The republic of Arabic letters : Islam and the European enlightenment

Resource Information

The work The republic of Arabic letters : Islam and the European enlightenment represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in San Francisco Public Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

The republic of Arabic letters : Islam and the European enlightenment

Title remainder

Islam and the European enlightenment

Statement of responsibility

Alexander Bevilacqua

Creator

• Bevilacqua, Alexander, 1984-

Author

• Bevilacqua, Alexander, 1984-

Subject

• Christian scholars -- Europe -- History
• Enlightenment -- Europe
• Europe -- Civilization | Islamic influences
• Islamic civilization -- Study and teaching -- Europe, Western

Language

eng

Summary

The foundations of the modern Western understanding of Islamic civilization were laid in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Well after the Crusades but before modern colonialism, Europeans first accurately translated the Qur'an into a European language, mapped the branches of the Islamic arts and sciences, and wrote the history of Muslim societies using Arabic sources. The Republic of Arabic Letters provides the first panoramic treatment of this transformation. Relying on a variety of unpublished sources in six languages, it recounts how Christian scholars first came to a clear-eyed view of Islam. Its protagonists are Europeans who learned Arabic and used their linguistic skills to translate and interpret Islamic civilization. Christians both Catholic and Protestant, and not the secular thinkers of the Enlightenment, established this new knowledge, which swept away religious prejudice and cast aside a medieval tradition of polemical falsehoods. Beginning with the collection of Islamic manuscripts in the Near East and beyond, the book moves from Rome, Paris and Oxford to Cambridge, London and Leiden in order to reconstruct the most important breakthroughs in this scholarly movement. By identifying the individual manuscripts used, The Republic of Arabic Letters reveals how the translators, willing to be taught by Islamic traditions, imported contemporary Muslim interpretations and judgments into the European body of knowledge about Islam. Eventually, their books reached readers like Voltaire and Edward Gibbon, who assimilated not just their factual content but their interpretations, weaving them into the fabric of Enlightenment thought.--

Assigning source

Provided by publisher

Cataloging source

MH/DLC

Dewey number

909/.09767

Illustrations

• illustrations
• plates

Index

index present

LC call number

CB251

LC item number

.B426 2018

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography