New Releases by Franz Rosenthal

In Man versus Society in Medieval Islam, Franz Rosenthal (1914-2003) investigates the tensions and conflicts that existed between individuals and society as the focus of his study of Muslim social history. The book brings together works spanning fifty years: the monographs The Muslim Concept of Freedom, The Herb. Hashish versus Medieval Muslim Society (Brill, 1971), Gambling in Islam (Brill, 1975), and Sweeter than Hope. Complaint and Hope in Medieval Islam (Brill,1983), along with all the articles on unsanctioned practices, sexuality, and institutional learning. Reprinted here together for the first time, they constitute the most extensive collection of source material on all these themes from all genres of Arabic writing, judiciously translated and analyzed. No other study to date presents the panorama of medieval Muslim societies in their manifold aspects in as detailed, comprehensive, and illuminating a manner.

This series reprints the best of the titles in Islamic Studies that were published by Brill before 1970. Titles that have been out of print for a long time, but are still important for libraries and scholars will become easily available to a wider audience. The best of two centuries of scholarship, newly typeset and with new introductions by some of the foremost scholars in Islamic Studies make the Brill Classics in Islam an indispensable part of any Islamic studies collection.

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." There is no branch of Muslim intellectual and daily life that remained untouched by the all-pervasive attitude towards 'knowledge' as something of supreme value for Muslim being. With a new foreword by Dimitri Gutas.

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.

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. Of particular concern here are the Hellenistic or late Hellenistic authors such as Galen, Hippocrates or Ptolemy. These articles show how Muslim writers have preserved much that has been lost in the Greek and played a vital part in ensuring the continuity of the classical tradition, and examine some of the specific ways in which they reacted to and developed it.