“Do Not Take Unbelievers as Your Leaders” The Politics of Translation in Indonesia Jeremy Menchik | March 31, 2016 Critical Approaches / Texts & Translations AboutCritical Approaches After achieving independence in 1945, Indonesian leaders began tackling the basic questions that faced all postcolonial state-builders: What principles would guide the state and nation? Communism or capitalism? Secularism or Islam? How could they craft a common national identity from a diverse population? It is against this backdrop that in the April 1954 issue of the popular Indonesian Muslim periodical Al-Muslimun, the editors published an unusual translation of a well-known verse from Sūrat al-Nisāʾ of the Qur’an from Arabic into Indonesian... Read the rest of this entry
The Syriac Galen Palimpsest Digital Recovery of a Missing Link between Greek and Islamic Science Ilex Foundation | March 3, 2016 Images & Intersections / Libraries & Collections AboutImages & Intersections Collaboration in collecting, cataloging, and digitizing information from ancient manuscripts and codices is critical for the preservation of texts on early mathematics and science in Arabic and other languages. New developments in technology help to shed light on the complex and often obscure pathways along which the history of science developed from Late Antiquity through the Islamic Middle Ages... Read the rest of this entry
The Arab Conquests and Sasanian Iran (Part 2) Islam in a Sasanian Context Khodadad Rezakhani | February 18, 2016 Global Late Antiquity AboutGlobal Late Antiquity It was in the context of a West Asian world dominated by the Sasanians that Islam began as a political and religious movement in Arabia Deserta. The Sasanian regime, however, was extending itself too far. The cost of the war with Byzantium was mounting, and the task of managing all the new territories was something for which their administration was not ready. The Sasanian government was in fact unable to control its own empire: the domain had simply outgrown the administration... Read the rest of this entry