The influence of classical antiquity on the religious disciplines, theology, mysticism and law of Islam cannot be overestimated. This work demonstrates the significance of the classical heritage by drawing together a great range of literary renderings, paraphrases, commentaries and imitations, as well as independent Islamic elaborations. Professor Rosenthal's collection includes the work of early authors, authors of the Golden Age and later writers who imitated their works. The Classical Heritage in Islam reveals that the Muslim adoption of and dependence on classical texts was not blind imitation or a casual compounding of traditions, but rather an original synthesis and therefore a unique achievement.

Product Description: In Knowledge Triumphant, Franz Rosenthal observes that the Islamic civilization is one that is essentially characterized by knowledge ('ilm), for ''ilm is one of those concepts that have dominated Islam and given Muslim civilization its distinctive shape and complexion.

Product Description: The Muqaddimah, often translated as "Introduction" or "Prolegomenon," is the most important Islamic history of the premodern world. Written by the great fourteenth-century Arab scholar Ibn Khaldûn (d. 1406), this monumental work laid down the foundations of several fields of knowledge, including philosophy of history, sociology, ethnography, and economics...read more

Product Description: The achievements of medieval Muslim scholars in the fields of philosophy, science and medicine are now well recognized, and Franz Rosenthal's work has been instrumental in helping us to understand these. In this third collection of his articles, he demonstrates the information to be gained from tracing the Greek roots of the science and medicine of the Islamic world in the Middle Ages...read more

Product Description: Volume I of the thirty-eight volume translation of Tabari's great History begins with the creation of the world and ends with the time of Noah and the Flood. It not only brings a vast amount of speculation about the early history of mankind into sharp Muslim focus, but it also synchronizes ancient Iranian ideas about the prehistory of mankind with those inspired by the Qur'an and the Bible...read more

Product Description: The concluding pages of al-Tabari's History cover the caliphates of al-Mu'tadid and al-Muktafi and the beginning of the reign of al-Muqtadir--altogether a period of 23 turbulent years in world history. Although al-Tabari has woven skillful narratives and quoted important documents verbatim, much of the information consists of brief notes jotted down by an observant and well-placed contemporary who witnessed the events as they occurred...read more