IBN GABIROL, SOLOMON
Solomon ben Judah ibn Gabirol (ca. 1021–1058
CE), known as Abu Ayyub Sulayman ibn Yahya ibn Jabirul in Arabic, was one of
the most important Jewish literary and religious intellectuals of
eleventhcentury al-Andalus. Scant biographical details of Ibn Gabirol’s life
survive in brief reports from Ibn Sa‘id al-Andalusi, a contemporary Muslim
intellectual of Toledo, and from the
late eleventh to twelfth century Andalusi Jewish scholar Moses ibn Ezra. Following
the collapse of the Umayyad caliphate, Ibn Gabirol’s family made its way from Ma´laga
to Saragossa. There the young Solomon established himself in the social and
intellectual circle of the Jewish courtier Abu Ishaq Yequti’el b. Isaac ibn
Hasan. Yequti’el met an untimely death by execution in 1039, but Solomon also
found patronage and developed a relationship, sometimes strained, with the leading Andalusi Jewish
sociopolitical and intellectual figure of the period, Samuel ibn Naghrela
(Samuel the Nagid) of Granada. Despite his associations with Andalusi Jewish
notables Ibn Gabirol seems to have been reclusive and socially alienated and
was certainly so preoccupied with the advanced study of philosophy that he
expressed considerable disdain for mundane social concerns. According to the testimony
of his poetry, Solomon suffered from a serious skin ailment. He died in Valencia
in 1058.
Ibn Gabirol’s literary production includes
highly original devotional and social poetry he composed in Hebrew and philosophical
works written in Arabic, some of which are no longer extant in the original. A
treatise on ethics, Islah al-akhlaq
(Improvement of the Moral Qualities), includes citations from the Hebrew Bible,
Greek philosophers, and Arabic poetry. An Arabic metaphysical work on
cosmology,The Source of Life, survived only in Latin translation (Fons
Vitae)and in a few Hebrew fragments. The Cairo Genizah also yielded fragments
of a collection of Arabic aphorisms attributed to Ibn Gabirol. Entitled Mukhtar al-jawahir (Choice of Pearls),
the full compilation survived only in Hebrew translation. Ibn Gabirol’s
philosophical writings addressed the general rather than specifically Jewish
concerns of a Neoplatonic intellectual
during the classical age of Islam. In particular Ibn Gabirol seems to have been
a reader of the classical encyclopedia Rasa’il
ikhwan al-safa (Epistles of the Brethren of Purity)that arrived in
al-Andalus from the Muslim East during the eleventh century. At the same time,
the philosophical vocabulary and speculative orientation of his Arabic prose
works inform the language and conceptual framework of Ibn Gabirol’s
idiosyncratic and enigmatic occasional Hebrew poetry that celebrates his quest
for wisdom. An Arabo-Islamic literary and intellectual background is equally
apparent in Ibn Gabirol’s verse written specifically for recitation in the
synagogue about the soul’s craving to be restored to its sublime source.
Studies of Ibn Gabirol’s liturgical verse have also shown the Hebrew poet to be
a devotee of contemporary Sufi poetry. A masterful synthesis of Ibn Gabirol’s
intellectual and literary creativity is the Hebrew philosophical poem Keter malkhut (Kingdom’s Crown).
Further Reading
Cole,
Peter.Selected Poems of Solomon ibn Gabirol. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2001. Loewe, Raphael.Ibn Gabirol. London: Peter Halban, 1989.
Schlanger,
Jacques.La philosophie de Salomon ibn Gabirol. E´ tudes d’un ne ´oplatonisme.
Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968.
IBN HAMDIS
Abd al-Jabbar Ibn Hamdıs, the most notable
and prolific of Arab Sicilian poets, was born in Syracuse in 1055 CE to a noble
family of the Azd tribe. He spent his childhood between the privileged life of landed
gentry and the first rumblings of the Norman Conquest of Sicily. He chose
self-imposed exile in 1078, seeking fame and fortune as a court poet and panegyrist.
His thirteen-year sojourn at the ‘Abbasid
Court in Seville (1078–1091) gave him the security of royal patronage and exposure
to wider spheres of poetic experimentation that shaped his literary
sensibilities and talents. His praise poems and celebratory odes to al-Mu’tamid
on his victory at the Battle of
al-Zallaqa in 1086 against Alfonse VI illustrate the perils of life in
frontier areas ravaged by civil unrest and threats of the Christian Reconquest,
as well as on the diction, themes, and motifs the poet chose to poeticize his
life experiences.
The Almoravid invasion of Seville and the
expulsion of his patron forced Ibn Hamdis to flee again, this time along the North
African littoral where he settled in the province of Ifriqiyya. He spent the
second half of his long life shuffling to and from the Zirid court at
al-Mahdiyya (modern Tunisia), singing the praises of new patrons and lamenting
the loss ofhis beloved homeland, themes that often collapse into a single poem.
Ibn Hamdis bequeathed to Arabic literature an
anthology (Diwan) containing 370 poems, from two lines short to eighty lines
long. The multiple genres of panegyric, elegy, love poem, devotional poem, wine
song, description, and celebratory ode underscore his artistic versatility. The
preponderance of the panegyric, from his earlier to his twilight years, calls
attention to a career financially and professionally dependent on the political
whims and winds of his time.
Ibn Hamdis’s poetics is intricately connected
to the neoclassicism of the later ‘Abbasid period, one that revamped old forms
to convey new meanings. His reworking of the stock phrases, imagery, themes, and
motifs of the poetic canons, his conscious tampering with the early tripartite
and later bipartite structure of the
qasida, and his playful manipulation of the rhetorical devices of the new
poetry (al-badi’), that is, of
punning and antithesis, disclose influences by poets such as Abu Tammam and al-Mutannabi.
Ibn Hamdis is best known for his verses
celebrating the life of and lamenting the loss of his beloved Sicily. Themes of
nostalgia for the homeland, lost youth, the vicissitudes of time, and Islam’s
struggle against the infidel enemy coalesce around imagery of a paradise lost.
I remember Sicily as agony stirs
in my soul memories of her.
An abode for
the pleasures of my youth, now vacant, once inhabited by the noblest of people.
I have been
banished from Paradise and I long to tell you her story.
Were it not
for the saltiness of my tears, I would imagine them to be her rivers.
I laughed at
twenty years old out of youthful passion.
Now I cry at
sixty for her crimes.
Further Reading
‘Abbas,
Ihsan. al-‘Arab fi Siqilliya. Cairo: Dar al-M’arif, 1959.
Amari,
Michele.Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia. 2d ed. Edited by C.A. Nallino.
Catania: Romeo Prampolini, 1933.
Borruso,
Andrea. ‘‘La nostalgia della Sicilia nel diwan di Ibn Hamdis.’’ Bollettino del Centro di studi
filologici e linguistici sicilianiXII (1073): 38–54
Gabrieli,
Francesco. ‘‘Sicilia e Spagna nella vita e nella poesia di Ibn Hamdis.’’ InDal Mondo
dell’Islam. Naples: Riccardo Ricciardi Editore, 1954, 109–126.
Granara,
William. ‘‘Remaking Muslim Sicily: Ibn Hamdis and the Poetics of Exile.’’
Edebiyat9, no. 2 (1998): 167–198.
Ibn Hamdis,
‘Abd al-Jabbar. Diwan. Edited by Ihsan ‘Abbas. Beirut: Dar Sadir, 1960
IBN HANBAL
Ibn Hanbal, Abu ‘Abd Allah Ahmad ibn
Muhammad, a hadith collector, critic, jurisprudent, and dogmatist, was born in
Baghdad circa 780 and died in Baghdad in 855.
Ibn Hanbal’s father, who died when Ibn Hanbal
was three years old, was a military officer in Khurasan. An uncle apparently
oversaw Ibn Hanbal’s early education in Baghdad. At age fifteen, he chose not
to become a bureaucrat but rather devoted himself to hadith. He first studied
in Baghdad, then traveled to Kufa, Basra, Mecca, Yemen, and Syria. He finally settled
down in Baghdad again after 820. His first and second wives each bore one son
and predeceased Ibn Hanbal. A concubine then bore him one daughter and four
sons. They all lived together in a large house, supported mainly by urban rents.
Ibn Hanbal famously suffered in the
Inquisition that the caliph al-Ma’mun instituted in 833, requiring men of
religion to testify that the Qur’an was created. The caliph’s point seems to
have been that he was the arbiter of Islamic orthodoxy. Ibn Hanbal was one of the
few to refuse the orders. He was imprisoned, then tried probably two years
later before al-Ma’mun’s successor, al-Mu‘tasim (r. 833–842). He was finally flogged and released. Mu‘tazili
sources assert that he first testified as bidden, but Hanbali sources state
that he lost consciousness (and so could not have been responsible for anything
he said).
At the accession of al-Wathiq (r. 842–847),
Ibn Hanbal briefly emerged from his house to teach hadith again. He was
threatened by the caliph’s agents and stayed out of sight until the accession of
al-Mutawakkil (r. 847–861), who dismantled the Inquisition over the next five
years. Near the end of this period, al-Mutawakkil summoned Ibn Hanbal to
Samarra to teach; however, he was unhappy to have anything to do with the
ruler, refused to eat, and was finally sent home. There ensued many bitter quarrels
with his oldest sons, who were willing to accept the caliph’s gifts in spite of
their father’s objections.
Ibn Hanbal’s greatest literary monument is by
far Musnad,a collection of almost
twenty-eight thousand hadith reports (about 80% repeats with variant chains of
transmitters; compare the Sahih of Bukhari with 7400 hadith reports, about 60%
repeats). He generally evaluated hadith reports by comparing variant chains of
transmitters. If someone’s transmissions were too often uncorroborated by
parallels from contemporaries, Ibn Hanbal considered the transmitter unreliable.
Various followers transmitted Ibn Hanbal’s
legal opinions. He strongly preferred to infer rules from hadith, from the
Prophet if possible and from Companions if necessary. Confronted with two
contradictory hadith reports, he tested their chains of transmitters to see
which was more reliable. If they seemed equally good, he would simply state the
alternatives without presuming to impose his own opinion.
Also extant are several collections of his
comments on hadith transmitters and two sayings he transmitted concerning the
pious life, mainly by early renunciants. In theology he rejected almost all
speculation that went beyond what was expressly stated in the Qur’an and
hadith. He recognized ‘Ali as the legitimate fourth caliph but staunchly
rejected Shi‘i assertions that some of the Companions had been unrighteous.
Further Reading
Cooperson,
Michael.Classical Arabic Biography: The Heirs of the Prophets in the Age of
al-Ma’mun. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. Cambridge: University Press,
2000.
Hurvitz,
Nimrod.The Formation of Hanbalism: Piety into Power. Culture and Civilisation
in the Middle East. London: Routledge Curzon, 2002.
Patton,
Walter Melville.Ahmed ibn Hanbal and the Mihna. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1897.
Spectorsky,
Susan A. ‘‘Ahmad Ibn Hanbal’sFiqh.’’Journal of the American Oriental Society,
102 (1982): 461–465
IBN ISHAQ
The traditionalist and historiographer
Muhammad b. Ishaq b. Yasar is one of the main authorities in the biography of
the Prophet. He was born in Medina ca. AH 85/704 CE, and died in Baghdad in ca.
150/ 767. Like other authors of this genre, he sprang from a family of manumitted
slaves (mawali).His grandfather,
probably a Christian Arab, was, at the taking of ‘Ayn Tamr in Iraq in 12/633,
sent with other prisoners to Medina. Ibn Ishaq collected most of his material
in Medina and Egypt. He was accused of having Shi‘i tendencies and of being a
Qadarite (that is, professing free will and not absolute predestination).
The great work of Ibn Ishaq on the life of Muhammad,
related historical, pseudohistorical, and legendary topics, pertains to the
historical and hagiographical genre (historia sacra, or salvation history). It
bears the title The Book of the Military
Campaigns [of the Prophet] (Kitab al-Maghazi). The most known recension of
this work is the rescript / abridgment (tahdhib)
of [‘Abd al-Malik] Ibn Hisham (d. ca. 218/833),
known asThe Life of the Prophet (al-Sira
al-nabawiyya), who wrote it on the basis of the transmission of one of Ibn
Ishaq’s immediate students, al-Bakka’i (d. 183/799). Ibn Hisham undertook
omissions in order to reduce the volume of the work. Therefore, he left out the
biblical history from Adam to Abraham, and also named of the progeny of Ismael
only those who are supposed to have been direct ancestors of Muhammad . Further
on, ‘‘he has left out some tales recorded by Ibn Ishaq in which the Prophet is
not mentioned, to which there are no allusions in the Qur’an.’’ He made in it
sundry emendations and additions of manifold and genealogical and lexical import.
He has also discarded ‘‘such poems as were known to no connoisseur of poetry questioned
by him; besides allegations where of the mention was malicious, or likely to be
disagreable to certain people’’ (Foreword of Ibn Hisham, according to
Horovitz).
Ibn Ishaq’s work was originally divided into
three
main
sections:
1.
The beginning (al-Mubtada’): a pre-Islamic
history of Revelation. It was divided into four parts:
a.
The pre-Islamic Revelation from the creation of the world till Jesus
b.
The history of Yemen in pre-Islamic times
c.
Arabian tribes and their idol worship
d.
The immediate ancestors of Muhammad and the
Meccan cult
2.
The sending (al-Mab‘ath): the youth of Muhammad and his activity in Mecca.
3.
The military campaigns: the Medinan period.
It has been often said that the ‘‘complete
book’’ of Ibn Ishaq is no more extant. The problem is that he never wrote or
published such a ‘‘complete’’ book, as it has been shown by the Iraqi scholar Sadun
Mahmud Al-Samuk for whom: ‘‘There never existed a unified text for the
traditions of Ibn Ishaq to which the transmitters and later authors could have referred,’’
because Ibn Ishaq has delivered them, often orally, at different times and
occasions. It is for this reason that we find different traditions according to
the transmitters. Besides al-Bakka’i’s recension used by Ibn Hisham, there was
that of Salama b. al-Fadl al-Razi (d.
191/806) to which Tabari (d. 3010/923) had access both in his Annalsand his
Qur’anic commentary, and that of Yunus b. Bukayr (d. 199/815), and so on.
As for the sources of Ibn Ishaq, his weightiest
teacher was the traditionalist and jurist Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri (d. 124/742), who
is credited with a book on the Campaigns of the Prophet. He also received information
from several adherents of the house of al-Zubayr. Of course, he quotes the
Qur’an, Islamic connoisseurs of Hadith, Qur’anic exegesis, and poetry and
poets. He turns also to non-Islamic learned men concerning Jewish, Christian,
and Parsi traditions, a thing for which he has been criticized. Apart from Wahb
b. Munabbih (d. 110/728 or 114/732), he appears to be the oldest Arabic author
who gives passages of the Old and New Testament in literal translation, sometimes
in the so-called Palestinian Christian translation.
Further Reading
Primary
Guillaume,
Alfred.The Life of Muhammad. A translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah.
Lahore. Pakistan Branch of the Oxford University Press, 1955; reprint, Karachi,
1978.
The History
of al-Tabari. Translated by Franz Rosenthal et al. Vols. I–IX (the whole 39
vols.). Albany: SUNY, 1987–1999.
Secondary
Al-Samuk,
Sadun Mahmoud. ‘‘Die historischen U¨ berlieferungen nach Ibn Ishaq. Eine
synoptische Rekonstruktion.’’ Inaugural-Dissertation. Frankfurt am Main: Johann
Wolfgang Goethe-Universita¨t, 1978.
Horovitz,
Josef.The Earliest Biographies of the Prophet and Their authors. Edited by
Lawrence I. Conrad. Princeton, NJ: The Darwin Press, 2002, 74–90.
Jones,
J.M.B. ‘‘Ibn Ishak.’’EIIII, 811.
Watt,
William Montgomery ‘‘Ibn Hisham.’’EIIII, 800– 801.
IBN JUBAYR, ABU’L-HUSAYN MUHAMMAD
B. AHMAD
Ibn Jubayr was an Andalusian traveler,
author, and muhaddith (recounter of
Prophetic tradition). He was born in Balansiya (Valencia) in AH 540/1145 CE, in
the last days of Almoravid rule in Sharq al-Andalus (eastern Andalusia), into
an Arab family that had settled in Spain soon after the Muslim conquest. He was
educated in the religious sciences and adab
(belleslettres) at Shatiba (modern Xa `tiva south of Valencia), where his
father worked as an official during the unsettled period between Almoravid and
Almohad rule. Ibn Jubayr himself was akatib(chancery secretary) in Sabta
(modern Ceuta on the northern Morocco coast) and Granada for ‘Uthman Abu Sa‘id,
brother of the second Almohad ruler, Abu Ya‘qub Yusuf 1, and governor of Granada.
In AH Shawwal 578/February 1183 CE Ibn Jubayr
left Granada on the first of three journeys that he was to make in the course
of his life. It is the only one that he wrote about, or at least the only one
of which the account survives. He first went to Egypt, traveling by sea from
Ceuta via Sardinia, Sicily, and Crete. After landing at Alexandria, he went
south to Cairo, and thence, after crossing the Red Sea, to Jedda. He stayed in
Mecca for nine months, and performed the Hajj (pilgrimage). He then made the
desert crossing to Kufa in western Iraq. From there he went north to Baghdad
and Mosul, and crossed the Jazira (northern Mesopotamia) to Aleppo in Syria. He
next turned south to Damascus, from where he made for Acre on the coast of Palestine.
He returned to Spain by sea via Sicily, arriving in Granada in AH Muharram 581/April
1185 CE.
Ibn Jubayr is supposed to have made the
pilgrimage to Mecca to expiate the sin of drinking wine. This, perhaps,
accounts for the emphasis on the rigors of travel in the account of his first
journey, titled Rihla (Journey).At
the same time, Ibn Jubayr gives a vivid picture of the eastern Mediterranean
and beyond in the late twelfth century. His book is an abundant source of information
about religious practices, social customs, commercial life, modes of travel by
land and sea, and the principal monuments of the towns and cities that he
visited. From Ibn Jubayr we learn, for example, about the formalities to which
arrivals by sea at Alexandria were subjected and about the details of the
pilgrimage to Mecca. His description of Damascus,
meanwhile, is the fullest contemporary account that we have of the medieval
city. He also offers a firsthand (Muslim) view of Frankish Palestine: among the
places in Frankish hands when Ibn Jubayr visited them were Acre and Tyre.
Encouraged by the news of Saladin’s capture
of Jerusalem in AH 583/1187 CE, Ibn Jubayr set out on his second journey to the
east in AH 585/1189 CE, returning to Granada two years later. He lived
successively there and at Malaga, Ceuta, and Fez, devoting himself to the study
ofhadith(prophetic tradition) and Tasawwuf (Sufism). After the death of his
wife in AH 614/1217 CE, he left Spain on his third journey to the east, dying
at Alexandria in the same year.
Primary Sources
Ibn
al-Khatib.al-Ihata fi akhbar Gharnata. Cairo, 1973.
Further Reading
Ibn
Jubayr.Rihlat Ibn Jubayr. Translated by R.J.C. Broadhurst asThe Travels of Ibn
Jubayr. London, 1952
IBN KHALDUN
The jurist and historian Abu Zayd ‘Abd
al-Rahman Wali al-Din al-Hadrami, known as Ibn Khaldun, was born in 1332 in
Tunis. He is best known as the author of
Muqaddima (Introduction), the
first part of his universal history titledKitab al-‘Ibar. This introduction
serves as prolegomena to the study of history, in which Ibn Khaldun developed
the concepts he felt were necessary to comprehend human civilization. While his
universal history is generally considered not to have met the standards
detailed in the introduction, his workMuqaddimais commonly regarded as one of
the most significant works of medieval Muslim civilization.
Ibn Khaldun was concerned with the history of
civilization (‘umran) in all its complexity, and Muqaddima outlines the
importance of social, economic, and natural factors, as well as political and religious
factors. (Ibn Khaldun is thus labeled by some modern scholars as a founder of
‘‘scientific history,’’ as well as of sociology.) A major theme of Muqaddima is
the rise and fall of states, or dynasties (he used the worddawlafor both).
States, as explained by Ibn Khaldun, rose and fell in a cycle similar to human
life: birth, maturity, decline, and death. Central to Ibn Khaldun’s discussion
of the life cycles of states was the concept of‘asabiyya, variously translated
as solidarity, group feeling, or group consciousness. A group with strong ‘asabiyya (established through means such as blood
relation, religious solidarity, or other means) would be able to achieve supremacy
over other groups and establish a state. However, once predominance was achieved,‘asabiyya would eventually fade, leading
to the overthrow of thatdawlaand the establishment of a new one.
It is likely that Ibn Khaldun’s views were
shaped in part by the events he witnessed in his own life. Born in HafsidTunis,
his early career as scholar and public official involved him in the politics
and struggles between the Hafsids of Tunis, the Marinids of Fez, and the Nasrids of Granada. He left
public life for a four-year sojourn in Tunis (1378–1382), which he devoted to
scholarship. (Details of his career are known primarily through his
autobiography,Ta‘rif bi-Ibn Khaldun.) It was in this period
that he completed his first versions of both the Muqaddima and the ‘Ibar, although he continued to revise
these texts for the remainder of his life. In 1382, he moved to Cairo, the
capital of theMamlukSultanate, where he had a second career in education and as
the occasional state official. He was an acquaintance of the Mamluk sultan
Barquq (r. 1382–1389 and 1390–1399). While in the service of Barquq’s son Faraj
(r. 1399–1412 with a brief interregnum), Ibn Khaldun traveled to Damascus as
part of an expedition to counter the invasion of Tamerlane (Timur). Ibn Khaldun met with Timur
after the latter had taken Damascus, and subsequently wrote a detailed account
of his interview, which is preserved in the Ta‘rif. Ibn Khaldun returned to Cairo where he died in
1406, shortly after his sixth appointment as chief Malikiqadi.
Primary Sources
Fischel,
Walter J.Ibn Khaldun and Tamerlane: Their Historic Meeting in Damascus, 1401 AD
(803 AH): A Study Based on Arabic Manuscripts of Ibn Khaldun’s
‘‘Autobiography,’’ with a translation into English, and a commentary. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1952.
Ibn
Khaldun.The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History. Translated by Franz Rosenthal.
Edited and abridged by N.J. Dawood. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967.
Further Reading
The
scholarship devoted to Ibn Khaldun is abundant. A search of his name in the
Mamluk online bibliography (www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/su/mideast/mamluk/)
maintained by the University of Chicago’s Middle East Documentation Center, for
example, yields almost six hundred titles. Useful starting points include the following:
Fischel, Walter J.Ibn Khaldun in Egypt: His Public Functions and His Historical
Research (1382–1406); A Study in Islamic Historiography. Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California, 1967.
Mahdi,
Muhsin.Ibn Khaldun’s Philosophy of History: A Study in the Philosophic
Foundation of the Science of Culture. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd.,
1957.
IBN
KHURRADADHBIH
Abu ’l-Qasim Ubaydallah ibn Abdallah is the
author of, among other works, the influential geographical treatise Kitab al-masalik wa-l-mamalik (The Book
of Routes and Kingdoms). Little is known of his life, and even the most basic
biographical details have eluded scholars. He has been referred to as Ubaydallah
or Abdallah, ibn Abdallah or Ahmad, and Ibn Khurradadhbih or Khurdad(h)bih—a name
of uncertain meaning, presumably of Persian, Zoroastrian origin. The son of a
former governor of Tabaristan, Ibn Khurradadhbih was born either in 820 or 825
CE in Khurasan and grew up in Baghdad, where he received a thorough education
in a wide range of subjects. He served as chief of the Barid postal service in
the Jibal region and, according to some authors, subsequently in Samarra and
Baghdad. Importantly, Ibn Khurradadhbih also served as a nadim (boon-companion)
and close confidante of the caliph al-Mu‘tamid (r. 870–82 CE). Hence, the bibliographer
Ibn al-Nadim includes him in his chapter on boon-companions and courtiers,
rather than in the chapter on state secretaries and administrators (where such
‘‘geographers’’ as Qudama ibn Ja‘far, Abu Zayd al-Balkhi, and al-Jayhani are
featured). Ibn Khurradadhbih died in 912 CE.
The breadth of his interests and knowledge is
reflected in the nine works attributed to him. These include expositions on the
etiquette of listening to music, Persian genealogy, cooking, drinking, astral patterns,
boon-companions, world history, music and musical instruments, and descriptive
geography. Only the latter two have been published; the former (Kitab al-lahw wa-l-malahi) is a slim
volume on the history of musical instruments, especially in the preIslamic
period; the latter will be the focus of what follows.
. Ibn Khurradadhbih is known primarily for his work Book
of Routes and Kingdoms, composed in its original
version during the reign of the caliph alWathiq (r. 842–847 CE) and
continuously revised until the reign of al-Mu‘tamid. The work is among the
earliest extant books on descriptive geography composed in Arabic; a man named
Ja‘far ibn Ahmad al-Marwazi (d. 888 CE) is said to have embarked on a similarly
titled work at an earlier date, but his work remained incomplete at the time of
his death. Having few, if any, prototypes with which to work, Ibn Khurradadhbih
drew heavily on foreign sources in his description of the world. Claudius
Ptolemy (d. 170 CE) is named as an influence both by modern scholars and by the
author himself, and there is internal textual evidence that Greek geographical
notions shaped Ibn Khurradadhbih’s understanding of the universe. However,
Ptolemy’s mathematical approach manifests itself more obviously in the Arabic works
of, for example, Musa ibn Ahmad al-Khwarizmi (d. 847 CE) than it does in Book
of Routes and Kingdoms. Furthermore, the frequent use of Persian administrative
terms, the attention given to pre-Islamic Iranian history, and the division of
the world according to Iranian cosmological divisions point to the existence of
Iranian sources at the core of the work.
Aside from the pioneering nature of Ibn Khurradadhbih’s project, the book is of
unique importance for a number of reasons. First, the work contains exhaustive
itineraries of the caliphal road system, as well as descriptions of the routes,
both overland and maritime, to foreign lands. Such information was of practical
use for couriers, armies, pilgrims, merchants, and other geographical writers,
some who openly admit to having taken a copy of the work on their travels.
Second, the author includes detailed information on the revenue yielded by the
various tax regions of the caliphate, information that has been invaluable to
historians of the social and economic conditions of the period. Third, the work
treats non-Muslim lands in great detail, providing descriptions of China, Byzantium,
and the Indian Ocean region atypical of comparable Arabic works that were often
limited to the lands of Islam or those aspects of non-Muslim countries that
were of direct relevance to rulers and administrators at the time. Finally, Ibn
Khurradadhbih provides miscellaneous data for which he is the only or at least
the original source, including, most famously, passages on an official
expedition to the fabled wall of Gog and Magog, and the activities of the Rus
merchants and the Radhanite Jews. The passage on the Rus has played a pivotal
role in the Normanist debate, while that on the Radhanites has provoked
controversy and extensive commentary.
Ibn Khurradadhbih’s Book of Routes and Kingdoms had a perceptible
influence on later writers; some quote the author directly, whereas others
preferred to pass off entire passages as their own work. The genre of ‘‘Routes
and Kingdoms’’ matured in subsequent centuries, but the content of these later works
was often Islamo-centric and laconic on details of the non-Muslim world.
Primary Sources
Barbier de
Maynard, C.Le livre des routes et des provinces par Ibn Khordadbeh. Paris:
Journal Asiatique, V (1865).
Ibn
Khurradadhbih. Kitab al-lahw wa l-malahi. Edited by I.A. Khalifa. Beirut, 1964.
———.Kitab
al-masalik wa l-mamalik. Edited by M.J. de Geoje. Leiden, 1889.
Maqbul
Ahmad, Syed (Trans).Arabic Classical Accounts of India and China. Shimla, 1989.
Further Reading
Bosworth, C.
Edmund. ‘‘Ibn Kordadbeh.’’EIr8: 37–38. Hadj-Sadok, Muhammad. ‘‘Ibn
Khurradadhbih.’’EI23: 839–840.
Heck,
Paul.The Construction of Knowledge in Islamic Civilization: Quda ¯ma b. Ja‘far
and his ‘‘Kita¯b al-Kharaj wa
Sina‘at
al-Kitabah.’’ Leiden, 2001 (Ch. II: Geography). Maqbul Ahmad, SyedA History of
Arab-Islamic Geography (9 th –16 th Century AD). Amman, 1995.
Miquel,
Andre´. ‘‘Geography.’’The Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science: Volume
3 Technology, Alchemy and Life Sciences, edited by R. Rashed, 796–812. London:
Routledge, 1996–1998.
Montgomery,
James E. ‘‘Serendipity, Resistance, and Multivalency: Ibn Khurrada ¯dhbih and
hisKitab al-Masalik wa-l-Mamalik.’’ Adab and Fiction in Medieval Arabic literature,
edited by P.F. Kennedy. Harrasowitz, Wiesbaden, (forthcoming).
IBN NAGHRELA, SAMUEL
Samuel ibn Naghrela (993–1056), known in
Andalusi– Arabic historiography as Isma‘il ibn Naghrila and in Jewish history
as Samuel the Nagid, was a rabbinic scholar, Hebrew poet and grammarian, and a
Jewish communal leader in eleventh-century Muslim Granada. He assumed the role
of the unofficial head (Nagidor prince)of the Jews of Granada around 1027. Thereafter,
Ibn Naghrela cultivated extensive contacts with the leaders of various Jewish
communities under Islam as far as the Muslim East, and he became a patron of
other Jewish literary and religious intellectuals and the communal institutions
supporting their activities. Because he was also an ambitious and opportunistic
Arabic court secretary who rose through the ranks of the state bureaucracy to
prominence as vizier in the service of the Zirid Berbers of Granada, Ibn Naghrela
arguably came to be the most eminent Jew in Andalusi social and political
history. Reliance on non-Muslim administrators such as Ibn Naghrela was not uncommon
throughout the lands of classical Islam, but it seems to have been especially pronounced
during this period in Andalusi political history. Indeed, Samuel was succeeded
by his son Joseph in the office of vizier, as well as in his role as Nagid of
the Jews of Granada.
Ibn Naghrela’s position in the affairs of the
Muslim state as the highest fiscal and administrative official of Granada, from
1038 until his death in 1056, is discussed in important Andalusi sources such
as Ibn Hayyan al-Qurtubi, as preserved in Ibn al-Khatib’s history of Granada and in The Tibyan, a political memoir
by ‘Abd Allah b. Buluggin, the last Zirid king to rule Granada. The famous and
unconventional Muslim polymath Ibn Hazm also reports having come into contact
with Samuel when they were young men and engaging him in polemical debate on
matters of religion. Both Arabic and Jewish sources credit Ibn Naghrela’s rise
to position and influence to his legendary mastery of Arabic language and
learning, and it is on account of this accomplishment that the figure of Ibn
Naghrela became typological among Jews and Muslims. According to his Hebrew
poetry, Samuel served Granada in some unspecified military capacity, although
recent research raises serious questions about the nature and even likelihood
of such service.
Ibn Naghrela was probably the most
significant Jewish cultural mediator of eleventh-century al Andalus, in part
because his social and political status among Andalusi Jews and Muslims
conferred legitimacy on his production of and support for JudeoArabic culture
and its fusion of Jewish and AraboIslamic elements. His many intellectual
endeavors included two works that survive only in fragments: an Arabic treatise
on biblical Hebrew grammar, and an Aramaic rabbinical compendium on Jewish law.
However, in terms of literary production Ibn Naghrela is remembered principally
for his three collections of Arabic-style Hebrew poetry that were edited by his
sons. The first highly accomplished poet of the ‘‘Golden Age’’ of Jewish
culture in al-Andalus, Ibn Naghrela established the new style of Hebrew verse by
drawing fully and creatively upon the prosodic forms, genre conventions, and
rhetorical style of Arabic poetry, applying them to biblical Hebrew with all of
its important textual associations and allusions. A twelfth-century Hebrew
historiography acknowledged Ibn Naghrela’s unique position in the history of Hebrew poetry in al-Andalus, by noting that
during the two generations before him ‘‘the bards began to twitter, and in the
days of R. Samuel the Nagid they burst
into song.’’
Ibn Naghrela’s distinctive style and range
opened Hebrew verse to all of the major genres prominent in Arabic poetry: love
lyrics and wine songs, many of which are exercises on a theme, panegyric in the
form of epistolary poems of friendship, laments, boasts, satire and invective, gnomic
poetry, reflective verse on the vicissitudes of life and human mortality, and ‘‘war
poems’’ devoted to Samuel’s involvement in the affairs of state. In particular,
Ibn Naghrela stands out as a poet for the ways in which he used many of these genres
to reflect poetically on his experiences, aspirations and concerns, his
achievements and frustrations, and to publicize his claims to unique status and
authority among the Jews and to display his grandiose sense of destiny.
Further Reading
Brann,
Ross.Power in the Portrayal: Representations of Jews and Muslims in Eleventh-
and Twelfth-Century Muslim Spain. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.
Cole,
Peter.Selected Poems of Shmuel HaNagid. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1996. Wasserstein, David J. ‘‘Samuel ibn Naghrila ha-Nagid and Islamic
Historiography in al-Andalus.’’Al-Qantaraxiv (1993): 109–125.
IBN QADISHUHBA
Taqıal-Dın
Abu Bakr b. Ahmad b. Muhammad b.
‘Umar (d. 851/1448) is, for modern historians, the most prominent member of the
Ibn QadıShuhba family. This family, known for its religious scholars, resided
in Mamluk Damascus. The name derive from an ancestor who had been a qadı in the
village of Shuhba in the Hawran district of southern Syria. Abu Bakr b. Ahmad,
most widely known by the appellation Ibn Qadı Shuhba, was a noted jurist (he
was chief Qadi of Damascus for most of AH 842–844/1438–1440 CE) and author. Of
his works, he is best known today for his biographical dictionary, al-Tabaqat al-sha fi‘iyya, and a work of
history, Ta’rıkh ibn qadı shuhba. The
published edition of this work covers the years 741–800/1340–1397, although a manuscript
(Chester Beatty 5527) subsequently found extends to 810/1407. The work is an
important source for the decades following the death of the Mamluk sultan
al-Nasir Muhammad b. Qalawun (whose third reign ended with his death in
741/1340), years marked by intense struggle for political power within the sultanate
and by the appearance of bubonic plague in Mamluk lands, to name just two
significant developments.
The historical work Ta’rıkh ibn qadıshuhba is considered as part of the so-called
Syrian School of Mamluk historiography. This loose designation refers to the
tendency of Mamluk-era Syrian historians to place more emphasis on the
biographies of the ulama than the more court-centered histories of the
‘‘Egyptian School.’’ Ibn QadıShuhba’s work is also part of the dhayl (continuation)
genre of medieval Muslim historiography, in which the historian envisioned the work
as continuing (and frequently modifying) a history written by an earlier
author. In this case, Ibn QadıShuhba built upon a historical work by Ibn Hijjı¯
(d. 816/1413), one of his teachers. While he maintained Ibn Hijjı¯’s annalistic
structure of yearly coverage, with each year divided into months, and a list of
biographies (in alphabetical order) attached at the end of each year, Ibn
QadıShuhba extensively reworked Ibn Hijjı¯’s text with additional material, and
subsequently abridged his version at least twice.
Primary Sources
Ibn
QadıSuhba.Tarıh Ibn Qadı Suhba. Edited by Adnan Darwich. 3 vols. Damascus:
IFAO, 1977–1994.
Further Reading
Reisman,
David C. ‘‘A Holograph MS of Ibn Qadı Shuhbah’s Dhayl.’’ Mamluk Studies Review2
(1998): 19–49.
Schacht,
Josef. ‘‘Ibn Kadı Shuhba.’’ Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2d ed, vol III, 814.
IBN QAYYIM AL-JAWZIYYA,
SHAMS AL-SHAMS AL-DI¯N ABU¯ BAKR MUHAMMAD IBN ABI BAKR AL-ZAR’I (AH
691–751/1292–1350 CE)
A prolific writer and a much-appreciated
Hanbali scholar, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya is mostly known as the devoted disciple
and exegete of the salient Hanbali theologian and jurist, Ibn Taymiyya. His
nickname, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, which may be rendered approximately as ‘‘the
son of the superintendent of al-Jawziyya,’’
indicates his father’s occupation and social status. Al-Jawziyya was a madrasa
(religious school) and court in Damascus
Biographical details on Ibn Qayyim
al-Jawziyya can be found in the works of Ibn Kathır (d. 774/ 1373) and Ibn Rajab
(d. 795/1397), two prominent scholars who were also his closest students.
However, their description of their teacher, although favorable and admiring,
is scanty. It seems that ever since Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya first met Ibn
Taymiyya, at the age of twenty-one, until the latter’s death in the year AH
728/1328 CE, their lives were interwoven. The major events of Ibn Qayyim
al-Jawziyya’s life are connected to the turbulent religious polemics that Ibn
Taymiyya conducted with his rivals. The rationale of these polemics lies in Ibn
Taymiyya’s overall view, which demands an utterly devout adherence to the
precepts and exact wording of the Qur’an and Hadith (the traditions related to
the Prophet and his Companions), as well as to the ijma ’ (consensus) the
teachings of the salaf (ancestors, that is, the followers of the Prophet in the
first two centuries of Islam), along
with a laborious effort to integrate them with some of the doctrines of kalam (speculative theology). However, Ibn
Taymiyya was most hostile to the methods, theses, and convictions of the
traditionalist Ash’ari kalam, widely
implemented by most of the religious senior officials of the Mamluk state. By
publicly demonstrating the ignorance of his opponents in the content of religious
literature, Ibn Taymiyya gained a lot of enemies within the highest ranks of.
and the
religious traditionalist establishment of
Damascus and Cairo. He also condemned the extreme form of Sufism,
embodied in the Ittihadiyya, namely
the followers of the Sufı Ibn al-‘Arabı (d. 637/1240).
Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, who shared his
master’s extreme views, although not his zealous style, also shared his fate of
persecutions. In the year 726/ 1326, he was imprisoned in the citadel of
Damascus with Ibn Taymiyya, after the latter was accused by his rivals of
holding anthropomorphist views.
Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya was arrested at least
twice after his master’s death for defending Ibn Taymiyya‘s teachings and
fatawa (formal legal opinions given by a muftı ) and refusing to recognize al-Khalıl (Hebron) as a site for Muslim
pilgrimage.
During his imprisonments Ibn Qayyim
al-Jawziyya deepened his interest in the mystic theories and practices of
Sufism. While Ibn Taymiyya tended toward a moderate form of Sufism as a part of
his efforts to combine all doctrines of Islam into one, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya
was extensively preoccupied with Sufism. He also wrote one of the most important
commentaries to al-Ansarı al-Harawı’s (d. 482/1089) Sufi manu al,Manazil al-sa‘irın (The Stations of
the Travelers). His commentary, titled Madarij
al-salikın (The Roads of the Travelers) combines not only Ibn Qayyim
alJawziyya’s own mystic concepts but also a meticulous theological analysis.
Nevertheless, following his master‘s footsteps, in this work Ibn Qayyim
al-Jawziyya does not hesitate to attack several aspects of al Ansarı’s Sufi
doctrine, which seem to him extreme and even wrong.
Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya wrote works in almost every
branch of the Islamic sciences. In the field of theology his works are an
elaborated arrangement of his master’s work. For example, an extensive part of his theological treatise, Shifa‘ al-’alıl fi
masa‘il al-qada ‘ wal-qadar wa-l-hikma wa-l-ta’lı l (Healing the Person with Wrong
Concepts about Predetermination and Causality),cites freely from Ibn Taymiyya’s
fatwas and epistles, although it is clear that he has succeeded in developing
an original thought. In most cases, he uses Ibn Taymiyya’s assertions and ideas
as a platform to introduce his own ideas, even though they are hard to trace
between the heavily ornamented phrases he inserts, which are the trademark of his
eloquent writing.
In the field of jurisprudence, his Ahkam ahl aldhimma, which deals with
laws regarding Jewish, Christian, and Sabaean subjects of the Muslim state,is a frequently cited work. His interest in
medicine is reflected in al-ibb al-nabawı,
which deals with remedies for mental and physical illnesses mentioned in Hadith
literature.
Primary Sources
Ibn Kathır,
Abu al-Fida ‘ Isma ’ı ¯l Ibn ’Umar.
Al-Bida¯ya wa‘l-niha¯ya. Beirut: Da ¯r al-Kutub al-’Ilmiyya, 1421/ 2001.
Ibn Qayyim
al-Jawziyya, Muhammad Ibn Abı¯ Bakr al-Zar’ı¯. Ahka¯m ahl al-dhimma. Beirut: Da
¯r al-Kutub al-’Ilmiyya, 1415/1995.
———.Mada¯rij
al-sa ¯likı ¯n bayna mana¯zil ‘iyya¯ka na’budu wa-‘iyya¯ka nasta’ı¯n. Beirut:
Da ¯r al-Jı¯l, 1412/1991.
———.Shifa¯‘
al-‘alı ¯l fi masa ¯‘il al-qada ¯‘ wa‘l-qadar wa‘lhikma wa‘l-ta’lı ¯l. Cairo:
al-Matba’a al-Husayniyya, 1323/1903.
———.Al-Tibb
al-nabawı¯. Beirut: Da ¯r al-Ma’rifa, 1417/ 1996.
Ibn Rajab,
Zayn al-Dı¯n Abu¯ al-Faraj.Al-Dhayl ‘ala¯tabaqa ¯t al-hana¯bila. Cairo:
Matba’at al-Sunna al-Muhammadiyya, 1372/1953.
Further Reading
Abrahamov,
Binyamin. ‘‘Ibn Taymiyya on the Agreement of Reason with Tradition.’’The Muslim
World82, no. 3–4 (1992). 256–272.
Bell, Joseph
NormentLove Theory in Later Hanbalite Islam. Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1979.
Laoust,
Henri.Essai sur les doctrines sociales et politiques de Taki-d-Din Ahmad b. Taimiya.
le Caire: Imprimerie de l‘institut franc ¸ais d‘arche´ologie orientale, 1939.
———.La
Profession de foi d‘Ibn Taymiyya- La Wasitiyya. Paris: Geuthner, 1986.
———. ‘‘Ibn
Kayyim al-Djawziyya.’’Encyclopedia of Islam new edition and CD-ROM version).
Vol 3. Leiden: Brill, 2001, 821–822.
Makdisi,
George. ‘‘Hanbalite Islam.’’ InStudies on Islam, edited by Merlin L. Swartz,
115–126. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.
———. ‘‘The
Hanbali School and Sufism.’’ InReligion, Law and Learning in Classical Islam,
edited by G. Maksis, 118–129. Hampshire: Variorum, 1991.
Meier,
Fritz. ‘‘The Cleanest about Predestination: A Bit of Ibn Taymiyya.’’ In Essays
on Islamic Piety and Mysticism, edited by Fritz Meier 309–334. Leiden: Brill,
1999.
van Ess,
Josef. ‘‘Sufism and Its Opponents—Reflections on Topoi, Tribulations and
Transformations.’’ InIslamic Mysticism Contested, edited by Frederick De Jong
and Bernd Radtke, 22–44. Leiden: Brill, 1999.
IBN QUTAYBA
Ibn Qutayba (828–889 CE) wrote books in a
wide range of fields but was prized by later generations primarily as a scholar
of language and literature. Ibn Qutayba pursued a lifelong scholarly interest
in Arabic language and literature, an interest that grew out of and remained
closely tied to his early study of religious texts, above all the Qur’an and Hadith.
The close connection between language study
and the study of religious texts emerges very clearly in Ibn Qutayba’s early
writings, which concern problems in the language of the Qur’an and Hadith. It
was a book that he wrote around the year 851, however, that secured him
‘Abbasid court patronage in the form of a judgeship, a posting that took him
from his native Iraq to Iran. That book, the Adab al-katib (The Chancery
Secretary’s Handbook), furnishes ‘Abbasid chancery secretaries, or those who
aspired to be secretaries, with a broad range of information about correct
Arabic usage, including general matters of style and vocabulary, technical
terms in official correspondence, penmanship and orthography, appropriatediction
in official correspondence, and the semantic implications of Arabic morphology.
The Adab alkatibalso likely sought to redirect the cultural interests of
Persophile bureaucrats back to the intricacies of Arabic as a worthy vehicle of
cultural sophistication and appropriate idiom of imperial splendor. The work
came to be considered fundamental for the study of Arabic literature (adab) by
later writers, such as Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406).
TheAdab al-katibalso marked an intellectual
turning point in Ibn Qutayba’s writings, which thereafter take up a broader
range of topics, including traditional Arab astronomy and other pre-Islamic
Arab customs, dream interpretation, history, and literary anthologies. One such
anthology is the Kitab al-shi‘r
wa-l-shu‘ara’ (The Book of Poetry and Poets),which collects Arabic poetry
up through the early ninth century and also contains an important contribution to
Arabic poetics, in its introduction. Another is the ‘Uyun al-akhbar (The Jewel-like Anecdotes), which collects prose
anecdotes, stories, and other literary excerpts under topic headings that range
from politics to asceticism to food.
A final group of writings, composed after Ibn
Qutayba’s retirement from the judiciary (ca. 870), directly addresses matters
of theological dogma. In these works, and consistent with his earliest writings
on the language of religious texts, Ibn Qutayba declares himself against
speculative theology (kalam), analogical
reasoning(qiyas),and the doctrine of the createdness of the Qur’an.
Later writings of Ibn Qutayba never achieved
the stature of his works on language, literature, and culture. Perhaps his discussion
of theological matters was not sufficiently nuanced or rigorous for those preoccupied
exclusively with such questions. On the other hand, in these and in his other
works, Ibn Qutayba made a variety of topics accessible to a newly emerging
class of private readers, a trait that has led some to refer to him as a
popularizer. For all that he insisted on grounding the high culture of his time
in the Arabic and Arabian heritages, Ibn Qutayba’s wide-ranging interests and
inclusive view of literature inaugurate the characteristic universalism and humanism
of classical Islamic civilization.
Primary Sources
Ibn Qutayba.
Adab al-katib. Edited by M.M. ‘Abd alHamid. Cairo: Maktabat al-Sa‘ada, 1963.
———.Kitab
al-shi‘r wa’l-shu‘ara’. Edited by A.M. Shakir.2 vols. Cairo: Dar al-Ma‘arif,
1945–1950.
———.al-Ma‘arif.
Edited by Tharwat ‘Ukasha. Cairo: Dar al-Ma‘arif, 1960.
———.‘Uyun
al-akhbar. Edited by Ahmad Zaki al-‘Adwi. 4 vols. Cairo: Dar al-Kutub,
1925–1930.
Further Reading
Bray, Julia.
‘‘Lists and Memory: Ibn Qutayba and Muhammad b. Habib.’’ InCulture and Memory
in Medieval Islam, edited by F. Daftary and J.W. Meri. London: I. B. Tauris,
2002.
Ibn Qutayba.
Introduction au Livre de la Poe ´sie et des Poe`tes. Translated by M.
Gaudefroy-Demombynes. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1947.
———.Le
Traite´ des divergences du hadith d’Ibn Qutayba. Translated by G. Lecomte.
Damascus: Institut Franc¸ais de Damas, 1962.
———. ‘‘Ibn
Quteiba’s ‘Uyun al-Akhbar’’ (translated into English).Islamic Culture 4 (1930):
171–198, 331–362, 487–530; and 4 (1931): 1–27 (translated by Josef Horowitz).
Lecomte,
Gerard. ‘‘Ibn Kutayba.’’ InEncyclopaedia of Islam. New Ed. Leiden: E.J. Brill,
1954–2002.
———.Ibn
Qutayba: l’homme, son oeuvre, ses ide´es. Damascus: Institut Franc¸ais de
Damas, 1965.
IBN QUZMAN, ABU BAKR IBN
’ABD AL-MALIK
Despite the fact, or perhaps because he
defied the norms of classical Arabic poetry, Ibn Quzman has come to embody the
essence of Hispano-Arabic poetry. Indeed, he has become for modern scholarship
the best-known literary figure from the entire 780-year Arabo-Muslim presence
on the Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain and Portugal). Ibn Quzman, whose full
name was Abu Bakr ibn ’Abd al-Malik, was born in the Andalusian city of Cordoba
in AH 470 472/1078–1080 CE, where he also died in 555/1160. Little of Ibn
Quzman’s biography has been documented. However, as is the case with many
premodern literary figures, much biographical information, reliable or
unreliable, has been extrapolated from Ibn Guzman’s poetry.
Before Ibn Quzman’s time, the traditional
means of livelihood for professional poets in both the East and West was the
composition of panegyrics in praise of contemporary rulers. On the Iberian
Peninsula this situation changed abruptly with the arrival of the Almoravids,
led by Yusuf bin Tashfin (489/ 1096).
The Almoravids’ conquest and occupation of territories previously held by the
fragmented ‘‘factional kings’’(muluk
al-tawa’if) led to the displacement of professional court poets employed by
the Almoravids’ predecessors. Because the Berber-speaking Almoravids had little
appreciation for the encomia composed in classical Arabic, poets were compelled
to earn a living by composing praise poetry for the lesser aristocracy, or to
redirect their efforts into nonpanegyric forms of poetry. Although Ibn Quzman
was not the first to compose zajals(Ibn
Bajja [d. 533/1138] was the most probable originator), he is considered the
genre’s foremost practitioner. In the context of a volatile social and cultural
environment, Ibn Quzman interjected and popularized the zajal, a genre of
poetry very different from the classical praise poetry that preceded it.
Ibn Quzman’szajalsrepresent a radical
departure from the seriousness of the classical panegyric that had been the
standard poetic form in both the East and West of the Arabic-speaking world.
Instead of the formalized, ritualized praise of rulers common in the encomia,
Ibn Quzman’szajalsconstitute a highly ironic countergenre to established norms.
Ibn Guzman’s zajal substitutes the bombastic, florid praise of the panegyric
with parodic, tongue-in-cheek, faint praise of individuals who in earlier times
never would have been the object of serious poetry. This emphasis on the
popular, lower strata of society is also apparent in Ibn Quzman’s depiction of
popular events, such as carnivals, jugglers’ entertainment, marketplaces, and foods.
Transgressive elements, such as drunkenness, seduction, fornication, adultery,
divorce, and slapstick violence are prominent features of his zajals.
The zajal, as practiced by Ibn Quzman, not
only dealt with subject matter alien to classical poetry, but also, thezajal’s
form and language differed significantly from those found in the classical
variety. In its structure the zajalresembles its counterpart, the classical
muwashshaha, a form consisting of five to seven strophes with a complicated
rhyme scheme. However, thezajaldiffers from the muwashshaha in the use of an introductory strophe rather than a
concluding envoi. The most striking feature of the zajal is its language. In
contrast to the highly formal diction of all classical poetry, thezajalsubverts
the classical norm by introducing often-lengthy passages of the written
representation of colloquial speech of Ibn Quzman’s time and locale. Ibn
Quzman’szajals, therefore, not only constitute an innovation on poetic language
but also his representations of colloquial speech serve as valuable
documentation of HispanoArabic, a dialect that often incorporated words and structures
from the Romance dialect that coexisted with Arabic in the Iberian Peninsula.
Primary Sources
de Gunzburg,
David (Ed and Trans).Le Divan d’Ibn Guzman: Texte, Traduction, Commentaire.
Berlin: S. Calvary & Co., 1896.
Further Reading
Lewis, B.,
V. L. Me´nage, C. Pellat, and J. Schacht (Eds). The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New
Ed. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1971, 3:849–852.
Monroe,
James T.Hispano-Arabic Poetry: A Student Anthology. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1974.
IBN RUSHD, OR AVERROES
Born in 1126 in Cordoba to a family of
distinguished jurists, Abu ˆ al-Wahıˆd Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Muhammad Ibn Rushd
served as Qadi at Seville and Cordoba and studied deeply works of Sharıˆ‘ah (religious law), Kala ˆm
(theological discourse), Aristotelian philosophy, and medicine until his death
in 1198. In dialectical religious writings he upheld natural causality in the face
of Ash‘arite occasionalist assertions of absolute divine power, denied that the
Qur’an teaches creation ex nihilo, argued that Divine knowledge is prior to all
forms of universal or particular knowledge, and asserted that the Qur’an
commands the study of philosophy as
obligatory for those capable. In understanding different human beings to be
swayed to assent by rhetoric, dialectic, or demonstration, he was able to deny
that there can be any ‘‘double truth,’’ one of religion and another of
philosophy and science, by arguing for the unity of truth. In his fatwa like Decisive Treatiseon religious
law and philosophy, Ibn Rushd insisted that philosophical demonstration, with
its necessary character, can be the ultimate arbiter of the meaning of
religious statements and even of Qur’anic passages, saying ‘‘Truth does not
contradict truth but rather is consistent with it and bears witness to it,’’ a
surreptitious quotation of Aristotle (Prior Analytics1.32, 47a8–9). That
confidence in philosophical method is even more prominent in his work
Incoherence of the Incoherence, a detailed commentary on Incoherence of the
Philosophers by Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, arguably Islam’s greatest theologian.
Working to refute many of al-Ghazali’s attacks on the philosophers, Ibn Rushd
also pointed out the non-Aristotelian excesses of al-Farabi and Ibn Sina
(Avicenna). In his work Kashf al-Mahanij
and other dialectical writings he appears to reflect the rationalism of the religious
reformer al-M˛dıˆ Ibn Tuˆmart (d. ca. 1129–1130), who held for the essential rationality
of the Qur’an and the ability of human rationality to apprehend the created
nature of the world.
While in some early philosophical works Ibn Rushd
followed the Neoplatonic teachings of his famous predecessors, al-Farabıˆand
Ibn Sina, in his mature works he rejected emanationism and vigorously defended
many teachings that he held to be geniunely those of Aristotle, such as the
eternity of the world, the transcendent and separate nature of the human material
and agent intellects, the mortal nature of individual human existence, and the
final causality of God as Unmoved Mover
subtly argued to be appropriately called ‘‘Creator.’’ Although he wrote many
valuable short treatises, his philosophical thought is predominantly found in
his commentaries on works of Aristotle. Medieval Jewish philosophical thought
was powerfully influenced by the dialectical works, a number of his early
syntheticShort Commentariesand his paraphrasing Middle Commentaries, as well as
his detailed Long Commentarieson the Posterior Analytics and Physics. In
contrast, the Latin translations of the thirteenth century were, for the most
part, of Long Commentaries, with those on natural philosophy, psychology, and
metaphysics prominent; none of his dialectical religious writings were translated. In these commentaries the Latin
West discovered the power of philosophical reasoning apart from religious belief,
something that scandalized some Christian thinkers, led others to uphold the value
of independent reason, and generally compelled a rethinking of the relation of
faith and reason.Though he taught a controversial theory of the unity of human
material intellect, Ibn Rushd had many Western admirers and some followers
through the period of the Renaissance, when additional works translated from
Hebrew became available in Latin.
Toward the end of his life, he was condemned,
his books were burned, and he was sent into a brief exile. After his death, philosophy
was suppressed in Andalusia, and in Islamic lands no school developed following
his Aristotelian approach. After a nineteenth-century revival of interest in
his dialectical thought, various social and educational reformers in the
Arabic-reading world have drawn on his work to provide a way for the conciliation
of Islamic religion and the methods of scientific reasoning prominent in the
West.
Further Reading
Aertsen, Jan
A., and Gerhard Endress (Eds).Averroes and the Aristotelian Tradition: Sources,
Constitution and Reception of the Philosophy of Ibn Rushd (1126–1198). Leiden:
Brill, 1999.
Averroes
database: www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/thomasinst/ averroes/index.htm. Thomas-Institut,
Cologne, 2004.
Ibn Rushd.
Averroes. On the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy. Translated by George F.
Hourani. London: Luzac & Co., 1961.
———.Averroes’
Tahafut al-Tahafut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence). Translated by Simon
Van Den Bergh. London: Luzac & Co., 1969.
———.Faith
and Reason in Islam. Averroes’ Exposition of Religious Arguments. Translated by
Ibrahim Y. Najjar.
Oxford:
Oneworld, 2001.(Kashf al-Mahanij) Najjar,
Fauzi M.
‘‘Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and the Egyptian
Englightenment
Movement.’’British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies31 (Nov 2004): 195–213
IBN SA‘D
Ibn Sa‘d (784–845) was among the pioneers of
biographical writings in Arabic. He was born in Basra and studied Hadith before
moving to Baghdad. Unusual for a Hadith scholar, he was also familiar with Arab
genealogy, pre-Islamic tribal lore, and Jewish and Christian narrative
traditions. In Baghdad, he apprenticed himself to al-Waqidi (d. 823), a collector of reports
on the early history of the Muslim community. After al-Waqidi’s death, Ibn Sa‘d
devoted the rest of his life to arranging his teacher’s notes and his own into
a book. The result was the Tabaqat (Generations),
the earliest biographical and historical compilation to be preserved in its
entirety.
Before Ibn Sa‘d’s time, Arabic biographical
writing had consisted largely of name-lists or collections of anecdotes about
notable personalities. The only work that resembled a proper biography, at
least by later standards, was theLife of the Prophetby Ibn Ishaq (d. 767). The
remaining biographical material at Ibn Sa‘d’s disposal consisted of historical
legends, namelists, and reports on the Prophet’s contemporaries and their
successors. By putting all of this material together, Ibn Sa‘d’s Generations became
one of the earliest Arabic works to present a coherent (if implicit) vision of universal history.
The work begins with a brief history of the
prophets from Adam to Muhammad, intended to establish the latter’s descent from
the founders of monotheism. It then offers biographies of Muhammad’s ancestors, who are represented as
devout and courageous men despite being pagans. The biography of Muhammad himself,
which takes up approximately one-fourth of the book, follows his career from
birth to death. It includes accounts of his childhood and marriage, his reception
of the Qur’an, his preaching in Mecca, his emigration to Medina, his
negotiations with the tribes of Arabia, his military campaigns, and his final
illness. There are also sections (with no parallels in Ibn Ishaq) on the
Prophet’s appearance, habits, clothing, diet, and personal possessions.
As a biographer of the Prophet, Ibn Sa‘d
follows the convention of citing first-person reports rather than narrating in
his own voice, although he occasionally admits to having combined several
reports into a single account. He seems to have been scrupulous in reporting everything
he was told, including mutually contradictory reports of the same event. He has
no hesitation about miracle stories, which appear in profusion. For these
reasons his biography of the Prophet is hardly reliable as a source of documentary
evidence. However, it is an indispensable source of information on early
Islamic history as it was remembered or imagined in the mid-ninth century.
Unlike Ibn Ishaq, whose work ends with the
death of Muhammad, Ibn Sa‘d continued his account with biographies of the Prophet’s
successors, that is, the men and women who took part in the transmission of Hadith.
These biographies, which number more than four thousand, are arranged in
sections and subsections according to generation, tribal affiliation, and place
of residence, with all the women appearing together in a section of their own
at the end. Some of the entries, such as those on the first four caliphs, are quite
long. The majority, however, consist of short notices giving the names of the
subject’s teachers and students (that is, the persons from whom and to whom he
or she transmitted Hadith), as well as a date of death, if known.
Modern scholarship has tended to assume that Generationswas
used as a work of reference. Given its content, the book could certainly have
served as a basis for the validation ofisnads(the lists of transmitters that
precede a Hadith report). Nevertheless, it also contains a good deal of
anecdotal information with little evident relevance to Hadith transmission. Clearly,
then, Ibn Sa‘d was not simply a recordkeeper working for the benefit of Hadith
scholars. Rather, he seems to have been a historian whose vision of history happens to give pride of place to the
transmission of Hadith.
Ibn Sa‘d’s Generationsexerted a formative
influence on Arabic historical writing. The arrangements he used for organizing
entries were adopted and modified by the authors of subsequent biographical works,
many of which were arranged by generation or by place of residence. (The only
system of organization Ibn Sa‘d did not use was the alphabetical one, which was
developed independently at approximately the same time.) Most important,
perhaps, Generations offered a vision of history writing that was based on the
collection of individual life stories. This understanding of historiography
remained dominant, or at least influential, until the beginning of the modern period.
In 833, Ibn Sa‘d was summoned to affirm the createdness
of the Qur’an. This controversial opinion had been raised to the status of
official state doctrine by the caliph al-Ma’mun (813–833), who sought to rein
in the power of the religious scholars by forcing them to proclaim assent to
it. Ibn Sa‘d gave his assent, although it is likely that he did so under
duress. Thereafter, he seems to have been left in peace until his death in
Baghdad at the age of sixty-two.
Primary Sources
Ibn Sa‘d.
Al-Tabaqat al-kubra. 9 vols. Edited by Ihsan ‘Abbas. Beirut: Dar Bayrut and Dar
Sadir, 1957.
———.Al-Tabaqat
al-kubra. 8 parts in 4. Edited by Riyad ‘Abd Allah ‘Abd al-Hadi. Beirut: Dar
Ihya al-Turath al-‘Arabi, 1996 (contains passages unpublished in earlier
editions). Partial translations in The women of Madina. Translated by Aisha
Bewley. London: Ta Ha, 1995.
The Men of
Madina. Translated by Aisha Bewley. London: Ta-Ha, 1997–2000.
The Men of
Madina II. Translated by Aisha Bewley. London: Ta-Ha, 2000.
Further Reading
Loth, Otto.
‘‘Ursprung und Bedeutung der Tabaqat.’’ Zeitschrift der Deutschen
Morgenla¨ndischen Gesellschaft 23 (1869): 593–614.
al-Qadi,
Wadad. ‘‘Biographical Dictionaries: Inner Structure and Cultural Significance.’’
In The Book in the Islamic World:The Written Word and Communication in the
Middle East, edited by George N. Atiyeh. Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1995.
Roded,
Ruth.Women in Islamic Biographical Collections: From Ibn Sa‘d to Who’s Who.
Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1994.
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