An Intellectual Correspondence from the Tenth Century, Volume Two
Questions and answers from two great philosophers Why is laughter contagious? Why do mountains exist? Why do we long for the past, even if it is scarred by suffering? Spanning a vast array of subjects that range from the philosophical to the theological, from the philological to the scientific, The Philosopher Responds is the record of a set of ......
Widows, Pastoral Care, and Medieval Models of Holiness
The Profession of Widowhood explores how the idea of 'true' widowhood was central to pre-modern ideas concerning marriage and of female identity more generally. The medieval figure of the Christian vere vidua or "good" widow evolved from and reinforced ancient social and religious sensibilities of chastity, loyalty and grief as gendered 'work.' ......
Poems of love and battle by Arabia's legendary warrior From the sixth-century highlands of Najd in the Arabian peninsula, on the eve of the advent of Islam, come the strident cries of a legendary warrior and poet. The black outcast son of an Arab father and an Ethiopian slave mother, 'Antarah ibn Shaddad struggled to win the recognition of his ......
In Elf Queens and Holy Friars Richard Firth Green investigates an important aspect of medieval culture that has been largely ignored by modern literary scholarship: the omnipresent belief in fairyland. Taking as his starting point the assumption that the major cultural gulf in the Middle Ages was less between the wealthy and the poor than between ......
Suger, the twelfth century abbot of Saint-Denis, has not received the respect and attention that he deserves. Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter the Venerable have garnered more attention, and students of medieval history know their names well. In one respect, however, Suger has earned due praise, for his architectural innovations to the church of ......
From the riddling song of a bawdy onion that moves between kitchen and bedroom to the thrilling account of Beowulf's battle with a treasure-hoarding dragon, from the heart-rending lament of a lone castaway to the embodied speech of the cross upon which Christ was crucified, from the anxiety of Eve, who carries "a sumptuous secret in her hands / ......
The ninth and tenth centuries witnessed the establishment of a substantial network of maritime trade across the Indian Ocean, providing the real-life background to the Sinbad tales. An exceptional exemplar of Arabic travel writing, Accounts of China and India is a compilation of reports and anecdotes about the lands and peoples of this diverse ......
The earliest surviving instance of sustained first-person travel narrative in Arabic Mission to the Volga is a pioneering text of peerless historical and literary value. In its pages, we move north on a diplomatic mission from Baghdad to the upper reaches of the Volga River in what is now central Russia. In this colorful documentary from the ......
The Life of Ibn Hanbal is a translation of the biography of Ibn Hanbal by the Baghdad preacher, scholar, and storyteller Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 597/1200), newly abridged for a paperback readership by translator Michael Cooperson. Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 241/855), renowned for his profound knowledge of hadiths-the reports of the Prophet's sayings and ......
