Sherman Jackson on Differences in Legal-Political Philosophy between Establishment and Non-Establishment Scholars
That al-Qarafi should concern himself with matters of government might appear at first blush to contradict the widely touted notion …
Category Archives: History
Eugen Weber on Linguistic Diversity and the Nation
“Like the report of 1863, Grégoire’s seems to have taken an optimistic view. Many of the provincial assemblies discussing the …
Megan H. Reid on the Nature of the Academy in Medieval Islam
‘Considering the number of hours that pious men and women spent awake at night in prayer, reciting the Qur’an in …
Eliezer Ben-Yehuda on the revival of Hebrew as a national obligation
“The struggle for the revival of Hebrew as a living, modern language might provide a good illustration of the range …
Isiah Berlin on the Struggle for Recognition in Nationalism
“It is this desire for reciprocal recognition that leads the most authoritarian democracies to be, at times, consciously preferred by …
Michael Billig on the invention of ‘Language’
‘Mediaeval Europe, in contrast with today’s world, was not a place of official vernacular languages. By and large written communication …
Knowledge and the ‘Golden Age’ of Islamic Civilisation
Yaqub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi, celebrated as the Philosopher of the Arabs, soon took up the anti-Byzantine refrain. He posited a …
Joseph Canning on the Clericalisation of the Church
Nevertheless there arises the intrusive thought, out of bounds for a historian: this was the moment of the great wrong …
Talal Asad on ‘Defining the Essence of Religion’
‘According to this view, Medieval religion, pervading or encompassing other categories, is nevertheless analytically identifiable. It is this face that …
Kenny on Two Traditions of Philosophy
The period between Descartes and Hegel was the great age of metaphysical system-building. In the medieval period there were many …
