- In “Intellectual Practice and Manuscript Culture in Early Islamic North Africa” (Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā), Clément Salah (University of Oxford ) “examines the figure of Abū al-ʿArab al-Qayrawānī (d. 333/945) as a scribe-scholar in early Islamic North Africa, situating his manuscripts within the broader history of intellectual and material practices in Ifrīqiya.” The article argues that “the material labor of copying was central to the formation and transmission of scholarly authority in Kairouan. More broadly, it demonstrates how the study of manuscript culture reshapes our understanding of scholarly practice and authority in the Islamic West.”
- In “The Spirit of God’s Laws: The Diffusion of Distilled Liquors in the East Mediterranean Through Hanafi Normative Texts” (Der Islam), Marwan El-Asmar (independent scholar) suggests that the spreads of distilled liquors in Western Europe and East Asia were two independent phenomena since any transfer between the two regions should have been visible in the East Mediterranean before the 16th century” and “shows that several geographies located between Western Europe and East Asia, including the East Mediterranean, may have experienced a diffusion of distilled liquors originating from East Asia.” [login required]