Sean W. Anthony
@shahanSean
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Professor, historian, specialist in Mashriqī Studies at 𝕿𝖍𝖊 @OhioState University
Columbus, OH
Joined May 2016
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My next book, Muhammad and the Empires of Faith, coming out April 2020
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The 18th surah of the Qurʾan, al-Kahf, speaks of a figure named Ḏū l-Qarnayn, ‘the Two-Horned Man’. Who is he? Most modern historians contend that Ḏū l-Qarnayn is none other than Alexander 'the Great' of Macedon (Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Μέγας, 356–323 BCE). This thread explains why…
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The story of how the young Salman Rushdie first encountered at Cambridge the classic story of the so-called "satanic verses" that eventually inspired the novel (published in 1988) is a pretty interesting one that he details in his memoir Joseph Anton (2012) ...
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🧵A 9th-cent. historian of Mecca, Abū l-Walīd al-Azraqī, transmits several stories abt how the Prophet Muḥammad spared an icon (ṣūrah) of Mary and Jesus from destruction when he purged the Kaʿbah of the idols it contained. But if the icon wasn’t destroyed, what happened to it?
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1/ Recently I’ve been revisiting the issue of the Ḥajj and the Kaʿbah in early Islam, and I started collecting the earliest historical attestations to Muslim reverence for the Kaʿbah and the Ḥajj. Here’s some of the results:
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Sorry, but Muslim scholars did 𝒏𝒐𝒕 write about evolution, let alone natural selection, 1000 yrs before Darwin ...
"A Thousand Years Before Darwin, Islamic Scholars Were Writing About Natural Selection" via
@vice
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Forthcoming: Michael A. Cook, A History of the Muslim World: From Its Origins to the Dawn of Modernity (May 2024), 960pp
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Seen this image before? If you’ve read abt Islamic history, I bet you have, but rarely is its significance ever discussed. It’s a library of sorts, but a very special sort. This image is one of the earliest depictions of a local *public* library in the Islamic world. A thread …
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This one's for all those Arabic teachers grading homework copied from Google translate
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Well-known among historians is that Muḥammad was not the only seventh-century claimant to prophecy from Arabia. There are at least four others: three men (Maslamah, Tulayḥah al-Asadī, and al-Aswad al-ʿAnsī) and a woman (Sajāḥ).
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This is a great work of social history by great historian of the Mamluk era.
If you are under any illusions that vice was absent from, or a minor aspect of, premodern societies because they were traditional (etc.), this is a perfect book for disabusing you of that notion.
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Please tell me that there's an academic article out there that documents this stuff
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Books that were published this year that I actually read and highly recommend
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دوش دیدم که ملایک در میخانه زدند
گل آدم بسرشتند و به پیمانه زدند
coming soon from Rudi Matthee
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[The Persian shah] Khosro said, "Make no city your home unless it possess these five things: a mighty ruler, a just judge, a fair market, a learned physician, and a bountiful river."
(Ibn Qutaybah, ʿUyūn al-aḫbār i 6)
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"Learn Arabic if you want to pursue a PhD in Islamic Studies" is apparently a controversial position in the US academy.
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We don't.
Academic Islamic studies professors believe that the Quran was written by a committee of scholars in the deserts of Arabia fluent in several languages, including Greek & various Aramaic dialects, with access to the Talmud & the collected works of the early Church fathers.
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A governor of ʿUmar II writes him worried about the number of persons converting to Islam to avoid paying the jizyah. The caliph’s solution? Require new converts to 1) be circumcised and 2) recite a few surahs before exempting them from jizyah.
(From Balādhurī’s Ansāb al-ashrāf)
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Advanced copy finally arrived! Thank you
@ucpress
for producing such a great cover design.
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Many asked on this thread abt Gog & Magog (Heb. גּוֹג וּמָגוֹג; Ar. يأجوج ومأجوج) and if Alexander of Macedon/Ḏū ’l-Qarnayn was associated w/ them before the Qurʾan. The answer is a resounding, “Yes,” and the same Syriac sources again have a key role to play. I'll explain why …
The 18th surah of the Qurʾan, al-Kahf, speaks of a figure named Ḏū l-Qarnayn, ‘the Two-Horned Man’. Who is he? Most modern historians contend that Ḏū l-Qarnayn is none other than Alexander 'the Great' of Macedon (Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Μέγας, 356–323 BCE). This thread explains why…
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-=[On the Origins of the Flying Carpet]=-
Many regard flying carpets as the quintessential symbol of the magical folklore of the Arabian Nights, but the flying carpet is quite rare in the Nights. Where then does this lore derive? A thread on the surprising answer …
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After seeing this tweet I looked for an early account of this attempt to destroy the pyramids during the era of the crusades. It turns up in the writings of a contemporary, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī (1162-1231), in his Kitāb al-Ifādah wa-l-iʿtibār, which recounts his travels ...
At the end of the twelfth century al-Malek al-Aziz Othman ben Yusuf, Saladin's son and heir, attempted to demolish the pyramids, starting with that of Menkaure.
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Forthcoming: Alain George, The Umayyad Mosque of Damascus: Art, Faith and Empire in Early Islam (June 2021)
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*important new discovery* An early, dated Arabo-Islamic inscription from Ḥismā
that mentions the the prophet Muhammad by name. This one is dated to the end of 80AH[=January 700CE]. A mere 7 decades after his death A quick English translation below:
بارك الله فيكم على ماتبذلونه من جهود في توثيق هذا التراث القيم
وهذه قراءة للنقش :
اللهم صلي على محمد النبي وتقبل شفاعته في أمته
وارحمنا به في الآخرة كما رحمتنا به في الدنيا
وكتب بكر بن أبي بكرة الأسلمي تمام سنة ثمانين .
والله تعالى أعلم بالصواب
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People mock this girl, but she's right. It's the man who's being manipulative. She's referring to the standard interpreation of Q. 4:24 and what happened at after the battle of Ḥunayn ...
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An inscription bearing the name of the Prophet Muḥammad's companion, Zayd ibn Thābit al-Anṣārī, the renowned scribe who recorded the Qurʾan codex of the caliph ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān, the archetype for all copies thereof. Here's a translation:
1] God, pardon Zayd, son of Thābit ...
#نقوش_إسلامية تنشر لأول مرة #المدينة_المنورة :
كتاب مبكر جدا وبخط متقن وبديع
ويحمل اسم زيد بن ثابت رضي الله عنه
ويظهر لي من رسمه والله تعالى أعلم
أنه من خطوط منتصف القرن الأول الهجري
والذي اشتهر بهذا الإسم الثنائي في ذلك الزمن
هو #زيد_بن_ثابت_الأنصاري رضي الله عنه #كاتب_الوحي
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🤯evidence of bilingualism and knowledge of Greek among Arabian nomads in the pre-Islamic period
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Fascinating update on the Ḏū l-Qarynayn ("the Horned Man") = Alexander the Great front thanks to an amazing discovery reported by C.A. Stewart in “A Byzantine Image of Alexander: Literature in Stone,” Report of the Department of Antiquities Cyprus 2017 (Nicosia 2018): 1-45 ...
The 18th surah of the Qurʾan, al-Kahf, speaks of a figure named Ḏū l-Qarnayn, ‘the Two-Horned Man’. Who is he? Most modern historians contend that Ḏū l-Qarnayn is none other than Alexander 'the Great' of Macedon (Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Μέγας, 356–323 BCE). This thread explains why…
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One of my favorite translation errors. The Arabic, instead of saying "Made in Turkey", says "Made in a turkey 🦃 (literally, 'in a Roman rooster')." 😂
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Early Arabic inscriptions by women from the environs of Medina-- important testimonies to women's literacy in early Islamic Arabia
#نقوش_إسلامية نسائية مبكرة من حاضرة #المدينة_المنورة وباديتها
هذه النقوش هي من الدلائل المؤكدة على انتشار العلم والكتابة بين شرائح المجتمع المدني في حاضرته وباديته وعلى مدى تعلق نساء الرعيل الأول رحمهن ﷲ وغفرلهن بالله تعالى فجل نقوشهم هي أدعية وتوكل وثقة بالله ﷻ
#الخط_المدني
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Eléonore Cellard has made a truly remarkable discovery: a new Qur'an palimpsest probably dating from the late-8th/early-9th century CE. It's remarkable because 'upper-text' is the Qur'an and the lower text is biblical. That's unprecedented ...
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I’m teaching a course of 1,001 Nights (alf laylah wa-laylah|ألف ليلة وليلة) this semester, so here’s quick thread on the earliest fragment of the work, discovered by Prof. Nabia Abbot and currently held
@orientalinst
in Chicago. Abbot is famous for her work on early papyri, but..
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I have to say, this upcoming film about the Abbasid Revolution looks like it will be really good.
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The earliest description of Europe (أروفى|urūfā, not أوروبا; from Εὐρώπη) in Arabic literature comes from a book called *Routes and Realms* by Ibn Khordāḏbeh (fl. 800s CE), by the caliph’s head of the postal and intelligence service; it's quite fascinating (translation below)
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My timeline is full of folks annoyed/dismayed by the idea that Abū Hurayrah (d. ca. 678-80), was a controversial figure and, especially, that early Ḥanafīs – like Muḥammad al-Shaybānī (d. 805) – rejected the authority of his ḥadīth in fiqh...
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It's said that the Umayyads’ governor of Iraq, al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf al-Thaqafī, denied that al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī was the Prophet’s progeny because he only recognized patrilineal lineage and discounted matrilineal descent. When in public al-Ḥajjāj thus declared, “Ḥusayn is not...
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In ca. 703-4, the Umayyad governor al-Ḥajjāj b. Yūsuf completed a project to (re)codify the Qurʾan, refining the codex of the caliph ʿUthmān. What was the project, and what did it entail?
The question is difficult to answer...
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Out this month: Hugh Kennedy’s new translation of al-Balādhurī’s Futūḥ al-Buldān
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If you'd like to read more about the satanic verses story in the Islamic tradition, I recommend the book *Before Orthodoxy* (HUP 2017) by the late Shahab Ahmed - which is not only brilliant but also dispels all sorts of popular myths about the story.
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Twitter gives me the sense that ½ of Muslims keen to debate religion on this website are desperate to show that the canonical hadith corpus *is* true+authentic in order to preserve their faith; and the other ½ that it is *not* true+authentic in order to preserve their faith.
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Thank God I'm American
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This is a lie.
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Apparently medieval citrus trees were generally not grown for their fruit? Ibn Khaldūn relates how the proliferation of gardens with citrus trees was regarded as sign of a city’s impending ruin, so much so that many people avoided planting them around their homes. Why? Because...
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Amazing - a treatise about why there can be no anal sex in heaven because the inhabitants of Paradise don't have anuses.
Shaykh al-Islām Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī (d. 926)'s great great great grandson, Sharaf al-Dīn al-Anṣāri (d. 1092), wrote a fantastic book on homosexuality in Jannah.
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This man is the former director of the CIA and is reciting the axioms of the ethnonationalism of another country as if they're metaphysical truths, before which the US and its people must make obeseience. He can fuck off.
Calling Israelis “settlers” is an ahistorical slur.
Judea and Samaria are the rightful homeland of the Jewish people.
For Biden to target these Israelis—especially as he shows weakness and deference to Iran—is a reckless policy.
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@Sturgeons_Law
This is one of the most persistent artifacts of medical beliefs about alchohol from ancient and medieval worlds.
But now I want to know whether it's worse to sit down with a can of Coca-Cola everynight or a can of beer.
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A very interesting and learned book on adelphopoiesis, a "brother-making" ritual between men, which emerged among monastics in late-ancient Egypt and Syro-Palestine. Adelphopoiesis is strongly reminiscent of the muʾākhāh oaths between the Anṣār and the Muhājirūn after the Hijrah
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The Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 685-705) is famous 4 reforming the currency of the early Islamic empire. Most famous of these coins are the briefly minted ‘standing caliph’ series (left) issued 73-77/693-697. But eventually they become aniconic (right).
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Qurʾan refers to “the believers, the Jews, the Christian, and the Sabians (allaḏīn ʾāminū wa’llaḏīna hādū wa’l-naṣārā wa-l-ṣābiʾīn)” (2:62, 5:69; cf. 22:17). Who are these Sabians? Scholars offer many answers, but I think the most interesting one comes from the ḥadīth corpus
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One of the strangest stories transmitted by Ibn Isḥāq (d. 767) appears only in the Tārīkh of Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭabarī (d. 923): the story of how an Anṣārī find the tomb of Jesus Christ on a mountain nearby Medina with an epitaph written in Pahlavi.
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In the early 1960s (?) the Egyptian scholar Muḥammad al-Bahī published a small tract called *Missionaries and Orientalists and their Stance towards Islam*. Though a mere 26 pages, it caught the attention of the German journal Die Welt des Islams, which...
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5 canonical prayers (al-ṣalawāt al-ḫams) constitute a mainstay of daily piety for millions of Muslims worldwide. But why 5 prayers? Why this particular number? Historians have sought to answer this question in numerous ways. Here's one take on a potential answer...
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#openacces
LAMINE 3. Scripts and Scripture: Writing and Religion in Arabia circa 500–700 CE | The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago
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Jerusalem’s sanctity in Muslim belief is well known, and most famously expounded in a genre called ‘The Merits of Jerusalem (faḍāʾil bayt al-maqdis)’. But most collections of these traditions date after the 11th century AD. Are these traditions therefore late? Definitely not …
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The Qur'an (simply put) is, in terms of early manuscripts, likely the most well-attested and accurately preserved text of the first millennium. Miraculously preserved? No. Extraordinary well preserved compared to its peers? Yes, without a doubt.
UPDATE: We present a massive update of the article "Concise List Of Arabic Manuscripts Of The Qur'ān Attributable To The First Century Hijra". This ninth interim update is the biggest update since the article was initially published on the 17th July 2009.
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An amazing find by Prof. Muḥammad al-Ṭabarānī, who is a great scholar and a first-class editor: The Kitāb al-Maghāzī of Mūsā ibn ʿUqbah, one of the earliest biographies of the Prophet Muḥammad ever written and much preferred by Mālik ibn Anas over Ibn Isḥāq’s Maghāzī.
بحمد الله، شرع في طبع مغازي الإمام موسى بن عقبة المدني المطرفي (ت 141 ه)، وهي أصح سيرة وأقدمها بإطلاق، بعد أن أعثرنا الله على نسختها الفريدة، ووقع تحقيقها وتخريج أحاديثها؛ وهذا بلا ريب فتح في المعلم السيري، نسأل الله النفع به.
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What I found esp interesting that he wasn't actually taught by an orientalist or even a historian of the Islamic world. The person who offered him the course was a medievalist named Arthur Hibbert who, I think, gave him a nice piece of advice worth its weight in gold.
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Sunnis blamed Jews for Shi'ism 🤦
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The Abbasid caliphs weren't fond of their predecessors, the Umayyads, be it the caliphs or just the Banū Umayyah in general. They claimed that Q. 98:3, “The Night of Power is better than 1000 months,” is a direct condemnation of the Umayyad caliphate, which lasted 1000 months.
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Recently published in English: Muna Tatari and Klaus von Stosch, tr., Mary in the Qur’an: Friend of God, Virgin, Mother, tr. Peter Lewis (Feb 2022), 350 pp.
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I shudder to think of the web without these folks. Thanks for all you do.
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Ummmmm, no ... In 1009 it was destroyed on the orders of the Fāṭimid caliph al-Ḥākim, which I am pretty sure counts as being "indefinitely closed"
Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is believed to contain the holiest Christian sites (Jesus’ crucifixion, burial, resurrection), has never been indefinitely closed in a millenia and a half, except
•In 1349, Black Plague
•Today, Coronavirus
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What a find! 2 lines of Arabic poetry - often cited in Abbasid-era belles lettres as being pre-Islamic and 𝐶ℎ𝑟𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑎𝑛 - found north of Mt. Arafat near Mecca. It's dated (!) by the inscriber, Abū Jaʿfar ibn Ḥasan al-Hāshimī, to 98 A.H. (716-17 C.E.). Here's what it says..
#نقش_نادر مؤرخ بسنة ثمان وتسعين للهجرة في شمال عرفة ،لبيتين من الشعر الجاهلي منسوبةٍ لقس بن ساعدة ، وقيل لغيره، ونصه:
أفنى الجديدَ تقلبُ الشمس
وطلوعها من حيث لا تمسي وطلوعها بيضاء صافية
وغروبها صفراء كالورس
وكتب أبو جعفر بن حسن الهاشمي سنة ثمان وتسعين.
#نقش_اسلامي .
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Islam originated in Petra and Dan Gibson is a first-rate scholar.
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A common question in the historiography of early Islam: How early did the communities of the 7th-century Near East perceive Arabian conquerors as possessing their own faith community with distinct laws and beliefs?
Here’s insights from John bar Penkāyē (ܝܘܚܢܢ ܒܪ ܦܢܟ̈ܝܐ) ...
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One of our earliest chronologies of the plague (al-ṭāʿūn|الطاعون) in early Islam comes from the Kitāb al-Taʿāzī (Book of Condolences) of Abū l-Ḥasan al-Madāʾinī (d. 225/840). He notes, “The famous great plagues in Islam were five …” Here’s his list:
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I've posted a pre-print version of my article, “Two ‘Lost’ Sūras of the Qurʾān: Sūrat al-Khalʿ and Sūrat al-Ḥafd between Textual and Ritual Canon (1st-3rd/7th-9th Centuries),” soon to appear in the next issue of Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam
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Everyone in MidEast Studies in the US academy should follow this like a hawk
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Nice, early attestation to the name of the Prophet's father, 'Abdallāh.
أنا مسلمة بن عبيد
أسل الله #الجنة نزلاً .
بسمـ الله اللهمـ اغفر
لمحمد ابن عبدالله #النبي_الأمي
وصلِّ عليه وسلمـ
واغفر لمن #قال آمين من المؤمنين
لا إله إلا الله وحده لا شريكــ له
له الملكــ وله الحمد
وهو على كل شيء قدير
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Let the Palestinian civilians leave Gaza and cross the border .... into Israel.
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"The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins." This famous quote of Kierkegaard hits differently in context
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Atheism is definitely not a sign of a great intellect.
(Just in case you still thought so. Do such people still exist on Twitter?)
We know that Jesus Christ was a fictional character created by the Council of Nicaea in the year 325 AD and modelled after Julius Caesar to pacify the poor in the Roman Empire.
We know this to be true from independent historians born in the same time period, hold no records
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Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq said: Three persons deserve mercy: the rich who become poor, the renowned who become disgraced, and the learnèd who become laughingstocks of the ignorant.
قال جعفر الصادق: ثلاثةٌ يجب لهم رحمة: غني افتقر وعزيز قوم ذلّ وعالم تلاعب به الجهّال.
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Is there some board somewhere to whom I can appeal to get this little Arabic agraphon officially included in the Gospels?
Jesus said, "Even though I managed to raise the dead, I have never been able to cure an idiot!"
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Many professors of religion/religious studies not only intensely dislike religious people but also feel no problem expressing how religious folk make them feel physically ill. That's a problem.
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In what way is the Ottoman era in the Egypt, Levant, etc. "pre-colonial"? I am amazed to see the persistence of this language in modern Mid-East historiography.
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Forthcoming 2022
Lajos Berkes, editor, Christians and Muslims in Early Islamic Egypt
(h/t Adam Sabra)
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Modern scholars, "Pre-Islamic Arabia was much more monotheistic than once thought."
Ibn Taymiyyah, "I told you so."
“The pagans of Quraysh and others … affirmed that God alone created the heavens and the earth” (Majmūʿ al-fatāwā, 1:155).
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One of the greatest poets of pre-modern Arabic literary canon is al-Mutannabī (d. 965 CE). He has quite a curious name: “al-Mutanabbī” means “the would-be prophet”. Why would he have a name such as this? Here’s a brief account …
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Let’s talk abt the famous variant reading of Q. Rūm 30:2 and some misconceptions. The verse simply reads “The Romans are defeated (غلبت الروم|ġulibati r-rūm)”, but another reading is attested, “The Romans conquered (ġalabati r-rūm),” which early MSS theoretically accommodate.
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-=[A thread on Ādam and Iblīs in the Qurʾan]=-
The Qurʾan often recasts biblical lore in a new light. Perhaps nowhere is this for visible than in its 7 (!) retellings of the creation of Adam and the fall of Iblīs|إبليس (=the Devil, from the Greek διάβολος|diábolos ). A thread ...
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A disgusting statemtent. There is a broad swathe of elites in this country who openly and self-righteously display a deep-seated and murderous racial animus against the Palestinian people, and their influence in the American gov't is pervasive and will cost many, many more lives.
My confidence in Harvard leadership’s ability and will to confront anti-semitism and the demonization of Israel continues to decline. Unfortunately, it is becoming ever clearer why Harvard ranks first on anti- semitism, even as it ranks last on upholding free speech.
Confronting
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Surprised tbh to see Ibn Khaldūn explicitly call Islam an Arab religion.
“...with few rare exceptions, the majority of scholars in the Islamic religion are non-Arabs… despite the fact that the religion is an Arab one (al-millah ʿarabiyyah) and its lawgiver is an Arab.”
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Al-Jāḥiẓ gripes of his era that although Christians can marry only one wife, which can’t divorce, and cannot even taken concubines, “the Christians have covered earth and filled the frontiers. They outnumber all other nations with the enormous number of their children”
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It's a pernicious myth that Western attitudes towards Muḥammad are wholly negative - and naive to think that a positive view of him must, therefore, be a faithful or accurate one.
Tolan's Muhammad: an anticlerical hero of the European Enlightenment –
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The photo of this incredible inscription between is one of the many reasons it’s a joy to be on Twitter. This is one of the more extraordinary dated inscriptions published in the last twenty years. I’ll explain why:
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Apropos the preservation of the Qurʾan
Is the Qurʾan extraordinarily well-preserved? Yes.
– miraculously preserved? No.
– less well-preserved than even the average educated Muslim thinks? Probably
– has centuries of painstaking Muslim scholarship addressed this topic? Of course.
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Why did the Umayyad caliphate fall? In his 𝐿𝑢𝑡̣𝑓 𝑎𝑙-𝑡𝑎𝑑𝑏𝑖̄𝑟, al-Khaṭīb al-Iskāfī records an interesting answer to this question purportedly given by “one of the sages of the Umayyads (baʿḍ ḥukamāʾ banī umayyah)”. The wise Umayyad says:
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I've been up to my eyeballs in Arabic translations of Aristotle with my grad class lately and now have moved on to reading Alfarabi -- I've never appreciated how beautifully he wrote before. No wonder Avicenna was so enthralled.
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The papyrus contains a portion of the story of Jesus bringing clay birds to life, which also appears twice in the Quran (3:49, 5:110)
This is a very interesting discovery, not least because it shows an example of the kinds of texts that were used as writing exercises in the 4th/5th century.
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A wonderful anecdote from Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī’s al-Imtāʿ wa-l-muʾānasah:
An agonistic/skeptic (mutaḥayyir) from 10th-century Sijistān was, “What leads you to still hold to the validity of your faith?” And he replies:
“A special quality nothing else has:...
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Striking
Q. 38:75: “[God] blew into [Adam] of his spirit and gave you hearing, sight, and minds"
Aphrahaṭ (Dem. XVII.5; ed. Wright, 338), “[God] blew into [Adam] of his spirit and gave him knowledge of discernment (wa-npaḥ beh men rūḥeh w-yahb īdaʿtā d-pūršānā)”
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Just released and
#openaccess
(!),
@PhDniX
's Quranic Arabic: From its Hijazi Origins to its Classical Reading Traditions (Brill, 2022)
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This is the first time in my life that I'm considering not voting for either prez candidate. Trump will be worse for Palestinians, I'm sure, but voting for Biden's cowardly admin bc he'll only permit Israel to commit "light genocide" ain't going to cut it.
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