Kevin van Bladel | Yale University (original) (raw)
Books by Kevin van Bladel
The URL link included here will direct you to the Google Books preview of this book. This hist... more The URL link included here will direct you to the Google Books preview of this book.
This historical study argues that the Mandaean religion originated under Sasanid rule in the fifth century, not earlier as has been widely accepted. It analyzes primary sources in Syriac, Mandaic, and Arabic to clarify the early history of Mandaeism. This religion, along with several other, shorter-lived new faiths, such as Kentaeism, began in a period of state-sponsored persecution of Babylonian paganism. The Mandaeans would survive to become one of many groups known as Ṣābians by their Muslim neighbors. Rather than seeking to elucidate the history of Mandaeism in terms of other religions to which it can be related, this study approaches the religion through the history of its social contexts.
A review that fairly summarizes my arguments in this book is found here:
http://www.ancientjewreview.com/articles/2017/11/13/book-note-from-sasanian-mandaeans-to-bians-of-the-marshes
The URL link included here will take you to the Google Books preview of this book. This is the f... more The URL link included here will take you to the Google Books preview of this book.
This is the first major study devoted to the early Arabic reception and adaption of the figure of Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary Egyptian sage to whom were ascribed numerous works on astrology, alchemy, talismans, medicine, and philosophy. Before the more famous Renaissance European reception of the ancient Greek Hermetica, the Arabic tradition about Hermes and the works under his name had been developing and flourishing for seven hundred years. The legendary Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus was renowned in Roman antiquity as an ancient sage whose teachings were represented in books of philosophy and occult science. The works in his name, written in Greek by Egyptians living under Roman rule, subsequently circulated in many languages and regions of the Roman and Sasanian Persian empires. After the rise of Arabic as a prestigious language of scholarship in the eighth century, accounts of Hermes identity and Hermetic texts were translated into Arabic along with the hundreds of other works translated from Greek, Middle Persian, and other literary languages of antiquity. Hermetica were in fact among the earliest translations into Arabic, appearing already in the eighth century. This book explains the origins of the Arabic myth of Hermes Trismegistus, its sources, the reasons for its peculiar character, and its varied significance for the traditions of Hermetica in Asia and northern Africa as well as Europe. It shows who pre-modern Arabic scholars thought Hermes was and how they came to that view.
Kevin van Bladel. The Arabic Hermes: From Pagan Sage To Prophet Of Science (Russian Edition) , 2022
ТОЛЬКО ОЗНАКОМИТЕЛЬНЫЙ ФРАГМЕНТ, электронная версия не распространяется. Кевин ван Бладел. Ара... more ТОЛЬКО ОЗНАКОМИТЕЛЬНЫЙ ФРАГМЕНТ, электронная версия не распространяется.
Кевин ван Бладел. Арабский Гермес: от языческого мудреца до пророка науки / Пер. с англ. и араб. В. А. Розова и М. М. Хасанова; науч. ред. В. А. Розова; науч. ред., вст. ст. и коммент. Б. К. Двинянинова; под общ. ред. Б. К. Двинянинова. — СПб.: Издательство «Академия исследований культуры», 2022. — 548 с.: ил. — (Герметицизм с древности до наших дней, вып. 5). ISBN 978-5-94396-239-4
Kevin van Bladel. The Arabic Hermes: From Pagan Sage To Prophet Of Science / Translation from English and Arabic V. A. Rozov and M. M. Khasanov; ed. V. A. Rozov and B. K. Dvinyaninov. St. Petersburg: Academy of Cultural’s Research, 2022. (Russian Edition)
Это первое крупное исследование, посвящённое раннему арабскому восприятию и адаптации фигуры Гермеса Трисмегиста, легендарного египетского мудреца, которому были приписаны многочисленные труды по астрологии, алхимии, талисманам, медицине и философии. До более известного принятия древнегреческой Герметики в эпоху Возрождения, арабское предание о Гермесе и труды под его именем активно развивались и процветали на протяжении семи столетий.
Трактаты, подписанные именем Гермеса Трисмегиста и его учеников, были написаны на греческом языке в период поздней Античности, по всей видимости, в Александрии Египетской, впоследствии циркулировали на разных языках и в регионах Римской и Сасанидской персидской империй. После расцвета арабского как престижного научного языка в VIII веке, рассказы о личности Гермеса и герметические тексты были переведены, наряду с сотнями других работ, с греческого, среднеперсидского и с других литературных языков Античности. Более того Герметика была среди самых ранних переводов на арабский язык. Немало можно сказать о корнях арабского мифа о Гермесе Трисмегисте, его источниках, причинах его своеобразного характера и о его многообразной ценности для герметицизма в Азии и Северной Африке, а также в Европе.
Настоящее русскоязычное издание дополнено глоссарием и приложением, включающем впервые изданные переводы герметических текстов с арабского языка: «Изумрудная скрижаль» — три древних версии, глава о городе Гермеса из Гайят аль-Хаким (Пикатрикс), суфийская молитва Идрису.
Papers by Kevin van Bladel
Worlds of Byzantium: Religion, Culture, and Empire in the Medieval Near East,, ed. Elizabeth Bolman, Scott Fitzgerald Johnson, and Jack Tannous (eds.), Cambridge University Press, 2024, pp. 78–97.
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108684620.005 Terms like “Classical Arabic,” “Classical Armenian,”... more https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108684620.005
Terms like “Classical Arabic,” “Classical Armenian,” “Classical Syriac,” and “Classical Persian,” though not entirely unproblematic, arouse minimal controversy and are widely used. These Near Eastern languages have their classical traditions of learning, all arising in the same region, all interacting with one another. Let us therefore envision a “Classical Near East” to foster modern scholarly exchange between specialists in pre-modern Near Eastern history and philology. This essay explores the prospects of a broader arena of ancient and medieval research for specialists in the premodern Near East that transcends the specializing delimitation of modern identities and religions.
(We have a PhD specialization in this field in the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations at Yale University. https://nelc.yale.edu/graduate/specializations/classical-near-east)
AOS Essay 16, 2024
"Written Middle Persian Literature under the Sasanids" OPEN ACCESS ESSAY. Current scholarship dou... more "Written Middle Persian Literature under the Sasanids" OPEN ACCESS ESSAY. Current scholarship doubts that there was much, if any, written Middle Persian literature in the Sasanian Persian Kingdom (third to seventh centuries CE), but plentiful sources attest that such skepticism is unwarranted. Most Middle Persian written literary works from that time were lost because specific institutional and environmental conditions did not favor their survival—not because "ancient Iran" was an overwhelmingly "oral society" that rejected written literature.
Josephine van den Bent, Floris van den Eijnde, and Johan Weststeijn (eds.), Late Antique Responses to the Arab Conquests, Leiden: Brill, 2022, pp. 89–119., 2022
This essay compares the processes of Arabicization (the adoption of Arabic) and Islamization (the... more This essay compares the processes of Arabicization (the adoption of Arabic) and Islamization (the adoption of Islam) by the peoples conquered and colonized by Arabian invaders from the seventh century onward. It focuses on population contact as the necessary key to subsequent research on these topics, urging researchers to avoid using "identity" as a primary criterion for understanding the two distinct but related processes. Identity followed the processes rather than prompting them.
Baghdad: Eye’s Delight. Exhibition at the Museum of Islamic Art on the Occasion of the World Cup 2022_, Doha: Qatar Museums, 2022, pp. 156–163., 2022
This short and very basic chapter, contributed to a museum exhibition volume, may be useful in a ... more This short and very basic chapter, contributed to a museum exhibition volume, may be useful in a survey course: “The Translation Movement in Abbasid Baghdad,” in _Baghdad: Eye’s Delight. Exhibition at the Museum of Islamic Art on the Occasion of the World Cup 2022_, Doha: Qatar Museums, 2022, pp. 156–163.
This article sketches the early history of Islamic civilization from its genesis in the late nine... more This article sketches the early history of Islamic civilization from its genesis in the late nineteenth century to its institutionalization in the twentieth. Key moments include its enshrinement in journals and a monumental encyclopedia and the flight of European Semitists to the United States. Its institutionalization in the undergraduate curriculum at the University of Chicago in 1956 created a successful model for the subsequent dissemination of Islamic civilization. Working in a committee on general education (the core curriculum) in the social sciences at the University of Chicago, Marshall Hodgson inaugurated Islamic civilization as a subject of university study that was not just for specialists but available to American college students as fulfilling a basic requirement in a liberal arts education. Many other universities followed this practice. Since then, Islamic civilization has come to be shared by the educated public. Today it is an internationally accepted and wellfunde...
The Language of the Xūz and the Fate of Elamite, 2021
This article discusses the language of the Xūz mentioned in Arabic sources, endorsing the view t... more This article discusses the language of the Xūz mentioned in Arabic sources, endorsing the view that it is the latest attestation of the Elamite language. Drawing on models from historical sociolinguistics, it also studies the problem of mutual acculturation between speakers of Elamite and Persian in antiquity.
Al-ʿUsur al-Wusta: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists, 2020
This article sketches the early history of Islamic civilization from its genesis in the late nine... more This article sketches the early history of Islamic civilization from its genesis in the late nineteenth century to its institutionalization in the twentieth. Key moments include its enshrinement in journals and a monumental encyclopedia and the flight of European Semitists to the United States. Its institutionalization in the undergraduate curriculum at the University of Chicago in 1956 created a successful model for the subsequent dissemination of Islamic civilization. Working in a committee on general education (the core curriculum) in the social sciences at the University of Chicago, Marshall Hodgson inaugurated Islamic civilization as a subject of university study that was not just for specialists but available to American college students as fulfilling a basic requirement in a liberal arts education. Many other universities followed this practice. Since then, Islamic civilization has come to be shared by the educated public. Today it is an internationally accepted and well-funded entity that confers contested social power but still lacks analytical power.
The following English text (with Dutch translation following) on "Arabicization, Islamization, an... more The following English text (with Dutch translation following) on "Arabicization, Islamization, and the Colonies of the Conquerors" is a full version of a paper I delivered in abbreviated fashion for the Zenobia Foundation on November 14, 2015. The Dutch version has appeared before the English publication. I know that many of my colleagues do not read Dutch, so I am posting the English original final draft along with the published Dutch, which occupies the second part of this pdf file. I have indicated the page numbers of the Dutch version in the English text to facilitate cross-reference; of course, the published Dutch version should be cited, at least until the English version appears in print (expected 2019).
![Research paper thumbnail of van Bladel 2018 [Literatures in] Arabian Languages [in Late Antiquity].pdf](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/57365426/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](This is a chapter from a Blackwell "Companions to the Ancient World" volume. Numerous texts surv... more This is a chapter from a Blackwell "Companions to the Ancient World" volume.
Numerous texts survive from Arabia in Late Antiquity. Scholarship has largely focused on three varieties. There are many thousands of inscriptions, mostly short, in several different ancient Arabian languages; there are hundreds of poems in early Arabic dating to the sixth and seventh centuries, and perhaps even occasionally to the fifth century; and there is the Qurʾān, the scripture of Islam, thought to originate in the first decades of the seventh century. Each of these three presents problems to specialists in Late Antiquity. This chapter offers a basic introduction.
This is a chapter from a Blackwell "Companions to the Ancient World" volume. Between the seventh... more This is a chapter from a Blackwell "Companions to the Ancient World" volume.
Between the seventh and the tenth centuries, Arabic became the chief language of learning from Spain to Afghanistan. Beginning in the late eighth century and for three hundred years, scholars knowledgeable in older literary traditions, including Aramaic, Middle Persian, and above all Greek, translated innumerable works into Arabic. Nothing was translated that was not available in Late Antiquity, and many works extant in Late Antiquity are lost in the original but survive in their Arabic translations. Importantly, the selection of works for translation and preservation in the new Arabic medium was based on different criteria from those used in the Carolingian renovatio, the Renaissance, and the Byzantine scholarly tradition, effecting thereby a different, third major “classical tradition” of reception of ancient works besides those in Greek and Latin.
In Central Asia in the early eleventh century, the Chorasmian scholar Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī recogn... more In Central Asia in the early eleventh century, the Chorasmian scholar Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī recognized that the Arabic works attributed to Hermes Trismegistus were inventions of recent centuries falsely written in the name of the ancient sage of legend. He did, however, accept the existence of a historical Hermes and even attempted to establish his chronology. This article presents al-Bīrūnī's statements about this and contextualizes his view of the Arabic Hermetica as he derived it from Arabic chrono-graphic sources. Al-Bīrūnī's argument is compared with the celebrated seventeenth-century European criticism of the Greek Hermetica by Isaac Casaubon. It documents a hitherto unknown but significant event in the reception history of the Hermetica and helps to illustrate al-Bīrūnī's attitude toward the history of science.
Here above I have included a link to the Google Books sample of this book chapter. The full citat... more Here above I have included a link to the Google Books sample of this book chapter. The full citation is:
Kevin van Bladel, “Zoroaster’s Many Languages,” in Shawkat Toorawa and Joseph Lowry (eds.), Arabic Humanities, Islamic Thought: a Festschrift for Everett K. Rowson, Leiden: Brill, 2017, 190-210.
This essay, dedicated to Everett K. Rowson, studies eighth-, ninth-, and tenth-century Arabic, Syriac, and Zoroastrian Middle Persian accounts of the language or languages imagined to be in the Avesta. These accounts insist, with varying purposes, that the Avesta was composed in a miraculous language beyond human comprehension, or in every human language at once, or in seven or twelve different languages. Authors cited for their views include al-Bīrūnī, Ibn al-Nadīm, al-Masʿūdī, Qusṭā ibn Lūqā (whose source I identify as Ādurbād ī Ēmēdān, whom he cites by name), Ādurfarnbag, Ibn Bahlūl, Išoʿdād of Marw, Išoʿ bar ʿAlī, and Theodore bar Konay. I discuss briefly a few obscure references to little-known eastern Iranian languages occurring in the Syriac sources as allegedly part of the Avesta. EDIT: The language named gwrzny' in the Syriac source discussed here is probably Georgian. Therefore the brief speculation I entertain in this article (pp. 205-206) about its identification, following Bénveniste, may be fruitless.
This brief paper was my contribution to the conference "Graeco-Arabica: Present State and Future ... more This brief paper was my contribution to the conference "Graeco-Arabica: Present State and Future Prospects of an Emerging Field,” held at Yale University, April 27, 2014
It asks not "What must Graeco-Arabic Studies accomplish?" but rather "What can a researcher do with Greek and Arabic together?" imagining a broad and inclusive Classical Near Eastern Studies integrating several fields of inquiry usually construed as separate.
The argument is that the reception of Indian astronomical methods in Baghdad in the eighth centur... more The argument is that the reception of Indian astronomical methods in Baghdad in the eighth century was conditioned by contact with the Tang court, where astronomers using the same Indian methods were already employed. The explanation sheds light on the connection between the exportation of Indian astrology and interest in esoteric Buddhism in China, on the one hand, and on the early background to the movement to translate Greek works into Arabic on the other.
The URL link included here will direct you to the Google Books preview of this book. This hist... more The URL link included here will direct you to the Google Books preview of this book.
This historical study argues that the Mandaean religion originated under Sasanid rule in the fifth century, not earlier as has been widely accepted. It analyzes primary sources in Syriac, Mandaic, and Arabic to clarify the early history of Mandaeism. This religion, along with several other, shorter-lived new faiths, such as Kentaeism, began in a period of state-sponsored persecution of Babylonian paganism. The Mandaeans would survive to become one of many groups known as Ṣābians by their Muslim neighbors. Rather than seeking to elucidate the history of Mandaeism in terms of other religions to which it can be related, this study approaches the religion through the history of its social contexts.
A review that fairly summarizes my arguments in this book is found here:
http://www.ancientjewreview.com/articles/2017/11/13/book-note-from-sasanian-mandaeans-to-bians-of-the-marshes
The URL link included here will take you to the Google Books preview of this book. This is the f... more The URL link included here will take you to the Google Books preview of this book.
This is the first major study devoted to the early Arabic reception and adaption of the figure of Hermes Trismegistus, the legendary Egyptian sage to whom were ascribed numerous works on astrology, alchemy, talismans, medicine, and philosophy. Before the more famous Renaissance European reception of the ancient Greek Hermetica, the Arabic tradition about Hermes and the works under his name had been developing and flourishing for seven hundred years. The legendary Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus was renowned in Roman antiquity as an ancient sage whose teachings were represented in books of philosophy and occult science. The works in his name, written in Greek by Egyptians living under Roman rule, subsequently circulated in many languages and regions of the Roman and Sasanian Persian empires. After the rise of Arabic as a prestigious language of scholarship in the eighth century, accounts of Hermes identity and Hermetic texts were translated into Arabic along with the hundreds of other works translated from Greek, Middle Persian, and other literary languages of antiquity. Hermetica were in fact among the earliest translations into Arabic, appearing already in the eighth century. This book explains the origins of the Arabic myth of Hermes Trismegistus, its sources, the reasons for its peculiar character, and its varied significance for the traditions of Hermetica in Asia and northern Africa as well as Europe. It shows who pre-modern Arabic scholars thought Hermes was and how they came to that view.
Kevin van Bladel. The Arabic Hermes: From Pagan Sage To Prophet Of Science (Russian Edition) , 2022
ТОЛЬКО ОЗНАКОМИТЕЛЬНЫЙ ФРАГМЕНТ, электронная версия не распространяется. Кевин ван Бладел. Ара... more ТОЛЬКО ОЗНАКОМИТЕЛЬНЫЙ ФРАГМЕНТ, электронная версия не распространяется.
Кевин ван Бладел. Арабский Гермес: от языческого мудреца до пророка науки / Пер. с англ. и араб. В. А. Розова и М. М. Хасанова; науч. ред. В. А. Розова; науч. ред., вст. ст. и коммент. Б. К. Двинянинова; под общ. ред. Б. К. Двинянинова. — СПб.: Издательство «Академия исследований культуры», 2022. — 548 с.: ил. — (Герметицизм с древности до наших дней, вып. 5). ISBN 978-5-94396-239-4
Kevin van Bladel. The Arabic Hermes: From Pagan Sage To Prophet Of Science / Translation from English and Arabic V. A. Rozov and M. M. Khasanov; ed. V. A. Rozov and B. K. Dvinyaninov. St. Petersburg: Academy of Cultural’s Research, 2022. (Russian Edition)
Это первое крупное исследование, посвящённое раннему арабскому восприятию и адаптации фигуры Гермеса Трисмегиста, легендарного египетского мудреца, которому были приписаны многочисленные труды по астрологии, алхимии, талисманам, медицине и философии. До более известного принятия древнегреческой Герметики в эпоху Возрождения, арабское предание о Гермесе и труды под его именем активно развивались и процветали на протяжении семи столетий.
Трактаты, подписанные именем Гермеса Трисмегиста и его учеников, были написаны на греческом языке в период поздней Античности, по всей видимости, в Александрии Египетской, впоследствии циркулировали на разных языках и в регионах Римской и Сасанидской персидской империй. После расцвета арабского как престижного научного языка в VIII веке, рассказы о личности Гермеса и герметические тексты были переведены, наряду с сотнями других работ, с греческого, среднеперсидского и с других литературных языков Античности. Более того Герметика была среди самых ранних переводов на арабский язык. Немало можно сказать о корнях арабского мифа о Гермесе Трисмегисте, его источниках, причинах его своеобразного характера и о его многообразной ценности для герметицизма в Азии и Северной Африке, а также в Европе.
Настоящее русскоязычное издание дополнено глоссарием и приложением, включающем впервые изданные переводы герметических текстов с арабского языка: «Изумрудная скрижаль» — три древних версии, глава о городе Гермеса из Гайят аль-Хаким (Пикатрикс), суфийская молитва Идрису.
Worlds of Byzantium: Religion, Culture, and Empire in the Medieval Near East,, ed. Elizabeth Bolman, Scott Fitzgerald Johnson, and Jack Tannous (eds.), Cambridge University Press, 2024, pp. 78–97.
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108684620.005 Terms like “Classical Arabic,” “Classical Armenian,”... more https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108684620.005
Terms like “Classical Arabic,” “Classical Armenian,” “Classical Syriac,” and “Classical Persian,” though not entirely unproblematic, arouse minimal controversy and are widely used. These Near Eastern languages have their classical traditions of learning, all arising in the same region, all interacting with one another. Let us therefore envision a “Classical Near East” to foster modern scholarly exchange between specialists in pre-modern Near Eastern history and philology. This essay explores the prospects of a broader arena of ancient and medieval research for specialists in the premodern Near East that transcends the specializing delimitation of modern identities and religions.
(We have a PhD specialization in this field in the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations at Yale University. https://nelc.yale.edu/graduate/specializations/classical-near-east)
AOS Essay 16, 2024
"Written Middle Persian Literature under the Sasanids" OPEN ACCESS ESSAY. Current scholarship dou... more "Written Middle Persian Literature under the Sasanids" OPEN ACCESS ESSAY. Current scholarship doubts that there was much, if any, written Middle Persian literature in the Sasanian Persian Kingdom (third to seventh centuries CE), but plentiful sources attest that such skepticism is unwarranted. Most Middle Persian written literary works from that time were lost because specific institutional and environmental conditions did not favor their survival—not because "ancient Iran" was an overwhelmingly "oral society" that rejected written literature.
Josephine van den Bent, Floris van den Eijnde, and Johan Weststeijn (eds.), Late Antique Responses to the Arab Conquests, Leiden: Brill, 2022, pp. 89–119., 2022
This essay compares the processes of Arabicization (the adoption of Arabic) and Islamization (the... more This essay compares the processes of Arabicization (the adoption of Arabic) and Islamization (the adoption of Islam) by the peoples conquered and colonized by Arabian invaders from the seventh century onward. It focuses on population contact as the necessary key to subsequent research on these topics, urging researchers to avoid using "identity" as a primary criterion for understanding the two distinct but related processes. Identity followed the processes rather than prompting them.
Baghdad: Eye’s Delight. Exhibition at the Museum of Islamic Art on the Occasion of the World Cup 2022_, Doha: Qatar Museums, 2022, pp. 156–163., 2022
This short and very basic chapter, contributed to a museum exhibition volume, may be useful in a ... more This short and very basic chapter, contributed to a museum exhibition volume, may be useful in a survey course: “The Translation Movement in Abbasid Baghdad,” in _Baghdad: Eye’s Delight. Exhibition at the Museum of Islamic Art on the Occasion of the World Cup 2022_, Doha: Qatar Museums, 2022, pp. 156–163.
This article sketches the early history of Islamic civilization from its genesis in the late nine... more This article sketches the early history of Islamic civilization from its genesis in the late nineteenth century to its institutionalization in the twentieth. Key moments include its enshrinement in journals and a monumental encyclopedia and the flight of European Semitists to the United States. Its institutionalization in the undergraduate curriculum at the University of Chicago in 1956 created a successful model for the subsequent dissemination of Islamic civilization. Working in a committee on general education (the core curriculum) in the social sciences at the University of Chicago, Marshall Hodgson inaugurated Islamic civilization as a subject of university study that was not just for specialists but available to American college students as fulfilling a basic requirement in a liberal arts education. Many other universities followed this practice. Since then, Islamic civilization has come to be shared by the educated public. Today it is an internationally accepted and wellfunde...
The Language of the Xūz and the Fate of Elamite, 2021
This article discusses the language of the Xūz mentioned in Arabic sources, endorsing the view t... more This article discusses the language of the Xūz mentioned in Arabic sources, endorsing the view that it is the latest attestation of the Elamite language. Drawing on models from historical sociolinguistics, it also studies the problem of mutual acculturation between speakers of Elamite and Persian in antiquity.
Al-ʿUsur al-Wusta: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists, 2020
This article sketches the early history of Islamic civilization from its genesis in the late nine... more This article sketches the early history of Islamic civilization from its genesis in the late nineteenth century to its institutionalization in the twentieth. Key moments include its enshrinement in journals and a monumental encyclopedia and the flight of European Semitists to the United States. Its institutionalization in the undergraduate curriculum at the University of Chicago in 1956 created a successful model for the subsequent dissemination of Islamic civilization. Working in a committee on general education (the core curriculum) in the social sciences at the University of Chicago, Marshall Hodgson inaugurated Islamic civilization as a subject of university study that was not just for specialists but available to American college students as fulfilling a basic requirement in a liberal arts education. Many other universities followed this practice. Since then, Islamic civilization has come to be shared by the educated public. Today it is an internationally accepted and well-funded entity that confers contested social power but still lacks analytical power.
The following English text (with Dutch translation following) on "Arabicization, Islamization, an... more The following English text (with Dutch translation following) on "Arabicization, Islamization, and the Colonies of the Conquerors" is a full version of a paper I delivered in abbreviated fashion for the Zenobia Foundation on November 14, 2015. The Dutch version has appeared before the English publication. I know that many of my colleagues do not read Dutch, so I am posting the English original final draft along with the published Dutch, which occupies the second part of this pdf file. I have indicated the page numbers of the Dutch version in the English text to facilitate cross-reference; of course, the published Dutch version should be cited, at least until the English version appears in print (expected 2019).
This is a chapter from a Blackwell "Companions to the Ancient World" volume. Numerous texts surv... more This is a chapter from a Blackwell "Companions to the Ancient World" volume.
Numerous texts survive from Arabia in Late Antiquity. Scholarship has largely focused on three varieties. There are many thousands of inscriptions, mostly short, in several different ancient Arabian languages; there are hundreds of poems in early Arabic dating to the sixth and seventh centuries, and perhaps even occasionally to the fifth century; and there is the Qurʾān, the scripture of Islam, thought to originate in the first decades of the seventh century. Each of these three presents problems to specialists in Late Antiquity. This chapter offers a basic introduction.
This is a chapter from a Blackwell "Companions to the Ancient World" volume. Between the seventh... more This is a chapter from a Blackwell "Companions to the Ancient World" volume.
Between the seventh and the tenth centuries, Arabic became the chief language of learning from Spain to Afghanistan. Beginning in the late eighth century and for three hundred years, scholars knowledgeable in older literary traditions, including Aramaic, Middle Persian, and above all Greek, translated innumerable works into Arabic. Nothing was translated that was not available in Late Antiquity, and many works extant in Late Antiquity are lost in the original but survive in their Arabic translations. Importantly, the selection of works for translation and preservation in the new Arabic medium was based on different criteria from those used in the Carolingian renovatio, the Renaissance, and the Byzantine scholarly tradition, effecting thereby a different, third major “classical tradition” of reception of ancient works besides those in Greek and Latin.
In Central Asia in the early eleventh century, the Chorasmian scholar Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī recogn... more In Central Asia in the early eleventh century, the Chorasmian scholar Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī recognized that the Arabic works attributed to Hermes Trismegistus were inventions of recent centuries falsely written in the name of the ancient sage of legend. He did, however, accept the existence of a historical Hermes and even attempted to establish his chronology. This article presents al-Bīrūnī's statements about this and contextualizes his view of the Arabic Hermetica as he derived it from Arabic chrono-graphic sources. Al-Bīrūnī's argument is compared with the celebrated seventeenth-century European criticism of the Greek Hermetica by Isaac Casaubon. It documents a hitherto unknown but significant event in the reception history of the Hermetica and helps to illustrate al-Bīrūnī's attitude toward the history of science.
Here above I have included a link to the Google Books sample of this book chapter. The full citat... more Here above I have included a link to the Google Books sample of this book chapter. The full citation is:
Kevin van Bladel, “Zoroaster’s Many Languages,” in Shawkat Toorawa and Joseph Lowry (eds.), Arabic Humanities, Islamic Thought: a Festschrift for Everett K. Rowson, Leiden: Brill, 2017, 190-210.
This essay, dedicated to Everett K. Rowson, studies eighth-, ninth-, and tenth-century Arabic, Syriac, and Zoroastrian Middle Persian accounts of the language or languages imagined to be in the Avesta. These accounts insist, with varying purposes, that the Avesta was composed in a miraculous language beyond human comprehension, or in every human language at once, or in seven or twelve different languages. Authors cited for their views include al-Bīrūnī, Ibn al-Nadīm, al-Masʿūdī, Qusṭā ibn Lūqā (whose source I identify as Ādurbād ī Ēmēdān, whom he cites by name), Ādurfarnbag, Ibn Bahlūl, Išoʿdād of Marw, Išoʿ bar ʿAlī, and Theodore bar Konay. I discuss briefly a few obscure references to little-known eastern Iranian languages occurring in the Syriac sources as allegedly part of the Avesta. EDIT: The language named gwrzny' in the Syriac source discussed here is probably Georgian. Therefore the brief speculation I entertain in this article (pp. 205-206) about its identification, following Bénveniste, may be fruitless.
This brief paper was my contribution to the conference "Graeco-Arabica: Present State and Future ... more This brief paper was my contribution to the conference "Graeco-Arabica: Present State and Future Prospects of an Emerging Field,” held at Yale University, April 27, 2014
It asks not "What must Graeco-Arabic Studies accomplish?" but rather "What can a researcher do with Greek and Arabic together?" imagining a broad and inclusive Classical Near Eastern Studies integrating several fields of inquiry usually construed as separate.
The argument is that the reception of Indian astronomical methods in Baghdad in the eighth centur... more The argument is that the reception of Indian astronomical methods in Baghdad in the eighth century was conditioned by contact with the Tang court, where astronomers using the same Indian methods were already employed. The explanation sheds light on the connection between the exportation of Indian astrology and interest in esoteric Buddhism in China, on the one hand, and on the early background to the movement to translate Greek works into Arabic on the other.
In this article I renewed, revised, and furthered Nöldeke's argument that the Qur'anic story of D... more In this article I renewed, revised, and furthered Nöldeke's argument that the Qur'anic story of Dhu l-Qarnayn (Q 18-83-102) is a retelling of a specific Syriac text, which was composed around 630 as a piece of propaganda in favor of the Byzantine emperor Heraclius. This is the text known sometimes in modern scholarship as "The Alexander Legend." The qur'anic version retells the story in ways reflecting the interests of Muhammad's community, removing pro-Byzantine components. The paper demonstrates that the Qur'an includes literary retellings not just of biblical and other ancient material but also of a text composed late in Muhammad's life. No Syriac words were adopted from the Syriac source.
Further relevant material is found in my article: “The Syriac Sources of the Early Arabic Narratives of Alexander,” in Memory as History: The Legacy of Alexander in South Asia, ed. Himanshu Prabha Ray and Daniel T. Potts, New Delhi: Aryan International, 2007, pp. 54-75 (see pp. 64-67).
Dr. Tommaso Tesei has published two articles buttressing and elaborating further the argument of this paper.
Review of Michael R. Jackson Bonner, The Last Empire of Iran. Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2020., 2023
Review of Michael R. Jackson Bonner, The Last Empire of Iran. Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2020.
Aestimatio: Critical Reviews in the History of Science, 2015
This is undoubtedly the most important volume produced on the subject of physiognomy-the science ... more This is undoubtedly the most important volume produced on the subject of physiognomy-the science of assessing personal character through the observation of external physical features-since Foerster's Scriptores physiognomici graeci et latini [1893]. Two influential ancient Greek treatises on the subject are extant: one attributed falsely to Aristotle and the other written by the scholar and politician Polemon (ca AD 88-144). Polemon's work is lost in its original form, but survives in abridgments in different languages. Seeing the Face, Seeing the Soul deals particularly with Polemon and his treatise. After Swain's helpful orientation to the sources and earlier scholarship in the introduction [ch. 1], the volume presents several detailed studies that situate physiognomy in the contexts of ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, society, and visual culture, and in its important Arabic reception. The essays range far and wide enough to make physiognomy a relevant matter for many areas of intellectual and cultural history in which it is often not normally taken it into account. They show that the extant treatises on physiognomy are important sources of information about the customs and manners of the societies in which they were produced and reproduced. Together these historical-contextual essays constitute two of the three sections of the work: 'Antiquity' and 'Islam'.
Studies in Late Antiquity, 2020
This book is a strong contribution to the sustained surge in publications on "Late Antiquity and ... more This book is a strong contribution to the sustained surge in publications on "Late Antiquity and Early Islam," in which the origin of Islam is explained, quite reasonably, by reference to its prior historical context. It is devoted specifically to apocalypticism, that narcissistic belief that the time in which one lives is the very most significant since creation itself, in which the meaning of history will become evident. Building on his earlier book The Death of a Prophet () and an earlier article, and repeating arguments to an extent necessary to make this sequel independent, Shoemaker argues persuasively that late ancient apocalypticism and its formulation as eschatology played a major role in the genesis of Islam in the career of Muh ̣ammad and afterward, both in its early doctrine and in animating the conquests carried out by Muh ̣ammad's followers. In doing so he demonstrates his detailed familiarity with the recent and varied outpouring of challenging research on the Qurʾān in its historical context as well as his sure footing among religious texts of the late ancient period. In a field characterized by subtle, and sometimes unsubtle, apology and polemic, Shoemaker takes a historian's stance, adopts specific positions, and defends them on the basis of primary sources, many of which will be unfamiliar to readers. He is undogmatically open to a Qurʾānic text shaped by the prophet's followers even after his death. The general argument addresses only one piece of the puzzle of Islamic origins, apocalypticism. As Shoemaker indicates, this is a component of ideology that has been neglected by quite a few specialists in early Islam in favor of an implicitly laudatory view of Muh ̣ammad as a reformer initiating a new society rather than warning of the end of all society.
The Classical Near East is one of four PhD specializations in the Department of Near Eastern Lang... more The Classical Near East is one of four PhD specializations in the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations at Yale University.
Encompassing the first millennium CE, before and after the advent of Islam, it includes the history and philology of Sasanian Iran, the early Islamic caliphates, the late Roman and Byzantine Near East, and adjacent areas.
Students in this specialization study classical Arabic and at least two other classical Near Eastern languages, such as Aramaic (including Syriac), Armenian, Greek, Middle Persian, New Persian.
For more details, follow the link in this notice.
https://nelc.yale.edu/academics/graduate-program/classical-near-east
I am offering Intensive Old Persian this spring/early summer to interested students who can arran... more I am offering Intensive Old Persian this spring/early summer to interested students who can arrange to attend. Graduate students attending CIC institutions (listed in the document) may use the Traveling Scholar Program to attend while covering tuition at their home institution.
I am offering Intensive Manichaean Middle Persian and Parthian this spring/early summer to intere... more I am offering Intensive Manichaean Middle Persian and Parthian this spring/early summer to interested students who can arrange to attend. Graduate students attending CIC institutions (listed in the document) may use the Traveling Scholar Program to attend while covering tuition at their home institution.