Like all religions Islam, too, has substantial ethical contents. The unique character of Islamic ethics, however, comes from the fact that it is entirely rooted in religion and so cannot be separated from it. Thus it is formed by the teaching of the Quran, to which the way of life of the Prophet Muhammad (sunnah) offers explanations. Man’s behavior in this sense is an act of either obedience or disobedience to God himself. It is also true that in the Muslim world a philosophical conception of ethics has evolved mainly due to Islam’s encounter with Greek culture. The central concept of Islamic ethics is character (khuluq), which is the state of man’s soul. It is in his character that man develops a tendency to perform either good or bad actions. Such understanding of human dispositions has much to do with Aristotle’s perception of man’s inner state that guides him to good or evil actions. These preliminary basic clarifications on Islamic ethics are then followed by brief accounts of select issues of moral life. Among those there are three main virtues (justice, kindness, charity) and vices (indecency, wickedness, oppression), marriage and the family, or the sanctity of human life (implying an ethical rejection of abortion and euthanasia).

The paper outlines the possible repercussions of the strong presence of Islamic representatives in Europe at the beginning of the 21st century. The percentage of Muslims in Europe increased from 2% in 1950 to 6% in 2020. The reception of the new wave of Muslim migration to the Old Continent leads to predictable consequences. Two scenarios can be considered. One of them is the growing perception of the threat from the increasing Muslim population in Europe. Another possible solution is their gradual integration. For both scenarios, clear premises based on known facts, socio-political decisions, ratified agreements and declarations of decision makers are presented. Discussions have been held on the emerging stereotypes that indicate an aversion to the growing presence of Islam on the Old Continent. Practices implemented to integrate the Muslim community have also been presented.

Benedict XVI, as the Supreme Shepherd of the Church and the head of the Vatican state (Vatican City), maintained contacts with representatives of the authorities of Muslim countries or those dominated by Islamic culture. He supported and built good relations between representatives of different religions, including Islam, through openness and honesty in the interreligious dialogue and bearing witness to the essential values of Christianity and Islam – justice and peace. In the article, we indicated the essence, purpose and challenges of interreligious dialogue, especially dialogue with Islam. People and environments involved in its conduct should be guided by the idea of searching for the true good of man and society. At the same time, it is important to remain faithful to one’s own religious identity, especially on the doctrinal level. Dialogue, in fact, should aim, first of all, at seeking the truth and bearing witness to it. This will only be possible if you respect your own faith and show respect for the identity of the followers of Islam. In the dialogue with Islam, the most important is Almighty God, who must be given his rightful place. For faith in one God obliges His believers to be responsible for peace. Benedict XVI’s theory of dialogue found confirmation in the papal meetings, either with the “world of Islam” or with various bodies (ecclesiastical, political, people involved in the so-called dialogue of specialists). For Benedict XVI, the most important criterion for dialogue was fidelity to Christian identity.

Since the beginning of islam in the 7th century christians and Muslims have been a permanent challenge for themselves. the confrontation and the closeness which accompany them through the entire history are rooted in the universal and monotheistic character of both religions. From the christian point of view it would be diffcult to talk about interreligious dialogue or at least its modern developments, without the Second Vatican council (1962–1965) and the declaration nostra aetate. The council recognized in it the spiritual, moral and cultural values present in different religions, emphasizing spiritual and moral values between Muslim and christians. For the frst time in the history of the Catholic Church, the council’s fathers offcially called for the co-operation with Muslims. This is the starting point of the real dialogue between Christians and Muslims.

This article attempts to describe and analyse – in three parts – some aspects of the dialogical initiatives of Christian-Muslim relations. A greater part of it refers to the Roman Catholic Church, but some examples of interpretation and dialogical initiatives of the Orthodox and protestant churches are included as well. Islam as a point of reference is taken as a whole. After a short introduction containing a general defnition of dialogue and its interreligious form the frst part deals with historical facts which shaped the dialogical attitudes. The selected historical facts build a background for some theological ideas on islam in orthodox, catholic and protestant traditions. The second part focuses on the practical aspects of dialogue – its forms and representative institutions, i.e. the pontifcal council for interreligious Dialogue, World council of churches and Orthodox center of the ecumenical patriarch in chambésy which are engaged in the dialogue on behalf of the main christian churches. The third part offers some ideas concerning aarguments for dialogue, its effciency and quality which might be important for the future of dialogue. The modern history of Christian-Muslim relations shows that the dialogue between adherents of these two largest religions is possible despite that it is not an easy undertaking. the author underlines that there is no alternative to dialogue as there is no better way to defeat prejudices and heal the wounds of the past.

The factor that stimulated the thought of ethical justification of warfare in medieval Europe was among others expansion of Islam. At the beginning of the Islamic religion, its believers were deeply convinced by the ideas coming from the pages of Koran dictated by prophet Mohammed, the words which encouraged them to convert infidels. The fact is that during the lifetime of Mohammed, Muslims bent to their own will many Arabic tribes and just after his death they had a greater part of the Arabian Peninsula in their hands. In 711 they crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and started conquering the Iberian Peninsula. In the meantime, in Europe, people who, on account of their public role, were supposed to have a wider perspective of the world issues, were aware of the dangers which Islam caused. The fight for preservation of the Latin civilization caused thus far an unprecedented inner consolidation of armed, political and intellectual forces of those times. In this way the epoch of the crusades began.

Kultura południa Hiszpanii oparta została na zdobyczach cywilizacyjnych chrześcijan, wandalów i imperium muzułmańskiego. Stanowi ona przykład współistnienia różnych kultur i wierzeń. Okres jej największego rozwoju datowany jest na czas panowania kalifa Abd ar – Rahmana i jego następcy Hakma II, jednak najsłynniejsze obiekty, będące najlepiej zachowanymi przykładami architektury i sztuki ogrodowej Islamu, powstały w wieku XIV, kiedy to następował powolny upadek emiratu ze stolicą w Grenadzie. Wówczas wzniesione zostały takie zespoły pałacowo – parkowe jak Alhambra i letni pałac Generalife. Celem artykułu jest zaprezentowanie najważniejszych osiągnięć arabskiej sztuki ogrodowej południa Hiszpanii. Autorka omawia wybrane założenia ogrodowe Andaluzji opisując ich historię, kompozycję i zastosowaną roślinność ze szczególnym podkreśleniem jej symboliki.

At the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first century, the field of Arabic and Islamic studies became enriched by a number of multi-facetted scholarly theories challenging the traditional account on the early centuries of Islam. An author of one of them was the Israeli scholar Yehuda D. Nevo (1932–1992), working in archaeology, epigraphy and historiography. He devoted much of his career to the studying of Arabic rock inscriptions in the Negev desert, as well as to investigating literary and numismatic evidence of nascent Islam. In his theory, the gradual development of the Islamic faith, inspired by Abrahamism with an admixture of Judeo-Christianity, went through a stage of “indeterminate monotheism”. Not earlier than since the end of the second century A.H. one can speak of the formation of the dogmatic pillars of Islam, similar to those we know today. This paper is an attempt to sum up Nevo’s insightful input into the field of modern Islamic & Quranic studies today. Although controversial and unorthodox, many later researchers repeatedly refered to Nevo’s plenty of inspiring theses in their quest for facts on Islamic genesis lost in the maze of time and shifting memory of generations.

The article highlights the significance of the first full English translation of Naqd al-Hitāb ad-Dīnī (Critique of Religious Discourse), one of the most characteristic and important works of the acclaimed Egyptian intellectual Nāsr Hāmid Abū Zayd (1943–2010). The work was firstly published in 1992 by Sīnā li-an-Našr in Cairo, coinciding with the beginning of the so-called Case of Abū Zayd (1992–1995), the campaign of Egyptian fundamentalists against the scholar. Abū Zayd’s critique of the dominant discourses and worldviews in the Arab world, created both by the Islamic fundamentalists and so-called Islamic left, has gained huge acclaim in the international academia but so far there has not been a full translation of the work into English (also taking into account the important role of the full German edition published by Chérifa Magdi and Navid Kermani in 1996). In 2018 Jonathan Wright’s translation was published by Yale University Press in the series “World Thought in Translation”. The edition was enriched by Carool Kersten’s scholarly introduction. The following article discusses the translation dilemma regarding Naqd… (e.g. problems with finding equivalents for Arabic semiotic and hermeneutical terminology utilised by the Egyptian scholar), giving examples of the choices made by the translator. Adding to it, the more general issues of the impact of Abū Zayd’s work on the contemporary rereading of Arab-Islamic turāt are analysed.

At first glance mathematics and art might appear very distant, perhaps even directly opposed to one another, but the fact is that they have quite a lot in common. How are they interlinked, and what do these links tell us?

The present paper analyses the self-portrait of Isabelle Eberhardt emerging from the letters she wrote to three men: her brother Augustin de Moerder, her friend Ali Abdul Wahab and her husband Slimène Ehnni. The paper is divided into three parts. The first one discusses her desire of Orient, the second shows her will of annihilating herself and the last one focuses on the power of the desert which helps the writer to find the desired calm.

Throughout the period between the 11th and 15th centuries, Christian and Arabic countries as well as territorial dominions, although faced with feudal political chaos, managed to take joint action against pirates. Piracy was unanimously treated as a major risk both to inshore safety and safety at sea, as well as to trade and economic growth. Attempts were made to establish institutional framework for prosecuting the pirates and setting terms under which respective counties would remain legally liable. International treaties had laid foundations for the aforementioned framework and imposed certain liabilities on the countries. A number of treaties concluded during the period under discussion and published by an archivist in the 19th century enables modern researchers to get to know the Law of Nations created somewhere in between the Islamic and European legal cultures.

Matematyka i sztuka wydają się bardzo odległe, wręcz przeciwstawne, jednak w rzeczywistości łączy je bardzo wiele. Jakie są te związki i z czego wynikają?

This paper makes a contribution to food research and studies of mobility through analyzing food exchange in a translocal context. Furthermore, by focusing on Muslim women’s practices in the North Caucasus it also contributes to gender studies of post-socialism, which, for the most part, are based on the field material from the non-Muslim part of the Russian population. Anthropologists have viewed social changes through the lens of various food items or consumption patterns. I argue that adding a mobility aspect to the research centered on food can help us discover social changes and practices that may otherwise remain unnoticed. I will show that studying the dynamics of food circulation and human mobility may serve as a good starting point towards the broader study of societies. Thus, by taking people originating from the Shiri village in Daghestan as an example, I look into channels of food sharing to analyze the nature of reproduction of social relations within communities and the cultural entanglements created by the circulation of goods. Furthermore, the analysis of their vernacular practices reveals the existence of informal exchange networks, in particular the ones secured by and for women. Through these networks, food and favors are exchanged, and social bonds and feelings of obligation are created and preserved. Further analysis also reveals social changes connected with mountain abandonment, in particular the growing awareness of the weakening of tukhum (lineage) and village ties. These dynamics reflect recent changes in the Daghestani society that are connected with increased mobility and the processes of (re)islamization.

In Old Polish texts as well as in later works written in the Old Polish style (e.g. in the Trilogy by H. Sienkiewicz), the name bachmat was used to describe a horse of the Tatar breed, characterized by its small size but incredible endurance. An analogous term ( бахматъ) can be found in the literature of Old Rus’. There is no doubt that it is an orientalism, which entered into both the Old Russsian language and – through it or independently – the Polish language and here from one of the Tatar dialects. Among the explanations for its etymology, the most interesting seems one connecting it with the term Бохмитъ, i.e., a variant of Muhammad’s name, characteristic for the literature of Old Rus’. The article aims to determine when the term бахматъ could have entered the literature of Old Rus’, how widespread it was, in what contexts it appeared, and whether it is possible to show a connection between the studied

Im Koran wird eine Religionsgemeinschaft der Sabier genannt. Damit können aus lautlichen Gründen nicht die südarabischen Sabäer gemeint sein, wie man früher geglaubt hat. Heute werden nach Meinung vieler Gelehrter die Mandäer mit den Sabiern in Verbindung gebracht. Die Berichte über die Sabier stimmen aber weitgehend nicht mit den religiösen Vorstellungen und rituellen Handlungen der Mandäer überein. In der Literatur der Mandäer kommt die Selbstbezeichnung „Sabier“ nicht vor. Deshalb verbergen sich hinter diesem Namen mit großer Wahrscheinlichkeit die Elchasaiten oder eine samaritanische Sekte. Die Verwendung des Namens machte aber die Mandäer unangreifbar und sie konnten als Sabier des Korans und Besitzer eines Buches, das von Johannes geoffenbart wurde, bis auf den heutigen Tag im Herzen der islamischen Welt als einzige gnostische Religionsgemeinschaft überleben.

The paper presents how the pluralism of relations in the early Muslim sources concerning the memory the Qādisiyya narrative is problematic for reconstructing the event of the battle by modern scholars. Specific studies of the early Islamic sources concerning the Battle of Al-Qādisiyya lead to the conclusion that it is certainly easier to interpret the functions of particular topoi than to determinate the facts about the Maʿrakat al-Qādisiyya. The main, unsolved questions related to the Qādisiyyah narrative are the uncertainty of the date of the battle, the size of the Muslim and Persian forces that fought in the Maʿrakat al-Qādisiyya as well as some contradictions and different presentations of the battle. Scholars have undertaken many attempts to make the conflicting accounts more coherent but in fact, they only made some speculations or, at the best, case scenario – explanations made on the basis of limited and uncertain evidence. For these reasons, the paper contains the suggestion to avoid an undue emphasis on the importance of the Maʿrakat al-Qādisiyya and to replace this term by the more general expression “the Mesopotamian campaign 634–637.” The critical evaluation of the Muslim sources leads to a more general description of the Battle of Al-Qādisiyya as an element of the campaign (stage 634–637) whose unambiguous evaluation is impossible.

This article discusses an unknown tradition from the Malay Archipelago, namely the island of Lombok. The article describes a spirit possession ceremony, as it was practised in East Lombok before being subject to a ban in 1984. It also explains the reasons for prohibition and explores a recent revival of the tradition. The discussion draws a parallel with similar traditions from late colonial Malaysia. Aside from similar functions as healing rites, the traditions many times use the same ceremonial equipment during the ceremonies and have identical symbols. This encourages us to look for connections between the Sasaks in Lombok and the Malays in Malaysia and Sumatra. The article suggests some direct connections between the two, but also takes indirect connections into consideration, for example, the rule of the Bugis-Makassarese people, who played an important role in both of these corners of the archipelago.

In and around the 13th century, two eastern authors describe the island of Sicily from different perspectives but with the common purpose of linking it to the Arab and Islamic world it had belonged to. Both describe the place with varied images which combine the real physical aspects with fantasy, and which show natural landscapes, both urban and rural, dominated by the presence of the great volcano. The study of this island using its landscapes as a key allows us to investigate the ideological processes of the authors who describe it. Al-Qazwīnī and Al-Harawī undertake a literary itinerary in which the images of idealization and Islamization or sanctification of the island are crystallised.

In this short paper, nine formerly unpublished rayed lamps from south-eastern Turkey, eight from Mardin and one from Malatya are being presented, belonging to a well-known type, starting from the end of the sixth century A.D., which became particularly widespread in the eighth century A.D. The article adds to a group of ‘rayed’ lamps from the Near East next few examples found in less accessible museums in Turkey and it also includes a useful historical sketch of the region during the Byzantine and Early Islamic period. The publication of these new specimens is valuable as the material from this area of modern Turkey is rarely published. While waiting for research on the many further lamps that are likely to be found in numerous museums to be published, this contribution helps us understand the variety of lamps and their area of diffusion, which stretches from northern Mesopotamia down to Palestine, including south-eastern Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Israel.

The paper exemplifies chosen textual variants extant in Qur’an versions in the Islamic world, focusing on printed readings according to Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim and Warš ʿan Nāfiʿ, against the historical background of Ibn Muǧāhid’s qirā’āt reform (10th century C.E.). The studied issue is part of and sheds light on a broader problem – the quest after elaborating a critical text edition of the Qur’anic text based on the oldest and best manuscripts. The preliminary conclusion is that neither Ibn Muǧāhid nor the oldest, surviving works by Muslim scholars devoted to the Qur’anic qirā’āt did actually record the factual state of the oral tradition from the 7th century, but that the variants of the oral tradition as codified in the 10th century have their origin only in the late written tradition (probably also only from the 10th century, possibly not much older).

This article deals with Janusz Makarczyk’s bestselling historical romance Jafar of Baghdad, first published in 1950. Makarczyk had a varied career as a journalist, travel writer of the ‘globtrotter school’, military officer, diplomat and academic; his deep involvement with the Middle East and Arab history began in the 1926 when he was sent to the Polish consulate in Jerusalem. The life of Jafar ibn Yahya provided him not only with enough material for a gripping story of love and romance but also a pretext for painting a broad canvas of historical events and personages. Addressed to younger readers, the book is didactic in the sense that it offers them basic information about Islam (e.g. the division between the sunni and the shia) as well as lots of facts about the Arab world at the peak of the Abbasid Age (e.g. Harun al-Rashid and the struggle for his succession; rise and fall of the powerful Barmakid family, Harun al-Rashid’s half-sister Abassa; the great Islamic jurists Malik ibn Anas, Muhammad al-Shaybani and Al-Shafi ‘i; an assortment of poets and scholars, including the translator Ibn al-Muqaffa). In addition to countless allusions to the Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, the narrative is encrusted with explicit and covert quotes from the Qur’an, Arabic adages and proverbs (32), the poems of Abu-l-’Atahiya and Abu Nuwas. The writer is aware that the allusions and learned references need to be contextualized in a way that is functional and that their incorporation into the main text must be handled with maximum flexibility. The great popularity of Jafar of Baghdad in its time can be taken as proof that Makarczyk did succeed in bringing the two functions of his novel, the cognitive and the aesthetic – to instruct and to please – into a harmonious whole.