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Josef van Ess. Translated from German by Gwendolin GoldbloomTheology and Society is the most comprehensive study of Islamic intellectual and religious history, focusing on Muslim theology. With its emphasis on the eighth and ninth centuries CE, it remains the most detailed prosopographical study of the early phase of the formation of Islam. Originally published in German between 1991 and 1995, Theology and Society is a monument of scholarship and a unique scholarly enterprise which has stood the test of time as an unparalleled reference work.Josef van Ess, Emeritus Professor of Islamic Studies and Semitic Languages, University of Tübingen, Germany, has published widely on the History of the Islamic World; Islamic theology and philosophy, especially with respect to the formative period (8th-10th centuries) and the age of the Mongol conquests (13th-14th centuries); and Islamic mysticism. His most famous work is Theologie und Gesellschaft in 6 volumes (de Gruyter 1991-97), the first four volumes of which are now being published in English by Brill.Gwendolin Goldbloom (1969) has produced English translations of several books and a number of articles in the field of Islamic Studies, most of them originally published in German.ReadershipAll interested in Middle Eastern history and history of religion.Table of contentsThe Unification of Islamic Thought and the Flowering of Theology1 Baghdad1.1 Local Tradition. Madāʾin1.2 Religious Policy Under al-Manṣūr and al-Mahdī1.3 The Rise of the Muʿtazila1.4 The Time Following the Fall of the Barmakids2 Divided Empire and Civil War2.1 The Uprising of Abū l-Sarāyā2.2 Ma‌ʾmūn and ʿAlī al-Riḍā2.3 Theologians with Ties to al-Ma‌ʾmūn. Thumāma b. Ashras2.4 The Anti-Caliphate of Ibrāhīm b. al-Mahdī2.5 Ma‌ʾmūn’s Return to Baghdad3 Al-Ma‌ʾmūn in Baghdad. The Flowering of Muʿtazilite Theology3.1 Ma‌ʾmūn’s Intellectual Profile. Intellectual Life at Court in Baghdad3.2 The Great Muʿtazilite Systematists3.3 The miḥnaSupplementary Remarkshttp://www.brill.com/products/book/theology-and-society-second-and-third-centuries-hijra-volume-3