Dr. Nabih Bashir

Dr. Nabih Bashir

Research interests

Nabih Bashir was born in Sakhnin in the Galilee, and studied political science and sociology at the Hebrew University before completing his doctorate in Jewish intellectual development in the Medival Islamicate lands, and now Dr Nabih is a researcher in the Triangle Research and Development Center and an adjunct lecturer – Master Program in Israeli Studies (Center for Advanced Studies, Birzeit University). His research focuses on two different fields: medieval Judeo-Arabic literature in general and the medieval corpus of exegetical literature; and history of Zionism.

He is further an author of several articles and books (in Arabic, Hebrew and English) in the two fields and have published an Arabic edition of Yehuda Ha-Levi’s “Kuzari”. Currently, he is preparing an anthology of the Jewish national though and Zionism to be published in the coming few years in Arabic. In last two years, he has led a team to conduct a general survey on the subject of turning to folk healing and traditional practices, including amulets, witchcraft, exorcism etc., among the Arabs in Israel. Recently, he co-founded an initiative to establish an applied research unit in the TRDC focusing in social sciences and humanities.

Dr. Bashir research interests focuses on the Jewish intellectual development in the Medieval Islamicate lands (9th – 13th Centuries). The Jewish traditional dogma and intellectual tools went in the Islamicate era (since the middle of the 9th century) in a thorough transformation and reshaping. My research projects for the next few years will explore different manifestations of the symbiotic nature within medieval Mediterranean culture: Jewish, Christian and Islam. By symbiotic nature, I mean the movement of ideas and systems between cultures and religions and the re-shaping of these ideas to allow their absorption within a given culture. In sum, my research project seeks to broaden access to the great works of the Judeo-Arabic tradition by broadening the literary traditions that shaped medieval Jewish thought to include the Christian and Islamic exegetical traditions.

Education

Selected publications

“Constructing Zionist Identity for Palestinian Minorities: The Case of the Druze in Israel,” The Israeli Affairs Quarterly Journal (Qadayya Israelieh), no. 67, 2017, pp. 76-94. [Arabic]

“Salvation and Redemption in the Hebrew Bible and Jewish Tradition”,  The Israeli Affairs Quarterly Journal (Qadayya Israelieh), no. 63, 2016. [Arabic]

“Jewish Kalām,” Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception, Dale C. Allison Jr. (ed.), Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017, vol. 14, pp. 4-12.

The Land Day: National and Civic, 2nd ed., Mada al-Carmel, Haifa, 2016, 220 Pages. [Arabic, the first edition was published in 2006]

Yehuda Halevi, The Kuzari – In Defense of the Despised Faith; transliterated, translated and Annotated by N. Bashir, Al-Kamel Verlag, Beirut, Köln and Freiberg, 2012, 727 pages. [Arabic]

 

Papers submitted in process of writing

“A Reexamination of Saadya Gaon’s Dictum ‘Humankind is more sublime than Angels’.” [Hebrew, submitted to Ginzei Qedem]

“Jacob Qirqisan’s Commentary of the Section Va-Yera, Gen. 18,” in: Jewish Bible Exegesis from Islamic Lands in the Middle Ages: An Anthology, eds. M. Polliack and A. Brenner, Atlanta, GA: Society of Bible Literature (SBL) Press. [English, submitted]

“Jacob Qirqisan’s Commentary of the Section Va-Yera, Gen. 18,” in: Anthology of English translations of Karaite Texts, eds. E. Yoram and M. Polliack, Tel-Aviv: University of Tel Aviv Press. [Hebrew, submitted]

“Jewish Kalām,” Encyclopédie de l’humanisme of Méditerranéen, Edited by Houari Touati, Paris: Orient Méditerranée, 2017. [French, English and Arabic, submitted]

Saadya Gaon’s Commentary on Genesis. Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute. [Judaeo-Arabic and Hebrew,