The remarkable extension in depth and width of Muslim intellectual life can be fathomed and measured only against the background of what went on immediately before, and simultaneously elsewhere, or it will remain, in any real sense, unexplored." This statement by the late Franz Rosenthal is, in a sense, the red thread of the present volume which unites 35 articles by renowned scholars of Islamic Studies, Middle Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and various allied fields of research in honour of a scholar congenial to Franz Rosenthal and exemplary in his scientific carefulness and integrity: Dr Gerhard Endress, Professor of Oriental Philology and Islamic Studies at the Ruhr University Bochum. Central topics of the contributions include Arabic philosophy and its Greek sources and Latin reception, the history and historiography of Arabic-Islamic science, and Islamic concepts of language, knowledge, science and pedagogy. Other articles deal with qur'anic studies, Arabic lexicography and linguistics, the history of Middle Eastern civilizations, the medieval translation movements from Greek into Arabic and from Arabic into Latin as well as with political and eschatological theories of medieval Islam. Rooted in different scientific traditions and methodological approaches the studies collected in this Festschrift form a vivid and stimulating synopsis of more than 1000 years of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean intellectual, social and cultural history.