Livnat Holtzman

LIVNAT HOLTZMAN Tenured Senior Lecturer in the Department of Arabic at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Chair of the Department of Arabic at Bar-Ilan University since October 2012. Currently on sabbatical leave until 2016. Visiting Professor at Freie Universität Berlin for the summer semester of 2016 (as part of the advisory staff of the Berlin Graduate School on Muslim Cultures and Societies). Area of Specialization Islamic Theology (mainly traditionalist theology), Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, didactic poetry, Quran and Hadith exegeses. Education 2000-2004, Ph.D, Arabic, Bar Ilan University. 1996-1999, M.A cum laude, Arabic, Bar Ilan University. 1984-1987, B.A cum laude, Arabic Language and Literature, Middle Eastern Studies, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Grants 2011- The German Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development (GIF 1079-111.4/2009- active funding until December 2014). 2011- The Israel Science Foundation (ISF 79/10- active funding until December 2014). 2006- The Israel Science Foundation (ISF 302/06- October 2006-October 2008). Selected Publications “Insult, Fury, and Frustration: The Martyrological Narrative of Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyah’s al-Kāfiyah al-Shāfiyah”, Mamlūk Studies Review XVII (2013): 155-198. "Debating the Doctrine of Jabr (Compulsion): Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya Reads Fakhr al-Din al-Razi", in: G. Tamer and B. Krawietz (eds.), Islamic Theology, Philosophy and Law.Debating Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (Berlin: de Gruyter 2013), 61-93 “The Dhimmi’s Question on Predetermination and the Ulama’s Six Responses: The Dynamics of Composing Polemical Didactic Poems in Mamluk Cairo and Damascus”, Mamlūk Studies Review XVI (2012): 1-54 (with Caterina Bori), A Scholar in the Shadow: Essays in the Legal and Theological Thought of Ibn Qayyim al-Gawziyyah, Oriente Moderno 90, 1 (2010). “Does God Really Laugh?- Appropriate and Inappropriate Descriptions of God in Islamic Traditionalist Theology”, in: A. Classen (ed.), Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), 165-200. "Human Choice, Divine Guidance and the Fitra Tradition- The Use of Hadith in Theological Treatises by Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya", in: Y. Rapoport and S. Ahmed (eds.), Ibn Taymiyya and His Times (Karachi: Oxford University Press 2010), 163-188. Work in Progress Defining Anthropomorphism (tashbīh): The Challenge of Islamic Traditionalism from the Eighth to the Fourteenth Centuries (a 400-page monograph; accepted to the new series “Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic History and Culture”, Edinburgh University Press)