Book: Essays in Islamic Philology, History, and Philosophy

This work treats in one volume the most important fields in Islamic studies: Persian literature and philology; Islamic history and historiography; Arabic literature and philology; and Islamic philosophy and jurisprudence.

The essays are representative of the fields in which one of the most illustrious Arabists and Persianists in the world, Ahmad Mahdavi Damgani, has been an indispensible contributor for close to 65 years.

The articles in this volume are dedicated to Professor Ahmad Mahdavi Damghani for the breadth and depth of his interests and his influence on those interests. They attest to the fact that his fervor and rigorously surgical attention to detail have found fertile ground in a wide variety of disciplines, including (among others) Persian literature and philology; Islamic history and historiography; Arabic literature and philology; and Islamic philosophy and jurisprudence. The volume has brought together some of the most respected scholars in the fields of Islamic studies and Islamic literatures, all his prior students, to contribute with articles that touch on the fields Professor Mahdavi Damghani has so permanently touched with his astonishing scholarship and attention to detail.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

Tabula Gratulatoria

Selected Bibliography of Professor Ahmad Mahdavi Damghani

Part I: Classical Persian Literature and Philology

Moving toward the Modern: The Nationalist Imagery of Malik al‑Shu‘arā Bahār

Old Iranian Motifs in Vīs o Rāmīn

Astronomical Poems from the “Four Corners” of Persia (c. 1000–1500 CE)

Moving from Persian to Arabic

The Iconic Sībawayh

Naming Shuʿūbīs

Part III: Islamic Theology, Islamic Jurisprudence and Islamic Philosophy

Prioritizing Metaphysics over Epistemology: Divine Justice (‘Adl) and Human Reason (‘Aql) in al-Shaykh al-Mufīd’s Theology

Returning to God through His Names: Cosmology and Dhikr in a Fourteenth-Century Sufi Treatise

Friendship in Islamic Ethical Philosophy

The Poetic Syllogism: Foray into an Inductive Research Proposal

The Scattered and the Gathered: Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī’s Infrequently Asked Questions

‘Aql (Reason) in Modern Shiite Thought: The Example of Muḥammad Jawād Maghniyya (1904–79)

Ṭūsī Did Not “Opt Out”: Shiite Jurisprudence and the Solidification of the Stoning Punishment in the Islamic Legal Tradition

ʿAlī’s Contemplations on this World and the Hereafter in the Context of His Life and Times

Part IV: Islamic History and Historiography

Al-ʿAṭṭāf b. Sufyān and Abbasid Imperialism

An Early Arabic Conversion Story: The Case of al-Faḍl b. Sahl

A Translation of the Prolegomena to Żiyāʾ al-Dīn Baranī’s Tārīkh-i Fīrūzshāhī

Bibliographic Information

Title: Essays in Islamic Philology, History, and Philosophy

Editors: Alireza Korangy, Wheeler M. Thackston, Roy P. Mottahedeh, William Granara

Publisher: Walter De Gruyter Inc (May 24, 2016)

Language: English

Length: 456 pages

ISBN: 978-3110313727

Pub. Date: May 24, 2016