This collection of essays celebrates 50 years since the founding of the Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit at Cambridge University Library. Three generations of scholars contributed their research and memories from their time at the GRU, stretching back to 1974. Their work comprises 18 articles on medieval Jewish History, Hebrew and Arabic…[Read more]

Almost one thousand years ago, the Jews of Old Cairo began to place their worn-out books and scrolls into a hidden storage room – a genizah – of their synagogue. Over the years, they added all sorts of writings to the pile, sacred and secular texts alike. When the chamber was emptied at the end of the 19th century, it held hundreds of tho…[Read more]

The Michaelides manuscript collection at the Cambridge University Library contains approximately 700 papyrus fragments collected by George Michaelides in Egypt in the middle of the twentieth century. While a preliminary handlist exists for this collection, most of the papyri have not been fully described. Among them are five Qur’anic papyri that h…[Read more]

The Michaelides manuscript collection at the Cambridge University Library contains approximately 700 papyrus fragments collected by George Michaelides in Egypt in the middle of the twentieth century. While a preliminary handlist exists for this collection, most of the papyri have not been fully described. Among them are five Qur’anic papyri that h…[Read more]

It is known that Berbers suffered from
central government after the conquests of the North Africa. Berbers who were
initially inclined to abandon Islam preferred to join political-religious
groups in time. In the 8th century, Khārijism was influential in North Africa.
In the 10th century, Ismā‘īlī Shī‘ism, which was another opposition group, w…[Read more]

While the Cairo Genizah is mainly known as a repository of medieval manuscripts, modern Genizah collections also contain thousands of folios from texts printed with moveable type between 1500 and 1900. Most of these imprints come from Europe, but almost all of them reached the Cairene Jewish community at some point before 1897. They are also among…[Read more]

Synoptic edition of the introductions to Kitāb al-Taḏkira fī aḥkām al-jawāhir wa-l-aʿrāḍ (‘Reminder about the properties of atoms and accidents’) by Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥasan b. Aḥmad b. Mattawayh and its commentary (Šarḥ), presumably by Abū Ǧaʿfar Muḥammad b. ʿAlī Mazdak. Taken together, these introductions offer a valuable summary outline of basi…[Read more]

Review of: Shukurov, Rustam. Byzantine Ideas of Persia, 650–1461. London: Routledge, 2023.

ByzRev 06.2024.018

در بررسی شعر فمنیستی فارسی معمولاً به نام فروغ فرخزاد، سیمین بهبهانی، طاهره قره‌العین، زندخت شیرازی و اخیراً ژاله عالم‌تاج قائم‌‌مقامی برمی‌خوریم و نام پروین اعتصامی (1285-1320ش) در چنین مباحثی مطرح نمی‌شود. آنچه پژوهشگران تا به اکنون دربارۀ شعر او در کانون توجه قرار داده‌اند جنبه‌های اجتماعی اشعار این شاعر و تلاش وی برای به تصویر کشیدن…[Read more]

Report on the historical details of a number of neglected storytellers in Iran and South Asia from the 16th to 17th centuries CE, including Zain al-‘Ābidīn Takaltū Khān, ‘Ināyat Allāh Darbār Khān, Fusūnī Yazdī, Mīr Muḥammad Hāshim, Iskandar Qiṣṣah-khẉān, Ḥājī Qiṣṣah-khẉān Hamadānī, Niẓām Shīrāzī, Mīr Qiṣṣah, Muḥammad…[Read more]

Describes the storytelling techniques of the 17th-century storyteller (qissah-khwan) ‘Abd al-Nabi Fakhr al-Zamani Qazwini in South Asia and discusses the truth/falsehood binary in the context of the qissah/dastan genre.

Translation of Mīrzā Asad Allāh Ḳhān Ġhālib’s 1866 Urdu preface to the dāstān Bostān-i Ḳhayāl.

ویتمن ایرانی: فراتر از پذیرش ادبی ــ که به پذیرش والت ویتمن، شاعر نامدار آمریکایی، در یک دورۀ تقریباً صد ساله در ایران معاصر می‌پردازد ــ دارای نُه فصل، مقدمه، مؤخره و ضمیمه است. کتابِ حاضر تحقیقی بینارشته‌ای است: از سویی ادبیات تطبیقی (پذیرش ادبی، تأثیرپژوهی و تصویرشناسی) و نقد ادبی (تاریخ‌گرایی نو)، و از سوی دیگر مطالعات ترجمه (ترجمه و ای…[Read more]

This article investigates several discussions of “chemistry,” understood as an analysts’ category referring to theories and practices dealing with the structure and transformation of matter. By reading these texts (a treatise defending kīmiyāʾ by al-Fārābī, the famous passage from Ibn Sīnā’s Shifāʾ on transmutation, Ibn Taymiyyah’s fatwā…[Read more]

The term “alchemy,” born out of early modern professional polemics among chemists, is problematic as a historical category. The present article shifts away from asking what pre-modern alchemy “really” was, to asking how medieval scholars writing in Greek and Arabic thought about the practice of treating and combining naturally occurring substan…[Read more]

The Cairo Genizah is famous as a source of manuscripts for the study of the medieval Mediterranean world, especially Jewish communities during the High Middle Ages. However, among the hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern manuscript fragments in Genizah collections are more than 12,000 moveable-type printed items, most of which come from Europe.…[Read more]

This paper compares psychostasia and/or kerostasia concepts from Indo-European, Semitic and adjacent cultures, and relates them to Cognitive Metaphor Theory. In the context of metaphysical weighing, the religions of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome all associated lightness with goodness and/or a favourable outcome; Hinduism does likewise. The…[Read more]

In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, when a new style of Persian poetry was developing in the Persianate world, several erudite literary critics appeared in India, whose meticulous critiques of Persian poetry was unprecedented in the long history of Persian literature. A close study of the works produced by these critics reveals their vast…[Read more]