Sonja Brentje
Biographic Data
| ID | 1024729 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sonja Brentje |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sonja |
| FAMILY NAME | Brentje |
| SIGNATURE | BRENTJE S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Max Planck Institute for the History of Science |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8205-8550 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 42 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Routledge Handbook on the Sciences in Islamicate Societies: Practices from the 2nd/8th to the 13th/19th Centuries
The article deals with the few translation of scientific works into Coptic and on the reasons why they are not numerous
On Four Sciences and their Audiences in Ayyubid and Mamluk Societies
This paper presents evidence for the relevance of four sciences and their practices to the Ayyubid and Mamluk elites in Egypt and Syria from the twelfth through the fifteenth century. These four sciences are timekeeping, astrology, philosophy, and alchemy. The importance of timekeeping in the Mamluk realm has been amply documented by the work of David A. King. This paper adds to his results some information about the social recognition of its pra…
The Language of ‘Patronage’ in Islamic Societies Before 1700
This paper approaches ‘patronage’ in Islamic societies from a linguistic point of view. This is a complicated enterprise, because in medieval Arabic and Persian there is no unambiguous term for ‘patronage’. Over the centuries and in different contexts, there were various terms used to describe this reality. Sometimes only a few words sufficed to express relationships of hierarchy, promotion and knowledge between people, while at other times a ver…
Shams Al-Dīn Al-Sakhāwī on Muwaqqits, Mu'adhdhins, and the Teachers of Various Astronomical Disciplines in Mamluk Cities in the Fifteenth Century
This paper studies the biographical dictionary of Shams al-Dīn al-Sakhāwī and discusses its information about muwaqqit s, mu’adhdhin s and the teaching of astronomical knowledge in Mamluk cities in the fifteenth century. It shows that a number of mu’adhdhin s mentioned by al-Sakhāwī had taken classes in the discipline, which the muwaqqit s represented, i.e., ʿ ilm al-mīqāt . Therewith it offers new insights into how this disciplinary knowledge re…
Ayyubid Princes and their Scholarly Clients from the Ancient Sciences
This paper addresses the relationship of the Ayyubid family’s patronage of the ancient sciences in order to clarify whether some of its members persecuted scholars exercising these sciences. It argues that this was not the case and that the diverse narratives in the extant historical sources need to be analysed together to avoid misinterpretations. A comprehensive and comparative analysis of all extant sources allows a more precise understanding …
Courtly Patronage of the Ancient Sciences in Post-Classical Islamic Societies
This paper discusses evidence for courtly patronage for the ancient sciences in specific post-classical societies in the Arab and Persianate worlds. It shows that there are plenty of historical sources for seriously challenging the widely held belief that courtly patronage for the ancient sciences disappeared in the post-classical period. Similarities and differences between the classical and post-classical period at large and between specific po…
Patronage of the Mathematical Sciences in Islamic Societies
This paper discusses for the first time structural and rhetorical elements of patronage relationships in the mathematical sciences in Islamicate societies. It pursues this topic for two different time periods, the eighth to the twelfth and the late twelfth to the eighteenth centuries. Its third part summarizes major outcomes of patronage in the mathematical sciences. The paper argues against the then common wisdom of the day that patronage for th…
The Study of Geometry According to Al-Sakhāwī (Cairo, 15th C) and Al-Muḥibbī (Damascus, 17th C)
This paper traces the study of geometry in various cities of the Arab world in the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries. The comparison of the information provided by two writers of scholarly biographies is chosen as a tool for discussing the conditions and trends that a particular mathematical discipline experienced within a relatively clear delineated geographical and cultural area. One major point of the discussion is the contradiction betw…
On the Location of the Ancient or ‘Rational’ Sciences in Muslim Educational Landscapes (Ah 500–1100)
This paper begins with a brief outline of two major positions and the question of whether the ancient (or ‘rational’) sciences were excluded from Muslim madrasas and cognate teaching institutes. The section that follows takes up positions formulated by Jonathan Berkey and Michael Chamberlain, who both stress the importance of networks, rather than schools, for Muslim education in the post-classical period, to show that these networks integrated t…
Narratives of Knowledge in Islamic Societies
Current history of science, including cartography and geography, in Islamic societies has lost its mainstream status that it occupied some decades ago. The major reason for this unfortunate development is the change of what constitutes mainstream today in comparison to the past. Mainstream history of science in other than Islamic societies is much more focused on the study of the sciences in culture than on the study of the content of scientific …
Sanctioning Knowledge
This paper discusses stories about rulers and princes of three dynasties - Abbasid, Norman and Timurid - and their narrative representation as prime knowers of the mathematical sciences, geography and history. It argues that they constitute one set of positive forms of sanctioning or contesting knowledge in those societies by prescribing hierarchies of knowledge forms and hierarchies of people and institutions that decide about the veracity of kn…
The Sciences in Islamicate Societies in Context: Patronage, Education, Narratives
Current debates and emerging trends in the history of science in premodern Islamicate societies
This roundtable brings together contributions from nine senior, mid-career and junior scholars who work on the history of science in pre-1800 Islamicate societies. The contributions reflect upon some of the challenges that have historically constrained the subfield, how they have sought to overcome them, and what they see as some of the more productive and fruitful turns the field has taken and/or should take in the future. A central trend in all…
Research Foci in the History of Science in Past Islamicate Societies
In recent years, numerous changes have emerged in the History of Science of what has traditionally been called the Islamic world. By now, it has become usual to speak of the Islamicate world, albeit more so in Islamic Studies and related historical disciplines. The notion Islamicate wishes to express that the societies rule by Muslim dynasties were multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-confessional and plurilingual. Different Muslim denominations c…
Copies of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣūfī’s Book on the Star Constellations as Patronage Objects and Their Properties
In this paper we discuss a number of copies of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣūfī’s Book on the Star Constellations with the aim to elucidate which of them can be justifiably called “patronage object” and which properties they share. We argue that such an object is always a material, not merely an intellectual product. Thus, the analysis of the patronage status of a scientific work needs to go beyond its scholarly content and narrative performance and includ…
The Stars in the Sky and on the Globe: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿUmar al-Ṣūfī’s Visualization of the Heavens
In this paper, I analyze about 50 manuscript copies of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿUmar al-Ṣūfī’s Book of the Images of the Stars (Kitāb ṣuwar al-kawākib althābita). I investigate how the constellations were visualized in those copies, what their changes tell us about the contexts in which Ṣūfī’s book was used, and which iconographic model dominated the transmission. Published Online (2022-07-31)Copyright © 2022 by Sonja Brentjes Article PDF Link: https:…
Wilbur R. Knorr on Thābit ibn Qurra: A Case-Study in the Historiography of Premodern Science
There was a widespread belief among historians of science of my generation that high competence with regard to content and languages alone can guarantee better, more reliable results than can good philology combined with high competence in history or the other human sciences. In my casestudy of Wilbur R. Knorr’s analysis of several medieval Arabic and Latin texts on the balance, or steelyard, I highlight a variety of factors that compromised time…
Travellers from Europe in the Ottoman and Safavid Empires, 16th–17th Centuries: Seeking, Transforming, Discarding Knowledge
This collection of Sonja Brentjes's articles deals with travels, encounters and the exchange of knowledge in the Mediterranean and Western Asia during the 16th and 17th centuries, focusing on three historiographical concerns. The first is how we should understand the relationship between Christian and Muslim societies, in the period between the translations from Arabic into Latin (10th - 13th centuries) and before the Napoleonic invasion of Ottom…
Globalization of Knowledge in the Post-Antique Mediterranean, 700-1500
Routes and Realms: The Power of Place in the Early Islamic World
Antrim's entry on the faculty page of Trinity College, Hartford, CT reveals. It consists of an introduction and three chapters (homeland, cities, regions). It purports to establish that there was a 'discourse of place' in a broad range of texts and a more limited range of images (i.e., maps) that were produced, mostly in Arabic, during the first centuries of the Abbasid dynasty.
Sancionar el conocimiento
En este artículo se estudian historias sobre gobernantes y príncipes de tres dinastías - ‛abbāsí, normanda y timurí – y su representación narrativa como conocedores de las ciencias matemáticas, la geografía y la historia. Se argumenta que constituyen un conjunto de formas positivas de aprobar o impugnar el conocimiento en esas sociedades, prescribiendo jerarquías de formas de conocimiento y jerarquías de gentes e instituciones que deciden acerca …
Towards A New Approach To Medieval Cross- Cultural Exchanges
This paper discusses the interpretive approach to cross-cultural transfer of knowledge as proposed by early twentieth-century scholars, in particular Charles Homer Haskins, and their successors after the Second World War. It describes this approach as teleological, linear, mono-cultural and static. It traces the changes that several historians of mathematics, science and medicine proposed to this type of observer narrative and shows that in the 1…
Geographical Knowledge and Imperial Culture in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire
Method, Structure, and Development in al-Fārābī’s Cosmology, by Damien Janos
Method, Structure, and Development in al-Fārābī ́s Cosmology, by Damien Janos (Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science, Texts and Studies: 85) (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2012), xiv + 433 pp., ISBN: 978-90-04-20615-1, â ¬161.00 / $221.00 (hb) (First paragraph) The present book is Janos ́ revised PhD thesis and consists of four chapters. The first chapter serves as an introduction and surveys in three sections followed by a fourth one reserved for c…
Mamluks and animals: Veterinary medicine in medieval Islam
This book is a revised version of Shehada's PhD thesis. It consists of an introduction, eight chapters, conclusion, bibliographies, and indices. The many illustrations appended to the book are help
The Interests of the Republic of Letters in the Middle East, 1550-1700
The ArgumentThe "raison d'être" of this paper is my dissatisfaction with current portrayals of the place and the fate of the so-called rational sciences in Muslim societies. I approach this issue from the perspectives of West European visitors to the Ottoman and Safavid Empires during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I show that these travelers encountered educated people capable of understanding and answering their visitors' scholarly qu…
Geographical Knowledge and Imperial Culture in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire
Towards A New Approach To Medieval Cross- Cultural Exchanges
This paper discusses the interpretive approach to cross-cultural transfer of knowledge as proposed by early twentieth-century scholars, in particular Charles Homer Haskins, and their successors after the Second World War. It describes this approach as teleological, linear, mono-cultural and static. It traces the changes that several historians of mathematics, science and medicine proposed to this type of observer narrative and shows that in the 1…
Mamluks and animals: Veterinary medicine in medieval Islam
This book is a revised version of Shehada's PhD thesis. It consists of an introduction, eight chapters, conclusion, bibliographies, and indices. The many illustrations appended to the book are help
Euclid's Elements , Courtly Patronage and Princely Education
The Persian tradition of Euclid's Elements is closely connected with the Arabic transmission of the work in Iran, Central Asia and India. This tradition has multiple starting points. Na īr al-Dīn ūsī's Arabic edition had a profound impact, but it was one of several Arabic versions that served as the basis for Persian translations. At the institutional level both the Arabic and the Persian traditions flourished in different spaces—at the courts, i…
Observations on Hermann of Carinthia's Version of the Elements and its Relation to the Arabic Transmission
This paper investigates the affiliation of Book I of the Latin translation of Euclid's Elements attributed to Hermann of Carinthia with the Arabic transmission of the Greek mathematical work. It argues that it is a translation of a text of the Arabic secondary transmission, that is, of an Arabic edition mixed with comments. Two methodological claims are made in the paper. The first insists that the determination of a text whose transmission was a…
Euklid
Das Kapitel 'ilm al-ariṯmāṭīqī aus der persischen Wissenshafts-Enzyklopädie von Faẖr ad-Dīn ar-Rāzī
British Society for the History of Science. Report of Council for the year 1996
Objects The primary objective for which the Society is established is to promote and further the study of the history and philosophy of science. Secondary objectives include the provision of facilities, the arrangement of meetings, the promotion of research and the publishing of papers; full details of all the objectives may be found in the Society's Memorandum of Association . Policies The main policy of the Society is to provide the infrastruct…
Crossing Boundaries: New Approaches to the History of “Pre-Modern“ Science and Technology
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The Interests of the Republic of Letters in the Middle East, 1550-1700
The ArgumentThe "raison d'être" of this paper is my dissatisfaction with current portrayals of the place and the fate of the so-called rational sciences in Muslim societies. I approach this issue from the perspectives of West European visitors to the Ottoman and Safavid Empires during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I show that these travelers encountered educated people capable of understanding and answering their visitors' scholarly qu…
Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science
Reviewed by: Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science* Sonja Brentjes (bio) Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science. Edited by Roshdi Rashed. 3 vols. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. $250. The Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science is the first current effort to describe and analyze a broad range of disciplinary topics in Arabic writings, instruments, and occasionally practices. Surprisingly little effort has been invested …
The sciences in Islamic societies (750–1800)
Introduction The study of the non-religious scholarly disciplines in Islamic societies has mostly focused on elite writings, instruments and, occasionally, images. A vertical historical approach that compares texts, tables or instruments produced at different places and times has prevailed over a horizontal approach that situates a scholar within the complex environment of his time and space. The vertical approach favoured the comparison between …
Observations on Hermann of Carinthia's Version of the Elements and its Relation to the Arabic Transmission
This paper investigates the affiliation of Book I of the Latin translation of Euclid's Elements attributed to Hermann of Carinthia with the Arabic transmission of the Greek mathematical work. It argues that it is a translation of a text of the Arabic secondary transmission, that is, of an Arabic edition mixed with comments. Two methodological claims are made in the paper. The first insists that the determination of a text whose transmission was a…
Oversimplifying the Islamic Scientific Tradition
Pietro Della Valle's Latin Geography of Safavid Iran (1624-1628): Introduction
This article argues that Pietro della Valle's Latin geography of the Safavid Empire is important for taking a middle ground between two common tendencies of early modern authors in Catholic and Protestant Europe when writing about Western Asia and Northern Africa. While cartographers and mapmakers—in Venice, Antwerp, Amsterdam, and Paris—privileged new information (from travelers) in their choice of place names, those who wrote on the history or …
El mecenazgo cortesano de las ciencias antiguas en las sociedades islámicas post-clásicas
Este artículo estudia el mecenazgo cortesano de las ciencias de los antiguos en determinadas sociedades post-clásicas del ámbito cultural árabe y persa. El autor muestra que un gran número de fuentes históricas cuestionan la idea, muy extendida, de que ese mecenazgo desapareciera en las sociedades post-clásicas, y analiza a ese respecto las similitudes y las diferencias entre los períodos clásico y post-clásico en general, y entre distintas dinas…
Euclid's Elements , Courtly Patronage and Princely Education
The Persian tradition of Euclid's Elements is closely connected with the Arabic transmission of the work in Iran, Central Asia and India. This tradition has multiple starting points. Na īr al-Dīn ūsī's Arabic edition had a profound impact, but it was one of several Arabic versions that served as the basis for Persian translations. At the institutional level both the Arabic and the Persian traditions flourished in different spaces—at the courts, i…
From Rhubarb to Rubies: European Travels to Safavid Iran (1550–1700) The Lands of the Sophi: Iran in Early Modern European Maps (1550–1700)
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Le commencement de l'algèbre . al-Khwārizmī , R. Rashed
Immediacy, Mediation, and Media in Early Modern Catholic and Protestant Representations of Safavid Iran
In this paper I argue that none of the sources produced by European visitors to Safavid Iran are unmediated, immediate expressions of observations, experiences, emotions and descriptions of the country's nature and culture. I offer as evidence different kinds of textual sources created by four travelers in the early seventeenth century, maps of Iran produced in various European cities and prints and engravings made by artists. I show that partly …
Patchwork – The Norm of Mapmaking Practices for Western Asia in Catholic and Protestant Europe As Well As in Istanbul Between 1550 and 1750
Eloges: Hans Wußing, 1927- 2011
Method, Structure, and Development in al-Fārābī’s Cosmology, by Damien Janos
Method, Structure, and Development in al-Fārābī ́s Cosmology, by Damien Janos (Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science, Texts and Studies: 85) (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2012), xiv + 433 pp., ISBN: 978-90-04-20615-1, â ¬161.00 / $221.00 (hb) (First paragraph) The present book is Janos ́ revised PhD thesis and consists of four chapters. The first chapter serves as an introduction and surveys in three sections followed by a fourth one reserved for c…
Mamluks and animals: Veterinary medicine in medieval Islam
This book is a revised version of Shehada's PhD thesis. It consists of an introduction, eight chapters, conclusion, bibliographies, and indices. The many illustrations appended to the book are help
Sancionar el conocimiento
En este artículo se estudian historias sobre gobernantes y príncipes de tres dinastías - ‛abbāsí, normanda y timurí – y su representación narrativa como conocedores de las ciencias matemáticas, la geografía y la historia. Se argumenta que constituyen un conjunto de formas positivas de aprobar o impugnar el conocimiento en esas sociedades, prescribiendo jerarquías de formas de conocimiento y jerarquías de gentes e instituciones que deciden acerca …
Towards A New Approach To Medieval Cross- Cultural Exchanges
This paper discusses the interpretive approach to cross-cultural transfer of knowledge as proposed by early twentieth-century scholars, in particular Charles Homer Haskins, and their successors after the Second World War. It describes this approach as teleological, linear, mono-cultural and static. It traces the changes that several historians of mathematics, science and medicine proposed to this type of observer narrative and shows that in the 1…
Geographical Knowledge and Imperial Culture in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire
Routes and Realms: The Power of Place in the Early Islamic World
Antrim's entry on the faculty page of Trinity College, Hartford, CT reveals. It consists of an introduction and three chapters (homeland, cities, regions). It purports to establish that there was a 'discourse of place' in a broad range of texts and a more limited range of images (i.e., maps) that were produced, mostly in Arabic, during the first centuries of the Abbasid dynasty.
Globalization of Knowledge in the Post-Antique Mediterranean, 700-1500
Travellers from Europe in the Ottoman and Safavid Empires, 16th–17th Centuries: Seeking, Transforming, Discarding Knowledge
This collection of Sonja Brentjes's articles deals with travels, encounters and the exchange of knowledge in the Mediterranean and Western Asia during the 16th and 17th centuries, focusing on three historiographical concerns. The first is how we should understand the relationship between Christian and Muslim societies, in the period between the translations from Arabic into Latin (10th - 13th centuries) and before the Napoleonic invasion of Ottom…
History (28 works) · Political science (18 works) · Islamic Studies and History (17 works) · Philosophy (17 works) · Art (15 works) · Historical and Linguistic Studies (14 works) · Law (14 works) · Ancient history (13 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Archaeology (11 works)