In this essay, I use the numerous extensive quotations from Mālik found in al-Shāfiʿī's Kitāb al-... more 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.
Toward the end of his life, Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 241/855), the hadith expert, jur-ist, and paragon... more Toward the end of his life, Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 241/855), the hadith expert, jur-ist, and paragon of Sunni piety, received a sick visit from a group of people, among them an older man with dyed hair. Upon seeing the man, Aḥmad declared, "How it delights me to see an old man with dyed hair!" Then he mentioned someone who was not present and asked, "Why does he not dye [his hair]?" The visitors answered, "He is ashamed." Aḥmad exclaimed in exas-peration, "God be praised; [it is] a tradition from the Prophet!"1 On another occasion Aḥmad catalogued the hair-dyeing practices of hadith scholars whom he personally knew: of the sixty-nine scholars he mentioned, forty-eight dyed their hair and twenty-one did not.2 Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal was by no means the only hadith scholar with a keen interest in hair dyeing: ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī (d. 211/827) transmitted numerous hadith reports from his teacher Maʿmar b. Rāshid (d. 153/770) on the topic, and a generation after Aḥmad, Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923) dedicated more than sixty pages of his Tahdhīb al-āthār to citing and discussing reports relating to male hair dyeing (khiḍāb, ikhtiḍāb, ṣibāgh).3 (By "hair dyeing" we should understand, throughout this paper, the dyeing of grey or white hairs both on the head and in the beard.) This paper argues that the considerable volume of discussion in early hadith literature on the issue of men dyeing their hair can grant us significant insight into the logic of early Muslim identity and norm formation. The first to address 1 Abū Bakr al-Khallāl, al-Wuqūf wa-l-tarajjul min al-Jāmiʿ li-masāʾil Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, ed. Sayyid Kasrawī Ḥasan (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1994), 131. 2 Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Masāʾil al-Imām Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, riwāya Ibn Abī al-Faḍl Ṣāliḥ, ed. Faḍl al-Raḥmān Dīn Muḥammad, 3 vols. (Delhi: al-Dār al-ʿIlmiyya, 1988), 2:374-381 (man kāna yakhḍab min al-muḥaddithīn). 3 Maʿmar b. Rāshid, al-Jāmiʿ, vols. 11 and 12 of ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī's al-Muṣannaf, ed. Ḥabīb al-Raḥmān al-Aʿẓamī (Simlak: al-Majlis al-ʿIlmī, 1970-1972), 11:153-156; Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Tahdhīb al-āthār: al-Juzʾ al-mafqūd, ed. ʿAlī Riḍā (Damascus: Dār al
This article presents two short but complete treatises on legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh). The first ... more This article presents two short but complete treatises on legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh). The first was written by Ibn Surayj (d. 306/918) as an addendum to his compendium on Shāfiʿī law, al-Wadāʾiʿ, and the second by Abū Bakr al-Khaffāf (fl. early fourth/tenth century), who included it as an introduction to his legal text al-Aqsām wa-l-khiṣāl. An analysis of these texts reveals the existence of a self-conscious legal-theoretical discourse around the turn of the fourth/tenth century that connects al-Shāfiʿī's (d. 204/820) Risāla with the so-called mature uṣūl tradition known from the late fourth/tenth century onward. The analysis also sheds considerable light on developments in legal theory in this period, such as the emergence of the term ʿilla (cause), the parallel rise of legal dialectics (jadal), the consequences of adopting the idea of waḍʿ (linguistic coinage), and generally the inclusion of theological concerns in legal theory.
This paper traces the influence of Galen's De usu partium on al-Ghazali both directly and through... more This paper traces the influence of Galen's De usu partium on al-Ghazali both directly and through various intermediaries. It also clarifies the provenance of two third century texts attributed to al-Jahiz.
This chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Islamic Law first revisits the debates regarding the role ... more This chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Islamic Law first revisits the debates regarding the role of the Qur’an and Hadith, respectively, in the formulation of Islamic law. It then reviews scholarship on the phases of Islamic law’s development (7th-11th centuries), beginning with the emergence of geographically defined legal traditions and culminating in the formation of the legal schools and their distinctive theoretical principles and substantive doctrines. It concludes by suggesting directions for future research.
Intellectual History of the Islamicate World, 2016
This paper uses the libraries of two prominent Azharī scholars of the nineteenth and early twenti... more This paper uses the libraries of two prominent Azharī scholars of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a window to the literary horizons of Islamic scholarship at the cusp of the print revolution. A comparative analysis of the two libraries’ holdings in law, theology, philosophy, literature, and Quranic exegesis reveals that the late manuscript tradition was overwhelmingly focused on a small number of curriculum texts and extensive commentaries on them, while ignoring most of the works that we today consider the classics of these fields. Only in the early twentieth century were these classics rediscovered and popularized through print. Further, the vast majority of the printed works in the two libraries was produced in Egypt, but they also contained significant numbers of works from Istanbul, Iran, and India. Books printed in Europe, however, were nearly absent.
Testimony is arguably the central element of Islamic judicial practice. Determining what testimon... more Testimony is arguably the central element of Islamic judicial practice. Determining what testimony is acceptable and what is not is consequently an important task, with repercussions for the very identity of the Islamic court system. In this paper, I examine the issue of the exclusion of potential witnesses in the second hijrī century-the earliest period for which sources exist-in order to provide a tentative sketch of changes in this aspect of judicial practice over the course of that century. I pay particular attention to the treatment of potential non-Muslim witnesses and the changing rationales given for their admission to or exclusion from Muslim courts. My analysis reveals shifts and interconnections along two axes: between communal and individual criteria of witness acceptability, and between considerations applying to Muslim witnesses and those applying to non-Muslim ones. Conflicting Early Opinions For the earliest sources on the exclusion of potential witnesses, we must look to collections of prophetic and post-prophetic reports compiled in the second and third hijrī centuries (eighth and ninth centuries CE), because legal treatises proper began to be authored only in the second half of the second/eighth century. The material preserved on the topic in these collections-the most important of which are the compilations of ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī (d. 211/827) and Ibn Abī Shayba (d. 235/849)-is dominated by early second/eighth-century reports. Ibn Abī Shayba cites no prophetic ḥadīth concerning the exclusion of potential witnesses and Ṣanʿānī cites just one report, according to which Muḥammad said: "No community Chapter One
In William Granara, Roy P. Mottahedeh, Wheeler M. Thackston & Alireza Korangy (eds.), Essays in I... more In William Granara, Roy P. Mottahedeh, Wheeler M. Thackston & Alireza Korangy (eds.), Essays in Islamic Philology, History, and Philosophy. De Gruyter 204-228 (2016)
Following the institutionalization of the Sufi orders, the ritual practice of dhikr took on a central role. In this paper I show that under the influence of the speculative Sufism that had taken root in the orders, dhikr came to be theorized as a method of return: a graded process that could lead its practitioner back to humanity's divine origin through various layers of existence. The core text at the heart of my analysis is the perennially popular Sirr al-Asrār (or Bayān al-Asrār), which in modern editions and translations has been misattributed to ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (d. 561/1166) but which in fact was written by Yūsuf al-Kūrānī (d. 768/1367), a Kurdish Sufi who settled in Egypt. Beginning in the sixth/twelfth century, Sufism underwent a fundamental transformation with two principal facets. The first of these was the emergence of an institutional framework of Sufi orders, structured by a system of master-disciple relations and based in endowed lodges. The second was the formulation of holis-tic doctrines that incorporated and adapted elements from a range of intellectual and religious traditions. The former development gave Sufism significant influence over popular religiosity, while the latter reconfigured the meaning of key Islamic concepts and practices.1 My aim in this article is to shed light on this transformation by examining the theorization of dhikr, formalized remembrance and contemplation of God, as developed in an eighth-/fourteenth-century Sufi text. My analysis reveals that the emergence of dhikr as the primary Sufi ritual within the nascent Sufi orders was underpinned and supported by a theoretical foundation rooted in a Neoplatonic cosmology of emanation. Within this framework, the increasingly internalized recitation of specific divine names allowed the Sufi seeker to gradually overcome the distance separating the person uttering the name from the one named and thus to return to humanity's original abode in the realm of divine presence.
In Public and Private in Ancient Mediterranean Law and Religion, 2015
The Islamic notion of an all-seeing God led to a reconfiguration of the pre-Islamic idea of shame... more The Islamic notion of an all-seeing God led to a reconfiguration of the pre-Islamic idea of shame and prompted the theorization of two distinct realms of human existence and action: one public, carried out before fellow humans, and the other private, known only to God. This essay traces the emergence of this distinction and its ramifications in the fields of Islamic law and asceticism. The conceptualization of privacy as the realm of the divine gaze gave rise to particular notions of sin versus crime and sincerity versus hypocrisy, and it contributed to the process of individuation that accompanied the urban spread of Islam.
In a recent article Petra M. Sijpesteijn presented a hitherto unknown second/eighth- or early thi... more In a recent article Petra M. Sijpesteijn presented a hitherto unknown second/eighth- or early third/ninth-century papyrus containing a report on the subject of prayer attributed to the second caliph ʿUmar (d. 23/644). Her analysis of the papyrus led her to conclude that it reveals that Muslims at this time “were unsure about how to execute the most basic religious obligations.” In this brief note I want to offer a few comments on the content and context of the report in question in order to show that the papyrus does not in fact support Sijpesteijn’s conclusion.
In this essay, I use the numerous extensive quotations from Mālik found in al-Shāfiʿī's Kitāb al-... more 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.
Toward the end of his life, Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 241/855), the hadith expert, jur-ist, and paragon... more Toward the end of his life, Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 241/855), the hadith expert, jur-ist, and paragon of Sunni piety, received a sick visit from a group of people, among them an older man with dyed hair. Upon seeing the man, Aḥmad declared, "How it delights me to see an old man with dyed hair!" Then he mentioned someone who was not present and asked, "Why does he not dye [his hair]?" The visitors answered, "He is ashamed." Aḥmad exclaimed in exas-peration, "God be praised; [it is] a tradition from the Prophet!"1 On another occasion Aḥmad catalogued the hair-dyeing practices of hadith scholars whom he personally knew: of the sixty-nine scholars he mentioned, forty-eight dyed their hair and twenty-one did not.2 Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal was by no means the only hadith scholar with a keen interest in hair dyeing: ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī (d. 211/827) transmitted numerous hadith reports from his teacher Maʿmar b. Rāshid (d. 153/770) on the topic, and a generation after Aḥmad, Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923) dedicated more than sixty pages of his Tahdhīb al-āthār to citing and discussing reports relating to male hair dyeing (khiḍāb, ikhtiḍāb, ṣibāgh).3 (By "hair dyeing" we should understand, throughout this paper, the dyeing of grey or white hairs both on the head and in the beard.) This paper argues that the considerable volume of discussion in early hadith literature on the issue of men dyeing their hair can grant us significant insight into the logic of early Muslim identity and norm formation. The first to address 1 Abū Bakr al-Khallāl, al-Wuqūf wa-l-tarajjul min al-Jāmiʿ li-masāʾil Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, ed. Sayyid Kasrawī Ḥasan (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1994), 131. 2 Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Masāʾil al-Imām Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, riwāya Ibn Abī al-Faḍl Ṣāliḥ, ed. Faḍl al-Raḥmān Dīn Muḥammad, 3 vols. (Delhi: al-Dār al-ʿIlmiyya, 1988), 2:374-381 (man kāna yakhḍab min al-muḥaddithīn). 3 Maʿmar b. Rāshid, al-Jāmiʿ, vols. 11 and 12 of ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī's al-Muṣannaf, ed. Ḥabīb al-Raḥmān al-Aʿẓamī (Simlak: al-Majlis al-ʿIlmī, 1970-1972), 11:153-156; Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Tahdhīb al-āthār: al-Juzʾ al-mafqūd, ed. ʿAlī Riḍā (Damascus: Dār al
This article presents two short but complete treatises on legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh). The first ... more This article presents two short but complete treatises on legal theory (uṣūl al-fiqh). The first was written by Ibn Surayj (d. 306/918) as an addendum to his compendium on Shāfiʿī law, al-Wadāʾiʿ, and the second by Abū Bakr al-Khaffāf (fl. early fourth/tenth century), who included it as an introduction to his legal text al-Aqsām wa-l-khiṣāl. An analysis of these texts reveals the existence of a self-conscious legal-theoretical discourse around the turn of the fourth/tenth century that connects al-Shāfiʿī's (d. 204/820) Risāla with the so-called mature uṣūl tradition known from the late fourth/tenth century onward. The analysis also sheds considerable light on developments in legal theory in this period, such as the emergence of the term ʿilla (cause), the parallel rise of legal dialectics (jadal), the consequences of adopting the idea of waḍʿ (linguistic coinage), and generally the inclusion of theological concerns in legal theory.
This paper traces the influence of Galen's De usu partium on al-Ghazali both directly and through... more This paper traces the influence of Galen's De usu partium on al-Ghazali both directly and through various intermediaries. It also clarifies the provenance of two third century texts attributed to al-Jahiz.
This chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Islamic Law first revisits the debates regarding the role ... more This chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Islamic Law first revisits the debates regarding the role of the Qur’an and Hadith, respectively, in the formulation of Islamic law. It then reviews scholarship on the phases of Islamic law’s development (7th-11th centuries), beginning with the emergence of geographically defined legal traditions and culminating in the formation of the legal schools and their distinctive theoretical principles and substantive doctrines. It concludes by suggesting directions for future research.
Intellectual History of the Islamicate World, 2016
This paper uses the libraries of two prominent Azharī scholars of the nineteenth and early twenti... more This paper uses the libraries of two prominent Azharī scholars of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a window to the literary horizons of Islamic scholarship at the cusp of the print revolution. A comparative analysis of the two libraries’ holdings in law, theology, philosophy, literature, and Quranic exegesis reveals that the late manuscript tradition was overwhelmingly focused on a small number of curriculum texts and extensive commentaries on them, while ignoring most of the works that we today consider the classics of these fields. Only in the early twentieth century were these classics rediscovered and popularized through print. Further, the vast majority of the printed works in the two libraries was produced in Egypt, but they also contained significant numbers of works from Istanbul, Iran, and India. Books printed in Europe, however, were nearly absent.
Testimony is arguably the central element of Islamic judicial practice. Determining what testimon... more Testimony is arguably the central element of Islamic judicial practice. Determining what testimony is acceptable and what is not is consequently an important task, with repercussions for the very identity of the Islamic court system. In this paper, I examine the issue of the exclusion of potential witnesses in the second hijrī century-the earliest period for which sources exist-in order to provide a tentative sketch of changes in this aspect of judicial practice over the course of that century. I pay particular attention to the treatment of potential non-Muslim witnesses and the changing rationales given for their admission to or exclusion from Muslim courts. My analysis reveals shifts and interconnections along two axes: between communal and individual criteria of witness acceptability, and between considerations applying to Muslim witnesses and those applying to non-Muslim ones. Conflicting Early Opinions For the earliest sources on the exclusion of potential witnesses, we must look to collections of prophetic and post-prophetic reports compiled in the second and third hijrī centuries (eighth and ninth centuries CE), because legal treatises proper began to be authored only in the second half of the second/eighth century. The material preserved on the topic in these collections-the most important of which are the compilations of ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī (d. 211/827) and Ibn Abī Shayba (d. 235/849)-is dominated by early second/eighth-century reports. Ibn Abī Shayba cites no prophetic ḥadīth concerning the exclusion of potential witnesses and Ṣanʿānī cites just one report, according to which Muḥammad said: "No community Chapter One
In William Granara, Roy P. Mottahedeh, Wheeler M. Thackston & Alireza Korangy (eds.), Essays in I... more In William Granara, Roy P. Mottahedeh, Wheeler M. Thackston & Alireza Korangy (eds.), Essays in Islamic Philology, History, and Philosophy. De Gruyter 204-228 (2016)
Following the institutionalization of the Sufi orders, the ritual practice of dhikr took on a central role. In this paper I show that under the influence of the speculative Sufism that had taken root in the orders, dhikr came to be theorized as a method of return: a graded process that could lead its practitioner back to humanity's divine origin through various layers of existence. The core text at the heart of my analysis is the perennially popular Sirr al-Asrār (or Bayān al-Asrār), which in modern editions and translations has been misattributed to ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (d. 561/1166) but which in fact was written by Yūsuf al-Kūrānī (d. 768/1367), a Kurdish Sufi who settled in Egypt. Beginning in the sixth/twelfth century, Sufism underwent a fundamental transformation with two principal facets. The first of these was the emergence of an institutional framework of Sufi orders, structured by a system of master-disciple relations and based in endowed lodges. The second was the formulation of holis-tic doctrines that incorporated and adapted elements from a range of intellectual and religious traditions. The former development gave Sufism significant influence over popular religiosity, while the latter reconfigured the meaning of key Islamic concepts and practices.1 My aim in this article is to shed light on this transformation by examining the theorization of dhikr, formalized remembrance and contemplation of God, as developed in an eighth-/fourteenth-century Sufi text. My analysis reveals that the emergence of dhikr as the primary Sufi ritual within the nascent Sufi orders was underpinned and supported by a theoretical foundation rooted in a Neoplatonic cosmology of emanation. Within this framework, the increasingly internalized recitation of specific divine names allowed the Sufi seeker to gradually overcome the distance separating the person uttering the name from the one named and thus to return to humanity's original abode in the realm of divine presence.
In Public and Private in Ancient Mediterranean Law and Religion, 2015
The Islamic notion of an all-seeing God led to a reconfiguration of the pre-Islamic idea of shame... more The Islamic notion of an all-seeing God led to a reconfiguration of the pre-Islamic idea of shame and prompted the theorization of two distinct realms of human existence and action: one public, carried out before fellow humans, and the other private, known only to God. This essay traces the emergence of this distinction and its ramifications in the fields of Islamic law and asceticism. The conceptualization of privacy as the realm of the divine gaze gave rise to particular notions of sin versus crime and sincerity versus hypocrisy, and it contributed to the process of individuation that accompanied the urban spread of Islam.
In a recent article Petra M. Sijpesteijn presented a hitherto unknown second/eighth- or early thi... more In a recent article Petra M. Sijpesteijn presented a hitherto unknown second/eighth- or early third/ninth-century papyrus containing a report on the subject of prayer attributed to the second caliph ʿUmar (d. 23/644). Her analysis of the papyrus led her to conclude that it reveals that Muslims at this time “were unsure about how to execute the most basic religious obligations.” In this brief note I want to offer a few comments on the content and context of the report in question in order to show that the papyrus does not in fact support Sijpesteijn’s conclusion.
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significant numbers of works from Istanbul, Iran, and India. Books printed in Europe, however, were nearly absent.
Following the institutionalization of the Sufi orders, the ritual practice of dhikr took on a central role. In this paper I show that under the influence of the speculative Sufism that had taken root in the orders, dhikr came to be theorized as a method of return: a graded process that could lead its practitioner back to humanity's divine origin through various layers of existence. The core text at the heart of my analysis is the perennially popular Sirr al-Asrār (or Bayān al-Asrār), which in modern editions and translations has been misattributed to ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (d. 561/1166) but which in fact was written by Yūsuf al-Kūrānī (d. 768/1367), a Kurdish Sufi who settled in Egypt. Beginning in the sixth/twelfth century, Sufism underwent a fundamental transformation with two principal facets. The first of these was the emergence of an institutional framework of Sufi orders, structured by a system of master-disciple relations and based in endowed lodges. The second was the formulation of holis-tic doctrines that incorporated and adapted elements from a range of intellectual and religious traditions. The former development gave Sufism significant influence over popular religiosity, while the latter reconfigured the meaning of key Islamic concepts and practices.1 My aim in this article is to shed light on this transformation by examining the theorization of dhikr, formalized remembrance and contemplation of God, as developed in an eighth-/fourteenth-century Sufi text. My analysis reveals that the emergence of dhikr as the primary Sufi ritual within the nascent Sufi orders was underpinned and supported by a theoretical foundation rooted in a Neoplatonic cosmology of emanation. Within this framework, the increasingly internalized recitation of specific divine names allowed the Sufi seeker to gradually overcome the distance separating the person uttering the name from the one named and thus to return to humanity's original abode in the realm of divine presence.
significant numbers of works from Istanbul, Iran, and India. Books printed in Europe, however, were nearly absent.
Following the institutionalization of the Sufi orders, the ritual practice of dhikr took on a central role. In this paper I show that under the influence of the speculative Sufism that had taken root in the orders, dhikr came to be theorized as a method of return: a graded process that could lead its practitioner back to humanity's divine origin through various layers of existence. The core text at the heart of my analysis is the perennially popular Sirr al-Asrār (or Bayān al-Asrār), which in modern editions and translations has been misattributed to ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (d. 561/1166) but which in fact was written by Yūsuf al-Kūrānī (d. 768/1367), a Kurdish Sufi who settled in Egypt. Beginning in the sixth/twelfth century, Sufism underwent a fundamental transformation with two principal facets. The first of these was the emergence of an institutional framework of Sufi orders, structured by a system of master-disciple relations and based in endowed lodges. The second was the formulation of holis-tic doctrines that incorporated and adapted elements from a range of intellectual and religious traditions. The former development gave Sufism significant influence over popular religiosity, while the latter reconfigured the meaning of key Islamic concepts and practices.1 My aim in this article is to shed light on this transformation by examining the theorization of dhikr, formalized remembrance and contemplation of God, as developed in an eighth-/fourteenth-century Sufi text. My analysis reveals that the emergence of dhikr as the primary Sufi ritual within the nascent Sufi orders was underpinned and supported by a theoretical foundation rooted in a Neoplatonic cosmology of emanation. Within this framework, the increasingly internalized recitation of specific divine names allowed the Sufi seeker to gradually overcome the distance separating the person uttering the name from the one named and thus to return to humanity's original abode in the realm of divine presence.