Sabine Schmidtke

This directory has been compiled on the basis of various sources. For the early years, The Institute for Advanced Study: Publications of Members 1930–1954 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955) proved to be an excellent source. For the period 1933 through 1980, the publication A Community of Scholars: The Institute for Advanced Study, Faculty and Members 1930–1980 (Princeton: Institute for Advanced Study, 1980) has been consulted. For the period from 1980 through 1990, lists of members, visitors, and assistants in the Institute’s annual reports include information on the respective disciplines of the scholars, as do the annual photo directories of the School of Historical Studies that have been produced for the academic year 1987–1988 and from 1990–1991 onwards on an annual basis. The School of Social Science lists all of its past members and visitors, including their topics of research, on its website at https://www.sss.ias.edu/people/past-scholars, and its current scholars at https://www.sss.ias.edu/current-scholars-2017-18. Past members in Near Eastern and Islamic Studies in the School of Historical Studies since 1990 are listed at https://www.hs.ias.edu/islamic_past_members. In addition, the database that includes all IAS scholars, past and present, at https://www.ias.edu/scholars/all-scholars has been regularly consulted.

Ms. Mahdawī 514 belongs to the literary legacy of the Bahshamiyya. It is a commentary on a work by Ibn Mattawayh on natural philosophy which is known under the titles al-Tadhkira fī aḥkām al-jawāhir wa’l-aʿrāḍ and Kitāb al-tadhkira fī laṭīf [ʿilm] al-kalām. Both Ibn Mattawayh's Tadhkira and the commentary contain a detailed chapter on substances, followed by two major sections devoted to physics and to 'biology'. These are further subdivided into several aqwāl, each consisting of numerous fuṣūl. The style of the commentary is characteristic of the bulk of Muʿtazilī literature of the Bahshamī tradition that is amply available to everyone. It is an explicative paraphrase of Ibn Mattawayh's work that closely follows the original in argumentation and doctrinal outlook and can be read independently of the original Tadhkira.

On 18 September 1929,Rudolf Strothmann (1877–1960) embarked on a trip to the Middle East, in the course of which he travelled to Bosnia, Montenegro, Albania, Anatolia, the Levant, Jordan, Palestine, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, and Yemen. He returned to Hamburg on 10 May 1930, nearly eight months after his departure. The trip is documented in three detailed letters (or Ansichtskarten, as he calls them) that Strothmann sent to Carl Heinrich Becker (1876–1933) on 19 December 1929, 10 March 1930, and 8 May 1930. This paper offers an edition of Strothmann’s third Ansichtskarten to Carl Heinrich Becker, with annotations.

The Twelver Shīʿī scholar Raḍī al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Mūsā Ibn Ṭāwūs (d. 664/1266), who hailed from al-Ḥilla and stayed in Baghdad during the Mongol conquest of the city, was a traditionist, and his extensive oeuvre includes writings in the fields of ḥadīth, supplications, history and biography, and polemics, as well as astrology. In addition, Ibn Ṭāwūs is well known for his rich personal library, and the care with which he documented his collection and the use he made of the books in his library when composing his own works is remarkable. Ibn Ṭāwūs compiled a now lost catalog of the holdings of his library, al-Ibāna fī maʿrifat (asmāʾ) kutub al-khizāna. He later supplemented the catalog with his Saʿd al-suʿūd li-l-nufūs manḍūd min kutub waqf ʿAlī b. Mūsā b. Ṭāwūs—essentially a notebook containing excerpts from books that Ibn Ṭāwūs had come across in the course of his studies and of which he kept copies in his own library and which was intended to serve as some kind of catalog raisonné of his library. The work, as it has come down to us, begins with excerpts from various revelatory writings: various copies (maṣāḥif) of the Qurʾān; two texts attributed to Idrīs, namely Ṣaḥāʾif Idrīs and Sunan Idrīs, the Pentateuch, a Zabūr Dāwūd, and the Gospels. The second, larger part of the book is devoted to Qurʾānic exegesis and related matters, and it consists of excerpts from various relevant works, with Ibn Ṭāwūs’s occasional comments interspersed. While Ibn Ṭāwūs’ copy of the Pentateuch has been discussed in an earlier study, where it was shown to be an amalgam of different translation traditions, the present paper is devoted to his copy of the Gospel.