Parution – Sonja Brentjes, “Teaching and Learning the Sciences in Islamicate Societies (800-1700)”, Brepols, 2018

his book provides for the first time a survey of the important features of educational activities and structures in various Islamicate societies between 800 and 1700 with regard to the mathematical and occult sciences, medicine, and natural philosophy.

This book surveys teaching and learning in the mathematical and occult sciences, medicine and natural philosophy in various Islamicate societies between 800 and 1700. It focuses in particular on Egypt and Syria between 1200 and 1600, but looks also at developments in Iran, India, Anatolia, and Iraq. It discusses institutions of teaching and learning such as house and court teachers, madrasas, hospitals, in-family teaching, and travelling in search of knowledge, as well as the content of the various sciences taught by or at them. Methods of teaching and learning, teaching bestsellers and their geographical and temporal dissemination, as well as encyclopaedias and literature on the classification of the sciences are treated in further chapters.

Sonja Brentjes is researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.  She has published widely on the history of mathematics, institutions, cartography, and cross-cultural encounters, mainly with regard to Islamicate societies, but also about parts of Christian Europe and South Asia.

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