The Sciences in Islamicate Societies in Context: Patronage, Education, Narratives

This Variorum volume reprints ten papers on contextual elements of the so-called ancient sciences in Islamicate societies between the thirteenth and the seventeenth centuries. They address four major themes: the ancient sciences in educational institutions; courtly patronage of science; the role of the astral and other sciences in the Mamluk sultanate; and narratives about knowledge.

The main arguments are directed against the then dominant historiographical claims about the exclusion of th...