Band 100, Heft 1

There are strong parallels between the popular description of Muḥammad’s first revelation in the Sīra of Ibn Isḥāq and a depiction of a seventh-century Northumbrian monk Cædmon in the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum by Bede Venerabilis. There has been some debate about whether these parallels are more or less coincidental, but very good arguments for a relation between the two texts have been put forward. This article adds to this line of research by providing a concrete model of how a Middle Eastern Vorlage might have traveled to Bede Venerabilis. It is argued that the archbishop of Canterbury, Theodore of Tarsus (d. 690), played a key role in this transfer. His biography puts into focus the transposition of Greek-Palestinian and -Egyptian monk congregations including relics and texts to Italy and especially Rome during the seventh century. The relevance of the surviving texts from the school of Canterbury for the study of seventh-century Middle Eastern history is then further illustrated with a version of the so-called legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesos recorded in Theodore’s biblical exegesis. Theodore’s specific version of that legend overlaps significantly with the version contained in the Qurʾān in Sura 18 ( al-Kahf, “The cave”). It has always been clear that Sūrat al-Kahf refers to the Christian Seven Sleepers legend. However, since all other hitherto known versions of the story differed significantly from the Qurʾān version, the connection between the versions was usually imagined within a model of “oral transmission.” The version recorded from Theodore’s seventh century teaching sessions now allow us to draw a more nuanced picture in which this specific version of the legend can be situated in seventh-century Palestine. Possibly it was linked to the veneration of Lot in that region, drawing a parallel between Lot’s wife, who had supposedly been transformed into a pillar of salt, but was apparently thought to not have died, and the unnaturally long sleep of the Seven Sleepers over centuries.

Muḥammad’s disruptive measures against the Quraysh’s commerce (exemplified in his looting the Meccan caravans) have commonly been considered to be of great importance in what brought about emerging Islam’s prosperity. Whereas Islamicists have devoted a good deal of research to Muḥammad’s antagonistic actions against the Meccan trade, previous studies can nonetheless be said to have mostly dealt with the traditional biography of Muḥammad with a receptive spirit. However, the sīra upon which we have to rely heavily, if not exclusively, is notorious for its source-critical problems. The extant theories are, hence, in need of reappraisal in the light of a more critical treatment of the sources.

Mosques are one main type of evidence to represent early Islam in the archaeological record. Dating mosques is crucial for pinpointing the earliest presence of the Muslim faith in a region and to test certain historical narratives known from the literary sources. Scholars, however, sometimes date medieval mosques in excavations and surveys relying on literary sources. Following these texts has led to dating several mosque remains to the seventh or eighth century. In contrast, archaeologically independent dating tools support only later or indefinite dates for these ancient structures. This article presents four sites that consist of a mosque each of which has been dated to the seventh or eighth century: Fusṭāṭ, Jerusalem, Wāsiṭ, and Ramla. Through these case studies, supplemented by similar examples, I demonstrate the gap between the literary sources and the material evidence. Interpreting relevant epigraphical data, as well as excavation results from many more sites, suggests that the spread of mosques beyond the Arabian Peninsula and Greater Syria occurred only in the ninth century. The literary sources, therefore, cannot be read at face value and can certainly not form the basis for interpreting and dating physical remains.

The fiscal tradition regarding the taxation of the “Christians of the Banū Taġlib” is related to a ṣulḥ established by caliph ʿUmar b. al-Ḫaṭṭāb. He is said to have ordered to double the social contribution of Muslims, called ṣadaqa , in return for their renunciation of baptizing their children. This contribution analyzes the chronology of the emergence of this case in Abbasid literature. By studying the isnād on which scholars, beginning with the Grand Qāḍī Abū Yūsuf (d. 182/798), relied, I suggest a new theme at the end of the eighth century CE. On the one hand, all the issues of the ṣadaqa levying, the social bonds with Christian Arabs, and finally, the category of the Banū Taġlib itself, are related to the ongoing construction, and then to the freezing, of two social categories: the ethnical “arabness” and the genealogical tribal organization. On the other hand, Miaphysite ecclesiology confirms a consistent timeline for the rise of the Taglibōyē bishopric. In order to explain this late inrush of information, two events of ca. 153/770 and 171/787, respectively from the Syrian-Orthodox and the Arab-Muslim literatures, refer first to the migration/invasion of pastoralists and farmers of Banū Taġlib towards the north, and second to their anti- ṣadaqa revolt in the steppe of the hinterland of Mosul. The second occurrence takes place amidst numerous local insurgencies whose motivation are in part tribal, khariji, and – perhaps foremost – anti-fiscal. Indeed, the dynamics of formation of this peculiar Mosulian tribe were partly generated by the irruption of the state in Northern Iraq and the Jazīra during the 170s/790s, between al-Mahdī’s founding of Rāfiqa in ca. 154/772 and Hārūn al-Rashīd’s strengthening of administrative pressure. The key factor for state building at this time was the development of a new set of taxation on agricultural incomes of (Muslim) Arabs, called ṣadaqat al-māl or zakāt , whose first traces are attested in Middle Egypt during the late Marwānid period. A generation later, the anonymous author of Zuqnīn, who lived at the beginning of this period, is not only the first Syriac writer to mention the Taglibōyē, but also bears witness of the first extension of the levy of ṣadaqa to Northern Mesopotamia. He even gives data about its ex officio settlement ( taʿdīl ) as a non-proportional ( ʿalā misāḥa ) and in-cash tax, exactly the same as for the properties of the (Christian) Syrians. Both kinds of rural landlords probably petitioned against this system during the following decades, aiming to switch to a proportional ( muqāsama ) and in-kind method of taxation. This resistance perhaps involved the anti- ṣadaqa revolt of the Taġlib in 171/787, as it was decisive to transform the kharāj on the Muslims into a tenth ( ʿushr ). Whereas Abū Yūsuf suggests an analogical doubling of the tax on a Muslim land to convert it into kharāj for a Christian purchaser, the very idea of a double ṣadaqa as kharāj for Christian Arabs had perhaps been invented a very short time before.

This article consists of a detailed study of the decoration and inscriptions on three stylistically related carved stucco miḥrābs in ʿIrāq-i ʿAjam . The ones in Urmia and Marand are dated to the Īlkhānī period and bear the names of craftsmen with a connection to Tabrīz. The fragmentary remains of the third, undated, miḥrāb in Tabrīz are then studied, followed by the upper stucco inscription band in the masjid-i jāmiʿ in Urmia. The final section highlights the connections between the material in Iran and related stucco in Mamlūk Cairo. The main aim of this article is to provide as full an account as possible of the decoration and inscriptions of these examples of Īlkhānī stucco, and also to demonstrate the existence of a distinctive regional school of stucco carving centered in Tabrīz. Several newly translated inscriptions are published here for the first time, and the analysis is based on a combination of archival material and new photographs and drawings of the subject structures.

The present study explores the centrality of ʿAlidism in the religious profile of a Sufi community active in the early sixteenth century in Mawarannahr, which was at the center of the ongoing major religio-political transformations in the aftermath of the decline of the Timurid dynasty. This community was led by a female Sufi master celebrated as Aghā-yi Buzurg (the Great Lady). The misfortunes faced by Aghā-yi Buzurg and her followers during this critical transitional period was related to her group’s upholding the Timurid-era tradition of ʿAlid devotion under the early Shibanid rule. The public proclamation of pro-ʿAlid sentiments in post-Timurid Central Asia became dangerous in the early sixteenth century when the veneration of ʿAlī and his descendants started being associated with sympathies toward the Shiʿi Safavids. It is remarkable that Aghā-yi Buzurg’s public career as a leader of the Sufi community consisting of male and female disciples was not the main factor provoking the attacks against her community, but instead, it was their admiration of ʿAlī and his descendants.

In the 1720s, the Ottoman grand vizier Dāmād İbrāhīm Pasha ordered a translation of the Persian world history Ḥabīb al-Siyar into Turkish. The chronicle deals with the history of the Islamic world until the 1520s and was penned 200 years earlier by the historian Khvāndamīr in Iran for the ruling dynasty of the Safavids. As its author composed it for the archenemies of the Ottomans and gave it a Shiʿi outlook, the committee of eight translators assigned by the grand vizier faced the challenge of translating explicitly anti-Ottoman and pro-Shiʿi sections within the text. By contextualizing the Turkish version of the Ḥabīb al-Siyar , the article sheds light on the question of how texts were translated during the so-called Tulip Age. Specifically, it analyzes the approach taken by the translators concerning historical events of utmost importance to the Ottomans, such as Sultan Bāyezīd I’s defeat by Timur at Ankara in 804/1402 and Sultan Selīm’s victory over Shah Ismāʿīl at Chāldirān in 920/1514. Another point of interest is the depiction of the Sayyid lineage of the Safavids as given in both texts, which was a controversial issue between the two dynasties for centuries.