{"product_id":"the-republic-of-arabic-letters-islam-and-the-european-enlightenment","title":"The Republic of Arabic Letters: Islam and the European Enlightenment","description":"Fascinating  eloquent  and learnedA powerful reminder of the ability of scholarship to transcend cultural divides  and the capacity of human minds to accept differences without denouncing them.Maya Jasanoff  author of The Dawn Watch and Libertys Exile  In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries  a pioneering community of Christian scholars laid the groundwork for the modern Western understanding of Islamic civilization. These men produced the first accurate translation of the Quran into a European language  mapped the branches of the Islamic arts and sciences  and wrote Muslim history using Arabic sources. The Republic of Arabic Letters reconstructs this process  revealing the influence of Catholic and Protestant intellectuals on the secular Enlightenment understanding of Islam and its written traditions.  Drawing on Arabic  English  French  German  Italian  and Latin sources  Alexander Bevilacquas rich intellectual history retraces the routesboth mental and physicalthat Christian scholars traveled to acquire  study  and comprehend Arabic manuscripts. The knowledge they generated was deeply indebted to native Muslim traditions  especially Ottoman ones. Eventually the translations  compilations  and histories they produced reached such luminaries as Voltaire and Edward Gibbon  who not only assimilated the factual content of these works but wove their interpretations into the fabric of Enlightenment thought.  The Republic of Arabic Letters shows that the Western effort to learn about Islam and its religious and intellectual traditions issued not from a secular agenda but from the scholarly commitments of a select group of Christians. These authors cast aside inherited views and bequeathed a new understanding of Islam to the modern West.","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44901344903221,"sku":"ByrdShop_0674975928","price":92.52,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/ByrdShop_0674975928.jpg?v=1767696223","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-republic-of-arabic-letters-islam-and-the-european-enlightenment","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}