Reading the Qur'an in Latin Christendom, 1140-1560 (Book) [show prizes]
Title: Reading the Qur'an in Latin Christendom, 1140-1560
Author: Thomas E. Burman
Abstract: Most of what we know about attitudes toward Islam in the medieval and early modern West has been based on polemical treatises against Islam written by Christian scholars preoccupied with defending their own faith and attacking the doctrines of others. Christian readings of the Qur'an have in consequence typically been depicted as tedious and one-dimensional exercises in anti-Islamic hostility. In Reading the Qur'an in Latin Christendom, 1140-1560, Thomas E. Burman looks instead to a different set of sources: the Latin translations of the Qur'an made by European scholars and the manuscripts and early printed books in which these translations circulated. Using these largely unexplored materials, Burman argues that the reading of the Qur'an in Western Europe was much more complex. While their reading efforts were certainly often focused on attacking Islam, scholars of the period turned out to be equally interested in a whole range of grammatical, lexical, and interpretive problems presented by the text. Indeed, these two approaches were interconnected: attacking the Qur'an often required sophisticated explorations of difficult Arabic grammatical problems.
Year: 2007
Primary URL: www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14318.html
Primary URL Description: This is the publisher's page for the book.
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 0812220625

Polemic, Philology, and Ambivalence: Reading the Qur'an in Latin Christendom (Article)
Title: Polemic, Philology, and Ambivalence: Reading the Qur'an in Latin Christendom
Author: Thomas E. Burman
Abstract: This article argues that alongside the obvious polemical motivation that medieval Latin Christians had for reading the Qur'an, they also showed a surprising interest in careful textual study of it, as well as intriguing tendencies to attribute prestige and desirability to it, despite their universal belief that it was a false scipture.
Year: 2004
Primary URL: http://jis.oxfordjournals.org/content/15/2/181.abstract
Primary URL Description: This is a link to the abstract of the article, this page containing also a link to the full text in pdf.
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Journal of Islamic Studies
Publisher: Oxford University Press

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