Books by Daniel G König
"Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West" (http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780198737193.do#) p... more "Arabic-Islamic Views of the Latin West" (http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780198737193.do#) provides an insight into how the Arabic-Islamic sphere perceived medieval Western Europe in an age that is often associated with violent Christian-Muslim relations during the rise and expansion of Islam, the so-called Reconquista, and the Crusades. A long and dominant scholarly tradition claims that Muslims of this period held an arrogant and ignorant attitude towards its northern neighbours, merely regarding medieval Christian Europe as an uncivilized and hostile cultural backwater clinging to a superseded religion. The study nuances this view by focussing on the mechanisms of transmission and reception that characterized the flow of information from one sphere to the other. By explaining how Arabic-Islamic scholars acquired and processed data on medieval Western Europe, it traces the two-fold ‘emergence’ of Latin-Christian Europe—a sphere that increasingly encroached upon the Mediterranean and therefore became more and more prominent in Arabic-Islamic scholarly literature.
Chapter One questions previous interpretations of related Arabic-Islamic records that reduce a large and differentiated range of Arabic-Islamic perceptions to a single basic pattern subsumed under the keywords ‘ignorance’, ‘indifference’, and ‘arrogance’. Chapter Two lists channels of transmission by means of which information on the Latin-Christian Europe reached the Arabic-Islamic sphere. Chapter Three deals with the general factors that influenced the reception and presentation of this data at the hands of Arabic-Islamic scholars. Chapters Four to Eight analyse how these scholars acquired and dealt with information on themes such as the western dimension of the Roman Empire, the Visigoths, the Franks, the papacy and, finally, Western Europe in the age of Latin-Christian expansionism. Against this background, Chapter Nine provides a concluding re-evaluation.
Edited Books by Daniel G König
Latin and Arabic. Entangled Histories, 2019
Open access download: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.448.
As linguistic systems comprising a larg... more Open access download: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.448.
As linguistic systems comprising a large variety of written and oral registers including derivate “languages” and “dialects,” Latin and Arabic have been of paramount importance for the history of the Euromediterranean since Antiquity. Moreover, due to their long-term function as languages of administration, intellectual activity, and religion, they are often regarded as cultural markers of Europe and the (Arabic-)Islamic sphere respectively. This volume explores the many dimensions and ramifications of Latin-Arabic entanglement both from macro-historical as well as from micro-historical perspectives. Visions of history marked by the binary opposition of “Islam” and “the West” tend to ignore these important facets of Euromediterranean entanglement, as do historical studies that explain complex transcultural processes without giving attention to their linguistic dimension.
Transkulturelle Phänomene haben in den letzten Jahren zunehmend die Aufmerksamkeit der Forschung ... more Transkulturelle Phänomene haben in den letzten Jahren zunehmend die Aufmerksamkeit der Forschung auf sich gezogen und werden aller Voraussicht nach auch in den nächsten Jahren Gegenstand geistes-wissenschaftlicher Debatten sein. Als Ergebnis eines kollaborativen Schreibaktes versteht sich der vorliegende Band sowohl als Einführung in die Untersuchung transkultureller Verfl echtungsphänomene wie auch als Versuch einer systematischen Durchdringung dieses Forschungs-feldes aus unterschiedlichen mediävistischen Perspektiven. Er befasst sich zunächst auf theoretischer Ebene mit der Entwicklung und den Entstehungshintergründen des transkulturellen Paradigmas. In zahlreichen Quellenstudien erörtert er ferner, wie transkulturelle Verfl echtungsprozesse in mittelalterlichen Quellen unterschiedlicher Herkunft und Art benannt, beschrieben und bewertet werden. Auf dieser Grundlage wird der Versuch unternommen, unter Nutzung der Begriffe ‚Netzwerk', ‚Gewebe', ‚rhizomatisches Gefl echt' und ‚Fusion' verschiedene Modelle transkultureller Verfl echtung zu defi nieren und anhand der Quellen auszuarbeiten. Ergänzend erfolgt eine ebenfalls quellen gestützte Beschäftigung mit den reziproken Beziehungen zwischen Verfl echtungs-und Entfl echtungsprozessen. Sie mündet in abschließende Überlegungen zu der Frage, welchen methodischen Chancen und Risiken sich eine historisch arbeitende Forschung aus-gesetzt sieht, die das transkulturelle Paradigma für die konkrete Arbeit an den Quellen nutzen möchte. Indem der Band die Genese aktueller methodischer Diskussionen nachzeichnet und diese anhand von mehr als fünfzig kurzen Quellen-analysen konkretisiert, eignet er sich in idealer Weise für den Einsatz in Studium und Lehre. Darüber hinaus bietet er durch die systematische Darstellung sowie die Refl exionen zu Theorie und praktischer An wen-dung des transkulturellen Ansatzes zahlreiche Anregungen für die weitere Forschungsdiskussion.
Netzwerk Transkulturelle Verflechtungen (= G. Christ, S. Dönitz, D. König, Ş. Küçükhüseyin, M. Mersch, B. Müller-Schauenburg, U. Ritzerfeld, C. Vogel, J. Zimmermann), Transkulturelle Verflechtungen. Mediävistische Perspektiven, Göttingen 2016. Auch online open access auf der Homepage des Verlags.
Papers by Daniel G König
Historische Zeitschrift
Zusammenfassung Der Artikel befasst sich mit der sprachlichen Dimension der muslimischen Herrscha... more Zusammenfassung Der Artikel befasst sich mit der sprachlichen Dimension der muslimischen Herrschaftsübernahme in Ägypten, Nordafrika und der Iberischen Halbinsel im 7. und 8. Jahrhundert. Teil I beschäftigt sich mit den sprachlichen Voraussetzungen der Expansion. Er stellt fest, dass die muslimischen Expansionskräfte zwar von einer arabischsprachigen Elite mit wahrscheinlich geringen Fremdsprachenkenntnissen geführt wurden, aber heterogen genug waren, um einen gewissen Grad an Vielsprachigkeit zu gewährleisten. Die Teile II bis IV beschreiben die jeweilige sprachliche Konstellation in Ägypten, im byzantinisch-berberischen Nordafrika sowie auf der Iberischen Halbinsel. Unter Berücksichtigung expliziter und impliziter Hinweise auf Multilingualismus in Form von etymologischen, papyrologischen, numismatischen, epigraphischen und historiographischen Belegen versuchen sie – soweit möglich – zu rekonstruieren, auf welche Weise die muslimischen Eroberer Sprachbarrieren zwischen dem Arabisch...
The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, 2013
Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History. Volume 5 (1350-1500), 2013
Historische Zeitschrift
Zusammenfassung Der Artikel befasst sich mit der sprachlichen Dimension der muslimischen Herrscha... more Zusammenfassung Der Artikel befasst sich mit der sprachlichen Dimension der muslimischen Herrschaftsübernahme in Ägypten, Nordafrika und der Iberischen Halbinsel im 7. und 8. Jahrhundert. Teil I beschäftigt sich mit den sprachlichen Voraussetzungen der Expansion. Er stellt fest, dass die muslimischen Expansionskräfte zwar von einer arabischsprachigen Elite mit wahrscheinlich geringen Fremdsprachenkenntnissen geführt wurden, aber heterogen genug waren, um einen gewissen Grad an Vielsprachigkeit zu gewährleisten. Die Teile II bis IV beschreiben die jeweilige sprachliche Konstellation in Ägypten, im byzantinisch-berberischen Nordafrika sowie auf der Iberischen Halbinsel. Unter Berücksichtigung expliziter und impliziter Hinweise auf Multilingualismus in Form von etymologischen, papyrologischen, numismatischen, epigraphischen und historiographischen Belegen versuchen sie – soweit möglich – zu rekonstruieren, auf welche Weise die muslimischen Eroberer Sprachbarrieren zwischen dem Arabisch...
Latin-Arabic Entanglement: A Short History, 2019
Open access download: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.448.
The present contribution recounts the... more Open access download: https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.448.
The present contribution recounts the entangled history of Latin and Arabic from a macro-historical perspective. This entangled history can be divided into three phases. In Phase One, both linguistic systems came into contact in the ancient Roman Near East, in a time in which Arabic as a standardized supraregional language had not yet fully emerged. In Phase Two, the Arabic-Islamic expansion into the western Mediterranean, dominated linguistically by Latin and Romance, ushered in a period of intensive Latin-Arabic entanglement. Lasting approximately from the seventh to the fifteenth century, this period was particularly dynamic: the expansion of so-called “Latin-Christian societies” into Mediterranean regions hitherto under Muslim rule considerably transformed the geopolitical equilibrium of linguistic interaction. In Phase Three, i.e. from the late medieval and early modern periods onwards, the interaction of Latin and Arabic progressively receded into the sphere of academic endeavours.
Der Islam und die Genese Europas. Zwischen Ideologie und Geschichtswissenschaften, 2018
A collection and critical review of various historical theories trying to explain the influence o... more A collection and critical review of various historical theories trying to explain the influence of "Islam" on the emergence and development of medieval and early modern Europe.
The Making of a Christian Atlantic. The Role of Islam in the Early Modern Emergence of 'the West', 2018
This article sets out to define the role of Islam in the early modern emergence of a Christianize... more This article sets out to define the role of Islam in the early modern emergence of a Christianized transatlantic sphere that was to stand at the origins of our contemporary notion of "the West". Part One discusses various sources and scholarly opinions with regards to the role played by Islam in the European-Christian discovery, conquest and settlement of South America. It shows that, in spite of early Muslim ventures into the Atlantic, the Islamic sphere ultimately failed to take advantage of its Atlantic coastlines in the medieval period. Part Two argues that, from the early modern period onwards, the Islamic sphere was systematically sidelined by Christian maritime powers in their quest for dominance over the Atlantic sphere. Part Three explains how these European-Christian efforts to deny Islam access to the Americas are reflected in the early modern Muslim documentation of the Americas, to the extent that the earliest description and history of South America in Arabic, dealt with in Part Four, was written as late as two centuries after Columbus reached the Caribbean by a Christian, i.e. the Chaldean priest Ilyās b. Ḥannā al-Mawṣilī from Baghdad. Against this backdrop, the article concludes with some reflections on the significance of this documentary evidence for the emergence of the transatlantic sphere known as "the West" in English, "al-gharb" in Arabic, a sphere that was almost untouched by Islam until the twentieth century.
The term " transcultural " probably constitutes one of the most important and widely discussed co... more The term " transcultural " probably constitutes one of the most important and widely discussed conceptual keywords in the humanities and social sciences of recent years. The aim of this journal section is to analyse and evaluate the relationship between the transcultural paradigm and various more or less established academic disciplines or fields of research. The contributors to this themed section have all worked in the context of an interdisciplinary research institution dedicated to developing and advancing the transcultural approach in the humanities and the social sciences.
This article gauges the transcultural character and disposition of Islamic Studies, a discipline ... more This article gauges the transcultural character and disposition of Islamic Studies, a discipline of European origins that emerged in the early modern period and has been accused of catering to the needs of a colonial and imperialist agenda. It establishes that a discipline with a history of formulating largely non-Muslim Western perceptions on non-Western societies marked by Islam, whose object of study is a religious orbit that transcends ethnic and political boundaries, can be regarded as transcultural per se. This does not mean, however, that the transcultural approach—presented here as a methodological tool for conceptual deconstruction and a multiplication of scales and perspectives of analysis—will be accepted by intellectuals and ideologues in Western and Muslim societies alike. Discussing various potential anti-reactions to the transcultural approach, the article concludes that such criticism cannot erase the many forms of interpenetration that have marked and will continue to mark future relations between Islam and the West. In view of this, the transcultural approach seems to be of high relevance to understand past, present, and future processes of interaction, entanglement, and hybridization.
As linguistic systems, Latin and Arabic have interacted for centuries. The article at hand aims a... more As linguistic systems, Latin and Arabic have interacted for centuries. The article at hand aims at analysing the status of the Latin language in the Arab and Arabic-Islamic sphere. Starting out from the observation that Latin-Christian and Arabic-Islamic scholarship dedicated a very different degree of attention to the study of the respective ‘other’ language in the course of the centuries, the article traces the impact of Latin on an emerging Arabic language in Antiquity, provides an overview on the various references to Latin found in works of Arabic-Islamic scholarship produced in the medieval and modern periods, and provides an exhaustive list of Arabic translations of Latin texts. A description of the role played by Latin in the Arabic-speaking world of our times is followed by a discussion of several hypotheses that try to explain why Latin was rarely studied systematically in the Arabic-Islamic sphere before the twentieth century.
[published in: Arabica 63/5 (2016), p. 419-93]
Figuring as sacral languages of two of ‘Abraham’s heirs’ – Western and Central European Christian... more Figuring as sacral languages of two of ‘Abraham’s heirs’ – Western and Central European Christians on the one hand, adherents to Islam on the other, Latin and Arabic also fulfilled various other functions in the medieval period. A chronological overview on various contexts of translation activity between Latin and Arabic examines if and how acts of translation between both languages were regulated. Who was subject to control, as well as why, to which degree and by which means control was exercised, varied from one setting to the other and did not conform to simple patterns of religious demarcation. Treated extensively in the last part of the article, the example of economic diplomacy in the Mediterranean of the 13th to 15th century illustrates how pragmatical requirements of communication considerably enhanced the role of an ethnically and religiously diverse profession of translators/interpreters who mediated between linguistic groups that also defined themselves in terms of religion and ethnicity.
[published in: Ludger Lieb, Klaus Oschema, Johannes Heil (eds), Abrahams Erbe. Konkurrenz, Konflikt und Koexistenz der Religionen im europäischen Mittelalter, Berlin 2015, p. 470-85]
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Books by Daniel G König
Chapter One questions previous interpretations of related Arabic-Islamic records that reduce a large and differentiated range of Arabic-Islamic perceptions to a single basic pattern subsumed under the keywords ‘ignorance’, ‘indifference’, and ‘arrogance’. Chapter Two lists channels of transmission by means of which information on the Latin-Christian Europe reached the Arabic-Islamic sphere. Chapter Three deals with the general factors that influenced the reception and presentation of this data at the hands of Arabic-Islamic scholars. Chapters Four to Eight analyse how these scholars acquired and dealt with information on themes such as the western dimension of the Roman Empire, the Visigoths, the Franks, the papacy and, finally, Western Europe in the age of Latin-Christian expansionism. Against this background, Chapter Nine provides a concluding re-evaluation.
Edited Books by Daniel G König
As linguistic systems comprising a large variety of written and oral registers including derivate “languages” and “dialects,” Latin and Arabic have been of paramount importance for the history of the Euromediterranean since Antiquity. Moreover, due to their long-term function as languages of administration, intellectual activity, and religion, they are often regarded as cultural markers of Europe and the (Arabic-)Islamic sphere respectively. This volume explores the many dimensions and ramifications of Latin-Arabic entanglement both from macro-historical as well as from micro-historical perspectives. Visions of history marked by the binary opposition of “Islam” and “the West” tend to ignore these important facets of Euromediterranean entanglement, as do historical studies that explain complex transcultural processes without giving attention to their linguistic dimension.
Papers by Daniel G König
The present contribution recounts the entangled history of Latin and Arabic from a macro-historical perspective. This entangled history can be divided into three phases. In Phase One, both linguistic systems came into contact in the ancient Roman Near East, in a time in which Arabic as a standardized supraregional language had not yet fully emerged. In Phase Two, the Arabic-Islamic expansion into the western Mediterranean, dominated linguistically by Latin and Romance, ushered in a period of intensive Latin-Arabic entanglement. Lasting approximately from the seventh to the fifteenth century, this period was particularly dynamic: the expansion of so-called “Latin-Christian societies” into Mediterranean regions hitherto under Muslim rule considerably transformed the geopolitical equilibrium of linguistic interaction. In Phase Three, i.e. from the late medieval and early modern periods onwards, the interaction of Latin and Arabic progressively receded into the sphere of academic endeavours.
[published in: Arabica 63/5 (2016), p. 419-93]
[published in: Ludger Lieb, Klaus Oschema, Johannes Heil (eds), Abrahams Erbe. Konkurrenz, Konflikt und Koexistenz der Religionen im europäischen Mittelalter, Berlin 2015, p. 470-85]
Chapter One questions previous interpretations of related Arabic-Islamic records that reduce a large and differentiated range of Arabic-Islamic perceptions to a single basic pattern subsumed under the keywords ‘ignorance’, ‘indifference’, and ‘arrogance’. Chapter Two lists channels of transmission by means of which information on the Latin-Christian Europe reached the Arabic-Islamic sphere. Chapter Three deals with the general factors that influenced the reception and presentation of this data at the hands of Arabic-Islamic scholars. Chapters Four to Eight analyse how these scholars acquired and dealt with information on themes such as the western dimension of the Roman Empire, the Visigoths, the Franks, the papacy and, finally, Western Europe in the age of Latin-Christian expansionism. Against this background, Chapter Nine provides a concluding re-evaluation.
As linguistic systems comprising a large variety of written and oral registers including derivate “languages” and “dialects,” Latin and Arabic have been of paramount importance for the history of the Euromediterranean since Antiquity. Moreover, due to their long-term function as languages of administration, intellectual activity, and religion, they are often regarded as cultural markers of Europe and the (Arabic-)Islamic sphere respectively. This volume explores the many dimensions and ramifications of Latin-Arabic entanglement both from macro-historical as well as from micro-historical perspectives. Visions of history marked by the binary opposition of “Islam” and “the West” tend to ignore these important facets of Euromediterranean entanglement, as do historical studies that explain complex transcultural processes without giving attention to their linguistic dimension.
The present contribution recounts the entangled history of Latin and Arabic from a macro-historical perspective. This entangled history can be divided into three phases. In Phase One, both linguistic systems came into contact in the ancient Roman Near East, in a time in which Arabic as a standardized supraregional language had not yet fully emerged. In Phase Two, the Arabic-Islamic expansion into the western Mediterranean, dominated linguistically by Latin and Romance, ushered in a period of intensive Latin-Arabic entanglement. Lasting approximately from the seventh to the fifteenth century, this period was particularly dynamic: the expansion of so-called “Latin-Christian societies” into Mediterranean regions hitherto under Muslim rule considerably transformed the geopolitical equilibrium of linguistic interaction. In Phase Three, i.e. from the late medieval and early modern periods onwards, the interaction of Latin and Arabic progressively receded into the sphere of academic endeavours.
[published in: Arabica 63/5 (2016), p. 419-93]
[published in: Ludger Lieb, Klaus Oschema, Johannes Heil (eds), Abrahams Erbe. Konkurrenz, Konflikt und Koexistenz der Religionen im europäischen Mittelalter, Berlin 2015, p. 470-85]
[publié dans: Catherine Richarté et al. (eds), Héritages arabo-islamiques dans l'Europe méditerranéenne, Paris 2015, p. 471-84.]