ljal

This month, the Maxwell Institute’s Middle Eastern Texts Initiative inaugurates a new series called the Library of Judeo-Arabic Literature. We’re very pleased to announce the first title in the series is now available: Twenty Chapters, by Dawud al-Muqammas, translated by Sarah Stroumsa. Stroumsa is the Alice and Jack Ormut Professor of Arabic Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. We’ve invited her to answer a few questions to introduce you to the new book and series. Dr. Stroumsa, your translation of Twenty Chapters is the first publication in the Library of Judeo-Arabic Literature. What is Judeo-Arabic?Sarah Stroumsa

On behalf of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship, I am pleased to announce the addition of an important new series to our Middle Eastern Texts Initiative (METI). The series, to be called the Library of Judeo-Arabic Literature (LJAL), will publish works written by Jewish authors living within the Islamic world of the Middle Ages. At the invitation of James T. Robinson, a professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School, and David Sklare, of the Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem, an international team of scholars has come together to advise on the selection and review of texts to appear in this series, which will feature the same dual-language format as other METI publications like the Islamic Translation Series and Eastern Christian Texts. The bilingual format makes primary texts and expert translations simultaneously available to experts, students, and general readers alike. Texts will be selected from across the entire range of genres represented in Judeo-Arabic literature, including philosophy, theology, Biblical interpretation, history, and many other genres.