Johannes Thomann
Biographic Data
| ID | 5988928 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Johannes Thomann |
| GIVEN NAMES | Johannes |
| FAMILY NAME | Thomann |
| SIGNATURE | THOMANN J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Asien-Orient-Institut , Universität Zürich , Rämistrasse 59 , Zürich 8001 , Switzerland |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 12 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
The Emergence of Arabic Scientific Terminology at the Eastern Contact Zone
Superstratum languages often become substratum languages after military defeats. This was the case with Middle Persian in the Islamic Empire. There were different phases of interference between Middle Persian and Arabic. For example, Middle Persian terms, especially in administration and technology, were borrowed into Arabic. Later, in the first decades of Abbasid rule, a new scientific terminology was developed in Arabic based on translations of…
Deconstructive Narratives, Decreasing Doublets, Deceptive Cadences, and the Design of Circles
While the beginning of the frame narrative in The Thousand and One Nights has generated many interpretations, its ending has gone almost unnoticed. This article discusses various narrative strategies for constructing an ending. The examples are taken from a corpus of texts consisting of the Arabic collection Alf layla wa-layla (“The Thousand and One Nights”) as it existed in the 9th/15th century and the so-called “orphan stories,” the tales Ḥannā…
Savage-Smith, Emilie/Swain, Simon/van Gelder, Geert Jan (Hrsg.)
Biographische Lexika bilden ein reich vertretenes Genre der vormodernen arabi-schen Literatur. Es umfasst eine Vielfalt an Auswahlkriterien und Anordnungs-prinzipien. Zu den frühesten spezialisierten biographischen Lexika gehörensolche über die in den Überliefererketten (asānīd, sg.isnād) der Berichte überTaten und Aussprüche (aḥādīṯ, sg.ḥadīṯ) des Propheten Muḥammad, seinerGefährten (ṣaḥāba) und der nachfolgenden Generation (ṭābiʿūn). Ein frühes…
Ritual Time, Civil Time, and Cosmic Time
Most studies on time in the premodern Islamic world have focused on philosophical and theological aspects of time. The present article concentrates on time practices in daily life. Iconic for Muslim time practices are the five daily prayers, the weekly Friday prayer, the yearly fasting in the month of Ramaḍān, and the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime. They all have the character of a time-out from everyday routine and are well char…
Paul Kunitzsch (1930‒2020)
With the passing of Paul Kunitzsch on May 7, 2020, in Munich, the field of Arabic studies has lost one of its great authorities, whose work has become a supporting pillar on which the study of the history of science in the Islamic world stands today. LifePaul Kunitzsch was born 14 July 1930 in Neu-Krüssow, a district part of the small town of Pritzwalk, about halfway between Berlin and Hamburg.1He was the eldest of two sons, born to Paul Kunitzsc…
Reck, Christiane
Sobieroj, Florian
The Second Revival of Astronomy in the Tenth Century and the Establishment of Astronomy as an Element of Encyclopedic Education
In the fourth/tenth century a great number of new intellectual centers appeared in the Islamic world, and an increase in the number of persons involved in production of written works on mathematics and astronomy took place. One such new center was Aleppo under the Ḥamdanid ruler Sayf al-Dawla. According to al-Qabīṣī the generosity of Sayf al-Dawla led to the situation that ignorant people pretended to be astronomers or astrologer. Therefore, al-Q…
Astrolabes as Eclipse Computers
The main topic of this article comprises four unpublished Arabic texts on astrolabe-like instruments for showing the conditions of eclipses. They are the earliest technical descriptions of eclipse computers in any language. The first text is a treatise by ʿAlī ibn ʿĪsā (ninth century) on a special astrolabe for lunar phases and eclipses. The second text is an anonymous redaction of the first text with some omissions and additions. The third text …
Die frühesten türkischen Übersetzungen von Tausendundeiner Nacht und deren Bedeutung für die arabische Textgeschichte
Despite the shoreless output of scholarly publications on the Thousand and One Nights in general, research on the textual history is comparatively limited. Given the small number of early Arabic manuscripts, evidence from early translations is crucial for any reconstruction of the Mamluk version of the Thousand and One Nights , written approximately between 1425 and 1500 CE. For some time, the existence of an early Turkish translation, extant in …
Early Persian Medical Works on Antisyphilitic Mercury Medicines
In this chapter, I examine the use of mercury with a special focus on its application as an ingredient in antisyphilitic medicines and therapies in a selection of medieval Persian scientific texts that represent either the earliest or the most influential works of their genre. Works examined include the earliest Persian pharmacological work, written by Abū Manṣūr Muwaffaq between 965 and 975 CE, which mentions mercury as a medicine against skin d…
Al-Fārābīs Kommentar zum Almagest in sekundärer Überlieferung bei Ibn aṣ-Ṣalāḥ
Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ (d. 1154 CE) wrote a critique on chapter V. 17 of al-Fārābī’s commentary on the Almagest, which is preserved in a unique MS in Mashhad. More than half of its text consists of literal quotations of al-Fārābī’s commentary, which previously was considered to be lost. A commentary on books IX–XIII of the Almagest, handed down anonymously in two MSS and recently discovered was attributed to al-Fārābī. Thomann 2010–2011. This assumption ca…
No prominent works on this page.
Early Persian Medical Works on Antisyphilitic Mercury Medicines
In this chapter, I examine the use of mercury with a special focus on its application as an ingredient in antisyphilitic medicines and therapies in a selection of medieval Persian scientific texts that represent either the earliest or the most influential works of their genre. Works examined include the earliest Persian pharmacological work, written by Abū Manṣūr Muwaffaq between 965 and 975 CE, which mentions mercury as a medicine against skin d…
Al-Fārābīs Kommentar zum Almagest in sekundärer Überlieferung bei Ibn aṣ-Ṣalāḥ
Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ (d. 1154 CE) wrote a critique on chapter V. 17 of al-Fārābī’s commentary on the Almagest, which is preserved in a unique MS in Mashhad. More than half of its text consists of literal quotations of al-Fārābī’s commentary, which previously was considered to be lost. A commentary on books IX–XIII of the Almagest, handed down anonymously in two MSS and recently discovered was attributed to al-Fārābī. Thomann 2010–2011. This assumption ca…
Die frühesten türkischen Übersetzungen von Tausendundeiner Nacht und deren Bedeutung für die arabische Textgeschichte
Despite the shoreless output of scholarly publications on the Thousand and One Nights in general, research on the textual history is comparatively limited. Given the small number of early Arabic manuscripts, evidence from early translations is crucial for any reconstruction of the Mamluk version of the Thousand and One Nights , written approximately between 1425 and 1500 CE. For some time, the existence of an early Turkish translation, extant in …
The Second Revival of Astronomy in the Tenth Century and the Establishment of Astronomy as an Element of Encyclopedic Education
In the fourth/tenth century a great number of new intellectual centers appeared in the Islamic world, and an increase in the number of persons involved in production of written works on mathematics and astronomy took place. One such new center was Aleppo under the Ḥamdanid ruler Sayf al-Dawla. According to al-Qabīṣī the generosity of Sayf al-Dawla led to the situation that ignorant people pretended to be astronomers or astrologer. Therefore, al-Q…
Astrolabes as Eclipse Computers
The main topic of this article comprises four unpublished Arabic texts on astrolabe-like instruments for showing the conditions of eclipses. They are the earliest technical descriptions of eclipse computers in any language. The first text is a treatise by ʿAlī ibn ʿĪsā (ninth century) on a special astrolabe for lunar phases and eclipses. The second text is an anonymous redaction of the first text with some omissions and additions. The third text …
Reck, Christiane
Sobieroj, Florian
Ritual Time, Civil Time, and Cosmic Time
Most studies on time in the premodern Islamic world have focused on philosophical and theological aspects of time. The present article concentrates on time practices in daily life. Iconic for Muslim time practices are the five daily prayers, the weekly Friday prayer, the yearly fasting in the month of Ramaḍān, and the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in a lifetime. They all have the character of a time-out from everyday routine and are well char…
Paul Kunitzsch (1930‒2020)
With the passing of Paul Kunitzsch on May 7, 2020, in Munich, the field of Arabic studies has lost one of its great authorities, whose work has become a supporting pillar on which the study of the history of science in the Islamic world stands today. LifePaul Kunitzsch was born 14 July 1930 in Neu-Krüssow, a district part of the small town of Pritzwalk, about halfway between Berlin and Hamburg.1He was the eldest of two sons, born to Paul Kunitzsc…
Savage-Smith, Emilie/Swain, Simon/van Gelder, Geert Jan (Hrsg.)
Biographische Lexika bilden ein reich vertretenes Genre der vormodernen arabi-schen Literatur. Es umfasst eine Vielfalt an Auswahlkriterien und Anordnungs-prinzipien. Zu den frühesten spezialisierten biographischen Lexika gehörensolche über die in den Überliefererketten (asānīd, sg.isnād) der Berichte überTaten und Aussprüche (aḥādīṯ, sg.ḥadīṯ) des Propheten Muḥammad, seinerGefährten (ṣaḥāba) und der nachfolgenden Generation (ṭābiʿūn). Ein frühes…
Deconstructive Narratives, Decreasing Doublets, Deceptive Cadences, and the Design of Circles
While the beginning of the frame narrative in The Thousand and One Nights has generated many interpretations, its ending has gone almost unnoticed. This article discusses various narrative strategies for constructing an ending. The examples are taken from a corpus of texts consisting of the Arabic collection Alf layla wa-layla (“The Thousand and One Nights”) as it existed in the 9th/15th century and the so-called “orphan stories,” the tales Ḥannā…
The Emergence of Arabic Scientific Terminology at the Eastern Contact Zone
Superstratum languages often become substratum languages after military defeats. This was the case with Middle Persian in the Islamic Empire. There were different phases of interference between Middle Persian and Arabic. For example, Middle Persian terms, especially in administration and technology, were borrowed into Arabic. Later, in the first decades of Abbasid rule, a new scientific terminology was developed in Arabic based on translations of…
Philosophy (11 works) · History (9 works) · Art (7 works) · Classics (6 works) · Linguistics (6 works) · Arabic (5 works) · Historical Astronomy and Related Studies (5 works) · Literature (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Historical and Linguistic Studies (4 works)