Jewish and Muslim intellectual cultures are deeply enmeshed: they developed in conversation with one another, and the echoes of that dialogue can be detected in Islamic and Jewish thought to this day.
This event will provide a closer look at some examples of Jewish-Muslim intellectual exchange in the medieval period.
DR RAPHAEL DASCALU (Adjunct Research Fellow, ACJC)
‘Ala al-Din al-Muwaqqit, a 14th century Muslim scholar suspected of heresy, and a significant figure in the elite intellectual circles of Ḥalab (Aleppo), Syria, whose sole surviving work is a vast commentary on the dominant Jewish legal code of his time, Moses Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah
DR AYDOGAN KARS (Lecturer, Monash Centre for Religious Studies)
Andalusian Muslim polymath Batalyawsi (d.1126) whose philosophical work, The Book of Gardens, was translated many times from Arabic into Hebrew, and was widely read and cited by Jewish intellectuals in a rich variety of Biblical commentaries and halachic works.
We will consider how this history of intellectual collaboration might point us towards more robust and fruitful interreligious and intercultural dialogue in the present.
We will consider how this history of intellectual collaboration might point us towards more robust and fruitful interreligious and intercultural dialogue in the present.
A/PROF (PRACTICE) REBECCA FORGASZ will moderate the event and offer reflections on the contemporary relevance of this historical scholarship.