Volume 102, Issue 1

The Sābiqa is a key concept in the early Islamic tradition, mainly referring to the precedence of the first converts to Islam, particularly those who migrated from Mecca to Yathrib/Medina. In this paper, I argue that the emergence of this discourse is rooted in a controversy regarding the identification of the Sābiqūn al-awwalūn mentioned in verse 100 of Sūra 9, al-Tawba . Alternative definitions of the Sābiqūn coexisted and vied with this discourse, progressively shaping the contours of the umma between the first/seventh and the second/eighth century. In the first/seventh century, the Sābiqūn were often identified with Companions who swore an oath of allegiance to Muḥammad at al-Ḥudaybiyya, or with Companions who first prayed toward Jerusalem, then toward Mecca. At the turn of the second/eighth century in Medina, the question was rather with whom identify the Muhājirūn al-awwalūn . The following century saw the gradual imposition of a major model for the founding of the first community of Believers centered on the emigration from Mecca to Yathrib/Medina. Locating these discourses posed the challenge of partially breaking away from the mold of the Islamic tradition to revisit the first/seventh century, before hadith became widespread among Muslim scholars. To achieve this, motifs, that is, coherent semantic units related to these discourses, were recorded in an SQL database and subsequently extracted to construct digital diagrams illustrating their transmissions.

The Kitāb al-Ansāb (The Book of Genealogies) provides detailed accounts of the lineages and familial connections of Omani tribes in southeast Arabia, which is essential for understanding the social and political structure of the region during the premodern period. This book became an indispensable resource for historians seeking to write a comprehensive history of premodern Oman, as it was frequently quoted by later Omani historians and formed the foundation of premodern Omani cultural and religious practices. Compiled during the 4th/11th century, the identity of its writer has attracted much speculation. While widely attributed to an individual from the ʿAwtabī family, this attribution does not withstand scrutiny. This paper critically examines the author of the Kitāb al-Ansāb , his style and method, sectarian and factional affiliations, and attempts to place the text in its historical context. It argues that the author was most likely a nonsectarian moderate from the cosmopolitan city of Ṣuḥār, a coastal city in northern Oman, and completed the text in the year 345/956 or earlier. The confused and fragmentary condition of the text today is likely the result of subsequent copyists, with the oldest known manuscript dated 1086/1672. The paper concludes with a discussion of the extant manuscripts and a call for a critical edition.

This article introduces eleven hitherto unknown Islamic tombstones from a private collection in Germany with an edition and translation of their inscriptional content. From a close analysis of their formulae, selection of Qurʾānic quotations, epigraphic style, fabric of the stelae, and marginal ornament, the stelae are attributed to Egypt during a period c. 180–270/c. 795–885. While this is but a small addition to the vast corpus of tombstones that survive from early Islamic Egypt – accessible, for example, through the Thesaurus d’Épigraphie Islamique – this study highlights the great potential of this material to pinpoint the local specificity of the Muslim community, often neglected in extant literary sources, while at the same time revealing the broad connectivity of an emerging Islamic empire with its movement of ideas, writings, people, and craftsmanship. Moreover, the article highlights the contribution of these objects in the evolving perception of Islamic material heritage through the history of provenance: While the exact route on which the stelae traveled from Egypt to Germany is not known, it can be concluded from the circumstances of the exhibition of Islamic Art in Munich 1910 and likely parallels in other collections that the tombstones were part of those materials that were brought to Germany in the context of this important exhibition.

The Archivio Storico Diocesano di Palermo conserves a unique Arabic-Islamic document dating to 526/1132 that allows for insights into the legal practices of small-scale water management in the fertile countryside of Sicily’s capital city Palermo. Almost entirely neglected by previous scholarship, this article offers the first analysis of the document’s legal content and situates it within the wider context of Mālikī law, landscape engineering, and Muslim communal practices in medieval Sicily at a time when Latin-Christian elites came to dominate the possession of resources in Palermo’s hinterland.

While the political, social, and material histories of smell and perfume in the Ottoman and other early modern Muslim societies have received some scholarly attention, the intellectual history of olfaction in the Islamic world remains largely unstudied. This is a significant shortcoming in so far as practices involving perfume and stink are always embedded in, and informed by, discursively constituted smellscapes. This article studies some of the conceptual parameters – philosophical-epistemological, mystical, and ethico-legal – within which smells were perceived in the early modern Islamic world. As the article demonstrates, not only was olfaction credited, by some, with great epistemic and even salvific importance, the question of smell and of the perception of smell also informed debates about who, and on what basis, should be attributed authority in matters of science, religion, and the sociopolitical order.

This study focuses on the tenure of Zekeriyāzāde Yaḥyā Efendī, an influential political and literary figure of the 17th century, as qāḍī in Aleppo, Damascus, and Cairo between 1596 and 1600. In this context, it analyzes how Yaḥyā Efendī, and by extension the Ottoman administration, formed his relations with the local dignitaries, scholars, and other figures in these places. The centerpiece of the study is a collection of qaṣīda s Madāʾiḥ presented to Yaḥyā Efendī. Madāʾiḥ contains about 150 poems written by more than 60 poets with various motivations. This collection demonstrates the pivotal role of literary relationships and gatherings in constructing professional networks. In these interactions, poetry was essential, serving as a vital medium of communication within the Rūmī-Arab social and professional spheres. Through poetry, various requests – including appeals for office, material gifts, assistance, and expressions of friendship – were conveyed and solidified, highlighting its central importance in these exchanges. All these illustrate how Yaḥyā Efendī strategically recruited individuals from the Arab provinces, integrated them into his extensive mülazemet network in Istanbul, and employed them for decades.

Mullā Ibrāhīm al-Kūrānī (d. 1101/1690) was an Ashʿarī scholar who was heavily influenced by the Ṣufī ideas of Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240). Nevertheless, he has been described in much of 20th-century Arabic literature as a Salafī scholar and a defender of Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328). Western academic studies have also described him as the scholar who rehabilitated, or at least played a crucial role in rehabilitating, Ibn Taymiyya and the Ḥanbalī school of thought. How did an Akbarian and Ashʿarī scholar come to be known as a Salafī and a defender of Ibn Taymiyya, who famously declared Ibn ʿArabī an unbeliever? Why was al-Kūrānī labeled a Salafī and what influence did Ibn Taymiyya have on al-Kūrānī’s works? In this paper, I examine the reception of Ibn Taymiyya in al-Kūrānī’s works and argue that al-Kūrānī’s interest in and knowledge of Ibn Taymiyya’s works was limited to a single idea related to understanding ambiguous Qurʾānic verses ( mutashābihāt ) that served his Ṣufī project, without displaying any genuine interest in Ibn Taymiyya or his thought more generally.

This article introduces the 18th-century ʿAjemī/Qizilbāsh Turkish inscription at the Imam ʿAlī shrine to the English-speaking academic world. The poetic inscription was commissioned in 1743 by Nādir Shāh during his invasion of Ottoman Iraq, where he sought to compel the Porte to recognize his Jaʿfarī creed ( maẕhab ) as a legitimate school of Sunnī jurisprudence, ostensibly in the interests of Islamic unity. It is argued that the inscription formed part of Nādir’s discourse on establishing Islamic unity as a world sovereign. The inscription drew from various pre-Islamic sources of legitimacy to articulate Nādir’s mandate for universal sovereignty. It then fused this mandate with a distinctly ʿAlīd conception of universal caliphal authority that could appeal to both his Jaʿfarī and Ḥanafī followers. Thus, by analyzing the text of the inscription within the political and socioreligious context in which it was created, new insights are offered on the purpose of the inscription, the role it played in Ottoman–Iranian peace negotiations, and Nādirid political and religious legitimacy. Finally, a complete translation and a transcription are appended herein.