His Pen and Ink are a Powerful Mirror is a volume of collected essays in honor of Ross Brann, written by his students and friends on the occasion of his 70th birthday. The essays engage with a diverse range of Andalusi and Mediterranean literature, art, and history. Each essay begins from the organic hybridity of Andalusi literary and cultural history as its point of departure, introduce new texts, ideas, and objects into the disciplinary conversation or radically reassesses well-known ones, and represent the theoretical, methodological, and material impacts Brann has had and continues to have on the study of the literature and culture of Jews, Christians, and Muslims in al-Andalus.
The book may be ordered through Brill’s web site.
Table of Contents:
Ali H. Akhtar, Bates College. Legislating Borders: Naturalized Genoese and Sefardi Merchants in the Ottoman Mediterranean.
Esperanza Alfonso, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. The Headings of the Psalms: A Case Study in Medieval Exegesis and Translation.
Peter Cole, Yale University. An Iberian Braid for Ross.
Jonathan Decter, Brandeis University. Panegyric as Pedagogy: Moses ibn Ezra’s Didactic Poem on the “Beautiful Elements of Poetry” (maḥāsin al-shi‘r) in the Context of Classical Arabic Poetics.
Elisabeth Hollender, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt-am-Main. Sefarad in Tzarfat: Sefardi and Sefardi-Style Piyyutim in MS Bernkastel-Kues 313.
Uriah Kfir, Ben Gurion University of the Negev. Solomon vs. Solomon: A Fabrication of a Hebrew Polemic.
S.J. Pearce, New York University. “His (Jewish) Nation … and His (Muslim) King”: Modern Nationalism Articulated through Medieval Andalusi Poetry.
F.E. Peters, New York University. Inscribing the Good News: The Run-Up to Mark.
Arturo Prats Oliván, Complutense University of Madrid. Fifteenth-Century Hebrew Literature: Some Reflections on Textual Transmission for a Modern Edition.
Cynthia Robinson, Cornell University. Desert and Palace: Poetics of Place in Naṣrid Poems to the Prophet.
Tova Rosen, Tel Aviv University. The Story of the Crude Preacher by Jacob ben Elʿazar.
Aurora Salvatierra, University of Granada. Ohev Nashim and Minḥat Yehudah Soneʾ ha-Nashim: New Fragments of a Debate.
Raymond P. Scheindlin, Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Ḥever the Pious: Some Aspects of Religion in the Taḥkemoni by Judah al-Ḥarīzī.
Jessica Streit, College of Charleston. Well-Ordered Growth: Meanings and Aesthetics of the Almohad Mosque of Seville.
Shawkat M. Toorawa, Yale University. A Translation of Q Luqmān/31.
David Torollo, King’s College, London. The Story of the Female Jewish Wine Merchant: An Example of Cultural Translation in Medieval Hebrew Literature.
Title Information:
Cover Image Information:
Late 11th-century letter from the Jewish community of Granada; the writers identify themselves as coming from “the city of our teacher, Samuel ha-Nagid and his son Joseph.” Cambridge University Library T-S 20.24 f.1r. Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.