Welcome to Albert - The Digital Repository of the IAS
Albert is a digital repository for scholarly work created by faculty and emeriti. By offering a central location for depositing research or other scholarly work (including datasets, working papers, pre-publication scholarship, and published papers), the digital repository makes research available to a wider audience, helps ensure its long-term preservation, and can be used to fulfill grant-funded mandates.
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- Under the Hammer: Trafficking,Trading, and Salvaging the Middle Eastern and North African Written Heritage(2023-11-02)The trade in written artifacts of Middle Eastern and North African origin is flourishing and its dimensions are growing particularly in areas experiencing militaryconflict and/or extreme poverty. Yemen is one such area: given the ongoing war, manuscripts are being clandestinely taken out of the country. Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya are similarly affected. Islamic, Christian, and Jewish manuscripts originating in the MENASA region are regularly offered for sale by Western auction houses, and many thus end up in private hands. The provenance ofthe objects sold often remains obscure or is at least not mentioned in the relevant sales catalogs. Additionally, artifacts of Middle Eastern origin are increasingly being offered and sold through social media, for the most part clandestinely. Such transactions not only are frequently illegal but also deprive the people living in conflict-ridden regions of their cultural heritage. Moreover, experts have made the case that the illegal trafficking of artifacts may be related to a variety of criminal activities that affect war-zones or regions experiencing instability due to armed conflict. Finally, scholarship, too, is impacted, since artifacts that are purchased by private collectors generally become inaccessible to scholars. While recent military conflicts and the pandemic appear to have exacerbated the situation, there are also many initiatives and actors who are involved in protecting and salvaging MENA’s cultural heritage on the ground. Our panel showcases the fate of individual manuscripts or written artifacts, and entire collections of such materials, that have been auctioned or otherwise sold during recent decades. The contributions address both problems and concrete initiatives aimed at preventing the phenomenon, creating awareness of the artifacts' cultural value among policy makers, customs and police authorities, and auctioneers, and at providing appropriate training to stop illegal trafficking. Moreover, we consider the question of survival and accessibility of written artifacts from the MENASA region, which is connected to the thorny issue ofthe possible restitution of written artifacts. Participants: Luise Loges (University of Glasgow), Josh Mugler (HMML), Cecilia Palombo (Chicago University), Nasser O. Rabbat (MIT), Valentina Sagaria Rossi (University of Rome Tor Vergata), Sabine Schmidtke (IAS)
55 13 - Proceedings of the Seminar on Muslim-Jewish Relations in North Africa(World Jewish Congress, 1975)"The seminar on Muslim-Jewish Relations in North Africa, which the American Section's Academic Committee, who Chairman is Rabbi Wolfe Kelman, co-sponsored with the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J., was one of a series of meetings planned... in an effort to reach out to the intellectual community at large." -- preface. The meeting took place on May, 19, 1974 in Princeton and includes comments by S.D. Goitein and Clifford Geertz.
1 15 - AI safety on whose terms?(Science: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2023-07-14)Rapid, widespread adoption of the latest large language models has sparked both excitement and concern about advanced artificial intelligence (AI). In response, many are looking to the field of AI safety for answers. Major AI companies are purportedly investing heavily in this young research program, even as they cut “trust and safety” teams addressing harms from current systems. Governments are taking notice too. The United Kingdom just invested £100 million in a new “Foundation Model Taskforce” and plans an AI safety summit this year. And yet, as research priorities are being set, it is already clear that the prevailing technical agenda for AI safety is inadequate to address critical questions. Only a sociotechnical approach can truly limit current and potential dangers of advanced AI.
9 2 - Kitāb fīhi kalām ʻAbd al-Laṭīf ibn Yūsuf ibn Muḥammad ibn ʻAlī al-Baghdādī(1215)Alá shayʾ mimmā qālahu Ibn Khaṭīb al-Rayyī ʻalá baʻḍ kitāb al-Qānūn fī al-ṭibb li-Ibn Sīnāʾ -- Qawl ʻalá ḥāl Ibn KHaṭīb al-Rayyī fī tafsīrihi sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ -- Maqālah fī al-mizāj -- Kitāb al-naṣīḥatayn ilá al-nās kāffatan -- Risālah fī mujādalat al-ḥakīmayn al-kīmyāʾī wa-al-naẓarī -- Risālah fī al-maʻādin wa-kashf shubah ahl al-kīmiyāʾ fuṣūl ḥikmīyah -- Risālah lil-Iskandar fī al-faṣl khāṣṣatan wa-mā huwa kāmāt ṭayyibah -- Maqālah fī al-maraḍ al-musammá diyābīṭis. Contains about 9 separate works, but improperly bound; some titles appear to be intermixed with one another. From the Martin Levey microfilm collection of Arabic scientific manuscripts. Microfilm of Hüseyin Çelebi ms. #823
11 9 - A Manual of Zaydī Muʿtazilī Dogmatic Texts from Early Sixth/Twelfth-Century Iran(Shii Studies Review (Brill), 2023)MS Riyadh, Maktabat Malik Fahd al-Waṭaniyya 748 is a multitext volume copied by al-Ḥasan b. Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. ʿAlī Ibn Abī l-ʿAshīra in 552/1157 in Ṣaʿda. It consists of doctrinal texts by Zaydī and Muʿtazilī authors, invariably Iranian. The codex is the only known extant witness of all but two of the tracts it includes (the exceptions being Ismāʿīl b. ʿAlī b. Ismāʿīl al-Farrazādhī’s K. Taʿlīq al-Tabṣira and Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Dāʿī al-Ḥasanī’s K. Ḥaqāʾiq al-aʿrāḍ wa-aḥwālihā wa-sharḥihā), and two of its tracts, K. al-Nasīm fī l-uṣūl by one Abū Jaʿfar and K. Muhaj al-ʿulūm by Muʿādh b. Abī l-Khayr al-Hamadhānī, are not even attested in the relevant biobibliographical sources. This study includes critical editions of the doctrinal tracts included in the majmūʿa as well as an additional tract preserved in a related codex that was apparently also copied by Ibn Abī l-ʿAshīra (MS Milan, Ambrosiana, ar. E 462). The edited tracts include Abū l-Faḍl al-ʿAbbās Ibn Sharwīn’s K. al-Wujūh allatī taʿẓumu ʿalayhā l-ṭāʿāt ʿinda llāh, his K. al-Yāqūta, and his Ḥaqāʾiq al-ashyāʾ, ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Hamadhānī’s Ḥudūd al-alfāẓ, Ibn al-Dāʿī’s K. Ḥaqāʾiq al-aʿrāḍ wa-aḥwālihā wa-sharḥihā, the extant part of the K. al-Nasīm fī l-uṣūl, K. Muhaj al-ʿulūm, by Muʿādh b. Abī l-Khayr al-Hamadhānī, fragments of two theological summae by unidentified Zaydī scholars, and collections of doctrinal definitions of uncertain authorship.
112 18 - Biomedicalizing Genetic Health, Diseases and Identities(Routlege, 2009)As the focus of the natural sciences shifted from cellular to molecular levels over the last half of the twentieth century, the question ‘What is life?’ has increasingly been raised. Rose (2007: 6–7) recently posited a parallel epistemic shift in biomedicine from the clinical gaze to the molecular gaze such that ‘we are inhabiting an emergent form of life’. Through biomedicine, molecularisation is transforming what Foucault called ‘the conditions of possibility’ for how life can and should be lived. The emergent biomedical molecular gaze offers possibilities of changing bios – ‘life itself’ – especially, but not only, through genetics and genomics. These new biomedical practices are increasingly transforming people’s bodies, identities and lives.
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- Albert Einstein, Yukawa, Wheeler, and Bhaba(The Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, USA, 1954)
3596 4429 - Institute for Advanced Study Board of Trustees: Certificate of Incorporation and By-Laws(Shelby White and Leon Levy Archives Center, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, USA, 1977)
2885 53 - المرجع في تاريخ علم الكلام(Namaa Center for Research and Studies, 2018)المرجع في تاريخ علم الكلام» هو عمل ضخم أصدرته جامعة أكسفورد، تَوفَّرَ على كتابته سبعة وثلاثون باحثًا، مع مقدمة مسهَبة بقلم زابينه شميتكه، التي قامت بتحريره. وقد كان الطابَعُ المرجعيُّ لهذا الكتاب هو الباعثَ لـ«مركز نماء للدراسات والبحوث» على نقله إلى العربية عبر ترجمة أنجزها الأكاديمي المعروف أسامة شفيع السيد، وحصل لقاءها على جائزة حمد للترجمة. يستقصي هذا الكتاب آخرَ ما انتهى إليه البحث العلمي الحديث في تطور علم الكلام، مقترحًا اتجاهات بحثية جديدة، كما يتضمن تأريخًا للمذاهب الكلامية المختلفة من قدرية، وجهمية، ومعتزلة، وأشعرية، وماتُريدية، وشيعة، وإباضية، وكرَّامية، وغيرها. وفي الكتاب أيضًا طائفةٌ من الدراسات التي تعالج قضايا كلامية معينة، كنظرية الأحوال لأبي هاشم الجُبَّائي، وفكرة الاقتران في نظرية السببية. ولم يقتصر الكتاب على تاريخ علم الكلام دون حاضره، بل قام برصد الاتجاهات الحديثة الرئيسة، ذات النزعة التجديدية، التي عرفت في العموم بـ«الكلام الجديد
2341 1246 - Prince Baysunghur, Before & After: Timurid Manuscripts in Context(2021)The inaugural symposium of the Persian Manuscripts Association, celebrates the 600th anniversary of the first manuscript produced at the royal library-atelier of the Timurid Prince Baysunghur (1399-1433) in Herat. Prince Baysunghur, Before and After: Timurid Manuscripts in Context, is a two-day international symposium, held on 5-6 November 2021, and hosted by the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Baysunghur’s patronage of manuscript production is significant for exhibiting a high artistic refinement in the arts of the book, but the patron was also actively involved in the scholarly aspect of the works to be reproduced. He commanded editions and the preservation of texts in a variety of fields, notably history, ethics and literature. This symposium brings together scholars and international experts in a number of disciplines to explore the connoisseurship and patronage undertaken by the prince, the aesthetic of his atelier’s output, their antecedents in the Jalayirid period, and the production of literary editions in his library.
2220 1456 - International Conference: Islamic and Jewish Studies around the Turn of the Twentieth Century: Ignaz Goldziher and his Correspondents(2020)When Ignaz Goldziher passed away on November 13, 1921, he left behind a corpus of scientific correspondence of over 13,000 letters from about 1,650 persons, in ten languages. His Nachlass, including the letters as well as his hand-written notes and works, was bequeathed to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The corpus, which is freely accessible in its entirety in digital form (https://konyvtar.mta.hu/index_en.php?name=v_3_2_1_goldziher and https://amirmideast.blogspot.com/2018/06/ignaz-goldziher-correspondence-archive.html?m=1) constitutes the single most important source informing about the history of Arabic, Jewish, and Islamic studies and cognate fields during Goldziher‘s time. Selected portions of the Goldziher correspondence are available in critical editions, while other portions have been consulted for studies on the history of the field, but the bulk of the material has as yet remained untapped. The conference aims to focus on the correspondence between Ignaz Goldziher and colleagues from different countries preserved in the Oriental Collection of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, addressing aspects of the history of the discipline as seen through the letters. Papers examining specific aspects of Goldziher’s contributions to Islamic and Jewish studies from a wider history of science point of view are also welcome.
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