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 […]

Ethics and spirituality in Islam

Francesco Chiabotti, Eve Feuillebois-Pierunek, Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen et Luca Patrizi (éd.), Ethics and spirituality in Islam: Sufi adab, Brill, Leyde, 2016, 792 pages. The notion of adab is at the heart of Arab-Islamic culture. Born in the crucible of the Arabic and Persian civilization, nourished by Greek and Indian influences, this polysemic notion could cover a variegated […]

A Persian Gospel manuscript

Dennis Halft, “A Persian Gospel manuscript and the London Polyglot”, in M. Pehlivanian, Ch. Rauch, and R. Vollandt, eds, Oriental Bible manuscripts from the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – PK: An illustrated history, Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2016, 155‒157.

The ‘Book of books’ in Persian

Dennis Halft, “The ‘Book of books’ in Persian”, in M. Pehlivanian, Ch. Rauch, and R. Vollandt, eds, Oriental Bible manuscripts from the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – PK: An illustrated history, Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2016, 150‒154.

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 […]

Positive history and sacred history

Dominique Avon, « Histoire positive et histoire sacrée autour de la pensée de Louis Massignon » in Cahiers d’étude du religieux 16 (2016). Louis Massignon (1883‒1962) was one of the famous orientalists during the first part of the 20th c. His PHD was based on the life of a mystic Muslim, Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj (c. 858‒922), who […]

Newsletter – July 2016

Dear friends, we are excited to introduce to you our new website. The previous site was becoming old and we could not update it easily. This new site is designed to primarily highlight our activities and news, rather than our identity and values. Next to the fixed pages (“IDEO’s Members”, “Our History”, “The Library”, “The Scholars’ […]

The reception of Sībawayh’s Kitāb in the West

Jean Druel icon-calendar September 2015‒September 2020 In her PhD research (1992, published in 1995 under the title Les voies de la transmission du Kitāb de Sībawayhi, Brill) Geneviève Humbert has reveaIed the existence of a North African (Kairouan?) parchment of Sībawayh’s Kitāb, probably dated 5th/11th century. It’s a very rare parchment (not paper) that roughly contains […]