Emilio G. Ferrín

* Ciudad Real, 1965
Lives in: Sevilla

Arabist

Emilio González Ferrín teaches History of Islamic Thought at Sevilla University in Spain. He has a PhD. in Islamic Science and is a staff member of Middle Eastern Studies at St John’s University in NY, USA. He is also a visiting professor at the Vancouver School of Theology in Canada and has worked in Universities in Cairo, Amman and Damascus.  Ferrín has written several books, including Historia general de al-Andalus (General History of al-Andalus) and La palabra descendida: un acercamiento al Corán (The Word sent down: an aproximation to the Quran), which recieved the Jovellanos Award 2002.
 
With his essays, Ferrín is continuing a tradition of historians building upon fore-runners like Ignacio Olagüe and Américo Castro. As those thinkers, he doesn’t consider the Islamic history in Spain as result of a colonization by Arabs but as a local evolution of social and political dynamics which only afterwards was denounced as “foreign” by the rest of Europe, because of the use of Arabic, then the general communication language in the Mediterranean region. 
 
Regarding the formation of Islam, Ferrín follows the postulates of the German Orientalist Günter Lüling; in fact he considers himself “a fervent Lülingist”. Just as Lüling, Ferrín sticks to conventional chronology, but asks for a profound revision of History. Spain, in his view, has not been subject to Arabisation, much less Islamization, and of course not conquest, after 711 AD. Both the Quran and the first Arabic grammar books were developed or standardized clearly later, he asserts. The Quran, he quippes, is “the most important Eastern apocryphal Gospel”.
 

Books

  • 2018: Cuando fuimos árabes. Almuzara
  • 2013: La angustia de Abraham. Almuzara
  • 2012: Las bicicletas no son para El Cairo. En Huida
  • 2006: Historia General de al-Andalus. Almuzara.
  • 2004: Las Rutas del Islam en Andalucía. Sevilla. Fundación José Manuel Lara.
  • 2002: La Palabra Descendida: un Acercamiento al Corán. Oviedo. Nobel.
  • 2000: El modernismo de Mohammed Abduh. Inst. Egipcio
  • 1998: El ajedrez en la Córdoba omeya. Grupo Joly.
  • 1997: El diálogo euroárabe. Ed. Cultura Hispánica