This chapter traces cross-communal interactions in the fields of medicine, mathematics and what the historical actors called the natural sciences. It discusses various modern interpretations of those interactions and engages with a number of historical problems researchers face when studying the extant sources. After a substantive survey of the…[Read more]

This chapter traces cross-communal interactions in the fields of medicine, mathematics and what the historical actors called the natural sciences. It discusses various modern interpretations of those interactions and engages with a number of historical problems researchers face when studying the extant sources. After a substantive survey of the…[Read more]

This article focuses on the Arabic manuscript collection of the Near Eastern School of Theology (NEST). The NEST library contains several manuscripts that were donated, copied, or read by important Christian-born intellectuals of the nahḍa. Given these men’s role in the emergence of modern publishing in the Middle East, I examine the int…[Read more]

This article examines a little-known and unstudied alchemical treatise, The Epistle on Alchemy (al-Risāla fī l-ṣināʿa) attributed to Aristotle, purportedly translated from Syriac into Arabic by the Nestorian bishop ʿAbdīshōʿ bar Brīkhā (d. 1318). In particular, I investigate the Epistle’s discourse on the concealment and revelation of alchemical…[Read more]

This book is the first monograph-length study and intellectual biography of ʿAbdīshōʿ of Nisibis (d. 1318), bishop and polymath of the Church of the East. Focusing on his works of apologetic theology, this study examines the intellectual strategies he employs to justify Christianity against Muslim (and to a lesser extent Jewish) criticisms. Bet…[Read more]

This book is the first monograph-length study and intellectual biography of ʿAbdīshōʿ of Nisibis (d. 1318), bishop and polymath of the Church of the East. Focusing on his works of apologetic theology, this study examines the intellectual strategies he employs to justify Christianity against Muslim (and to a lesser extent Jewish) criticisms. Bet…[Read more]