Islamicate Intellectual History – serie

In Rule-Formulation and Binding Precedent in the Madhhab-Law Tradition, Talal Al-Azem argues for the existence of a madhhab-law tradition’ of jurisprudence underpinning the four post-classical Sunni schools of law. This tradition celebrated polyvalence by preserving the multiplicity of conflicting opinions within each school, while simultaneously providing a process of rule formulation (tarjīḥ) by which one opinion is chosen as the binding precedent (taqlīd). The predominant forum of both activities, he shows, was the legal commentary.Through a careful reading of Ibn Quṭlūbughā's (d. 879/1474) al-Taṣḥīḥ wa-al-tarjīḥ, Al-Azem presents a new periodisation of the Ḥanafī madhhab, analyses the theory of rule formulation, and demonstrates how this madhhab-law tradition facilitated both continuity and legal change while serving as the basis of a pluralistic Mamluk judicial system.

In Opposition to Philosophy in Safavid Iran, Ata Anzali and S. M. Hadi Gerami offer a critical edition of a hitherto unpublished manuscript that is arguably the most erudite and extensive polemical work against philosophy and philosophical mysticism from the Safavid period. The introduction offers an extensive and in-depth analysis of the status of philosophy in the late Safavid period, placing Mulla Muhammad-Tahir Qummi’s (d. 1689) work in the broader context of the relevant cultural and intellectual developments of his time.The content of Hikmat al-‘arifin itself is divided between a refutation of many traditional philosophical arguments about the nature of God and His attributes and, more importantly for those interested in Safavid intellectual history, attacks on Mulla Sadra and his students for synthesizing fundamental elements Ibn ‘Arabi’s thought into the framework of traditional philosophical discourse.

In ʿAlāʾ al-Dawla al-Simnānī between Spiritual Authority and Political Power: A Persian Lord and Intellectual in the Heart of the Ilkhanate, Giovanni Maria Martini investigates the personality of a major figure in the socio-political and cultural landscape of Mongol Iran. In pursuing this objective, the author follows parallel paths: Chapter 1 provides the most updated reconstruction of Simnānī’s (d. 736/1336) biography, which, thanks to its unique features, emerges as a cross-section of Iranian society and as a microhistory of the complex relationships between a Sufi master, Persian elites and Mongol rulers during the Ilkhanid period; Chapter 2 contains a study on the phenomenon of Arabic-Persian diglossia in Simnānī’s written work, arguing for its socio-religious function; in Chapters 3 to 6 the critical editions of two important, interrelated treatises by Simnānī are presented; finally, Chapter 7 offers the first full-length annotated translation of a long work by Simnānī ever to appear in a Western language.

Philosophical Theology in Islam studies the later history of the Ashʿarī school of theology through in-depth probings of its thought, sources, scholarly networks and contexts. Starting with a review of al-Ghazālī’s role in the emergence of post-Avicennan philosophical theology, the book offers a series of case studies on hitherto unstudied texts by the towering thinker Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī as well as specific philosophical and theological topics treated in his works. Studies furthermore shed light on the transmission and reception of later Ashʿarī doctrines in periods and regions that have so far received little scholarly attention. This book is the first exploration of the later Ashʿarī tradition across the medieval and early-modern period through a trans-regional perspective.Contributors: Peter Adamson, Asad Q. Ahmed, Fedor Benevich, Xavier Casassas Canals, Jon Hoover, Bilal Ibrahim, Andreas Lammer, Reza Pourjavady, Harith Ramli, Ulrich Rudolph, Meryem Sebti, Delfina Serrano-Ruano, Ayman Shihadeh, Aaron Spevack, and Jan Thiele.

The Maẓhar al-ʿajāʾib is the devotional work written to expound upon the teachings of Aghā-yi Buzurg, a female religious master active in the early 16th century in Bukhara. The work was produced in 16th century Central Asia, when the region underwent major socio-economic and religio-political changes in the aftermath of the downfall of the Timurid dynasty and the establishment of the Shibanid dynasty in Mavarannahr and the Safavid dynasty in Iran. In its portrayal of Aghā-yi Buzurg, the Maẓhar al-ʿajāʾib represents a tradition that maintained an egalitarian conception of gender in the spiritual equality of women and men, attesting to the presence of multiple voices in Muslim discourse and challenging conventional ways of thinking about gender history in early modern Central Asia.

Saʿdeddīn Efendi was a renowned Ottoman chief jurisconsult, influential statesman, eminent scholar, and prolific translator of Arabic and Persian works into Turkish. Prognostic Dreams, Otherworldly Saints, and Caliphal Ghosts comprises a critical edition, English translation, and a facsimile of his hagiographic work on controversial Ottoman sultan Selim I (“the Grim”). Saʿdeddīn’s Selimname consists of a preface and twelve anecdotes in which Selim I is portrayed as a divinely ordained sultan who delves into the realm of meditation, communicates with otherworldly saints and the “rightly guided” caliphs, and foretells the future.

De Tamerlan à Gengis Khan describes how the writing of the history of Tamerlane by French scholars between the 16th and 18th c. led to a reinterpretation of the history of Genghis Khan. Based on a supposed common origin of these two emperors, the idea of a «Tartar empire» structured the perception of the history of the Orient until the 19th century. Matthieu Chochoy highlights the dynamics and networks within which this idea circulated, the sources mainly produced in Persia and China that fed this paradigm and the stages of its deconstruction.In this perspective, this book stands at the crossroads of the history of scholarship in France in the classical age and the intellectual history of Orientalism.De Tamerlan à Gengis Khan décrit la façon dont l’écriture de l’histoire de Tamerlan par les érudits français entre le xvie et le xviiie siècle a conduit à une réinterprétation de l’histoire de Gengis Khan. Construite à partir d’une origine supposément commune à ces deux empereurs, l’idée «d’empire tartare» a structuré la perception de l’histoire de l’Orient jusqu’au xixe siècle. Matthieu Chochoy met en lumière les dynamiques et les réseaux au sein desquels cette idée a circulé, les sources majoritairement produites en Perse et en Chine qui ont alimenté ce paradigme, et les étapes de sa déconstruction.Dans cette perspective, ce livre témoigne de la rencontre entre une histoire de l’érudition en France à l’âge classique et une histoire intellectuelle de l’orientalisme.

This is the first in a series of sourcebooks charting the reception of Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, d.1037) in the Islamic East (from Syria to central Asia) in the 12th-13th centuries CE. Avicenna was the dominant philosophical authority in this period, who provoked generations of thinkers to subtle critique, defense, and development of his ideas. The series will translate and analyze hundreds of passages from works by such figures as al-Ghazālī, al-Suhrawardī, Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, and many more. This volume focuses especially on issues in metaphysics, dealing with topics like the essence-existence distinction, the problem of universals, free will and determinism, Platonic Forms, good and evil, proofs of God’s existence, and the relationship between philosophy and theology.

Averroes’ Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics reveals the original version, previously considered lost, of a landmark work in Arabic philosophy. Undoubtedly authored by the Cordovan thinker Averroes (1126-1198), this “middle” commentary is distinct from the Long Commentary and the Short Commentary in method, several doctrinal elements, and scope (it includes books M and N of the Stagirite’s treatise). These points and the transmission of the Middle Commentary at the crossroads of Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin traditions are addressed in the introduction, which also establishes that the work was extensively quoted by the mystical philosopher Ibn Sabʿīn (13th c.). The edition of the text and the facing translation follow. At the end of the book are Ibn Sabʿīn’s quotations, along with extensive indexes.

Visualizing Sufism approaches the question of the presence of graphic materials in Islamic mystical literature from a broad and comprehensive perspective. To this goal, an international group of specialists in the field worked on largely manuscript and unpublished sources with the aim of analyzing the use of visual elements in the works of some key figures of Islamic mysticism—Ibn al-ʿArabī, Aḥmad al-Būnī, Saʿd al-Dīn Ḥamūyeh, al-Shaʿrānī—, and in intellectual networks—Ḥurūfiyya and Bektashiyya, Shīrīn Maghribī and his connections. The result is the most extensive collection of specimens of Sufi graphic materials ever brought together and discussed in a single volume. By virtue of the object of study investigated in the chapters of this book, in addition to the history of Sufism, questions are raised that touch upon numerous areas in the field of Islamic Studies, including intellectual history, codicology, and art history.ContributorsElizabeth R. Alexandrin, Noah Gardiner, Ali Karjoo-Ravary, Evyn Kropf, Giovanni Maria Martini, Orkhan Mir-Kasimov, and Sophie Tyser.

Ibn al-Azraq (d. 896/1491) was a renowned Andalusian jurist (faqīh) and statesman who lived during the final period of the Nasrid emirate of Granada. His most famous work, Badāʾiʿ al-Silk fī Ṭabāʾiʿ al-Mulk (Unprecedented Lines about the Nature of Political Rule), is a political treatise that builds upon Ibn Khaldūn’s (d. 808/1406) social theory (Ꜥilm al-Ꜥumrān). In The grand critic of Ibn Khaldūn Elena Şahin critically analyses the major aspects of Ibn al-Azraq’s political thought.In this contribution on the field of the history of Islamic political thought, Elena Şahin demonstrates that while Ibn al-Azraq integrates the thrust of Ibn Khaldūn’s approach, Ibn al-Azraq’s work should be regarded as part of a larger conversation amongst various scholars, engaging, for example with the Andalusian jurist al-Shāṭibī’s (d. 790/1388) theory of Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿa. Widening the analysis of Ibn al-Azraq’s work illuminates that Ibn al-Azraq’s political theory was in opposition to that of Ibn Khaldūn, and thus gives us a better understanding of the dynamic debates within Andalusian political thought.

In Lost in a Sea of Letters, Cyril Uy explores the life and work of Saʿd al-Dīn Ḥamūya (d. 1252), a Mongol-era Sufi whose arcane treatises inspired generations of mystics and messiahs. Reading Ḥamūya in dialogue with contemporaries across Central Asia, Iran, and the Eastern Mediterranean, Uy excavates a world in which knowledge was an embodied sensibility: a way of being that could improvise across all dimensions of human experience. Ḥamūya’s performative writing reworked the foundations of this knowledge, provoking readers to live reality through the cacophony of his Sufi free jazz. Foregrounding Ḥamūya’s deconstructive ethos and radical openness to interpretation, Uy reveals how embracing plurality could thrive as a mode of social, intellectual, and spiritual competition.

In Intellectual Life in the Ḥijāz before Wahhabism, Naser Dumairieh argues that, as a result of changing global conditions facilitating the movement of scholars and texts, the seventeenth-century Ḥijāz was one of the most important intellectual centers of the Islamic world, acting as a hub between its different parts.Positioning Ibrāhīm al-Kūrānī (d. 1101/1690) as representative of the intellectual activities of the pre-Wahhabism Ḥijāz, Dumairieh argues that his coherent philosophical system represents a synthesis of several major post-classical traditions of Islamic thought, namely kalām and Akbarian appropriations of Avicennian metaphysics. Al-Kūrānī’s work is the culmination of the philosophized Akbarian tradition; with his reconciliation of Ibn ʿArabī’s ideas with Ashʿarī theology, Ibn ʿArabī’s ideas became Islamic theology.