Link to personal webpage, access to publications by Uriel Simonsohn
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Books by Uriel Simonsohn
OUP, 2023
Female Power and Religious Change in the Medieval Near East engages with two levels of scholarly ... more Female Power and Religious Change in the Medieval Near East engages with two levels of scholarly discussion that are all too often dealt with separately in modern scholarship: the Islamization of the Near East and the place of women in pre-modern Near Eastern societies. It outlines how these two lines of inquiry can and should be read in an integrative manner. Major historical themes such as conversion to Islam, Islamization, religious violence, and the regulation of Muslim/non-Muslim ties are addressed and reframed by attending to the relatively hidden, yet highly meaningful, role that women played throughout this period.
This book is about the history of Islam from the perspective of female social agents. It argues that irrespective of their religious affiliation, women possessed crucial means for affecting or hindering religious changes, not only in the form of religious conversion, but also in the adoption of practices and the delineation of communal boundaries. Its focus on the role and significance of female power in moments of religious change within family households offers a historical angle that has hitherto been relatively absent from modern scholarship. Rather than locating signs of female autonomy or authority in the political, intellectual, religious, or economic spheres, Female Power and Religious Change in the Medieval Near East is concerned with the capacity of women to affect religious communal affiliations thanks to their kinship ties.
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Edited volumes by Uriel Simonsohn
Jews, Christians and Muslims in Medieval and Early Modern Times: A Festschrift in Honor of Mark R. Cohen., 2014
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Conversion to Islam in the Premodern Age: A Sourcebook, 2020
Conversion to Islam is a phenomenon of immense significance in human history. At the outset of Is... more Conversion to Islam is a phenomenon of immense significance in human history. At the outset of Islamic rule in the seventh century, Muslims constituted a tiny minority in most areas under their control. But by the beginning of the modern period, they formed the majority in most territories from North Africa to Southeast Asia. Across such diverse lands, peoples, and time periods, conversion was a complex, varied phenomenon. Converts lived in a world of overlapping and competing religious, cultural, social, and familial affiliations, and the effects of turning to Islam played out in every aspect of life. Conversion therefore provides a critical lens for world history, magnifying the constantly evolving array of beliefs, practices, and outlooks that constitute Islam around the globe. This groundbreaking collection of texts, translated from sources in a dozen languages from the seventh to the eighteenth centuries, presents the historical process of conversion to Islam in all its variety and unruly detail, through the eyes of both Muslim and non-Muslim observers.
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Conversion to Islam in the Premodern Age: A Sourcebook, 2020
Conversion to Islam is a phenomenon of immense significance in human history. At the outset of Is... more Conversion to Islam is a phenomenon of immense significance in human history. At the outset of Islamic rule in the seventh century, Muslims constituted a tiny minority in most areas under their control. But by the beginning of the modern period, they formed the majority in most territories from North Africa to Southeast Asia. Across such diverse lands, peoples, and time periods, conversion was a complex, varied phenomenon. Converts lived in a world of overlapping and competing religious, cultural, social, and familial affiliations, and the effects of turning to Islam played out in every aspect of life. Conversion therefore provides a critical lens for world history, magnifying the constantly evolving array of beliefs, practices, and outlooks that constitute Islam around the globe. This groundbreaking collection of texts, translated from sources in a dozen languages from the seventh to the eighteenth centuries, presents the historical process of conversion to Islam in all its variety and unruly detail, through the eyes of both Muslim and non-Muslim observers. https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520296732/conversion-to-islam-in-the-premodern-age
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The family stands at the centre of the present volume. Its networks of kinship and influence are ... more The family stands at the centre of the present volume. Its networks of kinship and influence are a central tenet of Late Antique communities. The relations within the family and between the family and the community occupy an important place in Late Antique law, theology, prose, poetry and art.
The institution of family has received different interpretations in the various geographical and chronological scenes discussed by this volume, yet there are also numerous parallels. The family is often seen as a miniature community, anchored to a vast network of values and shared perceptions. As such, the community opens a unique window into Late Antique history. Understanding the family not only brings the differences and similarities between the various communities into sharper relief; it provides an in depth look at the spiritual and material world of Late Antique societies. The contributions to this volume represent a broad range of interests, from Jewish, Classical and Byzantine studies to comparative literature, law, and philosophy.
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Edited Journal Issues (as Executive Editor) by Uriel Simonsohn
As Executive Editor of Medieval Encounters. Contents: "Between Sanudo and Fedanzola: Ashtori Ha-P... more As Executive Editor of Medieval Encounters. Contents: "Between Sanudo and Fedanzola: Ashtori Ha-Parḥi as Mediator" (Amichay Schwartz); "The Easter Ban in the Merovingian Kingdoms: Ideal and Reality" (Gregory I. Halfond);
"Review Essay about The Feeling of History. Islam, Romanticism, and Andalusia by Charles Hirshkind" (Fernando Rodríguez Mediano); "Review of War and Memory at the Time of the Fifth Crusade, written by Megan Cassidy-Welch" (Nicholas Paul); "Review of Cities of Strangers: Making Lives in Medieval Europe, written by Miri Rubin" (Tanya Stabler Miller)
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Papers by Uriel Simonsohn
The rise of Islam in the seventh century not only brought about significant political and religio... more The rise of Islam in the seventh century not only brought about significant political and religious changes but also sparked profound encounters among social and cultural institutions across vast territories. Often overlooked, Kinship constituted a central focus in these transformations. Even before Islam, the evolving religious landscape of the ancient world played a crucial role in shaping kinship notions and institutions. However, the Islamic expansion accelerated these processes through waves of migration, conversion, and acculturation, giving rise to diverse encounters in the formation of cosmopolitan Islamicate societies. These encounters ranged from quotidian interactions like marital partnerships to intellectual debates and literary translations. Kinship served as a locus for encounters between confessional, ethnic, and social groups, while there were also encounters between different kinship ideas, institutions, and practices. This article follows recent advances in kinship studies that argue for the cultural, rather than biological, nature of kinship and view it as a dynamic process rather than fixed structures. We offer the conception of kinship encounters as a useful lens to study medieval islamicate societies, institutions and interactions. Through a series of case
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Al-Qantara, 2023
Whereas from an Islamic perspective it was God and His message to which Muslims were to offer pri... more Whereas from an Islamic perspective it was God and His message to which Muslims were to offer primary allegiance, kinship ties could potentially challenge that commitment. Islamic ideals, articulated through a variety of literary genres, reflect this tension, presenting a prioritization of religious community over family. At the same time, however, kinship sentiments were often used in order to instill religious ideals and identity among communal members. The point is effectively illustrated in early and medieval Islamic perceptions of maternal authority, wherein Muslim mothers are depicted as having a crucial role in nurturing their children's Islamic identity. In contrasting circumstances, however, when non-Muslim maternal authority was present in Islamic-dominated family settings, an adaptation of norms and regulations became necessary. In this essay, I examine a range of Islamic positions concerning instances when mothers, both Muslim and non-Muslim, could impact the religious inclinations of their children during interreligious conflicts or differences. These positions shed light on an additional facet of Islamic efforts to preserve the religious integrity of Muslim believers, particularly young Muslim children, within a socially diverse religious context. They feature in a variety of literary genres with normative agendas, including the Qurʾān, Qurʾānic exegesis, prophetic traditions, legal compendia, biographies of the early Muslims (ṣaḥāba), and etiquette literature (adab), ranging from the first/seventh to the seventh/thirteenth centuries.
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Ha-mizrah he-hadhash, 2023
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Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 2017
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Conversion to Islam in the Premodern Age, 2020
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Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 2016
* I wish to thank Bernadette Brooten, Michael Cook, Itzhak Hen, and Robert Hoyland for reading an... more * I wish to thank Bernadette Brooten, Michael Cook, Itzhak Hen, and Robert Hoyland for reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper. I am also grateful to the two anonymous readers for their invaluable comments and suggestions. The research for this essay was supported by the I-CORE Program of the Planning and Budgeting Committee and The Israel Science Foundation (grant No 1754). 1 On the history of the Syrian Churches after the Islamic conquest, see M. Morony, Iraq After the Islamic Conquest (Princeton, NJ, 1984), ch. 12; A. Ducellier, Chrétiens d’Orient et Islam au Moyen Age: VIIe–XVe siècle (Paris, 1996), ch. 3; Anne-Marie Eddé, F. Micheau, and C. Picard, eds., Communautés chrétiennes en pays d’islam: du début du VIIe siècle au milieu du XIe siècle (Paris, 1997), 23–30; W. Hage, “Die Kirche ‘des Ostens’: Kirchliche Selbstständigkeit und kirchliche Gemeinsamkeit im fünften Jahrhundert,” in After Bardaisan: Studies on Continuity and Change in Syriac Christianity in Honour of Professor Hans J. W. Drijvers, ed. Gerrit J. Reinink and A. C. Klugkist. OLA 89 (Leuven, 1999), 141–48; W. Baum and D. W. Winkler, The Church of the East: A Concise History (London, 2003). On the history, composition, and legal contexts of East and West Syrian laws, see H. Kaufhold, “Sources of Canon Law in the Eastern Churches,” in The History of Byzantine and Eastern Canon Law to 1500, ed. Wilfried Hartmann and K. PenningBeyond its utility in offering Christians an alternative to the services of extra-ecclesiastical legal systems, an ecclesiastical law that also encompassed the civil concerns of its confessional affiliates would serve to instill a greater notion of a Christian communal identity. By regulating matters of normative conduct among their laity and enjoining their uncompromised obedience to ecclesiastical laws, church leaders were drawing the
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Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 2011
This article pursues a close examination of the biblical narrative in Saīd Ibn Barīq's (Euty... more This article pursues a close examination of the biblical narrative in Saīd Ibn Barīq's (Eutychius of Alexandria, d. 940) historiographic work, the Annales, to reveal a wide range of sources that were available either to the patriarch himself or to an intermediate source on which he ...
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openaccess.leidenuniv.nl, 2009
UMI, ProQuest ® Dissertations & Theses. The world's most comprehensive collection of dissert... more UMI, ProQuest ® Dissertations & Theses. The world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses. Learn more... ProQuest, Overlapping jurisdictions: Confessional boundaries and judicial choice among Christians and Jews under early Muslim rule. ...
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Journal of the American Oriental Society
Christians and Others in the Umayyad State. Edited by Antoine Borrut and Fred M. Donner. Late Ant... more Christians and Others in the Umayyad State. Edited by Antoine Borrut and Fred M. Donner. Late Antique and Medieval Islamic Near East, vol. 1. Chicago: riental Institute, University of Chicago, 2016. Pp. ix + 213. $24.95 (paper).
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Medieval Worlds, 2017
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Link to personal webpage, access to publications by Uriel Simonsohn
Books by Uriel Simonsohn
This book is about the history of Islam from the perspective of female social agents. It argues that irrespective of their religious affiliation, women possessed crucial means for affecting or hindering religious changes, not only in the form of religious conversion, but also in the adoption of practices and the delineation of communal boundaries. Its focus on the role and significance of female power in moments of religious change within family households offers a historical angle that has hitherto been relatively absent from modern scholarship. Rather than locating signs of female autonomy or authority in the political, intellectual, religious, or economic spheres, Female Power and Religious Change in the Medieval Near East is concerned with the capacity of women to affect religious communal affiliations thanks to their kinship ties.
Edited volumes by Uriel Simonsohn
The institution of family has received different interpretations in the various geographical and chronological scenes discussed by this volume, yet there are also numerous parallels. The family is often seen as a miniature community, anchored to a vast network of values and shared perceptions. As such, the community opens a unique window into Late Antique history. Understanding the family not only brings the differences and similarities between the various communities into sharper relief; it provides an in depth look at the spiritual and material world of Late Antique societies. The contributions to this volume represent a broad range of interests, from Jewish, Classical and Byzantine studies to comparative literature, law, and philosophy.
Edited Journal Issues (as Executive Editor) by Uriel Simonsohn
"Review Essay about The Feeling of History. Islam, Romanticism, and Andalusia by Charles Hirshkind" (Fernando Rodríguez Mediano); "Review of War and Memory at the Time of the Fifth Crusade, written by Megan Cassidy-Welch" (Nicholas Paul); "Review of Cities of Strangers: Making Lives in Medieval Europe, written by Miri Rubin" (Tanya Stabler Miller)
Papers by Uriel Simonsohn
This book is about the history of Islam from the perspective of female social agents. It argues that irrespective of their religious affiliation, women possessed crucial means for affecting or hindering religious changes, not only in the form of religious conversion, but also in the adoption of practices and the delineation of communal boundaries. Its focus on the role and significance of female power in moments of religious change within family households offers a historical angle that has hitherto been relatively absent from modern scholarship. Rather than locating signs of female autonomy or authority in the political, intellectual, religious, or economic spheres, Female Power and Religious Change in the Medieval Near East is concerned with the capacity of women to affect religious communal affiliations thanks to their kinship ties.
The institution of family has received different interpretations in the various geographical and chronological scenes discussed by this volume, yet there are also numerous parallels. The family is often seen as a miniature community, anchored to a vast network of values and shared perceptions. As such, the community opens a unique window into Late Antique history. Understanding the family not only brings the differences and similarities between the various communities into sharper relief; it provides an in depth look at the spiritual and material world of Late Antique societies. The contributions to this volume represent a broad range of interests, from Jewish, Classical and Byzantine studies to comparative literature, law, and philosophy.
"Review Essay about The Feeling of History. Islam, Romanticism, and Andalusia by Charles Hirshkind" (Fernando Rodríguez Mediano); "Review of War and Memory at the Time of the Fifth Crusade, written by Megan Cassidy-Welch" (Nicholas Paul); "Review of Cities of Strangers: Making Lives in Medieval Europe, written by Miri Rubin" (Tanya Stabler Miller)