Culture of Defeat is based on a 2017 conference focusing on the impact on, and responses by, the defeated parties in conflicts in the ancient Near East. Shifting the focus of analysis from the conqueror to the vanquished, the (re-)examination of written sources and the archaeological record sheds new light on the consequences and reactions after often traumatic defeats and allows to gain a more nuanced and complete picture of such events.

After the success of the Antioch Bible, this publication is a new translation of the Peshitta English New Testament in a single volume. The English translations of the New Testament Syriac Peshitta were carried out by an international team of scholars. The volume is also available in a beautiful gilded leather edition (ISBN 978-1-4632-4217-6).

After the success of the Antioch Bible, this publication is a new translation of the Peshitta English New Testament in a single volume. The English translations of the New Testament Syriac Peshitta were carried out by an international team of scholars. The volume is also available in a beautiful gilded leather edition.

The proceedings of the fourth PRO ORIENTE Colloquium Syriacum, which focussed on a culture of co-existence in pluralistic societies in the Middle East and in India.

When, on an autumn Medina night in 61/680, the night that saw al-Ḥusayn killed, Umm Salama was torn from her sleep by an apparition of a long-dead Muḥammad, she slipped effortlessly into a progression of her co-religionists who, irrespective of status, gender or standing with God, were the recipients of dark and arresting visions. At the core of those Delphian dreams, peopled by angels or ğinn or esteemed forbears and textured with Iraqi dust and martyrs' blood, was the Karbalāʾ event. Her dream would be recounted by an array of Muslim scholars, from al-Tirmiḏī, stellar pupil of al-Buḫārī, and Ibn ʿAsākir, untiring chronicler of Syrian history, to bibliophile theologian Ibn Ṭāʾūs and Egyptian polymath al-Suyūṭī. But this was not Umm Salama’s only otherworldly encounter and she was not the only one to have al-Ḥusayn’s fate disturb her nights. This is their story.

Thomas Stephens was one of the most significant and controversial nineteenth-century Welsh scholars. His Literature of the Kymry (1849) was the first work to apply modern critical scholarship to medieval Welsh literature. Throughout his career, he was an outspoken critic of unscrupulous interpretations of the Welsh and Celtic past. His scholarly ability brought him into correspondence with notable writers from not only Wales, but across the world. Indeed, writing the year after his death, B. T. Williams noted that the publication of his correspondence ‘would be welcomed by all Celtic scholars’, as it includes comments by many of the most noted historians, literary critics and Celticists of his day on a wide range of subjects. More than this, however, Stephens’s correspondence shows the complex networks of knowledge exchange which stretched across the nineteenth-century scholarly world and, within those networks, the development of modern Welsh and Celtic studies.

For students of Ge’ez, this book will function as a learning grammar and resource. It will also be of interest to scholars interested in the culture and religion of Ethiopia and Eritrea, non-western Christian intellectual traditions, and the Tawahedo Church.

This study of Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī’s (d. 631/1233) teachings on creation offers close analysis of all of his extant works of falsafa and kalām. Some of these were not known to previous scholars, yet they bear witness to key facets of the interaction between the historically inimical traditions of Hellenic philosophy and rational theology at this important intellectual moment. Al-Āmidī is seen to grapple with the encounter of two paradigms for the discussion of creation. On the one hand, Ibn Sīnā’s metaphysical concept of necessity of existence is the basis of his doctrine of the world’s pre-eternal emanation. On the other, for the mutakallimūn, the physical theory of atomism bolsters the view that God created the world from nothing. This study is of interest to scholars of Ibn Sīnā and Ash‘arism alike, as it advances our understanding of the ongoing tradition of rational theology in the Islamic world, long past Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’s (d. 505/1111) famous attack on the philosophers.

Michel Foucault claimed that the term biopolitics can be fully understood only within the context of modern forms of governing society. From this perspective, the development of modern medical knowledge, the re-organization of the hospital as a health institution, the growing attention to issues related to birth and population, and the rise of biological racism can be attributed to the influence of economic rationality on the most influential political strategies. In this book, Marzocca further explores the crucial role that the family structure has played throughout the history of biopolitics, explaining how family is firstly a place of government of life as well as a means to extend various forms of biopower to the whole society. By analysing the works of key figures in the debate on biopolitics – such as Agamben, Negri, Esposito, Rose, Cooper, Lemke, among others – this volume offers a systematic examination of this notion also in relation to the current ecological crisis, addressing fundamental problems of modern and contemporary political thought.

Osvalds Zebris’ stories capture those moments of existence visible only to the most attentive observer, laying particular attention on language and an idiosyncratic vision of the world. His characters seem bound to an irrevocable desinty, even if all of them are given a choice in the end, the freedom to decide their own lives. The stories are brought together by the enigmatic, ephemeral, recurring character of Mihails, who connects the dots of freedom between each of them.

Recognized as a saint by both Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Christians alike, Jacob of Sarug (d. 521) produced many narrative poems that have rarely been translated into English. Of his reported 760 metrical homilies, only about half survive. Part of a series of fascicles containing the bilingual Syriac-English editions of Saint Jacob of Sarug’s homilies, this volume contains two of his homilies on Jacob. The Syriac text is fully vocalized, and the translation is annotated with a commentary and biblical references. The volume is one of the fascicles of Gorgias Press’s Complete Homilies of Saint Jacob of Sarug, which, when complete, will contain all of Jacob’s surviving sermons.

This book is the result of an international conference that took place in Rome on September 13th-14th 2019, entitled “Resounding Spaces: Music and Atmospheres”. The main topic was the relationship between music(s) and concepts like resonance, atmosphere, and mood. Talking about “music(s)” and not “music” (in singular) is a necessity because of the academic backgrounds of the authors: philosophers, musicologists, ethnomusicologists, aestheticians of music, composers, etc. have given their particular contribution, within their own discipline, enriching the volume with very different points of view.

What is the imagination’s role in human cognition and culture? This book explores the hypothesis that such role is larger than we commonly think: imagination is the key to understand many important domains of our lives – including religion, superstition, and ideology – that are often taken to be the province of belief alone. Combining traditional methods of philosophical inquiry with relevant findings from cognitive and social sciences, the author seeks to provide solid empirical support for that hypothesis, on the one hand, and to explore its important theoretical and practical implications, on the other. A novel, substantive theory of the imagination emerges as a result. Imagination, on this view, does not just allow us to escape from reality into fictional worlds, but plays a key, direct role in our representation of (and practical engagement with) the real world itself.

A new volume in the Society for Studies series Short North African Histories, this book brings togeher the best stories of intrepid desert drivers in the early 20th century, crossing the vast and sometimes dangerous expances of the Sahara. The exploration of the Sahara - a huge swathe of terrain, the size of India - by motor car is one of the untold chapters in the story of 20th century exploration. This revised version of the successful title Wheels Across the Desert, looks at the intrepid drivers who crossed the desert in the early 20th century - bothmilitary and civilian.

Since its discovery and the initial efforts toward its critical edition, the Paippalādasaṃhitā of the Atharvaveda (PS) has attracted the attention of Vedic scholars and Indologists for several reasons. It constitutes a precious source for the study of the development of the earliest language. The text contains important information about various rites and magical practices, and hints about the oldest Indo-Iranian and Indo-European myths. All of this makes the PS a text of inestimable value for the study of Indian language and culture.

Cline advances a suggestive reading of Justin Martyr's Apologies as a subjective appropriation of the forms and practices of the Roman system of petition and response. He offers an historical contextualization of the Apologies within both contemporary administrative culture and the wider literary environment, comparing the Apologies with extant Roman-era petitions, and using this comparison to shed light on Justin's transformations of the genre and their communicative significance.