"This Variorum volume reprints ten papers on contextual elements of the so-called ancient sciences in Islamicate societies between the thirteenth and the seventeenth centuries. They address four major themes: the ancient sciences in educational institutions; courtly patronage of science; the role of the astral and other sciences in the Mamluk sultanate; and narratives about knowledge. The main arguments are directed against the then dominant historiographical claims about the exclusion of the ancient sciences from the madrasa and cognate educational institutes, the suppression of philosophy and other ancient sciences in Damascus after 1229, the limited role of the new experts for timekeeping in the educational and professional exercise of this science, and the marginal impact of astrology under Mamluk rule. It is shown that the muwaqqits (timekeepers) were important teachers at madrasas and Sufi convents, that Mamluk officers sought out astrologers for counselling and that narratives about knowledge reveal important information about scholarly debates and beliefs. Colophons and dedications are used to prove that courtly patronage for the ancient sciences continued uninterrupted until the end of the seventeenth century. Furthermore, these papers refute the idea of a continued and strong conflict between the ancient and modern sciences, showing rather shifting alliances between various of them and their regrouping in the classifications of the entire disciplinary edifice. These papers are suited for graduate teaching in the history of science and the intellectual, cultural and social history of the Middle East and for all readers interested in the study of the contexts of the sciences"--
This book reprints ten papers on contextual elements of the so-called ancient sciences in Islamicate societies between the thirteenth and the seventeenth centuries.
This Variorum volume reprints ten papers on contextual elements of the so-called ancient sciences in Islamicate societies between the thirteenth and the seventeenth centuries. They address four major themes: the ancient sciences in educational institutions; courtly patronage of science; the role of the astral and other sciences in the Mamluk sultanate; and narratives about knowledge.
The main arguments are directed against the then dominant historiographical claims about the exclusion of the ancient sciences from the madrasa and cognate educational institutes, the suppression of philosophy and other ancient sciences in Damascus after 1229, the limited role of the new experts for timekeeping in the educational and professional exercise of this science, and the marginal impact of astrology under Mamluk rule. It is shown that the muwaqqits (timekeepers) were important teachers at madrasas and Sufi convents, that Mamluk officers sought out astrologers for counselling and that narratives about knowledge reveal important information about scholarly debates and beliefs. Colophons and dedications are used to prove that courtly patronage for the ancient sciences continued uninterrupted until the end of the seventeenth century. Furthermore, these papers refute the idea of a continued and strong conflict between the ancient and modern sciences, showing rather shifting alliances between various of them and their regrouping in the classifications of the entire disciplinary edifice.
These papers are suited for graduate teaching in the history of science and the intellectual, cultural and social history of the Middle East and for all readers interested in the study of the contexts of the sciences.
The location of the Ancient or rational sciences in Muslim
educational landscapes (AH 500-1100), Bulletin of the Royal Institute for
Inter-Faith Studies, 4(1), 2002: 47-71. / Shams al-Dn al-Sakhw on
Muwaqqits, Muadhdhins, and the Teachers of Various Astronomical Disciplines
in Mamluk Cities in the Fifteenth Century, in (eds.) Emilia Calvo, Mercč
Comes, Roser Puig, Mņnica Rius, A Shared Legacy, Islamic Science East and
West, Homage to professor J.M. Milląs Vallicrosa, Barcelona: Universitat de
Barcelona, Publicacions i Edicions, 2008, 129-150. / Ayyubid Princes and
their Scholarly Clients from the Ancient Sciences, in Albrecht Fuess,
Jan-Peter Hartung (eds.), Court Cultures in the Muslim World: Seventh to
Nineteenth Centuries, SOAS/Routledge Studies on the Middle East, London:
Routledge, 2010, 326-56. / Patronage of the mathematical sciences in Islamic
societies: structure and rhetoric, identities and outcomes, in Eleanor
Robson, Jackie Stedall (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the History of
Mathematics, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 301-28. / Courtly
Patronage of the Ancient Sciences in Post-Classical Islamic Societies,
Al-Qanara: revista de estudios įrabes, XXIX (2008), 403-436. / The language
of 'Patronage' in Islamic societies before 1700, Cuadernos del CEMYR 20
(2012), 11-22. / The Study of Geometry According to al-Sakhw (Cairo, 15th
c) and al-Muibb (Damascus, 17th c), in J. W. Dauben, S. Kirschner, A.
Kühne, P. Kunitzsch and R. Lorch eds., Mathematics Celestial and Terrestrial,
Festschrift for Menso Folkerts zum
65. Geburtstag. Acta Historica Leopoldina
54 (2008),
323341. Halle/Saale: Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher
Leopoldina. / On Four Sciences and Their Audiences in Ayyubid and Mamluk
Societies, in Syrinx von Hees ed. Inhitat -The Decline Paradigm: Its
Influence and Persistence in Writing Arab Cultural History. Würzburg: Ergon,
2012, 139-172. / Narratives of knowledge in Islamic societies: what do they
tell us about scholars and their contexts? Almagest, 4(1), 2013: 74-95. /
Sanctioning knowledge, Al-Qanara: revista de estudios įrabes, 35(1), 2014:
277-309.
Sonja Brentjes is an historian of science with specialization in Islamicate societies, the late medieval Mediterranean and early modern Catholic and Protestant Europe. Currently, she is a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. Her latest books include: Teaching and Learning the Sciences in Islamicate Societies, 8001700 (2018), and The Routledge Handbook of the Sciences in Islamicate Societies: Practices from the 2nd/8th to the 13th/19th Centuries (2023), co-edited with Peter Barker (associated editor) and Rana Brentjes (assistant editor).
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