Superb thread on medieval Muslim conception of ishq/love (a legacy of Greek Galen) as a mental disease, and how it ought to be treated (according to al-Razi, with a lot of indiscriminate sex).

let me just quickly download this fascinating article so I can add it to the three identical versions already in my unread files

Today German radio (Deutschlandfunk) did a show on Avicenna, and I was interviewed for it, which was then translated into German. Here's the link! deutschlandfunk.de/islamischer-un…

On what qualifies as authorship with a skeptical outlook on poetry.

I still think about this breakfast I once had in Gümüşlük, Turkey

Dr. Elaine van Dalen Virginia Woolf begs to differ: “I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others at the same time.” goodreads.com/quotes/477731-…

"If you return to Damīra, it will be our perdition (dimār)." The writer of T-S 13J21.20 goes on to tell his relative, a physician in Cairo, that there are no more diseases in Damīra, hence no demand for his services. 1/2

New piece for History Compass by Yaron Ayalon on the plague in the premodern Middle East, focusing largely on the Ottoman Empire between the 16-18th centuries: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.111…

New issue of 𝐴𝑟𝑎𝑏𝑖𝑐 𝑆𝑐𝑖𝑒𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑃ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑜𝑝ℎ𝑦 is out. My paper "Avicenna on Grasping Mathematical Concepts" has appeared in this issue. Cambridge University Press - Philosophy Cambridge University Press - Academic cambridge.org/core/journals/…

We looked at this in my Islamic medicine class today. Ceramic bowl depicting a bloodletting, Seljuk, 13th century Museum for Islamic Art, Berlin Inv. Nr. I.4350

All are welcome to this two-day history of science confab next week, featuring Dimitri Gutas, Nahyan Fancy, Jane Murphy, Michael Noble and Hannah Erlwein, plus this poor wretch. There will be plenty of occult goodness, of course! islamicepistemology.com/2021/03/12/the…

Cairo in the 11th-13th centuries was the international capital of take-out food. But what did the menus look like? Wonder no more.

My old Munich colleague, Bethany Somma, has just had her (first!) book published: “Models of Desire in Graeco-Arabic Philosophy”. Congrats, Bethany! brill.com/view/title/599…

Transliteration troubles. Here Lynn Thorndike lists every variant he encountered of the name of the Sabian scholar Thābit Ibn Qurra (ثابت بن قره).

Next week I am excited to be looking forward to speaking on "Religion, Contagion, and Plague in the Pre-Modern Islamicate World" to the UIC Barcelona School of Architecture! All are welcome! uic.es/en/agenda/foro…

Abdallah ibn al-Fadl, Three physicians preparing medicine, from an Arabic translation of the Materia Medica of Dioscorides, 1224 clevelandart.org/art/1977.91.b #clevelandartmuseum #museumarchive