The Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre (ALC) has launched the sixth issue of “Al-Markaz: Majallat al-Dirāsāt al-ʿArabiyya” (The Centre: Journal of Arabic Studies), in collaboration with leading international publishing house Brill. “Al-Markaz” focuses on Arabic language, literature, and culture studies, encompassing a range of historical and analytical trends, as well as book reviews.

Titled “Bridges of Knowledge Transmission”, this issue originates from a conference held in March 2019, which gathered Italian and Spanish scholars at the Spanish School of History and Archaeology, part of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in Rome. The issue features four articles translated into Arabic and three book reviews.

Content included in the journal discusses means of knowledge transfer and exchange in the Islamic world by posing two key historical questions; one regarding the transfer of knowledge in the ancient Islamic world, and another focusing on the methods by which the transfer or education process occurs.

While several studies in recent decades have addressed the first question, few have tackled the second, despite its importance for studying scientific knowledge in the Islamic world at various stages and for building intellectual and religious identities throughout history.

The articles in this issue share a philological approach, utilizing tools of historiography, textual criticism, and linguistic analysis. They repeatedly explore themes such as the selection of sources, the transmission of texts from ancient times to the present, the importance of the language used in transferring texts, the relationship between knowledge transfer and linguistic, intellectual, and religious sources of a community, and the material and intellectual means of transfer and their transformation into rituals.

In the fourth article, researcher Cristina de la Puente examines dreams as means of transferring religious knowledge. The upcoming issue of the journal, scheduled for January 2025, will delve deeper into the topic of dreams and their functions in Arabic literature.

“Al Markaz: The Journal of Arab Studies” covers a chronological period that extends from before Islam times to contemporary times. The journal offers a forum for matters of formal language and spoken dialects, written and oral heritage, in poetry and prose, and welcomes submissions with an interdisciplinary and comparative approach.

The sixth issue is available for browsing on Brill’s official Website