Bevilacqua, Alexander (Author)
“Fascinating, eloquent, and learned...A powerful reminder of the ability of scholarship to transcend cultural divides, and the capacity of human minds to accept differences without denouncing them.”―Maya Jasanoff, author of The Dawn Watch and Liberty’s ExileIn the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a pioneering community of Christian scholars laid the groundwork for the modern Western understanding of Islamic civilization. These men produced the first accurate translation of the Qur’an into a European language, mapped the branches of the Islamic arts and sciences, and wrote Muslim history using Arabic sources. The Republic of Arabic Letters reconstructs this process, revealing the influence of Catholic and Protestant intellectuals on the secular Enlightenment understanding of Islam and its written traditions.Drawing on Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, and Latin sources, Alexander Bevilacqua’s rich intellectual history retraces the routes―both mental and physical―that Christian scholars traveled to acquire, study, and comprehend Arabic manuscripts. The knowledge they generated was deeply indebted to native Muslim traditions, especially Ottoman ones. Eventually the translations, compilations, and histories they produced reached such luminaries as Voltaire and Edward Gibbon, who not only assimilated the factual content of these works but wove their interpretations into the fabric of Enlightenment thought.The Republic of Arabic Letters shows that the Western effort to learn about Islam and its religious and intellectual traditions issued not from a secular agenda but from the scholarly commitments of a select group of Christians. These authors cast aside inherited views and bequeathed a new understanding of Islam to the modern West.
...MoreReview Pier Mattia Tommasino (2019) Review of "The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment". Journal of Early Modern History (pp. 400-403).
Book
Ben-Zaken, Avner;
(2010)
Cross-Cultural Scientific Exchanges in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1560--1660
(/isis/citation/CBB001020401/)
Chapter
David Juste;
(2016)
The Impact of Arabic Sources on European Astrology: Some Facts and Numbers
(/isis/citation/CBB202864545/)
Chapter
Michela Pereira;
(2016)
Projecting Perfection. Remarks on the Origin of the "Alchemy of the Elixir"
(/isis/citation/CBB815669811/)
Chapter
Joël Chandelier;
(2016)
Le concept de maladie chronique, des Grecs aux Arabes et des Arabes aux Latins
(/isis/citation/CBB672281648/)
Chapter
Agostino Paravicini Bagliani;
(2016)
Western Perspective of the Conference
(/isis/citation/CBB395781263/)
Book
Agostino Paravicini Bagliani;
(2016)
The Impact of Arabic Sciences in Europe and Asia
(/isis/citation/CBB069718460/)
Book
Wisnovsky, Robert;
Wallis, Faith;
Fraenkel, Carlos;
(2011)
Vehicles of Transmission, Translation, and Transformation in Medieval Textual Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB099952505/)
Chapter
Shi Yunli Zhu Haohao;
(2016)
Calculating the Fate of Chinese Dynasties with the Islamic Method: The Chinese Study and Application of Arabic Astrology in the 17th Century
(/isis/citation/CBB410817605/)
Book
Violet Moller;
(2020)
The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found
(/isis/citation/CBB401001470/)
Thesis
Margaret Gaida;
(2017)
Encounters with Alcabitius: Reading Arabic Astrology in Premodern Europe
(/isis/citation/CBB621114449/)
Book
İhsanoǧlu, Ekmeleddin;
(2004)
Science, Technology and Learning in the Ottoman Empire: Western Influence, Local Institutions, and the Transfer of Knowledge
(/isis/citation/CBB000470089/)
Chapter
Raphaela Veit;
(2011)
Greek Roots, Arab Authoring, Latin Overlay: Reflections on the Sources for Avicenna’s Canon
(/isis/citation/CBB432688861/)
Article
M. Shefer-Mossensohn;
K. Abou Hershkovitz;
(2013)
Early Muslim Medicine and the Indian Context: A Reinterpretation
(/isis/citation/CBB296977505/)
Chapter
Michio Yano;
(2016)
Eastern Perspective of the Conference
(/isis/citation/CBB840295299/)
Article
Alexandre M. Roberts;
(2022)
Byzantine Engagement with Islamicate Alchemy
(/isis/citation/CBB396204226/)
Article
Yücesoy, Hayrettín;
(2009)
Translation as Self-Consciousness: Ancient Sciences, Antediluvian Wisdom, and the `Abbasid Translation Movement
(/isis/citation/CBB001030427/)
Article
van Dalen, Benno;
(2011)
Between Orient and Occident: Transformation of Knowledge
(/isis/citation/CBB001230480/)
Book
Swetz, Frank;
(2008)
Legacy of the Luoshu: The 4,000 Year Search for the Meaning of the Magic Square of Order Three
(/isis/citation/CBB000952027/)
Article
Miquel Forcada;
(2017)
Books from Abroad: The Evolution of Science and Philosophy in Umayyad al-Andalus
(/isis/citation/CBB563944869/)
Book
Julio Samsó;
(2020)
On Both Sides of the Strait of Gibraltar: Studies in the History of Medieval Astronomy in the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghrib
(/isis/citation/CBB146260272/)
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