The word āmīn in Arabic
Jean Druel Director of IDEO icon-calendar Tuesday November 7ᵗʰ, 2017 In his short treatise entitled A glitter in the debate about the word āmīn used in supplication and its rules in Arabic, Ibn al-Ḫaššāb al-Baġdādī (d. 567/1172) presents the state of the art of the grammatical knowledge on the word āmīn in his time. All […]
Certainty and probability, from theology to the ‘servant’ sciences
Ahmad Wagih Doctor in Islamic Philosophy, Faculty of Dār al-ʿUlūm, Cairo University icon-calendar Wednesday October 18ᵗʰ, 2017 Muslim theologians (al-mutakallimūn) relied on the concepts of ‘certainty’ (al-qaṭʿiyya) and ‘probability’ (al-ẓanniyya) to build their theological argumentation and classify knowledge, in order to distinguish between what could be relied on and what could not. Practically speaking, however, each […]
Excavation of an Umayyad castle
Jean-Baptiste Humbert Archaeologist at the Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem icon-calendar Tuesday May 2nd, 2017 Archeology consists of luck and surprises. By searching for traces of the Aramean people (often mentioned in the Bible, but not well known), Jean-Baptiste Humbert, OP became interested in the site of Mafraq in the north of Jordan in […]
An epistemological shift: From Sunna to Šarīʿa and the breach of modern times
Rocio Daga Portillo Professor of Islamology at Munich University icon-calendar Tuesday March 28ᵗʰ, 2017 It is striking to note that in the Qurʾān and the oldest texts the term Sunna is used more often than the term Šarīʿa in order to mean the law. The word Sunna used to refer to the oral law transmitted by the tradition and the forefathers. […]
The first edition of the commentary of al-Tilimsānī on ʿUmar ibn al-Fāriḍ’s poem
Giuseppe Scattolin Professor of Sufism and Islamology With Mr. ʿAbd al-Samīʿ Salāma, editor of manuscripts at the Egyptian National Library icon-calendar Tuesday February 14ᵗʰ, 2017 The commentary of al-Tilimsānī (d. 690/1291) on ʿUmar ibn al-Fāriḍ’s (d. 632/1235) poem entitled al-Tāʾiyya al-kubrā is one of the oldest commentaries of this poem, after the one by Saʿīd al-Dīn al-Farġānī (d. 699/1300). Al-Farġānī and al-Tilimsānī lived at the […]
The oldest manuscripts of the Qurʾān
Emilio Platti IDEO, Professor Emeritus of the Catholic University of Leuven icon-calendar Tuesday January 24ᵗʰ, 2017 Following the discovery of extremely old manuscripts of the Qurʾān, and the Birmingham folios having been dated between 568 and 645 AD (56 before Hiǧra and 25 after) with Carbon 14 techniques, scholars largely refuse today the late dating […]
Archeology and water in medieval Morocco
Thomas Soubira Archeologist, PhD student in Toulouse University icon-calendar Monday December 19ᵗʰ, 2016 The archeological site of Sijilmasa is being excavated by a French Moroccan team. This “harbour” of transsaharian trade between the 8th and the 15th centuries has remarkable hydrolic archeological remnants that can be observed on the entire excavation zone: water harvesting, transportation, […]
Reflection on the argument from cannibalism in Islamic theology
Eric van Lit PhD in Islamic studies Tuesday December 13ᵗʰ, 2016 A little problem keeps popping up century after century, in the writings of all kinds of Muslim theologians (80 to 90 authors have been identified so far); what happens if one person were to eat another person, can they both have bodily resurrection? The […]
Al-Fārābī’s “fourth philosophy”
Aziz Hilal PhD in Arabic philosophy icon-calendar Tuesday October 25ᵗʰ, 2016 In his Kitāb al-ǧadal, al-Fārābī (d. 339/950) mentions a “fourth philosophy”. What he intends with this expression is a philosophy that would be adapted to non-specialists, both technicians in a particular given art (medicine, grammar, poetry…) and simple people (al-ǧumhūr). Unlike the first three […]
Ibn Taymiyya (728/1328) et son Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa-l-naql
Ahmad Wagih Doctorant en théologie musulmane à Dār al-ʿUlūm (Université du Caire) icon-calendar Mardi 19 mai 2015 à 17h00 Ibn Taymiyya (m. 728/1328) occupe une place très particulière dans la tradition musulmane. Il accusait régulièrement les oulémas de son époque d’avoir une approche non critique des sciences musulmanes, ce qui lui a valu plusieurs séjours […]