This Festschrift is a collection of papers in honour of Geoffrey Khan, the Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Cambridge, written by his former and current students and post-doctoral re ...

Studies in Semitic Linguistics and Manuscripts : A Liber Discipulorum in Honour of Professor Geoffrey Khan

State of Emergency (700–850)

Armenian Neighbours (600–1045)

introduction: coexistence with the caliphate As earlier chapters have shown, the empire’s military situation was alleviated by political upheavals in the Muslim world and the abatement of hammer blows directed by the Abbasid leadership. The caliphate itself had more recourse to diplomacy, recognising Ashot I Bagratuni (‘the Great’) (884–90) as paramount prince among the Armenians and bestowing a crown on him. Soon afterwards, Basil I (867–86) responded with demarches of his own towards Ashot. The later ninth century probably saw the elaboration of the basileus’ diplomatic web eastwards, drawing in political elites in central and eastern Caucasia such as ’the chiefs of Azia’, lords of the Caspian Gates. By the reign of Leo VI (886–912) the court was maintaining well-to-do Turks from the Fergana valley as well as Khazars, and these young men were making substantial down payments of gold in order to receive annual rogai as members of a unit of the imperial bodyguard. The chinks in Muslim power were shown up in other forms, such as the prisoners-of-war kept at court. The more prominent among them were enrobed in the white garments of catechumens at the emperor’s Christmas and Easter banquets, as if to affirm willingness to adopt the religion of the Christians. Triumphal parades of Basil I, as of Theophilos (829–42), celebrated with spectacular props the emperors’ occasional forays into Muslim-held regions, and a poet could write of Basil as a new David, who with God’s help will vanquish the enemy hosts.

Equilibrium to Expansion (886–1025)

Western scholars have long studied Jewish and Christian influence in shaping early Islamic tradition, but almost none of them has considered Eve's transformation as a critical part of the “genesis” of an Islamic historical framework and the evolution of its gender categories. I trace the transformation of the wife of Adam from the revelation contained in the Qurʾan and note the abrupt and distinct changes wrought upon this Qurʾanic persona in post-Qurʾanic sources in the matters of menstruation and motherhood. The figure of Satan plays a pivotal role in both of these biological aspects of Eve's biography. Her function as the first woman serves to explain not just the physiology of all women, but also the essential aspects of character that allegedly make all females different from the normative male in biology and behavior. As a wife, Eve is tested and fails, but as a mother, she both fails and passes the test of satanic temptation. I argue that in her role as wife, she is depicted in post-Qurʾanic sources in accordance with pre-Islamic monotheist precedent. However, in Eve's role as mother—especially as the mother of the prophetic patriline that culminates in Muhammad—Muslim scholars distinguished the meaning and implications of her temptation as distinctly Islamic. Eve embodied a fusion of traditions, a continuity of monotheistic meanings about the feminine in the Middle East, as well as an identity that distinguished her as the first woman of a new, emerging Islamic faith.

Gordon Darnell Newby

Papers

A History of the Jews of Arabia: From Ancient Times to Their Eclipse Under Islam