Etan Kohlberg

Etan Kohlberg

Etan Kohlberg ( Hebrew איתן קולברג; * 1943 in Tel-Aviv ) is an Israeli professor emeritus of Arabic language and literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . He is one of the best experts on the Schia , especially the Twelve Schia , and the Sufi literature.

Life

Etan Kohlberg is the son of a pharmacist. In his childhood he learned music theory and playing the piano. He spent his school days in Tel Aviv and New York and began studying Arabic as a teenager. From 1963 he studied English and Arabic at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with Meir Jacob Kister , David Ayalon and Joshua Blau , among others . After obtaining the first and second academic degrees (both with summa cum laude ) he received his doctorate from 1969–1971 at Oxford University with a dissertation on the relationship between the Twelve Shia and the companions of Muhammad. From 1972 until his retirement in 2006 he was a member of the faculty, since 1991 as a full professor , at the Department of Arabic Language and Literature at the Hebrew University. He gave lectures, seminars and courses on Koran exegesis , classical Shiite literature, Sufi texts, Islamic martyrs of the Middle Ages and Arabic calligraphy . 1978-1979 he held a teaching position at Yale University and was twice research assistant at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey . In 1993 he was appointed a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences . In 2008 he was awarded the Rothschild Prize for Humanities and the EMET Prize for Oriental Studies.

Etan Kohlberg is married to the violinist Bat-Sheva Savaldi-Kohlberg . His son Yaron Kohlberg (* 1983) is a pianist with an international career.

Scientific work

In his books and articles, Etan Kohlberg deals, among other things, with the thought, history and religious literature of the Twelve Shiah and the Imamites , with Taqīya in Shiite theology and religion. He wrote a monograph on the Shiite scholar Sa'id Ibn Tawus (1193-1266), who lived in the Abbasid capital at the time of the conquest of Baghdad by the Mongol ruler Hülägü . With the Iranian-French Islamic scholar and Shia expert Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi , he has published notes on the history of the Koran text under the title Revelation and Falsification . He has written several articles for the Encyclopædia Iranica and the Encyclopaedia of Islam .

Publications

• The Development of the Imami Shi'i Doctrine of jihad . In: Journal of the German Oriental Society , 126/1 (1976), pp. 64–86 = BL, art. XV. Reprinted in: Shiism , ed. Colin Turner and Paul Luft. Routledge, 2007.
• From Imāmiyya to Ithnā-ʿAshariyya . In: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , 39, 1976, pp. 521-534. - Reprinted in Abdullah Saeed (ed.): Islamic Political Thought and Governance. Critical Concepts in Political Science . 4 volumes. Routledge, London / New York 2011, Volume I, pp. 319-332.
• Jawami adab al-sufiyya wa-uyub al-nafs wa-mudawatuha by Abu Abd al-Rahman al-Sulami (d. 412 H). Edited with an introduction and indexes. 28 pp. (English) + 124 p. (Arabic). The Max Schloessinger Memorial Series, Texts 1, Jerusalem 1976. Reproduced (with Persian translation of the introduction). In: Nasrallah Purjawadi: Majmui'a-i Áthar-i Abu 'Abd al-Rahman Sulami , I, Markaz-i Nashr-i Danishgahi, Tehran 1990.
• Belief and Law in Imami Shi'ism . Variorum Reprints, Aldershot 1991 [= BL]. x + 352 p.
• A Medieval Muslim Scholar at Work: Ibn Tawus and His Library . Brill, Leiden 1992. ix + 470 p. Persian translation (by Sayyid Ali Qarai and Rasul Ja'fariyan), January 1993. 771 p. Partial view (PDF)
• (With Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi): Revelation and Falsification: The / Kitab al-Qira'at / of Ahmad b. Muhammad al-Sayyari . Critical edition with introduction and comments. Brill, Texts and Studies on the Qur'an, Leiden / Boston 2009. 363 pp. (English) + 201 pp. (Arabic) partial view (PDF)
• Shi'ism . Volume 33 of The Formation of the Classical Islamic World , General Editor: Lawrence I. Conrad. Aldershot 2003.
• (With Ella Landau-Tasseron and David Shulman): Classical and South Asian Islam: Essays in Honor of Yohanan Friedmann (Volume 33 of Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam , 2007).

Festschrift

• Le shi'isme imamite quarante ans après: homage to Etan Kohlberg. Edited by Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, Meir M. Bar-Asher, Simon Hopkins. Bibliothèque de l'École des Hautes Études, Sciences Religieuses, volume. 137, Turnhout: Brepols, 2009, 438 pp. (The volume contains English and French articles.) Digitized version (PDF)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hans Hans Gerhard Kippenberg, Guy G. Stroumsa: Secrecy and Concealment: Studies in the History of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Religions .
2. ↑ Etan Kohlberg: A Medieval Muslim at Work: Ibn Tawus .