TARIKH WA TAMADDUN-I ISLAMI
Year:2014 | Volume:9 | Issue:18|Papers Count:11

Exilarch or Rosh Galut or ReishGaluta was the head of the Jewish Community in the Eastern regions and acted as the political and administrative moderator between the governments and their Jewish citizens. This post had an integrated political and administrative organization during Sassanian era and after that, it was also pursued in the basic structure of Islamic governments. This article provides a history of this institution in Sassanian era and then its evolution in the Islamic era and depicts an image of this institution including the mode of selecting the Exilarch, the customs of ascending the throne, his political, administrative and juridical duties and the way that this institution interacted with Islamic governments, based on the Islamic and Jewish resources.

Abul-Qasim Ramesht (d.534 AH) was a generous Iranian merchant who left lasting and prominent works in Mecca and other places, including the institution of a ribat (fortress) that was a place for investigation and education; the preparation of kiswat al Ka’aba (Ka’aba’s cover) and building a golden gutter for it. Although his achievements have been depicted in the Arabic sources, his biography and the description of his works were not hinted at Persian sources. This paper, by collecting the scattered information about Abul-QasimRamesht, attempts to introduce his Iranian merchant who is unknown today but was famous at his time. Thereby, to illuminate a part of Iranians’ contribution in the prosperity of Islamic civilization.

This article is a study on the Egypt endowed lands in the Mamluks era. The Mamluk officers formed a type of military dictatorship by absolute control over their Iqta’at and their profits. Consequently, they had always curbed the power of Sultans and later on, the powerful emirs were not satisfied with their own incomes and farms and invaded some of endowed lands. Furthermore, the military nature of the generals leads them to employ other political-economic methods, such as bribery to the endowed supervisors, aiming to increase their wealth and power. Therefore, Mamluk sultans took various policies in order to restrain and control the excessive power of Emirs and prevent their encroachments. For instance: taking endowed and habous from Shaf’ids and instead, giving them to the sultan, regent or one of the country, s reliable leader, such as Davadar Kabir; separating the duties of the divans of endowed and habous to control the endowed lands and appointing the supervisors of endowed lands by Sultan, were among the fruitless policies which caused the corruption and the social rebels.

During the Islamic middle ages, besiegement was considered as one of the most frequent forms of military action. In order to ruin the resistance of the castle and take down the strong fenced cities, the raiders used various tricks, techniques, tools, and devices. Using ballistic devices, especially catapults, was extremely effective and determinative at the time. This article provides a documental description of various attack and defense functions of heavy ballistic armaments in castle wars of the Islamic period and examines how the utilisation of these kinds of weapons as a common technique in castle wars, is affecting the outcome of military operations during this historical period. It also showed that the aim of applying these armaments, the physical and destructive operational power, was not the only thing relied on, but it was partly for their ability to spread fear and panic and as a result, pushing a kind of psychological warfare against the enemy.

The book Al-Shuhub al-Lami’a fi al-Siyasat al-Nafi’a is about the manner of governance, and the ways of ruling, written by Abdollah Ibn Yousef Ibn Ridwan Malaki that was the secretary and the scriber in the Marinid court. The book was required by the Sultan Abu salim Ibrahim Ibn Hassan Al-Marini. The thought of Ibn Ridwan is a political domination that is based on social justice by Sultan. The book has been written in four chapters: Introduction, introducing the book Al-Shuhub al-Lami’a fi al-Siyasat al-Nafi’a, The Political Thought of Ibn Ridwan and its Originality. This is a survey of his thoughts about the Sultan and domination, its sources and originality. This paper shows that Ibn Ridwan’s ideas were not originally structured and his book is based on the works of ‎Turtushi and Mawardi as well as other thinkers.

India is one of the most important territories for the nurture of elephants in the world. This huge animal, has always had a significant role in the lives of both, the people and the rulers of India. Muslim at their arriving in India realized that using the animals is one of the ways to achieve victory in political and military conflicts. One of the Muslim dynasties that followed the local Indian rulers to use elephants for military and political objectives, were the Sultans of Delhi (602-932A.H.). Elephant was considered as the symbol of royal power and glory. Having a large number of elephants in a battle proved the victory over the enemy. To show their greatness and political power and in order to utilize elephants astonishing power in battles, Sultans of Delhi paid attention to buy, nurture and employ this animal. This paper, studied the role of the elephants in the military achievements by Sultans of Delhi.

Designing auto fountains, in order to create different shapes at the designated intervals as well as their design principles and componentswas known as al-Avani al-Ajibah (magic dishes) that was a branch of Ilm al-hiyal (approximate equivalent of mechanic engineering). Like magic dishes, these auto fountains had outstanding features and worked by a hiddenmechanical system. The capability of creating the various shapes in each interruption at the specific intervals is the main feature of these auto fountains. In the book al-turuk al-Saniyya fi al-Alat al-Ruhaniyyah written by Taki al-Din Muhammad ibn ma’ruf Known as Rasid, the great scientist and well-known astronomer in tenth century, Istanbul, three kinds of these auto fountains have been mentioned. Since changing the shape of the fountains eruption had been done due to their hidden controlling system, it is necessary to study the auto component parts separately, for better understanding the mechanism of their operating systems. Three important parts of these mechanisms consist of Mizab, Mukallab and Nisf-o-Tarjahar that being introduced and studied in this paper.

History of Muslims’ medicine has been investigated from different point of views. A glimpse on the related works shows that the researchers’ approaches to medicine are influenced by a very limited and traditional definition of medicine that considered medicine only as a science. New approaches have been appeared in the field of medical history as a general sense in recent years. These new views are trying to show further dimensions of medicine as social aspects. However, these efforts depend on a critical bibliography shaped by new ideas simultaneously. In this article, the author has tried to submit such a bibliography by emphasizing the gender approaches.

The relationship between religion and civilization and the role of religion in the creation or development of civilizations have been echoed among many civilization historians and theorists. and even some of religiousscholars, produced a diverse range of pro- and counter-views. This article attempts to analyses the ideas of Malek Ben Nabi, an Algerian prominent thinker, about the relationship between religion and civilization. He is one the few Muslim thinkers whose studies and works focus on civilization, the role of religion in civilization and the relationship between them. In his perspective, the constituent elements of a civilization are: man, soil and time. But what is important as an underlying point is that existence of these elements solely will not create a civilisation.It needs to a synthesizer, which influenced the combination of those three elements. Historical analysis shows that the only thing which always has been followed by constructing a civilization is “religious thought”. Religious thought stimulates spirit of these elements and by combining them together, extract a production called civilization. Although creation of a civilization is subject to human civilizational zation will, this doesn’t happened but by human’s faith which calls for attempts and motivations. The civilization is the result of human’s interaction with soil in a specific period of time and in the light of religious thought.