Report On the 24th I.R. Iran World Award for Book of the Year
This year, after the primary selection of more than 2500 books in different fields of Islamic and Iranian Studies, 179 books were assessed, from which 10 books entered the final stage of evaluation.
Report On the 24th I.R. Iran World Award for Book of the Year
This year, after the primary selection of more than 2500 books in different fields of Islamic and Iranian Studies, 179 books were assessed, from which 10 books entered the final stage of evaluation.
These evaluated books in the field of Islamic Studies include the following subfields: Acts and Life of the Prophet, Islamic Economics, Theology, Ethics, Translation of Qur&rsquoān, Jurisprudence & Islamic Law, Qur&rsquoānic Sciences, Qur&rsquoānic Studies & Interpretation, Philosophy & Mysticism, Contemporary Islam, History of Islamic Civilization, Shi&rsquoite Studies, Political Sciences in the World of Islam, Women&rsquos Rights, the History of Science, Art & Islamic Architecture. The evaluated books in the field of Iranian Studies include the following subfields: Pre-Islamic Iran, Military Sciences, Ancient Iranian Civilization, Handicrafts, Art & Iranian Architecture, Literary Criticism, Persian Language & Literature, Persian Literature & Poetry, Iranian Sociology, Manuscripts Studies, Contemporary History of Iran, History and Thought of the Islamic Revolution Thinkers, and Islamic Sufism.
The evaluated books have been written in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, Georgian, Chinese, Russian, Turkish, Finnish, Armenian, and Serbian languages.
The winners are from Turkey, Romania, Spain, Finland, Malaysia, US, France, UK, and Germany
Prof. Gerhard Böwering has been selected as a distinguished researcher of Islamic- Iranian Studies.
Moreover, Dr. Timothy Wright and Dr. Mohammad Ali Shomali have been selected to receive special awards for &ldquoInterreligious Dialogue of (Shi&rsquoa) Islam and Christianity&rdquo.
Distinguished Researcher
Gerhard Böwering
Professor of Islamic Studies at Yale University since 1984, received his Ph.D. in Islamic Studies at McGill University in 1975 and was Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (1975- 1984). He is member of APS and AOS and recipient of Guggenheim and Mellon fellowships, and was visiting professor at Princeton and Innsbruck universities. He is the author of The Mystical Vision of Existence in Classical Islam (1980), and Sulami&rsquos Minor Qur&rsquoān Commentary (1995 and 1997). He is co-editor of The Comfort of the Mystics Salwat al-‛ārifīn, (2013) and A Qur&rsquoān Commentary by Ibn Barrajān (Īḍāḥ al-ḥikma, 2016). He is editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought (Princeton 2012).
Şahnâme II
Firdevsî
Çeviren: Nimet Yıldırım
KabalcıYayıncilik, 2016
Ferdowsi is celebrated as the most influential figure in Persian literature by the means of national epicpoem. Shahname tells mainly the mythical and to some extent the historical past of the Persian Empire from the creation of the world until the Islamic conquest of Persia. I started to translate Shahname after I got thirteen different Persian prints of Şahnames synonyms and Şahnâme dictionaries. I did not consider it appropriate to work on a single print because Because there were more than one important and prudential prints that had to be studied carefully. In some of these prints, there were not hundreds of other lines in the different parts of the work.
Nimet Yildirim became assistant professor in 1997, associate professor in 2000, and professor in 2006 in the same university&rsquos Persian Language and Literature Department. He is still teaching at Ataturk University. Prof. Dr. Nimet Yildirim has published seventeen books in classic and contemporary Iranian literature, Iranian mythology and history and he has forty-seven articles in national and international scientific and academic journals.
The Sanskrit, Syriac and Persian Sources in the Comprehensive Book of Rhazes
Oliver Kahl
BRILL, 2015
This book offers a critical analysis of the Sanskrit, Syriac, and Persian sources in Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakariyyā al-Rāzī&rsquos (born 251 AH / 865 AD, died 313 AH / 925 AD) Comprehensive Book of Medicine (Arabic title al-Kitab al-Hawi fi l-Tibb). Al-Razi (latinized Rhazes) was an Iranian scholar from Rayy, a true polymath who wrote his various works on medicine, alchemy, and philosophy mainly in Arabic he ranks among the most versatile and most authoritative thinkers in the history of Islam, and certainly belongs to the greatest exponents of the Iranian scientific tradition. The Comprehensive Book is the most distinguished and most important of his many works: a medico-pharmaceutical encyclopedia of enormous proportions, containing medical information from Greek, Syriac, Persian, and Sanskrit sources, and constituting a unique mine of information that is unmatched not only in Islamic but also in world literary history.
Oliver Kahl received a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies from the Univeristy of Manchester in 1993. Until 2003, he was consultant for UNESCO and joined Manchester as a research fellow in 2004. Since 2012, he has been a research fellow at the Department of Semitology, Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Marburg, Germany.
Twelve Infallible Men: The Imams and the Making of Shiʿism
Matthew Pierce
Harvard University Press, 2016
This analysis of Shiʿa narratives provides insight into the social and religious significance of biographies of the imams, helping explain what made them worth preserving. This book examines a form of biography that emerged around the beginning of the tenth century CE, when Shiʿa scholars began compiling accounts of individual imams into works spanning the lives of all twelve holy figures. These collective biographies canonized particular versions of the lives and deaths of the imams, in the process constructing a sacred history.
Matthew Pierce holds a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from Boston University&rsquos Division of Religious and Theological Studies. From 2003 to 2006, he participated in an inter-faith dialogue program while studying in Qom, Iran.Pierce specializes in pre-Modern Islamic history and thought. His current research focuses on medieval Arabic and Persian biographies, analyzing the production of cultural symbols related to gender, authority, and identity. He is a contributor to The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought (2012) as well as an edited volume on Women, Leadership, and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority (Brill, 2012). His work has also appeared in the Journal of Shi&rsquoa Islamic Studies.
The Middle Path of Moderation in Islam: The Qurʼānic Principle of Wasaṭiyyah
Mohammad HashimKamal
Oxford University Press, 2015
This book advances the view that Islam is a religion of moderation and justice. The book consists of twenty-two chapters and two parts. Part One features seven chapters, beginning with a conceptual analysis of wasaṭiyyah, followed by a review of the source evidence in the Qur&rsquoan and hadith, and then a round-up of modern opinion on wasaṭiyyah. Part Two on &lsquoThematic Perspectives&rsquo looks into the various applications of wasaṭiyyah in the context of religiosity, moderation and justice, environmental degradation, and financial crises. Other chapters that follow address subjects such as moderation in jihād, the moderating role of disagreement (ikhtilāf), how wasaṭiyyah can be manifested with regard to women&rsquos rights, the moderating influence of Sufism, wasaṭiyyah and globalisation, moderation in personal character and lifestyle.
Mohammad Hashim Kamali is Founding CEO of the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies (IAIS) Malaysia. He was Professor of Islamic Law and Jurisprudence at the International Islamic University, Malaysia, and then Dean of the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilisation. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Jordan Institute of Advanced Study Berlin, and Afghanistan Academy of Sciences. He has published widely and his works have been translated in numerous languages.
Symbols of Power: Luxury Textiles from Islamic Lands, 7th&ndash21st Century
Louise W. Mackie
Cleveland Museum of Art, Distributed by Yale University Press, 2015
One of the outstanding and mostly-neglected resources on surveying the historico-cultural background of Islamic countries is to conduct research on the textiles extant since ancient times textiles that are also the invaluable relic of these countries from which one can realize those peoples&rsquo artistic talent, and from which one can find useful information on their sociology, culture, wellbeing, and civilization. Written by a leading Islamic textile scholar, this is the first book about luxury textiles from Islamic lands to consider hitorical, aesthetic, and technical issues in a comprehensive manner. It not only advances the field but also appeals to anyone interested in textiles, art history, material culture, and design.
Louise W. Mackie was curator of Textiles & Islamic Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art (1998-16 retired). She exhibited Islamic textiles plus &ldquoMuhammad Shah&rsquos Royal Persian Tent&rdquo (ruled 1834-48) from the museum&rsquos excellent collection. Mackie co-founded and was president of the Textile Society of America and has a M.A. degree in Islamic Art History from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
Self-Awareness in Islamic Philosophy
Jari Kaukua
Cambridge University Press, 2015
Self-Awareness in Islamic Philosophy investigates the emergence and development of a distinct concept of self-awareness in post-classical Islamic philosophy. The book presents the first extended analysis of Avicenna&rsquos arguments on self-awareness &ndash including the flying man, the argument from the unity of experience, the argument against reflection models of self-awareness and the argument from personal identity &ndash arguing that all these arguments hinge on a clearly definable concept of self-awareness as pure first-personality. This interpretation is substantiated with an analysis of Suhrawardī&rsquos use of Avicenna&rsquos concept and Mullā Sadrā&rsquos revision of the underlying concept of selfhood.
Jari Kaukua`s main area of research is medieval philosophy, especially the Arabic philosophical and theological tradition from the eleventh century CE onwards. He has published mostly on questions of epistemology and philosophy of mind, but he also works on metaphysics, philosophical theology and ethics. He is currently engaged in researching the revisions that Avicenna&rsquos Peripatetic cognitive psychology and theory of science underwent in its major twelfth century critics, such as Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī, Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī, and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī. He is now a professor of philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
The Love of Strangers: What Six Muslim Students Learned in Jane Austen&rsquos London
Nile Green
Princeton University Press, 2015
In July 1815, six Iranian students arrived in London under the escort of their chaperone, Captain Joseph D&rsquoArcy. Their mission was to master the modern sciences behind the rapid rise of Europe. Over the next four years, they lived both the low life and high life of Regency London, from being down and out after their abandonment by D&rsquoArcy to charming their way into society and landing on the gossip pages. The Love of Strangers tells the story of their search for love and learning in Jane Austen&rsquos England. Drawing on the Persian diary of the student Mirza Salih and the letters of his companions, Nile Green vividly describes how these adaptable Muslim migrants learned to enjoy the opera and take the waters at Bath. But there was more than frivolity to their student years in London.
Nile Green is Professor of History at UCLA. A specialist on the Muslim communities of Iran, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, and the Indian Ocean, his research brings Islamic history into conversation with global history. He is the author of over eighty articles, six edited books and seven monographs. His books include Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean (2011), which won the Middle East Studies Association&rsquos Albert Hourani book award and the Association for Asian Studies&rsquo Ananda K. Coomaraswamy book award Sufism: A Global History (2012) and The Love of Strangers: What Six Muslim Students Learned in Jane Austen&rsquos London (2016).
Cosmogonie et Eschatologie: Articulations Conceptuelles du Système Religieux Zoroastrien
MihaelaTimuş
Association pour l avancement des études iraniennes, 2015
The book includes seven studies that use historiographical and philological methods to explore the historical and religious aspects of Zoroastrian cosmogony and eschatology. It undertakes a close reading of Middle Persian literature to identify and illustrate specific aspects of this religious system, such as the symmetry between the beginning and the end of the world. The author reads the historiography of Iranian studies, paying special attention to the French scholarship on this topic, in order to show how the modern history of religions transformed Christian theological concepts in its analysis of the Zoroastrian religion. The Addenda include several unpublished documents, relevant for the history of Zoroastrian studies in France.
Mihaela Timuş took her BA and MA in Philosophy of Culture from the University of Bucharest in 2000. In 2009, she obtained her PhD in History of Religions and Religious Anthropology form EPHE, France. Between 2006-2012, she accomplished various projects at EPHE, Romanian Academy, and New Europe College. Since 2008, she has been a co-founding member of the Institute for the History of Religions, Romania. Also since 2016, she has been an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Institute for Iranian Studies, Free University and Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften.
Los arcanos de la Unicidad de Dios en las estancias espirituales del sheij Abū Saʿīd
Moḥammad b. Monavvar traducción del persa, prólogo y notas Joaquín Rodríguez Vargas
Mandala, 2015
...
The critical edition by Dr. Joaquín Rodríguez Vargas of one of the major works of Persian sufism, Asrār al-Tawḥīd (The Mysteries of the Oneness of God), into Spanish, published by Mandala Ediciones in 2015, must be considered as a landmark in the field of Iranian studies in Spain. Except for the translation of some of his mystical quatrains into Spanish, the work of Shaykh Abū Saʿīd Abū l-Khayr, as well as his inmense effort towards reconciling faith and reason, had remained largely unknown in the Spanish speaking world. The translation is remarkable not only for its accuracy, but also due to the capacity of Dr Rodríguez Vargas of recreating the cultural and religious scenario of Persia in the fifth century (A H).
Joaquín Rodríguez Vargas took his PhD in Arabic Philology and Islamic Studies from Universidad Complutense, Spain. During 1996-2004, he was teaching Persian language at the University of Seyilla. In 2010 and 2011, he was a professor at the School of Modern Languages, University of Barcelona. To date, he has participated in many scientific conferences and has translated many works from Spanish into Persian including Sa&rsquodī&rsquos Golestan and General Grammar of Modern Persian.
Geschichte
der Architektur Irans
Wolfram Kleiss
Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 2015
When taking into special consideration, the history of the architecture of Iran is such a comprehensive topic on which a certain restriction must be made. There are many examples to be found within the present-day national borders as well as within the timespan from the 6th century B.C. until 1979. The architectural examples presented here have always been contingent on different topographic and climatic conditions in addition to diverse cultural influences. Rock architecture and mosques &ndash bazaars, baths and palaces, as well as modern public buildings and housing-are among the relevant topics this book covers. Wolfram Kleiss characterizes in this volume the architectural history of Iran from the 4th millennium BC to the present day.
Wolfram Kleiss was born in Berlin (1930). In 1959, after he received a research grant from the German Archaeological Institute, he travelled for the first time to Iran. During 1971-1986, he was director of the institute&rsquos Tehran branch. He has directed plenty of accomplished archaeological explorations in Takht-e Soleymān, Masjid Soleymān, Bastām, and Bīsutūn. His publications &ndashmore than three-hundred works- cover the vast topics of architecture and urbanism in Iran. He retired in 1995.
Special Session Interreligious Dialogue: Islam and Christianity
Mohammad Ali Shomali
Dr Shomali is a graduate of Islamic Seminaries of Qum. He received his PhD in Ethics from the University of Manchester in 2001. He is currently the director of the International Institute for Islamic Studies in Qum and also the director of Islamic Centre of England. He has published several works on ethics, jurisprudence, Islamic studies, and Shi&lsquoa studies. Since 1997, in collaboration with Abbot Timothy Wright, he has played a very active role in the realm of interreligious dialogue between Catholicism and Shi&lsquoa Islam. He is the co-editor of six volumes of Catholic Shi&lsquoa dialogue: Catholics & Shi&lsquoa in Dialogue: Studies in Theology & Spirituality (2004 & 2011) Catholic-Shi&lsquoa Engagement: Reason & Faith in Theory and Practice (2006 & 2011) A Catholic-Shi&lsquoa Dialogue: Ethics in Today&rsquos Society (2008 & 2011) Monks and Muslims: Monastic and Shi&lsquoa Spirituality in Dialogue (2012) Monks and Muslims II: Creating Communities of Friendship (2014) and Monks and Muslims III: Towards a Global Abrahamic Community (2015).
Timothy Wright
Dr Abbot Timothy Wright OSB is a lecturer of the University of Saint Martin&rsquos. He used to be the spiritual director for the Pontifical Beda College in Rome and the delegate of the Abbot Primate of the Benedictine Confederation for monastic-Muslim relations. He served as abbot of Ampleforth Abbey from 1997 to 2005, during which time he and Dr Mohammad Ali Shomali organized a series of dialogue between Catholic monks and theologians and Shi&rsquoa Muslims from Iran. He is the author of No Peace without Prayer (2013).