Raymond Martini

"Like all multi-lingual computing, Arabic computing is now firmly in the domain of Unicode. Unicode is an industrial protocol with the status of international agreement. It is designed to encode the elements of all known script systems in such a way that they become interchangeable between programs and operating systems. Its implementation is well underway.

Unicode eliminates the need to tamper with fonts to get special characters, but it is not a font. For legible text on screen and paper, Unicode depends on compatible fonts with the required characters, where necessary with additional dedicated font technology."

Petrus Alfonsi was an important and unusual figure in the "twelfth-century renaissance" whose interests embraced polemical theology, astronomy, and literature, each an area in which he made important contributions to the development of medieval thought. Perhaps this diversity of interests is what has robbed Alfonsi of his due in modern scholarship, for he has fallen through the cracks, between various academic disciplines; he has received less acclaim among modern medievalists than he had among medieval writers.
In this first book-length treatment of Alfonsi, Tolan presents a thorough introduction to Alfonsi's thought and its importance to the Middle Ages.
A Spanish Jew who converted to Christianity, Alfonsi immigrated to England and later to France, wrote a polemic against Judaism and Islam, and translated moral fables and astronomical works from Arabic into Latin. The author shows that he was an important early transmitter of Arabic and Hebrew learning to the Latin north and greatly influenced later medieval thinkers.
Drawing from his analysis of nearly 170 manuscripts containing Alfonsi's works, along with the works of later authors who turned to Alfonsi as a source, Tolan uncovers much about who used Alfonsi's works and to what ends his works were put. He finds, for example, that Alfonsi's Disciplina clericalis provided a mine of materials not only for thirteenth-century preachers but also for Boccaccio and Chaucer, and that arguments from his Dialogis contra Iudaeos were taken up by Christian polemicists from Peter the Venerable to Alonso de Espina.

"La obra botánica Umdat al-tabīb del autor sevillano Abū l-Jayr al-Išbīlī destaca, entre otros aspectos, por la gran cantidad de fuentes citadas. Sin embargo, no se ha hecho ningún estudio monográfico sobre las mismas. En este artículo se estudian dos de
estas fuentes: al-Yahūdī e Ibn Ŷulŷul. En él se analiza cómo son tratadas, qué opinión tiene el autor de las mismas y, lo más importante, cómo se refiere a ellas, es decir, cómo son citadas, pues algunas no quedan del todo claras.
The botanical work Umdat al-abīb of the Sevillian author Abū l-Jayr al-Išbīlī stands out, for the substantial amount of sources mentioned, which haven't been studied at length till now. We analyze how two of these sources —al-Yahūdī and Ibn Ŷulŷul— are
dealt with, which are the author's opinions on both, and, most importantly, how they are cited and referenced due to some inconsistencies and inaccuracies."

This publication consists of three major parts.

1- The re-edition of Prieto y vives´s,  LOS REYES DE TAIFAS, first. published in 1926, p.279.
2-The comple plates of rubings discovered in the archives of  the Instituto de Don Juan de Madrid, p.98.
3- A co-authored suplement , SUPLEMENTO A LAS MONEDAS DE LOS TAIFAS ( p 111-219), which updates Prieto´s original work with a 175 new coins. This last needs some editorial correcting and will be posted in papers at a latter date. In sha` Allah.

Em 1496-7, D. Manuel I forçou os judeus a converter-se ao cristianismo e expulsou todos os súbditos muçulmanos. Portugal foi o primeiro reino da Península Ibérica a acabar definitivamente com a coexistência judaico-cristã-muçulmana, criando assim um reino exclusivamente cristão. Tendo por base narrativas e fontes documentais em português, espanhol e hebraico, François Soyer colige as circunstâncias que culminaram nos acontecimentos de 1496-7 e apresenta uma reconstrução detalhada da perseguição aos judeus. São contestadas visões amplamente aceites sobre o impacto da chegada a Portugal dos judeus expulsos de Castela em 1492, a disputa diplomática que levou à conversão forçada dos judeus portugueses em 1497 e as causas da expulsão da minoria muçulmana. Este livro trata, pois, o momento crucial da história portuguesa em que a tolerância religiosa deixou de ser parte integrante da política régia. Por esta razão, a circunstância marca uma viragem da política oficial que circunscreve para sempre a nossa cultura à cristandade. É então através da combinação da escolha indefectível desta orientação religiosa com uma intolerância até então estranha à nossa cultura que nasce no nosso imaginário uma perplexidade e um interesse por esta decisão histórica.

This is an excerpt of Robert W. Lebling's translation into English of Gonzague de Rey's "Les invasions des Sarrasins en Provence pendant le VIIIe, le IXe, et le Xe, siècle" (1878) as reprinted by Editions Jeanne Laffitte in 2001. For the complete translation, contact Robert W. Lebling. The complete book, in paperback and Kindle versions, is available at Amazon.com.

A en croire Geert Wilders, parlementaire du Partij voor de Vrijheid (extreme droite neerlandaise), si Muhammad revenait aujourd'hui il serait " pourchasse comme terroriste ". Wilders n'est pas le premier, loin s'en faut, a exploiter la figure du prophete dans des controverses europeennes. Pour mettre en perspective historique ces polemiques autour du prophete (et, a travers lui, autour de l'islam), cet article examine la figure de Muhammad dans les controverses en Europe du Moyen Age au XVIIIe siecle. Au moyen âge des auteurs chretiens europeens le presentent souvent sous les traits d'un charlatan heresiarque, la reforme protestante et les guerres de religions vont compliquer la donne : si Muhammad reste un repoussoir, son importance est relativisee : l'ennemi interieur, l'heretique lutherien ou le papiste, serait bien pire que le prophete de l'islam. Au XVIIIe siecle, Muhammad devient un enjeu dans les polemiques des philosophes contre le p...

SUMMARY ( The complete work has now been posted).
It would be difficult to overestimate the stratigic, historic, economic and cultural importance of Sabta during the whole of the medieval period. Its privileged georaphical position made it the nearly exclusive nexus between the Andalus and the rest of the Magrib , and it was therefore, to put in the words of Derek Latham "..predestined to play a leading part in the affairs of the Muslim West".
This evident historical preponderance during such a long period is clearly reflected in Sabta´s extensive coinage. The relative importance of the numismatics of Islamic Sabta becomes manifest when we consider that out of its medieval islamic past, unlike other contenporaneous cities of the area, there survives only the most exiguous architectural and archeological testimony, the coins remaining, therefore, as our main tangible evidence for the whole epoch.
The aim of the monograph was to put togrther in one volume as much of  our present knoledge of Islamic Sabta`s numismatics as possible. A word on the general structure of this publication. Following a brief introduction outlining the general history of the area, there is a first chapter describing medieval Sabta at the begining of the XIVth century as extracted from al-Ansari´s Ikhtisar al-Akhbar (p.17).
The second chapter is a chronological sequence of historical events in Sabta from various Arabic sources till its fall to the Portuguese in the Marinid period (p.27). In this chapter we have endeavoured to correlate, as closely as possible, the recorded historical events of the city with its numismatic production. This has been done as a fundamental necessity for the correct understanding and attributioin of many of the coins. There is, for example, among others, the case of the ´Azafids, who, though rulers of Sabtah for nearly a century, never struck coins in their own name.
The third chapter is the catalougue of the actual coins. A total of about 222 entries related to Sabta have been described, of which 134 are reproduced, many for the first time, in the plates, while most of the remaining coins are to be found illustrated in the various publications cited.
In addition to the obove main chapters, a fourth has been added dealing with selected dynastic chronologies that at one point ruled in the area during the medieval period.
Finally, annexed is a fifth chapter  describing and illustrating 25 rare or previously unpublished coins related to the general numimatics of medieval western Islam (p. 171-182,  plates L.XVIII E. - LXX E) which has now been posted apart under papers. T.I

In the first century of Islam, most of the former Christian Roman Empire, from Syria to Spain, was brought under Muslim control in a conquest of unprecedented proportions. Confronted by the world of Islam, countless medieval Christians experienced a profound ambivalence, awed by its opulence, they were also troubled by its rival claims to the spiritual inheritance of Abraham and Jesus and humiliated by its social subjugation of non-Muslim minorities. Some converted. Others took up arms. Still others, the subjects of John Tolan's study of anti-Muslim polemics in medieval Europe, undertook to attack Islam and its most vivid avatar, the saracen, with words.

In an effort to make sense of God's apparent abandonment of Christendom in favor of a dynamic and expanding Muslim civilization, European writers distorted the teachings of Islam and caricatured its believers in a variety of ways. What ideological purposes did these portrayals serve? And how, in turn, did Muslims view Christianity? Feelings of rivalry, contempt, and superiority existed on both sides, tinged or tempered at times with feelings of doubt, inferiority, curiosity, or admiration. Tolan shows how Christian responses to Islam changed from the seventh to thirteenth centuries, through fast-charging crusades and spirit-crushing defeats, crystallizing into polemical images later drawn upon by Western authors in the fourteenth to twentieth centuries. Saracens explores the social and ideological uses of contempt, explaining how the denigration of the other can be used to defend one's own intellectual construction of the world.

At first glance the typical medieval Islamic map of ‘the West’—Surat al-Maghrib— strikes us as nothing more than a quaint abstraction of circles, triangles, and oblong shapes ornately adorned with vivid pigments. Closer study presents a more complex image, however, of passion and conflict; of attraction and revulsion; of love and hate. Indeed the Maghrib map is by far the most dissonant image in the extant collection of medieval Arabic and Persian maps and, as such, one of the most engaging. Whereas all the other images have a veneer of harmony and balance, this one is—by deliberate design—passionately conflicted. It is the discord of desire inlaid within the Muslim pictographs of the Maghrib that is the focus of this chapter, the over-arching question being how did medieval Islamic cartographers settle on such a strange looking image as a representation of the Western Mediterranean— in particular, North Africa, Islamic Spain, and Sicily? Answering this question requires immersing ourselves in the map-image itself, and takes us through a series of subliminal messages ranging from intra-Islamic imperial ambitions to erotic and nostalgic Andalusian poetry.

Many of the conversos of Jerez and the Bishopric of Cadiz, among other places, were affected by social rehabilitation measures at the end of the fifteenth century. This often took place after having been summoned by the Inquisition due to a previous sentencing of a family member. The statistical study of the rehabilitation lists (1495-1497) allows not only for an understanding of the sentences that befell this harassed group, but also reveals social trends in the converso collective of southern Andalusia. The converso community comes to light by way of a thorough onomastic, geographical, family and labour study. The study points towards new hypotheses that reveal the complexity of converso society at the brink of the Modern Age.

The Oriental Collection of the Royal Academy of History in Madrid has been traditionally identified with Pascual de Gayangos’ Collection of Arabic and Aljamiado manuscripts. Nevertheless, the history and contents of the Oriental materials preserved at this institution are much richer and more complex than hitherto recognized. This essay provides a study of its formation and data regarding extant materials that have passed unnoticed

À en croire Geert Wilders, parlementaire du Partij voor de Vrijheid (extrême droite néerlandaise), si Muhammad revenait aujourd'hui il serait " pourchassé comme terroriste ". Wilders n'est pas le premier, loin s'en faut, à exploiter la figure du prophète dans des controverses européennes. Pour mettre en perspective historique ces polémiques autour du prophète (et, à travers lui, autour de l'islam), cet article examine la figure de Muhammad dans les controverses en Europe du Moyen Age au XVIIIe siècle. Au moyen âge des auteurs chrétiens européens le présentent souvent sous les traits d'un charlatan hérésiarque, la réforme protestante et les guerres de religions vont compliquer la donne : si Muhammad reste un repoussoir, son importance est relativisée : l'ennemi intérieur, l'hérétique luthérien ou le papiste, serait bien pire que le prophète de l'islam. Au XVIIIe siècle, Muhammad devient un enjeu dans les polémiques des philosophes contre le pouvoir de l'Église : certains (Henri, comte de Boulainvilliers, Emmanuel Pastoret et d'autres) voient le prophète comme un réformateur qui se serait battu contre les privilèges des clercs chrétiens et aurait instauré une religion épurée, sans intermédiaires cléricaux entre le fidèle et son Dieu. Hier comme aujourd'hui, les manipulations de la figure du prophète dans ces controverses nous révèlent surtout des enjeux politiques européens.

Muslim Writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible deals with the way in which Judaism and its holy scriptures were viewed by nine medieval Muslim writers representing different genres of Arabic literature: Ibn Rabban al-ṭabarī, Ibn Qutayba, al-Ya‘qūbī, Abū Ja‘far al-ṭabarī, al-Mas‘ūdī, al-Maqdisī, al-Bāqillānī, al-Bīrūnī and Ibn ḥazm. After an introductory chapter on the reception of Biblical materials in early Islam and a presentation of the authors under review, the book focuses on their knowledge of Judaism and the text of the Hebrew Bible, and subsequently discusses issues frequently debated between Muslims and Jews, namely, the claim that the Torah contains references to Muḥammad, and the assertion that the Torah has been both abrogated and falsified. In the appendix, texts by Ibn Qutayba and al-Maqdisī are offered for the first time in an English translation.

Este volumen proporciona una visión más plural y compleja que la valiosísima ofrecida en su día por Lévi-Provençal sobre el funcionamiento del cadiazgo en el territorio de al-Andalus durante la época omeya (M. Marín, pp. 19-45; M. Fierro, pp. 69-98; M. Arcas, pp. 47-67; J. Martos, pp.121-145 ), sobresaliendo la importancia que adquieren las individualidades dentro del marco abstracto de las instituciones; se resalta la coloratura legal del espacio doméstico en el que se movían las mujeres andalusíes (L. Serrano, pp. 147-168); se enriquece nuestro conocimiento del vocabulario técnico relativo al cadiazgo en sus variaciones a lo largo del tiempo (A. Carmona, pp. 99-119); el nombramiento de cadíes en lugares subalternos es analizado en unas coordenadas temporales concretas (R. El Hour, pp. 169-185) y la siempre fructífera óptica desde la que escribe el gran historiador Ibn Jaldun permite precisar mejor el funcionamiento del cadiazgo en los ss. XIII-XIV en el Occidente islámico (M. A. Manzano, pp. 187-203).

Índice:

EL HOUR, Rachid, Introducción 7

MARÍN, Manuela, Cadíes en la frontera de al-Ándalus durante el emirato omeya 19

ARCAS CAMPOY, María, La autoridad doctrinal de ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Habib (m. 238/835) frente a los cadíes y alfaquíes de su tiempo 47

FIERRO, Maribel, Los cadíes de Córdoba de ,Abd al-Rahman III (r. 300/912-350/961) 69

CARMONA, Alfonso, Tres documentos en la literatura biográfica andalusí de nombramiento para cargos judiciales 99

MARTOS QUESADA, Juan, Poder central omeya y poder judicial en al-Andalus: nombramiento y destitución de cadíes 121

SERRANO-NIZA, Dolores, Fiqh en el espacio doméstico. Mujeres alfaquíes en al-Andalus 147

EL HOUR, Rachid, El cadiazgo de Jaén en época almorávide: una propuesta de interpretación 169

MANZANO RODRÍGUEZ, Miguel Ángel, De cadíes y fuentes históricas: apuntes en el Kitab al-,ibar 187

ÍNDICE DE SIGLAS 205

FUENTES 211

"La consideración de la poesía de cancionero castellana de la Baja Edad Media como una “lírica de los Trastámara” se debe, en principio, a la cuasi exacta coincidencia cronológica entre el esplendor de esta moda lírica y el casi siglo y medio en que los miembros de esta dinastía ciñeron las coronas de Castilla y de Aragón (Perea Rodríguez, La época del Cancionero de Baena, 255-65). Pero también participa de esta consideración otro aspecto crucial, como fue que todos los miembros del linaje Trastámara que ocuparon los tronos hispánicos tuvieron un estigma fundamental al que atender: el ilegítimo origen de su acceso al trono. Por ello, cada uno de los monarcas de esta casa gastó gran parte de sus esfuerzos paralelos al gobierno de sus reinos en edulcorar este pecado original. Así, la poesía cancioneril fue estimulada conscientemente por los Trastámara, pues en ella encontraron un fantástico canal para la divulgación de propaganda política favorable a sus intereses familiares.
En un conflicto tan profundamente ideologizado como la lucha entre Pedro I y su hermano, Conde de Trastámara y futuro Enrique II, no podemos pasar por alto que el más universal de los poetas hebreos hispánicos, Sem Tob de Carrión, dedicase al monarca a la postre perdedor sus Proverbios morales, buscando la protección que la monarquía siempre prestó a la minoría hebrea. En el lado contrario, el victorioso Enrique II había empezado muy pronto a integrar el antisemitismo en su discurso político, tal como ejemplifica la famosa difamación que pretendía hacer a Pedro I hijo de un judío llamado Pero Gil, razón por la cual sus partidarios recibieron el despectivo apodo de emperogilados. Con tales antecedentes, no puede extrañar la explosión violenta del pogromo de 1391 (Wolff 7-8), momento en el que el problema converso saltó a la palestra como ingrediente esencial de la historia de España, a pesar de que frecuentemente tienda a ser desvanecido"

"Abstract. Scholars have long debated the possibility of a mystical or illuminationist strain of thought in Ibn Sīnā 's body of writing. This debate has often focused on the
meaning and contents of his partly lost work al-Mashriqiyyūn (The Easterners), also known as al-Ḥikma al-Mashriqiyya (EasternWisdom), mentioned by Ibn Sīnā himself as well as by numerous Western writers including Ibn Rushd and Ibn Ṭufayl. A handful of references to what is called Ibn Sīnā 's “Oriental Philosophy” are also found in the Castilian and Hebrew works of the Castilian Jew Abner of Burgos (ca. 1270-ca.1347), known after his conversion to Christianity as Alfonso of Valladolid. Although the content of these citations has not been identified, it has been proposed that they may preserve otherwise unknown passages from Ibn Sīnā's lost work. This study considers the references to Ibn Sīnā 's so-called “Oriental Philosophy” within Abner's writings and concludes that rather than preserving lost passages from Ibn Sīnā's writing, Abner's references were drawn primarily from Ibn Ṭufayl and offer no support for the argument of a possible mystical or illuminationist strain in Ibn Sīnā 's
thinking.

Résumé. Depuis longtemps, on a discuté de la possible présence d'une orientation mystique ou “illuminative” dans l'oeuvre d'Ibn Sīnā . Le sens et le contenu de son ouvrage (partiellement perdu) al-Mashriqiyyūn (Les Orientaux), également connu comme al-Ḥikma al-Mashriqiyya (La Sagesse orientale), mentionné par Ibn Sīnā lui-même et par des écrivains occidentaux comme Ibn Rushd et Ibn Ṭufayl, ont souvent été au centre de ce débat. On trouve aussi quelques références à ce qui est
appelé la “philosophie orientale” d'Ibn Sīnā dans l'oeuvre du juif castillan Abner de Burgos (ca. 1270-ca. 1347) connu après sa conversion au christianisme sous le nom d'Alphonse de Valladolid. Sans avoir au préalable identifié le contenu de ces citations, on a fait l'hypothèse qu'elles auraient permis de conserver des passages, inconnus par ailleurs, de l'ouvrage perdu d'Ibn Sīnā. Cette étude porte sur les références à la “philosophie orientale” d'Ibn Sīnā dans l'oeuvre d'Abner de Burgos. Elle montre que les références d'Abner semblent avoir été essentiellement tirées d'Ibn Ṭufayl et ne renvoient donc pas aux passages perdus de l'ouvrage d'Ibn Sīnā. En conséquence elles ne peuvent servir d'argument pour confirmer la présence d'une orientation mystique ou “illuminative” dans l'oeuvre d'Ibn Sīnā."