The Lineaments of Islam: Studies in Honor of Fred McGraw Donner 9004218858, 9789004218857

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Introduction: Narratives of Fred McGraw Donner
Bibliography of the Works of Fred McGraw Donner
Part One History and Society
Who was the Shepherd of Damascus? The Enigma of Jewish and Messianist Responses to the Islamic Conquests in Marwānid Syria and Mesopotamia
Political Anarchism, Dissent, and Marginal Groups in the Early Ninth Century: The Sūfīs of the Mu'tazila Revisited
Scholars and Charlatans on the Baghdad-Khurasan Circuit from the Ninth to the Eleventh Centuries
Were the Ismā'īlī Assassins the First Suicide Attackers? An Examination of Their Recorded Assassinations
Part Two Historiography
The Identity Crisis of Abū Bakra: Mawlā of the Prophet, or Polemical Tool?
Writing the History of the Futūh:The Futūh-works by al-Azdī, Ibn A'tham, and al-Wāqidī
In Defense of Mu'āwiya ibn Abī Sufyān: Treatises and Monographs on Mu'āwiya from the Eighth to the Nineteenth Centuries
The Umayyads and 'Abbāsids in Mujīr al-Dīn’s Fifteenth-Century History of Jerusalem and Hebron
Part Three Qur'ān, Law, and Narrative
Reproducing Power: Qur'ānic Anthropogonies in Comparison
Narratives of Villainy: Titus, Nebuchadnezzar, and Nimrod in the HadĪth and Midrash Aggadah
Qur'ānic Rhetoric in Ninth-Century Muslim-Byzantine Diplomacy: Al-Ma'mūn’s Letter to Theophilus in 833 CE
Ibādī Fiqh Scholarship in Context
The Hadd Penalty for Zinā: Symbol or Deterrent? Texts from the Early Sixteenth Century
Part Four Texts and Artifacts
The Revolt of al-Hārith ibn Surayj and the Countermarking of Umayyad Dirhams in Early Eighth Century CE Khurāsān
The Riddle of Early Islamic Ascalon: Where is it and What does Coptic Glazed Ware Tell Us About it?
Hisn, Ribāt, Thaghr or Qasr? Semantics and Systems of Frontier Fortifications in the Early Islamic Period
Descriptions of the Pharos of Alexandria in Islamic and Chinese Sources: Collective Memory and Textual Transmission
Index

Citation preview

The Lineaments of Islam

Islamic History and Civilization Studies and Texts

Editorial Board

Sebastian Günther Wadad Kadi

VOLUME 95

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/ihc

Cover illustration: Gold dinar struck under the Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik (685–705). Probably minted in Damascus, ca. 692–694. Obverse. Photo courtesy Penn Museum. Penn Museum Object #29-231-67/ANS #1002.1.107. The lineaments of Islam : studies in honor of Fred McGraw Donner / edited by Paul M. Cobb.   p. cm. — (Islamic history and civilization ; v. 95)  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978-90-04-21885-7 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-23194-8 (e-book)  1. Islam—History. 2. Islam—Historiography. 3. Koran—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 4. Islamic law. I. Donner, Fred McGraw, 1945– II. Cobb, Paul M., 1967–  BP25.L56 2012  297.09—dc23

2012015413

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.nl/brill-typeface. ISSN 0929-2403 ISBN 978 90 04 21885 7 (hardback) ISBN 978 90 04 23194 8 (e-book) Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

For all our teachers

CONTENTS Acknowledgements ......................................................................................... List of Illustrations ........................................................................................... List of Contributors .........................................................................................

xi xiii xv

Introduction: Narratives of Fred McGraw Donner ................................ . Paul M. Cobb Bibliography of the Works of Fred McGraw Donner ...........................

1 13

PART ONE

HISTORY AND SOCIETY Who was the Shepherd of Damascus? The Enigma of Jewish and . Messianist Responses to the Islamic Conquests in Marwānid . Syria and Mesopotomia ............................................................................ . Sean W. Anthony Political Anarchism, Dissent, and Marginal Groups in the Early .Ninth Century: The Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila Revisited ....................... . Hayrettin Yücesoy Scholars and Charlatans on the Baghdad-Khurasan Circuit from . the Ninth to the Eleventh Centuries .................................................... . Jonathan A. C. Brown Were the Ismāʿīlī Assassins the First Suicide Attackers? An . Examination of Their Recorded Assassinations ................................ . David Cook

21 61 85 97

PART TWO

HISTORIOGRAPHY The Identity Crisis of Abū Bakra: Mawlā of the Prophet, or . Polemical Tool? ........................................................................................... 121 . Elizabeth Urban Writing the History of the futūḥ: The futūḥ-works by al-Azdī, . Ibn Aʿtham, and al-Wāqidī ...................................................................... 151 . Jens Scheiner

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In Defense of Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān: Treatises and Monographs on Muʿāwiya from the Eighth to the Nineteenth . Centuries ....................................................................................................... 177 . Aram A. Shahin The Umayyads and ʿAbbāsids in Mujīr al-Dīn’s Fifteenth-Century . History of Jerusalem and Hebron .......................................................... 209 . Robert Schick PART THREE

QURʾĀN, LAW, AND NARRATIVE Reproducing Power: Qurʾānic Anthropogonies in Comparison ........ Kathryn Kueny Narratives of Villainy: Titus, Nebuchadnezzar, and Nimrod in the . ḥadīth and midrash aggadah .................................................................. . Shari L. Lowin Qurʾānic Rhetoric in Ninth-Century Muslim-Byzantine Diplomacy: Al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s Letter to Theophilus in 833 CE ..................................... . Vanessa De Gifis Ibāḍī Fiqh Scholarship in Context .............................................................. . Brannon Wheeler The ḥadd Penalty for zinā: Symbol or Deterrent?  Texts from the . Early Sixteenth Century ............................................................................ . Marion Holmes Katz

235 261 297 321 351

PART FOUR

TEXTS AND ARTIFACTS The Revolt of al-Ḥārith ibn Surayj and the Countermarking of . Umayyad Dirhams in Early Eighth Century CE Khurāsān ............. 379 . Stuart D. Sears The Riddle of Early Islamic Ascalon: Where is it and What does . Coptic Glazed Ware Tell Us About it? ................................................. 407 . Tracy Hoffman Ḥiṣn, Ribāṭ, Thaghr or Qaṣr? Semantics and Systems of Frontier . Fortifications in the Early Islamic Period ............................................ 427 . Asa Eger



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Descriptions of the Pharos of Alexandria in Islamic and Chinese . Sources: Collective Memory and Textual Transmission ................. 457 . Tasha Vorderstrasse Index .................................................................................................................... 483

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like my colleagues to believe that this volume was inspired as an act of filial piety, but in fact I had long ago lost all track of Fred’s age. Who can keep up? It was, to be honest, another of Fred’s students who reminded me of his then-approaching sixty-fifth year and suggested I put together a Festschrift for our mentor. That student was Mehmetcan Akpınar, who, being in the final stages of his dissertation work, was unable to contribute a paper to this volume, but who must be named as the one who really inspired it. For that, and for many other good ideas besides, I am very grateful to him. A few other friends and colleagues contributed input and advice, and, in some cases, a little oral history too: these include Carel Bertram, Antoine Borrut, Khaled Keshk, John Meloy, and Wadād al-Qāḍī. I once again thank my colleagues and (now possibly ex-)friends whom I was unable to include in this volume as I navigated the perilous political waters of The Festschrift Invitation. Their absence here does not, of course, indicate an absence of enthusiasm for this volume or its subject (or vice-versa). Putting together a volume like this requires handling an array of logistical and technical matters that cause every editor at one point or another to mutter, “never again.” I would like to thank the editorial staff at Brill for being so helpful as I prepared this book for publication, in particular Kathy van Vliet, Nienke Brienen-Moolenaar, and Rachel Crofut. Brill’s anonymous reviewer was also most helpful. I also thank Elias Saba for producing the index, and Juliette Fradin-Borrut for supplying the superb photo of Fred circa 2009. The cover illustration was provided with the kind permission of the University of Pennsylvania’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. My thanks go to Katy Blanchard, Keeper of the Museum’s Near East Section and to Maureen Goldsmith, Rights and Reproductions Coordinator of the Museum’s Archives, for making it happen. Finally, my unqualified gratitude goes to my peers, the contributors themselves, whose devotion to Wissenschaft, to say nothing of formatting rules and deadlines, continues to inspire me. P.M.C.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Introduction, Paul M. Cobb 1. Fred Donner and companion, 1964 ........................................................ 2. Fred Donner, 2009 .......................................................................................

11 11

The Revolt of al-Ḥārith ibn Surayj and the Countermarking of Umayyad Dirhams in Early Eighth Century CE Khurāsān, Stuart D. Sears 1.. Countermarked Umayyad dirhams, Type I ........................................ 2.. Countermarked Umayyad dirhams, Type II; Countermarked . Muslim drachm ........................................................................................... 3.. Countermarked Muslim drachms; Unmarked dirhams .................. 4.. Countermark motifs ...................................................................................

402 403 404 405

The Riddle of Early Islamic Ascalon: Where is it and What does Coptic Glazed Ware Tell Us About it? Tracy Hoffman 1. Map of region (after Walmsley, 2007, fig. 7) ........................................ 424 2. Plan of Ascalon showing areas excavated since 1985 ....................... 425 3. Coptic glazed ware ...................................................................................... 426 Ḥiṣn, Ribāṭ, Thaghr or Qaṣr? Semantics and Systems of Frontier Fortifications in the Early Islamic Period, Asa Eger 1. Quṣūr (Qaṣr al-Hayr al-Sharqī, Khirbat al-Mafjar, Qaṣr al-Hayr al-Gharbī, ‘Anjar from Whitcomb 2007; Khirbat al-Karak and Bālis from Genequand 2006, 22) ............................................................ 451 2. Ribāṭ (Ashdod-Yam from Nachlieli, D. et al., 2000: 127; Tel Michal from Brandfon 1990: 196; Habonim from Barbé et al., 2002: 34; Monastir from Cresswell 1989: 289; Sousse from Cresswell 1989: 286) ................................................................................... 452 3. Al-thughūr with sites, routes, and waystations .................................. 453

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list of illustrations

4. Waystations (Ḥiṣn Maslama sketch adapted from Haase 2006; Būqā sketch adapted from Google Earth Image 2/11/2011; Kurban Höyük from Algaze 1990, fig. 124) .......................................... 454 5. Number of Sites Repaired or Settled by Each Umayyad Caliph, Abbasid Caliph, and work done by Harun al-Rashid under other caliphs ................................................................................................. 455

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Sean W. Anthony is Assistant Professor of Islamic History in the Department of History at the University of Oregon. He is also the author of The Caliph & the Heretic: Ibn Saba‌ʾ and the Origins of Shʿism (Leiden: Brill, 2012). Jonathan A. C. Brown is Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington DC.  He is author of books including The Canonization of al-Bukhari and Muslim: The Formation and Function of the Sunni Hadith Canon (Leiden: Brill, 2007), and Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Paul M. Cobb is Professor of Islamic History in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania.  He is the author of, among other things, White Banners: Contention in ʿAbbasid Syria (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001) and Usama ibn Munqidh: Warrior-Poet of the Age of Crusades (Oxford: Oneworld, 2004). David Cook is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University. He is the author of, among other works, Understanding Jihad (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005) and Martyrdom in Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). Vanessa De Gifis is Assistant Professor of Islamic Studies in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Wayne State University. Her research focuses on Qurʾānic hermeneutics and the use of the Qurʾān in Islamic theology and politics. Asa Eger is Assistant Professor of the Islamic World in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He has excavated and surveyed around the regions of Antakya (Antioch), Kahramanmaraş, and Cilicia in Turkey and is currently directing excavations at Tüpraş Field (Ḥiṣn al-Tīnāt). He recently authored The Spaces Between the Teeth: A Gazetteer of Towns on the Islamic-Byzantine Frontier (Istanbul: Ege Yayınları, 2011).

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Tracy Hoffman is an independent scholar working in the field of Islamic Archaeology.  She is a field supervisor for The Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon.  She is the author of “Ascalon on the Levantine Coast,” in: Changing Social Identity with the Spread of Islam: Archaeological Perspectives (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004). Marion Holmes Katz is Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University.  She received a PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from the University of Chicago in 1997, and works primarily on issues of Islamic law, gender, and ritual. She is the author of Body of Text: The Emergence of the Sunni Law of Ritual Purity (Albany: SUNY Press, 2002) and The Birth of the Prophet Muhammad: Devotional Piety in Sunni Islam (London: Routledge, 2007).   Kathryn M. Kueny is Associate Professor of Theology and Director of the Religious Studies Program at Fordham University. She is the author of The Rhetoric of Sobriety: Wine in Early Islam (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001). Shari L. Lowin is Associate Professor of Islam and Judaism in the Department of Religious Studies of Stonehill College. Her research focuses on early Islamic exegetical narratives with a comparative eye toward midrashic narratives. She is the author of The Making of a Forefather: Abraham in Islamic and Jewish Exegetical Narratives (Leiden: Brill, 2006). Jens Scheiner is Junior Professor and Leader of a Junior Research Group at the Courant Research Centre “Education and Religion (EDRIS)” at the Georg-August Universität Göttingen. He is the author of, among other things, Vom Gelben Flicken zum Judenstern? Genese und Applikation von Judenabzeichen im Islam und christlichen Europa (849–1941) (Frankfurt: Peter Lang Verlag, 2004) and Die Eroberung von Damaskus. Quellenkritische Untersuchung zur Historiographie in klassisch-islamischer Zeit (Leiden: Brill, 2010). Robert Schick is a Byzantine and Islamic historian and archaeologist working mostly in Jordan and Jerusalem. He is the author of The Christian Communities of Palestine from Byzantine to Islamic Rule (Princeton: Darwin, 1995) and co-editor of Jerusalem Before Islam (Oxford:  Archaeopress, 2007).



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Stuart D. Sears is an independent scholar and translator and the author of numerous studies devoted to numismatics in the late antique and early Islamic Near East. Aram A. Shahin is Assistant Professor of Arabic in the Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at James Madison University. His research focuses on early Islamic intellectual history, Islamic political thought, and Islamic Sicily and southern Italy. Elizabeth Urban is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, where she is completing her dissertation, “The Early Islamic Mawālī: A Window onto Processes of Identity Construction and Social Change.” Tasha Vorderstrasse is a Research Associate in the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. She has written a book on the site of al-Mina, one of the ports of Antioch (Leiden: PIHANS, 2005) and co-edited a volume on the archaeology of the Anatolian countryside (Leiden: PIHANS, 2009). She has also written various articles that examine archaeology, art history, and texts in the Middle East and beyond. Brannon Wheeler is the founding Director of the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies and Professor of History at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis. He is author and editor of eight books in Islamic Studies and the History of Religions including Mecca and Eden: Ritual, Relics, and Territory in Islam (University of Chicago, 2006). Hayrettin Yücesoy is Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies in the Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at Washington University in St. Louis. In addition to numerous articles, he is the author of Messianic Beliefs and Imperial Politics in Medieval Islam (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2009) and Taṭawwur al-fikr al-siyāsī ʿinda ahl al-sunna: fatrat al-takwīn (Amman: Dār al-Bashīr, 1993).

INTRODUCTION: NARRATIVES OF FRED McGRAW DONNER Paul M. Cobb1 I hatched the plot when home on spring break; I guess I got the wanderlust. My grandfather had been a great traveler, so I thought I could be too . . .  I would just put baskets on my bike and put tents and a sleeping bag in them.

In the summer of 1964, at the age of eighteen, Fred Donner set off alone on a bicycle trip from New Jersey to Wisconsin and back again. As he did so, he was unknowingly seeing middle America during a period of calm before the storm. This was an interim grace-period for America’s politics and society, with President Lyndon B. Johnson serving out the rest of John F. Kennedy’s term, but not quite in control of the future himself. Kennedy’s New Frontier had not yet become Johnson’s Great Society. The Civil Rights Act was signed into law that July, but the Voting Rights Act, the Immigration Act, an all-out “War on Poverty”, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, Work Study programs, widespread public broadcasting, and all that these imply were months and years in the future. But there were hints of what was to come, even as Fred strapped his tent and sleeping-bag to his bike. In 1964, Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove was released in theatres; the Beatles gave their first tour of the US; Bob Dylan released The Times They Are A-Changin’; the PLO was formed in Jerusalem; Nelson Mandela was sentenced to prison; plans were announced for a sky-scraper complex in Manhattan called the World Trade Center; and Sandy Koufax and the Los Angeles Dodgers ruled the world. Fred’s cycling-tour summer was also Mississippi’s Freedom Summer, which saw white and black activists, many of them students, attempt to register tens of thousands of black voters, though with limited immediate success; in May, the first notable demonstrations, many led by students, against US involvement in Vietnam occurred; in August, Johnson passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, entrenching America ever deeper in war. In 1964, it 1 I am especially grateful to Carel Bertram, Fred’s wife and partner in so many pursuits, for transcribing and relaying to me the apophthegmata patrum that I have used here to punctuate this portrait.

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should be recalled, at the age of eighteen, Fred was still too young to vote. But it didn’t matter: everyone could tell change was in the air. Fred’s hometown was not at the epicenter of those changes. Basking Ridge, New Jersey is an unincorporated area in Bernards Township that was literally named for the propensity of its fauna to doze blissfully in the sun. It is situated in the Somerset Hills, a green and rolling region made habitable by the rivers and brooks that cross it. Its historical toponymy suggests an American pastoral symphony: Millington Gorge, the Great Swamp, Second Watchung Mountain, Dead River. George Washington actually slept here—that is the sort of place Basking Ridge, New Jersey is, and was. Nowadays, it is home to the headquarters of telecom giant Verizon Wireless, but in 1964, the Donner Era, the area was home to a much more modest concern called AT&T. But even that small landmark was merely a twentieth-century excrescence on a landscape that had been more familiar with farmland and the country homes of Manhattan’s robber barons (or, rather, baronets). As America’s prosperity crested after World War II, in came the parks, the country clubs, and the lines and curves of subdivisions. Brush’s Hardware became Brush’s Deli but still dutifully passed through generations of Brushes; the Patriot’s Oak grew old and senescent. The leafy streets of the town were more or less quiet and well-heeled, and their residents were more or less quiet and wellheeled, too. Of the region’s college-bound men, more than a few would be condemned to wind up down the road at Princeton, and this indeed had been Fred’s fate. His freshman year was behind him, and now he was eager to see some of America on his own. Such a venture was expected to be the sort of thing his father would disapprove of, but his mother supported it, and that’s what mattered. There was some precedent, after all: Fred’s grandfather and namesake, Fred McGraw, was renowned in family circles for his travels in the South Pacific and Central America back in the 1890s. When he was in his nineties, and the young Fred still in high school, he lived with the Donner family in Basking Ridge. It was then that the grandfather offered more than his name to his grandson and instilled in him a love of distant horizons. With this family history to inspire him, Fred set his sights on the Upper Midwest, where he could see the Great Lakes and visit a friend he had met while at college. Fred’s mother broke the story to her husband by covering it in excitement, “Fred’s got the wanderlust!” she said. Permission was granted. Maps were consulted. Tires were inflated. And away. The journey lasted about eight weeks. It took him into the Delaware Water Gap, across the Poconos and into New York state. One week into



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his journey, he paused for a few days in Cortland, New York to visit a great-uncle. But the timing was off: his hosts were in New England visiting one of their children. And so, reluctantly, Fred introduced himself to one of the neighbors, who reached his relatives by phone and, after some polite back-and-forth, let Fred in to their vacant house. He spent the night in the guest-room as anyone would, and paused to play on their grand piano to an empty house. The next morning, Fred tore west to Niagara Falls and into the exotic lands of Canada: across southern Ontario, along Lake Erie’s northern shore, to Port Dover, and then back into the US, to Michigan and Detroit, the one major city he could not avoid. From Detroit, where a fire company offered him a bed and some food at their firehouse, he passed on across southern Michigan to Battle Creek, where he visited the Kellogg’s plant “to see the cornflakes”. The road continued on along the South Shore to Michigan City, the Indiana Dunes, and, staying well south of Chicago, to Homewood, Illinois, where he stopped to visit with his friend and her family. On one outing, they took a train in to Chicago. Of all the places they might have gone in Chicago in 1964, they chose a neighborhood Fred would wind up visiting later anyway: Hyde Park. Some days later, with his adieus properly bid, Fred next prepared for his return journey. From Illinois, he cycled on to Milwaukee, where he caught the evening ferry across Lake Michigan to Ludington on the eastern shore, arriving in the dark hours of the morning. He rode on from Ludington and then north through the pine-barrens of western Michigan and on to Traverse City. In Michigan, he noticed his redoubtable bicycle was in increasingly bad shape—the gears were weakened and fickle— and, his destinations well behind him, he was eager to get home again. And so he packaged up his velocipede and sent it back to Basking Ridge via Railroad Express. A bus took him to Sault Ste. Marie, where he snared the last berth on a steam ship leaving that day for Port McNicoll, Ontario, clear across Lake Huron. From there, he traveled by bus in stages to New York City, and finally, jiggity-jig, to the brick sidewalks and venerable oaks of Basking Ridge, New Jersey. I had roast beef and mashed potatoes and they let me sleep in the firehouse.  They told me that if the lights came on, just stay put. And at 3 a.m. the lights went on and they all  jumped into their boots and literally in a minute they slid down the pole and were gone.

Fred was one of Princeton’s mukhaḍramūn. That is, his period there as undergraduate and graduate student straddled two dispensations— his undergraduate degree (1968, summa cum laude) was granted by the

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Department of Oriental Studies, while his PhD (1975) came from the same department, now bearing the new-fangled moniker of “Near Eastern Studies.” More telling still, the Princeton of Fred’s undergraduate degree was an all-male preserve; by the time he was awarded his doctorate, it was coeducational, “a great improvement,” as he recalled. Fred admittedly came to Islamic history slowly: his original plan was to study chemistry. But as much as he enjoyed the lab work, he surrendered to the fact that the required linear algebra was not his cup of tea. And, after his return from his Great Lakes odyssey, he knew that a future stuck in some chemistry lab in New Jersey was not for him, anyway. Kennedy’s Peace Corps program had undoubtedly opened many of Fred’s generation to the ideals of participant-travel, and Fred was good at languages, and, simply put, travel excited him—the wanderlust stayed with him. He had become quite enthralled with the history and cultures of the Near East thanks to an art history course he took on a whim, and so he focused his energies on Oriental Studies, and eventually threw in with the specific field of Islamic history since he felt—ironically, for a specialist in Islamic origins—that the sources were more plentiful and accessible. Thus it was that, thanks to a bike ride and to Princeton’s liberal-arts curriculum, the world lost a fine chemistry lab technician. But his new itineraries put his grandfather’s wanderlust to shame. In the summers, he studied Arabic at the University of Michigan and Columbia, and German in Munich. He continued with Arabic during a studyabroad program in Shimlan, Lebanon. After graduating in 1968, larger events intervened, and Fred entered the US Army, volunteering for the draft, seeing no point in delaying the inevitable. As a result, he was served with a short two-year enlistment, but no control whatsoever over what his assignment would be. As it happened, fortune smiled. For those two years, he served his time as a radio intercept operator and German linguist at a US Army Security Agency Field Station in the little town of Herzogenaurach in Germany; he stayed on for a year to study “Oriental Philology” at the Friedrich-Alexander Universität in nearby Erlangen. It was during his time in Germany that Fred was struck by how well developed the field of medieval European history was compared to that of the Near East, and he wondered at how much we seemed to know about medieval European societies compared to those of Islamdom. What made the Near East so distinct? As those of us inclined to linear algebra know, the simplest way to a solution involves eliminating variables. And so part of the answer, it seemed to Fred, lay in the persistent variable of pastoral nomads in the Near East and their complex relations with sedentary



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populations. From that germ of an idea resulted his dissertation, “The Arab Tribes in the Muslim Conquest of Iraq”, which he defended in 1975, leaving Princeton immediately for a job as Assistant, and then Associate Professor of History at Yale University (those were the days). In 1982, he returned to Chicago’s Hyde Park for the first time since his cycling trip to take up a new post at the Oriental Institute and the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, where, the wanderlust hardly abated, he is currently Professor of Near Eastern History. He and his wife ran the gas station and store and lived upstairs.  I hoped the rain would pass, but it didn’t so they invited me in. ‘Our daughter is away,’ they said, so I stayed in her room and they give me breakfast. I had been on the road for a month and told them my story. I think they were taken by the story of this 18-year-old kid from Princeton.  They called the local paper, who sent a photographer who came and took our picture, the man and his wife and me. They said they were ‘holding me up’ in my travels, but it was good advertising for them.

Chicago benefited from Fred as much as he did from Chicago. Chicago has great resources to offer any scholar, and a scholar of Islamic history especially. Since his arrival there, however, Fred has not simply made hay with his own research as some solitary academic, but has shaped the field in other less tangible (and often thankless) ways, as chairman of the NELC department, as Director of the Middle East Center, and in service to the usual academic societies such as MESA, of which he is currently President, the AOS, the AHA, and above all Middle East Medievalists (MEM), for which he served as president and (apparently in a life sentence) as editor and revitalizer of its newsletter, al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā. For all this service, he was awarded the Jere Bachrach Service Award from MEM in 2008. Fred is also a committed, indeed award-winning, teacher, offering a wide, some would say punishing, range of undergraduate and graduate courses, from Islamic Civ to Arabic Paleography. These efforts at service and teaching also bled into his extracurricular activities, as he is also an indefatigable lecturer, introducing non-specialist audiences to the intricacies and nuances of Islam and its history in public venues across the country and outside of it. Through a series of successful NEH-funded seminars, he has also energized and educated cohorts of secondary-school teachers—a vital link in the system by which young people come to know about the Middle East.

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paul m. cobb I was eager for home cooked food rather than all those beans out of cans cooked on Sterno.

In the professional field of Islamic history, Fred Donner is one of the most important interpreters of the early caliphate and, in particular, of Islam’s first century and its historiography. One cannot study Islam’s origins without encountering Fred’s work. His Erlangen musings about nomads and medieval history initiated his dissertation on Arab settlement in Iraq, and that work in turn became one piece of a larger interpretation of the rise of Islam in his first book, The Early Islamic Conquests (1981). Despite the title, the book is not a work of military history, and indeed is only partly concerned with the actual futūḥ of the 630’s and 640’s in Arabia, Syria, and Iraq. The book is perhaps better seen as a study of state formation, and the book’s discrete analytical essays on “Tribe and State” offer an anthropologically-inflected model for the rise of the early Islamic polity (and the importance of Islam itself in that process) that remains satisfying today. It is noteworthy as much for its integration of anthropological models as for its use of a wide range of primary sources (Fred was, for example, probably the first to demonstrate the potential value of Ibn ʿAsākir for early Islamic history). However, given the historiographical complexities of the period, the book piqued a few critics, with some suggesting that it rested upon an uncritical approach to the sources. Others roundly praised the work, and it remains the classic statement on the conquests. The criticism directed towards Fred’s approach to the sources in The Early Islamic Conquests is highly debatable, but to judge from his later works, it is clearly criticism that he took seriously. He spent the next decade in many articles and reviews grappling with the challenge that the “skeptical” or revisionist approach posed for the study of Islamic origins. In the end, as should be clear, there was something of a rapprochement. The revisionists learned to write better, and their wilder claims—Samaritan calques, Negev cult-sites, and so on—seem (at this writing) to have withered under all that clarity. Fred, for his part, never doubted the basic revisionist point that the Islamic narrative sources are insufficient guides to understanding Islamic origins, and so his work after The Early Islamic Conquests directly engages both the documentary sources (as in his article on “The Formation of the Early Islamic State”) and the earliest stages of the Arabic historical tradition (as in his piece on “The Problem of Early Arabic Historiography in Syria”). In the same period, he joined the team of Arabists engaged in the History of al-Ṭabarī translation project



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published by SUNY Press, producing volume X (in 1993), devoted to the end of the Prophet’s career and the caliphates of Abū Bakr and ʿUmar. The task paid dividends: if anything could prepare a scholar for the study of early Islamic historiography, translating the delights of Sayf ibn ʿUmar’s prose into English would have to be it. At roughly the same time, Fred crafted an essay synthesizing his reconstruction of the rise of Islam based on this work in the trenches, and presented it in 1993 as part of the influential “Late Antiquity and Early Islam” workshops, though it was not ultimately published until 2003. This essay, “From Believers to Muslims,” clearly informed his next monograph, Narratives of Islamic Origins (1998), which endeavored to trace when early Muslims first came to write historically, and, perhaps more importantly, why. The answer to the first question, he suggests, is in early Marwānid times, arguing somewhat controversially that the Qurʾān, for all its musings about fallen, hard-hearted civilizations and their prophets, does not actually possess an historical outlook per se. Islamic historicism must thus come from somewhere else, and, to answer the second question, it is to the crystallization of Islamic communal identity that Fred looks as the catalyst. In other words, for Fred Arabic historical writing began when the members of the movement founded by Muḥammad needed to draw a line in the sand to distinguish themselves as a community of Muslims distinct from an earlier and more porous community of Believers. Islamic historiography and narratives of sacred history thus served a role as a marker of identity akin to ritual and iconography. Along the way, Fred drew his own line in the sand vis-à-vis the skeptics: the early Islamic sources should not be simply dismissed, he argued, but rather painstakingly worked over, even if the dividends are modest. In his words, “Not by rejecting the whole Islamic tradition as ‘opaque’, but rather by patiently unraveling the strands and layers of the complex of traditional material, will the Islamic origins story finally come, at least partially, to light” (p. 290). If Fred’s “Believers to Muslims” thesis provided a setting for his archaeology of Islamic historical writing in Narratives, in his most recent book, Muhammad and the Believers, it provides the foundation. Indeed, the book is intended as an expanded version of the thesis set out in that article, but written in a way to be accessible to non-specialists, and to parallel the schema of Islam’s origins implied in Narratives. In brief, and based upon what little evidence there is, Fred postulates that Islam’s origins lie in a religious movement begun under Muḥammad as a pietistic, ecumenical reform movement open to other strict monotheists (Jews, Christians, and

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what Fred calls “Qurʾānic Believers”) who were prepared to live a righteous life, probably in preparation for what was believed to be an imminent apocalypse. The apocalypse, however, never came, and, in the meantime, Muḥammad’s “Believers Movement” had created for itself an empire. It was only later, under the Marwānids in the late seventh century, that “Islam” as we know it, with its distinctive rituals and institutions, came into existence, as the former Believers (now calling themselves Muslims) chose to distance themselves from the Christians and Jews who lived as subjects of the newly-formed Islamic state. The book is thus less about Islam (it is the last chapter that is titled “The Emergence of Islam”) than about the formation of the community that preceded it. It is a crisp and thought-provoking work that is also—let’s face it—more than a little revisionist. As one of my own professors once said, “We all stand on the shoulders of our predecessors, and if we have any sense, every once in a while we give them a good kick in the ears.”

But if Fred’s work has taught us anything, it is to be wary of the intricacies of narratives, their artifice, their selective vision. In writing this short overview, and in conversations with many of Fred’s colleagues, friends, and relatives, I was struck by how much would be left out, aspects of Fred’s story that seemed so important to others who know him. For my part, I have two first memories of Fred. The first barely counts, but it is typically Fred: my memory of him is a blur. Not my memory— Fred is the blur, speeding downstairs by me and Don Whitcomb, dapperly dressed, pausing for a brief handshake and orbital-velocity introductions at the top of the stairs of the Oriental Institute as he tore off to class. Days later, I met with Fred again in his office, located then on the balmy third floor of the OI—Nabia Abbott’s old office as it turned out. I was in the role of student and he the putative adviser. I was interested in Byzantine-Muslim relations, I proclaimed, and we talked shop for a bit and he showed me an honors paper or a thesis or something daunting he had done at Princeton on early Islamic Armenia, snapped into a black binder, typed on thin paper and punctuated with illustrations. He laughed a little at all the illustrations and reshelved it, dismissing it as an “Erstlingswerk”. I smiled; I was impressed. Impressed with Fred and his humility and humor, impressed with NELC, with the OI and with Chicago. I left our meeting to go straight back to my room at the International House to plan my year. And to find out what Erstlingswerk meant.



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But, my informants suggest, an accurate redaction of Fred’s sīra cannot pass over: His love of classical music, particularly choral works. He would regularly host periodic madrigal sessions at his home, attended by students and friends who didn’t mind stretching their vocal cords. He is an avid “if not very good” pianist and a great lover of Schubert, whose birthday (January 31st) he often commemorates with a musical get-together of some kind. His two children, Lucy and Alex, who, with their mother Elvira, were dragged on endless camping, hiking, birding, and sight-seeing trips as youngsters. Yet, for all that, they survived and now flourish, easily their father’s proudest achievements. The program he directed during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, by which scholars from Syrian institutions could spend a semester or more at the Oriental Institute, where they could have access to the kinds of resources that were generally in short supply at the their home-institutions. In the build-up before the 2003 war in Iraq, Fred wrote an op-ed column in the Chicago Tribune, listing the risks involved in such an operation. He received a good bit of hate mail—in addition to much supportive mail— but he never changed his position.  As one colleague put it, “Fred has stood always bravely for what he thought was right and just, sometimes at some discomfort to himself.” His penchant for odd, yet inspired invitations: bringing—strong-arming, really—visiting scholars to go ice-skating on the Midway; bowling with French Umayyadologists in Indiana; “and the parties,” one informant reminisced, “the parties! ” For his 60th, a gathering of Homeric proportions, he had an electrically-lit palm-tree permanently installed in his patio, to the delight of all his guests and, one can only presume, his neighbors.

It is the point of hagiographies to heap exempla upon exempla, but saint’s lives never end happily for their subjects. Perhaps instead it will be better to end in the middle of things by noting one final achievement. Among Fred’s generally unrecorded accomplishments the most important is surely the amount of work he put in (and continues to put in) to teaching and mentoring his students. Since his arrival at Chicago, he has served as the principal adviser or committee member of dozens of graduate students, including young scholars at institutions other than Chicago (to say nothing of his service to Chicago’s own redoubtable undergraduates). For a volume celebrating Fred’s career, then, it seemed appropriate not simply to call for contributions from Fred’s friends and colleagues in the field as is often done, but rather to limit the pool to Fred’s own brain-trust, the students he helped shape into scholars in their own right. All of the papers contained in this volume are by students that Fred worked closely with at different periods of his career. The contributions, unsurprisingly, tend to

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fall into those categories of knowledge for which Fred has inculcated so much enthusiasm, namely history, historiography, religious studies (especially Qurʾānic studies), and the use of material culture; and they gleefully cross the boundaries when necessary. The contributors to this slender volume, however, are only a small part of the large tribal moiety of Donner students who are celebrating Fred’s sixty-fifth year. Due to personal commitments and the press of production schedules, I regret that many of Fred’s students could not contribute to this book, despite their very real desire to salute their Doktorvater. If I could have edited a series of volumes for Fred, I would have. The only consolation I can give to these colleagues, and to Fred who will miss them, is that this particular celebration is premature: as young as he is, there will be other accomplishments and other occasions for celebration down the long road ahead. I was biking through the Delaware Water Gap, going up a two-mile hill with the expectation of the reward of coasting down the other side.  Alas, the wind was roaring up the notch.  The wind was in my face, so I had to fight it all the way down in low gear, making the downhill harder than the uphill.  If only I had been going the other way!  Then the wind would have pushed me up the hill and I could have coasted down.  But then, of course, I wouldn’t have got to where I wanted to go.



introduction: narratives of fred mcgraw donner

Plate 1 Fred Donner and companion, 1964

Plate 2 Fred Donner, 2009

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BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WORKS OF FRED McGRAW DONNER Monographs The Early Islamic Conquests. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing. Princeton: Darwin Press, 1998 (= Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, 14). Muhammad and the Believers: at the origins of Islam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Italian translation: Maometto e le origini dell’Islam. Torino: Giulio Einaudi editore, 2011. Edited Volumes The Expansion of the Early Islamic State (vol. 5 in series “The Formation of the Classical Islamic World”). Articles selected, and with an introduction and bibliography by Fred M. Donner. London: Ashgate/Variorum, 2008. The Articulation of Early Islamic State Structures (vol. 6 in series “The Formation of the Classical Islamic World”). Articles selected, and with an introduction and bibliography, by Fred M. Donner. London: Ashgate/ Variorum, forthcoming. Translations from Arabic The History of al-Tabari, vol. X: The Conquest of Arabia: The Riddah Wars. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. A section in The History of al-Yaʿqūbī dealing with the end of the life of the prophet and the caliphates of Abu Bakr and ʿUmar ibn al-Khattab. Collective project for publication by Darwin Press, Princeton, N.J., in the Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam series. Articles “Mecca’s Food Supplies and Muhammad’s Boycott.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 20 (1977): 249–66.

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“Muhammad’s Political Consolidation in Western Arabia up to the Conquest of Mecca: A Reassessment.” Muslim World 69 (1979): 229–47. “The Bakr b. Wa‌ʾil Tribes and Politics in Northeastern Arabia on the Eve of Islam.” Studia Islamica 51 (1980): 5–38. “Introduction.” In A. A. Duri, The Rise of Historical Writing among the Arabs, translated from the Arabic by Lawrence I. Conrad. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. “Some Early Arabic Inscriptions from al-Hanakiyya, Saudi Arabia.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 43 (1984): 181–208. “Tribal Settlement in Basra during the First Century A.H.” in Tarif Khalidi (ed.), Land Tenure and Social Transformation in the Middle East, 97–120. Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1984. “The Formation of the Islamic State.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 106 (1986): 283–96. “Xenophon’s Arabia.” Iraq 48 (1986): 1–14. “The Death of Abu Talib.” In John H. Marks and Robert M. Good (eds.), Love and Death in the Ancient Near East. Essays in Honor of Marvin H. Pope, 237–45. Guilford, CT: Four Quarters Publishing Company, 1987. “The Problem of Early Arabic Historiography in Syria.” In Muhammad Adnan Bakhit (ed.), Proceedings of the Second Symposium on the History of Bilâd al-Shâm during the Early Islamic Period, vol. I: 1–27. Amman, 1987. “The Shurta [Police] in Early Umayyad Syria.” In M. Adnan Bakhit and Robert Schick (eds.), Proceedings of the Third Symposium on the History of Bilâd al-Shâm during the Umayyad Period, vol. 2: 247–62. Amman, 1989. “The Role of Nomads in the Near East in Late Antiquity (400–800 CE).” In F. M. Clover and R. S. Humphreys (eds.), Tradition and Innovation in Late Antiquity, 73–85. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989. “Islamic History: Problems and Ideals for Schools.” Social Studies Review 6 (Fall, 1990). “The Sources of Islamic Conceptions of War.” In John Kelsay and James Turner Johnson (eds.), Just War and Jihad: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on War and Peace in Western and Islamic Traditions, 31–69. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991. “Mesopotamian Trade from the Tenth to the Fifteenth Century CE” Asien, Afrika, Lateinamerika 20 (1993): 1095–1112. “Al-Lahajāt al-ʿammiyya al-ʿarabiyya wa-ahammiyyat dirāsatihā” [“The Colloquial Arabic Dialects and the Importance of Studying Them”]. Al-Abḥāth 41 (1993): 3–26 [Arabic].



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“The Growth of Military Institutions in the Early Caliphate and their Relation to Civilian Authority.” In Supplement to Al-Qantara 14 (1993): 311–26. “Centralized Authority and Military Autonomy in the Early Islamic Conquests.” In Averil Cameron (ed.), Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, 3: States, Resources, and Armies, 337–60. Princeton: Darwin Press, 1995. “Pioneers in Medieval Middle Eastern Studies: Philip K. Hitti.” Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā. The Bulletin of Middle East Medievalists (October, 1996): 48–52. “Piety and Eschatology in Early Kharijite Poetry.” In Muḥammad al-Saʿafin (ed.). Fī miḥrāb al-maʿrifa. Festschrift for Ihsan ʿAbbas, 3–19. Beirut: Dar Sadir, 1997 [English Section]. “Khirbet al-Samra and its environs in the early Islamic period (ca. 635– 800 CE).” In Thomas Bauzou, Alain Desreumaux, Pierre-Louis Gatier, Jean-Baptiste Humbert, & Fawzi Zayadine (eds.), Fouilles de Khirbet esSamra en Jordanie I, 563–65. Turnhout: Brepols, 1998. “Muhammad and the Islamic Caliphate, 570–1258 CE.” In John Esposito (ed.). The Oxford History of Islam, 1–61. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. “Modern Nationalism and Medieval Islamic History.” Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Bulletin of Middle East Medievalists 13.1 (April, 2001): 21–22. “La Question de Messianisme dans l’Islam primitif.” Mahdisme et millénarisme en Islam (Révue du Monde Musulman et de la Méditerranée, Sommaire no. 91-92-93-94), 17–27. Aix-en-Provence: Éditions Édisud, 2001. “ ʿUthmān and the Rashīdūn Caliphs in Ibn ʿAsākir’s Ta‌ʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq: a Study in Strategies of Compilation.” In James E. Lindsay (ed.), Ibn ʿAsākir: A Muslim Historian and his work, 44–61. Princeton: Darwin Press, 2002. “Assumptions of Orientalists in Studying the Origins of Islam as a Historical Phenomenon.” Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology Newsletter, Yarmouk University (Jordan) 24 (2002): 34–37. [English abstract of an Arabic lecture delivered to the Institute in May, 2001.] “From Believers to Muslims. Patterns of Communal Identity in the early Islamic Community.” Al-Abḥāth 50–51 (2002–2003): 9–53. “Seeing the Rise of Islam in Historical Perspective.” First Annual Wadie Jwaideh Memorial Lecture, Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, Indiana University, November 4, 2002. In Z. Istrabadi and

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M. Drain (eds.). In Memoriam, 10–32. Bloomington: Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Indiana University, 2003. “Orientalists and the Rise of Islam.” In Sami A. Khasawnih (ed.), Conference on “Orientalism: Dialogue of Cultures,” 57–84. Amman: University of Jordan, n.d. [2004]. “Doing It: Richard W. Bulliet and Islamic Studies.” In N. Yavari, et al. (eds.). Views from the Edge: Essays in Honor of Richard W. Bulliet, ix–xviii. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. “The Background to Islam.” In Michael Maas (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, 510–33. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. “The Islamic Conquests.” In Yousef Choueiri (ed.). A Companion to the History of the Middle East, 28–51. Malden & Oxford: Blackwell’s, 2005. “The Historical Context of the Qurʾān.” In Jane D. McAuliffe (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to the Qurʾān, 21–39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. “Fight For God—But Do So With Kindness: Reflections on War, Peace, and Communal Identity in Early Islam.” In Kurt Raaflaub (ed.). War and Peace in the Ancient World, 297–311. Malden & Oxford: Blackwell’s, 2006. “Qurʾānic furqān.” Journal of Semitic Studies 52 (2007): 279–300. “The Qur’an in Recent Scholarship—Challenges and Desiderata.” In Gabriel S. Reynolds (ed.). The Qurʾān in its Historical Context, 29–50. London: Routledge, 2008. “Umayyad Efforts at Legitimation: The Silent Heritage of the Umayyads.” In Antoine Borrut and Paul M. Cobb (eds.). Umayyad Legacies: Medieval Memories from Syria to Spain, 187–211. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2010. “Modern Approaches to Early Islamic History.” In C. F. Robinson (ed.). The New Cambridge History of Islam. Volume 1: The Formation of the Islamic World Sixth to Eleventh Centuries, 625–47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. “ ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ, and the Muslim Invasion of Egypt.” In A. R. Sālimī, Brannon Wheeler, et al. (eds.), Community, State, History, and Changes: Festschrift for Prof. Riḍwān Al-Sayyid, 67–84. Beirut: Arab Network for Research and Publishing, 2011. “Qurʾānicization of Religio-Political Discourse in the Umayyad Period.” Révue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Mediterranée 129 (2011): 79–92. “Visions of the Early Islamic Expansion: Between the Heroic and the Horrific.” In Nadia Maria El Cheikh and Shaun O’Sullivan (eds.). ­Byzantium



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in Early Islamic Syria, 9–29. Beirut and El-Koura: American University of Beirut and University of Balamand, 2011. “The Historian, the Believer, and the Qurʾān.” In Gabriel S. Reynolds (ed.). New Perspectives on the Qurʾān: The Qurʾān in its Historical Context II, 25–37. London, Routledge, 2011. “A Typology of Eschatological Concepts.” In Sebastian Günther and Todd Lawson (eds.). Roads to Paradise. Eschatology in the Islamic Tradition [tentative title](forthcoming). “Arabic ‘fatḥ’ as ‘Conquest’.” In J. Lassner and E. Rowson (eds.). Memorial Volume for Franz Rosenthal [tentative title](forthcoming). “Al-Yaʿqūbī on the Saqīfa Episode and its Implications.” In Matthew Gordon (ed.). Al-Yaʿqūbī, Historian and Geographer [tentative title] (forthcoming). “Was Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam the first Real Muslim?” In Sarah Bowen Savant and Helena de Felipe (eds.). Genealogy, Knowledge, and the Plasticity of the Past in Muslim Societies [tentative title](forthcoming). “The Tribal Perspective in Early Islamic Historiography.” In Lawrence I. Conrad (ed.). Historiography in the Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East. Princeton: Darwin Press, forthcoming. Book Reviews Over sixty various reviews, published since 1977 in diverse journals. Among them the following are particularly significant: Review of Patricia Crone, Slaves on Horses (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), in Journal of the American Oriental Society 102 (1982): 367–71. Review of Patricia Crone and Martin Hinds, God’s Caliph. Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), in The Times Literary Supplement, Friday, July 3, 1987, p. 727. Review of Irfan Shahîd, Rome and the Arabs. A Prolegomenon to the Study of Byzantium and the Arabs (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1984) and Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1984), in Journal of Near Eastern Studies 47 (1988): 221–25.

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Review of Hugh Kennedy, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century (London and New York: Longmans, 1986), in Speculum 65 (1990): 182–84. Review of Jamāl ʿAbd al-Hādī Muḥammad Masʿūd and Wafāʾ Muḥammad Rif ʿāt Jumʿa, Istikhlāf Abī Bakr al-Ṣiddīq raḍīya Allāh ʿanhu [The Succession of Abu Bakr al-Siddiq] (Al-Manṣūra: Dar al-Wafāʾ, 1409/1989), in Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 6 (1994): 53–55. Review of Ibn Warraq (ed.), The Quest for the Historical Muhammad (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 2000), Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, 35 (2001): 75–76. Review of G. R. Hawting, The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), in Journal of the American Oriental Society 121 (2001): 336–38. Review of Jan Retsö, The Arabs in Antiquity. Their history from the Assyrians to the Umayyads (London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003), in Journal of Near Eastern Studies 66 (2007): 312–16. Review of Tayeb El-Hibri, Parable and Politics in Early Islamic History (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), in International Journal of Middle East Studies 43 (2011): 570–71.

PART ONE

HISTORY AND SOCIETY

Who was the Shepherd of Damascus? The Enigma of Jewish and Messianist Responses to the Islamic Conquests in Marwānid Syria and Mesopotamia1 Sean W. Anthony Of all the ramified responses of the local populations of Syria and Mesopotamia that the early Islamic conquests inspired, apocalyptic speculations and messianist movements stand among the most dramatic examples of the deeply transformative religious dynamism which resulted from the conquests. Although modern scholarship has of late considerably illuminated our understanding of the apocalyptic literature produced in the wake of these conquests, many of the apocalypticist and/or messianist movements of the era remain rather neglected, even to the extent of being entirely unknown. Aiming to remedy this state of affairs at least partially, this essay examines a hitherto neglected passage from the Persian heresiography Bayān al-adyān of the Ghaznavid scholar Abū al-Maʿālī (wr. ca. 1092 c.e.) that considerably illuminates the history of such movements among the Jewish inhabitants of Syria and Mesopotamia. This passage, ultimately deriving from the now lost Kitāb al-Maqālāt of the influential heresiographer Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq (d. after 864), preserves an account of a Jewish messianist personage of the Umayyad era known as the Shepherd (Ar. al-rāʿī) who began a movement among Syro-Mesopotamian Jewry during the caliphate of Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 715–717) and gained famed as a miracle worker and herald of the coming messiah. His movement allegedly ended when, after being imprisoned by the Umayyad caliph, he entered into a period of occultation (Per. ghāyeb shod). Through a critical reading of Abū al-Maʿālī’s account alongside accounts of Syriac historians living in the 8th century and those of heresiographical works, Muslim, Christian and Jewish, this essays attempts to provide a chronological reconstruction of the currents of Jewish messianist responses to the Islamic conquests as they evolved from the Marwānid to early ʿAbbāsid periods in general and to assess the profound influence of the Shepherd’s

1 The author would like to thank Wadād al-Qāḍī, Fred Astren, and the anonymous reviewer for reading the first draft of this essay and providing many invaluable comments.

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movement on the Jewish messianist movement of Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī and the ʿĪsawiyya in particular. Introduction When in the 630s and 640s the armies of Arabian tribesmen began to flood the lands of Syria and Mesopotamia, the early vanguards of the Islamic conquests walked onto the stage of an apocalyptic drama regarded by much of the region’s populace, regardless of their sectarian allegiances, as already underway. Indeed, when looking to 7th century Jewish apocalypticism in particular, the Islamic conquests can with justification be imagined as merely re-igniting the flames of Jewish apocalyptic sentiments and messianic expectations that were first set ablaze by the Byzantine-Persian wars spanning 603–628. Much of the impetus for the surge in apocalypticism among the Jewish denizens of Palestine during this time derives from the Sasanian conquests of Byzantine territories in the Levant and their capture of Jerusalem in 614. With the Persian victories, the Jewish populations found themselves freed of their Byzantine overlords and, in time, even in control of Jerusalem. Certainly, the brief and infamously difficult to interpret period from 614–617 during which the Persians left Jerusalem under Jewish administration created an indelible imprint on the Jewish communities of late antique Syro-Palestine, leading many to look eagerly for the imminent arrival of a messianic redeemer.2 Yet, a sharp turn of fortune for the Jews resulted from the Byzantines’ subsequent victorious campaigns against the Persians led by the emperor Heraclius, himself regarded by a number of his contemporaries as fulfilling archetypal, apocalyptic roles.3 Besides recapturing the territories recently lost to Persian advances, the Byzantine resurgence brought with it severe reprisals against the Jewish populations of Syria and Palestine in retaliation for Jewish acts of violence against Christians in the wake of the Persian conquest and their perceived collusion with invading Persian forces.4 2 Elliot Horowtiz, “‘The Vengeance of the Jews Was Stronger Than Their Avarice’: Modern Historians and the Persian Conquest of Jerusalem in 614,” Jewish Social Studies 4 (1998): 1–39; Averil Cameron, “Blaming the Jews: The Seventh-Century Invasions of Palestine in Context,” Travaux et Mémoires (Mélanges Gilbert Dagron) 14 (2002): 57–78. 3 Gerrit J. Reinink, “Heraclius, the New Alexander: Apocalyptic Prophecies during the Reign of Heraclius,” in G. J. Reinink and B. H. Stolte, eds., The Reign of Heraclius (610–641): Crisis and Confrontation (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), 81–94. 4 Walter E. Kaegi, Heraclius: Emperor of Byzantium (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 203 ff.



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Evidence that these tumultuous events inspired and intensified the chiliastic expectations among the Jews of seventh-century Palestine abounds in the apocalyptic literature produced in the time period. These apocalyptic writings convey attitudes that display expectations that the Byzantine victories merely represented the last trial to be suffered before history marched up to the precipice of the messiah’s appearance. This is a theme dominating the pages of well-known 7th-century Jewish apocalypses like Sefer Zerubbabel and also featuring quite vividly in extant piyyūṭīm, or liturgical hymns, which have begun to garner increased scholarly attention.5 It is in such a context, for instance, that the author of the Secrets of Rabbi Šimʿōn bar Yoḥai has the angel Metatron extol the boon represented by the arrival of the Arabian ‘Ishmaelites’:6 Do not be afraid, mortal, for the Holy One, blessed be He, is bringing about the kingdom of Ishmael only for the purpose of delivering you from that wicked one [i.e., Edom/Byzantium]. He shall raise up over them a prophet in accordance with His will, and He will subdue the land for them; and they shall come and restore it with grandeur.

Succor, it seems, had indeed come to the Jews from an unforeseen source; surely then, the apocalypticist inferred, the messiah’s coming drew nigh. Beyond the removal of perceived Byzantine oppression, the Islamic conquests also brought a conspicuous, renewed religious interest among the newly minted conquest élite in the revival of Jerusalem—particularly the esplanade regarded as the former site of the original Jewish temple— as a center of religious devotion and cultic activity. Muslim interest in Jerusalem contrasted starkly with the studied neglect of their Byzantine forbearers. If the seventh-century Armenian account of (Pseudo-)Sebeos is to be believed, many local Jews viewed the construction activities of “the Hagarenes’” mosque on the area regarded as the former site of the temple as holding clear chiliastic significance, and even as presaging the reconstruction of Solomon’s temple. According to Ps.-Sebeos, a number of Palestinian Jews even went as far as to resolve to construct a new 5 Günter Stemberger, “Jerusalem in the Early Seventh Century: Hopes and Aspirations of Christians and Jews,” in L. I. Levine, ed., Jerusalem: Its Sanctity and Centrality to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (New York: Continuum, 1999), 260–70; W. J. van Bekkum, “Jewish Messianic Expectations in the Age of Heraclius,” in Reinink and Stolte, eds., The Reign of Heraclius, 95–112; Nicholas de Lange, “Jewish and Christian Messianic Hopes in Pre-Islamic Byzantium,” in M. Bockmuehl and J. C. Paget, eds., Redemption and Resistance: The Messianic Hopes of Jews and Christians in Antiquity (London: T & T Clark, 2007), 274–84. 6 In John Reeves, Trajectories in Near Eastern Apocalyptic (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005), 79 f.

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synagogue at the base of the earliest Islamic structure.7 In any case, the Jewish participation in the revival and cultivation of neglected locations of Jerusalem’s sacred landscape immediately following the Islamic conquest of Jerusalem ca. 637–8—despite Christian efforts to thwart and circumscribe such activities—boasts too much evidence in both Islamic and non-Islamic historical sources to deny its historicity.8 Furthermore, the significance placed on Jerusalem by the Arabian tribesmen who overtook the city, evidenced by the building activities undertaken therein, was very unlikely to have been undertaken while aloof to its impact on the local Jewish populace. The Jews of Palestine and Jewish visitors from elsewhere likely constituted at least a section of the intended audience for such constructions in the first place.9 The urgency encapsulated within the extant Jewish apocalyptic writings and, in particular, the exuberance with which they embrace the Islamic conquests naturally gives rise to the question as to what exactly happened to all this apocalyptic momentum. In a volume dedicated to Fred Donner, it is especially important to emphasize that at least a partial answer to this question is that much of this initial enthusiasm and momentum was absorbed and harnessed by the burgeoning Islamic movement itself, which at its formative, early stages likely remained capacious and accommodating enough to envelope a wide range of sectarian identities, even if this phenomenon began to undergo a dramatic decline by the end of

7 R. W. Thomson and J. Howard-Johnston, The Armenian History Attributed to Sebeos (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), 1: 102 f., 2: 249. However, key points of Sebeos’ account, which remains problematic in other important respects too, lead one to doubt the accuracy of such assertions, especially the manner in which this anecdote strongly mirrors the narratives of the Romance of Julian the Apostate that portray the Jews as collaborators with the designs of Rome’s last pagan emperor to rebuild the Jewish temple, ordered by edict in 363 A.D. though never fully realized. See G. J. Reinink, “Ps.-Methodius: A Concept of History in Response to the Rise of Islam,” in L. I. Conrad and A. Cameron, eds., The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East I: Problems in the Literary Source Material, SLAEI 1 (Princeton: Darwin, 1992), 184 f. For an evaluation of the account attributed to Sebeos in general, see Robert Hoyland, “Sebeos, the Jews and the Rise of Islam,” in R. L. Nettler, ed., Medieval and Modern Perspectives on Muslim-Jewish Relations (Luxembourg: Harwood, 1995), 89–102. 8 Stefan Leder, “The Attitude of the Population, especially the Jews, towards the ArabIslamic Conquest of Bilād al-Shām and the Question of their role therein,” WO 18 (1987): 64–71; Moshe Gil, A History of Palestine, 634–1099, trans. E. Broido (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 65–74. 9 Andreas Kaplony, The Ḥaram of Jerusalem, 324–1099: Temple, Friday Mosque, Area of Spiritual Power (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2002), 56 f., 247 ff. As attested to also in the Secrets of Šimʿōn bar Yoḥai; see Reeves, Trajectories, 82 f.



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the 7th century.10 Yet, this cannot be the complete answer insofar as the experiences of and reactions to the early Islamic conquests among the Jewish the communities of Syria and Mesopotamia were by no means uniform. Even those Jews most enchanted with the ‘kingdom of Ishmael’ found increasingly with the passage of time that many of their messianic fantasies remained unrealized. Not only that, the burgeoning Muslim polity itself also came to perceive such messianism as being at cross purposes with, and even a potential threat to, the aspirations of Muslims themselves.11 This appears quite acutely in an account recorded by the anonymous Nestorian author of the 7th-century Khūzistān Chronicle,12 where one finds mention of a particularly early messianic pretender appearing among the Jews of Mesopotamia. It reads:13 There appeared a certain Jewish man from Bēṯ Ārāmāyē, from a town called Pelūgātā [Ar., al-Fallūja],14 where rivers of the Euphrates divide into the tributaries of the various lands. He said that the messiah had come (amar d-etā mšīḥā) and gathered together 400 men from the weavers, barbers, and fullers. They burned three churches and murdered the authority of the realm (šlīṭā d-atrā). At that time, a force (ḥaylā) from ʿAqūlā [Ar. al-Kūfa] attacked and slaughtered them—even their women and children. And their heads they impaled on stakes in his village (wa l-rīšhōn zpaqw bāh ba-qrīteh).

The chronicler thus provides us with a rather memorable incident in which Jewish messianism clashed rather bloodily with the newly established Muslim hegemony.15 The type of incident described in the Khūzistān

10 Fred M. Donner, Muḥammad and the Believers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010). 11  Robert G. Hoyland, Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam, SLAEI 13 (Princeton: Darwin, 1997), 526–31. 12 In I. Guidi, ed., Chronica Minora I, CSCO 1, scr. syri 1 (Louvain: Peeters, 1960), 15–39. Translated into German by Th. Nödelke, “Die von Guidi herausgegebene syrische Chronik übersetzt und commentiert,” Sitzungsberichte der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-Hist. Classe, 128 (1893): 1–48 (Abh. ix). See now Chase Robinson, “The Conquest of Khūzistān: A Historiographical Reassessment,” BSOAS 67 (2004): 14–39. 13 Khūzistān, 33. 14 See M. Gil, Jews in Islamic Countries in the Middle Ages, trans. D. Strassler (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 502–506. 15 There is a fascinating narrative in which a soldier from the Muslim armies describes seeing the Jews of Iṣfāhān celebrating upon his arrival at the city prior to its conquest in 642. In their midst he sees Ibn Ṣayyād—the Jewish dajjāl/antichrist—who is destined to reappear at the apocalypse. This account likely has no historical basis, however. See Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī, Dhikr akhbār Iṣfahān, ed. S. Dedering (Leiden: Brill, 1931), 1: 22–23 and Ibn al-Munādī, al-Malāḥim, ed. ʿA.-K. al-ʿUqaylī (Qom: Dār al-Sīra, 1998), 222. On Ibn Ṣayyād, see David Cook, Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic, SLAEI 21 (Princeton: Darwin Press,

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Chronicle seems to have been quite rare in the 7th century, but clashes of varying severity between Jewish messianists and their acolytes with the Muslim authorities began to occur with the onset of the 8th century. It is within such a context that the movement and preaching of the Shepherd must be weighed and interpreted. To my knowledge, no other scholar has brought him to the attention of historians besides Arjomand, who accords him a brief, passing mention in a study of Islamic apocalypticism.16 It is necessary, therefore, to begin with an analysis of the principal account from which nearly all of our knowledge of this figure derives. The Principal Account Although one may adduce various allusions to the Damascene Shepherd throughout the heresiological literature of the ʿAbbāsid era, most of these are rather arcane and elliptical in their reference to the Shepherd. There survives, in truth, only one full-fledged account of his religious career. It survives in the oft-neglected Persian heresiography Bayān al-adyān, penned by an ʿAlid scholar of the Ghaznavid court named Abū al-Maʿālī Muḥammad ibn ʿUbayd Allāh al-ʿAlawī (wr. 1092). Although not a lengthy work, Abū al-Maʿālī’s Bayān does uniquely stand out as our earliest example of a Muslim heresiography composed in Persian. For our purposes, one of the more useful aspects of his work is that its author, generally speaking, was a scholar who conscientiously employed earlier sources in composing his work, many of which now seem to have been lost.17 For his Persian account of the Shepherd, Abū al-Maʿālī depends exclusively upon—and, indeed, probably translates directly from Arabic—an excerpt from the much earlier heresiolographical work of the estranged Muʿtazilī thinker Abū ʿĪsā Muḥammad ibn Hārūn al-Warrāq known as the K. al-Maqālāt. A figure considerably earlier and more influential than Abū al-Maʿālī himself, Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq lived at least until 864, the latest point to which his writing activity can be dated with any certainty.18 2002), 110 ff. and W. Raven, “Ibn Ṣayyād as an Islamic ‘Antichrist’: A Reappraisal of the Texts,” in W. Brandes and F. Schmieder, eds., Endzeiten: Eschatologie in den monotheistischen Weltreligionen, Millennium-Studien 16 (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2008), 261–92. 16 First in Said Amir Arjomand, “Islamic Apocalypticism in the Classic Period,” in Bernard McGinn, ed., The Encyclopedia of Apocalypticism, vol. 2: Apocalypticism in Western History and Culture (New York: Continuum, 1998), 258; then, subsequently, in idem, “Ḡayba,” EIr, 10: 341b. 17 See J. van Ess, “Abū’l-Maʿālī Moḥammad,” EIr, 1: 334 f. 18 See W. Madelung, “Häresiographie,” GdAP, 2: 375.



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Although only fragments of the K. al-Maqālāt survive and even then only in later works, these fragments testify to the paramount importance of Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq’s work for the development of Muslim heresiography—in particular for that field in which he excelled most brilliantly among his peers, namely the study of non-Islamic sects.19 The K. al-Maqālāt seems to have been rather popular among the scholars of the Ghaznavid court. Its popularity is attested to not only by its extensive use by Abū l-Maʿālī but also by the polymath Abū al-Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī (d. after 1050).20 We have little reason to doubt Abū al-Maʿālī’s assertion that he translates his account of the Shepherd directly from the K. al-Maqālāt of Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq given his utilization of this work elsewhere in the Bayān; therefore, we can regard Abū al-Maʿālī’s version as a reasonably faithful and close Persian rendering thereof, even in the absence of the Arabic original. The account as preserved in the Bayān reads as follows:21 During the era of the reign and governance of Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Malik al-Umawī, there appeared a man whom the Jews called ‘raʿyā’,22 but he was better known (maʿrūftar būd) as ‘al-raʿī’. A group of the Jews (khalqī az jahūdān) gathered around him, and he called people to piety and asceticism and to abandon their inequities (ū khalq rā beh zohd va pārsāʾī vatark-e maẓālem daʿvat kard). He said, “I am the forerunner of the messiah (man moqaddemah-ye mahdī-am)” and called the people (khalq) to the religion of the Jews. His supporters made mighty claims and arguments on his behalf (shīʿah-ye ū az jehat-e ū daʿvīhā va-borhānhā-ye ʿaẓīm kardand). They said that one day he prayed at a home, and the wood of that house turned completely green and began to sprout leaves (rūzī dar khānah namāz kard chūb-e ān khānah hamah sabz shod va barg bar-āvard). They also said that in one day they saw him in several cities, and on the date of that same day letters arrived from those cities (dar yak rūz ū rā beh chand shahr dīdand va-beh tārīkh-e ān rūz az shahrhā nāmah āmad). [It is also said that] he was imprisoned inside the prison of Damascus, and every day there would fall near him sustenance (khūrdanī). One day he disappeared from there (az ānjā ghāyeb shod), though the door of the prison remained closed (va dar-e zindān hamchanān bastah būd). [They said that] because the Jews greatly 19 Ibid.; see also D. Thomas, “Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq and the History of Religions,” JSS 41 (1992): 275–90. 20 Cf. J. van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra: Eine Geschichte des religiösen Denkens im frühen Islam (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991–1997), 4: 430 f. 21 Abū al-Maʿālī al-ʿAlawī, Bayān al-adyān, ed. ʿAbbās Iqbāl Āshtiyānī, Muḥammad Taqī Dānishpazhūh, and Muḥammad Dabīr Siyāqī (Tehran: Enteshārāt-e Rūzanah, 1997), 75. 22 The text here reads “r.ʿ.n.ā”; however, this is undoubtedly a textual corruption of “r.ʿ.y.ā”, an Arabic transcription of the Aramaic raʿyā. Cf. L. Nemoy, “Corrections and Emendations to al-Qirqisānī’s Kitāb al-Anwār,” JQR n.s. 50 (1950): 373.

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As translated by Abū al-Maʿālī, Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq’s account ostensibly presents us with a number of basic ‘facts’ about the Shepherd, which one may summarize as follows. The Shepherd’s movement originated during the caliphate of Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 715–17), and he drew his following predominantly from the Jews. Remembered particularly as a miracle-working holy-man who called the people to piety and righteous conduct, he harbored profoundly messianistic beliefs, too. Lastly, while calling a multitude to faith in the Jewish religion (certainly Jews, but perhaps even non-Jews, as the identity of ‘the people [Per. khalq]’ in the text is somewhat vague on this point in one instance), he did so while viewing himself as a forerunner (moqaddemah) of the messiah/mahdī. Although the account focuses on his imprisonment in Damascus, the account provides no hint as to why the Umayyad authorities took such an interest in this miracle-working maven.23 Yet, after the Shepherd’s imprisonment, the account concludes with an even more inscrutable mystery: the complete disappearance of the miracle-worker from his Damascene prison, presumably never to be seen or heard from again. There is also much that is arcane and even hazardously factitious about the heresiographer’s account of the Shepherd. It is not merely that Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq describes the Shepherd’s career as attenuated by spectacularly preternatural feats and miraculous events that ought to give historians pause, but also the way in which he does so. Most conspicuously, nearly all of the preternatural feats and events mentioned therein harken back to either biblical or qurʾānic miracle topoi. Three of the Shepherd’s most distinctive miracles in particular bear the tell-tale signs of having been inspired by either biblical or other Jewish/Christian parascriptural materials. That the Shepherd’s prayers cause even lumber and felled wood to blossom, for instance, conjures imagery strongly evocative of contemporary, 23 It is noteworthy that Abū Hāshim ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyya was also placed in the prison of Damascus around the same time, though by Walīd I rather Sulaymān, likely due to the considerable following he enjoyed among the Kaysāniyya, many of whom regarded him as imām. Cf. EI3, art. “Abū Hāshim” (T. Bayhom-Daou). Later, Walīd purportedly released Abū Hāshim for good behavior and placed him under house arrest. See Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā al-Balādhurī, Ansāb al-ashrāf, vol. 2, ed. W. Madelung (Beirut: Klaus Schwarz, 2003), 648 f. Is it possible that the imprisonment of the Shepherd reflects a somewhat standard Marwānid policy?



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pan-sectarian expectations of both the eschatological re-appearance of Aaron’s flowering staff and the allegorical imagery associated with the Davidic messiah (Is. 11:1).24 The Shepherd’s miraculously speedy transport from town to town in a single day likewise finds precedence in biblical miracle stories (cf. 1 Kgs. 18:12 and Acts 8:39–40).25 Furthermore, the contention that the Shepherd mysteriously found sustenance of an unknown origin clearly mirrors a similar miracle attributed to the qurʾānic Mary (Q. 3:37).26 Yet, that the miracles associated with the Shepherd so transparently derive from such tropes does not necessarily nullify the historicity of Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq’s account entirely. Their centrality to the religious imaginary of the inhabitants of the early Islamic world ensured their typological significance for any would-be messianic pretender. In other words, these are old miracles of a well-known sort in the late antique world, and the very commonplace status of such tropes created expectations that any apocalyptic movement worth its salt would have to at least address, if not embody. To do otherwise would be a bit of a letdown as ostentatious claimants to divine charisms go. Considering the Jewish context, one particularly compelling aspect of these miracles is the potential ‘Elijah connection’ that may very well underlie each of the tropes.

24 See Reeves, Trajectories, 188 f. 25 For further examples, see R. I. Pervo, Acts: A Commentary, Hermeneia 58 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009), 226–27 and especially n. 81 thereto. Given the Islamic context, Muḥammad’s miraculous night journey (isrāʾ) from Mecca to Jerusalem and back certainly provides another relevant parallel as well; cf. Q. 17 1 and EQ, s.v. “Ascension” (M. Sells). By Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq’s time, however, the exegetical focus on these āyas falls predominately on the narrative of Muḥammad’s ascension, which acquired a much more paradigmatic significance in the Islamic imaginaire, rather than that of his miraculous transportation. See Mohammed Amir-Moezzi, ed., Le voyage initiatique en terre d’islam: Ascensions céleste et itinéraries spirituels (Louvain: Peeters, 1996). 26 The Persian word for sustenance in Abū al-Maʿālī’s account, ‘khūrdanī’ almost certainly translates the Arabic ‘rizq’ of the qurʾānic pericope. As I have noted elsewhere, this is a commonplace miracle also attributed to another Syrian pseudo-prophet from the reign of ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān named al-Ḥārith ibn Saʿīd; see S.W. Anthony, “The Prophecy and Passion of al-Ḥāriṯ ibn Saʿīd al-Kaḏḏāb: Narrating a Religious Movement from the Caliphate of ʿAbdalmalik ibn Marwān,” Arabica 57 (2010): 1 ff. The miracle is not solely attributed to would-be prophets in the Islamic tradition; it also appears in narratives of the death of the early Anṣārī martyr Khubayb ibn ʿAdī. See D. Cook, Martyrdom in Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 21–22. That this martyrological account of Khubayb’s death originates from the Umayyad period with the scholar Ibn Shihāb al-Zuhrī has recently been demonstrated by N. Boekhoff-van der Voort, “The Raid of the Hudhayl: Ibn Shihāb al-Zuhrī’s Version of the Event,” in H. Motzki (with N. Boekhoff-van der Voort and S.W. Anthony), Analysing Muslim Traditions: Studies in Legal, Exegetical and Maghāzī Ḥadīth (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2010), 305–382.

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Like Elijah, the Shepherd is a predecessor to the messiah and herald of his coming (Mal. 4:5), may be miraculously transported by God from place to place (1 Kgs. 18:12; 2 Kgs. 2:11), and miraculously receives sustenance in times of want (1 Kgs. 17:4).27 Moreover, many of these thematic elements of the Elijah persona had considerably expanded in late antique apocalypticism, as elaborated among both Jews and Christians. For instance, to Elijah is commonly assigned the role of recovering Aaron’s flowering rod28—the very rod whose magical properties, although unmentioned in the above account, the Shepherd replicates through his prayers. The account preserves another key detail in this respect too where it mentions that some regarded the Shepherd as somehow an angel. Whereas as angel acts as a deliverer in most late antique narratives of holy-men miraculously escaping prison,29 the Shepherd’s prison escape resembles more an apotheosis: it is by virtue of his quasi-angelic nature that he breaks free from his Umayyad jailers. This, again, appears to draw from Elijah’s own heavenly ascension and apotheosis as a model,30 which was regarded in late antique religious thought as having conferred on the prophet a

27 For subsequent extrapolations on these themes in Rabbinic literature, see Brenda J. Shaver, “The Prophet Elijah in the Literature of the Second Temple Period,” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2001), 198 ff. 28 See Sefer Zerubbabel and Pirqe Mašiaḥ in Reeves, Trajectories, 57 and 159, respectively. From an early date, Jewish writers amalgamated the prophet Elijah with the priest Phineas, the grandson of Aaron (see Num. 25:7), and attributed to Elijah/Phineas the concealment of the very staff of Moses and, although less consistently, the staff’s recovery at the advent of the messiah as well. See Robert Hayward, “Phineas—the Same as Elijah,” Journal of Jewish Studies 29 (1978): 22–34. 29 Such angelic rescues and deliverance for the unjustly imprisoned seems to have become an influential trope in late antique Syriac matyrologies as well; e.g. see Jean M. Fiey, Saints Syriaques, ed. L. I. Conrad, SLAEI 6 (Princeton: Darwin, 2004), 39f. (§58), 115f. (§238), 141 (§315) and Joel Walker, The Legend of Mar Qadagh: Narrative and Christian Heroism in Late Antique Iraq (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 33 (§25). The biblical narratives in Acts 5, 12, and 16 are paradigmatic for these stories; see John B. Weaver, Plots of Epiphany: Prison-Escape in Acts of the Apostles, BZNW 131 (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2004). 30 In general, see Alan F. Segal, “Heavenly Ascent in Hellenistic Judaism, Early Christianity and their Environment,” in ANRW II.23.2 (1980): 1352 ff. and Christopher Begg, “‘Josephus’ Portrayal of the Disappearances of Enoch, Elijah, and Moses: Some Observations,” JBL 109 (1990): 691–92. Contrast this picture with the ‘Moses of Crete’ discussed by the church historian Socrates Scholasticus (d. after 439). According to Socrates, there appeared in Crete in the 400s a Pseudo-Moses claiming to be sent from heaven to lead to the Jews across the sea. After he achieves his deception, he leads many Jews to their death by convincing them to cast themselves into the sea. Thereafter, he disappears, leading the Jews to speculate that he had been a demon (Gk. daímōn) sent to deceive them. See Histoire ecclésiastique, ed. G.C. Hansen and trans. P. Périchon and P. Maraval, Sources Chrétiennes 506 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 2004–2007), 7: 139 (VII.xxxviii.11).



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semi-divine and quasi-angelic nature, both among Jews31 and Christians.32 It seems reasonable to hypothesize that the Shepherd, like many Jewish messianists before him, modeled himself along the lines of the archetypal, eschatological persona of Elijah. Yet, even with this charitable reading, several alarming obstacles remain in the way of embracing the historicity of the account wholesale. The surviving information about the biography of the account’s author illuminates the nature of story, too. It is well-known that, prior to acquiring infamy as a heretic and freethinker (Ar. zindīq, mulḥid), Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq had been an Imāmī mutakallim and composed a number of works on the subject of the imāmate and, perhaps most famously, a treatise criticizing the ʿUthmānīya of the Muʿtazilī belle-lettrist al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 869).33 Indeed, al-Warrāq’s influence among the Imāmī intellectuals persisted rather palpably even well into the 5th/11th century—prominently exemplified, for instance, by the strident efforts of al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā (d. 1044) to rehabilitate him back into the fold of Islam. Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq’s familiarity with Imāmī thought and belief, therefore, was indubitably thorough and profound. It is thus quite remarkable that, given his Imāmī pedigree, al-Warrāq’s account of the Shepherd also employs an array of Shīʿī tropes and topoi as well. Most prominent among these, of course, is the statement, in Abū al-Maʿālī’s Persian re-wording, that after being interned in prison the Shepherd “was made to disappear (ghāyeb shod).” Even in its Persian translation, the passage very likely preserves sufficient vestiges of Abū ʿĪsā’s

31 Lucy Wadeson, “Chariots of Fire: Elijah and the Zodiac in Synagogue Floor Mosaics of Late Antique Palestine,” Aram 20 (2008): 1–41; Kristen H. Lindbeck, Elijah and the Rabbis (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 46 ff. 32 Thus, in a sermon of Jacob of Sarug the angels welcome the ascending Elijah to heaven as “angel of flesh, man of spirit (ʿīrā d-besrā nāšā d-rūḥā).” See Stephen A. Kaufman, trans., Jacob of Sarug’s Homilies on Elijah, Texts from Christian Late Antiquity 18 (Piscatawny, NJ: Gorgias, 2009), 424–5. Cf. Maja Kominko, “Elijah in the Christian Topography–Syriac Story and Greek Image?” Aram 20 (2008): 101–110. 33 Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī, Maqālāt al-islāmiyyīn wa-ikhtilāf al-muṣallīn, ed. H. Ritter (Beirut: Klaus Schwarz, 2005), 64; al-Masʿūdī, Murūj al-dhahab wa-maʿādin al-jawhar, ed. Ch. Pellat (Beirut: Manshūrāt al-Jāmiʿa al-Lubnānīya, 1974), 4: 77 It was common to claim that so-called crypto-zindīqs, among whose ranks Muslim authors often placed Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq, gained their foothold in the midst of the Muslim community by posing as Rāfiḍīs; e.g., see M. Chokr, Zandaqa et zindīqs en Islam au second siècle de l’hégire (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1996), 216. However, the historicity of the assertion in Abū ʿĪsā’s case finds confirmation in his authorship of a K. al-Imāma and the posthumous and often earnest defense of his reputation against accusations of zandaqa by a number of Twelver theologians.

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original, Arabic account to surmise an early allusion to the Shīʿī notion of occultation (Ar. al-ghayba). While written prior to the ghayba al-ṣughrā of the Ithnā-ʿAshariyya, the ghayba was a long established doctrine by al-Warrāq’s time.34 Having first arisen among the Kaysāniyya (perhaps as early as the death of their imām, Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥanafiyya in 700),35 the ghayba doctrine had regained considerable popularity within al-Warrāq’s lifetime through its revival by the Wāqifa-Shīʿa, following the death of the seventh imām Mūsā al-Kāẓim ibn Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq in 799.36 Indeed, by the time Abū ʿĪsā had begun writing his K. al-Maqālāt, the Wāqifa had already emerged as a vibrant faction among the Imāmī-Shīʿa who declared that Mūsā al-Kāẓim had not in fact died but entered into ghayba37—and having entered into his ghayba from prison, much like the Shepherd no less.38 Mūsā al-Kāẓim shares even further similarities with Abū ʿĪsā’s Shepherd: the former also allegedly once touched a felled tree and caused it to become green and then bear fruit,39 manifested miraculous abilities of locomotion (Ar. qudrat al-sayr) by visiting his disciples in 34 According to the ʿAbbāsid historian al-Masʿūdī (Murūj, 5: 23), the only source to mention his date of death, Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq died in the city of Baghdād in the year 247/861–2 and, thus, prior to the occultation (ghayba) of twelfth imām by over a decade. This date, however, seems to be too early; see W. Madelung, “Bemerkungen zur imamitischen FiraqLiteratur,” Der Islam 43 (1967): 48–49. 35 See EIr, art. “Kaysāniyya” (S. W. Anthony). Jewish and Zoroastrian precedents for the doctrine of the ghayba abound as well. On the Jewish side of things, see the statement of messiah/son of David Menahem bar ʿAmiel before his advent in Sefer Zerubbabel in Reeves, Trajectories, 5; cf. A. Berger, “Captive at the Gate of Rome: The Story of a Messianic Motif,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 44 (1997): 1–17. From the Zoroastrian side, the figure of the Pišyōtan provides compelling parallels; see Mary Boyce, “The Antiquity of Zoroastrian Apocalyptic,” BSOAS 47 (1984): 61–66. 36 E. Kohlberg, “From Imāmiyyah to Ithnā-ʿAshariyya,” BSOAS 39 (1976): 529 ff. 37 Amir-Moezzi, Divine Guide, 101–103; see also H. Modarressi, Crisis and Consolidation in the Formative Period of Shīʿite Islām: Abū Jaʿfar ibn Qiba al-Rāzī and His Contribution to Imāmite Shīʿite Thought (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1993), 87–89 and esp. n. 184 thereto. 38 M. Ali Buyukkara, “The Schism in the Party of Mūsā al-Kāẓim and the Emergence of the Wāqifa,” Arabica 47 (2000): 82–83. See also the alleged disappearance from prison of the Ḥusaynid Zaydī imām Muḥammad ibn al-Qāsim ‘Ṣāḥib al-Ṭālaqān’, whom the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Muʿtaṣim imprisoned in c. 219/834–5. Ashʿarī, Maqālāt, 82; Masʿūdī, Murūj, 4: 349–50. Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī records a number of detailed accounts on the fate of Muḥammad ibn al-Qāsim after his escape from al-Muʿtaṣim’s prison in Samarra and places his death after his caliphate, claiming that he was re-arrested by al-Mutawakkil and died shortly thereafter in prison; see Maqātil al-Ṭālibiyyīn, ed. Aḥmad Ṣaqr (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Aʿlamī, 1998), 470–73. So, too, the followers of Sabbathai Zevi while asserting that the angel Gabriel took his form in prison while he ascended to heaven; see Israel Friedländer, “Jewish Arabic Studies: Shiitic Elements in Jewish Sectarianism,” JQR 2 (1912): 515 f. 39 E. Kohlberg, “Mūsā al-Kāẓim,” EI2, 7: 647b; cf. Judith Loebenstein, “Miracles in Šīʿī Thought: A Case Study of the Miracles Attributed to Imām Ğaʿfar al-Ṣādiq,” Arabica 50 (2003): 233 ff. and K. Sindawi, “The Image of Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī in Maqātil Literature,” Quaderni di Studi Arabi 20–21 (2001): 97.



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distant lands though bodily confined in prison,40 and removed himself from this world due to the sins of his followers and partisans. According to one tradition, Mūsā al-Kāẓim said before his death (or occultation, if you will): “Verily, God Most High became angry with the Shīʿa and made me choose (to sacrifice) either myself or them—and by God, I redeemed them with my own soul (inna allāh ʿazza wa-jalla ghaḍiba ʿalā al-shīʿa fa-khayyaranī41 bi-nafsī aw hum fa-waqaytuhum wa-llāhi bi-nafsī).”42 All of this leads one to wonder: Is there something parodic—or even sardonic—in Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq’s account of the Damascene Shepherd as preserved in Abū al-Maʿālī’s Bayān? Is the account purely a heresiological fiction? I would like to suggest that is not, at least not entirely. Many of the aforementioned features of the account can be understood as typological portrayals; al-Warrāq’s account mobilizes a series of religious typologies, which he uses to portray the Damascene Shepherd’s mysterious religious message, mission, and, ultimately, disappearance. Filtered through such a typological lens, the reader can apprehend a number of religious topoi and tropes common to Jews, Christians and Muslims in Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq’s age that are themselves quite polysemic, making his narrative as deeply symbolic as it is literary. Yet, does his account proffer historical insight? While the penchant of Muslim heresiographers for reading Islamic paradigms into past and present religions and imputing to them ideas which are, in truth, quite foreign is well-known,43 this may be said to be a feature

40 E.g., see Ibn Bābawayh al-Ṣadūq, ʿUyūn akhbār al-Riḍā (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Aʿlamī, 2005), 1: 95. For further examples see Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Farrukh al-Ṣaffār, Baṣāʾir al-darajāt, ed. Muḥsin Kūchabāghī (Tabriz: Maktabat Āyat Allāh al-Marʿashlī, 1983), 397–408; M. A. Amir-Moezzi, The Divine Guide in Early Shīʿism: The Sources of Esotericism in Islam, trans. D. Streight (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), 94; and Loebenstein, “Miracles in Šīʿī Thought,” 239–40. The ability of supernatural locomotion figures prominently in the miraculous deeds of Mani as well; see EIr, art. “Mani” (W. Sundermann). 41 This is the correct reading, whereas the printed text reads “ḥayyaranī”. 42 Abū Jaʿfar al-Kulaynī, al-Kāfī, ed. ʿA. A. al-Ghaffārī (Tehran: Dār al-Kutub al-Islāmiyya, 1968–1971), 1: 260. The trope thereafter also appears in heresiological treatments of Ibn Saba‌ʾ and the Saba‌ʾiyya. See Saʿd ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn Abī Khalaf al-Qummī, K. al-Maqālāt wa-al-firaq, ed. Muḥammad Javād Mashkūr (Tehran: Ḥaydarī, 1963), 21 and Ps.-Nāshiʾ alAkbar (=Jaʿfar ibn Ḥarb, d. 850?), Uṣūl al-niḥal, 23, in: J. van Ess, ed., Frühe muʿtazilische Häresiographie: Zwei Werke des Nāšiʾ al-Akbar (gest. 293 H.) (Beirut: Ergon, 2003). On the authorship of the latter work, see W. Madelung, “Frühe muʿtazilitische Häresiographie: Das Kitāb al-Uṣūl des Ğaʿfar ibn Ḥarb,” Der Islam 57 (1980): 220–36. Yet, even this notion of the messiah being hidden by God because of the sins of his people has direct Jewish parallels; see Berger, “Captive at the Gates of Rome,” 2. 43 A famous example is that of Mani and his alleged claim, like Muḥammad, to have been khātam al-anbiyāʾ; see G. G. Stroumsa, “‘Seal of the Prophets’: The Nature of a Manichean Metaphor,” JSAI 7 (1986): 61–74.

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present in all heresiological writing more generally speaking.44 On the other hand, there is also the Imāmī penchant for attributing nearly every known miracle and wonder to the imāms, motivated by the impetus to portray them as archetypal holy-men theoretically capable of performing any divinely sanctioned miracle.45 Hence, any attempt to disentangle the historically ‘true’ assertions of such an account poses a number of formidable hermeneutical obstacles that are unavoidable, given the features of the heresiological genre. Still, from the perspective of the present author, it seems too parsimonious to deny the account any historicity whatsoever. The question still remains unanswered though as to just how one ought to go about discovering if any historical events or persons actually lie behind the account. Therefore, to further evaluate this account requires that we cast our net wider than we have hitherto ventured to do. Dāʿī vs. Rāʿī: A Pre-History of the ʿĪsawiyya? Abū al-Maʿālī’s Bayān preserves the only full-fledged narrative account of the Shepherd; however, outside the pages of this Persian heresiography one does stumble upon other references to his existence, albeit quite obliquely. These additional references allow one to at least surmise that his existence was not entirely unknown outside the work of Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq and his Ghaznavid redactor and to thereby conceive of his movement in the larger context of Jewish messianism in 7th and 8th centuries. One of the more straightforward, earlier examples of these references comes from the work of one of al-Warrāq’s contemporaries: the Mafātiḥ al-ʿulūm of Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārazimī (d. ca. 850). In his treatment of the Jewish sects, al-Khwārazimī briefly mentions a Jewish sect known as “the Rāʿiyya, named after one who made claims to prophecy among them [i.e., the Jews] and was named the Shepherd.”46 Likewise, al-Bīrūnī, who

44 A. Cameron, “How to Read Heresiology,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 33 (2003): 471–92. 45 M. A. Amir-Moezzi, “Savoir c’est pouvoir: exégèse et implications du miracle dans l’imamisme ancient (Aspects de l’imamologie duodécimain V),” in D. Aigle, ed., Miracle et Karāma: Hagiographies médiévales comparés (Turnhout, Brepols: 2000), 251–86 (esp. 258–62). 46 Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārazimī, Mafātiḥ al-ʿulūm, ed. G. van Vloten (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1895), 34–35: “al-rāʿīya mansūbūn ilā wāḥidin tanabba‌ʾa fīhim wa-kāna yusammā al-rāʿī”; Eng. tr. C. E. Bosworth, “Al-Ḫwārazmī on Theology and Sects: the chapter on kalām in the Mafātīḥ al-ʿulūm,” BÉO 29 (1977): 92. Abū al-Maʿālī also mentions a Jewish sect known as the Rāʿīya; see Bayān, 29.



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as noted above also had access to al-Warrāq’s Maqālāt, lists the Shepherd by name in his al-Āthar al-bāqiya alongside another messianist, the Jewish rebel Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī, among those who “proclaimed themselves prophets from among their [i.e. the Jews’] sects.”47 Al-Bīrūnī’s mention of Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī alongside the Damascene Shepherd brings us to the most intriguing aspect of the sparse Muslim heresiological discussions of early Jewish sectarianism—and also one of its most perplexing. Abū al-Maʿālī also discusses Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī and his movement in the Bayān; moreover, he also draws a direct and explicit link between the Shepherd and Abū ʿĪsā by casting the former as the latter’s predecessor. The extent to which Abū al-Maʿālī’s account of Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī depends on the writings of al-Warrāq remains more ambiguous than in the account of the Shepherd, where he explicitly indicates that he directly quotes al-Warrāq’s Maqālāt. Yet, there are strong indications that Abū al-Maʿālī does at least draw upon and summarize al-Warrāq’s text. The relevant section of his account reads as follows:48 In the days of Abū Jaʿfar al-Manṣūr a man from among the Jews appeared named Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī. He was a tailor from the inhabitants of Nisibis whose name was [originally] Abū Isḥāq ibn Yūsuf. He said to the people (beh khalq goft) that he was the messenger of the messiah (rasūl-e masīḥ) and that before the messiah his five messengers will come first (pīsh az masīḥ panj rasūl-e ū bekhwāhand āmad badav). They said that the Shepherd was one of this group and that he himself was Jesus, the son of Mary (az ān jomlah yakī rāʿī rā goft va keh ū khūd ʿĪsā ibn Maryam būd). He also said that there was a place where the aides of Moses lived ( yārān-e Mūsā ānjā bāshand) in the midst of this world (dar meyān-e donyā) where there is a river (daryā) that runs through the sand (dar rīg mī ravad). For six days of the week it is thus; but on the Sabbath this sand must remain in place and cease to run. Uttering repeatedly such trifles (turrahāt), a multitude (khalq) gathered around him.

This account contains a number of striking features. Most uncanny is Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī purported identification of the Shepherd with Jesus of Nazareth (i.e., ʿĪsā ibn Maryam). This assertion finds no exact parallel in other accounts and is, therefore, difficult to interpret on its own.49

47 Abū al-Rayḥān Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Bīrūnī, al-Āthār al-bāqiya ʿan al-qurūn al-khāliya, ed. E. Sachau (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1878), 15.11: “mutanabbiyī firaqihim”. 48 Bayān al-adyān, 75. 49 Recently, van Ess (Der Eine und das Andere, 827 ff.) has used this passage to argue for a Judeao-Christian basis to Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī’s revolt. In my view, however, this conclusion is unwarranted for reasons to be discussed shortly. It is more likely that Abū ʿĪsā’s

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I would like to suggest that this identification results from an error on Abū al-Maʿālī’s part, deriving from a transposition of the title masīḥ with the qurʾānic name for Jesus of Nazareth. We shall encounter confirmation for this hypothesis further below. More important to emphasize, however, is that Abū al-Maʿālī’s placement of Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī as an admirer and continuator of the Shepherd’s religious message is, in fact, not unique and finds confirmation elsewhere. The most important text confirming the Shepherd’s relationship with the movement of Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī is one long known and much studied by modern scholarship: the K. al-Milal wa-al-niḥal of al-Shahrastānī (d. 1153). The relevant passage from al-Shahrastānī mirrors to a great extent that of Abū al-Maʿālī, so much so that al-Shahrastānī’s account probably preserves much of the wording of the Arabic Vorlage upon which Abū al-Maʿālī’s account depends. The account of al-Shahrastānī affirms that Abū ʿĪsā “claimed that he was the messenger of the awaited messiah (rasūl al-masīḥ al-muntaẓar)” and “that the messiah has five messengers who shall come before him, one after another.” Shahrastānī adds further details, too, such as Abū ʿĪsā’s alleged claim to be a prophet (nabī), and, most importantly for our interests, that, He would make it requisite to testify to the veracity of the messiah and he extolled the message of the Shepherd. He also claimed that the Shepherd is himself the messiah (kāna yūjibu taṣdīq al-masīḥ wa-yuʿaẓẓimu daʿwat al-rāʿī wa-zaʿama anna al-rāʿī huwa al-masīḥ).50

Textually, my translation above has amended Cureton’s Arabic text to read daʿwat al-rāʿī rather than daʿwat al-dāʿī as conventionally read. The latter, better-known reading likely resulted from the text’s similarity to Q. 2:186, “If my servants ask you about me, I am near and answer the call of he who calls out when he has called out to me (daʿwat al-dāʿī idhā daʿānī).” Thus, the text of Shahrastānī’s Milal was likely inadvertently quranicized by a copyist,51 effectively occluding the mention of the Shepherd (al-Rāʿī) from the text. Abū al-Maʿālī and al-Shahrastānī’s account clearly parallel each other, although they do depart from one another in important details, too. Despite messianic revolt was Jewish in inspiration—as opposed to Jewish-Christian—but nonetheless embraced a wide array of non-Jewish followers. 50 K. al-Milal wa-al-niḥal, ed. W. Cureton (Leipzig: Harrossowitz, 1923), 168, where one should emend the text to read “daʿwat al-rāʿī” rather than “daʿwat al-dāʿī.” 51 I would like to thank Wadad al-Qāḍī for suggesting to me the possibility of this qurʾānic etiology for the corruption of Shahrastānī’s text.



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the persistent, albeit inadvertent, misreading of Shahrastānī’s entry on the ʿĪsawiyya, both texts refer explicitly to the Shepherd/al-Rāʿī as important, influential predecessor of Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī. Most prominently, Abū al-Maʿālī’s account places the Shepherd among the five messengers while attributing to Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī the belief that the Shepherd was himself Jesus of Nazareth (redivivus?). By contrast, al-Shahrastānī, while repeating the five messenger topos, identifies the Shepherd simply as the progenitor of Abū ʿĪsā’s religious message (daʿwa) and asserts that he regarded the Shepherd as the messiah—not Jesus of Nazareth as claimed by Abū al-Maʿālī. These textual divergences and overlaps strike me as being predominantly redactionary in nature. What differences do exist arise entirely from subtle rearrangements of shared sets of keywords and ideas. This strongly suggests that the texts shared a mutual dependence upon an independent rendering of a single, older narrative. This narrative, given what we know about the authors of these texts, was likely authored by al-Warrāq. Finally, the fact that al-Shahrastānī stops short of claiming the Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī regarded the Shepherd as himself being Jesus of Nazareth is textually significant for Abū al-Maʿālī’s text, as noted above, insofar as it provides important evidence that Abū al-Maʿālī’s source text merely stated a title—i.e., al-masīḥ—and did not claim that Abū ʿĪsā regarded the Shepherd to be Jesus of Nazareth. An additional feature pointing to al-Shahrastānī’s and Abū al-Maʿālī’s mutual dependence on Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq’s Maqālāt is the presence in both accounts of a distinctive, stylistic technique of heresiological writing, which seems to be a trademark of al-Warrāq’s stylistic depiction of these two Jewish sectarians. This trademark style consists of a tendency to describe and depict the beliefs of ‘false’-prophets in terms of religious types well-known in al-Warrāq’s day. We have previously observed this same technique in al-Warrāq’s account of the Shepherd, which he heavily colored with tropes and religious ideas current to the Imāmīs of his lifetime. This tendency remains perceptible in the accounts of Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī in al-Shahrastānī and Abū al-Maʿālī, which likely relied heavily on al-Warrāq’s material. Al-Shahrastānī’s account, for instance, asserts that Abū ʿĪsā led a rebellion during al-Manṣūr’s caliphate in the city of Rayy (a fact Abū al-Maʿālī neglects to mention) and that, once engaged in battle, he drew a circle around his followers using a myrtle staff (ʿūd ās) that protected them from being harmed by the caliph’s armies. Just as we saw in case of the narrative of the Damascene Shepherd, this passage contains a subtly typological

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casting of the events of Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī’s revolt—one also finds such mastery of ‘circle magic’ featured in the sīra-literature as an ability of the Prophet52 and, in particular, the usage of a myrtle staff itself evokes Aaron’s rod and its magical properties just as does the Shepherd’s miracle of causing deadwood to green and bloom.53 To this example, one should add al-Shahrastānī’s record of Abū ʿĪsā’s claim to have miraculously traveled to the tribes of Moses (banī Mūsā ibn ʿImrān) behind the sea of sand to whom he preached the word of God.54 Again, the typological nature of this narrative is quite apparent. Not only does Shahrastānī’s account evoke older Jewish concepts—the ‘sea of sand’ in particular references the Talmudic river of stones named Sambaṭyon beyond which the exiled tribes of Israel settled55—but the story of Abū ʿĪsā’s journey to the lost tribes of Israel also appears to be a typological adaptation of the story native to the Islamic tradition as well. The Prophet Muḥamamd, too, allegedly had been transported to visit the lost tribes of Israel during his isrāʾ. According to the traditions relating the event, Muḥammad preached to these lost tribes the tenets of Islam, after which they embraced him and his message as sent by God. This account of Muḥammad’s miraculous journey to the lost tribes begins appearing in exegetical glosses on the people of Moses (qawm Mūsā) of Q. 7:159 as early as the mid-8th century.56 It is hard to imagine that Warrāq’s account of Abū ʿĪsā’s journey to the lost tribes was not influenced by this story. It is notable that Abū al-Maʿālī’s account emphasizes the centrality of the lost tribes in Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī’s preaching as well, strongly suggesting that both he and Shahrastānī utilized al-Warrāq’s Maqālāt as a template for their own account. In further keeping with Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq’s 52 The first to note this connection was I. Goldziher, “Zauberkreise,” in Gesammelte Schriften, ed. J. Desomogyi (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1970), 5: 403 ff.; citing the story the Prophet’s and al-Zubayr ibn ʿAwwām’s visit to the jinn in Muḥibb al-Dīn al-Ṭabarī, al-Riyāḍ al-naḍira fī manāqib al-ʿashara, ed. Muḥammad Muṣtafā Abū al-ʿAlāʾ (Cairo: Maktabat al-Jindī, 1970–1971), 4: 49 f. 53 See Reeves, Trajectories, 187 ff. (esp. 194). On the myrtle rods and magically protective circles in Jewish traditions, see Steven Wasserstrom, “The ʿĪsawiyya Revisted,” SI 75 (1992): 63 and n. 27 thereto. 54 Shahrastānī, Milal, 168: wa-dhahaba ilā banī Mūsā ibn ʿImrān alladhīna hum warāʾa al-raml li-yusmiʿahum kalām Allāh. 55 For origins of this myth of the Lost Tribes in Midrash and its Muslim iterations and adaptations, see Wasserstrom, “ʿĪsawiyya,” 63 f. and Uri Rubin, Between Bible and Qurʾān: The Children of Israel and the Islamic Self-Image, SLAEI 17 (Princeton: Darwin, 1999), 26 ff. 56 For an early attestation to the story see, Muqātil ibn Sulaymān al-Balkhī, al-Tafsīr, ed. ʿAbdallāh Maḥmūd Shiḥāta (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma li-l-Kitāb, 1979–1989), 2: 554 (cited in Rubin, Between Bible and Qurʾān, 47 f.).



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penchant for typological parallels, one should note that the feats of Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī are claimed by Shīʿite imāms in Imāmī literature as well.57 Furthermore, just as Abū ʿĪsā sought aid for his revolt from the legendary lost tribes, so too the people of Moses are often said to fill the ranks of the Mahdī’s/Qāʾim’s armies in Shīʿī eschatology as well.58 The prominence of Shīʿī typologies in both the account of the Shepherd and of Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī strongly suggest a common author who was well acquainted with the religious ideas and narratives current among the Imāmiyya in the 9th century. Since we know who the author of the account of the Shepherd was, we undoubtedly can know that the author of the account of Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī behind those of al-Shahrastanī and Abū al-Maʿālī was also al-Warrāq. Despite the considerable body of scholarship that has been written on Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī and his movement, the indebtedness of this personality and his movement to that of the Shepherd, or at least the mere connection between the two, has gone unnoticed by nearly all studies of Abū ʿĪsā and his sect, the ʿĪsawiyya, due to a stubbornly persistent misreading of the text of Shahrastānī’s K. al-Milal wa-l-niḥal. The misreading arose from the fact the Cureton’s edition of the MS of Shahrastānī’s work renders the two instances of ‘al-rāʿī’ in the above text as ‘al-dāʿī’. Subsequent editions of Shahrastānī’s text slavishly follow Cureton’s reading—despite the recent efforts of Gimaret and Monnot in their French translation of al-Shahrastānī’s heresiography and Arjomand to bring attention to and to rectify the corrupted reading.59 Cureton’s (admittedly understandable) misreading of the text thereafter misguided scholars for over a century to search for the possible influence of Shīʿite opposition movements on Jewish sectarian movements of the early Islamic period, due to the Shīʿites’ well-known utilization of clandestine, organized networks of dāʿīs to propagate both their religious doctrines and political programs. This same misreading of dāʿī for rāʿī reappears, furthermore, in al-Shahrastānī’s

57 Usually the story is attributed to Muḥammad al-Bāqir, in which he narrates a story about a certain man whose identity he does not reveal but who almost certainly is himself; see al-Shaykh al-Mufīd (attrib.), al-Ikhtiṣāṣ, ed. ʿAlī Akbar al-Ghaffārī (Qom: Muʾassasat al-Nashr al-Islāmī, 2004), 315 ff. The apostle Paul famously uses this trope as well in 2 Cor 12. See also Rubin, Bible and Qurʾān, 45, 77 (I am unconvinced, however, by Rubin’s linking of such miracles with the Shīʿī doctrine of the ghayba). 58 Rubin, Bible and Qurʾān, 45. 59 D. Gimaret and G. Monnot, trans., Livre des religions et des sectes (Louvain: Peeters, 1986), 1: 640 and n. 55 thereto; Arjomand, “Islamic Apocalypticism,” 277 n. 30.

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passages on Abū ʿĪsā’s considerably more shadowy successor Yūdghān,60 who Shahrastānī also asserts revered and continued the message of the Shepherd, too. The longevity of this error is likely rooted in the fact that the first scholar led astray by Cureton’s erroneous reading was the deservedly much-revered Israel Friedländer, who cited the importance of dāʿīs to the ʿĪsawiyya as compelling evidence for the influence of Shīʿism on Jewish sectarianism.61 His interpretation, followed by virtually every historian of the sect thereafter, found its most earnest proponent in Yoram Erder who, in his otherwise impeccable work on the Abū ʿĪsā and the ʿĪsawiyya, chased the illusory notion as far down the rabbit hole as one would imagine possible. Erder did this even despite his knowledge of the existence of Abū al-Maʿālī’s account and its unambiguous associations of Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī with the Shepherd’s movement.62 Within both al-Shahrastānī’s and Abū al-Maʿālī’s texts, the nature of the continuity between the Shepherd and Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī in terms of their common beliefs—i.e., beyond their shared messianism—remains somewhat vague. The Ashʿarī heresiographer ʿAbd al-Qāhir ibn Ṭāhir al-Baghdādī (d. 1037) provides us, however, with an insightful and indispensible clue into the nature of this continuity in a short discussion of the Khārijī sect known as the Yazīdiyya and its founder Yazīd ibn [Abī] Unaysa.63

60 Shahrastānī, Milal, 169.1 again emending the text to read “al-rāʿī” rather than “al-dāʿī.” 61 Israel Friedländer, “Jewish-Arabic Studies: Shiitic Elements in Jewish Sectarianism,” JQR n.s. 3 (1912): 261–65. 62 Yoram Erder, “The Doctrine of Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī and Its Sources,” JSAI 20 (1996): 186 ff. Depending solely on Monnot’s French translation for Abū al-Maʿālī’s account of Abū ʿĪsā (see his Islam et religions [Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1986], 107), Erder perfunctorily dismisses Monnot’s emendation of Shahrastānī’s “dāʿī” to “rāʿī”, declaring “There is no basis for the suggestion to change the world al-dāʿī to al-rāʿī” (ibid., 185 n. 124). Moshe Gil came closest to noticing the textual problem, highlighting a number of problematic aspects to identifying Yudghān as “al-Rāʿī” (Jews in Islamic Countries, 247 and n. 151 thereto). 63 On whom, see J. van Ess, “Yazīd ibn Unaisa und Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī: Zur Konvergenz zweier sektiererischer Bewegnung.” In Studi in onore di Francesco Gabrieli nel suo ottantesimo compleanno, ed. R. Traini (Rome: Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Dipartimento di Studi Orientali, 1984), 1: 301–313; idem, Theologie und Gesellschaft, 2: 614 ff. There are many divergent names for this sect and its founder. Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (depending on Dhahabī’s Mīzān) knows him as Zayd ibn Abī Unaysa in his Lisān al-mīzān (Hyderabad: Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif al-Niẓāmiyya, 1911–13), 2: 501 f; Khalīl ibn Aybak al-Ṣafadī gives his name rather as Burayd ibn Abī Unaysa in his al-Wāfī bi-wafayāt, vol. 10, eds. ʿAlī ʿAmāra and Jacqueline Sublet, Bibliotheca Islamica 6j (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1980), 123; and Ibn al-Murtaḍā renders his name as Yazīd ibn Abī Shayba in al-Munya wa-al-amal fī sharḥ almilal wa-l-niḥal, ed. M. J. Mashkūr (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1979), 33.



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ʿAbd al-Qāhir states that Yazīd believed that “it is necessary to recognize the ʿĪsawiyya and the Raʿyāniyya of the Jews as Believers because they affirmed the prophecy of Muḥammad (yajibu an yakūna al-ʿĪsawiyya wa-al-raʿyāniyya64 min al-yahūd muʾminīn li-annahum aqarrū bi-nubuwwat muḥammadin).”65 By ‘the Rayʿāniyya’, ʿAbd al-Qāhir undoubtedly intends the followers of the Shepherd—the sect’s name appearing here as derived from the Aramaic rendering of his title (i.e., raʿyā; see above) rather than the Arabic rāʿī—and thus provides us here with an indispensible insight. ʿAbd al-Qāhir here posits not a minor doctrinal continuity between the followers of the Shepherd and those of Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī but, what’s more, a continuity on the very point for which the ʿĪsawiyya were most remembered by Muslim theologians: their recognition of Muḥammad’s prophecy as legitimately true but as limited to the Arabs.66 This belief features not only in Muslim heresiological treatments of the ʿĪsāwiyya, but also Jewish ones as well. The Karaite scholar Yaʿqūb al-Qirqisānī (fl. early 10th century) states that Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī not only recognized Muḥammad and Jesus but also “enjoined [his followers] to read the Gospel and the Qurʾān to know their interpretation (amara bi-qirāʾat 64 Goldziher suggested that “al-raʿyānīya” ought to be emended to read “al-yudghānīya” in Ṣadr’s edition; see his review in ZDMG 65 (1911): 361–62. His is a plausible rendering, with the benefit of mirroring the chronological priority of the ʿĪsawīya over the Yudghānīya in the text. However, I concur with Friedländer (art. cit., 285 and n. 413 thereto) that, strictly speaking, the emendation is superfluous. Also, Goldziher’s suggestion reveals no cognizance on his part of our messianist Shepherd from Damascus but merely of Yaʿqūb al-Qirqisānī’s account of Yudghān. 65 K. al-Farq bayna al-firaq wa-bayān al-firqa al-nājiya minhum, ed. Muḥammad Ṣadr (Cairo, 1910), 263–64. Cf. idem, al-Milal wa-al-niḥal, ed. A. N. Nader (Beirut: Dar al-Machreq, 1970), 78 where the similar claim is made regarding Yazīd’s beliefs, but where the two sects are not mentioned as examples. Yazīd ibn Unaysa’s ecumenical approach was staunchly rejected by nearly all theologians, as were other, more notorious beliefs of his like his expectation of a non-Arab prophet to arise from the mysterious qurʾānic Ṣābiʾa who would abrogate the law of Muḥammad. See Ashʿarī, Maqālāt, 103 f. Cf. the Imāmī tradition wherein it is Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq who relates that he read in the Muṣḥaf Fātima that the zanādiqa shall appear in the year 128/745–6 in Ṣaffār, Baṣāʾir, 157 and Kulaynī, Kāfī, 1: 240. The latter is likely a reference to the beginning of the ʿAbbāsid movement; see E. Kohlberg, “Authoritative Scriptures in Early Imāmī Shīʿism” in É. Patlagean and A. Le Bolluec, eds., Les retours aux écritures fondamentalismes presents et passés (Louvain: Peeters, 1993), 303. 66 On the rejection of their status as Muslims even with their affirmation of Muḥammad’s prophetic call, see Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī, K. al-Tamhīd, ed. Richard J. McCarthy (Beirut: Librairie Orientale, 1957), 161, 165 et passim; ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ma‌ʾmūn al-Mutawallī, al-Mughnī, ed. Marie Bernand, Supplément aux Annales Islamologiques 7 (Cairo: Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, 1986), 52; al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ, al-Shafāʾ bi-taʿrīf ḥuqūq al-Muṣṭafā, ed. ʿAlī Muḥammad al-Bajāwī (Cairo: ʿĪsā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1977), 2: 1070; Morṭażā ibn Dāʿī Ḥasanī Rāzī, Tabṣerat al-ʿavāmm fī maʿrefat maqālāt al-anām, ed. ʿA. Iqbāl (Tehran: Enteshārāt-e Asāṭīr, 1984), 22f.

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al-injīl wa-al-qurʾān wa-maʿrifat tafsīrihimā).”67 Qirqisānī also provides a further parallel between the fate of Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī and the Shepherd of Abū al-Maʿālī’s Bayān by recording the belief among the ʿĪsawiyya that Abū ʿĪsā too had entered into occultation. According to Qirqisānī, Abū ʿĪsā rebelled against the Muslim authorities with an army. When he was killed, “A group of his followers claimed that had not been killed but had only entered into the mountain’s crevice, and no word of him was heard thereafter (qawmun min aṣḥābihi yazʿamūna annahu lam yuqtal wa-innamā dakhala fī kharqin min al-jabal wa-lam yuʿraf khabaruhu).”68 This means that Abū ʿĪsā, like the Shepherd, did not die a human death, but disappeared into occultation, according to his followers.69 A re-visiting of Shahrastānī’s treatment of the Jewish sects, therefore, initially appears to provide a sound chronological and historical framework within which one can begin to understand the Shepherd’s movement, despite the heavily typological cast in which the accounts of both messianist personas were written. Shahrastānī’s account of Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī and his successor Yūdghān suggests that messianist movements remained common among the Jews from Syria to Iran throughout the 8th century and that such movements, moreover, arose as an organically united phenomena rather than a series of unrelated, isolated movements. Continuity between these movements persisted despite the geographic distances separating them. Evidence for this may be found in Jewish sources as well. Despite the centrality of Iranian geography in the accounts of Abū ʿĪsā’s messianist activities around Rayy, Qirqisānī knows of large numbers of ʿĪsawiyya in Damascus, for example.70 Yet, before such a continuity can be asserted with certainty, a number of reservations must be addressed. These arise from the fact that the historical context of Abū

67 Yaʿqūb al-Qirqisānī, K. al-Anwār wa-al-marāqib: A Code of Karaite Law, ed. L. Nemoy (New York: Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation, 1939–43), 1: 52. Cf. al-Maqdisī, K. al-Badʾ wa-al-ta‌ʾrīkh, ed. Cl. Huart (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1899–1919), 4: 35; Taqī al-Dīn al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ wa-al-iʿtibār fī dhikr al-khiṭaṭ wa-al-athār, ed. A. F. Sayyid (London: al-Furqān Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2003), 4(2): 960 where it is said Abū ʿĪsā believed in the prophecy of Muḥammad after ascending to heaven and encountering him there. It is interesting to note al-Maqdisī places the follower of Abū ʿĪsā’s successor, Yudghān, alongside the Christian sects (op. cit., 4: 42.2 and 46.7, reading “al-yūdghānīya” where the MS reads “al-yudhʿānīya”). 68 Qirqisānī, 1:12. 69 The occultation of the Ṭālibid ʿAbdallāh ibn Muʿāwiya (d. 747 or shortly thereafter), who rebelled in eastern Iran in 744–747, is described in similar terms as well; see Nawbakhtī, Firaq, 31 and Ashʿarī Maqālāt, 22. 70 Qirqisānī, 1:12.ult.



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ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī, though himself a much better known personage than the Shepherd, remains extremely problematic. This is due to the fact that the two principal sources hitherto utilized by scholars for writing the history the activities of Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī and his movement, one Muslim and the other Jewish, are in profound disagreement over the historical context in which his movement begins. The principal Muslim source, the Milal of al-Shahrastānī, places the origins of his movement during the reign of the Umayyad caliph Marwān II (r. 744–750) but asserts that his movement did not begin to manifest its revolutionary tendencies until the reign of the second ʿAbbāsid caliph Abū Jaʿfar al-Manṣūr (r. 754–75), during which he staged the revolt that cost him his life. By contrast, the Karaite author al-Qirqisānī places both the beginning of Abū ʿĪsā’s movement as well as its climax in a subsequent uprising against the Muslim authorities all within the reign of the Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān (r. 685–705). The conundrum posed by these two accounts is a famous one, and scholarship has been split from an early date between two camps, with some scholars preferring the earlier date of al-Qirqisānī and others preferring the later date of al-Shahrastānī. However, due to the circumstantial nature of the evidence put forward to resolve the impasse, no definitive consensus has yet emerged.71 Can the new data from Abū al-Maʿālī’s Bayān on the Shepherd ameliorate this issue? Given the divergences between the Muslim and Jewish sources on Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī, it should come as no surprise that one finds a similar dissonance between the Muslim and Jewish sources on the issue of the Shepherd. Hence, the Karaite al-Qirqisānī actually does know of a figure bearing the title of al-Rāʿī; however, al-Qirqisānī’s “Shepherd” is not Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī’s predecessor but, rather, his successor. According to al-Qirqisānī, it was Yūdghān who was called by his followers “the Shepherd (raʿyā).” This contradicts al-Shahrastānī’s assertion that Yūdghān merely revered the Shepherd, as did Abū ʿĪsā. The Karaite scholar further states that Yūdghān’s title “raʿyā” merely served as the shortened form for rāʿī al-umma—i.e., the shepherd of the community.72 Al-Qirqisānī’s also account notably claims that “[Yūdghān’s] followers purport that he is the messiah and that he has not died; they [thus] expect his return (aṣḥābuhu

71 Wasserstrom, “ʿĪsawiyya,” 58 ff. 72 Qirqisānī, 1: 13, 52 f.

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yazʿamūna annahu al-masīḥ wa-annahu lam yamut wa-hum yatawaqqiʿūn rujūʿahu).”73 Al-Qirqisānī’s account clearly creates problems for the chronology encountered in the Muslim sources discussed above. There is a temptation to harmonize the texts by imagining a scenario in which Yudghān is not actually identical with the Damascene Shepherd but, rather, appropriates his title; but this does nothing to resolve the remaining chronological contradictions. Without resorting to harmonization, however, the overlaps between al-Qirqisānī’s account of Yudghān and al-Warrāq’s account of the Shepherd (as redacted by later sources) suggests one of two scenarios. The first is a scenario in which one account is ‘false’ and the other ‘true’; and the second a scenario in which al-Qirqisānī’s account inverts the correct chronology by placing the Shepherd after Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī and thereby erroneously imputes information about the Damascene Shepherd to Yudghān while relying on Muslim sources—perhaps al-Warrāq himself but, if so, probably indirectly. However, all of this is admittedly speculative and tendentiously attributes the muddling to al-Qirqisānī while treating al-Warrāq’s account, by virtue of its earlier date and despite its imperfect redaction by later authors, as unassailably accurate. This solution, therefore, remains equally problematic.74 In what follows I would like to suggest an alternative path to circumvent this conundrum that separates the data provided by the Muslim and Jewish sources. Although I believe it is impossible to ever fully resolve the conundrum, a solution presents itself by turning to a somewhat unexpected source. It is to this source that our study now turns.

73 Qirqisānī, 1: 52.ult. The accounts of subsequent Jewish authors hardly diverge from Qirqisānī’s account, but this is due to fact, as Gill has argued ( Jews in Islamic Countries, 146 f.), that his account serves as the template for all others thereafter. 74 In a recent work available to me only after having written the present study, Josef van Ess discusses the issues raised by Abū l-Maʿālī’s passage on the Rāʿī somewhat in detail; see his Der Eine und das Andere: Beobachtungen an islamischen häresiographischen Texten, StIO 23 (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2011), 2: 827–29. Van Ess decides, too hastily in my view, to identify the Rāʿī of Abū l-Maʿālī’s account with Yūdghān in Qirqisānī’s account, being that Qirqisānī also attributes to Yudghān the title ‘al-Rāʿī’. However, this historical reification of Qirqisānī’s account encounters an insurmountable problem: Abū l-Maʿālī places his Rāʿī in Syria and depicts him as Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī’s predecessor, whereas Qirqisānī places Yudghān in Iran, namely Hamadān, and also depicts him as a successor, rather than predecessor, of Abū ʿĪsā. Though van Ess puzzles over this, he never provides a good solution to the problem and even neglects to take into account that Shahrastānī describes Yūdghān as himself a proponent of the Rāʿī’s message, as Shahrastānī also describes Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī as doing (Milal, 169.1, again emending the text to read “al-rāʿī” rather than “al-dāʿī”).



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Severus the Imposter As noted in the introduction, Muslim and Jewish authors were not the only writers to notice, observe, and report stories of the misadventures of messianic claimants and would-be prophets who arose among the Jewish inhabitants of lands overrun in the course of the Islamic conquests. Syriac-speaking Christians of sundry sectarian and geographical perspectives also observed and took note of this phenomenon, providing us with a welter of relevant materials that can illuminate considerably a number of the mysteries of the accounts of the Shepherd examined above. A particularly long account of a similar charismatic religious figure of utmost importance to this study appears in the 8th-century, Syriac history known as The Chronicle of Zuqnīn (hereafter: Chron. Zuqnīn). This anonymous author of this work speaks of an imposter (Syr. maṭʿyānā) appearing in the West among the Jews who is subsequently crucified by them ca. 734–5—i.e., in the middle of the reign of Umayyad caliph Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik (r. 724–743).75 The account begins as follows:76 At this time [Satan] stirred up a man from Mardīn in a village named PLḤT77 and led him to the West, to the land of the Samaritans. He was introduced to the house of an important Jew, and while there, he impregnated the daughter of that Jew. When the Jews learned about this matter, they beat him to the point of death, applying various tortures because he was Christian. When he found an opportunity, he fled from them, and set his mind on all kinds of evil doings against them. He went down to the land of Bēṯ Ārāmāyē [i.e., Southern Mesopotamia] that was immersed in all the evils of sorcery. He gave himself over to sorcery (ḥarāšūtā) and all the crafts of the Deceiver (ṣenʿāteh d-ākelqarṣā). He was trained in all evil doings and became perfected in them. Thus he left and went up to that land, and said to them, “I am Moses, who in the past brought out Israel from Egypt, and who was with them in the sea and in the desert (marbārā) for forty years. Now I come to rescue Israel and to bring her out of the desert (marbārā). Then I will introduce her afresh to inherit this Promised Land, as your forefathers inherited in the past when the Lord had destroyed all the nations that were there before them. And now, too, he will destroy all of them before you, and you

75 J.-B. Chabot, ed., Incerti auctoris Chronion Pseudo-Dionysianum vulgo dictum, CSCO 91, 104, scr. syri 43, 53 (Louvain: Peeters, 1927, 1965), 2: 172–74 (hereafter Chron. Zuqnīn). 76 Ibid., 2: 173f. Here, I reproduce with only minor changes the translation of Amir Harrak, trans., The Chronicle of Zuqnīn Parts III and IV, A.D. 488–775 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaevel Studies, 1999), 163f. See also the French translation of Robert Hespel, Chronicon anonymum Pseudo-Dyionysianum vulgo dictum, II, CSCO 507, scr. syri 213 (Louvain: Peeters, 1989), 130 ff. 77 Unidentified; see Harrak, 163 and n. 2 thereto.

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The chronicler’s account continues to relate the Jews’ gullibility in following this man and, subsequently, the imposter’s guileful and misanthropic deeds against them: he would take groups of them up to the mountain paths only to cast them over their peaks, and he would confine them in caves and clefts to die from deprivation. This imposter allegedly also manipulated the Jews with his mastery of sorcery learned during his sojourns in Bēṯ Ārāmāyē in order to extort massive amounts of the Jews’ gold, wealth, and property. Once he finished having his way with them, the imposter fled and returned to his homeland, whereupon the insidious nature and the cruelty of his chicanery soon become apparent. The account concludes: Then the Jews came to themselves, realizing what he had done to them; all of them went out after him to the four corners, asking about him and searching for him. When they found him, they brought him to Hishām, the Commander of the Faithful (Hīšam amīrā da-mhaymnē), who handed him over to them. After they had made him suffer all sorts of tortures and injuries, they crucified him on a wooden cross, and he died (zaqpūhy ʿal qaysā wa mīt).78

The author of Chron. Zuqnīn cast his account in a transparently didactic tone, which certainly produced embellishments and exaggerations in the account; however, he provides us, I contend, with an account of a figure who shares uncanny similarities with aspects of the portrayals of the Damascene Shepherd and Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī found in the Muslim and Jewish sources that needed to be explored. The most pressing and obvious question raised by this text, in my view, is: Does this account narrate the activities of the Shepherd, albeit without naming him as such? Certainly there are stark incongruities between this account and that of al-Warrāq. For one, the Arabic heresiological accounts make no mention of the Shepherd’s execution but merely of his imprisonment. Moreover, the executed imposter of Chron. Zuqnīn meets his end during the caliphate of Hishām, some two decades after the reign of Sulaymān in which al-Warrāq places the story of the Shepherd. Certainly

78 The Syriac here is vague, accommodating a number of different translations. Cf. Harrak, “they crucified him on a stake,” (164) and Hespel, “ils le crucifièrent sur le bois” (132). Here, I have translated qaysā (lit., ‘wood’) as a cross (cf. Syr Acts 5:30) as parallel to the Arabic khashaba, which can also be used in the sense of cross.



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this is the greatest obstacle to reconciling the accounts. Yet, this can be surmounted if one considers that merely the imposter’s death occurs during the caliphate of Hishām and al-Warrāq’s account concerns itself merely with his departure—a detail that might correspond with the above imposter’s sudden abandonment of his followers and return to his homeland in Chron. Zuqnīn. It is also notable that the narrative of Chron. Zuqnīn in fact remains ambiguous as to when the imposter began his activities. Given the open-ended nature of the account, the events narrated therein could have feasibly preceded Hishām’s caliphate by some years. Indeed, as will be shown below, other Syriac accounts confirm the likelihood of this scenario. Before addressing this issue further, though, I would like to dwell on the compelling continuities between the Zuqnīn chronicler’s account and the Muslim and Jewish heresiological tradition that merit close attention. It is striking that the Zuqnīn chronicler gives this Jewish messianist a Christian pedigree. Certainly, the claim that he later feigned being a Jew only to take revenge against those who had sorely punished him for his illicit sexual relationship with a Jewish girl bears the marks of a malicious calumny. Yet, one may find here a vestigial trace of the intersectarian openness that also distinguished the Jewish messianism of the Shepherd and Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī. Furthermore, it is significant that the Zuqnīn chronicler portrays his imposter as a crafty magician schooled in diabolical arts. Although the description here is certainly hostile, what the chronicler’s depiction really amounts to is a condemnatory manner of referring to the fact that this imposter was, like the Shepherd, regarded by his admirers as a miracle-worker. All religiously sanctioned criteria for positing distinctions between the wonders of miracles and magic, especially among prophets false and true, remained protean in application and conceptualization, whether in antiquity or late antiquity, since magic could often seem ‘miraculous’ and miracles could often seem ‘magical’. Debates over how the wonders of the prophets differed from and/or encompassed the preternatural feats of magicians persist into late antiquity, although they can first be seen as emerging as a problematic within the pluralistic context of antiquity. Depending on one’s perspective, miracles could either affirm the veracity of a prophet or expose the devilish origins of his demonic craft.79 For a late antique Christian readership, the clincher in

79 Anitra Bingham Kolenkow, “Relationship between Miracle and Prophecy in the Greco-Roman World and Early Christianity,” in ANRW II.23.2 (1980): 1471–1506.

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the above account, however, is that the imposter profits monetarily from his prophetic claims—the sine qua non for exposing prophets among religious communities of early and late antiquity.80 Even more substantive are the chronicler’s notices on the imposter’s message. What interests us in particular is his claim not only to be Moses but his desire to re-gather Israel from the desert/wilderness (Syr. marbārā). This desire expresses an idea deeply consonant with Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī’s claim that the lost tribes of Israel would soon re-gather.81 Although not directly attested to as a part of the Shepherd’s message, the appearance of this theme in Abū ʿĪsā’s movement may provide indirect evidence of its importance to the Shepherd’s message as well, inasmuch as Abū ʿĪsā had been deeply influenced by him. Here, the importance of the Elijahlike miracles attributed to the Shepherd in al-Warrāq’s account assume renewed importance, for this keys us into the possibility that the Shepherd either billed himself, or was billed by his followers, as an Elijah-like figure. By late antiquity, Elijah had long since assumed the role in Jewish apocalypticism of the personality who would regather the lost tribes of Israel (e.g., see Sirach 48:10). The claims by the Zuqnīn chronicler’s imposters, therefore, fall very much in line with the many Elijah-like miracles attributed to the Shepherd in al-Warrāq’s account preserved by Abū al-Maʿālī. The Zuqnīn chronicler’s assertion that the imposter claimed to be Moses, though difficult to interpret, is also potentially congruent with the title of ‘the Shepherd’ found in the Muslim heresiographers’ accounts, for Moses is widely referred to in Rabbinic literature as ‘the faithful shepherd’, ‘shepherd of Israel’, etc.82 It is theoretically possible that—just as Abū al-Maʿālī erroneously transposed ‘masīḥ’ for ʿĪsā ibn Maryam in his adaptation of

80 E.g. see Didache 11:12, Hermas Man. 11:7–12. 81 An idea that survives in Karaite religious thought and that remains prominent in Jewish eschatology more generally speaking; see Erder, “Doctrine,” 185, n. 123. 82 See Aaron Rosemarin, Moses im Lichte der Agada (New York: Goldbaltt, 1932), 82 and Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, trans. H. Szold (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1967–1969), 7: 322a. The title “faithful shepherd” appears as early as the Second Temple Period, as it features in a liturgical fragment from the Qumran texts (see 1Q 34bis ii.8). However, see James R. Davila, Liturgical Works, Eerdmans Commentaries on the Dead Sea Scrolls 6 (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2000), 24, who interprets the text as referring to David. Jesus’ claim to be the ‘good shepherd’ in Jn. 11:14 may also allude to this title of Moses; see J. Jeremias, “Mōysês,” in G. Kittel and G. Friedrich, eds., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, trans. G. W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1964–76), 4: 872. Compare this data with mention of the ‘seven shepherds’ of Israel to be resurrected from the day at the Messiah’s advent in the responsum of R. Hai Gaon (939–1038 c.e.) on the topic of redemption; the names of the so-called shepherds are Adam, Seth, Methuselah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and Jacob (Reeves, Trajectories, 140).



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al-Warrāq’s account—so the Zuqnīn chronicler transposed the title of ‘Shepherd’ with Moses. Then again, it is equally plausible that the Zuqnīn chronicler’s claim that the imposter touted himself as the second coming of Moses is merely a trope.83 Otherwise, the anonymous chronicler may merely preserve a detail about the Shepherd entirely congruent with what we known about his message from al-Warrāq’s account—i.e., by donning the title of al-Rāʿī, or Raʿyā, he in fact claimed to be Moses.84 While such solutions may strike one as mere harmonizations, they find further support elsewhere in the Syriac historical tradition, and one need not rely solely on such speculations to sustain the connection between the Muslim accounts and that of Chron. Zuqnīn. As fortune has it, yet another Syriac account survives—or, rather, multiple accounts based on an earlier archetype—relating events that putatively transpired ca. 720–1. The second account was likely penned by a contemporary of the Zuqnīn chronicler, Theophilus of Edessa (ca. 695–775), whose historical work, though no longer extant, served as the basis for many subsequent Christian histories for events in the Near East spanning from ca. 590 to 750.85 Theophilus’ text, therefore, comes down to us only partially as redacted in Syriac by Dionysius of Tell-Maḥrē (d. 845; whose own history survives only in the redaction of the anonymous Syriac Chronicle of 1234, but also to a great extent in the Chronicle Michael the Syrian, d. 1199), in Arabic by Agapius of Manbij (d. ca. 941), and in Greek by Theophanes the Confessor (d. ca. 817).86 In what follows,

83 The Zuqnīn chronicler’s account may betray the influence of the story of the ‘PsuedoMoses’ of Crete, who claimed to be Moses sent from heaven to lead the Jews across the sea on dry land, narrated in Socrates Scholasticus, Histoire, 7 138–9 (VII.xxxvii). Both stories share interesting, structural commonalities in that both Socrates’ Pseudo-Moses and that of the Zuqnīn chronicler beguile the Jews first by claiming to be Moses, then convincing them to abandon their wealth, and eventually succeed in killing large numbers of them by casting them off cliffs. 84 Al-Qirqisānī, it should be recalled, gives the title raʿī al-umma—a fitting Arabic parallel to ‘the shepherd of Israel’—as one of the variants of the title of the Shepherd (op. cit., 1: 52 f.), albeit with reference to Yūdghān. For thematic presentations of Elijah as ‘the second Moses’, see Shaver, “Prophet Elijah,” 58 ff. 85 Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 400 ff. For Hoyland’s attempt to reconstruct this source, see ibid., 631–71 (Severus appears at p. 654). 86 J.-B. Chabot, ed., Chroncium ad annum Christi 1234 pertinens, CSCO 81–82, scr. syri 36–37 (Louvain: Peeters, 1916, 1920), 1: 308 and Michael the Syrian, Chronique, 2: 490 (Fr.) and 4: 456 (Syr.). Theophanes the Confessor, Chronographia, ed. C. de Boor (Leipzig, 1883), 1: 401 (a.m. 6213); Eng. trans. Cyril Mango and Rogert Scott, The Chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History ad 284–813 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 554; Agapius of Manbij, K. al-ʿUnwān, part 2.2, ed. and trans. A. A. Vasiliev, in PO 8 (1912): 504.

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I give the version redacted by Dionysius of Tell-Maḥrē as preserved in Chron. 1234; it reads:87 At this time, a Syrian from Edessa named Severus (Sāwīrā)—a crafty and cunning man (gaḇrā ṣnīʿā wa mdarmā)—was living in a town named GSKĀ88 in the province (šūlṭānā) of Mardīn. Hoping to acquire some money, he went to the Jews and led them astray/seduced them (eṭʿī b-hōn). To some of them he would say, “I am the messiah (mšīḥā),” but to other Jews “the messenger of the messiah (īzgarā da-mšīḥā).”89 He acquired large quantities of gold and afterwards when he became well-known to Maslama (etṭbeb lawāṯ MWSLM).90 [Maslama] arrested [Severus] and took all that he had acquired. But when he confessed to the scheme, [Maslama] released him.

A number of details immediately key us into the fact that this account mirrors not only that of the chronicler of Zuqnīn but also that of al-Warrāq. Looking first to Chron. Zuqnīn, one can see that both figures hail from Mardīn; both are imposters who led Jews astray; both are known for their guile and conjurers’ tricks, which they use to extort large sums of money from the Jews; and both make messianic claims. There can be, therefore, little doubt that, despite the fact that Theophilus’ account apparently does not narrate the execution of this imposter, the two accounts refer to the same individual. With regard to Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq’s account, it is noteworthy that both Theophilus’ and his relate the story of a messianist whom the Umayyads arrest and to whom they attribute highly similar preaching. The above account from Chron. 1234 preserves what is by far the long­ est version. Other redactors of Theophilus’ account provide much briefer versions with fewer details. Agapius, although also providing a much shorter account, adds a number of important details that bring it into further conformity with the account in Chron. Zuqnīn. These are that the man “was Christian but converted to Judaism (kāna naṣrānīyan watahawwada)”; that “he claimed he came to save them and then collected great wealth”; “had acquired knowledge many deceitful tricks and a bit of sorcery”;91 and, most problematically, that Yazīd II ibn ʿAbd al-Malik 87 Chron. 1234, 1: 308. 88 Unidentified. 89 The biblical prophet Elijah also appears prior to the parousia of Jesus as “the messenger before Christ/the Messiah (īzgarā qdām mšīḥā)” in the Baḥīrā Apocalypse 3.22, in B. Rogemmena, The Legend of Sergius Baḥīrā: Eastern Christian Apologetics and Apocalyptic in Response to Islam (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 263. 90 I.e., Maslama ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān (d. 738), Umayyad prince and (at the time of this account) governor of al-Jazīra, Armenia and Ādharbāyjān; see EI2, s.v. “Maslama ibn ʿAbd al-Malik” (G. Rotter). 91 In Arabic: zaʿama annahu jāʾa la-yukhalliṣahum fa-jamaʿa mālan ʿaẓīman wa-qad taʿallama makhārīqan [sic] kathīratan wa-shayʾan min al-siḥr. Cf. the similar statement



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(r. 720–724), once he heard of him, had him executed.92 No other account deriving from Theophilus mentions Severus’ death at the hands of the caliph Yazīd II: Theophanes is silent on the matter, and Michael the Syrian merely notes briefly that “the governor (aḥīdeh da-šlīṭā) exposed his tricks (awdaʿ b-ṣenʿāteh).”93 There is a distinct possibility that either Theophilus’ account contained further details in agreement with the chronicler of Zuqnīn, or that Agapius himself augmented Theophilus’ account with details from Chron. Zuqnīn. The latter possibility may have the added benefit of providing a rationale for Agapius’ unique assertion that Yazīd II had the imposter executed, for Theophilus’ original account appears to have left the fate of Severus open-ended.94 The most salient observation to be had is how the additional details of Theophilus’ account bring us even closer to the Muslim heresiological accounts of the Shepherd. Although not exactly in chronological harmony with Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq’s account of the Shepherd, the chronological proximity of the two accounts renders the disharmony between Severus’ release from prison in the reign of Yazīd II and his appearance during Sulaymān’s caliphate quite negligible. There is, of course, no mention of the Shepherd’s ghayba; however, this appears to have been one concerning the Persian Zoroastrian Prophet and miracle-working al-Muqannaʿ who rebelled against the ʿAbbāsids ca. 756–80 in Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-aʿyān wa-anbāʾ al-zamān, ed. Iḥsān ʿAbbās (Beirut: Dār al-Ṣādir, 1994), 3: 263. See also Elton L. Daniel, The Political and Social History of Khurasan under Abbasid Rule (Minneapolis, Minn.: ­Bibliotheca Islamica, 1979), 137–47. 92 Agapius, ʿUnwān, 504. 93 Michael, Chronique, 4: 456. 94 Scholars have adduced other sources as mentioning Severus, too; however, these are of dubious value. Some later manuscripts of the Mozarab Chronicle of 754 mention a similarly devious imposter named Serenus (viz., ‘he who is serene’) as appearing in Iberia and running afoul the authorities there, but this story results from later interpolation and was not original to chronicle. For the Iberian account, see Chron. 754, §74 in K. B. Wolf, trans., Conquerors and Chroniclers of Early Medieval Spain (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1990), 139–40. Joshua Starr was, perhaps, the first scholar to demonstrate the problematic nature of this textual interpolation in his, “Le mouvement messianique au début du VIIIe siècle,” Revue des étude juives 52 (1937): 88 ff. As for the oft-cited Goanic responsum of a certain Rabbi Naṭronai treating former followers of a Jewish imposter wishing to readmitted into the community, the identification of the person mentioned therein can only be sustained by identifying the rabbi giving the responsum with Naṭronai ben Nehemiah, who acted as Gaon of Pembedita from 719–80. As does Hoyland, Seeing Islam, 28 n. 29 and Harris Lenowitz, The Jewish messiahs: From the Galilee to Crown Heights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 77 f. However, Jacob Mann long ago demonstrated rather definitively that this identification is unwarranted and, furthermore, insupportable. See J. Mann, “An Early Theologico-Polemical Work,” Hebrew Union College Annual 13–14 (1937–38): 454 ff., where he demonstrates that the responsum must date between 832–74, but certainly no earlier. Gil, although aware of this scholarship, oddly utilizes both sources as unproblematic in his Jews in Islamic Countries, 248, 252.

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of al-Warrāq’s typological glosses to his account. If historical, al-Warrāq’s attribution of a belief in the ghayba among the Shepherd’s followers must merely reflect an attempt of a number of his followers to explain why the Shepherd disappeared from their midst after having been released from prison. Most important of all is the key detail of Severus’ preaching preserved by Theophilus, particularly in Dionysius of Tell-Maḥrē’s redaction, that he claimed to be the messiah to some,95 yet claimed to be merely the messenger of the messiah to others. These two details correspond exactly to the account of the Shepherd’s claims to be the messiah’s predecessor on the one hand and on the other Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī’s preaching about the Shepherd one encounters in al-Shahrastānī’s Milal. This testifies to the remarkable intersection between both sources and demonstrates— potentially—that there exists further Syriac testimony to the continuity between the ʿĪsawiyya and the Shepherd’s movement posited by the Muslim sources. The testimonies of Theophilus—inasmuch as it survives intact—and of the chronicler of Zuqnīn are of extraordinary importance in that they write as contemporaries of these events, or, at the very least, as persons in whose lifetimes the aforementioned events transpired. This is not to say that either account is without blemish or unproblematic in many respects; indeed, both include their fair number of distortions, exaggerations, and inaccuracies arising from either the vagaries of hearsay and/or religious biases. Nevertheless, their accounts contain remarkable—even uncanny—details that are parallel to the heresiological account of the Shepherd authored by Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq. All of this evidence, when it is compounded together, makes a rather compelling case, I believe, for hypothesizing that the Syriac accounts of the imposter from Mardīn and the Muslim heresiological accounts of the Shepherd are all inspired by and derive from the same historical person and movement, despite the formidable obstacles that lie in the way of reconciling all of these historical narratives definitively. The death of the imposter in Chron. Zuqnīn in all likelihood merely relates historical events beyond the chronological scope of either the accounts of Theophilus or Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq, for these latter two sources only mention the messianist’s disappearance and appear to have no knowledge of his ultimate fate.

95 Agapius, ʿUnwān, 504; Theophanes, 554 (adding tendentiously that he also claimed to be the Son of God).



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Conclusion: A Revisitation of Jewish Messianist Movements in the Early 8th Century This study began as an attempt to interpret an enigmatic passage on a messianist personage preserved in the Bayān al-adyān of Abū al-Maʿālī al-ʿAlawī, but we have found that the account serves as an ideal springboard from which to explore many issues that remain unresolved in the history of Jewish messianism of the early Islamic period. This has led us to examine a wide array of sources that are quite rarely read in light of one another. The sources and accounts surveyed have offered us insights into messianist movements with their origins in the Jewish populations of Syro-Mesopotamia at the beginning of the 8th century and have also provided clues into the ultimately apocalyptic inspiration of such movements. Tantalizing though the insights they offer may be, many of the details they provide are disparate in content and, therefore, do not facilitate the process of discovering the continuities between the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian sources that discuss these movements. In this essay, I have attempted to demonstrate that the account of the Shepherd authored by Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq and preserved via a Persian translation in Abū al-Maʿālī’s Bayān al-adyān provides the historian with enough historical data to ameliorate this state of affairs. The challenges and obstacles standing in the way of envisioning how such sources might converge are formidable indeed. As we explored above, most of these accounts are characterized by a markedly didactic and typological mode of writing. This observation applies whether this writing assumes the conventions of the genre of the heresiographer or that of the chronicler. Yet, even though these modes of writing often produced details that prima facie prove to be contradictory and irreconcilable, there emerges across all the genres of writing—even despite the confessional and linguistic barriers demarcating them—a readily recognizable set of salient themes and events that cannot be attributable to the existence of textual interdependence or other similar mechanisms. One of the most compelling examples of such salient themes comes via the independent testimony of the Islamic sources that, on the one hand, some of the Shepherd’s disciples regarded him as a mere messenger of the messiah while others regarded him as the messiah himself; and, on the other hand, the claim of Syriac historical tradition that Severus claimed to some of his followers to be the messiah and to others to be merely his messenger. Despite the obvious chronological differences dividing the Persian, Arabic, and Syriac accounts of this 8th-century messianist persona,

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it seems safe to infer that these chronological difficulties derive primarily from the divergent emphases within the given accounts. Read together, they leave the distinct impression that though they call him by manifold names—the Shepherd (Ar. al-rāʿī), Severus, or merely ‘the imposter’ (Syr. maṭʿyānā)—these accounts in fact refer to the same personality insofar as they all relate, albeit in varying degrees of completeness, essentially the same skeletal narrative of his preaching and activities. Each account preserves disparate but connected impressions, the content of which depends on the relative narrative, didactic, and/or polemical emphases of the given account. Read together and in a complimentary fashion, they create a compelling, albeit patchwork, portrait of a Jewish messianist of the early 8th century. Synthesizing the most salient data, therefore, the following conclusions may be made. The preaching of the Shepherd and the movement it inspired marks the first known messianist, apocalypticist movement to take root among the Jewish populations in the Islamic Near East and to have left a sectarian legacy among the Jewish religious community. A great deal of the success of the Shepherd can be attributed to his adeptness as a wonder worker and as an Elijah-like herald of the coming messiah. The movement’s impact, moreover, was not transitory but, rather, also generated a long lasting legacy among the Jewish populations of the still burgeoning Islamic world. This is a legacy most clearly seen in the successor movement of Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī and, subsequently, the influence of the ʿĪsawiyya, a movement of profound importance for the emergence of Karaite Judaism, which would become in time the most important Jewish sectarian movement originating in the Islamic world. Furthermore, the data on the Shepherd and his movement allows historians to at last resolve the chronological problems plaguing the periodization of Abū ʿĪsā’s movement. Based on the wide array of sources that place the Shepherd’s movement in the early 8th century and also unanimously assert that Abū ʿĪsā’s movement came after his, al-Qirqasānī’s dating of his movement to the reign of the Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik should be abandoned in favor of al-Shahrastānī’s placement of his movement in the caliphal reigns spanning from the last Umayyad, Marwān II, to the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Manṣūr.96 96 Al-Shahrastānī, of course, likely takes his periodization from Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq. Al-Qirqisānī’s back projection of Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī into the late 7th century likely reveals more about his views of Jewish sectarianism than the historical context of the founder of the ʿĪsawiyya.



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Lastly, the case of the Shepherd shows us how the apocalyptic and messianic sentiments that emerged out of responses to Islam profoundly colored the Jewish messianist movements of the 8th century. These movements represent a phenomenon most conspicuously noticeable in their apparently ecumenical posture towards non-Jews and their attempts to accommodate early Muslim claims regarding the prophethood of Muḥammad, even if they did so entirely on their own terms. It is also likely—although the evidence for this is not as strong as that for other facets of his movement—that the Shepherd promoted an ecumenicist posture towards non-Jews, perhaps by even accommodating them within his movement and by drawing upon the initial openness of Islam that soon thereafter declined.97 In this way, the Shepherd’s message and movement also testifies to the enduring nature of the apocalyptic sentiments circulating among the Jews immediately following the Islamic conquests well into the 8th century. This continued relevance of the Jews’ messianist optimism in the wake of the Islamic conquest for subsequent messianist movements finds even further confirmation if one accepts the Syriac testimony in Chron. Zuqnīn to the optimistic preaching of the so-called ‘imposter’ that Israel would soon be re-gathered from its diaspora as a reflection of the Shepherd’s preaching as well. Because such sentiments had been formed largely in the crucible of upheavals and monumental changes experienced by the Syro-Mesopotamian Jewish communities of the 7th century, the apocalyptic and messianist momentum that resulted would inevitably produce movements of the sort we have encountered in this essay. This momentum found perhaps one of its most compelling and fascinating proponents in the Shepherd, and for this reason, it is about time that he take his proper place in the consciousness of modern historians of the early Islamic world.

97 Scholars have frequently found resonances, for example, between endorsement of Muḥammad’s prophecy to the Arabs in the Secrets of Rabbi Šimʿōn bar Yoḥai and the preaching of Abū ʿĪsā al-Iṣfahānī (Wasserstrom, “ʿĪsawiyya,” 62, 65–70 and Erder, “Abū ʿĪsā,” 18), but to my knowledge, no scholar has hitherto noticed the resonance between his movement and the Secrets’ portrayal of the Messiah of the lineage of David as hiding from the Jews because of their sinful rejection of him (see Reeves, Trajectories, 85 f). This theme of the Davidic Messiah entering into hiding from the Secrets strikingly resonates with Abū ʿĪsā’s clarion endorsement of the previous message of the Damascene messianist al-Rāʿī, who also reputedly went into hiding because his displeasure with the Jews and whom, as we now know, Abū ʿĪsā also reputedly revered as the messiah.

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Kolenkow, Anitra Bingham. “Relationship between Miracle and Prophecy in the GrecoRoman World and Early Christianity.” ANRW II.23.2 (1980): 1471–1506. Kominko, Maja. “Elijah in the Christian Topography–Syriac Story and Greek Image?” Aram 20 (2008): 101–110. Al-Kulaynī, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb. al-Kāfī. Edited by ʿAlī Akbar al-Ghaffārī. 8 vols. Tehran: Dār al-Kutub al-Islāmiyya, 1968–1971. al-Khwārazimī, Muḥammad ibn Mūsā. Mafātiḥ al-ʿulūm. Edited by Gerlof van Vloten. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1895. Lenowitz, Harris. The Jewish Messiahs: From the Galilee to Crown Heights. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Loebenstein, Judith. “Miracles in Šīʿī Thought: A Case Study of the Miracles Attributed to Imām Ğaʿfar al-Ṣādiq.” Arabica 50 (2003): 199–244. Madelung, Wilferd. “Bemerkungen zur imamitischen Firaq-Literatur,” Der Islam 43 (1967): 37–52. ——. “Frühe muʿtazilitische Häresiographie: Das Kitāb al-Uṣūl des Ğaʿfar ibn Ḥarb.” Der Islam 57 (1980): 220–36. Mann, Jacob. “An Early Theologico-Polemical Work,” Hebrew Union College Annual 13–14 (1937–8): 411–59. Al-Maqdisī, Muṭahhar ibn Ṭāhir. K. al-Badʾ wa-al-ta‌ʾrīkh. Edited by Clement Huart. 6 vols. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1899–1919. al-Maqrīzī, Taqī al-Dīn. al-Mawāʿiẓ wa-al-iʿtibār fī dhikr al-khiṭaṭ wa-al-athār. Edited by Aymān Fuʾād Sayyid. 5 vols. London: al-Furqān Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2003. al-Masʿūdī, Murūj al-dhahab wa-maʿādin al-jawhar. Edited by Charles Pellat. 5 vols. Beirut: Manshūrāt al-Jāmiʿa al-Lubnānīya, 1974. Michael the Syrian. Chronique de Michel le Syrien, Patriarche Jacobite d’Antioche (1166–1199). Edited by Jean-Baptiste Chabot. 4 vols. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1901–1905. Modarressi, Hossein. Crisis and Consolidation in the Formative Period of Shīʿite Islām: Abū Jaʿfar ibn Qiba al-Rāzī and His Contribution to Imāmite Shīʿite Thought. Princeton: Darwin Press, 1993. Monnot, Guy. Islam et Religions. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larouse, 1986. Morṭażā ibn Dāʿī Ḥasanī Rāzī. Tabṣerat al-ʿavāmm fī maʿrefat maqālāt al-anām. Edited by ʿAbbās Iqbāl. Tehran: Enteshārāt-e Asāṭīr, 1984. Motzki, Harald, with N. Boekhoff-van der Voort and S. W. Anthony. Analysing Muslim Traditions: Studies in Legal, Exegetical and Maghāzī Ḥadīth. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2010. Muqātil ibn Sulaymān al-Balkhī. al-Tafsīr. Edited by ʿAbd Allāh Maḥmūd Shiḥāta. 5 vols. Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿĀmma li-l-Kitāb, 1979–1989. Nemoy, Leon. “Corrections and Emendations to al-Qirqisānī’s Kitāb al-Anwār.” Jewish Quarterly Studies n.s. 50 (1950): 371–83. Nödelke, Theodor. “Die von Guidi herausgegebene syrische Chronik übersetzt und commentiert.” Sitzungsberichte der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-Hist. Classe, 128 (1893): 1–48. Pervo, R. I. Acts: A Commentary. Hermeneia 58. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2009. al-Qirqisānī, Yaʿqūb. K. al-Anwār wa-al-marāqib. Edited by Leon Nemoy. 5 vols. New York: Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation, 1939–43. Reinink, Gerrit J. “Ps.-Methodius: A Concept of History in Response to the Rise of Islam.” In The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near I: Problems in the Literary Source Material, edited by L.I. Conrad and A. Cameron, 149–188. SLAEI 1. Princeton: Darwin, 1992. ——. “Heraclius, the New Alexander: Apocalyptic Prophecies during the Reign of Heraclius.” In The Reign of Heraclius (610–641): Crisis and Confrontation, edited by G. J. Reinink and B. H. Stolte, 81–94. Leuven: Peeters, 2002. Reeves, John C. Trajectories in Near Eastern Apocalyptic: A Postrabbinic Jewish Apocalypse Reader. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005. Rosemarin, Aaron. Moses im Lichte der Agada. New York: Goldblatt, 1932.



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Rubin, Uri. Between Bible and Qurʾān: The Children of Israel and the Islamic Self-Image. SLAEI 17. Princeton: Darwin, 1999. Saʿd ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Abī Khalaf al-Qummī. K. al-Maqālāt wa-al-firaq. Edited by Muḥammad Javād Mashkūr. Tehran: Ḥaydarī, 1963. Al-Ṣafadī, Khalīl ibn Aybak. al-Wāfī bi-wafayāt, vol. 10. Edited by ʿAlī ʿAmāra and Jacqueline Sublet. Bibliotheca Islamica 6j. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1980. Al-Ṣaffār, Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan ibn Farrukh. Baṣāʾir al-darajāt. Edited by Muḥsin Kūchabāghī. Tabrīz: Maktabat Āyat Allāh al-Marʿashlī, 1983. Segal, Alan F. “Heavenly Ascent in Hellenistic Judaism, Early Christianity and their Environment.” ANRW II.23.2 (1980): 1333–1394. Shahrastānī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Karīm. K. al-Milal wa-al-niḥal. Edited by William Cureton. Leipzig: Harrossowitz, 1923. ——. Livre des religions et des sects. Translated by Daniel Gimaret and Guy Monnot. 2 vols. Leuven: Peeters, 1986. al-Shaykh al-Mufīd (attrib.). al-Ikhtiṣāṣ. Edited by ʿAlī Akbar al-Ghaffārī. Qom: Muʾassat al-Nashr al-Islāmī, 2004. Sindawi, Khalid. “The Image of Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī in Maqātil Literature,” Quaderni Studi Arabi 20/21 (2002): 79–104. Socrates Scholasticus. Histoire ecclésiastique. Edited by G. C. Hansen. Translated by Pierre Périchon and Pierre Maraval. 7 vols. Paris: Editions du Cerf, 2004–2007. Starr, Joshua. “Le mouvement messianique au début du VIIIe siècle.” Revue des étude juives 52 (1937): 81–92. Stroumsa, Guy. G. “‘Seal of the Prophets’: The Nature of a Manichean Metaphor.” JSAI 7 (1986): 61–74. al-Ṭabarī, Muḥibb al-Dīn. al-Riyāḍ al-naḍira fī manāqib al-ʿashara. Edited by Muḥammad Muṣtafā Abū’l-ʿAlāʾ. Cairo: Maktabat al-Jindī, 1970–1971. Theophanes the Confessor. Chronographia. Edited by C. de Boor. Leipzig: B.G. Teubnneri, 1883–1885. Thomas, David. “Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq and the History of Religions,” JSS 41 (1992): 275–90. ——. Anti-Christian Polemic in Early Islam: Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq’s ‘Against the Trinity’. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992. Wadeson, Lucy. “Chariots of Fire: Elijah and the Zodiac in Synagogue Floor Mosaics of Late Antique Palestine.” Aram 20 (2008): 1–41. Walker, Joel. The Legend of Mar Qadagh: Narrative and Christian Heroism in Late Antique Iraq. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006. Wasserstrom, Steven. “The ʿĪsawiyya Revisted.” SI 75 (1992): 57–80. Weaver, John B. Plots of Epiphany: Prison-Escape in Acts of the Apostles. BZNW 131. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 2004. Wolf, Kenneth Baxter, translator. Conquerors and Chroniclers of Early Medieval Spain. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 1990.

Political Anarchism, dissent, and Marginal Groups in the Early Ninth Century: The Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila revisited1 Hayrettin Yücesoy This essay deals with the views of a particular group of Muʿtazilī ascetics who took a radical stand on the question of legitimate rule, known as the imamate in medieval Islamic political discourse.2  Literature in the field has so far been largely concerned with the “Sunnī” (i.e. Umayyad and ʿAbbāsid) and “Shīʿī” (i.e. Fāṭimid) caliphates and with Sunnī jurists and theologians’ theoretical elaborations on the ideal caliphate. Less examined in this context are the voices of marginal dissenter groups, whose members articulated alternative discourses on the imamate. In this essay, I address the political views of the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila as one such group whose members advanced an anarchist argument in politics. The Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila maintained that rulership (the imamate) was neither rationally nor religiously necessary and opposed royal authority as fundamentally alien to the “book” and the “sunna.” They rejected the institution of the caliphate as a form of kingship and opposed the political epistemologies of emerging orthodoxies that engaged with and operated within the discourse of the imamate from the perspective of rationality or religious law. Instead, they suggested eliminating the imamate altogether, a term they used roughly synonymously with rulership, including caliphate and kingship. Similar to modern political anarchists, the question for the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila was not whether there should be a political society or not, but rather, what kind of society there ought to be and what kind of foundations should support it.3 Their reference to concepts such as aḥkām al-dīn and ḥukm al-Islām in their arguments suggests that they were not epistemological or moral anarchists. 1 I am grateful to Hüseyin Yılmaz, Ahmet Karamustafa, Derek Mancini-Lander, the participants of the “Legitimate and Illegitimate Violence in Islamic Tradition” Conference (The University of Exeter, UK September, 2011), the anonymous readers, and the editor of this volume for commenting on this paper. 2 I will use the word “imamate” to describe, more or less, the caliph and the political structure operating under his authority. The word imamate does not, in this context, imply the abstract notion of state as we use it today. 3 See Harold Barclay, People Without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchism (London: Kahn & Averill, 1996), 17.

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Their views offer an excellent vantage point to nuance the ideological landscape of the ʿAbbāsid world and illustrate better the diversity of political ideologies of the early ninth century. For their contributions on this subject, we are particularly indebted to Josef van Ess, Patricia Crone, and to Florian Sobieroj.4 This essay hopes both to contribute to these efforts and perhaps suggest additional vistas for a better understanding and contextualization of this significant group of people. The subject of the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila relates to another embarrassingly understudied but important field: ideologies and movements of dissent in early Islamic history. The relevant medieval literature of jurisprudence, theology, and Ḥadīth discuss it under various chapters and topics. Historiography, hagiography, literary genres, and biographical dictionaries are full of material that can be productively studied from this perspective to elaborate on the nature and forms of political dissent. Political tracts, mirrors for princes, manuals of statecraft deal with political dissent and the methods of its control from the prism of ancient imperial notions of justice and social equilibrium. Political dissent was expressed in a variety of subtle and open ways. These ranged from pacifist attitudes such as renunciation, withdrawal from politics, unvoiced deviation, and quietism to openly activist behavior, which included the tradition of al-amr bi-al-maʿrūf wa-al-nahy ʿan al-munkar, but certainly was not limited to it: poetry, political speeches, abstention, noncooperation, and various acts of open disobedience constituted other forms of dissent. Above all, scholarship, in particular historical scholarship, itself can be examined as dissent and a kind of shelter for the expression of dissent. As John Kelsey notes, scholarship helped citizens move out of the familial relations and establish a set of broader loyalties to function in the society as sectarian, artisanal, and professional

4 Pseudo-al-Nāshī al-Akbar, Frühe Muʿtazilitische Häresiographie (Masāʾil al-Imāma), ed. Josef van Ess (Beirut: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1971), 49–50. (Henceforth Masāʾil). Also see Josef van Ess, Theologie und Gesselschaft in 2. Und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra: Eine Geschichte Des Religioesen Denkens Im Fruehen Islam (Berlin: Wanter De Gruyter, 1992), 5: 329 ff. For its attribution to Jaʿfar ibn Ḥarb (236/850), see Wilferd Madelung, “Frühe muʿtazilitische Häresiographie: Das Kitāb al-Uṣūl des Ġaʿfar ibn Ḥarb,” Der Islam 57 (1980): 220 ff.; Patricia Crone, “Ninth-Century Muslim Anarchists,” Past and Present 167 (2000): 3 ff. and God’s Rule: Government and Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 65–69; Florian Sobieroj, “The Muʿtazila and Ṣūfism,” F. de Jong and Bernd Radtke. Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1999), 68–92. See also Hayrettin Yücesoy, Taṭawwur al-Fikr al-Siyāsī ʿinda Ahl al-Sunna: Fatrat al-Takwīn (Amman: Dār al-Bashīr, 1993), 140–43.



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groups.5 Noting the conflictual meaning and function of the law, including religious law or scripture, in this context is useful. Once scripture is disseminated among the faithful as a ubiquitous text/oral code outlining duties and privileges of the members of the community, it functions as a sort of ‘objectified law,’ empowering subjects with duties and privileges irrespective of governmental contingencies and, thus, enabling them to criticize and contest policies and practices. Therefore, while religious law does function to justify and legitimize political power, it also plays the role of a shelter for dissent. Needless to say, there are difficult issues to deal with in studying any movement of dissent across space and time, especially within the interpretive framework of medieval scholarship that was based on universalizing claims of scriptures, which inform more frequently than one wishes the premises and conclusions of modern scholars.6 The result is sometimes as misguided as asking whether one can speak of individuality, civil society, freedom, and rational political system in medieval Muslim societies.7 So much of this confusion results, as Rita Copeland argues about modern historiography of medieval European history, from neglecting the contingencies of such views and the internal conflicts, dissonances, and multivocality of their politics in any given ideological context. As she suggests, to make sense of dissent and the reasons of its variation we need to historicize medieval critiques in their own ideological contexts as practices that are themselves politically multivocal, heterogeneous, contingent, and conflictually invested.8 The Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila were one such critical cluster that advocated non-cooperation and refused compliance with established ideologies and epistemologies. Even though the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila were not a coherent group and never became powerful enough to disturb the political and ideological establishment, they did engender substantial ideological reactions throughout generations in the form of sectarian reprimand, to which we owe our information about this group. Unfortunately, the source

5 John Kelsay, “State and Civil Society,” in S. H. Hashmi, ed., Islamic Political Ethics: Civil Society, Pluralism, and Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 10. 6 See the comments of Rita Copeland, “Introduction: Dissenting Critical Practices,” in R. Copeland, ed., Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1–2 on the historiography of medieval Europe. 7 See Ann K. S. Lambton, State and Government in Medieval Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 309–310; Crone, God’s Rule, 300–301, 315 ff. 8 Copeland, “Introduction,” 2–3, 4.

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material about them is extremely slim,9 which means that what we can hope for often times is no more than scattered shreds of information that barely allow us to make conjectures about their views. However, we do have a contemporary source, Masāʾil al-Imāma, that offers insight into the political worldview of the Muʿtazilī Ṣūfīs. Madelung has made a strong case that the Masāʾil al-Imāma was authored most likely by Jaʿfar ibn Ḥarb (d. 236/850), who was a contemporary of the individuals mentioned below. As a Muʿtazilī himself, Jaʿfar ibn Ḥarb was not a distant bystander who transmitted hearsay about them. He was personally associated with the Muʿtazilīs of his generation and intimately knowledgeable about these individuals. What he offers is not a sectarian refutation, but rather a considerate summary of their opinions.10 Since this essay relies heavily on what Masāʾil al-Imāma has to say about them, it may be useful to provide a translation of the relevant section of the source at the end of this essay to facilitate easier access to the text for those who wish to consult it. Because of their background the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila had a distinct intellectual-ideological genealogy linking them to various Jamāʿī, Shīʿī, Muʿtazilī, and Ṣūfī trends. It is expected that some of their political views overlap with that of others, in particular the Muʿtazilī anarchists, under which category Patricia Crone treats them. However, it seems that there is enough of a gap in outlook to suggest a potentially important distinction between the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila and other Muʿtazilī anarchists. Crone has been criticized for using the word anarchism to describe those Muʿtazilīs who argued for a no-imamate position. My own objection is not about her use of the term; on the contrary it is about anchoring the meaning of it into European history to the degree that it drains the semantic potentiality of it, which leads her to argue at the end of her examination that those Muʿtazilīs were not actually anarchists. This tentativeness makes the use of the word anarchism for this group not only provisional and impressionistic, but also Orientalizing. Like the Weberian ideal type on what constitutes a “real” city, whose othering results we know up-close from our discussions on the “Islamic city,” “anarchism” as an ideal type of the same sort reinforces the idea of European exceptionalism and seals off the rest in the confines of the “Orient,” which was assumed to lack

9 The source material about them is limited to a few pages at most, one full page in Masāʾil on their political views being the most coherent and longest. 10 EI2, s.v. Djaʿfar ibn Ḥarb (Albert N. Nader); Madelung, “Frühe muʿtazilitische.”



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the necessary institutions to develop anarchist ideas on its own. However, given the fact that anarchism meant widely different things even within European traditions, this point of view cannot be sustained. Scholars need to work with the already decentralized and broadened semantic range of the word so that we can productively accommodate new experiences from different political and cultural traditions. In this article, I will use the term to mean strictly political anarchism, which advocates minimizing if not abolishing state hierarchy and calls for the self-management of communities according to a shared set of laws, but rejects the notion of individualistic or hedonistic opposition to external authority.11 The Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila were a small cluster of scholars and ascetics associated with the circle of Bishr ibn al-Muʿtamir and Abū Mūsā ʿĪsā ibn Ṣabīh al-Murdār. Other prominent Muʿtazilīs such as al-Naẓẓām also had Ṣūfī students, including Faḍl al-Ḥadathī and Ibn Khābiṭ.12 In their interests in both kalām and asceticism the group carried on and elaborated a distinct tradition reaching back to Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, to whose circle Wāsil ibn ʿAṭā’ and ʿAmr ibn ʿUbayd belonged. They were apparently among the early generations of ascetics to be named Ṣūfīs, who also followed an activist tradition of al-amr bi-al-maʿrūf wa al-nahy ʿan al-munkar, which would later become the fifth principle of the Muʿtazila and a major principle of many ascetic groups.13 Al-Raqāshī, al-Ḥadathī, and Ḥusayn al-Kūfī mentioned in the translated section seem to represent a smaller group of individuals among them that opposed the ʿAbbāsids as illegitimate and denied the legality of earning a livelihood (kasb). While their opinion on earning suggests a renunciatory tendency, I hope to show that it emanated from their position on political legitimacy and not from seeing earning contrary to appropriate “trust in God” (tawakkul) in the sense of withdrawal from society irrespective of political legitimacy. Perhaps never defined as a group, the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila seem to have come from urban, well-to-do, literate, and scholarly background

11 For a history of European and American anarchist thought see Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2008). 12 Among what medieval heresiography attributes to both, the most relevant pieces of information are their ascetic concerns and Ibn Khābiṭ’s rejection of the mafḍūl’s imamate. See Ibn Ḥazm, al-Faṣl fī al-Milal wa-al-Ahwāʾ wa-al-Niḥal, eds. Muḥammad Ibrāhīm Naṣr and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ʿUmayra (Jiddah: Sharikat Maktabāt ʿUkāẓ, 1982), 5: 64–65. Florian Sobieroj, “The Muʿtazila and Ṣūfism,” 69–70. Toby Mayer, “Theology and Ṣūfism,” in Tim Winter, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2007), 261. 13 See Christopher Melchert, “The Ḥanābila and the Early Ṣūfīs,” Arabica 48 (2001), 355.

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based in Baghdad and Basra. As learned elite residing in the centers of power, they had access to the privileges that the cosmopolitan and elaborate urban life could offer, but perhaps were not interested in agricultural hinterland and its inhabitants whose work and surplus supplied the main arteries of the Caliphate. That some of them donated their wealth and chose poverty suggests that they were not particularly keen about the exuberance of Baghdad and pro-earning ideologies. Nevertheless, their views reflect the values of an urban, scholarly, and politically engaged circle of people, whose level of dissatisfaction made them question the very foundations of the existing socio-political order. The author of the Masāʾil begins his passage with mentioning that the Muʿtazila were divided into two major groups on the imamate. After briefly mentioning those who maintained that it was a religious obligation whose institution was incumbent upon the community as well as an essential creed of faith, he goes on to explain the views of the second group, which in this passage seem to be the opinions of the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila.14 The second group maintained that the imamate was not a necessity nor a religious obligation, but merely a choice inferred by reason. The idea of appointing an imām stemmed from the people’s desire to do so, not from any religious command or practice requiring it. They maintained that appointing an imām resembled how daily prayers were performed—people could pray with or without the imām; none of which was better than or preferable to the other. What needed to happen instead, the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila reasoned, was that individuals in the community acquire sufficient knowledge of their duties and responsibilities to conduct themselves appropriately. It is clear that the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila rejected the attribution of reports concerning the imamate to the Prophet Muḥammad. They in fact claimed the opposite: the Prophet did not appoint anybody as an imām. Why did the Prophet explain in great detail the daily obligatory prayers, zakāt, and even as minor an issue as the direction of the prayer15 and yet leave a fundamental matter such as the imamate to be merely inferred? Were the imamate a fundamental principle of faith, ʿaqd al-dīn, Muḥammad 14 The author does not spell out their name until the end of the passage when he somewhat ambiguously states that “this is the opinion of the Ṣūfiyyat al-Muʿtazila” without clarifying which opinions in the preceding paragraph he means to attribute to them. However, given the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I will base my analysis on the assumption that the author of Masāʾil intends to attribute the content of the whole passage to them. 15 Masāʾil, 49.



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would have appointed somebody for it and announced his opinion in an unambiguous way, just as he did for other obligations.16 Another argument against having an imām was their association of the caliphate with kingship, mulk, which they opposed as fundamentally incompatible with the laws of Islam. To be sure, regardless of affiliation, many other early ninth century sectarian groups generally made a distinction between true imamate and kingship. For the majority of the Imāmī Shīʿīs, the true imamate existed only during the reign of ʿAlī. For the Zaydīs, both the Umayyads and the ʿAbbāsids were certainly kings. The Khārijīs rejected all caliphs after ʿUmar as illegitimate oppressors. For many of the Jamāʿīs, the true imamate was the period of the first four caliphs followed by kingship.17 But few seem to have problematized this dichotomy to launch an anarchist argument like the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila did. They maintained that while it might have been appropriate for other nations to live under royal authority, Islam was against kingship. The prophet was not a king and did not appoint one over his community, umma. They offered several reasons explaining their rejection of royal authority, many of which are also expressed against the state by modern anarchists. First of all, kingship calls for tyranny and monopoly of power, which results in kings ruling against the will of their subjects, coercing them into accepting royal authority, and not allowing them a share in governance. According to the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila, these characteristics were detrimental to the faith and even destructive to divine laws—the laws of the “book” and the “sunna.” While it is not clear what they specifically meant by the “sunna” and the “book,” they must have coalesced around an approach that was different from and perhaps contrary to the discourse of ḥadīth and fiqh that was rising to prominence at the time among the Jamāʿīs. The Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila recognized the need for peace, stability, and welfare. They, like many of the Khārijīs and the Muʿtazilīs, considered violating the law a valid reason to depose the caliph. They did not share the sentiment that one should endure injustice, oppression, and abuse of law to avoid discord. Kingship, according to them, was the root cause of unrest and violence. As the community was endowed with duties and privileges and therefore authority, it would resist the king for his transgressions.

16 Masāʾil, 49. 17 Masāʾil, 66; Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, al-Musnad, eds. Aḥmad Muḥammad Shākir and al-Ḥusaynī ʿAbd al-Majīd Hāshim (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1980), 16: 133. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAmr Abū Zurʿa al-Dimashqī, Tārīkh Abī Zurʿa al-Dimashqī, ed. Shukr Allāh Niʿmat Allāh al-Qūchānī (Damascus: Majmaʿ al-Lugha al-ʿArabiyya bi-Dimashq, n.d.), 1: 187–88.

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Kings, they argued, would inevitably commit crimes, which would require the community to interfere to prevent kings from eradicating divine laws, which would lead to a cycle of violence every time the king transgressed. As there would always be those who would defend the king against his opponents, this cycle of violence would not only result in bloodshed, contention, and disunity, but also a perpetual fear of the tyranny and revenge of the king, which would render the efforts to depose the king unsuccessful. Even if a qualified individual were to be elected for the imamate, the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila maintained, the problem of violence could not be avoided. Even a legitimately elected person could become oppressive later in his reign, which would require the community to resist and declare him illegitimate. Infringing upon his prerogatives and authority would then provoke and justify the king’s retaliation, which would, in turn, lead to strife. Thus, if, by electing an imām, the community had hoped to avoid strife, in reality, instituting an imām ultimately served just the opposite purpose. Not having an imām at all was therefore a better alternative if one wanted to avoid civil discord. This reasoning suggests that they proposed to shift the axis of politics from the exclusive domain of the dynastic or imperial elite to the community of faithful through a decentralized socio-political order. They, for instance, proposed that if there were a need requiring a judge, the community would seek him among the righteous in their midst and give him authority to arbitrate the task at hand. This individual would fulfill the duty for which he was appointed and relinquish his prerogatives as soon as his commission ended. He would return to being an ordinary individual as before with no political authority vested in him any longer. The authority vested in such an individual would be similar to that of a person authorized to lead a single session of prayer with the full consent of the worshippers. The authority of the prayer-leader would be coterminous with the prayer, dependent on the approval of his congregation, and not extending outside the prayer. He is not entitled to serve in that capacity again without the consent of the worshippers. Another far-reaching argument of the Ṣūfiyyat al-Muʿtazila was the prohibition of earning an income through employment or business (kasb, pl. makāsib). Masāʾil does not help in clarifying the nature and reason of their rejection of the legality of earning. The only piece of information we get is their categorical prohibition of earning: “This is the opinion of the Ṣūfiyyat al-Muʿtazila who uphold the prohibition of [the ways of ] earning ( yaqūlūna bi- taḥrīm al-makāsib).” This position places them with the Ṣūfī renunciants of the late Umayyad and early ʿAbbāsid times. As Michael



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Bonner has shown in his examination of the controversies concerning the problem of kasb, the prohibition of earning dated back well before the ninth century. From the objections of al-Shaybānī, who enthusiastically defended an earning-affirmative position,18 to their views we know that some of the renunciatory ascetics refrained from earning because they saw a contradiction between earning and tawakkul (reliance on God). The argument was that since God had promised to provide human beings with the means of life, it was against tawakkul to seek earning and get involved in economic activity.19 Another group of ascetics allowed the earning of what is permitted (ḥalāl) and enough for survival ( faqr wa-taqallul).20 Others considered earning permissible only in the case of life-threatening conditions: “earning is prohibited, it is not permissible except in case of necessity, like the permissibility of eating carrion.”21 The Karrāmiyya’s position was that earning was neither a religious obligation nor prohibited. It was a neutral activity, hence permissible.22 Other ascetics maintained that tawakkul was better and more meritorious than action for earning. According to these ascetics, seeking a livelihood is permitted for those who do not have enough strength for perfect tawakkul.23 They draw a distinction between elite, khāṣṣa, and common people, ‘āmma, to argue that kasb is appropriate for common people while tawakkul is for those who have achieved a higher spiritual level: “Refraining

18 Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī, al-Kasb, ed. Suhayl Zakkār (Dimashq: ʿAbd al-Hādī Ḥarṣūnī, 1980), 32–33, 34. “Earning is not only permissible but also a religious obligation incumbent on every Muslim, as is the seeking of knowledge.” Also, “prayer cannot be performed without appropriate clothing, clothing is made from fabric, fabric is acquired usually by earning; therefore, that without which obligatory prayer cannot be performed is obligatory.” 19 al-Shaybānī, al-Kasb, 37; Ḥārith ibn Asad al-Muḥāsībī, al-Makāsib, ed. ʿAbd al-Qādir Aḥmad ʿAṭā (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Kutub al-Thaqāfiyya, 1987), 61; see also Michael Bonner, “The Kitāb al-Kasb Attributed to al-Shaybānī: Poverty, Surplus, and the Circulation of Wealth,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 121 (2001): 410 ff.; Michael Bonner, “Poverty and Charity in the Rise of Islam,” in Michael Bonner et al., Poverty and Charity in the Middle Eastern Contexts (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2003), 133 ff.; Michael Bonner, “Poverty and Economics in the Qur’an,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 35 (2005): 391 ff.; Margeret Smith, Studies in Early Mysticism in the Near and Middle East (Oxford: One World, 1995), 172–73; Tor Andrae, In the Garden of Myrtles: Studies in Early Islamic Mysticism (Albany, NY: 1987), 110–11. 20 Al-Muḥāsibī, al-Makāsib, 76, 90, 95, 96. 21 Al-Shaybānī, al-Kasb, 37 and al-Muḥāsibī, al-Makāsib, 48. 22 Al-Shaybānī, al-Kasb, 45–46. 23 Al-Shaybānī, al-Kasb, 63.

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from action is better. However it is permitted for the weak among the people.”24 One of the best representatives of the ascetic compromise between tawakkul and kasb is no doubt al-Muḥāsibī. He refers to the main duty of humans in earthly life as knowledge of God, behaving according to His rules and relying upon Him in all deeds.25 In fulfilling those obligations, al-Muḥāsibī argues, tawakkul does not prevent human beings from seeking a livelihood. Moreover tawakkul and kasb are not contradictory because God has created human beings with a desire to seek livelihood and to love wealth.26 The main point is, then, to keep a balance between trust and earning since excessive wealth and a luxurious life style is indeed contrary to God’s will, both during the process of earning and afterwards.27 It is clear that for al-Muḥāsibī, earning is not an obligation, but rather a license circumscribed by divine law. As long as humans do not transgress these laws, they are allowed to seek a livelihood so that they can perform their duties toward their relatives and fulfill their obligations.28 So the problem for many ascetics was not the legitimacy of the ruler but rather the legal value of the act of earning itself independent of its political framework.29 The Ṣūfiyyat al-Muʿtazila on the other hand were maximalist renunciants. But if that was the case, what do we do with their views on the politics of the community? Clearly, they do not reflect a renunciant attitude. One plausible explanation of their position on earning is their opposition to the caliphate. While we do not have explicit evidence in the sources fully backing such a suggestion, we do have convincing indicators that the Ṣūfiyyat al-Muʿtazila might have conditioned earning on political legitimacy. Al-Khayyāṭ mentions, for instance, that al-Raqāshī used to proscribe earning and claim that “the house” (dār) of the caliphate was the house of disbelief (dār al-kufr).30 Although this piece of evidence does not directly link the two positions (considering the caliphate dār al-kufr and proscribing earning), contextual evidence makes the argument of politics

24 Al-Muḥāsibī, al-Makāsib, 63, also 61–64. 25 Al-Muḥāsibī, al-Makāsib, 37 ff. 26 Al-Muḥāsibī, al-Makāsib, 45–46. 27 Al-Muḥāsibī, al-Makāsib, 5, ff., 47. 28 Al-Muḥāsibī, al-Makāsib, 5 ff. 29 Al-Muḥāsibī, al-Makāsib, 63 ff. 30 Abū Qāsim al-Balkhī, al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, al-Ḥākim al-Jushaymī, Faḍl al-Iʿtizāl wa-Ṭabaqāt al-Muʿtazila, ed. Fuʾād Sayyid (Tunis: Al-Dār al-Tūnisiyya li-al-Nashr, 1986), 283–84; Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā ibn al-Murtaḍā, Ṭabaqāt al-Muʿtazila, ed. Susanna DiwaldWilzer (Beirut:  Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 1961), 77.



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a plausible inference. In particular, we know that some ascetics considered illegitimate selling arms and riding animals to those they opposed as “oppressors” and some others proscribed earning because they considered it illegal under an illegitimate ruler.31 Not unexpectedly, al-Shaybānī and al-Muḥāsibī were adamant about rejecting such views. Both unequivocally expressed that the lawfulness of earning as a legal question was separate from questions relating to political legitimacy.32 Al-Muḥāsibī, perhaps intending the Ṣūfiyyat al-Muʿtazila or similar groups, thus, declared that the “oppression of the imāms does not invalidate earning but noncompliance with jurisprudence (fiqh) and knowledge (ʿilm) makes it invalid.”33 The Ṣūfiyyat al-Muʿtazila were therefore not unique and particularly new, but if they linked kasb to political legitimacy they placed themselves among a distinct minority. Such a marginal stand reveals a serious disagreement with the institutions and discourses of the established order. The caliphate was one of them. In the course of its evolution, the caliphate underwent changes in the way the caliphs imagined themselves, exercised authority and control, and projected power. The controversies over identity, legitimacy, and power were magnified by changes and developments in public life. As the caliphate’s administration became more effective and central, it not only accelerated the process of social diversification along new lines leading to tensions over social and economic privileges, but also provoked resistance to the central authority itself in the peripheries as well as the center.34 Similar to other empires, the caliphate reordered the society over which it ruled, redistributed the human and material resources it controlled, and used violence when necessary and feasible to maintain control. Criticism of the caliphate was therefore also about resources, distribution and allocation of power within the caliphate. The events of the early ninth century (such as the civil war and the Miḥna) forced dissenting views to the fore not only because they provoked critical stands, but also perhaps because the period seemed an appropriate moment for power realignment and redistribution. The Ṣūfīs 31 Al-Muḥāsibī, al-Makāsib, 76–77, 90, 95, 96. For various opinions about the prohibition of earning for political reasons under the caliphate see Al-Ashʿarī, Maqālāt al-Islamiyyīn ed. Helmut Ritter (İstanbul: İstanbul Darülfünûn, Devlet Matbaası, 1927), 465. 32 Al-Muḥāsibī, al-Makāsib, 76–78. 33 Al-Muḥāsibī, 83. 34 For a more detailed analysis of the subject see my previous study, Taṭawwur, 37 ff., 83 ff. 121 ff. For a solid survey of the caliphate see Hugh Kennedy, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates (London: Longman, 2004).

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of the Muʿtazila were such a group of people who opposed and contested the legitimacy of the caliphate for practices they perceived as coercion, oppression, monopoly of power, violation of law, and disregard of the community. For instance, succession conventions were a major source of discontent. This was so not only because of the violence and confusion that frequently followed the death of a caliph, but also because succession was associated with monopoly of power and exclusion. As succession to rule shifted from elective practices to dynastic control, a wide spectrum of groups criticized the caliphate and called for a return to election and consultation (shūrā wa-ikhtiyār). One needs only to mention the revolt of Ibn al-Zubayr and the subsequent uprisings led by al-Muṭarraf ibn al-Mughīra ibn al-Shuʿba, Ibn al-Ashʿath, and Yazīd ibn al-Muhallab during the Umayyad period. The violent succession crisis between the sons of al-Rashīd himself, al-Amīn and al-Ma‌ʾmūn, was a stark reminder for critics such as the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila that violence in the transition of power was emblematic of rule. As a policy, concentrating political and administrative power in the center had also been a major source of discontent. In their empire building efforts, the caliphs pushed for a more effective control by establishing and improving military and administrative bureaucracy and interfered with existing social classes, hierarchies, and power distributions. As the caliphs pressed more for centralization, initially the centrifugal tribal ideologies, but later provincial power bases, nobility, and emerging religious movements and groups saw this as an intrusion into their affairs and became more protective of their own privileges against the central authority. Judging from the literary output of the ninth century, the rift between imperial ambitions and more egalitarian socio-political aspirations engendered a major confrontation of religious, political, and social dimensions.35 The limitations of medieval empires in effective control of their provinces notwithstanding, the critique of the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila shows discontent over policies of centralization. The period of civil war and the following developments as the immediate context for the ideas of the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila were particularly important for three reasons:36 The civil war was a spectacular failure of

35 For an evaluation of the centralization policies of the caliphs and their repercussions see the still-leading study of Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 1: 187 ff., 241 ff., 280 ff. 36 For a study of the civil war, the Miḥna, and al-Ma‌ʾmūn see Hayrettin Yücesoy, Messianic Beliefs and Imperial Politics in Medieval Islam (Columbia: University of South Carolina



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the institution, which must have further provoked their discontent. Secondly, part of what happened in Baghdad during the civil war after its capture by al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s commander, Ṭāhir, in 813 might have served as an inspiration to think about the possibility of having no government at all and about the means of preventing society from falling into socio-political chaos in the absence of a central authority. When criminals took over Baghdad what appears to be spontaneous civil resistance emerged in the city. In the absence of authority, neighborhoods looked for men of good conduct, ṣulaḥāʾ, and volunteers to resist the banditry and to bring a measure of security to their city. These ṣulaḥāʾ gathered in groups and started forming defense units against the brigands in the city under the leadership of eminent individuals from various quarters of Baghdad, such as Khālid ibn Daryūsh in the Ṭarīq al-Anbār quarter and Sahl ibn Salāma in al-Ḥarbiyya, none of which seems to be associated with the Ṣūfiyyat al-Muʿtazila. They gathered around the slogan “command the good and forbid the evil” to address the problems plaguing the town.37 Even though this spontaneous movement melted away after the return of al-Ma‌ʾmūn to the city, the sheer attempt itself at selfgovernance might have inspired anarchist ideas as a possible alternative to the caliphate. Thirdly, while the tumultuous period of the civil war galvanized a few around anarchist ideas, the succeeding events might have pushed some of them who sympathized with those who opposed the Miḥna into alignment and eventually merger with the Jamāʿīs. Thus, as Sobieroj notes, the events of the Miḥna might have also brought the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila’s relatively short existence into a rapid disintegration.38 Another cause of dissent was a particular political ideology offered by the secretaries, kuttāb. Already during the late Umayyad period but increasingly with the establishment of the ʿAbbāsid caliphate this ideology spread largely by communicating the conventions and culture of Sasanian imperial practice to governors, secretaries, princes, and caliphs as exemplified in the activities of Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (d. 757). Following a ­tradition of

Press, 2009); John Nawas, Al-Ma‌ʾmūn: Miḥna and the Caliphate (Nijmegen: 1992) and his “A Reexamination of Three Current Explanations for al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s Introduction of the Miḥna,” IJMES 26 (1994). 37 For a treatment of this subject see Ira M. Lapidus, “Separation of State and Religion in the Early Islamic Society,” IJMES 6 (1975). Wilferd Madelung, “The Vigilante Movement of Sahl ibn Salāma al-Khurāsānī and the Origins of Ḥanbalism Reconsidered,” Journal of Turkish Studies 14 (1990); van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, 3: 173–75. Michael Cooperson, Al-Ma‌ʾmūn (Oxford: Oneworld, 2005), 66–68. 38 Florian Sobieroj, “The Muʿtazila and Ṣūfism,” 70.

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divine or sacral kingship in the region, this ideology enhanced the divine or semi-divine image of the ruler; considered society as stratified and conflictual; and promoted the Sasanian idea of equilibrium to maintain social order as the primary aspects of exemplary rulership. The objection of the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila seems to have been directly against this axial shift in the socio-political order toward the traditions of kingship in the region, which they must have seen as alien to Islam and incompatible with divine laws. Ideologically, this was a conflict between two outlooks: anarchist egalitarianism vs. imperial and social hierarchism. A third source of discontent was the ideological support that various groups provided the caliphate. Available source material from the period amply demonstrate how references to divine appointment and favor justified the caliphs who were depicted as the trustees of God, the mine of kingship, the axis of authority and leadership, and the deputies of God (i.e. amīn allāh, maʿdan al-mulk, maqarr al-siyāsa wa-al-riʾāsa, khalīfat allāh).39 Abū Yūsuf depicted his patron as the caliph of God on earth who was given light to illuminate what is dark to his subjects in their dealings with each other. If he ruled with piety and justice, he would have his reward, and, if he acted otherwise, he would bear the guilt of his sin.40 Al-Shāfiʿī legitimized military domination (ghalaba) as long as it was successful: “He who takes hold (ghalaba) of the caliphate by the sword so that he is named caliph and the people gathered (ijtamaʿa) around him is the caliph if he is from Quraysh. One is to go to war with him and pray the Friday prayers behind him; whoever does not do this is in error.”41 Not unexpectedly, the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila and others viewed such attempts as not only reinvention of kingship, rebirth of Sasanian political practice, and an impediment to their own aspirations to bring the caliphate under the aegis of Islamic morality, but also oppressive and dismissive of the community. More broadly, the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila criticized the views of the emerging orthodoxies on the imamate. Unlike the Sufis of the Muʿtazila, the Jamāʿī, Shīʿī, and Muʿtazilī orthodoxies, despite their differences among themselves and criticisms of the caliphate, reasoned within the 39 For the significance of these titles in the Umayyad and ʿAbbāsid periods see Patricia Crone and Martin Hinds, God’s Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 40 Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb ibn Ibrāhīm, Kitāb al-Kharāj, ed. Iḥsān ʿAbbās (Beirut: Bank alKuwayt al-Ṣināʿī, 1985), 68–71. 41 Fakhr al-Dīn Muḥammad ʿUmar al-Rāzī, Manāqib al-Imām al-Shāfiʿī, ed. Aḥmad Ḥijāzī al-Saqqa (Cairo: Maktabat Kulliyāt al-Azhariyya, 1986), 137.



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discourse of the imamate. In particular, when the use of ḥadīth became a discursive practice in the early ninth century42 defining where one stood epistemologically, scholars began to advance political arguments based on prophetic utterances, whose recycling eventually became indispen­ sable for many groups. Since the late second and early third Islamic centuries ḥadīth transmitters began to insist on referring to ḥadīths in their arguments about the necessity of the imamate as a religious obligation.43 Like their Jamāʿī counterparts, some Muʿtazilīs too seem to have used the argument of implicit designation to defend their views. They, for example, claimed that the Prophet Muḥammad did not designate a specific individual for the caliphate but rather indicated his qualifications and characteristics, naʿt and ṣifāt.44 Even though the Shīʿīs and the Khārijīs advanced arguments not based on ḥadīths, they did too operate within the discourse of the imamate. By opposing religious and rational arguments for the imamate and by rejecting the legality of earning, the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila were directly challenging the very foundations of these emerging epistemologies. Their arguments about the imamate suggest that they categorically rejected ḥadīths and denied the exemplarity of the caliphate as a basis of political ideology. While Qurʾānic verses do not play a role in their discourse against the imamate, prophetic practice does. According to them, the sunna, which appears to replace the ḥadīth as the foundation of religious knowledge, instructs or inspires no imamate at all. Thus the Imāmī Shīʿī, the Jamāʿī, the Khārijī, and the Muʿtazilī emphasis on the importance of the imamate for not only the community but also the faith as well finds no justification among the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila. Therefore at least in two respects, the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila must be distinguished from other Muʿtazilī anarchists: their views on earning, which we have already outlined, and the nature of their anarchism. Unfortunately, existing scholarship45 treats them together. Although there is a certain amount of overlap between their views, they do differ considerably. While

42 See Scott C. Lucas, Constructive Critics, Hadith Literature, and the Articulation of Sunni Islam: The Legacy of the Generation of Ibn Saʿd, Ibn Maʿīn, and Ibn Ḥanbal (Leiden: Brill, 2004). 43 Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Musnad, 10:133–34; al-Ḥārith ibn Asad al-Muḥāsibī, Al-Masāʾil fī Aʿmāl al-Qulūb wa-al-Jawāriḥ fī al-Makāsib wa-al-Aʿmāl, ed. ʿAbd al-Qādir Aḥmad ʿAtā (Cairo: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1969), 208; Aḥmad ibn al-Daḥḥāk ibn Abī ʿĀṣim, al-Sunna, ed. Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī (Beirut: Al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1980), 2: 503–504. 44 Al-Nawbakhtī, Firaq, 8. 45 See for instance Crone, “Ninth-Century Muslim Anarchists.”

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the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila argued against having any imām, other Muʿtazilī anarchists acknowledged their acceptance of, in fact argued for, having multiple imāms and even a single imām if he was elected by consensus.46 Secondly, for numerous other anarchists, such as al-Fuwaṭī, anarchism was a provisional system of governance as long as the affairs could be managed without an imām.47 In the case of Ḍirār ibn ʿAmr (d. circa second decade of the ninth century) and Ḥafṣ al-Fard (d. circa 810) any nonArab (ʿajamī) imām would do just fine, even better.48 So the argument is about the qualifications of the candidates but not about eliminating the imamate altogether. In contrast, the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila seem to have objected to the imamate categorically. One of the leading Muʿtazilī anarchists, al-Aṣamm (d. 816 or 817) for instance argued that the imamate was not an obligation required by religious law (laysat wājibatun sharʿan) but a secular utility (maṣlaḥa) whose institution was contingent upon the will of the community, which had the discretionary power to decide whether to institute it.49 He also argued that, in an ideal case, if people conducted themselves according to ethical principles and acted justly in their transactions, crime would not occur in society. This would eliminate the need for penalty and therefore render political authority superfluous, if not harmful.50 Similarly, the famous ninth century Muʿtazilī al-Naẓẓām (d. 835 or 845), who was a mentor to some of the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila, and his followers also were of the opinion that if people followed the law willingly and maintained their integrity in both private and public life they would not need an imām.51 So far, there is compatibility between these views and the arguments of the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila. However, both part ways in the following arguments. While the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila clearly argued against having any imām, al-Aṣamm accepted the possibility of, in fact argued for, having multiple imāms. Furthermore, he seems to have agreed to having a single imam if he was elected by

46 Masāʾil, 60–61. 47 ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Baghdādī, Uṣūl al-Dīn, ed. Helmut Ritter (İstanbul: Devlet Matbaası, 1928), 271–72. 48 Masāʾil, 51. 49 Masāʾil, 49, 59–60; al-Ashʿarī, Maqālāt, 460; Muḥammad ibn Ḥasan ʿAbd al-Jabbār, al-Mughnī fī Abwāb al-ʿAdl wa-al-Tawḥīd, eds. ʿAbd al-Ḥālīm Maḥmūd and Sulaymān Dunyā (Cairo: Dār al-Miṣriyya li al-Ta‌ʾlīf wa-al-Tarjuma, n.d.), 20/1: 48. 50 Masāʾil, 49; al-Ashʿarī, Maqālāt, 460; Al-Baghdādī, Uṣūl, 271–72.  51 Al-Ashʿarī, Maqālāt, 9–10, 460; al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā al-Nawbakhtī, Firaq al-Shīʿa, ed. Helmut Ritter (İstanbul: Devlet Matbaası, 1931), 10–11.



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consensus. It is true that he still sees having multiple imāms as better for the community and elaborates on its benefits and practicality, yet he does not rule out having one imām.52 In fact, he explains the conditions under which this could be the case. Such an imām should be accepted by all members of the community; his election should follow strict guidelines: the appointment should come only after a wide consultation followed by a comprehensive search to identify the most appropriate candidate; the candidate then must accept the nomination and the responsibilities associated with his post; the community in turn must declare its consent to the candidate and acknowledge publicly a conscious deference to him. In short, according to al-Aṣamm there has to be a literal, communal consensus on the ruler for such an appointment to be legitimate.53 If consensus does in fact happen, even a singular imām will be legitimate. This is not what the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila seem to have argued. According to the Sunnī theologian al-Baghdādī (d. 1038), Hishām al-Fuwaṭī (d. 840s?) too seems to have maintained, in a similar way that the authority of the imām would be legitimate only if the whole community agreed on him. Al-Fuwaṭī recognized that consensus was not a universal requirement as it might not be practical all the time and it could even be counterproductive. Al-Fuwaṭī maintained that if the community rebelled against and assassinated the ruling imām, such as during a civil war, the “people of the truth” were then not required to elect another one. So for him anarchism was an option as long as needs can be met without an imām.54 Part of al-Fuwaṭī’s argument seems to have derived from the controversies concerning the first civil war and the legitimacy of the early caliphs, about which the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila appear silent in the quoted passage. According to al-Baghdādī, al-Fuwaṭī intended to nullify the caliphate of ʿAlī (r. 656–661) in his argument.55 Indeed, al-Fuwaṭī questioned the legitimacy of the election which brought the fourth caliph ʿAlī to power, who was acclaimed caliph after the murder of ʿUthmān (r. 644–656) in the circumstances of a civil war. Probably al-Aṣamm shared the same view. He accepted the caliphates of Abū Bakr (r. 632–634) and ʿUmar (r. 634–644) as legitimate because there was a valid consensus on their caliphates, but he rejected the legitimacy of ʿAlī because there was no 52 Masāʾil, 60–61. 53 Masāʾil, 59–60. 54 Al-Baghdādī, Uṣūl, 271–72. 55 Al-Baghdādī, Uṣūl, 272.

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consensus on his caliphate.56 Using the same logic, al-Aṣamm recognized Muʿāwiya as a legitimate caliph, because there was a consensus on his caliphate.57 Al-Fuwaṭī’s opinion was also echoed by al-Jāḥiẓ58 It seems that this discussion was informed by the events of the fourth civil war in which al-Ma’mūn and al-Amīn were separately proclaimed imām. Ḍirār ibn ʿAmr (d. circa second decade of the ninth century) and Ḥafṣ al-Fard (d. circa 810) were both concerned, like the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila, about monopoly of power and oppression. However, unlike the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila, Ḍirār and Ḥafṣ fell back on the assumption of having an imām. They opposed the practice of appointing a Qurashī to the imamate for fear that it would lead to a power monopoly, oppression, and strife. Both advocated allowing non-Qurashī candidates from more modest social ranks to be elected. In fact, they suggested that, given the option, people should elect a candidate from a socially inferior background, such as a “Nabataean” individual, instead of a Qurashī. Even if both candidates were equally eligible and competent, the community should elect the “Nabataean” candidate if it wishes to preempt civil wars in the future. Why would a “Nabataean” caliph be more likely to prevent civil wars? Their reason was that if such an imām should commit a crime requiring removal from office, when the community acts to remove him he would have no tribal base to support his resistance. Without the tribal support, the removal of the “Nabataean” imām from office would be easier, less controversial, and less likely to cause civil strife. Ḍirār ibn ʿAmr and Ḥafṣ al-Fard seem to have conceived the role of the imām as comprising nothing more than a mediator; they therefore opposed investing too much power in him. It is clear that the caliphal succession crises and civil wars served as background for Ḍirār ibn ʿAmr and Ḥafṣ al-Fard. In fact, both used to mention the civil war associated with the removal of ʿUthmān (r. 644–656) to back

56 ʿAlī was opposed in the Battle of Camel by Ṭalḥa, (d. 656) Zubayr (d. 656), and ʿĀʾisha, (d. 678) and in the Battle of Ṣiffīn by Muʿāwiya (r. 661–680). 57 Masāʾil, 59–60. Although al-Aṣamm was not supportive of ʿAlī, he nevertheless did not accuse either ʿAlī or his opponents of wrongdoing in their respective decisions on how to settle their differences. Al-Aṣamm tended to see the disagreements as a legitimate difference in reasoning, ijtihād. See al-Nawbakhtī, Firaq, 14; al-Ashʿarī, Maqālāt, 453. 58 Abū ʿUthmān ʿAmr ibn Baḥr al-Jāḥiẓ, “al-Jawābāt fī al-Imāma,” in Rasāʾil al-Jāḥiẓ, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khanjī bi-Miṣr, 1979), 4: 285 ff; al-Jāḥiẓ, “Kitāb al-Futya,” in Rasāʾil al-Jāḥiẓ, 1: 213–14; al-Jāḥiẓ, al-ʿUthmāniyya, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khanjī bi-Miṣr and Maktabat al-Muthannā bi-Baghdād, 1955), 14, 250, 256, 261–63.



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their claims.59 While their views were certainly along the lines of anarchism, they were not parallel to that of the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila. While the anarchists examined above seem to have retained the notion of an ideal imamate (however difficult to realize), as Crone has argued, the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila seem to have stayed away from suggesting it. They simply were concerned with creating a political society without an imām. It makes sense in this context that Ḍirār, Ḥafṣ al-Fard, al-Naẓẓām, and others among the Muʿtazilī anarchists argued for the election of “the best” candidate for the imamate because they considered the office important and noble enough to require a meritorious individual. Their argument was that as much as the Prophet Muḥammad was the most meritorious person of his epoch, the imām must also be the most excellent of his time, because the place (manzila) of the imām in merit comes only after that of the Prophet. Having no such concern, those who were associated with the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila however supported the idea, attributed to Wāṣil ibn ʿAṭāʾ, that the imām did not have to be the best of his contemporaries. They accepted the less meritorious as eligible for the office as long as he was just, knowledgeable in the “book” and the “sunna,” and agreeable to the community. Bishr ibn al-Muʿtamir and Abū Mūsā al-Murdār were among such individuals. It would have been odd to see them argue otherwise because the importance they assigned to the position of the imām was much less pronounced compared to that of other Muʿtazilīs. The Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila were not, as far as their main premise is concerned, on the wrong side in this debate.60 Finally, there has been a tendency to attribute the anarchism of early Islam to tribalism, which in some instances appears relevant—to the early Kharijīs for instance but not necessarily the later ones. In the case of the Muʿtazilī anarchists and the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila an argument based on tribal aspiration or tribal nostalgia does not stand to scrutiny. For the individuals belonged to scholarly circles in the early ninth century Baghdad, Basra, and other core urban areas and expressed views that suggest decidedly urban, communitarian, and sometimes elitist political ideologies. If these groups did indeed help pre-Islamic tribal political values survive in the early ninth century61 they did so by reinventing them within the context

59 Masāʾil, 55–56. 60 Masāʾil, 51–52 ff. for more detail. 61 Crone, God’s Caliph, 58–61, 269–70. For the role of tribal values in public life and politics see ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Dūrī, Muqaddima fī Tārīkh Ṣadr al-Islām (Beirut: Dār al-Mashriq, 1984), 42 ff.

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of an urban and agrarian empire, which renders an argument based on tribal motivations of little value analytically. Instead of tribalism, it may be more useful to look into the complex socio-political context of metropoli like Baghdad and Basra, with their functioning mosques, markets, neighborhoods, educational institutions, and charitable institutions to understand how anarchist ideas became one of the ideological choices available to dissenters. Conclusion Anarchist political thought developed within the context of the caliphate and was by and large about the caliphate. The stress on empowering the center justified the actions of centripetal forces. The emphasis on succession led to an opposition accusing the caliphate of becoming indistinguishable from kingship. The sustained political interest in forming orthodoxy certainly assisted the formation of alternative theological positions. The systematic emphasis on sovereignty engendered questions about legitimacy and monopoly of power. The civil wars suggested that the caliphate was failing to maintain legitimacy and justice. The question for the Ṣūfīs of the Muʿtazila was not how to reform the caliphate, but rather how to change the system more comprehensively. They were against the monopoly of power that deprived the community of its right of participation in governance. Inspired by their background, they took their religio-political opposition to its logical end and wanted to do away with rulership for good. Their dissent prompted reactions in the form of juridical/theological reprimand in sectarian language such as the accusation of heresy which often carried a serious socio-political consequence of exclusion from the political society. Ironically, however, the marginal views of these groups did help consolidate some of the Shīʿī, Jamāʿī, and the Muʿtazilī views on the imamate. Yet, from another perspective, their dissenting views expressed a vital function relating to the community’s role in public life. Even if their views remained marginal, it was this kind of emphasis on the community that encouraged in the medieval period the formation of universal discourses that were anchored not to any given political system, but to the transregionally spread umma itself and to social institutions emerging from and supporting it.



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Appendix Ps.-Nāshiʾ al-Akbar on the Muʿtazila (Masāʾil, 49–50) 82. All of the Muʿtazila is [divided into] two classes: [The people in] one class considered the imamate necessary (wājib). They claimed that erecting an imām is an obligation upon the community (umma) [stemming from] the essential creed of faith (ʿaqd al-dīn). [People in] another class denied that the imamate was obligatory and claimed that it was up to the Muslims if they institute or not institute an imām. None of the two choices is better than the other. They likened that to [performing] the daily prayer with and without an imām. They said: All of that is fine. Whichever [of the two options] one chooses is permissible ( jāʾiz). They claimed that what is required from people is to know what they need [to know] about obligations ( farāʾiḍ) which is specifically related to each one of them individually. If an incident occurs and they need the presence of a judge for [settling] it, such as inflicting the punishment of mutilation on the thief, the flagging of the adulterer, and fighting ( jihād) the enemy, they seek a man among the more righteous ones [in their community] and appoint him for that [purpose]. When that task [for which the person was appointed] has been completed, his authority expires and he [would have] no residual [authority] in that subject [anymore]. He [becomes] like any other Muslim—similar to a group of people who appoint someone to lead the [daily] prayer. Once the prayer has ended, his imamate also expires. He is not entitled to return to the imamate again without their consent. Their source in this [opinion] is that the Prophet died without appointing anybody as an imām for the people. They said: If the imamate was one of the fundamental creeds of religion, the Prophet would have appointed someone for it among the people and instructed [them about] it, similar to how he instructed [his people concerning] the qibla, the daily prayer, and the zakāt. 83. They claimed that the judgment of Islam (ḥukm al-islām) was opposed to the judgment of other nations concerning appointing kings and adopting kingdoms because the Prophet was not a king and did not appoint anyone over his community (umma) as king. They said: kingship calls for despotism (ghalaba) and monopoly of power (istiʾthār). In despotism and the monopoly of power there is the degeneration of religion, nullification of its laws (aḥkām) and the acceptance of the laws of kings, [which are] against the laws of the Book and the Sunna. They said: Deposing the king when he commits [a crime] invites disagreement among the umma,

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dispersal of the [unity of the] word, spilling of blood, and nullification of the laws. God the most exalted has commanded the Muslims to restrain whoever attempts to change anything from His laws. The kings are not to be trusted concerning replacement, change, and removing the laws from their [appropriate] places. If this is the case, whenever the imām makes a mistake the umma is responsible for preventing him [from doing that]. In this [confrontation], there is the erosion of religion, degeneration of it, [needlessly] making effort to fight [mujāhada] against the imāms, and [a perpetual] fear from the tyranny of the kings. [It is the case] especially since transgressors and evil doers (ahl al-baghy wa-al-fasād) incline toward the kings to affirm their actions, defend and help them. They said: If this is the case, the better [option] for the people is not to have an imām [at all]. If they appoint an imām, their obligation is to depose him whenever he willfully intends to remove the laws of religion. If he does not resign, they will fight against him. This is the opinion of the Ṣūfiyyat al-Muʿtazila who uphold the prohibition of the ways of earning ( yaqūlūna bi-taḥrīm al-makāsib). Among them there is Abū ʿImrān al-Raqāshī, Faḍl al-Ḥadathī, and Ḥusayn al-Kūfī. Bibliography ʿAbd al-Jabbār, Muḥammad ibn Ḥasan. Al-Mughnī fī Abwāb al-ʿAdl wa-al-Tawḥīd. Edited by ʿAbd al-Ḥālīm Maḥmūd and Sulaymān Dunyā. Cairo: Dār al-Miṣriyya li-al-Ta‌ʾlīf wa-al-Tarjama, n.d. Abū Yūsuf, Yaʿqūb ibn Ibrāhīm. Kitāb al-Kharāj. Edited by Iḥsān ʿAbbās. Beirut: Bank al-Kuwayt al-Ṣināʿī, 1985. Abū Zurʿa al-Dimashqī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAmr. Tārīkh Abī Zurʿa al-Dimashqī. Edited by Shukr Allāh Niʿmat Allāh al-Qūchānī. Damascus: Majmaʿ al-Lugha al-ʿArabiyya biDimashq, n.d. Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal. Al-Musnad. Edited by Aḥmad Muḥammad Shākir and al-Ḥusaynī ʿAbd al-Majīd Hāshim. Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1980. Andrae, Tor. In the Garden of Myrtles: Studies in Early Islamic Mysticism. Albany, NY: 1987. Al-Ashʿarī, Abū Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn. Maqālāt al-Islamiyyīn. Edited by Helmut Ritter. İstanbul: İstanbul Darülfünûn, Devlet Matbaası, 1927. Al-Baghdādī, ʿAbd al-Qāhir. Uṣūl al-Dīn. Edited by Helmut Ritter. İstanbul: Devlet Matbaası, 1928. Barclay, Harold. People Without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchism. London: Kahn & Averill, 1996. Bonner, Michael. “The Kitāb al-Kasb Attributed to al-Shaybānī: Poverty, Surplus, and the Circulation of Wealth.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 121 (2001). ——. “Poverty and Charity in the Rise of Islam.” In Michael Bonner et al., eds. Poverty and Charity in the Middle Eastern Contexts. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2003. ——. “Poverty and Economics in the Qur’an,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 35 (2005). Cooperson, Michael. Al-Ma‌ʾmūn. Oxford: Oneworld, 2005.



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Copeland, Rita. “Introduction: Dissenting Critical Practices.” In R. Copeland, ed. Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Crone, Patricia. “Ninth-Century Muslim Anarchists.” Past and Present 167 (2000). ——. God’s Rule: Government and Islam. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. —— and Hinds, Martin. God’s Caliph: Religious Authority in the First Centuries of Islam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. van Ess, Josef. Theologie und Gesselschaft in 2. Und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra: Eine Geschichte Des Religioesen Denkens Im Fruehen Islam. Berlin: Wanter De Gruyter, 1992. Hodgson, Marshall. The Venture of Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Ibn Ḥazm. Al-Faṣl fi al-Milal wa-al-Ahwāʾ wa-al-Nihal. Edited by Muḥammad Ibrāhīm Naṣr and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ʿUmayra. Jiddah: Sharikat Maktabāt ʿUkāẓ, 1982. Ibn al-Murtaḍā, Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā. Ṭabaqāt al-Muʿtazila. Edited by Susanna Diwald-Wilzer. Beirut:  Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 1961. Al-Jāḥiẓ, Abū ʿUthmān ʿAmr ibn Baḥr. “Al-Jawābāt fī al-Imāma.” In Rasāʾil al-Jāḥiẓ. Edited by ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn. Cairo: Maktabat al-Khanjī bi-Miṣr, 1979. ——. “Kitāb al-Futya.” In Rasāʾil al-Jāḥiẓ. ——. Al-‛Uthmāniyya. Edited by ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn. Cairo: Maktabat al-Khanjī bi-Miṣr and Maktabat al-Muthannā bi-Baghdād, 1955. Kelsay, John. “State and Civil Society.” In S. H. Hashmi, ed. Islamic Political Ethics: Civil Society, Pluralism, and Conflict. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002. Kennedy, Hugh. The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates. London: Longman, 2004. Lambton, A. K. S. State and Government in Medieval Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. Lapidus, Ira M. “Separation of State and Religion in the Early Islamic Society.” IJMES 6 (1975). Madelung, Wilferd. “Frühe muʿtazilitische Häresiographie: Das Kitāb al-Uṣūl des Ġaʿfar ibn Ḥarb.” Der Islam 57 (1980). ——. “The Vigilante Movement of Sahl ibn Salāma al-Khurāsānī and the Origins of Ḥanbalism Reconsidered.” Journal of Turkish Studies 14 (1990). Marshall, Peter. Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2008. Marsham, Andrew. Rituals of Islamic Monarchy: Accession and Succession in the First Muslim Empire. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009. Mayer, Toby. “Theology and Sufism.” In Tim Winter, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Melchert, Christopher. “The Ḥanābila and the Early Ṣūfīs,” Arabica 48 (2001). Al-Muḥāsībī, Ḥārith ibn Asad. Al-Makasib. Edited by ʿAbd al-Qādir Aḥmad ʿAṭā. Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Kutub al-Thaqāfiyya, 1987. Nawas, John. Al-Ma‌ʾmūn: Miḥna and the Caliphate. Nijmegen, 1992. ——. “A Reexamination of Three Current Explanations for al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s Introduction of the Miḥna.” IJMES 26 (1994). Al-Nawbakhtī, Al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā. Firaq al-Shīʿa. Edited by Helmut Ritter. İstanbul: Devlet Matbaası, 1931. Pseudo-al-Nāshī al-Akbar. Frühe Muʿtazilitische Häresiographie (Masāʾil al-Imāma). Edited by Josef van Ess. Beirut: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1971. Pseudo-Ibn Qutayba al-Dīnawarī. Al-Imāma wa al-Siyāsa. Edited by Saʿīd Ṣāliḥ Mūsā. Unpublished Masters thesis. Amman: al-Jāmiʿa al-Urduniyya, 1978. Al-Rāzī, Fakhr al-Dīn Muḥammad ʿUmar. Manāqib al-Imām al-Shāfiʿī. Edited by Aḥmad Ḥijāzī al-Saqqā. Cairo: Maktabat Kulliyāt al-Azhariyya, 1986. Al-Shaybānī, Muhammad ibn al Hasan. Al-Kasb. Edited by Suhayl Zakkār. Dimashq: ʿAbd al-Hādī Ḥarṣūnī, 1980. Al-Shāfiʿī, Muḥammad ibn Idrīs. Al-Risāla. Edited by Aḥmad Muḥammad Shākir. Cairo: Maktabat Ibn Taymiyya, 1940.

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Smith, Margaret. Studies in Early Mysticism in the Near and Middle East. Oxford: Oneworld, 1995. Sobieroj, Florian. “The Muʿtazila and Ṣūfism.” In F. de Jong and Bernd Radtke, eds. Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1999. Yücesoy, Hayrettin. Taṭawwur al-Fikr al-Siyāsī ʿinda Ahl al-Sunna: Fatrat al-Takwīn. Amman: Dār al-Bashīr, 1993. ——. Messianic Beliefs and Imperial Politics in Medieval Islam. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2009.

Scholars and Charlatans on the Baghdad-Khurasan Circuit from the Ninth to the Eleventh Centuries Jonathan A. C. Brown Introduction Sunnī Islam emerged as a sect that built its claims to legitimacy on the primacy of revealed knowledge (ʿilm) and its preservation from the whims of the masses, the vagaries of heresy and the temptations of power. A convincing argument can be made, however, that the glowing success of Sunnī Islam from the mid 800’s CE onwards has been due to its tremendous popular appeal and the approval that its political quietism earned from the state. Sunnī Muslim scholars envisioned their role as, and justified their authority by, being the guardians who educated the Muslim masses and shielded them from misguidance. A chief threat to the masses were the popular preachers who enthralled them in the mosques and who, perhaps more acutely, presented an alluring alternative to the Sunnī ʿulamāʾ as religious references. By the middle of the tenth century, the institutional security that Sunnī Muslim scholars enjoyed enabled them to become more active participants in the belle-lettrist cosmopolitanism of the ninth to the eleventh centuries. Sunnī scholars continued to condemn the marginal or heretical material purveyed by popular preachers, until, by the time of the great Sunnī preacher, jurist, and historian Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 1201) their antics had come to provide fodder for the burgeoning literary dimensions of Sunnī scholarly culture. The Sunnī ʿUlamāʾ and the Masses There is was no process of ordination in early Islam, nor did the Islamic community of the first three hundred years erect any stable institutions of learning that could conceivably produce graduates marked for religious distinction. Instead, the emergence of the Muslim scholarly class, the ʿulamāʾ, took place through a communal valorization of sacred knowledge, or ʿilm, a gradual consensus on major pious figures who transmitted this knowledge, and the networks of the teacher/student relationships

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that radiated outward from those early scholars.1 The idea of a scholarly class was thus a creation of that nascent class itself, which justified itself as the guardians of true religion and the guides of the Muslim masses. The conglomeration of the ʿulamāʾ class was also intimately tied to popular appeal, as mass acclaim as a reference on matters of faith and being a locus of blessing was a signature of a scholar’s piety and right guidance. Although some early Muslim schools of thought, such as the Ḥanafī school of law, became widely established through ʿAbbāsid sponsorship,2 the movement calling itself the “People of the Sunna and the Collective (ahl al-sunna wa al-jamāʿa)” (the core of what would mature into Sunnī Islam) owed much of its initial strength to popular appeal.3 This certainly was the case for Ibn Ḥanbal (d. 855), the quintessential Sunnī in retrospect, who made his reputation through refusing to align himself with the ʿAbbāsid theological agenda during the Miḥna (833–48 CE).4 Al-Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī (d. 857), who feuded bitterly with Ibn Ḥanbal over the acceptability of engaging in speculative theology, remarked with contempt how refusing to cave in to the demands of the state had garnered for ‘some scholars’ great appeal among the masses.5 The Sunnī ʿulamāʾ defined their role as guides through a language of pious selectivity. It was their duty to direct the people towards the proper founts of knowledge as well as to exercise discretion in what knowledge they shared with the gullible masses. The great ninth-century Muslim legal scholar al-Shāfiʿī (d. 820) divided the Muslim community into two groups, the Elect (khāṣṣa) and the Masses (ʿāmma). It was the duty of the Elect,

1 For an investigation of this process in the early Sunnī community, see Scott C. Lucas, Constructive Critics, Ḥadīth Literature and the Articulation of Sunnī Islam (Leiden: Brill, 2004). 2 See Nurit Tsafrir, The History of an Islamic School of Law: the Spread of Early Hanafism (Cambridge, MA: Islamic Legal Studies Program, Harvard University, 2004). 3 The earliest attestations I have found of ‘Sunnī’ scholars referring to themselves as ahl al-sunna wa-al-jamāʿa come from the early and mid ninth century; see Abū ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī (d. 892), Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī: kitāb al-zakāt, bāb mā jā’a fī faḍl al-ṣadaqa. In al-Shāfiʿī’s (d. 820) works we find references to the ahl al-ḥadīth; see Muḥammad ibn Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī, Kitāb al-Umm (Cairo: Dār al-Shaʿb, 1968–), 7: 256. 4 See Livnat Holtzman, “Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Third Edition. Ed. Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas and Everett Rowson (Leiden: Brill, 2010). See also Ibn Qutayba, Taʾwīl mukhtalif al-ḥadīth, ed. Muḥammad Zuhrī al-Najjār (Beirut: Dār al-Jīl, 1973), 17. 5 Al-Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī is almost certainly referring to his great rival Ibn Ḥanbal when he mentions how some scholars were acclaimed among the masses and scholars alike for their refusal to have any dealings with the state; al-Ḥārith al-Muḥāsibī, al-Makāsib, ed. Muḥammad ʿUthmān al-Khishsha (Cairo: Maktabat al-Qurʾān, 1984), 113.

scholars and charlatans on the baghdad-khurasan circuit 87 the scholars, to ponder and formulate the details of the proper Islamic lifestyle for promulgation amongst their flock. As a variety of early Muslim scholars such as Muḥammad ibn Sīrīn (d. 728) were quoted as warning, “This knowledge is religion, so look from whom you take your religion.”6 Muslim scholars of this formative period believed in carefully regulating the masses’ diet of religious knowledge.7 Precedent for this cautious practice was found in the Sunna of the Prophet himself. In their ḥadīth collections, al-Bukhārī (d. 870) and Muslim (d. 875) both included a report in which the Prophet instructs one of his Companions not to tell the people that God would protect from Hellfire anyone who professed that there is only one God and that Muḥammad is His prophet; the Prophet feared that such a guarantee might encourage laxity in people’s practice.8 A pillar of Sunnī Islam in Nīshābūr, Ibn Khuzayma (d. 923) explained that the Prophet had told his wife ʿĀʾisha that he had not seen a vision of God Himself during his miraculous ascension to Heaven (contrary to mainstream Sunnī belief ) because he was speaking to her “according to her mental capacity (ʿalā qadr ʿaqlihā).”9 The Successor Abū Qilāba (d. 722) is reported to have said: “Do not tell ḥadīths to him who would not know and accept them ( lā yaʿrifuhu), for indeed it will not benefit him and harm him.”10 Early Sunnī scholars regularly quoted ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as saying, “Tell the people only what they can accept and leave aside what they would reject; do you want God and His Prophet to be disbelieved?”11 The ʿulamāʾ’s relationship to the masses was conflicted, however, and a cause of perpetual tension for scholars. On the one hand, they were the

6 Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim: muqaddima, bāb fī anna al-isnād min al-dīn. 7 Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī stated that refraining from telling people ḥadīths whose evident meaning strengthens heresy is “desired (maṭlūb)”; Ibn Ḥajar, Fatḥ al-bārī sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, ed. Ayman Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī and ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Bin Bāz (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1997), 1: 300. 8 Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī: kitāb al-ʿilm, bāb man khaṣṣa bi’l-ʿilm qawman dūn qawm karāhiyyatan an lā yafahamū; Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim: kitāb al-īmān, bāb man laqiya Allāh bi’l-īmān. 9 Cited from Ibn Khuzayma’s Sunnī manifesto, the Kitāb al-Tawḥīd; Badr al-Dīn al-Zarkashī, al-Ijāba li-īrād mā istadrakathu ʿĀʾisha ʿalā al-ṣaḥāba, ed. Zakariyyā ʿAlī Yūsuf (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-ʿĀṣima, [n.d.]), 47. 10 Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Kitāb al-Jāmiʿ li-akhlāq al-rāwī wa ādāb al-sāmiʿ, ed. Muḥammad Raʾfat Saʿīd (Mansoura, Egypt: Dār al-Wafāʾ, 2002), 1: 379. 11 . . . ḥaddithū al-nās bi-mā yaʿrifūn wa daʿū mā yunkirūn, a-tuḥibbūn an yukadhdhaba Allāh wa rasūluhu?! Muḥammad bin Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī: kitāb al-ʿilm, bāb man khaṣṣa bi’l-ʿilm qawman dūn qawm karāhiyyatan an lā yafhamū. This is also attributed to the Prophet, (umirnā an nukallima an-nās ʿalā qadr ʿuqūlihim); Badr al-Dīn al-Zarakshī, al-Tadhkira fī al-aḥādīth al-mushtahira, ed. Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā (Beirut: Dār alKutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1406/1986), 107.

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enlightened guides. In the above-mentioned warnings we see an expression of the paternalistic attitude of the ʿulamāʾ—do not tell the masses what might be over their heads. But particularly in ʿAlī’s well-known admonition, we also catch a glimpse of the ʿulamāʾ’s fear of the fickleness of consumer choice—don’t tell the masses something that might make them stop listening to you. Muslim scholars admitted the temptation and mourned those who fell into it. Scholars could be tempted to pander to the masses or to the rich, with the ninth-century Muslim scholar al-Dārimī (d. 868) quoting an earlier authority as bemoaning how: The People of Knowledge in the past used to protect their knowledge from the worldly folk (ahl al-dunyā), and the worldly folk would incline towards that knowledge and subordinate their worldly interests to [the scholars]; but today the People of Knowledge subordinate their knowledge to the worldly folk. . . .12

In once instance in the late 800’s, two Sunnī ḥadīth scholars stopped short of correcting a preacher who was narrating false ḥadīths due to their fear of the reaction of the mass audience.13 Despite such self-criticism, external threats always seem to evoke more real concern than internal ones. In the eyes of the Sunnī scholarly class, the more serious danger presented by the whims of the masses was the creation of sources of authority outside the now-established domain of ʿilm. Chief among these were popular storytellers, or quṣṣāṣ, who preached on the streets and in the mosques of cities like Basra and Baghdad.14 The ʿulamāʾ disapproved of storytellers ostensibly because of the misguided and heretical material they purveyed, as we see in Ibn al-Waḍḍāḥ’s (d. 899) strong condemnation of preachers in his early work on Heretical Innovations and their Prohibition (al-Bidaʿ wa-al-nahy ʿanhā).15 Their stories were not reliably drawn from the body of knowledge considered to be transmitted from or in accord with Muḥammad’s legacy, and the resulting beliefs risked infecting the Muslim populace with heresies. In 12 Sunan al-Dārimī: introductory chapters, bāb fī iʿẓām al-ʿilm. 13 Mullā ʿAlī Qārī, al-Asrār al-marfūʿa fī al-aḥādīth al-mawḍūʿa, ed. Muḥammad Luṭfī Ṣabbāgh (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1986), 85. 14 The tenth-century Shāfiʿī jurist of Bust, Ḥamd al-Khaṭṭābī (d. 999), offers and interesting taxonomy of preachers: two acceptable kinds are the mudhakkir, who reminds people of the blessings of heaven, and the wāʿiẓ, who instills in the audience a fear of hell. The qāṣṣ (storyteller), however, is untrustworthy and uses unreliable stories; Ḥamd al-Khaṭṭābī, Maʿālim al-Sunan (Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿIlmiyya, 1981), 4 188. 15 Muḥammad Ibn al-Waḍḍāḥ al-Qurṭubī, al-Bidaʿ wa-al-nahy ʿanhā, ed. Muḥammad Aḥmad Dahmān (Cairo: Dār al-Ṣafā, 1990), 26–27.

scholars and charlatans on the baghdad-khurasan circuit 89 the papyrus fragments of Wahb ibn Munabbih’s Story of David (Ḥadīth Dāwūd) we find such pericopes as the scandal of David and Bathsheba, which horrified Sunnī scholars like ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Dāwūdī (d. 1074–75) with the unacceptable notion that prophets could lapse into repugnant ­immorality.16 “No report of the story of David and Uriah has been established [as authentic],” insisted al-Dāwūdī, “nor should it be thought of a prophet that he could want to kill a believer.”17 The story of the Satanic Verses, told on the streets of Baghdad, similarly alarmed Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 1201) with the notion that Muḥammad could have erred in receiving his revelation.18 It is difficult, however, to distinguish exactly what separated a storyteller from a scholar based solely on matters of ideological content. For we find the same contentious stories in the ḥadīth works of eminently respected scholars of the same period, such as the Tafsīr of Ibn Abī Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 938) (both the Satanic Verses and David and Bathsheba), the Musnad of al-Bazzār (d. 904), the Muʿjam al-kabīr of Abū al-Qāsim al-Ṭabarānī (d. 971) of Iṣfahān and the Aḥādīth al-mukhtāra of Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn al-Maqdisī (d. 1245) (for the story of the Satanic Verses).19 Not to suggest that ʿulamāʾ like Ibn al-Jawzī had no concern for scrutinizing their surroundings for heretical import, but what truly assured membership in the ʿulamāʾ was not what one included in one’s books. Rather it was being integrated into the network of acknowledged scholarly transmitters of ʿilm and knowing which sources were kosher. The famous scholar Thābit al-Bunānī (d. circa 744) was known to other scholars as a storyteller. He was approved of as a scholar himself, however, after he demonstrated to established scholars that he understood well the science of the isnād, or chains of transmission for ʿilm.20 The ʿulamāʾ feared the storytellers for the sake of the masses, but their palpable contempt for their flocks belied insecurity over their authority. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (d. 1071) felt that the masses would believe ­anything, or, more importantly, anyone. He explains that, “the cause for

16 Raif Georges Khouri, ed., Wahb b. Munabbih (Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1972), 71ff. 17 Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ bin Mūsā, Kitāb al-Shifāʾ (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 2002), 364–65. 18 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAlī Ibn al-Jawzī, Kitāb al-Quṣṣāṣ wa al-mudhakkirīn, ed. Merlin Swartz (Beirut: Dar El-Machreq, 1986), 103. 19 For a full list of the locations of the Satanic Verses story, see Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī, Naṣb al-majānīq li-nasf qiṣṣat al-gharānīq (Damascus: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, [1952].), 4–5. For the story of David and Bathsheba, see al-Albānī, Silsilat al-aḥādīth al-ḍaʿīfa, 2nd ed. (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Maʿārif al-Islāmiyya, 2000), 1: 485. 20 Ibn al-Jawzī, Kitāb al-Quṣṣāṣ, 153 of English translation.

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the ­storytellers telling fantastic tales is their awareness of the shortcomings and ignorance of the masses. . . .”21 Ibn al-Jawzī bemoaned how ignorant scholars giving Friday sermons or Sufi preachers would wreak havoc with the proper beliefs of the impressionable population of Baghdad, “those ignorant masses who are effectively cattle ( fī ʿidād al-bahāʾim). The people who hear these preachers accept their words blindly, saying ‘The scholar so-and-so said . . .,’ for the scholar in the eyes of the masses is whoever ascends the pulpit.”22 The Sunnī ʿulamāʾ and Adab in the ʿAbbāsid Period The Sunnī ʿulamāʾ were religious leaders, but during the tenth and eleventh centuries they increasingly became participants in the cosmopolitan and fully-rounded intellectual elite of the ʿAbbāsid literary world. The Muslim religious worldview early on required the subordination of poetry to the Qurʾān and proper belief, featuring examples like the great Pre-Islamic poet Labīd, who resigned never to compose poetry again after hearing the dulcet meter of the Qurʾān.23 In the early and middle ʿAbbāsid periods the notion of adab, or belle-lettres, was heavily cultivated by government bureaucrats and litterateurs like al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 868) and al-Ṣāhib Ibn al-ʿAbbād (d. 995), who often identified with strains of Muslim ration­ alism (in this case, Muʿtazilism) opposed to Sunnī Islam. Yet the Sunnī ʿulamāʾ in cities such as Baghdad or Nīshābūr gradually increased their participation in these literary activities as well, particularly after the ninth century. Even the most conservative Sunnī ʿulamāʾ peppered their religious works with verses of poetry of all colors, and many penned works specifically devoted to poets and poetry. They recalled the Prophetic ḥadīth that “Indeed in poetry there is wisdom.”24 Ibn Qutayba (d. 889) devoted his Taʾwīl mukhtalif al-ḥadīth to defending the ahl al-ḥadīth and their textualist inclinations against their Muʿtazilite foes, but he also composed a biographical work on great poets and their compositions. Our earliest surviving biographical dictionary of poets comes from

21 Al-Khaṭīb, al-Jāmiʿ, 2: 199. 22 Ibn al-Jawzī, Kitāb al-Quṣṣāṣ, 109. 23 C. Brockelmann, “Labīd b. Rabīʿ,” EI2. 24 Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī: kitāb al-ādāb, bāb mā yajūzu min al-shiʿr.

scholars and charlatans on the baghdad-khurasan circuit 91 the Baṣran ḥadīth scholar Ibn Sallām al-Jumaḥī (d. 845–6)—a teacher of the two Sunnī pillars Ibn Ḥanbal and Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn (d. 848).25 Of course, the ʿulamāʾ demanded that the religious sciences and the place of the religious scholar remain paramount. When the famous Sunnī ḥadīth scholar al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī (d. 1014) heard that the equally famous litterateur Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī (d. 1008) had arrived in Nīshāpūr to a crowd of admirers and belittled the memorization of ḥadīths, al-Ḥākim acted decisively. He approached Badīʿ al-Zamān and asked him to memorize a fascicule of ḥadīths. When he returned a week later to test al-Hamadhānī, the litterateur could not remember the specifics of the chains of transmission. Al-Ḥākim scolded him for mocking something more difficult to memorize than poetry and told him, “Know your place.”26 Charlatans and Heresy as Entertainment Like earlier belle-lettrists such as Cicero, Juvenal, or Lucian of Samosata, the Sunnī ʿulamāʾ developed an appreciation for humorous and satirical samplings. However much they might object to this claim, they followed in the footsteps of ‘libertins’ like al-Jāḥiẓ and Badīʿ al-Zamān in composing books designed to entertain while educating, or to educate while entertaining. One notices the polyvalence of humor and religious knowledge in figures like the legendary persona of the Medinese jester Ashʿab (d. circa 771), whose clowning and witticisms multiplied in popular transmission but whose use of language also appeared as proof texts in serious scholarly works on grammar.27 Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī’s History of Baghdad is first and foremost a work of Sunnī triumphalism, but the author intersperses the work with entertaining vignettes that are sometimes tinged with heresy. He recounts how the ʿAbbāsid courtier Abū al-ʿAtāhiya (d. 826) once challenged the Muʿtazilite scholar Thumāma ibn Ashras (fl. 820’s) to a theological debate on the issue of whether people’s actions are created by God (the Sunnī stance) or by humans themselves (the

25 See Ibn Sallām al-Jumaḥī, Ṭabaqāt fuḥūl al-shuʿarāʾ, ed. Maḥmūd Shākir (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1952). 26 Al-Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ, ed. Shuʿayb al-Arnāʾūṭ and Muḥammad ʿAraqsūsī (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1998), 17: 173. 27 See Hilary Kilpatrick, “The ‘genuine’ Ashʿab. The relativity of fact and fiction in early adab texts,” in Story-Telling in the framework of non-fictional Arabic Literature, ed. Stefan Leder (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998), 94–117. See al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh Baghdād, ed. Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1997), 7: 42 ff.

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Muʿtazilite stance) in the presence of Muʿtazilite caliph al-Maʾmūn. When Abū al-ʿAtāhiya began wiggling his hand and asked Thumāma “Who is moving this?”, Thumāma responded “One whose mother is a fornicator.” When the exasperated Abū al-ʿAtāhiya objected to the caliph, the ruler simply replied that Thumāma had answered the question fairly.28 There is no better example of the overlap between ʿilm and adab than the prolific Ḥanbalī scholar, preacher and Sufi of Baghdad Ibn al-Jawzī. In his voluminous history of the central Islamic lands, (al-Muntaẓam), Ibn al-Jawzī occasionally revels in subversive stories. He tells that in Baghdad in 1107 a blind girl appeared who could tell the “secrets of people.” She could, for example, tell the shape and color of hidden rings and jewelry and the contents of boxes of all sorts. The populace was fascinated and befuddled by her. Neither the ʿulamāʾ nor the people managed to discover her methods. The plot of this vignette culminates when one man comes to her with “his hand on his penis and asked her ‘what is in his hand?’ ”29 Ibn al-Jawzī also devoted a stern, book-length diatribe to popular story­ tellers and their vile influence on society. Yet even in this serious work Ibn al-Jawzī includes a whole chapter that can only be described as comic relief. Here the charlatan preachers are appreciated as humorous literary figures rather than real threats to orthodoxy. One preacher, Sayfawayh (Sayfūyā) is cast repeatedly as a jester figure. In one story he is riding a donkey near a graveyard and the donkey balks at a grave. Sayfawayh concludes, “It must be that the occupant of that grave was a veterinarian!”30 Another storyteller, Abū Kaʿb al-Qāṣṣ, is said to have remarked once while teaching, “The name of the wolf that ate Joseph was such and such.” When

28 Al-Khaṭīb, Tārīkh Baghdād, 7: 157. It is interesting that in his attack on al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī for including anti-Ḥanafī reports in his Tārīkh, the 20th-century scholar Muḥammad Zāhid al-Kawtharī (d. 1952) compares al-Khaṭīb to the licentious ʿAbbāsid-era poet Abū Nuwās due to his unseemly selections; Muḥammad Zāhid al-Kawtharī, Taʾnīb al-Khaṭīb ʿalā mā sāqahu fī tarjamat Abī Ḥanīfa min akādhīb (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Azhar, 1998), 23. 29 Ibn al-Jawzī says it is clear by tawātur that her father only gave her the questions, and the Ḥanbalī scholar Ibn ʿAqīl assures readers that this does not mean that she knew “inner truths (al-bawāṭin)” but only that God had given her this special faculty, just as plants and stones have special features; Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam fī tārīkh al-mulūk waal-umam, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā and Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1992), 17: 109–10. 30 Ibn al-Jawzī, Kitāb al-Quṣṣāṣ, 111.

scholars and charlatans on the baghdad-khurasan circuit 93 an audience member objected that Joseph was not eaten by a wolf, he replied, “Then it is the name of the wolf that did not eat Joseph.”31 Several of Ibn al-Jawzī’s works resemble the sophistic works of Lucian of Samosata and al-Jāḥiẓ more than the production of a devout ʿālim. In his Akhbār al-adhkiyāʾ (Stories of Cunning People), a book in which reports are narrated by formally impressive but highly unreliable (and also highly unnecessary) chains of transmission, Ibn al-Jawzī reports that the great Abū Ḥanīfa was told by one of his students that the family of the women he hoped to marry was coming to ask Abū Ḥanīfa’s opinion about their prospective son-in-law. Abū Ḥanīfa instructed the student to, when he came to see him with the family, hold his penis in his hand (presumably under his robe!), so that when the woman’s family asked Abū Ḥanīfa about the student’s financial status he could say, “I saw that he has in his hands what’s worth 10,000 dirhams.”32 In another of Ibn al-Jawzī’s adab works, Reports of Idiots and Heedless Folk (Akhbār al-ḥamqā wa-al-mughaffalīn), he includes numerous amusing examples of ḥadīth scholars misspeaking during their dictation sessions and accidentally perverting the meaning of ḥadīths. More surprisingly, misrepresenting the Prophet, normally the gravest of sins, here becomes a source of entertainment. In one story, Ibn al-Jawzī tells how one unreliable ḥadīth transmitter was asked, “Is it true that you heard from your father, from your grandfather, from the Prophet that Noah’s ark circumambulated the Kaʿba seven times and then prayed two prayer cycles behind the station of Abraham?” The man replies, “Yes” to this amusingly ridiculous ḥadīth, which Ibn al-Jawzī had otherwise used as text book example of heretically lying about the Prophet in his very serious work The Book of Forged Ḥadīths (Kitāb al-Mawḍūʿāt).33 Ibn al-Jawzī’s Stories of Cunning People and his Reports on Idiots invert the scholar/charlatan relationship and the duties of the ʿulamāʾ. The books feature detailed, full-length chains of transmission from Ibn al-Jawzī back to the Prophet and to innumerable titans of the Sunnī past. But instead of fulfilling their original purpose of authenticating ḥadīths, legal opinions or anecdotes, these chains only serve to give the work an air of scholarly cosmopolitanism. The stories and ḥadīths they communicate are either

31 Ibn al-Jawzī, Kitāb al-Quṣṣāṣ, 112. 32 Ibn al-Jawzī, Kitāb al-Adhkiyāʾ (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Tijārī, [1966]), 76. 33 Ibn al-Jawzī, Akhbār al-ḥamqā wa al-mughaffalīn, ed. Muḥammad ʿAlī Abū al-ʿAbbās (Cairo: Maktabat Ibn Sīnā, 1990), 72; idem, Kitāb al-Mawḍūʿāt, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Muḥammad ʿUthmān (Medina: al-Maktaba al-Salafiyya, 1966–68), 1: 100.

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comical, forgeries or unintended errors. Instead of being threats to orthodoxy or the authority of the ʿulamāʾ, however, they serve as entertainment for that scholarly class. Conclusion In the absence of early clerical institutions, scholarly authority could either come from state endorsement or popular support. Part of the historical success of Sunnī Islam no doubt comes from its having secured both. The relationship between the Sunnī ʿulamāʾ and the state has always been complicated and has been well-studied. The relationship between the Sunnī Muslim ʿulamāʾ and the masses has been equally complex. The Sunnī ʿulamāʾ justified their existence by claiming to be the guides of the masses, but they also served at the masses’ pleasure. Few threats loomed as large in the eyes of the ʿulamāʾ as the popular preachers and storytellers who might supplant them—hence the great energies that Sunnī scholars devoted to designating and condemning such figures. It is interesting that it was only after the institutional establishment of Sunnism in the eleventh century, with its guild-like schools of law and state sponsored madrasas, that the ʿulamāʾ could turn to popular preachers as material for entertainment within their secure scholarly elite. Bibliography Al-Albānī, Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn. Naṣb al-majānīq li-nasf qiṣṣat al-gharānīq. Damascus: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1952. ——. Silsilat al-aḥādīth al-ḍaʿīfa. 2nd ed. Riyadh: Maktabat al-Maʿārif al-Islāmiyya, 2000. Al-Bukhārī, Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl. Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī. Cited through kitāb, bāb format. Al-Dārimī, ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. Sunan al-Dārimī. Cited through kitāb, bāb ­format. Al-Dhahabī, Shams al-Dīn. Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ. Ed. Shuʿayb al-Arnāʾūṭ et als. 11th ed. Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1998. Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī. Fatḥ al-bārī sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī. Ed. Ayman Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī and ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Bin Bāz. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1997. Ibn al-Jawzī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAlī. Akhbār al-ḥamqā wa al-mughaffalīn. Ed. Muḥammad ʿAlī Abū al-ʿAbbās. Cairo: Maktabat Ibn Sīnā, 1990. ——. Kitāb al-Adhkiyāʾ. Beirut: al-Maktab al-Tijārī, [1966]. ——. Kitāb al-Mawḍūʿāt. Ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Muḥammad ʿUthmān. Medina: al- Maktaba al-Salafiyya, 1966–68. ——. Kitāb al-Quṣṣāṣ wa al-mudhakkirīn. Ed. Merlin Swartz. Beirut: Dar El-Machreq, 1986. ——. Al-Muntaẓam fī tārīkh al-mulūk wa-al-umam. Ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā and Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1992.

scholars and charlatans on the baghdad-khurasan circuit 95 Ibn Qutayba. Taʾwīl mukhtalif al-ḥadīth. Ed. Muḥammad Zuhrī al-Najjār. Beirut: Dār al-Jīl, 1973. Ibn Sallām al-Jumaḥī. Ṭabaqāt fuḥūl al-shuʿarāʾ. Ed. Maḥmūd Shākir. Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1952. Ibn al-Waḍḍāḥ, Muḥammad al-Qurṭubī. Al-Bidaʿ wa-al-nahy ʿanhā. Ed. Muḥammad Aḥmad Dahmān. Cairo: Dār al-Ṣafā, 1990. Al-Kawtharī, Muḥammad Zāhid. Taʾnīb al-Khaṭīb ʿalā mā sāqahu fī tarjamat Abī Ḥanīfa min akādhīb. Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Azhar, 1998. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī. Kitāb al-Jāmiʿ li-akhlāq al-rāwī wa ādāb al-sāmiʿ. Ed. Muḥammad Raʾfat Saʿīd. Mansoura, Egypt: Dār al-Wafāʾ, 2002. ——. Tārīkh Baghdād. Ed. Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1997. Al-Khaṭṭābī, Abū Sulaymān Ḥamd. Maʿālim al-Sunan. Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿIlmiyya, 1981. Khouri, Raif Georges, ed. Wahb b. Munabbih. Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz, 1972. Kilpatrick, Hilary. “The ‘genuine’ Ashʿab. The relativity of fact and fiction in early adab texts.” In Story-Telling in the framework of non-fictional Arabic Literature, ed. Stefan Leder, 94–117. Wiesbaden: Harrossowitz, 1998. Lucas, Scott C. Constructive Critics, Ḥadīth Literature and the Articulation of Sunnī Islam. Leiden: Brill, 2004. Al-Muḥāsibī, al-Ḥārith. Al-Makāsib. Ed. Muḥammad ʿUthmān al-Khishsha. Cairo: Maktabat al-Qurʾān, 1984. Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ bin Mūsā. Kitāb al-Shifā bi-taʿrīf ḥuqūq al-muṣṭafā. Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 2002. Qārī, Mullā ʿAlī. Al-Asrār al-marfūʿa fī al-aḥādīth al-mawḍūʿa. Ed. Muḥammad Luṭfī Ṣabbāgh. Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī, 1986. Al-Shāfiʿī, Muḥammad ibn Idrīs. Kitāb al-Umm. Cairo: Dār al-Shaʿb, 1968–. Al-Tirmidhī, Abū ʿĪsā Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā. Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī. Cited through kitāb, bāb format. Tsafrir, Nurit. The History of an Islamic School of Law: the Spread of Early Hanafism. Cambridge, MA: Islamic Legal Studies Program, Harvard University, 2004. Al-Zarkashī, Badr al-Dīn Muḥammad. Al-Ijāba li-īrād mā istadrakathu ʿĀʾisha ʿalā al-ṣaḥāba. Ed. Zakariyyā ʿAlī Yūsuf. Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-ʿĀṣima, [n.d.]. ——. Al-Tadhkira fī al-aḥādīth al-mushtahira. Ed. Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1986.

WERE THE ISMĀʿĪLĪ ASSASSINS THE FIRST SUICIDE ATTACKERS? AN EXAMINATION OF THEIR RECORDED ASSASSINATIONS David Cook Introduction and Statement of the Thesis Fear of Ismāʿīlīs in Islamic history is usually seen as the equivalent of that of the communist menace during the 1950s. The popular perception was that they were everywhere, they could be anybody, they were mysterious and messianic, they could kill anybody at any time and represented an existential evil for both Sunnīs and Shīʿīs. Repeatedly in the history books we read of massacres of whole populations on the off chance that some of the Ismāʿīlīs were among the slaughtered. The panic concerning them recorded in the sources is tangible.1 Even non-Muslim groups like the Crusaders and the Mongols were not immune to this terror. It was in part due to the reputation of the Nizārī branch of the Ismāʿīlīs in Syria and Iran as subversives and as assassins that the Mongols invaded the Muslim world, and ended up nearly exterminating the entire sect, founding the Il-Khānate of Persia in the process. And the Crusaders, through pilgrims and rumors, spread the fear of the Assassins—who were their next-door neighbors in Syria—back to Europe, where it entered both the literary and popular imagination. No doubt to some extent this panic was justified. The Ismāʿīlīs cultivated a secret esoteric teaching that indoctrinated young disciples,2 and won secret converts at the highest levels of society. Often they were able to suborn fortresses and cities by such conversions, which increased the paranoia of the populations around them. The major source of the mystique of the Ismāʿīlīs was the assassin, whose name passed into European and other languages (despite the fact that political and religious murders

1 E.g., the massacre in Isfahan described by Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil fī al-taʾrīkh, ed. C. Tornberg (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1979), 10: 315. 2 For examples of this process see James Morris, The Master and the Disciple (London: I.B. Taurus, 2001), a translation of the text of al-ʿĀlim wa-al-ghulām (ed. Muṣṭafā Ghālib in his Arbaʿ kutub ḥaqqāniyya [Beirut: al-Muʾassasa al-Jāmiʿiyya li-al-Dirasāt wa-al-Nashr, 1987]) detailing the indoctrination process.

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are well-known prior to their time).3 Today one frequently finds that the Assassins are said to be the ancestors of contemporary suicide attackers. According to Bernard Lewis: 4 The killing by the Assassin of his victim was not only an act of piety; it also had a ritual, almost a sacramental quality. It is significant that in all their murders, in both Persia and Syria, the Assassins always used a dagger; never poison, never missiles, though there must have been occasions when these would have been easier and safer. The Assassin is almost always caught, and usually indeed makes no attempt to escape; there is even a suggestion that to survive a mission was shameful.

This statement was developed by David Rapoport in his article on the classical terrorist groups, where he states, when discussing the differences between those assassinations commissioned by the Prophet Muhammad and the Ismāʿīlī Assassins, “A major difference between the earlier assassins and the later fidayeen is that one group returned to Mohammed for judgment, whereas the other actively sought martyrdom.”5 The idea is in fact cited by a great number of people who have written about contemporary suicide attacks, the most influential of whom was Robert Pape.6 This article will examine the accounts of a number of prominent Ismāʿīlī assassinations to see whether it is possible to claim them as suicide attacks, or whether this view needs to be revised. The Assassination of Niẓām al-Mulk No other single assassination that the Assassins carried out attracted more attention from the Muslim (and Western) historians than that of the famous and well-connected vizier Niẓām al-Mulk in 1092. Not only was Niẓām al-Mulk a high-profile target, a very cultured and intellectual 3 Many legends of the Ismāʿīlīs have been debunked by Farhad Daftary, The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Ismāʿīlīs (London, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995). 4 Bernard Lewis, The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 127. 5 David Rapoport, “Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Tradition,” American Political Science Review 78 (1984): 658–77, at p. 668. 6 Karin Andriolo, “Murder by Suicide: Episodes from Muslim History,” American Anthropologist 104: 3 (2002): 738–9; Shaul Shay, The Shahids (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2003), 24–26; Christoph Reuter, My Life is a Weapon: A Modern History of Suicide Bombing (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 23–27; Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 6–7; Robert Pape, Dying to Win (New York: Random House, 2005), 12–13, 33–35; and Ami Pedahzur, Suicide Terrorism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005), 9.



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man (who was known for his foundation of the Niẓāmiyya Madrasa in Baghdad, afterwards a central institution for the promotion of Sunnī orthodoxy), but his entire family was the mainstay of the Saljūq dynasty for the next century supplying viziers, courtiers, distinguished patrons of scholarship and many others to the capital of Baghdad.7 Consequently, unlike some of the other assassinations, that of Niẓām al-Mulk was wellreported (and is also frequently cited as an example of a suicide attack by contemporary scholars, including Pape). Niẓām al-Mulk had incurred the wrath of the Nizārī Ismāʿīlīs centered around their leader Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ8 by trying to encourage the Saljūq ruler Malikshāh to annihilate them, and besieged him in his castle. According to the early Saljūq account of al-Ḥusaynī (ca. 1180):9 . . . when Niẓām al-Mulk had shut up the ways of this fortress [Alamūt, the Persian capital of the Assassins] with armies, after the dissention of Ibn al-Ṣabbāḥ had been verified and his evil become widespread, its difficulties were magnified. Two men left the fortress with the shoes of their horses reversed, so that the soldiers surrounding the fortress through that they had entered the fortress. Niẓām al-Mulk departed from the baths, when he was in a litter, and one of those two men approached him in the guise of a petitioner from the ranks (of the army) and struck him with a knife (sikkīn), and then fled and tripped over the tent-pegs of the camp, so they killed him.

In this early account (only ninety years after the fact) one already sees the difficulties with associating Assassins together with suicide attackers.10 Although the account is a hostile one to the Ismāʿīlīs, it does not present the assassins as religiously driven at all. Nor, contrary to what is generally written about the Assassins, does the single assassin who killed Niẓām al-Mulk actually seem to seek martyrdom (there does not seem to be any word about the second Assassin). If that was the case, then why was he attempting to flee when he was killed? Their action is easily explicable within the context of the warfare against the Ismāʿīlīs.

7 See Encyclopedia of Islam² (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960–2000), s.v. “Niẓām al-Mulk” (H. Böwen – C. E. Bosworth). 8 On the history of the sect see Shabānkarāhī (d. 1332), Majmaʿ al-ansāb, ed. Mīr Hāshim Muḥaddas, (Tehran: Amīr Kabīr, 1985), 2: 125–33. 9 Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Ḥusaynī, Kitāb akhbār al-dawla al-Saljūqiyya, ed. Muḥammad Iqbāl (Beirut: Dār al-Āfāq al-Jadīda, 1984), 66–7; al-Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh al-Islām (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1994), 30: 24, 145 summarizes this version. 10 Noted by M. T. Houtsma, “The Death of Niẓām al-Mulk,” Journal of Indian History 11 (1924): 147–60; and K. Rippe, “Über des Sturz Niẓām al-Mulks,” in Fuad Köprülü armağani (Istanbul: Osman Yalçin Matbaasi, 1953), 423–35.

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Interestingly, the balance of the early sources concerning the assassination of Niẓām al-Mulk actually portray the deed as having been done at the instigation of Malikshāh himself, although none deny that it was carried out by an Ismāʿīlī. For example, the other early Saljūq account of al-Nīshāpūrī (fl. ca. 1186) explains that Malikshāh was behind the whole thing, and only sent one of the malāḥida (heretics) because it was forbidden for one Muslim to kill another.11 The Sunnī historian Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 1201) expands upon the responsibility of the courtiers of Malikshāh (who apparently had grown restive as a result of the close control that Niẓām al-Mulk maintained over the young monarch), and does not even mention the religious or ethnic identity of the assassin.12 This is despite the fact that Ibn al-Jawzī frequently gives information about Ismāʿīlī Assassins, and was a very devoted Sunnī who loathed Shīʿīs (as his polemical work Talbīs Iblīs demonstrates). His grandson, Sibṭ ibn al-Jawzī (d. 1256), in a similar world-history, tells us in one version that Niẓām al-Mulk’s assassin actually escaped: 13 A Daylamī youth approached him [Niẓām al-Mulk] in the guise of a Ṣūfī, having in his hand a petition, and he called to him, and asked him [the guard] to allow him to give it to him [Niẓām al-Mulk] personally (lit. hand to hand). He said: Fine. When he [Niẓām al-Mulk] stretched out his hand, he struck him with a knife to his heart, and he [Niẓām al-Mulk] was taken to his tent and died. The Daylamī fled, but then tripped over the tent pegs, and was cut. Abū Yaʿlā ibn al-Qalānisī said: A Daylamī man from the Ismāʿīlīs attacked him, killed him, and fled immediately. He was searched for, but not found, and there was no news of him, and no clues about him.

Likewise, their counterpart Ibn al-Athīr (d. 1232) says specifically that, while the assassination was carried out by a Daylamī Ismāʿīlī (in the guise of a mustaghīth, someone seeking aid), it was entirely the responsibility of the sultan.14

11 Ẓahīr al-Dīn Nīshāpūrī, The Saljūqnāma of Ẓahīr al-Dīn Nīshāpūrī, ed. A. H. Morton (Oxford: E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Series, 2004), 32; al-Rawandī, Rāḥat al-ṣudūr, ed. Muḥammad Iqbāl (London: Luzac, 1921 [Gibb Memorial Series, reprint]), 135. 12 Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam fī al-taʾrīkh, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭāʾ (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1993), 16: 302–307. 13 Sibṭ ibn al-Jawzī, Mirʾāt al-zamān fī taʾrīkh al-aʿyān (Hyderabad: Maṭbāʿat Majlis Dāʾirat al-maʿārif al-ʿUthmāniyya, 1952), 1: 173. 14 Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 10: 204–206, 313; Abū al-Fidāʾ, al-Mukhtaṣar fī taʾrīkh al-bashar, ed. Muḥammad Diyyāb (Beirut: Muḥammad ʿAlī Bayḍūn, 1997), 2: 17; the earlier source of al-Iṣfahānī (d. 597/1201), Taʾrīkh dawlat Āl Saljūq, ed. Yaḥyā Murād (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2004), 223 says the same.



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Lewis based himself not upon these earlier accounts, but upon the later Il-Khānid historian Rashīd al-Dīn (d. 1318), who, citing Ismāʿīlī sources, quotes them as saying: 15 Our Master [Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ] laid snares and traps so as to catch first of all such fine game as Niẓām al-Mulk in the net of death and perdition, and by this act his fame and renown became great. With the jugglery of deceit and the trickery of untruth, with guileful preparations and specious obfuscations, he laid the foundations of the fidāʾīs, and he said “Who of you will rid this state of the evil of Niẓām al-Mulk Ṭūsī?” A man called Bū Ṭāhir Arrānī laid the hand of acceptance on his breast, and, following the path of error by which he hoped to attain the bliss of the world-to-come, on the night of Friday, the 12th of Ramadan of the year 485 [16 Oct. 1092], in the district of Nihāvand, at the stage of Ṣaḥna, he came in the guise of a Ṣūfī to the litter of Niẓām al-Mulk, who was being borne from the audience-place to the tent of his women, and struck him with a knife, and by that blow he suffered martyrdom. Niẓām al-Mulk was the first man whom the fidāʾīs killed. Our Master . . . said: “The killing of this devil is the beginning of bliss.”

This is the source that Lewis prefers when describing the assassination of Niẓām al-Mulk. But one first notes that nowhere does the citation say how the assassin actually died, or even if he died at all. The entire encounter is moreover divorced from the earlier accounts where a siege of the Assassins’ castle is described, and conflicts with them. Rashīd al-Dīn lived some 250 years after the time of Niẓām al-Mulk, and although Lewis wants us to believe that he is citing original Ismāʿīlī materials here, the tone is both anachronistic and difficult to reconcile with other Nizārī Assassin activities. The lists Rashīd al-Dīn gives of the Assassins are frequently difficult to reconcile with the earlier Arabic material in any case. Also, as a servant of the Mongols, Rashīd al-Dīn had good reason to present the Assassins in a negative light in any case, as the Il-Khānate of which he was vizier came into existence as a result of the necessity to conquer and exterminate the Assassins. It has been suggested that Rashīd al-Dīn did not want to perpetuate the idea that viziers should be killed by rulers (which was indeed Rashīd al-Dīn’s own fate), and thus played down the role of Malikshāh.16 One suspects that Rashīd al-Dīn and the

15 Lewis, Assassins, 47, citing al-Juvaynī, Taʾrikh-i jahāngushā-yi Juvaynī, ed. E. G. Browne (Tehran: Sazmān-i Nashr-i Kitāb, 1348/1969), 3: 203–204; and Rashīd al-Dīn, Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh: qismat-i asmā-i ʿayiliyan Fāṭimīyān va-Nizarīyān va-dāʿīyān va-rafīqān, ed. Muḥammad Taqī Dānishpāzhvah and Muḥammad Mudarrasī Zanjānī (Tehran: Bangāh-i Tarjama va-Nashr-i Kitāb, 1977), 110. 16 My thanks to Deborah Tor for this idea.

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other Mongol historians wanted to honor Niẓām al-Mulk, who by their time had achieved mythical proportions as a result of his political text, the Siyāsatnāmeh. In contradistinction to the other accounts, Rashīd al-Dīn specifically refers to Niẓām al-Mulk as a “martyr” (shahīd ) as a result of his manner of death. There is no compelling reason to believe Rashīd al-Dīn’s account over the four earlier ones. But the most important element is the question of the story’s ramification for the history of suicide attacks. All contemporary literature on the subject from Robert Pape onwards cite this assassination as “evidence” of being a suicide attack, despite the fact that according to the earliest sources the assassin was trying to flee when killed or according to the one narrative actually escaped. Logically, if the assassination of Niẓām al-Mulk were to be accepted as a suicide attack, then there is no major assassination in history—from that of Julius Caesar, to the attempt on Lorenzo de’Medici, to the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy—that was not a suicide attack. In every single case the assassins were caught and killed, which presumably they must have known beforehand. In my opinion accepting Niẓām al-Mulk as a progenitor of suicide attacks is reflective of sloppy definitions. Assassinations, Quantified It is very difficult to find mention of suicide attacks in the classical materials when they are strictly defined. The Sunnī legal literature describes the category of the “single fighter who charges an overwhelming number.” However, assassinations as practiced by the assassins could be defined as “a sudden attack by an assailant under disguise, designed to penetrate maximum security and to inflict terror.” But one should not say that the assassins needed to die in order for the attack to be carried out. What one should note is that it was convenient for them to die, since as we will see the motives behind a great many of the assassinations ascribed to the Assassins are quite murky. The great years for Ismāʿīlī assassinations are between that of Niẓām alMulk (1092) and approximately 1147. During this period there are approximately 44 major assassinations of political and religious figures in Iran and Iraq, Syria and one in Egypt. According to the historians, the first assassination was carried out against an unnamed muezzin in the Persian city of Sāwa while Niẓām al-Mulk was still alive. This muezzin had heard their propaganda, but had rejected it so they killed him. Later, Niẓām



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al-Mulk found his killer, a woodworker by the name of Ṭāhir, and killed him and mutilated his body.17 However, this muezzin was not a prominent figure, and so his murder went unnoticed among the larger field of assassinations. Most of the assassinations were of figures who were well aware that they were targets for the Ismāʿīlīs or someone, and generally wore armor or other protection. For example, Balākabak Sarmūz, one of the most senior commanders, always wore armor, but on the day that he was assassinated, he was going to see the Sultan Muḥammad, and so was unprepared, and was killed by two assassins (one of whom got away).18 Likewise, ʿUbaydallāh ibn ʿAlī al-Khaṭībī, who was qāḍī of Iṣfahān, and who was known to be very anti-Ismāʿīlī, would wear armor at all times. On a Friday after he had preached, a Persian man came to him and intervened between him and his companions, and killed him.19 The Assassins were very good at finding the critical moments when a man might not be so protected. Qāḍīs and preachers were usually assassinated either in or around mosques and often during prayers. For example, Abū al-Muẓaffar al-Khujandī, chief preacher of Rayy, was killed when he came down from the pulpit. The assassin was killed immediately.20 Likewise, Abū al-ʿAlā Saʿīd ibn Abī Muḥammad al-Nīsābūrī, the qāḍī of Iṣfahān, was killed in the mosque of his city.21 But the foremost victims of the Assassins were viziers, especially from the family of Niẓām al-Mulk, two of whose children were either assassinated or were targets, along with a wide range of nephews and grandchildren. For example, Fakhr al-Mulk son of Niẓām al-Mulk, had a prognosticatory dream of being murdered. The next day, at the late afternoon prayer, he went out from his house, going to the women’s quarters, when he heard a voice calling “The Muslims have gone, and there is nobody left to uncover injustice, nor to take the hand of the troubled.” So he brought this person to him, and had pity on him, asking him “What is wrong with you?” He delivered a petition, and while Fakhr al-Mulk was considering it, the man struck him with a knife (sikkīn). Interestingly, the Assassin was taken to Sultan Sanjar (whose vizier Fakhr al-Mulk had been), where he confessed 17 Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 10: 313; al-Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh, 34: 28. It is interesting to note that Niẓām al-Mulk’s own assassin was named Abū Ṭāhir according to the sources. 18 Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 10: 301. 19 Ibid., 10: 471–72. 20 Ibid., 10: 366. 21 Ibid., 10: 415.

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his deed. But the Assassin took the opportunity to kill others indirectly by accusing falsely a number of his courtiers, who were all killed and then he was killed.22 This incident demonstrates that even when the Assassins did not survive their attacks, when they did, they could wreak more damage yet again. The dream listed in the sources clues us in to the fact that here we have the construction of a Sunnī narrative of martyrdom. Fakhr al-Mulk’s brother, Aḥmad ibn Niẓām al-Mulk, who became vizier after the former’s death, was naturally quite single-mindedly anti-Ismāʿīlī, and used to lead attacks on them whenever he could and advise the sultan to attack them. Consequently, he was himself attacked by a group of Assassins, who fell upon him, and attacked him with knives (sakākīn). Aḥmad was wounded on his neck, but survived. Interestingly, the Assassin who attacked him (from the team of more than one) was taken, made to drink wine until he was drunk, and then asked about his companions. In this version of in vino veritas he is said to have admitted that they were in the Maymūniyya Mosque (close by), and they were taken and killed.23 Of the 44 assassinations surveyed here, 11 were of viziers. Many of the other assassinations were of the lords or governors of various towns or cities (6) or prominent mamlūks (7). A good example is that of Aḥmadīl ibn Ibrāhīm al-Kurdī, lord of Marāgha, who was killed in Damascus. A man came to him as a petitioner and gave him a petition while he was weeping, and asked Aḥmadīl to give it to the sultan. When he took it from his hand, the petitioner struck him with a knife (sikkīn), but Aḥmadīl grabbed it from him, and threw it underneath him. A companion Assassin then struck Aḥmadīl with another knife, but the swords (guards) took them both. Then a third Assassin approached and struck him again. The historical accounts say that people were amazed that the third one came up after his two companions were struck down.24 There is no word of the fate of the last assassin; presumably he was cut down like his fellows. But this story illustrates the fact that the Assassins worked in teams, and sometimes had very clever tactics. One similar story is that of Kamāl al-Mulk Abū Ṭālib al-Simīrumī, vizier of Sultan Maḥmūd, as he was going along in a procession in Baghdad. When the procession reached a place hedged in with thorns on both sides, it spread out because of the proximity of the thorns. All of a sudden an

22 Ibid., 10: 419. 23 Ibid., 10: 478. 24 Ibid., 10: 516.



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Assassin jumped on al-Simīrumī with a knife, but it went into the donkey he was riding, and the Assassin fled to the Tigris. All of al-Simīrumī’s guards chased after the Assassin and the area around the vizier was empty, so then another assassin appeared, stabbed him on the waist, and dragged him from his donkey, stabbing him repeatedly. When the guards came back, two more Assassins attacked them and they fled. Finally, when they were able to regroup, and killed the three Assassins, they found that “the vizier was killed like a sheep,” with more than 30 wounds on him.25 Another example is that of Qasīm al-Dawla Āqsunqur al-Bursuqī, lord of Aleppo, who led the jihad against the Crusaders during the second and third decades of the eleventh century. He was a very pious man, and was praying one day in the mosque of Mosul. The night previously, he had had a prognosticatory dream about dogs dragging him down, he had killed one, but the others killed him. Consequently, his friends did not want him to go out to the mosque, but he told them that he had never missed prayers in his life and would not that day either. Praying in the first row, more than 10 Assassins leapt on him, they wounded him with knives, and he wounded 3 of them in the hands, but then he was killed. There is no mention of the fate of his assassins.26 Again, the important element to note is the creation of a Sunnī martyrology surrounding the figure of the jihad-leader Āqsunqur. The Assassins are notable for the social prestige of their victims. As previously mentioned, they managed to kill 11 viziers (at least) during the period under consideration, around 12 high religious dignitaries, and about the same number of commanders and lords. But several of their victims stand out for their being at the highest level of society. Among them are the two caliphs, al-Mustarshid and his son al-Rāshid, the Egyptian vizier al-Afḍal (who despite his title, together with his father Badr al-Jamālī, effectively ruled Egypt for more than 35 years), and the Saljūq Sultan Daʾūd. The assassination of al-Mustarshid in 1135 has its roots in the conflict this caliph had with the Saljūq sultans, especially Sultan Masʿūd. Despite the widespread thesis that the Saljūqs were the defenders of the Sunnī ascendancy and the person of the caliph, so long abused by the Shīʿī Būyid dynasty, the evidence suggests that the Saljūqs were not that much better for the caliphs at all.27 Al-Mustarshid was captured by Masʿūd, and

25 Ibid., 10: 601. 26 Ibid., 10: 633–34. 27 See Deborah Tor, “A Tale of Two Murders: Power Relations between Caliph and Sultan in the Saljuq Era,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 159 (2009): 279–97.

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put into the latter’s camp, and while Masʿūd was acting indecisively, 17 Ismāʿīlī assassins are said to have entered the caliph’s tent, murdered him and cut off his nose and ears.28 As Deborah Tor has demonstrated it is difficult to believe that such a brazen attack could have been organized and succeeded without the connivance of Sultan Masʿūd. Given the fact that the caliph was an embarrassment to the sultan, seeing this as an arranged murder seems obvious. All of the Ismāʿīlī assassins are said to have been killed, but where were the guards while they were butchering the caliph? So too with al-Mustarshid’s son al-Rāshid who was assassinated the following year. There are few details about the technique of this murder, but al-Rāshid was actually fighting against the Saljūqs, who he blamed for the assassination of his father, when he too was attacked by a group of Ismāʿīlī Assassins and killed. Later Sultan Daʾūd, who had been the ally of al-Rāshid in his fight against the Saljūqs, was similarly assassinated. All three of these assassinations at the top of the political pyramid probably could not have happened without the close support of the Saljūq sultans themselves. This raises the question of whether the large group of Saljūq viziers also assassinated was accomplished only with Saljūq connivance as well? The tactics revealed by this list of assassinations are closely in accord with what Lewis had noted. Overwhelmingly, the Assassins used knives, and there are absolutely no examples of any other weapons used, so in those cases where no weapon is specified, we must assume that the knife was the default weapon. There are few examples of close betrayals in the pattern of assassinations (two who were slain, one by a brother and one by a friend). The usual method of approach was to pretend to be a petitioner, or to otherwise gain close proximity to the victim quickly, mainly in public places such as mosques, palaces and streets. There are only a few examples of actual disguises, such as the murder of the Chamberlain Jawhar, who was accosted by a group of Assassins dressed as women, and stabbed to death.29 Breaking the list of the Assassins down to determine their fates afterwards, it is possible to see some difficulties with the idea that all Assassins could expect death as a result of their assassinations. In 10 of the cases all

28 Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam, 17: 248–49, and see Tor, “Tale”. Tor notes that some sources list up to 24 assassins. 29 Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, 10: 76–77.



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or most of the assassins were said to have been killed, but in 3 additional at least one of the members of the assassination team escaped. At least 3 of the assassinating teams were killed while trying to escape. In only one of the cases, however, did the assassins escape completely. The largest group of 29 there is no mention of the fate of the Assassins. It is difficult to know what to make of this last category, because one could come to the conclusion that in cases where there is no mention of justice being rendered to the Assassins that this is a tacit admission of failure on the part of the historians (who are universally anti-Ismāʿīlī). But the details in many of these cases are sparse in any case, and so it is impossible to come to a final conclusion. One can say, however, that it was not necessarily a death-sentence to carry out an assassination during the Saljūq period. One wonders how many assassinations other than those of these prominent figures were carried out by the Assassins. With only two failures among the 44 surveyed (and one of those died as a result of his wounds within a year), their success rate against the highest levels of society was quite astonishingly high. This fact strongly indicates the accessibility of prominent figures during the Saljūq period and probably that the Saljūqs were themselves responsible for many of these assassinations, as well as the fact that even those forewarned by wearing armor or taking other precautions were always vulnerable. Suicide Attacks in the Classical Legal Literature Ascribing the origins of suicide attacks to the Ismāʿīlī Assassins raises the question of how they were justified in the religious legal literature of the sect. Suicide attacks in Islam have their roots in interpretations of three Qurʾānic verses, two of which are: 9:111: “Allah has bought from the believers their lives and their wealth in return for Paradise; they fight in the way of Allah, kill and get killed . . . who fulfills His promise better than Allah. Rejoice then at the bargain that you have made,” and 2:207: “And some people sell themselves for the sake of Allah’s favor. Allah is kind to [His] servants.”30 This latter verse is known to have been cited by the Khārijite assassin Ibn Muljam as he was killing ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib in 66131 and in

30 Translation from Majid Fakhry, The Qurʾān: A Modern English Version (London: Garnet, 1997). 31 E.g., Ibn Abī al-Dunyā, Kitāb maqtal amīr al-muʾminīn (Damascus: Dār al-Bashāʾir, 2001), 40; and Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya wa-al-nihāya (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1990), 7: 327.

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contemporary times is used to justify martyrdom operations. Discussions concerning suicidal attacks—as opposed to suicide attacks themselves— usually under the rubric of “the single fighter who charges a large number of the enemy” mentioned before are quite common throughout the Sunnī legal literature.32 However, discussions of actual suicide attacks, in which there is an absolute necessity for the attacker to die, are unknown prior to the jihad book of Ibn al-Naḥḥās al-Dumyāṭī (d. 1414), who discusses them over the course of several pages.33 Al-Dumyāṭī was a Syrian who migrated to Egypt, and fought some of the later Crusaders (based in Cyprus), but did not influence Shīʿī thinking at all. In any case, al-Dumyāṭī was doubtful about the utility of suicide attacks, and indeed prior to the invention of explosives, it is difficult to see that a suicide attacker could possibly have been able to kill more than a few people, and even then only by surprise attack. Nizārī Ismāʿīlī legal materials are difficult to come by, and the broader Ismāʿīlī doctrines of jihad have only rarely been examined. Nothing is known to have survived the Mongol destruction of the Nizārī Ismāʿīlī fortress of Alamūt (other than the lists of martyrs preserved by al-Juvaynī and Rashīd al-Dīn), and so we must look to the earlier Ismāʿīlī doctrines in order to find out whether there was something about Ismāʿīlism that fostered the appearance of fidāʾī style attacks. This approach has not been encouraged by previous scholars writing about the Assassins. Farhad Daftary, whose monumental The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines covers almost every aspect of Ismāʿīlī history (except their doctrines, despite the title), does not devote any space to the question of what ideology motivated the Assassins.34 Rapoport, following Lewis, merely says that the Ismāʿīlīs relied upon the paradigmatic martyrdoms of ʿAlī and Ḥusayn to inspire them35 but does not attempt to answer the obvious question that this statement raises: why then did the many other Shīʿī groups not use this method?

32 Discussion in my Martyrdom in Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 149–53. 33 Ibn al-Naḥḥās al-Dumyāṭī, Mashāriʿ al-ashwāq ilā maṣāriʿ al-ʿushshāq fī al-jihād wa-faḍāʾilihi, eds. Idrīs Muḥammad ʿAlī and Muḥammad Khālid Istanbūlī (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 2002), 1: 557–60. 34 Farhad Daftary, The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), chapter 6 on the Assassins, 352–53 on their doctrines (such as he gives them—his coverage is filled with words like “doubtless”, “evidently” and “presumably” in stark contrast to the rest of his well-documented book). 35 Rapoport, 668.



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Assassinations by Shīʿīs, even by Ismāʿīlīs, during the period prior to the rise of the Nizārī Assassins are rare. For the most part, the martyrdom paradigm laid down by the Shīʿī Imāms was a passive one. Even Ḥusayn, by far the most activist of all of them, did not actively seek out death but fought until he died. Most of the activist elements in Shīʿī jihad teachings are either relegated to the period of the appearance of the Mahdī36 or are later developments. However, extensive writings from the pen of the Fāṭimid vizier al-Qāḍī Nuʿmān (d. 1003), who lived approximately 90 years before the Assassin adoption of their tactics, have survived, including detailed descriptions of jihad. Al-Qāḍī Nuʿmān cites Qurʾān 9:111 repeatedly in his discussion of jihad, and asks the question of whether this verse is applicable to all believers or just to some. He answers his own question by citations from the Imāms, especially Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 765), who said that this verse is only applicable to the very select of the select, citing other Qurʾānic verses such as 9:112 that deny the title of “fighter” to (apparently) most Muslims.37 Moreover, the jihad should be directed against these other lukewarm Muslims.38 In this type of theology it is easier to see how the idea of “selling oneself ” (ishtarā anfusahum) became associated with these fidāʾīs. What is lacking in his account is something like the Sunnī doctrine of “the single fighter charging a large number of the enemy” cited above. But al-Qāḍī Nuʿmān does not stop with merely citing these verses, but cites the third verse which is Qurʾān 2:249 in the context of discussion of how fighters should deal with overwhelming odds: “How many a small band has defeated a large one by Allah’s leave!” (taken from the Qurʾānic story of David and Goliath).39 This verse is also used by contemporary justifications of martyrdom operations. With the juxtaposition of “selling oneself ” to the idea of a small group overpowering a much larger one, development of doctrine of suicidal attacks becomes much clearer. Of course, the final elements of the fidāʾī jihad doctrine are lost to us, but from these initial interpretations the general path is clear.

36 Etan Kohlberg, “The Development of the Imāmī Shīʿī Doctrine of jihād,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 126 (1976): 64–86. 37 One should remember that in Shiʿite literature “believer” is associated with those who follow the Imāms, while “Muslim” includes Sunnīs. 38 Al-Qāḍī Nuʿmān, Daʿāʾim al-Islām, ed. ʿĀrif Tāmir (Beirut: Dār al-Aḍwāʾ, 1995), 1: 408– 409; idem, Kitāb al-himma fī adab atbāʿ al-āʾimma, ed. Muḥammad Sharīf ʿAlī al-Yamanī al-Harazī (Beirut: Dār al-Aḍwāʾ, 1996), 44. 39 Al-Qāḍī Nuʿmān, Kitāb al-himma, 47.

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The choice of the Assassins’ targets also give us some clues about the type of theology that supported assassinations. Overwhelmingly, their targets were political in nature. Bizarrely, the Assassins avoided some of their most prominent opponents. The best example of this tendency is the prominent theologian al-Ghazālī (d. 1111), who published frequent refutations of Ismāʿīlī teachings.40 The oversight of al-Ghazālī as a potential assassination target is inexplicable, unless one takes into account that he was a prominent scholar and apparently had a certain immunity. Looking through the lists there is not a single example of a scholar or a philosopher or any religious figure who was of a popular nature. All of the other prominent religious figures who were assassinated had official positions,41 and al-Ghazālī might have been beneath the notice of the Assassins. As Lewis says, their assassinations were highly selective.42 Interestingly, a number of other prominent Sunnī scholars also publicly opposed Ismāʿīlīsm during the time immediately prior to the period of the Assassins, such as the Muʿtazilite Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār (author of the great theology al-Mughnī fī abwāb al-tawḥīd wa-al-ʿadl), the theologian al-Bāqillānī, and the physician-philosopher Abū Bakr al-Rāzī and they were untouched.43 For this reason one can say that the Assassins used a careful discrimination in their targets, although of course we can only judge those successful assassinations recorded in the history books. It will probably never be known how many failures they had. Conclusions While Ismāʿīlī Assassins engaged in suicidal attacks, these need to be differentiated from contemporary suicide attacks, which necessitate the death of the assailant in order for the attack to succeed. There is no particular reason why Assassins in the classical period needed to die, and this paper demonstrates that actually most of them tried to flee the scene of their attack or else there is no information concerning what happened to them.

40 Al-Ghazālī, Faḍāʾiḥ al-bāṭiniyya, ed. Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Quṭb (Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿAṣriyya, 2000); see the translation by R. J. McCarthy, Al-Ghazāli: Deliverance from Error: Five Key Texts Including his Spiritual Autobiography al-Munqidh min al-Dalāl (London: Fons Vitae, 1980). 41 However, one should note that a number of the qāḍīs are unnamed in the sources. 42 Lewis, 133–34. 43 As al-Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh, 39: 31, notes.



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Because of the problems in isolating the precise ideology that motivated these attackers—and the numerous legends and myths surrounding their training and the supposed rewards promised them—it is impossible to determine the nature of the ideological conditioning that preceded each assassination. That ideology can only be determined by examination of the targets, the methods of assassination used, and the manner in which each assassin acted following the act. In general, the descriptions of the Assassin attacks in the Arabic sources are indicative of an attempt to create Sunnī martyrologies around the prominent victims, and not to perpetuate the memory of the Ismāʿīlīs or the reasons why they assassinated. Because the Ismāʿīlīs were so fundamentally Other they were safe to utilize as “non-Muslims” to kill prominent Muslim political and religious figures. Malikshāh’s desire that Niẓām al-Mulk die by the hand of an Ismāʿīlī leaves us with the conclusion that here we have the convenience factor at work: a willing group of Assassins at hand, that can wreak vengeance upon prominent figures (not all of whom, it is clear, actually opposed Ismāʿīlī goals), fulfilling both Sunnī Saljūq political goals as well as Ismāʿīlī religious goals at the same time. Ismāʿīlī Assassins, just like contemporary radical Muslim groups that utilize martyrdom operations, were comparatively small and weak (compared to their opponents) and in order to grab attention had to use flamboyant tactics. The evidence reveals that while the assassins were determined, gained access to their victims through betrayal of confidence, and as Lewis stated carried out their attacks in a ritual manner, there are no records of any slogans having been shouted out or interrogations carried out upon the assassins to determine what motivated them (other than those few listed above). This is not in accord with other high-profile assassinations in the Muslim world. For example, we have already noted that Ibn Muljam is said to have cited Qurʾān 2:207 when he killed ʿAlī, and other such cases can be adduced. With the Ismāʿīlī Assassins only the ritual aspects of their assassinations were recorded by their hostile opponents in the history books. Although Lewis records evidence that their names were preserved in the castle of Alamūt, there does not seem to have been any attempt to build martyrologies around them, or preserve their stories. They killed suddenly, were cut down themselves quickly, and left no mark on history other than a negative one.

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Name—title—date44—killed or not—assassin killed or not—method of killing 1. Niẓām al-Mulk (vizier of Sultan Malikshāh)—485/1092—killed in Nihāvand—assassin killed or fled or survived—knife.45 2. Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Labbād (governor of Iṣfahān)—486/1093— killed in Iṣfahān—no word—no details.46 3. Abū Muslim, prefect of Rayy—488/1095—killed by a friend—no details.47 4. ʿAbd al-Raḥman al-Samīrumī (vizier of Sultan Barkayārūq)—490/1097— killed—assassin killed immediately (Abū Ṭāhir al-Arrānī)—no details.48 5. Arghūsh al-Niẓāmī (mamlūk of Niẓām al-Mulk; close relation to Barkayārūq)—488/1095 or 490/1097—killed in Rayy—assassin killed immediately (ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Khurāsānī)—no details.49 6. Bursuq (senior commander, close to Ṭughril Beg)—490/1097—killed— a Kūhistānī companion—no details.50 7. Killing of unnamed qāḍī—491/1098—his brother—no details.51 8. Utiz al-Amīr52 (senior commander) together with Amīr Siyāh— 492/1099—killed near Sāwa—attacked by a team of three, 2 killed one survived—knife.53 9. Balākabak Sarmūz, (senior commander)—493/1100—killed as he entered the house of Sultan Muḥammad—attacked by two, one killed one got away—no details.54

44 There are irresolvable contradictions between the Arabic and Persian sources as to the dates of many of the assassinations, and al-Dhahabī on the Arabic side also contains numerous internal contradictions. I have followed the dates listed in Ibn al-Athīr (al-Kāmil) and Ibn al-Jawzī, Muntaẓam. 45 See above notes (section 2) for sources. 46 Ibn al-Jawzī, 17: 7. 47 Rashīd al-Dīn, 134. 48 Ibn al-Athīr, 10: 270. 49 Ibid., 10: 271. 50 Ibid.; Nīshāpūrī, 76. 51 Rashīd al-Dīn, 134. 52 Also called Anar (Rashīd al-Dīn, 134); or Unar (al-Dhahabī, 34: 15). Properly Unur. 53 Ibn al-Jawzī, 17: 50; Rashīd al-Dīn, Cāmiʿ, ed. Ahmed Ates (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1999), 5: 62. 54 Ibn al-Athīr, 10: 301.



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10. Abū al-Muẓaffar al-Khujandī (chief preacher of Rayy)—496/1102–3— killed when he came down from the pulpit—assassin killed immediately—no details.55 11. al-ʿAzīz (or al-ʿIzz) ʿAbd al-Jalīl al-Dihistānī (vizier of Sultan Barkayārūq)—496/1102–3—killed at the gate of Iṣfahān, died of wounds—killed by a youth—no details.56 12. Abū Jaʿfar al-Mashaṭṭ (leader of the Shafiʿīs in Rayy)—498/1104—killed in the mosque—no word—no details.57 13. Abū al-ʿAlā Saʿīd ibn Abī Muḥammad al-Nīsābūrī (qāḍī of Iṣfahān)— 499/1105–6—killed in the mosque of Iṣfahān—no word—no details.58 14. Khalaf ibn Mulāʿib (lord of Fāmiya)—499/1105–6—killed—assassins were a group, escaped—no details (according to one source used a ḥarba, spear).59 15. Fakhr al-Mulk ibn Niẓām al-Mulk (vizier of Sultan Barkayārūq)— 500/1106–7—killed by a petitioner—assassin caught, tried, killed— knife.60 16. ʿUbaydallāh ibn ʿAlī al-Khaṭībī (qāḍī of Iṣfahān)—502/1108–9—killed in the midst of friends—no word—knife.61 17. Abū al-Maḥāsin ʿAbd al-Waḥīd al-Ruwaynī (leader of the Shāfiʿīs)— 502/1108–9—killed in Āmul, in its mosque—no word—no details.62 (?) 18. Saʿīd ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (qāḍī of Nīshāpūr)— 502/1108–9—killed on ʿĪd al-Fiṭr—assassin killed—no details.63 19. Aḥmad ibn Niẓām al-Mulk (vizier of Sultan Barkayārūq)—503/1109– 10—wounded—assassin caught, and confessed, his companions killed—knives.64

55 Ibid., 10: 366. 56 Ibn al-Jawzī, 17: 77; al-Dhahabī, 34: 45. 57 Al-Dhahabī, 34: 67. 58 Ibn al-Athīr, 10: 415. 59 Sibṭ ibn al-Jawzī, 2: 460; al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ al-ḥunafāʾ bi-akhbār al-āʾimma al-Fāṭimiyyin al-khulafāʾ, ed. Jamal al-Dīn al-Shayyāl (Cairo: Idārat al-Awqāf, 1996), 3: 36; al-Dhahabī, 34: 71–72. 60 Al-Rawandī, 143; Ibn al-Athīr, 10: 419; Sibṭ ibn al-Jawzī, 2: 476; al-Dhahabī, 34: 75–76. 61 Al-Ḥusaynī, 83; al-Iṣfahānī, 248; Ibn al-Jawzī, 17: 113; Ibn al-Athīr, 10: 471–72; al-Dhahabī, 35: 14. 62 Ibn al-Jawzī, 17: 113 (no mention of any Bāṭinī, but said to have died as a shahīd); Ibn al-Athīr, 10: 473 (no mention of any Bāṭinī); al-Dhahabī, 35: 15 (said to have been killed by Bāṭinīs); Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-aʿyān (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1998), 3: 199 (noting malāḥida). 63 Ibn al-Jawzī, 17: 113 (no mention of any Bāṭinī); Ibn al-Athīr, 10: 472; al-Dhahabī, 35: 14. 64 Ibn al-Athīr, 10: 478.

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20. Sharaf al-Din Mawdūd (senior commander)—505/1111–2—killed in Damascus—no word—no details.65 21. Aḥmadīl ibn Ibrāhīm al-Kurdī (lord of Marāgha)—510/1116—killed in Damascus by petitioner—team of 3, 2 killed, no word on third— knives.66 22. al-Afḍal (vizier of the Fāṭimid state)—515/1121—killed in Cairo—team of 3, no word about fate of assassins—knives.67 23. Kamāl al-Mulk Abū Ṭālib al-Simīrumī (vizier of Sultan Maḥmūd)— 516/1122—killed in a procession in Baghdad—assassins in a team of 4—one escaped, others killed—knives.68 24. Abū Saʿd Muḥammad ibn Naṣr ibn Manṣūr al-Ḥarawī (qāḍī of Hamadhān, Ḥanafī)—519/1125—killed in the mosque—no word—no details.69 25. Qasīm al-Dawla Āqsunqur al-Bursuqī (lord of Aleppo)—521/1127— killed in the mosque of Mosul—team of 10 assassins, no word about their fate (he wounded 3 of them)—knives.70 26. Muʿīn al-Mulk Abū Naṣr ibn al-Faḍl (vizier of Sultan Sanjar)— 521/1127—killed—assassin was his horseman, betrayed—no details.71 27. Muʿizz (or Muʿīn) al-Dīn al-Kāshī (vizier of Sultan Sanjar)—?—killed in Marw, going from the Sultan’s palace to the mosque—no word— knives.72 28. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Khujandī (leader of the Shāfiʿīs in Iṣfahān)—523/1129— killed by treachery—no word—no details.73 29. Būrī ibn Tughtakīn (lord of Damascus)—526/1132—wounded, expired a year later as a result of the wounds—two assassins, both killed— knives.74

65 Ibn al-Jawzī, 17: 127. 66 Ibn al-Athīr, 10: 516; Sibṭ ibn al-Jawzī, 2: 603 (for 508/1114). 67 Ibn al-Athīr, 10: 589; al-Maqrīzī, 3: 108; al-Dhahabī, 35: 140–43; Lewis, 59. 68 Ibn al-Athīr, 10: 601; Sibṭ ibn al-Jawzī, 2: 757–59. 69 Ibn al-Athīr, 10: 630; al-Dhahabī, 35: 429. 70 Ibn al-Jawzī, 17: 230; Ibn al-Athīr, 10: 633–34; Ibn Khallikān, 1: 242–43; al-Dhahabī, 36: 34 (for the year 527/1133). 71 Ibn al-Athīr, 10: 647; al-Dhahabī, 36: 6; Ibn Taghrībirdī, al-Nujūm al-ẓāhira, ed. Muḥammad Ḥusayn Shams al-Dīn (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1992), 5: 226. 72 Rashīd al-Dīn, 104. 73 Al-Dhahabī, 36: 16. 74 Ibn al-Athīr, 10: 670, 680; Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1995–2000), 10: 409; Ibn Khallikān, 2: 265.



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30. Al-Mustarshid (caliph)—529/1135—killed—team of 17 assassins, killed afterwards by the guards—knives.75 31. Al-Rāshid (caliph)—529/1135–6—killed by stabbing—4 assassins (Balqāsim Darikī named, plus his companions), no word of their fate—knives.76 32. Jawhar (chamberlain)—534/1139–40—killed by petitioners in the garb of women—no word (other Ismāʿīlīs killed in revenge)—knives.77 33. Daʾūd (sultan)—538/1143–4—killed in Tabrīz by ambush—4 assassins—no details.78 34. Vizier (unnamed) (of Sultan Tughril)—?—killed by ambush—no word—knives.79 35. mamlūk (unnamed) (lord of Maṣyāf)—?—killed by treachery— group—no details.80 36. unnamed (qāḍī of Kuhistān)—533/1138–39—one assassin (Ibrāhīm Ḥanīfa al-Dāmaghānī), no word as to his fate—no details.81 37. unnamed (qāḍī of Tiflīs)—533/1138–9—killed—one assassin (Ibrāhīm Buʾya al-Dāmaghānī), giving a fatwa in his blood—no details.82 38. unnamed (qāḍī of Hamadhān)—534/1139–40—killed in the mosque of Hamadhān—one assassin (Ismāʿīl al-Khwaraẓmī, a number of whose companions had been killed)—no details.83 39. Yamīn al-Dawla Khwaraẓmshāh (vizier)—534/1139–40—killed in the army camp of Sultan Sanjar—no word—no details. 40. Naṣīr al-Dawla ibn al-Muhalhil—535/1140–1—killed in Kirmān— assassin (al-Ḥusayn al-Kirmānī)—no details. 41. Garashāsaf (senior commander)—537/1143—killed—assassin was a soldier—no details. 42. Girdbāzū ibn ʿAlī ibn Shahriyār (padishah of Mazandaran)— 537/1143—killed in Sarakhs—no word—no details. 43. Āqsunqur (mamlūk of Sanjar—541/1146—killed as a rebel against the sultan—two assassins (Sulaymān and Yūsuf)—no details.

75 Ibn al-Jawzī, 17: 298–99; see Tor, “Tale,” passim. 76 Rashīd al-Dīn, 115, 160; al-Dhahabī, 36: 206; see Tor, “Tale,” 295. 77 Ibn al-Athīr, 11: 76–77. 78 Al-Ḥusaynī, 114; Rashīd al-Dīn, 104, 161. 79 Al-Ḥusaynī, 104. 80 Ibn al-Athīr, 11: 79. 81 Rashīd al-Dīn, 160. 82 Ibid., 160. 83 Ibid., 160.

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44. ʿAbbās (governor of Rayy)—542/1147—killed in Rayy (or Baghdad) with armor on—no word—no details.84 Bibliography Abū al-Fidāʾ, Ismāʿīl ibn ʿAlī. Al-Mukhtaṣar fī taʾrīkh al-bashar. Edited by Muḥammad Diyyāb. Beirut: Muḥammad ʿAlī Bayḍūn, 1997. Andriolo, Karin. “Murder by Suicide: Episodes from Muslim History.” American Anthropologist 104: 3 (2002): 736–42. Bloom, Mia. Dying to Kill. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Cook, David. Martyrdom in Islam. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Daftary, Farhad. The Assassin Legends: Myths of the Ismāʿīlīs. London, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995. ——. The Ismāʿīlīs: Their History and Doctrines. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. al-Dhahabī, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad. Taʾrikh al-Islām. Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, 1994. Encyclopedia of Islam. 2nd ed. Edited by B. Lewis et al. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960–2000. Fakhry, Majid. The Qurʾān: A Modern English Version. London: Garnet, 1997. Ghālib, Muṣṭafā. Arbaʿ kutub ḥaqqāniyya. Beirut: al-Muʾassasa al-Jāmiʿiyya li-al-Dirasāt waal-Nashr, 1987. al-Ghazālī, Abū Ḥāmid. Fadāʾiḥ al-bāṭiniyya. Edited by Muḥammad ʿAlī al-Quṭb. Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿAṣriyya, 2000. Houtsma, M. T. “The Death of Niẓām al-Mulk.” Journal of Indian History 11 (1924): 147–60. al-Ḥusaynī, Ṣadr al-Dīn. Kitāb akhbār al-dawla al-Saljūqiyya. Edited by Muḥammad Iqbal. Beirut: Dār al-Āfāq al-Jadīda, 1984. Lewis, Bernard. The Assassins: A Radical Sect in Islam. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967. Ibn Abī al-Dunyā, Abū Bakr ʿAbd Allāh. Kitāb maqtal amīr al-muʾminīn. Damascus: Dār al-Bashāʾir, 2001. Ibn ʿAsākir, Abū al-Qāsim ʿAlī. Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq. Edited by ʿUmar al-ʿAmrāwī. Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1995–2000. Ibn al-Athīr, Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī. Al-Kāmil fī al-taʾrīkh. Edited by Carl Tornberg. Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1979; reprint of Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1853–67. Ibn al-Jawzī, Abū al-Faraj. Al-Muntaẓam fī al-taʾrikh. Edited by Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭāʾ. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1993. Ibn Kathīr, Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUmar. Al-Bidāya wa-al-niḥāya. Beirut: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1990. Ibn Khallikān, Shams al-Dīn Aḥmad. Wafayāt al-aʿyān. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1998. Ibn al-Naḥḥās al-Dumyāṭī. Mashāriʿ al-ashwāq ilā maṣāriʿ al-ʿushshāq fī al-jihād wa-faḍāʾilihi. Edited by Idrīs Muḥammad ʿAlī and Muḥammad Khālid Istanbūlī. Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmiyya, 2002. Ibn Taghrībirdī, Jamāl al-Dīn Yūsuf. Al-Nujūm al-ẓāhira. Edited by Muḥammad Ḥusayn Shams al-Dīn. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1992. al-Iṣfahānī, ʿImād al-Dīn al-Kātib. Taʾrīkh dawlat Āl Saljūq. Edited by Yaḥyā Murād. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2004. al-Juvaynī, ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn. Taʾrikh-i jahāngushā-yi Juvaynī. Edited by E. G. Browne. Tehran: Sazmān-i Nashr-i Kitāb, 1348/1969.

84 Ibn al-Athīr, 11: 117.



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Kohlberg, Etan. “The Development of the Imāmī Shīʿī Doctrine of jihād.” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 126 (1976): 64–86. al-Maqrīzī, Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad. Ittiʿāẓ al-ḥunafāʾ bi-akhbār al-āʾimma al-Fāṭimiyyin al-khulafāʾ. Edited by Jamāl al-Dīn al-Shayyāl. Cairo: Idārat al-Awqāf, 1996. McCarthy, R. J. Al-Ghazali: Deliverance from Error: Five Key Texts Including his Spiritual Autobiography al-Munqidh min al-Dalāl. London: Fons Vitae, 1980. Morris, James (trans.). The Master and the Disciple. London: I.B. Tauris, 2001. Nīshāpūrī, Ẓahīr al-Dīn. The Saljūqnāma of Ẓahīr al-Dīn Nīshāpūrī. Edited by A. H. Morton. Oxford: E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Series, 2004. al-Nuʿmān, al-Qāḍī. Daʿāʾim al-Islām. Edited by ʿĀrif Tāmir. Beirut: Dār al-Aḍwāʾ, 1995. ——. Kitāb al-himma fī adab atbāʿ al-aʾimma. Edited by Muḥammad Sharīf ʿAlī al-Yamanī al-Harazī. Beirut: Dār al-Aḍwāʾ, 1996. Pape, Robert. Dying to Win. New York: Random House, 2005. Pedahzur, Ami. Suicide Terrorism. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005. Rapoport, David. “Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions.” American Political Science Review 78 (1984): 658–77. Rashīd al-Dīn, Çāmiʿ al-tavārīh. Part 5. Edited by Ahmed Ates. Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1999. ——. Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh: qismat-i asmā-i ʿayiliyān Fāṭimiyān va-Nizāriyān va-dāʿiyan va-rafīqān. Edited by Muḥammad Taqī Dānishpāzhvah and Muḥammad Mudarrasī Zanjānī. Tehran: Bangah-i Tarjama va-Nashr-i Kitab, 1977. al-Rawandī. Rāhat al-ṣudūr. Edited by Muḥammad Iqbāl. London: Luzac, 1921. Reuter, Christoph. My Life is a Weapon: A Modern History of Suicide Bombing. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. Rippe, K. “Über des Sturz Niẓām al-Mulks.” in Fuad Köprülü armağani. Istanbul: Osman Yalçin Matbaasi, 1953, 423–35. Shabānkarāhī, Majmaʿ al-ansāb. Edited by Mīr Hāshim Muḥaddas. Tehran: Amīr Kabīr, 1985. Shay, Shaul. The Shahids. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 2003. Sibṭ ibn al-Jawzī. Mirʾāt al-zamān fī taʾrīkh al-aʿyān. Hyderabad: Maṭbāʿat Majlis Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif al-ʿUthmāniyya, 1952. Tor, Deborah. “A Tale of Two Murders: Power Relations between Caliph and Sultan in the Saljuq Era.” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 159 (2009): 279–97.

PART TWO

HISTORIOGRAPHY

The Identity Crisis of Abū Bakra: Mawlā of the Prophet, or Polemical Tool? Elizabeth Urban* Scholars have long recognized the important contributions of the mawālī (sg. mawlā) to Islamic civilization, while also acknowledging that the term mawlā is incredibly complex. The term is usually translated as client or freedman, but it can also mean kinsman, ally, patron, convert, and nonArab Muslim; it often means many of these things at once. In trying to untangle this confusing mass of meanings, some scholars have investigated the development of the legal system of clientage (walāʾ) or have shown how clientage led directly to the mamlūk military system.1 Others have traced the participation of the mawālī in Islamic scholarship, in fields such as ḥadīth, grammar, and jurisprudence.2 However, few have attempted to elucidate the social status of the mawālī in the early Islamic period,3 to see how developments in walāʾ reflected developments in other social institutions such as genealogy and slavery, or to see how the sources use the term mawlā to comment on the ideological conflicts of their contemporary societies. It is these social aspects of early Islamic walāʾ that will be investigated in this article. The focus of my investigation is a man named Abū Bakra, who is historically remembered as a mawlā of the Prophet Muḥammad. However, I argue that Abū Bakra was not actually a mawlā of the Prophet—indeed, that he was not a mawlā at all. It may seem strange to treat a non-mawlā * I would like to thank Professor Donner for his ceaseless guidance and encouragement. He has met my every request for dissertation advice with an invitation to lunch, where discussions of source material and methodology mingle with discussions of politics, travel, cooking, and ice skating. My only regret is that this article will not come as much of a surprise to Professor Donner, as it is a distilled chapter from a dissertation that he is supervising. However, it is with much gratitude and delight that I offer my contribution to this Festschrift in his honor. 1 See for instance Crone, Roman Provincial and Islamic Law; Crone, Slaves on Horses; Pipes, Slave Soldiers and Islam; and Mitter, Das frühislamische Patronat. 2 See for instance Motzki, “The Role of Non-Arab Converts”; and Bernards and Nawas, “A preliminary report of the Netherlands Ulama Project (NUP).” Bernards and Nawas have published a number of articles from the findings of the NUP, listed in the Bibliography. 3 The major exceptions are Maḥmūd Miqdād’s Al-Mawālī fī al-ʿAṣr al-Umawī and Jamal Juda’s “Die sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Aspekte der Mawālī in frühislamischer Zeit.”

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in an article on early Islamic walāʾ, but Abū Bakra’s situation is illuminating for two reasons. First, Abū Bakra was a freed slave; he was manumitted along with a handful of other men during the Prophet Muḥammad’s siege of al-Ṭāʾif in the year 630. The manumission of a slave was a primary means of forging a walāʾ bond from pre-Islamic times down through the early modern period, and classical Islamic law dictates that manumission automatically creates a walāʾ bond.4 However, in the earliest Islamic period it was sometimes possible to manumit a slave without creating a walāʾ bond,5 and I argue that Abū Bakra illustrates a unique kind of non-walāʾ manumission that was practiced during the earliest Islamic conquests. Thus, as the representative of an entire group of slaves freed during the siege of al-Ṭāʾif, Abū Bakra acts as a window into a wider social phenomenon of non-walāʾ manumission. Second, although I argue that Abū Bakra was actually not a mawlā, the fact remains that many historical sources portray him as a mawlā of the Prophet. Thus, investigating his case can help us understand why someone might be remembered as a mawlā, what ideological import walāʾ can have, and what the sources accomplish by back-projecting mawlā identity. Here again it is not just Abū Bakra as an individual that is important, but his place in society, especially his relationship with his close kinsmen. Through Abū Bakra and his family ties, we see how mawlā identity was used to criticize the Umayyad conception of genealogy. In keeping with these two aspects of Abū Bakra’s importance, this article consists of two sections. The first section is historical: it brings forth evidence that challenges Abū Bakra’s mawlā status and problematizes the relationship between manumission and walāʾ during the earliest Islamic conquests. I argue that, rather than becoming a mawlā of the Prophet, he became a ṭalīq allāh (“one set loose by God”) whose care was entrusted to the Muslim umma at large. The second section is historiographical: it demonstrates why Abū Bakra has been remembered in most sources as a mawlā of the Prophet. Although some innocent or accidental back-­projection is plausible, I argue that Abū Bakra’s mawlā identity is also used as an ideological weapon in the campaign to malign the Umayyads. These sources 4 The classical stance is summed up in the hadith: “walāʾ belongs to the manumitter” (al-walāʾ li-man aʿtaqa). This hadith has been interpreted to mean not only that the manumitter is the sole person who can legally get a walāʾ bond with his freed slave, but also that manumission always and necessarily forges a walāʾ tie between former master and slave. 5 As discussed in Crone, Roman Provincial and Islamic Law, 67–68; and especially in Mitter, “Unconditional Manumission.” This article will return below to the topic the sāʾiba, or slave manumitted without incurring a walāʾ bond.



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contrast Abū Bakra’s mawlā status with the opportunistic “Arabism” of his own relatives, thereby criticizing the Umayyad manipulation of kinship ties. Through this discussion, I hope to highlight the crucial but underappreciated fact that the term “mawlā” is not merely a descriptive term or a legal designation, but that it could be a potent polemical tool. A brief overview of Abū Bakra’s biography will provide a sense of context and orientation for the following analysis. His name is usually given as Nufayʿ ibn Masrūḥ.6 He was a slave born in the household of al-Ḥārith ibn Kalada al-Thaqafī, a well-to-do physician of al-Ṭāʾif. His father was a slave of al-Ḥārith’s, an Abyssinian man named Masrūḥ. His mother, Sumayya, was a slave woman and prostitute also belonging to al-Ḥārith; she was also the mother of the Umayyad governor Ziyād ibn Abīhi. During the siege of al-Ṭāʾif in the year 630, the Muslim army announced that any slave who escaped from their masters and joined the cause of Islam would be freed. At this point, Nufayʿ and a handful of other slaves joined the Muslims;7 Nufayʿ rappelled down from the high wall of al-Ṭāʾif on a pulley, thus earning his famous moniker, Abū Bakra, which means “father of the pulley.” Later, during the caliphate of ʿUmar, Abū Bakra moved to Basra along with several of his family members. There he became embroiled in a widely-recounted incident involving the governor of Basra, al-Mughīra ibn Shuʿba. Abū Bakra and three other men, including his half-brothers Nāfiʿ and Ziyād, accused al-Mughīra of engaging in fornication; however, Ziyād retracted his accusation at the last minute, and Abū Bakra was found guilty of qadhf (false accusation or slander) and beaten eighty lashes. This qadhf episode understandably created a rift between Abū Bakra and Ziyād. Abū Bakra appears to have shunned any association with politics, and he was among those who withdrew from combat and refused to take sides in the Battle of the Camel in 656. He had several children and many grandchildren, his progeny becoming some of the wealthiest and most prominent men of Basra. He died in the year 671 or 672 and was prayed over by his friend and fellow Companion Abū Baraza.8

6 His name is sometimes given as Nufayʿ ibn al-Ḥārith. The details of Abū Bakra’s parentage will be discussed in the historiographical section below. 7 Though the original siege of al-Ṭāʾif was abortive, Muḥammad and the Muslims defeated the Thaqīf tribe and accepted their conversion a few months later, after the battle of Ḥunayn. Given that the slaves who came down during the siege converted to Islam several months before their Thaqafī masters, they would have been superior to their former masters in terms of sābiqa, the prestige gained through early conversion to Islam. 8 Fatima Mernissi’s feminist re-interpretation of early Islamic history presents Abū Bakra in a rather different light (The Veil and the Male Elite, 49–60). Her focus is on Abū

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The first episode in Abū Bakra’s life that deserves closer examination is his escape from al-Ṭāʾif and subsequent manumission. Although the sources vary widely in their treatment of this event—most Tārīkh works barely mention it, whereas al-Wāqidī spends a full page discussing its details— most sources seem to take for granted that Abū Bakra became a mawlā of the Prophet as a result of his manumission at al-Ṭāʾif.9 Yet this largely implicit conferral of walāʾ through manumission is highly problematic. One problem is the simple fact that none of the other slaves who came down during the siege of al-Ṭāʾif has been remembered as a mawlā of the Prophet. Most of these other slaves are anonymous or largely forgotten to history, but even those that do receive some treatment in the early sources are never considered mawālī of the Prophet.10 There is also the fact that Abū Bakra is much more closely associated with his master’s tribe of Thaqīf than Muḥammad’s tribe of Quraysh.11 However, this article will focus on an even more pressing problem: the phrase used to describe Abū Bakra’s post-manumission status in most sources is not actually “mawlā rasūl allāh” (mawlā of the messenger of God), but rather “ṭalīq allāh wa-ṭalīq rasūlihi” (the one set loose by God and His apostle).12 The source authors themselves do not pay much attention to this unique Bakra’s association with the hadith: “Those who entrust their affairs to a woman will never know prosperity.” Here he is presented as a lying, wealth-loving, woman-hating villain. However, it remains that the sources actually present Abū Bakra as pious, almost ascetic in his renunciation of the dunyā, and an all-around good guy. 9 Only al-Balādhurī explicitly connects Abū Bakra’s manumission with his walāʾ (Ansāb al-Ashrāf, 490: “fa-aʿtaqahu fa-ṣāra mawlā rasūl allāh”). The other sources imply this connection, but they do not state it outright. 10 For example, al-Azraq, a Byzantine slave belonging either to al-Ḥārith ibn Kalada or to his father Kalada—and married to Abū Bakra’s mother Sumayya—descended from the citadel along with Abū Bakra. He is not known as a mawlā of the Prophet in a single early historical or bibliographical source; indeed, he and his sons seem to have claimed an Arabic heritage and intermarried with the Umayyads. See for instance al-Wāqidī, Maghāzī, 3:931–32; Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, 3.1:174; al-Balādhurī, Ansāb al-Ashrāf, 490; al-Balādhurī, Futūḥ al-Buldān, 55–56 (where he claims that the Azāriqa Kharijite sect was named after al-Azraq); and Tabari, Tārīkh, ser. 3, vol. 4, 2315. 11 One report even says Abū Bakra was a mawlā of al-Ḥārith ibn Kalada (Ibn ʿAsākir, Tārīkh Madīnat Dimashq, 62 208). In any case, a mawlā gets a bond of walāʾ with his manumitter but also gets a place in his manumitter’s tribe. If Abū Bakra had truly been a mawlā of the Prophet, he should have exhibited a much stronger social bond to Muḥammad’s family and tribesmen. 12 Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, 7.1:9; Ibn ʿAsākir, Tārīkh Madīnat Dimashq, 62:212–13; Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Zād al-Maʿād, 3:366. According to ʻUmar ibn Gharāmah al-ʻAmrawī, the editor of Ibn ʿAsākir’s Tārīkh Madīnat Dimashq, two versions of this account are also found in the



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phrase, but I argue that it preserves a glimmer of historical memory that Abū Bakra did not incur walāʾ with the Prophet or anyone else by dint of his manumission at al-Ṭāʾif. The context for the use of this peculiar phrase is as follows: when al-Ṭāʾif surrendered to the Muslim army, a delegation of Thaqafīs asked Muḥammad to return Abū Bakra to them, explaining that they had become Muslims and should thus rightfully get their former slave back. Muḥammad rebuffed the Thaqafīs by saying: “huwa ṭalīq allāh wa-ṭalīq rasūlihi.”13 One author, Ibn Saʿd, provides an alternate khabar that completely alters the problematic phrase; in this report, Abū Bakra himself responds to the Thaqafīs who wanted to reclaim him by saying: “I am Masrūḥ (sic), the mawlā of the Messenger of God.” However, in this account, the setup story has been altered as well: rather than hoping to reclaim him as their slave, the Thaqafī tribesmen hope to “adopt” (iddaʿā) him.14 Thus, the context of the khabar has been changed from one of slavery and freedom to one of genealogy and adoption, topics that will be covered in the second half of this article. Moreover, Ibn Saʿd provides two more khabars with the usual “ṭalīq allāh” phrasing, and the presence of the word “mawlā” in the altered khabar serves to highlight the strangeness of the phrase “ṭalīq allāh” in the other accounts, rather than to disguise it. As for the word ṭalīq, the Quran makes no reference to it or to its plural ṭulaqāʾ. However, the term ṭulaqāʾ is found in the historical sources with a very specific meaning. Here, it is used to refer to the Qurashīs who capitulated and converted during the Muslim conquest of Mecca. These conquered Qurashīs should legally have been the war captives of the Prophet, but he chose to release rather than to enslave them. As C. E. Bosworth explains, the term ṭulaqāʾ “was subsequently used opprobriously by ­opponents of the Meccan late converts, such as enemies of

Dār al-Fikr edition of Ibn Ḥanbal’s, Musnad, 6:168–169. I was unable to verify the existence of these accounts in any edition of the Musnad available to me. 13 Al-Wāqidī and Ibn Hishām provide a slight variant in their accounts: the Thaqafīs ask for all of their slaves back, and Muḥammad responds by saying, “hum ʿutaqāʾ allāh” (they are the manumitted ones of God). I believe that this phrase is a gloss, as the word ʿatīq (pl. ʿutaqāʾ) is the more common word for “freedman,” and also because the Thaqafīs of al-Ṭāʾif were generally known as al-ʿutaqāʾ (see below, footnote 15). In any case, this alternative phrase still seems to imply that these “freedmen of God” did not become the mawālī of their former masters. Al-Wāqidī, Maghāzī, 3:931–32; Ibn Hishām, Al-Sīra al-Nabawiyya, 1:485. 14 Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, 7.1:9; the same account is also found in the much later Ibn ʿAsākir, Tārīkh Madīnat Dimashq, 62 213–14.

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the Umayyads.”15 On the one hand, I believe we can discount the possibility that the sources are drawing a purely rhetorical comparison between Abū Bakra and the Meccan Qurashīs, as the implications of the term are completely different in these two cases. In contrast to the ambivalent situation of the Meccans, the context for Abū Bakra’s designation as a ṭalīq is overwhelmingly positive; it is a badge of freedom from slavery and possibly even a badge of spiritual superiority over the Thaqafīs who converted after him. On the other hand, I do believe that the Meccan situation can provide a clue to the meaning of the term ṭalīq in the Ṭāʾifī case: it does not seem to entail walāʾ. Certainly, no source ever argues that the Qurashī ṭulaqāʾ became Muḥammad’s mawālī. Similarly, because Abū Bakra was manumitted by God (with Muḥammad acting simply as the agent for this manumission), he did not entail any socially meaningful walāʾ bond. Additional clues about the phrase “ṭalīq allāh” can be found in early Islamic poetry. There are three poems that utilize the phrase, all dating before the early ninth century. While these few poems do not address Abū Bakra’s case directly, they do shed light on how the phrase was used and understood. The first poem concerns a man named Imām ibn Aqram al-Numayrī, who was arrested by al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf (d. 714) and some other members of Abān ibn Marwān’s police squad in Balqāʾ. Imām managed to escape from prison using his own cunning, at which point he reportedly recited a poem declaring himself a ṭalīq allāh and ridiculing the ugly faces of the police who had incarcerated him.16 Here Imām uses ṭalīq allāh to refer to his escape from jail, not from slavery; as such, it does not teach us much about the workings of slavery, manumission, and walāʾ in

15 Bosworth, “Tulaḳāʾ,” EI 2. According to Ibn Manẓūr, the Qurashīs of Mecca were known as ṭulaqāʾ while the Thaqafīs of al-Ṭāʾif were known as ʿutaqāʾ; the former designation was slightly more honorable than the latter (Lisān al-ʿArab, 10 227). I believe this distinction might have led al-Wāqidī and Ibn Saʿd to designate the freedmen of al-Ṭāʾif as “ ʿutaqaʾ ” rather than “ṭulaqāʾ ” in their accounts, see footnote 13 above. 16 The one set loose by God was given no favors ṭalīqu llāhi lam yamnun ʿalayhī By Abū Dāwūd or Ibn Abī Kathīr abū dāwūda wa-bnu abī kathīrī Or al-Ḥajjāj, with eyes like a stork wa-lā l-ḥajjāju ʿaynay binti māʾī Who turns up her gaze, fearing hawks. tuqallibu ṭarfahā ḥadhara ṣ-ṣuqūrī Sibawayhi, Kitāb, 2:158; Khalīl ibn Aḥmad, Al-Jumal fī al-Naḥw, 64; al-Jāḥiẓ, Al-Bayān wa-alTabyīn, 1:386. Sibawayhi and Khalīl ibn Aḥmad use this poem as an example of shatm (slander), which takes the manṣūb case—hence the use of ʿaynay rather than ʿaynā. They indicate that this entire description stands for “apes’ faces.” However, al-Jāḥiẓ gives another explanation. He says that al-Ḥajjāj had small eyes (ukhayfash) with red, infected eyelids (munsaliq al-ajfān), and that all water birds (such as the stork in this description) also have small, ugly infected, eyes. Ibn ʿAsākir provides a slightly different text with a moderately different interpretation in his Tārīkh Madīnat Dimashq, 9:217.



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early Islamic society. However, it does express the idea that Imām’s incarceration was unjust, while his escape was ordained by God. This theme of justice is also conveyed by the second poem, a short teaching tool in simple verse (rajaz). This poem was recited by the Kufan grammarian Ibn al-Aʿrābī (d. ca. 846) to illustrate the meaning of the word bahz (a violent blow). The poet begins, “I am a ṭalīq allāh,” and it goes on to explain how he had been saved from the beatings of a harsh master.17 In this poem, it appears that the ṭalīq allāh was some kind of freed slave or war captive, like Abū Bakra; though it is not explicit, it also seems that “ṭalīq allāh” here is a gloss for “Muslim.” Thus, like the poem above, this poem highlights the injustice of mistreating a fellow Muslim, whose freedom from a brutal enslavement was sanctioned by God. Both of these poems give us some idea of the overall meaning of “ṭalīq allāh” and thus illuminate Abū Bakra’s case. First, we see that the phrase ṭalīq allāh is different from the Quranic phrase and common name ʿabd allāh (“slave of God,” i.e. Muslim), which does not imply slavery in the mundane sense, but rather serves to express absolute subservience and submission to God. On the other hand, the phrase ṭalīq allāh does provide the justification for social freedom (whether from jail or bondage), as well as carrying the meaning of “Muslim.” Second, we see in both poems that the phrase is laden with notions of socio-religious justice and injustice— these poems are recited after some unjust act has been perpetrated, and the poet highlights that injustice by calling himself a ṭalīq allāh. These two elements seem to hold true for Abū Bakra as well: his social freedom was inextricable from his conversion to Islam, and his former master’s request to re-enslave him was unjust. Finally, these poems also show us that the ṭalīq allāh was a character familiar to early Islamic poetry, but that the figure died out sometime in the early ʿAbbāsid period. The death of the poetic ṭalīq allāh may also indicate the disappearance of the sociohistorical ṭalīq allāh in this same general time period. There is a third “ṭalīq allāh” poem that goes in a different direction. It is a panegyric (madīḥ) written by the ʿAbbāsid court poet Marwān ibn Abī 17 I am the one set loose by God, for the son of Hurmuz anā ṭalīqu llāhi wa-bnu hurmuzī Rescued me from a ruthless master, anqadhanī min ṣāḥibin musharrizī Vehement against the people, felling, striking. shiksin ʿala l-ahli matallin mibhazī Al-Azharī, Tahdhīb al-Lugha, 4:402–3; Ibn Sīda, Al-Muḥkam wa-al-Muḥīṭ, 4:238–39. Ibn Sīda adds a fourth line to the poem: “if he comes near me with the rod, it will not be held back” (in qāma naḥwī bi-l-ʿaṣā lam yuḥjazī).

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Ḥafṣa (d. 797) in praise of the caliph al-Mahdī (r. 775–785). After lauding the caliph’s character and uprightness, Marwān asks the rhetorical questions: “The one set loose by God, who is his manumitter? / The one killed by God, who is his killer?” (ṭalīq allāh man huwa muṭliquh / qatīl allāh man huwa qātiluh).18 In this case, the answer to both of these rhetorical questions is the caliph al-Mahdī himself, as the bastion of Islam and upholder of God’s statutes.19 However, this question is also important from a social, historical, and non-rhetorical standpoint: if God (or Islam) is the ultimate manumitter of the ṭalīq allāh, who is in charge of his social welfare? Who in society bears the responsibility for his manumission and subsequent care? Though it by no means conclusive, some evidence does exist that the ṭalīq allāh became the communal responsibility of the entire umma, rather than becoming the mawlā of any individual patron. The main support for this argument about the communal responsibility for the ṭalīq allāh is the strong resemblance between the idea of the ṭalīq allāh and the idea of the sāʾiba. In Islamic law, a sāʾiba is a freed slave who does not become a mawlā; tasyīb is the practice of freeing a slave without subsequently creating a walāʾ bond, which Ulrike Mitter calls “unconditional manumission.”20 Before exploring the similarities between the ṭalīq allāh and the sāʾiba, however, it must be noted that the two terms are not identical. The main difference between them is that the sāʾiba is manumitted by his master, whereas the ṭalīq allāh is manumitted by God Himself, or by his conversion to Islam. Moreover, the two ideas are never explicitly connected in the sources: the sources that discuss tasyīb never mention the phrase ṭalīq allāh, nor is Abū Bakra ever described as a sāʾiba. The reason for this lack of overlap is that the terms inhabit two different spheres. On the one hand, tasyīb is a legal issue. Though most jurists reject the institution outright,21 scholars of the seventh and eighth century debated whether the institution was allowed. Even the scholars who did accept the institution were only concerned with the legal right of inheritance from the sāʾiba and the legal responsibility of paying blood money for him. On

18 Marwān ibn Abī Ḥafṣa, Shiʿr, 95. 19 While the ultimate answer to the rhetorical question is God Himself, Marwān’s point here is to laud the caliph’s role in upholding God’s order, as evidenced by the next line of poetry: fa-innaka baʿd allāh la-al-ḥakam alladhī / tuṣābu bihi min kull ḥaqq mafāṣiluhu. Ibid. 20 Mitter, “Unconditional Manumission.” 21 Their rejection of tasyīb was justified using the “walāʾ belongs to the manumitter” hadith and the Quranic injunction against releasing a camel as a sāʾiba (5:103), i.e. letting it wander alone into a pasture without a caretaker and without restraints.



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the other hand, we have seen that the ṭalīq allāh is a historical and literary figure who highlights notions of freedom and justice, rather than notions of inheritance and blood money. Even for Abū Bakra, for whom we have a good sense of social setting and historical context, the intricacies of his legal status are never discussed, nor is it ever debated whether his status as a ṭalīq allāh is legally permissible. Despite these differences, a crucial similarity remains between the two concepts, in that they both involve manumission without walāʾ. It is noteworthy that the one major scholar who did accept tasyīb, Mālik ibn Anas, gave legal responsibility for the sāʾiba to the community of Muslims at large.22 Mālik’s school propagated the sunna of Medina; the school of Medina reflected the needs of a relatively small and homogenous community, one predominantly populated by fully-Islamicized Arabian tribesmen. Such a community could accommodate the care of a small number of foreigners, sāʾibas, and other rootless people.23 Abū Bakra and the other freed Ṭāʾifī slaves were products of a similar Arabian milieu that could incorporate outsiders into the community without necessarily needing individual ties of patronage. And, as both the sāʾiba and the ṭalīq allāh depended on having a small and relatively homogenous community that could accommodate a small number of rootless people, both were replaced by the more systematic legal and social institution of walāʾ as Islamic society expanded into Iraq and became more diverse. The sources do provide a dim glimmer of evidence about how such a communal responsibility might have worked, and what actually became of Abū Bakra and his fellow “freedmen of God.” Al-Wāqidī, the only author

22 For instance, Mālik says: “Jews and Christians do not get walāʾ [over Muslim slaves]; the walāʾ of a Muslim slave [owned by a Jew or Christian] goes to the society of Muslims” ( jamāʿat al-muslimīn). Mālik ibn Anas, Al-Muwaṭṭaʾ, 2:786 (book 38, section 13, hadith #25). 23 On the other hand, Basra and Kufa were outposts in the middle of diverse non­Muslim populations. The Muslim populations of these cities were too small, and the number of war captives and foreign slaves too high, to integrate outsiders into the community without a real system in place. The institution of walāʾ was needed to maintain order and to preserve the hegemony of the Muslim soldiers over the surrounding populations. There is a similar difference between Mālik’s Medinan school and other Iraqi schools of law in the treatment of kafāʾa, or marriage equality (a woman must marry a man of her own social station or higher). Mālik is not overly concerned with the issue of kafāʾa, for his community was relatively homogenous and made up of well-known, familiar tribal elements; the Iraqi schools, especially the school of the Kufan Abū Hanīfa, uphold intricate criteria of kafāʾa, which was important in maintaining some sense of social order in a diverse community. See Farhat Ziadeh, “Equality (kafāʾah) in the Muslim Law of Marriage.”

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who lists each of the freed slaves of al-Ṭāʾif by name, gives this detailed information: 24 The Messenger of God manumitted all of these, and gave each one of them to a Muslim to provide for him and look after him. Abū Bakra went to ʿAmr ibn Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ; al-Azraq went to Khālid ibn Saʿīd; Wardān went to Abān ibn Saʿīd; Yuḥannas al-Nabbāl went to ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān; Yasār ibn Mālik went to Saʿd ibn ʿUbāda; and Ibrāhīm ibn Jābir went to Usayd ibn al-Ḥuḍayr. The messenger of God ordered them to read them the Quran and teach them the proper ways (sunan).

From this account, it seems that Muḥammad, as the head of the umma, divided up the social and religious responsibility for these patronless freedmen among individual members of the umma as he saw fit. He did not forge any walāʾ bonds between the freedmen and their caretakers, but rather set up a temporary arrangement for the integration of these freedmen into the umma.25 The evidence presented here leads me to believe that Abū Bakra did not become a mawlā of the Prophet at the crucial moment of his manumission, but that he rather fell under the care of the Muslim community as a ṭalīq allāh wa-ṭalīq rasūlihi. It seems that this designation soon fell into disuse, and later scholars back-projected the more familiar social status of mawlā onto Abū Bakra. This back-projection is probably due in part to an application of the “walāʾ belongs to the manumitter” ḥadīth to Abū Bakra’s case, as well as to his association with a heterogeneous Basran milieu that did not understand the Arabian idea of the ṭalīq allāh. However, I argue that this back-projection of mawlā identity was not completely innocent, that it was more than a simple attempt to render Abū Bakra’s social and legal status more comprehensible to a later audience. I argue that Abū Bakra has been remembered as a mawlā of the Prophet largely in order to critique the Umayyads’ obsession with and manipulation of nasab. It is to these arguments that I now turn. 24 Al-Wāqidī, Maghāzī, 3:932. Ibn Saʿd, who was al-Wāqidī’s student and scribe, summarizes this account in his Ṭabaqāt, 2.1 114: “[The prophet] gave each one of them to one of the Muslims, to take care of him” (wa-dafaʿa kull rajulin minhum ilā rajulin min al-muslimīn yamūnahu). 25 The situation can perhaps be compared to a modern-day example, to clarify this distinction between individual and communal responsibility. It seems similar to when the members of some organization (school, church, etc.) are asked to host out-of-towners who are visiting that organization or are otherwise affiliated with it. While individual organization members end up hosting individual out-of-towners, it is the organization itself that is the reason for their coming together. The situation may have an individual element to it, but the ultimate framework is a communal or organizational one.



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Good Brother, Bad Brother: Abū Bakra as a Foil to Ziyād ibn Abīhi Ziyād and Nāfiʿ and Abū Bakra Are terribly amusing to me. Three men created in one woman’s womb, Yet with different genealogy: One a Qurashī, or so he says; one a mawlā; And one who claims an Arab to be.

inna Ziyād wa-Nāfiʿ wa-Abā Bakra ʿindī min aʿjab al-muʿjib Inna rijāl thalātha khuliqū min raḥm unthā mukhālfī al-nasab dhā qurashīyun fī-mā yaqūlu wa-dhā mawlā wa-hādhā bi-zaʿmihi ʿArabī 26

Abū Bakra’s family situation is quite complicated; it is bound up with several important concepts that were developing during the early Islamic period, such as the “the child belongs to the bed” (al-walad li-al-firāsh) dictum,27 the status of the umm al-walad,28 and new understandings of genealogy and ethnicity. However, all of the sources are deeply interested in Abū Bakra’s relationship with one particular family member: his notorious half-brother Ziyād ibn Abīhi. I argue that Abū Bakra is used in the historical sources as a foil to Ziyād, and that his historical persona as a mawlā of the Prophet is inextricable from this polemical role. There is ample evidence that Abū Bakra and Ziyād are ideologically bound together in the sources, with Abū Bakra playing the hero and Ziyād playing the villain. For instance, al-Balādhurī transmits a colorful account in which Anas ibn Mālik and al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī pay a visit to Abū Bakra, who is laid up by a bad case of sciatica. Anas asks Abū Bakra why he is so angry with Ziyād, wondering whether his grudge concerns a matter of this world or the next. Anas insists that Abū Bakra should not begrudge Ziyād anything concerning this world, for Ziyād has bestowed high positions and

26 A poem by Khālid al-Najjārī, cited in Masʿūdī, Murūj al-Dhahab, 5:26. 27 This dictum states that, in any case of disputed paternity, a child is automatically attributed to his mother’s legal husband or master. According to this dictum, Abū Bakra would have been taken as the legal son of his mother’s master, al-Ḥārith ibn Kalada al-Thaqafī. As such, he would have been treated as a full member of the Thaqīf tribe, rather than as a slave of mixed heritage. However, at the time of Abū Bakra’s birth, the walad li-al-firāsh dictum still seems to have been in its developmental stages. See Uri Rubin, “ ‘Al-Walad li-l-Firāsh.’ ” 28 The umm al-walad is a slave woman who bears a child to her master. She cannot be sold, and she is freed upon her master’s death. The child of an umm walad is legally free, even if there was some social stigma attached to being the child of an umm walad in the earliest Islamic society. In later times, Sumayya would have been treated as an umm walad and all her children would have been considered free. See J. Schacht, “Umm al-Walad,” EI 2.

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wealth upon Abū Bakra’s children. “And if it is for something concerning the next world,” says Anas, “by God, he strives to do what is right” (innahu la-mujtahid).29 Abū Bakra responds: “Oh really, does he strive to do what is right? The Kharijites of Ḥarurāʾ also claim that they strive to do what is right.” With one flip comeback, Abū Bakra has reduced his half-brother to the same level as a band of dangerous Kharijite fanatics. Additionally, almost all the sources refer to the aforementioned qadhf episode, in which Ziyād recanted his accusation of fornication against al-Mughīra ibn Shuʿba, and Abū Bakra consequently received the ḥadd punishment for slander. Given that he was found guilty of qadhf by no less a figure than ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, one might assume that Abū Bakra would come out of this affair with his reputation tarnished. Yet most of the historical sources—including al-Ṭabarī, al-Yaʿqūbī, al-Balādhurī, and Ibn Saʿd—depict the entire event from Abū Bakra’s point of view. That is, in their accounts Abū Bakra actually witnesses al-Mughīra’s fornication, and he receives confirmation from his three fellows that they also witnessed the event and could identify the perpetrators. Al-Balādhurī even inserts into his qadhf account a Quranic reference to Abū Bakra as one of “those who walks upon the earth in humility” (alladhīna yamshūna ʿalā al-arḍi hawnan, Q 25:63), and he declares Abū Bakra a “righteous, pious man.”30 Moreover, when ʿUmar moves to beat an unrepentant Abū Bakra a second time, al-Balādhurī has Abū Bakra yell: “I will not repent from the truth!” expressing the injustice of his punishment and even evoking a Ḥallāj-like sacrifice in the name of Truth.31 Similar examples of clashes between the two abound in the sources. However, the primary aim of this article is to discover how Abū Bakra’s mawlā status in particular was used to condemn Ziyād and the Umayyads. At this juncture, we must remember the incident that cemented Ziyād’s notoriety in Islamic history: his diʿwa, or his “acknowledgment” of Abū Sufyān as his father. Ziyād’s biological father was almost certainly a Byzantine slave belonging to al-Ḥārith ibn Kalada, named ʿUbayd—that is, Ziyād was first a slave and then a mawlā of al-Ḥārith’s. But when the caliph Muʿāwiya wanted to secure Ziyād’s loyalty as governor of Basra, Muʿāwiya suggested that his own father, the powerful Qurashī nobleman

29 I have translated mujtahid in a slightly tortuous manner, hoping to convey both the idea of “striving” and the idea of “independent judgment.” 30 Al-Balādhurī, Ansāb al-Ashrāf, 490–91 (for the Quranic verse), 492 (for the “righteous, pious man”). 31 Ibid., 492.



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Abū Sufyān, was actually Ziyād’s father as well. Overnight, Ziyād dropped his mawlā status and became an Arab tribesman and half-brother of the caliph. The sources universally condemn this act; they blame Muʿāwiya and Ziyād equally for committing this travesty, and they use the incident as evidence that the Umayyads cared more for mundane power than religious righteousness. On the other hand, according to some sources, Abū Bakra reveled in his identity as mawlā of the Prophet, insisted that his children call him “the son of Masrūḥ,” and flatly refused any attempt to claim him as an “Arab.” By examining the sources that portray Abū Bakra in this way, we can learn more about where and when this mawlā versus diʿwa theme originated. First, it is worth noting that genre is an important factor in tracing this development; the information we are seeking is found primarily in biographical dictionaries and ḥadīth literature. Works of Maghāzī/Futūḥ (conquest narratives) and Tārīkh (annalistic history) are not particularly helpful for this investigation. On the one hand, Maghāzī/Futūḥ works are interested in Abū Bakra’s manumission at the siege of al-Ṭāʾif, but they are not interested in his subsequent career or relationship with Ziyād. On the other hand, Tārīkh works are only interested in Abū Bakra’s interactions with political leaders, and they care little or nothing for his social identity. This genre bias is best exemplified by al-Balādhurī, who provides ample evidence of Abū Bakra’s ideological role in his biographical dictionary Ansāb al-Ashrāf but mentions nothing of Abū Bakra’s mawlā identity or his relationship with Ziyād in his conquest chronicle Futūḥ al-Buldān. Perhaps if al-Ṭabarī, al-Yaʿqūbī, Ibn Ḥabīb, Ibn Isḥāq and others had written works of biography and ḥadīth rather than Tārīkh and Maghāzī, there would be an overabundance of historiographical material regarding Abū Bakra’s ideological role. However, as it stands, the material in extant biographical dictionaries and ḥadīth compendia must suffice. When it comes to biographical dictionaries, Ibn Saʿd (d. 845) and later al-Balādhurī (d. 892) are particularly keen on contrasting Abū Bakra’s mawlā identity with Ziyād’s diʿwa. We have already seen that Ibn Saʿd provides a telling alternative to the ṭalīq allāh accounts discussed above. In this alternative account, the impertinent request made by the Thaqafīs is not to reenslave Abū Bakra, but to adopt him; the same verb is used here (iddaʿā) that is used when Ziyād “acknowledges” Abū Sufyan. Rather than accepting their request—as Ziyād accepted Muʿāwiya’s request—Abū Bakra simply says, “I am mawlā of the Messenger of God.” Here walāʾ is propped up as the antithesis to diʿ wa, and Abū Bakra’s noble pride in his (supposed) connection with the Prophet is contrasted with Ziyād’s wicked pride in his new genealogy.

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Ibn Saʿd also transmits an account in which a dying Abū Bakra exhorts his daughter to mourn him as “Ibn Masrūḥ.”32 He ends his account by saying: “Ziyād had brought the children of Abū Bakra close to him, and honored them, and given them land grants and government positions, so that they wound up with a terribly great amount of earthly interests and claimed that they were Arabs and the sons of Nufayʿ ibn al-Ḥārith al-Thaqafī.”33 Here we see that Ziyād’s ignoble influence even spread to Abū Bakra’s own children. Against a sea of people ditching their foreign backgrounds and claiming Arab lineages—including his own brother and sons—Abū Bakra stands out as a beacon of piety because he refuses to do precisely that. The second source that uses Abū Bakra’s mawlā status to condemn Ziyād is Ansāb al-Ashrāf, written by Ibn Saʿd’s student al-Balādhurī. Al-Balādhurī’s stance towards Abū Bakra’s social identity is instantly clear, as he locates Abū Bakra’s biography in a section titled “Mawālī and Servants of the Messenger of God.” Al-Balādhurī is also the only author who states outright that Abū Bakra became a mawlā of the Prophet upon his manumission. He then conveys an account that combines several of the elements we have seen in Ibn Saʿd’s work, on the authority of al-Wāqidī: “Nufay Abū Bakra was the mawlā of the Prophet, a pious and upright man. His sons said: ‘Nufayʿ ibn Ḥārith al-Thaqafī,’ but Abū Bakra denounced that and said to his daughter at the time of his death: ‘mourn me as Ibn Masrūḥ al-Ḥabashī.’ ” Finally, al-Balādhurī transmits yet another vividly anti-Ziyād account, in which Abū Bakra tells one of Ziyād’s sons that his father has committed three sins in Islam: 1) rescinding his witness against al-Mughīra, 2) accepting the diʿwa, and 3) intending to stay with his new “sister,” the wife of the Prophet Umm Ḥabība bint Sufyān, on the upcoming ḥajj. Here treachery, diʿwa, and scandal against the Prophet are all rolled up into one diatribe, put in the mouth of Abū Bakra. As for the provenance of Ibn Saʿd’s and al-Balādhurī’s accounts, we must content ourselves with hints and suggestions rather than hard proof. Unfortunately, al-Balādhurī prefers the collective isnād “they said” (qālū) to more precise isnāds; thus, we cannot trace the provenance of the accounts in question. Ibn Saʿd attributes the bulk of his account to the Medinese scholar Ismāʿīl ibn Ibrāhīm al-Asadī (d. 785).34 There must have been several transmitters in between al-Asadī and Abū Bakra—they

32 Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, 7.1:9. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb, 1:258–59.



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died more than a century apart—but we receive no information on these transmitters. Our best clue from Ibn Saʿd is found in the isnāds of his ṭalīq allāh accounts, as well as the third account that changes the wording to “mawlā rasūl allāh.” The isnād for the latter account is: Abū ʿĀmir al-Aqadī (d. ca. 820),35 from al-Aswad ibn Shaybān (d. 781),36 from Khālid ibn Sumayr (n.d.).37 From this isnād, it seems that the khabar dates to the early- or mid-eighth century, assuming that Khālid ibn Sumayr died between twenty and forty years before al-Aswad ibn Shaybān. Thus, Abū Bakra’s mawlā identity was being trumpeted during the late Umayyad period at the latest. Moreover, the isnād for this khabar is entirely Basran, while both transmissions of the ṭalīq allāh account are predominantly Kufan.38 It is possible that the Basrans took special pride in Abū Bakra’s anti-Ziyād stance as a kind of “hometown hero,” or even that it was in Basra in particular that mawlā came to mean the antithesis of Arab.39 However, we cannot take a Basran milieu as the sole reason that Abū Bakra was viewed as a mawlā and used as an anti-Umayyad vehicle. The Basran intellectual scene was diverse, and while some Basrans may have taken an anti-Umayyad stance, there was also a current of ʿUthmānī thought running through Basra.40 A pro-ʿUthmānī stance might have

35 Ibid., 4 254–55. 36 Ibid., 1:319. 37 Ibid., 2:274–75. 38 The isnads for the ṭalīq allāh accounts are: 1) Al-Faḍl ibn Dukayn (d. 834, Kufan; Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb, 5:250–55), from Abū al-Aḥwaṣ (d. 795, Kufan; ibid., 3:112), from Mughīra ibn Miqsam (d. ca. 750, Kufan; ibid., 6:386–87), from Shibāk (n.d., Kufan; ibid., 3:131), from an unnamed Thaqafī man; and 2) Yaḥyā ibn Ḥammād (d. 830, Basran; ibid., 7:27–28), from Abū ʿAwāna (d. 791, Wāsiṭī; ibid., 6:714–17), from Mughīra, from Shibāk, from ʿĀmir al-Shaʿbī (d. ca. 725, Kufan; ibid., 3:339–42). 39 Jamal Juda devotes much attention to the regional differences in walāʾ between Kufa and Basra. For instance, he finds finds that walāʾ al-tibāʿa (walāʾ of conversion) was found predominantly in Syria and Basra, whereas walāʾ al-ʿitāqa (walāʾ of manumission) was found in Hijaz and Kufa. He argues that Kufan and Medinan legal schools did not put much worth on nasab, but rather advocated the idea that all believers were equal (c.f. Ziadeh’s findings in “Equality (kafāʾah) in the Muslim Law of Marriage,” see footnote 22). On the other hand, in Basra, where the north Arabian tribes set the tone, tribal pedigree was more highly valued and the Persian ethnic minority more despised. Juda finds the roots of the Shuʿūbiyya movement in Basra. However, his theories need more investigation and evidence. For instance, he argues that the pride in famous mawālī such as Salmān al-Fārisī, and the negative view of the Umayyads, is a viewpoint found primarily in the Kufan sources. But the concomitant pro-mawlā and anti-Umayyad currents in Abū Bakra’s biography seem to have emerged in Basra. (See Juda, “Aspekte,” vi–xi, 76–86, 163–71, and 189–93.) For the most thorough discussion of early Islamic Basra, including its ethnic makeup, its intellectual currents, and its political trends, see Pellat, Le Milieu Baṣrien. 40 See Pellat, Le Milieu Baṣrien, 188–94.

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encouraged certain scholars to downplay or even deny Abū Bakra’s mawlā status, and thus to blunt his polemical anti-Umayyad edge. For instance, the famous Basran muḥaddith and ʿUthmānī sympathizer, Khalīfa ibn Khayyāṭ (d. 855), considers Abū Bakra to be a full Thaqafī tribesman, the son of al-Ḥārith ibn Kalada.41 While his pro-ʿUthmānī outlook may have contributed to his treatment of Abū Bakra, I believe the most important factor in Khalīfa’s outlook is his specialty in ḥadīth. Indeed, it seems that all the later ḥadīth compilers of the ninth century who have anything to say on the matter of Abū Bakra’s identity—including Ibn Abī Shayba, Ibn Ḥanbal, al-Bukhārī, and Muslim—consider Abū Bakra a Thaqafī Arab rather than a mawlā of mixed heritage.42 I attribute the muḥaddithūn’s position on Abū Bakra’s parentage to a back-projection of the al-walad li-al-firāsh dictum. They do not cite this reasoning, but simply declare Abū Bakra’s name as Nufayʿ ibn al-Ḥārith, without acknowledging the historical accounts to the contrary or even acknowledging that his paternity was disputed. Their concern with ḥadīth and their interest in determining the soundest ones seems to have led them to back-project this famous dictum onto Abū Bakra. They also largely avoid (though they do not deny outright) the fact that Abū Bakra was manumitted during the siege of al-Ṭāʾif, perhaps in order to avoid having to make a choice between two Prophetic maxims: the child belongs to the bed (al-walad li-al-firāsh) versus walāʾ belongs to the manumitter (al-walāʾ li-man aʿtaqa). Despite their back-projection of the firāsh dictum onto Abū Bakra, all of these muḥaddithūn actually transmit one particular ḥadīth that uses Abū Bakra’s mawlā identity to denounce Ziyād. In its most basic form, this ḥadīth reads: “whoever claims a false father, knowing that he is not his father, the Garden will be forbidden to him” (man iddaʿā ilā ghayr abīhi, wa-huwa yaʿlamu annahu ghayr abīhi, fa-al-janna ʿalayhi ḥarām).43 The

41 Khalīfa ibn Khayyāṭ, Ṭabaqāt, 125 and 430. For Khalīfa’s politics and scholarship, see S. Zakkar, “Ibn Khayyāṭ al-Uṣfurī, Khalīfa,” EI 2. 42 Al-Bukhārī, Al-Tārīkh al-Kabīr, 4.2: 112–13; Ibn Ḥanbal, Kitāb al-Asāmī wa-al-Kunā, 30; Muslim, Kitāb al-Kunā wa-al-Asmāʾ, 16. For Ibn Abī Shayba, as well as several other scholars, see Ibn ʿAsākir, Tārīkh Madīnat Dimashq, 62:202. Ibn Ḥanbal and al-Bukhārī were students of Khalīfa ibn Khayyāṭ, and they may have gotten their view on the matter directly from him. It is hard to say whether these ninth-century muḥaddithūn were making a social or political comment on “Arabism” by back-projecting the al-walad li-al-firāsh dictum onto the earliest period, or whether they had simply adopted a stricter interpretation of ḥadīth than had previously been practiced. 43 Uri Rubin discusses this hadith in connection with Ziyād’s diʿwa and the firāsh dictum (“ ‘Al-Walad li-l-Firāsh,’ ” 15–23). As he points out, there are several variations of Muḥammad’s actual utterance in this hadith. For instance, one variant has the Prophet



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text of the ḥadīth in this simplest form can be taken as a general maxim without any specific context.44 But we are not interested in the ḥadīth’s timeless core. We are interested precisely in its context, accrued through textual additions and through association with certain people and events. By investigating how this ḥadīth became imbued with context, we can discover how it took shape as an ideological tool. The ḥadīth gains its initial sense of context through its isnād, as almost all versions of this ḥadīth are transmitted by the Companion Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ. Saʿd had intervened in a paternity dispute on behalf of his brother ʿUtba, who claimed to have fathered a son by someone else’s slave girl. The Prophet decided the boy’s legal paternity in favor of the slave girl’s master rather than ʿUtba—even though the child resembled ʿUtba—based on the firāsh dictum. Thus, the original context of the ḥadīth seems to have revolved around ʿUtba ibn Waqqāṣ’s paternity dispute.45 But through a series of additions and interpolations—and then outright tampering— the ḥadīth also becomes associated with Abū Bakra. When Abū Bakra enters the scene, the entire context of the ḥadīth changes from one of disputed paternity into one of anti-Umayyad polemic. In order to elucidate this development, I have collected twenty versions of the ḥadīth from various canonical and non-canonical ḥadīth collections, and I have divided them into groups based on similarities in text and transmission (matn and isnād). The groups have been represented in Table 1. I will give an overall analysis of the changes in the matns, followed by a summary of what the isnāds tell us about provenance of these variations. Through an internal analysis of both matn and isnād, we can get some picture of how Abū Bakra’s role in this ḥadīth evolved.

add that “he who claims a false mawlā” will also be barred from Paradise. In another permutation, he also adds the firāsh dictum to the mix. There are several other, more complicated variations, but I am concerned with the one that contains only the most basic dictum: “He who claims a false father, knowing that he is not his father, the Garden will be forbidden to him.” This is the only version associated with Saʿd and Abū Bakra. 44 See Rubin, “ ‘Al-Walad li-l-Firāsh,’ ” 7. He points out that the firāsh dictum can also be taken as a contextless mathal (maxim). 45 Or perhaps the context is meant to refer to Saʿd himself, who asked the Prophet whether he should be called Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ (as he is most commonly known), or Saʿd ibn Mālik (his actual name). The Prophet said: “You are Saʿd ibn Mālik ibn Uhayb (or Wuhayb) ibn ʿAbd Manāf ibn Zuhra, and may God curse whoever says otherwise.” See Hawting, “Saʿd b. Abī Waḳḳāṣ,” EI 2, which mentions this tradition without citation.

isnād

matn

Hadith 2

Ibn Sīrīn (d. 728) Ziyād said to Abū Bakra: “Don’t you see that the Commander of Believers wants me for this and that? I was born on the bed of ʿUbayd and so I attribute my paternity to him, for I know that the Messenger of God said: whoever claims

Abū ʿUthmān

When Ziyād acknowledged [Abū Sufyān as his father], I met Abū Bakra and said: what is this that you have done? For I heard Saʿd Ibn Abī Waqqāṣ saying: my ear heard from the Messenger of God: whoever claims a father in Islam that is not his father,

Abū ʿUthmān

Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ and Abū Bakra said: we heard the Messenger of God say: whoever claims a false father, knowing that he is not his father, God forbids the Garden to him. ʿĀṣim said: you have heard from two people in whom you have I heard Saʿd (he was the first to shoot an arrow in God’s cause) and Abū Bakra (he came down to the Prophet from the citadel of al-Tāʿif ) saying: we heard the Messenger of God say: whoever claims a false father, knowing that he is not his father, the

Saʿd and Abū Bakra, both of them said: my two ears heard and my heart heeded from Muhammad that whoever claims a false father, knowing that he is not his father, the Garden will be forbidden to him.

[Saʿd said]: My two ears heard and my heart heeded from Muhammad that whoever claims a false father, knowing that he is not his father, the Garden will be forbidden to him. I met Abū Bakra and told him, and he said: my two ears and my

[Saʿd said]: I heard the Messenger of God say: whoever claims a false father, knowing that he is not his father, the Garden is forbidden to him.

[Saʿd said]: I heard the Messenger of God say: whoever claims a false father, knowing that he is not his father, God forbids the Garden to him.

Ḥabīb ibn Shahīd (d. 763)

Abū ʿUthmān

Khālid al-Ḥadhdhāʾ (d. ca. 760)

Abū ʿUthmān

ʿĀṣim al-Aḥwal

Yazīd ibn Zurayʿ (d. 798)

Hadith 20

Abū ʿUthmān

ʿĀṣim al-Aḥwal

Hushaym ibn Bashīr (n.d.)

Hadiths 17–19

Abū ʿUthmān al-Nahdī (d. ca. 715)

ʿĀṣim al-Aḥwal

Maʿmar ibn Rāshid (d. 769–70)

Hadiths 13–16

Muṣʿab ibn Saʿd (d. 722)

ʿĀṣim al-Aḥwal

Hadiths 8–12

Abū Muʿāwiya Shuʿba ibn Ḥajjāj (d. ca. 810) (d. 776)

Hadiths 5–7

ʿĀṣim al-Aḥwal (d. ca. 759)

Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUlayya (d. 809)

Hadiths 3–4

Mūsā al-Juhanī (d. 762)

Mandal ibn ʿAlī Sufyān al-Thawrī (d. ca. 784) (d. 778)

Hadith 1

Table 1: Variations of the “Man Iddaʿā” Hadith

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Hadith 1

Table 1 (cont.)

matn

Hadith 2

heart also heard [that] from ­Muḥammad.

Hadiths 3–4

Hadiths 5–7 Garden will be forbidden to him.

Hadiths 8–12 high esteem. Abū ʿUthmān said: Certainly! The one was the first to shoot an arrow in God’s cause. The other came down to the Prophet during the siege of al-Ṭāʾif along with twentythree slaves.

Hadiths 13–16

Hadith 20 a false father, let him occupy his seat in hell.” Then the following year came, and he had falsely adopted him.

Hadiths 17–19 knowing that he is not his father, the Garden will be forbidden to him. Abū Bakra said: I heard [that] from the Messenger of God.

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Looking at the table, we can see that Ḥadīths 1 and 2 have completely divergent isnāds but similar matns.46 Both texts are quite short, containing the “man iddaʿā” maxim and nothing else. Also, Abū Bakra is nowhere to be found—Saʿd is the sole transmitter.47 It is hard to say that either of these two simplest versions represents the original version of the ḥadīth, but they do demonstrate that this ḥadīth was transmitted in at least two forms without Abū Bakra. Abū Bakra makes an appearance in all the other ḥadīths, but his initial appearance is clearly as a supplement or addition. In Ḥadīths 3–4, transmitted by Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUlayya, the language is slightly more distinctive (“my two ears heard and my heart heeded . . .”), but more importantly, Abū Bakra chimes in at the end of the ḥadīth to corroborate Saʿd’s words.48 Saʿd is still presented as the primary transmitter, and Abū Bakra’s confirmation comes as something of an afterthought. Ḥadīths 5–7, transmitted by Abū Muʿāwiya, are similar to Ibn ʿUlayya’s ḥadīths, except that Abū Bakra has now been integrated into the original transmission of the ḥadīth, rather than being tacked onto the end of the account.49 However, the change is not completely seamless, as the phrase “both of them” (or “each one of them”) intervenes to indicate that some kind of combination of accounts has occurred. The most representative batch of ḥadīths, Ḥadīths 8–12, is associated with Shuʿba ibn Ḥajjāj. Several of the ḥadīths in Shuʿba’s group contain extra information both after Saʿd’s name (“he was the first to shoot an arrow in God’s path”) and Abū Bakra’s name (“he came down to the Prophet during the siege of al-Ṭāʾif ”).50 The wording of Ḥadīth 8 in this 46 Hadith 1: al-Bazzār, Al-Baḥr al-Zakhakhār, 3:363. Hadith 2: ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Muṣannaf, 9:51 (hadith #16314). 47 The text of Hadith 2 refers to Saʿd as “Abā Mālik,” which is an error either of the original manuscript or of the edition. It should read “Ibn Mālik.” 48 Hadith 3: Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad, 3:56, (hadith #1504). Hadith 4: ibid., 3:77 (hadith #1553). The matns of both variations are identical, but the isnāds are slightly different. Hadith 3 actually has a transmitter named Ibrāhīm in between ʿĀṣim and Ibn ʿUlayya. I was unable to identify this Ibrāhīm with any certainty. The famous Kufan transmitter Ibrāhīm al-Nakhāʾī (d. ca. 717) is much too early. Ibn Ḥajar lists a spate of men named Ibrāhīm who lived in Basra and/or who lived at about the right time to transmit this hadith, but none of these is given a death date or is known to have transmitted hadiths to Ibn ʿUlayya. The closest fit is the Jordanian Ibrāhīm Ibn Sulaymān ibn Wazīr, who was known to transmit from ʿĀṣim al-Aḥwal (Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb, 1:118–19). 49 Hadith 5: Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, 8:516 (hadith #26507). Hadith 6: Muslim ibn Ḥajjāj, Ṣaḥīḥ, 4.1:46–47 (hadith #229). Hadith 7: Ibn Māja, Sunan, 2:870 (hadith #2610). Ibn Māja’s version reads “each one of them said” (kull wāḥid minhumā yaqūlu) rather than “both of them said” (kilāhumā yaqūlu). 50 Hadith 8: al-Dārimī, Musnad, 4:1889–90 (#2902). The description of Abū Bakra reads: tadallā min ḥiṣn al-ṭāʾif ilā rasūl allāh s.a.w. Hadith 9: al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 5:430 (Book 59,



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group makes it clear that Shuʿba himself added this interjection, which makes sense in the context of oral transmission and teaching circles, in that he would want to clarify the identity of these Companions.51 In fact, Shuʿba’s information goes beyond simple identification, expressing praise for these two Companions’ superior virtue and achievements. Moreover, now Abū Bakra and Saʿd are treated together as a seamless group, almost as though they both heard the Prophet saying this ḥadīth in the same session. Ḥadīths 13–16, transmitted by Maʿmar ibn Rāshid, also have extra information identifying Saʿd and Abū Bakra; 52 but these explanations that were previously attributed explicitly to Shuʿba are now put in the mouth of the Successor transmitter, Abū ʿUthmān al-Nahdī. That is, the positive assessment of these two Companions has been woven into the context of the ḥadīth, rather than being presented as an addition made several generations later. In Ḥadīths 17–19, we find a group of ḥadīths with an unusual isnād; almost all other ḥadīths have ʿĀṣim al-Aḥwal as their second transmitter after Abū ʿUthmān, but this one has Khālid al-Ḥadhdhāʾ.53 The obvious new element in the matn is the setup story, the purported reason for Abū Bakra’s connection with this ḥadīth. Abū Bakra’s involvement is no longer only implicitly associated with Ziyād, as the connection has now been made quite explicit. However, the text of this ḥadīth still implies that the original transmitter was Saʿd rather than Abū Bakra. Here, it seems

hadith #616). Here Abū Bakra’s description is: tasawwara ḥiṣn al-ṭāʾif fī nās fa-jāʾa ilā al-nabī s.a.w. Hadith 10: Ibn Ḥanbal, Musnad, 3:53 (hadith #1497). Its description of Abū Bakra is identical to that of the previous hadith. Hadith 11: al-Dārimī, Musnad, 3:1645–46 (hadith #2572). Hadith 12: Ibn ʿAsākir, Tārīkh Madīnat Dimashq, 62:210. 51 Hadiths 11 and 12 do not contain the extra information about Saʿd and Abū Bakra. Perhaps Shuʿba only added the extra information when asked to do so in a teaching circle; or perhaps his students were unsure whether it was necessary to include Shuʿba’s explanations in their transmissions of the hadith. 52 Maʿmar ibn Rāshid, d. 769–70, Basran and Yemeni; Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb, 6:363–65. Hadith 13: ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Muṣannaf, 9:49–50 (hadith #16310). Abū Bakra is described thus: nazala al-nabī s.a.w. wa-huwa muḥāṣir li-ahl al-ṭāʾif bi-thalātha wa-ʿishrīn min raqīqihim—ḥasibtuhu qāla: fa-aʿtaqahum rasūl allāh s.a.w. Hadith 14: al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 5:430 (book 59, hadith #616). Here the description of Abū Bakra is: nazala al-nabī s.a.w. thālith thalātha wa-ʿishrīn min al-ṭāʾif. Hadith 15: Ibn ʿAsākir, Tārīkh Madīnat Dimashq, 62:210–11. The additional information on Abū Bakra reads: kharaja ilā rasūl allāh s.a.w. fī ʿishrīn ʿabdan min raqīq al-ṭāʾif. fa-ḥasaba annahu qāla: fa-aʿtaqahum rasūl allāh s.a.w. Hadith 16: ʿAbd al-Razzāq, Muṣannaf, 9:50 (hadith #16313). This last hadith stops with ʿĀṣim’s words to Abū ʿUthmān al-Nahdī, without recording Abū ʿUthmān’s reply. 53 Hadith 17: Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, v. 4, pt. 1, p. 46 (Hadith #228). Hadith 18: Ibn Ḥanbal, AlMusnad, 3:32 (hadith #1454). Hadith 19: Ibn ʿAsākir, Tārīkh Madīnat Dimashq, 19:176.

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a­ pparent that Abū Bakra’s connection with the ḥadīth only came about because of Ziyād’s diʿwa and Abū Bakra’s association with Ziyād. Finally, the anomalous Ḥadīth 20 can be easily dismissed as “unauthentic,”54 but it is nevertheless illustrative of the use of Abū Bakra as a polemical tool. It has a highly suspicious isnād—it does not have Abū ʿUthmān al-Nahdī as its Successor transmitter, substituting instead the famous Ibn Sīrīn55—and its matn has been made into a transparent vehicle for polemic. Now all the gloves are off and all attempts at subtlety are thrown to the wind. Not only are Ziyād and Abū Bakra shown having a direct interaction that has been preserved in no other historical source, but Ziyād incriminates himself by claiming to have heard the Prophetic ḥadīth with his own ears. Abū Bakra appears as the sole Companion transmitter, with no mention of Saʿd at all. While no one would accept this ḥadīth as authentic, it represents the final stage of the development— up till now a rather subtle development—of Abū Bakra as a mouthpiece against Ziyād. As for the isnāds, the first thing that stands out is that almost all of them have Abū ʿUthmān al-Nahdī (d. ca. 715) as their Successor ­transmitter.56 Abū ʿUthmān was a friend of Abū Bakra’s, and he reportedly transmitted the following account: “Abū Bakra, the mawlā of the Messenger of God, said: if the people insist on giving me a fatherly attribution, then let them call me Nufayʿ ibn Masrūḥ” (akhbaranā Abū Bakra mawlā rasūl allāh s.a.w.: fa-in abā al-nās illā an yansibūnī, fa-anā Nufayʿ ibn Masrūḥ).57 This may mean that Abū ʿUthmān himself was responsible for creating Abū Bakra’s identity of mawlā of the Prophet, in which case this mawlā versus diʿwa theme was a development of the early- to mid-Umayyad period. Moreover, this latter saying of Abū ʿUthmān’s indicates that the original meaning of the ḥadīth was indeed that Abū Bakra stood in judgment of Ziyād as a mawlā of the Prophet. That is, the meaning of this ḥadīth was changed (or one might say completely lost) by the back-projection of the firāsh dictum by the muḥaddithūn of the ninth century. The next generation in most of the isnāds shows a split between two Basran scholars, ʿĀṣim al-Aḥwal (d. ca. 759)58 and Khālid al-Ḥadhdhāʾ 54 This is not a controversial stance—this version of the hadith does not appear in any proper hadith collections, but rather in Ibn ʿAsākir, Tārīkh Madīnat Dimashq 19:174. 55 The isnād continues up to Ḥabīb ibn Shahīd (d. 762–63, Basran; Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb, 1:650), and then on to Yazīd ibn Zurayʿ (d. 798, Basran; ibid., 7:149–50). 56 Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb, 4:135–36. 57 Ibn ʿAsākir, Tārīkh Madīnat Dimashq, 62:205. 58 Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb, 3:318–19.



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(d. ca. 760).59 ʿĀṣim transmits the great majority of the ḥadīths, and all his ḥadīths have generally the same layout and information. ʿĀṣim may himself may be responsible for Abū Bakra’s inclusion in this ḥadīth, rather than Abū ʿUthmān; for in a traditional isnād analysis, ʿĀṣim would be considered the “common link,” while Abū ʿUthmān is part of the more dubious “single strand.”60 However, it remains that ʿĀṣim’s traditions are rather subtle (never mentioning Ziyād for example), whereas Khālid al-Ḥadhdhāʾ seems to have been particularly interested in using Abū Bakra to condemn Ziyād. It is hard to pinpoint any particular reason why Khālid may have done this; however, he was a student of al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 728),61 and H. P. Raddatz calls him an early Muʿtazilī.62 As we have already seen from the “Ziyād is as bad as a Kharijite” story, Abū Bakra himself was also connected (if somewhat obliquely) with al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī.63 Moreover, Abū Bakra exemplifies the early ideal of iʿtizāl, both in terms of worldly renunciation and political neutrality in the first civil war.64 Perhaps it was an early ascetic, proto-Muʿtazili current within Basra, associated with al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, that particularly co-opted Abū Bakra’s social identity for their own ideological needs.

59 Ibid., 2 295–97. 60 A good introduction these terms and the scholarly debates surrounding them can be found in Harald Motzki, ed., Ḥadīth, xxxviii–xli, and the sources cited therein. See also the corpus of G. H. A. Juynboll, especially his articles: “Some Isnād-Analytical Methods,” and “Nāfiʿ, the Mawlā of Ibn ʿUmar.” 61 Khālid transmitted hadiths both from al-Ḥasan and his brother Saʿīd ibn Abī al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī. Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb, 2:296. 62 Raddatz, “Sufyān al-Thawrī,” EI 2. Raddatz counts him in the same group as Wāṣil ibn ʿAṭāʾ and ʿAmr ibn ʿUbayd. However, I have been unable to find any reference to Khālid’s Muʿtazilī leanings in any biographical dictionaries, including Muʿtazilī biographical dictionaries. He also does not appear anywhere in Josef van Ess’s masterpiece Theologie und Gesellschaft. 63 For example, al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī transmitted the following anti-fitna, pro-reconciliation hadith on the authority of Abū Bakra: “Once while the Prophet was making an address, al-Ḥasan [ibn ʿAlī] came and the Prophet said: ‘this [grand]son of mine is a sayyid, may God make peace between two groups of Muslims through him.’ ” Al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 9 174 (book 88, hadith #225). Additionally, al-Ḥasan supposedly said: “No one better ever lived in Basra than Abū Bakra and ʿImrān ibn Ḥuṣayn” (Al-Dhahabī, Siyar, 4:5). Whether or not any of the interactions between Abū Bakra and al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī actually took place, some ideological connection (real or fictional) exists between the two figures. 64 For the development of the term iʿtizāl, see Stroumsa, “The beginnings of the Muʿtazila reconsidered.” Abū Bakra is not treated in works on Muʿtazilism, nor is he an ascetic (zāhid/nāsik) proper—he had legions of children, after all. But his life story does fit into the pattern of other austere Basran pietists such as al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī. For this ascetic strain in early Basran history, see Pellat, Le Milieu Baṣrien, 93–108.

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In the isnāds containing both Abū ʿUthmān and ʿĀṣim al-Aḥwal (Ḥadīths 2 through 16), we see that the third tier of transmitters put their own unique stamp on the ḥadīth—with tweaks and additions for the sake of clarity and teaching—but that they already had the basic Abū Bakra form of the ḥadīth from the previous generation. Of these versions, only the transmission of Sufyān al-Thawrī (d. 778) does not include Abū Bakra. Perhaps al-Thawrī himself, who had pro-ʿUthmānī tendencies, omitted the reference to Abū Bakra.65 While this is conjectural, what can be said for certain is that most of the transmitters of this generation are once again Basran. In fact, Shuʿba ibn Ḥajjāj (d. 776) moved to Basra specifically to study with al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī.66 The only prominent Kufan transmitter is Abū Muʿāwiya (d. ca. 810), who was “the vocal leader of the Murjiʾa in Kufa in that period.”67 It cannot be said with any certainty, but perhaps Abū Muʿāwiya’s Murjiʾism led him to champion Abū Bakra’s cause. The Murjiʾism of the Umayyad period was associated with “struggle for equality of the new non-Arab converts to Islam,”68 and Abū Bakra also supposedly refused to join in with the Umayyads in cursing ʿAlī, another hallmark of the early Murjiʾa.69 Finally, we find evidence that even in this fairly late generation, the context of the ḥadīth was still one of Abū Bakra as a mawlā. For Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUlayya (d. 809), transmitter of two of our ḥadīths, reportedly said: “Abū Bakra’s father was not known, and when the companions of the Messenger of God would revile him for that, he would say ‘if you do not know their fathers, they are your brothers in religion’ ” (Q 33:5). Ibn ʿUlayya’s death date is half a century before Khalīfa ibn Khayyāṭ’s (in 855). This might be an indication that the firāsh dictum was just gaining wide acceptance among muḥaddithūn at the beginning of the ninth century. Or perhaps it simply shows a new development in the thinking of the muḥaddithūn, who now prioritize Prophetic dictums over other types of historical accounts. In the end, for the third generation of transmitters, we see faint patterns under the surface about who was (and

65 Raddatz, “Sufyān al-Thawrī,” EI 2. 66 Juynboll, “Shuʿba b. al-Ḥadjdjādj,” EI 2. 67 Nimrod Hurvitz, The formation of Hanbalism, 48. 68 Madelung, “Murdjiʾa,” EI 2. 69 Ibid. In several accounts, the Umayyad governor of Basra, Busr ibn Abī Arṭāt, reviles ʿAlī from the pulpit and adjures his audience in the name of God to declare his words truthful or untruthful. Abū Bakra declares Busr’s words untruthful and is beaten almost to the point of death. Ṭabarī, Tārīkh, 18:15–17; Balādhurī, Ansāb al-Ashrāf, 492.



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was not) interested in transmitting Abū Bakra as part of this tradition, but we do not find many hard-and-fast conclusions. Finally, let us look at the two ḥadīths with the abnormal isnāds, Ḥadīths 1 and 20 in the table above. In the first version, it is no surprise to see a ḥadīth transmitted by Muṣʿab ibn Saʿd on the authority of his celebrated father, without any mention of Abū Bakra. However, the isnād of Musʿab’s ḥadīth continues on through a chain of Kufan transmitters,70 again giving credence to the idea that it was predominantly a subset of Basrans who were interested in Abū Bakra’s polemical role as a mawlā. As for the last ḥadīth, the one transmitted by Ibn Sīrīn, the authenticity of this isnād is extremely dubious. The famous Basran Ibn Sīrīn (d. 728) was another companion of al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī’s,71 which provides some connection to the previous transmissions. However, the third generation transmitter, Yazīd ibn Zurayʿ (d. 798), was a Basran muḥaddith known to have ʿUthmānī tendencies;72 he was also a teacher of Khalīfa ibn Khayyāṭ, who we have seen does not take Abū Bakra as a mawlā. It is difficult to glean much information from this unique, seemingly contradictory (though once again thoroughly Basran) isnād. Though it is hard to provide an exact chronology for when Abū Bakra first appeared in this ḥadīth, or to pinpoint who exactly was responsible for his appearance, it is important to notice that the development did indeed take place. It seems to have happened sometime in the first or second generation of transmitters, taking ʿĀṣim al-Aḥwal’s death date of 759 as a terminus ante quem. This corresponds with the dates we found in Ibn Saʿd, pointing to a late-Umayyad date at the very latest. The development also seems to have arisen predominantly in Basran circles, particularly in circles associated with the theologian, ascetic, and Umayyad critic al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī. Finally, it is worth noting that even in the third generation of transmission, the underlying context of the ḥadīth still hinged on the notion that Abū Bakra was a mawlā. It was only the compilers of the mid-ninth century, it seems, that lost the real thrust of the Abū Bakra ḥadīth by changing his social identity through their application of the firāsh dictum.

70 Mūsā ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Juhanī, d. 762 (Ibn Ḥajar, Tahdhīb al-Tahdhīb, 6:464); Mandal ibn ʿAlī al-ʿAnazī, d. ca. 784 (ibid., 6:410–12). 71 Fahd, “Ibn Sīrīn, Abu Bakr Muḥammad,” EI 2. 72 Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, 7.2:44.

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Throughout this discussion, Abū Bakra has proved himself to be more than just an interesting character with a colorful personal history. Rather, he sheds light on multiple phenomena, from early Islamic social history, to ideological developments of the Umayyad period, to historiography. In the first place, Abū Bakra exemplifies a particular kind of manumission practiced during Muḥammad’s maghāzī in Arabia. He illustrates that slaves who defected from non-Muslim territory and joined Muḥammad were not necessarily manumitted according to the normal channels—for Muḥammad had neither purchased such slaves nor captured them—but could be manumitted in the name of God and Islam. Thus, rather than becoming the individual mawālī of the Prophet, the slaves of al-Ṭāʾif seem to have become the communal responsibility of the entire umma. In this way, the historical and literary designation ṭalīq allāh was similar to the early legal category of the sāʾiba. However, such categories only functioned properly in an Arabian milieu, and as Islamic society expanded and developed, these categories were replaced by the more systematic practice of classical Islamic walāʾ. But perhaps more importantly, Abū Bakra illustrates some of the difficulties that must be overcome in studying the early Islamic mawālī. For one thing, mawlā identity can be innocently back-projected onto nonmawālī freedmen using the classical “walāʾ belongs to the manumitter” dictum. Or the exact opposite can occur, when slave origins and nontribal identity are erased by a back-projection of the firāsh dictum. Moreover, Abū Bakra shows us that we cannot unthinkingly accept mawlā as an objective term. For not only is the term multifaceted and malleable, it is also often ideologically loaded. In this case, Abū Bakra’s mawlā identity is a polemical weapon, forged sometime during the Umayyad period, and wielded against the concept of diʿwa. Indeed, it would be fruitful to see how the sources use the term mawlā to convey different ideological messages in different situations and across different genres. For the time being, however, let it simply be said that when studying mawālī in the early Islamic period, care must be taken to unravel the ideologically-charged language, polemic, and subtle sermonizing from the historical facts.



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Juda, Jamal. “Die sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Aspekte der Mawālī in frühislamischer Zeit.” PhD dissertation, Tübingen, 1983. Juynboll, G. H. A. “Nāfiʿ, the Mawlā of Ibn ʿUmar. and his Position in Muslim Ḥadīth Literature.” Der Islam 70 (1993): 207–44. Reprinted in his Studies, 207–44. ——. “Shuʿba b. al-Ḥadjdjādj.” The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition. ——. “Some Isnād-Analytical Methods Illustrated on the Basis of Several Woman­Demeaning Sayings from Ḥadīth Literature.” Al-Qanṭara 10 (1989): 343–84. Reprinted in his Studies, 343–83. Reprinted in Motzki, Ḥadīth, Ch. 10. ——. Studies on the origins and uses of Islamic Hạdīth. Brookfield, VT: Variorum, 1996. Madelung, W. “Murdjiʾa.” The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition. Mernissi, Fatima. The Veil and the Male Elite: A feminist interpretation of women’s rights in Islam. Translated by Mary Jo Lakeland. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., 1991. Miqdād, Maḥmūd. Al-Mawālī wa-Niẓām al-Walā’ min al-Jāhilīya ilá Awākhir al-ʿAṣr al-Umawī. Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 1988. Mitter, Ulrike. Das frühislamische Patronat. Würzburg: Ergon, 2006. ——. “Unconditional Manumission of slaves in early Islamic law: a ḥadīth analysis.” Der Islam 78 (2001): 35–72. Motzki, Harald, ed. Ḥadīth: Origins and Developments. Formation of the Classical Islamic World 28. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. ——. “The Role of Non-Arab Converts in the Development of Early Islamic Law.” Islamic Law and Society 6, no. 3 (1999): 293–317. Nawas, John. “The Birth of an Elite: Mawālī and Arab ʿUlamāʾ.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 31 (2006): 74–91. ——. “The Contribution of the Mawālī to the Six Sunnite Canonical Ḥadīth Collections.” Ch. 7 in Ideas, Images, and Methods of Portrayal, ed. Sebastian Günther. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005. ——. “The Emergence of Fiqh as a Distinct Discipline and the Ethnic Identity of the Fuqaha in Early and Classical Islam.” Ch. 43 in Studies in Arabic and Islam: proceedings of the 19th Congress: Halle 1998, ed. Stefan Leder. Sterling, VA: U. Peeters, 2002. Pellat, Charles. Le milieu baṣrien et la formation de Ǧāḥiẓ. Paris, Librairie d’Amérique et d’Orient Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1953. Pipes, Daniel. Slave Soldiers and Islam. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981. Raddatz, H. P. “Sufyān al-Thawrī.” The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition. Rubin, Uri. “ ‘Al-walad li-l-firāsh’: on the Islamic campaign against ‘zinā.’ ” Studia Islamica 78 (1993): 5–26. Schacht, J. “Umm al-Walad.” The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition. Stroumsa, Sarah. “The beginnings of the Muʿtazila reconsidered.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 13 (1990): 265–93. Zakkar, S. “Ibn Khayyāṭ al-Uṣfurī, Khalīfa.” The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition. Ziadeh, Farhat. “Equality (kafāʾah) in the Muslim Law of Marriage.” American Journal of Comparative Law 6 (1957): 503–17.

Writing the history of the futūḥ: The futūḥ-works by al-Azdī, Ibn AʿTHAM, and al-Wāqidī Jens Scheiner Introduction Anyone dealing with the history or the historiography of the Islamic conquests ( futūḥ) will employ at first the Annals by al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923) and the Book of the Conquests of the Regions by al-Balādhurī (d. 279/892). These two famous books contain many pages, in which various events of the conquest movement are described. Al-Ṭabarī’s Annals, which were originally titled The History of the Prophets and Kings (Arabic title: Taʾrīkh al-rusul wa-al-mulūk), is a world chronicle starting with reflections on time and the creation of the world and running to the year 302/915.1 Whereas the first part of the book deals thematically with pre-Islamic dynasties, for example the Sasānian empire, and pre-Muḥammadan prophets, like Abraham, Moses or Jesus, the latter part relates Islamic history in chronological fashion, from the early days to the beginning of the 4th/10th century. Therefore as Boaz Shoshan has pointed out the usual title is “a misnomer, in that it applies mainly to the first section of the book.”2 The part about the Islamic period in al-Ṭabarī’s Annals contains several reports (khabar, pl. akhbār) of various length. Some are only one or two lines long, others are medium-sized (some lines of length), while even longer reports consist of one or two pages. Attached to many reports are chains of transmitters (isnād, pl. asānīd) describing the source from which al-Ṭabarī allegedly got this information. However, almost none of al-Ṭabarī’s sources have reached us independently. Therefore there exists a wide field of research that tries to reconstruct

1 Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Taʾrīkh al-rusul wa-al-mulūk, ed. M. de Goeje et al. as: Annales quos scripsit Abu Djafar Mohammed ibn Djarir at-Tabari (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1879–1901 [reprint of the 1st ed. Beirut 1965]); ed. M. Abū al-Faḍl Ibrāhīm (Cairo, 1960–1969). 2 Boaz Shoshan, Poetics of Islamic Historiography. Deconstructing Ṭabarī’s History (Leiden: Brill, 2004), xxviii.

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these sources.3 It is exactly because of these earlier sources from the late 2nd/8th and the 3rd/9th centuries that the Annals are extremely precious for our knowledge not only about the Islamic conquests but for most of the information on the origins of the Islamic society. The second book I mentioned that deals mostly but not exclusively with the conquest movement is al-Balādhurī’s Book of the Conquests of the Regions (Arabic title: Kitāb futūḥ al-buldān).4 This book is arranged thematically by the conquered regions al-Shām, al-Jazīra, Miṣr (Egypt), the west, al-ʿIrāq, al-Jibāl and the other provinces of eastern Iran. Al-Balādhurī lists under each title some of the reports relating to the conquest of this particular area including sometimes subheadings to further divide the given information. It seems as if al-Balādhurī had divided his historic reports between his two works the Book of the Conquests of the Regions and his Decendents of the Nobles (Arabic title: Ansāb al-ashrāf), because the latter does not include according to my analysis conquest narratives and usually refers to the former. Based on this evidence Lawrence Conrad argued that the Book of the Conquests is the older of the two.5 Both books are finalized works that were edited by their specific authors with a public readership in mind. They therefore constitute “real” books or to use Gregor Schoeler’s expression: syngrammata.6 However, apart from these famous sources there exist three other works that include reports about the conquest movement. Even the works’ titles suggest that their focus lies on the futūḥ, but their literary character is far from being understood properly. Already in the 19th century Daniel Haneberg realized that

3 See for example Gernot Rotter, “Zur Überlieferung einiger historischer Werke Madāʾinīs in Ṭabarīs Annalen,” Oriens 23–24 (1974): 103–133; Sebastian Günther, “Al-Nawfalī’s Lost History. A Shīʿī Source Used by al-Ṭabarī and Abū l-Faraj,” in Hugh Kennedy, ed., Al-Ṭabarī. A Medieval Muslim Historian and His Work (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 2008), 157–73; Marianne E. Cameron, “Sayf at First. The Transmission of Sayf ibn ʿUmar in al-Ṭabarī and Ibn ʿAsākir,” in James E. Lindsay, ed., Ibn ʿAsākir and Early Islamic History (Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press, 2001), 62–77. 4 Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā al-Balādhurī, Futūḥ al-buldān, ed. M. de Goeje as: Liber Expugnationis Regionum. Auctore Imámo Ahmed ibn Jahja ibn Djábir al-Beládsorí (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1866 [reprint of the 1st ed. Frankfurt 1992]). 5 Lawrence I. Conrad, Review of: al-Balādhurī, Ansāb al-ashrāf. Bd. 2 (Ed. W. Madelung), Wiesbaden/Beirut 2003; Bd. 4/2 (Ed. ʿA. Duri/ʿA. Uqla), Wiesbaden/Beirut 2001; Bd. 7 /2 (Ed. M. al-Yaʿlawī), Wiesbaden/Beirut 2002, Der Islam 82 (2005): 182. 6 Gregor Schoeler, The Genesis of Literature in Islam. From the Aural to the Read. Tr. S. Toorawa, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009). For a summary of the book see my review in: sehepunkte 10 (2010): [15.07.2010], URL: http://www.sehepunkte .de/2010/07/16364.html (3/27/12).



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these other futūḥ-works share some commonalities, but were subordinated to the standard historic tradition presented by al-Ṭabarī and others.7 Which are these “other works”? And do they really form a different “historical disposition (historische Disposition)” as Haneberg suggested? These works are: the Book of the Conquests of (Greater) Syria (Arabic title: Kitāb futūḥ al-Shām) by Abū Ismāʿīl Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Azdī al-Baṣrī; another book carrying the same title, usually ascribed to Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar al-Wāqidī; and the Book of the Conquests (Arabic title: Kitāb al-futūḥ) by Muḥammad Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī. All three works are still only partly studied and create major problems regarding their content, their authorship and their date of creation.8

7 “Eine Vergleichung Baçris mit dem pseudo-wakidischen Fotūʿh zeigt nicht nur eine grosse Uebereinstimmung in der Erzählung einzelner Thatsachen, sondern auch hinsichtlich des chronologischen Systems [. . .] Vermögen auch diese beiden Authoren vereint, ihre historische Disposition gegenüber der herrschenden nicht zu Anerkennung zu bringen [. . .]” See Daniel B. Haneberg, “Erörterungen über Pseudo-Wakidiʼs Geschichte der Eroberung Syriens,” Abhandlungen der königlich-bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-philologische und historische Classe, Jg. 9.1 (1860): 133–34. 8 On al-Azdīʼs Futūḥ al-Shām see Haneberg, “Erörterungen”; M. J. de Goeje, “Mémoire sur le Fotouhoʼs-Scham attribué a Abou Ismaïl al-Baçri,” in M. J. de Goeje, ed., Mémoires dʿhistoire et de géographie orientales, no. 2 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1864), i–li; Muḥammad Kurd ʿAlī, “Futūḥ al-Shām li-Abī Ismāʿīl Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Azdī al-Baṣrī al-mutawaffā sanna 178 ʿalā wajh al-taqrīb. Tabiʿa fī Kalkuta bi-l-Hind sanna 1854,” Majallat al-majmāʿ al-ʿilmī al-ʿarabī = Revue de lʼAcadémie Arabe de Damas, 20.11–12 (1945): 544–49; Lawrence I. Conrad, “Al-Azdīʼs History of the Arab Conquests in Bilād al-Shām. Some Historiographical Observations,” in M. al-Bakhīt, ed., Proceedings of the Second Symposium on the History of Bilād al-Shām During the Early Islamic Period Up to 40 A.H./ 640 A.D. English and French Papers. vol. 1 (Amman: University of Jordan Press, 1987), 28–61; Ella Landau-Tasseron,“New Data on an Old Manuscript. An Andalusian Version of the Works Entitled Futūḥ al-Shām,” Al-Qanṭara 21 (2000): 361–80; Suleiman Mourad, “On Early Islamic Historiography. Abū Ismāʿīl al-Azdī and his Futūḥ al-Shām,” JAOS 120 (2000): 577–93; Jens J. Scheiner, “Grundlegendes zu al-Azdīs Futūḥ aš-Šām,” Der Islam 84 (2007): 1–16. N. Khalek, “ ‘He was Tall and Slender, and His Virtues were Numerousʼ. Byzantine Hagiographical Topoi and the Companions of Muḥammad in al-Azdīʼs Futūḥ al-Shām,” in A. Papaconstantinou, ed. Writing ‘True Stories’. Historians and Hagiographers in the Late Antique and Medieval Near East (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 105–123. On the Futūḥ al-Shām usually ascribed to al-Wāqidī see Haneberg, “Erörterungen”; Franz Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography, 2nd ed., (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968), 186–93. On Ibn Aʿthamʼs Kitāb al-futūḥ see Miklos Muranyi, “Ein neuer Bericht über die Wahl des ersten Kalifen Abū Bakr,” Arabica 25 (1978): 233–60; Ursula Sezgin, “Abū Miḫnaf, Ibrāhīm ibn Hilāl aṯ-Ṯaqafī und Muḥammad ibn Aʿṯam über ġārāt,” ZDMG 131 (1981): *1*-*2* (Wissenschaftliche Nachrichten); EAL, s.v. Ibn Aʿtham (L. I. Conrad); L. I. Conrad, “Ibn Aʿtham and His History.” Unpublished Presentation held at the Sixth International Colloquium on “From Jahiliyya to Islam”. 5 September–10 September 1993. I thank Antoine Borrut for making this paper available to me.

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Al-Azdīʼs Book of the Conquests of (Greater) Syria was edited three times. The editio princeps was undertaken by William Nassau Lees,9 whereas it was edited for the second time by ʿAbd al-Munʿim ʿĀmir.10 Since it is debatable which manuscript ʿĀmir had used for his edition11 and since all his variants in the text were included in the third edition, the edition by ʿĀmir had become obsolete. The third and latest edition was prepared by ʿIṣām Muṣtafā ʿUqla and Yūsuf Aḥmad Banī Yāsīn.12 The editors made use of the two manuscripts from Paris and presented a philologically sound edition, which should therefore be regarded as the standard edition of al-Azdīʼs work.13 Some parts of al-Azdīʼs text are also preserved in several later historical sources, e.g. in Ibn Ḥubayshʼs Raids and Ibn ʿAsākirʼs History of the City of Damascus.14 Al-Azdīʼs Book of the Conquests of (Greater) Syria starts with reports that describe how the first caliph Abū Bakr wrote to the Yemenite Muslims and asked them for their support in military expeditions directed towards Syria. They agreed and various subtribes came to Medina. Abū Bakr then dispatched several units to Syria, who conquered Bostra and fought the battle of Ajnadayn before he died. Then various events in Syria are described (the conquests of Damascus and Ḥimṣ, the battle at the Yarmūk-river, the conquests of Jerusalem and Caesarea) before the book ends with reports about the death of Yazīd ibn Abī Sufyān and the succession of his brother Muʿāwiya. The second book entitled Book of the Conquests of (Greater) Syria is usually ascribed to al-Wāqidī although his authorship is—at least—unclear.15 Manuscripts of this book were known in Europe for a long time. These manuscripts were the basis for several translations of the Arabic text into

9 Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Azdī, Futūḥ al-Shām, ed. W. Lees as: The Fotooh al-Shām. Being an Account of the Moslim Conquests in Syria by Aboo Ismāʾaīl Mohammad bin ʿAbd Allah al-Azdī al-Baçrī, Who Flourished About the Middle of the Second Century of the Mohammadan Era (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1854 [reprint of the 1st ed. Osnabrück 1980]). 10 al-Azdī, Futūḥ al-Shām, ed. ʿA. ʿĀmir as Taʾrīkh futūḥ al-Shām (Cairo: Muʾassasat sijill al-ʿarab, 1970). 11 For the complete discussion see Scheiner, Grundlegendes, 9 f. 12 al-Azdī, Futūḥ al-Shām, ed. ʿI. ʿUqla/Y. Banī Yāsīn as: Kitāb al-futūḥ al-Shām (Irbid: Muʾassasat Ḥammāda 2004). I am currently preparing an English translation of this text. 13 For detailed information including full remarks on the manuscripts see Scheiner, Grundlegendes, passim. 14 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad Ibn Hubaysh, Ghazawāt Ibn Hubaysh, ed. S. Zakkār. (Beirut: Dār al-fikr 1992 [= 1412]). ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥasan Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq, ed. ʿU. al-ʿAmrawī/A. Shīrī (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, Shīrī 1995–2001 [= 1415–1421]). 15 See EI², s.v. al-Wāḳidī (S. Leder). Haneberg and Conrad refer to this book as pseudoWāqidī. See Haneberg, Eröterungen, passim and Conrad, “al-Azdī,” 33. Regarding the authorship see also below.



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European languages in the 1st half of the 18th century.16 The first edition however was again undertaken by William Lees.17 A few years later the second edition appeared, which was prepared by Muḥammad al-Samlūṭī.18 This edition saw several reprints over the past decades.19 These reprints were published under the names of various scholars and do not constitute separate editions. I do call the reprints collectively “Cairene editions”. Both editions vary greatly in terms of the asānīd included, the motifs and the wording of the narratives, because the editions are based on three (out of at least twenty five) manuscripts. It is on one of these reprints that a recent English translation of the text is based, although the translator does not mention which one.20 The Book of the Conquests of (Greater) Syria ascribed to al-Wāqidī has a wider scope than al-Azdī’s work. It begins with the death of Muḥammad and Abū Bakrʼs summons to war of the Yemenite tribes. Then it describes the conquests of ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ in Filasṭīn and of Khālid ibn al-Walīd in Syria, including the battle of Ajnadayn, the conquest of Damascus and Ḥimṣ, the battle at the Yarmūk-river, and the capture of several other cities. In the latter part it mentions the conquest of Egypt, including the cities Miṣr and Alexandria, and then turns to events in Northern Mesopotamia (Diyār Bakr, Mārdīn, Armenia) and al-ʿIrāq. The book closes with accounts on the conquest of the region of al-Bahnasā. Finally, there is Ibn Aʿthamʼs Book of the Conquests that includes many reports on the conquest period. While there are three editions of this

16 Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar al-Wāqidī, Futūḥ al-Shām, trans. S. Ockley as The Conquest of Syria, Persia, and Egypt, by the Saracens (London: R. Knaplock, 1708); partial trans. J. Hughes as: The History of the Siege of Damascus by the Saracens in the year 633 (London: Brotherton, 1720); trans. T. Arnold as Simon Ockley’s, M.A. Vicarii zu Swavesey in Cambridgeshire, Geschichte der Saracenen. Oder ihre Eroberung der Länder Syrien, Persien und Egypten. Von Theodor Arnold aus dem Englischen ins Teutsche übersetzt (Leipzig: Korte, 1745). 17 al-Wāqidī, Futūḥ al-Shām, ed. W. Lees as The Conquest of Syria. Commonly ascribed to Aboo ʾAbd Allah Moḥammad ibn ʾOmar al-Wáqidí (Calcutta: Carbery, 1854–1862 [Reprint of the 1st ed. Osnabrück 1981]). 18 al-Wāqidī, Futūḥ al-Shām, ed. M. al-Samlūṭī (Cairo: Al-Maṭbaʿa al-kastilīya, 1865 [= 1282]). 19 Among these reprints are the following: al-Wāqidī, Futūḥ al-Shām, ed. ʿU. al-Rāziq (Cairo, 1898 [= 1316]); ed. M. Ṣāḥib al-Kutubī (Cairo, 1925 [= 1343]); ed. M. al-Khāliq Mahdī (Cairo, 1934 [= 1353]); ed. ʿAbd al-Ḥanafī (Cairo, 1949 [= 1368]); ed. A. Saʿd (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Muṣṭafā al-Bābā al-Ḥalabī, 1953 [= 1373]); ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (Beirut, 1997 [= 1417]); ed. Ḥ. al-Ḥājj (Cairo: Al-Maktaba al-Tawfīqīya, no date). 20 al-Wāqidī, Futūḥ al-Shām, partial trans. Mawlānā S. al-Kindī as The Islāmic Conquest of Syria. A Translation of Futūḫushām. The Inspiring History of the Saḫābah, r., Conquest of Syria (London: Ta-Ha, 2005). For a critical assessment of this translation see my book review in: sehepunkte 8 (2008), Nr. 10 [15.10.2008], URL: http://www.sehepunkte.de/2008/10/14139 .html (3/27/12).

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work, the first edition was prepared by Muḥammad Khān.21 This edition includes several lacunae which the editor filled with elements taken from the Persian translation that was accomplished in the year 596/1199–1200 by Mustawfī.22 The other two editions are negligible. Whereas the edition from Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmīya re-translates the Persian passages into Arabic, Suḥayl Zakkārʼs edition is incomplete. Therefore the edition by Khān has to be used as the standard edition of Ibn Aʿthamʼs work. This book contains in its six volumes narratives relating to the period stretching from early Islamic times up to early ʿAbbāsid times. It begins with the election of Abū Bakr, retells the ridda-wars and names major events during the Islamic conquests. Among them are the battle of Ajnadayn, the conquests of Damascus and Ḥimṣ, the battle at the Yarmūk-river and the later conquests of Jerusalem, Raqqa and the Ḥarrān, before turning to the conquests of Susa, Tustar, Armenia and Ifrīqiya. Then the book includes reports on the death of ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān, the caliphate of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib and mentions many narratives on the battle of Ṣiffīn, before turning to the issue of the Khārijites and the appointment of Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiya as caliph. It its final part it includes akhbār on al-Ḥusayn and his tragic death at Karbalāʾ, the rule of ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān and the later Umayyad caliphs and portrays the events from the ʿAbbāsid revolution up to the caliphate of al-Maʾmūn. It was already stated by Michel de Goeje in 1894, that research on the origins of these three futūḥ-works is a desideratum.23 In particular the question of the relationship between these three works has not yet been answered satisfactorily. However, an analysis of the works as a whole is very difficult due to their broad scope. However, the comparison of a narrative on a particular event seems to be a useful and manageable approach to this problem.24 Moreover, this approach will offer some clues 21 Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī, Kitāb al-futūḥ, ed. M. Khān (Haydarabad: Maṭbūʿāt dāʾirat al-maʿārif al-ʿuthmānīya 1968–1975 [= 1388–1395]); ed. Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmīya as Al-Futūḥ (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmīya, 1986 [= 1406]); partly ed. S. Zakkār as Al-Futūḥ, (Beirut, 1992 [= 1412]). 22 Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad Mustawfī al-Harawī, Tarjama-yi kitāb al-futūḥ az Khwāja Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-maʿrūf bi-Aʿtham al-Kūfī wa-mutarjim-i ān Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad Mustawfī al-Harawī (Bombay, 1883 [= 1300]). 23 M. J. de Goeje, “Tabari and Early Arab Historians,” Encyclopaedia Britannica (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black 1875–1903), 23: 5. In this article de Goeje mentions “the Conquest of Syria by Abú Ismáʿíl al-Baçri”, “the Pseudo-Wáḳidí”, and “the book ascribed to Aʿṣam Kúfí” as belonging to those works where “truth and falsehood are mingled”. According to his view “in the 6th century [H.] some of these books had gained so much authority that they were used as sources, and thus many untruths crept into accepted history” [i.e. into descriptions based on al-Ṭabarīʼs Annals]. 24 Scheiner, Grundlegendes, 16.



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on the problems of authorship, the date of creation, and the transmission of these works. To this end, this paper will analyze the narratives on the conquest of Damascus included in these three works.25 Narratives Regarding the Conquest of Damascus The three narratives on the conquest of Damascus included in the futūḥworks by al-Azdī, Ibn Aʿtham and the one ascribed to al-Wāqidī are complex texts. First, they are very long. Al-Azdīʼs version covers 34 pages in print, the narrative ascribed to al-Wāqidī covers 43 pages in the Cairene editions and more than 100 pages in the Lees edition, while Ibn Aʿthamʼs narrative is the shortest with 20 pages of content. Second, these narratives include several side plots that do not directly concern the conquest of Damascus, but are interwoven in the text. Third, for this event in general the authors only rarely employ asānīd, which—even if they do so—contain mostly unknown transmitters and sometimes disrupt the main plot. In short, in these narratives we have a somewhat different literary structure compared to the parallel traditions in al-Ṭabarīʼs and al-Balādhurīʼs works. In order to give an impression on the style and content of these narratives, I will—quite deliberately—present al-Azdīʼs text on the conquest of Damascus in a shortened version as reconstructed from the editions and later quotations described above:26 He said: Khālid ibn al-Walīd attacked the people in the Ghūṭa whereupon the people fortified themselves in Damascus. Abū ʿUbayda ibn al-Jarrāḥ arrived from al-Jābiya and both lay siege to the city. Yazīd ibn Yazīd ibn Jābir said: Before Khālid came to the Ghūṭa he crossed a mountain pass with his white flag, which was called “eagle”. Therefore the pass got the name “eagleʼs pass”. Khālid then camped at the monastery at the East Gate of Damascus, which to this day is called “Khālidʼs monastery”. Abū ʿUbayda camped at the al-Jābiya Gate. Both attacked the Ghūṭa when they received the message that Wardān had put up a Byzantine army to attack Shuraḥbīl ibn Ḥasana at Buṣrā. The Muslims decamped and set off. Khālid commanded the vanguard, while Abū ʿUbayda controlled the rearguard. The people of Damascus attacked Abū ʿUbaydaʼs troops and fought them severely. It was only due to

25 This analysis forms a part of my recently published PhD-Thesis which includes a detailed philological enquiry into almost 1000 narratives on the conquest of Damascus. See Jens J. Scheiner, Die Eroberung von Damaskus. Quellenkritische Untersuchung zur Historio­ graphie in klassisch-islamischer Zeit (Leiden: Brill, 2010). 26 Scheiner, Damaskus, 307–316.

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jens scheiner Khālidʼs return that they were put to flight. Then Khālid marched with the troops to al-Jābiya. [Then al-Azdī describes the battle of Ajnadayn on several pages.] He said: Then Khālid went to Damascus and camped at the east side at the place of “Khālidʼs monastery”. Abū ʿUbayda also came and camped at the Jābiya Gate, whereas Yazīd ibn Abī Sufyān camped at another side of the city. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Hanbal one day came with a letter from Abū Sufyān to the latterʼs son Yazīd. In a dialog between the two Yazīd is described as a firm leader, courageous, and popular. He said: One day Khālid attacked the city with the Muslims but was driven back by stones and arrows that were fired from the roofs. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān then quotes a poem in which Dimashqa is mentioned. He said: Then a messenger reached the Muslims reporting that many troops from the Byzantine emperor were marching against them. [Then al-Azdī describes the battle of Marj al-Ṣuffar on several pages.] Yazīd ibn Yazīd ibn Jābir from Abū Umāma: The time span between the battle of Ajnadayn and that of Marj al-Ṣuffar was 20 days. He said: I calculated them. The day of the battle was a Thursday, when there were left 12 nights from Jumādā al-ākhīra, i.e. four days before Abū Bakr died. Then the Muslims returned to Damascus and besieged the city fiercely. Whenever some people left the city, the Muslims attacked them and took the booty, even if it was only a needle, to the one responsible for the booty. Then the commander of the city questioned his spies about the Muslims. They answered that they are honorable people and they pray at night. The commander concludes: They are priests by night and lions by day. He then negotiated a peace treaty with the Muslims, when he learned that the Byzantine emperor assembled another army to fight the Muslims. This stopped him from concluding a peace treaty with the Muslims. Abū Bakr died on Monday, when there were eight days left from Jumādā al-ākhīra, in the year 13 and ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb continued ruling. Then Abū ʿUbayda had the supreme command during the siege of Damascus. He appointed Khālid to command the cavalry at the East Gate. This way the Muslims besieged Damascus after the death of Abū Bakr. Khālidʼs rule over Syria lasted for one year and several days. When the siege lasted too long, the commander of Damascus sent some messengers to Abū ʿUbayda to ask him for a peace treaty. Abū ʿUbayda was favored by the Damascenes because they knew that he had undertaken the hijra before Khālid and because he was closer related to them by family bonds. The messengers concluded a peace treaty with Abū ʿUbayda and opened the Jābiya Gate for him. In the meantime Khālid was attacking the East Gate and opened it by force. Then Khālid said to Abū ʿUbayda: Kill them or take them captive because I conquered the city by force. Abū ʿUbayda replied: I granted them a peace treaty. ʿAmr ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān said: Ṣafwān ibn al-Muʿaṭṭal al-Khuzāʿī attacked at Dārayyā a Roman soldier and took his jewellry as booty. The Muslims entered Damascus and completed the peace treaty.



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His father Muḥriz ibn Asīd said: We conquered Damascus in the year 14 in the month of Rajab on a Sunday, when 15 days of the month had passed. That was in the 13th month minus seven days of ʿUmarʼs rule as caliph. He said: The people of Damascus had sent a letter to Heraclius asking him to provide them with reinforcements. He responded, telling them to wait, because reinforcements were on their way. When they had waited for a long time without receiving help, they asked Abū ʿUbayda for a peace treaty, which he granted to them. When Heracliusʼ troops reached Baʿlabakk, they learned that Damascus was already conquered. They stayed there and asked Heraclius for new orders.

In order to assess a complex narrative like this, I suggest a three-level approach: first, the analysis of the narrative framework (Handlungsgerüst); second, analysis of the level of motifs included in the narrative (Motivbestand); and third, analysis of the narrativeʼs wording (Wortlaut). The Narrative Framework Starting with al-Azdīʼs account, it has the following narrative framework: Muslims in the Ghūṭa, first siege of Damascus—battle of Ajnadayn— main siege of Damascus—Abū Bakr, the first caliph, dies—Abū ʿUbayda is appointed to the Muslimsʼ supreme command, while Khālid is deposed from it—Abū ʿUbayda conquers D. by granting a peace treaty—Khālid conquers it by force—they discuss the status of the conquered city—agreement on a conquest by treaty27

The account in the futūḥ-work usually ascribed to al-Wāqidī has the following narrative framework: First phase of the siege of Damascus—battle of Ajnadayn—second phase of the siege—Abū ʿUbayda conquers D. by peace treaty—Khālid conquers it by force—both meet at the church of Mary—they discuss the status— they agree upon a conquest by treaty—Abū Bakr dies—appointment of Abū ʿUbayda/deposition of Khālid28

A brief comparison of these two outlines shows that although there are differences in the relative placement of some events, both agree in the following structural elements: The Muslims were twice close to Damascus, but left it the first time to fight the battle of Ajnadayn. The 27 The whole narrative is to be found in al-Azdī, Futūḥ al-Shām, ed. ʿUqla/Banī Yāsīn, 161–95. 28 The whole narrative is to be found in al-Wāqidī, Futūḥ al-Shām, ed. Lees, 1:53–2:8 and in ed. Saʿd, 1:19–62.

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c­ onquest of the city is described in both versions as a “double conquest” by Abū ʿUbayda and Khālid, the first granting a peace treaty whereas the latter was conquering Damascus by force. Finally, both narratives mention the discussion of the cityʼs status and the agreement on a ṣulḥanconquest.29 Differences occur in the fact that the narrative ascribed to al-Wāqidī places Abū Bakrʼs death and the information of the appointment and deposition—in contrast to al-Azdīʼs version—at the end of the narrative. Looking at the framework of Ibn Aʿthamʼs narrative further similarities and differences are to be acknowledged: Muslims in the Ghūṭa—battle of Ajnadayn—siege of Damascus—Abū Bakr dies—deposition of Khālid/appointment of Abū ʿUbayda—Abū ʿUbayda conquers Damascus by peace treaty—Khālid by force—both meet at the church of Mary30

The first observation to be made is that, this version has for the most part the same structure as the two other narratives; however, it lacks the discussion of the cityʼs status and the agreement. Its remaining narrative framework is structured almost identically to al-Azdīʼs version, i.e. it places the information of Abū Bakrʼs death and the appointment/­deposition in the middle of the narrative, not at the end as the version ascribed to al-Wāqidī does. However, it is the last detail, the meeting at the church of Mary, that this narrative particularly shares with the one ascribed to al-Wāqidī. Therefore, a first—and admittedly not very detailed—look at the narrative frameworks of the three narratives shows that in all three works the conquest of Damascus is told according to an almost similar structure. This fact offers a first hint on the dependencies between the three futūḥ-works. Tentatively one can hypothesize that al-Azdīʼs and Ibn Aʿthamʼs work are closely connected, whereas the work usually ascribed to al-Wāqidī shows a closer connection to Ibn Aʿthamʼs futūḥ-work than to al-Azdīʼs, due to the reference to the church of Mary.

29 On ṣulḥan-conquests, see A. Noth, “Zum Verhältnis von kalifaler Zentralgewalt und Provinzen in umayyadischer Zeit. Die „Ṣulḫ“—„ʿAnwa“-Traditionen für Ägypten und den Iraq,” Die Welt des Islam 14 (1973): 150–62. 30 The complete narrative is to be found in Ibn Aʿtham, Kitāb al-futūḥ, ed. Khān, 1:141–61.



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Motifs and Wording A closer look at the various motifs included in the narratives,31 the arrangement of these motifs, and the exact wording of the text will further enlighten our understanding of the dependencies between these works. To establish the inventory of motifs and the exact wording for the futūḥ-work ascribed to al-Wāqidī is very difficult, because the textual tradition is quite loose. Due to major differences in the two editions of the work, it is almost impossible to reconstruct a basic version of this narrative.32 Therefore, the edition by Lees has to be consulted primarily and has to be amended by the Cairene edition or one of its reprints. Al-Azdīʼs and Ibn Aʿthamʼs works do not pose such problems and are therefore easier to consult. If one compares the motifs included in al-Azdīʼs reconstructed version (Grundversion) with those included in Ibn Aʿthamʼs version, it becomes clear that these two narratives have most of the motifs in common. However, some of them are sometimes placed at another position within the narrative. Both for example mention Khālidʼs standard and the etymology of the “eagleʼs pass”, both include the motif of “Khālidʼs monastery”, both speak of the heroic deeds of Ṣafwān ibn al-Muʿaṭṭal and finally both date the conquest to Rajab 14 H/August-September 634.33 However, each version includes some motifs that are lacking in the other. Al-Azdīʼs narrative for example includes a dialog between Ibn Ḥanbal and Yazīd ibn Abī Sufyān, whereas Ibn Aʿthamʼs narrative contains the motif according to which the Muslims received a message about Abū Bakrʼs illness before he died, but concealed this information from the people of Damascus.34 Regarding the wording of the motifs there is only a small number of exactly equal expressions in both narratives.35 Both narratives for example state that Khālid approached Damascus, until he camped at the monastery “that was called Khālidʼs monastery ( yuqālu la-hū dayr Khālid)”. Most of the motifs however are expressed only in similar (not verbatim) ­wording

31 On motives in historiographical literature in general, see A. Noth, together with Lawrence I. Conrad, The Early Arabic Historical Tradition. A Source-critical Study, trans. by Michael Bonner, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1994). 32 For a detailed discussion of the commonalities and differences see Scheiner, Damaskus, 358–66. 33 A detailed comparison of the motifs is to be found in Scheiner, Damaskus, 345 and table 10.83 on 713–16. 34 I call this motif the “motif of concealment”. 35 A detailed comparison of the wording is to be found in Scheiner, Damaskus, 347 and table 10.84 on 716–20.

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leaving the impression that one story re-narrates the other or that the same story was told twice in a slightly different way. For example, the commander of the Damascenes after he questioned his spies announces that he will not be able to subdue those brave Muslims by fighting. In al-Azdīʼs version the wording is “mā lī bi-hāʾulāʾi ṭāqa wa-mā lī fī qitālihim khayr”, whereas in Ibn Aʿthamʼs narrative it runs “qad ʿalimtu annahū laysa lī bihim ṭāqa wa-lā lī fī qitālihim khayr”.36 The evidence on the level of motifs and wording therefore confirms the hypothesis that both accounts are closely related to each other. The question arises if one of the two works is based on the other or if they share a common source. Iḥsān ʿAbbās argued for the first option (Ibn Aʿthamʼs work is based on al-Azdīʼs), whereas Lawrence Conrad argued for a common Syrian source of the two works.37 The narratives I just compared do not provide convincing evidence for either of these alternatives. Therefore argumentation for these alternatives has to be based on secondary issues, like first the death dates of both persons, second the narrative style of both stories, and third the asānīd. Regarding firstly the death dates it is quite clear that al-Azdī died around the year 180/796–7,38 whereas the death date of Ibn Aʿtham is disputed. On the one hand Carl Brockelmann, Fuat Sezgin and Muḥammad Khān give the year 314/926–7 as the year in which Ibn Aʿtham died,39 on the other hand Lawrence Conrad and the unknown editor of the Dār alkutub al-ʿilmīya edition argue for the beginning of the 3rd/9th century.40 In both cases Ibn Aʿtham died at least one generation later than al-Azdī and could have known al-Azdīʼs narrative. In addition, the later death date of Ibn Aʿtham can be ruled out by the fact that al-Balādhurī (d. 279/892) quotes Ibn Aʿtham in his Ansāb al-Ashrāf.41

36 Scheiner, Damaskus, 718. 37 Iḥsān ʿAbbās, Taʾrīkh bilād al-Shām min qabl al-islām ḥattā bidāyat al-ʿaṣr al-umawī 600–661 (Amman, 1990 [= 1410]), 22; Lawrence I. Conrad, “Heraclius in Early Islamic Kerygma,” in G. J. Reinink et al., eds., The Reign of Heraclius (610–641). Crisis and Confrontation (Leuven: Peeters, 2002), 132. 38 For a summary of the various argumentations on al-Azdīʼs death date see Scheiner, Grundlegendes, 11–12. This death date is furthermore supported through an independent dating of some traditions in al-Azdīʼs Futūḥ al-Shām. At least two traditions can be dated to the 2nd quarter of the 2nd/8th century. See Scheiner, Damaskus, 336–37; 343. 39 Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur. Supplement (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1937–1942), 1:220 (no. 5c). Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des Arabischen Schrifttums (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1967–2007), 1:329 (no. 33). Ibn Aʿtham, Kitāb al-futūḥ, ed. Khān, front sheet. Abū Saʿda “corrects” the year into 320/932–3. See Muḥammad Abū Saʿda, Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī wa-minhajuhū al-taʾrīkhī fī kitāb al-futūḥ (Cairo, 1987 [= 1408]), 48. 40 EAL, s.v. “Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī” (L. Conrad); Conrad, “Heraclius,” 132. Ibn Aʿtham, Kitāb al-futūḥ, ed. Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmīya, dāl. 41 Conrad, Review of al-Balādhurī, 181.



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A second argument for the thesis that Ibn Aʿthamʼs narrative is based on al-Azdīʼs is the fact that the first narrative is a more detailed and elaborate text that differs from al-Azdīʼs version in important points. First, in Ibn Aʿthamʼs version direct speech is used whereas the examples are narrated without this technique in al-Azdīʼs text. Second, Ibn Aʿthamʼs version is told in a more heroic and “religious” style. For example, the date of the conquest is altered in Ibn Aʿthamʼs version from Sunday to the “holier” Friday. Third, Ibn Aʿthamʼs narrative mentions details that are expressed in a more general way in al-Azdīʼs text. Whereas al-Azdīʼs narrative simply says that Yazīd ibn Abī Sufyān camped at “another side of Damascus ( jānib akhar)”, in Ibn Aʿthamʼs version Yazīd is placed at a specific gate, the Bāb Tūma. These and many other examples are fictional alterations which have the function to improve the narrative. Ibn Aʿtham made use of them in order to “spice up” al-Azdīʼs narrative and make it a more fascinating and convincing story. Taking a look thirdly at the asānīd in both narratives, no conclusive argument can be made. Usually both texts employ the isnād “he said (qāla)” without referring to a particular person. Ibn Aʿthamʼs narrative uses in two cases the variations “and it is said (wa-yuqālu)” and “and in [another] transmission (wa-fī riwāya)”. In the first example the isnād is followed by the matn according to which Khālidʼs monastery is about a mile from the East Gate, which according to another tradition found in Yāqūt (d. 626/1229) is ascribed to Ibn al-Kalbī (d. 204/819). The second isnād is followed by the motif of the double conquest and the meeting point at the church of Mary.42 The combination of this alternative asānīd with two motifs, the second of which is not found in al-Azdīʼs narrative, indicates that Ibn Aʿtham took at least two motifs from other sources than the main body of the information. It therefore supports the hypothesis under discussion here that Ibn Aʿtham adopted and fictionalized al-Azdīʼs narrative and enriched it with additional motifs. Which other sources Ibn Aʿtham had used, will be discussed shortly. As we have seen, it is the narrative on the conquest of Damascus ascribed to al-Wāqidī that also includes the motif according to which the two conquering armies met at the church of Mary. This means that either Ibn Aʿtham took the motif from the formerʼs narrative (or vice versa) or that they both share a common source. As this example suggests, it seems fruitful to have a comparative look into the motifs and the wording of the narrative ascribed to al-Wāqidī and 42 See Scheiner, Damaskus, 747.

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the text of Ibn Aʿtham. The comparison of both narrativesʼ motifs and wording yields the result that they differ in both aspects to a far greater extent than they agree with each other. On the other hand, there are ­particular issues which both narratives have in common. First, they share the motifs about the “eagleʼs pass” and “Khālidʼs standard”. Second, they both mention Khālidʼs stay at the so-called “Khālidʼs monastery” twice, once before the battle of Ajnadayn and then after the battle. Third, the motifs describing the conquest proper are not only common to both narratives but share a structural similarity. They both mention Abū Ubaydaʼs conquest by treaty, give a date for the conquest and then speak of an alternative tradition according to which Khālid did not learn about Abū Ubaydaʼs actions and conquered the city by force. Then the tradition ends with the common motif that both armies met at the church of Mary.43 It is this particular structural similarity in which both narratives differ from al-Azdīʼs text. Although most of the motifsʼ wording is expressed not in identical words but by using synonyms, there are few examples where both versions employ exactly the same wording. Among them are the following: When describing “Khālidʼs monastery” they both say that it is called this way “up to our own day (ilā yawminā hādhā)”.44 Furthermore, the two narratives speak about the people of Damascus experiencing a hard time during the siege. Whereas Ibn Aʿthamʼs narrative includes the words “ḍāqa bi-him al-amr”, the narrative ascribed to al-Wāqidī puts “ḍāqa bi-him al-ḥisār”.45 Then, when asked to grant a peace treaty, both versions narrate: “Then Abū ʿUbayda gave them a positive answer to their request ( fa-ajābuhum Abū ʿUbayda ilā dhālika)”.46 Further issues not directly related to the conquest of Damascus indicate a close relationship between both narratives (and their distinction from al-Azdīʼs version). In the Futūḥ al-Shām ascribed to al-Wāqidī there are several references to persons translating speeches from Arabic to Greek (and vice versa).47 At least one reference to a translator also appears in Ibn Aʿthamʼs Kitāb al-futūḥ.48 Furthermore, the Christian crosses that were often commented on in the secondary literature appear in the

43 Scheiner, Damaskus, 741. 44 Scheiner, Damaskus, 369. 45 Scheiner, Damaskus, 372. 46 Ibid. 47 See for example al-Wāqidī, Futūḥ al-Shām, ed. Lees, 1:55, l. 15; 1:61 l. 11–12; 1:141, l. 9–10. 48 Ibn Aʿtham, Kitāb al-futūḥ, ed. Khān, 1:150, l. 13–14. See also Scheiner, Damaskus, 370, n. 651.



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Futūḥ al-Shām ascribed to al-Wāqidī and in Ibn Aʿthamʼs work.49 While the crosses function as a symbol of victory or loss in the first book, they are used as standards in the latter narrative. All these parallels in the motifs, their structure and their wording are indicators for a close interrelation between the two narratives on the conquest of Damascus which are included in the Futūḥ al-Shām ascribed to al-Wāqidī and in Ibn Aʿthamʼs Kitāb al-futūḥ. There are three possible explanations for this evidence: Either Ibn Aʿtham took some motifs from the narrative ascribed to al-Wāqidī, or the other way round, or both share a common source. I think that it is the last possibility that explains the evidence best, i.e. both narratives share a common source. The big differences in both narratives and the clear similarities at the same time are strong arguments in favor of this interpretation. Had the narrative ascribed to al-Wāqidī quoted Ibn Aʿthamʼs version I would have expected more similarities between this narrative and al-Azdīʼs text, due to the close textual relation between Ibn Aʿthamʼs and al-Azdīʼs versions. Had Ibn Aʿthamʼs text been based on the version ascribed to al-Wāqidī, I would have expected to find many more side plots and asānīd which are included in the latterʼs version appearing in Ibn Aʿthamʼs narrative as well. Possible Common Source of Ibn Aʿthamʼs Work and the One Ascribed to al-Wāqidī From which text could these two texts have taken their information? Who could be the common sourceʼs author or transmitter? The asānīd contained in both works give a clue to these questions. The narrative on the conquest of Damascus in the Futūḥ al-Shām ascribed to al-Wāqidī consists of 64 single traditions (akhbār) in the Lees edition and of 60 single traditions in the Cairene edition and in its reprints.50 45 of these 64 traditions and 42 of these 60 have an isnād. In other words approximately two thirds of the akhbār connect the matn to one or more transmitters, whereas one third consists only of the matn. From all 64 traditions in the edition by Lees 16 asānīd mention al-Wāqidī by using the expression qāla al-Wāqidī, which equals 25% of all traditions. In the Cairene editions

49 See for example al-Wāqidī, Futūḥ al-Shām, ed. Lees, 1:57, l. 3; 1:73, l. 1; 1:143, l. 2–3; and Ibn Aʿtham, Kitāb al-futūḥ, ed. Khān, 1:150, l. 6. 50 This count is based on the partition I made in table 10.86. See Scheiner, Damaskus, 722 f.

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the figure is even smaller. Seven traditions from 60 (= 8,6%) mention al-Wāqidīʼs name. Therefore only a small portion of all narratives in the Futūḥ al-Shām are traced back to the famous historian Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar al-Wāqidī (d. 207/822). To trace the whole narrative, i.e. all 64 or 60 traditions, back to the “authorship” of al-Wāqidī is therefore unwarranted. Whoever compiled the Futūḥ al-Shām as a whole remains therefore still uncertain. This is why throughout the article I use the expression the Futūḥ al-Shām is (usually) ascribed to al-Wāqidī.51 Apart from al-Wāqidī in the remaining 29 asānīd (or 35 asānīd respectively) 49 other transmitters are mentioned. Most of these other transmitters according to my knowledge do not show up in other asānīd outside the Futūḥ al-Shām. Even after consulting several biographical dictionaries I could only identify 15 of them. The information on the death dates of these 15 transmitters does not contradict their position in the asānīd. Therefore, the information included in the biographical dictionaries does not help to answer the question if the asānīd in the Futūḥ al-Shām were fabricated or not. These 15 transmitters could on the one hand have never existed or on the other hand they could have been too unimportant to be mentioned extensively in the ḥadīth-oriented biographical dictionaries. One of these 15 transmitters is Qays ibn Hubayra who is mentioned more than 20 times (in asānīd and mutūn) in the Futūḥ al-Shām ascribed to al-Wāqidī. According to Ibn Ḥajar Qays ibn Hubayra is furthermore mentioned in the Futūḥ al-Shām that was written by Ibn al-Kalbī (d. 204/819).52 A book bearing this title is not listed by Ibn al-Nadīm in his Fihrist.53 No one else apart from Ibn Ḥajar is according to my knowledge referring to a Futūḥ al-Shām authored or compiled by Ibn al-Kalbī. Nevertheless, the information given by Ibn Ḥajar raises some important questions. Did Ibn Ḥajar mix things up, i.e. did he wrongly ascribe the Futūḥ al-Shām ascribed to al-Wāqidī to Ibn al-Kalbī? Did Ibn al-Kalbī ever author or compile a Futūḥ al-Shām which differs from the one ascribed to al-Wāqidī and is only poorly documented? Or did he author a Futūḥ al-Shām that was later ascribed to al-Wāqidī and that we know under the latterʼs name? Arguments in favor of this latter possibility are the rare occurrence of al-Wāqidīʼs name in the asānīd and the mentioning of Qays 51 This expression shall indicate that this book is known under al-Wāqidīʼs name, but al-Wāqidī cannot be regarded as its author or compiler. 52 Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Kitāb al-iṣāba fī tamyīz al-ṣaḥāba, ed. Al-Maktaba al-Tujārīya 4 vols. (Cairo: Al-Maktaba al-Tujārīya al-Kubrā, 1939 [= 1358]), 3:262, no. 7319. 53 Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq Ibn al-Nadīm, al-Fihrist, ed. and trans. Dodge as The Fihrist of al-Nadīm. A Tenth-Century Survey of Muslim Culture, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 1:206–213.



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ibn Hubayra in the text and in Ibn Ḥajarʼs work. This last alternative is intriguing because it would not only provide a name for the common source of Ibn Aʿthamʼs futūḥ-work and the one ascribed to al-Wāqidī, but it will furthermore provide an explanation for the similarities of all three futūḥ-works under discussion here. Possible Common Source of the Three Futūḥ-works Based on the textual evidence and the information given by Ibn Ḥajar, I am going to argue in the following that the similarities in all three futūḥworks are due to their derivation from the Futūḥ al-Shām-work that is accredited to Abū Mikhnaf al-Azdī (157/774).54 Allusions and references to Abū Mikhnaf can be found in all three futūḥ-works. In particular, there are several hints that Abū Mikhnaf ’s Futūḥ al-Shām served as the basic source for the narratives of the conquest of Damascus in al-Azdīʼs Futūḥ al-Shām and also for the common sourceʼs version. This common source in turn forms the basis of Ibn Aʿthamʼs futūḥ-work and of the work ascribed to al-Wāqidī, which could be Ibn al-Kalbīʼs Futūḥ al-Shām. Firstly, in Ibn Aʿthamʼs Kitāb al-futūḥ there are two references to Ibn al-Kalbī, a famous transmitter of material from Abū Mikhnaf. According to Ursula Sezgin, there is no question at all that Ibn al-Kalbī transmitted a lot of material, such as the whole Kitāb al-ghārāt, from Abū Mikhnaf.55 If additional proof for her thesis is wanted, in Ibn ʿAsākirʼs Taʼrīkh madīnat Dimashq Ibn al-Kalbī is in several places listed as a transmitter of Abū Mikhnaf, although the latter does not have a complete tarjama on his own.56 When describing the location of “Khālidʼs monastery” as “being one mile from Damascus which is close to the Eastern Gate (innahū ʿalā mīl min Dimashq mimmā yalī Bāb al-Sharqī)”, Ibn Aʿtham used the isnād “it is said (yuqālu)” to show an alternative source. As already stated above this tradition is also found in Yāqūtʼs (d. 626/1229) Muʿjam al-buldān and is ascribed to Ibn al-Kalbī (qāla Ibn al-Kalbī huwa ʿalā mīl min al-Bāb al-Sharqī).57 This evidence suggests that Ibn Aʿtham took at least some

54 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, 1:201. Ursula Sezgin, Abū Miḫnaf. Ein Beitrag zur Historiographie der umaiyadischen Zeit (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1971), 52. 55 Sezgin, Abū Miḫnaf, 40 ff. 56 See for example Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq, 7:466; 11:314; 18:306; 49:266; 50:31, 125, 151; 52:132; 57:13; 58:199, 271; 64:123; 69 169, 176. 57 Abū ʿAbd Allāh Yāqūt ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Rūmī, Muʿjam al-buldān, ed. F. Wüstenfeld as Jaqutʼs geographisches Wörterbuch (Leipzig: Helioplandruck, 1866–1873), 2:657.

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information from Ibn al-Kalbī, i.e. it supports the thesis that Ibn al-Kalbī could have been the common source of Ibn Aʿthamʼs narrative and the one that is ascribed to al-Wāqidī. A further proof in this context is given in the collective isnād Ibn Aʿtham quotes in the second volume of his Kitāb al-futūḥ. As part of the collective isnād Ibn Aʿtham quotes Ibn al-Kalbī (qāla ḥaddathanī Abū al-Mundhir Hishām ibn Muḥammad ibn Saʿīd [= al-Kalbī]) via Isḥāq ibn Yūsuf al-Fazārī (n.d.).58 This collective isnād not only supports Ibn al-Kalbīʼs position as common source but furthermore argues for Abū Mikhnaf ’s role as basic transmitter for the three futūḥworks, because the isnād continues by naming Abū Mikhnaf as source for Ibn al-Kalbī (qāla ḥaddathanī Abū Mikhnaf Lūṭ ibn Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd ibn Mikhnaf ibn Sulaym al-Azdī).59 This evidence suggests that at least some of Ibn Athamʼs information is derived from Abū Mikhnaf. Whether it is only the reference to “Khālidʼs monastery” that belongs to the corpus of Abū Mikhnaf or the entire narrative on the conquest of Damascus is not clear. However, one can safely assume that at least some traditions from Abū Mikhnaf were taken up by Ibn Aʿtham. The same argument was already made by Miklos Muranyi in his analysis of the events during the election of Abū Bakr60 and by Sulaiman Mourad in his study on al-Azdī.61 Secondly, there exist several parallel versions of the conquest of Damascus including mutūn that resemble to a high degree the narrative found in al-Azdīʼs Futūḥ al-Shām. These parallels are found in Ibn ʿAsākirʼs Taʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq62 and in al-Balādhurīʼs Futūḥ al-buldān.63 The two parallels mentioned by Ibn ʿAsākir are ascribed via an isnād that does not include al-Azdīʼs name to Abū Mikhnaf and to an unnamed transmitter (qālū) respectively. The first parallel (no. 599=461) shows similarities in the narrative structure, the set of motifs and partly in the wording, whereas the second (no. 607=472) conforms to al-Azdīʼs version only on the level of motifs and wording. Its narrative structure however does not exactly match that of al-Azdīʼs text. Two other parallels mentioned by al-Balādhurī are also ascribed to Abū Mikhnaf. The first (no. 81) uses almost the same

58 Ibn Aʿtham, Kitab al-futūḥ, ed. Khān, 2:344 f. 59 Ibid., 2: 345. Regarding the sources of Abū Mikhnaf the isnād gives al-Ḥārith ibn al-Ḥuṣayn > ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAbīd and al-Naḍr ibn Ṣāliḥ ibn Ḥabīb ibn Zuhayr. 60 Muranyi, “Bericht,” 233. 61 Mourad, “al-Azdī,” 588. 62 Ibn ʿAsākir, Taʾrīkh, 2:119 (= no. 599=461) and 2:123 (= no. 607=472). For a detailed analysis of these two narratives see Scheiner, Damaskus, 329 f.; 332 f.; 339 ff; 703–710. Mourad found seven further traditions of this kind. See Mourad, “al-Azdī”, 584. 63 al-Balādhurī, Futūḥ al-buldān, 118 (= no. 81) and 122 (= no. 87).



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wording as al-Azdī when saying that the time span between the battle of Ajnadayn and the battle of Marj al-Ṣuffar accounted to twenty days. The second narrative (no. 87) apart from differing in some details shows almost the same narrative structure as al-Azdīʼs version and shares one literal expression: “through fighting (bi-qitāl)”. Following the information in the asānīd both Ibn ʿAsākīr and al-Balādhurī traced their narratives back to Abū Mikhnaf. Since these narratives are very similar, in fact partly identical, to al-Azdīʼs narrative, this evidence could be interpreted in the way that also al-Azdī had used a narrative on the conquest of Damascus that was put forward by Abū Mikhnaf.64 If one does not want to follow this conclusion, these narratives at least proof a close link between the narrative in al-Azdīʼs futūḥ-work and material on the conquest of Damascus transmitted by Abū Mikhnaf. However, my interpretation gains support from the study undertaken by Suleiman Mourad. Based on parallels in texts and asānīd and on common transmitters he argued that al-Azdī depended on Abū Mikhnaf.65 Thirdly, the Futūḥ al-Shām ascribed to al-Wāqidī does not mention Abū Mikhnaf by name. Therefore, the allusions to the latterʼs work are only visible in the mutūn, i.e. in the common motifs found in the narratives ascribed to al-Wāqidī and to Ibn Aʿtham. These motifs were transmitted indirectly through the common source, eventually Ibn al-Kalbīʼs Futūḥ al-Shām, from Abū Mikhnaf to the account ascribed to al-Wāqidī. This reference to Abū Mikhnaf is therefore the weakest among the three futūḥ-works. To sum up, there are slight indications in all three futūḥ-works that Abū Mikhnaf’s version forms the textual basis of the conquest narratives. First, there are several parallel versions to al-Azdīʼs narrative included in Ibn ʿAsākirʼs Taʼrīkh madīnat Dimashq and in al-Balādhurīʼs Futūḥ al-buldān. Second, Ibn Aʿtham ascribes some of his information via Ibn al-Kalbī to Abū Mikhnaf. Third, the similarities between Ibn Aʿthamʼs work and the one ascribed to al-Wāqidī are best explained as adoptions from Abū Mikhnaf ’s Futūḥ al-Shām via a common source, eventually Ibn al-Kalbīʼs futūḥ-work.66

64 This is not the only possibility to interpret the evidence. It could be argued that Ibn ʿAsākir and al-Balādhurī had taken the narratives from al-Azdī and attached another isnād to it. I thank Prof. Harald Motzki for bringing forward this point. 65 Mourad, “al-Azdī,” 577, 587, 588 and in particular 592. 66 For a graphical depiction of these dependencies see figure 1.

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Cairene Edition(s)

narrative ascribed to al-Wāqidī

narrative of Ibn Aʿtham

common source, possibly Ibn al-Kalbī’s Futūḥ al-Shām

narrative of al-Azdī

Abū Mikhnaf’s Futūḥ al-Shām

Figure 1 Dependencies of the various Futūḥ al-Shām-works

Further Proof If the dependencies suggested above are correct, then some further proof apart from that already mentioned should be found in the three futūḥworks and its narratives on the conquest of Damascus. Firstly, the death dates of all scholars mentioned fit the proposed theory (see figure 1). Abū Mikhnaf died in 157/774, al-Azdī in 180/796–7, Ibn al-Kalbī in 204/819, Ibn Aʿtham at the beginning of the 3rd/9th ­century. Although the compiler who compiled (parts of) the Futūḥ al-Sham ascribed to al-Wāqidī is unknown, he must have died at some point after including the narratives transmitted to him by al-Wāqidī (d. 207/822). Secondly the broad similarities in the narrative framework of al-Azdīʼs narrative and the one from the common source on which Ibn Aʿtham and the version ascribed to al-Wāqidī relied on can best be explained by another common source, i.e. Abū Mikhnaf ’s traditions collected in his Futūḥ al-Shām. This common narrative framework explains the conquest of Damascus as a two-phase siege of the city that was interrupted by the battle of Ajnadayn and that later led to Abū ʿUbaydaʼs conquest by granting a peace treaty and Khālidʼs conquest by force. Finally the narrative



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speaks of an agreement among the Muslim commanders according to which the city was treated as conquered by treaty. Thirdly, the dependencies are supported by further similarities on the levels of motifs and wording. Al-Azdīʼs and the common sourceʼs narrative include the motifs of Abū Bakrʼs death during the conquest and of the deposition of Khālid and the appointment of Abū ʿUbayda, although they place it to different positions within the narrative. Most obvious are these similarities regarding the motifs of the “eagleʼs pass” and “Khālidʼs monastery”, which in addition accord in their wording. Whereas al-Azdīʼs narrative formulates “thumma aqbala Khālid ibn al-Walīd ḥattā nazala dayran yuqālu la-hū dayr Khālid wa-bi-hī yuʿrafu ilā al-yawm (Then Khālid ibn al-Walīd turned forward until he camped at the monastery which is called ‘Khālidʼs monastery’ and which is known under this name until today)” the common source of Ibn Aʿthamʼs narrative and the one ascribed to al-Wāqidī display similarities in the following two sentences “wa-aqbala Khālid ḥattā nazala al-dayr alladhī yuqālu la-hū dayr Khālid wa-bi-hī yuʿrafu ilā yawminā hādhā (Ibn Aʿtham; And Khālid turned forward until he camped at the monastery which is called ‘Khālidʼs monastery’ and which is known under this name until this day)” and “thumma inḥadara minhā ilā al-Ghūṭa wa-nazala bi-al-dayr wa-huwa maʿrūf ilā yawminā hādhā bi-dayr Khālid (narrative ascribed to al-Wāqidī; Then he [= Khālid] desended to the Ghūṭa and camped at the monastery. This monastery is known until this day under the name of ‘Khālidʼs monastery’)”.67 All these structural and linguistic similarities can best be explained by a common source, i.e the Futūḥ al-Shām by Abū Mikhnaf, underlying al-Azdīʼs Futūḥ al-Shām and the common source which is the basis for Ibn Aʿthamʼs futūḥ-work and the one ascribed to al-Wāqidī. A similar argument was made by Amir Mazor who recently studied the dependencies of various works entitled Futūḥ al-Shām.68 The thesis of seeing Abū Mikhnaf ’s Futūḥ al-Shām as a common source of the other futūḥ-works is in addition supported by three pieces of internal evidence from within the narratives. First, the textual evidence, in particular the mentioning of “Khālidʼs monastery”, suggests according to Conrad a provenience from the 2nd/8th century.69 Second, the ­reference 67 Scheiner, Damaskus, 737. For further examples see Scheiner, Damaskus, 737–47. 68 Amir Mazor, “The Kitāb futūḥ al-Shām of al-Qudāmi as a Case Study for the Transmission of Traditions About the Conquest of Syria,” Der Islam 84 (2007): 38 f. 69 Conrad, “al-Azdī,” 39 and 48.

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to the church of al-Maqsallāṭ in the narrative ascribed to al-Wāqidī, where it however occurs in its corrupted form Kanīsat al-Maqsāṭ,70 points to an early usage of the expression, because it is this toponym that also occurs in the reconstructed version of Abū al-Muhallab al-Ṣanʿānī from the middle of the 2nd/8th century.71 Third, one of the side plots in the Futūḥ al-Shām ascribed to al-Wāqidī describes the actions of Wāthila ibn al-Asqāʿ (d. 83/702–3 or 85/704) during the conquest of Damascus. It was the same Wāthila who transmitted a narrative on the conquest of Damascus that can be dated at the latest to the 2nd quarter of the 2nd/8th century.72 These three pieces of textual evidence do not directly proof the fact that Abū Mikhnaf ’s Futūḥ al-Shām forms the basis for the other futūḥ-works, but it supports the thesis put forward by addressing issues that fit to Abū Mikhnaf ’s time and are not anachronistic. If the similarities in the narrative structure, the motifs and the wording can best be explained by Abū Mikhnaf ’s Futūḥ al-Shām, then these elements had to be taught in the early Islamic circles of learning and transmission at the latest around the middle of the 2nd/8th century, due to Abū Mikhnaf ’s death in 157/774. Regarding the age of the other narratives on the conquest of Damascus the following observations can be made. The narrative by Ibn Aʿtham dates from a later time than al-Azdīʼs narrative due to its dependency on the latter. Furthermore, it had to be in existence at least contemporaneously to the common source that forms the basis of Ibn Aʿthamʼs narrative and the one ascribed to al-Wāqidī, i.e. the Futūḥ al-Shām-work by Ibn al-Kalbī. Ibn Aʿthamʼs death date, i.e. the beginning of the 3rd/9th century, fits this relative dating quite well. One can therefore assume that Ibn Aʿthamʼs narrative was transmitted in the circles of historical study at the turn of the 3rd/9th century. Al-Azdīʼs narrative was transmitted in the same circles in the third quarter of the 2nd/8th century due to his death date in around 180/796–7. To date the narrative ascribed to al-Wāqidī is the most difficult task. Some of it, i.e. the motifs it took from the common source, had to be transmitted at least in the last quarter of the 2nd/8th century, because al-Wāqidī and Ibn al-Kalbī died in the years 207/822 and 204/819, respectively. This dating is supported by another reconstructed version on the conquest of Damascus that was transmitted some decades earlier and that could have been a precursor for

70 al-Wāqidī, Futūḥ al-Shām, ed. Lees, 1:158, l. 16. 71 For this narrative see Scheiner, Damaskus, 129. 72 Ibid., 169.



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Ibn al-Kalbīʼs version.73 Several other side plots in the narrative ascribed to al-Wāqidī had probably been integrated at a later point. However, only a more detailed analysis of the Futūḥ al-Shām ascribed to al-Wāqidī can illuminate this point. In other words, al-Azdīʼs Futūḥ al-Shām and the one ascribed to al-Wāqidī contain at least in the case of the conquest of Damascus some material dating to the second half of the 2nd/8th century. If my argumentation put forward here, i.e. that these two works and indirectly Ibn Aʿthamʼs futūḥ-work were based on Abū Mikhnaf ’s Futūḥ al-Shām, is accepted, then these works include even older material. Thus this material can be dated to the second quarter of the 2nd/8th century. Together with other narratives from the same period, this material then belongs to the oldest layer of historical information concerning the conquest of Damascus we can get ahold of.74 Conclusion To conclude, the futūḥ-works by al-Azdī, Ibn Aʿtham and the one ascribed to al-Wāqidī do not show a peculiar “historic disposition” as Haneberg suggested. They contain narratives with a similar content, with similar motifs and written in a similar literary style as traditions found in other historical works. These futūḥ-works even make (partly) use of the same transmitters. However, most importantly several of these works predate some of the narratives found in al-Ṭabarī’s Annals and in al-Balādhurīʼs futūḥ-work. Therefore, focusing solely on the two latter works is not up to date anymore. Anyone writing the history of the futūḥ has to make use of the narratives included in the futūḥ-works by al-Azdī, Ibn Aʿtham and the one ascribed to al-Wāqidī and has to display the same preconception towards them as to the more established works by al-Ṭabarī and al-Balādhurī.

73 See the reconstructed version RF 19 (termed “core structure of all long versions/Kernstruktur der Langversionen”) in Scheiner, Damaskus, 152. 74 For a discussion of the oldest narratives on the conquest of Damascus which can safely be reconstructed see my article “The Conquest of Damascus according to the Oldest Datable Sources,” In N. Boekhoff-van der Voort/K. Versteegh/J. Wagemakers, eds., The Transmission and Dynamics of the Textual Sources of Islam. Essays in Honour of Harald Motzki (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 153–80.

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Futūhushām. The Inspiring History of the Sahābah, r., Conquest of Syria. London: Ta-Ha, 2005. Yāqūt al-Rūmī, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Yāqūt ibn ʿAbd Allāh. Muʿjam al-buldān. Ed. F. Wüstenfeld as Jaqutʼs geographisches Wörterbuch. Leipzig: Heliosplandruck, 1866–1873. Secondary Sources ʿAbbās, Iḥsān. Taʾrīkh bilād al-Shām min qabl al-islām ḥattā bidāyat al-ʿaṣr al-umawī 600– 661. Amman, 1990 [= 1410]. Abū Saʿda, Muḥammad. Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī wa-minhajuhū al-taʾrīkhī fī kitāb al-futūḥ. Cairo, 1987 [= 1408]. Brockelmann, Carl. Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur. Supplement. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1937–1942. Cameron, Marianne E. “Sayf at First. The Transmission of Sayf ibn ʿUmar in al-Ṭabarī and Ibn ʿAsākir.” In James E. Lindsay, ed. Ibn ʿAsākir and Early Islamic History. Princeton: Darwin Press, 2001, 62–77. Conrad, Lawrence I. Review of al-Balādhurī, Ansāb al-ashrāf. Bd. 2 (Ed. W. Madelung), Wiesbaden/Beirut 2003; Bd. 4/2 (Ed. ʿA. Duri/ʿA. Uqla), Wiesbaden/Beirut 2001; Bd. 7/2 (Ed. M. al-Yaʿlawī), Wiesbaden/Beirut 2002. Der Islam 82 (2005): 180–83. ——. “Heraclius in Early Islamic Kerygma.” In G. J. Reinink et al., eds. The Reign of Heraclius (610–641). Crisis and Confrontation. Leuven: Peeters, 2002, 113–156. ——. “Ibn Aʿtham and His History.” Unpublished Presentation held at the Sixth International Colloquium on “From Jahiliyya to Islam”. 5 September–10 September 1993. ——. “Al-Azdīʼs History of the Arab Conquests in Bilād al-Shām. Some Historiographical Observations.” In M. al-Bakhīt, ed. Proceedings of the Second Symposium on the History of Bilād al-Shām During the Early Islamic Period Up to 40 A.H./640 A.D. English and French Papers. 2 vols. Amman: University of Jordan Press, 1987, 1 28–61. EAL = Meisami, Julie S. and R. Starkey, eds. Encyclopaedia of Arabic Literature. London: Routledge, 1998. EI² = Gibb, Hamilton A. et al., eds. Encyclopaedia of Islam. 2nd ed. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1960– 2004. de Goeje, M. J. “Mémoire sur le Fotouho´s-Scham atribué a Abou Ismaïl al-Baçri.” In de Goeje, M. J., ed., Mémoires d´histoire et de géographie orientales Nr. 2. Leiden: E. J. Brill 1864, i–li. ——. “Tabari and Early Arab Historians.” In Encyclopaedia Britannica. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black 1875–1903. 23:1–5. Günther, Sebastian. “Al-Nawfalī’s Lost History. A Shīʿī Source Used by al-Ṭabarī and Abū l-Faraj.” In H. Kennedy, ed. Al-Ṭabarī. A Medieval Muslim Historian and His Work. Prince­ ton Darwin Press, 2008, 157–73. Haneberg, Daniel B. “Erörterungen über Pseudo-Wakidi´s Geschichte der Eroberung Syriens.”Abhandlungen der königlich-bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-philologische und historische Classe, Jg. 9.1 (1860): 125–64. Khalek, Nancy. “ ‘He was Tall and Slender, and His Virtues were Numerousʼ. Byzantine Hagiographical Topoi and the Companions of Muḥammad in al-Azdīʼs Futūḥ al-Shām.” In A. Papaconstantinou, ed. Writing ‘True Stories’. Historians and Hagiographers in the Late Antique and Medieval Near East. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010, 105–123. Kurd ʿAlī, Muḥammad. “Futūḥ al-Shām li-Abī Ismāʿīl Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Azdī al-Baṣrī al-mutawaffā sanna 178 ʿalā wajh al-taqrīb. Tabiʿa fī Kalkutah bi-al-Hind sanna 1854.” Majallat al-majmāʿ al-ʿilmī al-ʿarabī = Revue de l’Académie Arabe de Damas 20.11–12 (1945): 544–49. Landau-Tasseron, Ella. “New Data on an Old Manuscript. An Andalusian Version of the Works Entitled Futūḥ al-Shām.” Al-Qanṭara 21 (2000): 361–80. Mazor, Amir. “The Kitāb futūḥ al-Shām of al-Qudāmi as a Case Study for the Transmission of Traditions About the Conquest of Syria.” Der Islam 84 (2007): 17–45.

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Mourad, Suleiman. “On Early Islamic Historiography. Abū Ismāʿīl al-Azdī and his Futūḥ al-Shām.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 120 (2000): 577–93. Muranyi, Miklos. “Ein neuer Bericht über die Wahl des ersten Kalifen Abū Bakr.”Arabica 25 (1978): 233–60. Noth, Albrecht, together with Lawrence I. Conrad: The Early Arabic Historical Tradition. A Source-critical Study. Trans. by Michael Bonner. 2nd ed. Princeton: Darwin Press, 1994. ——. “Zum Verhältnis von kalifaler Zentralgewalt und Provinzen in umayyadischer Zeit. Die „Ṣulḫ“—„ʿAnwa“-Traditionen für Ägypten und den Iraq.” Die Welt des Islam 14 (1973): 150–162. Rosenthal, Franz. A History of Muslim Historiography. 2nd ed. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968. Rotter, Gernot. “Zur Überlieferung einiger historischer Werke Madāʾinīs in Ṭabarīs Annalen.” Oriens 23–24 (1974): 103–133. Scheiner, Jens J. Die Eroberung von Damaskus. Quellenkritische Untersuchung zur Historio­ graphie in klassisch-islamischer Zeit. Leiden: Brill, 2010. ——. “The Conquest of Damascus according to the Oldest Datable Sources.” In N. Boekhoffvan der Voort/K. Versteegh/J. Wagemakers, ed. The Transmission and Dynamics of the Textual Sources of Islam. Essays in Honour of Harald Motzki. Leiden: Brill, 2011, 153–180. ——. Review of Schoeler, Gregor: The Genesis of Literatur in Islam. From the Aural to the Read. Edinburgh 2009. In: sehepunkte 10 (2010), No. 7/8 [15.07.2010], URL: http://www .sehepunkte.de/2010/07/16364.html. ——. Review of Mawlânâ Sulaymân al-Kindî: The Islâmic Conquest of Syria. A translation of Futûhushâm: the inspiring history of the Ṣahâbah’s, conquest of Syria as narrated by the great historian of Islâm al-Imâm al-Wâqidî. London 2005. In: http://www.sehepunkte .de/2008/10/14139.html. ——. “Grundlegendes zu al-Azdīs Futūḥ aš-Šām.” Der Islam 84 (2007): 1–16. Schoeler, Gregor. The Genesis of Literature in Islam. From the Aural to the Read. Trans. S. Toorawa. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009. Sezgin, Fuat. Geschichte des Arabischen Schrifttums. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1967–2007. Sezgin, Ursula. “Abū Miḫnaf, Ibrāhīm ibn Hilāl aṯ-Ṯaqafī und Muḥammad ibn Aʿṯam über ġārāt.” ZDMG 131 (1981): *1*-*2* (Wissenschaftliche Nachrichten). ——. Abū Miḫnaf. Ein Beitrag zur Historiographie der umaiyadischen Zeit. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1971. Shoshan, Boaz. Poetics of Islamic Historiography. Deconstructing Ṭabarī’s History. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2004.

In Defense of Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān: Treatises and Monographs on Muʿāwiya from the Eighth to the NINETEENTH Centuries Aram A. Shahin Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān, the sixth Muslim sovereign after the Prophet Muḥammad, is one of the most controversial individuals in Islamic history. On the one hand, the literary sources describe him as a Companion of the Prophet, one of his scribes, the unifier of the Muslims, one of the most influential and capable amīrs during the reigns of ʿUmar and ʿUthmān, and they praise his forbearance and political acumen. On the other hand, sources also depict him as the opponent of the righteous ʿAlī, one who established hereditary monarchical rule and ended selection via an assembly, a callous politician who assassinated political opponents, and they criticize his guile and Machiavellian tactics. This article, which is part of an ongoing study of the development of early Islamic political thought from pre-Islamic Arabia to the onset of the Umayyad dynasty, is a study of literary works dedicated to Muʿāwiya and composed before the middle of the nineteenth century. The material on Muʿāwiya and his reign in the literary sources is voluminous. In this article, I will limit myself to a survey of the treatises and monographs from the eighth to the nineteenth centuries that have been devoted exclusively or in great part to Muʿāwiya or an aspect of his life or reign. I have opted to omit works that deal only with the battle of Ṣiffīn or its aftermath or with the skirmishes that occurred after the inconclusive arbitration that resulted from an agreement made at the end of the battle. Volumes on Muʿāwiya that belong to larger works have also not been included (e.g., the volume dedicated to the reign of Muʿāwiya in the multi-volume work Tārīkh al-Islām, by al-Dhahabī [d. 1348]). The focus of the article will be on the reason(s) for composing such works and the contents that they present. Judging from the material that has survived, until the twentieth century, none of these works amounted to a biography of the (in)famous sovereign; they did not present a chronological narrative of the life of Muʿāwiya from birth to death, rather their scope was either to praise his merits ( faḍāʾil) or condemn his shortcomings (mathālib), and the biographical material that they offered was meant

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to provide support for one of these two goals. Although this trend has continued until the present, with a sizeable portion of writings falling within one of the two categories, in the last century a number of biographies have also been composed that attempt to present a more complete, nuanced, and balanced picture of Muʿāwiya. The first decade of the twenty-first century has been the most productive in terms of the number of works dedicated to Muʿāwiya, whether new studies, reprints of older studies, or new editions of texts. I have counted the following: one in Malay; two in Turkish; two in Persian; seven in English (plus one novel); six in Urdu; and twenty-six in Arabic. Despite all of this activity, there is still a lot of work to be done on the man and his reign. I do not refer to modern scholarship on Muʿāwiya in this article, as it will be the subject of a separate study. A Short Overview of Muʿāwiya’s Life Very little is known of Muʿāwiya’s life before his acceptance of Islam, probably in 630. His father Abū Sufyān ibn Ḥarb, leader of the Meccan opposition against the Prophet Muḥammad, and his mother Hind bint ʿUtba both accepted Islam at the same time as their son. Muʿāwiya promptly became a scribe to the Prophet. Abū Bakr (r. 632–634) appointed him as a minor amīr in the conquest armies attacking Greater Syria. After the death of his brother Yazīd in 638 or 639, Muʿāwiya replaced him through the order of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (r. 634–644) as amīr over a part of Greater Syria. When ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān (r. 644–656) came to power, he expanded Muʿāwiya’s authority to encomapss the entirety of Greater Syria. ʿUthmān also allowed Muʿāwiya to build the first Islamic fleet, which soon established its supremacy over the eastern part of the Sea of the Romans. When ʿUthmān was killed and ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (r. 656–661) was elected as his successor, Muʿāwiya refused to pledge his allegiance to the new sovereign demanding that the blood of his relative ʿUthmān be avenged. The conflict between ʿAlī and Muʿāwiya escalated until they met in battle at Ṣiffīn in 657. The battle ended with an agreement to send representatives of both sides for arbitration at a later time to settle the dispute. The arbitrators could not come to an agreement. However, ʿAlī was assassinated by a rebel and his son al-Ḥasan, who was initially selected to succeed his father, stepped down in favor of Muʿāwiya who thus became Muslim sovereign in 661. He ruled until his death in 680 and was succeeded by his son Yazīd and a second civil war.



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Muʿāwiya in Pre-Modern Treatises The first Muslim sovereigns have received the attention of Muslim scholars from the beginnings of Islamic historical writing and quite a number of treatises have been devoted to them. ʿAlī is the most popular of all, with ʿUmar and Abū Bakr coming second and third. Many of the treatises devoted to these sovereigns fall within the genre of faḍāʾil or manāqib and their aim is to document the excellent and praiseworthy characteristics of their subjects.1 The treatises which were devoted to Muʿāwiya are not as numerous as those of his predecessors. Furthermore, they have been just as much devoted to his faḍāʾil, as to their opposite, mathālib.2 As a result of the latter trend, a number of works were written defending Muʿāwiya, and the literature on the eminent sovereign can be quite polemical. The following is a list of works written before 1850 that are devoted exclusively or to a large extent to Muʿāwiya and/or to some aspect(s) of his reign. Titles marked by an asterisk have been partially or completely preserved and will be discussed in greater detail in a separate section below. The remaining unmarked works appear to have been lost. Although one cannot exclude the possibility that some of these might have been chapters or sections of larger works, there is no indication in the sources that this was the case and the surviving works are independent treatises. However, it is likely that at least some of the lost works were relatively short in length.

1 On the genre of faḍāʾil, see R. Sellheim, “Faḍīla,” in EI2. Sellheim translates the term faḍīla as “an excellence or excellent quality, a high degree in (or of) excellence” (ibid., 728). On the genre of manāqib, see Ch. Pellat, “Manāḳib,” in EI2. Pellat translates the term manāqib as “qualities, virtues, talents, praiseworthy actions” (ibid., 349). The two terms are often used interchangeably. For more on the faḍāʾil genre as relating to individuals or groups, see Ernst August Gruber, Verdienst und Rang: Die Faḍāʾil als literarisches und gesellschaftliches Problem im Islam (Freiburg im Breisgau: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1975) (Islamkundliche Untersuchungen 35), 22–48. For a study of the development of faḍāʾil as a distinct genre of Islamic literature and some of the ideological (political and theological) trends that are reflected in some of its traditions, see Asma Afsaruddin, “In Praise of the Caliphs: Re-Creating History from the Manāqib Literature,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 31, no. 3 (1999): 329–50; eadem, Excellence and Precedence: Medieval Islamic Discourse on Legitimate Leadership (Leiden: Brill, 2002) (Islamic History and Civilization: Studies and Texts 36). The focus of Afsaruddin is on competing traditions about Abū Bakr and ʿAlī. 2 Mathlaba, the singular of mathālib, can also be translated as “villainy” or “subject of shame.”

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 (1) Abū al-Ḥakam ʿAwāna ibn al-Ḥakam ibn ʿIyāḍ ibn Wazr [Wizr?] ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥārith al-Kalbī (d. 764 or 5), Kitāb Sīrat Muʿāwiya wa-Banī Umayya;3  (2) Abū Mikhnaf Lūṭ ibn Yaḥyā al-Azdī (d. 774), Kitāb Wafāt Muʿāwiya wa Wilāyat Ibnih Yazīd wa-Waqʿat al-Ḥarra wa-Ḥiṣār Ibn al-Zubayr;4  (3) idem, Maqtal Ḥujr ibn ʿAdī;5  (4) idem, Maqtal Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr wa-al-Ashtar;6  (5) Hishām ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Sāʾib al-Kalbī (d. 821 or 2), Kitāb Iddiʿāʾ Ziyād Muʿāwiya;7 *(6) al-Ḍabbī, Abū al-Walīd al-ʿAbbās ibn Bakkār (746–837), Akhbār al-Wāfidīn min al-Rijāl min Ahl al-Kūfa wa-al-Baṣra ʿalā Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān;8 *(7) idem, Akhbār al-Wāfidāt ʿalā Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān;9 3 Ibn al-Nadīm, Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq (fl. 987), Kitāb al-Fihrist, ed. Riḍā Tajaddud (Tehran: Maṭbaʿa-yi Dānishgāh, 1971), 103; idem, The Fihrist of al-Nadīm: A Tenth-Century Survey of Muslim Culture, tr. Bayard Dodge (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970) (Records of Civilization: Sources and Studies 83), 1: 197 (The life of Muʿāwiyah and the Banū Umayyah). Ibn al-Nadīm says that the book was attributed by some to Minjāb ibn al-Ḥārith but asserts its authorship to ʿAwāna, who was from al-Kūfa (ibid.). The English titles of the books and treatises given in parentheses are the translations of Dodge. It is said that ʿAwāna was a ʿUthmānī and that he fabricated reports favorable to the Umayyads; see Yāqūt ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥamawī (1179?–1229), Muʿjam al-Udabāʾ: Irshād al-Arīb ilā Maʿrifat al-Adīb, ed. Iḥsān ʿAbbās (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1993), 5: 2135, entry no. 877 (kāna ʿuthmāniyyan wa-kāna yaḍaʿ akhbāran li-Banī Umayya). See also Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums. Band I: Qurʾānwissenschaften · Ḥadīt · Geschichte · Fiqh · Dogmatik · Mystik bis ca. 430 H. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1967), 307 (no. 5). 4 Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist, 105; idem, The Fihrist of al-Nadīm, 1: 201 (The Death of Muʿāwiya); Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī, Muʿjam al-Udabāʾ, 5: 2253, entry no. 926 (cited as Kitāb Wafāt Muʿāwiya wa-Wilāyat Ibnih wa-Waqʿat al-Ḥarra wa-ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr). 5 Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī, Muʿjam al-Udabāʾ, 5: 2253, entry no. 926; Ismāʿīl Bāshā al-Bābānī, (1839–1920), Īḍāḥ al-Maknūn fī al-Dhayl ʿalā Kashf al-Ẓunūn ʿan Asāmī al-Kutub wa-alFunūn, ed. Muḥammad Sharaf al-Dīn Yāltaqāyā and Rifʿat Bīlgah al-Kilīsī, 3rd printing (Tehran: Maktabat al-Islāmiyya wa-al-Jaʿfarī Tabrīzī, 1967), 2: 541. 6 Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī, Muʿjam al-Udabāʾ, 5: 2253, entry no. 926 (cited as Kitāb Maqtal Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr wa-al-Ashtar wa-Muḥammad ibn Abī Ḥudhayfa); al-Bābānī, Īḍāḥ, 2: 541. 7 Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist, 109; idem, The Fihrist of al-Nadīm, 1: 207 (Appeal of Ziyād to Muʿāwiya); Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī, Muʿjam al-Udabāʾ, 6: 2780, entry no. 1207 (cited from Ibn al-Nadīm as Kitāb Iddiʿāʾ Muʿāwiya Ziyādan). The translation of the title by Dodge is incorrect. The title refers to Muʿāwiya accepting, or adopting, Ziyād ibn Abīhi as his brother. 8 Carl Brockelmann (1868–1956), Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, 2nd edition (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1937), Suppl. 1: 214 (“Abī” is omitted); Sezgin, GAS. Band I, 313 (no. 10). 9 Brockelmann, GAL, Suppl. 1: 214 (given as Kitāb al-Wāfidāt); Sezgin, GAS. Band I, 313 (no. 10); Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Shaybānī, Muʿjam Mā Ullifa ʿan al-Ṣaḥāba wa-Ummahāt al-Muʾminīn wa-Āl al-Bayt «Raḍī Allāh ʿanhum» (al-Kuwayt: Manshūrāt Markaz al-Makhṭūṭāt wa-al-Turāth wa-al-Wathāʾiq, 1993) (Markaz al-Makhṭūṭāt wa-al-Turāth



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*(8) al-Jāḥiẓ, Abū ʿUthmān ʿAmr ibn Baḥr (d. 868), Kitāb Imāmat Muʿāwiya;10    (9) Ibn Abī al-Dunyā, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad (823–894), Akhbār Muʿāwiya;11 *(10) idem, Ḥilm Muʿāwiya;12    (11) al-ʿAyyāshī, Abū al-Naḍr Muḥammad ibn Masʿūd ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAyyāsh (ninth century), Kitāb Sīrat Muʿāwiya;13   (12) Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥusayn al-Ḥasanī (9th/10th century?), Kitāb Akhbār Muʿāwiya;14   (13) Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim al-Ḍaḥḥāk, Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn ʿAmr (822–900), a treatise on the ḥilm of Muʿāwiya,15 although another source says it is on his manāqib;16   (14) Ibn ʿAmmār al-Thaqafī, Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Muḥammad (d. 931), Kitāb Akhbār Ḥujr ibn ʿAdī or Maqtal Ḥujr;17  

wa-al-Wathāʾiq. al-Fahāris wa-al-Biblyūghrāfiya 4), 30 (no. 111). In the latter reference book, a number of entries are actually chapter or section headings of pre-modern or modern works, some only 2 or 3 pages long. Certain of these are the biographical entries in select histories or biographical dictionaries. Entries of this type on Muʿāwiya are found on: pp. 116 (no. 557), 148 (no. 749), 216 (no. 1148), 230 (no. 1226), and 241 (no. 1282). 10 Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist, 210; idem, The Fihrist of al-Nadīm, 1: 405 (The Caliphate of Muʿāwiya); Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī, Muʿjam al-Udabāʾ, 5: 2118, entry no. 872; Brockelmann, GAL, Suppl. 1: 242 (given as Kitāb Imāmat Amīr al-Muʾminīn Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān). 11 Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Munajjid, “Muʿjam Muṣannafāt Ibn Abī al-Dunyā,” Majallat Majmaʿ al-Lugha al-ʿArabiyya bi-Dimashq 49 (1974): 583 (no. 9); al-Shaybānī, Muʿjam Mā Ullifa, 30 (no. 109). 12 al-Munajjid, “Muʿjam Muṣannafāt Ibn Abī al-Dunyā,” 586 (no. 62). He also wrote Ḥilm al-Ḥulamāʾ and Ḥilm al-Aḥnaf ibn Qays (ibid., [nos. 60 and 61]), as well as Faḍāʾil ʿAlī, Faḍāʾil al-ʿAbbās (ibid., 590 [nos. 141 and 139]) and Manāqib Banī al-ʿAbbās (ibid., 593 [no. 182]). See also al-Shaybānī, Muʿjam Mā Ullifa, 98 (no. 462), where it is cited as Ḥikam Muʿāwiya. 13 Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist, 246; idem, The Fihrist of al-Nadīm, 1: 486 (The Life of Muʿāwiya). Al-ʿAyyāshī also wrote: Kitāb Sīrat Abī Bakr [The Life of Abū Bakr]; Kitāb Sīrat ʿUmar [The Life of ʿUmar]; and Kitāb Sīrat ʿUthmān [The Life of ʿUthmān] (ibid.). He was an Imāmī Shīʿite from Samarqand. See also Brockelmann, GAL, Suppl. 1: 704 (no titles are given and the author is said to have flourished in the 4th century AH = 10th century AD). 14 Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist, 243; idem, The Fihrist of al-Nadīm, 1: 480 (Traditions about Muʿāwiya). He was a Shīʿite scholar. 15 Jalāl al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Suyūṭī, (1445–1505), Tārīkh al-Khulafāʾ, ed. Muḥammad Abū al-Faḍl Ibrāhīm (Cairo: Dār Nahḍat Miṣr li-al-Ṭabʿ wa-al-Nashr, 1976), 309 (within the biography of Muʿāwiya: wa-qad afrada Ibn Abī al-Dunyā wa-Abū Bakr ibn Abī ʿĀṣim taṣnīfan fī ḥilm Muʿāwiya). 16 Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, (1372–1449), Fatḥ al-Bārī Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, ed. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Bāz and ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Shibl (Riyad: Dār al-Salām, 2000), 7: 132 (Kitāb 62–Faḍāʾil aṣḥāb al-nabī: Bāb 28–Dhikr Muʿāwiya: comments on ḥadīths no. 3,764–3,766: wa qad ṣannaf Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim juzʾan fī manāqibihi wa-kadhālika Abū ʿUmar Ghulām Thaʿlab wa Abū Bakr al-Naqqāsh). 17 Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī, Muʿjam al-Udabāʾ, 1: 367, entry no. 109.

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(15) idem, Kitāb Risālatih fī Mathālib Muʿāwiya;18 (16) Abū ʿUmar al-Zāhid, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn Abī Hāshim (875–957), known as Ghulām Thaʿlab, is said to have collected a treatise (juzʾ) in which he gathered reports (aḥādīth) on the merits ( faḍāʾil) of Muʿāwiya. It seems that Abū ʿUmar stipulated that his students read this work before he would teach them anything in language, his specialization;19   (17) Abū Bakr al-Naqqāsh, Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan (879 or 80–962) is said to have written a treatise on the manāqib of Muʿāwiya;20 *(18) al-Saqaṭī, Abū al-Qāsim ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Muḥammad (d. 1015), Faḍāʾil Muʿāwiya;21 *(19) al-Ahwāzī, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Ibrāhīm (972–1054), (Kitāb) Sharḥ ʿUqad Ahl al-Īmān fī Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān wa-Dhikr Mā Warada fī al-Akhbār min Faḍāʾilih wa-Manāqibih;22  

 

18 Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist, 166; idem, The Fihrist of al-Nadīm, 1: 325 (an “epistle about the faults of Muʿāwiyah”); Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī, Muʿjam al-Udabāʾ, vol. 1: 367, entry no. 109 (cited as Kitāb al-Risāla fī Mathālib Muʿāwiya). 19 al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, (1002–1071), Tārīkh Baghdād aw Madīnat al-Salām, ed. Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1997), 3: 160, entry no. 1181 (wa kāna lahu juzʾun qad jamaʿa fīhi al-aḥādīth allatī turwā fī faḍāʾil Muʿāwiya fa-kāna lā yatruk wāḥidan minhum yaqraʾ ʿalayhi shayʾan ḥattā yabtadiʾ bi-qirāʾat dhālika al-juzʾ thumma yaqraʾ ʿalayhi baʿdahu mā qaṣada lahu); Abū al-Ḥusayn Ibn Abī Yaʿlā, (1059–1131), Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanābila, ed. Muḥammad Ḥāmid al-Fiqī (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Sunna al-Muḥammadiyya, 1952), 2: 68, entry no. 603 (identical to the statement by al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī but with some typographical errors); Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī, Muʿjam al-Udabāʾ, 6: 2558, entry no. 1073 (kāna qad jamaʿa juzʾan fī faḍāʾil Muʿāwiya fa-kāna lā yumakkin aḥadan min al-samāʿ minhu ḥattā yabtadiʾ bi-qirāʾat dhālika al-juzʾ); Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Fatḥ al-Bārī, 7: 132 (wa-qad ṣannafa Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim juzʾan fī manāqibihi wa-kadhālika Abū ʿUmar Ghulām Thaʿlab wa-Abū Bakr al-Naqqāsh); idem, Lisān al-Mīzān, 2nd printing (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Aʿlamī l-Maṭbūʿāt, [1971]), 5: 428, entry no. 1400 (Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā Abū Bakr al-ʿAnazī: ḥaddatha bi-ḥadīth munkar al-matn wa-al-isnād fī faḍl Muʿāwiya fa-innahu qāla ḥaddathanā Abū ʿUmar al-Zāhid [. . .] qāla Ibn al-Najjār wa-kāna Abū ʿUmar al-Zāhid qad jamaʿa juzʾan fī faḍl Muʿāwiya wa-aktharuhu manākīr wa-mawḍūʿāt. qultu: wa-al-juzʾ mawjūd fa-in kāna hādhā al-ḥadīth fīhi fa-qad bariʾa al-ʿAnazī min ʿuhdatihi). Ghulām Thaʿlab would begin with this treatise in his sessions to make sure that no Shīʿites were present amongst his audience or students. See also Brockelmann, GAL, Suppl. 1: 184 (given as Fī Faḍāʾil Muʿāwiya). 20 Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Fatḥ al-Bārī, 7: 132 (wa-qad ṣannafa Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim juzʾan fī manāqibihi wa-kadhālika Abū ʿUmar Ghulām Thaʿlab wa-Abū Bakr al-Naqqāsh).   21 Sezgin, GAS. Band I, 337 (no. 42); al-Shaybānī, Muʿjam Mā Ullifa, 90 (no. 401), where the title is cited as Juzʾ fīhi Faḍāʾil Amīr al-Muʾminīn Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān, and the author’s death date is given as 604 AH, and 185 (no. 983), where the title is given as Faḍāʾil Muʿāwiya, and the author’s flourish is given as the 4th century AH. The long title is the actual title found on the treatise, whereas the shorter title seems to be how the treatise was known to other scholars. See also Brockelmann, GAL, Suppl. 3: 1315 (addition to Suppl. 2, p. 929; given as Faḍāʾil Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān). 22 See al-Shaybānī, Muʿjam Mā Ullifa, 144 (no. 718).



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*(20) Ibn al-Farrāʾ, Abū Yaʿlā Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn (990–1066), Tanzīh Khāl al-Muʾminīn Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān Raḍī Allāh ʿanhu min al-Ẓulm wa-al-Fisq fī Muṭālabatih bi-Dam Amīr al-Muʾminīn ʿUthmān Raḍī Allāh ʿanhu;23 *(21) Ibn Taymiyya, Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm (1263–1328), wrote a response to some questions regarding Muʿāwiya;24 *(22) Ibn Ḥajar al-Haythamī, Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad (ca. 1503–ca. 1566), Taṭhīr al-Janān wa-al-Lisān ʿan al-Khuṭūr wa-alTafawwuh bi-Thalb Sayyidinā Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān;25   (23) Anonymous from Yemen, written in 1724 or 5, Naṣīḥat al-Ikhwān fī Tark al-Sabb li-Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān;26   (24) Jawād Sābāṭ ibn Ibrāhīm Sābāṭ al-Ḥasanī al-Hajarī al-Baṣrī al-Ḥanafī (1774–ca. 1834), Rabṭ al-Ḥimār fī Radd al-Iʿtidhār fī Waqāʾiʿ wa-Ijtihād Muʿāwiya.27 One collection of poetry attributed to Muʿāwiya has been published. However, there is no evidence that such a work existed in pre-modern times. The scholar who collected the poetry from various literary sources rarely challenges the attribution of the poems to Muʿāwiya and in general accepts the material to be authentic.28 In one compilation, there is also a reference to a Kitāb al-Taẓāfur wa-al-Tanāṣur wa-Huwa Majālis ʿinda Muʿāwiya, by Daghfal ibn Ḥanẓala

23 See al-Shaybānī, Muʿjam Mā Ullifa, 192 (no. 1026), where the title is given as Kitāb fīhi Tanzīh Khāl al-Muʾminīn Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān Raḍī Allāh ʿanhu min al-Ẓulm wa-al-Fisq fī Muṭālabat Dam Amīr al-Muʾminīn ʿUthmān. 24 See al-Shaybānī, Muʿjam Mā Ullifa, 137 (no. 679). 25 See al-Bābānī, Īḍāḥ, 1: 294; Brockelmann, GAL, Suppl. 2: 528–29; al-Shaybānī, Muʿjam Mā Ullifa, 82 (no. 360). In all three works, the title of the treatise is cited as “Taṭhīr al-Janān wa-al-Lisān ʿan al-Khawḍ wa-al-Tafawwuh bi-Thalb Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān,” although Brockelmann adds sayyidinā before Muʿāwiya. 26 al-Bābānī, Īḍāḥ, 2: 652 (li-wāḥid min ʿulamāʾ Ṣanʿāʾ al-Yaman ṣannafahu sanat 1137 [AH]). 27 al-Bābānī, Īḍāḥ, 1: 548; idem, Hadiyyat al-ʿĀrifīn: Asmāʾ al-Muʾallifīn wa-Āthār al-Muṣannifīn, 3rd printing (Tehran: Maktabat al-Islāmiyya wa al-Jaʿfarī Tabrīzī, 1967), 1: 259 (where the title is given as Rabṭ al-Ḥimār fī Radd al-Istiʿdhār fī Ithbāt Ijtihād Muʿāwiya). 28 Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān (d. 680), Dīwān Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān, coll. Fārūq Aslīm ibn Aḥmad (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1996). The collection consists of 53 poems and pieces comprising 214 verses attributed to Muʿāwiya, in addition to 11 short pieces of one or two lines comprising 15 verses that Muʿāwiya is reported to have uttered but that are actually attested to be by other poets. The topics treated by this poetry are predominantly political with a focus on attaining Islamic sovereignty and the consolidation of Umayyad political rule (ibid., 32).

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al-Sadūsī al-Nassāb al-Bakrī (d. second half of 7th century).29 However, the author of al-Fihrist states that Daghfal “had no compositions.”30 Extant Monographs and Treatises on Muʿāwiya from the Eighth to the Sixteenth Centuries In this section, a brief description of the surviving treatises on Muʿāwiya composed between the eighth and sixteenth centuries will be given. 1. al-Ḍabbī, Abū al-Walīd al-ʿAbbās ibn Bakkār (746–837), Akhbār al-Wāfidīn min al-Rijāl min Ahl al-Kūfa wa-al-Baṣra ʿalā Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān31 This short treatise actually consists of one relatively long narrative. In the narrative, Muʿāwiya is sitting with the heads of the tribes and the chiefs of Kūfa and they discuss news about the supporters of ʿAlī until late at night. When Muʿāwiya returns to his sister’s house, she tells him that she is amazed about those who had chosen to follow ʿAlī instead of her brother who is of such noble descent. He tells her that he can never compare to ʿAlī and proceeds to praise him. He then invites her to witness (secretly) on the next day his meetings with a number of ‘Alī’s supporters. On the following day, five Kūfans (including Ḥujr ibn ʿAdī and ʿAmr ibn al-Ḥamiq al-Khuzāʿī) and five Baṣrans (including Ṣaʿṣaʿa ibn Ṣawḥān al-ʿAbdī and al-Aḥnaf ibn Qays) are asked to enter before Muʿāwiya one by one. The pattern of each encounter is the same: As soon as the individual arrives at court he is insulted or met harshly by Muʿāwiya, or, occasionally, by one of his courtiers. The individual in question is angered and openly answers back decrying Muʿāwiya and professing his loyalty for ʿAlī and praising him. Muʿāwiya reacts angrily, dismisses the man, and tells his ḥājib to let the next man in. Some encounters are longer than others, but the pattern remains the same. When the last of the men is dismissed, Muʿāwiya goes to his sister and asks for her opinion on what she has seen and heard. She says that she was about to come out upon the men in anger. But Muʿāwiya 29 Brockelmann, GAL, Suppl. 1: 101. 30 Ibn al-Nadīm, The Fihrist of al-Nadīm, 1: 193. Daghfal was alive at the time of the Prophet but did not meet him. 31 Akhbār al-Wāfidīn min al-Rijāl min Ahl al-Baṣra wa-al-Kūfa ʿalā Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān, ed. Sukayna al-Shihābī (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1984). The actual short treatise is on pp. 19–38. On pp. 39–56, the editor gives the reports found in the treatise as they appear in Ibn ʿAsākir’s Tārīkh Dimashq.



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says that he has obtained power only through his ḥilm, and then proceeds to order gifts and rewards for all of the men as he sends them back to their respective towns. All of the men had fought on ʿAlī’s side at Ṣiffīn. 2. al-Ḍabbī, Akhbār al-Wāfidāt ʿalā Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān32 This treatise is similar in nature to the previous one. It contains sixteen separate reports involving sixteen different women each of whom appears willingly or is summoned to Muʿāwiya’s presence. Twelve of the women were supporters of ʿAlī, eight of whom had spurred on the army of the latter at Ṣiffīn through their eloquent speeches and poems. The reports follow three general patterns: (1) A woman supporter of ʿAlī goes for a need or is summoned to Muʿāwiya’s court. Once there, she is reminded by Muʿāwiya of verses of poetry or a speech which she had recited at the battle of Ṣiffīn demeaning him and praising ʿAlī. The woman herself either declines to repeat the words herself or claims not to remember them. The woman asks Muʿāwiya’s forbearance and forgiveness on the matter, and Muʿāwiya complies by rewarding the woman or granting her the request for which she had come to him in the first place.33 On two occasions, the women become angry at the insults they receive and leave the court, but not without Muʿāwiya offering to reward them or satisfy their request.34 On one occasion, it is the woman, a Hāshimite, who begins a verbal attack against Muʿāwiya demeaning him, boasting of ʿAlī, and complaining about how the Hāshimites were usurped by Muʿāwiya. This does not stop her from asking money from Muʿāwiya, and the latter duly obliges.35 (2) A woman supporter of ʿAlī is summoned by Muʿāwiya while the latter is in Madīna or Mecca. He asks her some questions about various Arabian tribes, which the woman answers eloquently. He then 32 Akhbār al-Wāfidāt min al-Nisāʾ ʿalā Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān, ed. Sukayna al-Shihābī (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1983). The editor casts doubt on the attribution of the treatise to the author. She argues that al-Ḍabbī might have written a treatise with the same or a similar title, however, what we have in our hands is a collection of reports by Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Dūrī (d. 989 or 90) in which the latter includes reports transmitted by al-Ḍabbī (ibid., 11–13; on al-Dūrī, see p. 21, note 1). 33 Ibid., no. 1, pp. 23–26; no. 2, pp. 27–32; no. 4, pp. 37–39; no. 11, pp. 63–66; no. 12, pp. 67–70. 34 Ibid., no. 6, pp. 44–46; no. 13, pp. 71–72. 35 Ibid., no. 7, pp. 47–51.

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asks about her opinion concerning ʿAlī, to which she either declines to give an answer36 or proceeds to praise ʿAlī profusely.37 Muʿāwiya then rewards her. One report stops after the woman answers questions about the tribes.38 (3) A woman appears before Muʿāwiya and asks his aid against one of his amīrs or one of her own relatives who has committed an injustice against her. Through her eloquence and perseverance, she is able to win over Muʿāwiya and obtain justice from him.39 One exception that does not fit the three patterns above is the case of the wife of ʿAmr ibn al-Ḥamiq al-Khuzāʿī who receives the head of her husband while in a prison cell. When Muʿāwiya hears that she has cursed him, he brings her to court. But despite the taunts of a courtier, she stands firm and speaks haughtily upon which Muʿāwiya tells her to leave ­Damascus.40 These interchanges at Muʿāwiya’s court are very popular, especially amongst Shīʿite authors, in whose works the exchanges become more heated and antagonistic. A modern author, Muḥammad al-Ṭabasī, has collected similar anecdotes from a variety of sources, although he is curiously ignorant of the two short treatises by al-Ḍabbī and never cites them.41 The author collects anecdotes involving 37 individuals arranged in alphabetical order according to their names. Some of the material is repeated and no attempt is made at sifting it or noting similarities. All the individuals are men, five of them also found in al-Ḍabbī. Some of the reports are actually from Muʿāwiya’s time as amīr of al-Shām and, particularly, during the battle of Ṣiffīn where the encounters are with messengers from ʿAlī asking him to submit to the latter’s authority. The longest entry is that of al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī.42 Some of the reports (and occasionally entire entries) have nothing to do with ʿAlī or his descendants, but revolve around an individual who was a supporter of ʿAlī. Not all of the reports depict ­hostility between

36 Ibid., no. 3, pp. 33–36. 37 Ibid., no. 5, pp. 40–43 (without the initial questions on the Arabian tribes); no. 9, pp. 57–59. 38 Ibid., no. 15, p. 78. 39 Ibid., no. 10, pp. 60–62; no. 14, pp. 73–77; no. 16, pp. 79–80. 40 Ibid., no. 8, pp. 52–56. 41 Muḥammad Jawād al-Ṭabasī, Ḥiwārāt Sākhina bayna Muʿāwiya wa-Aṣḥāb ʿAlī ʿalayhi al-Salām (Qum: Madyan li-al-Ṭibāʿa wa-al-Nashr, [2002]). 42 Ibid., 58–91.



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the supporters of ʿAlī and Muʿāwiya. However, most of the confrontations are with supporters of ʿAlī, ʿAlids, or Hāshimites (especially with al-Ḥasan, al-Ḥusayn, and Ibn ʿAbbās). In some cases, the individual confronting Muʿāwiya is punished (through exile, imprisonment, or death), but more often than not Muʿāwiya shows patience and forbearance, even when individuals in his entourage urge him to punish the man. These reports can be used in two opposing ways. While on the one hand they usually portray the ḥilm and magnanimity of Muʿāwiya, on the other hand, quite a number of these confrontational meetings provide an opportunity to declare the legitimist claims of the ʿAlids, asserting the legitimacy of ʿAlī and decrying Muʿāwiya as a usurper. The scene of ʿAlid supporters fearlessly voicing their loyalty to ʿAlī at Muʿāwiya’s court and the latter pardoning their offence or his inability to chastise and rebut them is reminiscent of the scene of Kaveh the blacksmith with the tyrannical king Zahhak in the Shāhnāma of Firdawsī: The former barges into Zahhak’s court and angrily shouts out the iniquitous actions of the latter. Zahhak can only acquiesce to Kaveh’s request of returning his son and is unable to chastise him for his actions.43 3. al-Jāḥiẓ, Abū ʿUthmān ʿAmr ibn Baḥr (d. 868), Kitāb Imāmat Muʿāwiya Charles Pellat believed to have obtained a manuscript that could be a fragment of the treatise on Muʿāwiya by al-Jāḥiẓ.44 The text, reproducing the arguments of the correspondent of al-Jāḥiẓ, defends Muʿāwiya and his reign. It argues that the superiority of Muʿāwiya is proven by how perfectly he governed Syria and how much his subjects loved him and worked tirelessly under him. This superiority is also proven by the fact that: he did not commit any injustice; his rule was accepted by all, including the Companions of the Prophet, after al-Ḥasan stepped down; and neither ʿUmar nor ʿUthmān found any reason to remove him from office or be angry with him throughout their reigns. This argument and what follows is put in the mouth of Muʿāwiya while addressing ʿAlī. It is then pointed out that ʿAlī was not elected like the previous sovereigns, yet he required Muʿāwiya to abandon his position without the latter having done any wrong. Muʿāwiya wanted to capture the murderers of ʿUthmān, his sovereign and cousin,

43 Abū al-Qāsim Firdawsī (ca. 940–1020 or 1025), Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings, tr. Dick Davis (New York: Viking, 2006), 19–20. 44 Charles Pellat, “Le culte de Muʿāwiya au IIIe siècle de l’Hégire,” Studia Islamica 6 (1956): 59–65.

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and bring justice to the Muslims. Those who prevented him from doing so would have been committing an injustice. For all of the above reasons, Muʿāwiya deemed himself to be more worthy than the other members of the shūrā committee selected by ʿUmar, of which only four members were still alive at the time of the death of ʿUthmān. The above was the argument of the correspondent writing to al-Jāḥiẓ. The remainder of the text is incomplete. However, Pellat partly reconstructs the possible answer of al-Jāḥiẓ. The latter probably explained that the argument put in the mouth of Muʿāwiya could not have been made by him since it makes recourse to dialectics, which was unknown at his time. Rather, it is a later fabrication of some mutakallimūn who were hostile to ʿAlī. 4. Ibn Abī al-Dunyā, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad (823–894), Ḥilm Muʿāwiya45 The treatise by Ibn Abī al-Dunyā on the ḥilm of Muʿāwiya has not come down to us in its entirety, rather extracts from it by an anonymous scholar have been preserved in a unique manuscript in Damascus.46 What we

45 “Ḥilm Muʿāwiya,” in Thalāth Rasāʾil fī Faḍāʾil Muʿāwiya, ed. ʿIṣām Muṣṭafā Hazāyima and Yūsuf Aḥmad Banī Yāsīn (Irbid: Muʾassasat Ḥamāda li-al-Dirāsāt al-Jāmiʿiyya wa-alNashr wa al-Tawzīʿ, 2000), 39–58; Kitāb Ḥilm Muʿāwiya, ed. Ibrāhīm Ṣāliḥ (Damascus: Dār al-Bashāʾir li-al-Ṭibāʿa wa-al-Nashr wa-al-Tawzīʿ, 2003) (Nawādir al-Rasāʾil 19). On the proUmayyad content in a number of works by Ibn Abī al-Dunyā, see James A. Bellamy, “ProUmayyad Propaganda in Ninth-Century Baghdad in the Works of Ibn Abī ’l-Dunyā,” in George Makdisi, Dominique Sourdel, and Janine Sourdel-Thomine, eds., Prédication et propagande au Moyen Age: Islam, Byzance, Occident: Penn-Paris-Dumbarton Oaks Colloquia III, Session des 20–25 octobre 1980 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983), 71–86. After giving a biographical sketch of Ibn Abī al-Dunyā, and noting the possible connections he had with another scholar said to have written a treatise on the faḍāʾil of Muʿāwiya, Abū ʿUmar al-Zāhid, (pp. 71–74) Bellamy provides translations of selected reports from a number of treatises written by Ibn Abī al-Dunyā that portray the Umayyads in a favorable way. Muʿāwiya appears only a handful of times, except in the excerpts taken from the treatise on his ḥilm (pp. 79–80). Bellamy argues that there are few pro-Umayyad ḥadīths extant because only a few existed in the first place, not because the ʿAbbāsids were able to suppress them (pp. 80–83). He postulates: “It seems safe to conclude that the Umayyads were never eager to coin false hadith about themselves, but that this was a weapon used almost exclusively by their enemies” (p. 83). It might all depend on what is meant by “few,” but, as will be shown below, a number of scholars did in fact collect ḥadīths on the faḍāʾil of Muʿāwiya and dedicated treatises to them. Whether or not these ḥadīths were coined by the Umayyads themselves or under their tutelage is a different matter. 46 See the introduction by Ibrāhīm Ṣāliḥ in his edition of Kitāb Ḥilm Muʿāwiya, 9–10. It seems that the work may have been composed of two parts (juzʾān; ibid., 10). Ibn Abī al-Dunyā was a mawlā of the Banū Umayya although he was also the tutor of the ʿAbbāsid al-Muʿtaḍid and then his son, al-Muktafī. On a brief account of the life and works of Ibn Abī al-Dunyā, see also the introduction in Thalāth Rasāʾil, 12–16.



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are left with are 40 reports without isnāds,47 not all of which show the ḥilm of Muʿāwiya strictly speaking. A typical report has an individual act or speak inappropriately towards Muʿāwiya, but the latter is not angered and overlooks the indiscretion of his subject. Another type of report has an eminent Muslim praise Muʿāwiya’s ḥilm and other qualities of his. A number of reports, though, do not touch upon his ḥilm at all48 and, on the contrary, portray him as a callous schemer devoid of forbearance.49 5. al-Saqaṭī, Abū al-Qāsim ʿUbayd Allāh ibn Muḥammad (d. 1015), Faḍāʾil Muʿāwiya50 This treatise is also preserved in a unique manuscript found in al-Maktaba al-Ẓāhiriyya.51 It is a collection of thirty-two reports, most of them

47 The edition by Ibrāhīm Ṣāliḥ has 39 numbered reports because he lists two versions of one report as no. 31, whereas the editors of Thalāth Rasāʾil give a number to each version (nos. 31 and 32). 48 For example, in one report ʿUmar praises his ingenuity (“Ḥilm Muʿāwiya,” 41–42 [no. 2]) while in others he calls him the kisrā of the Arabs (ibid., 42 and 43 [nos. 3 and 6]). Other reports contain praises by ʿUmar, ʿAlī, Ibn ʿAbbās, Ibn ʿUmar, and ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr (ibid., 42–44 [nos. 4–5, 8–11]), while in a number of reports, it is Muʿāwiya who praises ʿAlī (ibid., 47 and 57 [nos. 19–20 and 36]). In one report, Ibn ʿAbbās states that Muʿāwiya has not cursed the Hāshimites from the pulpits (an accusation leveled against Muʿāwiya found in numerous sources) (ibid., 43 [no. 7]). One other report shows Muʿāwiya’s generosity to his antagonists (ibid., 56–57 [no. 36]). 49 For example, in one report a young man promises a group from the Quraysh that he will be able to anger Muʿāwiya in return for a wage (the group had been discussing how Muʿāwiya is never angered by anything). The young man is then able to approach Muʿāwiya and remark to him that his eyes looked like his mother’s eyes. Muʿāwiya replies to him gently that those eyes pleased Abū Sufyān and tells him to go take his wage and desist from such actions. The group then promises the young man double the wager if he will do the same to ʿAmr ibn al-Zubayr. The young man agrees, approaches ʿAmr and tells him that his face resembles that of his mother. ʿAmr does not take this lightly and has the young man beaten to death. Muʿāwiya then sends blood money to the young man’s mother with a line of poetry indicating that he had caused the death of the young man (i.e., by forgiving his affront, he emboldened him to try the same thing on someone else who Muʿāwiya guessed would not be as lenient towards the young man) (ibid., 58 [no. 39]). This is somewhat reminiscent of the way in which al-Mughīra ibn Shuʿba, during Muʿāwiya’s reign, handled the insubordination of Ḥujr ibn ʿAdī. Al-Mughīra was lenient with the latter even though he would have been within his rights to punish him, but he confided to those close to him that by his leniency towards Ḥujr he had in fact doomed him. He predicted that Ḥujr would behave the same way with al-Mughīra’s successor and the latter would be sure to punish him severely. This is, in fact, what happened as Ziyād ibn Abīhi swiftly captured Ḥujr and sent him to Muʿāwiya who had him executed. 50 “Juzʾ fīhi Faḍāʾil Amīr al-Muʾminīn Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān Raḍī Allāh ʿanhu,” in Thalāth Rasāʾil, 59–86. On al-Saqaṭī, see the introduction in Thalāth Rasāʾil, 16–20. 51 Thalāth Rasāʾil, 18. The reports in al-Saqaṭī’s treatise are declared by the editors to be fabricated (mawḍūʿa) (ibid., 20).

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ḥadīths, of very dubious authenticity. One major theme of these reports is to stress that Muʿāwiya will be entering heaven.52 Some ḥadīths go further showing that he will have an exalted position in heaven even higher than the Prophet.53 Another theme is the equivalence or the superiority of Muʿāwiya over other Companions in particular the sovereigns that preceded him.54 A third theme is that Muʿāwiya was a scribe of revelation, with some reports stating that he was made a scribe by God himself and that he was given a special pen from God to write with.55 A fourth theme is that whoever curses or hates Muʿāwiya will be punished in hell.56 6. al-Ahwāzī, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Ibrāhīm (972–1054), (Kitāb) Sharḥ ʿUqad Ahl al-Īmān fī Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān wa-Dhikr Mā Warada fī al-Akhbār min Faḍāʾilih wa-Manāqibih57 Abū ʿAlī al-Ahwāzī collected in this treatise reports on the life and merits of Muʿāwiya as well as a musnad of Prophetic ḥadīths that were transmitted on his authority.58 However, only an incomplete copy of chapter 17 has been preserved for us, and this in a unique manuscript in al-Maktaba al-Ẓāhiriyya.59 Chapter 17 was part of the musnad and what is preserved of it contains 92 ḥadīths divided into 37 subsections. One ḥadīth cluster, the largest one, reports the story of a man who had killed 99 people unjustly and who was seeking absolution for his sins. He meets a monk or a scholar and asks him if there was any repentance from such sins. When the latter denies the possibility of repentance, the man kills him, bringing his murders to 100. He then meets another monk or scholar and asks him the same question. This time he is told to go to a nearby monastery and worship there, perhaps God will forgive his sins. So, the man sets out for the monastery, but before he can reach it, he dies.

52 Ibid., 61–62, 65, 76–77, 78–80, 82–83, 84–86 (nos. 1, 5, 17–18, 21–24, 27, 32). 53 Ibid., 73 (no. 13). 54 Ibid., 62–63, 71–72, 81–82 (nos. 2–3, 12, 26). 55 Ibid., 65–70, 73, 74–75, 77, 84 (nos. 6–10, 14, 16, 19, 30). 56 Ibid., 71, 74, 78, 83 (nos. 11, 15, 20, 28). 57 “al-Juzʾ al-Sābiʿ ʿAshar min Kitāb Sharḥ ʿUqad Ahl al-Īmān fī Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān, wa-Dhikr Mā Warada fī al-Akhbār min Faḍāʾilihi wa-Manāqibihi Raḍī Allāh ʿanhu,” in Thalāth Rasāʾil, 87–145. 58 On al-Ahwāzī and his treatise, see the introduction in Thalāth Rasāʾil, 20–30. 59 Ibid., 25 and 28.



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The angels of punishment and the angels of mercy argue against each other over the man, so God sends to them to measure the distances to see if the man had died closer to the monastery or closer to the point at which he had made the decision to go to the monastery. It turns out that he is closer to the monastery by a matter of a fingertip, and so God forgives him.60 The contents of the other ḥadīth clusters include: (1) the Prophet forbade ghalūṭāt (questions asked of a person, in particular a man of learning, to cause him to make a mistake in order to lower his prestige);61 (2) he forbade Muslim women of emulating Jewish women by wearing or using other women’s hair;62 (3) he stated that deeds are like a container, if what is on top is good, then so is what lies at the bottom;63 (4) he said that rule (al-amr) is in the hands of the Quraysh;64 (5) he stated that whoever loved the Anṣār, God would love him, and whoever despised them, God would despise him;65 (6) he avowed that whoever dies without accepting an imām, has died a jāhilī death;66 (7) he ordered to leave the Turks alone as long as they left the Muslims alone;67 (8) he foretold that there will be amīrs against whose words no one will interject (because of fear) who will be destined to hellfire;68 (9) he said that if a plague spreads in an area, no one should enter it, but if this happens while one is in the area, then he should not leave it;69 (10) he made negative predictions of the Marwānid rise to power;70 (11) the Prophet foretold that Muʿāwiya would one day hold the khilāfa;71 (12) he promulgated that the child belongs to the bed, and to the adulterer belongs the stone.72

60 Ibid., 89–95 (nos. 1–10). Is this meant to state that no matter what crimes Muʿāwiya himself may be accused of having committed, there is always the possibility of salvation as long as he repents? 61 Ibid., 95–96 (nos. 11–13). 62 Ibid., 97–107 (nos. 14–32). 63 Ibid., 107–113 (nos. 33–46). 64 Ibid., 113–115 (nos. 47–49). 65 Ibid., 115–119 (nos. 50–55). 66 Ibid., 119 (no. 56). 67 Ibid., 123–124 (nos. 63–64). 68 Ibid., 129–131 (nos. 71–73). 69 Ibid., 139 (no. 85). 70 Ibid., 139–141 (nos. 86–87). 71 Ibid., 144 (no. 91). 72 Ibid., 144–145 (no. 92).

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7. Ibn al-Farrāʾ, Abū Yaʿlā Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn (990–1066), Tanzīh Khāl al-Muʾminīn Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān Raḍī Allāh ʿanhu min al-Ẓulm wa-al-Fisq fī Muṭālabatih bi-Dam Amīr al-Muʾminīn ʿUthmān Raḍī Allāh ʿanhu73 This treatise can be divided into two parts, the first of which corresponds closely to its title. In the first part, Ibn al-Farrāʾ informs us that he was asked about what happened between ʿAlī and Muʿāwiya and whether this is counted on Muʿāwiya as ẓulm (an act of injustice or iniquity) or fisq (an unlawful or sinful act). The answer of the author is that it should be said that Muʿāwiya did his ijtihād (independent judgment and interpretation), and he will have a reward for this ijtihād. Muʿāwiya’s ijtihād was as follows: “ʿUmar and ʿUthmān both appointed me over Greater Syria and I will keep my position until the people unite over an imām to whom I will cede what I have. I am also demanding the blood of ʿUthmān since I am his cousin and his walī (next of kin), and his killers [some of whom he names] are with you [i.e., ʿAlī].”74 On the other hand, ʿAlī’s ijtihād was based on the following: 1. ʿAlī did not know the killers of ʿUthmān specifically and no witness had come forward identifying them; 2. If he had known their identity, he might have feared for himself and for strife to weaken the Muslims, and so he deemed it better to wait until matters settled down; 3. If he had known them, no one came to him asking him to punish them since ʿUthmān’s awliyāʾ did not accept the rule of ʿAlī; 4. The walī has to obey the imām and not fight against him even if the latter does not rule in his favour.75 At any rate, the author states that it is best not to discuss their disagreement and dwell on it (al-imsāk ʿammā jarā baynahum awlā). He proceeds to cite some ḥadīths ordering not to speak ill of the Companions and to refrain from mentioning anything against them (amsikū) as well as some

73 Tanzīh Khāl al-Muʾminīn Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān Raḍī Allāh ʿanhu min al-Ẓulm waal-Fisq fī Muṭālabatihi bi-Dam Amīr al-Muʾminīn ʿUthmān Raḍī Allāh ʿanhu, ed. Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Atharī (Riyad: Maktabat al-Rushd, and Amman: Dār al-Nubalāʾ, 2001). The treatise is cited in the sources with the title Tabriʾat Muʿāwiya (ibid., 76). The text of the treatise is on pp. 83–116 and follows an introduction in which the editor describes the position of ahl al-sunna wa-al-jamāʿa with regards to the Companions of the Prophet and the conflicts that arose amongst them. According to this position, Muslims should love all of the Companions and not argue about or discuss the civil strife that befell the community in their time. Whatever occurred was due to their ijtihād, with some erring and some being correct, although both sides will be rewarded for their efforts in the hereafter. 74 Ibid., 83–84. 75 Ibid., 85.



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which prohibit the cursing or reviling (sabb) of the Companions.76 He then argues that no Companion can be described as possessing ẓulm or fisq on the following bases: 1. There are Qurʾānic verses that praise the Companions of the Prophet. 2. There are numerous reports (cited by the author) in which ʿAlī unequivocally states that the dead followers of Muʿāwiya at the battle of Ṣiffīn are believers and that they will be destined for heaven, as well as a report praising Muʿāwiya, and reports in which ʿAlī calls the followers of Muʿāwiya as the people of heaven (ahl al-janna). 3. Muʿāwiya was not the only one who fought against ʿAlī. So did Ṭalḥa, al-Zubayr, and ʿĀʾisha. The first two were promised heaven by the Prophet and were in the shūrā council set up by ʿUmar. Both were praised by ʿAlī after their death. ʿĀʾisha was defended by ʿAmmār ibn Yāsir and ʿAlī, while Muʿāwiya was saddened when he heard of ʿAlī’s death. All of the points made above prohibit describing Muʿāwiya as having committed an act of ẓulm or fisq.77 The author then cites a number of ḥadīths containing faḍāʾil of Muʿāwiya. These faḍāʾil preclude Muʿāwiya from doing ẓulm or fisq. They are as follows: 1. The Prophet invoked God asking Him to teach Muʿāwiya the Qurʾān, to give him power in the land, and to protect him from punishment in the hereafter. 2. The Prophet said that Muʿāwiya’s belly and chest were filled by God with knowledge and forbearance (ʿilman wa ḥilman). 3. On one day, the Prophet remarked that a man would appear from a door who was of the inhabitants of heaven, and then Muʿāwiya entered. This was repeated on three consecutive days. 4. In two reports, the Prophet told Muʿāwiya that he will be with him in heaven. 5. In two reports, Jibrīl told the Prophet to use Muʿāwiya to write down the revelation since he was trustworthy (amīn). 6. The Prophet told Abū Bakr and ʿUmar to rely on Muʿāwiya since he was amīn. The two were upset because the Prophet called Muʿāwiya when they were not able to advise the Prophet on a matter. 7. The Prophet told his wife, Umm Ḥabība (Ramla bint Abī Sufyān),

76 Ibid., 85–88. 77 Ibid., 89–99. This point is reinforced after the second part of the treatise where, in a long report describing the aftermath of the battle of the Camel, ʿAlī walks by the dead at the end of the battle and points out some pious and estimable men who had died on his opponents’ side and praises them (i.e., he acknowledges that the fighters on the opposing side were also good Muslims). ʿAlī prays on their dead and buries them all in a large grave. He also prohibits his men from taking as booty what belonged to the dead from the other camp. In other words, ʿAlī considered his opponents as Muslims who should be treated and respected as any other Muslim (ibid., 114–15).

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that he loves Muʿāwiya, as do Jibrīl, Mīkāʾīl, and, more than those two, God himself. 8. ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān recounted that the Prophet said that Muʿāwiya was amīn over the reports of the heavens. 9. The Prophet said that Muʿāwiya will be wearing a cloak made from the light of faith (ridāʾ min nūr al-īmān) on the day of resurrection.78 The second part of the treatise discusses the question of calling Muʿāwiya khāl al-Muʾminīn (the maternal uncle of the believers) on the basis that his sister, Umm Ḥabība bint Abī Sufyān, had married the Prophet Muḥammad. He begins by stating the position of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal for whom the brothers of the wives of the Prophet can be called akhwāl al-Muʾminīn. However, he also points out that al-Shāfiʿī did not call them with this title. The author provides a summary defense for the possibility of using the title khāl al-Muʾminīn and argues that it is simply given out of respect (al-taʿẓīm li-al-ḥurma).79 8. Ibn Taymiyya, Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm (1263–1328), wrote a response to some questions regarding Muʿāwiya that were addressed to him80 This short treatise by Ibn Taymiyya presents a carefully constructed argument in defense of Muʿāwiya and is not just a collection of various reports as what is often encountered with authors, both modern and pre-modern, that discuss the life and reign of Muʿāwiya. The treatise was written as a response to a number of questions that were addressed to Ibn Taymiyya: (1) Is it permissible to curse (laʿn) Muʿāwiya? (2) What is the punishment for the one who does this? (3) Did the Prophet say: “If two caliphs fight each other, then one of them is cursed” (idhā iqtatala khalīfatān, fa-aḥaduhumā 78 Ibid., 99–105. The editor points out that five of these ḥadīths are fabricated (mawḍūʿ ) while others have various problems in their isnād that cast doubt on their authenticity. 79 Ibid., 106–110. After this there is a section containing a variety of reports and one poem all critical of Shīʿite concepts and beliefs (ibid., 110–113) followed by reports on the conflict between ʿAlī, Ṭalḥa, and al-Zubayr (ibid., 114–15). There is only one report concerning Muʿāwiya in which is described the sadness which befell Ibn ʿAbbās when he heard of Muʿāwiya’s death (ibid., 113). 80 Suʾāl fī Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān Raḍiya Allāh ʿanhu, ed. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Munajjid (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-Jadīd, 1979). This treatise was first published within the collection Kitāb Majmūʿat Fatāwā Shaykh al-Islām Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyya al-Ḥarrānī al-Mutawaffā Sanat 728 (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Kurdistān al-ʿIlmiyya, [1911]), 4: 216–27 (masʾala 410). It was then republished by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Qāsim and Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Qāsim in Majmūʿ Fatāwā Shaykh al-Islām Aḥmad ibn Taymiyya ([Mecca]: Maṭbaʿat al-Ḥukūma, [1966]), 35: 58–79. See also the introduction by al-Munajjid, pp. 7–8. Al-Munajjid based his edition on a manuscript in his collection that bore the title Majmūʿ Rasāʾil in which the epistle in question was the ninth of the collection (see the introduction by al-Munajjid, 9).



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malʿūn)? (4) Did the Prophet also say that ʿAmmār would be killed by the unjust or erring group (inna ʿAmmāran taqtuluhu al-fiʾa al-bāghiya), taking into consideration the fact that he was killed by Muʿāwiya’s troops? (5) Did they, i.e., the Umayyads, curse or revile (sabba) the Ahl al-Bayt? (6) Did al-Ḥajjāj kill a sharīf ?81 Ibn Taymiyya begins his defense by arguing that no Companion of the Prophet may be cursed, adducing a number of ḥadīths in this respect, although he also argues that the Companions are not all of equal merit, again on the basis of ḥadīths and Qurʾānic verses.82 He then sets about to show that Muʿāwiya, like others who converted at the conquest of Mecca (all known as the ṭulaqāʾ), was a true believer (muʾmin) and not a hypocrite (munāfiq), pointing out that neither the Prophet nor any of the other Companions ever accused him of hypocrisy in his faith.83 A proof of Muʿāwiya’s faith is the fact that the Prophet and ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb appointed him in important, sensitive positions of authority: the Prophet made him his scribe (and said: Allāhumma ʿallimhu al-kitāb wa-al-ḥisāb wa-qih al-ʿadhāb),84 and ʿUmar appointed him (i.e., as amīr in Syria).85 In addition to this, none of the supporters of Muʿāwiya nor of his detractors ever accused him of lying in the material that he transmitted from the Prophet, a further proof of his unblemished faith.86 This would never have happened if Muʿāwiya had been a munāfiq. Since it is established that Muʿāwiya (and those in the same position as his, like ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ) was a true believer (muʾmin), then it is forbidden to curse him, because doing so would be a disobedient act towards God and His Prophet who prohibited the cursing of believers.87 In the next step, Ibn Taymiyya argues that errors or sins do not invalidate the faith of a believer nor do they consign him to perdition.88 Since prophets are the only humans who are infallible, even the Companions of Muḥammad were prone to error, although God in His mercy will forgive 81 Ibn Taymiyya, Suʾāl, 12. 82 Ibid., 12–19. Ibn Taymiyya makes a distinction between sabb and laʿn with the latter being more severe (aʿẓam) than the former (ibid., 13). 83 Ibid., 19–21. 84 Ibid., 21. 85 Ibid., 22–24. A number of reports are here cited to show that ʿUmar was very knowledgeable about people and that his knowledge was inspired by God (ibid., 23). Hence, he could not have appointed Muʿāwiya to a position of authority unless he was absolutely certain of the latter’s trustworthiness and reliability. 86 Ibid., 24–25. 87 Ibid., 25. 88 Ibid., 25–28.

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them on account of their good deeds. Hence, when the Companions did ijtihād on a particular matter, they sometimes came to the right conclusion, and sometimes they did not. This does not mean that their faith was diminished either way nor does their inability to come to a right conclusion allow others to curse them. Hence, neither side at the battle of Ṣiffīn deviated from faith and all were believers.89 ʿAlī held that, as the Muslim ruler, he should be obeyed by Muʿāwiya; but the latter retorted that, as next of kin of the slain ʿUthmān, he is required to seek his killers. Each had his position, but neither deviated from faith because of this.90 This ties in with the interpretation of the ḥadīth: inna ʿAmmāran taqtuluhu al-fiʾa al-bāghiya. Ibn Taymiyya begins by stating that some scholars have doubted its authenticity. However, since it is found in the Ṣaḥīḥ of Muslim and in some copies of al-Bukhārī (huwa fī baʿḍ nusakh al-Bukhārī) (and, as a matter of fact, in numerous other sources), he cannot simply dismiss it as he does with other reports. He begins by rejecting the interpretation given by some of the word al-bāghiya as meaning al-muṭāliba bi-dam ʿUthmān (seeking retribution for the blood of ʿUthmān). Then, adducing the Qurʾānic verse Sūrat al-Ḥujurāt 49:9, he argues that the presence of baghy does not exclude faith, and, just as he argued earlier, fighting between believers can occur without either side being cast outside faith. Baghy only occurs when an individual knows something to be wrong and insists on committing it. In addition to this, Ibn Taymiyya posits that the report might not apply to Muʿāwiya and his closest companions, but rather to that specific troop of soldiers that attacked and killed ʿAmmār. His conclusion is that this ḥadīth does not justify cursing any of the Companions of the Prophet nor does it allow for any of them to be considered fāsiq (profligate, iniquitous).91 89 Ibid., 28–32. Here, Ibn Taymiyya cites a ḥadīth in which the Prophet said about his grandson al-Ḥasan predicting the end of the first fitna: inna ibnī hādhā sayyid, wa-sayuṣliḥ Allāh bihi bayna ṭāʾifatayn ʿaẓīmatayn min al-muslimīn. This ḥadīth, which can be found in al-Bukhārī and is considered a sign of the prophecy of Muḥammad since he was able to foretell the events of the first fitna, is used by Sunnī scholars as proof that both ʿAlī’s side and Muʿāwiya’s side were Muslim and that neither had gone astray from true faith. The Khawārij held an opposite view and Ibn Taymiyya proceeds to attack their position. 90 Ibid., 32–34. In one report, Muʿāwiya acknowledges that ʿAlī is better and more suited for rule: wa-Allāh innī la-aʿlam annahu khayr minnī wa-afḍal, wa-aḥaqq bi-al-amr, wa-lākin a-lastum taʿlamūn anna ʿUthmān qutila maẓlūman, wa-anā ibn ʿammihi, wa-anā aṭlub bi-damihi (ibid., 33). 91 Ibid., 34–40. Citing Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Ibn Taymiyya tells that when Muʿāwiya heard ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ recite this report, he scoffed: a-wa-naḥnu qatalnā ʿAmmāran? innamā qatala ʿAmmāran man jāʾa bihi. When ʿAlī heard this he retorted: fa-naḥnu idhan qatalnā Ḥamza! (ibid., 38). Ibn Taymiyya also points out that not all the Companions fought on the side to



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So what if someone does curse a Companion of the Prophet? Ibn Taymiyya avers that he deserves severe punishment, but does not specify what this punishment ought to be, although he indicates that scholars disagree on whether this offence warrants the death penalty or not.92 As for the other questions posed to Ibn Taymiyya, he summarily dismisses them: (1) the ḥadīth stating “If two caliphs fight each other, then one of them is cursed” is proclaimed to be a lie that has not been transmitted by any ḥadīth scholar; (2) in a brief sentence he states that the Ahl al-Bayt were never cursed;93 (3) he also states that al-Ḥajjāj did not kill anyone from the Banū Hāshim, although he did kill some Arabian ashrāf.94 9. Ibn Ḥajar al-Haythamī, Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad (ca. 1503–ca. 1566), Taṭhīr al-Janān wa-al-Lisān ʿan al-Khuṭūr wa-al-Tafawwuh bi-Thalb Sayyidinā Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān95 The main argument of Ibn Ḥajar al-Haythamī’s treatise is that the Companions of the Prophet cannot be accused of any sinful or malicious act. This message is evident from the first sentence in the treatise.96 Al-Haythamī which ʿAmmār belonged, rather many of them abstained from fighting altogether (ibid., 38–39). The latter group defended its position with a number of ḥadīths which stated that abstaining from fitna is better than fighting in it (Ibn Taymiyya does not actually cite a ḥadīth explicitly, but rather gives the general meaning of these reports) (ibid., 39). The report transmitted by Ibn Ḥanbal is used by Shīʿite scholars to dismiss the ridiculous accusation directed at ʿAlī as being the one responsible for the death of ʿAmmār as well as to point out the twisted logic of Muʿāwiya and his distortion of facts to suit his political ends. The ḥadīth of ʿAmmār is cited in so many fundamental texts that both Sunnī and Shīʿite scholars accept it as authentic, although, as exemplified by Ibn Taymiyya, they diverge in its interpretation. 92 Ibid., 13. 93 This is in stark contrast to the Shīʿite point of view on the matter. Every single Shīʿite author dealing with the issue emphasizes that Muʿāwiya, and the Umayyads after him with the exception of ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, had ʿAlī publicly cursed from the pulpits. Numerous reports are provided, many from Sunnī sources, to show that this indeed took place. 94 Ibid., 32, 40, and 41. 95 “Taṭhīr al-Janān wa-al-Lisān ʿan al-Khuṭūr wa-al-Tafawwuh bi-Thalb Sayyidinā Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān,” in ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, ed., al-Ṣawāʿiq al-Muḥriqa fī alRadd ʿalā Ahl al-Bidaʿ wa-al-Zandaqa, 2nd edition (Cairo: Maktabat al-Qāhira, 1965), 1–72 (at the end of the book, following the edition of al-Ṣawāʿiq al-Muḥriqa). There is an abridgment of the treatise: Mukhtaṣar Taṭhīr al-Janān wa-al-Lisān ʿan al-Khawḍ wa-al-Tafawwuh bi-Thalb Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān, abridged by Sulaymān ibn Ṣāliḥ al-Kharāshī (Riyad: Dār ʿUlūm al-Sunna li-al-Nashr wa-al-Tawzīʿ, 2001). For a criticism of the treatise, see Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī al-Saqqāf, Naqd Kitāb Taṭhīr al-Janān wa-al-Lisān Taʾlīf al-ʿAllāma al-Faqīh al-Shāfiʿī Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī 909 H-974 H ([Amman]: Dār al-Imām al-Nawawī and Dār al-Ṣiddīq al-Akbar, 2008). 96 Ibn Ḥajar al-Haythamī, “Taṭhīr al-Janān,” 3 (al-ḥamdu lillāh alladhī awjaba ʿalā al-kāffa taʿẓīm aṣḥāb nabiyyihim wa-ālihi al-muṣṭafīn al-akhyār li-mā anna Allāh subḥānahu

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states that he wrote the treatise to list the merits ( faḍāʾil and manāqib) of Muʿāwiya and to clarify some ambiguous incidents which have caused some individuals to curse (sabb) him, thus going against one of the Prophet’s injunctions not to curse or blemish any of his Companions. The Mughal sultan Humāyūn ibn Bābūr (r. 1530–1556) asked the author to write on the topic since a group of individuals in his kingdom arose criticizing Muʿāwiya and belittling him.97 The author begins by stating that Muslims must love all the Companions of the Prophet and must believe in their refraining from sins (ʿudūl) since the Prophet praised them repeatedly and forbade criticizing them. Since Muʿāwiya is a Companion, and because of his relationship to the Prophet which ensures him of a place in heaven, because of his imāra and khilāfa, his ḥilm and honour, he also should be loved.98 Al-Haythamī then cites a number of ḥadīths and reports prohibiting any criticism of the Companions and explaining that the bloodshed that occurred between the Companions is an earthly, worldly matter that does not extend into the hereafter, where each and every one of them will be rewarded for their ijtihād. Their reward will vary depending on the individual: those whose ijtihād was correct (like ʿAlī and his followers) has double or tenfold the reward of those whose ijtihād led them to error (like Muʿāwiya).99 In the first part of the treatise, the author discusses the conversion of Muʿāwiya and his parents to Islam. He cites the various reports on the date of the conversion of Muʿāwiya: while some say that he converted at the conquest of Mecca in 630,100 others say that he converted a year earlier but kept it a secret. The author argues that just because the Prophet gave Muʿāwiya some money after the battle of Ḥunayn does not mean that he was one of the muʾallafa qulūbihim, since the Prophet gave rewards to others who were clearly not in that category. Al-Haythamī, repeating the typical Sunnī standpoint on the matter, then avers that both of Muʿāwiya’s

wa taʿālā barraʾahum min kull waṣma wa-saqṭa wa-athār wa-mayyazahum bi-annahum al-ḥāʾizūn li-qaṣb al-sabq fī kull kamāl wa-miḍmār). 97 Ibid., 3–4. 98 Ibid., 4–5. This is a relatively common argument made by the Sunnīs. Since the ḥadīths on the faḍāʾil of Muʿāwiya are quite suspect and cannot withstand the strict scrutiny of ḥadīth scholars, some Sunnī scholars adduce ḥadīths praising the Companions of the Prophet in general. Since Muʿāwiya himself is also a Companion, the praise falls on him as well. 99 Ibid., 5–6. 100 This is actually the opinion of the majority of Muslim scholars.



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parents converted at the conquest of Mecca but both became among the best Muslims.101 In the second part, al-Haythamī discusses the merits of Muʿāwiya. Although al-Bukhārī did not accept any of the merits of Muʿāwiya as true, since his teacher Ibn Rāhawayh stated as much, the same level of criticism could be leveled at most of the Companions depriving them of their merits as well. Besides which, there are reports in al-Tirmidhī and elsewhere on his merits. The author then explains a methodological point espoused by many Sunnī scholars, viz. that the ḥadīths that are weak (ḍaʿīf), although rejected in other circumstances, in the case of manāqib they are accepted as authoritative proof (ḥujja).102 He then proceeds to enumerate a number of faḍāʾil of Muʿāwiya: (1) Muʿāwiya is one of the most noble Companions in terms of lineage (nasab). (2) He was one of the scribes of the Prophet (writing correspondence between him and other Arabian tribes on waḥy and other matters).103 (3) Eminent scholars vehemently stated that Muʿāwiya is far superior to ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz because of his ṣaḥāba. (4) Al-Tirmidhī cites a ḥadīth ḥasan in which the Prophet invokes God to make Muʿāwiya rightly-guided and guiding (hādiyan mahdiyyan). (5) ʿAwf ibn Mālik said that he was awoken by a lion who informed him that he (i.e., the lion) was a messenger of God sent to ʿAwf ordering him to tell Muʿāwiya that he is destined to heaven. (6) The Prophet in a ḥadīth praises his four successors and Muʿāwiya as well, who is described as the most forbearing and generous of his community (aḥlam ummatī wa-ajwaduhā). (7) In another ḥadīth, the Prophet praises his four successors and six other Companions and then Muʿāwiya, his confidant (ṣāḥib sirrī). The Prophet states that whoever loves these individuals will be saved and whoever despises them will be lost. (8) In yet another ḥadīth, Jibrīl instructs the Prophet to rely on Muʿāwiya since he is trustworthy (amīn). (9) The Prophet stated that he and God love Muʿāwiya. (10) Muʿāwiya was also a brother-in-law of the Prophet. In this regard, al-Haythamī cites three ḥadīths: in the first, people are told not to attack the Companions and in-laws of the Prophet; in the second and third, the Prophet avows that his in-laws will be in heaven with him. (11) Five versions of one ḥadīth are given which is interpreted to foretell Muʿāwiya that

101 Ibid., 7–9. 102 Ibid., 9–10. This point is repeated on p. 12. 103 Shīʿī scholars in general insist that Muʿāwiya wrote some correspondence of the Prophet to the chiefs of Arabian tribes and worked on alms-money collection, but was never involved in writing down revelation.

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he will rule over the Muslims. (12) The Prophet also said that there will be twelve khalīfas among the Muslims. The author argues that Muʿāwiya has to be one of them. (13) Even if, following other ḥadīths, the reign of Muʿāwiya should be considered a mulk, then he will still be rewarded for his actions, since those who do ijtihād and err are still rewarded. (14) The Prophet described Muʿāwiya as strong and trustworthy (qawī amīn) to Abū Bakr and ʿUmar. (15) In another ḥadīth, the Prophet asked God to teach Muʿāwiya the Qurʾān and arithmetic. (16) ʿUmar praised Muʿāwiya and made him amīr in Syria for the entirety of his reign and ʿUthmān kept him in that position for the duration of his own reign. (17) ʿUmar criticized Muʿāwiya when he made the pilgrimage for his looks, dress, and perfumed clothes. Muʿāwiya responded back, and ʿUmar was ashamed of his earlier criticism. (18) In one instance, some Companions, and then ʿUmar himself, praised the qualities of Muʿāwiya when the latter appeared before them. (19) ʿUmar said that if discord arose after his death, then Muslims should seek Muʿāwiya and move to Syria. (20) ʿAlī said that his dead and the dead of Muʿāwiya are all in heaven, proof that both sides are rewarded because they did their ijtihād even though they arrived at different conclusions.104 (21) Ibn ʿAbbās praised Muʿāwiya saying that he was a faqīh (in another version he is said to be a Companion of the Prophet). (22) Both his mother and father saw from his childhood that Muʿāwiya will be a leader. (23) Ibn ʿAbbās said that Muʿāwiya was suited to reign while ʿUmar called him the kisrā of the Arabs.105 (24) Muʿāwiya foretold the future by stating that the khilāfa will never be in Mecca because the Meccans forced the Prophet to leave the town, and it will not return to Madīna after the killing of ʿUthmān. (25) Ibn ʿUmar said that he did not see anyone after the Prophet more apt to rule (aswad) than Muʿāwiya. (26) Al-Aʿmash said that Muʿāwiya was like the mahdī. (27) When Muʿāwiya was about to die, he instructed to be dressed in a shirt that the Prophet had given to him and for nail clippings of the Prophet to be powdered and placed in his eyes and mouth.106

104 One other report is interpreted to mean that whoever of the two sides was in the right, their reward and compensation will be multiplied. Neither side will be punished (ibid., 32). 105 This is taken by the author, as well as other Sunnī scholars, as a very positive praise of Muʿāwiya, although this is often understood to mean that Muʿāwiya was behaving like non-Muslim sovereigns and diverging from the standard set by the first successors of the Prophet. 106 Ibid., 10–21 and 24–28.



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Some of these reports prove, according to the author, that Muʿāwiya was one of the greatest Muslim mujtahids and, thus, that he cannot be blamed for his actions against ʿAlī. He then gives examples to show the knowledge and competence of Muʿāwiya in religious and legal matters: (1) Muʿāwiya on two occasions stood up in Madīna to give a khuṭba in which he showed his knowledge of fiqh matters. (2) ʿAbd Allāh ibn alZubayr described the actions of Muʿāwiya during a pilgrimage which indicates that he accepted them and followed them. Again, this shows Muʿāwiya’s knowledge in matters of fiqh. (3) Abū al-Dardāʾ said that Muʿāwiya was the closest in his way of prayer to the Prophet. (4) In his last days, he was stricken by some disease in his face while on his way to Mecca. He then gave a khuṭba in which the author sees Muʿāwiya’s knowledge and faith. (5) He was a great faqīh and mujtahid who learnt from a number of eminent Companions and from whom many Companions and tābiʿūn took ḥadīth and knowledge. (6) He was pleased when a man in the mosque objected to him when he claimed that the land and the money belonged to him. The man stated that the land and the money belonged to the Muslims. Muʿāwiya then related a ḥadīth in which the Prophet foretold of amīrs whose words will not be challenged and whose fate is hellfire. Since the man objected to his words, Muʿāwiya felt that he had saved his own soul. (7) Muʿāwiya related 163 ḥadīths from the Prophet (al-Bukhāri and Muslim share 4 of these, al-Bukhārī has another 4 and Muslim another 5).107 In part three, al-Haythamī responds to some accusations and attacks directed at Muʿāwiya by some scholars: 1. The Prophet sent Ibn ʿAbbās to fetch Muʿāwiya to him. Ibn ʿAbbās went three times, but Muʿāwiya was eating continuously. The Prophet invoked: “May God not fill his belly!” (lā ashbaʿ Allāh baṭnah).108 The author criticizes this report as follows: This is not a blemish at all on Muʿāwiya for the following reasons: (1) There is no mention in the report that Ibn ʿAbbās actually told Muʿāwiya that the Prophet wanted him and that Muʿāwiya delayed in his going. Hence, the invocation of the Prophet can be understood as a criticism of overeating but not as a religious shortcoming on the part of Muʿāwiya. (2) If we assume that Ibn ʿAbbās did indeed tell Muʿāwiya that the Prophet wanted him, it is possible that Muʿāwiya thought that he 107 Ibid., 21–28. 108 This report is often cited by Shīʿī scholars to show the slowness of Muʿāwiya in responding to a request of the Prophet and his gluttony. His congenital voraciousness along with the invocation of the Prophet caused Muʿāwiya to become insatiable and obese.

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had enough time to finish eating and that there was no urgency on the part of the Prophet. (3) It is possible that this invocation by the Prophet was not intentional, i.e., he said it but did not mean it as something similar occurred on other occasions with other Companions. (4) Muslim, the compiler of the Ṣaḥīḥ who also cites this ḥadīth, himself indicated that Muʿāwiya did not deserve this invocation since he placed the report in the chapter on those whom the Prophet cursed (sabb) or invoked against while not deserving it, this being counted for the individual as a blessing. (5) This report is actually one of the manāqib of Muʿāwiya since it is an invocation for him and not against him.109 2. The Prophet is reported to have said: If you see Muʿāwiya on my minbar, then kill him. It is also said that al-Dhahabī authenticated the report. The latter statement is false: al-Dhahabī mentioned the report in his Tārīkh but then proceeded to show that it was fabricated. If this report were true, then the Companions would be at fault, or at least those who heard it. What proves the fabricated nature of the report is the fact that: ʿUmar appointed Muʿāwiya in Syria throughout his reign; the Companions praised Muʿāwiya; and the Companions took knowledge from him (accepted his transmission of ḥadīths). Also, when he became sovereign, the Companions accepted him.110 3. The Prophet is reported to have said that the worst Arabian tribes are the Banū Umayya, the Banū Ḥanīfa, and the Thaqīf. Hence, since Muʿāwiya was an Umayyad he should not have been fit to be ruler. The author retorts that on the basis of this argument then both ʿUthmān and ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz were also unfit rulers. The meaning of the report is that a majority of those tribes are reprehensible (ashrār), not all their members.111 4. The Prophet said in the sound ḥadīth (ṣaḥīḥ) that ʿAmmār ibn Yāsir would be killed by the oppressing party (al-fiʾa al-bāghiya). All that this says is that Muʿāwiya and his followers were bughāt, this does not take away anything from them as they will be rewarded for their ijtihād.112 5. The Prophet said of ʿAmmār that the fiʾa bāghiya would kill him while he was calling them to heaven and they were calling him to hell. This report is weak (ḍaʿīf) in its isnād and therefore presents no proof. Even if we were to accept its authenticity, those who would be calling ʿAmmār to 109 Ibid., 28–29. 110 Ibid., 29–30. 111 Ibid., 30–31. 112 Ibid., 32–35.



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hell would be individuals in Muʿāwiya’s camp who are not mujtahids (i.e., not Muʿāwiya himself whom the author has shown to have been capable of exercising his ijtihād).113 6. Muʿāwiya rebelled against ʿAlī, the rightful imām. But so did others, like ʿĀʾisha, Ṭalḥa, and al-Zubayr. All of these individuals did their ijtihād and taʾwīl and acted accordingly. They are all Muslims and will be rewarded despite of their errors. ʿAlī’s reward will be double or ten times as much because he was correct in his actions. But even he treated his opponents and their followers as Muslims.114 7. ʿAlī is reported to have said that the Prophet entrusted him to fight against “the perfidious, the unjust, and the renegade” (al-nākithīn wa-alqāsiṭīn wa-al-māriqīn). These traits are interpreted by some to describe Muʿāwiya and his followers. However, the author explains that this report is ḍaʿīf (aw fī ḥukmih). If this were true, then the report could be applied to all against whom ʿAlī fought, including his opponents at the battle of the Camel, many of whom were Companions.115 8. In a report, it is stated that Shaddād ibn Aws entered the court of Muʿāwiya and sat between Muʿāwiya and ʿAmr. He then explained that he did so because he heard the Prophet say that the two, Muʿāwiya and ʿAmr, should be separated since they would only come together for perfidy (ghadr). The author attacks the isnād of this report and deems it problematic since there is an unknown person in it. If we were to accept the authenticity of the report, then we must remember that both Muʿāwiya and ʿAmr were dāhiyas (cunning and shrewd men) and the Prophet probably feared that they would unite on a worldly matter that would harm others. But the report is not a sound one (ṣaḥīḥ).116 A basic message that the author wants to explain is that Muslim scholars have urged Muslims not to discuss the disagreements that arose between the Companions (al-imsāk ʿammā shajar bayn al-ṣaḥāba). Specifically, Muslims should not criticize or attack Companions and their actions, bearing in mind that many reports were fabricated by various parties with injurious intent to disparage and denigrate them. Whatever they did, they did out of their own ijtihād and we should be grateful to all

113 Ibid., 35. In many other instances, the author is quite happy to accept weak reports as long as they prove his point. 114 Ibid., 35–39. 115 Ibid., 39. The author finds room here to attack the Shīʿite notion that ʿAlī should have succeeded the Prophet as ruler of the Muslims (ibid., 39–43). 116 Ibid., 43.

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Companions for the great services that they performed in spreading and strengthening Islam.117 In his conclusion (which takes up more than one third of the entire treatise), the author discusses the killing of ʿUthmān (he was killed unjustly and no Companion was at fault in the matter), the battle of the Camel (ʿAlī was in the right, but all Companions made their ijtihād. Thus, none is at fault though they might have erred), and events that occurred after the death of Muʿāwiya.118 One curious admission by al-Haythamī is that he considers Muʿāwiya to have erred in appointing his impious son, Yazīd, as successor. However, the author believes that Muʿāwiya will be forgiven for this error.119 Conclusion It is curious that of all the twenty-four treatises listed in the second section of this article, the ones that have survived (or, at least, the ones that I have found) are all favorable to Muʿāwiya, singing his praise and defending him from attack. Not to fret. Criticism of Muʿāwiya is abundant in the Islamic literary sources and in quite a number of modern monographs dedicated to him. This, of course, has ensured the continuous production of monographs in defense of Muʿāwiya, following to a greater or lesser extent the model of the nine treatises described in some detail in the section above. Reports like those cited by Ibn Abī al-Dunyā and al-Ḍabbī are important to show Muʿāwiya’s ability as a sovereign. His forbearance, generosity, and political acumen are all attributes that serve to highlight his capability to govern aptly and hence also serve to legitimize his rule. The inclusion of reports from highly esteemed Companions, such as ʿUmar and ʿAlī, praising Muʿāwiya also support the legitimacy claims, since, from a Sunnī perspective, no Companion would have praised a ruler or 117 Ibid., 31–32. Repeated again on pp. 43–44. 118 Ibid., 44–67. 119 Ibid., 49. Al-Haythamī actually describes what he deems to be the heinous acts of the iniquitous Yazīd (ibid., 60), although he does not think that Muʿāwiya can be blamed for these actions since he was not aware, or did not see, the faults of his son (ibid., 25–26). Typically, Sunnī scholars will not allow that Muʿāwiya made any errors in selecting Yazīd as his successor, because of the importance of the decision. Quite the contrary, they insist that all reports criticizing Yazīd and portraying his wanton behavior are fabrications and they argue that he did not give any orders to kill al-Ḥusayn, rather that was a decision made by his military commander on his own.



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amīr unless the latter was fully deserving of this. It is true, however, that the type of reports found in al-Ḍabbī have been very popular amongst Shīʿite authors as well, especially those versions in which ʿAlids or their supporters openly advocate the legitimacy of ʿAlī and his sons and reject Muʿāwiya’s claims to be more deserving of the position of Muslim sovereign. Hence, while Sunnī scholars interpret these reports as portraying a patient and just sovereign, Shīʿite scholars emphasize the courage of his antagonists and his inability to refute the claims that they bring forth in favour of the ʿAlids. The ḥadīths on the faḍāʾil of Muʿāwiya have not been widely used, since even Sunnī scholars themselves acknowledge their spurious nature and doubt their authenticity. Those scholars, like al-Haythamī, who accept them in their arguments are quickly quashed by their opponents. After all, even al-Haythamī himself admitted that the reports which he was citing were weak and problematic. They cannot withstand the scrutiny of ḥadīth scholars. There are stronger grounds for accepting ḥadīths that are transmitted by Muʿāwiya, as some of these can be found in the Ṣaḥīḥs of al-Bukhārī and Muslim and other major Sunnī collections. It is important for Sunnī scholars to stress this point (although not all of them do) because this shows that: (1) Muʿāwiya had spent enough time with the Prophet to hear, learn, and understand from him a variety of issues dealing with ritual, ethics, and conduct. This confirms his status as a Companion of the Prophet; and (2) Muʿāwiya had the requisite knowledge of Islamic laws and etiquette that qualified him to be sovereign and allowed him to perform his own ijtihād on matters for which no clear precedent or rule had been set. All of this then fits with the general argument made by Sunnī scholars (and not accepted by their Shīʿite counterparts) that during the first fitna all Companions performed their own ijtihād with some hitting the mark (e.g., ʿAlī) while others erring in their conclusions (e.g., Muʿāwiya), but that all would be recompensed in the hereafter. Some of the ḥadīths transmitted by Muʿāwiya seem to be self-serving and meant to legitimize his rule (e.g., the ones that state that rule would be in the hands of the Quraysh; that whoever dies without pledging allegiance to an imām has died a jāhilī death; and that the Prophet had foretold that he would become Muslim sovereign). The arguments made by scholars like Ibn al-Farrāʾ, Ibn Taymiyya, and Ibn Ḥajar al-Haythamī have been adopted by modern Sunnī scholars. Although the latter might expand on the work of their forerunners, the basic fundamental principles remain the same. They emphasize that

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­ uslims should not criticize or demean any of the Companions of the M Prophet Muḥammad and they strive to write a history of the early community in which none of these Companions is allowed to have the slightest deviant thought or emotion, let alone action. I hope to discuss the work of these modern scholars and their antagonists in a subsequent study. Bibliography Afsaruddin, Asma. “In Praise of the Caliphs: Re-Creating History from the Manāqib Literature.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 31 (1999): 329–50. ——. Excellence and Precedence: Medieval Islamic Discourse on Legitimate Leadership. Leiden: Brill, 2002. al-Ahwāzī, al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī (972–1054). “al-Juzʾ al-Sābiʿ ʿAshar min Kitāb Sharḥ ʿUqad Ahl al-Īmān fī Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān, wa-Dhikr Mā Warada fī al-Akhbār min Faḍāʾilihi wa-Manāqibihi Raḍī Allāh ʿanhu.” In Thalāth Rasāʾil fī Faḍāʾil Muʿāwiya, edited by ʿIṣām Muṣṭafā Hazāyima and Yūsuf Aḥmad Banī Yāsīn, 87–145. Irbid: Muʾassasat Ḥamāda li-alDirāsāt al-Jāmiʿiyya wa-al-Nashr wa-al-Tawzīʿ, 2000. al-Bābānī, Ismāʿīl Bāshā (1839–1920). Īḍāḥ al-Maknūn fī al-Dhayl ʿalā Kashf al-Ẓunūn ʿan Asāmī al-Kutub wa-al-Funūn. Edited by Muḥammad Sharaf al-Dīn Yāltaqāyā and Rif ʿat Bīlgah al-Kilīsī. 3rd printing. Tehran: Maktabat al-Islāmiyya wa-al-Jaʿfarī Tabrīzī, 1967. [Reprint of the Istanbul, Millî Eğitim Basımevi, 1945–1947 edition.] ——. Hadiyyat al-ʿĀrifīn: Asmāʾ al-Muʾallifīn wa-Āthār al-Muṣannifīn. 3rd printing. Tehran: Maktabat al-Islāmiyya wa-al-Jaʿfarī Tabrīzī, 1967. [Reprint of the Istanbul, Millî Eğitim Basımevi, 1951–1955 edition.] Bellamy, James A. “Pro-Umayyad Propaganda in Ninth-Century Baghdad in the Works of Ibn Abī ’l-Dunyā.” In Prédication et propagande au Moyen Age: Islam, Byzance, Occident: Penn-Paris-Dumbarton Oaks Colloquia III, Session des 20–25 octobre 1980, edited by George Makdisi, Dominique Sourdel, and Janine Sourdel-Thomine, 71–86. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983. Brockelmann, Carl (1868–1956). Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur. 2nd edition. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1937–1949. al-Ḍabbī, al-ʿAbbās ibn Bakkār (746–837). Akhbār al-Wāfidāt min al-Nisāʾ ʿalā Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān. Edited by Sukayna al-Shihābī. Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1983. [Persian translation: Nukhbagān-i Ḥāmī-i Vilāyat: Zanānī ki bar Muʿāviya Shūrīdand. Translated by Zahrā Rafīʿī Rād. Tehran: Sāzmān-i Taḥqīqāt-i Khvudʾkafāyī-i Basīj and Shirkat-i Īrān Khvudraw, [1997].] ——. Akhbār al-Wāfidīn min al-Rijāl min Ahl al-Baṣra wa-al-Kūfa ʿalā Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān. Edited by Sukayna al-Shihābī. Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1984. Firdawsī, Abū al-Qāsim (ca. 940–1020 or 1025). Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings. Translated by Dick Davis. New York: Viking, 2006. Gruber, Ernst August. Verdienst und Rang: Die Faḍāʾil als literarisches und gesellschaftliches Problem im Islam. Freiburg im Breisgau: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1975. Islamkundliche Untersuchungen 35. [Originally a Ph.D. dissertation, Frankfurt am Main, 1973.] Hazāyima, ʿIṣām Muṣṭafā, and Yūsuf Aḥmad Banī Yāsīn, eds. Thalāth Rasāʾil fī Faḍāʾil Muʿāwiya. Irbid: Muʾassasat Ḥamāda li-al-Dirāsāt al-Jāmiʿiyya wa-al-Nashr wa-al-Tawzīʿ, 2000. Ibn Abī al-Dunyā, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad (823–894). “Ḥilm Muʿāwiya.” In Thalāth Rasāʾil fī Faḍāʾil Muʿāwiya, 39–58. ——. Kitāb Ḥilm Muʿāwiya. Edited by Ibrāhīm Ṣāliḥ. Damascus: Dār al-Bashāʾir li al-Ṭibāʿa wa-al-Nashr wa-al-Tawzīʿ, 2003.



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Ibn Abī Yaʿlā, Abū al-Ḥusayn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad (1059–1131). Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanābila. Edited by Muḥammad Ḥāmid al-Fiqī. Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Sunna al-Muḥammadiyya, 1952. Ibn al-Farrāʾ, Abū Yaʿlā Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn (990–1066). Tanzīh Khāl al-Muʾminīn Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān Raḍī Allāh ʿanhu min al-Ẓulm wa-al-Fisq fī Muṭālabatihi bi-Dam Amīr al-Muʾminīn ʿUthmān Raḍī Allāh ʿanhu. Edited by Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Atharī. Riyad: Maktabat al-Rushd, and Amman: Dār al-Nubalāʾ, 2001. Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī (1372–1449). Fatḥ al-Bārī Sharḥ Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī. Edited by ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Bāz and ʿAlī ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Shibl. Riyad: Dār al-Salām, 2000. ——. Lisān al-Mīzān. 2nd printing. Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Aʿlamī li-al-Maṭbūʿāt, [1971]. [Reprint of: Kitāb Lisān al-Mīzān. Hyderabad: Maṭbaʿat Majlis Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif al-Niẓāmiyya, [1911–1913].] Ibn Ḥajar al-Haythamī, Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad (ca. 1503–ca. 1566). “Taṭhīr al-Janān wa-alLisān ʿan al-Khuṭūr wa-al-Tafawwuh bi-Thalb Sayyidinā Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān.” In al-Ṣawāʿiq al-Muḥriqa fī al-Radd ʿalā Ahl al-Bidaʿ wa-al-Zandaqa, edited by ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, 1–72. 2nd edition. Cairo: Maktabat al-Qāhira, 1965. [First edition published in 1956 by the same publishers. Other editions (always on the margin of Kitāb al-Ṣawāʿiq al-Muḥriqa fī al-Radd ʿalā Ahl al-Bidaʿ wa-al-Zandaqa): Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-ʿĀmira, 1891; Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Maymaniyya, 1894; Najaf: Maktabat al-Hudā and Tehran: Maktabat Murtaḍawī, n.d. Also reprinted at the end of al-Ṣawāʿiq al-Muḥriqa fī al-Radd ʿalā Ahl al-Bidaʿ wa-al-Zandaqa, Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1983, 2nd printing in 1985.] ——. Mukhtaṣar Taṭhīr al-Janān wa-al-Lisān ʿan al-Khawḍ wa-al-Tafawwuh bi-Thalb Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān. Abridged by Sulaymān ibn Ṣāliḥ al-Kharāshī. Riyad: Dār ʿUlūm al-Sunna li-al-Nashr wa-al-Tawzīʿ, 2001. Ibn al-Nadīm, Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq (fl. 987). The Fihrist of al-Nadīm: A Tenth-Century Survey of Muslim Culture. Translated by Bayard Dodge (1888–1972). New York: Columbia University Press, 1970. Records of Civilization: Sources and Studies 83. ——. Kitāb al-Fihrist. Edited by Riḍā Tajaddud. Tehran: Maṭbaʿa-yi Dānishgāh, 1971. Ibn Taymiyya, Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm (1263–1328). “Masʾala.” In Kitāb Majmūʿat Fatāwā Shaykh al-Islām Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyya al-Ḥarrānī al-Mutawaffā Sanat 728, vol. 4: 216–27. Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Kurdistān al-ʿIlmiyya, [1911]. ——. “[Masʾala].” In Majmūʿ Fatāwā Shaykh al-Islām Aḥmad ibn Taymiyya, collected by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Qāsim and Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Qāsim, vol. 35: 58–79. [Mecca]: Maṭbaʿat al-Ḥukūma, [1966]. [Reprinted: Beirut: Maṭābiʿ Dār al-ʿArabiyya, [1977 or 8]; Cairo: Maktabat Ibn Taymiyya, 1979; al-Ribāṭ: Maktabat al-Maʿārif, 1980; Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Idārat al-Misāḥa al-ʿAskariyya, [1983]; Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, and Riyad: Dār ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1997.] ——. Suʾāl fī Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān Raḍiya Allāh ʿanhu. Edited by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Munajjid. Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-Jadīd, 1979. al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī (1002–1071). Tārīkh Baghdād aw Madīnat al-Salām. Edited by Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1997. Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān (d. 680). Dīwān Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān. Collected by Fārūq Aslīm ibn Aḥmad. Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1996. al-Munajjid, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn. “Muʿjam Muṣannafāt Ibn Abī al-Dunyā.” Majallat Majmaʿ al-Lugha al-ʿArabiyya bi-Dimashq 49 (1974): 579–94. Pellat, Charles (1914–1992), “Le culte de Muʿāwiya au IIIe siècle de l’Hégire,” Studia Islamica 6 (1956): 53–66. [Reprinted in Pellat, Charles. Études sur l’histoire socio-culturelle de l’Islam (VIIe–XVe s.). London: Variorum Reprints, 1976.] ——. “Manāḳib.” In The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 6: 349–57. New edition. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1987.

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al-Saqaṭī, ‘Ubayd Allāh ibn Muḥammad (d. 1015). “Juzʾ fīhi Faḍāʾil Amīr al-Muʾminīn Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān Raḍī Allāh ʿanhu.” In Thalāth Rasāʾil fī Faḍāʾil Muʿāwiya, 59–86. al-Saqqāf, Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī. Naqd Kitāb Taṭhīr al-Janān wa-al-Lisān Taʾlīf al-ʿAllāma al-Faqīh al-Shāfiʿī Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī 909 H-974 H. [Amman]: Dār al-Imām al-Nawawī and Dār al-Ṣiddīq al-Akbar, 2008. Sellheim, R. “Faḍīla.” In The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol. 2: 728–29. New edition. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1963. Sezgin, Fuat. Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums. Band I: Qurʾānwissenschaften · Ḥadīt · Geschichte · Fiqh · Dogmatik · Mystik bis ca. 430 H. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1967. al-Shaybānī, Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm. Muʿjam Mā Ullifa ʿan al-Ṣaḥāba wa-Ummahāt al-Muʾminīn wa-Āl al-Bayt «Raḍī Allāh ʿanhum». al-Kuwayt: Manshūrāt Markaz al-Makhṭūṭāt wa-al-Turāth wa-al-Wathāʾiq, 1993. al-Suyūṭī, Jalāl al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (1445–1505). Tārīkh al-Khulafāʾ. Edited by Muḥammad Abū al-Faḍl Ibrāhīm. Cairo: Dār Nahḍat Miṣr li-al-Ṭabʿ wa-al-Nashr, 1976. al-Ṭabasī, Muḥammad Jawād. Ḥiwārāt Sākhina bayna Muʿāwiya wa-Aṣḥāb ʿAlī ʿalayhi al-Salām. Qum: Madyan li-al-Ṭibāʿa wa-al-Nashr [2002]. Yāqūt ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥamawī (1179?–1229). Muʿjam al-Udabāʾ: Irshād al-Arīb ilā Maʿrifat al-Adīb. Edited by Iḥsān ʿAbbās. Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1993.

The Umayyads and ʿAbbĀsids in Mujīr al-Dīn’s fifteenth-Century History of Jerusalem and Hebron Robert Schick Introduction Mujīr al-Dīn al-ʿUlaymī al-Ḥanbalī, the chief Islamic law court judge of Jerusalem at the end of the Mamlūk period in the late fifteenth century, wrote an extensive history of the cities of Jerusalem and Hebron, entitled al-Uns al-Jalīl bi-Taʾrīkh al-Quds wa-al-Khalīl. That history covers the history of Jerusalem and to a lesser extent Hebron and Palestine in general, from the Creation up to Mujīr al-Dīn’s own day. Included in the book is coverage of the major events of the first centuries of Islamic rule in Jerusalem, concentrating on the time of ʿAbd al-Malik and his construction of the Dome of the Rock and the Civil War against ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr. This article presents some information about Mujīr al-Dīn and his history al-Uns al-Jalīl, followed by a translation of his account of the Umayyad and ʿAbbāsid periods, and then briefly examines some characteristics of his account. Mujīr al-Dīn Abū al-Yumn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad al-ʿUmarī al-ʿUlaymī al-Ḥanbalī, most commonly known as Mujīr al-Dīn, was a native of Jerusalem born in 860/1456. His father was the Ḥanbalī judge in the Palestinian cities of al-Ramla and Jerusalem, and Mujīr al-Dīn himself, after study in Cairo, became a Ḥanbalī judge, first in al-Ramla in 889/1484 and then in 891/1486 in Jerusalem. He later became the chief judge in Jerusalem, in which position he continued until just before his death in Jerusalem in 927/1520, four years after the Ottoman conquest.1

1 EI2, “Mudjīr al-Dīn al-ʿUlaymī.” [Heribert Busse]; Fahmī al-Anṣārī, Muʾarrikh al-Quds wa-al-Khalīl Mujīr al-Dīn Abū al-Yumn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-ʿUmarī al-ʿUlaymī al-Ḥanbalī. Ḥayātuhu wa-Mawḍaʿ Qabrihi. Publication no. 6, Part 3 (Jerusalem: Qism Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-Islāmī, 1986); Donald Little, “Mujīr al-Dīn al-ʿUlaymī’s Vision of Jerusalem in the Ninth/ Fifteenth Century,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 115 (1995): 237–47; Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh Asʿad, Mujīr al-Dīn al-Ḥanbalī. Shakhsīyatuhu wa-Manhajuhu al-Tārīkhī wa-Makānatuhu bayna al-Muʾarrikhīn al-Muʿāṣirīn lahu (Ph.D. Thesis, Jāmiʿat al-Qadīs Yūsuf, Beirut, 2002).

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In addition to his duties as judge, Mujīr al-Dīn was a prolific scholar who wrote a biographical dictionary of Ḥanbali legal scholars, al-Manhaj al-Aḥmad fī Tarājim Aṣḥāb al-Imām Aḥmad,2 a Qurʾān commentary, Fatḥ al-Raḥmān fi-Tafsīr al-Furqān [or al-Qurʾān],3 and an as-yet unedited short draft of what became al-Uns al-Jalīl covering general history from the Creation up to 896/1491, Taʾrīkh al-Muʿtabar fī Anbāʾ Man ʿAbara.4 But the work for which he is best known is al-Uns al-Jalīl bi-Taʾrīkh al-Quds wa-alKhalīl, his fundamentally important, lengthy history of Jerusalem and Hebron, variously translatable as: The Splendid Familiarity / the Sublimely Familiar Account / the Significant Ambiance / the Sublime Friendship about the History of Jerusalem and Hebron, that he wrote between 900/1495 and 902/1496.5 Al-Uns al-Jalīl first covers the history of the prophets from Adam up to the Prophet Muḥammad and then the period from the Muslim Conquest up to the end of the Crusades. The second part identifies the Islamic monuments in Jerusalem before turning to the history and monuments of Hebron and briefly some other cities in Palestine. The third part presents the biographies of the rulers of Jerusalem and the judges and scholars of the four Sunni legal traditions in Ayyūbid and Mamlūk times. Mujīr al-Dīn ends with a presentation of the reign of Sultan Qāytbāy, the sultan of his day, up to 900/1494–1495. A short appendix not found in all the manuscripts and not included in the printed editions, covers the period between 902/1496 and 914/1508. The exceptional value of al-Uns al-Jalīl was recognized from the beginning, shown by the number of extant manuscripts,6 and the extensive use that later Arabic authors made of it, as well as by the early attention that Western scholars paid to it, especially to the description of the Islamic 2 Mujīr al-Dīn al-ʿUlaymī, Al-Manhaj al-Aḥmad fī Tarājim Aṣḥāb al-Imām Aḥmad, ed. ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Arnāʾūṭ (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1999); Idem, Al-Durr al-Munaḍḍad fī Dhikr Aṣḥāb al-Imām Aḥmad, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Sulaymān ʿUthaymīn (Saudi Arabia: Maktabat al-Tawbah, 1992). 3 Mujīr al-Dīn al-ʿUlaymī, Fatḥ al-Raḥmān fi Tafsīr al-Quʾrān, ed. Nūr al-Din Ṭālib (Beirut: Dār al-Nawādir, 1995). 4 British Museum Ms. Or. 1544. 5 See also Robert Schick, “The Life of Jesus in Mujīr al-Dīn’s 15th-Century History of Jerusalem,” Journal of the Henry Martyn Institute 24 (2005): 89–111; idem, “Geographical Terminology in Mujir al-Din’s History of Jerusalem,” in Khalid El-Awaisi, ed., Geographical Dimensions of Islamic Jerusalem (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), 91–105. 6 Kāmil al-ʿAsalī, Makhṭūṭāt Faḍāʾil Bayt al-Maqdis. Dirāsa wa-Bībliyūghrāfiyā. [English title: K. J. Asali, Fadaʾil Bayt al-Maqdis Manuscripts: A Study and a Bibliography] (Amman: Dār al-Bashīr, 1981), 105–112.



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buildings in Jerusalem. Excerpts covering about a quarter of the total work, including some of the portions translated here, were published in French by Joseph de Hammer as early as 1809–1816.7 His translated excerpts about the Islamic buildings in Jerusalem were translated into English by George Williams in 1849.8 That was even before the first printed edition of the Arabic text was produced in Cairo in 1866.9 Henry Sauvaire published an abridged French translation in 1876;10 he translated less than a quarter of the total, covering much of the same portions as Joseph de Hammer’s 1809–1816 translation, including the full fifty-page section about the buildings of Jerusalem. The appendix covering the period up to 914/1508 was published by Leo Mayer in 1931 and again by Kāmil al-ʿAsalī in 1985.11 The most commonly cited edition of al-Uns al-Jalīl was published in Najaf, Iraq in 1968,12 and reprinted as a photo offset with the same pagination in Amman, Jordan in 1973,13 using the same manuscript as the 1866 Cairo edition. That edition was arbitrarily divided into two volumes in a way that has become the standard for citing pagination. The 1973 Amman edition has been reprinted numerous times, including a 1995 reprint by a printer in Nablus that was spuriously labeled as having been printed by Dār al-Nahḍa in Baghdad. An index of the 1866 Cairo and 1968–1973 NajafAmman editions was produced in 1988.14

7 Joseph de Hammer, trans., “Extraits du livre. Enisol-Djelil fit-tarikhi Kouds velKhalil. Le Compagnon sublime dans l’histoire de Jérusalem et d’Abraham, par le juge Medjired-din, Ebil-yemen Abdor-rahman, El-alemi, mort l’an 927 de l’Hegire,” Fundgruben des Orient / Mines de l’Orient / Makhzan al-Kunūz al-Mashriqīyah wa-Maʿdan al-Rumūz al-Ajnabīyah 2 (1811): 81–100, 118–42, 375–87; 3 (1813): 70–83, 118–28, 211–20; 4 (1814): 215–37; 5 (1816): 145–63 (translation of 1:59–63, 226–41, 255–56, 272–75, 280–81, 283, 303–408 and 2:1–84 of the 1973 edition). 8 George Williams, The Holy City. Historical, Topographical, and Antiquarian Notices of Jerusalem (2nd Edition, with Supplement: Historical and Descriptive Memoir Illustrative of the Ordnance Survey) (London: John W. Parker, 1849), vol. 1, appendix 2, pp. 143–64. 9 Mujīr al-Dīn al-ʿUlaymī, al-Uns al-Jalīl bi-Tārīkh al-Quds wa-al-Khalīl (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Wahbīya, 1283/1866). 10 Henry Sauvaire, trans., Histoire de Jérusalem et d’Hébron (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1876). Available online at www.worldcat.org. 11 Leo Mayer, “A Sequel to Mujīr ad-Dīn’s Chronicle,” Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society 11 (1931): 85–97; Kāmil al-ʿAsalī, “Mujīr al-Dīn al-ʿUlaymī al-Ḥanbalī: Muʾarrikh al-Quds—Naṣṣ Jadīd ʿan Ḥayātihi wa-Naṣṣ Dhayl Kitābihi al-Uns al-Jalīl,” Dirāsāt (University of Jordan) 12.8 (1985): 115–35. 12 Mujīr al-Dīn al-Ḥanbalī, al-Uns al-Jalīl bi-Tarīkh al-Quds wa-al-Khalīl (Najaf: alMaktaba al-Ḥaydarīya, 1968). 13 Mujīr al-Dīn al-Ḥanbalī, al-Uns al-Jalīl bi-Tarīkh al-Quds wa-al-Khalīl (Amman: Maktabat al-Muḥtasib, 1973). 14 Isḥaq Mūsā al-Ḥusaynī and Ḥasan al-Silwādī, Fahāris Kitāb al-Uns al-Jalīl bi-Tarīkh al-Quds wa-al-Khalīl li-Mujīr al-Dīn al-Ḥanbalī (Jerusalem: Dār al-Ṭifl al-ʿArabī, 1988).

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A new edition of al-Uns al-Jalīl was published in Amman in 1999.15 That edition has its origin in two MA theses by students at al-Najāh National University in Nablus: ʿAdnān Yūnis ʿAbd al-Majīd Abū Tabāna for volume one in 1999 and Maḥmūd ʿAwdah Kaʿābna for volume two in 1997. The 1999 edition is based on a different manuscript than the earlier editions: the British Library manuscript 8516, copied by Abū Saʿūd al-Daqqāq in 1118/1706. Unfortunately, the 1999 edition does not record the pagination of the 1973 edition. There are substantial differences between the two editions, with dozens of cases where sentences, paragraphs, and even whole pages appear in one of the editions, but not the other, without the editors of the 1999 edition indicating that fact in their critical apparatus. That demonstrates that a critical edition still needs to be produced. The portion translated here begins after the death of the caliph ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, and touches briefly on the caliphates of ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān and ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, before covering in greater detail the reigns of Muʿāwiya ibn Abi Sufyān and the other Umayyad caliphs. Mujīr al-Dīn devotes the most coverage to the reign of ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān and his construction of the Dome of the Rock as well as the course of the civil war against ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr. He includes an extensive description of the Kaʿba in Mecca, before concluding with the first few ʿAbbāsid caliphs. Mujīr al-Dīn’s account of the Umayyads and ʿAbbāsids covers some fifteen pages in the 1968/1973 edition.16 That pagination is marked in the translation here in parentheses. The 1968/1973 edition and the 1999 edition are virtually identical here; for a few words a textual variant in the 1999 edition is preferable. Some of the portion translated here was translated into French by George de Hammer,17 and by Henry Sauvaire.18

15 Mujīr al-Dīn al-ʿUlaymī, al-Uns al-Jalīl bi-Tarīkh al-Quds wa-al-Khalīl (Amman: Maktabat Dandis, 1999). 16 1968/1973 edition 1: 269–85; 1866 edition 1: 238–52 and 1999 edition 1: 397–417. 17 De Hammer, Fundgruben 5 (1816): 157–60. 18 Sauvaire, Histoire, 48–61.



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The Translation (1:269) The Construction by ʿAbd al-Malik of the Noble Dome of the Rock and the Noble Masjid al-Aqṣā and What Happened About That When the Commander of the Faithful ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, may God be pleased with him, died, he appointed a group of those with whom the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, was pleased when he died. They were ʿUthmān, ʿAlī, Ṭalḥa, al-Zubayr, Saʿd and ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAwf, may God be pleased with them. He stipulated that his son ʿAbd Allāh join them in making the selection, but that he would not be eligible for the caliphate. After him, allegiance as caliph was paid to the Commander of the Faithful, ‘Uthmān ibn ‘Affān, may God be pleased with him, and he became caliph on the third day of Muḥarram, year 24 of the Hijra. He continued until he was martyred on Wednesday with eighteen nights having passed of Dhū al-Ḥijja of the year 35 of the Hijra. His caliphate lasted for twelve days less than twelve years. His virtues and his vices are well known. After him, the Commander of the Faithful ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, may God be pleased with him, became caliph. Allegiance as caliph was paid to him on Friday with five days remaining of Dhū al-Ḥijja of the year 35 of the Hijra. What happened between him and Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān is well known, so that there is no benefit in mentioning it. Keeping silent about it is preferable. He continued until he was martyred in al-Kūfa. His death was on the night of Sunday, the 19th of Ramaḍān of the year 40 of the Hijra. His caliphate lasted four years and nine months. Then his son al-Ḥasan, may God be pleased with him, became caliph. Allegiance as caliph was paid to him on the day his father died, and he continued in the caliphate for about six months, which was exactly thirty years after the death of the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace. It is narrated from the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, that he said, “the caliphate after me will last for thirty years and then it will revert to tyrannical kingship.” The rule of al-Ḥasan ended after exactly thirty years, when he surrendered the rule to Muʿāwiya, who became caliph in the month of Rabīʿ I of the year 41 of the noble Hijra (270). He continued in the caliphate for about twenty years until he died in Damascus in the middle of Rajab of the year 60 of the Hijra. He was called al-Nāṣir li-Ḥaqq Allāh Taʿālā.

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When he died, his son Yazīd became caliph after him. He called himself al-Muntaṣir ʿalā Ahl al-Zaygh. Allegiance had been paid to him as caliph before the death of his father, and allegiance to him was renewed after his death. Then the course of events went badly, and he oppressed the people and openly committed acts of disobedience. When his oppression became well known and his tyranny increased and he killed the family of the Messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace, the people of al-Madīna agreed to expel his agent ʿUthmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī Sufyān and Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam and the rest of the Banū Umayya, with the approval of ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr. When that news reached Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiyah he sent out the armies against the people of al-Madīna and prepared against them Muslim ibn ʿUqba al-Mazanī, who sacked noble al-Madīna and killed its people. Then he headed for Mecca, but he died before reaching it. Al-Ḥuṣayn ibn Numayr succeeded him in command of the army. He came to Mecca and lay siege to Ibn al-Zubayr for forty days and set up catapults and destroyed and burned the noble Kaʿba. That was eleven days before the death of Yazīd. God destroyed Yazīd and he died. His death was in Ḥawārīn in the district of Ḥimṣ after fourteen nights had passed of Rabīʿ I of the year 61 of the Hijra, when he was 38 years old. His caliphate lasted for three years and eight months. His conduct was the worst. And even if there had been nothing more than the killing of al-Ḥusayn in his days and what happened due to him concerning the rights of the descendants of the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, that would have been enough evil conduct for him. After him his son Muʿāwiya ibn Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiya became caliph in Damascus and he was called al-Rājiʿ ilā Allāh. He was virtuous and was not concerned with the caliphate and did not welcome it. He was in place for three months, and it is said less than that, and then he died, may God have mercy on him. When Yazīd died, the people paid allegiance to ʿAbd Allāh ibn alZubayr in Mecca, who was called the Khādim Bayt Allāh (271). Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam was in al-Madīna and he intended to go to ʿAbd Allāh ibn alZubayr and pay him allegiance. Then he joined those of the Banū Umayya who went to al-Shām. The people of al-Baṣra paid allegiance to Ibn al-Zubayr, and the Ḥijāz, Iraq and Yemen joined him, and he sent to Egypt and its people paid him allegiance. In al-Shām Nimr al-Ḍaḥḥāk ibn Qays paid him allegiance,



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as did al-Nuʿmān ibn Bishr al-Anṣārī in Ḥimṣ and Bishr ibn Dhafr ibn al-Ḥārith al-Kilābī and he held almost total power. Ibn al-Zubayr undertook the construction of the Kaʿba, may God the Exalted ennoble it. That was in the year 61 of the noble Hijra. Its walls were out of kilter due to the catapult strikes, and so he dismantled it and dug its foundations, witnessed by seventy shaykhs of the Quraysh. That was because when the Quraysh built the Kaʿba they did not have enough funds and so they reduced by seven cubits the size of the house that Ibrāhīm, the Friend, upon him be blessing and peace, had founded with Ismāʿil, upon him be peace. Then ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr rebuilt it, adding the seven cubits and placing the stone in the Kaʿba. He restored it to what it had been originally and installed two doors, one to enter and one to exit. The house continued in that form until al-Ḥajjāj killed Ibn al-Zubayr, as we will mention, if God the Exalted wills. When Muʿāwiya ibn Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiya died in al-Shām, allegiance as caliph was paid to Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam, who was called al-Muʾtamin bi-Allāh. The people divided into two groups, the group who preferred the Banū Umayya and the group who preferred Ibn al-Zubayr. The dispute led to fighting and battles between them. Then the rule of al-Shām settled for Marwān, and Egypt came under his control. He ordered the people to pay allegiance to his son ʿAbd al-Malik and after him his brother ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz. But nothing was quicker in ending than the time of Marwān, who died of the plague in Damascus with three days having passed in Ramaḍān of the year 65 of the Hijra. He ruled for nine months and eighteen days and he was 60 years old. (272) When he died, allegiance as caliph was paid to his son ʿAbd alMalik on the third day of the month of Ramaḍān of the year 65. He was called al-Muwaffiq li-Amr Allāh. He was the first person named ʿAbd alMalik in Islam and the first one to mint dirhāms and dīnārs in Islam. The text on one side was Allāhu Aḥad and on the other Allāhu al-Ṣamad. The dirhāms before that were Byzantine and Kisrawī. When he became caliph, he pledged well-being to the people—the day allegiance was paid—and called them to revive the Book and the Sunna and to establish justice. When the year 66 started, he began to build the noble Dome of the Rock and to rebuild the noble Masjid al-Aqṣā. That was because he prevented the people from going on the Ḥajj pilgrimage, lest they incline to Ibn al-Zubayr, and they made an outcry. He intended to keep the people occupied with the construction of this mosque instead of the pilgrimage. Ibn al-Zubayr denounced ʿAbd al-Malik for that.

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It is reported about the construction, that when ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān came to Bayt al-Maqdis and ordered the construction of the dome over the noble Rock, he sent letters to all of his agents and to the remaining cities that he wanted to build a dome over the Rock of Bayt alMaqdis to shelter the Muslims from the heat and cold and that he would build the mosque, but that he did not want to do so without receiving the opinion of his subjects, so let the subjects write to him their opinion and what they had against it. Letters were sent to him from all of the officials of the cities: “We agree that the view of the Commander of the Faithful is the correct one. If God wills, may he complete the building of His House and His Rock and His Mosque that he intends to do and may he carry that out by his own hand and make it a memorial for himself and his descendants.” He collected the artisans for the project and he provided a large amount of money for the reconstruction, an amount said to be the kharāj of Egypt for seven years. He placed it in the dome located in front of the Rock on the east side facing the Mount of Olives, after having ordered its construction, and he made it a store house that he filled up with funds. He appointed over the expenditure of money and what was needed for the construction of the mosque and the dome Abū al-Maqdām Rajāʾ ibn Ḥaywa ibn Jūd al-Kindī, who was a well-known scholar and a boon companion of ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, may God be pleased with him. He placed (273) along side him a man called Yazīd ibn Sallām, a client of ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān from the people of Bayt al-Maqdis, and his two sons. It is said that ʿAbd al-Malik described his choice for the construction of the dome and its shape to the artisans, which they carried out. It is in Bayt al-Maqdis the small dome that is to the east of the Dome of the Rock called the Dome of the Chain. Its form is most amazing. He ordered its construction like its form. He ordered Rajāʾ and Yazīd to spend on it and to arrange it and to dispense the money on it without concern about using it up. They started the building and reconstruction around the dome from the east of the mosque to the west until they finished the work and there was nothing further to be said. That is the construction that is in the center of the mosque from the wall at the Cradle of Jesus to the west to the place known today as the Jāmiʿ al-Maghāriba. Rajāʾ and Yazīd wrote to ʿAbd al-Malik in Damascus, “God has completed the construction of the Dome of the Rock of Bayt al-Maqdis and the Masjid al-Aqṣā that the Commander of the Faithful ordered and there was nothing further to be said. Some of what the Commander of the



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Faithful had ordered to be spent on it was left over—after the construction was finished and done well—one hundred thousand dinars, so let the Commander of the Faithful spend it as he sees fit.” The Commander of the Faithful wrote to them, “I ordered it for you two as a reward for your achievement in constructing the blessed noble house.” Then they wrote to him: “We are the first to add to it from the jewelry of our women and the excess of our money, so spend it in the way that is most pleasing to you.” Then he wrote to them to melt it down and pour it on the dome, so it was melted down and poured on it. Then no one was able to look at it due to how much gold was on it. A covering of felt and animal skins placed above it was prepared. When the winter rains came, it clothed it from the rain, wind and snow. After the caliphate was transferred to al-Muntaqim Allāh al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, the east part of the mosque collapsed and there was nothing left in the treasury. He ordered that to be to minted and spent on what had collapsed. Allegiance was paid to al-Walīd in Shawwāl of year 86 and he died in Jumādā II year 96 of the Hijra. (274) Rajā’ ibn Ḥaywa and Yazīd ibn Sallām had surrounded the Rock with a balustrade of ebony and placed behind the balustrade curtains of soft silk brocade let down between the columns. Every Monday and Thursday they ordered saffron to be crushed or pulverized and then in the night they mixed it with musk, perfume and red rose water and it fermented during the night. Then he ordered the servants in the early morning to go to the Bath of Sulaymān, where they washed and purified themselves. Then they went to the storeroom in which the khulūq was and took off their clothes and brought out from the storeroom new clothes from Merv and Herat and something called the sash and adorned girdles with which they tightened their waists. Then they took the khulūq and went with it to the Rock and they anointed what they could reach with their hands until they covered all of it. For what they were not able to reach with their hands, they washed their feet and then went onto the Rock until they anointed what was left, so that the jars of the khulūq were used up. Then they went with gold and silver censers and aloes wood and incense scented with musk and ambergris, and all of the curtains around the columns were lowered. Then they took the incense and circled around it until there was so much incense that it filled the space between them and the dome. Then the curtains were lifted up and the incense went out, and there was so much that it spread out until it reached the entrance of the market so that whoever passed by there smelled it until the incense dissipated. Then a herald cried in the row of the cloth sellers and others,

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“Indeed, the Rock is opened for the people, so whoever wants to pray in it, let him come.” The people hastened to prayer in the Rock, and most people who reached it prayed two rakʿas, although a smaller number did four rakʿas. Whoever smelled his scent said, “This person is one of those who entered the Rock.” Then they washed the traces of their feet with water and wiped with green myrtle and dried with towels and closed the doors. There were ten guards at each door and it was only opened on Monday and Thursday; only the servants entered it on the other days. From Abū Bakr ibn al-Ḥārith, may God be pleased with him, who said, “All of it was lit up during the caliphate of ʿAbd al-Malik with al-Madīnī frankincense and the lead lily.” And he said that the servants said to him, “O Abū Bakr, pass by us with a lamp with which we may anoint and perfume ourselves.” And he did that for them. He did all of that during the caliphate of ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān. (275) Al-Walīd said, “ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Manṣūr ibn Thābit narrated to us, saying: My father narrated to me, from his grandfather, saying, ‘In the chain that was in the center of the dome above the Rock was a precious pearl and the two horns of the ram of Abraham and the crown of Kisrā, hung in the days of ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān.’ ” When the caliphate went to the Banū Hāshim, they took them to the Kaʿba, may God, the Exalted, protect it. Construction of the Dome of the Rock and the Masjid al-Aqṣā was finished in the year 73 of the noble Hijra, which was the year when ʿAbd Allāh ibn Zubayr was killed. Concerning him: ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān, when the time became clear to him and his rule in the caliphate became stable, sent al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf al-Thaqafī to fight ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr in Mecca. Al-Ḥajjāj came to al-Ṭāʾif and stayed there for a month. Then he advanced to Mecca and lay siege to Ibn al-Zubayr on the night of the new moon of Dhū al-Qaʿda of the year 72, and the siege continued until prices rose and the people were hit with famine. Al-Ḥajjāj continued the siege and fighting and assaulted the Kaʿba with the trebuchet. When he was assaulting it with it, the sky thundered and lightning flashed. A thunderbolt came, followed by a second one, and twelve of al-Ḥajjāj’s men were killed. The fighting intensified and Ibn al-Zubayr came out and fought a fierce battle. The people of al-Shām increased by the thousands from every side and they assaulted him with rocks until he was knocked down. Two of his clients bent over him and they were all killed and his associates dispersed. Al-Ḥajjāj ordered him to be crucified. That was on Tuesday of the fourteenth night passed of Jumādā II of the year 73 of the noble Hijra after a battle of seven months.



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When he was killed, he was around 73 years old. He was the first person born to the Emigrants after the Hijra, because allegiance was paid to him in year 64. His authority was recognized in the Ḥijāz, al-Irāq, Khurāsān and the eastern districts. He worshiped a great deal and he lived for forty years without taking his shirt from his back. His caliphate was for nine years. And he, may God be pleased with him, had long hair, parted in the middle. (276) When he was crucified, al-Ḥajjāj hung a dead dog next to him and prevented his mother from burying him; she was 100 years old and was Asmāʾ bint Abī Bakr al-Ṣiddīq, may God be pleased with her, called ‘the one with two girdles’. Then al-Ḥajjāj wrote to ʿAbd al-Malik to inform him about crucifying him. He wrote him back, blaming him and said, “You should have stayed out of the business between him and his mother.” He allowed her to bury him, and she died shortly thereafter. Al-Ḥajjāj sent to ʿAbd al-Malik, informing him of what Ibn al-Zubayr had added to the Kaʿba. ʿAbd al-Malik ordered it demolished and returned to what it had been in the lifetime of the Messenger of God, may God have mercy on him and grant him peace. He made one door for it. Al-Hajjāj did that, and it is the construction existing in our day. What happened between the construction and the demolition of the Kaʿba has been mentioned previously. To conclude: our lord Ibrāhīm the Friend, upon him be mercy and peace, built the Kaʿba, which is the inviolate House of God, as was mentioned previously, after he reached the age of 100 years.19 It remained standing for about 2775 years until the Quraysh demolished it in the year 35 after the birth of the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, and they rebuilt it, as was presented previously.20 That is the second construction and it continued around 82 years. Then al-Ḥuṣayn demolished it and burned it in the days of Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiya, as was mentioned previously.21 That was in year 64 of the Hijra. Then ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr built it on the bases of Ibrāhīm. That was the third construction and it lasted about nine years. Then al-Hajjāj demolished it and killed Ibn al-Zubayr in year 73 of the Hijra. Then al-Hajjāj built it and took the stone from the house and made it as it had been in the life of the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace. That was the fourth construction in year 74 of the

19 1:38–39. 20 1 177. 21 1:270, see above.

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Hijra. It has continued in that state up to the present time, which is the end of year 900. The Kaʿba was covered with qibāṭī cloth and then it was covered with burd cloth. The first one who covered it with dībāj cloth was al-Hajjāj ibn Yūsuf. As for the measurement of the walls of the noble Kaʿba, the length of its east wall from the highest (277) point to the ground of the circumambulation is 23 1/3 cubits, using the iron cubit. Likewise its three other walls, except for the north one, which is four cubits shorter than the east one. The west wall is eight cubits shorter than the east wall, while the south wall is exactly like the east one. Al-Fārisī mentioned that in his Taʾrīkh al-Mukhtaṣar. He and other historians mentioned the dimensions of the noble house in each direction accurately. But here is not the place to mention it, fearing length. As for the reports about the expansions of the Masjid al-Ḥarām and its rebuilding, the first one who expanded it was ʿUmar ibn al-Khattāb, may God be pleased with him, with houses that he bought and houses that he demolished on top of those who refused to sell, leaving their sale price for their owners in the storeroom of the Kaʿba. That was in year 20 of the Hijra. ʿUthmān did the same thing in year 26 of the Hijra. Then ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr expanded its east, north and south sides. Then al-Manṣūr the ʿAbbāsid expanded its north and west sides, and what he added was like what was there before. He began the work in Muḥarram of the year 137 and finished in Dhū al-Ḥijja of the year 140. Then the caliph al-Mahdī—Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Abī Jaʿfar al-Manṣūr, the ʿAbbāsid—went on the pilgrimage in the year 160. He stripped the Kaʿba and coated its walls with musk and ambergris from top to bottom and expanded the mosque on its south and west sides until it reached what it is today, except for the two additions that were renewed after him. The noble Kaʿba was on one side of the mosque, not in the middle. Then he demolished the walls of the mosque and purchased the houses and residences and brought engineers, and the Kaʿba came to be located in the middle. His expansion was in two phases, the first in year 161 and the second in year 167, which was the year in which he rebuilt the mosque of the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace. None of the rulers did anything as expensive in renovating the Masjid al-Ḥarām as al-Mahdī, may God have mercy on him. (278) Among those who renovated it without expansion was ʿAbd alMalik ibn Marwān, who raised its walls and roofed it with teak. His son al-Walīd renovated it and roofed it with decorated teak and covered it on the inside with marble. Added to it after al-Mahdī were the addition



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of the Dār al-Nadwa on the north side and the additions known as the addition of the Bāb Ibrāhīm on the west side. The addition of the Dār alNadwa was done in the time of al-Muʿtaḍid, the ʿAbbāsid. Writing to him about it began in the year 281. The addition in the Bāb Ibrāhīm was done in year 376. Many renovations have taken place in the Masjid al-Ḥarām since then. Some historians mention the dimensions of the Masjid al-Ḥarām without the two additions using the expression ‘the cubit of the hand’ and some with ‘the iron cubit’. Its length from the west wall to the opposite east wall was 356 cubits, valuing the cubit as the iron cubit. That would be 407 cubits using the cubit of the hand. That is from the middle of the west wall, which is the wall of the Ribāṭ al-Jawzī to the middle of the east wall at the Bāb al-Janāʾiz. Then it passes by it in the ḥijr enclosure adjoining the north wall of the Kaʿba. Its width from the north wall to the south wall was 266 cubits using the iron cubit, which would be 304 cubits using the cubit of the hand, and that from the middle of its old wall at the vaults to the middle of the south wall that is in between the Bāb al-Ṣafā and the Bāb Ajyād, passing by it between the Maqām Ibrāhīm and the Kaʿba and it is closer to the maqām. The addition of the Dār al-Nadwa is 470 iron cubits minus a quarter cubit, and from the large wall of the Masjid al-Ḥarām to the opposite north wall, where the door of its minaret is. This is its length, while its width is 70 and a half cubits, from its east wall to the middle of its west wall. As for the addition of the Bāb Ibrāhīm, its length is 59 cubits minus a sixth, from the columns that are parallel to the large mosque to the threshold that is in the gate (279) of this addition. Its width is 52 and a quarter cubits, from the start of the Bāb al-Jawzī to the wall of the Ribāṭ Rāmshat. As for the number of the gates of the Masjid al-Ḥarām, there are nineteen gates opening onto thirty-eight arches. On the east side are: Bāb Banī Shība with three arches, Bāb al-Salām, Bāb al-Janāʾiz with two arches, Bāb al-ʿAbbās with three arches and Bāb ʿAlī with three arches. On the south side are: Bāb Bāzān, Bāb al-Baghla, Bāb al-Ṣafā, the small Bāb al-Ajyād, Bāb al-Mujāhidīn, Bāb al-Madrasa al-Sharīf Ajlān, Bāb Umm Hānī; each of the gates on this side has two arches, except for Bāb al-Ṣafā, which has five. On the west side are: Bāb al-Gharūra covered with silk and with two arches, Bāb Ibrāhīm, named after Ibrāhīm the tailor, who was among them, while some name it after Ibrāhīm the Friend, upon him be blessing and peace, which is unlikely, with one arch and Bāb al-Amra with one arch. On the north side are: Bāb al-Sidda, Bāb Dār al-Majalla, Bāb

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al-Ziyāda with one and Bāb al-Sakīna; all of them have two arches except for Bāb al-Ziyāda, which has one. There are five minarets. A sixth minaret was added for the Madrasa of Sultan al-Malik al-Ashraf Qāytbāy, may God, the Exalted, grant him victory. What happened to the Kaʿba in the year 317 in the days of al-Mahdī bi-Allāh ʿUbayd Allāh, the first of the Fāṭimid caliphs, while the caliph in Baghdad at that time was al-Muqtadir bi-Allāh Abū al-Faḍl Jaʿfar the ʿAbbāsid, was that Abū Ṭāhir Sulaymān al-Qarmaṭī, the ruler of Baḥrayn, headed to Mecca and entered it on the Day of Deliberation, which was the eighth of Dhū al-Ḥijja, and plundered the possessions of the pilgrims and killed the people in the precincts of Mecca and its ravines, as well as in the Masjid al-Ḥarām and in the interior of the Kaʿba. The dead were buried in the well of Zamzam and in the Masjid al-Ḥarām. He ordered the stripping of the Kaʿba and took the covering off of it and divided it among his associates. He demolished the dome of Zamzam and ordered the black stone to be removed and he took it to Hijr. It remained in their land for twenty-two years and was not returned until year 339. When the Imām Abū al-Qāsim ʿUmar ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Kharaqī al-Ḥanbalī arranged the book Al-Khalāṣa (280) fi Fiqh Madhhab al-Imām Aḥmad, may God be pleased with him, he said in the book on pilgrimage in the chapter about the pilgrimage and entering Mecca, that when entering the Masjid al-Ḥarām, it is preferable to enter from the Bāb Banī Shība and when one sees the house one raises one’s hands and states the greatness of God, the Exalted, and then one goes to the black stone, if it is there. He said that because he arranged the book at the time when the black stone was in the hands of the Qarmaṭīs when they took it from its place. They did not return it until after the death of Abū al-Qāsim al-Kharaqī at the time already mentioned. Abū al-Qāsim, may God have mercy on him, died in Damascus the well-protected, in year 334, fifty years before the return of the black stone to its place. The Characteristics of the Masjid al-Aqṣā and What It Was Like in the Time of ʿAbd al-Malik and After Him Al-Ḥāfiẓ Bahāʾ al-Dīn ibn ʿAsākir narrated that there were six thousand pieces of wood in the roof at that time, not including the columns of wood, and there were fifty doors. Al-Qurṭubī said, among them are Bāb Dāʾūd, Bāb Sulaymān, Bāb Ḥiṭṭa, Bāb Muḥammad, upon him be blessing and peace, Bāb al-Ṭawba, in which



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God, to Whom are power and majesty, forgave Dāʾūd, Bāb al-Raḥma, the Abwāb al-Asbāṭ, six gates, and Bāb al-Walīd, Bāb al-Hāshimī, Bāb al-Khiḍr and Bāb al-Sakīna. In it were six hundred columns of marble and seven miḥrābs. There are four hundred chains for the lamps, minus fifteen; two hundred and thirty of them are in the Masjid al-Aqṣā and the remainder are in the noble Dome of the Rock. The length of the chains is four thousand cubits and their weight is 43,000 Syrian raṭls. In it are five thousand lamps. Lit along with the lamps were two thousand candles on Friday night and the night of the middle of Rajab and Shaʿbān and Ramaḍān and the nights of the two festivals. In it are fifteen domes, excluding the Dome of the Rock. On the surface of the mosque are 7,700 lead tiles, each weighing seventy Syrian raṭls, excluding those on the Dome of the Rock. That work was in the days of ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān. And he arranged for it permanently (281) three hundred servants purchased from the fifth of the treasury. Whenever one of them died, his son or the son of his son or someone from his family took his place continuing that for as long as they reproduced. In it are twenty-four large reservoirs and four minarets, three of which are in one line on the west of the mosque, and one is above Bāb al-Asbāt. It had ten Jewish servants, from whom the jizya was not collected and who reproduced and became twenty, to sweep the filth of the mosque left during the holidays and in winter and summer and to sweep the places of purification that are around the congregational mosque. It has ten Christian servants, inhabitants of the house who inherited its service to make the carpets, to sweep the carpets of the mosque and the channel in which the water runs to the reservoirs and also to sweep the reservoirs and other things. Among the Jewish servants is a group who make the glass lamps, bowls, chandeliers and other things. The jizya is not collected from them nor from those who trim the wicks of the lamps, they and their sons for ever for as long as they reproduce from the time of ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān and it is still continuing. ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān died in Damascus on Thursday the fifteenth night having passed of Ramaḍān, in the year 86 of the noble Hijra when he was sixty years old. His caliphate from the killing of Ibn al-Zubayr and the uniting of the people to him was thirteen years and four months minus seven nights. And he was in al-Shām and the area he ruled before the killing of Ibn al-Zubayr for seven years and around nine months.

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Al-Hajjāj died in the month of Ramaḍan, and it is said Shawwāl, in the year 95 of the Hijra when he was fifty three. He died in al-Wāsiṭ; he is the one who built it. His grave has disappeared and water flows upon it. Rajāʾ ibn Ḥaywa, who was appointed to construct the Rock and the Masjid al-Aqṣā, died in year 112. His head and beard were red. When Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Malik the Umayyad became caliph after his brother al-Walīd in year 96 of the Hijra, he went to Bayt al-Maqdis and the delegations came to him to pay allegiance. No one ever saw a reception-ceremony that was (282) sweeter than his. He sat in a dome in the courtyard of the mosque of Bayt al-Maqdis near the Rock, perhaps the dome known as the Qubbat Sulaymān near the Bāb al-Duwaydarīya. Carpets were spread in front of his dome, with cushions and chairs upon them, and he sat and permitted the people to come, who sat on the chairs and pillows, while money and the registers were next to him. He was considering residing in Bayt al-Maqdis and taking it as a residence and he gathered the funds and the people to it. He, may God the Exalted have mercy on him, praised the religious scholars. Ibn Sīrīn, may God have mercy on him, said, “May God have mercy on Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Malik; he opened his caliphate with good, he prayed the prayers at their appointed times and finished it with good.” He was succeeded by ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, called al-Mahdī bi-Allāh al-Dāʿī ilā Allāh. He died in the year 99 of the Hijra when he was forty five years old, may God have mercy on him. From ʿAṭāʾ from his father, he said that the Jews lighted the lights of Bayt al-Maqdis, but when ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz became caliph, he removed them and arranged it from the fifth. A man from the people of the fifth came to him and said to him, “Set me free.” Then he said, “How can I set you free? If you were to go, look, I would not have a single hair of your body. ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAziz became caliph in Ṣafar in year 99 of the Hijra. He was called al-Maʿṣūm bi-Allāh and his caliphate was for two years and five months. He died in Dayr Simʿān in the districts of Ḥimṣ on Friday five days remaining of Rajab of the year 101, may God be pleased with him. It is narrated from ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Manṣūr ibn Thābit from his father from his grandfather that all of the gates were covered with sheets of gold and silver in the caliphate of ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān. When Abū Jaʿfar al-Manṣūr the ʿAbbāsid came, the east and west portions of the mosque having collapsed, it was said to him, “O Commander of the Faithful, the east and west portions of the mosque collapsed from the earthquake in the year 130; so order the construction



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and rebuilding of this mosque.” Then he said, “I do not have any money.” Then he ordered the plates of gold and silver that were on the doors to be removed. They were removed, and dinars and dirhams were minted and he spent on it until it was finished. The caliphate of al-Manṣūr was in the year 136. He was the second of the caliphs of the (283) Banū ʿAbbās and was the one who built the city of Baghdad. Its construction started in the year 145. He died on Saturday with six nights remaining of Dhū al-Ḥijja in the year 158. He was sixty-five years old and was buried in Mecca. Then there was a second earthquake, and the building that Abū Jaʿfar had ordered built fell. Then al-Mahdī came later, when it was ruined. That was brought to his attention and he ordered its construction and said, “This mosque is shabby and is long and without people.” They shortened its length and increased its width. Then the construction was completed in his caliphate. He was Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Manṣūr, called al-Mahdī. Allegiance as caliph was paid to him between the corner and the shrine with six days remaining of Dhū al-Ḥijja of the year 158. When al-Mahdī came, wanting to go to Bayt al-Maqdis, he entered the mosque of Damascus with Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ashʿarī, his secretary, and he said to him, “O Abū ʿAbd Allāh, the Banū Umayya have excelled us in three things.” And he asked, “And what are they, o Commander of the Faithful?” He said, “This house—meaning the mosque—I do not know on the face of the earth anything like it. And the inclination of the clients to them is not like the clients to us. And ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, there will never be among us, by God, anyone else like him.” Then he came to Bayt al-Maqdis and entered the Rock and he said, “O Abū ʿAbd Allāh, this is the fourth.” Al-Mahdī died on Thursday with eight days remaining of al-Muḥarram of the year 199, when he was forty-eight years old. Al-Ḥāfiẓ ibn ʿAsākir said, “And the length of the Masjid al-Aqṣā is 755 cubits with the cubit of the king and its width is 465 cubits with the cubit of the king.” Abū al-Maʿālī al-Musharrif said likewise. The writer of the Muthīr al-Gharām said, “I went to visit Jerusalem and al-Shām, but I saw a long time ago in the inside of the north wall that is above the gate near the Bāb al-Duwaydarīya a panel that had on it the length and width of the mosque. That is different from what we mentioned. On it was that its length is 784 cubits and its width is 455 cubits (284). He said, “And it identified the cubit.” But I did not investigate that. Is it the cubit mentioned before or another to mix up the writing? He said he had measured its length and width with ropes in our time. Its length

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from the east side was 683 cubits and from the west 650 cubits. Its width is 438 cubits outside of the width of the walls and he ended. As for its length and width in our own day, which is the end of year 900, I will mention them in full in what follows about the description of the Masjid al-Aqṣā and what it has in our time. I will mention its length from the south side to the north side and its width from the east side to the west side. Likewise inside the Jāmi‘ al-Aqṣā from at the miḥrāb near the minbar to the entrance door and its width and the courtyard of the noble Rock and the height of the dome. I will fully mention the length and width using the work cubit by which the buildings are measured in our time. And I will render that accurately according to the places, if God the Exalted, wills.22 As for what was present in Bayt al-Maqdis on some of the rocks, Abū Sulaymān al-Khiṭābī transmitted in the book Al-Uzla ʿan Dhī al-Nūn that he said, “I found lines written on the Rock of Bayt al-Maqdis and when I translated them, on it was written ‘Every rebel is savage. And every obedient one is gentle. And every fearful one flees. And every hopeful one seeks. And every contented one is rich. And every beloved one is humble.’ ” From Abū Bakr al-Ṭarṭūshī, may God have mercy on him, who said, “One night I was standing in the Masjid al-Aqṣā and the only thing that startled me was a voice that almost broke one’s heart as it recited the poetry: Fear and security? How amazing that is! My heart was bereft of you, but you are lying. By the glory of God, if you were truthful, You would not have been able to close your eyes in sleep. And by God, the eyes cried and the hearts grieved.

Sahl ibn Ḥātim, who was one of the worshippers, said, “Abū Saʿīd, a man from Alexandria, reported to me, saying, ‘I was spending the night in Bayt al-Maqdis and it was almost empty of people on vigil’ (285). He said, ‘I got up one night after much of the night had passed and I looked and I did not see in the mosque anyone on vigil.’ And he mentioned that he heard a voice reciting poetry: O what a wonder for the people! Their eyes were delighted. Sleep, after it death is raised up.

22 2:24.



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He said, ‘I fell on my face and my mind went and when I woke up I looked and no one on vigil remained who had not left’.” It is said that five hundred virgins with clothes of wool and remembering the righteousness of God the Exalted and His punishment entered Bayt al-Maqdis in the time of the Children of Israel and they all died from fear. Al-Bayhaqī reported from Ibn Shihāb that in the morning when Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, may God be pleased with him, was killed no stone in Jerusalem was raised without blood being found under it. And likewise on the day his father ʿAlī, may God be pleased with them, was killed. The killing of Ḥusayn, may God be pleased with him, was in Karbalāʾ on ʿĀshūrāʾ Day of the year 61 of the Hijra. Other Passages About the Umayyads and ʿAbbāsids in al-Uns al-Jalīl Mujīr al-Dīn mentioned the Umayyads and the ʿAbbāsids only a few times elsewhere in al-Uns al-Jalīl. The most extensive such passage concerns the mosque of the Prophet in Medina:23 The noble mosque at the time of the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, was built of mudbrick with a roof of palm branches and columns of palm wood. Abū Bakr did not add anything to it. ʿUmar added to it and built on its structure in the time of the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, with mudbricks, palm branches and returned its columns with wood. Then ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān changed it during his caliphate and added much to it. He built its walls with dressed and cut stone and made its columns of dressed stone and its roof of teak. Then when the caliphate came to al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, who built the mosque of Damascus, he put ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, may God be pleased with him, in charge of Medina and wrote to him in the year 87 of the noble Hijra, ordering him to demolish the mosque of the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, and demolish the houses of the wives of the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace and be pleased with them, and to bring the houses within the mosque so that the size of the mosque would be two hundred cubits by two hundred cubits and to place the eights of the houses from the treasury. The people of Medina responded to that, and the artisans came from al-Walīd to rebuild the mosque, and ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz devoted himself to that and built the

23 1:190–91.

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But other than that, Mujīr al-Dīn had little to say. In his section about alRamla and Lod,24 he barely mentioned that one of the Umayyad caliphs, Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Malik, built the congregational mosque when he became caliph in the year 96 of the noble Hijra,25 rather than giving the fuller story of Sulaymān founding the city and demolishing nearby Lod that other authors, such as al-Balādhurī and al-Jahshiyārī recorded.26 He said nothing about the Umayyads and ʿAbbāsids in his presentation of the history of Hebron, beyond the briefest mention of a copy of the endowment of Tamīm al-Dārī being written by the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Mustanjid bi-Allāh (555–566/1160–1170).27 Among the few other references, he mentioned a grave in Jerusalem near Bāb al-Nāẓir said to be the grave of Fāṭima, the daughter of Muʿāwiya,28 and he mentioned that the Qubbat Sulaymān in the north part of the Masjid al-Aqṣā compound dates back to the Umayyad period,29 and he thought it possible that the Jāmiʿ al-Maghāriba in the southwest corner of the Masjid al-Aqṣā compound may go back to the Umayyads.30 Mujir al-Din did not mention Christians in the Umayyad and ʿAbbāsid periods in his account after the surrender of the city by the Patriarch Sophronius to the Caliph ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb until the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre by the Fāṭimid Caliph al-Ḥākim bi-Amr

24 2:66–73. 25 2:69. 26 Aḥmad bin Yaḥyā ibn Jābir al-Balādhurī, Futūḥ al-Buldān, ed. M. J. de Goeje (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1866), 143; Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdūs al-Jahshiyārī, Al-Wuzarāʾ wa-al-Kuttāb, ed. Muṣṭafā al-Saqā, Ibrāhīm al-Abyārī and ʿAbd al-Ḥāfiẓ Shalabī (Cairo: Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1938), 48–49. 27 2:81–82. 28 2:43. 29 2:21. 30 2:16.



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Allāh,31 although he did mention that ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ sent oil for lighting to Bethlehem where ʿĪsā, upon him be peace, was born.32 Commentary Mujīr al-Dīn, resident in Jerusalem for most of his life, was in an unrivaled position to bring his own local knowledge to bear in his coverage of the history of Jerusalem and Hebron, and he had a major interest in al-Uns al-Jalīl of documenting the Islamic sites and monuments in Jerusalem. So one might anticipate that what he wrote about the Umayyads and ʿAbbāsids and Jerusalem would be of potentially greater importance than the accounts of other pre-modern Muslim authors. But it is remarkable just how uninteresting his account is. There is little in his account about the Umayyads and ʿAbbāsids translated here that could not have been written by anyone else living anywhere with access to some books of general Islamic history and compilations of reports about the merits of Jerusalem. Remarkably few details reflect any special local knowledge on his part. His mention of a grave in Jerusalem near Bāb al-Nāẓir said to be the grave of Fāṭima, the daughter of Muʿāwiya is one example.33 Another example is his suggestions that the dome where Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Malik received the delegations was the Qubbat Sulaymān near the Bāb al-Duwaydarīya and that the dome perhaps dated back to the Umayyads,34 although the dome where Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Malik was should rather be identified with the Qubbat al-Silsila just to the east of the Dome of the Rock, based on Ibn al-Murajjā’s statement in his eleventh-century Merits of Jerusalem compilation.35 A third example of Mujīr al-Dīn’s local knowledge is his 31 1:303. 32 2:65. 33 2:43. The grave is perhaps to be identified with the one in the Ribāṭ al-Manṣūrī on the west side of the Masjid al-Aqṣā compound, see Michael Burgoyne, Mamluk Jerusalem, (London: British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, 1987), 138. 34 1 282 and 2:21. For the Qubbat Sulaymān, see Robert Hillenbrand and Sylvia Auld, eds., Ayyubid Jerusalem. The Holy City in Context 1187–1250, (London: Altajir Trust, 2009), 156–63, 252–54. For Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Malik and Jerusalem, see Reinhard Eisener, Zwischen Faktum und Fiktion. Eine Studie zum Umayyadenkalifen Sulaimān b. ʿAbdalmalik und seinem Bild in den Quellen. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1987, pp. 39–40, n. 16. The Bāb al-Duwaydarīya is the Mamluk-period name for the gate in the middle of the north wall of the compound, also known as Bāb al-ʿAtm. 35 Ofer Livne-Kafari, ed., Faḍāʾil Bayt al-Maqdis wa-al-Khalīl wa-Faḍāʾil al-Shām by Abū al-Maʿāli al-Musharraf ibn al-Murajjā ibn Ibrāhīm al-Maqdisī (Shfaram: Dār al-Mashriq,

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idea that the Jāmiʿ al-Maghāriba in the southwest corner of the Masjid al-Aqṣā compound may go back to the Umayyads,36 although the extant building is assigned to the Crusader Templar Knights.37 Mujīr al-Dīn’s description later on of Jerusalem in his own day, however, is much more valuable. Mujīr al-Dīn wrote in the late fifteenth century, hundreds of years after the events of the seventh to ninth centuries, and his account does not present original information not found in his sources. Virtually all of his coverage for the Umayyads and ʿAbbāsids and Jerusalem is a re-arranged close copy of an earlier compilation of traditions about the Merits of Jerusalem, the book Muthīr al-Gharām ilā Ziyārat al-Quds wa-al-Shām, written in 1351 by Shihāb al-Dīn Abū Maḥmūd ibn Tamīn al-Maqdisī, a long-term resident of Jerusalem, if not a native.38 All of al-Maqdisī’s chapters 6 and 7 about ʿAbd al-Malik, the Dome of the Rock and the Masjid al-Aqṣā, for example, were copied almost word for word by Mujīr al-Dīn.39 Al-Maqdisī himself copied his information from earlier compilations, and his book was also copied freely by Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad Shams al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī, who came to Jerusalem in 1470–1471 and wrote there his Ittiḥāf al-Akhṣā bi-Faḍāʾil al-Masjid al-Aqṣā, another of the major compilations of the Merits of Jerusalem.40 Another noteworthy feature of Mujīr al-Dīn’s account is how much attention he paid to Mecca.41 Specifically in the portion translated here, he devoted to Mecca at the time of the Civil War between ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Zubayr and ʿAbd al-Malik and to a lengthy description of the Masjid 1995), 226, no. 333. See Andreas Kaplony, The Ḥaram of Jerusalem 324–1099. Temple, Friday Mosque, Area of Spiritual Power (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2002), 304–305. 36 2:16. 37 Burgoyne, Mamluk Jerusalem, 260–61; Hillenbrand and Auld, Ayyubid Jerusalem, 370. 38 Shihāb al-Dīn Abū Maḥmūd ibn Tamīn al-Maqdisī, Muthīr al-Gharām ilā Ziyārat alQuds wa-al-Shām, ed. Aḥmad al-Khuṭaymī (Beirut: Dār al-Jīl, 1994), 171–77, 345. 39 Many of the parallel passages of al-Maqdisī were translated into English by Guy Le Strange, Palestine Under the Moslems (Reprint Beirut: Khayats, 1965): 144–49. For further discussion of these passages, see especially the publications of Amikam Elad: “Why Did ʿAbd al-Malik Build the Dome of the Rock? A Re-examination of the Muslim Sources,” in Julian Raby and Jeremy Johns, eds., Bayt al-Maqdis. ʿAbd al-Malik’s Jerusalem, Part One (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 33–58; idem, Medieval Jerusalem and Islamic Worship (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995), esp. 51–61; idem, “ʿAbd al-Malik and the Dome of the Rock: A Further Examination of the Muslim Sources,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 35 (2008): 167–226, esp. 179–83. 40 Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suyūtī, Ittiḥāf al-Akhṣā bi-Faḍāʾil al-Masjid al-Aqṣā, ed. Aḥmad Ramaḍān Aḥmad (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣrīya al-ʿĀmmah li-alKitāb, 1982–1984). 41 Discussed by Little, “Mujīr al-Dīn,” JAOS 115 (1995): 237–47.



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al-Ḥarām precinct about two thirds of the coverage that he devoted to Jerusalem. Neither al-Maqdisī nor al-Suyūṭī included similar detailed descriptions of Mecca in their Merits of Jerusalem compilations. Mujīr al-Dīn wrote extensively about Mecca elsewhere: in his accounts of the prophets Ibrāhīm,42 and Sulaymān,43 and in his long biography of the Prophet Muḥammad,44 as well as in a long section about the Merits of Jerusalem.45 Such extensive coverage of Mecca was not his original intention. As he mentioned in his introduction,46 he intended to write about Jerusalem and Hebron only, but when he reflected, he realized that the interconnection of events would lead him to write about the construction activity at the Kaʿba, the Mosque of the Prophet and other events. That enabled him to emphasize the Islamic links between Mecca and Jerusalem. Bibliography al-Anṣārī, Fahmī, Muʾarrikh al-Quds wa-al-Khalīl Mujīr al-Dīn Abū al-Yumn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-ʿUmarī al-ʿUlaymī al-Ḥanbalī. Ḥayātuhu wa-Mawḍaʿ Qabrihi. Publication no. 6, Part 3. Jerusalem: Qism Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-Islāmī, 1986. Asʿad, Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh, Mujīr al-Dīn al-Ḥanbalī. Shakhsīyatuhu wa-Manhajuhu al-Tārīkhī wa-Makānatuhu bayna al-Muʾarrikhīn al-Muʿāṣirīn lahu. Ph.D Thesis. Jāmiʿat al-Qadīs Yūsuf, Beirut, 2002. al-ʿAsalī, Kāmil. “Mujīr al-Dīn al-ʿUlaymī al-Ḥanbalī: Muʾarrikh al-Quds—Naṣṣ Jadīd ʿan Ḥayātihi wa-Naṣṣ Dhayl Kitābihi al-Uns al-Jalīl.” Dirāsāt (University of Jordan) 12.8 (1985): 115–35. ——. Makhṭūṭāt Faḍāʾil Bayt al-Maqdis. Dirāsah wa-Bībliyūghrāfiyā. ʿAmmān: Dār al-Bashīr, 1981. [English title: K. J. Asali, Fadaʾil Bayt al-Maqdis Manuscripts: A Study and a Bibliography]. al-Balādhurī, Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā ibn Jābir. Futūḥ al-Buldān. Edited by M. J. de Goeje Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1866. Burgoyne, Michael. Mamluk Jerusalem. London: British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, 1987. Eisener, Reinhard. Zwischen Faktum und Fiktion. Eine Studie zum Umayyadenkalifen Sulaimān b. ʿAbdalmalik und seinem Bild in den Quellen. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1987. Elad, Amikam. “Why Did ʿAbd al-Malik Build the Dome of the Rock? A Re-examination of the Muslim Sources.” In Julian Raby and Jeremy Johns, eds., Bayt al-Maqdis. ʿAbd alMalik’s Jerusalem. Part One. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, 33–58. ——. Medieval Jerusalem and Islamic Worship. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1995.

42 1:36–39. 43 1 126–27. 44 1 172–226. 45 1:226–44. 46 1:4.

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——. “ ʿAbd al-Malik and the Dome of the Rock: A Further Examination of the Muslim Sources.” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 35 (2008): 167–226. de Hammer, Joseph, trans. “Extraits du livre. Enisol-Djelil fit-tarikhi Kouds vel-Khalil. Le Compagnon sublime dans l’histoire de Jérusalem et d’Abraham, par le juge Medjireddin, Ebil-yemen Abdor-rahman, El-alemi, mort l’an 927 de l’Hegire.” Fundgruben des Orient / Mines de l’Orient / Makhzan al-Kunūz al-Mashriqīyah wa-Maʿdan al-Rumūz al-Ajnabīyah 2 (1811) 81–100, 118–42, 375–87; 3 (1813) 70–83, 118–28, 211–20; 4 (1814) 215–37; 5 (1816) 145–63. Hillenbrand, Robert and Sylvia Auld, eds. Ayyubid Jerusalem. The Holy City in Context 1187– 1250. London: Altajir Trust, 2009. al-Ḥusaynī, Isḥaq Mūsā and Ḥasan al-Silwādī. Fahāris Kitāb al-Uns al-Jalīl bi-Tarīkh al-Quds wa-al-Khalīl li-Mujīr al-Dīn al-Ḥanbalī. Jerusalem: Dār al-Ṭifl al-ʿArabī, 1988. al-Jahshiyārī, Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdūs. Al-Wuzarāʾ wa-al-Kuttāb. Edited by Muṣṭafā al-Saqā, Ibrāhīm al-Abyārī and ʿAbd al-Ḥāfiẓ Shalabī. Cairo: Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1938. Kaplony, Andreas. The Ḥaram of Jerusalem 324–1099. Temple, Friday Mosque, Area of Spiritual Power. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2002. Little, Donald. “Mujīr al-Dīn al-ʿUlaymī’s Vision of Jerusalem in the Ninth/Fifteenth Century.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 115 (1995): 237–47. Livne-Kafari, Ofer, ed., Faḍāʾil Bayt al-Maqdis wa-al-Khalīl wa-Faḍāʾil al-Shām by Abū al-Maʿāli al-Musharraf b. al-Murajjā b. Ibrāhīm al-Maqdisī. Shfaram: Dār al-Mashriq, 1995. al-Maqdisī, Shihāb al-Dīn Abū Maḥmūd Ibn Tamīn. Muthīr al-Gharam ilā Ziyārat al-Quds wa-al-Shām. Edited by Aḥmad al-Khatibī. Beirut: Dār al-Jīl, 1994. Mayer, Leo. “A Sequel to Mujīr ad-Dīn’s Chronicle.” Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society 11 (1931): 85–97. Mujīr al-Dīn al-ʿUlaymī. Al-Manhaj al-Aḥmad fī Tarājim Aṣḥāb al-Imām Aḥmad. Edited by ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Arnāʾūṭ. Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1999. ——. Al-Uns al-Jalīl bi-Tarīkh al-Quds wa-al-Khalīl. Amman: Maktabat Dandis, 1999. ——. Fatḥ al-Raḥmān fi Tafsīr al-Qurʾān. Edited by Nūr al-Din Ṭālib. Beirut: Dār al-Nawādir, 1995. ——. Al-Durr al-Munaḍḍad fī Dhikr Aṣḥāb al-Imām Aḥmad. Edited by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Sulaymān ʿUthaymīn. Saudi Arabia: Maktabat al-Tawba, 1992. ——. Al-Uns al-Jalīl bi-Tarīkh al-Quds wa-al-Khalīl. Amman: Maktabat al-Muḥtasib, 1973. ——. Al-Uns al-Jalīl bi-Tarīkh al-Quds wa-al-Khalīl. Najaf: al-Maktaba al-Ḥaydarīya, 1968. ——. Al-Uns al-Jalīl bi-Tārīkh al-Quds wa-al-Khalīl. Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Wahbīya, 1283/1866. Sauvaire, Henry, trans. Histoire de Jérusalem et d’Hébron. Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1876. Available online at www.worldcat.org. Schick, Robert. “Geographical Terminology in Mujir al-Din’s History of Jerusalem.” In Khalid El-Awaisi, ed. Geographical Dimensions of Islamic Jerusalem. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008, 91–105. ——. “The Life of Jesus in Mujīr al-Dīn’s 15th-Century History of Jerusalem.” Journal of the Henry Martyn Institute 24 (2005): 89–111. al-Suyūtī, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Manhajī Shams al-Dīn. Ittihaf al-Akhissa bi-Fadāʾil al-Masjid al-Aqṣā. Edited by Aḥmad Ramaḍān Aḥmad. Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Misrīya al-ʿAmma li-al-Kitāb, 1981. Williams, George. The Holy City. Historical, Topographical, and Antiquarian Notices of Jerusalem (2nd Edition, with Supplement: Historical and Descriptive Memoir Illustrative of the Ordnance Survey). London: John W. Parker, 1849.

PART THREE

QURʾĀN, LAW, AND NARRATIVE

Reproducing Power: Qurʾānic Anthropogonies in Comparison Kathryn Kueny The Qurʾān offers myriad accounts to depict how God generates human life.1 However, three major models predominate. For example, the Qurʾān portrays how God uses various types of clay as foundation, and then breathes life into the form he fashions. This masculine, artisan model of creation mirrors Near Eastern, biblical anthropogonies. The Qurʾān also draws from pagan, agricultural motifs to demonstrate God’s unique versatility as he manufactures or delivers human life from intimate plantings in a feminized earth, or from sexual pairings.2 To underscore God’s exceptional mastery over both creative techniques, the Qurʾān fuses artisan (urban) and agricultural models together as God shapes man from clay first (into a kind of homunculus), and then plants him as “sperm” (nuṭfa) in the womb second. Finally, the Qurʾān engages Hippocratic, Galenic, and Aristotelian paradigms of fetal development to illustrate further how God also dictates nature to generate humans from nonliving matter. Although conception, gestation, and birth seemingly follow a natural, mechanistic path, the Qurʾān affirms God alone initiates the progression from inanimate nuṭfa to child. The Qurʾān asserts this amalgam of Near Eastern artisan paradigms, pagan agricultural motifs, and contemporary Greek medical theories in its depiction of human creation to supplant (1) biblical portrayals of God’s generative efforts, which limit God’s nature and identity, and (wrongfully) separate human reproduction from divine creation; and (2) pagan, “scientific” theories that privilege human sexuality and other atomistic, mechanistic processes over God in the conception, development, and animation

1 For an incomplete sampling of God’s many and varied creative efforts, see Sūras 4:1; 6:2; 7:198; 15:26; 16:4; 22:5; 23:12; 23:12–14; 24:45; 25:54; 31:28; 32:7; 35:11; 38:71; 39:6; 40:67; 42:11; 53:45–46; 55:14; 76:2; 86:6–7. 2 In general, the period under consideration might best be referred to as “late antiquity,” which roughly covers the transitional centuries from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, or, from the second or third to eighth centuries (Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity [Norton, 1989]).

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of life.3 However, the panoply of God’s creative efforts dispersed throughout the Qurʾān more strongly suggests that while past authoritative tradition, human sexuality, or nature may play a role in the re/production of human life, all of these causalities are subordinate to a divine will that human reason can never precisely identify, define, or replicate.4 Near Eastern, Artisan Foundations of Human Creation: Clay and Water In order to show his mastery and supreme power over all life, the Qurʾān reiterates familiar Near Eastern stories of God’s generation of humans from inanimate, earthy materials, such as those found in Genesis 2:7: The Lord God formed man of the dust from the earth (wayyîṣer yəhwâ ʾĕlōhîm ʾet-hāʾādām ʿāfār min-hāʾădāmâ).5 In contrast, the qurʾānic God prefers clay (ṭīn) in his molding of humanity: “It is he who created you from clay (ṭīn) then decreed a term.”6 However, the Qurʾān does not limit him to

3 Clearly these “debates” suggest the Qurʾān emerged in a kind of multireligious, cosmopolitan milieu where knowledge of Greek medical wisdom and philosophy, along with Jewish and Christian cosmologies and anthropogonies, would have been well-known among both Meccan and Medinan elites and would in fact have rivaled the Qurʾān’s message about how and why God creates life. However, those hearing the Qurʾān’s message on creation and reproduction would have favored a belief system that emphasizes how God and God alone causes life to be, in whatever form, and through whatever means, he chooses over and against recourse to “natural law” or prior tradition. In this way, qurʾānic stories about creation contain within them a kind of logic that undermines rival Jewish, Christian, and pagan theories that presume humans or nature generate life in ways similar to God. 4 This article takes the general approach that the Qurʾān should be read in light of its sectarian context, which includes both Christian and Jewish scripture (as argued most recently by Gabriel Said Reynolds in The Qurʾān and its Biblical Subtext [Routledge, 2010]), but also, as the following will suggest, Greek mythology, science, and medicine, which make their way into qurʾānic creation stories and reproductive theories. 5 For Mesopotamian examples similar to Genesis 2:7, where humans are generated from dirt or clay, see Atrahasis, where Nintu creates humans by mixing clay with the blood of a slain God (Stephanie Dalley, trans., Myths from Mesopotamia [Oxford, 1989], 15). For Greek examples see Hesiod’s Works and Days (trans. M. L. West [Oxford, 1999], lines 47–105), and Theogony (trans. Norman O. Brown [Prentice Hall, 1953], lines 507–616), in which Hephaestos fashions Pandora from clay. For Roman examples, see Ovid’s Metamorphoses I.85, where the “son of Iapetus fashioned that earth, mingled with the waters of rain, into the image of the gods that guide the world” (trans. Z. Phillip Ambrose, Focus Publishing, 2004, 4); and Pseudo-Hyginus, Fabulae 142, where he used just clay to create Pandora (The Myths of Hyginus, translated and edited by Mary Grant [University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies, no. 34. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960]). 6 Sūra 6:2: See also Sūras 23:12; 32:7; and 38:71. Ṭīn, which refers to a pure form of clay that remains after the subsiding of water, has a reputation for preventing plague or pestilence, and has the power to purify corrupt water (Edward Lane, Arabic English Lexicon



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ṭīn alone. Other verses mention God’s use of potter’s clay (ṣalṣāl);7 mud (ḥamāʾ);8 sticky clay (ṭīn lāzib);9 and dust (turāb).10 Water (māʾ)11 also serves as a foundational basis for God’s formation of life, both human and otherwise, and mirrors, perhaps, ancient Mediterranean or Near Eastern flood narratives, where life emerges after the subsiding of the waters.12 In all of these examples, God chooses some natural resource he alone shapes into life with his own hand,13 without help or intervention.

[London: Williams and Norgate, 1863], s.v. ṭīn). Interestingly, however, such clay would appear to be found in more fertile, agricultural regions, where rivers would flood and then reside, leaving sticky but fertile clay behind in which crops could be planted. Such references suggest these qurʾānic images may have been imported from more fertile lands like Mesopotamia or Egypt. 7 Sūras 15:26; 55:14. Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī notes that ṣalṣāl is dry clay, which has in it ṣalṣāla, or that which makes sounds (Tārīkh al-rusūl wa-al-mulūk, trans. Franz Rosenthal, vol. 1, General Introduction and From the Creation to the Flood [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989], 26); Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl āy al-qurʾān, vol. 4 [Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1994] (Tafsīr al-Ṭabarī), 477). See also Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad Riḍā al-Qummī, Tafsīr kanz al-daqāʾiq wa-baḥr al-gharāʾib, vol. 7 (Qum: Dār al-Ghadīr, 2003, 104). Ṭabāri reports further that Adam produced such a sound when Iblīs would pass by him and kick him (Tārīkh, 262). 8 Sūra 15:26. 9 Sūra 37:11. Ṭabarī notes the term lāzib refers to that which is viscous and sweet smelling, something that sticks or adheres to something else, or that which emerges from masnūn or muntin slime, meaning “stinking” slime (Tārīkh, 258–259). ʿAlī ibn Ibrāhīm al-Qummī notes that ṭīn lāzib is that which sticks to the hand (Tafsīr al-Qummī [Qum: Dhawā al-Qurbā, 2007], 525). 10 Sūras 22:5; 35:11; 40:67. 11 The word for “water” (māʾ) can also mean “sperm” or “semen,” at least in later Islamic medical texts. See, for example, Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, al-Tibyān fī aqsām al-qurʾān (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1994), 293. In the following two qurʾānic examples where water is mentioned, however, it is not clear that human sperm is indicated. In Sūra 24:45, God creates every beast from water (māʾ), and in Sūra 25:54, “it is he who created from water (māʾ) a human being.” In these examples, it appears as though water is just another natural resource God utilizes to generate human life. For a Roman account of water as an essential ingredient in man’s creation, see Ovid, Metamorphoses, where Prometheus used water from “living streams” to create humans (I:100–110). 12 Genesis 9 1. For a similar version of the flood, see Gilgamesh (trans. Dalley, 113–14). Again, as in the case of ṭīn, flooding would not be a major concern in either Mecca or Medina, since no great rivers grace these areas, which again suggests the imported nature of such imagery (or, perhaps, the overriding concern to preserve or usurp a Near Eastern, or biblical, heritage). 13 The role of God’s loving hands in the generation of life is reflected upon by Ibn ʿArabī, who states that “from the first existent thing down to the last of the children— the animals—God did not combine both his hands in anything He created except the human being, that is, in the human being’s earthly and bodily configurations. He created everything else either by divine command or with one hand” (Futūḥāt I 122.11, quoted and translated in The Tao of Islam, Sachiko Murata, SUNY Press, 1992, 88). Clearly, Ibn ʿArabī believed the creation of humans was a unique process that separated them from animals. See discussions of Sūra 32:7–9, which also maintains this position, below.

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The Qurʾān is relatively silent as to why God decides to utilize one substance over another, although the text does note that sticky clay (ṭīn lāzib) appears to be the stubborn, stinking substance God uses to create those “who see signs but turn them into mockery” (37:14). Many qurʾānic commentators, however, connect the type of clay God prefers in fashioning a human with her innate, natural disposition. For example, when God created the first human being, Adam, he selected ṭīn, the purest form.14 Humans shaped from ṭīn would be born untainted and righteous, though later may be “muddied” by their actions.15 Some exegetes suggest extraordinary human beings, like prophets, were formed from specific types of purified clay.16 Others propose human skin color stems from the type of clay originally chosen by God.17 Such exegetical speculations, however, do little to counter the fact that the Qurʾān deflects any assertions of interpretive certainty over God’s reasons for choosing particular raw materials to form humans. God’s supreme, solitary role in the fashioning of life is further underscored through the absence in these examples of any feminized earthly counterpart who must yield her natural substances to God’s hand. God’s dependency on the earth’s role in human creation is implied in Genesis 2:7, as Yahweh Elohim necessarily creates man of the dust from the earth (ʿāfār min-hāʾădāmâ).18 By way of contrast, the Qurʾān eliminates the feminized earth as an intermediary source that God must reckon with

14 Ṭabarī, Tārīkh, 258. See also al-Qummī, Tafsīr kanz, vol. 11, p. 98. Al-Qummī also records traditions that assert believers are formed from paradisiacal clay, while the unbelievers are fashioned from clay from hell (ibid.). 15 Ṭabarī actually aligns all the qurʾānic substances together to suggest the clay from which Adam was originally formed was moistened until it became sticky, and then what was left became stinking slime, and then dry clay (ṣalṣāl) (Tārīkh, 260–61). There is also the suggestion that God caused Adam’s clay to ferment, since he left it lying around as a body for forty years (ibid., 261). These exegetical examples emphasize man’s innate, corrupt disposition, a position that contradicts many qurʾānic passages that stress his purity at birth. 16 The Shīʿite exegete al-Qummī notes how believers are composed from the same type of clay (ṭīn) as the prophets (al-anbiyāʾ); however, prophets themselves are formed from the purest kind. The uppermost believers, however, are made from ṭīn lāzib; therefore God will not separate them those who separate from them (Tafsīr kanz, vol. 11, 98). In this light, “stickiness” is not equated with stubbornness or insubordination; rather, it suggests a steadfastness in character. 17 Ṭabarī, Tārīkh, 258–60. 18 While the Qurʾān does not link “clay” with “earth” in these passages, later exegetes, like Ṭabarī do. According to Ṭabarī, Adam was created from the skin (adīm) of the earth (Tārīkh, 258–259). Skin, however, is also a masculine noun. Here, the skin serves to protect the feminized earth.



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to extract his foundational, masculine substances—clay (ṭīn) or water (māʾ)—to generate life. Several Muslim exegetes continue to privilege this qurʾānic notion of creation as a solitary act to the point where God alone even multiplies Adam’s progeny without the help of Eve. Thaʿlabī, for example, relates how God created Adam, and then stroked his (Adam’s) back from which he withdrew offspring who were then destined for the Garden or Fire, a phenomenon also explored at some length by Ibn Kathīr.19 This autoerotic image of God stroking Adam’s back to generate human life without a female counterpart is underscored by the qurʾānic examples noted above that emphasize God’s dominant, creative power as he alone produces life in solitary fashion. In its elimination of any human or non-human helpers, partners, or repositories in the procreative process, the Qurʾān portrays its deity as a more transcendent, supreme, and powerful version of the biblical Yahweh Elohim. Pagan Agricultural Models of Human Creation: Earth, Soul and Sperm The Qurʾān, however, refuses to limit God’s creative nature to that of omnipotent artisan. In order to deny the divine identity that is affirmed in the above examples, many qurʾānic verses instead highlight God’s intimate—almost sexual—interactions with a feminized earth. For example, Sūra 71:17–18 mentions that “God caused you to germinate from the earth (anbatakum min al-arḍ), then he will return you into it and bring you out again.” Sūra 53:32 also asserts how God “knows you very well since he produced you from the earth (anshā’akum min al-arḍ).” These passages are unique in that they refer to God not as an artisan but as a farmer whose crops may die but are reborn each spring as a result of his farming. Here, the earth serves as a willing, animate recipient of God’s “seed”20 rather

19 Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUmar ibn Kathīr, Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ (Dimashsq: Dār Ibn Kathīr, 1992), 32. Abū Isḥāq Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Thaʿlabī, ʿArāʾis al-majālis fī qiṣiṣ al-anbiyāʾ, trans. William Brinner, Stories of the Prophets (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 70. 20 See also Sūra 22:6, where the barren, dry earth receives God’s water (māʾ), stirs to life, and then produces rich vegetation in pairs (zawj). The parallels between human reproduction and God’s generating life through his water (māʾ) raining down upon the earth is underscored by the fact that these verses on vegetation directly follow the Qurʾān’s discussion of how God creates human life in stages (22:6). For further discussions of the link between water (māʾ) and male semen, see note below. Pointedly, these references suggest their audience would have been comprised of those familiar with agricultural life and practices. Given the urban and/or pastoral environment in Arabia in which such

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than a static storehouse of natural resources to be mined and molded by him, as is the case in Genesis 2:7. This intimate partnership between God and earth is mirrored in human life also, as in Sūra 2:223, where women are depicted as “tillage” (ḥarth) for men to plough. Such agricultural metaphors that depict the earth in terms of female sexuality appear throughout Greek literature. For example, the Hippocratics liken the female body to a plowed and seeded field.21 Further, in Pindar’s Pythian IV, Lemnian women are described as “foreign furrows.”22 God’s intimate relationship with the earth reverberates elsewhere in the Qurʾān. For example, in Sūra 99:5, the earth (al-arḍ) serves as one of the few nonhuman, loving beneficiaries of God’s revelation (bi anna rabbaka awḥā lahā), the other being the bee.23 Later exegetes fleshed out this intimate partnership by relaying that when God sent Gabriel to the earth to gather for him some of her clay out of which he would fashion Adam, the earth refused, saying “I take refuge in God against your taking something away from me and mutilating me.”24 While ultimately the earth could only protest against and not refuse God’s request, her dissenting voice forced the angels to extract bits of clay from different points on her “skin” (adīm) so as not to mutilate her.25 Such examples of God’s partnering with

revelations would have been given, such imagery may have seemed foreign or out of place to those hearing the revelation. However, an intellectual milieu may be reconstructed in which an elite audience would have been familiar with agricultural traditions and practices to generate the necessary analogies, despite the fact that they would not have been actual practitioners. 21 See Ann Hanson, “The Medical Writers’ Women,” in Froma I. Zeitlin, John J. Winkler, and David Halperin, ed., Before Sexuality: The construction of erotic experience in the ancient Greek world (Princeton, 1990), 317, who cites Hp., Mul. 1.1, 8.10.1–14.7 L (Hippokratische Gynäkologie: Die gynäkologischen Texte des Autors C nach den pseudohippokratischen Schriften De Muliebribus I, II unde De Sterilibus, ed. H. Grensemann (Wiesbaden, 1982)). 22 Bruce Karl Braswell, A Commentary on the Fourth Pythian Ode of Pindar (Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1988), 50. In note 255 (b) in the commentary, Braswell provides an exhaustive list of Greek sources where human reproductive processes are compared to the planting and plowing of a field; for examples, cf. Thgn. 581–82, A. Th. 753–56 (lyr.), S. Tr. 31–33, Ant. 569, OT 1211 (lyr.), 1256–57, 1484–85, 1497–98, E. Med. 1281 (lyr.), Or. 553, etc. 23 Sūra 16:68. See also Kathryn Kueny and J. Andrew Foster, “From the Bodies of Bees: Classical and Christian Echoes in Surat al-Nahl,” Comparative Islamic Studies (Vol. 3, No. 2 [2007]), 145–68. 24 Ṭabarī, Tārīkh, 258–60. 25 Ṭabarī, Tārīkh, 258–259. For midrashic parallels of the earth’s refusal to allow the angel (either Michael or Gabriel) to extract dust from her surface, see Howard Schwartz and Caren Loebel-Fried’s Tree of souls: the mythology of Judaism (Oxford, 2004), 132. Here, the authors cite 4 Ezra 3:4; Genesis Rabbah 14:8; Midrash Komen in Bayt ha-Midrash 2:27; Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer 11, 12, 20; Midrash Tehillim 92:6; Y. Nazir 7.2, 56b; Seder Eliyahu Zula 2; Sefer Zikhronot 15.



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the earth counter his image as the solitary creative force who self-generates life at will. As consort with a feminized earth, God’s identity in these verses becomes much more immanent, human, and masculine than his more abstract, omnipotent role as artisan. However, as a practitioner of both artisanship and husbandry in his production of human beings, God’s uniqueness as creator ultimately surpasses any single quality or characteristic ascribed to him by either the Qurʾān or its antecedents. Earth may provide the material but God alone gives it form and life. The intimate relationship between God and the earth is reflected further in the many qurʾānic passages that feature the integral role of sexual pairing in the procreative act. Such ruminations are similar to what is presented in Genesis 1:27, where “God created humankind (ʾet-hāʾādām),” then “male (zākār) and female (nəqēbâ) he created them.” Likewise, in Sūra 4:1, “your Lord created you (pl.) from a single soul (min nafsin wāḥidatin)26 and from it (her) he created its mate (wakhalaqa minhā zawjahā).”27 What distinguishes the qurʾānic example from its biblical counterpart is that the word for soul, nafs, is feminine, and the mate (zawj) formed from this generic feminine soul is masculine. In contrast, the biblical version presents ʾet-hāʾādām as a generic, masculine form that is then split into male and female parts. While the qurʾānic God is in no way coupling sexually with the feminine soul to produce its mate, clearly his creative force is working through her—in partnership—to generate life. The Qurʾān provides many other examples that emphasize the importance of sexual pairing in human reproduction.28 In 92:3, “the male and the female (al-dhakara wa’l-unthā)” serve as signs of God’s creative power. The reasons God has produced both “the male and female (al-dhakara wa’lunthā)” are revealed further in Sūra 49:13: “to make nations and tribes so that you might come to know one another.” What has taken place between God and the earth in primordial times is reflected in the subsequent sexual acts that take place throughout human generations. Sūra 42:11 asserts how God “has made pairs (azwājan) for you among yourselves, and of the cattle

26 Here, nafs may be related to the Aristotelian psuchē, meaning a quality that is related to the essence of life. 27 See also Sūras 31:28; 39:6. 28 Fazlur Rahman observes how sexual pairing functions as a universal law operative in all life in Health and Medicine in the Islamic Tradition (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1987), 101. For qurʾānic examples of universal pairing, see Sūra 13:3: “of each kind of fruit he creates in two sets of pairs (zawjayni athnayni); Sūra 20:53: “We bring forth diverse pairs of plants” (azwājan min nabātin); and Sūra 51:49: “All things we have made in pairs.”

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pairs (azwājan), multiplying you thereby.”29 While the qurʾānic God himself does not engage in carnal relations, his creative power clearly underlies the mechanics of sexual fusion so that human reproduction must also be considered a divine feat. In this light, God becomes inextricable from the natural, human laws that govern his generative acts; in fact, he causes them to be. His creative forces, which engendered the first human, continue to penetrate every act of human copulation. When it comes to human reproduction, God is “closer to you than your jugular vein.”30 According to the Qurʾān, sexual pairing serves as more than just a sign of God’s power and greatness; it is a fact of nature. The Qurʾān offers many explicit, scientific details as to how humans are produced through sexual pairing, in particular through sperm: “He has created humankind (al-insān) from a sperm drop (nuṭfa).”31 The Qurʾān mentions further how the human being (al-insān) was “created from flowing water (khuliqa min māʾin dāfiqin) proceeding out from what lies between the loins (ṣulb) and the chestbone (tarāʾib).”32 The masculine word “water” (māʾ) in this case most likely refers to semen, given the Qurʾān’s direct reference to the fact that the water comes from various parts of the human body. The idea that sperm comes from all parts of the body is Hippocratic;33 later Muslim physicians, however, also professed this view.34 Given that the word insān refers to humankind more generally, it is worth noting the Qurʾān assumes, like Hippocrates and Galen, that both males and females produce sperm from different parts of their bodies that then combines in the womb to form life.35 Other verses underscore this two-seed reproductive 29 For mention of cattle, see also Sūra 39:6. 30 Sūra 50:16. See also Sūras 2:186; 34:50; 56:85; and 57:4 for examples of God’s close proximity to humans. 31  Sūra 16:4. 32 Sūra 86:6–7. See also Sūra 32:8. 33 Lesley Dean-Jones, Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science (Oxford, 1996), 168, notes that Hippocrates believed parts of the body from which seeds are drawn are humors that possess different potencies. See also Hanson, where she discusses how the Hippocratics believe in pangenesis of the seed, i.e., the production of seed by all parts of the body (314). 34 Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿUthmān al-Dhahabī, Ṭibb al-nabawī (Mecca; al-Riyāḍ: Maktabat Nizār Muṣṭafā al-Bāz, 1976) discusses how semen flows from all parts of the body (183). ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, in reference to Hippocrates, observes, too, that sperm comes from all parts of the body. He adds, however, that God gives it [sperm] the goodness of his creation (Kitāb khulq al-janīn wa-tadbīr al-ḥabālā wa-al-mawlūdīn [Algiers: Maktabat Farrāris, 1956], 9). 35 See below. The affirmation of combined or “mixed seed,” that is, seed emitted from both males and females, appears in Hippocrates, “The Nature of the Child,” translated by J. Chadwick, in Hippocratic Writings, ed. G. E. R. Lloyd (Penguin, 1978), 324. According



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theory, including those that refer specifically to mixed or mingled sperm (nuṭfatin amshājin).36 The fact that God created humans from the sperm he spawns within them—both male and female—suggests he alone dictates the laws of nature governing reproduction. Therefore, the qurʾānic sperm is not produced from the loins of God, which would cast him as a paternal figure, but rather serves as a foundational, generic substance (like clay) that God crafts to utilize in the process of human reproduction. Here, God dons the role not of parent but of inseminator as he creates human beings in pairs, male and female, from a sperm drop (nuṭfa) lodged in place.37 Human beings may serve as the source or vehicle for such sperm, but God alone causes it “to be”38 deep within their bodies. His generation of human sperm suggests a profound intimacy with both nature and human life that again casts into relief his image as the lone, transcendent artisan who requires no assistance or partnership in the production of life. Such contradictory assertions about his identity resist any human impulse to pinpoint precisely the nature of God or the extent of his powers. While God mans the sperm that generates all human life, the Qurʾān asserts boldly he is in no way to be understood as a husband or father.39 to Hippocrates, the mixing occurs because the woman will not remain still. Galen, too, asserted that both males and females produce seed. Galen proposed females possessed “testicles” (ovaries) that discharge semen into the uterus (Galen: On Semen, edition, translation and commentary by Phillip de Lacy [Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1992], II.2–6 (145)). 36 Sūra 76:2. In other qurʾānic verses, this mixed, seminal fluid is referred to as a “clot(s) of blood” (ʿalaq). Lane suggests ʿalaq refers to the seminal fluid, after its appearance, when it becomes thick, clotted blood, before it passes to another stage, becoming flesh (s.v., ʿalaq). 37 Sūra 53:45–46: Wa-annahu khalaqa al-zawjayni al-dhakara wa-al-unthā min nuṭfatin idhā tumnā. 38 The qurʾānic God often creates by claiming “Be!” and it is. See, for example, Sūras 2:117; 3:47; 19:35. 39 See Sūra 112:3: “God begets not, nor was he begotten.” See also 72:3: “And that he, may our Lord’s majesty be exalted, has not taken a consort or a son,” and 6:101: “How can he have a son when he has no consort?” It is not surprising that the qurʾānic God would be viewed as a paternal figure, especially given his relationship with the earth and his role in generating life. The refutation of that role, perhaps, is more unusual, since human reproduction is often mirrored in cosmology. See, for example, Aristotle, who notes that “in cosmology too they speak of the nature of the Earth as something female and call it ‘mother,’ while they give to the heaven and the sun and anything else of that kind the title of ‘generator,’ and ‘father’ ” (Aristotle, GA 1.2.716a14–18, quoted in “Semen, Philosophy, and Paul, Yii-Jan Singh [ Journal of Philosophy and Scripture, Volume 4, Issue 2 (Spring 2007), 32–45], 38). Similarly, Ibn ʿArabī also notes how a “father” is anything that exercises an effect and a “mother” is anything that receives an effect (as noted in The Tao of Islam, 154). In these examples, the severance of God from a sexual role in human reproduction counters those qurʾānic passages that link him with a generative function.

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Many qurʾānic verses note how both pagan Qurayshī and Christian audiences accused God of fathering daughters or sons during the time of Muhammad. For example, several of the Qurʾān’s polemical statements against the Quraysh serve to counter the pagan praise for Muhammad’s (extra-qurʾānic) Satan-inspired revelation that the goddesses al-Lāt, al-ʿUzzā and Manawāt, whom the Quraysh venerated as God’s daughters, “are the gharānīq (exalted females) whose intercession is approved.”40 Clearly, the Qurʾān avows, this statement could not have come from God, for “would God choose daughters for himself and sons for you alone?”41 Such counter criticisms allow the Qurʾān to distance further its deity from any paternal characteristics derived from his generative role in the creation of life. Christians are also subject to such polemical attacks for reasons having to do with their understandings of Jesus as God’s son. The Qurʾān posts dire warnings against “those who say [God] has taken a son,”42 and repudiates the Christian idea that God could serve as father, since “God begets not, nor was he begotten.”43 Certainly God could have a child if he chose to do so,44 but ultimately “it is not fitting for the compassionate (al-raḥmān) to have a son.”45 Despite his close associations with sperm, earth, nature, and the human body, and his role as lone artisan in the creation of human life, the Qurʾān makes clear God is devoid of overtly paternal qualities or attributes. As such, he transcends human categories that ascribe to him a particular gendered or familial role in the procreative act. While many qurʾānic passages flatly deny God’s role as a father, some do explore his intimate relationship with wombs, which further repudiates his paternal role by (ironically) casting him into a maternal light. The arena in which God creates is often the womb,46 whose secrets are hidden to men and women in “shadows of darkness (thalmāt).”47 The word for

40 The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah, with introduction and notes by Alfred Guillaume (Oxford University Press, Karachi, 1995), 165–67. 41 Sūra 43:16. See also 37:151–53: “It is out of their perversion that they will say: God has begotten, but they are liars. Has he preferred daughters over sons?” 42 Sūra 18:4. See also 19:88. Those who utter such blasphemies about God’s paternal nature will stand by as the heavens crack, the earth splits, and the mountains crumble to dust. 43 Sūra 112:3. 44 Sūra 39:4. 45 Sūra 19:92. See also 19:35. As noted below, the root for the word raḥmān comes from the same root as womb. It is ironic that the raḥmān could have a son but chose not to. 46 Sūra 2:228. 47 Sūra 39:6.



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womb (raḥim) is derived from the same root as mercy (raḥma), which forms two of God’s ninety-nine names: the merciful (al-raḥman) and the compassionate (al-raḥīm).48 In addition to womb, the root r-ḥ-m also implies blood ties, kinship, pity, and tenderness.49 The Qurʾān suggests God’s mercy and tenderness are ever-present in the womb, which, like human beings, cannot escape God’s complete knowledge of all its inner workings.50 In theory, this mercy and knowledge will be cast further upon all those whom God creates in their mothers’ bellies, “one creation after another.”51 God’s close connection with the womb is also well attested in many ḥadīth, which, for example, note how God appoints an angel to guard over every womb.52 In addition to highlighting God’s maternal associations with the womb, the Qurʾān also underscores his role as midwife when mothers give birth. Not only does God have complete knowledge of what takes place in the womb, but he himself delivers his followers “out from the bellies (buṭūn) of your mothers knowing nothing and gave you hearing, sight and hearts, that by chance you may give thanks.”53 Through such dealings with the womb and what it produces, God’s identity becomes intimately entwined with both the mother in whose womb he creates life, and the life form he fashions and carries forth into the world. Interestingly, this passage notes the ability to see and hear is something God grants humans subsequent to their birth. In other words, humans are incomplete, or perhaps even non-human, as they exit the womb, and therefore require God’s continued hands-on molding, nurturing, and rearing to bring them to their current physical and moral state, where they may worship him fully and freely. While God certainly displays all the characteristics of a good mother in these examples, he is never explicitly portrayed as one. Whatever maternal characteristics God may display, they are entwined with his identity as artisan and masculine consort with a feminized earth. By amalgamating disparate identities, and suggesting that God embodies them all, the Qurʾān affirms no clear attribute could

48 Al-Bukhārī links these terms together in Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ (al-Riyāḍ: Bayt al-Afkār al-Dawlīya li-al-Nashr, 1998), “Kitāb al-adab,” nos. 16, 17, 18. 49 Murata, 215. 50 Sūra 31:34. See also 3:36, where God knows the wife of ʿImrān is bearing a female and not a male. 51 Sūra 39:6. 52 Murata, 215–217. Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, “Kitāb al-ḥayḍ,” no. 315; “Kitāb al-anbiyāʾ,” no. 550. 53 Sūra 16:78.

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possibly capture God’s true procreative identity or the nature of his generative powers. The Fusion of Paradigms: Greek Medical Theories and the Qurʾānic God Still other qurʾanic verses combine the different artisan and agriculturalist models together into a single trope that serves to frame an epigenetic depiction of fetal development that reflects, to varying degrees, Greek medical theories. In its articulation of Hippocratic, Galenic, and, to a lesser degree, Aristotelian models of fetal development, the Qurʾān demonstrates God’s mastery of the reproductive techniques described by them, but emphasizes his creative efforts are not bound by them. While mechanistic processes known from Greek “science” may play an important role in the production of offspring as they generate heat, friction, or pneuma from seminal fluid, the laws of nature are ultimately subject to the one God who alone possesses the power to engender humans from nonliving matter. The Qurʾān’s epigenetic portrayal of fetal development, which follows the creation of life from clay, to sperm, to blood clot, to lump of flesh, to bones, appears in Sūra 23:12–14: “We have created man from a scion, from clay (wa-laqad khalaqnā al-insāna min sulālatin min ṭīnin); then we placed him as a sperm drop (thumma jaʿalnāhu nuṭfatan) in a secure place; then we created out of the sperm drop a clot of blood (thumma khalaqnā al-nuṭfata ʿalaqatan); then we created from the clot a lump of flesh ( fakhalaqnā al-ʿalaqata muḍghatan); then made the lump of flesh into bones ( fakhalaqnā al-muḍghata ʿiẓāman); then covered the bones with flesh; then fashioned him into another creation (khalqan).”54 In this example, God pinches off a small, clay, homuncular mass that he then places “as a sperm” in the womb. The fashioned mass then progresses along the precise path outlined by Greek medical scholars: from seed, to mixed seed, to coagulated blood, to flesh, to bones.55 According to Hippocrates, for example, it is at this point, when the bones and limbs have been articulated, that the “fetus” comes into being.56 Likewise, the

54 See also 22:5: “We have created you from dust, then from a sperm, then from a clot, then from a sperm, then from a little lump of flesh partly formed and partly unformed in order to show you our power.” 55 Hippocrates, 324–29. 56 Ibid., 329.



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Qurʾān acknowledges the presence of another “creation” after the bones are covered with flesh. Where the qurʾānic version differs from the Hippocratic description of fetal development, however, is in its assertion of God’s active hand throughout the entire progression, which can be seen most clearly in his original formation of life from clay, to the placing of that clay as “sperm” in the womb. This added prequel to the Hippocractic process of sperm originating from clay ensures that human reproduction is not an activity separate from divine procreation. God’s initial, creative act of generating the first man from clay is still evident in the very conception of each and every human being via sexual intercourse. This crucial inclusion of clay in the Hippocratic stages of human reproduction has a number of theological consequences. First, it connects biblical antecedents of dust formation with contemporary Greek medical wisdom, and demonstrates how the Qurʾān supersedes them both. Second, it affirms that the divine creation of the first man and subsequent acts of human reproduction are, in essence, indistinguishable. By making God’s hand ever-present in both, the Qurʾān breaks from the biblical narrative in Genesis by no longer casting human reproduction as a distinct form of divine punishment upon those who disobeyed God.57 In the qurʾānic context, sexual intercourse and reproduction mirror God’s initial creative act rather than disrupt it. God is not absent from earthly, human reproduction, which stands as a consequence of disobedience or sin, but remains an intimate partner within it as he navigates the entire course of conception, fetal development, birth, and life itself from both inside and outside the womb. Thus human sexuality is a wholly positive creative act in concert with God’s plans provided the participants are entirely submissive to the will of God. And third, God’s formation of a clay homunculus as “sperm” ensures that God’s initial creation of each human being is perfect and unadulterated. Whatever happens subsequent to God’s preliminary fashioning to disturb his work results from either defective wombs or human error.58 Thus the qur’ānic God has no need to “blot out from the earth the human beings [he] has created”59 for their initial creation is one of perfection.

57 Genesis 3 14–21. 58 See Kathryn Kueny, Conceiving Identities: Maternity in medieval Muslim discourse and practice, Chapter Two, “Mapping the Maternal Body: The mechanics of reproduction” (SUNY Press, forthcoming). 59 Genesis 6:7.

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In order to assert its superiority over it, the Qurʾān continues to deconstruct Greek medical wisdom through its discussions of another essential ingredient required in the process of human creation: the animating breath. As noted above, Hippocrates divides the embryo into four stages: sperm, coagulated blood, flesh, and bones (and other bodily members). In his model, breath (pneuma) enters into the developmental process during one of the earliest stages, after seed from both mother and father mixes in the womb, and is gathered into a single mass that condenses as a result of heat.60 According to Hippocrates, since the lifeless mass is in a warm environment, it “acquires breath.”61 This warm breath, however, must escape, so it hollows out a passage for its release. Once the passage of escape has been formed, it “inspires” from the mother a second quantity of breath, which is cool air. Hot air, in other words, necessarily draws cool air into itself to “feed upon” as it expels warm air in return.62 Hippocrates identifies two sources of air for the seed: this internal breath generated by heat, but also the cool, outside air inhaled by the mother.63 Hippocrates asserts the continuous breathing in and out of the seed allows it to inflate and to develop a membrane around its surface, similar to the way a crust is formed on the surface of bread when it is baked.64 In other words, Hippocrates likens the female body to a hot “oven” where bread, the staple of life produced through women’s labor, is cooked. Because a woman ceases to menstruate when she becomes pregnant, the excess blood descends and surrounds the membrane. The seed contained within the membrane then draws this blood into itself via the essential breath.65 The process of tearing the membrane in order to “breathe in” blood from the mother further results in coagulation around the areas of rupture, which causes the mass to grow.66 Thus the breath (pneuma) generates the

60 Hippocrates, 324. 61  Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid., 325. 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid., 326. For the same account reiterated in medieval Muslim medical texts, see also Zakarīyā ibn Muḥammad al-Qazwīnī, ʿAjāʾib al-makhlūqāt wa gharāʾib al-mawjūdāt (1973), 349. 66 Hippocrates, 326. This same narrative concerning the role of “breath” in the reproductive process is repeated in ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khulq, 29; and Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyutī, Ṭibb al-nabawī (London: Ta-Ha, 1994), who states how the “womb is a greedy creature. When a man’s semen meets a woman’s fluid the two fluids intermingle. This results in bubbles forming, caused by the heat of the interaction in the same way that bubbles are produced



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evolution of what is eventually to become a living being from the first stage of development (seed), to the second (coagulated clot), and then to the third (flesh), when the coagulated clot connects with the umbilicus, and flesh begins to form.67 At this point in the process, the breath (pneuma) serves as the principle organizer of matter, a force that drives non-living material into living beings. For the Hippocratics, breath is the power that first generates life inside the womb, and then determines, guides, and drives its progression toward a completed human being.68 While the four qurʾānic stages of fetal development resemble the Hippocratic model, they differ radically from it in that they do not evolve one from another, but rather stand as separate and distinct divine acts as noted by the repetition of the verb khalaqnā (we created). Rather than breath driving the transformation of the mixed seed into progressive permutations of fetal development, it is God who creates each stage separately. Here, God leaves nothing to natural, mechanistic processes; each movement is not caused by another but rather is rooted in his creative efforts. As a result, there is never a moment in the qurʾānic scheme—as there is in the Hippocratic model—where any of the various fetal forms would be caught betwixt and between a sperm drop or clot of blood; a clot of blood or lump of flesh. An entity that is neither a sperm drop nor a clot of blood, or one that is in the nebulous process of transforming from one state to another, could potentially fall outside God’s jurisdiction. When the Qurʾān does take up notions of breath, they tend to reflect more the Aristotelian, as opposed to the Hippocratic, understanding of pneuma in terms of the necessary, biological role it plays in the animation of life. The Qurʾān, however, critiques and transforms Aristotelian conceptions of breath according to its own theological principles. Such principles are elaborated through the Qurʾān’s discussion of two specific cases where God generates life outside the normal course of human reproduction: the creation of Adam from clay, and the conception of Jesus, son

when a thick fluid is heated over a fire. These bubbles then coalesce, making one single bubble, which forms a relatively large sphere. It is inside the sphere that the vital force will enter, by the permission of Allah” (193). See also Hanson, 314. 67 Hippocrates, 326. 68 This understanding of breath as the power that drives fetal development is illustrated further in Hippocrates’ description of how breath forms flesh into bones and distinct members of the body (the fourth stage): the flesh fills with air, and then begins to divide and separate. Once the parts of the body materialize, and the bones grow hard “as a result of the coagulating heat,” Hippocrates determines the embryo to be a living being (Hippocrates, 328).

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of Mary, without a father. In each instance, the Qurʾān draws upon Aristotelian theories of pneuma to describe how life comes to be, but alters them according to the theological belief that God alone, as opposed to humans or nature, has the power to produce life. Like Hippocrates, Aristotle also views pneuma as heat. However, for Aristotle, this heat is not generated by the friction caused when two seeds mix together, but rather is imparted by the male semen, which is a compound of pneuma (hot air) and water.69 This heat, however, is no ordinary heat; Aristotle likens pneuma to the divine element of the stars.70 Aristotle believes only males contribute semen or seed, and thus pneuma, or ether, to the generation of life.71 Unlike the Hippocratic model where both parents generate seed, females supply only the “prime matter” (menstrual blood) upon which the semen, or vital heat, acts.72 The male, therefore, is the sole active partner in the process of reproduction, the transmitter of the pneuma that generates the movement,73 or produces the “effect” inside the passive female body.74 Rather than two matters colliding and mixing together to produce heat, as in the Hippocratic model, the male semen alone contains the dynamos that causes the material in the female to take on a particular shape or character,75 and imparts to it the same movement with which it is itself bequeathed.76 Once inside the womb, the water portion of the semen dissolves and evaporates, and the vital heat (pneuma) is left to form, differentiate, and organize the new individual. Aristotle links the activity of the animation and formation of an individual being to the idea of the soul (psuchē),77 which he defines as “the essence (or reality) of a particular body.”78 Here,

69 Aristotle, Generation of Animals, trans. A. L. Peck (Harvard, 1943), II.ii.736a (163). 70 Ibid., II.iii.736b (171). 71 Ibid., I.xx.729a (111). 72 Ibid. For Aristotle, menstrual blood is really unheated semen. Women do not generate enough heat to convert blood into semen, as do men. Aristotle goes so far as to say the male is separate from the female, “since it is something better and more divine in that it is the principle of movement for generated things, while the female serves as their matter” (II.i.732a [133]). 73 Ibid. 74 Ibid., I.xxi.729b (115). 75 Ibid., I.xxi.730a (117). 76 Ibid., II.iii.737a (173). 77 Ibid., II.iii.737a (173). Although Aristotle suggests menstrual discharge is unformed semen (since the female body cannot heat its blood enough to convert it into semen), he asserts this cold substance does not contain the principle of the Soul, or the ability to generate movement, as does the male semen. 78 Ibid., II.iv738b (185).



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the soul (psuchē) serves as principle of life because it is the source of its movement, its final cause (for the sake of which the body exists), and the “essence” of all living bodies.79 Although Aristotle, like Hippocrates, confers breath or pneuma as the animating or organizing principle for life, he deviates from his predecessor by maintaining that the breath also transmits the soul, the essence that makes something a distinct living being. He also parts company with Hippocrates by locating the source for both breath and soul within the male, who alone produces semen from heated blood. In the example of Adam’s creation, God tells the angels he is going to produce a man (bashr) from clay (ṭīn), and “when I have fashioned him and breathed into him from my spirit (wanafakhtu fīhi min ruḥī), fall down before him.”80 In many respects, the “breath” imparted by the deity functions analogously to the male semen that contains the life generating breath in Aristotle’s paradigm. Like the Aristotelian male, God in this passage serves as the active force in the reproductive process, the lone transmitter of the pneuma that animates life from passive, inanimate material. However, it is God’s breath, as opposed to the male semen, that imparts the dynamos that causes “Adam” to take on a particular shape and character and bestows upon him the same life essence he himself possesses. Qurʾānic descriptions of Mary’s conception of Jesus also mirror Aristotelian paradigms of the role of the animating breath in human reproduction. Here, the divine breath allows Mary to conceive Jesus without a human partner, just as it allowed for the generation of Adam without a father (or mother, for that matter).81 The Qurʾān notes in Sūra 21:91 that because Mary guarded her private, sexual parts (aḥṣanat farjahā), “We breathed into her from our spirit ( fa-nafakhnā fīhā min rūḥinā) and made her and her son a sign to the world.” Sūra 66:12 gives a slightly different version that emphasizes the more explicitly sexual nature of the breath’s role in reproduction. Here, the breath did not enter her but it, meaning

79 Ibid., II.iv738b, footnote “a” (184). 80 Sūra 38:71–72. See also 32:9. 81  Later exegetes also make the connection between Adam and Jesus son of Mary, as neither one had a father. For example, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Kisāʾī relates that when Joseph learned of Mary’s pregnancy, he asked Mary if anything could grow without seed. She said no, and he then he asked her if there can be a child without a father. To this she replied yes: Adam had no father or mother. She tells Joseph the child she is carrying is like Adam, whom God shaped from dust and to whom God said “Be!” and he was (Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ, translated by W. M. Thackston, Jr. as Tales of the prophets of al-Kisāʾī [Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1978], 328–29).

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her vagina ( fa-nafakhnā fīhi min rūḥinā). The latter presentation elicits more overtly the Aristotelian model of male semen carrying the essential breath of life that activates the inanimate matter in Mary’s womb. Here, Jesus’ conception follows the natural course of reproduction outlined by the Greeks, but without the presence of a human father. Most qurʾānic exegetes continue to shape their own interpretive discourses according to Greek biological paradigms—in particular, those of Aristotle—in their efforts to reconcile the discrepancies between Sūras 21:91 and 66:12. While most commentators agree the spirit was blown into Mary, the question remains open as to precisely who acted upon what. According to many exegetes, the conceiving breath is not generated within Mary’s womb as a result of friction, but is blown either directly or indirectly into her farj by an angel, just as the male semen enters a woman’s womb to impart life. Although the Qurʾān does not mention him as the one who blows the conceiving breath into Mary’s farj, a majority of scholars assume it was Gabriel who did so.82 Gabriel did not act on his own initiative, however, as a husband might decide to act upon his wife;83 rather, God dispatched him to her.84 As to the exact location where Gabriel blew, most scholars agree that the spirit was exhaled into some part of Mary’s person. A number of scholars take the position that farj simply refers to Mary’s vagina, given that Mary is lauded because she has guarded her most private of parts (farj).85 However, other scholars were clearly uncomfortable with the sexual nature of Mary’s relationship with Gabriel, and suggest rather that Gabriel blew his 82 For example, Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Ṭūsī notes how Gabriel breathed the messiah directly into Mary’s farj (Tibyān fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān, vol. 10 [al-Najaf: al-Maṭbaʿa al-ʿIlmīya, 1957–63], 54–55). Ṭabarī also reports that Gabriel is the one who blew into Mary’s farj (Tafsīr, vol. 7, 333; 279), as does Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Qurṭubī ( Jāmiʿ li-aḥkām al-Qurʾān, [al-Qāhira: Dār wa-Maṭābiʿ al-Shaʿb, 1961], 573), Ibn Kathīr (Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm, vol. 14 [Jīza: Muʾassasat Qurṭuba: Maktabat Awlād al-Shaykh li-alTurāth, 2000], 67) and Maḥmūd ibn ʿUmar al-Zamakhshārī, vol. 4 (Khashshāf ʿan ḥaqāʾiq al-tanzīl wa-ʿuyūn al-aqāwīl fī wujūh al-taʾwīl [Miṣr al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1966], 132). Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn al-ʿArabī, by way of contrast, suggests the Holy Spirit (rūḥ al-quds) imparted his breath into Mary, and she bore Jesus (Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-karīm, vol. 2 [Beirut: Dār al-Thaqāfa al-ʿArabiyya, 1968], 89). 83 See, for example, Qurtubī, 573, and Zamakhshārī, vol. 4, 132, who both suggest Gabriel’s appearance both resembled, but did not resemble, that of a husband. 84 Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr, vol. 9, 67. The intervening role of Gabriel protects the qurʾānic idea that humans and God must remain separate. Otherwise, the divine breath blown into individual humans might have the potential to elevate them above and beyond their humanity. 85 Tūsī, Tafsīr, vol. 10, 54–55. See also Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr, vol. 9, p. 67. See also Ibn Kathīr, Qiṣaṣ, 585.



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breath into a hole or opening in her outer garment, and she conceived.86 Ibn Kathīr tries to align Mary’s integrity and modesty more closely with the qurʾānic passages, which clearly imply a more directly sexual encounter between Mary and the breath. He proposes God commanded Gabriel to blow the breath into an opening (jīb) in Mary’s garment, but that the breath then descended into her vagina and she conceived Jesus,87 just as a woman becomes pregnant from sexual intercourse with her husband.88 While the Qurʾān asserts Jesus’ unusual conception did not have any impact on his natural, biological composition, some exegetes claim Jesus was “superior in nature, not like the children created from [human] sperm (nuṭfa).”89 Unlike other messengers who received their status later in life as a result of their piety, Jesus, via the breath, was created as a prophet.90 Here, the breath, occupying the same function as male semen in the Aristotelian context, bequeathed something vital of its nature to the offspring it generated. Whatever the details, exegetes all emphasize how God’s creative efforts still conform to the laws of nature, where a woman conceives via a man’s semen. Reproduction can only occur when a male (here, Gabriel, who in his likeness as a man functions as a surrogate husband and father) imparts the life-giving dynamos into the woman’s womb. In contrast, while the Qurʾān draws from such biological paradigms to relay the intricacies of how Mary conceived Jesus without a male partner, it also supersedes them by suggesting God is not dependent on natural, mechanistic causes to reproduce life. In yet another account of Jesus’ conception (Sūra 19:17), Mary receives not the breath that contains the spirit, but directly “our spirit (rūḥanā), who appeared to her as a man in every respect (basharan sawīyyan)” to tell her the Lord will give her a son. Here, the feminine spirit (rūḥ) is cloaked in the guise of a man (in every respect), who literally descends upon her, and she conceives. In this qurʾānic verse, the necessary, animating breath of life that must somehow be inserted or generated in Mary’s womb—so vital in both

86 Ṭabarī in particular defends this position, and even goes so far as to suggest that the interpretation of the word farj actually means fissure, gap, or tear. As he notes, “every fissure (ṣadʿ) or gap (shaqq) in a wall, or roof, is farj.” Therefore, Gabriel blew not into Mary’s vagina, but rather “in the hole (jīb) of her outer garment, and that is her farj” (Tafsīr, vol. 7, 333). Likewise, Ibn Kathīr reports how some scholars assert Gabriel blew directly into her chest; others that Gabriel exhaled into her mouth (Qiṣaṣ, 585). 87 Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr, vol. 9, 67. See also Ibn Kathīr, Qiṣaṣ, 585. 88 Ibn Kathīr, Qiṣaṣ, 585. 89 Ṭūsī, vol. 7, 276. 90 Ibid.

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Hippocratic and Aristotelian paradigms and in many qur’ānic verses—is absent. The qurʾānic God, in defiance of those who suggest otherwise, can cause life to be in the womb without breath or pneuma by simply sending his spirit upon Mary, just as he cast down his spirit (rūḥ) on or into the night of destiny.91 The fact that the spirit, rūḥ, is both masculine and feminine in this example further underscores the point that God’s creative efforts transcend the laws of science or nature. God’s choosing of Mary to bear his “signs”92 in many ways mirrors his partnering with the earth to create life in the examples noted above. In theory, Mary, like the earth in the eyes of exegetes, could have rejected God’s breath that imparted his spirit into her body, or at least have voiced some resistance to what was about to be done to her. In fact, she does cry out to the spirit (in the guise of a man) who confronts her, asking “How can I have a son when no man has touched me?”93 While God could have created Jesus in Mary’s womb regardless of her own desires, her consent and receptive nature are vital to the Qurʾān’s theological message. The fact that Mary acquiesces to God’s request and bears and delivers Jesus successfully, but in great hardship and pain, points to her extraordinary piety, superior physical aptitude, and free acceptance of God’s will. Contrary to the Aristotelian depiction of reproduction, where the womb is a passive receptacle for man’s generative seed—the woman a derivative form of the man—the Qurʾān portrays those feminized partners (Mary, soul, earth) who receive God’s breath, spirit, or creative hand as active, willing participants in the generative process. What further separates qurʾānic depictions of life giving breath in the reproductive process from their Greek counterparts is the presence of the spirit (rūḥ), which deviates radically from the Aristotelian psuchē. In both the creation of Adam and Jesus, the breath that enlivens them is derived from the spirit of God. The spirit not only separates the animate from 91 Sūra 97:1–5. Michael Sells argues that the descent of the spirit upon or into Mary at the conception of Jesus structurally parallels the descent of the spirit on or into the night of destiny (Approaching the Qur’an, Ashland: White Cloud Press, 1999, 183–207, summarized also in the Encyclopedia of the Qurʾān [ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Brill, 2001–2006], s.v., “spirit”). These examples also parallel Sūra 99:5, where the earth is a recipient of God’s revelation. 92 Sūra 19:21. Mary, Jesus’ birth, and Jesus himself all serve as bearers of God’s signs. Elsewhere in the Qurʾān, God’s water (māʾ) enlivening a barren earth (just as the breath and spirit enliven Mary’s womb to produce life) also serves as a “sign” for humankind. For God’s māʾ raining down upon a barren earth, see Sūras 10:24; 7:57–58; 18:45; 22:63; 25:48; 31: 50:9; 78:16; 23:10–21 and 39:20–21. 93 Sūra 3:47.



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the inanimate, but, in contrast with the psuchē, humans from animals. For example, Sūra 32:7–9 speaks of God creating all humanity (al-insān) from clay (ṭīn), and then making his (its) progeny (naslahu) of a “water despised” (māʾin mahīnin), or sperm. However, unlike the Mary passages where the spirit, via the breath, is blown directly into the womb, God “breathes in him/it94 of his spirit” (nafakha fīhi min rūḥihi), and finally bestows upon “you” (m. plural) the faculties of hearing and sight. Clearly, life does not begin until the breath animates the inanimate sperm, as suggested by the shift in pronoun from “it” to “you.” Human sperm alone does not carry the essential life force; it can only be transmitted by the divine. Again, clay, which God employed in the creation of the first man, Adam, serves as the origin of or source for human sperm and the subsequent reproduction of all human life. Even human sperm, like the clay, can only be “activated” or animated by God’s breath, which contains his spirit. In this example, however, the spirit does not elevate ordinary humans as bearers of God’s signs, as is the case with Mary and Jesus, but merely animates the inanimate, and, in the process, passes along the vital capacity to see and hear the signs, a quality that is distinctly human. This theory that God’s spirit contains within it the ability to see and hear his signs—which seems to define human life itself—is underscored by the fact that it is only human life that holds his spirit, and not animal life. In the Qurʾān, animal life receives only the animating breath. For example, in Sūra 5:110, Jesus is instructed to fashion the likeness of a bird (kahayaʾti al-ṭayribi) from clay (ṭīn), and by God’s leave, to breathe into it so that it becomes a real bird.95 Jesus’ breath serves to enliven the clay figure of the bird just as God’s breath brought to life the clay figure of Adam. However, Jesus’ breath in this case does not transmit the spirit. Jesus’ inability to transmit the spirit to the bird may be due to the fact that he is merely a man and not God or that non-human beings cannot be the recipients of God’s spirit. Certainly, if God had wanted him to, Jesus could have infused the bird with his spirit. Therefore, it seems likely that God does not want his spirit to dwell in animals, which possess no innate capacity to see and hear the signs.96 94 Here it is ambiguous whether the “him” or “it” refers to the al-insān, the naslahu, or to the māʾ. 95 See also Sūra 3:49. 96 According to the Qurʾān, some animals do possess certain human qualities, like the capacity to speak. Solomon speaks of the human ability to comprehend the speech of the birds; likewise, ants are able to converse with their fellow ants (Richard C. Foltz quoting Sūra 27 16–18, in Animals in Islamic Tradition and Muslim Cultures [Oxford: Oneworld,

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Sūra 32:7–9, along with the passages on Mary and Adam, acknowledge yet transform the atomistic, Hippocratic view that life is the byproduct of two non-living matters colliding in a warm environment by suggesting that while male and female sperm may meet and unite in women’s wombs, only God, and not friction, or heat, supplies the necessary breath to generate human life. In the context of the Qurʾān, strict adherence to the Hippocratic model would give human beings, both male and female, or nature the ability to animate human life, a divine power that would challenge God’s supreme authority. In addition, the Qurʾān’s emphasis on God’s spirit allows the text to distinguish the creation of human life from other, inferior forms (animals) that cannot see and hear his signs. Sūra 32:7–9 also underscores the theological idea that only God, and not the human male, serves as the sole source for and transmitter of the pneuma and the spirit. As depicted in the Qurʾān, God in many ways embodies the Aristotelian life force, an image so clearly expressed in the qurʾānic verses depicting God’s breath descending into Mary’s womb to impregnate her. While human conception and fetal growth may follow Hippocrates’ two-seed theory and four-stage path, as suggested by the Qurʾān’s many references to sexual pairing, mixed sperm, and embryonic development, only God, the prime Aristotelian force, can generate that path through his breath, his spirit, or his molding and fashioning of clay into sperm that he then plants in the womb, after which he “brings you out as infants, then allows you to come of age, then become old men.”97 Perhaps, then, one of the reasons why the majority of medieval medical scholars, such as Rabbān al-Ṭabarī, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, and Ibn Saʿd favored the Hippocratic (and Galenic), two-seed model of human conception over the Aristotelian view that males alone impart the pneuma to generate life was to distinguish clearly between human and divine reproduction.98 If human males were allowed to cast out the animating 2006, 12). As noted above, also, the bee was the recipient of divine revelation. In general, however, it does not appear that animals have the choice of accepting or rejecting God’s revelation in the same way that humans—who possess the spirit—do. They can serve as signs, or even bear them, but cannot witness to them. 97 Sūra 40:67. 98 Obviously, one of the major issues the two-seed theory resolves is that of family resemblance, and that of sex determination. For support of the two-seed theory for those reasons in medical treatises, see ʿArīb ibn Saʿd, Kitāb khulq, 9; ʿAlī ibn Sahl Rabban al-Ṭabarị, Firdaws al-ḥikma fī al-tibb (Beirut: s.n., 1970), 34; Suyutī, 185. In addition to medical scholars, the ḥadīth also support the two seed theory. For example, Mālik ibn Anas records a tradition that has ʿĀʾisha reprimanding the Prophet for laughing at the idea that a woman might have some sort of nocturnal emission. ʿĀʾisha claims women must have such emissions, for where else might family resemblance come (“Kitāb al-salāt,” in



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“breath” (let alone the “spirit”) through their own semen, what, then, was there to distinguish them from God? As Sūra 5:110 suggests, even Jesus, who was, after all, a man, cannot send forth the spirit as he animates the clay pigeon via his breath. Only God, the sole Aristotelian generator of life, can impart the “dynamos” that has the effect of granting humans their life, which implies animation, but perhaps more importantly, the unique perception to see and hear that which is divine. As noted above, the Qurʾān already supports the two-seed theory of reproduction with its emphasis on sexual pairing, mixed seed, and assertions that sperm comes from all parts of the human body, both male and female. Medieval Muslim physicians, therefore, had the essential, revelatory support for their theories that both males and females produce sperm to create life. Their adoption of the Hippocratic/Galenic model of reproduction had the added consequence of ascribing an active role in the transformation of life to a woman and her womb, thereby empowering women in the eyes of men. Such empowerment, however, also led medieval Muslim scholars to scrutinize a woman’s role in the procreative process in great detail, often to her detriment. For example, because they thought the female body to be naturally weak,99 early Muslim physicians suggest women’s bodies are inimical to childbearing, which sets potential mothers in willful insubordination to God’s plans for humanity. Thus, the failure of a pregnancy becomes an indictment not only against a woman’s anatomy but also her moral character, which, for medieval physicians, were indistinguishable. Thus the Qurʾān’s more egalitarian treatment of the female reproductive body, both actual and metaphorical, was quickly usurped by male efforts to guarantee not just animated life, but the superlative life God demands. Conclusions In sum, the Qurʾān displays a number of Near Eastern artisan paradigms, pagan agricultural motifs, and contemporary Greek medical theories to Muwaṭṭaʾ [Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1994], 2:21.86). See also Abū Dāʾūd Sulaymān ibn al-Ashʿath al-Sijistānī, Sunan Abī Dāʾūd, “Kitāb al-ṭahāra, vol. 1 (Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmiyya [Beirut, Lebanon], 1996), #236. See also Bukhārī, Saḥīḥ, “Kitāb al-adab,” no. 113; “Kitāb al-ḥudūd,” no. 830; “Kitāb al-ʿilm,” no. 132. 99 Rabban al-Ṭabarī notes that the maleness of an embryo becomes evident in 30 days, while the femaleness of an embryo only becomes evident after 42 days. This is due to the fact that the seed that makes the male is stronger and hotter from that which creates the female (30).

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demonstrate the varied and contradictory ways God generates life. God is at once the sole fashioner of human life from (masculine) substances he alone chooses but also intimate partner with a number of feminine subjects who participate alongside him in the procreative process. Likewise, God appears as both omnipotent molder of humans from clay and maternal midwife to the wombs that serve him. God also takes on the role of astute physician as he demonstrates his mastery of contemporary medical wisdom about how life is conceived and how it develops in the womb, but also omnipotent lord as he transcends the laws of nature that govern such mechanistic processes in light of his own will. Such colorful and diverse models of how life is re/produced and the roles God assumes in his generative efforts reflect the Qurʾān’s rhetorical desire to evoke dialog, debate, and general human uncertainty about how (and what) God creates. In this way, the qurʾānic God is able to embody yet surpass the limited identities and characteristics assigned to him by past authoritative traditions, human sexuality, or natural law as articulated through Greek medical wisdom. By articulating multiple images of God’s creative activities and resorting to a variety of models to explain God’s procreative efforts, the Qurʾān provides only glimpses into God’s ineffable power, a power that ultimately defies any classificatory schemes or metaphorical descriptions. Bibliography Abū Dāʾūd Sulaymān ibn al-Ashʿath al-Sijistānī. Sunan Abī Dāʾūd. 3 vols. Beirut: Dār alKutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1996. ʿArīb ibn Saʿd. Kitāb khulq al-janīn wa-tadbīr al-ḥabālā wa-al-mawlūdīn. Algiers: Maktabat Farrāris, 1956. Aristotle. Generation of Animals. Translated by A. L. Peck. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1943. Braswell, Bruce Karl. A Commentary on the Fourth Pythian Ode of Pindar. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1988. Brown, Peter. The World of Late Antiquity. New York: Norton, 1989. Bukhārī, Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad. Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ. Al-Riyāḍ: Bayt al-Afkār al-Dawlīya lial-Nashr, 1998. Dalley, Stephanie, ed. and trans. Myths from Mesopotamia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Dean-Jones, Lesley. Women’s Bodies in Classical Greek Science. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. al-Dhahabī, Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad. Ṭibb al-nabawī. Mecca; al-Riyāḍ: Maktabat Nizār Muṣṭafā al-Bāz, 1976. Foltz, Richard C. Animals in Islamic Tradition and Muslim Cultures. Oxford: Oneworld, 2006.



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Foster, J. Andrew and Kathryn Kueny. “From the Bodies of Bees: Classical and Christian Echoes in Surat al-Nahl.” Comparative Islamic Studies 3 (2007): 145–68. Galen. On Semen. Edition, translation and commentary by Phillip de Lacy. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1992. Guillaume, Alfred. The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1995. Hanson, Ann. “The Medical Writers’ Women.” In Before Sexuality: The construction of erotic experience in the ancient Greek world, edited by Froma I. Zeitlin, John J. Winker, and David Halperin, 309–37. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Hesiod. Works and Days. Translated by M. L. West. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. ——. Theogony. Translated by Norman O. Brown. New York: Prentice Hall, 1953. Hyginus. The Myths of Hyginus. Translated and edited by Mary Grant. University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies, no. 34. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1960. Hippocrates. Hippocratic Writings. Translated by J. Chadwick, and edited by G. E. R. Lloyd. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978. ——. Hippokratische Gynäkologie: Die gynäkologischen Texte des Autors C nach Den pseudohippokratischen Schriften De Muliebribus I, II unde De Sterilibus. Edited by H. Grensemann. Wiesbaden, 1982. Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn. Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-karīm. 2 vols. Beirut: Dār al-Thaqāfa al-ʿArabiyya, 1968. Ibn Kathīr, Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUmar. Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿAẓīm. 15 vols. Jīza: Muʾassasat Qurṭuba: Maktabat Awlād al-Shaykh li-al-Turāth, 2000. ——. Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ. Dimashsq: Dār Ibn Kathīr, 1992. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr. Al-Tibyān fī aqsām al-qurʾān. Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1994. Kisāʾī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh. Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ. Translated by W. M. Thackston, Jr. as Tales of the prophets of al-Kisāʾī. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1978. Kueny, Kathryn M. Conceiving Identities: Maternity in Medieval Muslim Discourse and Practice. Albany, SUNY Press, forthcoming. Lane, Edward. Arabic English Lexicon. London: Williams and Norgate, 1863. Mālik ibn Anas. Muwaṭṭaʾ. Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1994. McAuliffe, Jane Dammen, ed. Encyclopedia of the Qurʾān. 6 vols. Brill, 2001–2006. Murata, Sachiko. The Tao of Islam. Albany: SUNY Press, 1992. Ovid, Metamorphoses. Translated by Z. Phillip Ambrose. Focus Publishing, 2004. al-Qazwīnī, Zakarīyā ibn Muḥammad. ʿAjāʾib al-makhlūqāt wa gharāʾib al-mawjūdāt, 1973. al-Qummī, ʿAlī ibn Ibrāhīm. Tafsīr al-Qummī. Qum: Dhawā al-Qurbā, 2007. al-Qummī, Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad Riḍā. Tafsīr kanz al-daqāʾiq wa-baḥr al-gharāʾib. Qum: Dār al-Ghadīr, 2003. al-Qurṭubī, Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad. Jāmiʿ li-aḥkām al-Qurʾān. Al-Qāhira: Dār wa-Maṭābiʿ al-Shaʿb, 1961. Rabban al-Ṭabarī, ʿAlī ibn Sahl. Firdaws al-ḥikma fī al-ṭibb. Beirut: s.n., 1970. Rahman, Fazlur. Health and Medicine in the Islamic Tradition. New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1987. Reynolds, Gabriel Said. The Qurʾān and its Biblical Subtext. London: Routledge, 2010. Schwartz, Howard and Caren Loebel-Fried. Tree of souls: the mythology of Judaism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Sells, Michael. Approaching the Qur’an. Ashland: White Cloud Press, 1999. Singh, Yii-Jan. “Semen, Philosophy, and Paul.” In Journal of Philosophy and Scripture 4 (2007): 32–45. al-Suyutī, Jalāl al-Dīn. Ṭibb al-nabawī. London: Ta-Ha, 1994. al-Ṭabarī, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr. Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl āy al-qurʾān (Tafsīr al-Ṭabarī). 7 Vols. Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1994.

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Narratives of Villainy: Titus, Nebuchadnezzar, and Nimrod in the ḥadĪth and midrash aggadah Shari L. Lowin Much has been written on the similarities between the narratives of the shared founding fathers of Judaism and Islam. After all, these founding fathers—Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael, King David and others—serve as the paradigms upon which adherents of both traditions model themselves, their religious philosophy, and ultimately their relationships to one another and to God. Importantly, the ḥadīth and midrash aggadah, the repositories of these narratives, share information not only on the heroes who serve as models for proper imitative behavior, but also on the evil villains who are excoriated. Thus adherents learn not only what behavior to imitate and value but also from which practices, attitudes, and conduct one should distance oneself and condemn. Fascinatingly, despite their desire to identify themselves as separate religious traditions and value systems, Judaism and Islam tell many of the same stories about the same ancestors and their shared villainous foils. Perhaps because of these largely unavoidable similarities, in studies on these Islamic and Jewish extra-Scriptural narrative expansions1—ḥadīth and midrash aggadah—early scholars often all too quickly jumped to conclusions. When Jewish and Muslim narratives relate similar stories about their shared forefathers, we find scholars frequently asserting that the younger tradition, Islam, has lifted the narrative from the elder, Judaism. Differences between the two versions are often attributed to Muslim mistakes, confusion, or flights of Arab fancy. Such a practice constitutes an injustice to the inherent creativity of the Muslim tradition, as well as to the complex, often symbiotic, relationship between the narrative traditions of Islam and Judaism. The current study presents a comparative examination of one particularly intriguing motif appearing in both the Jewish and Islamic extraScriptural corpora: the attempt by a pagan king to kill God and the 1 For more on this term, see James L. Kugel, In Potiphar’s House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 3–6.

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subsequent punishment the villain endures. In examining this “narrative of villainy,” this paper will challenge earlier scholarly tendencies in two ways. First, analysis of these Jewish and Muslim accounts reveals that the Islamic texts adopted and adapted the narratives of the earlier midrashic tradition (on Titus, Roman destroyer of Jerusalem in 70 CE), not out of confusion as David Sidersky has written.2 Rather, the Islamic authors purposely modified particular midrashic materials in order to teach believers a lesson about a shared villain of greater significance to the Islamic tradition (i.e. Nimrod, the enemy and pursuer of the shared forefather of the Muslims and Jews, Abraham). Equally interestingly, we will see that in so doing the Muslim texts preserved what appears to be a now-lost early rabbinic midrash on yet another shared villain (Nebuchadnezzar, Babylonian destroyer of Jerusalem in 586 BCE). Nimrod, the Flying Box, the Attack on God, and Death by Gnat Our point of departure begins with the chronologically earliest of our villains, Nimrod/Namrūd, who appears in both the Islamic and Jewish exegetical corpus as the idolatrous king who argues with the forefather Abraham over theological issues. These polemical encounters, in which Nimrod/ Namrūd, fails to convince Abraham/Ibrāhīm to worship other than the one God, eventually lead Nimrod/Namrūd to throw the religious rebel in a fiery furnace, ur kasdim, the Ur of the Chaldees. In both the Arabic and Hebrew texts, God prevents the fire from harming His loyal servant and Abraham/Ibrāhīm emerges from the flames completely unscathed.3 2 “Les Arabes ayant entendu relate cette histoire dans le milieux juifs ont fait confusion entre le prince romain du premier siècle aprés J.-C. et le fameux Nemrod, personnage de la haute antiquité, contemporain et adversaire du patriarche Abraham.” See David Sidersky, Les Origines des légendes Musulmanes dans le Coran et dans les Vies des Prophètes (Paris: Libraire Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1933), 42. 3 Among the pre-Islamic midrashic accounts, see the 6th century CE Babylonian Talmud [BT] (Vilna: Ram Publishers, 1927), Pesaḥim 118a; BT Eruvin 53a; Genesis Rabbah (5th cent. CE), ed. J. Theodor and Ch. Albeck (Berlin, 1903–1936; reprint, Jerusalem: Wahr­ mann, 1965), 44:13; Song of Songs Rabbah (500–640 CE), 1:12, in Midrash Rabbah ha-Mevoʿar ( Jerusalem: Mekhon ha-Midrash ha-Mevoʿar, 5744– [1983–]), Shir ha-Shirim; and, Midrash Tanḥuma (5th cent. CE), ed. Shelomo Buber (New York: Hotsa’at Sefer, 1946), Lekh Lekha 2. Among the Islamic sources, both Shīʿī and Sunnī, see Q 21:51–71; Muqātil ibn Sulaymān (713–83 CE), Tafsīr Muqātil, ed. ʿAbd Allāh Maḥmūd Shiḥāta (Cairo: al-Ḥayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿāmma li-al-kitāb, 1979–89) 3:613; ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī (c. 795–844 CE), Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓim, ed. Muṣṭafā Muslim Muḥammad (Riyad: Maktabat al-Rushd, 1989), 2:24–25; Isḥaq ibn Bishr (d. 821 CE), Mubtada‌ʾ al-dunyā wa-qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ, MS Huntington 388 (Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Oxford), 168a–b; Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī    



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While the classical midrashic accounts for the most part lose interest in Nimrod with Abraham’s rescue from certain death by fire and his subsequent departure from Ur, the Muslim renditions go on to heap ignominy on Namrūd’s head describing continued wickedness on his part. According to the earliest detailed version of this account, found in the Qurʾānic exegetical work of the early ninth century Isḥāq ibn Bishr (d. 821 CE),4 when Namrūd fails to convert Ibrāhīm to polytheism or to burn him to death in the furnace, he decides to search for and take on Allāh Himself. Understanding from his conversations with Ibrāhīm that Allāh dwells in the heavens, Namrūd commissions the building of the Tower of Babel, ordering it to be built high enough so as to reach the sky. But Allāh turns the tower over on its head, destroying it.5 Not to be defeated, Namrūd then commissions a box to be built, places his throne in the box, takes four eagles, which he had starved for this occasion, and ties them to the four corners of the box. He commands a young servant to enter the box, places a spear loaded with meat in the servant’s hand and then enters the box himself, sitting on the throne. At Namrūd’s command the servant raises the spear high above the eagles’ heads and as the ravenous eagles fly toward the meat, the contraption lifts off the ground and flies up into (838–923 CE), Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan ta‌ʾwīl ay al-Qurʾān (Cairo: Sharikat maktabat wa-maṭbaʿat Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī wa-awlādihi, 1954), 17:45 (on Q 21:70); Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Ibrāhīm al-Qummī (d. c. 940 CE), Tafsīr al-Qummī (Najaf: Maṭbaʿat al-Najaf, 1386–7 AH [c. 1967], 2:73; Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Thaʿlabī (d. 1036 CE), Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ almusamma ʿarāʾis al-majālis (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-anwār al-Muḥammadiyya, n.d.), 93; ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAsākir (1105–1176 CE), Ta‌ʾrīkh madīnat dimashq, ed. ʿUmar ibn Gharāma al-ʿAmrawī (Beirut: Dār al-fikr, 1995–), 6:185; Abū al-Fidāʾ Ismāʿīl ibn Kathīr (1300–1373 CE), Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓim (Beirut: Dār al-fikr, 1970), 5:352; Muḥammad ibn Baqīr al-Majlisī (1627–1698 CE), Biḥār al-anwār (Teheran: Dār al-kutub al-Islāmiyya, 1362–66 AH [1943– 46], 12:33. In order to allow for easier differentiation between the Islamic and Jewish narratives, I use the transliteration of the Arabic names to indicate the Islamic version of the characters and the commonly spelled English versions to refer to the midrashic characters. This is in accordance with academic practice in midrashic studies, which does not refer to the forefather as “Avraham,” the transliteration of the Hebrew, but as “Abraham.” 4 Ibn Bishr, 159a–160a and also 157a, 158b. An earlier account appears in the exegesis of Muqātil ibn Sulaymān (c. 713–83) but Muqātil (2:411) makes only a brief reference to the story with very few details. Ibn Bishr’s version is the earliest of the detailed versions, as noted above. See also al-Thaʿlabī, 84; ʿAbd al-Razzāq, 1:344; al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 3:25–26 (on Q 2:258), 14:96–98 (on Q 16:26); idem, Ta‌ʾrīkh al-rusul wa-al-mulūk (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1879–1901), 1:320–23; al-Majlisī, 25:373. While al-Thaʿlabī’s parallels Ibn Bishr’s account almost word for word, the other sources include variations. These will be discussed further on. 5 The different Islamic sources include slightly differing details regarding Namrūd’s building of the Tower and Allāh’s destruction of it. These are not relevant to the current discussion but will be addressed in a forthcoming work on the topic.

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the sky.6 When Namrūd reaches the abyss, the angel Jibrīl (Gabriel) suddenly approaches him, asking the king where he thought he was travelling to and what he planned on doing when he arrived. Says Namrūd, I want to find the king of heaven and wrest his kingdom from him. Jibrīl warns Namrūd that the trip is exceedingly long, at least 500 years between earth and the lowest rung of heaven, another 500 years between each level after that, and another 500 to cross each level. Undaunted, Namrūd continues flying higher and higher. When they had flown high enough so that, as the servant describes, the earth looked like a white coil and the mountains appeared as puffs of smoke, Namrūd suddenly shoots an arrow into the sky.7 It comes back to him with drops of blood on it. Seeing the blood, Namrūd exclaims, “Verily I have killed the king of heaven!” and orders his servant to lower the spear, returning them to terra firma.8 Namrūd exits 6 A small number of versions of this account do not describe the eagles as starving but as having been raised on a diet of meat so that they grew strong and dreadful. See al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān 14:96–98 (on Q 16:26); idem, Ta‌ʾrīkh, 1:323; al-Thaʿlabī, 84–85. Al-Kisāʾī (13th cent. CE) records simply that the eagles are hungry. See Isaac Eisenberg, Vita Prophetarum auctore Muhammad ben Abdallah al-Kisa‌ʾi (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1922), 148–49. ʿAbd al-Razzāq (1:344 on Q 14:46) and al-Majlisī (2:411 on Q 14:46) relate the story in detail but do not address the issue of the eagles’ diet or hunger. 7 Al-Ṭabarī includes two different versions. In one, Namrūd ascends heavenward to “do battle with the one who was there” and does so; in the other, Namrūd rises, only to leave before releasing any ammunition. See his Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 14:96 (on Q 16 27) and his Ta‌ʾrīkh, 1:320–23. Mircea Eliade points out that shooting arrows into heaven constitutes an ancient ritual; usually the shooters aimed at thunderclouds, or really at the power that dwelled in the cloud and caused the frightening thunder. Eliade notes that in Herodotus’ Histories (Bk 4, para. 94), Herodotus writes that the Thracians will, during a thunderstorm, shoot arrows into the sky while uttering threats against the Lord of Lightning and Thunder because they recognize no god but their own. See Mircea Eliade, “Notes on the Symbolism of the Arrow,” in Religions in Antiquity, ed. Jacob Neusner (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968), 463–75. 8 The Islamic accounts describe various scenarios for Namrūd’s descent. In addition to the one just described, Ibn Bishr brings another in which he records that after Namrūd claimed to have killed God, Jibrīl let loose with a great scream which shook the mountains and caused the ark to descend to earth, accompanied by light and noise. When the mountains saw the strange noisy object heading toward them, they became frightened that Allāh had decided to destroy the earth and so they moved out of the way. The ark and its occupants landed in the sea; but the sea wanted no part of them and ejected them. And so, Namrūd and his box landed on a parapet on a mountain top. Allāh sent a cloudless wind and it carried him back to his home. See Ibn Bishr, 159a-159b. Al-Ṭabarī recounts a far less vivid descent in which Namrūd simply ordered the servant to lower the spear and the eagles flew the box down to earth. See Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 14:96 (on Q 16:26); Ta‌ʾrīkh, 1:323; al-Thaʿlabī, 84. Al-Ṭabarī brings another version, attributed to al-Suddī, in which Namrūd became frightened by the darkness of the heavens and, panicking, threw down the meat, whereupon the eagles raced downward after it. When the mountains saw them coming, they grew afraid and tried to move from their place but couldn’t. Namrūd landed on Jabal Dukhkhān. See Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 14:97–98 (on Q 16:26). ʿAbd al-Razzāq (1:344)



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the box, performs a ritual ablution, washes his head, and, as befits a king, calls for a beautiful woman to look at. Allāh, however, is not content to let the man get away with such blasphemy and attempted deicide. And so, He sends a gnat, which lands on the king’s nose, enters his nostril, climbs up the dark passages to his brain and begins to sup there. Not surprisingly, the chomping noises in Namrūd’s head cause him a particularly grievous headache, one from which the king finds no respite. In desperation, he places a rock over the threshold of his doorway, and, we are told, does not cease butting his head against it until he breaks off the top of his head and dies. Freed from Namrūd’s head, the gnat exits, having grown to about the size of a bird.9 Other versions provide slightly differing scenarios regarding Namrūd’s attempts to quiet the noises in his head. Muqātil ibn Sulaymān (713–783 CE) records that the gnat entered Namrūd’s brain and afflicted him for forty days, causing him such headaches that he would beat himself in the head with a hammer. When he hit his head, the gnat would quiet similarly records that Namrūd simply lowered the spear and the eagles flew the box downward, which frightened the mountains. Unlike al-Ṭabarī, ʿAbd al-Razzāq reports that the mountains, thinking something horrible had happened, did move. So too Muqātil (2:411) reports that the mountains moved because of Namrūd’s flight but he does not detail how or why. Al-Kisāʾī (148–149) claims that Jibrīl hit the flying box with his wing, causing Namrūd to be thrown into the ocean. When he emerged, he found all his hair had turned white. Al-Kisāʾī does not explain how Namrūd then got back home, other than to say that Ibrāhīm “found him.” Al-Majlisī (25:373) includes a truncated version in which he relates simply that Namrūd was punished for declaring that he had killed “the one who is in heaven.” His actual trip does not appear. Taking a vastly different turn, Ibn Bishr cites an alternate version of Namrūd’s descent, with an alternate chain of transmission (Isḥāq— Abū Ilyas—Wahb), in which on the way down the cloudless wind which Allāh sent to carry Namrūd’s ark suspends it temporarily between heaven and earth. Allāh sends snow, which covers Namrūd, seeps into his joints and freezes his body parts together. Allāh then causes the frozen monarch to sink down through the seven levels of the earth. Some say that he remains there, alive and frozen erect, till Resurrection Day (yawm al-qiyāma); others maintain that he stayed that way for only 270 years. 9 Ibn Bishr, 160a. Al-Ṭabarī and others record an additional version of this account in which the gnat afflicts Namrūd, but with no mention of an attempt to fly heavenward. Here Allāh sends an angel to Namrūd and threatens him that if he does not begin worshipping Allāh, He will wrest his kingdom from him. Thrice Namrūd refuses, proclaiming himself to be Lord instead. The angel then advises Namrūd to gather his forces three days hence. At the appointed time, the angel releases an army of gnats so great in number that they block out the sun. The gnats eat the flesh and drink the blood of Namrūd’s soldiers, leaving only bones. The king himself, however, remains untouched, until Allāh sends a single gnat to him, which enters his nose and lives in his head for 400 years. Here too Namrūd finds respite only when he smashes himself in the head with a hammer or when people take pity on him and smack him in the head with their hands. After 400 years, Allāh finally killed him. See Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 3 25–26 (on Q 2:258); idem, Ta‌ʾrīkh, 1:320–321; ʿAbd al-Razzāq, 1/1:105–106; al-Thaʿlabī, 85.

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down. But when he regained consciousness, the gnat would start up again. According to ʿAbd al-Razzāq, recorded by al-Ṭabarī (d. 923 CE), the gnat lived in Namrūd’s head for 400 years, and for 400 years he had to beat himself with a hammer in order to quiet it. Frequently people took pity on him and smacked him in the head with their hands.10 Titus, Attack on God, and Death by Mosquito Those familiar with Talmudic and midrashic material will immediately notice parallels between Namrūd’s villainous behavior and the resulting punishment and that of a villain found in the earlier Jewish exegetical corpus: the Roman general and enemy of the Jews, Titus son of Vespasian. And so it is to the midrashic accounts of Titus, destroyer of Jerusalem in 69–70 CE, to which we now turn. According to the earliest version of this account, found in the c. fifth century CE exegetical midrash Leviticus Rabbah (22:3) and other preIslamic midrashic sources,11 when Titus attacked Jerusalem, he took 10 Muqātil, 1:215 (on Q 2:258); Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 14:97 (on Q 16:26). Al-Kisāʾī later records a version that reflects Muqātil’s. According to al-Kisāʾī (148–149), the gnat began gnawing not only on the king’s brain but also on his flesh, bones, and marrow. For 40 days he could neither eat nor sleep. Finally, he commissioned an iron bar to be constructed and asked his servants, those of the highest order only, to smash his head with it, in order to quiet the gnat. After 40 days of this “treatment,” an especially strong vizier gave the king a particularly mighty blow to the head and split his head open. The gnat emerged like a chicken from an egg, piously recited the shahāda, and flew off. Al-Majlisī (12:18), citing the exegesis of Ibn ʿAbbās, relates a very brief rendition in which Namrūd tried to catch the gnat before it flew up his nose but failed. Allāh punished him this way for 40 days and then killed him. 11 See Leviticus Rabbah (400–500 CE), 22:3 in Midrash Rabbah ha-Mevoʾar. Vayiqra. The account also appears in BT Gittin 56b (6th century); Midrash Tanḥuma (5th cent. CE), Ḥuqat, 1; and in the 5th century CE Genesis Rabbah 10:7. According to the TheodorAlbeck edition of Genesis Rabbah, only a very terse account appears, in which Titus is said to have entered the Holy of Holies, blasphemed and ripped the curtain, and was then punished with a mosquito in the nose, which grew to 2 liters in size. Other editions of Genesis Rabbah include the longer account found in Leviticus Rabbah. See also Exodus Rabbah (500–700 CE), 5:4, in Midrash Rabbah ha-Mevoʾar. Shemot. The 3rd century Sifre to Deuteronomy (para. 328) calls Titus the son of Vespasian’s wife. Avot de-Rabbi Natan B (ch. 7) picks up on this as well. See Sifre on Deuteronomy, ed. Shaul Horovitz and Eliezer Finkelstein (Berlin: Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums, 1939; reprint New York and Jerusalem: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1969); Masechet Avot de-Rabbi Natan, ed. Solomon Schechter (New York: Feldheim, 1945). Since the midrashic texts recognize Titus as Vespasian’s biological son, scholars have understood that referring to Titus as “the son of Vespasian’s wife” was a way of saying that Titus was legitimate, and not the son of Vespasian’s concubine or the like. According to H. L. Strack and G. Stemberger, though the content of Avot de-Rabbi Natan dates largely to the early third



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himself over to the Temple Mount, the most sacred spot for the Jews. Now, although pagans were forbidden from entering the Temple, Titus brazenly did so. Sword drawn and at the ready, Titus proceeded through the Temple until he reached its innermost sanctum, the Holy of Holies. Although only the High Priest may enter the Holy of Holies, and only in the most ritually purified state, and only on the Day of Atonement, Titus entered the room, brandishing his sword, and stabbed the parochet (the curtain that cordoned off the Holy of Holies), ripping it. When he withdrew his sword from the curtain’s folds, it emerged covered in blood.12 Titus then took two prostitutes, unrolled a Torah scroll atop the Temple’s altar, and had sexual intercourse with the prostitutes atop it.13 He blasphemed and jabbed with his sword, gathering all the Temple utensils as spoils, mocking God, and claiming he had killed Him. Titus declared victoriously, “The king who does battle with another king in the desert and wins is not equal to the king who does battle with another king in his own palace and wins.”14 He went down to his ship with all his spoils and headed off to Rome. A roiling storm hit as he was at sea. Said Titus, “It seems to me that the God of this people has no power but in water. He rid himself of the Generation of Enosh through water; of the Generation of the Flood through water; and of Pharaoh and his army through water.15 And now myself as

century, the text was not closed until the 7th or early 8th century (p. 247). Strack and Stemberger, Introduction to Talmud and Midrash, trans. Markus Bockmuehl (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 245–47. The 5th century CE Midrash Tehillim refers to Titus as the son of Vespasian’s “sister.” Some have understood this to be a textual error for “wife.” See Midrash Tehillim, ed. Shelomo Buber (Vilna: Ram, 5651 [c. 1890]), 121:3. 12 On the source of this mysterious blood, see fn. 18. A late version of this midrash maintains that Titus cut the Torah scroll, not the curtain, and when he did so, blood spurted forth. See Numbers Rabbah (12th cent. CE), 18: 22, in Midrash Rabbah ha-Mevoʾar. Bamidbar. Avot de-Rabbi Natan A (ch. 1) provides a much different narrative in which Titus’s sole evil act was to enter the Holy of Holies and strike the altar multiple times with his baton. As he did, he cried out, “Lycos [murderous wolf ]! Lycos!” and challenged God to wage war against him. Titus’ charge against God in referring to Him as a murderous wolf was that all God ever did was lay waste to the earth, as is evident from the number of animals sacrificed to Him at that altar. Interestingly, Eliade notes that in Asia, practitioners shot arrows into the sky against demons; in China, they aimed their arrows toward a “Celestial Wolf,” the cause of eclipses. See Eliade, 466. 13 BT Gittin restricts Titus to one prostitute. 14 This appears to be a reference to God’s victories on behalf of the Israelites during their 40 years in the desert. In Avot de-Rabbi Natan B, ch. 7, Titus specifies particular incidents from later Israelite history: Sisera (Judges 4) and Sennacherib’s death (2 Kgs. 19:37). 15 For the Generation of the Flood, see Gen. 6–8; for the drowning of Pharaoh’s army, see Exodus 14–15. Although midrashic texts consistently speak of a flood that punished the generation of Enosh for having sinned, this does not appear in the Bible itself and

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well—when I was in His house and His territory He could not stand up to me but now He comes to fight me because He thinks He can defeat me through water.” Said the Holy One, Blessed Be He, “Evil one (rasha)! I will rid myself of you using the most insignificant of all my creations.”16 Immediately, God signaled to the Prince of the Sea and the sea stopped roiling. When Titus arrived at shore, all the nobles of Rome came out to greet and praise him. He traveled to Rome and, apparently in need of some royal relaxation, went to the bathhouse. When he exited, they brought him a drink of wine. While he was drinking, a mosquito suddenly flew up his nostril. From there it traveled to his brain where it picked continuously until it grew to the size of a bird weighing two pounds. Unable to stand the pain or the noise caused by the mosquito living in his head, Titus commanded his people to split his head open and discover exactly how the God of the Jews rid Himself of him. Immediately, they called the doctors. When they split Titus’ head open, a two-pound bird emerged. Says the midrashic text, while the mosquito thus changed for the better, Titus changed for the worse; for when the mosquito, now very large, escaped from Titus’ head, so too did Titus’ soul, and he died. The sixth century CE Babylonian Talmud provides an alternative version of this latter part of the story. According BT Gittin 56B, the mosquito buzzed continuously for seven years, driving Titus close to insanity. One the exegetical source for such a motif remains somewhat shrouded in mystery. Gen. 4:26 identifies Enosh as the son of Seth, and states that during his lifetime “men began (heḥel) to call upon the name of the Lord.” Although the Bible does not attribute outright any sin to these people, the early rabbinic readers of the Bible understood the phrase to indicate that during Enosh’s generation people began to worship false idols, calling them by God’s name. See Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Genesis, trans. Michael Maher (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1992), on 4:26 and Targum Neophyti 1: Genesis, trans. Martin McNamara (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1992), on 4:26. It appears that the Targums read the Biblical word heḥel as created from the root ḥll, meaning to desecrate, and not as the hophal form, meaning to begin. On this root and verb, see Samuel Sandmel, “Genesis 4:26b,” HUCA 32 (1961): 19–29. See also BT Shabbat 118b. The Mekhilta of R. Ishmael (2nd half 3rd cent. CE) and the 3rd century CE Sifre to Deuteronomy (piska 43) describe God’s response to this new idolatrous behavior: He sends a flood which covers one-third of the earth. Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishmael, ed. Meir Ish-Shalom (Vienna: 1879; reprint New York: Om, 1948), Ba-Hodesh, 6. See also Genesis Rabbah 19:7 and 23:7. A flood in Enosh’s day also appears in the Talmud Yerushalmi [ Jerusalem Talmud] (Berlin: Hotsaʿat Sefarim, 5685 [1925]), Shekalim, chapter 6, halakha 2. In Midrash Tanḥuma. Ḥuqat 1, Titus names only Pharaoh and Sisera (perhaps because Sisera asked for water to drink but instead Jael gave him milk, a soporific, and when he fell asleep, she killed him. See Judges 4–5). 16 BT Gittin 56b explains why the mosquito is the most insignificant; it has an orifice for ingesting but not for excreting, thereby demonstrating that it is not a biologically complex creature.



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day, walking by a blacksmith’s shop, Titus noticed that the creature quieted when it heard the clanging noises. So he ordered a blacksmith to appear before him every day in order to clang and thereby quiet the noise in his head. Now if the blacksmith were a Gentile, explains the Talmud, he received remuneration of four zuz. A Jewish blacksmith, however, received no monetary compensation; said Titus to the Jewish blacksmith, ‘It is enough of a reward for you that you see the suffering of your enemy!’ After thirty days of such blacksmith “therapy,” the mosquito became used to the noise, and the incessant buzzing returned. When Titus finally died, they split open his head and removed the creature, which had grown to the size of a baby bird.17 Namrūd and Titus: Similarities The many parallels found here between the Islamic Namrūd narrative and midrashic Titus strike even the most casual reader of the text as undeniable. In both, an idolatrous enemy of God’s beloved attacks God in the aftermath of an attack on His faithful: Namrūd embarks upon his attack against God after failing to burn Abraham to death in the fiery furnace while Titus launches his assault on God as the final move in his military attack on Judea. Both men understand that in order to attack God, they need to find Him at home: Namrūd travels to heaven and Titus enters the Temple’s Holy of Holies. Although their methods of attack differ slightly, both men use sharp weapons aimed at piercing God: Titus stabs with a sword while Namrūd shoots sharp arrows. Both villains aim these weapons in the general direction of where they assume God to be although they cannot see Him: Namrūd blindly shoots up into the sky and Titus stabs the curtain. Disturbingly for their monotheist readers, both traditions relate that the villains seem to have hit their mark: Namrūd’s arrows return to him bloodied, as does Titus’ sword when he withdraws it from the folds of the stabbed curtain.18 Despite their exceedingly 17 BT Gittin 56b reports that Abaye (d. 339 CE) noted that the beak of the emerging mosquito-bird was made of copper and its nails of iron. See also Genesis Rabbah 10:7; Numbers Rabbah 18:22; Midrash Tanḥuma, Ḥuqat, ch. 1; Avot de-Rabbi Natan, version B, ch. 7; Ecclesiastes Rabbah, 5:4, in Midrash Rabbah ha-Mevoʾar. Qohelet. Incomplete accounts appear in the 3rd century CE Sifre on Deuteronomy, piska 228 and in Leviticus Rabbah (c. 400–500 CE) 20:5, as well as in many texts that date to after the rise of Islam. 18 In another similar move, each religious tradition attempts to explain away this disturbing detail. Genesis Rabbah 10:7 and Leviticus Rabbah 22:3 take note of the fact that Titus’ assault occurs near the sacrificial altar and suggest that the blood was either that of

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sacrilegious behavior and boasts of having successfully committed deicide, both Namrūd and Titus leave what they perceive to be God’s territory unmolested: Namrūd descends from heaven and returns safely to earth while Titus leaves the Temple and the Land of Israel and returns safely to Rome.19 Both tyrants then celebrate their victories first by washing up and then with other royal pursuits: Namrūd performs a ritual ablution and then calls for a pretty woman while Titus enters the bathhouse and then orders a celebratory drink. It is at this point, when both men think they are safe, that God punishes them both for their hubris. In both cases He sends the most “insignificant” of His creatures, the gnat/the mosquito, to defeat them. The bloodsucking insect enters through both noses, travels up to both brains and vexes both men with incessant chomping and buzzing, quieting only, in both cases, at loud noises. Eventually both Namrūd and Titus die from the torture. When their heads are opened post-mortem, the insects emerge not only still alive but having grown to the size of a bird. Who Influenced Whom? Given all these similarities, it seems clear that our Jewish Titus texts and Islamic Namrūd accounts must be linked. And, given the fact that the earliest Titus texts—Genesis Rabbah (5th cent. CE), BT Gittin (early 6th cent. CE), Midrash Tanḥuma (5th cent. CE) and Leviticus Rabbah (400– 500 CE)—predate the birth of Islam by approximately 200 years, one can safely say that the Jewish texts provided the inspiration for the later Muslim adaptations. Indeed, not only do the relevant midrashic texts predate the birth of Islam by close to two centuries, they predate the Namrūd accounts in particular by even more time; the first Islamic Namrūd

sacrifices normally offered in the Temple (dam qodashim) or of the sacrificial goat offered on the Day of Atonement whose blood is sprinkled onto and before the ark-cover in the Holy of Holies. While Ibn Bishr does not try to explain away the blood on the arrows, al-Thaʿlabī, who records a version of the account that closely resembles Ibn Bishr’s, does (pp. 84–85). One possibility, which al-Thaʿlabī attributes to ʿIkrima, explains that Namrūd’s arrow hit one of the fish that dwells in the sea between heaven and earth. Another explanation, say al-Thaʿlabī, is that the arrow accidentally hit one of the eagles tethered to the box. 19 It appears that BT Gittin 56b find God’s silence and inaction in the face of Titus’ blasphemy and assault disturbing and so it turns God’s stoicism into a value, lauding Him as “mighty in self-restraint.” Nonetheless, a sense of implied criticism of His inaction is detectable there. This critique can be seen also in Midrash Tanḥuma, Aḥarei Mot, 5.



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pericopes available to us appear some 300–400 years after the rabbinic Titus materials.20 Such a claim of Jewish textual influence on Islamic exegetical materials should not disturb readers of the Islamic texts. After all, the Muslim use of Talmudic and midrashic material in the Islamic extra-Scriptural corpus is a well-known and well-documented phenomenon. Although such materials ultimately fell out of favor among the normative orthodox scholars of Islam, beginning around the Abbasid period, the early Muslims did not deny the fact of Jewish textual influence nor did they find it particularly problematic, especially in the earlier years of Islam’s development. The early qiṣaṣ and ḥadīth collectors were known to have drawn from the earlier Jewish textual materials in composing their extra-Qurʾānic “stories of the prophets” for a variety of reasons.21 One well-known early ḥadīth tradition recorded in the Risāla of al-Shāfiʿī (d. 820 CE) demonstrates this early positive perspective: “The Prophet said: Transmit on my authority be it even one verse (from the Qurʾān), narrate (traditions) concerning the Children of Israel and there is nothing objectionable (in that).” This saying became widely current among Muslims in the first half of the second Islamic century (late 7th–8th century CE) and reflects the perspective of the Qurʾān itself (10:94): “If you are in doubt about what We have sent down to you then ask those who have been reading the book before you.”22 Indeed, so acceptable was the Muslim familiarity with Jewish narrative materials that the Islamic tradition credits even Muḥammad himself with having been a possible source for Jewish materials. Nabia Abbott points out that according to the sīra and ḥadīth materials, Muḥammad was said to visit the beit midrash (Jewish House of Study) in Medina along with his closest Companions, to have conferred with Jewish scholars, and to have possessed Jewish manuscripts.23

20 The earliest Muslim rendition, a short un-detailed reference, appears in the exegetical work of Muqātil ibn Sulaymān, who died in 722 CE. The earliest detailed version dates to almost a century later, appearing in the authoritative qiṣaṣ of Isḥāq ibn Bishr, d. 821 CE. 21  For an in-depth discussion see Shari L. Lowin, The Making of a Forefather: Abraham in Islamic and Jewish Exegetical Narratives (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2006), Introduction, esp. pages 9–15. The Excursus to the Introduction traces the history of scholarship on Muslim-Jewish intertextuality. 22 M. J. Kister, “Ḥaddithū ʿan banī isrāʿīla wa-lā ḥaraja: A Study of an Early Tradition,” IOS 2 (1972): 215–39. 23 Nabia Abbott, Studies in Arabic Literary Papyri II (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 7–8.

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Yet despite all this, two issues prevent us from declaring definitively, as some have done, that the Muslim Namrūd tradition results directly from the earlier Jewish Titus narratives, with no intermediate intervention. Namely, the Muslim adaptation of midrashic material is not a haphazard, willy-nilly process. Although accidental errors do occur when these narratives pass from tradition to tradition, the Muslim use of midrashic information results largely from organized, intelligent, and insightful readings and reinterpretations of the material in accordance with the values of the tradition.24 Thus, we must ask: why or how does the Jewish villain Titus become the Islamic villain Namrūd? The problematic significance of the shift from Titus to Namrūd becomes clearer when we realize that neither the midrashic nor Islamic depictions of the two villains have anything in common that would naturally link them with one another and cause the Islamic tradition to “confuse” one for the other.25 Our two villains do not share national affiliation: Titus is Roman and Nimrod/Namrūd, in both the Islamic and midrashic traditions, is Babylonian-Chaldean.26 They do not live in the same time period but in eras separated from one another by thousands of years: Nimrod/Namrūd belongs to the generations who followed shortly after Noah’s flood,27 and, in the extra-Scriptural Islamic and Jewish texts, serves 24 For more on this phenomenon, see Lowin, The Making of a Forefather. 25 As Sidersky has written. See above, fn. 2. 26 On Nimrod as a Babylonian in the Islamic traditions, see al-Ṭabarī, Ta‌ʾrīkh, 1:233 and 2 206; idem, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 3:23 (on Q 2:258); al-Kisāʾī, 128–132; ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn al-Masʿūdī (c. 896–c. 956 CE), Murūj al-dhahab wa-maʿādhin al-jawhār, ed. Charles Pellat (Beirut: Publications de L’Université Libanaise, 1966–1974), 1:249; ʿAbd Allah ibn Muslim ibn Qutayba (828–889 CE), Kitāb al-maʿārif, ed. Muḥammad Ismāʿīl ʿAbd Allāh al-Sāwī (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Islāmiyya, 1934), 113–14; Aḥmad ibn Abī Yaʿqūb al-Yaʿqūbī (d. 897 CE), Ta‌ʾrīkh Aḥmad ibn Abī Yaʿqūb ibn Jaʿfar ibn Wahab ibn Wādiḥ al-maʿrūf bi-al-Yaʿqūbī, ed. M. Th. Houtsma (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1969), 90–91. Al-Ṭabarī brings an alternate version in which Namrūd appears as a Nabatean who eventually conquers Babylon. See Ta‌ʾrīkh, 1:323–24. Genesis 10:10 also notes that Nimrod’s kingdom extended to Babel. Both the midrashic and Islamic sources credit, or accuse, Nimrod of having been the Babylonian who built the Tower of Babel. 27 The Islamic extra-Scriptural sources generally identify Namrūd as either the son of Canaan son of Cush son of Shem son of Noah or, deleting Canaan, as the son of Cush directly. See Muqātil, 1:215 (on Q 2:258), 1:572 (on Q 6:74–82), and 2:411 (on Q 14:46); al-Ṭabarī, Ta‌ʾrīkh, 1:318–19, 254; idem, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 14:96–98 (on Q 16 26), 3:23 (on Q 2:258); al-Masʿūdī, 1:47–8, 2:244; al-Kisāʾī, 129–131; Mujāhid ibn Jabr (641–722 CE), Tafsīr al-imām Mujāhid ibn Jabr, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Salām Abū al-Nīl (Cairo: Dār al-fikr, 1989), 243 (on Q 2:258); Ibn Qutayba, 13–14. Genesis 10:1–10 lists Nimrod as the son of Cush son of Ḥam son of Noah (Canaan is Cush’s brother, v. 6). That the Islamic texts add Canaan



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as king over the land in which the forefather Abraham first dwelled; Titus, a documented historical figure, was a Roman general, son of the Emperor Vespasian, and lived in the first century CE.28 They do not even share an enemy: before assaulting God, Titus fights against the nation of the Jews, while both the midrashic Nimrod and Islamic Namrūd attack Abraham, a single non-Jewish person. The goal, and even the result, of their attacks differ as well. Despite Titus’ suffering and humiliating death in the rabbinic narrative, the Jewish texts acknowledge the historical fact of Titus’ successful defeat of Judea in which he brought it under Roman rule and burned the Temple to the ground.29 Nimrod’s/Namrūd’s fight with Abraham/Ibrāhīm, on the other hand, lacks any military or territorial component and in no sense does he gain a victory. Instead, while Titus proves successful on some level, destroying the Temple and carrying away its treasures, the Muslim and midrashic Babylonian villain fails to persuade Abraham to cease worshipping God, fails to immolate Abraham, and fails to destroy God. The second problem in claiming that the Islamic Namrūd saga derives directly from the Jewish Titus narratives concerns the vivid detail of Namrūd’s flying machine. In the Islamic extra-Qurʾānic accounts, this detail forms a major component of Namrūd’s attack on Allāh and is much described and focused upon. If the Islamic tradition had drawn the account of Namrūd directly from the midrashic Titus tale, we would expect to see this detail in the midrashic texts as well. Problematically however, no Jewish account of Titus records him either building for himself a box or flying to heaven. Rather, Titus remains steadfastly earth-bound in all the Jewish sources.

to the genealogical list may have to do with the events of Gen. 9. There the Bible records that Noah’s son Ḥam, identified as “the father of Canaan,” saw his father’s nakedness while Noah was passed out in a drunken stupor; instead of covering Noah, Ḥam went to tell his brothers about it. When Noah awoke, he cursed Ḥam’s son Canaan. Classical rabbinic exegesis explains that the verse indicates that Canaan (not Ḥam) was actually the first to see Noah in his nakedness and that he was then cursed because he told his father rather than covering up his grandfather. See Genesis Rabbah 36:7 and Midrash Tanḥuma, Noaḥ, 15. Religious texts often engage in what can be called a “conservation of biblical personalities,” in which wicked people from across the generations become identified with one another. The same conservation occurs with righteous characters. 28 For more on Titus in the midrashic sources and for the Islamic identification of Titus, see below. 29 For an overview of the Jewish traditions on Titus, see Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1909–1938), passim.

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Evidently then, while the midrashic account of Titus appears to have provided the Islamic Namrūd with the motifs of attempted deicide and death-by-gnat, it did not provide all of the elements that appear in the Namrūd narrative. Specifically, the midrashic account of Titus clearly did not serve as the source for Namrūd’s aero-dynamic construction project and his flight to heaven. David Sidersky maintains that this apparently added detail results from what he understands to be a colorful Arab imagination. Writes Sidersky of the story of Namrūd’s building the tower of Babel and then the flying box, “Elle est assurément d’origine juive; mais l’imagination arabe l’a considérablement amplifée et colorée.”30 But is this a fair conclusion to reach? Is the detail of Namrūd’s flying container no more than added whimsy? Or, is something more intentional, and intelligent, afoot in the Muslim adoption and adaptation of Titus and creation of Namrūd? Nebuchadnezzar’s Ascent to Heaven Solutions to these questions appear not in the Muslim or Jewish materials on either Nimrod or Titus but are hinted to in a number of pre-Islamic midrashic passages about an entirely different ancient royal villain: King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, Biblical destroyer of Jerusalem (586 BCE). As we shall see, it appears that the Namrūd accounts combined the midrashic tale of Titus’s assault and death with a midrashic narrative strain on Nebuchadnezzar. And so it is the pre-Islamic rabbinic narratives on Nebuchadnezzar that draw our attention now. According to the sixth century CE BT Ḥullin 89a, R. Eleazar the son of R. Jose the Galilean once taught: The Holy One Blessed Be He loves Israel not because they are greater than any other people but because they are the most humble. By contrast, the idolaters puff themselves up undeservedly.31 “I gave greatness to Nimrod,” said God, “and he said ‘Let us build for ourselves a city and a tower’ [Gen 11:4]. To Pharaoh and he said, “Who is God that I should heed him?” [Ex. 5:2]. To Sennacherib and he said, “Which among all the gods of those countries saved their countries from me that the Lord should save Jerusalem from me?” [2 Kings 18:35]. To

30 Sidersky, 40. 31  R. Eleazar here brings three examples of Israelite humility: Abraham (Gen. 18:27), Moses and Aaron (Ex. 16:8), and King David (Ps. 22:7). As they are not immediately relevant to our discussion, I have skipped over them.



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Nebuchadnezzar, and he said, “I will mount the back of a cloud; I will be like the Most High” [Isaiah 14:14]. To Hiram, king of Tyre, and he said “I am a god; I sit enthroned like a god in the heart of the seas” [Ezekiel 28:2].32 At first glance, nothing appears to be amiss in this exegetical midrashic passage. Each statement of royal human hubris finds its source in an actual biblical statement articulated by the villain himself. In the Bible, the Egyptian Pharaoh, the Assyrian ruler Sennacherib, and the Phoenician king of Tyre all actually uttered the blasphemous anti-God declarations attributed to them here.33 Pharaoh denigrated God and refused to listen to God’s demands to free the Israelites and allow them to celebrate a festival in the desert; Sennacherib boasted that since no country could save itself from him, God would not be able to save Jerusalem from his attack; and, the king of Tyre arrogantly proclaimed himself to be divine. Even Nimrod’s statement, an anonymously uttered sentence taken from the story of the building of the Tower of Babel in Gen. 11:4, does not pose an unsolvable difficulty. Although the Biblical verse actually reads, “They said: Come let us build for ourselves a city and at tower,” rabbinic tradition has long held Nimrod responsible for commissioning the Tower 32 See also the third century CE Mekhilta, Beshallaḥ, ch. 8, “Mi kamocha”; and, Genesis Rabbah 9:5. The 5th century CE Midrash Tanḥuma (Va-era, 8) cites a slightly different version which takes the midrash out of the context of comparing Israelite to Gentiles and replaces Sennacherib with the Israelite king Joash. See also Midrash Tanḥuma, Va-era, 16. Leviticus Rabbah 18:2 (400–500 CE) lists only three kings: Sennacherib, Hiram, Nebuchadnezzar. Interestingly, here R. Simon notes a midrashic tradition teaching that Hiram was Nebuchadnezzar’s stepfather, whom Nebuchadnezzar murdered. An alternate version in which Nebuchadnezzar’s punishment consists of being partially burned appears in Midrash Tanḥuma, Tzav, 3. Another slightly deviating version appears in Seder Eliyahu Zuta, a text with a redaction date of after the closing of the Babylonian Talmud (6th cent. CE) but before the 9th century CE. In Seder Eliyahu Zuta, the midrash maintains that as a youth Nebuchadnezzar declared he would ascend the heights of heaven. See Seder Eliyah Rabbah ve-Seder Eliyahu Zuta, ed. Meir Ish-Shalom (Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1969), ch. 11. Despite the slight deviations in the different midrashic texts, they all agree that Nebuchadnezzar was the speaker of Isaiah 14:14. 33 Ezekiel 28:2 does not name the king of Tyre. The midrashic texts supply the name Hiram. Many maintain that this was an anachronistic move on the midrash’s part, noting that the Biblical Hiram King of Tyre lived centuries earlier than Ezekiel, during the reigns of David and Solomon (ex., 2 Sam. 5; 1 Kgs. 5). Since the Tyrian king to whom Ezekiel was speaking was unnamed, the rabbis here engaged in a bit of a conservation of biblical personalities and named him Hiram as well. Others suggest that the rabbis intended a later Hiram, also a ruler of Tyre and a contemporary of the man who destroyed Tyre in Ezekiel’s lifetime (Nebuchadnezzar). Josephus speaks of this Hiram in his Contra Apion (i. 21). See Solomon Schechter, Louis Ginzberg, Emil G. Hirsch, M. Seligsohn, “Hiram,” in Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906), accessed Aug. 25, 2010, http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=752&letter=H&search= Hiram. For more on this Hiram, see H. Jacob Katzenstein, “Hiram,” in EJ, 2nd ed.

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of Babel. The rabbis noted that in the midst of relating the genealogical listing of Noah’s descendants, Genesis 10:10 goes out of its way to point out that Nimrod’s kingdom began in Babel, in the plains of Shinar. The next chapter, Gen. 11, immediately moves to the story of the Tower of Babel, erected in the plains of Shinar. Because Gen. 10’s genealogical listing breaks to report about Nimrod’s dominion of Babel, and because of the repetition of terms used in chapters 10 and 11 (Babel, Shinar), the rabbinic readers understood the Bible as indicating that Nimrod, King of Babel in Shinar, was responsible for the tower built there. Indeed, in BT ʿAvodah Zara 53b, R. Jeremiah bar Abba refers to the Tower of Babel as “the house of Nimrod.” This tower was seen in many midrashic texts as a theological rebellion against God; according to the rabbis, the wording of the verses hinted as such. In the first place, the name Nimrod, explain the midrashic texts, derives from the Hebrew root ‘to rebel’ (mrd), indicating that Nimrod desired to rebel against God and lead his people down the same path.34 Additionally, midrashic texts report that the builders of the tower planned to place atop the structure an idol with a sword in its hand so that it would battle against God and prevent Him from scattering them over the face of the earth.35 In BT Sanhedrin 109a, R. Nathan explains how the rabbis arrived at this understanding: whenever Scripture uses the word shem (name) it intends idolatry, as in Ex. 23:13 where God commands “and make no mention of the name (shem) of other gods.” Thus, when the builders of Babel declare (v.4), “Come, let us build a city and a tower, with its top in heaven, and let us make a name (shem) lest we be scattered upon the face of the whole earth,” they intended “let us make an idol” to rebel against God. Unlike the words of Sennacherib, Hiram, Pharaoh, and Nimrod, Nebuchadnezzar’s quote poses a particularly puzzling difficulty and herein lies our connection to the Islamic account of Namrūd’s ascent to heaven. Problematically, the Biblical quote attributed to Nebuchadnezzar, “I will mount the back of a cloud,” has nothing to do with Nebuchadnezzar. Instead, the sentences placed in Nebuchadnezzar’s mouth have a named speaker: Isaiah, a Jewish prophet of God who preached religious, social,

34 See for example BT Pesaḥim 94b and BT Ḥagigah 13a. 35 Genesis Rabbah 38:6, 38:8; BT Sanhedrin 109a; Targum Neophyti (2nd century CE) on Gen. 11:4; Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (7th–8th cent. CE) on Gen. 11:4; and, Targum Yerushalmi la-Torah (7th–8th cent. CE), ed. Moshe Ginsburger (Berlin: S. Calvary, 1903), on Gen. 11:4. I intend an in-depth analysis of the story of the tower of Babel in the midrash and in the Islamic texts, and its relationship to our current motif, in a separate work.



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and political reform, and lived in Jerusalem approximately 200 years before Nebuchadnezzar.36 Further complicating the issue, Isaiah did not speak these words in a vacuum. Rather, Isaiah was parroting the enemy against whom Israel fought during Isaiah’s lifetime and one whom Isaiah names outright earlier in his prophecies: the Assyrians and their king Sennacherib (as in Isaiah 8). According to the Bible, Sennacherib and the Assyrians campaigned against and invaded the Land of Israel more than once during Isaiah’s lifetime, taxing the kingdom of Judea and the people of Jerusalem beyond their capabilities, causing them great distress and pain, and exiling many.37 In Isaiah 14, Isaiah prophesies against Israel’s enemies, assuring Israel and Judah that God has not abandoned them but will redeem them and restore them to former glory and power. When that happens, says Isaiah, the people of Jerusalem and Judah will recite a song of scorn for their enemies. The words attributed to Nebuchadnezzar by the midrash are part of this. In v. 12, Isaiah turns to the king of Babylon and taunts him, “How are you fallen from heaven, o Shining One, son of Dawn! How you are felled to earth, O vanquisher of nations!” The ruler who once imagined himself climbing to the sky and setting his throne above the stars of God (v. 13), who claimed (v. 14), “I will mount the back of a cloud; I will match the Most High,” this ruler will come to nothing. Rather than achieving magnificence and power, Isaiah warns, this ruler will be “brought down to Sheol” (v. 15), to the bottom of the pit of the underworld. The midrashic attribution of the words of Isaiah 14:14 to Nebuchadnezzar becomes even more troubling when we realize that the arrogance and hubris attributed to him here stands somewhat at odds with the personality of Nebuchadnezzar presented in the Bible itself. Whereas Sennacherib appears in the Bible as consistently haughty, overconfident regarding his own power, and disparaging of God,38 the Biblical Nebuchadnezzar ultimately acknowledges the God of the Jews. According to Dan. 3, after 36 In the opening verse of the book of Isaiah, Isaiah writes that he served as prophet under four Judean kings: Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah. According to modern scholarship, all four reigned in the 8th century BCE. Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem took place in 586 BCE, two hundred years later. 37 Sennacherib’s campaign against Hezekiah appears in 2 Kings 18–20; 2 Chron. 32; and Isaiah 22, 36–37, 39. Isaiah foretells the Assyrian attack in ch. 8. 38 Sennacherib answers King Hezekiah’s demand to withdraw the Assyrian forces from Israel’s territory by mockingly and arrogantly declaring (2 Kgs. 18:33–35), “Did any of the gods of other nations save his land from the king of Assyria? . . . Which among the gods of [those] countries saved their countries from me, that the Lord should save Jerusalem from me?” Not surprisingly, this is the quote cited as evidence of his hubris and arrogance in BT Ḥullin 89a.

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Nebuchadnezzar unsuccessfully attempts to immolate three Judahites39 for their refusal to bow before his idol, the king repents of his rebelliousness against God, blesses Him, and orders that any who blasphemes against Him be “torn limb from limb” and lose his possessions (v. 28–29). Nebuchadnezzar then sends a proclamation to “all people and nations of every language that inhabit the whole earth” declaring (v. 32–33), “The signs and wonders that the Most High God has worked for me I am pleased to relate. How great are His signs, how mighty His wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and His dominion endures throughout the generations.”40 In the next chapter, Nebuchadnezzar declares, “So now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise, exalt, and glorify the King of Heaven, all of whose works are just and whose ways are right, and who is able to humble those who behave arrogantly” (Dan. 4:34).41 Yet time and again, the midrashic texts accuse Nebuchadnezzar of speaking the arrogant words of the king in Isaiah 14:14, unrepentantly desiring to ascend to heaven and challenge and conquer God.42 This puzzling midrashic shift to Nebuchadnezzar appears to be a rabbinic attempt to clear up some confusing language found in the book of Isaiah. The narrative voice of the book of Isaiah, and in other biblical passages, speaks of the Assyrian conquest of Babylonia as having taken place in Isaiah’s lifetime.43 Isaiah himself, however, continues to refer to 39 In Daniel they are known here by the Babylonian names as Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Their Hebrew names are Ḥananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. See Daniel 1:6–7. 40 This is not the first time Nebuchadnezzar acknowledges God. After Daniel successfully interprets his dream to him, Nebuchadnezzar declares, “Truly your God must be the God of gods and Lord of kings and revealer of mysteries” (Dan. 2:47). 41 These God-fearing declarations appear to be the source for a surprising Talmudic passage in which Nebuchadnezzar appears in somewhat of a good light. In explaining a holiday known as “Trajan’s Day,” BT Taʿanit 18b refers to Nebuchadnezzar, destroyer of Jerusalem and of the Temple, as a “worthy king” (melekh hogen). Texts that depict Nebuchadnezzar as a less than wholly evil ruler should not surprise us that much. As Eliezer Margaliyot has pointed out, there is not a single righteous man in Scripture about whom the aggadah has not taught a negative story and few evil men about whom the aggadah has not had something positive to say. See his He-Ḥayavim ba-Miqra ve-Zakaim ba-Talmud u-va-Midrashim (London: Ararat, 5709 [1949]). 42 See fn. 32 for the many versions of this midrashic motif and the consistent attribution of Isaiah 14:14 to Nebuchadnezzar. 43 This is in accordance with the historical record, which relates that the Assyrian ruler and Sennacherib’s father, Sargon, conquered Babylonia and dethroned its king, Merodachbaladan. Almost immediately after Sennacherib ascended the Assyrian throne, Merodachbaladan revolted against him in a bid to restore himself to the throne. The Babylonian attempted to draw the Judean king, Hezekiah, into the rebellion but the revolt failed. Sennacherib ultimately defeated Babylonia entirely, bringing it completely under Assyrian rule. The Bible refers to these events in Isaiah 39, 47–47 and in 2 Kgs. 20. See also Emil G.



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Babylonia here as if she were still an independent power.44 In an attempt to solve this confusion of terms, the rabbinic readers recalled that Isaiah was a prophet. Therefore, they understood his “song of scorn” against Babylonia as a prophetic interlude addressed to Nebuchadnezzar, whose destruction and oppression of Judea would come only two hundred years hence. A more practical reason serves to explain the rabbinic reassignment of Sennacherib’s hubris to Nebuchadnezzar. Sennacherib, for all his evil in demanding high taxes of the Jews, ultimately failed to conquer Jerusalem (as told in II Kings 19:34–35). Nebuchadnezzar however, despite his ultimate recognition of God in the book of Daniel, did destroy Jerusalem, did burn the Temple to the ground, and did scatter the Jews in a horrific exile. Not only do such actions automatically make Nebuchadnezzar more villainous than Sennacherib, in the rabbinic perception, but they are more in sync with an expressed desire to rise to heaven and slay God than Sennacherib’s harsh taxation program is. In applying the arrogant words to Nebuchadnezzar, and by extension Isaiah’s words of mockery and prediction of the king’s ultimate and humiliating failure, the midrash here betrays a sense of wishful thinking. According to the Biblical narrative, Nebuchadnezzar was able to destroy Jerusalem and God’s Temple and walk away unpunished for this deed.45 In applying Isaiah 14:12–14 to Nebuchadnezzar, the rabbis teach that

Hirsch and Louis H. Gray, “Sennacherib,” in Jewish Encyclopedia, accessed Aug. 20, 2010, http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=477&letter=S&search=Sennacherib. 44 A look at the book of Isaiah reveals that Isaiah clearly means here the Assyrian king, who has become the ruler of Babylonia as well. Chapter 14 opens with Isaiah assuring the house of Jacob that the Lord will soon redeem them and free them from the foreign powers ruling over them. Despite the fact that the previous chapters show that Isaiah has been speaking of Assyria, he declares that when redemption comes, the people of Judah will recite a song of scorn “over the King of Babylon” (v. 3). At the chapter’s end, the prophet returns to speaking of the foreign power under discussion as Assyria. Says Isaiah in v. 24–25, “The Lord of Hosts has sworn, saying: Surely, as I have thought, so shall it come to pass, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand, that I will break Assyria in My land and upon My mountains tread him under foot . . .” Assyria, the prophet declares, shall be removed from power over Israel. Clearly the prophet intends a single individual, the Assyrian king who conquered Babylonia and now serves as its ruler as well. The rabbis nonetheless chose a less historical and more prophetic lens through which to read the passages. 45 In Dan. 4, Nebuchadnezzar is exiled from the throne and sent to live among the beasts of the field and eat grass. However, this punishment is only temporary (seven seasons, say v. 22 and 29) and is a response to Nebuchadnezzar’s having declared his own power and majesty, not a response to his having destroyed the Temple and Jerusalem and exiling the Jews.

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Nebuchadnezzar was held to account for his behavior. He did not die a peaceful death, as it might seem in the book of Daniel. Rather, as Isaiah indicates, he was felled from heaven and brought down to the bottom of Sheol, where such a villain belongs. Yet another possible reason for the rabbis shifting the words and actions of Sennacherib to Nebuchadnezzar has less to do with the kings themselves and more to do with their descendants. BT Gittin 57b and BT Sanehdrin 96b46 report that Sennacherib’s sons murdered him (as in II Kings 19:37) and fled to Kardu. Upon their arrival, they released the many Jewish captives held there and marched with them to Jerusalem, the city their father had attacked but had failed to conquer. When they arrived, Sennacherib’s sons converted to Judaism. The first century BCE rabbinic sages, Shemayah and Abtalyon, president (nasi) and vice-president (av beit-din) of the Sanhedrin Court, were their descendants. Perhaps because of this, the midrashists wished to minimize Sennacherib’s evil. Nebuchadnezzar, who not only destroyed the Temple but had no such rabbinic progeny to redeem his name, received the opposite treatment. Rather than minimize his villainy, the rabbis heaped evil on his head.47 However, none of this explains the “meat” of the quote attributed to Nebuchadnezzar. Namely, while we know what incidents or events the other villains’ quotes refer to, we are left in the dark as to precisely what incident the midrashic authors here intended to recall. Isaiah 14 does not provide details. And, nowhere does the Bible mention any occasion on which Nebuchadnezzar travelled or expressed a desire to travel to the sky in order to challenge God. Rather, the Bible relates precisely the opposite of Nebuchadnezzar; he eventually came to recognize and praise the God of the Jews. Why then does the exegetical midrash go out of its way to attribute this problematic verse to Nebuchadnezzar? Would it not have been simpler to choose a statement of hubris which he actually uttered? Or, is there perhaps yet another midrashic stream, a midrashic back-story that speaks of Nebuchadnezzar attempting to harness the power of flight and assault the God of the Jews?

46 See also Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, 6: 364, n. 61. 47 Other midrashic texts accuse Nebuchadnezzar of homosexual rape/pederasty. According to Rabbah bar R. Huna, Nebuchadnezzar set up a lottery system that would determine which of the he had subjugated was obligated to engage in sexual intercourse with him on a given day. See BT Shabbat 149b. The rabbis claim to learn this from the vocabulary of Isaiah 14.



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Nebuchadnezzar and Namrūd: Namrūd Preserves a Midrash? Interestingly, while no back-story remains today in the Jewish extra-Scriptural sources on Nebuchadnezzar, the Islamic extra-Scriptural narratives of Namrūd’s ascent to heaven hint that at one point such a midrashic account likely existed. In other words, it seems that the pre-Islamic midrash once told of a Nebuchadnezzar not only declaring in his heart that he would travel to the sky, as recounted in the Bible, but actually building a box that would allow him to do so. The early Islamic exegetes picked up on this motif and applied it to Namrūd. The details of the Nebuchadnezzar story were then lost from the midrashic accounts, leaving only the “punch-line.” They were preserved by the Islamic sources in this new Namrūd context however. Indeed, a number of factors indicate that the Islamic narrative of a flying box aimed at attacking heaven was not an original Islamic Namrūd creation but derived from the midrashic Nebuchadnezzar framework. On the most basic level, if we look closely at the Isaiah verse in its entirety and at its context, we see that the story of a flying box appears to be quite the appropriate exegetical narrative expansion of Isaiah’s text. Let us return to Isaiah 14:12–15 in full. There we find Isaiah declaring to the Babylonian enemy king: (12) How are you fallen from heaven, o Shining One, son of Dawn! How you are felled to earth, O vanquisher of nations! (13) Once you thought in your heart, “I will climb to the sky. Higher than the stars of God I will set my throne. I will sit in the mount of assembly, on the summit of Zaphon. (14) I will mount the back of a cloud—I will match the Most High. (15) Instead you are brought down to Sheol, to the bottom of the pit.”

In v. 13, Isaiah assigns to the enemy king only the desire to ascend to heaven (“once you thought in your heart”). Yet, in v. 12, Isaiah appears to report that the king was actually thrown down from on high (“How you are fallen from heaven . . . How you are felled to earth”). A midrashic reading in which Nebuchadnezzar actually attempted to harness the power of flight and travel to the sky to challenge God, only to be felled to earth before rising, seems a likely interpretation of these at-first contradicting Biblical verses. Other elements in the Namrūd accounts likewise hint that the source for the narrative may have been in a now-lost midrash on Nebuchadnezzar. Namrūd, we recall, having failed in his mission, sails back to earth in a noisy chaotic drop, one so frightening that the mountains hurry to get

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out of the king’s way. So too Isaiah reports that rather than gently touching down in a nicely controlled descent, the Babylonian king is felled from heaven and cut down to earth (v. 12). The Hebrew word used to express this action, nigdaʿta, presents a strange use of the root. The root gdʿ, from which the verb is formed, means to chop down, or mutilate, as in a tree or an idol; it does not mean to descend from on high.48 Noting Isaiah’s strange usage of the root, the midrashic readers may once have crafted an exegetical explanation, interpreting the verse’s wording to mean that Nebuchadnezzar was not simply returned to earth but was knocked down in violent chaos. The later Islamic texts picked up on this, recording a Namrūdian fall from the heavens that frightens even the mountains from their places.49 A somewhat more subtle hint that the Muslim accounts have preserved a Nebuchadnezzar-oriented midrash on Isaiah 14 appears in a seemingly inconsequential detail told in the Namrūd context. Namrūd not only builds the box but, the narratives report, places his throne inside it. Thus royally seated, he ascends to challenge God. No Qurʾānic verse exists that would explain such a detail, but the Biblical verses attributed by the midrash to Nebuchadnezzar do. In Isaiah 14:13, the king declares, “I will climb to the sky. Higher than the stars of God I will set my throne.” The Hebrew word used here to describe the action the king does to his throne, arīm, more accurately means, “I will lift.” One can easily see that a narrative expansion of this verse, in which Nebuchadnezzar declares that he desires to raise his throne above God’s stars, might have resulted in Nebuchadnezzar actually sending his throne to heaven. The later Islamic Namrūd, in placing his throne in his flying box, does exactly this, echoing Nebuchadnezzar’s Biblical and possibly midrashic behavior. The Islamic Scriptural presentation of Namrūd, by contrast, suggests no such textual connection between the villain who strove to immolate Ibrāhīm and an attempt to ascend to heaven and assault Allāh. Indeed, Namrūd does not appear at all by name in the Qurʾān but appears only in the later Muslim extra-Qurʾānic texts. There seems to be no inherent 48 See F. Brown, S. R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906; reprint, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, [1966]), s. v. gd’, p. 154. Deut. 7:5 presents the word in its normal usage and context. 49 See fn. 8, above. In many of these cases, the exegetes note that the narrative expansion comes to explain Q 14:46, “Mighty indeed were the plots which they made, but their plots were within the sight of Allāh even though they were such as to shake the mountains.” However, the Qurʾān itself makes no mention here of Namrūd or of any king or flight.



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Islamic need to create the account of Namrūd’s ascent, as there was a midrashic need for one about Nebuchadnezzar. What’s more, while the Qurʾān does speak of a royal desire to ascend to heaven to Allāh, the king who does so is a well-known and clearly identified villain: Firʿawn, the Pharaoh of Egypt. According to Q 28:36–40, after Mūsā (Moses) arrives in Egypt from Midian, he approaches the arrogant Firʿawn and his pagan subjects and performs two miracles before them, which the unbelievers declare to be forgery.50 Mūsā then praises Allāh and declares that evil-doers will not prosper. In response, Firʿawn asserts blasphemously that he himself is in fact the deity. He then orders Hāmān (Haman), his vizier, to kindle a fire for making bricks and build him a tower that reaches up to heaven. With this tower, declares Firʿawn, he will rise up to and challenge Mūsā’s god. Firʿawn’s hubristic attempt proves futile, however; Allāh seizes him and his subjects and throws them into the sea (v. 40).51 As we see, even in the Islamic context the motif of a king climbing to heaven in order to assault God does not appear to have been originally connected to Namrūd. Rather, it becomes affiliated with him only at some later point.52 50 As in the Bible, the Qurʾānic miracles consist of Mūsā turning his rod into a snake and turning his hand completely white. The Bible relates that Moses turned the snake back into a rod after it devoured Pharaoh’s magicians’ snakes and that he turned his hand back to normal colored after having turned it white with leprosy (Ex. 4, 7). In Q 28, the event appears in a bare-bones telling. Other renditions appear in Q 7 103–121; 10:75–93; 20:9–24; 26:29–43; 27:11–14; 40: 36–37. 51 According to Ḥaim Schwarzbaum, the Qurʾānic Pharaoh’s desire to build a tower to heaven derives from the Aramaic 5th cent. BCE, Sefer Aḥiqar’s Pharaonic challenge to build a tower suspended between heaven and earth. See Ḥaim Schwarzbaum, “Haman ha-Rasha be-Masoret ha-Islam,” Mahanajim, v. 89 (1964): 66–71. Given that Aḥiqar’s tower is not intended to challenge a deity, Schwarzbaum’s claim overlooks a far more relevant narrative in which people build a tower to heaven as a challenge God: the account of the tower of Babel (Genesis 11) as understood in the rabbinic exegetical materials. The later Islamic attribution of the building of the Tower of Babel to Namrūd appears to have been based on the midrashic texts and not on the Qurʾān. I intend to present an analysis of this motif and its travels in the Islamic and Jewish materials in a subsequent work. On Sefer Aḥiqar, see fn. 53. 52 The Firʿawnic case does not strike me as the immediate source for the Muslim story of Namrūd for a number of reasons. In the first place, Firʿawn does not desire to build a flying box but a tall tower. What he intends to do when he reaches Allāh is not clear. In some translations and commentaries, Firʿawn is said to simply want to look at Allāh; in others, he desires to challenge His supremacy. The Qurʾān says only that he wants a tower so that he can ascend to Mūsā’s god (28:38). In the Qurʾān, Firʿawn does not actually attempt to murder Allāh, nor does any weapon return to him bloodied. It seems that shortly after Firʿawn commands Hāmān to begin building, Allāh grabs all involved and throws them into the sea, before the project even begins. See also fn. 51. On a possible Near Eastern koine in which a king attempts to rise to heaven to meet a deity, see fn. 53.

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A significant hint to the existence of a now-lost pre-Islamic midrash on a Nebuchadnezzarian flying-box appears in another Talmudic text, BT Ḥagigah 13a, which relates a version of the events referred to in BT Ḥullin but with slightly more detail. Here God does not remain silent in the face of Nebuchadnezzar’s blasphemous attempt to attack Him. Rather, according to R. Joḥanan ben Zakkai, after Nebuchadnezzar declares his intent to assault God, a voice rings out from heaven (a bat qol) and mockingly chastises the Babylonian king for wanting to undertake a trip that would be both exceedingly frightening and practically impossible. Cries out the voice, “Evil one (rasha), son of an evil one, grandson of Nimrod the evil one!” Humans, it declares, live only around 70 years, but the distance from the earth to the firmament is 500 years. Crossing the thickness of the firmament itself takes another 500 years, it continues to explain, and the distance between one rung of heaven and another is also 500 years. If one could successfully traverse all of this, the voice adds, one would then find oneself blocked by the “holy living creatures” (ḥayyot ha-qodesh), who are equally enormous, and who sit at the foot of God’s enormous throne. No, says the voice returning to quote Isaiah 14:15, “Instead you are brought down to Sheol, to the bottom of the pit.” As we recall, the supernatural voice, the heavenly mathematics and geographic description all appear in the later Islamic narrative of Namrūd’s trip to heaven. In the Islamic accounts, shortly after Namrūd ascends into the heavens, the angel Jibrīl calls to him and, like the heavenly voice which speaks to Nebuchadnezzar, informs Namrūd that the trip he has planned will take him a long time. Indeed, Jibrīl quotes the precise calculations to Namrūd that the heavenly voice of BT Ḥagigah mentions to Nebuchadnezzar; both inform their wicked kings that the trip to heaven will last 500 years, with an additional 500 years between each rung of heaven, and another 500 years to cross each firmament itself.53 53 Ibn Bishr, 159a–160a. The idea that the heavens consisted of different levels, that one could travel from one to another, and that as one does so one describes what one has seen, seems to have entered the rabbinic corpus from Near Eastern mythology, specifically the Babylonian Etana epic. See Wayne Horowitz, “The Flights of Etana and the Eagle into the Heavens,” Chapter Three in Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1998). So too the idea that one could fly to heaven with the help of an eagle may find its earliest source in the Babylonian Etana account. According to this story, Etana, a king of Kish, is childless but seeks to have children. Following the instructions of the sun-god Shamash, Etana liberates a starving eagle from a pit and then rides to heaven on the eagle’s back in search of the “plant of birth,” a fertility plant. Cylinder seals dating to the Akkadian period (2390–2249 BCE) which show Etana rising to heaven on the back of an eagle have been



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Not only does the heavenly voice appear in pre-Islamic Talmudic Nebuchadnezzar texts but, like the throne and the noisy drop, the heavenly voice’s interruption seems to derive from a Biblical text about Nebuchadnezzar. Here, however, we move away from Isaiah 14 and turn to a Biblical text unequivocally related to Nebuchadnezzar. According to Dan. 4, having returned home to his palace to rest, Nebuchadnezzar found himself one day taking a walk on the roof of his royal palace. Looking out at the magnificence of his works, at the great Babylon that was his royal home, found. See Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh and Others (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 189–202. How the Babylonian eagle motif—in which the eagle is a willing partner in flight and the king is not an evil rebel intent on deicide but a man in search of fertility—became the Islamic (and/or rabbinic) narrative in which a villain starves four eagles, hitches them to a box, and then attempts to fly upward and kill God is not clear. The motif has many permutations. In the Greek Life of Aesop (2nd century CE), Aesop tries to help his king win a contest with Nectanebo, king of Egypt, to build a tower in the air. To do so, Aesop harnesses four eagles to four boys, who thus fly up into the air carrying building materials and build a wall in the middle of the air. See Lawrence M. Wills, The Quest of the Historical Gospel: Mark, John and the Origins of the Gospel Genre (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 215ff (para. 105ff ), esp. p. 218 (para. 116). In the earlier non-Jewish Aramaic Sefer Aḥiqar (5th century BCE), Pharaoh offers to Sennacherib of Assyria that if Sennacherib can send him a builder who will build for him a palace hovering in the air, he will grant him Egypt’s taxes for three years. Sennacherib sends the wise Aḥiqar, who tells his wife to send him two baby eagles, some ropes, and some boys. He then ties the eagles to the ropes, puts the youths on the eagles, and sends them up to the sky. When they get there, they call down to the Egyptians to send up the building materials. Pharaoh and his builders realize their folly and the demand is cancelled. See Sefer Aḥiqar he-Ḥakham, ed. and trans. Avinoam Yellin (Jerusalem, 1937); Ahiqar, trans. and intro. J. M. Lindenberger, vol. 1 The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. by James H. Charlesworth (New York: Doubleday, 1985). The 6th century CE Babylonian Talmud in Bechorot 8b tells a version of this story about R. Joshua ben Ḥananiah, although his adversary is the Athenians and he harnesses the power of God’s name, not eagles. In the Alexander Romance, Alexander the Great builds a chamber or a tented chair, sits in it, attaches griffins to the corners, and flies up to heaven to explore. In some versions this takes place when Alexander is but a youth, in others when he is already the ruler of armed forces. In some cases, he harnesses griffins, in others he captures two very large birds, starves them, attaches a wooden yoke to them, to which he then attaches a large bag into which he settles himself, and raises some meat on a spear above their heads, causing them to fly upwards. The Alexander Romance may have been composed as early as the 3rd century BCE. According to Richard Stoneman, the segment about Alexander’s trip to heaven first appears in Western tradition in an 8th century CE Greek version. See Richard Stoneman, Alexander the Great: A Life in Legend (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008), 116 and chapters 3 and 6. The 4th century CE Jerusalem Talmud, in tractate Avodah Zarah, tells a similar story of Alexander of Macedon although the Talmudic passage omits any eagles, saying simply that when Alexander wanted he could wing upwards into the heavens to look around. In Ecclesiastes Rabbah (c. 6th–8th century CE) 2, we read that King Solomon had a large eagle upon whom he would ride, often flying over to Tadmor (Palmyra) and back to Jerusalem in the same day. See Midrash Rabbah ha-Mevoʾar. Qohelet. I hope to conduct a more in-depth study of this motif under separate cover, as it is too long and complex to be included here.

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he congratulated himself heartily for having created things which bespoke of the “glory of my own majesty” (v. 27). Instantly, a voice came forth from heavens declaring that the kingdom had passed out of Nebuchadnezzar’s hands and that Nebuchadnezzar was to be exiled immediately to live among beasts for the next seven years (v. 28–30). And so he was. This Biblical pericope speaks of a haughty king whose ruminations about his own greatness are interrupted by a heavenly voice, and who then falls from greatness to the earth. These are the same characteristics found in the midrashic attribution of Isaiah 14 to Nebuchadnezzar. It is not difficult to see that the midrash likely wove the Dan. 4 text of Nebuchadnezzar with Isaiah’s, resulting in a biblical narrative expansion in which the arrogant, self-congratulatory, and self-deifying Nebuchadnezzar attempted to best God by flying to heaven to assault him, only to find himself rebuffed by a heavenly voice and felled to earth. Islamic Sources on Nebuchadnezzar Importantly, even some of the Islamic extra-Scriptural texts themselves seem to hint that the flying-box motif belonged to the midrashic Nebuchadnezzar before moving to Namrūd. A number of accounts cited by al-Ṭabarī identify the idolatrous king who desired to rise to heaven and kill God not as Namrūd but as Bukhtnaṣṣar, the Arabic rendition of Nebuchadnezzar.54 According to Mujāhid as quoted by al-Ṭabarī, Bukhtnaṣṣar (and not Namrūd) went out, took some eagles, and built for himself a box to which he attached them. He put meat on a spear and then climbed into the box. Using the spear and the eagles, he flew up high enough so that he could no longer see the earth. Suddenly, a voice cried out to him. “Tyrant ( Jabbār)!” yelled the voice, using a title often reserved to refer to Namrūd,55 “Where are you trying to go?” Bukhtnaṣṣar became terrified

54 Others express a measure of ambivalence about the king’s identity; al-Ṭabarī, for example, writes, “the one who went up to the sky to do battle with Him who was in it was the greatest of all tyrants. Some of them [the scholars] say he is Namrūd the son of Kanāʿan. Some say he Bukhtnaṣṣar.” See Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 14:96 (on Q 16:26). 55 The Islamic sources frequently refer to Namrūd as al-Jabbār, Namrūd al-Jabbār, or Jabbār al-Jabābīr. See, for example, Muqātil 1:572, 2:411, 3:356; ʿAbd al-Razzāq, 1/2:103–105 and 212–13; al-Yaʿqūbī, 18; al-Ṭabarī, Ta‌ʾrīkh, 1 217; idem, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 3:23 (on Q 2:258), al-Masʿūdī, 1:47; al-Majlisī, 12:17, and Ibn ʿAsākir, 6:177. Reference to Nebuchadnezzar as a wicked person, grandson of Nimrod the wicked, appears not only in BT Ḥagigah as noted earlier, but also in BT Pesaḥim 94b.



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and, abandoning his original plan to slay God, he lowered the spike, causing the eagles to descend and return him to earth.56 In another version, Bukhtnaṣṣar does not even manage to get off the ground. Here Bukhtnaṣṣar demands of the Israelites that they tell him how he could rise to heaven, slay the one who lives there, and thereby conquer it as part of his realm. When then Israelites refuse to tell him, on the grounds that such a thing is impossible, Bukhtnaṣṣar threatens to slaughter every last one of them. The Israelites turn to God, imploring Him to save them. Hearing their entreaties, God decides to show Bukhtnaṣṣar how weak and negligible he truly is and sends a gnat to him which, as it did with Titus and Namrūd, bites the king in the brain until he dies.57 As we can see here, the Bukhtnaṣṣar versions of our narrative differ from the Namrūd versions in one very interesting and significant way, and in so doing call to mind the earlier midrashic materials. When Bukhtnaṣṣar appears as the villain, the king never manages to attack God, despite the best of his evil intentions. One of two things happens. A heavenly voice rings out asking the tyrant where he thinks he is going and he, terrified, returns to earth before completing his mission. Or, the king does not manage to lift off of the ground in the first place. In both renditions, unlike Namrūd who fires his weapon at Allāh, Bukhtnaṣṣar never does. While this dual rendition of Bukhtnaṣṣar’s inactivity does not have a link to a Qurʾānic source, it does recall the Biblical Isaiah 14 segment. The two versions told about Bukhtnaṣṣar reflect the unclear language of vs. 12 and 13. We recall that in v. 12 Isaiah speaks of the king as having been thrown violently from heaven; in v. 13, Isaiah appears to attribute to the king only the desire to ascend and challenge God, without being able to actually do so. That the Muslim renditions of the Bukhtnaṣṣar account express both of these scenarios hints to the possibility that once there were two rabbinic exegetical narratives attempting to explicate the confusing wording of Isaiah 14. In one version Nebuchadnezzar tried to fly high but was thrown down, and in another version he remains earthbound, despite a desire to rise up and attack God. The BT Ḥullin text, which attributes Isaiah’s words to Nebuchadnezzar without repeating the entire incident, assumed that readers were already familiar with these midrashic narrative

56 Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 13 244–45 (on Q 14:46). Two sources tell of similar failure to shoot on Namrūd’s part. See ʿAbd al-Razzāq, 1:344 and al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 14:96 (on Q 16:27) and Ta‌ʾrīkh, 1:320–23. 57 See al-Ṭabarī, Ta‌ʾrīkh, 1: 668–70; al-Thaʿlabī, 303–304.

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expansions, as they were familiar with the midrashic texts attributing the Tower of Babel to Nimrod. Paths of Transmission After wading through and analyzing the different extra-Scriptural Jewish and Muslim traditions, we are better able to understand the path the flight-to-heaven/attack-on-God/death-by-gnat motif took in traveling from the Talmudic tale of Titus to the Muslim narratives of Namrūd. It appears that the midrashic corpus originally told of three villainous pagan kings, Nimrod, Nebuchadnezzar, and Titus. All three rose to infamy in the Jewish tradition for having committed similar crimes: each blasphemously declared war against God and His faithful. While Nimrod’s attack consisted of building the Tower of Babel and placing a fighting idol atop it in an attempt to thwart God’s plan to settle mankind over the face of the earth, the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar and the Roman Titus both attacked Israel, exiled and slaughtered the Jews, and destroyed the holy city of Jerusalem. Because these latter two, Titus and Nebuchadnezzar, commit the most serious crime possible in the rabbinic mindset—destroying the Temple— the rabbinic writers of the midrashic texts not only took pleasure in heaping more evil upon the two villains but also reveled in imaging particularly humiliating and unpleasant punishments for them. Thus the rabbis relate that the Roman Titus not only destroyed the Temple but sacrilegiously entered it, profaned it in myriad ways, physically attempted to kill God, and carried off all the Temple treasures.58 Although Titus thought of himself as stronger than God, God proved him wrong in the most elegant of ways. God sent a mosquito that entered Titus’ nose and bit at his brain, agitating him until he died. The midrash told a somewhat different story about Titus’ destructive predecessor, the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar, one which has been preserved in less detail. Why this happened, we cannot be sure. Perhaps because Nebuchadnezzar’s actions are well-detailed in the Bible itself, the midrash felt less compelled to mythologize him. Similarly, while Titus’ actions reverberated into the lives of the midrash’s composers or compiler, who lived under the rule of the Roman emperors, Nebuchadnezzar was

58 The Arch of Titus in Rome depicts this looting of the Temple’s treasures.



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a villain from the distant, Biblical, past. Or, perhaps the details of Nebuchadnezzar’s villainy and punishment simply fell out as time elapsed and as the Jews moved from exile to exile, a state of being started by Nebuchadnezzar himself. Whatever the cause, the midrash as we now have it relates only the vague outlines of what seems once to have been a longer account. Based on verses from Isaiah and Daniel, the midrash relates that Nebuchadnezzar once aspired to harness the natural elements, fly up to heaven, best God, and set himself up as ruler in His stead. We do not have enough information to know whether or not Nebuchadnezzar’s flying instrument included eagles tied to the four corners, as we see in the Islamic texts of Bukhtnaṣṣar and Namrūd.59 Nonetheless, once Nebuchadnezzar decided on his flight plan, a heavenly voice rang out to confront him and dissuade him. Although we do not know precisely what took place next, the midrash does relate that, as Isaiah records, Nebuchadnezzar’s attempts came to nothing and instead he fell back to earth, to the pit of despair. When the later Muslim exegetes encountered these three different midrashic narratives, they found them appropriate for Islamic teachings. Unlike the Jewish tradition, the Islamic tradition was less concerned with these kings for their roles in the history of Jewish exile and of the loss of Jewish political and religious autonomy in the land of Israel. Rather, what appealed to the Islamic authors was the fact that in all three cases an arrogant pagan king meets his just ends through punishment at the hands of Allāh. Indeed this message, that Allāh will reward those who follow His path and will punish those whose arrogance leads them astray to the falsehood of idolatry, sits at the very core of the Qurʾān’s teachings. Faced with these disparate but thematically interrelated accounts, the Islamic exegetes engaged in a purposeful adaptation of the midrashic texts, reformulating them and weaving them together as one. The most obvious of the texts to undergo this Islamicization are the texts on Titus. Although the Roman destroyer looms large in the rabbinic imagination, in the Islamic exegetical tradition Titus is of minimal importance. After all, he does not appear in the Bible which, along with its exegetical material, serves as the basis for ḥadīth on the Children of Israel. Indeed, the Islamic extra-Scriptural literature mentions Titus by name only extremely rarely. Instead, in the Islamic traditions Titus remained a hazy historical figure, related more to the Jews and Jewish history than to the shared forefathers 59 See fn. 53, above.

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and their history.60 Yet the midrashic story of his hubris, his attack on God, and the humiliating punishment the pagan king suffered fit well with the classical exegetical Islamic teachings on these topics. And so it seems that in desiring to preserve the account, the Islamic exegetical tradition shifted Titus’ account on to the more relevant villain Bukhtnaṣṣar. The designation of Bukhtnaṣṣar as the receiver of the midrashic Titus’ motifs constitutes a particularly appropriate move. In the first place, Bukhtnaṣṣar commits the same crime as Titus, rebelling against God by attacking and destroying the holy city of Jerusalem and the holy Temple.61 Bukhtnaṣṣar’s added value lies in that, as Nebuchadnezzar, he appears in the Bible, God’s word to the Jews through Moses.62 What’s more, the Babylonian villain’s attack against God went beyond his destroying the Temple. The Biblical book of Daniel relates that Nebuchadnezzar attempted to prevent the practice of monotheism, as is evidenced by the episode in which he commanded to immolate three Israelites for refusing to bow to his idol (ch. 3). For these reasons, Nebuchadnezzar plays a greater role in the Islamic historical world-view, and in the Islamic texts, than does Titus.63 Thus it seems that the Islamic exegetes joined Nebuchadnezzar’s blasphemy with Titus’, and shifted 60 For example, al-Ṭabarī writes that Titus came to rule over the Land of Israel some forty years after Jesus’ ascension. Vespasian had sent his son to attack the Israelites, says al-Ṭabarī, in his wrath over Jesus’ fate. Ta‌ʾrīkh, 2:707, 742. 61 Interestingly, one medieval Muslim historian attributed this melding of the two Temple destroyers to the Jews themselves. Says al-Birūnī (973–1048 CE), “It seems that the people of Jerusalem called everybody who destroyed their town Nebukadnezzar.” He points out that many actions attributed to Nebuchadnezzar ought really to be more correctly attributed to the king Vespasian and his son. See Edward Sachau, ed. and trans., The Chronology of Ancient Nations. An English Version of the Arabic Text of the Athar-ul-Bakiya of Albiruni (London: William H. Allen and Co., 1879), 297. Modern scholars have tended to agree to a certain degree with this analysis. Aggadic descriptions of Nebuchadnezzar, some point out, seem largely to be a veiled reference either to Titus or to the general Roman emperors under whom the authors were living. Since the rabbis sometimes felt they could not voice blatant critique against either the Roman emperors or their predecessor, they used the Babylonian Nebuchadnezzar as a stand-in when they desired to engage in negative speech about the Romans. See “Nebuchadnezzar,” EJ, 2nd ed., 15:48–52. See also Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, 6:406, n. 53. Of the Titus-Nebuchadnezzar confusion in the midrash, Ginzberg writes, “The parallels are often carried so far that one is not quite sure whether the legend, in speaking of the destruction of the Temple, refers to that of the first or the second.” 62 It is important to recall that Muslim theologians understood the Hebrew Bible to be both the word of God and a work with which the Jews had tampered. Generally, as long as the Hebrew Bible was in agreement with the Qurʾān, it was considered reliable. For more on this, see Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, Intertwined Worlds: Medieval Islam and Bible Criticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), especially the Introduction and Chapter 4. 63 For example, while Titus merits only two mentions in al-Ṭabarī’s encompassing history of the world, accounts of Bukhtnaṣṣar abound and run for pages. See Ta‌ʾrīkh, 658 ff.



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Titus’ humiliating penalty (death-by-mosquito) to the Babylonian. Muslim narratives now told of Bukhtnaṣṣar’s attempt to ascend to the heavens and challenge Allāh and of the punishment he received when Allāh sent a humble gnat up his arrogant nose to torture him to death. With the shift of the attack on God and insect-induced death from Titus to Bukhtnaṣṣar, the subsequent shift of both motifs to Namrūd becomes an almost natural move. In the first place, the Islamic traditions follow the midrashic identification of both Namrūd and Bukhtnaṣṣar as kings of Babylon.64 Furthermore, both are men included in Muslim lists as the two evil kings who ruled over the entire world.65 The Islamic sources draw the connection between them even deeper, identifying Bukhtnaṣṣar as either from the nation of Namrūd,66 or as a general in Namrūd’s army,67 and, at points, as a descendant of Namrūd himself.68 Given this close identification, we are not surprised to find that frequently what the Islamic traditions relate about one Babylonian, they also relate about the other.

64 On Namrūd see, for example: al-Ṭabarī, Ta‌ʾrīkh, 1 220, 1:252–53; idem, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 3:23 (on Q 2:258), 14:96–7 (on Q 16:26); Ibn Qutayba, 13–14; al-Yaʿqūbī, 18, 90–91; al-Masʿūdī, para 523/ 1:249. The midrashic understanding of Nimrod as Babylonian stems from Gen. 10: 9–10 which informs readers that the “beginning of his kingdom was Babel.” The midrashic texts never disagree with this ethnic designation and, as noted above, understand Nimrod to have been responsible for building the Tower of Babel. The Bible unequivocally identifies Nebuchadnezzar as the king of Babylon (see for example Jer. 49:2), a fact which the midrash never disputes. The Islamic texts likewise generally understand Bukhtnaṣṣar to have been Babylonian, as in al-Majlisī, 14:353; ʿUmāra ibn Wathīma al-Fārisī (d. 851 CE), Les Légendes prophétiques dans l’Islam: depuis le Ier jusqu’au IIIe siècle de l’Hégire (Kitab badʿ al-khalq wa-qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ), ed. Raif Georges Khoury (Weisbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1978), 250; al-Thaʿlabī, 302; al-Qummī, 1:86–89; al-Yaʿqūbī, 70–71. 65 Among the many examples of this, see al-Ṭabarī, Ta‌ʾrīkh, 1 253–54, 323–24, and al-Majlisī, 11:57. The earliest Jewish source to include both men on the list of rulers who ruled over the entire world appears in the 8th century CE Pirqei de-Rabbi Eliezer (Jerusalem: Eshkol, 1973), 11. BT Megillah 11a–b discusses many of these same men but concludes that only Ahab, Ahasuerus, and Nebuchadnezzar actually ruled over the entire world until their deaths. 66 For example, ʿUmāra ibn Wathīma, 250. BT Ḥagigah 13a and BT Pesaḥim 94b refer to Nebuchadnezzar as the grandson of Nimrod, though this appears to be a symbolic linkage, based on their behavior rather than bloodlines. BT Gittin 56b refers to the Roman Titus as Nimrod’s “grandson” as well. 67 For example, al-Majlisī, 14:353. 68 In his Ta‌ʾrīkh (1:650–651), al-Ṭabarī lists him as “Buktanaṣṣar ibn Nebuzardan ibn Sennacherib ibn Darius . . . ibn Namrūd.” As noted earlier, the midrash also mentions this genetic link, twice referring to Nebuchadnezzar as “wicked one, son of a wicked one, grandson of Nimrod the wicked one.” See BT Pesaḥim 94b and BT Ḥagigah 13a. Interestingly, Midrash Taḥuma (Ḥuqat, 1) refers to the Roman Titus this way as well. BT Gittin 56b more traditionally refers to Titus as, “Wicked one, son of a wicked one, son of Esau the Wicked.” In the rabbinic texts, Esau is often used as a code for the Roman Empire. The Bible names Esau as the father of the Edomites (Gen. 36:8–9), whom the rabbis identified with the Romans.

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An additional link between these two Babylonians in the Jewish and Muslim tradition might also have allowed the Islamic exegetical identification of one with the other and enabled its shifting of motifs between them. In the Jewish narrative tradition, both Nebuchadnezzar and Nimrod attempt to burn God’s faithful in a fiery furnace as punishment for refusing to abandon the worship of God. In Daniel 3, Nebuchadnezzar attempts to immolate Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah for refusing to bow down to his golden idol. In the midrashic corpus, Nimrod famously builds the fiery furnace of Chaldea and throws Abraham in it when he refuses to cease worshiping God. In the Islamic texts, Namrūd also builds a flaming pyre into which he heaves Ibrāhīm when the latter refuses to acknowledge Namrūd’s pagan religion.69 In the biblical, midrashic, and Islamic cases, God saves His faithful servants from certain death. That the pre-Islamic midrashic texts on Nimrod’s Chaldean fire are clearly modeled after Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian fire was not lost on the Islamic tradition and its fashioners. Indeed, the Islamic version of Namrūd’s attempt to burn Ibrāhīm to death combines elements of the pre-Islamic midrashic traditions with elements from the Biblical account of Nebuchadnezzar’s fire.70 After all, as the foil for the biological and spiritual forefather Ibrāhīm, Namrūd ranked far higher in importance in the Islamic world-view than did Nebuchadnezzar. Thus, in relating the miracle of Allāh’s salvation of the forefather Ibrāhīm and His defeat of Namrūd, the authors of the Islamic traditions saw fit to heap wonder upon wonder and use details of the less important Nebuchadnezzar in doing so. When the motifs of Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace account entered into the Islamic exegetical tradition as narratives on Namrūd, they appear to have brought with them into the Namrūdian milieu other midrashic

69 The pre-Islamic accounts of Nimrod’s attempted incineration of Abraham appear in BT Pesaḥim 118a; BT Eruvin 53a; Genesis Rabbah 44 14; Song of Songs Rabbah (500–640 CE), 1:12 and 8; Midrash Tanḥuma, Lekh Lekha, 2. For the Islamic sources on this, see fn. 3 and fn. 65. 70 The Qurʾān (21:51–71) records that Ibrāhīm was thrown into a furnace but does not name the one responsible. This identification appears in the extra-Scriptural texts. See Muqātil, 1 215 (on Q 2 258), 2:411 on (Q 14:46), 3:86 on (Q 21:69); Ibn Bishr, 168a; al-Majlisī, 12:18ff; al-Thaʿlabī, 93; al-Kisāʾī, 138, al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 17:45 (on Q 21:70). See above, fn. 3. For an in-depth discussion of the parallels between Dan. 3’s fire of Nebuchadnezzar and the Islamic narratives’ fire of Abraham, see Lowin, The Making of a Forefather, 197–200. The one Islamic telling of Nebuchadnezzar’s attempt to throw the three monotheistic Israelites into a fiery furnace appears in al-Majlisī (14:368) where he writes that Bukhtnaṣṣar commanded his people to build a fire “like the fire of Namrūd.”



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motifs that had been associated with Nebuchadnezzar. Thus Nebuchadnezzar’s attempt to ascend to heaven and attack God, a midrash with exegetic connections to Isaiah 14, shifted to Namrūd. And though no textual basis for the creation of such a motif exists in the Islamic Namrūd context, because of Namrūd’s role as enemy of the forefather who was the faithful servant of Allāh, the motifs of blasphemy, attempted deicide, and the wonderfully humiliating punishment that resulted remained appropriate for the Namrūd context. Sum It appears that the Islamic account of Namrūd’s heavenward attack on God, his bloodied weapon, his declaration that he killed the one who dwells in heaven and his subsequent death by brain-sucking insect is not, as some scholars have said, an accidental Arab transposition of the Titus story to Namrūd. Rather, it is a purposeful adaptation, reinterpretation, and intentional fusing of three separate exegetical/homiletical midrashic accounts in which a villain attempts to slay God. One spoke of Nimrod as the builder of the Tower of Babel who attempts to build a tower high enough so as to enable him to attack God from there. Another spoke of Nebuchadnezzar who, outdoing Nimrod in hubris, desired to somehow fly himself up to heaven, raise himself above God’s throne, and defeat Him, only to find himself scared back to earth by a powerful and mocking heavenly voice. A third spoke of Titus’ humiliating and painful death by insect as divine retribution for his blasphemous and bloody assault on God in the Temple. The Islamic exegetes joined these three together and adapted them to a villain of greater relevance, Namrūd, the enemy of the forefather Ibrāhīm. In so doing, the Muslim texts reinforced the primary lesson that God rules over all and that the plans of villains will always come to naught. And in constructing this new villain, the Islamic traditions preserved details of a half-lost midrash on Nebuchadnezzar, making the perplexing parts that remain more understandable. Bibliography Primary Sources ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī. Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm. Edited by Muṣṭafā Muslim Muḥammad. Riyad: Maktabat al-Rushd, 1989.

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Ahiqar. Translation and Introduction by J. M. Lindenberger. Vol. 1, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Edited by James H. Charlesworth. New York: Doubleday, 1985. Avot de-Rabbi Natan. See Masechet Avot de-Rabbi Natan. Babylonian Talmud. Vilna: Ram Publishers, 1927. Ecclesiastes Rabbah. See Midrash Rabbah ha-Mevo’ar. Eisenberg, Isaac. Vita Prophetarum auctore Muhammad ben Abdallah al-Kisa‌ʾi. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1922. Exodus Rabbah. See Midrash Rabbah ha-Mevoʾar. Genesis Rabbah. See Midrash Rabbah Bereishit. Ibn ʿAsākir, ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥasan. Ta‌ʾrīkh madīnat Dimashq. Edited by ʿUmar ibn Gharāma al-ʿAmrāwī. Beirut. Dār al-fikr, 1995–. Ibn Kathīr, Abū al-Fidāʾ Ismāʿīl. Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm. Beirut: Dār al-fikr, 1970. Ibn Qutayba, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muslim. Kitāb al-maʿārif. Edited by Muḥammad Ismāʿīl ʿAbd Allāh al-Sāwī. Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Islāmiyya, 1934. Isḥāq ibn Bishr. Mubtada‌ʾ al-dunyā wa-qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ. MS Huntington 388. Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Oxford. Jerusalem Talmud. See Talmud Yerushalmi. The JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1999. al-Kisāʾī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allāh. See Eisenberg. Leviticus Rabbah. See Midrash Rabbah ha-Mevoʾar. al-Majlisī, Muḥammad Baqīr. Biḥār al-anwār. Tehran: Dār al-kutub al-Islāmiyya, 1362–1366 AH [1943–1946]. Masechet Avot de-Rabbi Natan. Edited by Solomon Schechter. New York: Feldheim, 1945. al-Masʿūdī, ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn. Murūj al-dhahab wa-maʿādhin al-jawhār. Edited by Charles Pellat. Beirut: Publications de L’Université Libanaise, 1966–1974. Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishmael. Edited by Meir Ish-Shalom. Vienna: 1879. Reprint New York: Om, 1948. Midrash Rabbah Bereishit. [Genesis Rabbah]. Edited by J. Theodor and Ch. Albeck. Berlin, 1903–1936; reprint, Jerusalem: Wahrmann, 1965. Midrash Rabbah ha-Mevoʾar. Jerusalem: Mekhon ha-Midrash ha-Mevoʾar, 5744–59 [1983– 1999]. Midrash Tanḥuma. Edited by Shelomo Buber. New York: Hotsa‌ʾat Sefer, 1946. Midrash Tehillim. Ed. Shelomo Buber. Vilna: Ram, 5651 [c. 1890]. Mujāhid ibn Jabr. Tafsīr al-imām Mujāhid ibn Jabr. Edited by Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Salām Abū al-Nīl. Cairo: Dār al-fikr, 1989. Muqātil ibn Sulayman. Tafsīr Muqātil. Edited by ʿAbdallāh Maḥmūd Shiḥāta. 5 vols. Cairo: al-Ḥayʾa al-Miṣriyya al-ʿāmma li-al-kitāb, 1979–1989. Numbers Rabbah. See Midrash Rabbah ha-Mevoʾar. Pirqei de-Rabbi Eliezer. Jerusalem: Eshkol, 1973. al-Qummī, Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Ibrāhīm. Tafsīr al-Qummī. Najaf: Maṭbaʿat al-Najaf, 1386– 87 AH [c. 1967]. Al-Qurʾān: A Contemporary Translation. Translated by Ahmed Ali. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984. Sachau, Edward, ed. and trans. The Chronology of Ancient Nations. An English Version of the Arabic Text of the Athar-ul-Bakiya of Albiruni. London: William H. Allen and Co., 1879. al-Ṣanʿānī. See ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī. Seder Eliyah Rabbah ve-Seder Eliyahu Zuta. Edited by Meir Ish-Shalom. Jerusalem: Wahr­ mann, 1969. Sefer Aḥiqar he-Ḥakham. Edited and translated by Avinoam Yellin. Jerusalem: 1937. Sifre on Deuteronomy. Edited by Shaul Horovits and Eliezer Finkelstein. Berlin: Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judentums, 1939. Reprint, New York and Jerusalem: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1969. Song of Songs Rabbah. See Midrash Rabbah ha-Mevoʾar.



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al-Ṭabarī, Muḥammad ibn Jarīr. Ta‌ʾrīkh al-rusul wa-al-mulūk. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1879–1901. ——. Ta‌ʾrīkh al-rusul wa-al-mulūk. Edited by Muḥammad Abū al-Faḍl Ibrāhīm. Cairo: Dār al-maʿārif, 1961(?)–1977. Talmud Yerushalmi. Berlin: Hotsaʿat Sefarim, 5685 [1925]. Targum Neophyti 1: Genesis. Translated by Martin McNamara. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1992 Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Genesis. Translated by Michael Maher. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1992. Targum Yerushalmi la-Torah. Edited by Moshe Ginsburger. Jerusalem, 1969. al-Thaʿlabī, Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad. Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ al-musammā ʿarāʾis al-majālis. Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Anwār al-Muḥammadiyya, n.d. ʿUmāra ibn Wathīma al-Fārisī. Les Légendes prophétiques dans l’Islam: depuis le Ier jusqu’au IIIe siècle de l’Hégire (Kitāb badʿ al-khalq wa-qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ). Edited by Raif Georges Khoury. Weisbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1978. al-Yaʿqūbī, Aḥmad ibn Abī Yaʿqūb. Ta‌ʾrīkh Aḥmad ibn Abī Yaʿqūb ibn Jaʿfar ibn Wahab ibn Wādiḥ al-maʿrūf bi-al-Yaʿqūbī. Edited by M. Th. Houtsma. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1969. Secondary Sources Abbott, Nabia. Studies in Arabic Literary Papyri. Volume II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967. Brown, Francis, S. R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906; reprint, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers [1966]. Dalley, Stephanie. Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh and Others. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. EJ. See Encyclopedia Judaica. Eliade, Mircea. “Notes on the Symbolism of the Arrow.” In Religions in Antiquity, ed. Jacob Neusner, 463–475. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968. Encyclopedia Judaica. 2nd ed. Thomson Gale and Keter Publishing House, 2007. Ginzberg, Louis. The Legends of the Jews. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1909– 1938. Horowitz, Wayne. “The Flights of Etana and the Eagle into the Heavens,” Chapter Three in Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1998. Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–1906. Accessed Aug. 25, 2010, http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=752&letter=H&search=Hiram. Kister, M. J. “ḥaddithū ʿan banī isrāʾīla wa-la ḥaraja: A Study of an Early Tradition.” IOS 2 (1972): 215–39. Kugel, James L. In Potiphar’s House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990. Lane, Edward William, ed. An Arabic-English Lexicon. London: Williams and Norgate, 1867–1893. Lowin, Shari L. The Making of a Forefather: Abraham in Islamic and Jewish Exegetical Narratives. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2006. Margaliyot, Eliezer. Ha-Ḥayavim ba-Miqra ve-Zaka‌ʾim ba-Talmud u-va-Midrashim. London: Arrarat, 1949. Sandmel, Samuel. “Genesis 4:26b.” HUCA 32 (1961): 19–29. Schwarzbaum, Ḥaim. “Haman ha-Rasha be-Masoret ha-Islam,” Mahanajim, v. 89 (1964): 66–71. Sidersky, David. Les Origines des légendes Musulmanes dans le Coran et dans les Vies des Prophètes. Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1933. Stoneman, Richard. Alexander the Great: A Life in Legend. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008.

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Strack, H. L. and G. Stemberger, Introduction to Talmud and Midrash. Translated by Markus Bockmuehl. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992. Wills, Lawrence M. The Quest of the Historical Gospel: Mark, John and the Origins of the Gospel Genre. London and New York: Routledge, 1997. Yafeh, Hava Lazarus. Intertwined Worlds: Medieval Islam and Bible Criticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.

QURʾĀNIC RHETORIC IN NINTH-CENTURY MUSLIM-BYZANTINE DIPLOMACY: AL-MAʾMŪN’S LETTER TO THEOPHILUS IN 833 CE Vanessa De Gifis In Muhammad and the Believers, Fred M. Donner describes how the early ecumenical character of Muḥammad’s “community of Believers” evolved over the course of a century into a distinctly Muslim confessional identity, at the center of which was belief in the prophecy of Muḥammad and the primacy of the Qurʾān as the consummate revelation of the one God.1 This paper investigates how the Muslim community’s qurʾānic orientation impacted its relationship with the Christian Byzantine Empire during the reign of the ʿAbbāsid Caliph al-Ma‌ʾmūn (r. 813–833 CE), through a study of the rhetorical use of the Qurʾān in al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s letter to the Byzantine Emperor Theophilus (r. 829–42). The qurʾānicity of al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s language in this letter attests to the centrality of the Qurʾān in the conception and articulation of early ninth-century Muslim imperial ideology. Before analyzing al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s letter, it is instructive to consider some background information on depictions of Muslim-Christian relations in the Qurʾān and Sunna and the events surrounding the exchange of letters between al-Ma‌ʾmūn and Theophilus in 833. Much has already been written about the early Islamic conquests, frontier administration, and diplomacy in the early Islamic era,2 so it suffices here to highlight some of the formative events, trends, and ideological underpinnings of Muslim-Byzantine diplomacy, which influenced the nature and function of diplomatic 1 Fred M. Donner, Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), 109–10, 205–11. 2 See, for example, Fred M. Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981); Walter E. Kaegi, Byzantium and the Early Islamic Conquests (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Hugh Kennedy, The Armies of the Caliphs: Military and Society in the Early Islamic State (New York: Routledge, 2001); Walter E. Kaegi, “The Early Muslim Raids into Anatolia and Byzantine Reactions under Emperor Constans II,” in The Encounter of Eastern Christianity with Early Islam, eds. Emmanouela Grypeou et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2006); Fred M. Donner, ed., The Expansion of the Early Islamic State (Burlington: Ashgate, 2008); Yasin Istanbuli, Diplomacy and Diplomatic Practice in the Early Islamic Era (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2001); Leslie Brubaker and John Haldon, Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era (ca. 680–850): The Sources, chap. 16, “Letters” (Burlington: Ashgate, 2001), 276–85.

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correspondence, and which thus shed light on our reading of al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s letter to Theophilus. The Qurʾān and Sunna as Guides for Muslim-Byzantine Diplomacy The Qurʾān speaks about the Romans/Byzantines in Sūrat al-Rūm (Chapter 30). It opens with: “The Romans (al-Rūm) have been defeated. / In a nearby land; yet after their defeat they will be victorious, / Within a few years.”3 These verses, revealed in the Meccan period, have been generally understood to express a favorable view toward the Byzantines vis-à-vis the (unnamed) Persians/Sasanians.4 This sympathy toward the Byzantines has been explained, among other things, as a preference for a monotheistic empire over a pagan one.5 In Qurʾān 5:82–85, the Christians are praised for their acknowledgment of the truth of Muḥammad’s prophecy. But in other verses they are criticized and described as corrupted monotheists, who have distorted previous revelations and denied the true prophecy of Muḥammad.6 The Qurʾān clarifies what Christians and Jews have tried to obscure through the practice of taḥrīf.7 On account of its clarity and completeness, Islam is superior to Christianity and Judaism.8 In political terms, this came to mean that, theoretically, the Byzantines, as Christians, must submit to the political authority of the Muslim Caliphate, either by accepting the religion of Islam or entering into a treaty with

3 Qurʾān, 30:1–4. 4 The Sasanians had defeated the Byzantines “in a nearby land,” usually assumed to be Syria, in 614–615 CE, shortly before the revelation of Sūrat al-Rūm. In the year 6 AH, Heraclius was victorious over the Sasanians and regained his lost territory in Syria. Al-Ṭabarī, The History of al-Ṭabarī (Ta‌ʾrīkh al-rusul wa-al-mulūk), vol. 8, The Victory of Islam, trans. Michael Fishbein (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997), 100; Walter E. Kaegi, Heraclius: Emperor of Byzantium (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 201–12. 5 EQ, s.v. “Byzantines” (Michael Bonner and Nadia Maria El-Cheikh). 6 On the change in Muslim-Christian relations hinging upon the acceptance or rejection of the prophecy of Muḥammad, see Fred M. Donner, Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1998), 149–50, 153–54; idem, Muhammad and the Believers, 205–11. 7 See, for example, Qurʾān 2:135–41; 5:15–20. On the doctrine of taḥrīf (distortion of God’s revelations to the Jews and Christians), see EI2, s.v. “Taḥrīf ” (Hava Lazarus-Yafeh); W. Montgomery Watt, “The Early Development of the Muslim Attitude to the Bible,” in Early Islam: Collected Articles (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990), 77–85; Uri Rubin, Between Bible and Qurʾān: The Children of Israel and the Islamic Self-Image (Prince­ ton: Darwin Press, 1999), 60, 108–109. 8 On the Qurʾān’s criticisms of Jews and Christians, see EQ, s.v. “Community and Society in the Qurʾān” (Frederick Mathewson Denny), 378.



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payment of the poll-tax ( jizya),9 or else be subdued by force.10 It was the latter choice that came to define the relationship between the Byzantine Empire and the Muslims during the Islamic conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries. For the early Muslims, subduing the Byzantines was generally associated with the meritorious conduct of jihād, which was a key expression of membership in the Muslim community.11 The emergence of a normative theory of jihād in the early ʿAbbāsid period was partly based on the early Muslims’ readings of relevant verses in the Qurʾān.12 An assessment of the theme of jihād in the Qurʾān reveals three main features: 1) that it is directed against the disbelievers and the hypocrites, 2) that it is an obligation for Muslims, and 3) that a Muslim who turns away from this obligation ceases to be a true Muslim and becomes a hypocrite.13 Alongside qurʾānic verses relating to jihād, the early Muslims looked to the early expeditions of the Prophet Muḥammad (maghāzī), and to some extent the expeditions of the “rightly guided (rāshidūn)” caliphs, as

9 See EI2, s.v. “Djizya” (Claude Cahen). From the late eighth-early ninth century, with the stabilization of the frontier zones, and the concurrent development of Islamic law, there emerged a classification of territories into three categories: dār al-islām (the realm of Islam), dār al-ḥarb (the realm of war), and dār al-ʿahd or dār al-ṣulḥ (the realm of treaty). This last category designates non-Muslim states that paid tribute to the Muslim state, but were allowed to retain their own sovereignty. C. E. Bosworth, “Byzantium and the Arabs: War and Peace between Two World Civilisations,” JAOS 3–4 (1991–92): 5; David Cook, Understanding Jihad (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 20–21; Roy Parviz Mottahedeh and Ridwan al-Sayyid, “The Idea of the Jihād in Islam before the Crusades,” in The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World, eds. Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library, 2001), 28. 10 See, for example, Qurʾān 8:38–40, 60–61; 9:1–6, 29; 47:4. Qurʾān 9 29 is often cited in documents concerning tribute. See Albrecht Noth, The Early Arabic Historical Tradition: A Source-Critical Study, 2nd ed., in collaboration with Lawrence I. Conrad, trans. Michael Bonner (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1994), 69. 11 Michael Bonner, Aristocratic Violence and Holy War: Studies in the Jihad and the ArabByzantine Frontier (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1996), 12. On jihād in general, see, for example, EI2, s.v. “Djihād” (E. Tyan); Michael Bonner, Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006); David Cook, Understanding Jihad. On the regional (e.g. Hijazi and Syrian) variances in the development of the concept of jihād, see Mottahedeh and al-Sayyid, “Idea of the Jihād,” 26–27. 12 Mottahedeh and al-Sayyid, “Idea of the Jihād,” 28. 13 See, for example, Qurʾān 9:73–74, 81–88. On exemption from jihād, see Qurʾān 48:17. For a discussion of the divergent texts on jihād in the Qurʾān, and of jihād as a communal and individual obligation (farḍ kifāya and farḍ ʿayn, respectively), see EI2, s.v. “Djihād” (E. Tyan). On the term fāsiq (usually translated as “grave sinner”) as it relates to the concept of jihād, see Toshihiko Izutsu, Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qurʾān (Ithaca: McGillQueen’s University Press, 2002), 158.

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models for the conduct of war.14 These early campaigns were thought to be exemplary not only in their military aspects, but also in their diplomatic features. According to the Islamic historical tradition, in 627–8, Muḥammad dispatched embassies to foreign rulers, among them the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius (r. 610–41).15 In the letters accompanying these embassies,16 there were varying degrees of hostility or conciliation, terseness or verbosity, and religious or non-religious polemic. Although the letters attributed to Muḥammad are of dubious authenticity, they reflect what Muslim historians considered plausible prophetic precedence in Muslim-Byzantine diplomacy, and part of the normative tradition of the Prophet that Muslim rulers were to emulate. To Heraclius, Muḥammad is said to have written: In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful. From Muḥammad, the Messenger of God, to Heraclius, the ruler of the Romans. Peace upon whoever follows right guidance (al-salām ʿalā man ittabaʿa al-hudā)!17 To proceed: Submit yourself, and you shall be safe. Submit yourself, and God shall give you your reward twice over. But, if you turn away, the sin of the Husbandmen shall be upon you.18

A similar message is said to have been delivered to the Sasanian Emperor Khusraw.19 In contrast to these letters, the letter supposedly sent to the Negus of Aksum was less challenging and more conciliatory: May you be at peace! I praise to you God, the King, the Most Holy, the Peace, the Keeper of Faith, the Watcher (al-malik al-quddūs al-salām al-muʾmin almuhaymin),20 and I bear witness that Jesus the son of Mary is the Spirit and Word of God, which He cast into the goodly and chaste Virgin Mary (inna ʿĪsā ibn Maryam rūḥ Allāh wa-kalimatuhu alqāhā ilā Maryam al-batūl al-ṭayyibah al-ḥaṣīnah),21 so that she conceived Jesus; whom God created

14 Mottahedeh and al-Sayyid, “Idea of the Jihād,” 24. 15 Muḥammad sent Diḥya ibn Khalīfa al-Kalbī with the letter to Heraclius. For a list of the various accounts of this embassy, see EI2, s.v. “Ḳayṣar” (A. Fischer and Irfan Shahid). 16 On the authenticity of these letters, see W. Montgomery Watt, Muḥammad at Medina (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), 345–47; Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 76; Kaegi, Byzantium, 69–70; idem, Heraclius, 236. 17 Cf. Qurʾān 20:47. 18 Al-Ṭabarī, Victory of Islam, 104. On the sin of the Husbandmen, see n. 445 therein. 19 Ibid., 111. Al-Ṭabarī records two versions of this letter, both of which include the same reference to Qurʾān 20:47 found in the letter to Heraclius. In both accounts, Khusraw is said to have torn up the letter. 20  Cf. Qurʾān 59 23. 21 Cf. Qurʾān 4:171.



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from His Spirit and breathed into him ( fa-khalaqahu Allāh min rūḥihi wanafakhahu),22 just as He created Adam by His hand and breathed into him.23 I call you to God alone, Who has no partner, to continue obedience to Him (ṭāʿatihi), and that you follow me and believe in what has come to me; for I am the Messenger of God. . . . Accept my advice! Peace upon whoever follows right guidance (al-salām ʿalā man ittabaʿa al-hudā)!24

This letter to the Negus is especially rich with qurʾānic references, undoubtedly selected to establish common ground with the Christian audience, to demonstrate the truth of Islam as the consummation of Christian revelation, and to thereby encourage the Negus’ conversion to Islam as the continuation of obedience to God. In summoning the Negus to “continue obedience to [God],” the letter indicates a positive estimation of the Negus as a pious man. The tone is thus comparatively friendlier than we have found in the letter to Heraclius. The variance in tone in the letters to the Negus and Heraclius may correlate with a difference in the context of the Prophet’s relationships with each of these rulers. The Negus was friendly with the Muslims, while Heraclius was not; the Negus’ Aksumite kingdom was already in decline, while the Byzantine empire was still powerful and represented a greater threat to the fledgling Islamic polity.25 In sum, these letters show that Islamic rhetoric for a Christian audience is not confined to a single form of confrontation; rather, there are multiple ways in which a Muslim may try to persuade a Christian to submit to Islamic domination, depending on particular political circumstances. It is particularly noteworthy for the study of qurʾānic rhetoric that passages borrowed from the Qurʾān appear in all three of these letters, including the one to the Sasanian emperor. The fact that qurʾānic rhetoric appears also in the letter addressed to a non-monotheist recipient points to the indispensability of the Qurʾān in Muslim conceptions of inter-faith relations of all sorts.

22 Cf. Qurʾān 66:12. 23 Cf. Qurʾān 3:59. 24 Al-Ṭabarī, Victory of Islam, 108. For the closing of this letter, cf. Qurʾān 20:47, also cited in the letters to Heraclius and Khusraw. The Negus’ congenial reply appears in al-Ṭabarī, Victory of Islam, 108–109. 25 See, for example, EI2, s.v. “Ḥabash” (E. Ullendorff); Noth, Early Arabic Historical Tradition, 162.

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After the death of the Prophet Muḥammad in 632, the Muslims continued their forays into Byzantine territory, now in an organized form, under the auspices of the state. They penetrated into lands under direct Byzantine control, and successfully wrested Syria from the Byzantines in the 630s-640s.26 From the reign of the third caliph ʿUthmān (r. 644–56) onward, they conducted regular summer raids (ṣawāʾif  ) into Byzantine Anatolia. During the Umayyad period (661–750), both the Muslims and the Byzantines wanted to clearly define the frontier between their two territories, in order to establish tight controls over communication and travel. From the reign of the first Umayyad caliph Muʿāwiya (r. 661–80), there emerged a clear frontier region at the Taurus Mountains,27 the frontier region in which al-Ma‌ʾmūn became active later in the ninth century. The only major effort to take Constantinople in the early ʿAbbāsid period was carried out by Hārūn al-Rashīd in 781–82, when he was still a crown-prince.28 As caliph (r. 786–809), he continued to engage in frontier warfare, and was allegedly the first caliph to regularly and personally participate in the jihād raids against the Byzantines. His son al-Ma‌ʾmūn follows the example of his father in this,29 affirming the role of the caliph as the special protector and defender of Islam. The apparent lack of substantial material gain from raiding, in terms of both territory and plunder (according to Bonner, plunder was often worth less than the cost of the undertaking),30 allows one to point to the ideological component of jihād as a major motivation for raids into Byzantine territory. Notions of communal membership, obligation, merit, reward, and martyrdom were cultivated in the ḥadīth literature.31 These notions

26 Donner, Early Islamic Conquests, 111–12; Kaegi, Byzantium, 67, 119–22, 147–51, 191–97. 27 Kaegi, Byzantium, 251–52. 28 Al-Ṭabarī, The History of al-Ṭabarī, vol. 29, Al-Manṣūr and al-Mahdī, trans. Hugh Kennedy (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), 220–22; EI2, s.v. “Rūm” (C. E. Bosworth). 29 Al-Ṭabarī, The History of al-Ṭabarī, vol. 32, The Reunification of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate, trans. C. E. Bosworth (Albany: SUNY Press, 1987), 184–88; al-Yaʿqūbī, Tārīkh, 2:465–67, 469. 30 Bonner, Aristocratic Violence, 138. 31 For a discussion of the early ḥadīth collections that deal with jihād, see Cook, Understanding Jihad, 14–19; Bonner, Jihad, 45–48. On the concept of jihād in apocalyptic traditions, see Cook, Understanding Jihad, 22–25; Bonner, Jihad, 9, 61, 131–32, 140. On the definitions and rewards of martyrdom, see Cook, Understanding Jihad, 26–31; Bonner, Jihad, 74–81.



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must have been sincerely embraced, and many Muslims from throughout Islamdom participated in the raids on the Byzantine frontier. The centrality of jihād as a validating ideology for conquest gave the early Muslims an advantage over the Byzantines,32 and proves the sustained impact of religious—specifically qurʾānic—concepts on military and diplomatic activities. Events Surrounding the Ma‌ʾmūn-Theophilus Correspondence The first expedition into Byzantine territory in which al-Ma‌ʾmūn participated took place near the end of his reign, in 830, in the frontier region of Cilicia (Arabic: al-maṭāmīr). Al-Ma‌ʾmūn and his forces captured the fortresses of Mājida, Qurra, Sundus, and Sinān.33 After these successes, he withdrew to Damascus. This initial incursion initiated a series of raids from both sides. In the following year, 831, al-Ma‌ʾmūn set out again for the frontier.34 The historian al-Ṭabarī (d. 923) provides two explanations for what prompted his return to Byzantine territory. The first reason, mentioned also by Ibn Abī Ṭāhir (d. 893), is that al-Ma‌ʾmūn received reports about Byzantine attacks on Ṭarsūs35 and Maṣṣīṣa.36 The second is that he received a letter from Theophilus, in which the latter put his own name before that

32 The Byzantines did not consider their confrontations with the Muslims a “test of Christian truth or Christian survival;” Kaegi, Byzantium, 265; idem, Heraclius, 256. They were also less successful than the Muslims in securing the honor of martyrdom for their fighters. The emperor Nicephorus Phocas asked the clergy to bestow the status of martyr upon those soldiers who died fighting the Muslims, but the patriarch Polyeuctus denied his request, citing St. Basil’s First Canonical Epistle, which withheld the Eucharistic sacrament from any Christian who sheds blood, no matter what the circumstances; see C. E. Bosworth, “Byzantium and the Arabs,” 18. 33 Ibn Abī Ṭāhir, Kitāb Baghdād (Baghdad: Maktabat al-Muthannā, 1388/1968), 143–45; al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh al-rusul wa-al-mulūk, ed. Muḥammad Abū al-Faḍl Ibrāhīm (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, [1968]), 8:623–24. On Mājidah, Qurrah, Sundus, and Sinān, see A. A. Vasiliev, Byzance et les Arabes, vol. 1, La dynastie d’Amorium (820–867) (Brussells: Institut de philologie et d’histoire orientales, 1935), 101–103. 34 Ibn Abī Ṭāhir, Baghdād, 145–46; al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh, 8:625; al-Yaʿqūbī, Tārīkh, 2:465–66. 35 On the city of Ṭarsūs in this period, see C. E. Bosworth, “The City of Tarsus and the Arab-Byzantine Frontiers in Early and Middle ʿAbbāsid Times,” Oriens 33 (1992): 268–86; Bonner, Aristocratic Violence, 169–77, offers a brief summary of the city’s frontier history and biographical notices of scholars and ascetics who lived there. 36 On the city of al-Maṣṣīṣa in this period and scholars and ascetics who lived there, see Bonner, Aristocratic Violence, 158–69.

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of al-Ma‌ʾmūn.37 This infuriated the caliph, so he did not even read the letter and immediately set out for the frontier.38 Theophilus then wrote a second letter to al-Ma‌ʾmūn, this time with the latter’s name first, offering to release 7,000 Muslim prisoners of war and to pay the caliph 100,000 dinars.39 There is no surviving record of a reply. The expedition of 831 was another success for al-Ma‌ʾmūn. In the following year, 832, al-Ma‌ʾmūn returned again to Byzantine territory, and besieged Luʾluʾa (Lulun) for one hundred days, after which time he withdrew and left his deputy ʿUjayf to continue the siege. By some ruse, ʿUjayf was captured by the Byzantines and was kept prisoner for eight days, giving Theophilus enough time to reach Luʾluʾa. But then al-Ma‌ʾmūn dispatched an army to Luʾluʾa, which quickly forced Theophilus’ troops to retreat. After his defeat at Luʾluʾa, Theophilus sent a third letter to al-Ma‌ʾmūn, asking for peace. Although Theophilus started this letter with his own name before that of al-Ma‌ʾmūn, al-Ma‌ʾmūn did not discard it as he had discarded the first letter; instead, he decided to send a reply. This reply is the object of study in the present paper. Theophilus’ letter was intended to establish a truce with al-Ma‌ʾmūn, but this was not achieved. After sending his reply, al-Ma‌ʾmūn marched to Salaghūs, a fortress beyond Ṭarsūs. On 25 May 833, he sent his son al-ʿAbbās to set up camp at Ṭuwāna and undertake a fortification project there.40 It was at this point that Theophilus sent yet another, fourth, letter to al-Ma‌ʾmūn, offering to reimburse his war expenses, return prisoners without ransom, and establish a truce. Al-Ma‌ʾmūn declined this offer.41 The Extant Letters Of the letters exchanged between these two rulers, the only two that are extant are Theophilus’ third letter and al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s reply to it, both of which are preserved in al-Ṭabarī’s Tārīkh.42 Therefore, these are the only letters that may be subjected to textual analysis. 37 For a list of sources that mention this letter, see Franz Dölger, ed., Regesten der Kaiserurkunden des oströmischen Reiches: von 565–1453 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1924), 1:51, no. 423. Note that only the Arabic sources mention it. 38 Al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh, 8:625; idem, Reunification, 187–88. 39 Al-Yaʿqūbī, Tārīkh, 2:465. 40 Al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh, 8:631; idem, Reunification, 197–99. 41  For a list of sources that mention this letter, see Dölger, Regesten, 1:52, no. 430. 42 The letters of Theophilus and al-Ma‌ʾmūn appear together in al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh, 8:629– 30; idem, Reunification, 195–97; French trans. in Vasiliev, Dynastie d’Amorium, 289–91. For



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The primary sources do not provide any direct information on the composition and transmission of Theophilus’ letter. The only preserved version is the apparently incomplete Arabic version, but it is almost certain that it was originally written in Greek43 and then translated. The surviving Arabic text of Theophilus’ letter is fairly short, consisting of about one hundred words. Al-Ṭabarī says that the letter was sent to al-Ma‌ʾmūn with Theophilus’ vizier, whose name he gives as al-Faṣl.44 Unsurprisingly, Theophilus does not cite the Qurʾān in his letter, and hence a textual analysis of it is not necessary here. It suffices to point out the salient themes. Theophilus opens his letter by acknowledging al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s practical interest in securing his own fortune, and then proposes that the two of them assure the security of their respective positions through a truce (musālama). A truce, he explains, would relieve them of “the burdens of war”—clearly referring to the drain war causes to various resources—and nurture friendship between them. Moreover, it would facilitate commercial activity along secure trade routes. In order to persuade al-Ma‌ʾmūn to agree to a truce, he offers to release prisoners of war in his possession. Theophilus then changes his tone and threatens to launch an attack on Muslim territory if al-Ma‌ʾmūn rejects his proposal. He closes the letter by saying, “And if I do this, it will only be after setting forth a valid excuse (maʿdhira) [for adopting this course of action] and after setting up between us the standard of argument (ḥujja). Peace!” This letter has two main components: a peace proposal and a threat of attack. With regard to the matter of peace, Theophilus emphasizes its material benefits. As for his threat, he conditions it on the establishment of a decisive proof that will justify it, without explaining what such a proof would be.

a list of primary and secondary sources that mention Theophilus’ letter, see Dölger, Regesten, 1:52, no. 428. 43 According to Mark Whittow, Byzantine letters composed between 600–1025 “were not composed in the language of contemporary spoken Greek, or even in the standard written language of official reports, but instead in a deliberately elevated style modelled on the Attic Greek of the fourth and third centuries BC, and their authors embellished them with references to classical and biblical texts.” Among the 1,700 letters preserved in Byzantine manuscripts, most were composed after the late 8th century, including letters from Nicholas Mystikos to the ʿAbbāsid caliph al-Muqtadir (r. 908–932); Mark Whittow, The Making of Byzantium, 600–1025 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 5–6. It is reasonable to speculate that the Greek used in the letter to al-Muqtadir was the same as the original language of Theophilus’ letter to al-Ma‌ʾmūn. 44 On this name, see Vasiliev, Dynastie d’Amorium, 289 n. 1. For a discussion of the embassies and ambassadors of Theophilus to al-Ma‌ʾmūn, see ibid., 118–19, n. 2.

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Al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s letter, likely written on his behalf by a secretary in the chancery,45 is a little longer than Theophilus’, consisting of about 150 words. Al-Ṭabarī does not mention whether al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s name appeared first or that of Theophilus. Al-Ma‌ʾmūn replies to Theophilus from a position of power, having been victorious over him in his previous campaigns. Not feeling the urgent desire for peace, he sets certain conditions for it that benefit him practically and ideologically. His letter first summarizes Theophilus’ letter, then threatens to continue hostilities, lauding the strength and bravery of his men. But he offers Theophilus advice and a choice: Convert or pay tribute money and enter into a contract of protection (dhimma). If Theophilus does neither, fighting will ensue and there will be no more negotiations. The first instance of qurʾānic borrowing occurs towards the end of the first quarter of the letter. After summarizing Theophilus’ letter, al-Ma‌ʾmūn says that, if he (i.e. al-Ma‌ʾmūn) were not a prudent man, then “I should answer your letter with cavalry horses bearing the people of fortitude, courage, and discernment (ahl al-ba‌ʾs wa-al-najda wa-al-baṣīra).”46 The underlined phrase is an example of analogous coining, in which al-Ma‌ʾmūn constructs a new phrase on the model of the qurʾānic ahl al- ___ construction (the people of ___).47 In the Qurʾān, the ahl al-___ construction is mainly used in the phrase ahl al-kitāb, the People of the Book, referring mainly to Jews and Christians.48 It is also used in the phrase ahl al-bayt, as in Qurʾān 33:33, referring to the House (i.e. Family) of the Prophet. This construction also appears in the Qurʾān such that the muḍāf ilayh

45 Already by the time of the Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik, the chancery was well established, and it was common for an official secretary to write letters on behalf of the caliph. See Wadād al-Qāḍī, “Early Islamic State Letters: The Question of Authenticity,” in The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, vol. 1, Problems in the Literary Source Material, eds. Cameron and Conrad (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1992), 217–19; Amidu Sanni, “The Secretary (Kātib) and his Tool in Medieval Islam: Prosification as a Professional Technique,” Journal for Islamic Studies 21 (2001): 88–89. 46 Borrowed qurʾānic elements appear in italics in the English translation and underlined in the Arabic transliteration. 47 The ahl al-___ construction is not unique to the Qurʾān. It is found in pre-Islamic poetry. What magnifies the qurʾānicity of al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s phrasing is that he constructs it with qualitative nouns that are themselves found, in either nominal or other forms, in the Qurʾān. Cf. Wadād al-Qāḍī, “The Impact of the Qurʾān on the Epistolography of ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd,” in Approaches to the Qurʾān, eds. Hawting and Shareef (New York: Routledge, 1993), 303. 48 For example, Qurʾān 4 153, 159, 171. On the phrase ahl al-kitāb in the Qurʾān, and on the ahl al-___ construction in general, see EI2, s.v. “People of the Book” (M. Sharon).



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is a quality, often expressed as a verbal noun, as in ahl al-dhikr (people of recollection, the people who recall).49 Such is the type of al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s analogous coining. The word ahl in the phrase ahl al-ba‌ʾs is exactly equivalent to the word ūlū / ūlī (people of . . .). The phrase ūlū al-ba‌ʾs / ūlī al-ba‌ʾs appears three times in the Qurʾān.50 The most interesting instance for the context of al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s usage is Qurʾān 48:16, the original context of which is the conquest ( fatḥ) of Mecca: “Say to the Arabs who lagged behind: ‘You will be called upon [to fight] against a people of fierce fortitude (ūlī ba‌ʾs shadīd); then you will fight them or they will submit (tuqātilūnahum aw yuslimūn).’ ” In this verse, ūlī ba‌ʾs are the Meccan polytheists, against whom God summons the believers to fight. This is in contrast to al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s application of the phrase to his own men in a positive way.51 It is nonetheless relevant because the two options available to the Meccan polytheists are the very same options that al-Ma‌ʾmūn presents to Theophilus: submit or be subdued by force. By describing his cavalrymen as ahl al-ba‌ʾs, he invokes this qurʾānic instruction for warfare in support of his stance. To the qurʾānicized phrase ahl al-ba‌ʾs, al-Ma‌ʾmūn adds two more muḍāf ilayhis: courage (najda) and discernment (baṣīra).52 In so doing, he amplifies the phrase, expanding its impact on his reader. Al-Ma‌ʾmūn says that his forces will pursue fighting the Byzantines, “to draw near to God ( yataqarrabūna ilā Allāh) by [spilling] your blood.” The root q-r-b pertains to nearness, and appears in several forms in the Qurʾān. While the root q-r-b itself is not necessarily borrowed from the Qurʾān, its use in connection with God indicates that al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s phrasing echoes the qurʾānic concept of drawing near to God.

49 Qurʾān 16:43; 21:7. 50 Qurʾān 17:5; 27:33; 48:16. 51  The multiple connotations of fortitude (ba‌ʾs) is demonstrated in Qurʾān 4:84: “Then fight in God’s cause—You are held responsible only for yourself—and rouse the believers. It may be that God will restrain the fortitude (ba‌ʾs) of the disbelievers, for God is the strongest in fortitude (ashadd ba‌ʾs) and in punishment.” The negative or positive quality of fortitude depends on the immediate context. In connection with the disbelievers, it acquires a negative connotation insofar as it is an attribute of bad people. In connection with God, fortitude acquires a positive connotation, because God is good. The fortitude of good overpowers the fortitude of bad. 52  The word najda does not appear in the Qurʾān, while baṣīra does in 12:108: “Say [O Prophet Muhammad]: ‘This is my Way. I invite unto God, with [the evidence of] discernment (ʿalā al-baṣīra)—I and whoever follows me;” and in 75 14: “Nay, man will be evidence (baṣīra) against himself.”

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Of the many verses in the Qurʾān that employ the root q-r-b, the closest to al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s use of the Form V yataqarrabūn (draw near) are those that use the passive participle of Form II muqarrabūn (drawn near). There are eight verses that use muqarrabūn / muqarrabīn. The most relevant for al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s context is Qurʾān 56:10–12, regarding people who attain Paradise: “And the foremost [in faith] will be the foremost [in Paradise] (wa-al-sābiqūn al-sābiqūn). / Those are the ones drawn near [to God] (ūlāʾika al-muqarrabūn), / in gardens of bliss.”53 According to the early exegetes, the sābiqūn are the muhājirūn (Companions of the Prophet who emigrated from Mecca to Medina).54 They hold a high status in the community on account of their precedence in, among other things, fighting in the cause of Islam.55 They played a critical role in the early raids and conquests under the leadership of the Prophet, as well as during the ridda wars, and in the early campaigns in Byzantine Syria and Iraq.56 Thus they serve as paradigms of heroism in military campaigns in defense of Islam. By describing his own men as “drawing near,” al-Ma‌ʾmūn equates his men with these paradigmatic military heroes, who are represented in the Qurʾān as those who are drawn near. According to the applied context, his men draw near to God “by [spilling] your [i.e. Byzantine] blood (bi-dimāʾikum),” i.e. their conduct of jihād. Their efforts against the Byzantines are equivalent to the efforts of the early muhājirūn against the Arab and Byzantine pagans. His men actively perform the action of drawing

53 Cf. Qurʾān 56:88; 83 21, 28, which speak about righteous people being drawn near (muqarrabūn / muqarrabīn) to the bliss of Paradise. Prophets and angels are also drawn near; see, for example, Qurʾān 3:45, regarding Jesus: “Behold, the angels said, ‘O Mary! God gives you glad tidings of a Word from Him; His name will be Christ Jesus, son of Mary, honored in this world and in the hereafter, and among those who are drawn near [to God] (min al-muqarrabīn);’ ” Qurʾān 4:172, regarding the angels: “Christ does not disdain to worship God, nor do the angels who are drawn near (al-malāʾika al-muqarrabūn). Those who disdain to worship Him and arrogate themselves, He will gather them all together to Himself.” Cf. Qurʾān 7:114; 26: 42, in which Pharaoh promises the sorcerers that they shall be drawn near to him (muqarrabīn) if they defeat Moses’ miracles. In this context, being drawn near has a negative connotation on account of the Pharaoh’s position as the archetypal tyrant. 54 Muqātil ibn Sulaymān, Tafsīr, ed. Aḥmad Farīd (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīya, 1424/2003), 3:312; al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan ta‌ʾwīl āy al-Qurʾān, repr. 1st ed., ed. Maḥmūd Shākir (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1421/2001), 27: 199–200. Al-Ṭabarī reports that the sābiqūn are said to be “those who have prayed to two qiblas.” 55 Donner, Early Islamic Conquests, 77. 56 EI2, s.v. “al-Muhādjirūn” (W. Montgomery Watt); Donner, Early Islamic Conquests, 86, 88, 118, 119, 126, 178. Relatively few muhājirūn participated in the second phase of conquests in central Iraq; Donner, Early Islamic Conquests, 193.



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near (yataqarrabūn), and God thus makes them, passively, drawn near (muqarrabūn). The equivalence of contexts between the sābiqūn / muhājirūn and al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s forces works on three levels: 1) al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s men are engaged in the same activity in which the muhājirūn were engaged—namely, fighting the disbelievers; 2) the manner in which they are thus engaged is the same—namely, with fortitude and bravery; 3) their reward for their conduct is the same—namely, nearness to God. Verse 56:11 uses the root q-r-b in the passive participle of Form II (muqarrabūn). Al-Ma‌ʾmūn, on the other hand, uses the root in the present-tense verb of Form V ( yataqarrabūn). Whereas the qurʾānic Form II passive participle makes God the actor and people passively acted upon, al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s active, reflexive Form V verb makes people the actors, acting upon themselves to draw themselves near. This usage indicates that al-Ma‌ʾmūn intends to emphasize the will of his men, their activism and self-determination. Their own deeds are the means by which they make themselves near to God. Al-Ma‌ʾmūn then expands on the notion of nearness to God: “They have the promise of one of the two best things (iḥdā al-ḥusnayayn): a speedy victory (ghalaba) or a glorious return (karīm munqalab).”57 The phrase “one of the two best things (iḥdā al-ḥusnayayn)” appears verbatim in Qurʾān 9:52, where the Prophet is made to say to the hypocrites, who shy away from fighting in God’s cause: “Say: ‘Can you expect for us [anything] but one of the two best things (iḥdā al-ḥusnayayn)? But we can expect for you either that God will send His punishment from Himself or by our hands. So wait; we too will wait with you.’ ” While the two best things are not explicated in the original qurʾānic context, the statement following this phrase implies that one of the two is that the believers will punish the hypocrites by their own hands, indicating victory in battle (“a speedy victory,” as al-Ma‌ʾmūn puts it). The second option, “a glorious return,” is less directly implied: If the fighters do not punish with their own hands, the implication is that they die in battle, which would lead to a glorious return to God in Heaven.

57 Cf. the ḥadīth report #21.1.2 in Mālik ibn Anas, al-Muwaṭṭa‌ʾ, ed. Sālim al-Hilālī (Dubai: Majmūʿat al-Furqān al-Tijārīya, 1424/2003), 3:8; trans. Aisha Abdurrahman Bewley (New York: Kegan Paul International, 1989), 173.

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The exegetes read in this verse that the two best things are indeed martyrdom (shahāda) or victory (ghalaba).58 Al-Ma‌ʾmūn uses the same word that al-Ṭabarī used for victory (ghalaba); it is a word that appears in the Qurʾān several times in various forms, most notably Qurʾān 4:74: “Whoever fights in God’s cause, whether he is killed or is victorious (fa-yuqtal aw yaghlib), we will give him a great reward (ajr ʿaẓīm).” This verse explicates “the two best things,” heavenly reward and worldly victory. Al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s statement combines the phrase iḥdā al-ḥusnayayn with its explanation, taken in part from this latter verse. But al-Ma‌ʾmūn does not use a noun from the root q-t-l to express martyrdom, nor shahāda, using instead the phrase “glorious return (karīm munqalab).” The word munqalab appears twice in the Qurʾān. In verse 18:36, an ungrateful man brags about his worldly gain, and exclaims, “Surely if I am brought back (rudidtu) to my Lord, I will find something even better than this in exchange (munqalaban).” In this context, the semantic field of munqalab includes the concept of being “brought back.” Yet the precise usage of the term here, to mean exchange, is slightly different than the meaning for which al-Ma‌ʾmūn uses it. Closer to his usage is verse 26:227, which declares: “[The poets are astray in hypocrisy], except those who believe and do good works (alladhīna āmanū wa-ʿamilū al-ṣāliḥāt), oft remembering God, and defending themselves after they are attacked unjustly. Those who are unjust (alladhīna ẓalamū) will learn by what kind of return they shall return [to God] (ayy munqalab yanqalibūn).” In the original context of this verse, “those who are unjust” are the polytheistic Meccan poets, whose “return” is to a state of loss in hellfire.59 In both this context and al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s applied context, the word munqalab indicates the return to God. For al-Ma‌ʾmūn, the kind of return by which his men will return to God is one of glory, not loss. The difference between a glorious return and a losing return depends on the righteous or unjust conduct of the person returning. A glorious return implies that his men are not among “those who are unjust,” but rather, they are “those who believe and do good works.” Their engagement in jihād against the Byzantines is a good act, an act of faith, for which they will be rewarded with a glorious return to God upon their deaths.

58 Muqātil, Tafsīr, 2:52; al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayan, 10 171. Muqātil uses the word fatḥ for victory. 59 Muqātil, Tafsīr, 2:467; al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 19:150.



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Al-Ma‌ʾmūn continues: “But I consider that I should give you advice (mawʿiẓa), with which God establishes clearly for you (yuthabbitu Allāh bi-hā ʿalayka) the proof (al-ḥujja). . . .” The concepts of advice and establishing appear together in Qurʾān 4:66, referring to the hypocrites: “If We had ordered them to sacrifice their lives or leave their homes, very few of them would have done it. But if they had done what they were advised (mā yūʿaẓūn bihā), then it would have been best for them and strongest in establishing [them in the right, in faith] (tathbīt).” There is similarity between the original and applied contexts. Both involve admonishing a group that is doing wrong, and giving them a chance to change and do right. The warning given establishes a course—distinguishing right from wrong, true Islam from false monotheism, polytheism, and hypocrisy— and whoever heeds the warning will be established firmly in the true religion. On the qurʾānic concept of proof (ḥujja), there are two illuminating verses. The first is Qurʾān 6:149: “Say: ‘The ultimate proof (al-ḥujja al-bāligha) is with God. . . . ’ ” In the original context of this verse, the truth of God’s proof is contrasted with the falseness of the arguments of the polytheists. While the testimonies of the polytheists are conjectural, the proof of God is decisive, and with it God settles the disputes in favor of the believers over the disbelievers. In the applied context, this means that God defends al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s position vis-à-vis Theophilus, and supports him in his attempt to convert or subdue his Christian counterpart. The second verse is Qurʾān 6:83: “That is Our proof (ḥujjatunā), which we gave to Abraham. . . .” God’s ultimate proof, which defends al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s position, had previously been revealed to Abraham, a prophet whom the Christians and Muslims share as a spiritual forefather and paradigmatic believer.60 As a result, Theophilus should already be aware, through his own religion, of the truth of al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s message and the rightness of submission to the true religion of Islam. Al-Ma‌ʾmūn elaborates on the proof of the true religion: “. . . involving the summoning of you and your supporters to knowledge of the divine unity and the Way of pure monotheism (al-sharīʿa al-ḥanīfīya).” The word sharīʿa is used once in the Qurʾān, 45:18: “We put you [i.e. the Prophet Muḥammad] on a Way (sharīʿa) of the Command (al-amr), so follow it. . . .”

60 See, for example, Rubin, Between Bible and Qurʾān, 211; on the mutual interdependence of Jewish and Muslim traditions regarding Abraham, see Shari Lowin, The Making of a Forefather: Abraham in Islamic and Jewish Exegetical Narratives (Boston: Brill, 2006).

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In the original context, the meaning is “the right Way of Religion,”61 which God had previously prescribed for the Banū Isrāʾīl and now prescribes for Muḥammad.62 Al-Ma‌ʾmūn describes the nature of this right Way with the word ḥanīfīya (monotheism). The word ḥanīf is used in the Qurʾān especially of Abraham, as the archetypal monotheist,63 who is neither a Jew nor a Christian, “but a ḥanīf, a Muslim (ḥanīfan musliman)” (3:67). Thus the combination of terms in al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s phrase al-sharīʿa al-ḥanafīya emphatically indicates that Islam is a continuation of the Abrahamic tradition. In fact, verse 3:67 equates ḥanīf with muslim, so that Islam is not merely a continuation of the religion of Abraham, but the very fundament of that religion. Elsewhere in the Qurʾān, the Prophet Muḥammad is exhorted to turn his face “to the religion, pure, the natural constitution with which God endowed humankind (lil-dīn ḥanīfan fiṭrat Allāh allatī faṭara Allāh al-nās ʿalayhā)” (30:30). The condition of ḥanīf is an integral part of the natural constitution (fiṭra) of humankind; the monotheism to which Muḥammad was called, and to which he in turn calls the rest of humanity, is the natural state in which humans were created. The People of the Book were originally commanded to worship God as ḥunafāʾ, but in neglecting this command, they became polytheists (mushrikīn) (98:5–6). Similar to his use of the term ḥujja, al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s use of the term ḥanīfīya is intended to convey the idea that Theophilus, as a Christian, is summoned to the truth of Islam, which is actually the truth of his own nature ( fiṭra). The ḥujja and the ḥanīfīya of Abraham belong to both Christianity and Islam, but it is Islam, not Christianity, which preserves the true religion in its ideal, unadulterated form, and preserves the natural condition of man as God created him. It is highly appropriate that al-Ma‌ʾmūn should use the term ḥanīfīya in a letter to a Christian, whom he is trying to persuade to recognize the domination of Islam and the Muslim Caliphate. If Theophilus were to submit to Islam, he would in effect be returning to the true form of his

61 Another possible reading of the term al-sharīʿa is in reference to the legal code. In this sense, al-Ma‌ʾmūn is summoning Theophilus to comply with the prescriptions that govern the behavior of subjected peoples in Islamic law, including payment of the jizya. This legal reading is supported by al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s use of two other words of legal significance: istiṣlāḥ (communal welfare) and dhimma (contract of protection). 62 See al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān, 25 172. 63 Qurʾān 6:79, 161; 2:135; 3:67, 95; 4 125; 16:120, 123.



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own uncorrupted religion,64 which is essentially ḥanīfīya. Moreover, his submission to the Muslim Caliphate would restore him to his natural disposition. Al-Ma‌ʾmūn exploits Theophilus’ current religious orientation as a basis for the ideological and ontological imperatives of submission to the political domination of the Muslim Caliphate. Al-Ma‌ʾmūn closes by saying, “Peace for whoever follows the divine guidance (wa-al-salām ʿalā man ittabaʿa al-hudā).” This closing is borrowed verbatim from the end of Qurʾān 20:47, in which Moses and Aaron are commanded to address Pharaoh in this manner: “Say: ‘Verily, we are messengers from your Lord, so send forth with us the Children of Israel, and do not afflict them. We have come to you with a sign (āya) from your Lord, and peace for whoever follows the divine guidance (wa-al-salām ʿalā man ittabaʿa al-hudā)!’ ” Its original qurʾānic usage as an address from a believer to a disbeliever has been imitated in Arabic diplomatic correspondence, very possibly as early as the time of the Prophet.65 This statement acquired a formulaic function typically reserved for non-Muslim addressees, and is widely attested in the administrative papyri from Umayyad times.66 The original context of Qurʾān 20:47 is Moses and Aaron addressing Pharaoh, who is the paradigmatic tyrant. By using this same quotation to address Theophilus, al-Ma‌ʾmūn is equating Theophilus with Pharaoh, as the paradigm of Disbelief (kufr), to whom is sent a message of divine guidance—and al-Ma‌ʾmūn himself takes on the role of the prophet delivering this message. The Significance of Qurʾānic Rhetoric in al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s Letter The qurʾānic themes in al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s letter proceed in a rhetorically persuasive order. He opens with the themes of martyrdom and victory, in order to convey the threat of a fearless Muslim army. He then offers the warning of proof, as a way to propose the choice that Theophilus must make. He then states what the better option is, namely monotheism. He

64 Cf. Muḥammad’s use of qurʾānic passages about Jesus in his letter to the Negus; above, 7. Both Muḥammad and al-Ma‌ʾmūn use qurʾānic passages that touch on aspects of Christian belief (Jesus and monotheism, respectively) as evidence of Christianity’s consummation in Islam. 65 Cf. Muḥammad’s letters to Heraclius and the Negus, above, 6–7. 66 EI2, s.v. “Salām” (C. van Arendonk and D. Gimaret); Nabia Abbott, Ḳurrah Papyri, 40, 43, 45–46, 47–48, 51–52, 54–55.

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closes with reference to the theme of guidance, in order to reiterate the soundness of the proof and the goodness of the right choice. All of these themes build on each other to persuade Theophilus to submit to the Muslim caliph. Qurʾānic themes are selected and arranged to maximize rhetorical efficacy, and to encourage a specific reaction. They are employed within an independently valid rhetorical structure, so that the selection of qurʾānic elements borrowed depends on their relevance to the context in general and also their usefulness at specific points within the argument. The centripetal theme in al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s letter, around which the other themes revolve, is the way of pure monotheism (al-sharīʿa al-ḥanīfīya), which God has clarified in the Qurʾān. The argument of pure monotheism is embodied in the scripture itself, which al-Ma‌ʾmūn uses to construct his argument for political domination. The monotheistic message of the Qurʾān is presented as the decisive proof of the right course to take in the current situation. Theophilus must decide if he will submit to the call of Islam as articulated in the Qurʾān, and al-Ma‌ʾmūn will decide whether to attack or accept peace, depending on Theophilus’ rejection or acceptance of the dominance of Islam, in accordance with al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s understanding of the Qurʾān’s dictates for inter-communal relations. For al-Ma‌ʾmūn, peace is only possible if Theophilus acknowledges that proof is on Ma‌ʾmun’s side—the proof of the revelation, which pronounces the domination of true monotheism. Here we can see how al-Ma‌ʾmūn has redefined two points introduced in Theophilus’ letter, peace and proof. For Theophilus, peace is explicitly presented as a means for material benefit (although he may have non-material incentives as well). Al-Ma‌ʾmūn imposes a condition on this proposed peace, derived from the “proof ” of his reading of the terms of peace set out in the Qurʾān, which is religious rather than material in orientation. This does not necessarily show that al-Ma‌ʾmūn is unconcerned with material and strategic gains; rather, it demonstrates al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s interest in imbuing the political reality of peace—and war—with a religious significance. What is striking, although not surprising, in al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s letter is not simply that he borrows terms and phrases from the Qurʾān, but that he effectively draws what Stephan Dähne has coined “equivalence of contexts.”67 His letter is directed to a Christian audience on the occasion of military conflict, and he borrows from the Qurʾān passages that pertain

67 Stephan Dähne, “Qurʾanic Wording in Political Speeches in Classical Arabic Literature,” Journal of Qurʾanic Studies 3 (2001): 1.



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specifically to the groups that Muslims are commanded to resist (the corrupted monotheists, hypocrites, and disbelievers—all categories to which Christians may belong), and to the merits and rewards of jihād. Al-Ma‌ʾmūn presents his own men as concrete examples of the believers (56:10–12; 4:74; 26:227), who are defined by adherence to right guidance and courageous activism. On the other hand, he presents the Byzantines as concrete examples of those groups who are defined by resistance to Islam—the hypocrites (9:52; 26:227; 4:66),68 polytheists (98:5–6), and disbelievers (20:47).69 The Byzantines are most often portrayed in al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s letter as hypocrites, insofar as they profess monotheism while entertaining polytheistic inclinations, and accept God’s revelations to them only but not those revealed to the Muslims that affirm and perfect the true nature of their religion. Through selective qurʾānic borrowing, al-Ma‌ʾmūn equates the qurʾānic context of jihād with the contemporary context concerning the Byzantines. He explains Muslim-Byzantine relations in his own time in terms of the Qurʾān’s ethico-religious categories. At the same time, he interprets the Qurʾān’s categories of the believers on the one hand, and the corrupted monotheists, hypocrites, and disbelievers on the other hand, in an imperial framework. The Caliphate’s relationship with Byzantium is—or should be—exemplary of the archetypal relationship between the believers and the corrupted monotheists/hypocrites/disbelievers. Al-Ma‌ʾmūn designs his imperial policy to imitate his reading of the Qurʾān’s prescriptions for Muslim-Christian relations and jihād. The conditions that al-Ma‌ʾmūn sets for peace are based on his understanding of the Qurʾān’s position vis-à-vis the hypocrites and disbelievers. The raids against the Byzantines during this period are rituals of jihād, which legitimize the rule of the Muslim caliphate and give it meaning in the political world at large. The best way, then, for al-Ma‌ʾmūn to capitalize on the raids in general, and Theophilus’ request for peace in particular, is to present the situation as echoing the qurʾānic vision of history as a struggle between the believers and disbelievers/hypocrites. In this way, the contemporary events of al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s time are placed in an unfolding pattern of salvation history.

68 On the use of the term hypocrites as a pejorative reference to one’s opponents, see EQ, s.v. “Hypocrites and Hypocrisy” (Camilla P. Adang). 69 On the Qurʾān’s dynamic characterizations of Christians as corrupt or hypocritical monotheists, polytheists, and disbelievers, see EI2, s.v. “People of the Book” (M. Sharon).

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Within this dichotomous, believer-versus-hypocrite/disbeliever framework of jihād, al-Ma‌ʾmūn puts himself in the role of the upholder of the true monotheism offered in the Qurʾān, whose task is to call people to the right path. In other words, he assumes the role of a prophet. His selfportrayal as a leader paralleling prophecy is represented in the text in two ways. First, he explicitly states that his advice to Theophilus is the means by which God establishes His proof (“innī ra‌ʾaytu an ataqaddama ilayka bi-al-mawʿiẓa allatī yuthabbitu Allāh bi-hā ʿalayka al-ḥujja”). His letter conveys God’s message to Theophilus. Second, and more implicit, he borrows the qurʾānic phrase “al-salām ʿalā man ittabaʿa al-hudā,” which the prophets Moses and Aaron said to Pharaoh in Qurʾān 20:47. In using this statement, al-Ma‌ʾmūn imitates its original speakers, and thus equates himself with them.70 This equation through imitation is taken even further when we consider that he uses this phrase in precisely the same manner that the Prophet Muḥammad is depicted to have used it in his letter to the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius in the year 6/627–8.71 The contexts of the Prophet’s letter and al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s are strikingly similar: a Muslim leader addressing a Byzantine leader, insisting on the latter’s submission. Just as al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s rhetoric parallels the qurʾānic speech of Moses and Aaron, it also parallels that of the Prophet Muḥammad. He parallels the Prophet Muḥammad earlier in the letter, as well, in his borrowing Muḥammad’s divinely-revealed speech to the hypocrites in Qurʾān 9:52. Like the prophets Moses, Aaron, and Muḥammad, al-Ma‌ʾmūn calls the hypocrite/disbeliever to right guidance, and thus has inherited the prophetic role of the upholder of the true monotheism. Al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s invitation to the true monotheism introduces the chance for transformation on the part of Theophilus. He can choose to change his status from the negative category of corrupted monotheist/hypocrite/ disbeliever to the positive category of believer. The possibility of conversion reminds us that the evaluative categories of believer, disbeliever, etc., are not perpetual states that people cannot navigate. They are definite categories, but an individual’s classification within these categories is 70 Cf. the manner in which Bishr ibn Abī Kubār al-Balawī constructs a parallelism between himself and the prophets in his letter to Ibrāhīm ibn ʿUbayd Allāh al-Ḥajabī. While al-Ma‌ʾmūn constructs a parallelism through borrowing the words that prophets are made to say in the Qurʾān, Bishr establishes a parallelism through attributing the Qurʾān’s description of prophets to himself; Wadād al-Qāḍī, Bishr ibn Abī Kubār al-Balawī: Namūdhaj min al-nathr al-fannī al-mubakkir fī al-Yaman (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1405/1985), 105–106. 71 See above, 6–7; cf. Muḥammad’s letters to Khusraw and the Negus, above, 7.



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changeable. The key to shifting from one category to another is actively changing one’s declarations and deeds. In order for Theophilus to shift from the negative category to the positive, he must transform his relationship with the Muslim Caliphate from one of hostility to one of amity. Although his audience is Christian, al-Ma‌ʾmūn builds his rhetoric on an Islamic religious foundation. I attribute the qurʾānicity of his rhetoric in this context to two factors. First, in political discourse, speakers are public figures, whose speech is “oriented within a context of public governance.”72 Therefore they are generally aware of a public audience, and the potential for the broader publication of speech officially directed at a specific person.73 So although al-Ma‌ʾmun’s letter is addressed to Theophilus, al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s rhetorical choices reflect a concern for the reception of the larger audience of his Muslim subjects, who would appreciate his borrowing from the Qurʾān. This larger, passive audience includes groups that had heretofore resisted al-Ma‌ʾmūn during the fitna and the various ʿAlid rebellions, often challenging his authority on religious grounds. It makes sense, then, that al-Ma‌ʾmūn would use religious rhetoric to reassert himself. The Qurʾān is an expression for all Muslims, not only for defenders of the createdness of the Qurʾān or any other controversial issue. Al-Ma‌ʾmūn relies on this common touchstone to appeal to the community as a whole. Despite the fact that Theophilus belongs to a community with a different language and faith, al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s qurʾānic borrowing is meant to impact him as well. Although his level of appreciation is doubtlessly different from that of the Muslim passive audience, it is nonetheless imperative that Theophilus be made aware of the impact that the Qurʾān has on al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s relationship with him.

72 Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition: Communication from Ancient Times to the Information Age, ed. Theresa Enos (New York: Garland Publishing, 1996), s.v. “Political Rhetoric” (Judith S. Trent et al.). 73 Official letters may be publicized via state officials, particularly those employed in dīwān al-rasāʾil, who, in addition to constituting a distinct passive audience, could transmit state letters to the larger passive audience of the general public. Actual letters could be transcribed as examples in epistolary manuals, for example al-Ṣūlī’s (d. 946) Adab al-kuttāb; EI2, s.v. “Inshāʾ” (H. R. Roemer). On state secretaries who compiled anthologies of their epistles, see Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, trans. Bayard Dodge (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 257–273. On the preservation of state papers in administrative bureaus (dawāwīn, sing. dīwān), see Paul L. Heck, The Construction of Knowledge in Islamic Civilization: Qudāma b. Jaʿfar and his Kitāb al-Kharāj wa-ṣināʿat al-kitāba (Boston: Brill, 2002), 34–35, 43, 48–49, 62–63, 73–76.

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Second, the presence of qurʾānic rhetoric may simply reflect the outlook of the writer. Regardless of the religious identity of the audience, the writer’s own identity is irrepressible. Whether al-Ma‌ʾmūn wrote the letter himself, or an official letter-writer wrote it for him, the text of the letter reveals the Islamic intellectual formation pervading the chancery in this period. The Qurʾān is the criterion, the lexicon and framework for interpreting al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s political situation. The aim of al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s letter is to persuade Theophilus to submit to Islam. What better way to assert the importance of Islam than to position its scripture, the Qurʾān, as the moral foundation for his military policy? His personal political interests hinge on religious ideology, and therefore require a pietistic pitch. By using the Qurʾān in his argument, al-Ma‌ʾmūn demonstrates to Theophilus that the Qurʾān is real, and that it operates on him and his cavalrymen in direct ways. This makes Theophilus’ relationship to Islam all the more consequential, both religiously and militarily. The qurʾānicity of al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s argumentation may give the impression that the Qurʾān is the dictator of al-Ma‌ʾmūn’s policy, and this is probably exactly the impression that al-Ma‌ʾmūn wanted to give. Indeed, the Qurʾān provides the universal principles that al-Ma‌ʾmūn applies to his current situation. Through equivalence of contexts, al-Ma‌ʾmūn is able to transmit the Qurʾān’s rhetoric to his own agenda, so that the identity of interest is blurred between the Qurʾān and himself. He gives the impression that his personal political interests are equal to those of the Qurʾān. Al-Ma‌ʾmūn argues in such a way that the Qurʾān appears to be the decision-maker, and that he is simply adhering to its prescription. Yet it must be remembered that al-Ma‌ʾmūn is arguing for what he wants—the submission of the Byzantine emperor. So while the Qurʾān asserts the dominance of Islam, so too does al-Ma‌ʾmūn. In his letter, his own agenda and that of the Qurʾān are made to function cooperatively. Bibliography Abbott, Nabia. The Ḳurrah Papyri from Aphrodito in the Oriental Institute. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938. Bonner, Michael. Aristocratic Violence and Holy War: Studies in the Jihad and the ArabByzantine Frontier. New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1996. ——. Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practice. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. Bosworth, C. E. “Byzantium and the Arabs: War and Peace between Two World Civilisations.” JOAS 3–4 (1991–92): 1–24. ——. “The City of Tarsus and the Arab-Byzantine Frontiers in Early and Middle ʿAbbāsid Times.” Oriens 33 (1992): 268–86.



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Brubaker, Leslie and John Haldon. Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era (ca. 680–850): The Sources. Chap. 16, “Letters.” Burlington: Ashgate, 2001. Cook, David. Understanding Jihad. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Dähne, Stephan. “Qurʾanic Wording in Political Speeches in Classical Arabic Literature.” Journal of Qurʾanic Studies 3 (2001): 1–13. Dölger, Franz, ed. Regesten der Kaiserurkunden des oströmischen Reiches: von 565–1453. Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1924. Donner, Fred M. The Early Islamic Conquests. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. ——. Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010. ——. Narratives of Islamic Origins: The Beginnings of Islamic Historical Writing. Princeton: Darwin Press, 1998. Donner, Fred M., ed. The Expansion of the Early Islamic State. Burlington: Ashgate, 2008. Enos, Theresa, ed. Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition: Communication from Ancient Times to the Information Age. New York: Garland Publishing, 1996. Guessous, Azeddine. “Le rescrit fiscal de ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz: Une nouvelle appreciation.” Der Islam 73, no. 1 (1996): 113–37. Heck, Paul L. The Construction of Knowledge in Islamic Civilization: Qudāma b. Jaʿfar and his Kitāb al-Kharāj wa-ṣināʿat al-kitāba. Boston: Brill, 2002. Hodgson, Marshall G. S. The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, vol. 1, The Classical Age of Islam. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974. Ibn Abī Ṭāhir. Kitāb Baghdād. Baghdad: Maktabat al-Muthannā, 1388/1968. Ibn al-Nadīm. Fihrist. Trans. Bayard Dodge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970. Istanbuli, Yasin. Diplomacy and Diplomatic Practice in the Early Islamic Era. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2001. Izutsu, Toshihiko. Ethico-Religious Concepts in the Qurʾān. Ithaca: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002. Jeffery, Arthur. “Ghevond’s Text of the Correspondence between ʿUmar II and Leo III.” Harvard Theological Review 37, no. 4 (1944): 269–332. Kaegi, Walter E. Byzantium and the Early Islamic Conquests. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. ——. “The Early Muslim Raids into Anatolia and Byzantine Reactions under Emperor Constans II.” In The Encounter of Eastern Christianity with Early Islam. Eds. Emmanouela Grypeou et al. Leiden: Brill, 2006. ——. Heraclius: Emperor of Byzantium. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Kennedy, Hugh. The Armies of the Caliphs: Military and Society in the Early Islamic State. New York: Routledge, 2001. ——. “Byzantine-Arab Diplomacy in the Near East from the Islamic Conquests to the Mid Eleventh Century.” In Arab-Byzantine Relations in Early Islamic Times. Ed. Michael Bonner. Burlington, VT.: Ashgate Variorum, 2004. Lowin, Shari. The Making of a Forefather: Abraham in Islamic and Jewish Exegetical Narratives. Boston: Brill, 2006. Mālik b. Anas. Al-Muwaṭṭa‌ʾ. Ed. Sālim al-Hilālī. Dubai: Majmūʿat al-Furqān al-Tijārīyah, 1424/2003. Trans. Aisha Abdurrahman Bewley. New York: Kegan Paul International, 1989. Mottahedeh, Roy Parviz and Ridwan al-Sayyid. “The Idea of the Jihād in Islam before the Crusades.” In The Crusades from the Perspective of Byzantium and the Muslim World. Eds. Angeliki E. Laiou and Roy Parviz Mottahedeh. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library, 2001. Muqātil ibn Sulaymān. Tafsīr. Ed. Aḥmad Farīd. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīyah, 1424/ 2003. Noth, Albrecht. The Early Arabic Historical Tradition: A Source-Critical Study. 2nd ed. In collaboration with Lawrence I. Conrad. Trans. Michael Bonner. Princeton: Darwin Press, 1994.

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al-Qāḍī, Wadād. Bishr ibn Abī Kubār al-Balawī: Namūdhaj min al-nathr al-fannī al-mubakkir fī al-Yaman. Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1405/1985. ——. “Early Islamic State Letters: The Question of Authenticity.” In The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, vol. 1, Problems in the Literary Source Material. Eds. Cameron and Conrad. Princeton: Darwin Press, 1992. ——. “The Impact of the Qurʾān on the Epistolography of ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd.” In Approaches to the Qurʾān. Eds. Hawting and Shareef. New York: Routledge, 1993. Rubin, Uri. Between Bible and Qurʾān: The Children of Israel and the Islamic Self-Image. Princeton: Darwin Press, 1999. Sanni, Amidu. “The Secretary (Kātib) and his Tool in Medieval Islam: Prosification as a Professional Technique.” Journal for Islamic Studies 21 (2001): 85–112. al-Ṭabarī. The History of al-Ṭabarī: An Annotated Translation. Ed. Ehsan Yar-Shater. Albany: SUNY Press, 1985–2007. ——. Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan ta‌ʾwīl āy al-Qurʾān. Repr. 1st ed. Ed. Maḥmūd Shākir. Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1421/2001. ——. Tārīkh al-rusul wa-al-mulūk. Ed. Muḥammad Abū al-Faḍl Ibrāhīm. 10 vols. Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, [1968]. Vasiliev, A. A. Byzance et les Arabes, vol. 1, La dynastie d’Amorium (820–867). Brussells: Institut de philologie et d’histoire orientales, 1935. Watt, W. Montgomery. “The Early Development of the Muslim Attitude to the Bible.” In Early Islam: Collected Articles. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1990. ——. Muḥammad at Medina. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956. al-Yaʿqūbī. Tārīkh. 2 vols. Beirut: Dār Bayrūt, n.d.

Ibāḍī fiqh Scholarship IN CONTEXT Brannon Wheeler In 1992 Professor Donner guided me, along with two other students that quarter, meeting in his office around his desk, on a careful reading of the ritual section of the Mukhtaṣar fī al-fiqh of Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Qudūrī (d. 428/1037).1 It was this course, and Professor Donner’s infectious curiosity in particular, that inspired me to continue reading the remainder of the Mukhtaṣar along with all of the published and unpublished commentaries I could locate.2 It resulted in my dissertation, many hours combing through archives in the Middle East and Europe, and the publication of my first book.3 It was Professor Donner also who introduced me, indirectly, to the rich tradition of Ibāḍī fiqh scholarship in the Sultanate of Oman. I was in Jordan conducting research on the origins of Islam when I happened to switch on the television and find Professor Donner televised from Muscat delivering a lecture, in perfect fuṣhā Arabic, on early Islamic historiography. On the strength of being a student of Professor Donner I was able to visit Oman on a fellowship in the Fall of 2004 and have been invited to participate in a number of international conferences on Ibāḍī fiqh sponsored by the Ministry of Awqāf and Religious Affairs. This essay represents the conjunction of what I learned about Ḥanafī fiqh scholarship from Professor Donner and the Ibāḍī fiqh scholarship he introduced me to in Oman. Previous studies have examined the epistemological and methodological bases of interpretive reasoning in Sunnī and Shiʿī legal schools but relatively little attention has been devoted to the study of this in Ibāḍī fiqh scholarship. The following pages examine how Ibāḍī and other jurists conceive of and use the relationship between the

1 The edition we used was a photocopy of the lithograph published as Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Qudūrī, Matn al-Qudūrī fī fiqh madhhab al-Imām al-Aʿẓam Abī Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Khayyīra, 1324). 2 For some of these commentaries, see my “Identity in the Margins: Unpublished Ḥanafī Commentaries on the Mukhtaṣar of Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Qudūrī,” Islamic Law and Society 10.2 (2003): 182–209. 3 Applying the Canon in Islam: The Authorization and Maintenance of Interpretive Reasoning in Ḥanafī Scholarship (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996).

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sources [uṣūl] and legal opinions [ furūʿ] that are derived from them, how they identify and interpret textual indications [dalāʾil] of general principles [ʿilal] that are applied to specific circumstances. Section one focuses on how Ibaḍī jurists illustrate the induction of general legal principles from the Qurʾān, ḥadīth reports, and opinions of other jurists. Section two shows how this compares to the approach of other jurists in non-Ibāḍī legal schools. Section three illustrates how Ibāḍī and non-Ibāḍī jurists alike identify general principles to generate a system of differences that account for the whole of the Islamic legal definition of practice [sharīʿa]. The cases presented here show how jurists use legal opinions to exemplify the epistemology and methodology which account for the authority and identity of the different schools. I In his al-Jāmiʿ al-mufīd min aḥkām, the Ibāḍī jurist Abū Saʿīd Muḥammad ibn Saʿīd ibn Muḥammad al-Kudamī (d. 557/1152) discusses a number of related issues surrounding the mosque as a public space.4 According to al-Kudamī, the prophet Muḥammad prohibited commercial transactions in the mosque but he also allowed buying and selling in a mosque. There is a similar discrepancy regarding whether it is allowed to work in a mosque. In both of these cases, al-Kudamī makes reference to a variety of interpretations, employing different types of interpretive reasoning to disclose the general principle responsible for what appear to be conflicting legal opinions. For example, in the case of the prophet Muḥammad both prohibiting and allowing commercial transactions in the mosque, al-Kudamī cites the opinion of Abū al-Ḥasan and concludes that buying and selling are only allowed in the mosque when what is bought and sold is the property of 4 On al-Kudamī, see J. C. Wilkinson, “Bio-bibliographical background to the crisis period in the Ibāḍī Imāmate of Oman,” Arabian Studies 3 (1976): 137–64, esp. 147–48, 156; Wilkinson, The Imamate Tradition of Oman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 166; Sayf ibn Ḥamūd ibn Ḥāmid al-Baṭṭāshī, Itḥāf al-aʿyān fī ta‌ʾrīkh baʿḍ ʿulamāʾ ʿUmān (Muscat: Maktabat al-Mustashār al-Khāṣṣ li-Jalālat al-Sulṭān li-al-Shuʾūn al-Dīniyya wa-al-Ta‌ʾrīkhīya, 1419/1998), 1:282–94; Patricia Crone and Fritz Zimmermann, eds., The Epistle of Sālim ibn Dhakwān (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 340; Joseph van Ess, “Untersuchungen zu einigen ibāḍitischen Handschriften,” Zeitschriften der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 126 (1976): 25–63, esp. 60; Nāṣir ibn Manṣūr ibn Nāṣir al-Fārisī, Nizwa ʿabra al-ayyām: maʿālim wa-aʿlām (Nizwa: Idārat Nādī Nizwa, 1994), 99; Abū Hilāl Sālim ibn Ḥamūd ibn Shāmis al-Siyābī, Isʿaf al-aʿyān fī anṣāb ahl ʿUmān (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī li-al-Ṭibāʿa wa-al-Nashr, 1384/1965), 166–67; Muḥammad ibn al-Zubayr, Dalīl aʿlām ʿUmān (Muscat: Jāmiʿat al-Sulṭān Qābūs, 1991), 146.



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the mosque. Al-Kudamī cites the opinion of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb who chided Ḥasan ibn Thābit for doing work in the mosque that benefitted him alone, but al-Kudamī also cites the practice of ʿUthmān as allowing work in the mosque that benefits the mosque and public welfare.5 In both of these cases, al-Kudamī illustrates that the general principle behind what appear to be conflicting legal opinions is that the mosque is a public place whose purpose is public welfare. Al-Kudamī uses references to different sources [uṣūl] and different types of indications in those sources [dalāʾil] to disclose the underlying principle [aṣl or ʿilla]. A similar procedure is evinced in the Muṣannaf of the Ibāḍī jurist Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn Mūsā al-Kindī (d. 557/1162).6 Al-Kindī begins his discussion of the laws defining qiṣāṣ and dīya by citing several verses from the Qurʾān, which are the sources from which the definition of the laws pertaining to these practices are derived. First he cites Q 42:40. God the exalted said: ‘If a person forgives and makes reconciliation, his reward is from God,’ If a guardian [walī] forgives the murder then his reward is from God but if he kills him then that is his due according to the word of God: ‘for you in retaliation [qiṣāṣ] is a life.’7

Then he cites Q 2:179 and 42:41 and 43, in each case providing a basic interpretation of the verses. He uses the combination of specific parts of these verses, along with their apparent plain meaning, to establish the parameters of the legal principles at work in the case of wergild.8 Following this, al-Kindī cites a number of ḥadīth reports in which these verses from the Qurʾān are interpreted and applied by the prophet Muḥammad to different historical circumstances. He explains that although the Qurʾān and the prophet Muḥammad establish specific penalties for the wergild [dīya], this is meant only to establish a general principle of value but not to specify a fixed amount for all times and places. The Apostle of God imposed wergild upon the people of a city in paper or in gold, a specified amount not to be exceeded and we follow what the apostle of God determined for this but he used to establish it using camel teeth.9

5 See Abū Saʿīd Muḥammad ibn Saʿīd ibn Muḥammad ibn Saʿīd al-Kudamī, al-Jāmiʿ al-mufīd min aḥkām Abī Saʿīd (Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa al-Thaqāfa, 1406), 2:96–99. 6 On al-Kindī, see al-Baṭṭāshī, Itḥāf, 1:326–38; al-Fārisī, Nizwa, 123–25. 7 Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn Musā al-Kindī, al-Muṣannaf (Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1406), 41 105. 8 al-Kindī, al-Muṣannaf, 41:105. 9 al-Kindī, al-Muṣannaf, 41:126.

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Al-Kindī goes on to provide further cases on the authority of the Ṣaḥābah, Tābiʿūn, the founders of the different Sunnī legal schools, and an opinion recorded by al-Kudamī representing earlier generations of Ibāḍī fiqh scholarship.10 He follows this with the differences between the legal limits of wergild as set by the followers of Abū Ḥanīfah and al-Shāfiʿī, and cites the most general opinion of Abū Muʿāwīyah that the price of wergild is the value of a free person.11 Throughout this long survey of sources and opinions, al-Kindī is able to demonstrate that it is the general principle of the established value of a person, subject to changing times and places, that is at the basis of wergild. The specific definitions of the price of wergild given in earlier sources, upon which al-Kindī’s opinion is based, are to be seen as an array of examples the differences separating which allow for the discerning of the principle from which they are all deduced. A similar example of inducing a general principle from legal opinions expressing specific definitions of practice can be found in the discussion of the impurity [najāsa] of Jewish sweat in the Jāmiʿ al-jawāhir of the Ibāḍī jurist Jumʿa ibn ʿAlī ibn Sālim ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Ṣāʾighī (d. 1202/1787).12 Al-Ṣāʾighī shows the relationship between general principles and the particulars of applying these principles to certain cases. He begins with a series of hypothetical cases followed by reference to the sources from which the general principles are derived. With regard to Jewish sweat: If a person is praying and a Jew touches his ring that he is wearing: Question: Is the person praying allowed to pray with this ring if he washes it or not? Answer: We hold that when he washes it he is permitted to do this. Question: Is this likewise the case for the cloth of a Jew when the person praying washes it, is his prayer allowed for him with it like the ring? Answer: It is likewise [like the ring] according to us. Question: If the person does not wash the cloth or the ring but he does not know that on them is physical impurity [najāsa] or that a Jew had sweated on them, is it permitted for him to pray with them if he does not know they are physical impurity? Answer: When he is wearing something he is not permitted to pray in it until he knows that it is clean [ṭāhir]. 10 See al-Kindī, al-Muṣannaf, 41 126–27. 11  See al-Kindī, al-Muṣannaf, 41:129. 12 On al-Ṣāʾighī, see al-Baṭṭāshī, Itḥāf, 3:91–96; al-Fārisī, Nizwa, 172.



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Question: If the Jew tells him that he washed it and had not worn it before he washed it, would it be permitted for him to pray in it if he believes the Jew [that it had been washed]? Answer: There is no distinction in this case because the Jew is not trustworthy regarding physical impurity for he, the Jew, is physical impurity. Question: How is this different from the true trustworthy person regarding wergild from among the People of the Book and a Muslim [ahl al-qibla] whom he believes although he is considered a liar? Is it permitted to believe [them] regarding the physical impurity but not permitted to believe the Jew regarding physical impurity of the Jew? Answer: He does not believe the Jew regarding the physical impurity because his legal status is physical impurity.13

The author here lists the issues related to Jewish sweat and the legal status of things that have come into contact with Muslims after these things have been washed: the ring and the cloth of a Jewish man. The ring, made out of metal, and the cloth, through which the Jewish sweat can penetrate are considered equal. The ring and the cloth are distinguished in the next example: If the person praying does not wash the items and does not know whether or not the items have been affected by Jewish sweat, he must wash the cloth before using it in prayer if the Jew had worn the cloth, even if the Jew says he had washed the cloth himself after wearing it. Using the different permeable qualities of the two different items (ring and cloth) allows al-Ṣāʾighī to demonstrate that it is not the items but the washing that is necessary to remove the sweat of the Jew from the items. In the case of the ring, where there is no evidence that the Jew had worn the ring, or that there is no sweat from the Jew on the ring (i.e., it had been washed after having been worn by him) then it is possible to wear the ring while praying without washing it again. In the case of the permeable cloth, however, the cloth must be washed before it can be used in prayer even if it shows no evidence of having been worn by the Jew or if it had been washed after he wore it. This is illustrated further in the final section of the above passage concerning whether or not the Jew should be considered trustworthy in his claim of having washed the ring and cloth. According to al-Ṣāʾighī, it does not matter that the Jew might be trustworthy because the principle determining the impurity [najāsa] of the ring and cloth is that the Jew himself is impure [najas]. At issue here is direct contact with the Jew via

13 Jumʿa ibn ʿAli al-Ṣāʾighī, Jāmiʿ al-jawāhir (Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa al-Thaqāfa, 1406), 1 224.

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the Jew’s contact (and contamination) of the ring and the cloth.14 In the final example, al-Ṣāʾighī makes clear that it is not an issue of the Jew being trustworthy in his statement about having washed the cloth but rather the fact that the Jew is the legal status of physical impurity [najāsa]. Citing the Muṣannaf of al-Kudamī, al-Ṣāʾighī then refers to Q 9:28 and a ḥadīth report cited on the authority of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭab as the sources from which these legal principles are taken, each followed by different interpretations.15 Q 9:28 is cited as the source for those who maintain that all the People of the Book [ahl al-kitāb] are physically impure [najāsa], interpreting the mushrikīn of the verse as a reference to the People of the Book. Other jurists interpret the verse as relating specifically to the polytheists among the Arabs in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times. According to ʿImād al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Ṭabarī al-Harrāsī (d. 504/1111), for example, this verse is interpreted to refer only to the pre-Islamic polytheists who would bring their pagan sacrifices to Mecca.16 The Hanafī scholar Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Jaṣṣāṣ, in his work on the legal indications contained in the text of the Qurʾān, makes the same conclusion.17 The ḥadīth report of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb is set into the context of different interpretations by al-Ṣāʾighī, including the claim of some jurists that the report is not sound to be given on the authority of ʿUmar. This reasoning is concluded with reference to the related case of a well or other holder of water that is dug, filled, and emptied of water by a Jew. Question: Concerning the well and a container in which a Jew washes clothes. If the well is cleaned and new water is poured into it and then [that new water is] taken out, what is the legal status of that water? Answer: It is pure.18

Like the cases of the cloth and the ring, the water in question here, although contained in a well constructed by a Jew, is considered pure if the well is cleaned and the original water replaced. Although the Jew is still considered impure [najas] the water is not, and can be used for

14 For further discussion of this issue in the context of Spain, see Nina Safran, “Rules of Purity and Confessional Boundaries: Maliki Debates about the Pollution of the ‘Christian’,” History of Religions 42 (2003): 197–212. 15 See al-Ṣāʾighī, Jāmiʿ al-jawāhir, 1:224. 16 See Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn al-ʿArabī, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīya, n.d.), 2:468. 17 See Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīya, 1415), 3:185–86. 18 al-Ṣāʾighī, Jāmiʿ al-jawāhir, 1:224.



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performing ablutions and ritual washing just as if the water had been affected by certain types of vermin. II The way in which Ibāḍī fiqh uses different legal opinions to illustrate the type of reasoning used to disclose the general principles that are induced from the authoritative sources is not unlike that found in the fiqh scholarship of other Sunnī and Shiʿī schools. In the Kitāb al-ghāya al-ma‌ʾmūl fī ʿilm al-furūʿ wa-al-uṣūl, the modern Ibaḍī scholar Muḥammad ibn Shāmis al-Baṭṭāshī (d. 1320/1999) writes that the penalty for drinking wine is not restricted only to beverages made from fermented fruit but applies to any intoxicating drink.19 In the earlier Jawāhir al-athār of Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUbaydān al-Samadī al-Nizwī (d. 1106/1694–5), ḥadīth reports are cited to support the claim that the principle behind the prohibition of wine and other intoxicating beverages, such as nabīdh, is that such beverages cause a person to become intoxicated.20 According to the Imāmī Shiʿī jurist Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Bābūwayh (d. 381/991), the penalty for drinking alcohol is death after the third or fourth offence, the difference between the two numbers being due not to a matter of principle but a divergence in the interpretation of the specifics related to the evaluation of particular cases, and is tied to the intoxicated state of the person doing the drinking.21 The Ayātallāh Rūḥallāh al-Khumaynī (d. 1989) repeats this same point with more detail. Punishment is incumbent upon a person who tries to become intoxicated even if he does not become intoxicated considering he is mature, sane, learned, and able to make a choice . . . There is no distinction in intoxication between the types such as that made from grapes [khamr], from dates

19 See Muḥammad ibn Shāmis ibn Khanjar ibn Shāmis al-Baṭṭāshī, Kitāb al-ghāya al-ma‌ʾmūl fī ʿilm al-furūʿ wa-al-uṣūl (Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1407), 9:233. On al-Baṭṭāshī, see al-Baṭṭāshī, Itḥāf, 3:9; Muḥammad ibn Rāshid ibn ʿUzayyiz al-Khuṣaybī, Shaqāʾiq al-nuʿmān ʿalā sumūṭ al-jumān fī asmāʾ shūʿarāʾ ʿUmān (Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa al-Thaqāfa, 1407), 3:98–105. 20 See Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUbaydān al-Samadī al-Nizwī, Jawāhir al-athār (Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1406), 15:163–72. On al-Nizwī, see al-Baṭṭāshī, Itḥāf, 3:143; Wilkinson, The Imamate Tradition of Oman, 337; Aḥmad Ubaydlī, “Early Islamic Oman and Early Ibāḍism in the Arabic Sources,” Ph.D. Thesis (Cambridge University, 1993), 219. 21 See Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusain ibn Bābuwayh, ʿIlal al-sharāʾiʿ (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Aʿlamī li-al-Maṭbūʿāt, 1408), 266–67.

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brannon wheeler [nabīdh], being juice made from dried fruits [naqīʿ], honey [bataʿ], barley [mizr], wheat, grains, or anything else.22

The principle here is not contingent on the substances from which the intoxicating beverage is made nor is it contingent on whether or not the person drinking the beverage becomes intoxicated but on the intention to become intoxicated regardless of the drink used. The Ḥanbalī jurist Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad Ibn Qudāma (d. 620/1223) lists five different issues related to the punishment for drinking intoxicating beverages: All intoxicating drinks are forbidden whether a little or a lot, including wine [khamr] whose legal status is that of grape juice when it is prohibited state. A punishment is required for anyone who drinks a little or a lot of an intoxicating drink, and we do not recognize a distinction between grape juice and all other intoxicating drinks. The punishment is incumbent upon a person who drinks out of choice, but if a person drinks out of coercion then there is no punishment incumbent upon him. The punishment is limited to be imposed upon a person who drinks knowing that a lot of it [drinking] will make him intoxicated. Otherwise there is no punishment incumbent upon him because he was not aware of its prohibition and there was no intention of it leading to intoxication. This is like if a person is to be married off to someone who is not his spouse.23

Ibn Qudāma presents a more complicated explanation of the principles underlying the prohibition of intoxicating beverages which includes knowledge of the drink being intoxicating and includes not distinguishing between the impermissibility of wine (i.e., fermented grape juice) and other intoxicating drinks. A similarly complicated exposition is found in the Ḥanafī rules on the prohibition of wine and other intoxicating drinks where two different principles are said to be at work: one principle is that wine is prohibited because it is thus stated in the Qurʾān, and thus cannot be consumed in any amount whether a person becomes intoxicated from it or not. Another principle is that any drink, wine or not, that causes a person to become intoxicated is prohibited based on the Qurʾānic prohibition of becoming intoxicated.24 22 Ayatallāh Rūḥallāh al-Khamaynī, Taḥrīr al-wasīla (Beirut: Dār al-Muntaẓar, 1405), 2:430–31. 23 Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad Ibn Qudāmah, al-Mughnī (Cairo: Hijr, 1410), 15:495–501. 24 See the discussion in ʿAlī ibn Abī Bakr al-Marghīnānī, al-Hidāya: sharḥ bidāyat al-mubtadāʾ (Cairo: Maṭbaʿa Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1975), 5:232–77.



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In the Istiqāma, al-Kudamī states that the prohibition against nabīdh, wine, and other intoxicating drinks is supported by the Qurʾān, Sunna, and Ijmāʿ but there is disagreement concerning what is to be included in these categories and what constitutes intoxicating beverages. Concerning what God, the praiseworthy and exalted, forbids in his book, is established as forbidden in the Sunna, and is considered forbidden by the consensus [ijmāʿ] of Muslims [ahl al-qibla] is nabīdh, wine and other intoxicating drinks. In this we do not recognize a distinction, regarding the punishment of a Muslim, nabīdh and wine are forbidden, even if the wine is mixed and if the nabīdh is not strong, nor is it considered whether the dates are fresh or the grapes are fresh from which the drinks are made. The two types of intoxicated drinks are forbidden, whether a little or a lot, in all types of containers . . . It is required for a person who drinks a little or a lot of them that he be punished, redeem himself, and be forgiven.25

Citing verses from the Qurʾān, ḥadīth from the Sunna, examples of Ijmāʿ, and the discussion of subsequent generations of scholars, al-Kudamī highlights the principles responsible for the legal opinions prohibiting the consumption of intoxicating beverages.26 In doing so, al-Kudamī demonstrates how jurists induce different principles from the same sources depending upon their understanding of the particulars relevant to the cases they are adjudicating. Additional examples are provided in the discussion of al-nāsikh wa-almansūkh in relation to the verses relevant to the prohibition of wine and intoxicating beverages in the Qurʾān in the Mudawwana al-sughrā of the Ibāḍī jurist Abū Ghānim Bishr Ibn Ghānim al-Khurāsānī (d. beginning of 3rd/9th century).27 Ibn Ghānim cites ḥadīth reports on the authority of Ibn ʿAbbās, Abū ʿUbayda, Ibn Masʿūd, al-Rabīʿ ibn Ḥabīb and others concerning how the example of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb was used by jurists to interpret the verses in the Qurʾān.28 In the Kitāb al-jāmiʿ of the Ibāḍī jurist Abū Muḥammad Abdallāh ibn Muḥammad Ibn Baraka al-Bahlawī (d. early 5th/11th century), the pertinent verses from the Qurʾān are discussed along with a number of ḥadīth reports, including some in which

25 al-Kudamī, al-Jāmiʿ, 3:163. 26 See al-Kudamī, al-Jāmiʿ, 3:163–70. 27 On Ibn Ghānim, see T. Lewicki, “Abū Ghānim Bishr ibn Ghānim al-Khurāsānī,” in EI2; Van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra. Eine Geschichte des religiösen Denkens im frühen Islam (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1991–1997), 2:602–604. 28 See Bishr Ibn Ghānim al-Khurāsānī, al-Mudawwana al-ṣughrā (Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1404), 2 100–104.

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the prophet Muḥammad is said to have consumed nabīdh are listed.29 Ibn Baraka also critiques the Ḥanafī position allowing the consumption of nabīdh and other drinks not made from fermented grapes or in which the intoxicated qualities of the drinks are lessened with certain procedures. He reinforces the Ibāḍī principle, through comparison of the legal opinions of other madhāhib in relationship to the uṣūl, highlighting what Ibāḍī jurists recognize as dalāʾil in the sources and how they apply these indications to determine an authoritative legal opinion.30 These examples are to be used by students, later readers of the citation of sources and the legal opinions that encapsulate the interpretation of the sources, as examples of how to induce general principles from the authoritative sources. The methods used by Ibāḍī scholars to show how various legal opinions can be understood as being deduced from more general principles identified in the sources are comparable to how non-Ibāḍī jurists explain the relationship between conflicting legal opinions and shared authoritative sources. In his Ikhtilāf al-fuqahāʾ the early jurist and historian Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), illustrates how the different legal opinions among the various local authorities of the eighth century can be compared to uncover certain general principles. In the case of the prophet Muḥammad’s statement that a sale can be canceled as long as the two contracting parties have not yet separated, al-Ṭabarī gives the opinions of six different local authorities. Mālik and Abū Ḥanīfa and his followers hold that the ‘separation’ [furqān] mentioned by the prophet Muḥammad refers to a verbal conclusion of the sale, and thus that the two contracting parties can cancel a sale anytime until they both agree verbally that the sale is concluded.31 Al-Awzāʿī limits the general application of the prophet Muḥammad’s statement by listing three conditions in which the contracting parties do not have the right to cancel the

29 On Ibn Baraka, see T. Lewicki, “Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Baraka al-ʿUmānī,” in EI2; al-Baṭṭāshī, Itḥāf, 1:295–99; Wilkinson, The Imamate Tradition of Oman, 151–52; Crone and Zimmermann, Epistle, 337–38. 30 See Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad al-Bahlawī, Kitāb al-jāmiʿ (Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1404), 2:534–58. 31 See Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, Kitāb ikhtilāf al-fuqahāʾ (Beirut: Muḥammad Amīn Ramj, 1980), 123. For the ḥadīth report in question, see Muḥammad al-Bukhārī, al-Ṣaḥīḥ, ed. L. Krehl and T. W. Juynboll (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1862–1908), 23:44; Muslim, Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ, ed. Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī (Cairo: Maṭbaʿa al-Fajālat al-Jadīda, 1955–56), 21:10; al-Shāfiʿī, al-Risāla (Cairo: Maktabat al-Ḥalabī, 1358), 313; Mālik ibn Anas, al-Muwaṭṭāʾ (Cairo: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Kutub al-ʿArabī, 1370), 2:671; Abū Bakr ibn ʿAli al-Ḥaddād, Jawhara al-nayyira (Cairo: Maḥmūd Bey, 1301), 1 233–37. On this issue, see my Applying the Canon in Islam, 94–100.



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sale even if they have not separated or concluded the exchange.32 Sufyān al-Thawrī states that the two parties, if they both agree, can contravene the right to cancel the sale established by the prophet Muḥammad. Both al-Shāfiʿī and Abū Thawr maintain that the two parties cannot forfeit their right to cancel the sale, and that the ‘separation’ ending the option of canceling is the physical separation of both parties.33 Al-Tabarī’s analysis shows how different authorities can arrive at conflicting legal conclusions based on their interpretation and application to their own specific circumstances of the same general principle from the same ḥadīth report. A similar approach is discussed by the Ḥanafī scholar Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Ṭaḥāwī (d. 321/933) in his Ikhtilāf al-fuqahāʾ as redacted by Abū Bakr al-Rāzī al-Jaṣṣāṣ, using the case of what constitutes predatory animals. According to al-Ṭaḥāwī, Mālik ibn Anas forbids the eating of animals that have fangs on the basis of a ḥadīth report in which the prophet Muḥammad prohibited the eating of predatory animals with fangs.34 Mālik’s opinion, fixing on the ‘fangs’ mentioned in the ḥadīth report, allows for the eating of predatory birds because they do not have fangs. The opinion of al-Shāfiʿī is that the restriction against eating predatory animals applies only to those animals that feed on people, to include the lion, tiger and wolf but not the hyena and the fox. In addition, al-Shāfiʿī restricts the eating of vultures because they feed on people whereas Mālik prohibits the eating of vultures because they eat carrion.35 So, although both al-Shāfiʿī and Mālik agree that the prophet Muḥammad prohibited the eating of predatory animals, they disagree on the general principle that is to be derived from the ḥadīth report. The practical effect is that al-Shāfiʾī allows the eating of hyena and fox because he takes the general principle to be the prohibition of animals that eat people. Mālik does not allow the eating of hyena and fox because he takes the ‘fangs’ as the general principle from which to deduce specific cases of which animals are allowed to be eaten. To both of these legal opinions al-Ṭaḥāwī compares the Ḥanafī position and shows how different principles can be extracted from the same authoritative source resulting in conflicting but equally authoritative legal opinions.

32 See al-Ṭabarī, Kitāb ikhtilāf al-fuqahāʾ, 123. 33 See al-Ṭabarī, Kitāb ikhtilāf al-fuqahāʾ, 123. 34 See Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad Muḥammad al-Ṭaḥāwī, Ikhtilāf al-fuqahāʾ (Islamabad: Maʿhad al-Abḥāt al-Islāmīya, 1391), 58. The relevant discussion can be found in Mālik, al-Muwaṭṭāʾ, 1:357. For this analysis of al-Ṭaḥāwī’s work, see my Applying the Canon, 100–109. 35 See al-Ṭaḥāwī, Ikhtilāf al-fuqahāʾ, 58.

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Perhaps the most specific and detailed explanation of how conflicting legal opinions can be derived from the same authoritative sources is found in the Ta‌ʾsīs al-naẓar, of the Ḥanafī jurist ʿUbaydallāh ibn ʿUmar al-Dabūsī (d. 430). According to al-Dabūsī the differences separating conflicting legal opinions originate on three levels. On the first, most general level the conflicts among the different legal schools are due to the founders extraction and use of different principles from the same set of authoritative sources. The principles might be induced from different sources, such as when Mālik induces a principle from a ḥadīth report and Abū Ḥanīfa uses qiyās on the basis of a verse from the Qurʾān.36 On the second, less general level, al-Dabūsī demonstrates that the conflicts among the local authorities associated with eighth-century Kūfa (Ibn Abī Laylā, Zufar, Abū Ḥanīfa) are due to the deduction of different opinions from a single, agreed upon principle rather that different principles from different sources.37 On the third, most specific level, the conflict of opinions among the three main Ḥanafī authorities (Abū Ḥanīfa, Abū Yūsuf, Muḥammad al-Shaybānī) is due to their differing interpretations of the particular details entailed in the context to which they apply a general principle upon which they all agree.38 Al-Dabūsī shows how the relationship among the differing conflicts of legal opinions can be summed up in a general way by reference to the sources, the principles induced from the sources, and the legal opinions deduced from those principles. III In his al-Jāmiʿ al-mufīd min aḥkām, al-Kudamī repeats a ḥadīth report transmitted from the prophet Muḥammad by Abū Hurayra. Abū Hurayra reported that the prophet Muḥammad said: “The most beloved part of the city to God is its mosques and the most despised part of the city to God is its markets.” It is said: Mosques are the gathering places for the noble, the fortress against Satan.39

36 See, for example, ʿUbaydallāh ibn ʿUmar al-Dabūsī, Ta‌ʾsīs al-naẓar (Cairo: Zakarīyā ʿAlī Yūsuf, n.d.), 75. 37 See, for example, al-Dabūsī, Ta‌ʾsīs al-naẓar, 52. 38 See, for example, al-Dabūsī, Ta‌ʾsīs al-naẓar, 8–9. 39 al-Kudamī, al-Jāmiʿ, 2:80.



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He follows this with another ḥadīth report referring to the number of sets of bowing and prostrations required for anyone entering a mosque.40 Abū al-Walīd Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Ibn Rushd (d. 595/1198) reports that the Ẓāhirīs require the two sets of bowing and prostration, as does al-Shāfiʿī on the authority of Ashhab, but Abū Ḥanīfa, on the authority of Ibn al-Qāsim, does not require them.41 A similar distinction between ordinary place and special place is made in defining the legal status of trees in mosques, public roads, cemeteries, and in the sanctuary of Mecca. Al-Baṭṭāshī includes all of these locations in a single section, using the example of a “tree” to compare the principles that apply to each place.42 In this section, al-Baṭṭāshī shows that the produce of a tree in a mosque, public road, or cemetery, when that produce has value, becomes public property and should be distributed to the poor. The produce of a tree in a mosque becomes part of the waqf of the mosque. The same principle is displayed in al-Kudamī’s discussion of the permissibility of selling in the mosque only when it benefits the mosque not private individuals.43 The produce of a tree on a public road is a public benefit to those who travel on the road. In the Muṣannaf of al-Kindī even the produce of a cultivated tree that falls on a public road becomes public property just as the produce of a tree in a cemetery does not belong to any one person regardless of who might be buried near the tree.44 If, however, the produce of a tree or any part of a tree is cut from the sanctuary [ḥaram] of Mecca, then a kifāra is due to God for that which is taken from the sanctuary. This final case of the Meccan sanctuary illustrates the distinction between public place and sacred place, a distinction that parallels the separation of private place and public place. This series of binary oppositions

40 See al-Kudamī, al-Jāmiʿ, 2:80. For the ḥadīth report, see al-Bukhārī 8:444; Muslim 4:69, 6:495; Abū Dāʾūd, Sunan, ed. Muḥammad Muḥyī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīya, 1980), 2:467; al-Tirmidhī, al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ, ed. Aḥmad Muḥammad Shākir and others (Delhi: Kutub Khāna Rashīdīya, 1937–1965) 2:314; al-Nasāʾī, Kitāb alsunan al-kubrā, ed. ʿAbd al-Ṣamad Sharaf al-Dīn (Bombay: al-Dār al-Qayyima, 1985), 8:53; Ibn Māja, Sunan, ed. Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī (Cairo: Maṭbaʿa al-Tazīya, 1952–1953), 2:1013; Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, al-Musnad (Cairo, 1313), 5:395. 41 See Abū al-Walīd Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Rushd, Bidāyat al-mujtahid wa-nihāyat al-muqtaṣid (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīya, 1416), 2:456–57. 42 See al-Baṭṭāshī, Kitāb ʿāya al-māʾmūl fī ʿilm al-furūʿ wa-al-uṣūl (Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1407), 7:86–87. 43 See al-Kudamī, al-Jāmiʿ, 2:96. 44 See al-Kindī, al-Muṣannaf, 87:7.

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is generated from a series of general principles extracted from the Qurʾān and ḥadīth reports. These legal rulings and opinions show how jurists used a limited set of general principles induced from the sources to generate a system of differences displayed in the definition of social practices. Ibāḍī and other Muslim jurists delineate other spatial distinctions to exemplify certain general principles induced from the sources. In the Baṣīra of the Ibāḍī jurist Abū ʿAbdallāh ʿUthmān ibn Abī ʿAbdallāh al-Aṣamm (d. 631/1234), for example, the discussion of the shortening of the obligatory prayers for people traveling demonstrates the general principle distinguishing residence from travel.45 Concerning every traveler who leaves his home city intending to travel two parasangs, when he attains the status of traveler and he passes beyond the settled area [ʿimrān] of his home city then he prays the prayer of the traveler. When he returns he prays the prayer of the traveler until he passes back into the settled area of his home city . . . The settled area includes the palm groves and dwelling. Agriculture is not considered part of the settled area. When he does not intend to travel two parasangs then he does not shorter his prayer requirement until he actually travels two parasangs.46

Continuing in this manner, al-Aṣamm includes specific information for the geographical boundaries of areas in Oman. The area of shortening [of prayer] from Nizwa when leaving for Bahla is when one enters the walls. If a person sets out intending for Kudam or Rustaq he will not travel for two parsangs. The area of shortening from Nizwa when intending to go west from behind Imdi is when he leaves the palm groves. From Nizwa when he intends Izki or Minh or someplace else is the white wadi which from it ascends to the pass, as it is said: “Is this farther than the settled area of the palm groves of Nizwa to the white wadi?” . . . From every city in the interior [al-bāṭina], when he leaves the dwellings and the palm groves he prays a shortened prayer. If there is no particular place then when he leaves the dwellings in which most people live he prays a shortened prayer.47

45 On al-Aṣamm, see al-Baṭṭāshī, Itḥāf, 1:439–56; al-Fārisī, Nizwa, 132–35; Wilkinson, The Imamate Tradition of Oman, 194, 346n26; Wilkinson, “The Omani and Ibāḍī Background to the Kilwa Sīra: The Demise of Oman as a Political and Religious Force in the Indian Ocean in the 6th/12th Century,” in A Miscellany of Middle-Eastern Articles in Memoriam Thomas Muir Johnstone 1924–83, Professor of Arabic in the University of London, 1970–82, ed. A. K. Irvine and others, 131–48 (Harlow: Longman, 1988), esp. 140. 46 Abū Muḥammad ibn Abī ʿAbdallāh al-Aṣamm, al-Baṣira (Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1404), 2 108. 47 al-Aṣamm, al-Baṣīra, 2:109.



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In the Sharḥ kitāb al-nīl wa-shifāʾ al-ʿalīl of the prolific western Ibāḍī jurist Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf ibn ʿĪsā ibn Ṣāliḥ Iṭfayyish from Mzāb (d. 1332/1914),48 the limits of what constitutes “travel” is defined in more generic terms. The limit of travel is two parasangs. A parasang is 12000 dhira, or three miles, the miles determined by trustworthy people. Concerning the travel there are two opinons: Is it [prayer] shortened if he passes two parasangs or if he sets out with the intention of traveling [two parasangs] but does not pass that far? There is disagreement concerning the return: when does he enter his homeland [waṭan-hu]? It is said when he reaches the settled area of it, and it is said to the edge of the walls of the dwellings and in the fortress to its gate.49

In addition to specifying the length of a parasang, Iṭfayyish also includes the condition of the intention to be travelling. Other jurists define the limits of travel in relation to certain distances and modes of transportation. According to the Iraqī Ḥanbalī jurist Abū al-Muẓaffar Yaḥyā ibn Muḥammad ibn Hubayra al-Shaybānī (d. 560/1165), Abū Ḥanīfa defines “travel” as a trip of three days by camel or walking whereas Mālik ibn Anas, al-Shāfiʿī, and Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal maintain that it is sixteen parasangs.50 Like the more generic definition of Iṭfayyish, the Ḥanafī jurist Abū Bakr ibn ʿAlī al-Ḥaddād (d. 800/1398), commenting on the Mukhtaṣar fī al-fiqh of al-Qudūrī, explains that the journey of three days by camel or foot is to be understood as a specific application of a more general principle. Travel in the desert is not calculated according to travel by sea nor is travel by sea calculated according to travel in the desert. But for each location is considered the circumstances of the travel as if there were two roads to travel: One of them is by water and takes a period of three days when the wind is blowing. The second is in the desert and takes two days. When the sea route is taken then the prayer is shortened but in the desert it is not shortened. If the desert route took three days and the sea route took two days then the prayer would be shortened for the desert but not for the sea. For the three days of sea travel is taken into consideration that the wind

48 On Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf ibn ʿĪsā ibn Ṣāliḥ Iṭfayyish, see J. Schacht, “Aṭfiyāsh, Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf ibn ʿĪsā ibn Ṣāliḥ,” EI2; P. Cuperly, Apercus sur l’histoire de l’Ibāḍisme au Mzāb (al-Risālah l-Shāfiya fī baʿḍ tawārīkh ahl Wādī Mīzāb de Muḥammad Aṭfayyash). Traduction francaise (extraits) avec introduction et notes (Paris: Sorbonne, 1973), 5–16. 49 Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf Iṭfayyash, Sharḥ kitāb al-nīl wa shifāʾ al-ʿalīl (Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1406), 2:39–47. 50 See Abū al-Muẓaffar Yaḥyā ibn Muḥammad ibn Hubayra al-Shaybānī, Ikhtilāf al-a‌ʾimmah al-ʿulamāʾ, ed. Yūsuf Aḥmad (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīya, 1423), 1:147.

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These examples make clear that it is not a particular distance, location, or specified destination but rather a given period of time that serves to distinguish travel from residence and thus shortening performance of the obligatory ritual prayer. These spatial distinctions are illustrated further in the restrictions placed upon certain practices inside and outside of civilizational centers, whether the individual is traveling or not. For example, many jurists maintain that it is not permitted to perform ablution without water [tayammum] when in a civilized area [miṣr]. According to Iṭfayyish, in his Taysīr al-tafsīr li-l-Qurʾān al-Karīm, this is based on Q 4:43 and 5:6,52 and al-Kindī cites the opinions of al-Zuhrī and others who interpret this verse to refer to ablution without water when a person is four miles or more from water.53 Al-Aṣamm records the opinion that ablution without water is invalid when performed by a traveler who then enters a city or other place with water before performing the prayer for which the ablution without water was performed.54 In his Bayān al-sharʿ, al-Kindī also cites opinions which allow the use of date-wine and milk instead of performing ablution without water when water is not available but not within a civilized area.55 In his compilation and comparison of the legal positions of the different legal schools, Ibn Rushd reports that some jurists do not require the congregational prayer [ jumʿa] when a person is outside of a civilized area. As to whether the congregational prayer is required when a person leaves a civilized area. Some of them say it is not required if he leaves a civilized area, and some of them say it is required.56

51 Abū Bakr ibn ʿAlī al-Ḥaddād, Jawhara al-nayyira, 1:102; ʿAbd al-Ghānī al-Maydānī, al-Lubāb fī sharḥ al-kitāb (Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿIlmīya, 1413), 1:105. 52 See Iṭfayyash, Taysīr al-tafsīr li-al-Qurʾān al-karīm (Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1406), 6:43. 53 See al-Kindī, Bayān al-sharʿ (Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1404), 9:99. 54 See al-Aṣamm, al-Baṣīra, 2:101. 55 See al-Kindī, Bayān al-sharʿ, 8:35–37. 56 Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat al-mujtahid, 2:353.



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According to Ibn Rushd, only the Ẓāhirīs allow the congregational prayer outside of a civilized area [miṣr]. Citing Ibn Jaʿfar, al-Ṣāʾighī makes a similar distinction between the people of a civilized area praying the congregational prayer and someone traveling outside of a civilized area.57 The Nizwa-based Ibāḍī jurist Saʿīd ibn Bashīr al-Ṣubḥī (d. 1150/1738) discusses the differences between the congregational prayer and the prayer of a traveller in a single section in his Kitāb al-jāmiʿ al-kabīr.58 Al-Aṣamm includes a list of the seven areas of civilization [amṣār] in which the congregational prayer is required. Congregational prayer is an obligatory duty according to the Imams of justice in the seven civilizational centers which were established by ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb: Mecca, Medina, Kufa, Basra, Syria [al-Shām], Yemen, and Egypt. Sanʿa, Bahrain, and Oman are a single civilizational area.59

In his Ikhtilāf al-a‌ʾimma al-ʿulamāʾ, Ibn Hubayra states that Abū Ḥanīfa does not require the prayer when a person is three parasangs or more from a civilized area. Mālik ibn Anas, al-Shāfiʿī, and Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal require the congregational prayer outside of a civilized area when the call to prayer is heard but not in a village [qurā] unless there are enough people to constitute a congregation for the prayer.60 Ibn Qudāma cites a number of opinions which hold that a village must have at least forty people to perform the congregational prayer.61 Various other spatial distinctions are used by the jurists of the various schools to illustrate the system of differences generated by limited range of general principles. Al-Ṣāʾighī, for example, mentions a number of legal opinions preferring prayer in a mosque over prayer in a house.62 In the Sharḥ fatḥ al-qadīr of the Ḥanafī jurists Kamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid Ibn al-Humām (d. 681/1281), a commentary on the Hidāya of Burhān al-Dīn ʿAlī ibn Abū Bakr al-Marghīnānī, there is a discussion of the prophet Muḥammad’s prohibition of a city-dweller making an exchange on behalf of a desert-dweller.63 Elsewhere in the Mukhtaṣar of al-Qudūrī is the statement that a bailed defendant may be deposited in the 57 See al-Ṣāʾighī, Jāmiʿ al-jawāhir, 5:111. 58 See Saʿīd ibn Bashīr al-Ṣubḥī, al-Jāmiʿ al-kabīr (Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1407), 1 113–29. On al-Ṣubḥī, see al-Baṭṭāshī, Itḥāf, 3:249–53. 59 al-Aṣamm, al-Baṣīra, 2:90. 60 See Ibn Hubayra, Ikhtilāf al-a‌ʾimma al-ʿulamāʾ, 1 151–52. 61  See Ibn Qudāmah, al-Mughnī, 3 202–209. 62 See al-Ṣāʾighī, Jāmiʿ al-jawāhir, 5 117–31. 63 See Kamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid ibn al-Hummām, Sharḥ fatḥ al-qadīr ʿalā al-Ḥidāya (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, n.d.), 6:478.

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Dār al-Ḥarb

Dār al-Islām

Open Country

Civilization

Market

Mosque

marketplace but not in the open country of the desert.64 The rules pertaining to fighting in defense of the community [  jihād, siyār] applying outside the boundaries of Islamic civilization--such as killing, looting, and setting free slaves--are serious crimes inside Muslim society. Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal and al-Bukhārī mention the prohibitions on carrying copies of the Qurʾān into the Dār al-Ḥarb and the restrictions on the passage of unprotected women.65 In effect, the jurists construct a virtual map of Islamic territory through a series of binary oppositions. These oppositions are used by the jurists, Ibāḍī and non-Ibāḍī alike, as examples to illustrate the basic principles that are used in the generation of legal opinions, and are extended logically to other temporal and social distinctions such as the delineation of the Meccan sanctuary and the pilgrimage there. For example, Iṭfayyish defines the pilgrimage to Mecca [ḥajj] in temporal and spatial terms. The stipulations of pilgrimage relate to place and time. As for place, it is the specificed entry points for all who approach—for Medina Dhū al-Ḥalīfa, for Syria al-Juḥfa, for Najd Qarn, for Yemen Yamlam, for Iraq Dhāt ʿIrq . . . As for time, its basis is the word of God the exalted: “The pilgrimage is the known months.” It is said Shuwāl, Dhū al-Qaʿda. It is said: Two months and ten days.66

64 See ʿAbd al-Ghānī al-Maydānī, al-Lubāb fī sharḥ al-kitāb, 2 152–59. 65 See Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, al-Musnad, 1:381–85; al-Bukhārī 67:6. 66 See Iṭfayyish, Sharḥ kitāb al-nīl, 2:7–9.



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In the Muṣannaf of al-Kindī these same spatial and temporal differences are exemplified in the discussion of the legal status of pre-Islamic treasure. If a person finds a treasure [rikāz], he has the most right to it, there is nothing identifying it, and it was buried in pre-Islamic times [al-jāhilīya], if he finds it visible above the ground then Abū Muḥammad [al-Kindī] says there are two statements for not keeping it: It is required to determine its status as “gleaning” [luqṭa] dependent on if it is housed where it fell from the belongings of people, and on it differing from the definition of the treasure [rikāz] which was buried as treasure. God knows. If a person finds a pre-Islamic treasure buried in the earth in the land of a people or in the land of a person then this is considered gleaning. Pre-Islamic treasure is that upon which is not written the name of God and has the markings of pagans [kuffār] and the names of pagans. In the Jāmiʿ [of al-Ṣāʾighī] its markings have to be inside, upon the treasure itself, or upon it marking in the form of what is known to belong to the polytheists [ahl al-shirk] . . .  It is said when it is not known whether it is from Islamic or pre-Islamic times then it is considered Islamic when it is in the land of Islam [arḍ al-Islām] unless it is known that it is pre-Islamic. If it is in the land of the covenant [al-ʿahd] then it is not permitted to take it for it is the property of the people of the covenant except when it is known that it is pre-Islamic. This is likewise the case for the protected people [ahl al-amān] for the land in which they are protected is Muslim. If the treasure is in the land belonging to a people then the valuable objects of it are considered to be the loot of apostates and the People of War [ahl ḥarb] whether visible or hidden it is loot.67

Treasure found in Islamic lands falls under the law of gleaning, unless it is found in open country in which case the treasure is treated analogous to the reclamation of dead land, whereas treasure found outside of Islamic lands is considered loot. A similar set of distinctions is made by the early Ibāḍī jurist Abū Jābir Muḥammad Ibn Jaʿfar al-Izkawī (d. 281/894) in his al-Jāmiʿ.68

67 al-Kindī, al-Muṣannaf, 22:145–46. 68 On Abū Jābir Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar al-Izkawī, see T. Lewicki, “Ibn Djaʿfar, Abū Djābir Muḥammad ibn Djaʿfar al-Azkawī,” EI2; al-Baṭṭāshī, Itḥāf, 1 271–73; Ersilia Francesca, Teoria e pratica del commercia nell’Islam medievale. I contratti di vendita e di commenda nel dirito ibāḍita (Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente C.A. Nallino, 2002), 131 n. 202; ʿUlayyān Jālūdī, “alSiyar al-ʿumānīya maṣdaran li-ta‌ʾrīkh ʿUmān. Qirāʾa fī makhṭūṭ siyar al-ʿulamāʾ [al-ibāḍīya] al-maḥbūbiyīn,” in Aʿmāl al-multaqa al-ʿilmī al-thānī ḥawla maṣādir al-ta‌ʾrīkh al-ʿumānī, ed. Ḥasan al-Malkh and Ibrāhīm Baḥḥāz (Mafraq: Jāmiʿat Āl al-Bayt, 2003), 15–67, esp. 61 n. 4.

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This principle is illustrated in the analogous case of the Muslim treatment of non-Muslim places of worship. According to Ibn Rushd many jurists do not allow Muslims to prayer in synagogues and churches.70 Ḥanafī jurists stipulate that churches and synagogues are not to be damaged by Muslims outside of the Dār al-Islām, and when they are damaged by military campaigns the churches and synagogues are to be restored by the Muslims. In both of these cases the example of pre-Islamic treasure illustrates the function of principles operative in other, perhaps better-known cases such as campaigns [siyar, jihād], foundlings [laqīṭ], and gleanings [luqṭah]. Insofar as the legal status of the treasure is determined by its being found outside of Islamic territory, the identity of the treasure is analogous to the claims of ownership operative in the Dār al-Ḥarb: property found outside the Dār al-Islām is apportioned as loot. As it relates to foundlings and gleanings, the legal status of the treasure depends in part on the identity of the people most proximate to the location where it is found. In al-Bayān fī fiqh al-Imām al-Shāfiʿī of the Shāfiʿī jurist Yaḥyā ibn Abu alKhayr al-ʿImrānī (d. 558/1163), it is explained that the Muslim identity of abandoned children is based on Q 52:21 as interpreted by a ḥadīth report from the prophet Muḥammad referring to the innate religious nature of the child.71 The Mālikī jurist Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Bāqī al-Zurqānī (d. 772/1371), in his Sharḥ ʿalā Muwaṭṭa‌ʾ al-Imām Mālik, explains that the opinion of Mālik ibn Anas regarding the identity of abandoned children is based upon a number of examples from the practice of the early followers of the prophet Muḥammad in Medina connecting the identity with the people in the location.72

69 Abū Jābir Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar al-Izkawī, al-Jāmiʿ li-Ibn Jaʿfar (Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, n.d.), 3:146. 70 See Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat al-mujtahid, 2 194–95. See also Nīl al-Awṭār, 2:155. 71   See Yaḥyā ibn Abī al-Khayr al-ʿImrānī, al-Bayān fī fiqh al-Imām al-Shāfiʿī (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīya, 1423), 8:7. 72 See Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Bāqī al-Zurqānī, Sharḥ al-Zurqānī ʿalā Muwaṭṭāʾ li-alImām Mālik (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīya, 1411), 4:63–68.



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The principles displayed in the examples of the foundlings and gleanings are also illustrated in the legal opinions relating to the burial of Muslims and non-Muslims. Al-Kindī records Ibāḍī legal opinions regarding the burial of a non-Muslims by a group of Muslims. According to Abū al-Ḥawārī: I asked him about a man traveling with whom was a protected person [ahl al-dhimma] and then the non-Muslim died. He said: He buries him but not facing toward Mecca. I asked Abū al-Ma‌ʾthur about the protected person when he dies in the view of Muslims and there is no one in the vicinity of his religion to bury him, what is the opinion for this? He said: Dig a hole for him, throw him into it and bury him but do not wash him.73

The non-Muslim is treated as a non-Muslim even after his death when he is separated from the rest of his community. This also applies to the identity of children whose parents are deceased. When a Jewish woman dies being pregnant with a child who is born and then dies, the father being a Muslim. Abū Muḥammad [al-Ṣāʾighī] said: He buries him just as he would be buried but does not pray over him. If a Christian woman dies and she is pregnant from a Muslim man? I think the child is Christian first as long as it has not left her womb but if it has left her womb, whether living or dead, then the father of the child determines its religion.74

In this example the womb acts as a physical border not unlike the frontier separating the Dār al-Islām from the Dār al-Ḥarb. The Christian identity is determined by being in the womb just as treasure is considered loot outside of the Dār al-Islām. The identity of different groups within society is displayed in the rules pertaining to retribution [qiṣāṣ] and wergild [dīya]. Concerning the wergild of non-Muslims, al-Kindī records: Know that the wergild of the covenanted, Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians, and Sabians is one-third the wergild of a Muslim. The wergild of a woman from among them is like one-third the wergild of a Muslim woman.75

Non-Muslims are distinguished by their wergild being only a third the wergild of Muslims. Among non-Muslims further distinctions are made creating a hierarchy that places Jews and Christians above other protected

73 al-Kindī, al-Muṣannaf, 31:90. 74 al-Kindī, al-Muṣannaf, 31:90. 75 al-Kindī, al-Muṣannaf, 41 151.

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peoples such as Zoroastrians.76 In the Tāj al- manẓūm min durar al-minhāj al-maʿlūm of the Algerian Ibaḍī jurist ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Ibrāhīm al-Thamīnī (d. 1223/1808) includes the discussion of cases in which Jewish and Christian women take precedence over Zoroastrian women.77 Analogous cases are discussed in al-Baṭṭāshī, and through a listing of similar cases, al-Thamīnī exemplifies the principles which account for the differences separating Muslims from non-Muslims by providing different combinations of the identities of the killers and victims and the penalties due for each combination.78 This sort of procedure, illustrating general principles through a listing of examples deduced from those principles can also be seen at work in the examples distinguishing people on the basis of gender. It is said that a woman in all things is half that of a man except for the blood money [arsh] due for the breast of a woman for which she is owed ten camel teeth. For the breast of a man is five camel teeth. If her breast did not produce milk then its blood money is half when it is cut and likewise when she ends her pregnancy and stops producing milk. If it is both of her breasts then the blood money is that of the whole woman.79

Women are worth half that of men but also have attached to them the special penalty for damage to the breasts of a woman given the connection of this physical feature to breast-feeding [riḍā] and to other legal determinations such as the permissibility of marriage. The Muṣannaf also provides a series of examples that demonstrate the relative value of a hermaphrodite vis-à-vis a woman and a man. If a hermaphrodite [khunthā] kills a man intentionally, then those whose relative was killed put to death the hermaphrodite and take from his money one-fourth the wergild but there is also the opinion that they do not take anything from the hermaphrodite’s money if they put to death the hermaphrodite.

76 See al-Kindī, al-Muṣannaf, 41:153. 77 See ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Ibrāhīm al-Thamīnī, Tāj al-manzūm min durar al-minhaj al-maʿlūm, ed. Muḥammad ibn Mūsā Bābāʿammī and Muṣṭafā ibn Muḥammad Sharīfī (Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1421), 5:171. On al-Thamīnī, see A. de C. Motylinski and T. Lewicki, “ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn al-Ḥādjdj Ibrāhīm al-Thamīnī al-Isdjanī,” EI2; Muḥammad ʿAlī Dabbūz, Nahḍat al-jazāʾir al-ḥadīth wa-thawratuhā al-mubāraka (Damascus: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Taʿāwunīya, 1965), 1:263–86. 78 See al-Baṭṭāshī, Kitāb ʿāyah al-māʾmūl, 4:97–101; al-Thamīnī, Tāj al-manzūm, 5 172. 79 al-Kindī, al-Muṣannaf, 41:149.



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If a person kills a hermaphrodite intentionally then his guardian puts his killer to death and receives one-fourth the wergild due for the killing of a man. Likewise if a person kills a woman then his guardians put to death the killer and collect one-fourth the wergild. If a woman kills another woman then her guardians put to death the killer and take one-fourth the wergild from her belongings, but [there exists] the opinion also that her belongings are not liable.80

The asymmetrical relationship between men, hermaphrodites, and women is also illustrated in the rules regulating marriage, testimony, inheritance, and other laws pertaining to social relations. This is also applied to the status of free people and slaves. In his Sharḥ kitāb al-nīl wa-shifāʾ al-ʿalīl, Iṭfayyish records the opinion that the penalty for wounding or killing a slave is the value of lost property.81 Other scholars record cases that display the relative value of different people based upon their religious affiliation. This is illustrated by two statements from the Muṣannaf of al-Kindī that non-Muslims are permitted to put other non-Muslims to death for murder but a Muslim slave is not permitted to put to death a free non-Muslim, and non-Muslims are not permitted to put to death a Muslim.82 The examples show that although Muslim slaves might be equivalent in value to non-Muslim free people, the determination of that status is deduced from different principles. The legal status of slaves is as property, and compares to the legal status of free people who are imprisoned. The legal status of slaves and prisoners is curtailed but for different reasons: slaves because they are considered chattel, prisoners because their legal freedoms and responsibilities have been forfeited. These descriptions outline the owned status of people independent of their identity based on religion, gender, age, and mental ability. The legal status of free people is based on a set of principles that determines their relationship to the law, and is evinced in a number of different contexts including ritual and social relations. Non-Muslims are not responsible to perform the rituals, and according to some jurists are also exempt from other social laws such as the prohibitions against pork and intoxicating beverages. Muslims are further distinguished as a group by gender, age, mental ability, and a host of other factors illustrated in legal opinions relating to certain contexts. Women are not to attend the congregational

80 al-Kindī, al-Muṣannaf, 41:145. 81   See Iṭfayyish, Sharḥ kitāb al-nīl, 15 255–63. 82 See al-Kindī, al-Muṣannaf, 41:152–53.

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prayer on Fridays, are not allowed to pray in mixed groups with men, nor, according to some, are virgins allowed to perform any prayers or fast during the month of Ramaḍān.83 Al-Kindī, in his Bayān al-sharʿ, records special conditions that apply to the travelling conditions of women.84 Offering [zakāt] and pilgrimage [ḥājj] are required only of people possessing wealth over and above that required for their regular upkeep, just as the pilgrimage to Mecca and fighting in defense of the community [ jihād] are not required for a people who do not have the means to both perform the duty and provide for their families during their absence. The qualifications for prayer leader and the description of the order of prayer reflect a social hierarchy generated by the application of certain principles from the sources. According to Ibn Rushd the considerations used in determining the Imām include that the Imām be literate and able to recite the Qurʾān, that he not be a youth, that he not be a fāsiq, and that he be a man.85 Ibn Rushd records that al-Shāfiʿī allows a woman to lead the prayers of a group of women but Mālik ibn Anas does not.86 The Ḥanafī scholar al-Qudūrī provides a summary of the distinctions. The first of people with respect to the Imamate are the most learned in Sunna. If they are equal then the best reciter among them. If they are equal then the most pious among them. If they are equal then the oldest among them. It is reprehensible to put forward a slave, naked person, sinner, illiterate or fornicator. If they are put forward it is permitted.87

Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī records a number of ḥadīth reports which include not allowing a woman to lead men, nor a nomad, a sinner, a slave, or an illiterate.88 This hierarchy can also be observed in the stipulations for the standing order of prayer. The pure does not pray behind the person with incontinence of urine, the pure behind the woman with an irregular menstruation, the literate behind the illiterate, nor the clothed behind the naked.89 83 See al-Bukhārī 10 164; Muslim 4:132, 5:269; al-Tirmidhī 2:59; al-Dārimī 2:52; Abū Dāʾūd 2:69; Ibn Māja 5:54; Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, 6:301; Ibn al-Humām, Sharḥ fatḥ al-qadīr, 1:321; Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat al-mujtahid, 2:323–56. 84 See al-Kindī, Bayān al-sharʿ, 6:97–98. 85 See Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat al-mujtahid, 2:286–96. 86 See Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat al-mujtahid, 2 289. 87 al-Qudūrī, al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-fiqh, 35; Ibn al-Humām, Sharḥ fatḥ al-qadīr, 1:315–320; Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat al-mujtahid, 2 286–99. 88 See Aḥmad ʿAli ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Bulūgh al-mirām min adilla al-aḥkām (Beirut; Dār Ibn Kathīr, 1423), 108–110. 89 al-Qudūrī, al-Mukhtaṣar fī al-fiqh, 36. Also see al-Bukhārī 8:2; Muslim 4:275; Abū Dāʾūd 2:77; al-Nasāʾī 9:18; al-Dārimī 2:100; Ibn al-Humām, Sharḥ fatḥ al-qadīr, 1:321–274; Ibn Rushd, Bidāyat al-mujtahid, 2:300–322.



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In the Baṣīra of al-Aṣamm, it is stated that the congregational prayer is not to be prayed by women, slaves, youths, sick people, and travelers,90 and he discusses the special rules that apply to the prayer of a naked person.91 The Ḥanbalī jurist Ibn Rajab (d. 795/1393), in his Qawāʾid fī alfiqh al-islāmī, reports the special conditions that must be met regarding the standing position when a naked person is praying together with an Imām.92 Al-Kindī records opinions on the special rules for the prayer of a naked person and the ranking of people praying according to the types of clothing they are wearing including clothes that show the body of the person, clothes that show the outline of the body of the person, silk clothing, clothes that cling to the body when wet or dry, clothes through which the color of a person’s body can be discerned, clothing that covers the lower but not the upper half of the body, and clothing which is soiled with physical impurity only on its edges or dried physical impurity.93 Conclusions The principles that account for the examples included in Islamic legal opinions and textbooks are varied. There is agreement on the range of sources considered authoritative and consent on the epistemology and methodology used to extract authoritative legal opinions from these sources. There is not agreement, however, among the schools or even within the schools, regarding which sources to use in which cases, what principles are to be extracted from those sources, and how to interpret and apply the principles that are extracted. The accepted process of induction and deduction used by the jurists, despite the different ways they might describe and define this process, allows for multiple and changing opinions to be considered authoritative, to be tied to a single source of law but flexible in the ability to address changing circumstances. That the discussion of these principles through the deduction of a variety of different cases is largely heuristic and pedagogical in character is evident from the contexts in which the legal opinions were discussed. Young scholars were initiated into the institutional authority of the

90 See al-Aṣamm, al-Baṣīra, 2:92. 91   See al-Aṣamm, al-Baṣīra, 2:113–14. 92 See Abū al-Faraj ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Rajab, al-Qawāʾid fī al-fiqh al-islāmī (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-Islāmī, 1413), 337. 93 See al-Kindī, Bayān al-sharʿ, 12:112–20.

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different legal schools through years of specialized training. The “textbooks” employed by the schools in this training process represent collections of legal opinions of different authorities providing a model for students to learn which sources are authoritative and how to reason on the basis of those sources. Many of the texts within the schools take the form of commentaries [shurūḥ] on selected collections of legal opinions, and the comments themselves appear to result from the pedagogical contexts of question and answer. In this sense, the education of jurists is less about memorizing and learning to repeat certain legal opinions than it is about learning, through the medium of certain legal opinions, the epistemology and methodology of the school in which one is being authorized to be a recognized jurist. Ibaḍī legal scholarship, like the legal scholarship of the other nonIbāḍī schools, is about the ability to link legal opinion with a fixed set of authoritative sources. The exercise of legal authority is the ability to demonstrate that one’s opinions are produced in accordance with this accepted set of sources and methods of interpretation consistent with the recognized precedents of earlier generations of scholarship. Ibāḍī legal scholarship depends upon the play between the specific sources and the specific context: application moving between these two specificities in the interpretive space provided by the textual indications of the recorded sources and the logical process of induction and deduction required to extract and apply the general principles to a definition of practice. It is the creative and thoughtful navigation of the movement between the two poles of generality and specificity that allows for the continued relevance of the revealed and divinely-guided tradition to the rich living heritage of contemporary life. Bibliography Abū Dāʾūd. Sunan. Ed. Muḥammad Muḥyī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīyah, 1980. Aṣamm, Abū Muḥammad ibn Abī ʿAbdallāh. al-Baṣira. Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1404. Bahlawī, Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad. Kitāb al-jāmiʿ. Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1404. Baṭṭāshī, Muḥammad ibn Shāmis ibn Khanjar ibn Shāmis. Kitāb al-ghāya al-ma‌ʾmūl fī ʿilm al-furūʿ wa-al-uṣūl. Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1407. Baṭṭāshī, Sayf ibn Ḥamūd ibn Ḥāmid. Itḥāf al-aʿyān fī ta‌ʾrīkh baʿḍ ʿulamāʾ ʿUmān. Muscat: Maktabat al-Mustashār al-Khāṣṣ li-Jalālat al-Sulṭān li-al-Shuʾūn al-Dīniyya wa-alTa‌ʾrīkhīya, 1419.



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­­——. Kitāb ʿāyat al-māʾmūl fī ʿilm al-furūʿ wa-al-uṣūl. Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1407. Bukhārī, Muḥammad. al-Ṣaḥīḥ. Ed. L. Krehl and T.W. Juynboll. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1862– 1908. Crone, Patricia and Fritz Zimmermann. Eds. The Epistle of Sālim ibn Dhakwān. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Cuperly, P. Apercus sur l’histoire de l’Ibāḍisme au Mzāb (al-Risālah l-Shāfiya fī baʿḍ tawārīkh ahl Wādī Mīzāb de Muḥammad Aṭfayyash). Traduction francaise (extraits) avec introduction et notes. Paris: Sorbonne, 1973. Dabbūz, Muḥammad ʿAlī. Nahḍat al-jazāʾir al-ḥadīth wa-thawratu-hā al-mubāraka. Damascus: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Taʿāwunīya, 1965. Dabūsī, ʿUbaydallāh ibn ʿUmar. Ta‌ʾsīs al-naẓar. Cairo: Zakarīyā ʿAlī Yūsuf, n.d. Fārisī, Nāṣir ibn Manṣūr ibn Nāṣir. Nizwa ʿabra al-ayyām: maʿālim wa-aʿlām. Nizwa: Idārat Nādī Nizwa, 1994. Francesca, Ersilia. Teoria e pratica del commercia nell’Islam medievale. I contratti di vendita e di commenda nel diritoo ibāḍita. Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente C.A. Nallino, 2002. Ḥaddād, Abū Bakr ibn ʿAli. Jawhara al-nayyira. Cairo: Maḥmūd Bey, 1301. Ibn al-ʿArabī, Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh. Aḥkām al-Qurʾān. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīya, n.d. Ibn al-Hummām, Kamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wāḥid. Sharḥ fatḥ al-qadīr ʿalā al-Ḥidāya. Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, n.d. Ibn al-Zubayr, Muḥammad. Dalīl aʿlām ʿUmān. Muscat: Jāmiʿat al-Sulṭān Qābūs, 1991. Ibn Bābuwayh, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusain. ʿIlal al-sharāʾiʿ. Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Aʿlamī li-al-Maṭbūʿāt, 1408. Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Aḥmad ʿAli. Bulūgh al-mirām min adillat al-aḥkām. Beirut: Dār Ibn Kathīr, 1423. Ibn Ḥanbal, Aḥmad. al-Musnad. Cairo, 1313. Ibn Hubayra al-Shaybānī, Abū al-Muẓaffar Yaḥyā ibn Muḥammad. Ikhtilāf al-a‌ʾimma al-ʿulamāʾ. Ed. Yūsuf Aḥmad Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīya, n.d. Ibn Māja. Sunan. Ed. Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī. Cairo: Maṭbaʿa al-Tazīya, 1952–1953. Ibn Qudāma, Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad. al-Mughnī. Cairo: Hijr, 1410. Ibn Rajab, Abū al-Faraj ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. al-Qawāʾid fī al-fiqh al-islāmī. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-Islāmī, 1413. Ibn Rushd, Abū al-Walīd Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad. Bidāyat al-mujtahid wa-nihāyat al-muqtaṣid. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīya, 1416. ʿImrānī, Yaḥyā ibn Abī al-Khayr. al-Bayān fī fiqh al-Imām al-Shāfiʿī. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīya, 1423. Iṭfayyash, Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf. Sharḥ kitāb al-nīl wa-shifāʾ al-ʿalīl. Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1406. ­­——. Taysīr al-tafsīr li-al-Qurʾān al-karīm. Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-alThaqāfa, 1406. Izkawī, Abū Jābir Muḥammad ibn Jaʿfar. al-Jāmiʿ li-Ibn Jaʿfar. Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, n.d. Jālūdī, ʿUlayyān “al-Siyar al-ʿumānīya maṣdaran li-ta‌ʾrīkh ʿUmān. Qirāʾa fī makhṭūṭ siyar al-ʿulamāʾ [al-ibāḍīya] al-maḥbūbiyīn.” In Aʿmāl al-multaqa al-ʿilmī al-thānī ḥawla maṣādir al-ta‌ʾrīkh al-ʿumānī. Ed. Ḥasan al-Malkh and Ibrāhīm Baḥḥāz, 15–67. Mafraq: Jāmiʿat Āl al-Bayt, 2003. Jaṣṣāṣ, Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī. Aḥkām al-Qurʾān. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīya, 1415. Khamaynī, Ayatallāh Rūḥallāh. Taḥrīr al-wasīla. Beirut: Dār al-Muntaẓar, 1405. Khurāsānī, Bishr Ibn Ghānim. al-Mudawwana al-ṣughrā. Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1404. Khuṣaybī, Muḥammad ibn Rāshid ibn ʿUzayyiz. Shaqāʾiq al-nuʿmān ʿalā sumūṭ al-jumān fī asmāʾ shūʿarāʾ ʿUmān. Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1407.

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Kindī, Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn Musā. al-Muṣannaf. Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1406. ­­——. Bayān al-sharʿ. Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1404. Kudamī, Abū Saʿīd Muḥammad ibn Saʿīd ibn Muḥammad ibn Saʿīd. al-Jāmiʿ al-mufīd min aḥkām Abī Saʿīd. Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1406. Lewicki, T. “Abū Ghānim Bishr ibn Ghānim al-Khurāsānī.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2d ed. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1965–, 1 120. ­­——. “Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Baraka al-ʿUmānī.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2d ed. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1965–, 1 140–41. ­­——. “Ibn Djaʿfar, Abū Djābir Muḥammad ibn Djaʿfar al-Azkawī.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2d ed (Brill, 1965–), 3:748. Mālik ibn Anas. al-Muwaṭṭāʾ. Cairo: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Kutub al-ʿArabī, 1370. Marghīnānī, ʿAlī ibn Abī Bakr. al-Hidāya: sharḥ bidāyat al-mubtadāʾ. Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1975. Maydānī, ʿAbd al-Ghānī. al-Lubāb fī sharḥ al-kitāb. Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿIlmīya, 1413. Motylinski, A. de C. and T. Lewicki. “ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn al-Ḥādjdj Ibrāhīm al-Thamīnī al-Isdjanī.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2d ed. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1965–, 1:57. Muslim. Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ. Ed. Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī. Cairo: Maṭbaʿah al-Fajālat al-Jadīda, 1955–56. Nasāʾī. Kitāb al-sunan al-kubrā. Ed. ʿAbd al-Ṣamad Sharaf al-Dīn. Bombay: al-Dār al-Qayyima, 1985. Nizwī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿUbaydān al-Samadī. Jawāhir al-athār. Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1406. Qudūrī, Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad. Matn al-Qudūrī fī fiqh madhhab al-Imām al-Aʿẓam Abī Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān. Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Khayyīra, 1324. Safran, Nina. “Rules of Purity and Confessional Boundaries: Maliki Debates about the Pollution of the ‘Christian’.” History of Religions 42 (2003): 197–212. Ṣāʾighī, Jumʿa ibn ʿAli. Jāmiʿ al-jawāhir. Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1406. Schacht, J. “Aṭfiyāsh, Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf ibn ʿĪsā ibn Ṣāliḥ.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2d ed. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1965–, 1:736. Shāfiʿī, Muḥammad ibn IdrIs. al-Risāla. Cairo: Maktabat al-Ḥalabī, 1358. Siyābī, Abū Hilāl Sālim ibn Ḥamūd ibn Shāmis. Isʿaf al-aʿyān fī anṣāb ahl ʿUmān. Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islāmī li-al-Ṭibāʿa wa-al-Nashr, 1384/1965. Ṣubḥī, Saʿīd ibn Bashīr. al-Jāmiʿ al-kabīr. Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-alThaqāfa, 1407. Ṭabarī, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr. Kitāb ikhtilāf al-fuqahāʾ. Beirut: Muḥammad Amīn Ramj, 1980. Ṭaḥāwī, Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad Muḥammad. Ikhtilāf al-fuqahāʾ. Islamabad: Maʿhad al-Abḥāt al-Islāmīya, 1391. Thamīnī, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Ibrāhīm. Tāj al-manzūm min durar al-minhaj al-maʿlūm. Ed. Muḥammad ibn Mūsā Bābāʿammī and Muṣṭafā ibn Muḥammad Sharīfī. Muscat: Wizārat al-Turāth al-Qawmī wa-al-Thaqāfa, 1421. Tirmidhī. al-Jāmiʿ al-ṣaḥīḥ. Ed. Aḥmad Muḥammad Shākir and others. Delhi: Kutub Khāna Rashīdīya, 1937–1965. ʿUbaydlī, Aḥmad. “Early Islamic Oman and Early Ibāḍism in the Arabic Sources.” Ph.D. Thesis, Cambridge University, 1993. van Ess, Joseph. “Untersuchungen zu einigen ibāḍitischen Handschriften.” Zeitschriften der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 126 (1976): 25–63. ­­——. Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra. Eine Geschichte des religiösen Denkens im frühen Islam. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1991–1997. Wheeler, Brannon. “Identity in the Margins: Unpublished Ḥanafī Commentaries on the Mukhtaṣar of Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Qudūrī.” Islamic Law and Society 10 (2003): 182–209.



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­­——. Applying the Canon in Islam: The Authorization and Maintenance of Interpretive Reasoning in Ḥanafī Scholarship. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. Wilkinson, J.C. “Bio-bibliographical background to the crisis period in the Ibāḍī Imāmate of Oman.” Arabian Studies 3 (1976): 137–64. ­­——. “The Omani and Ibāḍī Background to the Kilwah Sīrah: The Demise of Oman as a Political and Religious Force in the Indian Ocean in the 6th/12th Century.” In A Miscellany of Middle-Eastern Articles in Memoriam Thomas Muir Johnstone 1924–83, Professor of Arabic in the University of London, 1970–82, ed. A.K. Irvine and others, 131–48. Harlow: Longman, 1988. ­­——. The Imamate Tradition of Oman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Zurqānī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Bāqī. Sharḥ al-Zurqānī ʿalā Muwaṭṭāʾ li-al-Imām Mālik. Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīya, 1411.

The ḥadd Penalty for ZINĀ: Symbol or Deterrent? Texts from the Early Sixteenth Century Marion Holmes Katz The penalty for zinā is severe and sure, but proving it, establishing its verdict and making certain of its existence was made a difficult and improbable thing for most people; for testimony of it is accepted only if [the witness] says, “I saw his such-and-such in her such-and-such”—and that is no trivial matter! So praise be to the One Who has made the penalty of that obscene act great, then made it extremely onerous and burdensome to prove!1 Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī (d. 1072)

Writing in the 1530’s, an Egyptian scholar resident in Medina remarked about the obligations of a religious scholar, “In stoning the adulterer2 he must adhere to [the requirement for] the testimony of four upright men who see [penetration occur] like a stylus into a kohl jar, even if that leads to the complete nullification of that penalty—as is in fact the case, as it is not known that stoning based on the establishment of proof has ever occurred in [the history of ] Islam.”3 Almost half a millennium later, the situation has become more complex. Although it is doubtful whether the fantastically rigorous classical standard of proof has ever been met, more than one modern state has imposed the death penalty for adultery on unwilling victims (rather than on those rare individuals who sought

1 al-Qushayrī, Laṭāʾif al-ishārāt, ed. Ibrāhīm Basyūnī (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣrīya al-ʿĀmma li-al-Kitāb, 2000), 2:593 (commentary on verse 24 2 of the Qurʾān). 2 Arabic: al-zānī, the person guilty of zinā. Zinā is illegal sexual intercourse (that is, intercourse legitimized by neither marriage nor concubinage). In classical fiqh, there is a distinction between the muḥṣan and the non-muḥṣan; a non-muḥṣan would be punished with the Qurʾānic punishment of lashing, and a muḥṣan with the ḥadīth-based penalty of stoning. According to Sunnīs, the muḥṣan is a person who has experienced sexual intercourse in a valid marriage. Twelver Shīʿites, in contrast, define the muḥṣan as a person who currently has sexual access to a legitimate wife or concubine. “Adulterer” is here thus an imprecise if convenient translation, as a muḥṣan need not be currently married and thus may not be an adulterer in the English sense. 3 Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār al-Mālikī, Izālat al-ghishāʾ ʿan ḥukm ṭawāf al-nisāʾ baʿd al-ʿishāʾ, Cairo ms., Dār al-Kutub, 109 Fiqh Mālik, microfilm 1965, 63a.

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expiation of their sins by voluntary and repeated confession).4 Beginning in the nineteen-seventies, a number of regimes including those of Libya, Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, and some states in Northern Nigeria have introduced penalties for non-marital sexual intercourse based on the ḥadd penalties of classical fiqh,5 although a number of factors—from the laws’ promulgation in statutes and codes, to the relevant procedural and evidentiary rules—distinguish them from their pre-modern precedents. This development in turn has led to vigorous critique from a number of Islamic thinkers, often precisely on the grounds that classical standards of evidence render the ḥadd penalty for zinā (non-marital intercourse) a symbolic sanction rather than a functional element of penal law. For instance, Asifa Quraishi has argued in a critique of the Pakistani law that “[b]y limiting conviction to only those cases where four individuals actually saw sexual penetration take place, the crime will realistically only be punishable if the two parties are committing the act in public, in the nude.”6 She concludes that the rationale for the strict evidentiary requirements for zina is an affir­ ma[tion] and protection of both female and male honor: unlawful sexual intercourse will be prosecuted by the state only when it is publicly indecent. Within the privacy of one’s home the immorality of the act is something left between the individual and God.7

4 Rudolph Peters notes that Saudi Arabia imposed the stoning penalty four times between 1981 and 1992, and remarks that “In view of the strict requirements of evidence and the multitude of defences based on uncertainty (shubha), one cannot but conclude that at least some of these ḥadd sentences must have been the consequence of voluntary confessions” by individuals seeking atonement through their punishment (Rudolph Peters, Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law: Theory and Practice from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 150–51). In contrast, he observes of the relative frequency of amputation and stoning in post-revolutionary Iran that “[i]n view of the many restraints put by the shari’a on the application of fixed punishments, it is doubtful whether all these convictions were obtained in conformity with the shari’a, which stipulates that testimonies and confessions made under duress are not valid.” (Ibid., 163) This paper will not deal with the related question of unwed pregnancy as de facto evidence of zinā, which raises more complex issues. 5 The ḥudūd (sing. ḥadd) are crimes specifically identified and sanctioned in the Qurʾān; they include unlawful intercourse, zinā; sexual slander (that is, ungrounded accusations of zinā), qadhf; wine drinking; theft; and highway robbery. Precise definitions and standards of proof vary among the schools of law. See B. Carra de Vaux, “Ḥadd,” EI2. 6 Asifa Quraishi, “Her Honor: An Islamic Critique of the Rape Laws of Pakistan from a Woman-Sensitive Perspective,” in Gisela Webb, ed., Windows of Faith: Muslim Women ScholarActivists in North America (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 110. 7 Ibid., 128.



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In contrast, modern proponents of ḥadd penalties for illegitimate sexual intercourse often argue that their severity functions as an effective deterrent for social immorality (while at the same time averring that they would be extremely rare in a truly Islamic society).8 This article examines the extent to which the position articulated by Quraishi—that the penalty for zinā was effectively inapplicable to any but notional instances of flagrant public obscenity—is a view reflected in the writings of pre-modern Islamic legal scholars. Did such thinkers conceive of the criminal penalties for adultery as effective deterrents whose imposition might realistically be feared by potential miscreants, or as mere symbolic statements of the severity of sexual offenses? To the extent that actual zinā prosecutions can be identified historically, what was the attitude of religious scholars towards the procedural obstacles to conviction? Did they attempt to circumvent them, or to magnify them? One of the main considerations that may have limited formal accusations of zinā in pious circles is the fact that concealment (satr) was considered preferable to prosecution; unlike the case with other offenses, where scholars envisioned a positive duty to testify, in the case of ḥadd offenses it was considered more meritorious to remain silent.9 Even voluntary 8 The complexity of modern Islamist attitudes towards the ḥadd penalty for zinā is suggested by Sayyid Quṭb’s discussion of the issue in his commentary on the opening passage of Chapter 24 of the Qurʾān. Although he strongly emphasizes the deterrent value of the penalty and its importance in ensuring the stability of the marital bond and the purity of society, he also emphasizes that Islam ensures sexual morality not primarily through punishment, but through the creation of a chaste social order where occasions of sin are minimized. Finally, he acknowledges that the evidentiary requirements ensure that zinā will be successfully prosecuted only if it is blatantly committed in public—a position that is not so different from Quraishi’s. He also suggests that repentant adulterers may sometimes undergo the ḥadd as a form as self-purification, as the Companion Māʿiz did during the time of the Prophet. (Sayyid Quṭb, Fī ẓilāl al-qurʾān (Cairo: Dār al-Shurūq, 1417/1992), 4:2487–90) For an example of a trend within Islamist public opinion emphasizing the deterrent role of the ḥadd for zinā—and the (perceived) resultant appropriateness of selfhelp through “honor killing” when this remedy is not applied—see Catherine Warrick, Law in the Service of Legitimacy: Gender and Politics in Jordan (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 79–80. 9 See Wahba al-Zuḥaylī, al-Fiqh al-islāmī wa-adillatuhu (Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, eighth reprint, 1425/2005), 6029–30. Although it is inherently impossible to know how often rumors of sexual misconduct were intentionally hushed up before reaching the attention of the authorities, occasional anecdotes suggest that the ethic of satr had real-world consequences. Walid Saleh describes how the Qurʾān commentator al-Biqāʿī (d. 885/1480) reacted when two men accused one of his fellow scholars, al-Qudsī, of raping them. Although al-Biqāʿī was known to follow the legal opinion that the death penalty was applicable to sexual acts between men (and apparently believed the accusation), in the event “al-Biqāʿī took al-Qudsī aside and rebuked him. Al-Biqāʿī hoped that such a rebuke would be enough, since he did not want to drag al-Qudsī to the courts for fear of scandal.” (Walid

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confession was not necessarily encouraged; the otherwise censorious Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 1200) states in his legal handbook for women, on the authority of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, that a wife who has committed zinā without the knowledge of her husband should by no means confess to him, but practice satr and repent discreetly.10 Furthermore, a well-established ḥadīth encouraged that ḥadd penalties be averted by doubts (al-shubuhāt); any ambiguity at all could, and should, be exploited to preclude their application.11 Nevertheless, does this simply mean that scholars (ideally) sought to avoid ḥadd penalties in cases of actual doubt or to conceal them while concealment remained possible, or that (as modern progressives are wont to argue) that they wished to avoid them altogether—even in the most flagrant and unambiguous instances, and even after these cases had already been brought to public attention? Rather than simply examining the extent to which scholars regarded the ḥadd penalties for zinā as practically applicable or as effectively fictional, however, we will examine what either of these attitudes might have meant in terms of the relationship between legal scholarship and the penal power of the state. Beth Berkowitz’s recent work on the death penalty in Mishnaic law has demonstrated how the apparent impracticability of the rabbinic procedures for capital conviction became a central issue for nineteenth and twentieth-century scholars seeking to define the core ethical attitudes of Jewish law, often in the overt context of interfaith polemics with Christians and of efforts to rehabilitate the image of Jewish law in the modern world.12 As in the debates surrounding ḥudūd ordinances in modern Islamic states, participants argued alternatively that the excessive rigor of the procedural requirements signaled an underlying ethical objection to the death penalty, or (conversely) that the imposition of the death penalty for a relatively wide variety of crimes was an integral part of a Jewish moral order under siege in the modern world. Rather than using ancient evidence to bolster politicized modern arguments about the

A. Saleh, In Defense of the Bible: A Critical Edition and an Introduction to al-Biqāʿī’s Bible Treatise [Leiden: Brill, 2008], 28.) 10 Ibn al-Jawzī, Kitāb Aḥkām al-nisāʾ, ed. ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad Yūsuf al-Muḥammadī (Ṣaydā and Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿAṣrīya, 2003), 190–91.  11 See Maribel Fierro, “Idraʾū l-ḥudūd bi-l-shubuhāt: when lawful violence meets doubt,” Hawwa: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World, 5 (2007): 208–38; Intisar Rabb, “Islamic Legal Maxims as Substantive Canons of Construction: Ḥudūd-Avoidance in Cases of Doubt,” Islamic Law and Society 17 (2001): 63–125. 12 Beth A. Berkowitz, Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 25–64.



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essence of Jewish legal ethics, Berkowitz argues that a closer reading of rabbinic texts about the imposition of the death penalty reveals a preoccupation with the issue of rabbinic authority and with the ways in which its (symbolic) exercise in the imposition of the death penalty both mimicked the power of the Roman state and sought to differentiate itself from that power.13 The modern Jewish debate on the death penalty is in a number of significant respects very different from the modern Islamic debate over the ḥudūd; for instance, denial that the early rabbis ever imposed the death penalty was an argument that (whatever its ultimate validity) was historically deeply informed by the desire to demonstrate that the Jews could not in fact have executed Jesus. Furthermore, classical Islamic legal discourse is historically and formally in many ways far removed from that of the Mishnah. However, Berkowitz’s fundamental point still applies. Rather than simply assuming that pre-modern discussions of such issues were driven by ethical and political considerations parallel to those of modern observers, it is valuable to interrogate the texts with an openness to the other agendas that may structure and inform them. Because it is not possible to provide a comprehensive survey of this subject in a piece of this size (and because the scattered nature of the relevant data in any case make it difficult to construct a full historical picture), this paper will focus on a small set of revealing texts from the first half of the sixteenth century. While they originated in different geographical locations (the Hijaz, Egypt, and Syria), from the point of view of the religious and legal culture that they represent, they are from an interconnected milieu. For instance, the scholar quoted at the beginning of this paper wrote in Medina, but grew up and received his scholarly training in Egypt. Although it is certainly not to be assumed that this period is representative of pre-modern Islamic thought or practice in general, it reflects a stage before European colonialism and the rise of the nation-state fundamentally transformed the political context in which debates over the ḥudūd penalties took place. Most importantly, they demonstrate that the functional inapplicability of the stoning penalty for adultery was a thinkable thought—although certainly not an inevitable one—long before it became a staple of modern apologetics.

13 See Berkowitz, Execution, esp. 153–79.

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marion holmes katz The Vagaries of Zinā

Our first text will be the one quoted at the opening of this paper. It is from a much larger work responding to an incident that occurred in Mecca in 1530, when the local authorities banned women from the Great Mosque at night (from after the ʿishāʾ prayer until just before fajr prayers the next morning) as a measure of public order. The author, a Mālikī scholar known as Ibn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār, composed his work as a sustained legal polemic against the legitimacy of this action. I analyze this fascinating work at much greater length in a forthcoming book; in this context, however, the relevant aspect is Ibn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār’s response to the argument that women’s exclusion from the mosque at night is an application of the legal principle of sadd al-dharāʾiʿ, the prohibition of otherwise permissible actions on the grounds that they lead to other actions that are textually forbidden. In this case, the otherwise permitted action is women’s frequentation of the mosque; the forbidden action that is ultimately intended to be prevented is zinā. In addition to the hypothetical (and generally unobserved) occurrence of actual sexual misbehavior, supporters of the ban pointed to less grave but more easily observed infractions, such as the women’s appearance in the mosque adorned with fine clothes, jewelry and perfume. Ibn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār writes: To ignore it [i.e., women’s alleged bad behavior] is not in any way an instance of condoning reprehensible actions (iqrār al-munkar), because we have not been made responsible for what occurs de facto (lam nukallaf bi-mā fī nafs al-amr); rather, it is forbidden for us to pursue it. Sins of all kinds have existed de facto in every age, even in the times of the prophets (may God bless all of them), and they were not commanded to eliminate them in such a way that they could be assured that they were non-existent. Similarly, we know definitively that very many reprehensible actions occur de facto in God’s Sacred City [i.e., Mecca] and the City of His Prophet (peace be upon him!) and in other cities, including the occurrence of zinā, sodomy, the drinking of wine, the taking of interest, and other grave sins, because of the incontrovertibly broad circulation (tawātur) of reports of the occurrence of that, many times as great as what is incontrovertibly reported about women. Nevertheless, it is not permissible for us, simply relying on those rumors, to confront anyone whose personal situation we are not aware of without inspection (taftīsh)—it is not even permissible to do that based on the wisdom of “forbidding the wrong,” because its objective is only to rectify what is outwardly apparent (iṣlāḥ al-ẓāhir). What is obligatory for the legally responsible actor is to limit himself in establishing [the occurrence] of reprehensible acts to the channels that the Lawgiver has stipulated for



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the elimination of reprehensible actions, so that he treats each reprehensible action in the way appointed for it and does not innovate a means that violates Consensus.14

Building on this logic, Ibn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār goes on to argue that it is not permissible to resort to new means of deterring people from committing a given form of corruption beyond the ones that are textually established, based on the perception that the people of this time are not responsive to the old means. The stringent evidentiary requirements for the ḥadd penalties must be sustained, even if this leads to a great diminution in the number of people to whom the penalty is applied. He then makes the comment cited above: that this applies even if the penalty becomes completely void, and that in fact no one has ever been stoned for adultery based on proof (which leaves open the possibility that this might have happened based on the culprit’s confession). Even in the time of the caliph ʿUmar, when four witnesses in fact attested to adultery in the case of al-Mughīra ibn Shuʿba, the case fell apart; one of the witnesses withdrew and the remaining three were flogged for slander. It is implied that, if it was impossible to make a case against an adulterer when the Companions of the Prophet were still alive, it is unlikely to be possible in the even less ideal conditions of subsequent generations. The author declares, “There is no legal significance (lā ʿibra) in the fancies of anyone who supposes that [i.e., adherence to the evidentiary requirements of the shariʿa] will suspend the “forbidding of wrong” (al-nahy ʿan al-munkar) and diminish its benefit, and lead to frequent occurrence of zinā and theft.”15 Turning to the exclusion of women from the Meccan mosque at night, he remarks: If you ponder this well, you will realize that what motivated them to commit this ban is nothing other than their consideration of what they believe is occurring de facto, their eagerness to eliminate it, their being unwilling to content themselves with judging based on outward appearances, and their ignorance of the fact that the objective of “forbidding wrong” is merely that [the reprehensible action] will not be manifest, not to eliminate it from existence de facto.16

Ibn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār argues that, in fact, his opponents’ legal innovation in constructing new means of preventing the supposed harm of the sexual

14 Ibn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār, Izāla, 62b–63a. 15 Ibid., 63a. 16 Ibid., 63a.

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immorality that may result from women’s presence in the mosque at night is in itself far graver than the harm they seek to prevent. His opponents’ arguments would ultimately lead to the erosion of the very foundations of the shariʿa. (As emerges elsewhere in his discussion, he considers the exclusion of innocent women from the Meccan sanctuary to be a punishment indiscriminately applied without the necessary evidence.) A person might say, “Zinā and sodomy have become very common in this time; we ought to accept the testimony of four upright witnesses even if they did not see [penetration] like the stylus in the kohl jar”; then another would broaden it and say, “Rather, we should accept the testimony of two men, like the rest of the ḥudūd.”17

If jurists were allowed to revise the evidentiary requirements of the ḥudūd in view of the perceived needs of society, the law would quickly be transformed beyond recognition. As for the women’s alleged misbehavior, the worst they can lead to is “the occurrence of zinā, which is of frequent occurrence, and which is of no harm except to the person who commits it—he is the one who bears its sin, and upon him alone alight its evil consequences.”18 Ibn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār’s comments on this point are rather surprising, and they do not necessarily represent even his own sentiments in a straightforward manner; as he himself observes, some of his arguments are rhetorical and intended to expose the inconsistency of his opponents’ positions, rather than to expound the law as it actually is.19 However, the self-consistency and passion of his remarks on zinā suggest the likelihood of their sincerity. They are based on a fundamental distinction between the social sphere that is observable by political authorities and legal scholars without invasive searches (al-ẓāhir) and the sphere of de facto occurrences that may exist “in themselves” (the literal translation of his Arabic wording) but do not officially come to the cognizance of jurists through the kinds of evidence stipulated by law. As long as jurists (or governmental or private “forbidders of wrong”) are not made formally, legally aware of sexual wrongdoing due to its visible public manifestation, as expressed in the testimony of four witnesses, its actual existence outside of that official sphere of cognizance is legally irrelevant. What exists de facto in the

17 Ibid., 39a. 18 Ibid., 38b. 19 Ibid., 26a.



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view of God, or in the private lives of individuals, does not necessarily exist de jure in the proper sphere of rulers or moral censors. At one level, Ibn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār’s arguments sound strikingly similar to those of Asifa Qureishi almost half a millennium later. Taking his comments at face value, he is content to let private sexual misconduct remain outside of the purview of legal or religious interdiction; individuals bear the burden of their own sins, which are properly of no further interest to the religious or political authorities. It would in any case be impossible to interdict zinā, which has been ubiquitous in all places and times, including the Holy Cities of the Hijaz and the lifetimes of the prophets. Attempting to do so would involve invasive searching (taftīsh), which is legally prohibited—a point that he pursues at much greater length elsewhere in the work, in connection with the more general objective of regulating women’s behavior. He staunchly denies that the prohibitive difficulty of applying the ḥadd for zinā should be mitigated in order to make it an effective deterrent. However, although Ibn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār’s arguments are compatible with a modern liberal agenda, and indeed appear to have genuine points of commonality with it—the problem of sexual sin is commended to a forgiving God, not to a punitive and invasive government—it should be remembered that he composed his arguments in a very different religious, social and political context. He writes not in a spirit of liberal deference to the sexual liberty and autonomy of private individuals, but of ṣūfī commendation of the sinful soul to an all-forgiving God. Although Ibn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār may well have been unaware of any case where the stoning penalty for zinā was imposed based on witness testimony, he probably knew of the most notorious zinā case of his time, which occurred in Cairo in 919/1513. Known primarily through a colorful and circumstantial account by the chronicler Ibn Iyās, it has been discussed more than once in modern scholarship.20 Ibn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār was Egyptian, and relocated to the Hijaz only later in his career; he is known to have been active as a teacher in Cairo by 924/1517,21 and it seems highly likely that he would have known about a notorious affair that riveted Cairene public attention only five years earlier.

20 Carl Petry, Protectors or Praetorians? The Last Mamluk Sultans and Egypt’s Waning as a Great Power (Albany, 1994), 149–51; Yossef Rapaport, “Women and Gender in Mamluk Society,” Mamluk Studies Review XI (2007): 1–2. 21 Najm al-Dīn al-Ghazzī, al-Kawākib al-sāʾira bi-aʿyān al-miʾa al-ʿāshira, ed. Jibrāʾīl Sulaymān Jabbūr (Harissa, Lebanon: American University in Beirut, [1945–58], 3:148 (Oriental Series, No. 29).

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As recounted by Ibn Iyās, the sequence of events involved a Ḥanafī deputy judge (nāʾib), Ghars al-Dīn Khalīl, who had a beautiful wife; one his Shāfiʿī colleagues, Nūr al-Dīn al-Mashālī, fell in love with her and the two had a lengthy affair. One night the husband went to hold a vigil at the grave of al-Layth ibn Saʿd; his wife summoned her lover, expecting that he would be absent all night. Meanwhile, her neighbor, who was also in love with her but whom she had spurned, waited until the lover was ensconced in the house and went to the tomb to alert the husband. The husband rode home, found the door locked, and caught his wife and her lover embracing under the covers of the bed. Both the lover and the wife offered the husband large bribes to keep the affair secret. In the direct dialogue reported (or perhaps composed) by Ibn Iyās, the wife tellingly beseeches, “Take all the goods in the house and conceal (sattir) this matter; concealment is desirable (al-satr maṭlūb).”22 Whether in actual fact or in the imagination of her contemporaries, the wife appealed not merely to self-interest, but to the religious value of discretion regarding sinful or improper acts. However, her husband was unmoved. He locked the lovers into the house and reported them to the chief chamberlain (ḥājib al-ḥujjāb), who arrested them. At that point the lover confessed that he had committed zinā with the wife. The chamberlain summoned another Shāfiʿī deputy judge, who witnessed the lover’s confession and produced an official document to that effect. The chamberlain then stripped the lover and gave him such a severe beating that he almost died; he also had the wife beaten. Both of them were also punished by being forced to ride around Cairo on donkeys, facing backwards (ishhār). Then they were brought back to the house of the chamberlain, who fined the woman a hundred dinars. At this point the husband’s young son, who was being educated at the sultan’s court, informed the sultan (Qānsūh al-Ghawrī, r. 1501–1516) of what was going on. The sultan summoned the four chief judges and rebuked them, saying that their deputies were busy drinking wine, committing zinā, and selling religious endowments. The same Shāfiʿī deputy who had witnessed al-Mashālī’s confession, presented with the document from the lover, said that the adulterers should be stoned. The sultan agreed to this; according to the historian, “he intended by that to manifest justice, so that that would be written in his history, that he stoned those who committed

22 Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Ibn Iyās al-Ḥanafī, Badāʾiʿ al-zuhūr fī waqāʾiʿ al-duhūr, ed. Muḥammad Muṣṭafā (Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣrīya al-ʿĀmma li-al-Kitāb, 1404/1984), 4:341.

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zinā in his time, as occurred in the time of the Prophet to Māʿiz and Zaynab, whom the Prophet ordered to be stoned.”23 The session concluded with the Shāfiʿī deputy ruling for stoning and his verdict being endorsed by the Shāfiʿī chief judge, and the historian remarks that had the sentence been carried out immediately, there would have been no trouble. However, other events intervened—the sultan had to participate in the rites surrounding the launching of the ḥajj caravan to Mecca. Meanwhile, another Shāfiʿī deputy who was loyal to the lover framed the question whether, if someone confessed zinā and then withdrew the confession, the ḥadd penalty was cancelled or not, and circulated it among the religious scholars. The Shāfiʿī Burhān al-Dīn Ibn Abī Sharīf responded that the ḥadd penalty was indeed voided, a fatwa that was then endorsed by a number of other scholars. When the sultan heard this he became enraged against the judges and exclaimed, “O Muslims, a man goes up into the house of [another] man and commits indecency with his wife; he is caught under the coverlet with his wife, confesses that, and confirms in his own handwriting what he did—they say that after that he is allowed to retract?!”24 The sultan convened a council in the Citadel and commanded the chief judges of the four schools and all of the leading religious scholars to attend. He once again asked them how it was possible for a man to find another man sleeping with his wife, for the other man to confess, and for the culprit then to be allowed to retract. Ibn Abī Sharīf. replied, “That is God’s law,” and they showed him the relevant legal text on the subject. However, the sultan was not interested in the legal texts and insisted that he was responsible for public order. The judge rejoined that this was so, but only in agreement with God’s law; if the sultan killed the adulterers, he would be liable for their blood money (i.e., he will have slain them illegally). The sultan then told another judge that if the culprits were let go, it would be his responsibility ( fi dhimmatika); the judge retorted that, on the contrary, it would be the responsibility of al-Shāfiʿī, the founder of his school. Assured by another scholar that it was actually the doctrine of the Shāfiʿī school that a retracted confession of zinā had no legal value, the sultan retorted, “God willing, you will go home and find someone having sex with your wife the way al-Mashālī did with al-Khalīl’s wife!”25

23 Ibid., 4:343. 24 Ibid., 4:344. 25 Ibid., 4:345.

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In the end, the sultan dismissed all of the four head judges from his presence in a rage. He then removed them from their judgeships, as well as from other positions. The country remained without legal authorities for five days, according to Ibn Iyās an unprecedented situation; the lack of legal authorities paralyzed transactions, partially due to the lack of judges and partially to what sounds like a strike by the notaries.26 For the moment, the adulterers were imprisoned. Soon after the sultan summoned al-Zankalūnī, who had circulated the question about retracting a confession of zinā to the legal scholars. The sultan asked, “So your verdict (ḥukm) is carried out and my verdict is voided?” and had him and his two sons beaten severely; al-Zankalūnī later died of his injuries. Ultimately the sultan ordered that both the adulterers be hanged from one rope, face to face. He pointedly had the gallows erected before the house of Ibn Abī Sharīf, whose family inferred that he was the one to be executed and wailed and lamented until the situation became clear. Ibn Iyās reports, “When [the adulterers] were hanged, the people came in droves from every nook and cranny to look at them.” He then presents two fragments of poetry about the incident, one that warns wrong-doers to reform because “the ḥadd for zinā has become firm in our time,”27 the other celebrating the love of the adulterous couple. Yossef Rapoport is correct in describing this incident as involving “an overt struggle over the right to interpret the law.”28 On one level, it is clearly the authority of the religious scholars that is at stake; they demand that their legal rulings, as expressed in fatwas, define the law that is to be applied. They also assert the authority of the legal schools; the fatwa affirming al-Mashālī’s immunity from punishment after the retraction of his confession is correct because it conforms to school doctrine, and the moral onus for its accuracy rests not on the scholar who enunciates it but on al-Shāfiʿī, on whose authority it is based. However, the sultan’s position is not founded on a competing claim to hermeneutic authority, but on a claim to have the right and duty to deter wrongdoing by public application of the ḥudūd. Indeed, the entire story can be read as a dramatic real-world enactment of tensions around Ibn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār’s distinction between what “is in itself ” and what is legally relevant. The sultan’s incredulity at the

26 Ibid., 4:347. 27 Ibid., 4:349–50. 28 Yossef Rapoport, “Women and Gender,” 2.



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jurists’ position is based on his conviction that he knows what really happened. The culprits were caught in flagrante delicto; the man confessed in writing; and (although this remains unsaid) his retraction could easily be explained away as an act of self-preservation. For the jurists, of course, the (apparently) obvious fact of the culprits’ guilt has little to do with the legal validity of the evidence against them.29 If the sultan executes the adulterers, he will presumably be right that they are guilty, but he will be wrong to kill them. The sultan’s insistence on punishing the guilty is directly related to his perception that the ḥadd for adultery has deterrent value only if it can actually be applied; in his view, anyone who wishes to render it inoperative with legal technicalities deserves to be cuckolded himself. Indeed, despite some degree of public sympathy with the lovers (as expressed in Ibn Iyās’s second selection of poetry), the first verses he cites suggest that people received the sultan’s message clearly: Adulterers beware! Ibn Iyās’s revealingly (and perhaps, on some points, implausibly) detailed account of these events is clearly interpretive, and other sources suggest that other views of the incident were possible. For instance, the short account reproduced by Najm al-Dīn al-Ghazzī (d. 1651) in his biographical entry on Ibn Abī Sharīf states only that the man “was accused” of zinā, and tellingly claims that the accused pair confessed after being beaten in the custody of the chamberlain.30 (It is not specified whether they were brought there directly from bed.) Another contemporary account, that of Ibn al-Ḥimṣī (d. 1527–8), also diverges slightly in its chronology and details from that of Ibn Iyās (although he did not enjoy Ibn Iyās’s intimate Cairene perspective on the event). For Ibn al-Ḥimṣī, the moral of the episode seems to be that the sultan did not take a single 29 In its reliance on a common-sense evaluation of the signs of guilt, rather than application of strict canonical standards of evidence, the sultan’s approach seems reminiscent of the trends analyzed by Baber Johansen among reformist scholars of the thirteenth and fourteenth century. This trend in Islamic jurisprudence, pioneered by Ibn Taymīya, argued that God had mandated the establishment of guilt through any compelling form of proof (bayyina), rather than exclusively through the forms of testimony admitted by the classical schools—which often rendered conviction difficult to the point that sharīʿa courts were unable to enforce the provisions of Islamic criminal law. (Baber Johansen, “Signs As Evidence: The Doctrine of Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328) and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (D. 1351) on Proof,” Islamic Law and Society 9 (2002), 168–93. It is significant that the jurists in Ibn Iyās’s account display no awareness or acceptance of this approach as an application of Islamic law; they insist on the classical standard of proof, and the common-sense consideration that the culprit’s initial confession is more credible than his subsequent retraction appears only as a manifestation of pragmatic statecraft, rather than of legitimate legal reasoning. 30 Ghazzī, Kawākib, 1:103.

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d­ irham (presumably, in confiscation or bribes) from the judges—an observation that gives a principled cast to his actions.31 Thus, the stark contrast between flagrant de facto guilt and outright legal immunity, the normative authority of scholars and the disciplinary authority of rulers, was (at least retrospectively) not the inevitable crux of the story. However, the fact that Ibn Iyās structured his dramatic dialogues so centrally around this issue suggests that it was a problem with real relevance to at least some contemporary observers.32 What emerges quite unambiguously from accounts of these events is how shocking they were perceived to be. The length and vividness of Ibn Iyās’s account give it a compellingly lurid quality. Al-Ghazzī closes his much briefer account by remarking, “This incident was a cause of the disturbance of [the sultan] al-Ghawrī’s rule and the beginning of the dissolution of his sovereignty, until he was killed two years later at Marj Dābiq—there is no might and no power except with God!”33 Certainly there was more than one scandalous aspect to this chain of events; both the execution itself and the viciousness of the sultan’s treatment of the judges (not to mention the suspension of legal life in Cairo for several days) were potentially disturbing. Indeed, al-Shaʿrānī—who approached Ibn Abī Sharīf from a distinctively mystical angle—interpreted al-Ghawrī’s downfall as a result of his conflict with this spiritual master.34 However, whatever the other disturbing elements of the story, it also appears that the execution of the adulterers was perceived as genuinely bizarre. It should be noted that this is not, in fact, an instance of the application of the ḥadd penalty; while the judges had originally agreed that the couple should be stoned, the sultan’s defiance of their authority apparently did not extend to inflicting the ḥadd penalty without their 31 Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar al-shahīr bi-Ibn al-Ḥimṣī, Ḥawādith al-zamān wa-wafayāt al-shuyūkh wa al-aqrān, ed. ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Salām Tadmurī (Ṣaydā: al-Maktaba al-ʿAṣrīya, 1419/1999), 2: 252. In this brief account, news reaches Damascus about an incident that occurred in the previous month. In this rendition, the man and woman both confess to zinā and both retract their confessions. It is otherwise quite compatible. 32 Ibn Iyās was notoriously hostile in his attitude towards al-Ghawrī, against whom he had personal grievances regarding his inheritance; however, he is regarded as having been generally accurate in his factual depictions of al-Ghawrī’s actions. See Carl F. Petry, Twilight of Majesty: The Reigns of the Mamlūk Sultans al-Ashrāf Qāytbāy and Qānṣūh al-Ghawrī in Egypt (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993), 9–10, 119–22. For another example in which Ibn Iyās depicts al-Ghawrī pressuring the chief judges into flexibility on a point of fiqh, see Petry, Twilight, pp. 146–47. 33 Ghazzī, Kawākib, 1: 103. 34 Ibid., 1: 104.



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i­ mprimatur. Instead, he resorted to an extrajudicial execution by means not envisioned for this purpose in the shariʿa. (Nevertheless, the verses celebrating the deterrent value of the execution—whether sincerely or satirically is difficult to know—explicitly describe it as the ḥadd for zinā.) Even before his will is thwarted by the judges, however, the sultan (or at least Ibn Iyās) seems to be aware of the uniqueness of his prospective application of the ḥadd. Rather than envisioning it as a routine application of a continuously-active element of the shariʿa, he believes that his act will go down in the history books. Instead of invoking a precedent from any earlier Islamic ruler, he (or Ibn Iyās) harkens directly back to the events of the Prophet’s lifetime. This might in principle have either reflected the lack of relevant precedents or his desire for unmediated emulation of the sunna. However, it is striking that Ibn Iyās describes him as seeking to be seen to “manifest justice” rather than “revive the sunna”; again, at least as represented by the chronicler, the sultan’s desired image is as a righteous upholder of social order rather than as a proponent of the law. The scenario described by Ibn Iyās is in many ways a “perfect storm,” a concatenation of circumstances that created an unlikely and unique opportunity for the application of the ḥadd penalty (at least until delay opened an opportunity for the strategic withdrawal of the confession). Not only did the husband find the couple in flagrante—regrettably, probably not a unique occurrence—but he was able to detain them together long enough to summon the authorities. The lover was either sufficiently disoriented by events or sufficiently repentant to confess explicitly to zinā (rather than, for instance, simply to improperly consorting with another man’s wife). Even then, it appears that under ordinary circumstances the chamberlain would have been satisfied with the couple’s physical chastisement and public humiliation and their payment of a monetary penalty. Had the injured husband not had a son with connections in very high places, there the matter would have ended; indeed, it is at this point that Ibn Iyās signals his feeling that things have truly gotten out of hand: “then things got out of control (literally, “the tear became too big to be mended,” ittasaʿa al-kharq ʿalā al-rāqiʿ).”35 It is notable that the son complains to the sultan not out of dissatisfaction with the punishment of the adulterers, but out of outrage that the authorities are adding injury to insult by attempting to make his father pay the fine imposed on his wayward wife. Only then does 35 Ibn Iyās, Badāʾiʿ, 4:342.

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the sultan become involved, in ways that appear to reflect royal ambition and personal chagrin at the self-assertion of the jurists more than the routine functioning of the mechanisms of justice. Ibn Iyās’s account strongly suggests that, absent this fortuitous chain of events, the punishment for adultery would have been a fine and a backwards ride through town on a donkey (albeit one that the chronicler describes as a “frightful day”); whether these measures were standard or extemporaneous as a penalty for adultery is unclear from the narrative, although such punitive parades were a time-honored feature of the region’s penal history.36 In the context of this story, the position of the legal scholars (although expressed in their approach to a concrete situation, rather than in a theoretical discussion) appears quite close to that of Ibn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār. They need not and cannot concern themselves with what actually happened; their duty is to uphold the evidentiary requirements of the law, even if the deterrent value of the ḥadd for zinā is thereby vitiated. (After all, if an adulterer cannot be successfully prosecuted after being caught in bed with his lover and formally confessing to the authorities, it is difficult to imagine a successful case.) However, not all scholars of this period agreed. Ibn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār’s comments can be contrasted with those of his Syrian contemporary ʿAlī ibn ʿAṭīya al-Hītī al-Ḥamawī, known as al-Shaykh ʿAlwān (d. 936/1530), who also wrote in the context of the transition to Ottoman rule. (Although the precise date of Ibn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār’s work is unknown, their comments on this subject must be roughly contemporaneous, that is, date from within a decade or so of each other.) After the Ottoman takeover of Syria in 922, Ibn ʿAṭīya initially had a strong relationship with Sultan Selim I; it was after his approval gave way to disillusionment that he wrote a work of advice addressed to the ruler and entitled al-Naṣāʾiḥ al-muhimma.37 In it, he states that among the greatest sins that are prevalent in his day are zinā and sodomy (liwāṭ); it is incumbent upon the ruler (walī al-amr)

36 See Christian Lange, Justice, Punishment, and the Medieval Muslim Imagination (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 79–89. Tashhīr in this sense does not, however, appear to have been a prevalent penalty for adultery in the Saljūq period. Interestingly, it appears that this penalty for adultery may have persisted for many centuries (or perhaps been revived at a later date) after the Mamlūk period; in her fictionalized account of her mother’s childhood in early twentieth-century Lebanon, Hanān al-Shaykh describes a woman accused of adultery being paraded seated backwards on a donkey in Nabatiya. (Ḥanān al-Shaykh, Ḥikāyatī sharḥ yaṭūl (Beirut: Dār al-Ādāb, 2005), 187–88). 37 ʿAlī ibn ʿAṭīya al-Hītī al-Ḥamawī, al-Naṣāʾiḥ al-muhimma li-al-mulūk wa al-aʾimma, ed. Nashwa al-ʿAlwānī (Damascus: Dār al-Maktabī, 2000), Introduction, 30.

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to put an end to these things and abolish them, and to execute the ḥudūd upon those who commit them. The penalties are one hundred lashes and a year’s banishment for a free virgin; fifty lashes and six months’ banishment for a male or female slave, if the offense is demonstrated by confession or proof (bayyina); and stoning for a male or female muḥṣan. “God established rulers [in power],” he declares, “only by for the sake of establishing these kinds of ḥudūd ” (mā aqāma Allāh al-ḥukkām illā fī iqāmat mithl hādhihi’l-ḥudūd). Although al-Shaykh ʿAlwān does not advocate the application of the ḥadd penalty without the requisite sharʿī proof, he does not let the likelihood of insufficient evidence deter him from advocating stiff punishment. He writes that if the zinā of a virgin or muḥsan has not been proven, but it is well-known and notorious that either one of them has committed sexual misconduct (al-fāḥisha) and been alone with a member of the opposite sex in a way that is forbidden, the culprit must be subjected to a discretionary punishment (taʿzīr) and be prevented from re-offending. In some of the lands of Islam, zinā has become so open that the sultans take a regular tax from prostitutes. Solicitation of young men and reprobates goes on openly in the streets, and there is even an official responsible for overseeing the prostitutes and collecting the tax or fine from them. Ibn ʿAṭīya refers to this tax as being foul/abominable (suḥt) and forbidden (ḥarām)—i.e., these are ill-gotten and tainted gains. They are mahr albaghy, “the bride-price of the whore,” which is explicitly forbidden (along with “the diviner’s hire”) by a ḥadīth of the Prophet. Using such funds to augment the state treasury is a practice that angers God and offends the Prophet in his grave, for the deeds of his community are passed in review before him. Al-Shaykh ʿAlwān appeals to the sultan to change these practices, which would be a great good deed that would redound to his credit. God will fill the royal treasuries from the storehouses of His abundant grace; God owns the storehouses of the heavens and the earth, and victorious armies are succored by God. The use of ill-gotten or tainted money to pay the soldiers may lead them to become incapable of facing the enemy or of remaining steadfast in battle.38 Al-Shaykh ʿAlwān’s intervention addresses a very different configuration of state, society, and religious law than that of Ibn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār or the Egyptian jurists who came into conflict with the Sultan Qānsūh al-Ghawrī. Rather than confronting an overzealous ruler who seeks to 38 Ibid., 138–39.

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manifest ­religious legitimacy by interdicting sexual immorality, he exhorts a ruler whom he perceives to be complicit in the institutional condoning and exploitation of illicit sex. Rather than using flagrant sexual misbehavior (in the case of al-Ghawrī) or the imagined threat of sexual immorality (in the case of the authorities who banned women from the mosque at night) as occasions for the dramatic enactment of the ruler’s role as an enforcer of public moral order, al-Shaykh ʿAlwān accuses the authorities of his time of regarding sexual immorality as the source of a profitable revenue stream—one that they presumably did not wish to jeopardize by actually eliminating illicit sex. Al-Shaykh ʿAlwān surely has a more alarmist attitude towards sexual transgression than does Ibn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār or Ibn Abī Sharīf (as well as a more optimistic attitude towards the potential of ḥudūd law to deter such behavior); by emphasizing that sexual miscreants can be punished (albeit not with the ḥadd penalties) even in the absence of canonically sufficient evidence, he diverges from the other scholars’ apparent belief that under a strictly sharʿī regime, adulterers may get off scot-free. On another level, however, all of these scholars share the fundamental objective of bringing the disciplinary activities of the authorities into better conformity with the moral program of the fuqahāʾ. It is difficult to gauge how unusual the imposition of death penalty for zinā actually was historically. It is certainly the case that modern historians have found it very difficult to document its occurrence in the premodern period, although it is also possible that such penalties would have escaped the notice of the sources if they were imposed by local authorities rather than involving the highest officials of the state. Particularly if stonings were carried out on the village level, they could easily have passed into historical oblivion (although gratuitously assuming their occurrence is also highly problematic). A particularly significant category of possible zinā cases would have been those brought to the attention of society, not by the testimony of supposed eyewitnesses, but by the pregnancy of an unmarried woman—a form of evidence accepted by a minority of classical jurists.39 Ibn Taymīya remarked in this regard: “It is scarcely possible 39 Mālikīs accepted the pregnancy of an unmarried woman as evidence of zinā. The other three classical Sunnī schools of law held that an unmarried woman could not be convicted of zinā on the basis of pregnancy if she denied engaging in voluntary intercourse, because of the possibility that she had been coerced or had intercourse in the (false) belief that she was validly married. These possibilities, no matter how remote they might be perceived to be in a given case, were understood to constitute a shubha (doubt) requiring the suspension of the ḥadd. (See al-Mawsūʿa al-fiqhīya (Kuwayt: Wizārat al-Awqāf wa-alShuʿūn al-Islāmīya, 1414/1993), s.v. “zinā,” section 39, paragraph 1, 24: 42–3).



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for the ḥadd to be imposed based on eyewitness testimony (al-shahāda) of zinā; I do not know of anyone who [ever] imposed the ḥadd based on that. Rather, ḥadd penalties [for zinā] are imposed based either on confession or on pregnancy.”40 Patterns of Punishment However, from a (preliminary and partial) survey of the available sources— which admittedly favor the inclusion of anomalous and spectacular incidents involving elite actors—distinct patterns emerge. The documented cases of stoning that have been analyzed by modern historians occurred precisely when the religious role and legitimacy of the state was being re-negotiated (even if on a small and episodic level); in each case, there seems to have been far more than the sexual morality of individuals at stake. Furthermore, it was not the availability of evidence conforming to the requirements of the shariʿa that was the decisive factor; it appears that stoning might be supported by the authorities in the absence of such evidence or condemned in its presence, based on the larger religio-political issues that were in each case at stake. In his study of penal law in the Saljūq period, Christian Lange notes only one instance of stoning for zinā—although he finds a number of cases of stoning for religious deviance or apostasy.41 In this case, recounted by the historian Ibn Bībī, Saʿd al-Dīn Köpek arrives in Akşehir around the year 1240. He is informed by “malicious gossips and devilish informers” that Tāj al-Dīn Parvāneh, upon arriving in the area, had taken a slave girl from among the musicians and singers of the king of Harput and slept with her without purchasing her. Upon hearing this, Köpek presents the imams 40 Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Ibn Taymīya, Minhāj al-sunna al-nabawīya fī naqḍ kalām al-shīʿa wa-al-qadarīya (Bulaq, 1322), 3: 151. At least by the Ottoman period, it is clear that confession to zinā (including the fourfold confession in separate sittings that constituted legal proof of the ḥadd according to Ḥanafī law) was not an unusual occurrence. However, the fact that the Ottoman regime largely replaced the severe physical penalties of the ḥudūd with monetary fines (while at the same time formally acknowledging the continuing—theoretical—validity of the ḥudūd) rendered confession to zinā a lower-stakes strategy that might serve a number of personal agendas (for instance, to force a desired marriage against parental disapproval by acknowledging the paternity of a child conceived out of wedlock). See Leslie Peirce, Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 193–94, 330–33, 352–58. 41 Lange, Justice, Punishment, and the Medieval Muslim Imagination, 67 and note 52 there.

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and qāḍīs of the town with the question, “According to the shariʿa, what must be done with someone who is found committing zinā with [a slave] belonging to the ruler?” Each one of them replies that the penalty for a married person found committing zinā is stoning.42 Having obtained this fatwa, Köpek manages to get the sultan alone and persuade him that if he turns a blind eye to this offense and shows lenience, his subjects will forget their places and cast covetous eyes on their masters’ households. Due to the sultan’s youth, impetuosity and intoxicated state, he gives Köpek his ring and deputes him to go to Ankara and impose the penalty. There, he compels the imams and dignitaries to witness Tāj al-Dīn Parvāneh’s punishment, but they appear to play no further role in it. The execution is clearly a classical stoning as defined in fiqh, with the victim buried up to his navel. The historian provides a moving evocation of the beauty and talents of the doomed youth. His description of this incident, in which he clearly sympathizes with the alleged culprit rather than with his accusers, closes with remarks about the emir’s extreme harshness and the fear by means of which he subjected his supporters.43 Ibn Bībī does not write from the perspective of a legal scholar, and it is not clear to what extent the religious authorities may have endorsed or resisted this execution. What is clear is that, despite the solicitation of religious scholars for fatwas, this execution (at least as depicted by Ibn Bībī) does not in any way satisfy the sharʿī requirements of procedure and proof. The accusation is based on rumors that are in circulation after the fact; even aside from the fact that the historian clearly regards them as ill-motivated and baseless, there is no suggestion of four eyewitnesses to actual sexual congress. While the fatwas correctly (if vaguely) state the penalty for a married adulterer caught in flagrante, they—like all fatwas— are statements of law rather than evaluations of the evidence, and they do not address the specific circumstances of the case at all. Their affirmation 42 Although Lange is certainly technically correct that the execution takes place “after consultation with ‘leading jurists’” ( Justice, Punishment, and the Medieval Muslim Imagination, 67, n. 52), the narrative does not indicate whether the jurists are even apprised of the specific circumstances of the alleged offense or of the nature of the evidence. Do they simply answer an apparently trivial general question, or are they aware of the specific case at hand? Do they actually anticipate the imposition of the penalty, and if so, is that a familiar event for them? 43 Nāṣir al-Dīn Ḥusayn (Yaḥyā) ibn Muḥammad, known as Ibn Bībī al-Munajjimeh, Akhbār-i Salājiqeh-yi Rūm, ed. Muḥammad Jawād Mashkūr (Tabrīz: Kitābfurūshī-yi Tehrān, 1350 H.Sh.), 213–14; İbn Bibi, El Evamirüʾl-alaʾiyye fiʾl-umuriʾl-alaʾiyye (Selçuk-name), trans. Mürsel Öztürk (Ankara: T.C. Kültür Bakanlığı, 1996), 2: 28–29.



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that a married adulterer should be stoned in no way attested to their factual belief that Parvaneh was muḥṣan, had committed adultery, or could be convicted according to the evidentiary standards of the law. Furthermore, the query itself raises a question of comparative status (the fact that the woman belonged to the ruler) that is completely irrelevant to the issue of zinā, suggesting that Köpek’s motivations align rather poorly with the categories of the law. Although the historian mentions qadis, here they seem to function as jurisconsults rather than as judges. Although a legal fig leaf is duly sought, the initiative comes from a misled or ill-intentioned third party and the authority comes from the sultan. The sultan, like Qānsūh al-Ghawrī in Ibn Iyās’s account, is motivated by reputational considerations; at least under the influence of alcohol and rashness, he is convinced that his rule will suffer if adulterers flourished undeterred by the imposition of the stoning penalty. As in the case recounted by Ibn Iyās, the ruler’s interest in public order—and in the glory that will accrue from a reputation for imposing it—trumps the scholars’ interest in sharʿī niceties. In this case, however, it is clearly the severity of the punishment itself—rather than an affront to the authority of the jurists—that is shocking to the sensibilities of the chronicler. The sole case of stoning identified by scholars of the Ottoman period occurred in 1680; Marc Baer, basing himself on contemporary historical sources, confidently describes it as “the first public execution of an allegedly adulterous couple staged in Istanbul since the Ottomans took the city in 1453.”44 The case involved a married Muslim woman who fell in love with a neighboring (and also married) Jewish merchant. Baer recounts that:45 One day neighbors raided the [woman’s] home when they knew that the Jewish man was inside. They claimed to have found the couple engaging in sexual intercourse. All the historians declare to their readers that they cannot vouch for the truth of this claim. They also express how both the Muslim woman and the Jewish man denied any wrongdoing until their last breaths.

44 Marc David Baer, Honored by the Glory of Islam: The Ottoman State, Non-Muslims, and Conversion to Islam in Late Seventeenth-Century Istanbul and Rumelia, PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2001, 176–77. See also Peters, Crime and Punishment, 93 (“The only instance [of stoning in the Ottoman period] I have come across took place in 1680 . . .”); Elyse Semerdjian, “Off the Straight Pat”: Illicit Sex, Law, and Community in Ottoman Aleppo (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2008), 185, n. 3, and references there. 45 Baer, Honored by the Glory, 177.

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However, despite the apparent lack of technically sufficient eyewitness testimony or confessions, when the mob brought the couple to the military judge (kadıaskeri) of the European provinces he ordered that the woman be stoned and the man (exempt from the ḥadd punishment because he was not Muslim)46 executed by other means. The woman was stoned by an eager crowd. Although the Jewish man converted to Islam in the hopes of evading execution (the proper outcome according to the shariʿa), he was in fact decapitated on the spot. The legally irregular nature of this execution clearly did not escape contemporary observers; an obituary notice of the judge who ordered it notes that “The learned men and general populace abhorred the aforementioned kadıaskeri for his being excessively angry and violent. His rulings in the matter of the stoning in particular increased the astonishment of the whole world, may God bless his soul.”47 However, it seems to have been approved by the sultan, who personally witnessed the execution from a palace window, and by the throngs who attended and participated. Baer convincingly places this anomalous event in the context of the tensions around religious boundaries and the enforcement of an increasingly narrowly-defined orthodoxy during the Kadızadeli movement. Once again, the decisive factor seems to have been not the quality of the evidence or any established expectation that adulterers would be punished by death, but the re-negotiation of the role of the Ottoman state in upholding religious values and boundaries. Another famous instance of stoning occurred early in the career of the Arabian religious reformer Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1792). The earliest Wahhābī chronicler, Ibn Ghannām (d. 1810), recounts of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s early career in ʿUyayna: The shaykh (may God have mercy upon him!) continued to dwell in ʿUyayna, commanding the good and forbidding wrong, teaching people their religion, eliminating all of the innovations that he was able, enforcing the ḥudūd penalties and instructing the governor (al-wālī) to enforce them, until a woman of the people of ʿUyayna who had committed zinā came to him and confessed that she had committed zinā; she repeated this four times. The shaykh [initially] ignored her; then she confessed and repeated her confession multiple times. Then he enquired about her mental competency

46 Abū Ḥanīfa considered Islam to be one of the conditions of iḥṣān; a non-believer could not be muḥṣan, nor could a dhimmī wife confer the status of iḥṣān. Only a muḥṣan offender was subject to the penalty of stoning for zinā. 47 Baer, Honored by the Glory, 179, n. 78.



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(ʿaqlihā), and was informed that it was complete and sound. He gave her several days’ grace in hopes that she would withdraw her confession, but she persisted in confessing it, and confessed it four times on successive days. So the shaykh (may God have mercy upon him!) ordered the governor that she should be stoned because she was muḥṣan . . .

According to Ibn Ghannām, the sentence was carried out; he then remarks, “When this incident occurred, there was much talk about it among the people of innovation and misguidance; their hearts quailed in fear and alarm, and they lost their minds with terror and dismay. The religious scholars slandered him, condemning what he had done despite the fact that he had only applied the penalty stipulated by the sunna and the consensus.”48 Esther Peskes observes that, unlike the destruction of graves—which is documented in Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s own epistles and in the contemporary work of Ibn Suḥaym—the stoning incident is first mentioned in Ibn Ghannām’s biography of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb. Furthermore, in the alternative account of Ibn Bishr, the stoning evokes no protest locally at all; rather, it consolidates Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s influence and authority. Only when news of it reaches the ruler of al-Aḥsāʾ and al-Qaṭīf does it evoke alarm and initiate a plot against the reformer.49 Regardless of the precise reaction that the alleged stoning actually elicited—and even of the question of its historicity—the way it functions in both of these early Wahhābī narratives implies that the imposition of the ḥadd penalty would have been a striking and distinctive measure. Even in the ideal scenario of a voluntary and repeated confession by a person of sound mind, which is modeled on an explicit precedent traced to the Prophet Muḥammad,50 it apparently would have been sufficiently remarkable to transform Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s reputation (if perhaps only in the context of retrospective mythmaking), establishing him either as a fearless proponent of the sunna or as a dangerous hothead. Again, what is at stake is not so much

48 Ḥusayn ibn Ghannām, Taʾrīkh Najd, ed. Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Asad (Beirut: Dār al-Shurūq, 1985), 85–86; see David Commins, The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 18. 49 Esther Peskes, Muḥammad B. ʿAbdalwahhāb (173–92) im Widerstreit: Untersuchungen zur Rekonstruktion der Frühgeschichte der Wahhābiya (Beirut: In Kommission bei Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart, 1993), 239–40, 265. 50 In a ḥadīth transmitted in several canonical collections, the Companion Māʿiz ibn Mālik al-Aslamī confesses to zinā to the Prophet Muḥammad, who repeatedly turns away from him; when Māʿiz persists in confessing, the Prophet orders that he be stoned after the fourth confession.

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sexual morality, as the contestation of interpretive authority and the relationship between the religious leadership and the temporal authorities. Conclusion The infrequency of the recorded cases of execution for adultery in premodern works does not necessarily reflect the rate of its actual occurrence in the societies in question. It may be that stoning was simply so rare and shocking that it was recorded in chronicles; conversely, it may have been recorded in chronicles only when it was shocking for other reasons. Certainly Ibn Iyās would have been incensed by the mass dismissal of chief judges even if he were not moved by the execution of hapless lovers. However, it seems to have been the kadıaskeriʾs unwarranted violence that led learned men to “abhor” him, and the horror of Tāj al-Dīn Parvāneh’s demise that moved Ibn Bībī. The violation of legal sensibilities required to impose the punishment was inextricably linked with the violation of humane sensibilities required to execute the penalty.51 Would contemporaries have been equally repelled if the kadıaskeri had not illegally executed a new convert to Islam (in principle sinless in his rebirth in his new faith), or if Tāj al-Dīn Parvāneh had not been noble, comely, and accomplished? These things are difficult to determine; yet it is striking that the rare accounts of stoning for adultery in pre-modern sources appear almost invariably to be accompanied by expressions of shock and dismay. In three out of the four cases examined above—occurring in, respectively, the Saljuq, Mamlūk, and Ottoman periods—the imposition of the stoning penalty for adultery represents not the enforcement of Islamic law, but its active subversion. In each case, the supposed deterrent value of the punishment, the resulting gain in social order, and the consequent enhancement of the reputation of the ruler appear to be the paramount considerations. For religious scholars, in contrast, the capacity actually to impose the ḥadd—and thus to intimidate potential future wrongdoers—

51 It would be interesting to compare accounts of adulterers’ deaths by stoning, like the ones above, with accounts of violent executions (including stonings) for other reasons. Was the issue that exercised contemporary observers the degree of violence of the mode of execution, or was it simply that adulterers—unlike, perhaps, heretics or rebels—excited a degree of sympathy that militated against the imposition of the penalty?



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is subordinated to the supreme value of adhering to the law (and the related objective of preserving the normative authority of the jurists). Ibn ʿAlwān, who does emphasize the deterrent value of the ḥudūd, writes expressly to recruit the Ottoman ruler to the project of sharʿī rule, with its attendant implications of deference to the authority of religious scholars. Despite his discussion of the ḥadd for zinā in the context of a concrete concern for public order, he ultimately appeals to a divine sanction (the tendency of troops supported with ill-gotten gains from the state treasury to lose in battle). Thus, even for him, the mysterious blessings of obedience to the divine fiat ultimately overshadow the pragmatic advantages of the sharīʿa as a penal code. Ibn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār, like the jurists who opposed Qānsūh al-Ghawrī, preserves the authority of the religious law—and of the jurists who represent it—by removing the ḥadd for zinā from the realm of pragmatic penal policy altogether. Conversely, if the religious scholars in the Saljuq and Ottoman cases in fact failed to protest, this would seem to reflect their acquiescence to state power— or their allegiance to other religious projects—rather than their fidelity to Islamic penal law. The sole case where the imposition of the stoning penalty appears to have reflected the scrupulous application of evidentiary standards modeled by the Prophet is that of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb. Whatever the truth of local scholars’ reaction, it seems to have struck his contemporaries as an extraordinary measure, and not at all as part of the normal functioning of Islamic criminal law. Rather, like the other cases discussed here—although in a very different mode—it served to make a striking symbolic statement about the relationships among law, religious scholarship, and temporal rule. Bibliography ʿAlī ibn ʿAṭīya al-Hītī al-Ḥamawī [al-Shaykh ʿAlwān]. al-Naṣāʾiḥ al-muhimma li-al-mulūk wa-al-aʾimma. Ed. Nashwa al-ʿAlwānī. Damascus: Dār al-Maktabī, 2000. Baer, Marc David. Honored by the Glory of Islam: The Ottoman State, Non-Muslims, and Conversion to Islam in Late Seventeenth-Century Istanbul and Rumelia. PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 2001. Berkowitz, Beth A. Execution and Invention: Death Penalty Discourse in Early Rabbinic and Christian Cultures. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Commins, David. The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia. London: I.B. Tauris, 2006. Al-Ghazzī, Najm al-Dīn. Al-Kawākib al-sāʾira bi-aʿyān al-miʾa al-ʿāshira. Ed. Jibrāʾīl Sulaymān Jabbūr. Beirut: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Amrīkīya, 1945. Ibn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār, Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad al-Mālikī. Izālat al-ghishāʾ ʿan ḥukm ṭawāf al-nisāʾ baʿd al-ʿishāʾ. Cairo ms., Dār al-Kutub, 109 Fiqh Mālik, microfilm 1965. Ibn Bībī al-Munajjimeh. Akhbār-i Salājiqeh-yi Rūm. Ed. Muḥammad Jawād Mashkūr. Tabrīz: Kitābfurūshī-yi Tehrān, 1350 H.Sh.

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Ibn Ghannām, Ḥusayn. Taʾrīkh Najd. Ed. Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Asad. Beirut: Dār al-Shurūq, 1985. Ibn al-Ḥimṣī, Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar. Ḥawādith al-zamān wa-wafayāt al-shuyūkh wa-al-aqrān. Ed. ʿUmar ʿAbd al-Salām Tadmurī. Ṣaydā: ­al-Maktaba al-ʿAṣrīya, 1419/1999. Ibn Iyās, Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Ḥanafī. Badāʾiʿ al-zuhūr fī waqāʾiʿ al-duhūr. Ed. Muḥammad Muṣṭafā. Cairo: al-Hayʾa al-Miṣrīya al-ʿĀmma li-al-Kitāb, 1404/1984. Ibn Taymīya, Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm. Minhāj al-sunna al-nabawīya fī naqḍ kalām al-shīʿa wa-al-qadarīya. Bulaq, 1322. Johansen, Baber. “Signs As Evidence: The Doctrine of Ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328) and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (D. 1351) on Proof.” Islamic Law and Society 9 (2002): 168–93. Lange, Christian. Justice, Punishment, and the Medieval Muslim Imagination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Peskes, Esther. Muḥammad B. ʿAbdalwahhāb (173–92) im Widerstreit: Untersuchungen zur Rekonstruktion der Frühgeschichte der Wahhābiya. Beirut: In Kommission bei Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart, 1993. Peters, Rudolph. Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law: Theory and Practice from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Petry, Carl. Protectors or Praetorians? The Last Mamluk Sultans and Egypt’s Waning as a Great Power. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. ——. Twilight of Majesty: The Reigns of the Mamlūk Sultans al-Ashrāf Qāytbāy and Qānṣūh al-Ghawrī in Egypt. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993. Quraishi, Asifa. “Her Honor: An Islamic Critique of the Rape Laws of Pakistan from a Woman-Sensitive Perspective.” In Gisela Webb, ed., Windows of Faith: Muslim Women Scholar-Activists in North America (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 102–35. Quṭb, Sayyid. Fī ẓilāl al-qurʾān. Cairo: Dār al-Shurūq, 1417/1992. Rapaport, Yossef. “Women and Gender in Mamluk Society,” Mamluk Studies Review XI (2007): 1–47. Saleh, Walid A. In Defense of the Bible: A Critical Edition and an Introduction to al-Biqāʿī’s Bible Treatise. Leiden: Brill, 2008. Semerdjian, Elyse. “Off the Straight Path”: Illicit Sex, Law, and Community in Ottoman Aleppo. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2008. Al-Shaykh, Ḥanān. Ḥikāyatī sharḥ yaṭūl. Beirut: Dār al-Ādāb, 2005. Warrick, Catherine. Law in the Service of Legitimacy: Gender and Politics in Jordan. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2009. al-Zuḥaylī, Wahba. al-Fiqh al-islāmī wa-adillatuhu. Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, eighth reprint, 1425/2005.

PART FOUR

TEXTS AND ARTIFACTS

The Revolt of al-Ḥārith IBN Surayj and the Countermarking of Umayyad Dirhams in Early Eighth Century CE Khurāsān1 Stuart D. Sears One of the more significant anomalies in the record of early Muslim coinage is the phenomenon of countermarks found on a small number of Umayyad dirhams. Countermarks are special stamps applied to circulating coinage to guarantee its value or sanction its use. On early Muslim coinage, they are relatively rare but common for brief periods. They are best known from the 670s until the 690s CE when they were applied to Sasanian and early Muslim drachms in the East (see catalogue nos. 2e–2f, 3a–d). Two different types are known, consisting of the profile of an animal’s head and a geometric emblem. Although they bear some resemblance to the stamps of the 670s to 690s CE, their appearance on dirhams—not drachms—set them apart. Dirhams were introduced generally in 697–99 CE (78 and 79 H) as part of the Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān’s monetary reforms. This coinage eventually replaced drachms as the preeminent silver coinage in the Middle East. The origin and purpose of the countermarks are difficult to discern. They lack mint legends, dates and name legends, and slogans of any kind. Although countermarks are normally employed during monetary and fiscal crises, these cannot be tied to any particular emergency. In the early eighth century CE, the Umayyad caliphate was, by most measures, stable and secure. The promulgation and dissemination of the 1 I would like to thank Fred Donner for his role in introducing me to Islamic numismatics and supporting my work over many years. This article was inspired by an online discussion in [email protected] between Michael Bates, then Curator of Islamic Coins at The American Numismatic Society, Stephen Album, professional numismatist, and me in April and May, 2000. I wish to thank each of them for their contributions and insights. The views set forth here are, however, my own and any flaws, my responsibility. I am also grateful to Stephen Album, Michael Bates, Robert Hoge, Curator of Coins at the American Numismatic Society; Frank Kiel, reference librarian at the Widener Library at Harvard University; and Aleksandr Naymark, Associate Professor of Fine Arts at Hofstra University for helping me locate sources, and to the late Samir Shamma, the American Numismatic Society, the Bibliothèque Nationale, the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo, Egypt, Stephen Album, the late William B. Warden, and a private collector in Syria for allowing me to publish specimens in their collections.

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Reformed dinars and dirhams had established a reliable money. Administrative reforms and conquests had increased the caliphate’s revenues. A local crisis in one of the caliphate’s cities or provinces, or in a neighboring state, presents a more plausible hypothesis. The narrative sources of the period, however, are in general unconcerned with local disturbances or monetary affairs. They focus on events and themes central to the Umayyad caliphate and the rise of its pro-ʿAbbāsid opposition. Close analysis of not simply the countermarks but their numismatic and historical contexts, nevertheless, ties them to the failed revolt of al-Ḥārith ibn Surayj in Khurāsān in the mid-730s CE. The countermarks’ geographical origin may be established through broad comparison of the motifs on these and other countermarks, the provenance of the dirhams on which they appear and the location of their mints. Their chronology may be gauged by the dates of the undertypes and the relative frequency of countermarked and non-countermarked coins in a recently-published corpus and contemporary hoards. Al-Ḥārith led his revolt with the support of Hephthalite princes and nobility against the province’s Umayyad governors from 734 CE until early 740s CE. The stamps would appear to have been applied by his allies in efforts to raise funds for their armies shortly after its outbreak. The motifs on the countermarks provide a general indication of the stamps’ origins. These represent Hepthalite emblems of authority belonging to eastern Iran, if not Khurāsān. The two types are described as follows: Type I (catalogue nos. 1a–1f ): This type is an animal’s head set in left profile. The head has a short rounded muzzle opened wide with the tongue extended. A small semi-circle set toward the back of the head, with a pellet above, may be an ear. In addition, a thick slightly curvilinear line wraps around the neck. It may be a halter or a border. This type occurs on dirhams of the following mints, organized from west to east: Wāsiṭ for 705/06 CE (87 H, catalogue no. 1d), 713/14 CE (95 H, catalogue no. 1e) and 715/16 CE (97 H, catalogue no. 1f ); Jundī-Sābūr for 715/16 CE (97 H, catalogue no. 1b); Dastawā for 712/13 CE (94 H, catalogue no. 1a); and Marw for 718/19 CE (100 H, catalogue no. 1c). The animal is a beast of prey, probably a lion or simurgh. Lions were common symbols of aristocratic power. The simurgh was a fantastical, benevolent, flying creature in eastern Iranian tradition that was believed to bring investiture. The neck and shoulders are not rendered fully so that



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the mane or wings that would distinguish them are not evident. The short rounded muzzle, however, eliminates other beasts of prey from consideration such as a bear, wolf or dog. The motif is Hephthalite or east Iranian. Similar depictions appear on Göbl’s nos. 1, 3, 7, 10 and 11 (see plates 4a, 4b, 4c, 4d and 4e).2 The thick line at the base of the neck, in particular, resembles an element on Göbl’s no. 7. Although the countermark on catalogue no. 2e has been compared to Göbl’s no. 106,3 the likeness is more remote. The latter types present a longer muzzle and pointed ears characteristic of a wolf, though they are also Hephthalite.4 Lion / simurgh types are common and have numerous varieties among the region’s other countermarks. Göbl attributed them to north and south of the Hindu-Kush corresponding to Khurāsān and Kāpiśi.5 Gaube ascribed Göbl’s no. 7 to Khurāsān and nos. 10 and 11, to Sijistān but conceded that many of the latter occurred on coinage of Khurāsān.6 Type II (catalogue nos. 2a–2d): This type is a geometric emblem or tamga. It consists of two sets of semi-circles and crooks arranged symmetrically. The semi-circles stand next to each other with concave sides facing outwards and convex sides, inwards, and with midpoints joined. A pair of crooks is mounted above them in a similar manner but without the midpoints joined. Catalogue nos. 2a, 2b and 2d vary slightly indicating the use of different dies. Markov’s illustration (catalogue no. 2c) presents a stylized representation of the stamp’s main features. This type is known on dirhams of the following mints, from west to east: Wāsiṭ for 713/14 CE (95 H, catalogue no. 2d), al-Manādhir for 711/12 CE (93 H, catalogue no. 2a), Sābūr for 708/09 CE (90 H, catalogue no. 2c), and al-Mubāraka for 725/26 CE (107 H, catalogue no. 2b). The motif almost certainly is Hephthalite and belongs to Khurāsān. The tamga resembles Göbl’s type no. 111 (cf. stamps in margins of catalogue

2 R. Göbl, Documente zur Geschichte der Iranischen Hunnen in Baktrien und Indien, Volumes I–IV (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1967), IV, Tafeln 8, 10. 3 Lutz Ilisch, Islamic Coins. The Silvio Baldassari Collection. The Umayyad and Abbasid Dynasties. Auction Leu 62 May 18th, 1995 (Zurich: Leu Numismatik Ltd., 1995), 26, no. 196; Cf. Göbl, Documente, IV, Tafel 9, nos. 101, 105–107. 4 Göbl, Documente, II, 134–35; IV, Tafel 10. 5 Ibid., II, 174–83. 6 H. Gaube, Arabosasanidische Numismatik, Handbücher der mittelasiatischen Numismatik Band II (Brunswick, 1973), 113–14.

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nos. 3a–3d),7 though it is not identical. Göbl suggested that the latter was an abstract representation of a ram’s skull and noted its similarity to symbols on Hephthalite coinage.8 Gaube attributed it to Merv in Khurāsān, along with several other countermarks with which it occurs frequently on Muslim drachms.9 Although the attribution to Merv may be disputed, the more general identification with Khurāsān is reasonably secure. Reports of a third countermark, consisting of a pellet triad, are so far unconfirmed. Lane Poole described what seemed to be three points stamped over the shīn of sharīk on a coin of al-Mubāraka for 726/27 (CE 108 H) in the collection of Colonel Charles Seton Guthrie.10 The coin, however, was not illustrated. It seems probable that these points were, in fact, incised on the obverse die as is known on a variety of this mint and date (see catalogue no. 3e). Despite their differences, the countermarks bear common technical features, suggesting that they are products of the same or related workshops. All specimens examined, for example, whether physically or from plates, are small and circular. Nearly all are also applied near the obverse rim.11 In contrast, earlier drachm countermarks are much larger and have oblong and rectangular as well as circular shapes. The countermarks, moreover, follow the perspective of the circular Arabic legend of the undertype. All specimens of type I (catalogue nos. 1a–1f ) place the crown of the lion’s / simurgh’s head toward the rim and the neck toward the center of the coin. The head is, moreover, presented facing left in the direction that the Arabic legend is read. Specimens of type II (catalogue nos. 2a, 2b, and 2d) are oriented in a similar manner. The upper portion of the tamga is positioned toward the rim of the coin   7 Göbl, Documente, vol. IV, Tafeln 9, 11, 16.   8 Ibid., II, 132–33, 190.   9 Gaube, 117. 10 S. Lane-Poole, Catalogue of the Oriental Coins belonging to Col. C. Seton Guthrie, R.E. Fasciculus I. Coins of the Amawī Khalīfehs (Hertford: Stephen Austin & Sons), 24, no. 135 (without illustration). The countermark was confirmed by H. Nützel in his Königliche Museen zu Berlin. Katalog der Orientalischen Münzen. I. Die Münzen der östlichen Chalifen (Berlin, 1898) 99, no. 534 (without illustration); John Walker, A Catalogue of the Arab-Byzantine and Post-Reform Umaiyad Coins (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1956), 178, fn. 482.  11 The countermarks should help clarify the problem of which side of the Umayyad dirham was the obverse. In circulation, the people of the Khurāsān, like most scholars, considered it to be the side with the statement of faith, “There is no god but God alone. He has no partner.” Countermarks are normally applied to the obverse, not the reverse. See Jere L. Bacharach and H. A. Awad, “The Problem of the Obverse and the Reverse in Islamic Numismatics,” NC Seventh series VIII (1973): 183–91.



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and the lower portion, towards the center. In contrast, earlier drachm countermarks orient the bottom of the stamp toward the rim and the top toward the center, and proceed clockwise around the rim like the accompanying Arabic marginal legend. In view of the countermarks’ scarcity, the consistency of the technical features—even standardization—appears to indicate some level of administrative coordination or contact between the workshops producing the two types. The features seem intended to facilitate the use of the countermarks as devices of control. On the one hand, they are rendered relatively inconspicuously so that the general appearance of the coins is not marred. Their regular placement and orientation, on the other hand, aids their detection and reading. The workshop or workshops probably belonged to a group or groups sufficiently detached from Umayyad government authority that the countermarking would serve a logical if not wholly legitimate purpose. These groups may have been rebels or local landed elites in eastern Iran who yearned for independent authority but lacked the power and resources to strike coins themselves. Some of the technical features suggest an Arabic Muslim influence. The orientation of the two types according to the vertical and horizontal organization of the dirham’s Arabic legends, for example, implies that the workers applying them had some knowledge of Arabic script. The stamps almost certainly do not belong to the caliphal or provincial governments. It is unlikely that a provincial governor would adopt figural images or tamgas to represent his authority in the last decades of Umayyad rule. The motifs are contrary to the aniconic style of the Umayyad caliphate and its governors. While it was first introduced in the late 690s CE by caliphal orders, the all-Arabic type became a common type on the local coinages of Syria and Iran in the decades afterwards.12 It is even known as far east as Sijistān.13 The countermarks countermand the authority of the caliphal and provincial governments. The dirham’s distinctive all-Arabic stamp was an 12 John Walker, A Catalogue of the Arab-Byzantine and Post-Reform Umaiyad Coins (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1956), 201–94. 13 There is a specimen with a Sasanian style obverse and an anaconic reverse but no date which probably belongs to the 710–20s (90-early 100s H). See Rika, Gyselen, ArabSasanian Copper Coinage (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2000), 154, type 50. In addition, a specimen of Sijistān with both obverse and reverse in anaconic style is known for 748–49 (131 H). Baldwin’s Auctions and Arabian Coins & Medals, Islamic Coin Auction 8 in London (May 5, 2004), lot no. 123 w/plate.

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unambiguous symbol of Umayyad government. It had been employed only by the Umayyads until this time, though it would later be imitated by others. It is doubtful that the caliph and his governors would allow its defacement. In fact, they increased their production of dirhams throughout the early eighth century CE when the countermarks were applied. The application of type I over the dirham’s mint legend, moreover, effaces the clearest scriptural reference to the government’s authority. Three of the six specimens of this type were struck at an axis of 5:00 or 6:00, which is on or immediately next to this legend. The other three specimens are located at 2:00, 9:00 and 11:00. The provenances of extant specimens seem to agree with the above evidence, though they are incompletely documented. Three of the ten dirhams were recovered in the vicinity of Afghanistan or at sites south or west of this country from where they may have also originated in Afghanistan. Afghanistan comprises much of the historical provinces of Khurāsān and Sijistān. Six of the seven remaining coins, however, first appeared at auction houses or in private collections culled from unknown sources. The provenance of catalogue no. 1d is the most reliably documented. It belonged to the collection of Colonel Guthrie, a British officer who served in the Corps of the Bengal Sappers and Miners in India between 1828 and 1857.14 It most likely belonged to finds in Afghanistan. Umayyad dirhams turn up infrequently in the Indian subcontinent. Although his duties were primarily limited to civil affairs,15 Guthries contacts would have provided him access to these finds. His corps played an important role in the British invasion and occupation of the country during the first Afghan war of 1839 to 1842.16 He may have obtained the coins from soldiers who had been stationed there, if he was unable to visit the country himself. If not in Afghanistan, two other coins were found at least somewhere to its south or west. Catalogue no. 1a belonged to Archer Huntington. Huntington purchased many of his coins from Spanish collections, which drew from finds in the Mediterranean.17 Catalogue no. 1b belonged to the

14 Frederic Boase, Modern English Biography: Containing Many Concise Memoirs of Persons who Have Died Since the Year 1850, with an Index of the Most Interesting Matter (London, Frank Cass & Co., 1965 = Reprint of Truro: Netherton & Worth, 1892–1921) I, 1263; Vernon Charles Hodson, List of the Officers of the Bengal Army, 1758–1834 (London: Constable & Co., 1927–47) II, 349–50. 15 Hodson, List of Officers, II, 349–50. 16 For general reference, see Sir John Kay, History of the War in Afghanistan (London: R. Bentley, 1857–58). 17 This information was provided to me by Michael Bates in a personal communication.



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collection of princess Fāṭima Ismāʿīl of Egypt.18 While most of this collection may have been assembled from finds in the Arab world, some portions could have been obtained as gifts from British officers or other foreign dignitaries visiting from Iran or India. Only catalogue no. 2c allows the possibility of a more northerly provenance. It is known from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg catalogued by A. de Markov in 1897.19 Most of the Hermitage’s collection came from finds from territories once under Russian or Soviet control and influence. This coin, nevertheless, may also have surfaced in Afghanistan or the Middle East. Johann C. Adalung, director of its Oriental Language Institute attached to Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the nineteenth century, encouraged students traveling to the Middle East to collect and bring back whatever coins or manuscripts they could find.20 Although the record is incomplete, a dearth of finds in southern Russia would be significant. It would suggest that the countermarks do not belong to the lands historically forming Khwārazmia and Soghdia. Had the dirhams been countermarked in these lands, they would be expected to appear in Russian collections or museums in significant quantities. Their recovery in significant numbers in Afghanistan, or places farther south and west would be unusual as coinage tended to drift eastwards in circulation.21 While Sijistān cannot be discounted, Khurāsān is a more likely site based on its earlier tradition of countermarking. During the seventh century CE, its drachms were countermarked far more often than those of other provinces. According to Gaube, the ratio of countermarked to noncountermarked drachms for Iraq and western Iran is 1:20 and for Kirmān and Sijistān, 1:4. In contrast, for Khurāsān, the ratio ranges from 2:1 to 5:1 depending on the mint.22 Many of the province’s drachms carry more than one countermark.

18 This collection became part of l’Musée de l’art Arabe and subsequently the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo, Egypt. 19 A. de Markov, Inventarniy Katalog musulmanskikh Monet imperatorskago Ermitazha (St. Petersburg, 1896–98), 3, no. 58. 20 B. Dorn, Collections Scientifiques de l’Institut des Langues Orientales du Ministere des Affaires Etrangères II (St. Petersburg, 1877), vii. 21 See R. P. Blake, “The Circulation of Silver in the Moslem East down to the Mongol Epoch,” HJAS 2 (1937): 291–300. 22 Gaube, Arabosasanidische, 111–12.

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The mint sites of the latest countermarked dirhams provide support for this attribution. They are Marw for type I (718–19 CE/100 H) and al-Mubāraka for type II (725–26 CE/107 H). Because countermarks were applied to circulating coinage, these sites should prove nearer to the site of countermarking activity than the mint sites of other countermarked dirhams. The dirhams of Marw and al-Mubāraka had less time than the other coins to travel in circulation before being countermarked. Marw, the Arabic for Merv, is located in the north of Khurāsān. Although previously subject to disagreement, al-Mubāraka may be identified with Balkh in the eastern district of Ṭukhāristān.23 The Iraqi and west Iranian mints found on other countermarked dirhams are not unexpected. These consist of Wāsiṭ in Iraq (types I and II); Manādhir (type II) and Jundī-Sābūr (type I) in Khūzistān; Sābūr in Fārs (type II); and Dastawā in Jibāl (type I). Khurāsān generally struck very few dirhams under the Umayyads. Coinage, moreover, as previously noted, typically moved eastwards in circulation. The same evidence weighs against an attribution to Sijistān. Although never very numerous, specimens of this province are absent among the countermarked dirhams. Specimens of the nearby province of Kirmān, which might also be expected to appear among the undertypes, are also absent. Comparison of the countermarked dirhams with contemporary hoards points to a location in eastern Khurāsān. The countermarked dirhams, much like the hoards, form a distinct group of coins removed from circulation within a relatively limited geographical area and short interval of time. As a result, where the proportions are similar, the different groups of coins probably drew from a common pool of circulating coinage at a common location. Among hoards of the East, the countermarked dirhams prove most similar to a hoard that surfaced in Kabul (see Table 1).24 The proportions of mints, in fact, are nearly identical. Forty percent of the countermarked dirhams come from Iraq and twenty percent, from Khurāsān while fortytwo percent of the coins in the Kabul hoard originate in Iraq and twentytwo percent, in Khurāsān. The proportions of mints from other provinces correlate similarly. This stands in contrast to the Nippur hoard of Iraq.25

23 Stuart D. Sears, “The Attribution of the Mint of al-Mubāraka to Balkh,” The American Journal of Numismatics 23 (2012): forthcoming. 24 S. Album, “An Umayyad Hoard from Afghanistan,” The American Numismatic Society Museum Notes 17 (1971): 241–46. 25 Sears, “A Late Umayyad Hoard from Nippur,” The Numismatic Chronicle 154 (1994): 133–46.



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Table 1. Distribution of mints among countermarked dirhams and contemporary hoards for the interval of 697–734 (78 to 115 H). Provinces Iraq Jibāl Khuzistān Fārs Kirmān Sijistān Khurāsān Other

Nippur Hoard Mashhad Hoard Kabul Hoard Countermarked (97 coins) (196 coins) (131 coins) Dirhams (10 coins) 71% 5% 4% 13% 0% 0% 2% 5%

86% 1% 2% 3% 2% 0% 5% 0%

42% 7% 9% 14% 2% 2% 22% 2%

40% 10% 20% 10% 0% 0% 20% 0%

Seventy-one percent of its specimens for the same span of years are from Iraq and only two percent, from Khurāsān. The Mashhad hoard, which was recovered in western Khurāsān, is anomalous.26 Its Iraqi component comprises eighty-six percent of the hoard. This is far larger than what appears in the Kabul hoard and even the Nippur hoard. Most likely, the hoard was culled for unusual mints by a dealer prior to its sale. This is a common practice as the rarer mints command higher prices in the antiquities market than the more common mints like Wāsiṭ and al-Baṣra. The same circumstance is not possible for the Nippur hoard since it was recovered in archaeological excavations. In view of the eastern origin of the Kabul hoard, the countermarked dirhams may be attributed to eastern Khurāsān. The Kabul hoard was purchased in Kabul’s bazaar, which draws on finds from the eastern portion of Afghanistan, including what historically consisted of eastern Sijistān and eastern Khurāsān. Finds elsewhere in Afghanistan would tend to be sold in the antiquities markets of other cities. Because Sijistān has been discounted as a source, eastern Khurāsān, that is, the eastern district of Ṭukhāristān, is the most likely possibility. This agrees with the evidence of the specimen of al-Mubāraka, the latest countermarked dirham. The district of Ṭukhāristān extended east from Balkh along the south side of the Oxus river as far as the frontiers of Badakhshān. It was bounded in the north by the Pamir mountains and in the south by the Hindu Kush north of Bāmiyān and Panj-hīr.27 The Muslims subdued the district ­several 26 R. Herbert, “Notes on an Umayyad Hoard from Khurāsān,” The American Numismatic Society Museum Notes 12 (1966): 157–63. 27 Guy le Strange, The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate (1905. Reprint. New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1966), 426–27.

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times before bringing it under permanent control. The population was primarily Hephthalite and Persian but included Muslims and some Turks.28 A combination of evidence ascribes the countermarking generally to the mid 730s CE, in spite of the date on the dirham of al-Mubāraka. The common technical features and geographical origin of the two types of countermarks, as well as their rarity, suggest that they belonged to a single episode and, therefore, were applied at the same time. Under normal circumstances, the latest date in any group of coins such as this, much like hoards, would provide a reasonably reliable indication of the approximate date of assemblage or countermarking. The terminal date of 725–26 CE (107 H, catalogue no. 3d) would suggest that the dirhams were countermarked in the mid to late 720s CE. This impression, however, is misleading for several reasons. First, the sample size is so small that the single date constituting the terminus is not statistically reliable. The discovery of one new specimen could significantly alter the conclusions drawn from it. For example, before the discovery of the specimen of al-Mubāraka, the latest known date was only 718–19 CE (100 H). A new specimen might in the same way add an equal number of years to the current terminus. The composition of coinage circulating in Khurāsān in the early eighth century CE, moreover, was skewed in favor of older coins (see Table 2). Only ten to twenty percent of the coins in the Mashhad and Kabul hoards were struck between 721 and 734 CE even though these hoards have terminal dates in the early to mid 730s CE. Eighty percent of their specimens fall in the interval of 708–721 CE. The distribution of the dates of countermarked Table 2. Frequency of dates in Eastern hoards and on countermarked dirhams for the interval of 697 to 734 CE (79 to 115 H). Nippur Hoard Mashhad Kabul Hoard Countermarked Hoard Dirhams 697–708 CE (78–89 H) 708–21 CE (90–102 H) 721–34 CE (103–115 H)

11% 42% 47%

2% 88% 10%

4% 79% 17%

10% 80% 10%

28 J. Harmatta and B. A. Litvinsky, “Tokharistān and Gandhara under Western Türk Rule (650–750),” in The History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Vol. III. The Crossroads of Civilizations: A.D. 250 to 750. Ed. B. A. Litvinsky with co-ed. Zhang Guang-da and R. Shabani Samghabadi (Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 2003), 371–73.



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dirhams is very similar. This stands in contrast to the contemporary portion of the Nippur hoard where forty-seven percent of specimens over the same period fall in the interval of 721–34 CE and forty-two percent, in the interval of 708–21 CE. The anomaly reflects the dependence of Khurāsān on the importation of dirhams from Iraq and western Iran to meet its demand for species. As previously noted, Iraq produced most of the coinage in the East. Khurāsān struck only small amounts of dirhams. The Iraqi and west Iranian coinage, moreover, seems to have taken about fifteen years to reach Khurāsān in significant quantities. In the Kabul hoard, fifty-five percent of specimens for the interval of 721–34 (103–15 H) come from Khurāsān while only seventeen percent, from Iraq, Khuzistān and Fārs. The ratios are reversed for the earlier interval of 708–21 CE (90–102 H). Thirteen percent of its dirhams are from Khurāsān and seventy-six percent, from Iraq, Khuzistān and Fārs.29 The similarity in the distributions of dates on the countermarked dirhams and in the Mashhad and Kabul hoards suggests a slightly later date for the countermarking (see Table 2). These distributions provide a more reliable gauge for chronology as they are not based on the date of a single specimen but rather the frequency of dates across each coin group as a whole. The three groups seem to have been assembled or countermarked at approximately the same time. They are proportionally very similar for the intervals of 721–34 CE (103–115 H), 708–21 CE (90–102 H), and 697–708 CE (78–89 H). The terminuses of the Mashhad and Kabul hoards, 730–31 CE (112 H) and 733–34 CE (115 H) respectively, place the countermarking in the early to mid 730s CE. The terminuses of these hoards are more reliable than the terminal date among the countermarked dirhams due to the hoards’ large sizes. The Mashhad hoard numbers 196 coins and the Kabul hoard, 131 coins.30 Although the interval of 721–34 CE is still relatively poorly represented in both hoards, the addition or subtraction of one specimen would not significantly alter the terminal date of either. The absence of countermarked dirhams in the Mashhad and Kabul hoards, at the same time, argues for a date that is even slightly later. Countermarked dirhams would otherwise be expected to appear in small

29 Album, 241–46. 30 For Mashhad hoard, Hebert, 157. For Kabul hoard, Album, 241.

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numbers. The hoards drew on whatever was available in circulation when they were assembled. The hoards’ owners would not have had any reason to remove countermarked coins. The coins are of as fine a quality as those without countermarks. The countermarks on them are, moreover, relatively inconspicuous. A study of the relative incidence of countermarks on dirhams circulating at this time lends support to this chronology. The incidence of countermarks may be determined from their frequency on large groups of dirhams known to have circulated in Khurāsān when the Mashhad and Kabul hoards were formed. This information may then establish the probable number of countermarked dirhams that should have appeared in the hoards had the countermarking preceded their assemblage. A suitable sample may be culled from Klat’s Catalogue of the PostReform Dirhams. This work is as complete a corpus as possible of Umayyad dirhams. It documents the total number of known dirhams by mint and date, and the countermarks that appear on them. The dirhams listed for Khurāsān between 718 and 731 CE (100 and 112 H) form a sufficiently large and reliable group of coins. They are bounded by the date of the oldest known countermarked specimen from Khurāsān and the terminal date of the earlier of the two hoards. They were all struck in Khurāsān and, thus, most would have circulated in the province and been available for countermarking in the 730s CE when it occurred. The fact that this sample is not representative of the mints and dates on the coins in circulation at this time is not important. The countermarks were applied irrespective of this information. No pattern may be discerned in the mints and dates of dirhams on which they appear. The sample is constructed conservatively, that is, it is unlikely to exaggerate the incidence of countermarked dirhams in circulation. While it is certain that all of these coins circulated in Khurāsān at one time, many may no longer have circulated in the province when the countermarking occurred. Coinage in Khurāsān dispersed in circulation just as it did in other provinces. The calculation of the general incidence of countermarking is straightforward. The number of countermarked specimens in the sample is tallied and divided against the total number of specimens. The result is the approximate percentage of coins that would be expected to be countermarked in any random sample of dirhams drawn from circulation at this time, such as the two hoards. The tally of countermarks is likewise conservative. It represents a minimum count. The true number of countermarked dirhams is ­probably



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higher. Klat did not always record whether a coin had been countermarked in his catalogue. Of eight dirhams known to have countermarks, he noted the countermarks on only four of them (see catalogue below). Two other specimens were not known to him. The incidence of countermarking in the sample is on this basis 1.5 to 3 percent. The catalogue lists one hundred and twenty specimens for the mints of Abarshahr, al-Mubārika, Madīnat Balkh al-Bayḍa and Marw for 718–31 CE (100–12 H). Only two of these are documented with countermarks, representing approximately 1.5 percent of the total. Because of the catalogue’s inconsistency in the notation of countermarks, another two dirhams may be countermarked but lack documentation. This would raise the incidence to 3 percent of the total. It is, therefore, unlikely that the countermarking could have occurred before 733–34 CE. Had it occurred previously, two to four countermarked dirhams would probably have appeared in the Kabul hoard. Had it occurred before 731–32 CE, three to six countermarked dirhams would probably have also been found in the Mashhad hoard. This leaves 733 CE or slightly later as the most likely date for the countermarking. The evidence, moreover, suggests that the countermarks addressed a fiscal rather than a monetary crisis. These represent very different kinds of problems. A monetary crisis occurs where debased or defective coinage drives sound coinage out of circulation. This happens when circulating species consists of both defective and sound coinages and the two coinages are exchanged at the same rate. The bad coins are gradually substituted for the good ones leading to the removal of the latter. This, in turn, undermines the value of the circulating coinage creating inflation and shortages.31 A financial crisis, in contrast, occurs where the state or quasi state is unable to meet its pecuniary needs and obligations through the collection of taxes and tribute, the seizure of booty and property, and the management and exploitation of natural resources. It is unrelated to the composition or quality of circulating species. Countermarking addresses these problems in very different ways. In monetary crises, it seeks to establish a stable supply of species in circulation by guaranteeing the value of the sound coinage. Countermarks are applied to large numbers of the high quality coins. They are not applied 31 This is well known as Gresham’s Law after Sir Thomas Gresham (1519–79). Gresham explained on this basis the poor state of England’s coinage after the “Great Debasements” of Henry VIII and Edward VI in a letter to Queen Elizabeth on the occasion of her accession in 1558.

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to debased or defective coins. The countermarked coins then circulate at a premium over the non-countermarked coins because the countermark guarantees their higher precious metal content.32 In financial crises, on the other hand, countermarks are intended to raise revenue by sanctioning the use of species in whatever form it occurs. They may be applied to either small or large numbers of coins, and are applied irrespective of the coins’ quality, so long as they achieve their immediate purpose. The countermarked coins do not command a premium except by fiat of their countermarkers. Outside the countermarkers sphere of administrative authority, the coins do not have a premium. These formal differences have profound ramifications for the economic relationships between the countermarkers and their subjects or clients.33 In a monetary crisis, the relationship is marked by reciprocity. The countermarking serves the interests of both the state or quasi state and its subjects. Where non-state actors are its authors, such as money lenders and bankers, it benefits both these actors and their clients. Coins are countermarked with little coercion and countermarked coins are freely accepted at an increased value since their value derives from their intrinsic character. In contrast, in fiscal crises, the relationship is redistributive. The countermarking serves the needs of the state or quasi state alone. It is, in effect, a tax that reallocates the wealth of subjects to the ruler’s coffers. The ruler imposes the measure through some form of coercion. It may, for example, insist on the payment of taxes in countermarked specie and collect a fee for the service of countermarking this species.34 Because non-state actors lack the means to coerce, this form of countermarking is for the most part

32 Countermarking in response to a monetary crisis is very rare in Middle Eastern and South Asian history. One of the few documented examples is the “shroff marks” used by bankers and moneychangers on coinage of the Sultanate of Bengal in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries CE. See G. S. Fareed, “The Markings on the Coins of the Sultans of Bengal,” Journal of the Numismatic Society of India 40 (1) (1978): 27–33. 33 For theoretical discussion on the nature of exchange, see Karl Polyani, Conrad M. Arensberg and Harry W. Pearson, Trade and Market in the Early Empires. Economies in History and Theory (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1957). 34 A rare explanation of this form of countermarking exists from the Timūrid period. The Chinese envoy Ch’en Ch’eng, who visited the court of Shāhrukh in 1414 (817 AH), wrote about Timūrid countermarks: “They [the populace] pay taxes on the coins to the ruler and then the ruler stamps the coins with the official seal. Those without the official seal are illegal.” See Morris Rossabi, “A Translation of Ch’en Ch’eng’s Hsi-Yü Fan-kuo chih,” Ming Studies 17 (1983): 51. Stephen Album kindly contributed this reference.



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only undertaken by states or quasi states such as rebel movements. Any increase in the value of these coins is ephemeral. The coins cease to command a premium once they circulate in the open market. The chief advantage of countermarks is that they fulfill their purpose quickly and inexpensively. Coinage that is deficient or obsolete, for example, is normally recalled, melted and re-coined. Countermarks are applied directly to circulating species with a minimum of preparation. This avoids the costs of melting and striking new coins. On this basis, patterns in the record of the countermarks indicate that they addressed a fiscal crisis. The countermarks were employed without consideration of the mint or date of the undertypes. Their impact on circulating species was negligible. Only 1.5 to 3 percent of circulating species carried them. There is, moreover, no evidence of a monetary crisis. Late Umayyad dirhams were renowned for their high standards of fineness and, for this reason, became the prototypes of many later coinages both inside and outside the Muslim world.35 Debased or corrupt dirhams from the late Umayyad period, which might suggest monetary problems, are very rare. As such, the countermarks served a redistributive function. They almost certainly were applied through some coercive measure by anti-Umayyad rebels or landed elites detached from caliphal authority. Money-changers or private bankers would not have played a role. The countermarking can under these circumstances only be tied to the revolt of al-Ḥārith ibn Surayj.36 This revolt originated in Ṭukhāristān and drew significant support from Hephthalite princes and nobility during the 730s CE. Its fleeting success, moreover, created dire fiscal needs that would have lent impetus to this practice.

35 Statements of early Muslim writers have been confirmed by modern metallurgical analysis. See Earle R Caley, “Chemical Composition of some Early Dirhems,” ANSMN VII (1957): 211–18; A. A. Gordus, “Neutron Activation Analysis of Coins and Coin-Streaks.” In Methods of Chemical and Metallurgical Investigation of Ancient Coinage, ed. E. T. Hall and D. M. Metcalf (London: RNS, 1972) [Special Publication no. 8], 136–44; Ibid., “Analysis of Parthian, Sasanian, and Umayyad Silver Coins,” in Near Eastern Numismatics, Iconography, and History: Studies in Honor of George C. Miles. Ed. by D. K. Kouymjian (Beirut: AUB, 1974), 141–62. 36 This rebellion has been treated in H. A. R. Gibb, The Arab Conquests in Central Asia (London: The Royal Asiatic Society, 1923), 76–91; G. R. Hawting, The First Dynasty of Islam. The Umayyad Caliphate AD 661–750 (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987), 86–94, 107–09. M. J. Kister, “Al-Ḥārith b. Surayj,” EI2; M. A. Shaban, The ʿAbbāsid Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 114, 117–39.

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The revolt was, in general, spontaneous and poorly planned. A commander who had distinguished himself fighting against the Turks,37 al-Ḥārith seized Balkh, the chief city of Ṭukhāristān in 734 CE. He then marched with sixty thousand followers on the provincial capital at Merv. The campaign fell apart, however, when he failed to dislodge the governor ʿĀṣim ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Hilālī.38 A new governor, Asad ibn ʿAbd Allāh, reasserted Umayyad control in eastern Khurāsān in 735 CE. He moved the capital to Balkh where he launched a series of campaigns into Khuttal and Badakhshān to the north.39 When the ruler of Khuttal appealed to the Khāqān of the Turgesh, al-Ḥārith and his Hephthalite and Soghdian allies joined forces with him in an invasion of the lands that they had previously controlled. They were repulsed, however, in a surprise attack.40 Asad’s successor, Naṣr ibn Sayyār, maintained the pressure. Although he moved the capital back to Merv41 he launched an attack in 740 CE across the Jaxartes on Shāsh where al-Ḥārith had established a base and forced his deportation to Fārāb.42 Finally, in 744 CE, the caliph Yazīd ibn al-Walīd agreed to pardon al-Ḥārith fearing that he would encourage the Turgesh to launch new incursions.43 He died several years later organizing yet another revolt.44 The main grievances behind al-Ḥārith’s revolt were the military and tax policies of the provincial government. Unpopular military policies had replaced Khurāsān’s independent tribesmen in the capital, Merv, with more loyal forces from Iraq.45 The tribesmen were reassigned to distant outposts. Al-Ḥārith, for example, was sent to al-Nakhūd (Andkhūy) in the district of Gūzgān.46 The policies aimed to check the growing threat of 37 Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, The History of al-Ṭabarī XXV The End of Expansion: The Caliphate of Hishām, A.D. 724–738/A.H. 105–120, trans. by Khalid Yahya Blankenship, ed. Ehasan Yar-shater (Albany: State University Press, 1989), 51, 52. 38 Al-Ṭabarī, XXV, 106–09; Gibb, 76–77; Kister, 223–24; Shaban, 118–21. 39 Al-Ṭabarī, XXV, 111–12; Gibb, 80; Shaban, 121–24. 40 Al-Ṭabarī, XXV, 143–48; Shaban, 124–27.   41 Shaban, 129. 42 Al-Ṭabarī, The History of al-Ṭabarī XXVI. The Waning of the Umayyad Calihate. Prelude to Revolution. A.D. 738–745 / A.H. 121–27, trans. Carole Hilenbrand, ed. Ehasan Yarshater (Albany: State University Press, 1989), XXVI, 25–29, 30–31; Gibb, 90–91. 43 Al-Ṭabarī, XXVI, 235–36, 264–65; Gibb, 93; Shaban, 136. 44 Al-Ṭabarī, The History of al-Ṭabarī XXVII The ʿAbbāsid Revolution, A.D. 743–50/A.H. 126–32, trans. John Alden Williams, ed. Ehasan Yar-shater (Albany: State University Press, 1989), 28–49; Hawting, 107–108. 45 Shaban, 114–18. 46 Ibid., 117.



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the tribesmen. They had grown accustomed to settled life and interfered in the government. They resisted, in particular, efforts to organize new campaigns. Harsh tax policies imposed new taxes and regular tribute on the peoples and principalities under the government’s control. These became especially onerous with the failure of campaigns across the Jaxartes and the suppression of rebellions in Soghdia and Ṭukhāristān. One of the most unpopular measures was the poll tax levied on mawālī, non-Arab converts to Islam. This was normally only required of non-Muslims. The policies aimed to reverse declines in revenue. The failure of the Muslims to make new conquests and to collect regular taxes in the lands they had already conquered had sapped Khurāsān’s remittances to Iraq.47 Al-Ḥārith appealed to broad notions of social justice. Although his sincerity is doubted by some,48 he presented himself as the champion of disaffected Muslims and non-Muslims alike without regard to their tribe or ethnicity. On dirhams struck at Balkh in 734–35 CE (116 H; see catalogue no. 3f ), he inscribed the phrase: Amara Allāh bi-l-ʿadl li-manṣūr, “God commanded justice for one triumphant.”49 He urged reform based on a loosely defined set of Islamic principles. He called on Umayyad governors to return to “the Qurʾān and the Sunna of the Prophet.”50 His revolt lacked a clear political program, though it evolved over time into an attack on the Umayyad caliphate. He reportedly once claimed the caliphate for ­himself.51 The revolt drew support from a wide range of groups. These included Arab tribesmen who chafed at the military reforms and mawālī who resented the discrimination of the tax policies. Both Muḍar and Yamanī Arabs joined his cause, though the Banū Tamīm to whom he belonged proved more loyal.52 Many Soghdian and Hephthalite princes and nobles who had borne the weight of heavy reprisals after earlier failed rebellions and yearned for their lost independence also joined. They drew from the nobility in Ṭukhāristān, Khuttal and Soghdia and the western Turkish Jabghu of Ṭukhāristān.53 47 Gibb, 76–84; Shaban, 114–18, 129–30. 48 Gibb, 78. 49 This dirham and legend has not previously been identified with al-Ḥārith. The location and date, however, are consistent with the sphere of his known activity. 50 Al-Ṭabarī, XXV, 108, 109.   51 Kister, 224.  52 Al-Ṭabarī, XXV, 47, fn. 216, 218; Shaban, 119–20; Hawting, 86. 53 Gibb, 77–78, 83; Shaban, 118–19.

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The revolt posed a serious problem for the Umayyads. Al-Ḥārith’s ability to unite disparate factions, even temporarily, in a province known for unrest raised the specter of even wider rebellion. The initial object of his revolt, the governor ʿĀṣim ibn ʿAbd Allāh, in fact, offered an alliance against the caliph when he learned of his dismissal.54 Moreover, as was evident from the intrusion of the Khāqān, outside forces stood ready to exploit the discontent. The Umayyad governors pursued a policy of reprisal and appeasement. In addition to the campaigns of Asad ibn ʿAbd Allāh and Naṣr ibn Sayyār, the latter governor promised a more equitable tax policy and granted a general amnesty in a famous khuṭba shortly after assuming his office.55 Discrimination against mawālī was abolished. Local notables were offered a greater role in the government. Many features of the dirham countermarks support this historical narrative. The Hephthalite motifs of the iconography agree with what is known of al-Ḥārith’s alliances. When al-Ḥārith marched on Merv, he was accompanied by “some of the dihqāns of al-Jūzjān . . . as well as Tarsul the dihqān of al-Fāryāb, Suhrab, the prince of al-Ṭālaqān, and Qāryāqis the dihqān of Merv, along with their likes.”56 The countermarks probably belong to some of these Hephthalite leaders. The iconography also marks the revolt’s lack of a cohesive ideology. Aside from a common antipathy toward the Umayyad government, the countermark’s motifs have little in common. They share no set of symbols. None allude to al-Ḥārith’s appeal to justice. Al-Ḥārith’s Hephthalite allies probably resorted to countermarking sometime during the period of 734–35 CE. Although modern scholarship has emphasized the role of ethnic and religious divisions, a fiscal crisis probably also have undermined the initial revolt. The siege of Merv in 734, in particular, would have strained the movement’s finances if the numbers of al-Ḥārith’s forces are accurate. Moreover, after this defeat and prior to their expulsion from eastern Khurāsān in 735 CE, al-Ḥārith and his allies lacked funds to defend themselves against the impending Umayyad counterattack of Asad ibn ʿAbd Allāh. The countermarking was, however, almost certainly controversial. It was exactly this sort of tax by Umayyad governors that had incited many of al-Ḥārith’s followers to revolt.

 54 Al-Ṭabarī, XXV, 115. 55 Al-Ṭabarī, XXVI, 129–30. 56 Al-Ṭabarī, XXV, 107–108.



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In the end, the legacy of Al-Ḥārith’s revolt lay not in the countermarks but his appeal to justice. When Abū Muslim raised the banner of the ʿAbbāsid revolution in Khurāsān a few years afterwards, his call to redress longstanding grievances resonated among the local Muslims much as it did under al-Ḥārith. The ʿAbbāsid partisan, however, enjoyed access to greater resources and exercised far more control over his movement than al-Ḥārith. He had prepared his revolt carefully and cultivated a base of support over many years around the veneration of an unnamed member of the prophet’s family. As a result, he was not forced to adopt unpopular measures such as countermarking. Following Ibn Muʿāwiya, he pledged on his earliest coins:57 Qul lā asʾalu-kum ʿalay-hi ajrān illā al-muwaddata fī al-qurbā. Say: I ask of you no recompense for this other than love of kin.

Catalogue (Catalogue nos. refer to the plates) Umayyad Dirhams with Countermarks Type I: Hephthalite 1a. Dastawā 94 Collection of Archer M. Huntington (formed in Spain) = Collection of the Hispanic Society of America = on loan to ANS between 1947 and 2009, 1001.1.14064 = Klat, 126, no. 313, notes (countermark not noted) = Returned to Hispanic Society in 2009. 2.80 g., diam. 25 mm. Hole drilled at center from reverse. Countermark of animal head appears on obverse at 2:00. 1b. Jundī Sābūr 97 Collection of Fāṭima Ismāʿīl = P. Casanova, Inventaire Sommaire de la Collection des Monnaies Musulmanes de S. A. Princesse Ismail (Paris, 1896), 5, no. 126 = Walker, Post-Reform 158, fn 422 = Islamic Museum in Cairo ­(formerly

57 Qurʾān XLII: 23; Carl Wurtzel, “The Coinage of the Revolutionaries in the Late Umayyad Period,” ANSMN 23 (1978): 161–99, see 165.

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Musée de l’Art Arabe), no. 16790 = ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Fahmī, Fajr al-Sikka al-ʿArabīya (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Dār al-Kutub, 1965), 342–43, no. 588 = Klat, 105, no. 245 notes (countermarked not noted). Casanova mistakenly read mint as Sābūr. Countermark of animal head appears on obverse at 6:00. 1c. Marw 100 Lutz Ilisch, Islamic Coins. The Silvio Baldassari Collection. The Umayyad and Abbasid Dynasties. Auction Leu 62 May 18th, 1995 (Zurich: Leu Numismatik Ltd., 1995), 26 no. 196 = Klat, 236, no. 598, notes (countermark noted). Countermark of animal head at 6:00. Ilisch says that countermark resembles Göbl no. 106. 1d. Wāsiṭ 87 Lane Poole, 28, no. 157 (without illustration) = H. Nützel, Königliche Museen zu Berlin. Katalog der Orientalischen Münzen. I. Die Münzen der östlichen Chalifen (Berlin, 1898), 82, no. 418, Pl. IV = Walker, Post-Reform, 192, fn. 529 = Klat, 266, no. 682, notes (Nut 418, countermark not noted). Countermark of animal head on obverse at 9:00. Lane-Poole does not mention the presence of countermark but Walker says that dirham is no. 157 of Guthrie collection. 1e. Wāsiṭ 95 Sotheby’s Auction of Islamic Coins. October 14, 1981. (London: Sotheby’s, 1981), lot 38 = Spink & Sons in November 1981 = ANS 1982.11.1. 2.65 g., diam. 27 mm. Countermark of animal head appears on obverse at 5:00. 1f. Wāsiṭ 97 Collection of Samir Shamma = Klat, 272, no. 692b, notes (SHM 851, countermark noted). Countermark of animal head on obverse at 11:00. Type II: Hephthalite 2a. al-Manādhir 93 Ilisch, Islamic Coins, 26, no. 200 = Klat, 242, no. 617, notes (countermark noted).



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Countermark of tamga on obverse at 1:00. Ilisch identifies it as Göbl #106. 2b. al-Mubāraka 107 Collection of Hamad Bin Abdallah Al-Thani = Klat, 217, no. 570.2 (countermark noted). Use of fī before sanat confirms the date as 107. Issue of 106 omits it. Countermark of tamga on obverse at 1:00. 2c. Sābūr 90 Markov, 3, no. 58 (with illustration of countermark but not coin) = Walker, Post-Reform (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1956), 157, fn. 413 = Klat, 164, no. 421b, notes (countermark not noted). Walker calls countermark “Sasanian.” 2d. Wāsiṭ 95 Private collection, Syria. Countermark of tamga on obverse at 3:00. Reference Coins Muslim Drachms 2e–2f. Merv (MRWWW) 68 ʿAbd Allāh ibn Khāzim Bibliothèque Nationale no. 1974.462, 3:00 die axis, 3.14 g., 33–35 mm. Date is HShTSh. Countermark at 3:00 is Göbl no. 111. A second countermark at 11:00 is indistinct. 3a–3b. Merv (MRWW) 69 ʿAbd Allāh ibn Khāzim Warden-Album collection, 12:00 die axis, 3.15 g., 33–35 mm. Date is NWShST. Countermarks are clockwise from 12:00 Göbl nos. 14, 119, 108?, an uncertain Bactrian countermark, and a variety of Göbl no. 3. 3c–3d. Merv-Rūdh (MRW-RWT) 63 Salm ibn Ziyād Bibliothèque Nationale no. 1970.694, 9:00 die axis, 3.18 g., 31.5–33 mm. Date is SShST. Countermarks are clockwise from 12:00 Göbl nos.: 23, 14 (new variety), 23, and 3.

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Umayyad Dirhams without Countermarks 3e. al-Mubāraka 108 Michel G. Klat, Catalogue of the Post Reform Dirhams. The Umayyad Dynasty (London: Spink & Son LTD, 2002), 8, no. 571.b1 3f. Balkh 116 Ibid., 86, no. 181. In margin is the legend amara Allāh bi-al-ʿadl al-manṣūr, “God commanded justice for one triumphant”. Bibliography Album, S. “An Umayyad Hoard from Afghanistan.” The American Numismatic Society Museum Notes 17 (1971): 241–46. Bacharach, Jere L. and H. A. Awad, “The Problem of the Obverse and the Reverse in Islamic Numismatics.” NC Seventh series VIII (1973): 183–91. Baldwin’s Auctions and Arabian Coins & Medals. Islamic Coin Auction 8 in London. May 5, 2004. Blake, R. P. “The Circulation of Silver in the Moslem East down to the Mongol Epoch.” HJAS 2 (1937): 291–328. Boase, Frederic. Modern English Biography: Containing Many Concise Memoirs of Persons who Have Died Since the Year 1850, with an Index of the Most Interesting Matter. 1892–1921. Reprint. London: Frank Cass & Co., 1965. Caley, Earle R. “Chemical Composition of some Early Dirhems.” ANSMN VII (1957): 211–18. Casanova, P. Inventaire Sommaire de la Collection des Monnaies Musulmanes de S. A. Princesse Ismail. Paris, 1896. Dorn, B. Collections Scientifiques de l’Institut des Langues Orientales du Ministere des Affaires Etrangères II. St. Petersburg, 1877. al-Fahmī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. Fajr al-Sikka al-ʿArabīya. Cairo: Maṭbaʿa Dār al-Kutub, 1965. Fareed, G. S. “The Markings on the Coins of the Sultans of Bengal.” Journal of the Numismatic Society of India 40 (1) (1978): 27–33. Gaube, H. Arabosasanidische Numismatik. Handbücher der mittelasiatischen Numismatik Band II. Brunswick, 1973. Gibb, H. A. R. The Arab Conquests in Central Asia. London: The Royal Asiatic Society, 1923. Göbl, R. Documente zur Geschichte der Iranischen Hunnen in Baktrien und Indien. Volumes I–IV. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1967. Gordus, A. A. “Neutron Activation Analysis of Coins and Coin-Streaks.” In Methods of Chemical and Metallurgical Investigation of Ancient Coinage. Ed. by E. T. Hall and D. M. Metcalf. London: RNS, 1972 [Special Publication no. 8], 127–48. ——. “Analysis of Parthian, Sasanian, and Umayyad Silver Coins.” In Near Eastern Numismatics, Iconography, and History: Studies in Honor of George C. Miles. Ed. by D. K. Kouymjian, 141–62. Beirut: AUB, 1974. Gyselen, Rika. Arab-Sasanian Copper Coinage. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2000. Harmatta, J. and B. A. Litvinsky, “Tokharistān and Gandhara under Western Türk Rule (650–750).” In The History of Civilizations of Central Asia. Vol. III. The Crossroads of



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Civilizations: AD 250 to 750. Ed. B. A. Litvinsky with co-ed. Zhang Guang-da and R. Shabani Samghabadi. Paris: UNESCO Publishing, 2003. Hawting, G. R. The First Dynasty of Islam. The Umayyad Caliphate AD 661–750. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987. Hebert, R. “Notes on an Umayyad Hoard from Khurāsān.” The American Numismatic Society Museum Notes 12 (1966): 157–63. Hodson, Vernon Charles. List of the Officers of the Bengal Army, 1758–1834. London: Constable & Co., 1927–47. Ilisch, Lutz. Islamic Coins. The Silvio Baldassari Collection. The Umayyad and Abbasid Dynasties. Auction Leu 62 May 18th, 1995. Zurich: Leu Numismatik Ltd., 1995. Kay, Sir John. History of the War in Afghanistan. London: R. Bentley, 1857–58. Klat, Michel G. Catalogue of the Post Reform Dirhams. The Umayyad Dynasty. London: Spink & Son LTD, 2002. Lane-Poole, Stanley. Catalogue of the Collection of Oriental Coins belonging to Col. C. Seton Guthrie, R.E. Fasciculus I Coins of the Amawī Khalīfehs. Hertford: Stephen Austin and Sons, 1874. Markov, A. K. Inventarniy Katalog musulmanskikh Monet imperatorskago Ermitazha. St. Petersburg, 1896–98. Nützel, H. Königliche Museen zu Berlin. Katalog der Orientalischen Münzen. I. Die Münzen der östlichen Chalifen. Berlin, 1898. Polyani, Karl, Conrad M. Arensberg and Harry W. Pearson, Trade and Market in the Early Empires. Economies in History and Theory. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1957. Rossabi, Morris. “A Translation of Ch’en Ch’eng’s Hsi-Yü Fan-kuo chih.” Ming Studies: 17 (1983): 51. Sears, Stuart D. “A Late Umayyad Hoard from Nippur.” The Numismatic Chronicle 154 (1994): 133–46. ——. “The Attribution of the Mint of al-Mubāraka to Balkh.” The American Journal of Numismatics 23 (2012): forthcoming. Shaban, M. A. The ʿAbbāsid Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. Sotheby’s Auction of Islamic Coins. October 14, 1981. London: Sotheby’s, 1981. Spink & Sons Numismatic LTD. Auction. November 1981. le Strange, Guy. The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate. 1905. Reprint. New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1966. al-Ṭabarī, Muḥammad ibn Jarīr. The History of al-Ṭabarī XXV. The End of Expansion: The Caliphate of Hishām, A.D. 724–738/A.H. 105–120. Trans. by Khalid Yahya Blankenship. Bibliotheca Persica. Ed. Ehasan Yar-shater. Albany: State University Press, 1989. ——. The History of al-Ṭabarī XXVI. The Waning of the Umayyad Calihate. Prelude to Revolution. A D. 738–745/A.H. 121–27. Trans. By Carole Hilenbrand. Bibliotheca Persica. Ed. Ehasan Yar-shater. Albany: State University Press, 1989. ——. The History of al-Ṭabarī XXVII The ʿAbbāsid Revolution, A.D. 743–50 / A.H. 126–32. Trans. by John Alden Williams, Bibliotheca Persica. Ed. Ehasan Yar-shater. Albany: State University Press, 1989. Walker, John. A Catalogue of the Arab-Byzantine and Post-Reform Umaiyad Coins. London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1956. Wurtzel, Carl “The Coinage of the Revolutionaries in the Late Umayyad Period.” ANSMN 23 (1978): 161–99.

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Plate 1 Countermarked Umayyad dirhams, Type I



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Plate 2 Countermarked Umayyad dirhams, Type II (2a–d); Countermarked Muslim drachm (2e–2f)

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Plate 3 Countermarked Muslim drachms (3a–3d); Unmarked dirhams (3e–3f )



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The Riddle of Early Islamic Ascalon: Where is it and What does Coptic Glazed Ware Tell Us About it? Tracy Hoffman Since 1985 the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon has excavated the ancient site of Ascalon, a port city on the southern coast of Israel.1 Ascalon (Heb. Ashqelon, Gr. Askalon, Ascalon, Ar. ʿAsqalān) is most well known as one of the five Philistine capitals, and the Bronze and Iron Age settlements have long been the focus of research and excavation. Throughout its history Ascalon survived and even thrived through the vicissitudes of being an entrepot strategically and economically positioned between Egypt and the Near East (see Fig. 1). Nebuchadnezzer destroyed the city in 604 BCE and within a century the city was once again settled and prospering under Persian rule. Cleopatra VII fled to the city in the first century BCE during unrest in Egypt and years later the city still minted coins in her honor. Herod the Great is credited with an ambitious building program that added public buildings, fountains and colonnaded streets to the cityscape in the first century BCE and Ascalon achieved free status in the Roman Empire during the first century CE. During the Byzantine period the city had a well-established Christian population that supported a number of active churches and it was renowned for the wine that came from the region. And in the often-overlooked Islamic period, the subject of this paper, Ascalon was an important regional center fully incorporated into Mediterranean trade networks. It was also a valuable fortified port within the expanding Islamic Empire. During the Islamic period Ascalon more than lived up to the sobriquet ʿArūs al-Shām (“The Bride of Syria”), bestowed on it by the Prophet Muhammad himself, before being finally and irrevocably destroyed by the Mamluks in 1270.2

 1 I am grateful to Professor Lawrence Stager of Harvard University and current codirector Professor Daniel Master of Wheaton College for the opportunity to study and publish the Islamic and Crusader periods at Ascalon. A comprehensive study of the late periods at Ascalon is forthcoming and will include a more detailed analysis of the material presented in this article. 2 Guy Le Strange, Palestine Under the Moslems: A Description of Syria and the Holy Land from AD 650 to 1500 (Beirut: Khayats, 1965), 402.

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tracy hoffman Islamic Ascalon: A Historical Sketch

The general outline of the history of Ascalon in the Islamic period is well documented even as it remains elusive in the archaeological record. There are still many details to be filled in particularly in the early Islamic period during the first formative century of Islamic rule. Sources record that Ascalon was the last city in Palestine to surrender, which it did, on terms (ṣulḥan), to Muʿāwiya in 640 CE. The following decades were tumultuous and it is possible that for a brief time the Byzantine Empire retook Ascalon, perhaps even destroying it and dispersing the population, before Islamic rule was firmly consolidated again under Muʿāwiya. Ascalon had a special status, as did other settlements along the coast, as a fortified outpost on a hostile border, the Byzantine-controlled Mediterranean Sea, and as such received a great deal of attention from the ruling authorities. Ascalon’s fortifications were rebuilt and strengthened in the late seventh century. Muʿāwiya and later ʿAbd al-Malik both made land grants to soldiers who settled in Ascalon recognizing the strategic importance of a city that was situated in along major trade routes and positioned to control access to and from Egypt. Already in the early Islamic period the city had an economic presence in Mediterranean trade networks highlighted by increasingly close ties to Egypt.3 By 712, Ascalon had a mint that issued post-reform copper coins with a shahāda and an inscription that read, “Struck in Filasṭīn ʿAsqalān.”4 And an inscription found and published by Clermont-Ganneau in the late nineteenth century records the construction of a mosque and a minaret in 772.5 Less is known about Ascalon from textual sources in the ninth century although there is a sense that it, along with other coastal settlements, 3 According to some sources the agricultural fertility of the region around Ascalon so impressed Muʿāwiya that he dispatched one of his aides to purchase some land for him. Moshe Sharon, Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum Palaestinae (CIAP) Volume One -A(Leiden: Brill, 1997), 132. 4 Moshe Sharon, Egyptian Caliph and English Baron: The Story of an Arabic Inscription from Ashkelon (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1994), 17. 5 There is still a debate about who built the mosque. The inscription reads, “. . . has ordered the establishment of this minaret and mosque al-Mahdī, amīr al-muʾminīn . . .” which has led some scholars to attribute the construction of the mosque to al-Mahdī. As Clermont-Ganneau correctly noted, a point echoed more recently by Moshe Sharon, al-Mahdī would carry the title amīr al-muʾminīn only after the death of his father, al-Manṣūr. Sharon argues that al-Manṣūr must have built the mosque and that amīr al-muʾminīn in this case must be understood not as a regnal title for al-Mahdī but rather as a messianic title used by al-Manṣūr. Moshe Sharon, Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicarum Palaestinae, 144–47.



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may have fared better than more inland sites after the ʿAbbāsids shifted their court further to the east. Later, its proximity to Egypt as the southernmost fortified port in Palestine, however limited or basic the docking facilities may have been by this point, undoubtedly allowed the city to continue to thrive in the late ninth century when Ascalon came under the control of the Ṭūlūnids. By then Ascalon had a well-established, diverse population with Christian, Jewish and Muslim residents all attested to in the source material. There were signs of tensions, however, and in the early tenth century the Church of St. Mary of the Green was destroyed, it is said, with the help of Ascalon’s Jewish population.6 The Fāṭimids annexed Syria and Palestine in 969 and Ascalon remained under their control until the city fell to the Crusaders in 1153. A great deal is known about Ascalon in this period from documents found in the Cairo Geniza which reveal not only fascinating, often salacious details about residents, such as their propensity for red cloth, but also the length of time it took a letter to go from Fusṭāṭ in Egypt to Ascalon and when it was possible to sail to the city.7 Writing in the late tenth century the great geographer al-Muqaddasī noted that Ascalon was “strongly garrisoned . . . spacious, opulent, healthy and well fortified.” He praised the city for its plentiful fruit and noted that the city’s silkworms were renowned, “. . . that its wares are excellent, and life there is pleasant.” Al-Muqaddasī also mentioned that Ascalon’s Great Mosque stood in the market of the clothes-merchants and he described it as being paved in marble. He further noted that the markets were “thronged.” His only complaints were about the city’s unsafe harbor, brackish waters and the pesky sand flies.8 The city’s mosque, markets and fortifications feature prominently in the descriptions of later visitors including Nāṣir-i Khusraw in 1047 and al-Idrisi almost a century later in 1154.9 The arrival of the Crusaders and the fall of Jerusalem in the late eleventh century had a significant impact on Ascalon which became a coveted holding. Although a major battle was fought outside the city in 1100, it was not captured and in the early twelfth

6 Moshe Gil, A History of Palestine 634–1099 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 324. 7 The most comprehensive treatment of the Cairo Geniza remains S. D. Goitein’s monumental six volume work, A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 6 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967–1993). Ascalon is mentioned frequently in both Volume 1: Economic Foundations and Volume 4: Daily Life. 8 Le Strange, Palestine, 401. 9 Le Strange, Palestine, 401.

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century the population swelled as Ascalon, ultimately the last remaining Fāṭimid stronghold along the coast, absorbed refugees fleeing from the Crusader armies. During this period the city had a mint that continued to issue coins and sources reveal that even in the midst of the turmoil of near constant warfare segments of the population continued to prosper, their wealth intact.10 A monumental imperial Fāṭimid inscription found in 2003 commemorates the construction of a tower in 1150 in an effort to strengthen Ascalon’s fortification system as the Fāṭimids anticipated an attack by the Crusaders. That attack came three years later and after a lengthy siege the Crusaders captured the city.11 Saladin retook the city in 1187 and held it until 1191, when he destroyed the city ahead of Richard the Lionheart who promptly spent four months refortifying it when he reached the city. As part of his treaty negotiations, Richard was nevertheless obliged destroy the fortifications he had worked on so diligently before leaving to return to England. Around 1240, Richard, earl of Cornwall arrived in Ascalon while on crusade and built a fortress that he occupied for four years.12 Once he abandoned the fortress the city was left largely uninhabited and in 1270 the Mamluks demolished the city a final time and the ancient city was never reoccupied. Visiting the site of Ascalon in 1355, Ibn Baṭṭūṭa noted that it was a complete ruin though at one time the city had been beautiful.13 The Mystery of the Archaeological Record The excavation of Ascalon continues to fill in the blanks making significant contributions to what is known about the city in the Islamic period (see Fig. 2). The city’s wealth, involvement in trade, strategic importance and cosmopolitan population are readily displayed in the material culture 10 Gil, A History of Palestine 634–1099, 196 and 258.  11 It was at this time that William of Tyre wrote his well-known description of Ascalon’s fortification and gate systems. See, Denys Pringle, “King Richard I and the Walls of Ascalon,” PEQ 116 (1984): 135–36. 12 Accompanying Richard, earl of Cornwall, on crusade was a knight named Sir Hugh Wake who carved his shields over the earlier Fatimid imperial inscription. Those shields are the best evidence archaeologists have right now for a Crusader presence in Ascalon in the mid-thirteenth century. The Fatimid inscription and Crusader shields have been studied and published by Moshe Sharon. For the most comprehensive publication see, Sharon, Egyptian Caliph and English Baron. 13 Le Strange, Palestine, 402. He also mentioned two mosques; the first, a mosque built by a Fāṭimid caliph which, Ibn Baṭṭūṭa wrote, once held the head of Ḥusayn and the second, the Mosque of ʿUmar.



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record of Ascalon. It is not, however, the architecture of Islamic Ascalon that proves to be the most revealing. The architecture, indeed the urban plan, of the Islamic period city is largely missing. Over the course of 25 years, excavation work has uncovered no evidence of a mosque, palace or dār al-imāra, sūqs or ḥammām. It is, rather, the ceramic corpus that offers a simultaneously frustrating and ultimately intriguing glimpse into the archaeology and history of this important medieval city. Ascalon is a semi-circle with its flat edge against the Mediterranean Sea on the southern coast of Israel and today the arc of the medieval fortifications towers over the modern city of Ashkelon.14 Within the fortifications the topography of the site is quite varied with two mounds, designated the North Tell and the South Tell, separated and surrounded by more low-lying terrain. Previous work at Ascalon in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries focused on areas near the city center just inside the city’s east or Jerusalem Gate, and near the presumed crossing of the classical city’s cardo and decumanus. Unsurprisingly, excavation in the city center uncovered monumental public buildings dating to the Roman period and, according to one excavator, evidence for at least one of the city’s mosques.15 Since 1985 excavation by the Leon Levy Expedition has centered on the northern slopes and summits of both the South Tell and North Tell where it was believed excavators would have the best opportunity to bypass monumental buildings of the Roman, Byzantine and Islamic periods in the search for the earlier Bronze and Iron Age settlements. Unsurprisingly, however, remains of the Islamic period were found in all areas of excavation. During the first few seasons of excavation several site-wide patterns emerged which largely define the material record of the Islamic period city.

14 Recent excavation in 2008 has shown that the medieval fortifications on the eastern side of the city actually sit on top of MB II mudbrick ramparts. This differs from the fortifications lying just to the west of the main entrance into the site where, near a fallen tower there is a large section of stone talis which dates to the Fāṭimid/Crusader period. At least one scholar has suggested the stone talis is part of the fortress built by Richard, earl of Cornwall in the mid-13th century. See, Pringle, “King Richard I and the Walls of Ascalon.” 15 Lady Hester Stanhope excavated in Ascalon in 1815 and found a basilica as well as a statue of a cuirassed soldier. The exact location of her excavation remains unknown but it is thought to be near the city center. See, Lawrence Stager, Ashkelon Discovered: From Canaanites and Philistines to Romans and Moslems (Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1991), 45. John Garstang excavated Ascalon’s city center in the 1920s and published his results in PEQ. Garstang claimed he found the city mosque but offered few details. See, John Garstang, “The Excavations at Askalon,” PEQ 54 (1922): 115.

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First, just under topsoil excavators found large debris fields full of rubble and architectural fragments, from roof and floor tiles to mosaic fragments, painted plaster and worked stone, in every area they investigated. Those debris fields in turn overlay numerous robber trenches, which revealed the systematic and widespread search for stone throughout the city. Those robbing programs, which dated primarily to the twelfth century, dismantled entire buildings from the Roman, Byzantine, and perhaps even the early Islamic periods leaving, in many areas of the city, only impressions of the earlier settlements. The second pattern that emerged was the dichotomy between the apparent wealth of the Islamic period city suggested by the material culture finds and the relative poverty of the architectural remains of the medieval city. This pattern is most visible in a large courtyard house excavated just to the west of Ascalon’s city center. From within the house, both on living surfaces and in debris layers, excavators collected a wide array of imported glazed ceramics, coming from as far away as North Africa and China, as well as other small finds such as a luxurious gold collar dated to the eleventh century.16 The house itself, which is of good quality, was not an original construction although it was located in a clearly prestigious location near the city center. Sometime in the Islamic period, perhaps as early as the ninth century, a large, Byzantine period building underwent significant renovations that completely remade the interior in a process that involved the construction of new walls, the reuse of existing walls and the use of old floors as substructure for new mosaic, plaster and paved floors. The result of the renovation was pairs of rooms flanking two sides of a paved courtyard that had a pool and an elaborate drainage system. The interior was surprisingly luxurious for all that the owner reused an existing building. The house, which holds the best occupational sequence for Islamic-period Ascalon, is not quite as impressive as what came from within it but it does offer some clues into the nature of settlement in the Islamic period. Most importantly, while excavation uncovered numerous buildings, such as this house, that were renovated and occupied in the ʿAbbāsid and Fāṭimid periods, there was not one single building whose construction could be dated to the ninth through eleventh centuries.

16 Miriam Rosen-Ayalon, “The Islamic Jewellery from Ashkelon,” in Jewellery and Goldsmithing in the Islamic World: International Symposium, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem 1987, ed. N. Rosh ( Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1987), 9–19.



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The absence of new construction in the Islamic period was startling but even more so was the near total absence of evidence for the first century of Islamic rule in Ascalon, the third site-wide pattern identified during excavation. This is not entirely surprising since the excavation of Ascalon did not aim to uncover the Islamic period city, but it does require some explanation. The missing seventh century is not unique to Ascalon and it is a question many sites must answer. According to Walmsley, “For almost two generations after the Islamic expansion the objects that were produced, traded and used in Syria-Palestine displayed very little variation from those in use in the decades before the arrival of Islam. Indeed, the seventh century stands out as one of the more conservative periods in the cultural record of late antique and early Islamic Syria-Palestine . . . By comparison, the cultural setting of the eighth and ninth centuries is much better understood due to the appearance and preservation of monumental architecture, more extensive archaeological discoveries at sites and, unlike the seventh century, very rapid change in all classes of material culture.”17 Why is the early Islamic period missing from the archaeological record of Ascalon? Although it is possible the early Islamic city simply hasn’t been found such an answer is hardly satisfying albeit ultimately, perhaps, the correct one. Perhaps the better question is, why hasn’t the early Islamic city been found and can anything be said about the seventh century? After the conquest two main urban patterns predominate; the continued use of existing settlements and the construction of new cities often adjacent to established cities. It seems unlikely that at Ascalon, a fortified port along a hostile border with the Byzantine Empire, the authorities would take the time to build a new city. The sources are in agreement that efforts were made to strengthen the city’s fortifications and to encourage settlement in and around the city. The best available evidence suggests that the early Islamic settlement should be found within the confines of the existing fortification system and there is nothing to suggest an extramural site although it cannot be entirely ruled out either based on the existing archaeological record. If then Ascalon was an existing city that continued to be used, evidence for the early Islamic city should be found within the fortifications. But this evidence may be inherently difficult to find for a number of reasons. The

17 Alan Walmsley, Early Islamic Syria: An Archaeological Assessment (London: Duckworth, 2007), 48–49.

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most basic explanation is that the right areas have not been investigated. There are two prevailing theories about patterns of urban development within cities in the early Islamic period, which suggest where key institutions should be located. Donald Whitcomb argues that the expansion of the Islamic Empire out of the Arabian Peninsula brought with it an ideal for urbanism that organized key institutions and buildings in specific locations.18 The schema he identified includes city gates from which axial streets lead into the city center, which is often where the mosque was built, placing it in a prominent location. The palace or dār al-imāra would be located near the mosque, often just to the north, to allow easy access to the central place of worship. The bath-house or ḥammām was usually located further to the north and, Whitcomb argues, residential areas were concentrated in the western regions of cities. This was the case at Ayla and a number of additional sites.19 At Ascalon, this theory can neither be proven nor disproven since with the exception of the city center the areas where Whitcomb locates key institutions have not been excavated. Alan Walmsley, in comparison, does not see the wholesale importation of a new urban model displacing the earlier Byzantine period urban model but rather the adaptation of and respect for existing urban models coexisting with the incorporation of new components into the built environment in the early Islamic period. One such example is the site of Jarash in Jordan where the city center underwent some significant changes with the construction of a new mosque built over a one-time bathhouse that had previously been converted to industrial use.20 In this case Walmsley argues the mosque, located near the South Tetrakonia piazza, which marked the intersection of the cardo with the decumanus, was built in such a way that it did not infringe on the cardo, which continued to be used in the early Islamic period. In order to face Mecca as all mosques must do, the building was offset creating an eyesore which the builders further camouflaged with the construction of a new row of shops between

18 Donald Whitcomb, “An Urban Structure for the Early Islamic City: An archaeological hypothesis,” in Cities in the Pre-Modern Islamic World: The urban impact of religion, state and society, ed. Amira K. Bennison and Alison L. Gascoigne (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 15–26. 19 Interestingly, Ascalon’s residential areas as they have been identified lie in the western half of the city. Whether or not this can be taken as confirmation of Whitcomb’s model remains to be seen and will require further excavation to uncover the city’s urban plan. 20 For more on the Jarash mosque see, Alan Walmsley and Kristoffer Damgaard, “The Umayyad congregational mosque of Jarash in Jordan and its relationship to early mosques,” Antiquity 79 (2005): 362–78.



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the mosque and the street thereby maintaining the aesthetic ideal of the existing urban plan.21 The two models are in agreement on one aspect of early Islamic period cities: necessary public buildings were constructed in prominent places, perhaps determined by a pre-existing ideal or by topographic requirements, often replacing public structures from the preceding Byzantine and Roman periods. To some degree even Whitcomb’s model, if applied to an existing city, allows for continuity while Walmsley clearly argues for it and therein lies a clue to understanding and locating early Islamic Ascalon. The key institutions of Islamic period Ascalon should be near the city center which today is largely under the main parking lot and kiosks of the national park that encompasses the ancient site. Garstang and more recently the Leon Levy Expedition have excavated near the city center and found no evidence of monumental Islamic period public buildings.22 Even knowing where the institutions should be has not furthered what is known about the seventh century because the areas which need to be investigated are largely inaccessible, thereby limiting the amount of work that can be done, and what work has been done has produced little evidence for monumental public buildings. As with Whitcomb’s theory it is currently impossible to draw conclusions about Ascalon’s city center in the Islamic period and the placement of key public institutions since to date, excavation results near the city center have been disappointing. The Ceramic Evidence Public buildings are not the only way to identify and investigate the Islamic period city, however, although in their absence there are other factors that may make it difficult to identify and characterize the first century of Islamic rule in Ascalon as revealed in the archaeological record. Those factors are the continuity in the urban plan of a densely built environment such as Ascalon and the distinction between dynastic change and cultural 21 Walmsley, Early Islamic Syria, 84–86. 22 In 2008 the Leon Levy Expedition reopened the area first excavated by John Garstang in order to assess his work, clarify the relationships between the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine period buildings he identified and to assess whether the material remains warranted reconstruction and development. This new excavation has uncovered Byzantine period reuse of an earlier Roman public building as well as two separate phases of occupation in the Islamic period. The Islamic period occupation is domestic in nature, however, and Garstang’s assertion that he found the city’s mosque is unsustainable. From unpublished reports.

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change, which do not occur simultaneously. The surrender of the city in 640 is not visible in the archaeological record at Ascalon but then neither is the conquest or capitulation of any other site in Palestine.23 Changes in the residential architecture of Ascalon, which amount to Islamic period renovations of Byzantine period buildings, date to the ninth century and later. And while residential architecture can be used to study Islamic period cities the structures at Ascalon all post-date the seventh century and are, therefore, not informative about the earliest decades of Islamic rule. The archaeological evidence points to continuity in the urban plan of the city and it seems clear the Byzantine city served as the urban structure for the earliest decades, and perhaps longer, of Islamic settlement in the city. But then what was the urban plan of Byzantine Ascalon and what might it reveal about the early Islamic period? The status of Ascalon in the sixth and early seventh centuries is unclear and it is yet to be determined whether the city was thriving, stable or in decline. There are, nonetheless, some clues about its urban structure. A sixth century text known as On the Laws or Customs of Palestine details the range of crafts, industries and services not to mention the types of housing found in Ascalon as well as the importance of public art and park space in the Late Roman period.24 The text describes a city with a dense built environment as well as open spaces to be enjoyed by all of the city’s residents and clearly reflects a continuing concern with classical urban ideals. The sixth century Madaba Map depicts Ascalon as a clearly recognizable fortified classical city with colonnaded streets, multi-story houses and a building thought to be the city’s cathedral church.25 Is this same image relevant for Ascalon in the seventh and eighth centuries? The new

23 Caesarea, the regional capital, was the only city to resist and in so doing suffer damage when it was finally captured during the conquest of Palestine. The excavators of Caesarea once thought they could identify the conquest in the archaeological record but a reassessment of the material culture record proved they were wrong. Kenneth G. Holum, “Archaeological Evidence for the Fall of Byzantine Caesarea,” BASOR 286 (1992): 73–85. 24 For an overview of this text see Besim Hakim, “Julian of Ascalon’s Treatise of Construction and Design Rules from Sixth-Century Palestine,” JSAH 60 (2001): 4–25. Interestingly, the text does not deal at all with public architecture perhaps because there was no perceived need to treat such material. 25 M. Piccirillo, The Madaba Map Centenary 1897–1997: Travelling Through the Byzantine Umayyad Period (Jerusalem: Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, 1999). Lawrence Stager has suggested that the depiction of the city in the Madaba Map relied on standard symbols such as the multistoried buildings to represent Ascalon in a stylized image. See, Stager, Ashkelon Discovered, 43. Recently, however, G. W. Bowersock has convincingly argued that these mosaic depictions were highly accurate, noting that excavation has uncovered buildings depicted in cityscapes included in the mosaic in the Church of St. Stephan in Umm



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mosque in Jarash was not built until the second quarter of the eighth century indicating, if Walmsley is correct, the longevity of the Byzantine period urban plan until well after the Islamic conquest in Jarash and it is certainly possible that Ascalon followed a similar pattern.26 If the architecture and urban plan don’t reveal much about early Islamic Ascalon perhaps the pots and pans will be more informative. Continuity also figures prominently in the material culture record where cultural change, such as the introduction of new types of bowls with new decorative motifs, occurs long after dynastic change but is there a possibility it might be more revealing? For instance, the Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik’s reform of the coinage provides a valuable indicator for the late seventh century and a distinct break with previous monetary traditions. When early post-reform coins are found they are invaluable to establishing chronology and exploring the question of cultural change but no such coins have been found at Ascalon and the ceramic corpus remains the best opportunity to identify the earliest century of Islamic rule. This is not without difficulties, however, as many Byzantine period forms continued to be used well into the eighth century with little to no modification. In fact the Gaza jar, once believed to disappear in the sixth century, continues to be in use in Ascalon and other sites in Palestine including Caesarea well into the eighth century.27 While the ceramics of the Umayyad period are largely forms which continue from the Byzantine period the same cannot be said for the ʿAbbāsid period when change in the ceramic corpus is rapid and quite distinct. It is during the eighth century that the great ceramic innovation of the Islamic period, glazed pottery, first appears. Glazed ceramics were not invented in the Islamic period but the range of technological innovations and decorative techniques far exceeded anything seen before as did the wide distribution of a great array of types and forms. The glazing of pottery was quite ar-Rasas, Jordan. G. W. Bowersock, Mosaics as History: The Near East from Late Antiquity to Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006). 26 Ascalon is also depicted in the 8th century mosaic found in the Church of St. Stephan in Umm er-Rasas, Jordan. Scholars believe that the mosaic probably served as a guidebook for Christian pilgrims visiting sites in the Levant. Ascalon is depicted with the viewer standing outside of the city looking west over the Jerusalem Gate into the city. The fortifications are shown as are multi-story buildings and the city’s cathedral church in the center of the image. The image certainly suggests the continuity of the Byzantine urban plan well into the Islamic period. 27 The Gaza Jar is Arnon’s Type 813. For a description see, Yael D. Arnon, Caesarea Maritima, the Late Periods (700–1291 CE). BAR International Series 1771 (Oxford: Archaeopress 2008), 31 and 80.

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common in the Islamic period and while glazed vessels were always a luxury item, generally making up no more than 10% of any given ceramic corpus, they were widely available throughout the Islamic Empire and as such serve as valuable markers of the Islamic period. As an art historical discipline the study of Islamic period ceramics focused on art worthy pieces divorced from their contexts which often placed a premium on the aesthetic value of a piece over its historical value. In fact, Oliver Watson argues that traditional approaches to Islamic ceramics identified centers of production for the most important wares and then imitations, implicitly inferior, made elsewhere. That focus, he argues, has obscured what is most interesting about Islamic period glazed wares, “. . . the rapid spread . . . of ceramic technologies and styles of decoration, not only within countries, but throughout the Islamic empire, leading to the distribution of ‘families’ and ‘extended families’ of wares, made at numerous sites.”28 That focus often ignored regional variations that did not achieve the wide geographic distribution of some of the greatest Islamic period ceramics such as lustre ware and Iznik ware. That may well be the case with Coptic Glazed ware, the first glazed ceramic type to appear in Ascalon and at many sites in Palestine. It is taking archaeological excavation to better understand this key indicator of the late eighth century. Archaeologically two sites dominant the landscape of early Islamic period ceramics; Sāmarrāʾ and Fusṭāṭ. Whether glazed ceramics first appeared in Iraq, Egypt or simultaneously is still debated but there is little question these two cities and their ceramic traditions greatly influenced traditions in their immediate surroundings and much further afield. At Ascalon glazed ceramics first appear in the late eighth century with the arrival of Coptic Glazed ware, which derived from the tradition of Coptic Painted ware. Coptic Glazed ware is a lead-glazed ceramic first identified by the Polish Mission during the excavation of Kom el-Dikka in Alexandria, Egypt.29 The significance of the ceramic was quickly recognized by M. Rodziewicz when it was found in debris overlaying houses dating to the sixth and seventh centuries and in association with coins dating just

28 Oliver Watson, Ceramics from Islamic Lands (New York: Thames and Hudson, 2004), 35. 29 Although Rodziewicz did not publish a comprehensive treatment of Coptic Glazed ware the type is treated in a number of his publications. M. Rodziewicz, “La céramique émailée copte de Kom el Dikka,” Études et Traveaux 10 (1978): 337–45 and “Egyptian glazed pottery of the eighth to ninth centuries,” Bulletin de la société d’archéologie copte 25 (1983): 73–75.



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after the monetary reforms in 695 CE which gave Coptic Glazed ware a very early date.30 While Rodziewicz commented on the possible influence of Coptic painted wares on the decorative schemes found on Coptic Glazed ware vessels it is the forms, Donald Whitcomb argues, which most clearly suggest continuity from earlier Egyptian ceramic traditions.31 The characteristic forms that distinguish Coptic Glazed ware include the straight and slightly incurving profile of the bowl rim, a sharp carination in the wall above the base and the flat base.32 The ware is also distinguished by its light orange-pink ware which sets it apart from the slightly later cream wares which quickly gained popularity (see Fig. 3).33 In Egypt Coptic Glazed ware is found at a number of sites including Alexandria and Fusṭāṭ where it is dated to the early eighth century. Its spread, primarily to the Hijaz and Palestine, is dated to the late eighth century. At Ayla in Jordan, layers containing Coptic Glazed ware were preceded by layers that contained only unglazed late Byzantine types of the sixth and seventh centuries.34 The Ayla collection, one of the largest Coptic Glazed ware corpora outside of Egypt, closely parallels the material from Alexandria and confirms the eighth century date for this earliest of Islamic period glazed wares.35 Coptic Glazed ware is found at a number of sites in Israel. Miriam Avissar has published a small collection from Tel Yoqne’am which closely

30 Rodziewicz’s discovery of Coptic Glazed ware, which was clearly related to the forms and decorative schemes of the earlier Coptic Painted ware, in 8th century contexts led him to conclude that the technique of glazing ceramics was not imported into Egypt during the 9th century as was commonly assumed about the ceramics found in Fusṭāṭ. In his article on Coptic Glazed ware Whitcomb notes that the earliest glazed wares found at Sāmarrāʾ, white glazed wares and blue-green barbotine storage jars, commonly known as “SasanianIslamic ware” are not found in early contexts at either Alexandria or ʿAqaba strongly suggesting independent origins for some of these early Islamic period glazed wares. In other words, both Sāmarrāʾ and Fusṭāṭ could be independent sources for early Islamic period glazed wares. Donald Whitcomb, “Coptic Glazed Ceramics from the Excavations at Aqaba, Jordan,” JARCE 26 (1989): 180–81. 31 Whitcomb, “Coptic Glazed Ceramics,” 168. 32 Whitcomb, “Coptic Glazed Ceramics,” 168–69. 33 Donald Whitcomb, “Glazed Ceramics of the Abbasid Period from the Aqaba Excavations,” Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society 55 (1990–1991): 53. 34 Whitcomb, “Coptic Glazed Ceramics,” 171. 35 According to Whitcomb the forms of Coptic Glazed ware found at ʿAqaba were most commonly bowls with straight or slightly incurving sides, carinated and flat bottomed which corresponded to examples from Alexandria. Whitcomb, “Coptic Glazed Ceramics,” 171.

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parallels the Alexandria and Ayla material.36 At Tiberias David Stacey identified only two pieces of Coptic Glazed ware but noted that another type found in greater quantity, matte-glazed ware, was clearly imitating Coptic Glazed ware. He dated both wares to the late eighth century.37 Coptic Glazed ware is well represented at Caesarea where Arnon dates the ware to the late eighth century and agrees with an Egyptian origin for the ceramic.38 Ascalon has a large collection of Coptic Glazed ware that closely parallels the corpora from Ayla, Caesarea and Kom el-Dikka. As at Ayla the most common forms in Ascalon are bowls with straight or slightly incurved walls and flat bases. The fabric is typically peach or pink and usually has many inclusions.39 The vessels often have slip on both the exterior and interior of the bowls sometimes but not always covering the entire vessel. Often, the glazed decoration is applied directly over the fabric of the vessel without any slip being applied and the most common colors of glaze are yellow, green and brown. The decorative scheme is similar to that of the corpora from other sites. Yellow or green glaze are employed most commonly as a background color with bands of brown and whichever color is not the background employed in the decoration of the vessel. Sometimes the glaze appears almost mottled, which can be the fabric showing through, while in many examples the glazing is quite precise and well done. Typical patterns include a band of green glaze running just under the rim around the well of the vessel and a dominant background color over which splashes of another color are overlaid. Unlike the collection from Kom el-Dikka none of the Coptic Glazed ware from Ascalon is figurative although at least two unpublished examples have

36 A. Ben-Tor, M. Avissar, and Y. Portugali, Yoqne’am I: The Late Periods ( Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1996). Coptic Glazed ware is Avissar’s Type 1. See Fig XIII.I: 1–3. 37 David Stacey, Excavations at Tiberias, 1973–1974: The Early Islamic Periods ( Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2004), 104–105. Photographs of the two types are in Color Plate 1, p. 107. 38 Arnon, Caesarea Maritima, the Late Periods. Coptic Glazed ware is Type 221. The description of the ware is on p. 35 and color photographs in Pl. X. Line drawings and descriptions are on pages 108–13. 39 At ʿAqaba the fabric for Coptic Glazed ware is most commonly described as orange and light-buff orange. See Whitcomb, “Coptic Glazed Ceramics,” 177 and 179. See also, Whitcomb, “Glazed Ceramics of the Abbasid Period,” 57. This differs from Caesarea where the fabric of the Coptic Glazed ware is characterized as pink. See Arnon, Caesarea Maritima, 108. The examples from Ascalon presented here seem to more closely resemble the Caesarea corpus.



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vegetal ­images.40 The examples published in this paper are the most common types of Coptic Glazed ware found in Ascalon. Each one shown is represented by multiple similar pieces from different locations in the site suggesting Coptic Glazed ware was common and perhaps quite popular. The presence of Coptic Glazed ware at Ascalon clearly identifies the spread of cultural change in the early Islamic period, seemingly indicates that Muslims or at a minimum Ascalonites with ties to Egypt, were living and presumably trading with lands to the west. Much more cannot be said because the pieces presented in this paper, as well as those not included, come from fill layers, pits and robber trenches excavated on both the North and South Tells. These are not considered good contexts, i.e. living surfaces or sealed contexts which can be securely dated, and it is impossible to say when exactly the ceramics recovered from such layers were actually in use. It is equally difficult to assess who may have been using them. At best, the Coptic Glazed ware found at Ascalon can be assigned a general late eighth century date.41 And while the presence of Coptic Glazed ware suggests many things because it was not found in primary contexts it ultimately does not help to identify specific settlement patterns in early Islamic Ascalon generally and the seventh century specifically. The introduction of Coptic Glazed ware into the ceramic corpus of Ascalon marks not just the initial wave of a great technological innovation but also the increasing influence of Egypt over sites in Palestine. Donald Whitcomb notes, “The first phases of glazed Islamic ceramics may in fact reflect much more than a simple technological advance but indicate the strong connection between Egypt, Palestine and the Hijaz during the sudden prosperity of the eighth century.”42 Egypt did become a center of ceramic production and from Coptic Glazed ware rose a host of related ceramics including Cream Splash wares, Ḥijāzī ware and an even more distant descendant, Fayyūmī ware. These wares, with the exception of Ḥijāzī ware, and more including Monochrome Glazed ware, Polychrome Splashed and Mottled wares with and without sgraffiato, are found at Ascalon in great quantities. The depth and range of the ʿAbbāsid period 40 Coptic Glazed ware is found at Pella in Jordan as well as a number of additional sites in Egypt, Akhmīm and Abū Mīnā most notably. 41 The fill layers in which Coptic Glazed ware ceramics are found often contain everything from the Byzantine ceramics to late-12th century Crusader imports and the lack of sealed contexts containing Coptic Glazed ware currently makes it impossible to provide better chronological distinctions. 42 Whitcomb, “Coptic Glazed Ceramics,” 167.

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ceramic corpus with its expanding number of glazed wares is exceeded by that of the Fatimid period when FFS (Fusṭāṭ Fāṭimid Sgraffiato), Lustre and Under-glaze Painted ware not to mention Chinese celadon and porcelain made their way to Ascalon along with imports from North Africa. The Crusader period is readily visible in the continuing use of several important Fāṭimid period wares, sgraffiatos and Under-glaze Painted ware in particular, as well as an impressive range of imported ceramics from Proto-Maiolica to Byzantine and Aegean wares that provide important insight into the archaeological record. The ceramics do indeed tell a story, one that has a clear beginning with the arrival of Coptic Glazed ware in the late eighth century. In a sense relying on glazed wares to identify the presence of Muslims in Ascalon, and to interpret the early Islamic city, is a cheat because there should be earlier signs of culture change. While the seventh century and early eighth century may have been rather conservative, as Walmsley argues, there were innovations that marked the transition from Byzantine period traditions to those of the Islamic period, a process typified by the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem which is a melding of a Byzantine period form with emerging Islamic iconography. Unfortunately, whether because it is not well recognized or simply hasn’t been found, that transition is not visible at Ascalon. The undiscovered urban institutions which are the typical hallmarks of Islamic cities and the renovated architecture have conspired to obscure the seventh century. Even the ceramics bespeak of continuity until the late eighth century arrives with a bang. Much is left to be learned about Ascalon in the Islamic period. Ongoing excavation near the city center has already identified Byzantine and multiple Islamic period occupation levels which hold promise for clarifying much which is not well understood at present. Importantly, there is still an opportunity to explore and better identify the Byzantine-Islamic transition, and its manifestation in the archaeological record, as well as the late seventh century and early eighth century and the initial stages of cultural change. While the first century of Islamic rule remains mysterious the ʿAbbāsid and later periods are coming into much sharper focus. Today Coptic Glazed ware clearly identifies the late eighth century in Ascalon and for the first time allows the cultural influence of the Islamic Empire to be seen in this ancient port city. As excavation continues it is certain that even more will be learned about Ascalon, the Bride of Syria, and the elusive seventh century.



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Bibliography Arnon, Y. Caesarea Maritima, the Late Periods (700–1291 CE). BAR International Series 1771. Cambridge: Archaeopress, 2008. Ben-Tor, A., M. Avissar and Y. Portugali. Yoqne’am I: The Late Periods. Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1996. Bowersock, G. W. Mosaics as History: The Near East from Late Antiquity to Islam. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. Garstang, J. “The Excavations at Ashkelon.” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 54 (1992): 112–119. Gill, M. A History of Palestine 634–1099. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Goitein, S. D. A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza. 6 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967–1993. Hakim, B. “Julian of Ascalon’s Treatise of Construction and Design Rules from SixthCentury Palestine.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 60 (2001): 4–25. Holum, K. “Archaeological Evidence for the Fall of Byzantine Caesarea.” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 286 (1992): 73–85. Le Strange, G. Palestine Under the Moslems: A Description of Syria and the Holy Land from AD 650 to 1500. Beirut: Khayats, 1965. Piccirillo, M. The Madaba Map Centenary 1897–1997: Travelling Through the Byzantine Umayyad Period. Jerusalem: Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, 1999. Rodziewicz, M. “La céramique émailée copte de Kom el Dikka.” Études et Traveaux 10 (1978): 337–345. ——. “Egyptian glazed pottery of the eighth to ninth centuries.” Bulletin de la société d’archéologie copte 25 (1983): 73–75. Rosen-Ayalon, M. “The Islamic Jewellery from Ashkelon.” In Jewellery and Goldsmithing in the Islamic World: International Symposium, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1987, edited by N. Brosh, 9–19. Jerusalem: The Israel Museum, 1987. Sharon, M. Egyptian Caliph and English Baron: The Story of an Arabic Inscription from Ashkelon. Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1994. ——. Corpus Inscriptionum Arabicrum Palaestinae (CIAP) Volume One -A-. Leiden: Brill, 1997. Stacey, D. Excavations at Tiberias, 1973–1974: The Early Islamic Periods. Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 2004. Stager, L. Ashkelon Discovered: From Canaanites and Philistines to Romans and Moslems. Washington D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1991. Walmsley, A. Early Islamic Syria: An Archaeological Assessment. London: Duckworth, 2007. ——. and Damgaard, K. “The Umayyad congregational mosque of Jarash in Jordan and its relationship to early mosques.” Antiquity 79 (2005): 362–378. Watson, O. Ceramics from Islamic Lands. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2004. Whitcomb, D. “Coptic Glazed Ceramics from the Excavations at Aqaba, Jordan.” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 26 (1989): 167–182. ——. “Glazed Ceramics of the Abbasid Period from the Aqaba Excavations.” Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society 55 (1990–1991): 43–65. ——. “An Urban Structure for the Early Islamic City: An archaeological hypothesis.” In Cities in the Pre-Modern Islamic World: The urban impact of religion, state and society, edited by Amira K. Bennison and Alison L. Gascoigne, 15–26. London and New York: Routledge, 2007.

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Fig. 1 Map of region (after Walmsley, 2007, fig. 7)



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Fig. 2 Plan of Ascalon showing areas excavated since 1985

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Registration Number Description

1

57.58.L2 UR peach fabric, slip under yellow glaze background with lines of brown glaze and green glaze splashes, many inclusions 16.43.F15.B34 5 peach ware, green glaze on interior, slip under green glaze on exterior, many inclusions 16.53.L5.B37 3 peach ware, slip on interior and exterior, green glaze in band around rim, brown and yellow glaze on interior, many inclusions 9.63.L2.B10 1 pink ware, yellow background with lines of green and brown glaze on interior, many inclusions 64.87.L11.F10.B25 1 peach-pink fabric, slip under yellow glaze background with dashes of green and brown glaze on interior, slip under yellow background with green splashes on exterior, inclusions

2 3 4 5

Fig. 3 Coptic glazed ware

Ḥiṣn, Ribāṭ, Thaghr or Qaṣr? SEMANTICS AND SYSTEMs of Frontier Fortifications in the Early Islamic Period Asa Eger* Fred Donner, in his influential Early Islamic Conquests, argues that the early Islamic state, following the conquests, settled Arab tribes in newly established habitations including garrison towns (amṣar), ‘desert castles’ (quṣūr), or preexisting but reoccupied frontier forts as part of a policy of controlling nomadic or semi-nomadic groups.1 He also introduced a new idea: that the state settled nomadic tribes on the frontier (thughūr) as a way to control them, break them up and reorganize them, and prevent local autonomies, thereby planting the seeds for a new sub-field which he affectionately referred to as ‘thughurology.’ Developing Donner’s ideas further, I argue that the state further managed the movements of tribes from these settlements across frontiers (thughūr) by reframing seasonal transhumance movements into state-sponsored trade excursions and military campaigns using political and religious ideologies.2 As such, designs reflective of these economic and military functions and state-sponsored intentions should be imprinted upon early Islamic frontier settlements, whether newly founded or adapted from preexisting towns. However, the question of the degree to which these designs are evident and what categories of settlement existed remains unanswered. Early Islamic geographical and historical texts designate fortresses on the frontiers of Islamic lands with four Arabic terms: ḥiṣn, ribāṭ, thaghr, or * An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Institut Français d’Ètudes Anatoliennes (IFEA) in Istanbul, Turkey in March, 2009 as part of a symposium on fortifications while I was a Senior Fellow at the Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (RCAC) in Istanbul. I would like to thank particularly Alessandra Ricci, the 2008 director of the RCAC and moderator of the symposium panel at IFEA for her insightful suggestions and our many conversations about the paper and its larger themes. I would also like to thank Thomas Lorain for organizing the symposium and Alyssa Gabbay, Andrew Blackley, Felipe Rojas, Paul M. Cobb and the anonymous reviewer of this volume for their thoughtful comments.  1 F. Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 263–67, esp. 266 for Syria.  2 A. Eger, “The Spaces Between the Teeth: Environment, Settlement, and Interaction on the Islamic-Byzantine Frontier,” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2008), 376–88; idem “Islamic Frontiers Real and Imagined,” al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā (2005): 1–6, 10.

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qaṣr. These terms give rise to the impression that each refers to a different and specific category of settlement. However, closer investigation for architectural, geographical, or chronological patterns among these settlements proves to be a frustrating exercise abounding in inconsistencies. The historians and geographers who wrote about these structures used terms interchangeably and ambiguously making the exercise of pinning down meanings for these structures a slippery challenge resulting in generalizing definitions for these terms, as demonstrated by several targeted studies on separate terms.3 All too frequently in sources, once a pattern reveals itself, exceptions arise quickly; places that are called ḥiṣn can also be called ribāṭ or qaṣr. Indeed, the common English translations for these words (ḥiṣn—fort or castle, ribāṭ—coastal fort or caravanserai, thaghr— frontier fort, qaṣr—castle, ‘desert castle,’ or palace) often compounds the reductive and imprecise qualities of these terms. Can studies of Islamic architectural types and fortifications allow us to home in on specific meanings from and “of ” the terms ribāṭ, ḥiṣn, qaṣr, and thaghr employed by geographers and historians for fortifications? Part of the ambiguity surrounding the nature of frontier forts arises because very few of these structures have actually been excavated, their plans discerned, and their contexts understood. This paper examines first these four terms for varieties of fortification together in order to observe if there are distinguishing characteristics of differentiated frontier settlements that constitute a typology. Then these designations will be reassessed in light of recently discovered or newly reinterpreted sites that together constitute a communication network on the Islamic-Byzantine Anatolian frontier dating to the eighth to tenth centuries. Proceeding from a basic lexical problem, this paper will first reveal the difficulty in defining the semantic range for castle and fort and the utility in defining substantive categories of architectural types. While this is a point already well known to most scholars, the paper will further demonstrate that fortifications are better understood less as solitary units and more helpfully as spatially and temporally linked fortification systems or networks.

3 L. I. Conrad, “The Quṣūr of Medieval Islam: Some Implications for the Social History of the Near East” Al-Abḥāth 29 (1981): 7–24; Y. Masarwa, “Early Islamic Military Architecture: A Study of the Umayyad Ribats of Palestine Based on Archaeological Remains and Historical Sources,” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2005).



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The Qaṣr Looking at the last term first, early Islamic fortified enclosures or quṣūr (sing. qaṣr) are fairly well known as the ubiquitous “desert castle” types seen throughout the Near East. The typical early Islamic qaṣr was newly founded (though not always), consisted of an enclosure often possessing thicker external walls, evenly spaced buttresses or towers, and perpendicular rooms arranged around a central courtyard. Their origin is debatable; however many scholars identify influences deriving from Roman/ Late Antique legionary forts on the Roman/Parthian and Byzantine/ Sasānian frontier, well known to the pre-Islamic Arab tribes and traders who ranged the eastern Syrian and Jordan deserts.4 While horseshoe shaped buttresses are often present and considered characteristic of the early Islamic quṣūr, exceptions existed with square buttresses in Early Islamic buildings and horse-shoe shaped buttresses in earlier forts (Fig. 1).5 The qaṣr, as argued by Shahīd, was a loanword from the Latin castrum, and thought to have filtered into Arabic vocabulary because many Roman and Late Roman castra were garrisoned with Arab tribes.6 However, these were seldom military forts. Rather the quṣūr of the Umayyad period, as argued by Whitcomb, were developed from a standardized plan for urban cities including the mid-range cities and large miṣr or garrison cities. These quṣūr shared a common vocabulary of structures all tending to include a city wall with interspersed towers, orthogonal street plan, and an urban core complex of three buildings in a generally fixed pattern: the bathhouse, the mosque, and the dār al-imara or governor’s residence (Fig. 1).7 As argued variously, they also had an agricultural aspect, linked to trade routes, and may have been the residences of important tribal chiefs, members of the ruling Umayyad family, or the

4 D. Genequand, “Umayyad Castles: The Shift form Late Antique Military Architecture to Early Islamic Palatial Building,” in Muslim Military Architecture in Greater Syria: From the Coming of Islam to the Ottoman Period, ed. H. Kennedy, 3–25 (Leiden: Brill, 2006). 5 Square buttresses are seen at Khirbat al-Karak/Ṣinnabra and Bālis; horse-shoe buttresses are seen at al-Lajjūn and Mons Claudianus. See Genequand, “Castles,” for further discussion. 6 I. Shahīd, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, Vol. II, Part I: Toponymy, Monuments, Historical Geography, and Frontier Studies (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2002), 67 ff. 7 D. Whitcomb, “An Urban Structure for the Early Islamic City” Cities in the Pre-Modern Islamic World (2007), 15–26.

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peripatetic caliphs themselves.8 Of all the various suggestions for the purpose of these settlements, military fortification has not been one of them, despite their designation as ‘castles,’ their perceived military antecedents, and their imposing monumental appearance. Their outward monumentality, it has been argued, is to present the appearance of a sturdy and defensible fortification but, it is nevertheless only an appearance.9 It is for this reason that these structures are referred to as fortified enclosures rather than military forts. Unfortunately, the quṣūr are hardly known textually by any name that might suggest a more specific function. While some of the quṣūr were found as isolated buildings,10 many included other buildings such as a khan or caravanserai, separate external bathhouses, water reservoirs, agricultural enclosures, and small residences as part of the complex, further casting doubt on their role as military fortification. In light of this evidence, Conrad argues convincingly that the term qaṣr refers to an enclosure in the most basic (and agrarian/pastoral) sense and does not necessarily have to refer to a palace or fortification and was commonly adopted into the plan for the caravanserai or rural inn.11 Furthermore, it functioned both as a temporary or permanent residence for local clans or tribal leaders and as a place of refuge for local villagers and their livestock. Milwright argues most recently that regardless of the patronage and ownership of these settlements, all were located on main routes and near water access and therefore functioned effectively as stopping points for merchants, pilgrims, nomads, and armies.12 The quṣūr are not the only fortified enclosure mentioned or found in the Early Islamic period. Similar looking and similarly planned structures were found within other settlements such as the forts, palaces, or caravanserais of the Darb Zubayda stations. The settlements were all waystations in a sense, located on specific routes in lowland plains and deserts rather than defensible hilltop or mountain positions.

  8 A. Borrut, “Itinerant Kingship and Umayyad ‘Desert-Castles,’” paper presented at the Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting, Boston 2009.  9 Genequand, “Umayyad Castles,” 25. 10 Such as Qaṣr al-Kharrāna and Khirbet al-Minya. However, it is important to note that a major factor for the single monumental building has to do with the nature of preservation and that archaeological excavations only focused on the monument itself.  11 Conrad, “The Quṣūr of Medieval Islam.” 12 To this we can add the court of the caliph (see note 8). M. Milwright, An Introduction to Islamic Archaeology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010).



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The Ḥiṣn Structures that have previously been more confidently identified as military fortifications (rather than fortified enclosures) in the Early Islamic period are still ambiguous in both function and form. Ḥiṣn appears as one of the two most commonly used terms by Islamic historians and geographers for fortifications or fortified sites on the frontiers. Yet, at the same time, it is the least understood. Ḥiṣn, from the Syriac chetzna, is formed from the root ḥ-ṣ-n—to be fortified or inaccessible. A ḥiṣn then is not only a fort, but could refer to a fortified city or any fortified and/or inaccessible place. Do the ḥuṣūn retain any geographic, linguistic, typological, or chronological characteristics in common? On the early Islamic thughūr, geographical distribution does not reveal any specific pattern as to which sites are called ḥiṣn; they were found throughout the frontier zone from west to east and beyond.13 Examining the proper names of these fortifications illuminates some interesting possible patterns regarding the use of the term ḥiṣn but still presents inconclusive ambiguities. Ḥuṣūn are sometimes used in conjunction with descriptive place names14 or were named after individuals or groups of people,15 or they also may have been signifiers of appropriation and conquest over Byzantine sites.16 There are also difficulties in ­arguing 13 Two sites east of the thughūr al-bakrīya guarded the Tigris but are not often mentioned as thughūr forts: Ḥiṣn Hanab (Hani) and Ḥiṣn Kayfā (Hasankayf ). Ḥiṣn Maslama (Madīnat al-Fār) in the Balikh Valley near Raqqa is . . . technically not on the thughūr. 14 Ḥiṣn al-Tīnāt (Castle of the Figs), Ḥiṣn al-Jawzāt (Castle of the Nuts), Ḥiṣn alMuthaqqab (Castle of the Pierced), and Ḥiṣn Mulawwan (Colored Castle) are four examples all located in the western thughūr. 15 At Qūrus, a pre-Islamic fort within the city was renamed as Ḥiṣn Salmān after Salmān ibn Rabīʿa, who was in the army of ʿUbayd Allah ibn al-Jarrāh in the seventh century conquest of the city (Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-Buldān, 2:264). Archaeological research has identified a restored Middle Islamic citadel within the city plan, likely the site of the earlier ḥiṣn. I. Straughn, “Materializing Islam: An Archaeology of Landscape in Early Islamic Syria (c. 600–1000 CE)” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2006), 209. At Zibaṭra/Ḥiṣn Zibaṭra, following the Byzantines’ attack, al-Muʿtaṣim built four ḥuṣūn in and around the city. These were named after people or tribes: (built in/around: Ḥiṣn Ṭabārjī, Ḥiṣn al-Ḥusayniyya, Ḥiṣn Banī al-Mūmin, Ḥiṣn Ibn Rahwān. These were noted in 928 CE by Qudāma ibn Jaʾfar, Kitāb al-Kharāj (Leiden: Brill, 1967), 253. ʿAwlas or Ḥiṣn ʿAwlas also had a fort in it called Ḥiṣn al-Zuhhād (Fortress of the Ascetics) (Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān, 1:282). 16 Such as the group of Byzantine forts on the uplands of the Taurus around the Cilician Gates. Ḥiṣn al-Ṣaqāliba (possibly Byzantine Faustinopolis) refers to the garrison of Slavs, probably former Byzantine soldiers, placed there. Ḥiṣn Hiraqla was previously Kybistra, but renamed following Heraclius’ retreat from Cilicia in during the Islamic conquests. Ḥiṣn Luʾluʾa may also be a reference to the retaking of this similarly named Byzantine city

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whether the meanings of the term changed over time or that authors simply used the term with different meanings in mind. The term ḥiṣn may also have been an Arabic appellation only in name, an “optional” way of referring to places. Writing at the time of the Byzantine reconquest, Ibn Ḥawqal (wrote c. 977–978) describes Ḥiṣn al-Tīnāt, but al-Muqaddasī (wrote c. 985) only refers to the site as Tīnāt.17 Unfortunately, there has not been a systematic study of its appearance in building inscriptions or textual sources. I would suspect that some authors such as Ibn Ḥawqal and al-Idrisī used the term far more frequently than others who reserved the use only for sites which came to be qualified by the term ḥiṣn. Sites which retain the ḥiṣn in all geographical accounts include Ḥiṣn Manṣūr near the Euphrates River and Ḥiṣn Maslama near the Balikh River.18 To answer why the term ḥiṣn persisted for these sites through the centuries, could be quite simple; both places were named after people, and without the ḥiṣn marker the town name Manṣūr or Maslama would be rather confusing. However, there does seem to be a certain ordering of terms. Although nearly all thughūr sites were previously Byzantine cities as reflected in their names, very few ḥuṣūn names were adapted from preexisting Greek place names, suggesting that many were in fact newly founded.19 Further, there are other common characteristics related to settlement typology and chronology shared by these two sites and ḥuṣūn in general. Abu Ezzah divides the thughūr into three categories: large thughūr which were cities and cultural centers on the plain not necessarily near passes including Ṭarsūs, Maṣṣīṣa, Anṭakīya, Adhana, Malaṭiya, and Marʿash; medium bases including Ḥadath, al-Kanīsa al-Sawdāʾ, Iskandarūna, Bayās, Zibaṭra, Hārūnīya; and small bases or maslaḥa on high peaks for (Loulon) as treasure or booty (the pearl). This is similar to cities today in the same region such as Kahramanmaraş and Gaziantep whose Arab names were appended with Turkish epithet prefixes of military victory (kahraman/hero and gazi/warrior of the faith) following the Franco-Turkish war in 1920. 17 Ibn Ḥawqal, Kitāb ṣūrat al-ārḍ (Beirut: Dār Maktabat al-Ḥayā, 1964), 167; idem, Kitāb ṣurāt al-ārd, Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum 2, Third Edition (Leiden: Brill, 1967), 154; Muqaddasī, Aḥsan al-taqāsīm fī ma‘rifat al-āqālīm, Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum 3, Third Edition (Leiden: Brill, 1967), 154. 18 In the fourteenth century, Dimashqī, who mentions only Kamkh (without the Ḥiṣn) still refers to Ḥiṣn Manṣūr, as does Abū al-Fidāʾ. 19 Three sites considered to have been built by Hārūn al-Rashīd were not newly founded: Kanīsa al-Sawdāʾ (Byzantine Epiphaneia), Ḥadath (Byzantine Adata) and Hārūnīya (Byzantine Irenopolis). The latter might be located elsewhere (at Örenşehir, near Osmaniye) and possibly new, but this is hypothetical. The Cilician Gates fortifications are possible exceptions and may not have been newly founded.



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c­ ommunication or near large bases as satellites including Ḥiṣn al-Jawzāt and Luʾluʾa.20 These do not perfectly encapsulate the ḥiṣn either—as ḥiṣn has been used for both medium bases (Ḥiṣn Zibaṭra) and small bases. Whether ḥuṣūn refer to a single fortified structure within a larger city, or the entire site (or both), one cannot say for certain as very few have been excavated.21 Yet, the term seems never to have been applied to the large thughūr cities. As such, ḥiṣn may refer to a certain type of new smaller class of fortified site. Survey and excavations have shown that Ḥiṣn al-Tīnāt, Ḥiṣn Būqā, and Ḥiṣn Maslama were mainly eighth to tenth century sites with very little pre-Islamic occupation but were sited near Byzantine sites. These sites also were dominated by main enclosures with surrounding buildings. Ḥiṣn Manṣūr, which was located near its Byzantine predecessor, Perre, likely was also newly founded. Both Ḥiṣn Manṣūr22 and Ḥiṣn Maslama23 are associated with the late Umayyad/early ʿAbbāsid period up until the caliphate of al-Mahdī (r. 775–787).24 They were also both surrounded by canals and irrigated fields. They may have been part of a settlement policy giving incentives with agricultural lands. This suggests that the ḥuṣūn were not strictly fortified ‘castles’ per se but in some way developed from the quṣūr desert castles with their agricultural extents. Like the quṣūr, these sites also served as waystations on key routes which for the thughūr, were north-south traversing the frontier. What can be said about ḥiṣn as a type? It was a medium or small fortified structure or settlement not only confined to the frontier. It was frequently accessible (appearing on major routes) though not as a rule. It 20 A. M. Abu Ezzah, “The Syrian Thughūr” (PhD diss., University of Exeter, 1980), 105–11. 21 For examples, see note 15. 22 Ḥiṣn Manṣūr was not named after the ʿAbbāsid caliph but after Manṣūr of Qays, commander during the reign of Marwān II (r. 744–750) and the site was later refortified by Harūn al-Rāshīd during the caliphate of al-Mahdī. C.-P. Haase, “The Excavations at Madīnat al-Fār/Ḥiṣn Maslama on the Balikh Road,” in Muslim Military Architecture in Greater Syria, Hugh Kennedy, ed., (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 54–60, esp. 55–56. 23 The Umayyad caliph’s son Maslama ibn ʿAbd al-Malik controlled the territory of the frontier from Iskandarūna (modern Iskenderun) and Anṭākiya to the Balikh, and was governor of the Jazīra (708–9). The early ʿAbbāsid caliphs allowed the territory to remain in his family’s possession. Whether Maslama and his family were supported by the caliphate, local tribal leaders, or urban elites following the Umayyad demise is uncertain. In 779–80 al-Mahdī stayed at the site where a descendant of Maslama, Muhammad ibn Yazīd al-Umawī (known also as al-Hisnī), was still living there as a poet. The ʿAbbāsids, sympathetic to him as they were with Maslama, spared his life. 24 Interestingly, although not on the frontier, there was a Ḥiṣn Mahdī in Khurāsān below Ahwāz near the Persian Gulf that was attributed to the caliph al-Mahdī and located also on a major canal and a crossroads. Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān (Beirut: Dār Ṣādr: 1984), 2:266. P. Wheatley, The Places Where Men Pray Together, 142.

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was generally a lone structure with outlying buildings, agricultural fields, and canals but also incorporated within larger towns, though never a large city by itself. It was often newly founded, though not always. Lastly, there is a strong association with the establishment of the most known of these settlements at the end of the Umayyad/start of the ʿAbbāsid period, particularly with the caliphate of al-Mahdī. The Ribāṭ The second most commonly cited form of fortification in texts is the ribāṭ. These structures appear on the North African and Syro-Palestinian coastal frontiers and eastern Islamic-Turkic borders and are known best as part of an early Islamic system of defense. There is some debate over the meaning of ribāṭ as a specific fortification or ideology of jihād associated with any structure mainly due to the fact that the word ribāṭ is not always used to denote a place but sometimes as a function of a place and as an action.25 Just as the elastic concept of jihād evolved over the Early Islamic period as befitting a religio-political agenda,26 so did the meaning and use of the term ribāṭ. Its Qurʾānic usage indicated a gathering of horses while in the Umayyad period it referred to a cavalry to defend the frontiers. In the ninth and tenth centuries, ribāṭ meant defending the frontier for the purposes of jihād and by the second half of the tenth century, this ideological activity is mapped onto an actual edifice already referred to as a ḥiṣn or qaṣr.27 The most referenced geographer for the ribāṭ system is al-Muqaddasī who lists seven evenly spaced ones on the southern Syro-Palestinian coast:

25 The word ribāṭ can have two related meanings. As a verb, the root rbṭ means to tie up, to bind, to attach, or to link, i.e. fighters of the faith attaching themselves to the frontier. According to al-Azharī’s tenth century dictionary and others, it is the plural of rubuṭ, meaning tied up horses, which itself is the plural of rabīṭ. As a plural of a plural it refers to a group of tied up horses, typically opposite the enemy on the frontier. Ribāṭ is also the verbal noun of the third form of the verb rābaṭa and it means staying or attaching to somewhere or someone. Y. Masarwa, “From a Word of God to Archaeological Monuments: A Historical-Archaeological Study of the Umayyad Ribāṭs of Palestine” (PhD diss., Prince­ ton University, 2006), 102–105, 256–57. 26 The concept of jihād was not always consistent, embodying different notions of conflict throughout its history. For example, see F. Donner, “The Sources of Islamic Conceptions of War,” in J. Kelsay and J. T. Johnson (eds.), Just War and Jihad: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives on War and Peace in Western and Islamic Traditions (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991), 31–69. 27 Masarwa, “From a Word of God,” 77–78.



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Arsūf, Yāfā, Māḥūz Yubnā, Māḥūz Azdūd, ʿAsqalān, Mīmās, and Ghazza. They communicated with one another via a system of fire and smoke signals from towers and were locations for prisoner exchanges. Excavations have revealed other ribāṭāt beyond those on al-Muqaddasī’s list and farther north. Taken together, all of these varied immensely, resembling fortified enclosures,28 cities,29 or even watchtowers.30 Though they differ in size and form, all were built over earlier Byzantine remains and nearly all in the seventh century Umayyad period, diverging chronologically from the ḥuṣūn. Settlement policies, besides offering soldiers increases in pay, distributed free land and houses, suggesting that these structures were not solitary forts but situated near or within wider communities.31 The ribāṭāt along the Tunisian and Moroccan Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts followed a standardized plan of rooms or cells around a courtyard built on two floors. A mosque was built in one of the rooms along the center of the southern enclosure wall and a minaret outside which acted also as the beacon for communication via other ribāṭāt through fire signals and a watchtower. The majority were also built over earlier sites

28 Two late seventh/early eighth century ribāṭāt were excavated in Israel at AshdodYam and Habonim. They measure 60 × 40 m and had with 2 m thick and 8 m high walls with semi-circular towers, buttresses, rooms around a courtyard with wells, a stable, and a small mosque. They have a land and sea gate. 29 Arsūf was surrounded by a city wall dating to 685–705 CE. Qayṣārīya (Caesarea) further north where a fortified enclosure with semi-circular towers (the kastron in Area FZ) around a Roman amphitheatre was found at the southern limit of the city with seventh/eighth century pottery. An inscribed stone heavily abraded and found in the water next to the theater/kastron is a form of dedicatory caliphal inscription stating that the blessed tower (burj) or coastal fortress (thaghr) was commissioned by Aḥmad ibn Ṭūlūn. The actual word was difficult to translate by Sharon due to the poorly preserved nature of the inscription and the lack of Ṭūlūnid material culture in the area do not point clearly to a correlation. M. Sharon, “Arabic Inscriptions from Caesarea Maritima,” in Caesarea Maritima: a retrospective after two millennia, A. Raban and K. Holum., eds. (New York: Brill, 1996), 426. An Early Islamic tower was found at the northern end of the harbor (Area LL) tentatively dated to the ninth/tenth centuries. K. Holum, “The Combined Caesarea Expeditions,” New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, Vol. 5 Supplementary Volume ( Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2008), 1665. Beirut, a locus for jihād activity in large part to the residence of al-Awzāʿī in the eighth century, was another ribāṭ and port for import/export. 30 These manāyir (sing. manāra) or maḥāris (maḥras/miḥras) were about 60 sq. m in size and all had corner buttresses and were built on coastal tells (such as Tel Michal) interspersed between larger ribāṭ sites. H. Khalilieh, “The Ribāṭ of Arsūf and the Coastal Defense System in Early Islamic Palestine,” Journal of Islamic Studies 19.2 (2008): 166. 31 ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, and Muʿāwiya settled Arabs but also non-Arabs (such as Persians) on the less-populated coasts. Indeed, a genre of propaganda literature ( faḍāʾil al-shām) was designed to encourage similar settlement. See Wheatley, The Places Where Men Pray Together, 256.

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or in close proximity (Fig. 2). Based on the ideological meaning of ribāṭ and because many of these were associated with the religious reformist Almoravids (al-murabiṭūn), the traditionalist view is that the structures were considered monasteries or convents for ascetic warriors. The revisionist view interprets these as fortified coastal urban centers occupied seasonally that had living quarters, storage facilities, arms magazines, food, and a signal tower.32 They would have functioned as places of refuge for the surrounding population in times of danger and as trading posts for sub-Saharan—Mediterranean routes.33 The interpretation of ribāṭ as trading posts has been applied more frequently to the eastern Islamic-Turkic frontier (thughūr al-Turk). Early Islamic geographers mention them on main routes and river systems and some as part of larger complexes of agricultural lands.34 Many of their names are descriptive or named after individuals. The military characteristic of these forts has also been questioned, particularly as the eastern frontier, managed by the Ṭāhirid and Sāmānid governors, was a relatively quiet one characterized by the gradual conversion of Turks, the acquisition of slaves (ghilmān) for the military, and defensive posturing.35 In some cases these were not military forts at all but venerated shrines, hospices outside city gates for travelers, or caravanserais (rural inns) on internal desert routes. Indeed, the variety of structures termed ribāṭ is made apparent by the huge numbers of these structures attested by geographers such

32 A. El’Ad, “The Coastal Cities of Palestine During the Early Middle Ages,” The Jerusalem Cathedra 2 (1982): 146–67. 33 The Almoravids’ primary interests included developing the gold and slave trade in sub-Saharan Africa, two of the most valuable commodities in the medieval Mediterranean. The spread of religious creed and economic interests were, in fact, directly linked. So too was exchange of prisoners and trade in slaves (many of whom were prisoners of war). I would argue that these structures played a role in this trade as economic trading posts that were quite defensible. 34 To name a few: On a desert route: Ribāṭ Dihistān in Jurjān in ruins by mid 10th century; Farāvah was both a ribāṭ and settlement said to be built by the Ṭāhirids during the reign of Maʾmūn; Ribāṭ Āb Shuturān (“Camel Watering Hole”) was also on a desert route and built in the 10th century; Ribāṭ Dhū al-Qarnayn was a river fort associated with a town with another ribāṭ (Ribāṭ Dhū al-Kifl) opposite it with surrounding buildings; Ribāṭ Mīla was on a river in the Oxus area; Ribāṭ Pusht Kham (“Crooked Back”) was in Kirmān on a desert route; Ribāṭ Savanj was in Khurāsān also on a main road; and Ribāṭ Ṭāhir ibn ʿAlī was on the Oxus (Amu Darya) on the main road to Bukhara (from G. Le Strange, The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, Cambridge: University Press, 1930). See also Masarwa, “From a Word of God,” 79–80. 35 J. Chabbi, “Ribāṭ,” EI2; Wheatley, The Places Where Men Pray Together, 257.



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as al-Muqaddasī and Ibn Ḥawqal on the eastern frontier.36 This last type, called manzil l’il mārra, were often named after their founders, inhabited by changing garrisons, and included around them reservoirs and agricultural land.37 The rural inn function was carried over by the Saljūqs of Rūm to Anatolia where the use of the term ribāṭ in several foundational inscriptions of caravanserais appears, but later is gradually replaced by the word khān.38 On the Syrian-Anatolian frontier, the nature of ribāṭ is unclear, as seen for example at nearby Ṭarsūs where tenth century Islamic sources speak of one such large enclosed frontier site that had several ribāṭ garrisons within its city walls serving soldiers from different regions.39 It is possible that an urban plan developed out of one or several ribāṭ enclosures or that urban ribāṭāt differed from those in the countryside, which had to appear more fortified and self-sufficient. Ribāṭāt were certainly frontier forts, similar in some ways to ḥuṣūn as objects of a settlement policy on the thughūr. Also much like the ḥuṣūn, the ribāṭāt then can assume any form from tower to fort to city to waystation. The ribāṭāt, like the other forms of fortification, represent two different layers: the material physical settlement and the ideological religious meaning draped over it. Further, although they continue past the Umayyad period they were part of a specific system of varying interspersed settlement types and intercommunication. If we are to extract any specificity from the term ribāṭ as structure, then it dates from the Umayyad period, though it may refer retroactively in the tenth and eleventh centuries to ḥuṣūn. Further, it was built over Byzantine remains. The Thaghr Military fortifications (thaghr) have been assumed to have been built along the embattled Syro-Anatolian, Andalusian, and Central Asian

36 These figures number one thousand or more. Wheatley, The Places Where Men Pray Together, 257. 37 Masarwa, “From a Word of God,” 79–82. 38 K. Cytryn-Silverman, “The Mamluk Inns (Khans) in Southern Bilad al-Sham” (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2005), 65–66. 39 Abū ʿAmr ʿUthmān ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Ṭarsūsī’s Kitāb siyar al-thughūr, which is only preserved in Ibn al-ʿAdīm’s Bughya al-ṭalab fī tārīkh Ḥalab. See the text in S. Muṣṭafa, Baqāyā kitāb siyar al-thughūr min khilāl makhṭūṭa bughya al-ṭalab lī Ibn al-ʿAdīm (Damascus: Dār Ṭalās, 1998); sections translated in C. E. Bosworth. “Abū ʿAmr ʿUthmān al-Ṭarsūsī’s Siyar al-Thughūr and the Last Years of Arab Rule in Tarsus (Fourth/Tenth Century,” Graeco-Arabica 5 (1993): 183–96.

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­ ountainous borders or thughūr, “the spaces between the teeth,” to m protect the dār al-Islām from non-Muslims.40 However, the depiction of al-thughūr as a battleground for holy war: a no-man’s land with a string of isolated forts, was an ideological one; the frontier on the ground was a settled zone with cities, towns, and villages.41 Further, the word thaghr is not used very often in sources to describe a frontier thughūr site. Islamic military forts on the Syro-Anatolian and Andalusian thughūr before the eleventh century are hardly known, except in literary sources where most are actually termed ḥuṣūn. The known military fortifications that have been recorded are the innumerable high craggy castles dating after the mid-tenth century during the Byzantine reconquest of the Anatolian frontier42 and the establishment of the kingdom of Armenian Cilicia, the Crusader principalities, and the various Islamic dynasties that emerged in the same period, such as the Hamdānids, Artuqids, Mirdasids, Ayyūbids, and Mamlūks. The same process, termed incastellemento—the transition of lowland sites to upland more fortified sites and towns, has been documented on the Andalusian thughūr and elsewhere around the Mediterranean.43 These sites were not necessarily state-sponsored military outposts or feudal castles. Rather, perhaps like the ribāṭ, fortification activities were the result by a local need to create a space for refuge for the surrounding rural population and their livestock, as well as a safe storage for grain during times of trouble or raiding.44 40 The singular thaghr denotes usually not a single frontier but rather a fort on the frontier. 41 A. Eger, The Spaces Between the Teeth: A Gazetteer of Towns on the Islamic-Byzantine Frontier (Istanbul: Ege Yayınları, 2011), 3–5. 42 Middle Byzantine fortifications include the first phase of the ʿAyn Zarba upland castle, the Anṭākya ‘citadel’, upland Baghrās fortification, and the fortified pilgrimage sites of St. Symeon the Elder (near Ḥalab) and Younger (near al-Mina). See R. W. Edwards, Fortifications of Armenian Cilicia (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1983), 31, 46, J.-L. Biscop, “The ‘Kastron’ of Qalʿat Simʿān,” Muslim Military Architecture in Greater Syria, Hugh Kennedy, ed., (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 75–83; A. BelginHenry, “The Pilgrimage Center of St. Symeon the Younger: Designed by Angels, Supervised by a Saint, Constructed by Pilgrims,” (PhD diss., University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, forthcoming). 43 For an excellent synthetical and theoretical overview, see T. F. Glick, “Tribal Landscapes of Islamic Spain: History and Archaeology,” and From Muslim Fortress to Christian Castle: Social and Cultural Change in Medieval Spain and for Italy see R. Francovich and R. Hodges, Villa to Village: The Transformation of the Roman Countryside in Italy, c. 400–1000 (London: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd., 2003). 44 For the thughūr see: Eger, “The Spaces Between the Teeth,” 289–373. Interestingly, earlier occasions for incastellemento occurred on the even lesser well known Byzantine side of the Anatolian thughūr during the Early Islamic period when, following the Islamic conquests and the abandonment of the region by the Byzantine central state, locals were left to their own devices and moved to the Taurus uplands. See G. Dagron, “Guérilla, places



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The Central Asian Islamic-Turkish frontier is perhaps the least studied of all the frontiers.45 New archaeological research has shown two massively built Sasānian walls in northeastern Iran in the medieval provinces of Ṭabaristān and al-Daylam: the Gorgan ( Jurjān) Wall and Tammishe Wall with large fortified barracks/garrison type structures along their lengths at intervals.46 Their occupation in the Early Islamic period following their abandonment between 612 CE and 650 CE is uncertain, yet the use of the Tammishe Wall continued into the Islamic periods as evidenced through excavation and textual sources referring to renovations to a Sasānian wall and the site of Ṭamīs alongside it.47 Relating these to the many textually known ruined or newly built ribāṭ structures may be possible. On the frontiers of Islam, it becomes clear that intended (and state-sponsored) military fortifications before the eleventh century and after are not entirely well understood and that these structures served a variety of functions. A type plan for the thaghr is not known. As these nearly all developed out of Roman/Byzantine cities, the plan presumably follows the original classical plan and cannot be considered an Early Islamic new foundation. However, Islamic geographers frequently describe a double circuit wall with an intervening ditch, congregational mosques, bathhouses, and markets. The thaghr has also been perceived as a spiritual center: a locus for scholars and ascetics on the frontier.48 Thus, one could also argue that, like the ribāṭ, the thaghr had double material and ideological layers of meaning. The sites did not form a defensive line, but they were always on lowland plains or in inland valleys and on major routes (Fig. 3). “The spaces between the teeth” is an appropriate term to illustrate what was

fortes et villages ouverts à la frontière orientale de Byzance vers 950,” in Guerre, fortification et habitat dans le monde méditerranéen au Moyen Âge, edited by A. Bazzana. Castrum 3, 43–48. Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 1988. 45 Although two dissertations have recently come out: Mark Luce, “Frontier as Process: Umayyad Khurasan,” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2009); Robert Haug, “The Gate of Iron: The Making of the Eastern Frontier” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2010). 46 Eberhard Sauer. “Sasanian Campaign Bases, Cities and Mountain Refuges in the Vicinity of the Gorgan Wall: the 2008 and 2009 Seasons of the Joint Project of the Iranian Cultural Heritage, Handicraft and Tourism Organisation and the Universities of Edinburgh and Durham,” paper presented at the International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (ICAANE), London 2010; J. Nokandeh et al. “Linear Barriers of Northern Iran: The Great Wall of Gorgan and the Wall of Tammishe,” Iran 44 (2006): 121–73. 47 Eberhard Sauer, personal communication, August 20, 2010; A. D. H. Bivar and G. Fehérvári, “The Walls of Tammīsha, Iran 4 (1966): 35–50. 48 M. Bonner, Aristocratic Violence and Holy War, American Oriental Series 81 (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1996).

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not a hermetically sealed border, but a well-established network of open cities connected by trans-frontier routes. Networks A categorical analysis of the fortification terms has shown, despite some basic shared characteristics, that there were as many exceptions to rules as rules in isolating typologies. An alternative route is to see how fortifications related to one another spatially and temporally, as interconnected settlement systems within landscapes, rather than as individual exempla. Another type of site existed on the Islamic-Byzantine frontier that is poorly known and found mainly from surveys and excavations. These sites were new Early Islamic foundations, smaller than the well known urban frontier centers, rectilinear (nearly square), and not always identified or known by name in the primary sources. They were similar to one another in architectural plan, but they varied in size. As settlement systems, they were all placed on key south-north land routes and date to the early ʿAbbāsid period. On the western thughūr the coastal route followed the sea through the narrow Plain of Issos from Iskandarūna, past Ḥiṣn al-Tīnāt, then inland through the Cilician Plain. Ḥiṣn al-Tīnāt was known textually by tenth century Islamic geographers as a military garrison on the IslamicByzantine Anatolian frontier and depot/port for gathering and shipping cut timber. It is identified with the low coastal site of Tüpraş Field, ca 900 m north of Kinet Höyük. Excavations in 2006, 2008, and 2010 on the highest part of the site revealed a part of a solidly built and partially preserved fortified enclosure that can be projected as square (25 × 25 m) with solid square towers and buttresses along the midpoint of the sturdy ashlar walls (Fig. 4). Thin perpendicular walls articulated narrow rooms around the interior perimeter of the building. The structure belonged to Phases III and IV of five phases of occupation; the ninth century building (IV) was subsequently refortified with sunken foundation walls and towers in the tenth century (III). Below the fortified enclosure, excavations revealed portions of thick external walls and inner thin perpendicular walls and floor surfaces, suggesting an even earlier rectilinear enclosure (Phase V, mid to late eighth century) (Fig. 4). Extramural buildings to the south, east, and north of the enclosure abutted the walls and included domestic, residential, and possibly religious structures reminiscent of the southern compound of Ḥiṣn Maslama. Down-slope towards the sea, the edge of a



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structure and materials buried in the area along the ancient coastline are suggestive a port facility. Geophysical prospection with a resitivity meter indicated a strong concentration of features around the southwest corner of the fortified enclosure and various features and potential structures between the enclosure and the coastline, thus contributing to the evidence of a settlement with a fortified enclosure and surrounding buildings. The well-preserved fortified enclosure and its occupation span the periods of the early Islamic occupation and Byzantine reconquest of the frontier which occurred sometime after c. 960. Whether the tenth century refortification of the structure was attributed to the Islamic or Byzantine occupation is unknown, however, the successive occupation of the fort continued until the early twelfth century (Phase II).49 As such, the Middle Byzantine fort seems to incorporate more or less the size and orientation of the Early Islamic structure, including even several walls.50 Further, it was not located in the uplands like other Middle Byzantine fortifications in the area. Rather Ḥiṣn al-Tīnāt was a low flat open site on the Mediterranean coast, at the estuary of a river (the Tüm Çay) that brought timber from the nearby Amanus Mountains, and near the Roman and medieval coastal road, portions of which have been revealed south of the site at Kinet Höyük and a Roman bridge, 3 km further south. It was approximately 14 km north of Bayās and 18 km southeast of al-Muthaqqab. From the early ʿAbbāsid period through the Middle Byzantine period until the just after the arrival of the Crusaders, the site was a waystation and port, accessible by sea and road, and part of the western thughūr system. Another land route branched off of the coastal road, likely after al-Tīnāt, going north to ʿAyn Zarba and the Taurus pass. Örenşehir, near ʿAyn Zarba, was surveyed recently by F. Tülek’s team from Kocaeli University.51 Visible from Google Earth, it measures 250 m per side with a central axis route and ceramics date from the early ʿAbbāsid period and continue until the twelfth century.52 Its huge size is more like Ḥiṣn Maslama’s northern enclosure, Zibaṭra, and ʿAnjar. It may be identified either with Ḥiṣn Mūra,

49 For a more detailed discussion, see A. Eger, “Ḥiṣn al-Tīnāt on the Islamic-Byzantine Frontier: Synthesis and the 2005–2008 Survey and Excavation on the Cilician Plain (Turkey),” Bulletin of the American School of Oriental Research 357 (February 2010): 49–76. The building’s phasing presented here differs from what was previously published as it takes into consideration the 2011 excavation season which presented new evidence. 50 Eger, “Ḥiṣn al-Tīnāt,” 73. 51 F. Tülek, “Osmaniye Arkeolojik Yüzey Araştırması 2006 Yılı Çalışması” Araştırma Sonuçları Toplantısı 25 (2007): 317–18. 52 I am very grateful to Füsun Tülek for showing me the site and its ceramics.

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an unidentified site mentioned east of the Jayhān River in Cilicia, or even Hārūnīyya, the early ʿAbbāsid site “founded” by Hārūn al-Rashīd.53 Following this pattern, Ḥiṣn Jawzat, unidentified at present but known to have been on the south-north route between Ṭarsūs and the Cilician Gates, may well belong to this network of waystations on the frontier.54 In the central frontier, the Anṭākiya-Marʿash road is a well known and traversed route. At the northernmost extent of the Amuq Plain in the Kara Su River Valley is Kırmıtlı (AS 190), thought to be identified with Būqā, also previously discussed.55 It comprised a square enclosure measuring 70 by 70 m with stone walls and rooms around the perimeter and corner towers dated to the ʿAbbāsid and Middle Islamic periods by ceramics.56 There was also a low building mound east and northeast with large cobble walls and a flat area to the south of the enclosure with numerous basalt columns that may have been an open courtyard and perhaps a mosque. Just west of the enclosure was a well built and partially preserved square tower structure which seems later in date, likely Middle Islamic, as the site continued until the fourteenth century. The site was important both for its strategic location, as it offers a long view north in the Kara Su Valley and south to the Amuq Plain (and guards the entrance), and for its location on the main south–north road as a waystation between Baghrās (at the Belen Pass) and Marʿash, a distance of approximately 118 km as the crow flies. The site is about 23 km north of Baghrās, about the average of one day’s travel.

53 Which is typically identified with Byzantine Irenopolis, modern Düziçi. 54 The site is known to be about 24 Arabic miles or 45 km north of Ṭarsūs which would put it in the Taurus Mountains (Cilician Gates) near or at Tekir Yaylası about 17 km south of modern Pozantı (al-Badhandūn). See Ibn Khurradādhbih, Kitāb al-masālik wa-al-mamālik (Leiden: Brill, 1889, 1967), 100. 55 A. Eger, “The Early Islamic Period (mid 7th to mid 10th centuries) in F. Gerritsen, et al., “Settlement and Landscape Transformations in the Amuq Valley, Hatay: A LongTerm Perspective,” Anatolica 34 (2008): 270–71; and “Gazetteer of Sites,” In A. Yener, ed. The Amuq Valley Regional Projects, Volume 1: Surveys in the Plain of Antioch and the Orontes Delta, 1995–2002 (Chicago: Oriental Institute Publications, 2005), 45, 240. 56 Although if the site is identified with Būqā, it was said to have been built, fortified, and repaired by the Umayyad Caliph Hishām like Baghrās. Balādhuri, Futūḥ al-buldān (Beirut: Dār al-Nashr lī al-Jāmiʿīyīn, 1957–58), 229; Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-buldān (Beirut: Dār Sādr, 1955–57), 1:510; Ibn Shaddād, al-ʿAlāq al-khaṭīra fī Dhikr Umarāʾ al-Shām wa-al-Jazīra, Vol. 2 (Damascus: Manshūrāt Wizārat al-Thaqāfa, 1956–91), 2:422. One cannot say for certain that there is no preexisting component as the site was only surveyed and revealed one third century ceramic sherd and three other sherds of indeterminate Byzantine or Early Islamic date. Eger, “The Early Islamic Period,” 270–71.



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The Bālis-Manbij-Raʿbān-Ḥadath pass route followed the Euphrates partway from south to north. On the west bank of the Euphrates was Pınar Tarlası, “Site 4” in G. Algaze’s survey around Birecik.57 It was a rectilinear structure measuring 80 by 70 m, well built and preserved 1 m with stone facing, and dated only to the ‘Abbāsid period. It was located on an upper part of a narrow alluvial fan overlying a low river terrace, thus taking advantage of the river and the irrigable agricultural lands of the terrace. The site is about 100 km north of Jisr Manbij which was a fairly open alluvial plain. North of Pınar Tarlası the Euphrates is more incised and the land route likely diverged from it towards Sumaysāṭ or Kurban Höyük (see below), a distance of about 60 km. Pınar Tarlası also would have been situated on the two east-west routes from Dulūk (one long day or 45 km to the west) to al-Ruhā (modern Urfa, nearly three days or 85 km to the east) or Sumaysāṭ. It is likely that the site replaced classical Zeugma and preceded medieval Bira (modern Birecik) as a crossing point on the Euphrates River.58 In the eastern frontier (east of the Euphrates River), the RaqqaSumaysāt-Malaṭiya route was an important and well-traversed southnorth road. Ḥiṣn Maslama (Madīnāt al-Fār), previously described, was part of this system, connecting Raqqa and Ḥarran on the south-north route and likely Jisr Manbij and Raʾs al-ʿAyn on the west-east route. It was a large walled compound with three elements including a central elevated rectangular enclosure (80 × 40 m) consisting of two adjacent houses surrounded by a wall, and a large northern enclosure (330 × 330 m) on the scale of Zibaṭra59 or ʿAnjar in Lebanon (Fig. 4). It had corner towers and 8 intermittent tower buttresses with gates along each wall and an outer ditch. A southern compound consisted of loose residences. The site of Ḥiṣn Maslama dated to two phases: the first was scarcely represented and dated to the early eighth century while the second dated to the late 57 G. Algaze, G. Breuninger, J. Knudstad, “The Tigris-Euphrates Archaeological Reconnaissance Project: Final Report of the Birecik and Carchemish Dam Survey Areas,” Anatolica 20 (1994): 28, 94. 58 Although an area within Zeugma (Area D, Site 19) encompassing 2.5 ha on a hill overlooking the Euphrates had a scatter of mid-eighth to mid-ninth century pottery. Algaze et al., ibid., 22–23. 59 Ḥiṣn Zibaṭra, though only once mentioned as a ḥiṣn and once mentioned as having ḥuṣūn in and around it (see note 20), has also not been the subject of any archaeological research. However, a visit to the site showed the remains of high walls in a neighborhood of the modern town which is confirmed by satellite imagery of a rectilinear enclosure bounded by streets and bisected in the center by two tracks demarcating a space that measured 220 × 280 m.

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eighth/early ninth centuries. Most of the visible remains and large scale building of the central enclosure and the northern enclosure are attributed to the second ʿAbbāsid phase but the dating of the city walls and gates are not known with any certainty.60 Although an Umayyad foundation, it is likely that the northern and central enclosures were built up in the early ʿAbbāsid period as part of the system of waystations on frontier routes. Ḥiṣn Manṣūr was also on this route connecting Sumaysāṭ (32 km to the south) and Malaṭiya (about 150 km to the north), and I hypothesize was part of this system although it has not been excavated. Two sites were located in close proximity east and west of Sumaysāṭ on the Euphrates. These were part of an east-west route that crossed the frontier. At Kurban Höyük on the Euphrates, a 57 by 57 m square building was excavated and dated to the ninth century (Fig. 4).61 The building had no towers or buttresses but rooms arranged around a courtyard. Further upstream, a 20 by 18 m rectilinear building was excavated at Lidar Höyük. While originally thought to be Byzantine, it was later determined to be Early Islamic and contemporaneous with the building at Kurban.62 The sites are too close in proximity to be one day’s travel apart even from each other (from Sumaysāṭ Kurban Höyük is 11 km west, Lidar Höyük is 6 km east). Nevertheless, they speak to an intensification in waystations in this fertile and wide section of the upper Euphrates known as the Karababa Basin. Geographically, these Early Islamic rectilinear waystations (fortified or otherwise) all occupied important stopping points on south-north and east-west land routes connecting North Syria (al-ʿawāṣim) and Northern Mesopotamia (al-Jazīra) with the thughūr and beyond—“the spaces between the teeth.” Yet many of these sites were also located along water routes, whether coastal or riverine. In comparison with earlier Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine settlement patterns, the number of river sites (notably on the navigable Euphrates River) was dramatically decreased in the Early Islamic period, suggesting that there was a stronger preference for land travel and caravan routes which undoubtedly blended easily into traditional pastoralist routes. Although river travel on the Euphrates is mentioned by sources, they often refer to river crossing points (such as 60 Haase, “The Excavations at Madīnat al-Fār,” 56–59; C. Haase, “Is Madīnat al-Fār, in the Balikh Region of Northern Syria, an Umayyad Foundation?” Aram 6 (1994), 245–53. 61 G. Algaze, Town and Country in Southeastern Anatolia, Volume 2: The Stratigraphic Sequence at Kurban Höyük, (Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1990), 395, fig. 124, photo fig. 132. 62 S. Redford, The Archaeology of the Frontier in the Medieval Near East: Excavations at Gritille (Philadelphia: University Museum Publications, University of Pennsylvania, 1998), 17, fn. 74.



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Sumaysāṭ or Jisr Manbij) or methods of crossing such as bridges of linked boats or on rafts of inflated animal skins. Emphasis seems to be placed far more on land routes where multiple itineraries segmented with distances and times are frequently given between towns and waystations.63 Architecturally, the fortified enclosures exhibit a range of sizes from 360 sq. m to 108,900 sq. m. with three basic sizes: 1. 20–25 m per side; 2. 60–80 m per side; and 3. 250–330 m per side. They were not built with thick walls capable of withstanding attack by armies; however, it was important enough that they appeared monumental and imposing in the landscape and that their walls and towers were sufficiently strong enough to protect travelers, merchants, soldiers, and nomads from raids on these trans-frontier supply, trade, and communication routes. Further, these structures could provide refuge during times of danger and, as in the case of Ḥiṣn al-Tīnāt, protect the supply and distribution of an important economic resource (the timber trade). This system of newly founded sites does not constitute a frontier defensive line but fits within the pre-existing Byzantine and Umayyad settlement system of large urban centers and rural settlements.64 Chronologically, the enclosures all date to the early ʿAbbāsid period and are newly founded, unlike the Syro-Palestinian system of ribāṭāt that were Umayyad and built on Byzantine remains. When placed in context with earlier settlement patterns on the thughūr, this is in stark contrast to settlement in the seventh and early eighth centuries (Umayyad period) which were sparse, consisting of few key newly founded rural sites, few reoccupied Byzantine towns, and few remaining Byzantine villages.65 Beginning in the late eighth/early ninth centuries (ʿAbbāsid period) there was a significant increase in settlement in the landscape with newly founded or occupied urban centers and villages. The fortified waystations and their settlements represent a midrange group of sites that were part of a new system designed to promote settlement and sedentarization and also build and protect the economic infrastructure of movement across the frontier. At the same time, this example of state-sponsored intentionality, as argued by Donner, added a level of control on the frontier that prevented the rise of local autonomies.

63 Redford, Archaeology of the Frontier, 13. 64 Eger, “Ḥiṣn al-Tīnāt on the Islamic-Byzantine Frontier,” 73. 65 Eger, “The Spaces Between the Teeth,” 321–22, 350–57.

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Tighter dating and correlation with texts may discover that many can be attributed to the last quarter of the eighth century or more specifically to the Caliphate of al-Mahdī and his son Hārūn al-Rashid who sponsored many renovations of frontier fortifications before he became caliph (see Fig. 5).66 During this time, al-Mahdī (largely through Hārūn) carried out a large number of renovations and repairs to settlements in all regions of the thughūr including al-Maṣṣīṣa and Kafarbayya across the river, Adhana, Ṭarsūs, Ḥadath (which was briefly renamed Mahdīyya), Hārūnīyya, Ḥiṣn Qalawdhiya, Ḥiṣn Manṣūr, Ḥiṣn Maslama. In addition to continuing work at the aforementioned sites, Hārūn during his own reign, repaired al-Kanīsa al-Sawdāʾ, ʿAyn Zarba, Iskandarūna, Adhana, Dābiq, Baghras, Maṣṣīṣa, Ṭarsūs, Zibaṭra, and Marʿash. Both caliphs also settled groups of Khurāsānīs, Yāmānīs, Jazīrans from Mosul, Syrians, and volunteers from Iraq and the Ḥijāz.67 Indeed, al-Mahdī himself moved the capital from Baghdad to Aleppo in 778, and Hārūn did similarly by establishing Manbij as a headquarters in 791 and moving the capital to Raqqa in 796.68 Al-Mahdī and Hārūn, according to Bonner, personally went on expeditions into Byzantine lands, oversaw renovations of preexisting towns and founding of new ones, settled large populations of soldiers to the frontier, and overall implemented a new policy on the thughūr of direct ­participation.69 For the major frontier towns (not including the waystation system), the majority of these were not newly founded, although it is the first time that many appear in the histories as having been repaired or settled, including the sites of Ḥadath, Hārūnīyya, al-Kanīsa al-Sawdāʾ, ʿAyn Zarba, and not least, the important site of Ṭarsūs.70 In this instance, the textual evidence supports and may further refine the dating of new archaeological evidence at Ṭarsūs, ʿAyn Zarba, Ḥiṣn al-Tīnāt, and the site of Örenşehir which, from ceramic evidence, point to settlement beginning only in the early ʿAbbāsid period.71 Future archaeological work will help to answer whether there was Umayyad settlement and to what degree. That the waystations 66 Both father and son also patronized building projects on waystations of another route, the Darb Zubayda (M. Milwright, An Introduction to Islamic Archaeology, 183). 67 See individual entries in Eger, Spaces Between the Teeth. 68 Abu Ezzah, “The Syrian Thughūr,” 90. 69 M. Bonner, Aristocratic Violence and Holy War, 71–75. 70 Ibid., 82. 71 I am very thankful to A. Özyar and F. Tülek to have preliminary and briefly examined the collections from Ṭarsūs and Örenşehir. For recent reports, see for Ṭarsūs: A. Özyar, “TarsusGözlükule 2007 Yılı Kazısı,” Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı 30.2 (2008): 47–60 and Örenşehir (possibly Ḥiṣn Mūra or Hārūniyya): F. Tülek, “Osmaniye Arkeolojik Yüzey Araştırması 2008 Yılı Çalışması,” Araştırma Sonucları Toplantısı 27.3 (2009): 69–81. An intensive site



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such as Ḥiṣn al-Tīnāt and Ḥiṣn Maslama were new Islamic foundations is further supported by those sites that can be identified. These sites do not retain Arabicized versions of earlier names such as the larger thughūr like Anṭākiya/Antioch, Malaṭiya/Melitene, or ʿAyn Zarba/Anazarbos. Rather, as new foundations they are given new names which are either named for descriptive characteristics or after individuals, like the ribāṭāt on the eastern frontier or the ḥuṣūn of this newly organized system.72 The historical semantics of fortifications shows at once the inherent danger in constructing categories. From this, however, we can draw some insight as to the prescriptive or descriptive function of Arabic language in texts. While some words had arguably sharper defined meanings like the miṣr and madīna probably owing to an administrative role,73 words such as ḥiṣn, ribāṭ, and qaṣr were ambiguous and interchangeable; their meaning changed with particular use. R. Hillenbrand has posited the red herring notion that the difference or similarity in terms could come down to a regionalism of vocabulary.74 This paper demonstrates the difficulty in assigning fortification terms to specific substantive categories or regionalisms. The answer is not to be found necessarily in redefining one or more of these terms more specifically or in equating them (such as the thaghr with the ḥiṣn) or even in assigning a new term, say, for the frontier waystation. Rather, the terminology should act as a basic guide for understanding the systems presented by these fortifications, spatially and temporally. In the case of this system of structures, which includes Ḥiṣn al-Tīnāt and its parallel settlements which function as waystations, military garrisons, and religious centers, the frontier landscape can begin to be recast as a landscape of human transportation, expanding frontiers, and material and cultural exchange.

c­ ollection and mapping at ʿAyn Zarba was conducted in 2006 and 2007 under the direction of R. Posamentir and I am currently preparing the Islamic ceramics for publication. 72 Yet, Islamic and Byzantine architectural forms continued to influence each other. Frontier cities were built over and likely influenced by their Byzantine urban predecessors. Interestingly, the smaller waystations in some cases were previously thought by archaeologists to be Roman or Byzantine forts or military camps, though they were newly founded in the ʿAbbāsid period. That they continued past the Early Islamic period into the period of Byzantine reoccupation as seen at Ḥiṣn al-Tīnāt (whose name continued as well) shows further cultural exchange on the frontier. 73 See Wheatley, The Places Where Men Pray, 74–84. 74 R. Hillenbrand, Islamic Architecture: Form, Function, and Meaning (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 332.

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Gerritsen, F. A. de Giorgi, A. Eger, R. Özbal, and T. Vorderstrasse. “Settlement and Landscape Transformations in the Amuq Valley, Hatay: A Long-Term Perspective.” Anatolica 34 (2008): 270–71. Glick, T. F. From Muslim Fortress to Christian Castle: Social and Cultural Change in Medieval Spain. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995. Haase, C.-P. “The Excavations at Madīnat al-Fār/Ḥiṣn Maslama on the Balikh Road.” In Muslim Military Architecture in Greater Syria: From the Coming of Islam to the Ottoman Period, edited by H. Kennedy, 54–60. Leiden: Brill, 2006. ——. “Is Madīnat al-Fār, in the Balikh Region of Northern Syria, an Umayyad Foundation?” Aram 6 (1994): 245–57. Haug, R. “The Gate of Iron: The Making of the Eastern Frontier.” PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2010. Hillenbrand, R. Islamic Architecture: Form, Function, and Meaning. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Holum, K. “The Combined Caesarea Expeditions.” New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, Vol. 5 Supplementary Volume. Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2008, p. 1665. Ibn Ḥawqal. Kitāb ṣūrat al-ārḍ. Beirut: Manshūrāt Dār Maktabat Al-Ḥayā: 1964. Also Kitāb ṣūrat al-ārd. Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum 2. Third Edition. Leiden: Brill: 1967. Ibn Khurradādhbih. Kitāb al-masālik wa al-mamālik. Leiden: Brill, 1889, 1967. Ibn Shaddād. al-ʿAlāq al-khaṭīra fī Dhikr Umarāʾ al-Shām wa-al-Jazīra. Damascus: Manshūrāt Wizārat al-Thaqāfa, 1956–91. al-Istakhrī. Kitāb al-Masālik wa-al-Mamālik. Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum 1. Third Edition. Leiden: Brill, 1967. Khalilieh, H. “The Ribāṭ of Arsūf and the Coastal Defense System in Early Islamic Palestine.” Journal of Islamic Studies 19.2 (2008). Le Strange, G. The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate: Mesopotamia, Persia, and Central Asia from the Moslem conquest to the time of the Timur. New York: AMSPress, 1976. Luce, M. “Frontier as Process: Umayyad Khurasan.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2009. Masarwa, Y. “From a word of God to archaeological monuments: A ­historical-archaeological study of the Umayyad ribāṭs of Palestine.” PhD diss., Princeton University, 2005. Milwright, M. An Introduction to Islamic Archaeology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010. Muqaddasī. Aḥsan al-taqāsīm fī maʿrifat al-āqālīm. Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum 3. Third Edition. Leiden: Brill, 1967. Muṣṭafā, S. Baqāyā kitāb siyar al-thughūr min khilāl makhṭūṭa bughyat al-ṭalab lī Ibn al-ʿAdīm. Damascus: Dār Ṭalās, 1998. Nokandeh, J. et al. “Linear Barriers of Northern Iran: The Great Wall of Gorgan and the Wall of Tammishe,” Iran 44 (2006): 121–73. Özyar, A. “Tarsus-Gözlükule 2008 Yılı Kazısı.” Kazı Sonuçları Toplantısı 30.2 (2008): 47–60. Qudāma ibn Jaʿfar. Kitāb al-Kharāj. Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum 6. Second Edition. Leiden: Brill, 1967. Redford, S. The Archaeology of the Frontier in the Medieval Near East: Excavations at Gritille. Philadelphia: University Museum Publications, University of Pennsylvania, 1998. Sauer, E. “Sasanian Campaign Bases, Cities and Mountain Refuges in the Vicinity of the Gorgan Wall: the 2008 and 2009 Seasons of the Joint Project of the Iranian Cultural Heritage, Handicraft and Tourism Organisation and the Universities of Edinburgh and Durham.” Paper presented at the International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (ICAANE), London 2010. Shahîd, I. Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century. Vol. II, Part I: Toponymy, Monuments, Historical Geography, and Frontier Studies. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 2002.

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Fig. 1 Quṣūr (Qaṣr al-Hayr al-Sharqī, Khirbat al-Mafjar, Qaṣr al-Hayr al-Gharbī, ʿAnjar from Whitcomb 2007; Khirbat al-Karak and Bālis from Genequand 2006, 22)

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Fig. 2 Ribāṭ (Ashdod-Yam from Nachlieli, D. et al., 2000: 127; Tel Michal from Brandfon 1990: 196; Habonim from Barbé et al., 2002: 34; Monastir from Cresswell 1989: 289; Sousse from Cresswell 1989: 286)

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Fig. 3 Al-thughūr with sites, routes (in bold), and waystations (in bold, underlines, parentheses)

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Fig. 4 Waystations (Ḥiṣn Maslama sketch adapted from Haase 2006; Būqā sketch adapted from Google Earth Image 2/11/2011; Kurban Höyük from Algaze 1990, fig. 124)

0

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10

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uʾt a

Early Islamic 2

Early Islamic 1

Possible work

Harun

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Fig. 5 Number of Sites Repaired or Settled by Each Umayyad Caliph, Abbasid Caliph, and work done by Harun al-Rashid under other caliphs

Um Mu ar I ʾ Ab awiy d a a l-M ali k W a Ma lid sla Su ma l a y ma n Um ar Hi II sh Ma am r w an II Sa ffa h Ma ns ur Ma hd i H a r Ma un a Had i l ʾ m un Rash (o id r Am in Ab Ma ) ʾm du l l a b un .T a M hir u ʾta sim W Mu athiq t a w ak kil M mi d

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DESCRIPTIONS OF THE PHAROS OF ALEXANDRIA IN ISLAMIC AND CHINESE SOURCES: COLLECTIVE MEMORY AND TEXTUAL TRANSMISSION1 Tasha Vorderstrasse Introduction The Pharos of Alexandria was considered one of the seven wonders of the ancient world and this iconic building has continued to fascinate travelers, scholars, and geographers ever since it was built, even after it was fijinally destroyed in the 14th century. The Classical sources give descriptions of the Pharos, but it is the authors writing in Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew in the Islamic period who recorded stories about the building that they read or heard when they visited the city. These Islamic period sources were then transmitted to other regions, including China, where a story concerning the Pharos was written down in Chinese during the southern Song dynasty (1127–1279 AD) in the 13th century. All of this reflects the collective memory (the way people remember and reconstruct the past and how a collective vision of that past is created) about the Pharos that existed in this period and the diffferent stories that must have circulated at the time. The Chinese description of the Pharos that appears in Zhao Rugua’s book on foreign lands is not identical to the Islamic period versions, even though the similarities to these stories indicates that it is derived from an Islamic source. It is likely that Zhao heard an oral version of the Pharos story from a foreign merchant in Quanzhou where he lived and then wrote it down, publishing the story in 1225. The transmission of this story can be placed within the context of contact between these two regions and demonstrates the important position of the Pharos in the collective memory of medieval Middle Easterners, a position solid enough that such a story would fijind its way to China. The audience for such an “inscribed memory” includes individuals for whom the text or oral tale was not originally intended as it was transmitted from one generation to

1 This paper was originally presented as part of a lecture on Chinese descriptions of Antioch and Alexandria in 2006 at St. Andrew’s, Scotland. I would like to thank all those who attended that lecture for their helpful comments and remarks.

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the next. That said, while Zhao’s book was collected and sections of his book were indeed copied by other works, the impact of the description of the Pharos on the Chinese collective memory of foreign lands was minimal. This article will fijirst look at Egypt and Alexandria in Chinese sources in general before examining Zhao’s description and its similarities to the Islamic period sources, followed by a brief consideration of the importance of the Pharos story in Chinese textual transmission. Egypt and Alexandria in the Chinese Sources Prior to the 13th century, it is difffijicult to identify the country of Egypt or the city of Alexandria in Chinese sources. This should not be considered surprising. It would have been a very long journey to visit the Middle East and while the Chinese did have some interest in the region, their descriptions of the lands and peoples in it were often extremely vague or full of pseudo-historical or mythical facts about the land and its people. This makes it difffijicult to identify cities or countries until the Tang and Song Dynasties, when information became sufffijiciently detailed, thanks to the direct contact between the regions. The descriptions of foreign countries are often found in dynastic histories, where the same passages were often transmitted from one history to the next, forming part of the inscribed memory of foreigners in China. This collective memory of foreigners and foreign lands was expanded in the Tang and Song periods when the Chinese described Muslims and other foreigners who were now living in China.2 There have been several suggestions about the identifijication of the city of Alexandria in the descriptions of foreign lands,3 but

2 Friedrich Hirth and William Woodville Rockhill, Chau Ju-Kua: His Work on the Chinese and Arab Trade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, entitled Chu-fan-chï (St. Petersburg: Imperial Academy of Sciences, 1911), 7. For a discussion of Chinese knowledge of the Muslims and vice versa see Donald D. Leslie, Islam in Traditional China: A Short History (Canberra: Canberra College of Advanced Education, 1986), 24–25; Donald D. Leslie, “Living with the Chinese: The Muslim Experience in China, T’ang to Ming,” in C. LeBlanc and S. Blader, eds., Chinese Ideas about Nature and Society: Studies in Honour of Derek Bodde (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1987), 175–79, 186–88, 190; Donald D. Leslie, The Integration of Religious Minorities in China; The Case of Chinese Muslims (The Fifty-Ninth George Ernest Morrison Lecture in Ethnology. Canberra: University of Australia, 1998), 5–10. For a discussion of similar sources see also Tasha Vorderstrasse, “Medieval Encounters between China, Mongolia, Antioch, and Cilicia,” In press. 3 Friedrich Hirth, China and the Roman Orient: Researches into their Ancient and Medieval Relations as Represented in Old Chinese Sources (Shanghai and Hong Kong: 1885, Reprinted Chicago: Ares Publishers, Inc., 1975), 181–82, 199; Paul Pelliot, “Li-kien, autre nom

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none of these are certain thanks to the vague descriptions of the cities in these sources. In the 13th century, however, one can fijinally identify an actual description of Egypt and Alexandria in the Chinese sources. The source is the Zhufan zhi written by Zhao Rugua. Zhao Rugua was Inspector of the Department of Foreign Sea Trade at the harbor of Quanzhou in Fujian in the 13th century under the southern Song, a city that had a Middle Eastern merchant community and was one of the major ports where foreign ships called in China. A distant member of the royal family, he was also Quanzhou prefect and southern administrator, the only person who ever held all three offfijices.4 In 1225 he published his book Zhufan zhi describing regions outside of China in considerable detail. In the preface to his work, Zhao states that he personally spoke with foreign merchants and other foreigners, but it is also clear that he used historical Chinese documents and other written sources or other records that would have existed in the superintendent.5 He never actually left China and visited any of du Ta-ts’in,” T’oung Pao 16 (1915): 691; Jan Julius Lodewijk Duyvendak, China’s Discovery of Africa: Lectures Given at the University on Jaunary 22 and 23, 1947 (London: Arthur Probsthain, 1949), 8; Shiratori Kurakichi, “Chinese ideas reflected in the Ta-ch’in accounts,” Memoirs of the Toyo Bunko 15 (1956): 28; Shiratori Kurakichi, “The Geography of the Western Region Studied on the Basis of the Ta-ch’in Accounts,” Memoirs of the Toyo Bunko 15 (1956): 102–103; Shiratori Kurakichi, “A New Attempt at the Solution of the Fu-lin Problem,” Memoirs of the Toyo Bunko 15 (1956): 165–67, 225; Donald D. Leslie and K. Herbert J. Gardiner, “Chinese Knowledge of Western Asia during the Han,” T’oung Pao 68 (1982): 296; David F. Graf with Edward L. Dreyer, “The Roman East from the Chinese Perspective,” Annales archéologiques arabes syriennes 42 (1996): 208; Donald D. Leslie and Kenneth Herbert James Gardiner, The Roman Empire in Chinese Sources (Studi Orientali 15. Rome: Bardi, 1996), xix, xxii, xiv; Leslie, 1; Edwin G. Pulleyblank, “The Roman Empire known to Han China,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 119 (1999): 76–77. 4 Paul Pelliot, “Review of Chau Ju-Kua, his work on the Chinese and Arab trade, by Friedrich. Review of Hirth and Rockhill,” T’oung Pao 13 (1912): 448–449; Yves Hervouet, A Sung Bibliography = Bibliographie des Sung (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1987), 161; Richardo Fracasso, “Ssu-Chia-Li-Yeh,” T’oung Pao 68 (1982): 248; John William Chafffee, “The Impact of the Song Imperial Clan on the Overseas Trade of Quanzhou,” in A. Schottenhammer, ed., The Emporium of the World: Maritime Quanzhou, 1000–1400 (Sinica Leidensia 49. Leiden: Brill, 2001), 37; Roderich Ptak, “Quanzhou: At the Northern Edge of a Southeast Asian ‘Mediterranean’?,” in A. Schottenhammer, ed., The Emporium of the World: Maritime Quanzhou, 1000–1400, (Sinica Leidensia 49. Leiden: Brill, 2001), 411–12; John William Chafffee, “Diasporic Identities in the Historical Development of the Maritime Muslim Communities of Song-Yuan China,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 49 (2006): 395. 5 The translation of Hirth and Rockhill did not include the preface. See Paul Pelliot, “Review of Chau Ju-Kua,” 446–91; Hervouet, A Sung Bibliography, 161. See also Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-Kua, 36; Paul Wheatley, “Analecta Sino-Africana Recensa,” in H. N. Chittick and R. I. Rotberg, eds., East Africa and the Orient: Cultural Synthesis in Pre-Colonial Times (New York: Africana, 1975), 103; Paul Wheatley. “Notes on Chinese Texts Containing

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these regions himself,6 but his information from his sources, presumably from foreign visitors in Quanzhou, was quite accurate.7 His known written sources include Zhou Qufei’s Lingwai daida (1178) which he quoted extensively in certain passages (Zhou was stationed in Guangdong and would have met his oral sources there, meaning they had a diffferent emphasis than Zhao’s Fujian-centric sources)8 and he also relied less heavily on Zhu Yu’s Pingzhou ketan (1116).9 Zhou Qufei, however, does not describe Egypt (although it is possible he briefly mentions it),10 suggesting that in this instance Zhao’s descriptions are entirely original based on oral sources11 or based upon another source which is now lost. Fracasso, in his discussion of Zhao Rugua’s description of Sicily, suggests that Zhao’s sources about the island were oral stories from merchants.12 Zhao has a number of references to Egypt in his book, not all of which are as accurate as others which points to the variety of sources that he used. In his general description of the Middle East, he mentions that the References to East Africa,” in H. N. Chittick and R. I. Rotberg, eds., East Africa and the Orient: Cultural Synthesis in Pre-Colonial Times (New York: Africana, 1975), 287; Richardo Fracasso, “Ssu-Chia-Li-Yeh,” 249; Jonathon M. Lipman, Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1997), 27, no. 9; John William Chafffee, “Impact,” 37; Ptak, “Quanzhou,” 410–11. 6 Julie Wilensky, The Magical Kunlun and “Devil Slaves”: Chinese Perceptions of Dark Skinned People and Africa before 1500 (Neo-Platonic Papers No. 122. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2002), 2, who notes that the Chinese sources about Africa were composed by individuals who had never left China and simply spoke to foreigners who lived there. 7 Leslie, Islam in Traditional China, 58–60; Idem, “Living with the Chinese,” 187; Idem, “The Integration of Religious Minorities” 8. 8 Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-Kua, 36; Fracasso, “Ssu-Chia-Li-Yeh,”249; Ptak, “Quanzhou,” 410; Wilensky, Magical Kunlun, 28. Zhao’s use of Zhou’s text is well documented. In the discussion of Madagascar, for example. Zhao repeated Zhou’s description, but also added additional information. See Frank Dikötter, The Discourse of Race in Modern China (London: Hurst & Company Ltd., 1992), 15; Don J. Wyatt, The Blacks of Premodern China (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 2010), 156; Wilensky, Magical Kunlun, 28. See also Wheatley, “Analecta,” 86. For the suggestion that Zhao’s sources were Fujiancentered, while Zhou’s were more centered on Guangdong, see Ptak, “Quanzhou,” 411. 9 Lipman, Familiar Strangers, 27, no. 9; Derek Heng, “Shipping, Customs Procedures, and the Foreign Community: The ‘Pingzhou ketan’ on Aspects of Guangzhou’s Maritime Economy in the Late Eleventh Century,” Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 38 (2008): 1–38. Despite the fact that the original text has been lost, it still remains a valuable source. This text is composed of material based upon the author’s own observations on administration in the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi as well as his father’s experience at Chuzhou and Guangzhou between 1078–1085. He also included oral traditions in order to provide evidence for his own accounts or to provide interesting stories to the intended audience. The relevance of this text for foreign trade is that he provides descriptions of the administration of maritime trade and shipping, including international trade. 10 Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-Kua, 24–25, no. 5. 11  Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-Kua, 37. 12 Fracasso, “Ssu-Chia-Li-Yeh,” 250.

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capital is Mi-xu-li, an important trading center. Hirth and Rockhill have suggested that this is supposed to be a transcription of the Arabic Misr, but note that the description is inaccurate and confused.13 The description seems to be a combination of fantastical material from earlier Chinese sources describing the cities in the west, strange facts (such as the idea that the reason that the Arabs revere rugs is because it snows all the time and it is cold in their country), and actual facts seen through a Chinese lens (the source states that they have a Buddha known as Muḥammad, fast for a month at New Year, chant prayers, and pray fijive times a day).14 The subsequent sections that describe Egypt are far more detailed and Hirth and Rockhill are probably correct in stating that it comes from a diffferent source than this information, particularly given the fact that the names of the region are diffferent. The country described in these two sections is known as Wu-si-li rather than Mi-xu-li.15 There are two sections in Zhao Rugua’s book that discuss Egypt in detail: the fijirst discusses the country of Egypt in general and the second discusses Alexandria. Duyvendak states that in general it “truly remarkable to read such tales . . . in a Chinese account of the thirteenth century.”16 The fijirst section will be discussed in more detail in a forthcoming article.17 Description of the Pharos of Alexandria Alexandria receives its own section in the book. Zhao calls it the country of E-gen-tuo (the transcription in this period can be reconstructed as

13 Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-Kua, 115–16, 120 (notes). 14 Zhao Rugua, Zhufan zhi, edited Li Tiaoyan (Tokyo: Minyusha, 1914): 21b–24b. See Leslie, “Living with the Chinese,” 39. 15 Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-Kua, 120, 140 (where they note characters with the same sounds is used to render the name of a city which they believe is Mosul). For descriptions and transliterations of Egypt in the Yuan dynasty see Emil Bretschneider, Mediaeval Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources: Fragments towards the Knowledge of the Geography and History of Central and Western Asia from the 13th to the 17th Century (London: Trüber and Co., 1885), Volume I: 141–42, 389, II: 135–36; Paul Pelliot, “Les anciens rapports entre l’Égypte et l’Etrême Orient,” in Congrès international de geographie Le Caire—Avril 1925. Compte rendu publié par le secrétaire général du congrès. Tome cinquième (Cairo: Institut Français d’archéologie Orientale du Caire pour la Société Royale de Géographie d’É gypte, 1925), 21–22. For the Ming dynasty attestations see Luther Carrington Goodrich, “A Note on Professor Duyvendak’s Lectures on China’s Discovery of Africa,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 14 (1952): 384. 16 Duyvendak, China’s Discovery of Africa, 26. 17 See Tasha Vorderstrasse, “A Southern Song Source for Medieval Egypt: Zhao Rugua’s Zhufan zhi of 1225,” forthcoming.

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?at-kən-tfıa)18 which is a transcription of Alexandria19 which is under Wusi-li (reconstructed as ʋjvt/ʋut-sẓ-li).20 It is described as follows: The country of E-gen-tuo belongs to Wu-si-li. According to the tradition of the ancients, an extraordinary man, Cu-ge-ni, built on the shore of the sea a great tower under which earth was excavated to make two rooms, well connected and very well hidden. In one vault was stored grain and in the other were arms. The tower was two hundred zhang high. Four horses breast could ascend to two-thirds of its height. In the center of the tower was a great well connected by a tunnel with the great river. In order to protect it [the tower] from surprise by soldiers of other lands, the whole country guarded the tower to withstand the enemy. Above and below it could contain 20,000 men, to keep guard inside and to go into battle outside. On the summit there was a extremely large mirror and if warships of other countries made a sudden attack, the mirror detected them beforehand and the guards were prepared in advance to resist the plan. In recent years there came a foreigner who asked to be given work below the tower; he was employed to sweep and sprinkle. For years no one entertained any suspicion of him but suddenly one day he found the opportunity to steal the mirror and threw it into the sea after which he made offf.21

It is clear from not only the description, but also the name of the site, that it must be identifijied as Alexandria22 and there are a number of main points that are discussed in this section of the book: the builder of the tower, its appearance, and the mirror. As Hirth and Rockhill stated in their notes to the edition, Zhao is relating stories that are similar to those told by Arabic authors about the Pharos of Alexandria. The Pharos had

18 Edwin G. Pulleyblank, A Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation in Early Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese and Early Mandarin (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1991), 86, 106, 314. The reconstruction is based here on Pulleyblank’s transcriptions of Late Middle Chinese, which describes the language during the Tang and Song periods. After the Tang period, the language evidence for the Northern Song (960–1127 AD), Jin (1115–1234), and Southern Song dynasties is limited, but the basic structure remains Late Middle Chinese. Therefore, Late Middle Chinese pronunciation is used here because it provide the closest possible pronunciation. See Pulleyblank, Lexicon, 3 and his Middle Chinese: A Study in Historical Phonology (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1984), 62. 19 Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-Kua, 146. 20 Pulleyblank, Lexicon, 188, 291, 327. 21  Zhao Rugua, Zhufan zhi, edited Li Tiaoyan (Tokyo: Minyusha, 1914): 31b–31a; Ibid., edited Fang Chengjun (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1956): 69–70; Ibid. (Taibei: Taiwan yinhand, 1961): 30–31. English translations are given by Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-Kua, Chapter 37; Duyvendak, China’s Discovery of Africa, 25–26; Joseph Needham with Wang Ling and Lu Gwei-djen, Science and Civilisation in China. Volume IV. Part 3. Civil Engineering and Nautics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 661. 22 Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-Kua, 146.

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been built by Ptolemy II in the 3rd century BC (possibly begun under Ptolemy I) and was considered a wonder of the ancient world. The fact that it was so impressive is reflected in the fact that Classical authors describe it frequently23 and that it was the subject of diffferent stories in the Late Antique period. These stories reflect a confusion about which Ptolemaic ruler built the Pharos and the identity of its architect.24 There were already mythical or pseudo-historical stories circulating about the Pharos in this period. Such stories continued to be transmitted into the Islamic period by authors writing in Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew, but the content of the stories changed from the Late Antique period, with the exception of John of Nikiu in the seventh century AD, who was clearly still relying on the earlier authors.25 These other authors also had access to Greek and Latin authors, as well as their Arab contemporaries and the local oral traditions of the population,26 but they nonetheless saw the landscape of Egypt, and consequently the Pharos, diffferently than their predecessors. While the 23 Aristide Calderini, Dizionario dei nomi geografijici e topografijici dell’Egitto grecoromano. Vol. 1.1 (Cairo: Societa Reale di Geografijia d’Egitto, 1935), 158; Peter Marshall Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), Vol. 1, 17–20, Vol. II, 43–44, no. 96, 51, no. 111; Getzel M. Cohen, The Hellenistic Settlements in Syria, the Red Sea, and North Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 363–64, no. 7; Judith MacKenzie, The Architecture of Alexandria and Egypt: BC 300 to AD 700 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 41–42. 24 Calderini, Dizionario, 158; John Malalas, The Chronicle of John Malalas, translated E. Jefffreys, M. Jefffreys, and R. Scott (Byzantine Australiensia 4. Central Printing: Melbourne, 1986): 218; Procopius of Gaza, Panegyric of Emperor Anastasius, ed. Alain Chauvot as Procope de Gaza, Priscien de Cesaree. Panegyriques de l’empereur Anastase Ier (Antiquitas 1. Abhandlungen zur alten Geschichte 35. Bonn: Dr. Rudolf Habelt Gmbh, 1986): 20; R. L. Rike, Apex omnium: Religion in the Res gestae of Ammianus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 97–98; Ammianus Marcellinus, History, edited and translated J. Fontaine with E. Frézouls and J.-D. Berger (Collection des universités de France vol. 333. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1996) Book XXII.XIV.8. Cohen, Hellenistic Settlements, 363–64, no. 7. For the Suda, see now online, http://www.stoa.org/sol-entries/letter/phi, 114. 25 John of Nikiu. Chronicle. Edited and translated H. Zotenberg as Chronique de Jean, evêque de Nikiou (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1883): 229; Hermann Thiersch, Pharos: Antike, Islam und Occident: ein Beitrage zur Architekturgeschichte (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1909), 39; John of Nikiu. Chronicle, ed. R. H. Charles as Chronicle of John, Bishop of Nikiu translated from H. Zotenberg’s Ethiopic Text (Works issued by the Text and Translations Society No. 10. London: Williams & Norgate, 1916): Chapter LXIV.8 and LXVIII. 3–4. There have been suggestions that the fijirst part of John of Nikiu’s chronicle represents a reworking of John Malalas. See Elizabeth Jefffreys, “The Transmission of Malalas’ Chronicle: Malalas in Greek,” in E. Jefffreys with B. Croke and R. Scott, eds., Studies in John Malalas (Byzantina Australiensia 6. Sydney: University of Sydney, 1990), 254. 26 Charles C. Torrey, “Introduction,” in Futuḥ Miṣr (Yale Oriental Research Series III. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1922), 3, 6; Michael Cook, “Pharaonic History in Medieval Egypt,” Studia Islamica 57 (1983): 69; Okasha El Daly, Egyptology: The Missing Millennium.

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original context of the Pharaonic and Classical landscapes in Egypt had been lost as that cultural milieu in which the monuments were originally built had disappeared, this meant that their original functions were reinterpreted in an Islamic context. The Muslims observers had to reconcile what they saw with what they read and heard about Egypt, which was primarily that it was a mysterious land fijilled with magic.27 As various stories about the past were transmitted through time, they continued to be elaborated.28 The city of Alexandria may have ceased to be the most important city in the Islamic period in Egypt, but it still remained an important and impressive city.29 Not surprisingly, given the visual and literary importance of the Pharos of Alexandria, it is mentioned by many Islamic period sources that describe the city and presumably also were aware of the various stories and legends that were already circulating about the building. El Daly claims that this interest was a result not only of the importance of the building itself, but also due to Islamic interest in the technology and the function of the mirror on the Pharos.30 Whether or not this is the case, it is clear that these writers were extremely interested in the Pharos as one of the major monuments of Alexandria.31 The majority of the individuals

Ancient Egypt in Medieval Arabic Writings (London: University College London Press, 2005), 25–28, 129–30, 165. 27 Ulrich Haarmann, “Regional Sentiment in Medieval Islamic Egypt,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 43 (1980): 55–66; Ulrich Haarmann, “Das Pharaonische Ägypten bei islamischen Autoren des Mittelalters,” in E. Hornung, ed., Zum bild Agyptens im Mittelalter und in der Renaissance = Comment se représente-t-on l’É gypte au Moyen-Âge et à la Renaissance (Orbis biblicus et orientalis 95. Freibourg: Universitatsverlag, 1990), 29–58; Ulrich Haarmann, “In Quest of the Spectacular: Noble and Learned Visitors to the Pyramids around 1200 AD,” in W. B. Hallaq and D. Little, eds., Islamic Studies Presented to Charles J. Adams (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1991), 57–67; Ulrich Haarman, “Medieval Muslim perceptions of Pharaonic Egypt,” in A. Loprieno, ed., Ancient Egyptian Literature: History and Forms (Probleme der Ägyptologie 10. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1996), 605–27, esp. 606, 611; Ulrich Haarmann, “Islam and Ancient Egypt,” in D. Redford, ed., Oxford Encyclopaedia of Ancient Egypt. Vol. 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 193. 28 Martyn Smith, “Pyramids in the Medieval Islamic landscape: Perceptions and Narratives,” Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 43 (2007): 6. 29 Alfred Joshua Butler, The Arab Conquest of Egypt and the Last Thirty Years of the Roman Dominion (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987, reprint from 1902), 368; Mieczysław Rodziewicz, “Transformation of Ancient Alexandria into a Medieval City,” in R.-P. Gayraud, ed., Colloque international d’archéologie islamique (Textes arabes et études islamiques 36 (Cairo: Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 1998), 369–86; Paul Wheatley, The Places where Men Pray Together: Cities in Islamic Lands Seventh through Tenth Centuries (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 192, 198, 298–99, 498. 30 El Daly, Missing Millennium, 54. 31  Butler, Arab Conquest, 389.

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who wrote about the Pharos were geographers or travelers, who wished to place this monument in its historical context.32 Therefore, they were interested in explaining to the readership, many of whom would never visit the places that they described, what they had seen and relating interesting stories about the monuments. These geographers were clearly impressed by Alexandria and particularly by the Pharos.33 The Pharos descriptions in Arabic sources are typical of sources of the time, as described by Pettigrew. The descriptions include not only what he terms as “practical knowledge” of monuments (including quantitative information), but also fantastic or mythical elements.34 The Chinese Word for Pharos and Its Signifijicance The Pharos description in Zhao Rugua is a reflection of the collective memory of the Pharos that was written down by the Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew authors in the Islamic period. These descriptions have been previously studied in some detail35 and therefore this article will focus on the similarities that appear in Zhao Rugua rather than on all aspects of the descriptions. The fijirst question to be addressed is what the Chinese name is for the Pharos. The word used to describe the Pharos is ta in Chinese, which literally means tower, although some writers translate it as pagoda. The translation “tower” is preferred to the word pagoda, which in any case means tower, as it is unclear if the Chinese would have seen imagined that the Pharos looked like a Chinese tower or not. In the fijirst instance, the Pharos is described as a da ta (great tower), but subsequently in the text simply as a tower. In the Arabic texts, however, Pharos is called a manāra or lighthouse (this is also the name given in Hebrew, where Benjamin of Tudela who visited Alexandria in 1173 is quoting the Arabic word), 32 Mark Fraser Pettigrew, The Wonders of the Ancients: Arab-Islamic Representations of Ancient Egypt (Unpublished PhD Dissertation: University of California Berkeley, 2004), 189. 33 Rodziewicz, “Transformation,” 369. 34 Pettigrew, Wonders of the Ancients, 152–53. 35 Max van Berchem, Matériaux pour un corpus inscriptionum arabicarum. Partie 1: É gypte (Mémoires publiés par les membres de la Mission Archéologique Française au Caire, Ministère de l’Instruction Publique et des Beaux-Arts 19. Paris: Leroux, 1903), 473–89; Thiersch, Pharos; Miguel Asín Palacios, “Una descripción nueva del faro de Alejandría,” al-Andalus 1 (1933): 241–92; Ibid., “The Pharos of Alexandria—Summary of an Essay in Spanish,” Procceedings of the British Academy 19 (1933): 277–92; Ibid., “Nuevos datos sobre el Faro de Alejandría,” al-Andalus, III (1935): 185–93; Doris Behrens-Abouseif, “The Islamic History of the Lighthouse of Alexandria,” Muqarnas 23 (2006): 1–14.

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meaning that the authors simply referred to the “lighthouse of Alexandria” rather than transliterating the word “Pharos” from the Greek. The word is used as a lighthouse beginning in the Umayyad period and is also the word used for minaret.36 The word al-Fārūš, which is clearly the Arabic transcription of the Greek Pharos, does appear. In al-Bakrī (as recorded in al-Ḥimyarī in 1461 AD) he states that there is a building called al-Fārūš to the north of the lighthouse. But there is some idea that it may actually be part of the lighthouse, which then fell down.37 The minaret of the Huaisheng Mosque in Guangzhou is called a guangta (light tower), although it is unclear when this term fijirst came into use.38 Needham suggested that this term meant that the Huaisheng minaret functioned as a lighthouse as he did not understand that this

36 There were attempts to suggest that the Pharos inspired the construction of minarets, see Thiersch, Pharos, 97–99 or that the word is related to the Greek Pharos (Joseph Sadan and Jonathon Fraenkel, “Manār, manāra,” in EI2, s.v., but this has since been discounted. See Jonathan M. Bloom, Minaret: Symbol of Islam (Oxford Studies in Islamic Art VIII. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 9, 36–37; Jonathan M. Bloom, “Creswell and the Origins of the Minaret,” Muqarnas 8 (1991): 56. 37 Al-Ḥimyarī, Al-Rawḍ al-miʿṭār fī khabar al-aqṭār, ed. and trans. É. Levi-Provençal, “Une description arabe inedite du Phare d’Alexandrie,” in Mélanges Maspero III: Orient Islamique (Mémoires publiés par les membres de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale du Caire 68. Cairo: Imprimerie de l’Institut Français d’archéologie orientale, 1940), 166; Ibid., ed. and trans. Saleh Hamarneh, “The Ancient Monuments of Alexandria,” Folia Orientalia 13 (1971): 99. Levi-Provençal suggests that that the š conforms to pronunciation of Iberian Arabic at the time. There is some confusion about al-Bakrī, however. LeviProvençal and Harmaneh both publish an Arabic transcription and translation of the section relating to the Pharos written by al-Bakrī (1067–1068 AD) and reproduced in al-Ḥimyarī. Several of the al-Bakrī manuscripts had already been edited and translated by Miguel Asín Palacios, “Nuevos datos sobre el Faro de Alejandría,” al-Andalus, III (1935): 185–93. Harmaneh was unaware of Levi-Provençal’s work and the fact that the text is actually from al-Bakrī. The surviving incomplete manuscripts of al- Bakrī rather than the transmission preserved in al-Ḥimyarī was given by Asín Palacios in 1935 and this section is identical to the 1992 al-Bakrī edition. The section preserved in al-Ḥimyarī and the sections preserved in al-Bakrī are not identical. The introduction to the 1992 edition does not note the previous publications or discuss the al-Himyari transmission in much detail other than to state that it does not shed any light on the missing parts of al-Bakrī because it is arranged diffferently. A. P. van Leeuwen and A. Ferre, “Introduction,” in Kitāb al-masālik wa ’l-mamālik d’Abū ʿUbayd al-Bakrī. Vol. II (Tūnis: Al-Dār al-ʿArabiyah li-al-Kitāb, 1992), 15–16. Leeuwen’s dissertation, however, upon which the introduction to the 1992 edition is based, does discuss the issue of al-Ḥimyari in more detail. In this part of introduction, omitted from the 1992 edition, he states that al-Ḥimyari should be used to better understand al-Bakrī and that comparing the texts side by side is something that should be done at a later point. See A. P. van Leeuwen, Kitāb al-masālik wa-al-mamālik d’Abū ʿUbayd al-Bakrī. Vol. 1. Introduction, notes et indices (Paris: PhD Dissertation, Université de Paris III, 1975), xxviii, xxxii. As a full edition of al-Ḥimyarī has now appeared edited by I. ʿAbbās (Beirut: Maktabat Lubnān, 1984 [fijirst edition 1975)]), it would now be possible to do the textual comparison. 38 Leslie, Islam in Traditional China, 152, no. 12.

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was probably the literal translation of the word manāra rather than an indication of its function. At the time that Zhao was writing, the minaret of this mosque was actually called a fan ta (foreign tower)39 or simply ta (tower).40 Therefore, it is interesting to see that in the Song Dynasty, when all of these texts were composed, culturally loaded terms were not used to describe foreign buildings. The Builder of the Pharos According to Zhao, the tower was built by a stranger, known as Cu-ge-ni, the pronunciation of which Hirth and Rockhill compare to its pronounciation as in Cantonese Chou-got-ni (they transliterate it as “Ts’o-kot-ni”) in order to suggest that it must be a corrupted transliteration of the Arabic Dhūl-Qarnayn, the name of Alexander the Great in Arabic literature.41

39 Fang Xinru (1177–1222) described the minaret around 1200. See Fang Xinru, Nanhai baiyong (Congshu jicheng chubian Vol. 3123. Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1936): 7–8. For English translation see Leslie, Islam in Traditional China, 42. A shortened translation is also given in Leslie, Integration, 10. Needham, when he stated that the mosque was a lighthouse, quotes a description of the mosque by Qiu Chishi written in the early 19th century which he states is based upon Fang Xinru’s text. This implied that the name of the Guangta minaret came from Fang Xinru, but this is not the case. See Needham et al., Science and Civilisation in China, IV/3: 661. Qiu Chishi, Yangcheng guchao, (China, s. n., 1806), Ch. 3: 36b–37a; Ibid. (Taibei: Wenhai chubanshe, 1969): 264–65. See also Xuehaitang ji (Nanjing: Jiaosu jiaoyu chubanshe, 1995 (reprint of original 1825 edition), Ch. 11: 24b–25 which quotes Fang Xinru and uses his text as an inspiration for original work, which also refers to the minaret as a fan ta. For the Huaisheng minaret see Leslie, Islam in Traditional China, 152, no. 12; Sun Dazhang (trans. Zhong Guodong), Islamic Buildings (Vienna: Springer, 2003), 143. Fan ta is not the modern name for minaret. See Wang Jianping, A Glossary of Chinese Islamic Terms (Richmond: Curzon, 2001), 13, 71, 77, 82. 40 Yue Ke, Tingshi, ed. Wu Qiming (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981), Ch. 11: 126. 41 Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-Kua, 146; Duyvendak, China’s Discovery of Africa, 25. For Alexander the Great in Arabic literature see Michel Mazzaoui, “Alexander the Great and the Arab Historians,” Graeco-Arabica 4 (1991): 33–43; Faustina Doufijikar-Aerts, “A Legacy of the Alexander Romance in Arab Writings: Al-Iskandar, Founder of Alexandria,” J. Tatum, ed., The Search of the Ancient Novel (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1994), 323–43; Faustina Doufijikar-Aerts, “Alexander the Great and the Pharos of Alexandria in Arabic Literature,” in M. Bridges and J. Ch. Bürgel, eds., The Problematics of Power: Eastern and Western Representations of Alexander the Great (Schweizer Asiatische Sudien Band 22. Berlin: Peter Lang, 1996), 191–192; Faustina Doufijikar-Aerts, “ ‘The Last Days of Alexander’ in an Arabic Popular Romance of al-Iskandar,” in S. Panayotis, M. Zimmerman, and W. Keulen, eds, The Ancient Novel and Beyond (Mnemosyne Supplement 241. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2003), 23; Richard Stoneman, “Alexander the Great in the Arabic Tradition,” in S. Panayotis, et al., Ancient Novel and Beyond, 3, 8; Faustina Doufijikar-Aerts, Alexander Magnus Arabicus: Zeven eeuwen Arabische Alexandertraditie von Pseudo-Callisthenes tot Ṣurī (Published PhD Dissertation. Leiden University, 2004), 118–33.

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According to Pulleyblank’s reconstruction of Late Middle Chinese, it should be transliterated as tsɦuə˘-kat-nri.42 It does appear to be a rather corrupted version of the Arabic name for Alexander, but the fact that Zhao describes him as an extraordinary individual and that the Pharos was built some time ago, also does argue in favor of this identifijication. That his name given in Zhao appears to be a corruption of Dhūl-Qarnayn from the Arabic is signifijicant because it points to Zhao receiving his information from an Arabic speaker. In the Islamic period descriptions of the Pharos, Alexander is frequently mentioned as the builder of the Pharos, or at least the possible builder, when the name of the builder is mentioned.43 Other possible builders were mentioned, but Zhao clearly only knew about one builder, Alexander the Great, which suggests his source about this information is similar to stories related by Islamic period authors who defijinitively state that Alexander was the builder rather than suggesting multiple possibilities.44

42 Pulleyblank, Lexicon, 65, 106, 223. 43 Al-Dimashqī, Nukhbat al-dahr fiji ʿajaib al-bar wa al-baḥr, edited A. F. Fraehn (St. Petersburg: M. M. Eggers, 1866); al-Suyūṭī, Ḥusn al-muḥāḍara fī tārīḵ Miṣr wa-al-Qāhira, edited M. Abū al-Faḍl Ibrāhīm (Cairo: ʿĪsā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1967), I: 89; Al-Ḥimyarī, Al-Rawḍ al-miʿṭār fī khabar al-aqṭār, ed. I. ʿAbbās. (Beirut: Maktabat Lubnān, 1984 [fijirst edition 1975)]), 54; also ed. and trans. É. Levi-Provençal, “Une description arabe inedite,” 162; Hamarneh, “Ancient Monuments,” 94–95; al-Maqrīzī, Kitab al-Mawāʿiz wa-al-iʿ tibār fī dhikr al-khiṭāṭ wa-al-āthār, ed. M. ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Quṭṭa al-ʿAdawī (Cairo: Dār al-ṭibāʿa al-miṣrīya, 1853), I: 155–58; al-Masʿūdi, Murūj al-dhahab wa maʿādhin al-jawhar, ed. C. Pellat (Beirut: University of Lebanon): II, 432. Thiersch, Pharos, 40–41, 46–48, 50. He also claims [page 42] that it appears in one edition but not another of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī. It does not appear in the edition seen by this author. The edition is ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī, Kitāb al-Ifāda wa-al-iʿtibār fī al-umūr al-mušāhada wa-al-ḥawādiṯ al-muʿāyana bi-arḍ Miṣr, edited and translated K. H. Zand, The Eastern Key (London: Allen and Unwin, 1965); Doufijikar-Aerts, “Alexander the Great and the Pharos,” 197 (English translation of Ibn Hishām), 192–93. 44 Binyamīn ben Yōnah (Benjamin of Tudela), Masaʿot shel Rabi Binyamin, edited M. N. Adler, The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela: Travels in the Middle Ages (Malibu: J. Simon, 1983, reprint from 1907), 132–33; Ibid., edited S. Benjamin, The World of Benjamin of Tudela: A Medieval Mediterranean Travelogue (London: Associated University Presses, 1995), 275; Eutychius of Alexandria/Saʿid ibn Baṭrīq. Das Annalenwerk des Eutychios von Alexandrien: Ausgewählte Geschichten und Legenden kompiliert von Saʿid ibn Baṭrīq, edited and translated by M. Breydy (Corpus Scriptorum Christanorum Orientalium Vol. 471 Scriptores Arabici 44. Leuven: Peeters, 1985): 38.114; al-Gharnāṭī, Tuḥfat al-albāb wa nukhbat al-aʿjāb, ed. G. Ferrand, Journal Asiatique 207 (1925): 70; Ibn Hishām. Kitāb al-tīǧān fī mulūk Ḥimyar, edited M. Lidzbarski. “Zu den arabischen Alexandergeschichten.” Zeitschrift für Assyrologie 8 (1893): 278–79; Al-Ibshīhī, Al-Mustaṭraf fī kull fann mustaẓraf, trans. G. Rat, Al-Mostaṭraf: recueil de morceaux choisis choisis çà et là dans toutes les branches de connaissances réputées attrayantes (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1899–1902), 359–60; Khalīl b. Šāhīn al-Ẓāhirī, Kitāb zubdat kašf al-Mamālik wa-bayān al-ṭuruq wa-al-masālik, edited P. Ravaisse (Publications de l’É cole des Langues Orientales Vivantes 3e Ser., Vol. 16. Paris: Imprimerie, 1894),

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Alexander the Great is a well-known character in Arabic literature and therefore it is not surprising that stories existed that he built the Pharos and that this was subsequently transmitted to Zhao. It is clear, however, from the description that Zhao had very little understanding of who Alexander the Great was or why he was signifijicant. Appearance of the Pharos in a Chinese Source The description of the tower presented by Zhao states that there were two secret rooms (one stored grain and the other arms). The tower was two hundred zhang high and four horses could ride side by side up to two-thirds the height of the tower. In the middle of the tower was a well that was connected by a tunnel to the great river. The whole country guarded the tower to protect it from enemies and the tower could house 20,000 men. The translators suggested that one should substitute chi (foot) for zhang (ten feet), which would allow it to be closer to the actual height of the Pharos.45 According to the text without any alterations, the tower would be 300 meters high, which would obviously mean that it was impossibly tall. According to Behrens-Abouseif, based upon her study of the Arabic texts, the height of the Pharos would have been about 122 or 132 meters,46 meaning that Zhao’s tower was over twice that height. It is possible, however, that the information given to Zhao described the tower as being 200 cubits high and he simply substituted the Chinese measurement for the Arabic one.47 The idea of four horses being able to ascend up the interior of the tower is echoed in the Arabic texts, several of which state that one or two horsemen could ascend the ramp inside the tower.48

41; Abu Zakariyya Yaḥyā ibn Abī Bakr al-Warǧalānī, Kitāb Siyar al-aʾimma wa-aḵbārihim, al-maʿrūf bi-Tārīḵ Abī Zakariyyẚ̄, edited I. al-ʿArabi (Beirut: Dār al-Ġ arb al-Islāmī, 1982), 160; Yāqūt, Kitāb Muʿǧam al-buldān, edited F. Wüstenfeld (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1866–1873): I: 261. Thiersch, Pharos, 42–44, 50; Doufijikar-Aerts, “Alexander the Great and the Pharos,” 194–95, 198–99. 45 Duyvendak, China’s Discovery of Africa, 25; Needham et al., Science and Civilisation in China, IV/3: 661. They amend their translations here to take account of Hirth and Rockhill’s suggestion. 46 For lists of heights of the Pharos see Thiersch, Pharos, 66; Asín Palacios, “Una descripción nueva,” 245; Behrens-Abouseif, “Islamic History of the Lighthouse,” 10. 47 According to Thiersch, al-Suyūṭī stated that the height of the Pharos was 200 cubits high. But this is not in the edition of the text seen by this author. See al-Suyūṭī, Ḥusn al-muḥāḍara, I: 90–91. For the translation, see Thiersch, Pharos, 51. 48 Al-Bakrī, Kitāb al-masālik wa-al-mamālik, edited A. P. van Leeuwen and A. Ferre (Tūnis: Al-Dār al-ʿArabiyah li-al-Kitāb, 1992): 636 (two horses); al-Balawī, Kitāb alif bāʾ

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The description of the two rooms underneath the tower is similar to the description in al-Masʿūdi, who states that a Byzantine spy who visited the caliph (see below) claimed that there was a treasure hidden in subterranean chambers and caves underneath the Pharos.49 Al-Dimashqī (1273–1331 AD) also relates this part of the story but he provides an even closer parallel to the contents of those secret rooms described by Zhao by claiming that there was a cache of arms and a treasure underneath the Pharos.50 Benjamin of Tudela also states that there were secret passages in the Pharos.51 Therefore, one can assume that Zhao’s information came from someone who knew similar stories about the Pharos. There were well known cisterns beneath the city of Alexandria that existed into the Islamic period that were fijilled with water from the canal of Alexandria and were used for drinking water.52 This may be where a story about tunnel underneath the Pharos connecting to the great river came from, but this is not clear. One can assume that the “great river” in Zhao is actually the Nile. In the previous section, where the Nile is discussed in more detail, it is simply referred to as a “river” rather than the “great river.” Therefore it is not clear if Zhao recognized that the river was the same in both descriptions. The Mirror of the Pharos It should not be surprising that Zhao’s description of the Pharos includes a description of a mirror ( jing in Chinese). Although none of the Classical sources mention a mirror, it is likely that there was a mirror or mirrors that projected and magnifijied the light for ships at the Pharos.53 This mirror must have been very impressive as it became an integral part of the collective memory of the building and continued to be transmitted in the Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew descriptions. Nearly all of these sources (Cairo: Būlāq, 1870), II: 538 (2 horses); al-Muqaddasī, Aḥsan al-taqāsīm fī maʿrifat al-aqālīm, ed. M. de Goeje (Bibliotheca geographorum arabicorum 3. Leiden: Brill, 1877): 211 (1 horseman); Thiersch, Pharos, 42; Behrens-Abouseif, “Islamic History of the Lighthouse,” 3, 6–7. 49 Masʿūdi, Murūj al-dhahab, II: 434. 50 Dimashqī, Nukhbat al-dahr, 37; Thiersch, Pharos, 46. 51 Binyamīn ben Yōnah, Masaʿot, ed. Adler, 132–33; Ibid., ed. Benjamin, 275; Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-Kua, 146–47; Butler, Arab Conquest, 370; Hamarneh, “Ancient Monuments of Alexandria,” 78. 52 MacKenzie, Architecture, 24–25. 53 Thiersch, Pharos, 91–96; Peter Marshall Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), Vol. 1, 18; Christopher Haas, Alexandria in Late Antiquity: Topography and Social Conflict (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 25.

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mention some type of mirror (mirʾāh)54 that has diffferent attributes depending on the author being cited. The discussion of the mirror may be a reflection of memory of the actual mirror, assuming that one did exist, but its meaning had been lost. Almost all the texts suggest that the Pharos had a mirror which allowed someone to see enemy ships attacking from far away or those in other lands, such as Byzantium or al-Andalus,55 while a few other authors suggest that not only could the mirror allow one to see far away lands, but also that the mirror was made of Chinese iron that could be used to incinerate enemy ships.56 Zhao’s description of how the mirror worked most closely resembles the explanation provided by al-Muqaddasī in the tenth century CE. He claims that a guardian watched the mirror day and night and when they saw an enemy ship, the governor was informed and they made preparations to defend it.57 Zhao’s description notes that the mirror would detect enemy ships and then the troops would be made ready to repel them. Earlier in the description, he also stated that the entire country guarded the tower in order to protect it from enemies. Zhao does not repeat the suggestion that the mirror allowed one to see lands far away or burn up ships, rather simply to see ships. Zhao then moves on to describe what happened to the mirror, namely, that a stranger came to Alexandria and subsequently tricked the Muslims and destroyed the mirror. In the other sources, it is clear that the Pharos of Alexandria had experienced a number of difffijiculties over the years as it sufffered disrepair and it was already somewhat ruined when the Muslims conquered Egypt. There may have been a number of stories that were constructed in collective memory of the Egyptians in order to order to explain this problem. The oldest known story is that of al-Masʿūdi, writing in the 10th century CE, who stated the Byzantines wished to combat the problem of the mirror and therefore the emperor sent his trusted aid, a eunuch. This eunuch worked his way into the confijidence of the Umayyad al-Walīd I and mentioned the location of various treasures and then

54 Manfred Ullmann, Das Motiv des Spiegels in der arabischen Literatur des Mittelalters (Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen 3. F., Nr. 198. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1992), 15, for discussion of the word. 55 Thiersch, Pharos, 39, 40–42, 115; Asín Palacios, “Una descripción nueva,” 282; DoufijikarAerts. “Alexander the Great and the Pharos,” 195; El Daly, Missing Millennium, 117, 166–67; Behrens-Abouseif, “Islamic History of the Lighthouse,” 1. 56 Thiersch, Pharos, 49–50, El Daly, Missing Millennium, 53–54, 117; Doufijikar-Aerts. “Alexander the Great and the Pharos,” 194–95, no. 4. 57 Al-Muqaddasī, Aḥsan al-taqāsīm, 211.

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claimed that the there were secret treasures under the Pharos. This led the caliph to dig under the Pharos and in so doing, destroyed the mirror and tower. The population of Alexandria was alerted to this and became very angry by what had occurred, which meant that the eunuch, realizing he was about to be found out, had to flee by ship. As a result of his actions, the Pharos was half-ruined.58 This story was repeated by a number of writers who were clearly copying al-Masʿūdi.59 These authors were clearly happy to simply transmit the inscribed memory of the destruction of the Pharos, but they nonetheless made some changes. There are a number of important diffferences in the account of al-Masʿūdī and that of al-Dimashqī that are relevant here. Not only is the version of al-Dimashqī much shorter, but he specifijically says that al-Masʿūdī wrote that the envoy of the Byzantines persuaded the caliph to demolish the tower and the spy then threw the mirror into the sea,60 even though al-Masʿūdī attributed the destruction of the mirror to the troops of the caliph. Importantly, however, the suggestion that the mirror was thrown into the sea is also given in Zhao. There are also similarities once again to al-Muqaddasī. His shortened version of the story does not contain the name of the caliph involved, which is also missing from Zhao. He also states that the Byzantine managed to become appointed a guard of the tower,61 which once again resembles Zhao’s story that the stranger was appointed to work at the tower. Once again, Zhao does not give details about the stranger, such as his religion or country of origin. Zhao’s story of the mirror is only another analogue of the many stories that clearly circulated around the mirror as part of the collective memory. Some authors offfered only abbreviated descriptions of how the Greeks/Byzantines used deception to destroy the mirror,62 while other 58 Al-Masʿūdi, Murūj, II: 435–36; Thiersch, Pharos, 40–41; Hamarneh, “Ancient Monuments,” 85; Behrens-Abouseif, “Islamic History of the Lighthouse,” 1, 3. 59 Al-Bakrī, Kitāb al-masālik wa-al-mamālik, ed. van Leeuwen and Ferre, 635; al-Dimashqī, Nukhbat al-dahr, 37; Al-Ḥimyarī, Al-Rawḍ al-miʿṭār fī khabar al-aqṭār, ed. I. ʿAbbās (Beirut: Maktabat Lubnān, 1984 [fijirst edition 1975)]), 54–55; also ed. and trans. É. Levi-Provençal, “Une description arabe inedite,” 164; ed. and trans. Hamarneh, “Ancient Monuments,” 96–97; Al-Maqrīzī, Kitab al-Mawāʿiz, I: 156; Qazwīnī, Kitāb ʿAǧāʾib al-maḵlūqāt wa-ġarẚ̄ib al-mawǧūdāt, edited F. Wüstenfeld (Göttingen, 1848), II: 98; al-Suyūṭī, Ḥusn al-muḥāḍara, 89–90. See also Thiersch, Pharos, 45–46; Levi-Provençal, “Une description arabe inedite,” 161; Hamarneh, “Ancient Monuments,” 86, 105–106; Behrens-Abouseif, “Islamic History of the Lighthouse,” 4–5, 13, no. 35. 60 Al-Dimashqī, Nukhbat al-dahr, 37; Thiersch, Pharos, 45–46. 61  Thiersch, Pharos, 42. 62 Abū al-Fidā, Al-Mukhtaṣar fī aḵbār al-bašar, ed. and trans. Reinaud (Paris, 1848), II: 144; al-Qalqashandī, Kitāb ṣubḥ al-aʿshā (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Sulṭānīyah, 1913–1920), 3: 321–22; Thiersch, Pharos, 42 (translation of Nāṣir-i Khursaw), 46, 50.

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stories provide slightly diffferent versions from al-Masʿūdī and those who followed him.63 Still other versions provide diffferent individuals who were responsible for the destruction of the Pharos such as a Jew64 or a ship’s captain.65 Signifijicance of Pharos Story in Zhao What is clear from looking at this text is that Zhao Rugua either spoke to someone who was familiar with the legends surrounding the Pharos or had access to a Chinese translation of an Arabic text relating the legend of Alexandria. It seems most likely that Zhao transcribed a story about the Pharos that was told to him by a merchant from the Middle East who either lived in Quanzhou or was visiting there and spoke to him about Egypt. It is possible that he spoke to several sources. As the Chinese source is not identical to any of these sources, it seems likely that either the story was changed when it was told to Zhao or had been changed already as it was transmitted orally or that the oral source was citing another source that is currently unknown. Hirth and Rockhill correctly note that al-Masʿūdī describes a similar story to the one given here,66 but they did not examine the non-Chinese sources in detail, meaning that they did not note the similarities to other authors such as al-Dimashqī and al-Muqaddasī. Clearly, Zhao’s description does not resemble any one single source. In some respects, this is similar to the original sources that mention the Pharos, which also used a variety of diffferent sources. The impact and reception of the Pharos description on Chinese literature appears to be minimal in Chinese texts that have been preserved.67

63 Al-Gharnāṭī, Tuḥfat al-albāb, 71–72 (he repeats the treasure story given in al-Masʿūdi but substitutes ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAs for Walīd); Gabriel Ferrand, “Les monuments de l’Egypte au XIIe siècle d’après Abū Ḥāmid al-Andalusī,” in Mélanges Maspero III: Orient Islamique (Mémoires publiés par les membres de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale du Caire 68. Cairo: Imprimerie de l’Institut Français d’archéologie orientale, 1940), 57–59. Al-Ibshīhī, Al-Mustaṭraf, II: 359; Thiersch, Pharos, 49–50; Ibn Iyas, Badāʾiʿ al-zuhūr fī waqāʾiʿ al-duhūr, edited M. Muṣṭafā (Bibliotheca Islamica 5. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1960–1992), I: 106–107; Asín Palacios, “Una descripción nueva,” 281–83. 64 Al-Warǧalānī, Kitāb Siyar al-aʾimma, 161. Thiersch (Pharos, 42–43) only gives a partial translation of the text, leaving out most of the detail about the destruction of the mirror. 65 Binyamīn ben Yōnah, Masaʿot, ed. Adler, 132–33; Ibid., ed. Benjamin, 275; Thiersch, Pharos, 42. 66 Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-Kua, 147. 67 Hirth and Rockhill, Chau Ju-Kua, 35–36, 38; Pelliot, “Review of Chau Ju-Kua,” 448–49; William Woodville Rockhill, “Postface,” in Zhao Rugua (Li Tiaoyan, ed.), Zhufan zhi (Tokyo: Minyusha, 1914), 1–2.

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Therefore, the current evidence suggests that Zhao’s story of the Pharos was not transmitted widely in Chinese literature and did not enter into the Chinese collective memory of foreign countries. Conclusion While the Chinese description of the Pharos of Alexandria has been known since the fijirst English translation of Zhao appeared, its signifijicance and importance has not been discussed in detail. This description is a reflection of the collective memory of the Pharos, just like the Arabic, Persian, and Hebrew written sources. While there does not seem to be an obvious continuation of Pharos stories from the Late Antique period, it is clear that the many stories about the Pharos began to appear then and these continued into the Islamic period. The authors who wrote about the Pharos in this period went to the site and observed it themselves and spoke to the local Alexandrians, copied what others had said, or did a combination of both. In the case of Zhao, it is clear that he did not go to Alexandria himself, but nonetheless, was interested enough in Egypt that he dedicated one section of his book to Egypt and another specifijically to Alexandria. In that chapter on Alexandria, his story reflected much of what was being said about the Pharos at the time: it was built by Alexander the Great, it was very large, it had a great mirror to defend itself against enemy ships, and the mirror was destroyed through treachery. Although Zhao Rugua’s description of Alexandria does not seem to have prompted further interest in the subject at the time in China and did not enter into the Chinese collective memory of foreign lands, this has not been the case in modern China.68 Large scale models of the Pharos have been erected at the Window of the World Cultural Park in Shenzhen, Guandong and more recently, the Beijing World Park. As one of the seven wonders of the ancient world it has been replicated in China, just as it has in other such parks around the world and forms part of the collective memory of the Chinese who visited the park and viewed the monuments.

68 For modern Chinese appreciation of Arabic literature see Ouyang Wen-Chin, “The Arabian Nights in Chinese and English Translations: Difffering Patterns of Cultural Encounter,” in A. Chraibi and C. Ramirez, eds., Les Mille et une nuits et le recit oriental: En Espagne et en Occident, ed. A. Chraibi and C. Ramirez (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2009), 371–400.

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Appendix: Chinese Terminology for Medieval Egypt

English word

Chinese Characters

Pinyin

lighthouse Pharos minaret (Guangzhou)

燈塔 (大) 塔 燈塔 番塔 鏡 勿斯里 遏根陀 徂葛尼 大江

guangta (da) ta guangta fanta jing Wu-si-li E-gen-tuo Cu-ge-ni da jiang

mirror Egypt Alexandria Alexander the Great Nile

Reconstructed Transcription (if relevant)

ʋjvt/ʋut-sẓ-li ?at-kən-tfıa tsɦuə˘-kat-nri

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index Aaron (Hārūn) 29–30, 38, 274 n.31, 313, 316 ʿAbbāsid 21, 26, ṣ41 n.65, 51 n.91, 61–2, 65, 67–68, 73, 86, 90, 92 n.28, 127, 156, 188 n.45, 209, 212, 227–230, 271, 299, 302, 380, 397, 409, 412, 417, 421–22, 433–34, 440–46, 447 n.72 ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Marwān 29 n.26, 43, 54, 156, 209, 212–213, 215–220, 222–224, 227, 230, 306 n.45, 379, 408, 417, 455 ʿAbd al-Qāhir ibn Ṭāhir al-Baghdādī 40–41, 77 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Manṣūr ibn Thābit 218, 224 Abraham (Ibrāhīm) 48 n.82, 93, 151, 215, 218–19, 221, 231, 261–63, 265 n.8, 269, 273, 274 n.31, 282, 292–93, 311–12 Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī 230–231 Abū Bakr al-Naqqāsh, Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan 182 Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq 77, 154–56, 158–61, 168, 171, 178–79, 193, 200, 227 Abū Ḥanīfa, Nuʿmān ibn Thābit  93, 129 n.23, 324, 330, 332–33, 335–37, 372 n.46 Abū ʿĪṣā al-Iṣfahānī 22, 35–44, 46–48, 52, 54, 55 n.97 Abū ʿĪṣā, Muḥammad ibn Hārūn al-Warrāq 21, 26–29, 31–35, 37–39, 44, 46–53, 54 n.96 Abū al-Maʿālī, Muḥammad ibn ʿUbaydallāh al-ʿAlawī 21, 26–28, 29 n.26, 31, 33–40, 42–43, 44 n.74, 48, 53 Abū Mikhnaf Lūt ibn Yaḥyā al-Azdī  167–73, 180 Abū Muʿāwiya 138, 140, 144, 324 Abū Mūsā al-Murdār, ʿĪsā ibn Ṣabīh 65, 79 Abū Sufyān ibn Ḥarb 132–33, 158, 178, 189 n.49, 200 Abū Ṭāhir Arrānī 101, 103, 112 Abū ʿUbayda ibn al-Jarrāḥ 157–60, 164, 170, 329 Abū ʿUthmān al-Nahdī 138, 141–44 Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb ibn Ibrāhīm 74, 332 Adam 48 n.82, 210, 237 n.7, 238–41, 249, 251, 254–56, 301 Adhana 432, 446 Afghanistan 384–85, 387

Agapius of Manbij 49–52 Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal 86, 91, 136, 161, 194, 196 n.91, 337–38, 354 al-Ahwazī, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Ibrāhīm 182, 190–91 ʿĀʾisha bint Abī Bakr 78 n.56, 87, 193, 203, 256 n.98 Alamūt 99, 108, 111 Alexander the Great 467–69, 474–75 Alexandria 155, 226, 418–20, 457–59, 461–62, 464–66, 470–75 Aleppo 105, 114, 446 ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib 67, 77–78, 87–88, 107–108, 111, 144, 156, 177–79, 184–89, 192–94, 196–98, 200–201, 203–205, 212–213, 227 ʿAlid 26, 187, 205, 317 al-Amīn Muḥammad ibn Hārūn al-Rashīd 72, 78, 455 ʿAmmār ibn Yāsir 193, 195–96, 202 ʿAmr ibn al-Ḥamiq al-Khuzaʿī 184, 186 ʿAmr ibn Saʿīd ibn al-ʿĀṣ 130, 155, 195–96, 203, 473 n.63 Anatolia 428, 437–38, 440, 302 Andalus 437–38, 471 ʿAnjar 441, 443 Anṭakīya 432, 433 n.23, 442, 447 Antioch see Anṭakīya Arabia 146, 177, 239 n.20, 414; see also Ḥijāz Arjomand, Said Amir 26, 39 Armenia 23, 50 n.90, 155–156, 438 Aristotle, Aristotelian 235, 241 n.26, 243 n.39, 246, 249–54, 256–57 al-Aṣamm, Abū ʿAbdallāh ʿUthmān ibn Abī ʿAbdallāh 76–78, 334, 336–37, 345 ʿĀṣim ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Hilālī 394, 396 ʿĀṣim al-Aḥwal 138, 140 n.48, 141–45 al-ʿAsqalānī, Ibn Ḥajar 40 n.63, 87 n.7, 140 n.48, 166–67, 344 Ayla 414, 419–20 ʿAyn Zarba 438, 441, 446–47 Ayyubid 210, 438 al-Azdī, Abū Ismāʿīl Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh 153–55, 157–65, 167–73 Babylon 272 n.26, 274, 277, 278–79, 285, 291

484

index

Badakhshān 387, 394 Baghdād 32 n.34, 66, 73, 79–80, 88–90, 92, 99, 104, 114, 116, 211, 222, 225, 446 Baghrās 442, 446 Baḥrayn 222, 337 Balādhurī, Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā 124 n.9, 131–34, 151–52, 157, 162, 168–69, 173, 228 Balkh 386–87, 394–95, 400 Baṣrā 66, 79–80, 88, 91, 123, 129 n.23, 130, 132, 135–36, 140 n.48, 142–45, 184, 214, 337, 387 Battle of Ajnadayn 154–60, 164, 169–70 Battle of the Camel 123, 193 n.77, 203–204 Battle of Marj al-Ṣuffar 158, 168 al-Baṭṭāshī, Sayf ibn Ḥamūd ibn Ḥāmid  333, 342 Bayās 432, 441 Benjamin of Tudela 465, 470 Bēṯ Ārāmāyē 25, 45–46 al-Bīrūnī, Abū al-Rayḥān 27, 34–35 Bishr ibn al-Muʿtamir 65, 79 Bonner, Michael 68–69, 302, 446 Bostra 154, 157 al-Bukhārī, Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl 87, 136, 196, 199, 201, 205, 338 Bukhtnaṣṣar 286–87, 289–91, 292 n.70; see also Nebuchadnezzar Byzantium 22–23, 124 n.10, 132, 157–58, 215, 297–304, 307–308, 310, 315, 318, 407–408, 411–17, 419, 421 n.41, 422, 428–29, 431–33, 435, 437–41, 444–47, 470–72 Caesarea 154, 416 n.23, 417, 420, 435 n.29 Cairo 114, 155, 157, 166, 170, 209, 211, 359–60, 363–64, 409 China 412, 457–62, 465, 468, 474 Chronicle of Zuqnīn 45–52, 55 Church of Mary 159–160, 163–64, 409 Cilicia 303, 431 n.16, 438, 442 Conrad, Lawrence 152, 161–62, 171, 430 Crone, Patricia 62, 64, 79 Crusades 97, 105, 108, 210, 230, 409–10, 411 n.14, 421 n.41, 422, 438, 441 Ḍabbī, Abū al-Walīd al-ʿAbbās ibn Bakkār 180, 184–187, 204–205 Damascus 27, 41 n.64, 42, 104, 114, 154–65, 167–73, 186, 188, 213–16, 222–23, 225, 227, 303, 364 n.31 Dastawā 380, 386, 397 David (Dāwūd) 29, 48 n.82, 55 n.97, 89, 109, 261, 274 n.31, 275 n.33

Dhahabī, Shams al-Dīn Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad 112 n.44, 177, 202 Dionysius of Tell-Maḥrē 49–50, 52 al-Dimashqī, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Abī Ṭālib 470, 472–73 Ḍirār ibn ʿAmr 76, 78 Dome of the Rock 209, 212–13, 215–18, 223–26, 229–30, 422 Donner, Fred 24, 297, 321, 427, 445 Egypt 45, 102, 105, 108, 152, 155, 214–16, 237 n.6, 283, 285 n.53, 337, 355, 385, 407–409, 418–19, 421, 458–61, 463–64, 471, 473–75; see also Miṣr Elijah 29–31, 48, 50 n.89, 54 Euphrates 25, 432, 443–444 Faḍl al-Ḥadathī 65, 82 Fakhr al-Mulk Abū al-Muẓaffar ʿAlī ibn Niẓām al-Mulk 103–104, 113 Fārs 386–87, 389 Fāṭimids 61, 109, 114, 222, 228, 409–12, 422 Fusṭāṭ 40, 418–19, 422 Gabriel (Jibrīl) 32 n.38, 193–94, 199, 240, 252–53, 264, 284 Galen, Galenic 235, 242, 246, 256–57 Ghars al-Dīn Khalīl 360–61 Ghaznavids 21, 26–27, 34 al-Ghazzī, Najm al-Dīn 363–64 Ghūṭa 157, 159–60, 171 Ḥadath 432, 443, 446 Ḥafṣ al-Fard 76, 78–79 al-Ḥajjāj ibn Yūsuf al-Thaqafī 126, 195, 197, 215, 218–20, 224 Haneberg, Daniel 152–53, 173 Hamadhān 44 n.74, 114–15 Ḥanafīs 86, 92 n.28, 114, 321, 326, 328, 330–32, 335, 337, 340, 344, 360, 369 n.40 Ḥanbalīs 92, 209–10, 328, 335, 345 Ḥārith ibn Kalāda al-Thaqafī 123–24, 131 n.27, 132, 136 Ḥārith ibn Surayj 380, 393–97 Ḥarrān 156, 443 Hārūn al-Rashīd 72, 302, 432 n.19, 433 n.22, 442, 446, 455 Hārūniyya 432, 442, 446 Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī 143 n.63, 178, 186–87, 196 n.89, 213 Ḥasan al-Baṣrī 65, 131, 143–45 Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ 99, 101 Hebron 209–10, 228–29, 231



index

Heraclius 22, 159, 298 n.4, 300–301, 316, 431 n.16 Ḥijāz 135 n.139, 214, 219, 355, 359, 419, 421, 446; see also Arabia Ḥimṣ 154–56, 214–15, 224 Hind bint ʿUtba 178, 200 Hippocrates, Hippocratic 235, 240, 242, 246–51, 254, 256–57 Hishām ibn ʿAbd al-Malik 45–47, 442 n.56, 445 Hishām al-Fuwatī  76–78 Ḥiṣn al-Jawzāt 431 n.13, 433, 442 Ḥiṣn Manṣūr 432–33, 444, 446 Ḥiṣn Maslama 431 n.13, 432, 433, 440–41, 443, 446–47 Ḥiṣn al-Tīnāt 431 n.13, 432–33, 440–41, 445–47 Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī 108–109, 156, 187, 204 n.119, 214, 227, 410 n.13 Ḥusayn al-Kūfī 65, 82 Ḥusayn ibn Numayr 214, 219 Ibāḍīs 321–22, 324, 327, 329–30, 334, 335, 337–39, 341–42, 346; see also Khārijīs Ibn ʿAbbās, ʿAbdallāh 187, 189 n.48, 194 n.79, 200–1, 266 n.10, 329 Ibn ʿAbd al-Ghaffār 356–59, 362, 366–68, 375 Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb, Muḥammad  372–73, 375 Ibn Abī al-Dunyā, ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad 181, 188–89, 204 Ibn Abī Sharīf, Burhān al-Dīn 361–64, 368 Ibn ʿAsākir, ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥasan 126, 154, 167–69 Ibn Aʿtham, Muḥammad al-Kūfī 153, 155–7, 160–73 Ibn Baraka, Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibn Muḥammad-Bahlawī 329–30 Ibn Bībī al-Munajjimeh 369–70, 374 Ibn al-Farrāʾ, Abū Yaʿlā Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn 183, 192–94, 205 Ibn Ḥajar al-Haythamī, Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad 183, 197–205 Ibn Ḥawqal, Abū al-Qāsim Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī 432, 437 Ibn Hubayra, Abū al-Muẓaffar Yaḥyā ibn Muḥammad al-Shaybānī 335, 337 Ibn Iyās, Abū al-Barakāt Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad 359–60, 362–66, 371, 374 Ibn Jaʿfar, Abū Jābir Muḥammad al-Izkawī 337, 339 Ibn al-Jawzī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn ʿAlī 85, 89–90, 92–93, 100, 354

485

Ibn al-Kalbi, Hishām ibn Muḥammad ibn Sāʾib 163, 166–70, 172–173, 180 Ibn Kathīr, Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUmar 239, 253 Ibn Muljam, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Murādī 107, 111 Ibn Qudāma, Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh ibn Aḥmad 328, 337 Ibn Saʿd, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad al-Baṣrī 125, 130 n.24, 133–35, 145 Ibn Sīrīn, Abū Bakr Muḥammad 87, 138, 142, 145, 224, Ibn Taymiyya, Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm  183, 194–97, 205, 363 n.29, 368 Ibn ʿUmar, Sayf 189, 200 Ibn al-Zubayr, ʿAbdallāh  72, 189 n.48, 201, 209, 212, 214–15, 218–20, 223, 230 al-Idrīsī, Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad 409, 432 Imāmīs 31–32, 34, 37, 67, 75, 181 n.13, 327, 351 n.2; see also Shīʿa Iran 42, 44 n.74, 97, 102, 152, 352, 380, 383, 385, 389, 439 Iraq 102, 129, 152, 155, 211, 214, 219, 308, 338, 385–87, 389, 394–95, 418, 446 Isaiah 276–82, 284–87, 289, 293 ʿĪsawiyya see Abū ʿĪṣā al-Iṣfahānī Iṣfahān 25 n.15, 89, 97 n.1, 103, 112–114 Isḥāq ibn Bishr 263–64, 270 n.18, 373 Ishmael 23, 25, 261 Iskandarūna 432, 433 n.23, 440, 446 Ismāʿīl ibn ʿUlayya 138, 140, 144 Israel 38, 45, 48, 55, 227, 270–71, 274–75, 277, 279 n.44, 288–89, 313, 407, 411, 419 Iṭfayyish, Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf ibn ʿĪsā ibn Ṣāliḥ 335–36, 338, 343 Jāḥiẓ, Abū ʿUthmān ʿAmr ibn Baḥr 31, 78, 90–91, 93, 126 n.16, 181, 187–88 Jamāʿī 64, 67, 73, 74–75, 80, 86, 192 n.73; see also Sunnī Jarash 414, 417 al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī 326, 331 Jazīra 50 n.90, 152, 433 n.53, 444; see also Mesopotamia Jerusalem 22–24, 29 n.25, 154, 156, 209–211, 216, 224–231, 262, 266, 274–280, 285 n.53, 288, 290, 409, 422 Jesus 35–37, 41, 48, 50 n.89, 151, 229, 244, 249, 251–55, 257, 290 n.60, 300, 308 n.53, 313 n.64, 355 al-Jibāl 152, 386–87 Jordan 211, 321, 414, 419, 421 n.40, 429

486

index

Joseph 92–93 Judea 269, 273, 277, 279 Jundī-Sābūr 380, 386, 397 Kaʿba 93, 212, 214–15, 218–22, 231 Kabul 386–91 al-Kanīsa al-Sawdāʾ 432, 446 Karaite 41, 43, 48 n.81, 54 Karbalāʾ 156, 227 Khālid ibn Ḥadhdhāʾ 138, 141–43 Khālid ibn al-Walīd 155, 157–61, 163–64, 167–68, 170–71 Khalīfa ibn Khayyāṭ 136, 144–45 Khān, Muḥammad 155–56, 162 Khārijīs 40, 67, 75, 79, 107, 124 n.10, 132, 143, 156, 196 n.89; see also Ibāḍī al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī 89, 91, 92 n.28 Khurāsān 219, 380–82, 384–90, 394–97, 433 n.23, 436 n.34 Khuttal 394–95 Khūzistan 386–87, 389 al-Kindī, Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn Mūsā 323–324, 333, 336, 339, 341, 343–45 Kirmān 115, 385–87, 436 n.34 al-Kisāʾī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh 251 n.81, 264 n.6, 265 n.8, 266 n.10 al-Kudamī, Abū Saʿīd Muḥammad ibn Saʿīd ibn Muḥammad 322–24, 326, 329, 332–33 Kūfa 25, 127, 129 n.23, 135, 140 n.48, 144–145, 180 n.3, 184, 213, 332, 337 Lees, William Nassau 154–55, 157, 161, 165, 170 Lewis, Bernard 98, 101, 106, 108, 110–11 Luʾluʾa 304, 431 n.16, 433 Mahdī, Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Abī Jaʿfar 128, 220, 225, 228, 408 n.5, 433–34, 446, 455 al-Mahdī ʿUbaydallāh 222, 224 Malaṭiya 432, 443–44, 447 Mālik ibn Anas 129, 256 n.98, 330–33, 335, 337, 340, 344 Mālikīs 340, 356, 368 n.39 Malikshāh 99–101, 111–112 Maʿmar ibn Rashīd 138, 141 Mamlūk 209–10, 229 n.34, 366 n.36, 374, 407, 410, 438 al-Maʾmūn ʿAbdallāh ibn Hārūn al-Rashīd  72–73, 297–98, 302–18, 455 Manādhir 381, 386, 398 Manbij 443, 445–46

Manṣūr, Abū Jaʿfar ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad 35, 37, 43, 54, 220, 224–25, 228, 408 n.5, 455 Marʿash 432, 442, 446 Mardīn 45, 50, 52, 155 Marwān ibn Abī Ḥafṣa 127–28 Marwān ibn al-Ḥakam 214–215 Marwān II ibn Muḥammad ibn Marwān 43, 54, 433 n.22, 455 Mary 29, 251–56, 300, 308 n.53 al-Mashālī, Nūr al-Dīn 360–62 Mashhad 387–91 Masjid al-Aqṣā 215–16, 218, 223–26, 228 Masjid al-Ḥarām 220–222 Maṣṣīṣa 303, 432, 446 Masʿūdī, ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥusayn 32 n.34, 470–73 Mecca 29 n.25, 125, 185, 195, 198–201, 212, 214, 218, 222, 225, 230–31, 237 n.12, 307–308, 326, 333, 337–38, 341, 344, 356, 361, 414 Medina 129, 135 n.39, 154, 185, 200–201, 214, 227, 236 n.3, 237 n.12, 271, 308, 337–38, 340, 351, 355 Mediterranean 237, 384, 407–408, 411, 435–36, 438, 441 Melitene see Malaṭiya Merv 217, 382, 386, 394, 396, 399 Mesopotamia 21–22, 25, 45, 53, 55, 155, 236 n.5, 444; see also Jazīra Michael the Syrian 49, 51 miḥna 71, 73, 86 Miṣr 152, 155, 461; see also Egypt Mongols 97, 101–102, 108 Moses (Mūsā)  30 n.28, 35, 38–39, 45, 48–49, 151, 274 n.31, 283, 290, 308 n.53, 313, 316 Mosul 105, 114, 446, 461 n.15 Muʿāwiya ibn Abī Sufyān 78, 132–33, 154, 177ff., 212–13, 228–29, 302, 408, 435 n.31 Muʿāwiya II ibn Yazīd ibn Muʿāwiya  214–15 al-Mughīra ibn Shuʿba 123, 132, 134, 189 n.49, 357 Muḥammad 29 n.25, 38, 41, 55, 66–67, 75, 79, 81, 87–89, 93, 98, 121–22, 124–25, 130–31, 133–34, 137–44, 146, 151, 155, 177–78, 187, 190ff. 210, 213–14, 219–20, 227–28, 231, 244, 256 n.98, 271, 297–302, 306, 309, 311–12, 313, 316, 322–23, 330–32, 337, 340, 353 n.8, 361, 365, 367, 373, 375, 395, 407, 461 Muḥammad ibn Sīrīn 87, 138, 142, 145, 224 al-Muḥāsibī, al-Ḥārith 70–71, 86



index

Mujīr al-Dīn al-ʿUlaymī al-Ḥanbalī, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad 209–210, 212, 227–31 al-Muqaddasī, Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad 409, 432, 434–35, 437, 471–72 Mūsā al-Kāẓim ibn Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq 32–33 Muslim ibn Ḥajjāj al-Qushayrī 87, 136, 196, 201–202, 205 Muʿtazilī 26, 31, 61–82, 90–92, 110, 143 Namrūd 262–66, 269–70, 272–74, 276, 281–84, 286–89, 291–93; see also Nimrod Naṣr ibn Sayyār 394, 396 al-Naẓẓām, Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn Sayyār 65, 76, 79 Near East 49, 54, 235–37, 257, 407, 429 Nebuchadnezzar 262, 274–93, 407; see also Bukhtnaṣṣar Nimrod 262–63, 272–76, 284, 288, 291 n.64, 292–93; see also Namrūd Nippur 386–89 Nīshāpūr 87, 90–91, 113 Niẓām al-Mulk 98–103, 111–112 Noah (Nūḥ) 93, 272, 276 North Africa 412, 422, 434 Oman 321, 334, 337, 341 Ottoman 209, 366, 369 n.40, 371–72, 374–75 Palestine 22–24, 155, 209–10, 408–409, 413, 416–19, 421 Pape, Robert 98–99, 102 Pharaoh 267, 268 n.15, 274–76, 283, 285 n.54, 308 n.53, 313, 316 Qansūh al-Ghawrī 360, 364, 367–68, 371, 375 Qaytbay, al-Malik al-Ashraf 210, 222 Qirqisānī, Yaʿqūb 41–44, 49 n.84, 54 n.96 Quanzhou 457, 459–60, 473 Qudūrī, Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad 321, 335, 337, 344 Qurʾān 28–29, 36, 41–42, 75, 90, 107, 109, 111, 125, 127, 130, 132, 193, 195–96, 200, 210, 235ff., 263, 271, 273, 282–83, 287, 289, 292 n.70, 297–318, 322–23, 326, 328–29, 332, 334, 338, 344, 351 n.2, 352 n.5, 353 n.8, 395, 434 Quraishi, Asifa 352–53, 359 Quraysh 74, 124, 189 n.49, 191, 205, 215, 219, 244 Rabbān al-Ṭabarī 256, 257 n.99 Ramla 209, 228

487

Rapoport, David 98, 108 al-Raqāshī, Abū ʿImrān 65, 70, 82 Raqqa 156, 431 n.13, 443, 446 Rashīd al-Dīn 101–102, 108 Rayy 37, 42, 103, 112–13, 116 Rome 24 n.7, 267–68, 270, 288 n.58 Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqās 137–38, 140–42, 213 Saʿd al-Dīn Köpek 369–71 al-Ṣāʾighī, Jumʿa ibn ʿAlī ibn Sālim ibn ʿAbdallāh 324–26, 337, 339, 341 Saljūqs 99–1000, 105–107, 111, 366 n.36, 369, 374–75 Samarra 32 n.38, 418, 419 n.30 al-Samlūṭī, Muḥammad 155, 161, 165 Sanjar 103, 114–15 al-Saqaṭī, Abū al-Qāsim ʿUbaydallāh ibn Muḥammad 182, 189–90 Sasānia 22, 73–74, 151, 298, 300–301, 379, 383 n.13, 402, 419 n.30, 429, 439 Sennacherib 274–77, 279–80, 285 n.53, 267 n.14 Severus 45, 50–54 al-Shāfiʿī, Muḥammad ibn Idrīs 74, 86, 194, 271, 324, 331, 333, 335, 337, 344, 361–62 Shāfiʿīs 113–14, 340, 360–61 Shām 152, 186, 214–15, 218, 223, 225, 337; see also Syria Sharastānī, Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Karīm 36–40, 42–43, 44 n.74, 52, 54 al-Shaybānī, Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan 69, 71, 332 Shaykh ʿAlwān, ʿAlī ibn ʿAṭiyya al-Hītī al-Ḥamawī 366–68 Sheol 277, 280–281, 284 Shīʿa 31–33, 39, 40, 61, 64, 67, 74–75, 80, 97, 100, 105, 108–109, 181 nn.13–14, 182 n.19 186, 197 n.91, 199 n.103, 201 n.108, 203 n.115, 205, 238 n.16, 262 n.3, 321, 327, 351 n.2; see also Imāmīs Shihāb al-Dīn Abū Maḥmūd ibn Tamīn al-Maqdisī 225, 230–231 Shuʿba ibn Ḥajjāj 138, 140, 144 Ṣiffīn 78 n.56, 156, 177–78, 185–86, 193, 196 Sijistān 381, 383–87 Sobieroj, Florian 62, 73 Soghdia 385, 394–95 Solomon 23, 231, 255 n.96, 275 n.33, 285 n.53 Song dynasty 457–59, 462 n.18, 467 Ṣūfīs 61–68, 70–80, 82, 90, 92, 100–101, 359

488

index

Sufyān al-Thawrī 138, 144, 331 Sulaymān ibn ʿAbd al-Malik 21, 27–28, 46, 51, 224, 228–29, 455 Sumaysāṭ 443–45 Sunnī 61, 77, 85–94, 97, 99, 100, 102, 104–105, 108–11, 196 n.89, 197 n.91, 198–200, 204–205, 210, 262 n.3, 321, 324, 327, 351 n.2, 368 n.39; see also Jamāʿī Syria 21–22, 25, 29 n.26, 42, 44 n.74, 97–98, 102, 135 n.39, 154–55, 158, 178, 187, 192, 195, 200, 202, 223, 298 n.4, 302, 308, 337–38, 355, 366, 383, 409, 413, 429, 437–38, 444, 453; see also Shām Ṭabarī, Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr 132–33, 151, 153, 157, 173, 237, 238, 252 n.82, 253 n.86, 264–66, 272 n.26, 286, 290 n.60, 291 n.68, 300 n.19, 303–306, 308 n.54, 310, 330–31 Ṭāʾif 122–26, 129–30, 133, 136, 139–40, 146, 218 Tāj al-Dīn Parvāneh 369–72, 374 Ṭalḥa ibn ʿUbaydallāh 78 n.56, 193–94, 203, 213 Ṭarsūs 303–304, 432, 437, 442, 446 Taurus mountains 302, 431 n.16, 438 n.44, 441–42 Theophanes the Confessor 49, 51 Theophilus of Edessa 49–52 Theophilus, Emperor 297–98, 303–307, 311–18 Thumāma ibn Ashras 91–92 Titus 262, 266–74, 287–91, 293 Tower of Babel 263, 272 n.26, 274–76, 283 n.51, 288, 291 n.64, 293 Ṭukhāristān 386–87, 393–95 ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-Azīz 197 n.93, 199, 216, 224–25, 227, 455 ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb 67, 77, 123, 132, 158, 177–79, 187–89, 192–93, 195, 200, 202,

204, 212–13, 220, 227–28, 323, 326, 329, 337, 357, 435 n.31, 455 Umayyad 21, 28, 29 n.26, 30, 50, 61, 67, 68, 72–73, 74 n.39, 122–123, 126, 130, 132–133, 135–137, 142, 144–146, 156, 177, 183 n.28, 188 n.45, 195, 197 n.93, 202, 209, 212, 214–215, 225, 227–230, 302, 313, 379–380, 382 n.11, 383–384, 386, 390, 393–400, 403–404, 417, 429, 433–35, 437, 444–46, 466, 471 Umm Ḥabība bint Sufyān 134, 193–94 ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān 77–78, 130, 156, 177–78, 187–88, 192, 194, 196, 200, 202, 204, 212–14, 220, 227, 302, 323, 435 n.31 Walīd I ibn ʿAbd al-Malik 28 n.23, 217–18, 220, 224, 227, 455, 471, 473 n.63 Walmsley, Alan 413–15, 417, 422 al-Wāqidī, Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar 124, 125 n.13, 126 n.15, 129, 134, 153–55, 157, 159–61, 163–73 Wāsil ibn ʿAṭāʾ 65, 79, 143 n.62 Wāsiṭ 224, 380–81, 386–87, 398–99 Whitcomb, Donald 414–15, 419, 421, 429 Yarmūk River 154–156 Yāqūt ibn ʿAbdallāh al-Ḥamawī 163, 167 Yazīd ibn Abī Sufyān 154, 158, 161, 163, 178 Yazīd ibn Abī Unaysa 40–41 Yazīd I ibn Muʿāwiya 156, 178, 204, 214, 219 Yazīd ibn Zurayʿ 138, 142 n.55, 145 Yemen 154–55, 183, 214, 337–38 Yūdghān 40–44, 49 n.84 Zhao Rugua 457–62, 465, 467–74 Zibaṭra 431–433, 441, 443, 446 Ziyād ibn Abīhi 123, 131–36, 138, 141–43, 189 n.49 al-Zubayr 78 n.56, 193–94, 203, 213