Cultures and Religions | Course catalogue

Religious history of Islam

Course objectives

The course - provides the student with knowledge and understanding of the methodological and critical-problematic aspects of the Discipline as well as application issues; proposes area and sectoral perspectives in which research projects relating to the Discipline are active or can be activated; shows the variability of the fields of interest within which disciplinary skills can be applied (descriptor 1); - develops the student's autonomous ability to relate what has been learned with other SSDs: historical, literary, artistic, cultural, economic, political, historical-religious disciplines, etc. (descriptor 2); - enables the student to use the acquired knowledge and the specific learned language in view of the so-called "transversal skills" (autonomy of judgment, communication skills, descriptors 3-5).

Channel 1

MARCO DI BRANCO Lecturers' profile

Program - Frequency - Exams

Course program

The course will introduce the student to the study of Islam from a religious, political and cultural point of view. The first part of the course will be dedicated to the history of the origins of Islam and its sources (the Koran, the corpus of sayings attributed to the Prophet, or hadith, the biography of the Prophet, archaeological and epigraphic sources). The following lessons will cover the birth of the caliphate, the period of the "well-guided" caliphs, the origins of the split between Shiites and Sunnis and the history of the four great medieval Islamic caliphates: Umayyad, Abbasid, Umayyad of al-Andalus and Fatimid. The last part of the course will focus on the phenomenon known as the translation movement, with particular attention to the only Arabic translation of a historical Latin text: Orosius' Historiae adversus paganos. I. Introduction II. Pre-Islamic Arabia: history, geography, religion III. Mohammed and the origins of Islam IV. The Quran and the hadiths V. Islam and politics: the birth of the caliphate VI. The great conquests VII. Shiites and Sunnis VIII. The Umayyads IX. The Abbasids X. Fatimids and Umayyads of al-Andalus XI. What is “Islamic law”? XII. The Translation Movement XIII. Orosius Arabicus XIV. Visit to the Mosque of Rome XV. Interviews with members of the Roman Islamic community

Prerequisites

No prerequisites required.

Books

A. Bausani, Islam, Milano, Garzanti. M. Di Branco, Il califfo di Dio, Roma, Viella.

Frequency

Face-to-face lessons

Exam mode

Oral exam on the topics covered in the course.

Lesson mode

Thematic lessons on the topics of the program.