Thesiss

This study is an analysis of the development of early Persian mysticism with specific reference to the ninth-century Islamic mystic Bayazid Bist[dotbelow]ami. The study contains historical, political, social, religious, and literary background of Bayazid in Islamic thought. A co…

Moshe bar Kepha not only makes an apology for the Christian communities, but he also attempts to claim the Syriac Semitic exegesis as a common ground among the various Syriac communities. Thus, he used the Syriac sources extensively beginning from Ephrem and Aphrahaat, whom are …

This study is an investigation into the semiotics of carved ivory objects in the Frankish Empire of the ninth and early tenth centuries. It argues that a number of distinctive social practices involving ivory emerged in this period that made carved ivory a newly desirable catego…

This dissertation consists of two parts. Part one is a translation of the Egyptian history within the Futuh Misr wa Akhbaruha of Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam. The Futuh Misr , as I refer to it in this dissertation, is a ninth century history written by the Egyptian historian/legalist, Ibn …

The sculptural reliefs depicting the Rāmāyana at the ninth-century Hindu temple complex of Loro Jonggrang in Central Java represent the most extensive telling of the epic in stone. For over a century the identification of many of their episodic themes and the influences leading …

The development of notation and the changing relationship between textual syntax and musical semiotics were inherently connected to the transformation of a culture based on oral transmission and ritual to one based on writing and hermeneutic interpretation. Along this historical…

This dissertation examines the writings and contribution of H[dotbelow]abib ibn H[barbelow]idmah Abu Ra'it[dotbelow]ah, a malpono and Christian mutakallim , who lived in Takrit near Baghdad at the turn of the ninth century. Writing in Arabic, he was among the few Christians to t…

The fundamental question addressed by this dissertation is how Sunnism became a sectarian articulation of Islam. While previous studies have credited this phenomenon to the short texts of a few theologians and jurists, we argue that the most appropriate texts for understanding t…

Unraveling the complex dynamics that created and sustained the hegemony of the four principal schools of Sunni Islamic law necessarily requires an appreciation of the schools' historical genesis. This dissertation provides the first comprehensive account of the emergence and ear…