The Routledge Handbook on the Sciences in Islamicate Societies provides a comprehensive survey on science in the Islamic world from the 8th to the 19th century.
Across six sections, a group of subject experts discuss and analyze scientific practices across a wide range of Islamicate societies. The authors take into consideration several contexts in which science was practiced, ranging from intellectual traditions and persuasions to institutions, such as courts, schools, hospitals, and observatories, to the materiality of scientific practices, including the arts and craftsmanship. Chapters also devote attention to scientific practices of minority communities in Muslim majority societies, and Muslim minority groups in societies outside the Islamicate world, thereby allowing readers to better understand the opportunities and constraints of scientific practices under varying local conditions.
Through replacing Islam with Islamicate societies, the book opens up ways to explain similarities and differences between diverse societies ruled by Muslim dynasties. This handbook will be an invaluable resource for both established academics and students looking for an introduction to the field. It will appeal to those involved in the study of the history of science, the history of ideas, intellectual history, social or cultural history, Islamic studies, Middle East and African studies including history, and studies of Muslim communities in Europe and South and East Asia.
Author(s): Sonja Brentjes
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 874
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of contributors
List of abbreviations
List of figures
List of tables
List of boxes
Preface
Introduction
Part I Late Antiquity, translating and the formation of the sciences in Islamicate polities (1st bh–7th/5th–13th centuries)
I.1 Translation as an enduring and widespread cultural practice
I.2 Multiple translation activities
I.3 Translations in the mathematical sciences
I.4 Translations of medical and occult texts into Arabic and Syriac and their contexts after 80/700
I.5 Geometry and its branches
I.6 The astral sciences through the 7th/13th century: Attitudes, experts and practices
I.7 Algebra and arithmetic
I.8 Optics: experiments and applications
I.9 Automata and balances
I.10 Medicine
I.11 Natural philosophy
I.12 Alchemy and the chemical crafts
I.13 Geography and mapmaking
I.14 Physiognomy: science of intuition
I.15 The Hieroglyphic script deciphered? An Arabic treatise on ancient and occult alphabets
I.16 Practices of Zoroastrian scholars before and after the advent of Islam
I.17 Evaluating the past: scholarly views of ancient societies and their sciences
Part II Scientific practices at courts, observatories and hospitals (2nd–13th/8th–19th centuries)
II.1 The emergence of Persian as a language of science
II.2 The emergence of a new scholarly language: the case of Ottoman Turkish
II.3 Imperial demand and support
II.4 The practice of pharmacy in later medieval Egypt
II.5 Ottoman and Safavid health practices and institutions
II.6 Planetary theory
II.7 Practices of celestial observation in the Islamicate world
II.8 The practical aspects of Ottoman maps
II.9 Another scientific revolution: the occult sciences in theory and experimentalist practice
II.10 Arts, sciences and princely patronage at Islamicate courts (4th/10th–11th/17th centuries)
II.11 Physiognomy (ʿilm-i firāset) and politics at the Ottoman court
Part III Learning and collecting institutions – debates and methods (3rd–13th/9th–19th centuries)
III.1 Libraries – beginnings, diffusion and consolidation
III.2 Madrasas and the sciences
III.3 Scientific matters in kalām (theology)
III.4 Ashʿarite occasionalist cosmology, al-Ghazālī and the pursuit of the natural sciences in Islamicate societies
III.5 The role of sense perception and experience (tajriba) in Arabic theories of science
III.6 Logic: didactics and visual representations
III.7 Medical commentaries
III.8 Textual genres and visual representations in the astral sciences
Part IV The materiality of the sciences (3rd–13th/9th–19th centuries)
IV.1 The materiality of scholarship
IV.2 Three-dimensional astronomy: celestial globes and armillary spheres
IV.3 Projecting the heavens: astrolabes
IV.4 Medical instruments
IV.5 Alchemical equipment
IV.6 Water and technology in the Islamicate world
IV.7 Arts and sciences in the Islamicate world
Part V Centers, regions, empires and the outskirts (3rd–113th/9th–19th centuries)
V.1 Mathematical knowledge fields in the Islamicate world: similarities and differences
V.2 Jewish mathematical activities in medieval Islamicate societies and border zones
V.3 Patronage and the practice of astrology in al-Andalus and the Maghrib
V.4 Anwāʾ and mīqāt in calendars and almanacs of the societies of al-Andalus and the far Maghrib
V.5 Scholarly communities dedicated to the sciences in al-Andalus
V.6 Post-Avicennan natural philosophy
V.7 Cool and calming as the rose: pharmaceutical texts as tools of regional medical practices in early modern India
V.8 Medical practices and cross-cultural interactions in Persianate South Asia
V.9 Premodern Ottoman perspectives on natural phenomena
V.10 Scientific practices in sub-Saharan Africa
V.11 Medical practices in Tibet in intercultural contexts
V.12 Islamicate astral sciences in eastern Eurasia during the Mongol Yuan dynasty (1271–1368)
V.13 Collation and articulation of Arabo-Persian scientific texts in early modern China
V.14 The multiplicity of translating communities in the Iberian Peninsula (12th–13th centuries)
Part VI Encounters, conflicts, changes (4th–13th/10th–19th centuries)
VI.1 Cross-communal scholarly interactions
VI.2 Which is the right qibla?
VI.3 Were philosophers considered heretics in Islam?
VI.4 Systems of knowledge: debating organization and changing relationships
VI.5 Embassies, trading posts, travelers and missionaries
VI.6 The sciences in two private libraries from Ottoman Syria
VI.7 13th/19th-century narratives and translations of science in the South Asian Islamicate world
Consolidated Bibliography
Index
