The History of Akbar Indo-Persian for a New Audience Sunil Sharma | April 28, 2016 Muslim Literatures AboutMuslim Literatures Abu’l-Fazl, the author of the History of Akbar, is known to anyone with an interest in Mughal India. Along with his brother Faizi, Abu’l-Fazl made a lifelong career for himself in imperial Mughal service, while their father Shaykh Mubarak ran a madrasa in Agra. They represented a relatively small but growing number of Indian Muslims who had gained mastery in Persian to prepare them for various posts in this fast-growing empire of early modern India… Read the rest of this entry
“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
