MI Working Group (Religion & Pluralism in the Medieval Mediterranean): John Mulhall (MI Mellon Fellow; Purdue University), "'Blessings on All the Prophets': Islamic Prayers and Blessings on Muhammad in the Latin Scientific Translations of the Twelfth Century"

Please join us for the fourth and final meeting this term of the Religion & Pluralism in the Medieval Mediterranean Working Group. John Mulhall (MI Mellon Fellow, Assistant Professor of History, Purdue University) will give a talk titled "'Blessings on All the Prophets': Islamic Prayers and Blessings on Muhammad in the Latin Scientific Translations of the Twelfth Century." Dr. Mulhall has provided the following abstract for the talk:

In the twelfth century, translators active in the Iberian Peninsula translated religious, scientific, and philosophical texts from Arabic into Latin on an unprecedented scale. More than one hundred and fifty texts were translated from Arabic into Latin in twelfth-century Iberia, many of which were written by Muslim authors. Given that the majority of the translators were Latin Christians, assessing these translators’ attitudes towards Islam has great potential to contribute to our understanding of intellectual interactions across religious boundaries in the medieval Mediterranean. To date, modern scholarship on the twelfth-century translators’ attitudes towards Islam have understandably concentrated on translations of the Qur’an and other explicitly religious Islamic texts. The attitudes of translators of scientific and philosophical works have, however, been largely overlooked. This talk examines how Latin translators approached specifically Islamic elements such as Islamic prayers and blessings on the Prophet Muhammad in their translations of scientific and philosophical works.

Professor Mulhall's research explores the history of science and religion in the medieval Mediterranean, focusing specifically on intellectual interactions among the Islamic, Byzantine, and Latin Christian worlds. During his time as Mellon Fellow, John is working on his book project entitled "The Republic of Translators: Latin, Greek, Arabic and a New Age of Science, Philosophy, and Theology in the Twelfth Century."

Please contact Francisco J. Cintrón Mattei with any questions you have about this event. Thanks!