acts of war.     

“Fear God; Fear the Bogaze”: The Nile Mouths and the Navigational Landscape of the Medieval Nile Delta,Egypt

By the fourth/tenth century, Egypt's Nile Delta had just two major Delta branches debouching directly into the Mediterranean – the Dumyā? (Damietta) and Rashīd (Rosetta). Navigational conditions at these branches’ mouths were treacherous because of a combination of currents, winds, wave-fields and shifting sandbanks. These conditions were a danger to shipping, and so had a formative effect on the navigational landscape of the Delta. Despite its remoteness from the Nile, Alexandria remained Egypt's chief Mediterranean port, but only because river connections were maintained that avoided the Rashīd mouth. In contrast, the port of Rashīd was relatively insignificant. Similar conditions at the Dumyā? mouth prompted navigators to adopt routes via Lake Tinnīs, modern Lake Manzala, which linked to the sea through its calmer sea mouths. This article brings together material from multiple disciplines to offer a new understanding of the navigational context of Egypt's medieval Mediterranean ports.     

“A Crusade from the First”: The Norman Conquest of Islamic Sicily, 1060–1091

In the creation myth of the Crusades, Pope Urban II (r. 1088–1099) is the founding father and 1095 is the critical year. During the twentieth century, French, Spanish, and English scholars challenged this myth; yet this myth remains as durable as ever. Because the origins of the crusading enterprise came to be associated with the so-called First Crusade (1095–1102), scholars have created a vision of crusading at odds with Pope Urban's vision, which views the “First” Crusade as the third part of a triptych: first, the Norman conquest of Sicily (1060–1091); then, the Castilian and Catalan advances in Iberia; and finally the 1095 Eastern Crusade. Today, the study of the Crusades is hampered by a failure to concentrate on the direct evidence and to take into account what contemporaries understood by crusading. To get a sense of what contemporaries understood by crusading, this paper examines the Norman Crusade in Sicily, drawing upon both Christian and Islamic sources.     

Parallel Preachings: Urban II and al-Sulamī

At the Council of Clermont in 1095, Pope Urban II (1088–1099) called for a holy war against the Muslims who had wrested Jerusalem from Christian rule and who continued to threaten the Byzantine Empire. His audience responded enthusiastically and undertook a campaign commonly known today as the first crusade, which established several crusader states in the Levant. Some 10 years after the council, a Damascene jurisprudent named ‘Alīb. Tāhir al-Sulamī (d. 499–500/1106) publicly dictated the earliest extant call for a Muslim counter-offensive against these states. Al-Sulamī's message met with little success, unlike Urban's: only 14 years later, at the Battle of Balat (also called Ager sanguinis or the Field of Blood), do Islamic calls to jihād (holy war) seem to have started to have significant effect. Despite marked disparities between the religious traditions of each faith, the entreaties of Urban II and al-Sulamī parallel one another in many ways. On the most basic level, they have identical purposes: both call for a military campaign against people of another faith. Yet their similarities go much deeper than this. The two preachings reveal a common mindset toward religious or holy war that is all the more striking because Christian views on holy war and Muslim doctrines of jihād developed in isolation. Moreover, both demand similar responses from their listeners – responses that subordinate secular interests to sacred ones. So although these calls to action came out of separate theological traditions and addressed audiences in quite disparate social contexts, their similarities appear to reflect cross-cultural medieval attitudes toward holy war. Indeed, they suggest that there were certain basic ideas associated with holy war that were common to the medieval mindset, regardless of the individual's cultural background.     

Piracy as Statecraft: The Mediterranean Policies of the Fifth/Eleventh-Century Taifa of Denia

The taifa of Denia on the Iberian eastern seaboard was one of the most dynamic of the regional polities that emerged from the disintegrated Cordovan caliphate. Mujāhid al-‘āmirī based his state not only on its continental territories, but especially on the maritime networks that linked it with the Mediterranean. Commerce with Muslim and Christian ports played a role in Denia's success, but both Latin and Arabic sources emphasise its practice of piracy on a grand scale. In fact, Mujāhid al-‘āmirī built his state as a continuation of the maritime policies of the Cordovan caliphate under which the piracy of independent coastal communities was adopted and expanded into a state-sponsored guerre de course. Mujāhid's pursuance of this policy stemmed from his role in the erstwhile caliphate, but was also motivated by a combination of religious, political and economic factors. The legitimacy provided by his “jihād on the sea” helped to shore up his power at a time of political instability. This policy also provided the taifa's economic foundation for much of its history. In fact, the Mediterranean maritime lanes became as much an extension of Denia as its continental territories. Denia's piracy thus reflects a coherent form of statecraft, informing definitions of the medieval state and territoriality.     

Michaud,Montrond, Mazloum and the First History of the Crusades in Arabic

This short notice provides a novel and preliminary analysis of the source for the first Arabic history of the crusades, and contributes to the understanding of the penetration of the crusades as a distinct phenomenon into the Islamic world. The Arabic history, Min Ta?rīkh al-?urūb al-muqaddasa fī l-mashriq al-mad?ūwa ?arb al-?alīb was published in Jerusalem in 1865 under the authorship of the (late) Melkite patriarch, Maximos III Mazloum (d. 1855). The book was a modified translation of the French Les Guerres saintes d’Outre-Mer, ou tableau des croisades, retracé d’après les chroniques contemporaines, published in 1840 by Maxime de Montrond, who was heavily inspired by Michaud's Histoire des croisades. Though created in a Christian Francophile milieu, it seems clear that the Arabic translation was intended not only for a Christian audience, but also for a Muslim readership, as evidenced by examples, provided here, of the modifications of the French original.     

Truth,Tradition and Religion. The Association between Judaism and Islam and the Relation between Religion and Philosophy in Medieval Jewish Thought

The paper presents the unique philosophy of Moshe Ben Joshua of Narbonne (d. 1362), known as Moshe Narboni. Narboni wrote some fifteen different treatises dealing with various subjects: philosophy, Kabbalah, Biblical exegesis and medicine. The philosophical issues he addressed were logic, psychology, physics and metaphysics. Narboni was a keen disciple of the outstanding Jewish thinker Moses Maimonides, as well as a devoted commentator on works written by prominent Muslim philosophers: Al-Ghazālī, Ibn Bājja (Avempace) Ibn .(T)ufayl and Ibn Rushd (Averroes). Narboni adopted the Averroistic view, held also by Maimonides, maintaining that religion was founded on philosophical principles, offering a popular adaptation of philosophy in favour of the uneducated mass. He thus felt that Judaism and Islam were both truthful monotheistic religions, teaching their adherents the same basic principles. However, he did regard Judaism as superior in three major aspects: i) Judaism is more ancient than Islam, and thus was the source for Islamic basic beliefs; ii) the Jewish law teaches the ideal way of life; iii) the Hebrew language lends to the concept of the Deity.     

The Philosophical Conflict between the School of Baghdad and the School of Khorasan in the Tenth Century: Towards a New Understanding of the Development of Islamic Philosophy

Historians often present the evolution of Islamic philosophy through a limited number of philosophers beginning with al-Kindī and concluding with Ibn Rushd. This practice tacitly asserts that Islamic philosophy developed only in accordance with this “sequential” or “chronological” context that assumes it was the inevitable evolution of Aristotelian thought in Arabic. However, most of those who present Islamic philosophy in this manner appear to have overlooked the fact that it developed in the context of a philosophical conflict that emerged between the two schools to which the majority of Islamic philosophers belonged – the School of Baghdad and the School of Khorasan, which appeared in the tenth century and introduced philosophy to Islam and Muslims. This study stands apart from earlier attempts to present Islamic philosophy by considering these two schools and the frequently violent disputes that occurred between them. It is based on an historical-analytical approach accompanied by a rereading of numerous historical and literary texts and presents a reinterpretation of the works of Ibn Sīnā that differs from past interpretations of the history of Islamic philosophy. The study concludes with a thorough examination of the texts and contexts, which demonstrates the existence of the two philosophical schools and their significant contributions to the development of Islamic philosophy, albeit with their own distinctive elements. The study also argues that the philosophical School of Baghdad migrated to Morocco and Andalusia and arrived, in some respects, in Europe through Ibn Rushd, whereas the School of Khorasan appeared in Suhrawardī’s Philosophy of Illumination and in modern Iranian philosophy.     

Solomon,his Demons and Jongleurs: the Meeting of Islamic,Judaic and Christian Culture

The legend of Solomon's special ability to control demons originated in Jewish-Hellenistic circles and became widespread in later Judaic, Islamic and Christian culture. In the Qur’ān, as well as in the earlier Babylonian Talmud and other rabbinic sources, the legend was adopted with a clear tendency to avoid the pragmatic demonic aspects of the story. In a similar vein, Qur’ānic commentators presented the relations between Solomon and the demons as an expression of the supernatural rule of the king over the cosmos and ignored his shameful end. The inclusion of the legend in the most sacred canonical text of Islam, and its connotation of eternity may explain the frequent representation in Muslim art. On the other hand, the avoidance by the Christian establishment authorities and the relegation to profane literature mocking the king may account for its absence in western official art. A combination between the high and low aspects of Solomon is seen in an illuminated medieval Hebrew Mahzor from South Germany. The divine aspect of Solomon as he appears in the Mahzor is paralleled in the Muslim examples. These similarities are the result of close textual traditions deriving from the same sources. Yet a possible pictorial testimony linking East and West may be discerned in the Ottoman illuminated Book of Suleiman, possibly based on a western tradition.     

A Possible Connection between the Philosophy of the Castilian king Alfonso X and the Risālat ayy ibn Yaqān by Ibn ufayl

This article explores the textual connections between two narratives: Ibn ufayl's (581/1185–6) Risālat ayy ibn Yaqān and a brief history of religions present in two works – the General Estoria and the Stenario – produced in the Castilian court of king Alfonso X (1221–1284). Both literary narratives deal with the intersection of philosophy and metaphysics. First, Alfonso X's cultural renaissance is contextualized. Under Arabic influence, Alfonso's collaborators created a cultural synthesis that was denounced by his son Sancho in the 1290s. Second, we compare Ibn ufayl's and Alfonso X's narratives. Ibn ufayl's model was probably adapted to justify a cultural programme that blended Christianity and Pagan inheritance. Unfortunately, there is no physical evidence to prove that Alfonso's circle was familiar with Ibn ufayl's work. Nevertheless, the analysis of a common genre – following A.W. Hughes's theory – allows us to contend that Alfonso X reproduced this type of text within a Christian context.     

Islamic Historians of the Ayyūbid Era and Muslim Rulers from the Early Crusading Period: A Study in the Use of History

This article examines the presentation of Muslim rulers from the early crusading period, 490–540/1097–1146 in six of the main chronicles written during the first half of the seventh/thirteenth century. It discusses the themes, ideas and topoi in each, demonstrating that the historians appear to have been divided into two ‘camps’ over their presentation of these rulers, based on their personal views of the rulers of their time. The article also examines why this division may have occurred, and considers its ramifications for modern scholarship of Arabic historiography, Islamic history and the history of the Crusades, in both the sixth/twelfth and seventh/thirteenth centuries.     

An Ottoman Preacher's Perception of a Medieval Cosmography: Maḥmūd al-Haṭīb's Translation of Kharīdat al-ʿAjāʾib wa Farīḍat al-Gharāʾib

The ninth/fifteenth century Arabic work, Kharīdat al-?Ajā?ib wa Farī?at al-Gharā?ib, ascribed to Ibn al-Wardī (d. 861/1457), was frequently translated into Ottoman Turkish and widely read by the Ottoman literati between the tenth/sixteenth and thirteenth/nineteenth centuries. The most popular translation of the Kharīdat al-?Ajā?ib that is extant today with more than thirty copies in libraries worldwide was made by the tenth/sixteenth century Ottoman preacher Ma?mūd al-Ha?īb. Within the context of Medieval Islamic cosmographical works and their translations, which have potential to shed light on the Ottoman worldview in the early modern era, this paper delves into the extra-textual statements of the translator in the form of eye-witness accounts and contemporary hearsay. By doing so, it argues that Ma?mūd al-Ha?īb's intervention in the text he translated not only provides him with grounds for confirmation of the worldview promoted in the Kharīdat al-?Ajā?ib, but also expressions on certain issues related to sixteenth century Ottoman rule.     

The Sword and the Sun: The Old World Drought Atlas as a Source for Medieval Mediterranean History

The release of the Old World Drought Atlas (OWDA) in November 2015 provides historians with an unprecedented glimpse into the climate of the medieval world. Through the careful examination of tree-ring data provided by the OWDA, historians can better gauge how the environment affected the course of medieval Mediterranean history, particularly in times and places where textual data is sparse, such as North Africa. The case studies of the Norman conquest of the coast of Ifrīqiyya in the 1140s and the invasion by the Banū Hilāl in the mid-eleventh century show the utility of the OWDA for gaining a better understanding the medieval Mediterranean. In particular, OWDA data shows that the arrival of the Banū Hilāl into Ifrīqiyya coincided with a period of extended drought that is not documented in the written sources and suggests that increased competition for scarce resources was instrumental to their entrance into the region.     

The politics of sexual morality and evangelical activism in Hong Kong

This paper aims to review the discourse of sexual morality as recently staged by Christian evangelical groups in Hong Kong and the effects of this new round of evangelical activism on the shaping of recent political culture in Hong Kong. Unlike the moral campaign against decriminalization of homosexuality in the 1980s, which eventually lost to the reasoning of British rule of law implicit in Hong Kong legislature, this new Christian movement for the defense of sexual morality in Hong Kong is situated at the juncture of political contestation between the local democratic movement and the pro-establishment political forces, including pro-Beijing businessmen, political organizations and personnel. With a high degree of ideological and strategic affinity with the Christian Right movement, which collaborates with conservative Republican groups in the United States, the evangelical campaigners of Hong Kong, whether consciously or not, have gained much political currency in collaborating with the pro-establishment forces of Hong Kong. As a result, sexual morality articulated in the name of the preservation of traditions, whether they are Christian or Chinese, has fed an autocratic political movement of Hong Kong that partakes the dangerously divisive politics of the fundamentalist religious movements around the globe.     

Waṭan before Waṭaniyya: Loyalty to Land in Ayyūbid and Mamlūk Syria

This article argues that the term wa?an (“homeland”) was used in new ways in Arabic texts describing Syria from the sixth/twelfth and seventh/thirteenth centuries. The authors of these texts understood wa?an in its older sense as an affective attachment to land but assigned it new meaning as a territorial category of political and religious belonging. By analysing first the use of wa?an in Arabic literature from the third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries and then its use in these later texts, this article proposes a re-evaluation of our assumptions about the role played by territory in defining political and religious allegiances in the pre-modern era and, thus, about the relationship between the pre-modern concept of wa?an and the modern concept of wa?aniyya, or “nationalism”.     

Ibn Baṭṭūṭa on Shedding of Blood in the Delhi Sultanate

Ibn Ba??ū?a's longest sojourn (734–748/1333-ca. 1347) in his famous world travels was in the domains of the Delhi sultanate ruled by Mu?ammad b. Tughluq. He presents a vivid picture of court life in Delhi and a portrait of the sultan, whom Ibn Ba??ū?a describes in contrasting terms of generosity and violence. This essay examines the latter phenomenon, first by briefly noting the contribution of two contrasting studies on the complex nature of violence itself (Part One), followed by Ibn Ba??ū?a's depiction of Ibn Tughluq's accession to power (Part Two), and then his perception of the sultan's use of capital punishment during his reign (Part Three). The last section (Part Four) adds further detail on the sultan's policy and then briefly compares Ibn Ba??ū?a's perception of the sultan's violence with that of another contemporary witness, the historian ?iyā? al-Dīn Baranī. The result suggests that Ibn Ba??ū?a's representation of violence is as nuanced as the phenomenon of violence itself.