Academic literature on the topic 'Umm al-Kitāb'

AbstractʿAbdallāh ibn Sabaʾ is a figure generally regarded as Islam's first heretic by Sunnī scholars and also vilified by Shīʿī scholars. In this article an anonymous, esoteric work known as Umm al-Kitāb is examined as it contains an exceptional narrative that adopts a strikingly sympathetic approach to Ibn Sabaʾ. It is also argued that the work's unique take on the Ibn Sabaʾ legend sheds considerable light on the date and elusive provenance of this early Shīʿī text.

AbstractThis article examines the biographical traditions that developed around al-Rabī b. Sulaymān al-Jīzī (d. 256/872) who, by the Mamlūk period, was widely viewed as a disciple of Muhammad b. Idrīs al-Shāfi'ī (d. 204/820). Against this view, I demonstrate that scholars working in the 4th/10th century depicted al-Jīzī as a follower of the Mālikī movement in Egypt. These scholars also suggested that some traditions transmitted by al-Rabī' b. Sulaymān al-Murādī (d. 270/884) were mistakenly attributed to al-Jīzī. By the 5th/11th century, new legal ideas had surfaced that conflicted with those said to have been transmitted by al-Murādī from al-Shāfi'ī. In order to save al-Murādī's reputation as the faithful and trustworthy transmitter of al-Shāfi'ī's final legal views, al-Jīzī was reinvented as a companion of al-Shāfi'ī so that legal ideas that conflicted with those found in the Kitāb al-umm could be attributed to him instead of al-Murādī.

The muslim judgement against apostates has in recent years been applied in cases of publicly expressed conviction that contradict generally accepted foundations of the Muslim faith. This situation is, however, only the outcome of a theological and legal development in the 5th/11th century. Until that time, the judgement of apostasy (irtidād) could not have been applied against Muslims who voiced opinions that were regarded as unbelief. The rules for this earlier period were written down by al-Shāfi‘ī in his Kitāb al-Umm. His interpretation of the legal institution of istitāba leads to the acknowledgement that the judgement of irtidād is applicable only in a very small number of cases. This reflects legal sensitivity in the period of mass conversions when the secret practice of pre-Islamic religious rites amongst newly converted Muslims might have been widespread. Al-Shāfi‘ī's guidelines, based on earlier judgements within the Kufan tradition, gained widespread acceptance in the Hanafī, Hanbalī, and Shāfi‘ī schools of law. A first change can be noted in the middle of the 5th/11th century when authors such as al-Māwardī and Abū Ya‘lā argued for a less generous application of the istitāba. Two generations later, al-Ghazālī (d. 555/1111) and his contemporaries such as Ibn ‘Aqīl (d. 513/1119) did not restrict the judgement of irtidād to cases of openly declared apostasy. Al-Ghazālī develops a reasoning which is fully aware of the change in law and of the deviation from long-established principles. His own condemnation of three key statements of the falāsifa, expressed in his Tahāfut al-falāsifa, would be impossible without his identification of kufr with irtidād in earlier works.

Este artigo pretende chamar a atenção para uma obra que passou despercebida. Considerado um trabalho menor de um autor satírico, al-Jāḥiẓ, o Kitāb Fakhr al-Sūdān 'alā al-Bīḑān (A superioridade dos negros sobre os brancos), apesar de seu título sugestivo, foi subvalorizado, mas, na realidade, é um trabalho sério e totalmente imbuído no contexto e no debate político-social do século IX. A obra é essencial para entender a complexidade de qualquer sociedade, antiga ou moderna. Confrontado com a imagem tradicional da população negra como um grupo marginalizado, invisível e sem história, o Kitāb Fakhr al-Sūdān 'alā al-Bīḑān lhe confere o protagonismo de sua obra, remove-a da sua invisibilidade na sociedade abássida, e recupera e reescreve, e isso é interessante, uma história e uma memória que têm suas raízes na antiguidade.

Apesar de não constar entre os saberes tradicionais, a História possui uma função fundamental nas sociedades mulçumanas medievais. Este artigo pretende apresentar o célebre historiador islâmico Ibn al-Athīr , seu fazer histórico e discutir a concepção de sua mais importânte obra, o Kitāb al kāmil fī l- taʾrīḫ, e sua função enquanto conselheira real.

À primeira vista, a investigação psicológica de Avicenna é pouco precisa quanto ao modo pelo qual a alma se relaciona com as intenções sensíveis. Dadas algumas passagens do Kitāb al-nafs nas quais se discute a relação entre elas e a faculdade estimativa, pode-se chegar a algumas conclusões acerca do estatuto ontológica das intenções. Utilizarei os exemplos fornecidos por Avicena em I.5, II.2 e IV.1 para mostrar em quais sentidos o termo maʻnā é utilizado e se elas existem no mundo ou resultam de uma relação particular.

Tendo em vista o desacordo entre os comentadores contemporâneos acerca do modo pelo qual o intelecto teorético conhece no "Kitāb al-nafs" de Avicena, investigo se esta atividade se realiza por um sentido interno que é auxiliado pelo intelecto a fim de abstrair a forma material ou se é uma atividade exclusiva do intelecto que não depende das formas materiais, mas apenas da intuição das formas inteligíveis. Contudo, algumas passagens das seções V.5 e V.6, nas quais são descritas a atividade conjunta entre intelecto e os sentidos internos e a sua atividade própria, conduzem à conclusão segundo a qual são necessários dois elementos para que o conhecimento seja realizado: a unificação da multiplicidade e a multiplicação da unidade; em outras palavras, não é suficiente que o intelecto, em conjunto com as faculdades estimativa e cogitativa, conceitualize os termos menor e maior do silogismo, mas ele também precisa intuir o termo médio.

Following the monumental translation project of al-Ṭabarī’s History (40 vols., Albany: SUNY Press), completed in 2007, the editors of this three-vol- ume work have supervised the translation of the writings of another im- portant early historian: Ibn Wāḍiḥ al-Yaʿqūbī (d. shortly after 295/908). It contains fully annotated translations of al-Yaʿqūbī’s History (Tārīkh), his Geography (Kitāb al-buldān), his short political essay The Book of the Adap- tion of Men to Their Time and Their Dominant Characteristics in Every Age (Mushākalat al-nās li-zamānihim wa-mā yaghlibu ʿalayhim fī kull ʿaṣr) and a few fragmentary texts found in other pre-modern Arabic works. The first volume (the subject of this review) contains The Adaption of Men, The Ge- ography, and the fragmentary texts, while the latter two volumes contain The History divided into two parts. Because of their early date and richness of information on a wide range of historical subjects, al-Yaʿqūbī’s works are important sources to consider for anyone interested in early Islamic history and the historical tradition that developed in the first centuries AH. That was also, as stated in the introduction, the main reason for this translation project that took over two decades to complete. In the first introductory chapter (1:1-8), Matthew S. Gordon makes clear that the translation project sought to address two main groups of readers: (1) “scholars in related fields who, in most cases, are unable to read al-Yaʿqūbī in the original Arabic” and (2) “students of early Near Eastern and Islamic history” (1:2). These are important clarifications and answers to the question that might otherwise arise: What is the use of translating these rather specialized Arabic texts into English? One answer is, as Gor- don points out, that they are useful to scholars in related fields. In the case of al-Yaʿqūbī, considering his broad interests as a historian and geographer, the translation of his works will be particularly useful for historians of Late Antiquity from outside the field of Arabic and Islamic studies. Another answer would be, as also pointed out, that they are useful for undergradu- ate and graduate students of Islamic history, as well as teachers and course organizers, who usually have to rely on texts in translation. A third answer that is not explored in the introduction—except perhaps alluded to in the reference to the translation of al-Ṭabarī’s History as an “invaluable resource for scholars and students alike” (1:2)—is that critical and fully-annotat- ed translations of classical works may function as “commentaries” on the original Arabic texts and can thus be useful to scholars who are capable of reading the original texts. This is, for example, how the translation of al- Ṭabarī’s History has often been used; scholars may (or rather should) read the text in the original Arabic, but for clarifications of difficult passages, meanings of certain words in context or questions how to translate terms or passages, they may consult the critical and annotated translations. Gordon’s introduction briefly introduces al-Yaʿqūbī and his three surviving works, noting their general content, some of their characteristics and, especially in relation to The History, al-Yaʿqūbī’s Shīʿī views and his “Shiʿite reading of Islamic history” (1:5). The introduction is useful in what it contains, but would have benefitted from a more thorough discussion of how al-Yaʿqūbī worked as a historian and geographer—including subjects such as his intel- lectual context, audience, sources, methods of compilation, and historical views. Instead, it is simply noted that some of these topics “deserve further investigation” (1:6). The second introductory chapter contains a “biographical sketch” of al-Yaʿqūbī by Sean Anthony and Matthew S. Gordon (1:9-22). Despite the scarcity of biographical information (“there is little that can be known for certain about al-Yaʿqūbī and his life,” 1:10), Anthony and Gordon provide a useful summary of what we can know about him, based on a few accounts of other historians who cite his works and what might be inferred from his own writings: his hardline Shīʿism, the works he compiled, the approxi- mate date of his death (shortly after 295/908), his many travels, some of the places in which he lived from al-Fusṭāṭ to Iṣfahān, his links to certain dynasties (Ṭāhirids in Iran and Ṭūlūnids in Egypt), his involvement in the bureaucratic circles of the ʿAbbāsid era and his particular attachment to, and historical interest in, the ʿAbbāsid dynasty. Either here or in the first introductory chapter, however, a lot more could be said about al-Yaʿqūbī as a historian and a geographer; after all, what we really know about him and have access to is the results of his historical and geographical writings: The History and The Geography. The third and final introductory chapter, by Everett K. Rowson, out- lines the manuscripts, printed editions and translations of al-Yaʿqūbī’s three works (1:23–27). Rowson notes “that three of al-Yaʿqūbī’s works have been preserved, although not in optimal form, and that they have received con- siderable scholarly attention” (23). Most of the discussion pertains to The History. He points out that there are two more or less identical surviving manuscripts of The History, one of which is based on the other. The stan- dard and “only respectable” Arabic edition of the text (ed. M. Th. Houtsma, 2 vols., Leiden: Brill, 1883) is based on the later of the two manuscripts, while the translators in this project have prioritized the earlier one as the “only independent source for text readings” and mainly used the later copy (including Houtsma’s published edition) for interpretations of words and phrases that are hard to read. This raises the question if it would not have been a good idea to provide a critical edition of the Arabic text before a translation (of the manuscript text) into English; after all, a new critical and accessible edition of the original Arabic text is needed in the field. However, it is possible that such a project of re-editing al-Yaʿqūbī’s History is already underway, which would make this question unnecessary. The first of the three volumes contains the translation of The Adap- tion of Men (31-60, trans. Michael Fishbein), The Geography (64-199, trans. Elton Daniel and Paul M. Cobb), and some fragmentary texts (203-34, trans. Cobb, Gordon and Fishbein). The first is a short political essay com- prised of chronologically arranged anecdotes about the caliphs—begin- ning with Abū Bakr (r. 11-13/632-4) and ending with al-Muʿtaḍid (r. 279- 89/892-902)—and examples of how the people of their times, according to al-Yaʿqūbī, tended to follow them in their conduct and tastes. Fishbein’s translation is clear and the annotation is very informative, essentially functioning as a useful commentary with information about mentioned indi- viduals, places, and events as well as clarifications of terms and difficult passages. It is interesting to note that al-Yaʿqūbī’s image of the first three caliphs is surprisingly positive for a “hardline” Shīʿī historian—Abū Bakr, for example, is described as “the most abstemious of men, the most humble and sparing in his clothing” and ʿUmar, among other things, as “strict in matters relating to God” (31-33)—which might illustrate the difficulty of categorizing al-Yaʿqūbī’s Shiʿism. The second translated text is The Geography, which, as Gordon notes, is a book of “administrative geography” that al-Yaʿqūbī seems to have com- piled in order to “provide his fellow regional functionaries with the kind of information required to carry out their administrative duties” (6). It con- tains descriptions of the major towns and cities in the Muslim world of al-Yaʿqūbī’s time and information about practical matters such as distanc- es, agriculture, crafts, products, successions of governors, and the religious and ethnic composition of the local populations. The translation is clear and very readable, despite the sometimes difficult terminology and numer- ous place names, and the annotation is extensive and useful. Altogether, this translation of al-Yaʿqūbī’s works is a very welcomed addition to the field of early Islamic history and historiography, comparable in this respect to the translation of al-Ṭabarī’s History, which has proven its importance for both students and scholars. Similar to that project, the translations of al- Yaʿqūbī’s writings are carried out by twelve specialists in the field, which is evident from the translated texts as well as the accompanying annotations and the concise but useful introductory material. One does, however, hope that the translations will be complemented by new critical editions of the Arabic texts, at least in the case of The History, and new detailed historio- graphical studies on al-Yaʿqūbī as a historian and as a geographer. Tobias Andersson Faculty Member Department of Theology Uppsala University

Abstract In this essay, I use the numerous extensive quotations from Mālik found in al-Shāfiʿī’s Kitāb al-Umm to reconstruct what might be called al-Shāfiʿī’s recension of Mālik’s Muwaṭṭaʾ and to compare this recension with the surviving complete Muwaṭṭaʾ recensions of Abū Muṣʿab al-Zuhrī, Ibn Bukayr, and Yaḥyā b. Yaḥyā al-Laythī. I present examples of the differences between the recensions, analyze one specific type of variant closely, and use my findings to suggest possible reasons for the various kinds of discrepancies. Through this analysis I both affirm Mālik’s role as the Muwaṭṭaʾ’s author and situate the nature of his authorship in the context of teaching and transmission practices and the materiality of the book in the second/eighth century.

Ibn ʿArabī -o Šayḫ al-Akbar (“o Maior dos mestres”), como é conhecido entre seus discípulos- não fundou propriamente uma ṭarīqa. No entanto, sua baraka (influência espiritual) permaneceu sendo transmitida tanto por meio de sua rūḥāniyya (presença o entidade espiritual) quanto por meio da transmissão ininterrupta ao longo dos séculos da ḫirqa (manto) akbari (nome derivado da expressãoal-Šayḫ al-Akbar) entre seus discípulos. Dentre estes, um dos mais notáveis foi ʿAbd al-Qādir.Filho e neto de sufis, sua filiação à silsila akbariyya deu-se já em sua juventude, sendo, desse modo, dirigido e ensinado diretamente pela rūḥāniyya de Ibn ʿArabī. Não obstante ele, como é comum entre “as gentes da Via”, teve mestres vivos, dentre eles seu próprio pai. Seu nome encontra-se no centro do chamado “renascimento akbari”, tendo realizado a primeira edição das Futūḥāt makkiyya, obra maior de Ibn ʿArabī. O capítulo aqui traduzido foi extraído da tradução francesa feita por M. Chodkiewicz de trechos do Kitāb al-Mawāqif (Livro das Paradas), em que o Emir comenta versos do Corão.

Le but du présent travail est de confronter un certain nombre de données relatives à l’histoire de la compilation du texte coranique provenant des sources disponibles les plus anciennes aux principaux critères de lecture de la compilation traditionnelle reconnue comme étant le texte fondateur de l’Islam, à savoir le codex ou muṣḥaf de ‘Uṯmān (troisième calife, de 644 à 656), appelé par ce dernier : muṣḥaf al-Ĝāmi ̒ (ouvrage de consensus). Après le décès du prophète, les compagnons avaient conservé leurs maṣāḥif (livres). Parmi eux on trouve ‘Abd Allah ’Ibn Mas‘ῡd (650/29), un fidèle qui avait la réputation de ne jamais quitter le Prophète. Or, l’examen du muṣḥaf de ce célèbre compagnon nous a montré que ce dernier ne comportait pas les cent quatorze (114) sourates inscrites dans le codex fondateur de ‘Uṯmān. Dans ce muṣḥaf nous avons trouvé que non seulement il manquait les trois sourates mentionnées par l’ensemble de la tradition, il manquait d’autres sourates.Dans la perspective de cette confrontation, nous avons mené dans la seconde partie une réflexion sur le sens des mots et les connotations de chaque terme. Est-ce que le Coran comporte des mots synonymiques ? Faut-il chercher à comprendre le texte coranique simplement d’un point de vue rhétorique et terminologique, ou bien faut-il prendre également en compte le contexte de la révélation? Certain passage coranique nous semble, par fois difficile à comprendre du fait du contexte de la révélation, mais les spécialistes de l’exégèse nous renvoie à l’abrogé et l’abrogeant pour dissiper cette difficulté. D’ailleurs, est ce qu’il existe réellement l’abrogé et l’abrogeant dans le texte coranique ? Cette question nous intéresse beaucoup du fait qu’un verset possède t-il une valeur juridique (ḥukm) ou bien reste caduque du fait de la perte de cette valeur par l’intervention d’un autre verset plus récent
The purpose of the present work is to confront a number of data relating to the history of the compilation of the Koranic text from the oldest available sources to the main reading criteria of the traditional compilation recognized as the founding text of Islam. , namely the codex or muṣḥaf of 'Uṯmān (third caliph, from 644 to 656), called by the latter: muṣḥaf al-Ĝāmi ̒ (work of consensus). After the death of the prophet, the companions had kept their maṣāḥif (books). Among them is 'Abd Allah' Ibn Mas'ῡd (650/29), a devotee who had the reputation of never leaving the Prophet. However, the examination of the muṣḥaf of this famous companion showed us that it did not include the one hundred and fourteen (114) suras listed in the founding codex of 'Uṯmān. In this muṣḥaf we found that not only did the three suras mentioned by the whole tradition. In the perspective of this confrontation between elements of history of the text and study of its contents, we conducted in the second part of this work a reflection on the meaning of the words and the connotations of each term. Does the Qur'an contain synonymic words? Should we seek to understand the Qur'anic text simply from a rhetorical and terminological point of view, or must we also take into account the context of the revelation? Certain Koranic passages seems to us, sometimes difficult to understand because of the context of the revelation, but the experts of the exegesis returns to the repealed and repealing it to dissipate this difficulty. Besides, is there really the abrogated and abrogating it in the Qur'anic text? This question is of great interest to us because a verse has a legal value (ḥukm) or is obsolete because of the loss of that value by the intervention of another more recent verse

Pluralism and tolerance are considered constitutive elements of good governance, especially liberal democracy as it developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For this reason they are widely debated among modern Muslims, including Islamists of various persuasions. This chapter focuses largely on modern debates. Pluralism and tolerance are clearly related and both cover a broad semantic field. They concern relations within the Muslim community, as well as between Muslims and non-Muslims, and are closely tied to understandings of freedom, liberty, and citizenship. However, there is a difference of emphasis between the two: Pluralism is discussed mostly with regard to the Muslim community, or umma, especially concerning the plurality of political views and interests and their institutionalization within civil society and a multiparty system. Discussions of tolerance, on the other hand, tend to focus on relations between Muslims and non-Muslims—more specifically Christians and Jews as the prime representatives of the People of the Book (ahl al-kitāb)—within a Muslim polity, or within an Islamic state.