Faculty of Arts & Sciences

An introduction to the Semitic language of Akkadian, primarily through the Old Babylonian dialect and cuneiform writing system as used during the time of Hammurabi (c. 1750 BCE). Students learn the fundamentals of grammar and the writing system, as well as the most common cuneiform signs in official and cursive script. Readings span a variety of genres, including private letters, judicial documents, literary and religious texts, divinatory compendia, legal code, and royal inscriptions. The course also briefly introduces students to examples of texts from other periods and dialects of the Akkadian language for cultural and comparative purposes.

The Gilgamesh Epic.

Readings in representative historical, epistolary, literary, and economic texts with emphasis on the grammar.

Focuses on juridical aspects of every-day life in 1st millennium BCE Babylon. Reports of legal cases, letters and contracts allow vivid insights into interactions between persons and enhances their sometimes moving biographies. Explores the fates of murderers, thieves, slaves and foundlings; characteristics of legal decision-making bodies and the royal interventions in private law will be discussed.

This course provides an overview of the history of the ancient Near East, with a focus on ancient Mesopotamia. It begins with the advent of writing in the late fourth millennium BCE and ends with the fall of Babylon to Cyrus the Great, in 539 BCE. The course combines archaeological, art historical, and textual data to explore the extraordinarily rich history of this region.

What are the essential elements of human society? Have our fundamental conditions developed, and how? Can we use themes from ancient history to think about contemporary society and culture? These questions are in focus in this Societies of the World (SW) course for the Harvard College Program in General Education, which explores the earliest human civilizations in the region of Mesopotamia c. 3500-300 bce. Few elements in the way we live and organize ourselves today are to be taken for granted. There is - and has always been - a wealth of ways in which humans live. But biologically we are the same as our ancestors of 5500 years ago, at the dawn of history. Any likeness or difference between `us and them' is therefore likely to be a product of history and culture. `Ancient Lives' builds upon this realization to inspire a critical way of thinking about society in the broadest possible scope. Areas explored during the course are selected for their relevance across the range of contemporary life - they include freedom, music, public health, food, jurisprudence, trade, the visual arts, science, sexuality, religion and political power. You will learn about how societies and individuals have dealt with change on multiple levels, from large-scale societal revolutions to personal transformation. Having taken this course, you will have gained a fundamental understanding and appreciation of human life in the broadest scope, as well as of your own life as a part of history. You will be able to critically assess contemporary discourses on the study of `the other' in past and present; engage with core concepts of human society, such as justice, beauty, value and belief on a broad historical base; be familiar with examples of classical social theory and thinkers through concrete cases in which their work has been applied to or shaped by the study of the past; and acquire skills in presenting scholarly work to a general audience.

This course deals with major changes in climate and environment affecting humans, and the various ways in which Near Eastern societies have endured, mastered, or destroyed themselves, from an ecological perspective. Importance is placed on a diachronic outlook on dynamic human-environment interactions as understood through archaeology, particularly with reference to the challenge of sustainability in the so-called Anthropocene. A major focus of this course will be on case studies from around the eastern Mediterranean and greater Near East during the Holocene, but particularly dealing with examples from the Levant (modern Israel/Palestine, Syria, southern Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan). Topics will cover different types of environments and geological processes found in the Near East, practical sampling and analytical procedures, and major categories of anthropological interpretation.

A survey of the Hebrew Scriptures as viewed in their historical and cultural setting in the ancient Near East and as interpreted by modern scholarship, with attention to this literature as an expression of the religious thought of Israel and one of the formative influences on Western civilization.

A critical introduction to the literature and theology of the Hebrew Bible, considered in light of the historical contexts of its formation and the interpretive contexts of its reception within Judaism and Christianity. The course, the second part of a divisible, year-long sequence, will focus on the Latter Prophets and the Writings.

This course aims to increase facility with Septuagint Greek by reading representative prose portions of the Septuagint and studying the peculiarities of the grammar inductively. The basics of Hellenistic Greek will be reviewed as necessary.

A close critical reading in English of the book of Genesis with an eye both to the storytellers' techniques and to the moral and theological dimensions of the text. Emphasis will be given to literary and religious rather than historical and editorial issues.

Not your usual introduction to the Hebrew Bible. Through a close study of biblical texts (in translation) that are at once strange, shocking, raw, even bawdy, this course aims to reveal the variety and excitement of biblical literature and the ancient Israel that lies behind it.

A consideration of the concept of the biblical motif of divine choice of individuals and groups, with close reading of representative texts in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. Knowledge of Hebrew not required.

This course follows human societies in the region of the Levant (modern Israel/Palestine, Syria, southern Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan) from the earliest sedentary communities through the Iron Age. This extensive survey through time focuses on current archaeological research, emphasizing major aspects of: geography and chronology, art and architecture, modes of social organization, explanations for major socio-cultural changes, social identity, domestic life, religious expression, and issues of gender. Societies and areas under investigation include: the Canaanites, Amorites, Phoenicia, Philistia, Israel, Judah, Aram, the Neo-Hittites, Ammon, Moab, Edom, and Arabia.

An exploration of social, historical, interpretive, and theological issues associated with the so-called Septuagint and its complex relationship to early Judaism and Christianity. Emphases include origins, eschatology, messianism, halakhah, New Testament backgrounds, and biblical theology.

Introduces students to the phonology and script of classical/modern standard Arabic and covers the basic morphology and syntax of the written language. Emphasis on the development of the four skills (reading, speaking, listening, and writing). Samples of modern (contemporary) and classical styles of writing introduced into basic syllabus, and audio-visual material from the contemporary Arabic media. Required textbooks: (1) Alif Baa (with multimedia), 2nd edition. (2) Al-Kitaab fii Ta'allum al-'Arabiyya:, Part I, 2nd edition.

A continuation of Arabic Ba. Textbook: Al-Kitaab, volume II, 2nd edition.

Continuation of Arabic 130a or may be taken separately with permission of the instructor. Readings from corpus of "Adab" (Belles-Lettres) literature, as well as various pieces of classical Arabic poetry.

A continuation of Arabic 131a or may be taken separately with permission of the instructor. Continued emphasis on advanced reading and speaking skills, and introduction to contemporary Arabic fiction, with emphasis on short stories and essays. Required textbook: al-Kitaab -Kitaab fii Ta'allum al-Arabiyya, Part III with DVDs.

Introduces students to Colloquial Levantine Arabic of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Israel/Palestine. The course emphasizes the development of speaking and listening skills through the reinforcement of grammar and vocabulary.

A continuation of Arabic 241ar.

Corporeal States: Body, Nation, Text and Beyond in Contemporary Arabic Novel

Reinforcement of advanced classical Arabic grammar and stylistics, and introduction to the genres of usul, kalam, mantiq and falsafa.

Reinforcement of advanced classical Arabic grammar and stylistics, and introduction to various genres of Quran, Hadith, Sira and Tafsir.

Readings on selected topics in Islamic philosophy.

Readings on selected topics in Islamic intellectual history.

Readings in Egyptian, Palestinian and targumic Aramaic, with special focus on the grammar, literary form and function of the Targumim.

Introduction to classical Armenian grammar and reading of selected texts.

Armenian magical texts include codices, scrolls, and separately-printed saints' lives used for good or ill, containing magic squares and symbols, the latter mostly deriving from Islamic magic. The course will consider literary sources of magic texts (e.g., the prayer Havatov khostovanim, the meditations of Narek), parallel traditions (esp. Christian Ethiopia), and the consideration of the paintings in Armenian magical manuscripts from the standpoint of the genre of Outsider Art.

A survey of the history and culture of the Armenian people from earliest times to the Genocide and Soviet era.

Readings in prose books; review of grammar.

Advanced reading in selected biblical prose texts and intensive review of the grammar of Biblical Hebrew.

This course will trace the changes in Hebrew grammar in its ancient phases through the study of inscriptional, biblical, and extra-biblical texts.

Continues Middle Egyptian I from the spring 2013 semester. Students will complete the introductory grammar book lessons, and move on to read a selection of basic stories, historical and biographical inscriptions, in the original hieroglyphs. Visits to the Egyptian galleries of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in order to read some of the ancient hieroglyphic inscriptions on the original monuments, may also be included.

Old Egyptian or Middle Egyptian Texts

Introduction to Tannaitic and Amoraic Hebrew with readings from talmudic and midrashic literature.

Topic for 2015-16 to be determined.

A close critical reading of Genesis 37-50 and the Book of Esther in Hebrew. Emphasis on literary design and religious messages and on the influence of the story of Joseph upon the Book of Esther.

An examination of Genesis 22 and its afterlife in ancient Judaism, early Christianity, and the Qur'an. Ample consideration of the interpretation and expansion of the story in modern theology and of critical responses to the story.

A close examination of the book of Jeremiah, with special attention to its historical context and textual and literary history. Knowledge of Hebrew not required.

A close critical reading of the account of the early life of Moses in three contexts: (1) the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Near Eastern world in which it took shape; (2) rabbinic Judaism in Late Antiquity; and (3) medieval Jewish commentary. Texts to be read in Hebrew include Exodus 2 and a selection of rabbinic midrashim and medieval commentaries on it.

Further study of the pre-Islamic languages and literatures of Parthian and Sasanian Iran and Zoroastrian sacred texts, and their alphabets.

An introductory survey of the development of Islamic theology and philosophy. We will examine and discuss some of the central problems that were much debated through the centuries, such as: the relationship between philosophy and faith; whether humans possess free will; how to understand apparently anthropomorphic expressions in Scripture; whether acts are good because God commands them or God commands them because they are good; and proofs for the existence of God.

Al-Ghazali (d.1111) is generally recognized to be one of the most influential of all Muslim religious thinkers. A prominent theologian and jurist, he experienced a spiritual crisis at the height of his career, and as a consequence explored mysticism (Sufism) and worked out a powerful synthesis between respect for the externals of the Islamic religion and the mystics' stress on the interior life. In this course, we will look in particular at his account of his spiritual crisis; his critical engagement with the Islamic Philosophers; and some of the more mystical works that he wrote toward the end of his life, including his theodicy, his meditations on the Qur'anic dictum that "God is the Light of the Heavens and the Earth", and select chapters from his great summa "The Revival of the Religious Sciences". All readings will be in English.

Unknown in Africa before the jihad against the Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan, suicide bombing has become common place in the 21st century. From Algeria to Somalia through Libya, Mali and Nigeria, so- called Salafi jihadis have recruited and trained tens of thousands of combatants. Through cigarette and narcotic trafficking, hostage taking for ransom, and bank hold ups, they have procured huge financial resources, sophisticated weapons, and now constitute a serious security challenge not only to many countries of North Africa and the Sahel but also to their Western allies. This conference course will address the spread of jihadi groups in Muslim Africa (North Africa and the Sahel) after the cold war. The first part of the course will address the divergent theoretical interpretations of terrorism and address in particular the following questions: Is it greed that sustains civil wars or grievance? Does the root of terror lie in culture or politics? Is there any evidence that civilizations clashed after the cold war? The second part of the course will focus on select transnational Islamist movements, situated both in their local context of nation building and their larger regional contexts. Case studies will include Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb in North Africa and the Sahel, the Harakat al-shabab al-mujahidin in the Horn of Africa, the Boko Haram in the Lake Chad region and the Gama'at islamiyya in Egypt and beyond.

The seminar will explore two important issues in relation to mobility and religion. The first is how geographic mobility affects the faith and religious practices of diasporas, and the second how migration influences the development of religion in the sending and receiving countries of immigrants? After a critical evaluation of the concept of religion, seminar participants will look at pre-modern types of migration (forced and voluntary) and different religious traditions, and analyze the social and personal transformations provoked by migration. We will explore in particular theoretical perspectives on diasporas and look at the religious experience of Jews in Africa. We will also discuss various expressions of African religions in the new world, including Islam in Antebellum America, and Afro-American Religions, as well as the Islamic pilgrimage tradition in West Africa and its impact on state formation in pre-colonial Africa. The second part of the seminar will be focused on Muslim globalizations. Increasing numbers of labor migrants, students and refugees from Muslim countries have settled in Western Europe and North America in the last three decades. Their numbers are estimated at some 40 million in the early twenty-first century, an unparalleled presence in history. While Western societies are moving away from organized religion, Muslim immigrant communities, by striving to carve a niche in Western Societies, have followed the opposite direction. Although most Western societies recognize the freedom of worship, the multiplication of Muslim institutions (such as mosques, shops, restaurants, schools, cultural centers, newspapers, and charities) has created growing anxiety in the secularizing Western societies. We will look at how Muslim intellectuals mediate the integration of Muslim through the reinterpretation of Islamic theology, as well as how Western states grapple with the issue of Muslim integration in the post-September 11th context of War on Terror.

At the beginning of European colonial rule in the early 20th century, less than a half of the West African population was Muslim. By independence from European colonial rule in the early 1960s, close to 90 percent of many West African countries have been Islamized. More people converted to Islam during the six decades of European colonial rule than in the preceding thousand year of slow Islamization. The aim of this lecture course is to analyze contemporary West African Muslim societies with particular reference to the twenty and twenty first centuries. This course will look at how colonialism created a favorable ground for the spread of Islam. It will also address the main institutions and movements of modern Islam in West Africa as well as the postcolonial transformations in education, gender, the arts, interfaith relations etc. In addition to the discussion section in English, this lecture course will also offer a section in Arabic in which participants will be initiated to the intellectual production of Muslim intellectuals in Africa.

This course will shed light on the historical transformation of the internal religious reforms of Islam in the 18th and 19th century into politicized and/or fundamentalist versions of Islam in the 20th century.

This lecture course provides an oversight over the history of Muslim Law, the fiqh, from the 8th to the 19th century. This system of legal and ethical norms is conceived as the continuous interpretation of the shari'a, the revealed principles and norms of law and ethics. In the "branches of the fiqh" (furu‘ al-fiqh) this interpretation, since the eighth century, takes the form of the production of legal and ethical norms. From the tenth century on, the texts of the methodology of fiqh (usul al-fiqh) attempt to create the norms for norm production. We will discuss the norms and the methodology of the law as well as the institutions that allowed it to spread over the whole of the Muslim World. The course will consistently focus on the methods through which changes in genres of legal literature, methods, institutions and norms were introduced and recognized during different periods of the fiqh's development. Special attention will be given to the changes that the system underwent from the 19th to the 21st century.

Concepts of human nature are systematically developed in early Islamic theology. By contrast, references to human nature in the texts of the applied law (furu‘ al-fiqh) are mostly passing remarks used to justify a particular norm but rarely systematized and generalized. In the methodology of the law (usul al-fiqh) references to the legal personality (dhimma) provide a bridge between the discussions on human nature in theology and the texts of the applied law. For a discussion of the theological concepts of nature the seminar will rely on the work of Josef van Ess and Bernard Weiss. BJ will provide a selection of texts on human nature translated from Arabic treatises on the applied law and the methodology of law written by authors of different law schools between the tenth and the thirteenth centuries.The purpose of the seminar is to understand in how far elements of natural law can be found in the legal and theological discussions of Islam from the 8th to the 12th century. We will discuss the secondary literature on natural law in Islam, published over the last decade and see, in how far it contains material that could help us to answer this question and how far it integrates the Muslim discussion of human nature.

From the eighth century on, the construction of gendered spheres in the fiqh assigns to women the capacity to dominate and control certain spheres, such as the sphere of reproduction, the education of children through the first years of their life, some schools of law also assign only to women the right to report to courts and the outer world on acts and persons they have seen in the gendered spheres dominated by women. The seminar will try to establish a full list of such gendered spheres under feminine control. The reasons by which such gendered spheres are justified by the jurists are many: the women's intimacy has to be protected against the intrusion of the male gaze and touching that may stir the man's and the woman's sexual desire for each other. The seminar will discuss the growing list of reasons for additional veiling and seclusion in the writings of different schools of Sunni law. At the same time, an inverse development also takes place. The number of exceptional situations that require the uncovering of free (and slave) women in the presence of male strangers is constantly growing. Such situations as medical therapy or identification before a court require and justify the unveiling of women in the presence of strangers. As a result, a particular categorie of of women of high standing is developed who are exempt from these exceptions. We will try to follow the development of the casuistry on veiling and unveiling and to find a satisfying explanation for the many contradictions that characterize the arguments for veiling as developed in the legal literature of the classical period. Such an effort to come to terms with the notions of the legal development of veiling from the eighth to the nineteenth century will also allow us to understand better the fundamental change that has taken place in the functions attributed to veiling over the last 50 years.

This is the second of the three seminars on Islamic Modernism. It treats the period between 1870-1970. It focuses on the development, within a colonialist context, of the learned Islamic modernism that develops in Egypt during the last third of the 19th century in the spheres of Qur'anic exegesis, the reinterpretation of Islamic normativity in a way that is compatible with the institutions of the modern nation state. This modernism also pleads for a selective reception of modern sciences from the West. This type of Islamic modernism is best represented by Muhammad ‘Abduh, the mufti of Egypt at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. ‘Abduh sees in the earliest period of Islam, the lifetime of the Prophet and the first four caliphs, the model by which all Islamic societies have to abide. The Muslim societies of the 19th and the 20th centuries that deviate from this model are characterized by him as living in "ignorance" or "paganism" (jahiliyya), much as the pre-Islamic societies. This approach leads to a devaluation of the historical forms of political organization, law, and science that were developed after the early model period, a development that facilitates the adaptation of Islam to the requirements of a modern national state

A seminar for graduate students focusing on current scholarship on Islamic civilization in South Asia.

An introduction to the cultural history of Jewish life in the Middle East. Provides an overview of the changing administrative contexts that historically governed the lives of minority populations in the Mamluk, Ottoman and Modern periods, and examines historical modes of Jewish community-building, strategies of survival, and cultural production in these settings. Finally, the course focuses on the diverse fates Middle Eastern Jewish communities in the 20th century. Readings will focus primarily on historical and anthropological accounts, though literary, cinematic and biographical sources will also be included.

A close examination of the books of Amos, Hosea, Micah, and Isaiah 1-39, in their historical and social contexts.

Topic for 2010-11: Boundaries and Identities. Readings of Jewish texts, ancient to modern, that deal with the question of the Other and the Self: what is the boundary between Jews and non-Jews, and between Judaism and non-Judaism? Topic for 2014-15 to be determined.

The course reinforces and expands knowledge of linguistic and grammatical structures, with emphasis on further developing the four skills. Readings include selections from contemporary Israeli literature, print media, and internet publications. Readings and class discussions cover various facets of Israeli high and popular culture.

This course constitutes the third year of the Modern Hebrew language sequence. The course emphasizes the development of advanced proficiency in all skills. Readings include texts of linguistic and cultural complexity that cover contemporary Israeli literature and culture.

This course constitutes the final level of Modern Hebrew language studies. The course offers representative readings and screenings from contemporary Israeli literature and cinema, and it forms bases of discussion on major cultural and linguistic themes through academic readings. We will focus on the theme of the family in Israeli culture and relationships between fathers and sons in "Far away Islands"; "Book of Intimate Grammar"; the new series "Shtissel"; and more.

An introduction to the cultures and literatures of the Near East in ancient, classical, and modern times, emphasizing major themes and problems that cut across individual cultures and historical periods.

A thorough review and continuation of modern Persian grammar with an emphasis on reading, writing, speaking, and listening comprehension. Includes an introduction to classical prosody. Course materials draw from both classical and modern poetry and prose.

Review of advanced Persian grammar and syntax with introduction to both pre-modern and modern Persian prose and poetry. Themes cover a wide range of disciplines, from literature, history, social sciences and the arts.

Both poetry and the art of painting in medieval Persianate cultures developed to a high level of artistic excellence in the context of court patronage. This course examines that development through the epic tradition in medieval Persian poetry and prose including long narratives in heroic, romance, folk and ethical genres. The course considers the affinities and differences between these and epic tales from other traditions as well as their interactions with Persian painting and manuscript illustration. Beginning with the Parthian romance of Vis and Ramin and the heroic epic of Shahnameh, the survey will continue with epic romances of Nizami, prose narratives about folk heroes such as Abu Muslimnameh, and didactic epics by Sa`di and others.

Diglossia describes a situation in which two (or more) languages coexist, or two varieties of one language, within one speech community. In this course we will examine various aspects of such a linguistic situation from different theoretical points of view, considering this fascinating phenomenon in the history of the Semitic languages.

Introduction to Ugaritic grammar, with readings in mythological, epistolary, and administrative texts.

Tutorial supervision of research in subjects not treated in regular courses.

Introduces a wide spectrum of students to some of the most significant aspects of Iranian culture from the Constitutional Revolution through the three decades since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, one of the paradigmatic shifts in twentieth-century global history. Using the modernist commitment of artists and intellectuals to social and political engagement as a unifying theme, the course will survey modern and contemporary Iranian culture through the analysis of various literary, artistic, cinematic, and intellectual forms. The impact of European culture; nationalism; the tensions between modernism, secularism, and religion; the emergence of women's voices, a cinematic avant-garde, and mass culture; the strains of cosmopolitan and provincial coexistence; the anti-Western critique of "occidentosis"; and the controversial 2009 elections are among the issues that will be addressed.

This course uses a variety of methodological approaches to explore the multidimensional nature of contemporary Israeli culture and society. Conventional and alternative narratives of the Israeli experience will be illuminated by analyzing a variety of texts, including literature, film and ethnography. Careful attention to historical and social contexts will amplify these explorations. The goal of the course is to give students a range of scholarly tools to explore central questions about Israeli culture and social life.

This course introduces modern literature and contemporary technology writing in the contemporary Arabian Peninsula. Themes include "race" and "otherness" and how these tropes are fashioned by political and social discourses. Readings include novels from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen, and Qatar, exploring how narratives have been influenced and marked by questions of canon formation, globalization and social change.

This course surveys the history of modern Turkey and culture through Turkish literature in translation. Main focus is on topics of cultural revolution, nationalism, identity, gender, and migration. Primary readings are translations of novels, short stories, drama and poetry.

Interdisciplinary seminar serves as an introduction to the major disciplines constituting Middle Eastern Studies, including history, political science, anthropology, literature and Islamic Studies. Faculty affiliated with Center for Middle Eastern Studies serve as guest lecturers.

Emphasis on complex sentence structure and building communicative competence in describing events and expressing ideas through exercises in reading, writing, and speaking.

Introduction to conversational and literary Uzbek. Overview of the grammar, intensive practice of the spoken language, and reading of contemporary texts.

A continuation of Turkish 125a.

Studies in literary and idiomatic prose through readings, discussions, and writing of short analytical papers.

Continuation of Turkish 140a. Exercises on specialized orthographic conventions and grammatical characteristics of Ottoman Turkish through readings in printed selections from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Further development of reading, writing, speaking, and oral comprehension skills. Introduction to features of the main Yiddish dialects: Polish/Galician, Ukrainian/Volhynian, and Lithuanian/Belorussian. Course materials include selections from modern Yiddish fiction, poetry, songs, the press, and private letters, as well as pre-WWII and contemporary Yiddish films. Occasional visits from native Yiddish speakers.

Emphasis on building advanced vocabulary from the three main lexical components, Germanic, Hebrew-Aramaic, and Slavic, and further development of writing, reading, and speech. Continued exploration of the main Yiddish dialects. Introduction to various styles of Yiddish literature, journalism, theater, film, and song, particularly from the nineteenth century to the present, including contemporary sources from both secular Yiddish culture and the Yiddish-speaking "ultra-orthodox" communities of New York, Jerusalem, and elsewhere.

In 1926, the Yiddish novelist Dovid Bergelson announced the "three centers" of Yiddish literature and culture: New York, Warsaw and Moscow. Using Bergelson's essay as a window on Yiddish modernism, this class looks at the relationship between language, city, and state. We will ask, what distinguished Yiddish culture in one place from another? Did writers see themselves at home or in exile? How did politics affect the Yiddish writer? And what should we make of the other Yiddish centers, Vilna, Kiev, even Berlin?