George Makdisi – författare

This biography of the Muslim scholastic and humanist Ibn 'Aqil (A.H. 431-513/ A.D. 1040-1119) sheds light on one of the most important periods of classical Islam, one which has had a significant impact on religious and intellectual culture in the Christian Latin West.

In the present collection of his articles George Makdisi is first of all concerned with the local history and the topography of Baghdad. This is of interest in itself, as a study of one of the principal urban centres of the medieval world, but it also has a broader significance. For Baghdad, as the seat of the Abbasid caliphate, was the focal point of much of the Islamic world at the time: the rivalries between rulers and their ministers and the conflicts between secular and religious authorities, and between different religious factions, all find their reflection in the physical structure of the city and in the writings of those who lived there. Of particular note are the studies on the only extant diary of the period, that of Ibn al-Banna, and its historical significance ” both in terms of the literary genre, and as a unique source for the affair of Ibn 'Aqil, a cause célèbre that shook the world of Islam. The theme of authority and power is then developed in the second set of articles, focusing on the relations between caliph and sultan after the coming of the Saljuks. Au cours des articles rassemblés dans le présent volume, George Makdisi s 'attache avant tout à l'histoire locale et a la topographie de Bagdad. En soi, ceci présente un intérêt particulier en tant qu'étude d'un des principaux centres urbains du monde médiéval, cependant la signification en est plus large; en effet, Bagdad, en tant que siège du Califat abbaside, était le point de mire d'une grande partie du monde islamiques de l'époque: les rivalités entre les dirigeants et leurs ministres et les conflits entre autorités séculières et religieuses, ainsi qu'entre diverses factions religieuses, sont autant de choses qui se voient reflétées au travers de la structure de la ville et dans les écrits de ceux qui y vivaient. A noter plus particulièrement: les études sur le seul journal de l'époque qui ait été conservé, celui d'Ibn al-Banna et sa signification historiographiq

This second selection of articles by George Makdisi concentrates on the schools of religious thought and legal learning in the medieval Islamic world and their defence of ’orthodoxy’. The author aims to review and re-assess the implications of the conflict between, first, the ’rationalist’ and the ’traditional’ theologians (the one accepting the influence of Greek philosophy, the other rejecting it), and then between one of these traditionalist schools - the Hanbali school of law - and Sufi mysticism. One of the most important consequences of the first of these confrontations, he contends, was the emergence of the schools of law as the guardians of the faith and theological orthodoxy. The final section of the book also looks at the structure of legal learning, at the institutions themselves, their organization and the principles upon which they operated. As well as entering the debate over the existence of corporations and guilds of law in classical Islam - maintaining that they did exist - these articles further suggest links between such institutions and the evolution of universities in the medieval West, and the Inns of Court in England, and discuss the Islamic and Arabic contribution to the concepts of academic amd intellectual freedom and to the development of scholasticism and humanism. Cette seconde collection d’articles par George Makdisi se concentre sur les écoles de la pensée religieuse et de la science juridique, dans le monde islamique médiéval. L’auteur a pris pour objectif de réviser et de ré-évaluer les implications du conflit entre, premièrement, les théologiens rationalistes et traditionalistes (les premières étant ouverts à l’influence de la philosophie grecque que les seconds rejettaient) et, deuxièmement, entre l’une de ces écoles traditionalistes - l’école de droit Hanbali - et le mysticisme Sufi. L’une des conséquences les plus importantes, selon lui, de la première de ces confrontations à été la po