Michel Kabalan

Ibn Bassām al-Shantarīnī's al-Dhakhira as an outstanding early literary achievement of the Andalusi literature.
A thorough study of the compilation itself and the cataloguing of the illustrous poets, writers and governors in Gharb al-Andalus.

This project is a study and an evaluation of the first Arabic compilation of the History of Philosophy. It also wants to frame this compilation within the context of the Medieval History of Thought/Philosophy and eventually as an intrinsic part of the Western Canon

Ibn Bassām al-Shantarīnī's al-Dhakhira as outstanding early literary achievement of the Andalusi literature.
A thorough study of the compilation itself and the cataloguing of the illustrous poets, writers and governors in Gharb al-Andalus.

IiAphR, Berlin, October 2008

For a newcomer to Berlin, a quick stroll in the Sonnenallee is enough to leave her puzzled and bemused: shops after shops run by middle-aged Arab men offering exotic goods coming from a distant culture. More striking however are the cafes that line up the "allee": a mishmash of a strong brown and yellow painted saloons occupied by these same dark men ceaselessly smoking their arguileh (water-pipes).
The pavements are often dirtier than the pavements in other parts of the city. Apart from few shabby old German pubs, the "allee" looks more like a forgotten street in a poor neighborhood in Lebanon.....

Identified first as turks (turcos), the Syrian-Lebanese arriving to Brazil and Argentina quickly moved to publish newspapers and magazines in their native Arabic language. From the 1880s until the 1940s and between Buenos Aires and San Miguel de Tucuman, more than
twenty Arabic periodicals and newspapers were published in Argentina alone. These titles reflect a flourishing journalistic and literary movement among the Syrian-Lebanese migrant community in Argentina.
The Levantine cultural production in the Americas became soon a category of its own, known as al-Mahjar (Diaspora) literature. The actual paper is a study of this phenomenon among the immigrants with Syrian-Lebanese backgrounds.

Many contemporary Arab thinkers/philosophers consider themselves to be addressing issues that pertain specifically to the Arab world (rather than to humanity in general or fundamental questions in metaphysics, epistemology, etc). For example, they ask: How is the Arab world to enter modernity (if that is indeed desirable)? Or: How is to forge its own way in the modern or post-modern era (if modernity is not desirable)? Or: What compromise is possible between Arab-Islamic tradition and modern ideology? Or: What ideology is best suited to Arab political life (nationalist, socialist, Islamist, etc.)? Or: What (intellectual) obstacles lie in the way of Arab cultural, political, and economic development? In asking themselves these and related questions, some of these thinkers make rather broad generalizations about "Arab-Islamic civilization", "Arab culture", "Islamic tradition", or even 'the Arab mind". In so doing, have they fallen into the trap of cultural essentialism? Is it possible to address such points without lapsing int o cultural essentialism? First, when we look at the AlJabiri-Tarabichi debate and compare it to the above questions around cultural essentialism, we see clearly that at least some thinkers, namely AlJabiri, who address these issues, fall squarely into the trap of cultural essentialism. And Tarabichi does a fairly good job of pointing out AlJabiri's essentialist generalizations and of highlighting the fallacies and misconceptions of cultural essentialism (e.g. that there are many different trends and tendencies within Arab-Islamic civilization and tradition, some rationalist, some legalistic, etc) This brings us to another important question, which is: Is it possible to address the kinds of questions that interest contemporary Arab thinkers without commit ting the "sin" of cultural essentialism?

Recensão do livro publicado pelo Prof. Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala intitulado Scripta Theologica Arabica Christiana: Andalusi Christian Arabic Fragments Preserved in Ms. 83 (al-Maktabah al-Malikiyyah, Rabat), uma edição diplomática de alguns excertos da obra de polémica religiosa atribuída al-Imam al-Qurtubī intitulada al-I'lam.

Recensão: Scripta Theologica Arabica Christiana

Monferrer-Sala,  Scripta Theologica Arabica Christiana: Andalusi Christian Arabic Fragments Preserved in Ms. 83 (al-Maktabah al-Malikiyyah, Rabat), Edições Húmus, V.N. Famalicão 2016, 110 pp., ISBN 9789897551994.