Intellectual History of Al andalus

EPALZA, Míkel de & FRANCO SÁNCHEZ, Francisco. “Bibliografía sobre temas árabes del Sharq Al-Andalus (Levante de Al-Andalus). Apéndice V”. Sharq Al-Andalus. Estudios Árabes. N. 5 (1988). ISSN 0213-3482, pp. 259-285 |
Download: http://hdl.handle.net/10045/17938

EPALZA, Míkel de  & FRANCO SÁNCHEZ, Francisco. “Bibliografía sobre temas árabes del Sharq Al-Andalus (Levante de Al-Andalus). Apéndice IV”. Sharq Al-Andalus. Estudios Árabes. N. 4 (1987). ISSN 0213-3482, pp. 291-349 |
Download: http://hdl.handle.net/10045/18017

The funerary inscription of Yehudah Bar Akon is dated to 845 AD, a moment in which the first known contacts between the Iberian Peninsula and the Eastern rabbinic academies were taking place. A study of this inscription in the context of the Hispanic-Jewish epigraphical corpus allows tracing the reception process of the rabbinic culture during the transition from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages, in Hispanic-Jewish history.

En los últimos tiempos la edición y el estudio de nuevas obras y documentos han supuesto una importante contribución a la historia de la jurisprudencia musulmana (fiqh) en el Occidente islámico medieval, y un ejemplo de ello es el recientemente editado Kitāb al-ribā, objeto de este estudio en el cual ofrezco la traducción al castellano de esta temprana y -hasta ahora- desconocida obra del fiqh mālikí. La aparición de este texto, que hasta ahora no era más que una mención en los diccionarios bibliográficos, supone una valiosa fuente de información, no sólo para el estudio del derecho económico medieval, sino también del proceso de formación y desarrollo de la jurisprudencia andalusí así como del funcionamiento del zoco y la sociedad andalusí de época temprana, puesto que sirvió de base jurídica para aplicaciones prácticas de la ley islámica como demuestran, por ejemplo, las continuas alusiones del almotacén Ibn ʿAbd al-Raʾūf al Kitāb al-ribā en su tratado de ḥisba.

Resumen: Panorámica del ambiente intelectual de la ciudad islámica de Jerez y semblanza de los poetas que nacieron en ella entre los siglos X al XIII.

Palabras clave: Jerez islámico. Poesía. Poetas de Jerez. Biografías, al-Andalus.

Abstract: Overview about the intellectual atmosphere of the Islamic city of Jerez and biographies of all the poets who were born in this city between the X and XII centuries.

Key words: Islamic Jerez, Poetry, Poets from Jerez, Biographies, al-Andalus.

FRANCO SÁNCHEZ, Francisco. “Personatges il·lustres de Cocentaina en l'època andalusina (ss. VIII-XIII), segons les fonts àrabs”. En. Els musulmans al Comtat : 1609-2009, 400 anys de l'expulsió. Cocentaina: Centre d'Estudis Contestans, 2009. ISBN 978-84-692-6527-7, pp. 109-125 |
Download: http://hdl.handle.net/10045/31311

"Like all multi-lingual computing, Arabic computing is now firmly in the domain of Unicode. Unicode is an industrial protocol with the status of international agreement. It is designed to encode the elements of all known script systems in such a way that they become interchangeable between programs and operating systems. Its implementation is well underway.

Unicode eliminates the need to tamper with fonts to get special characters, but it is not a font. For legible text on screen and paper, Unicode depends on compatible fonts with the required characters, where necessary with additional dedicated font technology."

Petrus Alfonsi was an important and unusual figure in the "twelfth-century renaissance" whose interests embraced polemical theology, astronomy, and literature, each an area in which he made important contributions to the development of medieval thought. Perhaps this diversity of interests is what has robbed Alfonsi of his due in modern scholarship, for he has fallen through the cracks, between various academic disciplines; he has received less acclaim among modern medievalists than he had among medieval writers.
In this first book-length treatment of Alfonsi, Tolan presents a thorough introduction to Alfonsi's thought and its importance to the Middle Ages.
A Spanish Jew who converted to Christianity, Alfonsi immigrated to England and later to France, wrote a polemic against Judaism and Islam, and translated moral fables and astronomical works from Arabic into Latin. The author shows that he was an important early transmitter of Arabic and Hebrew learning to the Latin north and greatly influenced later medieval thinkers.
Drawing from his analysis of nearly 170 manuscripts containing Alfonsi's works, along with the works of later authors who turned to Alfonsi as a source, Tolan uncovers much about who used Alfonsi's works and to what ends his works were put. He finds, for example, that Alfonsi's Disciplina clericalis provided a mine of materials not only for thirteenth-century preachers but also for Boccaccio and Chaucer, and that arguments from his Dialogis contra Iudaeos were taken up by Christian polemicists from Peter the Venerable to Alonso de Espina.

"La obra botánica Umdat al-tabīb del autor sevillano Abū l-Jayr al-Išbīlī destaca, entre otros aspectos, por la gran cantidad de fuentes citadas. Sin embargo, no se ha hecho ningún estudio monográfico sobre las mismas. En este artículo se estudian dos de
estas fuentes: al-Yahūdī e Ibn Ŷulŷul. En él se analiza cómo son tratadas, qué opinión tiene el autor de las mismas y, lo más importante, cómo se refiere a ellas, es decir, cómo son citadas, pues algunas no quedan del todo claras.
The botanical work Umdat al-abīb of the Sevillian author Abū l-Jayr al-Išbīlī stands out, for the substantial amount of sources mentioned, which haven't been studied at length till now. We analyze how two of these sources —al-Yahūdī and Ibn Ŷulŷul— are
dealt with, which are the author's opinions on both, and, most importantly, how they are cited and referenced due to some inconsistencies and inaccuracies."

This publication consists of three major parts.

1- The re-edition of Prieto y vives´s,  LOS REYES DE TAIFAS, first. published in 1926, p.279.
2-The comple plates of rubings discovered in the archives of  the Instituto de Don Juan de Madrid, p.98.
3- A co-authored suplement , SUPLEMENTO A LAS MONEDAS DE LOS TAIFAS ( p 111-219), which updates Prieto´s original work with a 175 new coins. This last needs some editorial correcting and will be posted in papers at a latter date. In sha` Allah.

La obra Kitáb a!-'lbar del gran historiador árabe del siglo XIV, de origen andalusí, Ibn Jaldún; el cual describe al fundador del movimiento almohade como «un jurista versado en la ciencia, que daba consejos y practicaba la enseñanza». Mientras que, desde el punto de vista externo, ofrece este sobrio retrato del fundador almohade: «Llevaba un vestido de lana remendada, se dedicaba con frecuencia a ejercicios ascéticos y a prácticas piadosas».

Em 1496-7, D. Manuel I forçou os judeus a converter-se ao cristianismo e expulsou todos os súbditos muçulmanos. Portugal foi o primeiro reino da Península Ibérica a acabar definitivamente com a coexistência judaico-cristã-muçulmana, criando assim um reino exclusivamente cristão. Tendo por base narrativas e fontes documentais em português, espanhol e hebraico, François Soyer colige as circunstâncias que culminaram nos acontecimentos de 1496-7 e apresenta uma reconstrução detalhada da perseguição aos judeus. São contestadas visões amplamente aceites sobre o impacto da chegada a Portugal dos judeus expulsos de Castela em 1492, a disputa diplomática que levou à conversão forçada dos judeus portugueses em 1497 e as causas da expulsão da minoria muçulmana. Este livro trata, pois, o momento crucial da história portuguesa em que a tolerância religiosa deixou de ser parte integrante da política régia. Por esta razão, a circunstância marca uma viragem da política oficial que circunscreve para sempre a nossa cultura à cristandade. É então através da combinação da escolha indefectível desta orientação religiosa com uma intolerância até então estranha à nossa cultura que nasce no nosso imaginário uma perplexidade e um interesse por esta decisão histórica.

This is an excerpt of Robert W. Lebling's translation into English of Gonzague de Rey's "Les invasions des Sarrasins en Provence pendant le VIIIe, le IXe, et le Xe, siècle" (1878) as reprinted by Editions Jeanne Laffitte in 2001. For the complete translation, contact Robert W. Lebling. The complete book, in paperback and Kindle versions, is available at Amazon.com.

"This discussion of the pyxis invites a meditation on the ways in which subjects and objects acquire meanings and exchange positions within the web of socio-symbolic relations. In Fatal Strategies Baudrillard wages an assault..."
"...Just like the potter, the art historian’s creative process should not exclusively focus on mapping variations on the surface of his object, but rather on bringing to light  the generative void that constitutes its essence, on creating an epistemological structure that reflects its perceived meaning, and on making it visible by delineating its contours with words. It cannot be too often repeated…."
CONTENTS
1. 357/967-968
2. Princes and Lions
3. The Lion and the Bull
4. The Palm Tree and the Eagle
5.Taslib + Tashbih
6. Fatal Strategies: Subjects (in)to Objetcts
7. The Void and the Vessel

Depósito legal: AS 00207-2021 Imprime: Gofer Todos los derechos reservados. No se permite la reproducción total o parcial de este libro, ni su incorporación a un sistema informático, ni su transmisión en cualquier forma y por cualquier medio, sea este electrónico, mecánico, por fotocopia, por grabación u otros métodos, sin permiso previo por escrito del autor.

FRANCO SÁNCHEZ, Francisco (ed.) & Míkel de EPALZA (dir.). La rábita en el islam. Estudios interdisciplinares. Congressos Internacionals de Sant Carles de la Ràpita (1989, 1997). Sant Carles de La Ràpita / Alicante : Ajuntament de Sant Carles de la Ràpita / Universidad de Alicante, 2004, 377 pp.  |    ISBN: 84-609-3080-7  |
Resumen:  Publicación de 33 estudios sobre rābiṭas, al-monastīres y ribāṭ en al-Andalus  |
Abstract: Publication that includes 33 different works concerning rābiṭas, al-monastīres and ribāṭ in al-Andalus  | 
Other links: http://hdl.handle.net/10045/92327  |
Index:
~~ I. Estudis generals/Estudios generales
– Ahmad Mujtar AL-ABBADI, Acerca del Rebato (3-4)
– Míkel de EPALZA: La Ràpita islámica: Historia institucional (5-28)
– Míkel de EPALZA, : Los estudios sobre las rápitas en la actualidad (1998) (29-41)
– Kamel FILALI: Processus du ribāṭ dans la conception du jihād. Des Marabouts guerriers de la foi aux Marabouts insurgés et fondateurs de tribus (43-48)
– Carmen MARTÍNEZ SALVADOR: El ribāṭ en al-Andalus. Enclaves militares y centros de transmisión mística (Siglos IX-XI d.C) (49-58)
– Francisco FRANCO SÁNCHEZ, La economía de las rábitas (59-79)
– Jemaa CHEIKHA: Les ribâts d'après les livres de tabaqât (81-82)
– Alejandro GARCÍA SANJUÁN: Rābiṭas y ribāṭs en el “Mi‘yār” de al-Wanšarīsī (m. 914/1508) (83-89)
– Joaquín NIETO MORENO - Manuel PÉREZ TELLO: Testimonio del Movimiento Mundial Murabitun (91-92)
~~  II. Estudis regionals i locals/Estudios regionales y locales
– Francisco FRANCO SÁNCHEZ: Rabitas i Al-Monastir(es) en el norte y levante de la península de Al-Andalus (95-109)
– Manuela MARÍN: El ribāṭ en Al-Andalus y el Norte de Africa (111-116)
– Dolors BRAMON: La Ràpita de Cascall al delta de l'Ebre (117-123)
– Josep PITARCH LÓPEZ: Alguns aspectes sobre el territori de la Ràpita del Cascall al voltant de l’any mil (125-128)
– Paco CARLES I GUÀRDIA: La toponímia i els espais d'època àrab a l'àmbit territorial de la Ràpita del delta de l'Ebre al s. XI (129-144)
– José Antonio GÓMEZ SANJUÁN: El ribat de Casteli (145-152)
– Albert CURTO I HOMEDES: Recerques arqueològiques sobre la regió tortosina a l'època islàmica. Estat de la qüestió (153-159)
– GRUP D'ESTUDIS RAPITENCS: Petita història d'un poble. La Ràpita del Penedès (161-163)
– Alfredo GONZÁLEZ PRATS: El conjunto arqueológico de las dunas de Guardamar (Alicante). El yacimiento islámico de la rábita califal y el yacimiento fenicio de La Fonteta (165-171)
– Míkel de EPALZA: «Sa Ràpita» de Campos, a Mallorca, topònim araboislàmic i document històric (173-180)
– Manuel ESPINAR MORENO - Juan ABELLÁN PÉREZ: Las rábitas en Andalucía. Fuentes y metodología (181-209)
– Manuel ESPINAR MORENO: Las rábitas de las tierras granadinas en las fuentes documentales. Arqueología y toponimia (211-230)
– Pedro CANO ÁVILA: Noticias de la Rábita de Alcalá la Real (Jaén) (231-235)
– Mª Isabel CALERO SECALL - Virgilio MARTÍNEZ ENAMORADO: Rábitas, ribates y zubias malagueñas (237-254)
– Juan ABELLÁN PÉREZ: Las rábitas de la fachada atlántica gaditana (255-262)
– Helena CATARINO: Breve sinopse sobre topónimos Arrábida na costa portuguesa (263-274)
– Carlos GOZALBES CRAVIOTO: Rábita y Záwiya en la Ceuta medieval: similitudes y diferencias (275-280)
– Ferhat DACHRAOUI: Le rôle des ribats dans le ğihād maritime en Ifriqya au moyen âge (281-287)
– Mustafá Slimane ZBISS: Les ribāṭs de Monastir (289-294)
– Abdelhakim Gafsi SLAMA: Des autres al-Monastir à la Tunisie? (295-297)
– Roberto CAMPAILLA: Un ribat islámico in Sicilia Orientale (299-308))
– As-Sid Abdelaziz SALEM: Las rábitas de Alejandría (309-313)
– Jassim ALUBUDI: Las rábitas, “zāwiyas” y “takias” bagdadíes e Ibn Sa‘īd (315-344) Masraḥ al-afkār, valiosa antología, de tio florilegios, perteneciente al género andalusí del aab
~~  III. Homenatge a Velari boet: Valeri, amb la mar als ulls (345-347)
~~  IV. Francisco FRANCO SÁNCHEZ: “Rābiṭa-s”, “ribāṭ”-es y “al-munastīr”-es. Bibliografía comentada con una introducción historiográfica (349-377)

A en croire Geert Wilders, parlementaire du Partij voor de Vrijheid (extreme droite neerlandaise), si Muhammad revenait aujourd'hui il serait " pourchasse comme terroriste ". Wilders n'est pas le premier, loin s'en faut, a exploiter la figure du prophete dans des controverses europeennes. Pour mettre en perspective historique ces polemiques autour du prophete (et, a travers lui, autour de l'islam), cet article examine la figure de Muhammad dans les controverses en Europe du Moyen Age au XVIIIe siecle. Au moyen âge des auteurs chretiens europeens le presentent souvent sous les traits d'un charlatan heresiarque, la reforme protestante et les guerres de religions vont compliquer la donne : si Muhammad reste un repoussoir, son importance est relativisee : l'ennemi interieur, l'heretique lutherien ou le papiste, serait bien pire que le prophete de l'islam. Au XVIIIe siecle, Muhammad devient un enjeu dans les polemiques des philosophes contre le p...

A lo largo de la Edad Media la península ibérica fue un ámbito caracterizado por una gran diversidad de formas políticas, sociales y culturales. La conquista de 711 dio origen al nacimiento de al-Andalus, un país árabe e islámico, cuya presencia constituye un hecho determinante en la configuración del período medieval. El presente volumen lo integran nueve artículos en los que se analizan ciertos aspectos de esa interacción, haciendo especial hincapié en el tratamiento que se otorgaba a los no musulmanes (cristianos y judíos) en al-Andalus.

Scholars in the Arabic Grammatical Tradition have mainly been focusing their attention on the formative stage of the Arabic grammatical theory (2nd-4th/8th-10th centuries). This dissertation aims at broadening the scope and is intended to contribute to our knowledge of this discipline at the post-classical period and in the western periphery of the Islamic world.
The starting point of research is represented by a 4th/10th century grammarian of Persian origin who settled in Damascus: ʾAbū al-Qāsim al-Zaǧǧāǧī. Nowadays he is one of the best-known Arabic grammarians, but that was not the case in the beginning. Indeed his fame grew steadily thanks to one of his treatises, the Kitāb al-Ǧumal fī al-naḥw. The presentation of al-Zaǧǧāǧī and of his book sets the frame for the study, whose main focus is to trace the history of this text through time and space. This enquiry leads to al-Andalus: whereas the Ǧumal seemed to be abandoned in the Islamic East, it was adopted by Andalusian scholars as one of the main texts for grammatical studies.
The analysis of its chains of transmission and the presentation of all of its commentaries show not only that this treatise was the main grammatical text in this periphery of the Islamic world, but even that it came to be a sort of mirror of Andalusian history and identity.
The journey of this book starts at the 4th/10th century and may be followed almost uninterruptedly until today: imported to al-Andalus from the Islamic East during the formative stage of Andalusian culture, it was then brought to Maghreb thanks to Andalusian emigration flows and was eventually edited in Algiers in 1927.

FRANCO SÁNCHEZ, Francisco & EPALZA, Míkel de. “Bibliografía sobre temas árabes del Sharq Al-Andalus (Levante de Al-Andalus) (Apéndice VII)”. Sharq Al-Andalus. Estudios Árabes. N. 9 (1992). ISSN 0213-3482, pp. 229-276 |
Download: http://hdl.handle.net/10045/17742

FRANCO-SÁNCHEZ, Francisco: «La toponimia árabe de los espacios viales y los espacios defensivos en la península Ibérica». In: Carvalho, C., Planelles Iváñez, M., Sandakova, E., (éds.). De la langue à l'expression: Le parcours de l'expérience discursive. Hommage à Marina Aragón Cobo. Alicante: Universidad de Alicante, 2017, pp. 167-190. ISBN: 978-84-16724-43-7  |
The Arab toponymy of the road spaces and the defensive spaces in the Iberian peninsula |
Recopilación de étimos de origen árabe relacionados con las diversas realidades de los caminos y de las fortalezas en Al-Andalus, así como enunciación de los topónimos que han dado origen |  Compilation of Arab-origin etymon related to the various realities of the roads and fortifications in Al-Andalus, as well as enunciation of the place names they generated |

The epigraphic poems written in Arabic in the Alhambra and Generalife have been studied for more than four hundred years. Therefore, their authorship and meaning have been determined. In the present paper, I will analyze one of the two poems that had not received any critical attention so far and, at the same time, I will try to explain the meaning of this poem within the Naṣrid and North African context.

Although Ibn Barrajān (d. 536/1141) was one of the foremost Sufi masters in al-Andalus, he remains a controversial figure. He is mainly known for the accurate prediction of the Muslim capture of Jerusalem on 583/1187, for his close relationship with the other leading Andalusian Sufi master of his time, Ibn al-ʻArīf (d. 536/1141), and for his obscure death. Ibn Barrajān is not mentioned in Ibn Bashkuwāl’s Ṣila—the main source for study of the Andalusian ulema of this time—and as a result has been taken to be an outsider among the Andalusian ulema, one who threatened the theological and political establishment. However, this image is distorted by the sociopolitical context of the time and by the paucity of our references. The aim of this article is to shed light on the figure of Ibn Barrajān from a historical point of view so as to improve our understanding of the role played by Sufism in Mahdist movements and in the political changes in the Islamic West during the sixth/twelfth century.

Dari banyaknya buku sejarah yang kita baca dan informasi-informasi yang kita telah dapatkan, para ahli sejarah telah mencatat banyak hal tentang perkembangan peradaban Islam khususnya pertengahan abad ke-8 M hingga permulaan abad ke-13 M. Sejarah peradaban islam telah dicatat dalam sejarah, bahwa pada masa tersebut

The studies brought together in this volume provide an important contribution to the history of ḏimmī-s in the medieval dār al-islām, and more generally to the legal history of religious minorities in medieval societies. The central question addressed is the legal status accorded to ḏimmī-s (Jews and Christians) in the Muslim law in the medieval Muslim west (the Maghreb and Muslim Spain).  The scholars whose work is brought together in these pages have dealt with a rich and complex variety of legal sources. Many of the texts are from the Mālikī legal tradition; they include fiqh, fatwā-s, ḥisba manuals. These texts function as the building blocks of the legal framework in which jurists and rulers of Maghrebi and Peninsular societies worked.  The very richness and complexity of these texts, as well as the variety of responses that they solicited, refute the textbook idea of a monolithic ḏimmī system, supposedly based on the Pact of ‘Umar, applied throughout the Muslim world.  In fact when one looks closely at the early legal texts or chronicles from both the Mashreq and the Maghreb, there is little evidence for a standard, uniform ḏimmī system, but rather a wide variety of local adaptations.  The articles in this volume provide numerous examples of the richness and complexity of interreligious relations in Medieval Islam and the reactions of jurists to those relations.

SUMMARY: This article focuses on the ethics manifest in the correspondence of Ibn 'Abbād of Ronda (d. 792/1390), particularly the theme of adab. The essay situates Ibn 'Abbād within Ṣūfī discourse on adab and within Islamic ethics generally by sketching his work as a director of conscience primarily interested in the inner spiritual forces at work in particular disciples. The problem of scruples in one disciple presents a test case for Ibn 'Abbād's general approach to moral discernment: the mandates of revelation provide a field in which the Ṣūfī disciple follows God's call, but perfection lies in the proper demeanor connected to tasting certainty, or yaqīn. Investigation of the relationship between šarī'a and ḥaqīqa forecloses any attempt to cast Ibn 'Abbād as antinomian but permits the term " hypernomian " with certain qualifications. Ibn 'Abbād of Ronda (b. 733/1333, d. 792/1390) has been called the director of conscience of his times, a moniker frequently reaffirmed by Western scholars who have studied his writings 1. In particular, his epistolary correspondence manifests his role as a spiritual mentor both for those disciples gathered around him and those living further away. This article will focus on the ethics at work in that correspondence, especially his letters to yaḥyā ibn Sarrāǧ, and consider it against the backdrop of Sufi morality in general, particularly the theme of adab. Ibn 'Abbād's letters show that while he willingly answers questions about the proper ḥukm in certain circumstances, his primary interest lies in the spiritual forces at work within the disciple. Put more strongly, he often cares less about the decision itself than about the forces which give rise to the decision and he investigates these forces in the context of the particular disciple's personality. Ibn 'Abbād's heavy criticism of jurists cannot be taken as evidence of antinomianism, although his ethics could be considered hypernomian with certain qualifications.

The Arabic and Latin sources for al-Andalus mention several Christians who held high office in the Umayyad administration in the ninth and tenth centuries. How did Christians and Christian converts to Islam attain the command of written Arabic they would have needed to be appointed to such positions? The article focuses on Ḥafṣ ibn Albar's introduction to his translation of the Psalter into Arabic, which directly addresses this question. It also considers other Christians who were schooled in Arabic, some of whom chose martyrdom rather than assimilation into the elite. In al-Andalus, as in other parts of the Islamic world, local elites contributed to the maintenance of imperial rule in the first centuries after the conquests with the aid of new members recruited from the indigenous population. The key to advancement of non-Muslims in the bureaucratic aristocracy of the Umayyad regime was a good command of the language of administration. Much has been written about the loss of Latin that the assimilation of Christians into Muslim society entailed. Less attention has been paid to the question of how Christians and converts to Islam attained a command of written Arabic that enabled them to serve in the highest positions in Muslim society. This article asks what we can deduce about how well elite Christians knew Arabic and how they learned it. It focuses on the mid to late ninth century when some fifty Christians made the ultimate protest against Islam, an indication of the stress that these developments imposed on Andalusi society.

SUMMARY ( The complete work has now been posted).
It would be difficult to overestimate the stratigic, historic, economic and cultural importance of Sabta during the whole of the medieval period. Its privileged georaphical position made it the nearly exclusive nexus between the Andalus and the rest of the Magrib , and it was therefore, to put in the words of Derek Latham "..predestined to play a leading part in the affairs of the Muslim West".
This evident historical preponderance during such a long period is clearly reflected in Sabta´s extensive coinage. The relative importance of the numismatics of Islamic Sabta becomes manifest when we consider that out of its medieval islamic past, unlike other contenporaneous cities of the area, there survives only the most exiguous architectural and archeological testimony, the coins remaining, therefore, as our main tangible evidence for the whole epoch.
The aim of the monograph was to put togrther in one volume as much of  our present knoledge of Islamic Sabta`s numismatics as possible. A word on the general structure of this publication. Following a brief introduction outlining the general history of the area, there is a first chapter describing medieval Sabta at the begining of the XIVth century as extracted from al-Ansari´s Ikhtisar al-Akhbar (p.17).
The second chapter is a chronological sequence of historical events in Sabta from various Arabic sources till its fall to the Portuguese in the Marinid period (p.27). In this chapter we have endeavoured to correlate, as closely as possible, the recorded historical events of the city with its numismatic production. This has been done as a fundamental necessity for the correct understanding and attributioin of many of the coins. There is, for example, among others, the case of the ´Azafids, who, though rulers of Sabtah for nearly a century, never struck coins in their own name.
The third chapter is the catalougue of the actual coins. A total of about 222 entries related to Sabta have been described, of which 134 are reproduced, many for the first time, in the plates, while most of the remaining coins are to be found illustrated in the various publications cited.
In addition to the obove main chapters, a fourth has been added dealing with selected dynastic chronologies that at one point ruled in the area during the medieval period.
Finally, annexed is a fifth chapter  describing and illustrating 25 rare or previously unpublished coins related to the general numimatics of medieval western Islam (p. 171-182,  plates L.XVIII E. - LXX E) which has now been posted apart under papers. T.I

In the first century of Islam, most of the former Christian Roman Empire, from Syria to Spain, was brought under Muslim control in a conquest of unprecedented proportions. Confronted by the world of Islam, countless medieval Christians experienced a profound ambivalence, awed by its opulence, they were also troubled by its rival claims to the spiritual inheritance of Abraham and Jesus and humiliated by its social subjugation of non-Muslim minorities. Some converted. Others took up arms. Still others, the subjects of John Tolan's study of anti-Muslim polemics in medieval Europe, undertook to attack Islam and its most vivid avatar, the saracen, with words.

In an effort to make sense of God's apparent abandonment of Christendom in favor of a dynamic and expanding Muslim civilization, European writers distorted the teachings of Islam and caricatured its believers in a variety of ways. What ideological purposes did these portrayals serve? And how, in turn, did Muslims view Christianity? Feelings of rivalry, contempt, and superiority existed on both sides, tinged or tempered at times with feelings of doubt, inferiority, curiosity, or admiration. Tolan shows how Christian responses to Islam changed from the seventh to thirteenth centuries, through fast-charging crusades and spirit-crushing defeats, crystallizing into polemical images later drawn upon by Western authors in the fourteenth to twentieth centuries. Saracens explores the social and ideological uses of contempt, explaining how the denigration of the other can be used to defend one's own intellectual construction of the world.

Memorie Domenicane si avvale di una direzione scientifica collegiale. I contributi degli autori, che pervengono alla redazione, prima di essere pubblicati sono sottoposti al previo esame da parte di uno o più membri della direzione. Memorie Domenicane is governed by an Editorial Advisory Board. Upon submission, all manuscripts are reviewed for acceptance by one or more members of the Editorial Advisory Board.

At first glance the typical medieval Islamic map of ‘the West’—Surat al-Maghrib— strikes us as nothing more than a quaint abstraction of circles, triangles, and oblong shapes ornately adorned with vivid pigments. Closer study presents a more complex image, however, of passion and conflict; of attraction and revulsion; of love and hate. Indeed the Maghrib map is by far the most dissonant image in the extant collection of medieval Arabic and Persian maps and, as such, one of the most engaging. Whereas all the other images have a veneer of harmony and balance, this one is—by deliberate design—passionately conflicted. It is the discord of desire inlaid within the Muslim pictographs of the Maghrib that is the focus of this chapter, the over-arching question being how did medieval Islamic cartographers settle on such a strange looking image as a representation of the Western Mediterranean— in particular, North Africa, Islamic Spain, and Sicily? Answering this question requires immersing ourselves in the map-image itself, and takes us through a series of subliminal messages ranging from intra-Islamic imperial ambitions to erotic and nostalgic Andalusian poetry.

The use of the dictionary and translation are both common language experiences. The dictionary is an indispensable tool to translating. Yet dictionary skills are grossly neglected in translator training, which assumes that students have acquired all the necessary knowledge and skills before training. In order to reveal the situation in Hong Kong, this case study attempts to investigate the dictionary use pattern of 107 translation students from five local universities for Chinese to English translation, and the dictionary consultation process of four respondents. Triangulation methods were employed: questionnaire survey, interview, think-aloud protocol, and performance exercise. A coding system for think-aloud protocols has been adopted from Thumb , with modifications for Chinese-English dictionary use for production. Results found that most of the respondents had not been trained to use the Chinese-English dictionary, and that they had difficulties in using it for Chinese to English translation. Curricular assessment discovered a gap between student needs in dictionary skills and the curriculum. Pedagogical recommendations are made, and the notion of Dictionary Use Competence is proposed for translation students, while dictionary skills should be treated as a learning strategy across the curriculum from the primary to university levels.