Volume 86, Issue 1

The Constitution of Medina (Kitāb) is perhaps the earliest surviving text of Islam that is accepted as authentic even by most revisionist historians. It embodies crucial material for the history of Muḥammad's relations with the Jews of Medina as well as for the historical emergence of Islam, but its meaning and significance are difficult to ascertain, and it has proven difficult to extract the substantial kernel of historical truth which is contained within it. This article proposes a new method of doing so based on the triangulation of the Sīra narratives, the Qur'ān , and the Kitāb , in which the last may be used as a control on the other sources. The Kitāb itself is analyzed on the basis of R. B. Serjeant 's critical dissection of the text into a series of component treaties concluded at various times with the Muslim, Jewish and Munāfiqūn residents of Medina. The particular episode of the Jewish Qaynuqā' tribe and its Munāfiqūn allies is investigated to demonstrate the potential of the method.

The article briefly examines two recent monographs on the biography of Muḥammad and the genesis of the Qur'ān by the Tunisian historian Hisham Djait. Both the general methodological assumptions of Djait's studies and representative examples of his approach are presented. It is argued that one of Djait's most significant insights consists in his recognition of the necessity of critically juxtaposing the Qur'ānic text with later Islamic amplifications and narrative contextualizations. The article also discusses Djait's use of Western Qur'ān scholarship and his romantically inspired portrayal of Muḥammad as a religious genius.

This article aims to establish the biography of Ἁbd al-Raḥmān ibn Rustum (presumably d. in 168/784–785) who founded the Ibāḍī Rustumid dynasty. Ἁbd al-Raḥmān grew up in al-Qayrawān, then he learned in Baṣra with the Ibāḍī scholar Abū ῾Ubayda Muslim ibn Abī Karīma al-Tamīmī. Afterwards he came back to the Maghrib in a group of «bearers of learning». In 140/757–758, he declined the Imāmate offered to him in favour of Abū l-Ḫaṭṭāb al-Ma῾āfirī. The latter took al-Qayrawān and proclaimed Ἁbd al-Raḥmān governor of the city. After the Ἁbbāsid reconquest and Abū l-Ḫaṭṭāb's death in 144/761–762, Ἁbd al-Raḥmān founded Tāhart. He was proclaimed Imām in 160/776–777 or 162/778–779. Under his reign, the Ibāḍī capital developed considerably.

This paper argues that the encroachment of the Saljūq political authorities onto the religious arena prompted jurists to tighten their legal arguments in order to bolster their legitimacy in determining the laws of Muslim society not established in the textual sources of the law. A key case in the ‘tug-of-war’ between the political and religious authorities over the sphere of law was the post-prophetic ruling on punishing the wine drinker. That this important ruling was established during the first caliphs provided a claim for secular authorities over jurisdiction of large areas of the law, including matters deemed of religious significance. This paper presents the different justifications given to this ruling by al-Juwaynī, al-Ghazālī, and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, showing how this post-prophetic ruling was successively incorporated into the religious law that derived its authority from being grounded in the textual sources of Islamic law. While al-Juwaynī rationalized the punishment for drinking wine with a counter-implication argument, al-Ghazālī made a first step toward deriving it in analogy ( qiyās ) to the authoritative texts, an intellectual move which was successfully completed by al-Rāzī. Their different rationalizations reflect the increasing use of Greek logic in legal reasoning during that time period. Furthermore, this case also mirrors the general efforts by legal theorists at that time to make Islamic law a viable alternative to secular legislation ( siyāsa ).

The purpose of this study is to examine Ibn Taymiyya's criticism of Aristotelian logic, and to test the arguments he raises against it, as well as the theory he proposes as an alternative. Ibn Taymiyya tries to prove that Aristotelian logic cannot contribute to knowledge because it is based on metaphysical foundations. He raises arguments that are intended to expose the contradictions of Aristotelian logic. These arguments are based partly on the principles of relativity and skepticism, and partly on empirical presuppositions. Ibn Taymiyya proposed the use of analogical reasoning ( qiyās al-tamthīl ) which is a type of evaluation and measurement based on the comparison between particulars, or the relations between two similar or dissimilar things. It can be seen that the most important and decisive thing in this relation is the common attribute that links two particular occurrences. Therefore, this inference deals with the relations between things and the causal connections between them. This is expressed in the research method used in the Islamic juridical sciences, which are causal methods, such as: the coextensiveness and coexclusiveness ( ṭard wa-῾aks ), coextensiveness-cum-coexclusiveness ( dawarān ), and classification and successive elimination ( al-sabr wa l-taqsīm ).

This article revises current understandings of the Indian Naqshbandī Shaykh, Aḥmad Sirhindī (d. 1624). It moves analytically beyond the pioneering and balanced scholarly accounts of Yohanan Friedmann and J.G.J. ter Haar , directly addressing the issues that Sirhindī's modern scholarly detractors have considered his most alarming statements and alleged exaggerated claims. Looking sociologically at Sirhindī's ashrāfī social context and his role as a sufi teacher the article demonstrates the logic of many of his shocking statements, some of which involve personal issues that have yet to be discussed in western scholarly literature. Finally, the so-called “controversy” generated between two perspectives of unity (waḥdat-i wujūd and waḥdat-i shuhūd) has been vastly overstated in the scholarly literature. The overall sufi consensus is that there is no real controversy. Indeed, both Ibn al-Ἁrabī and Sirhindī agree that these two valid modes of unity are simply two ways of perceiving the One.

Islamic fundamentalism is a product of modernity. Its constitution as the hegemonic discourse of modern Islam was accomplished in the course of the twentieth century over against two Others: the external Other of the West and the internal Other of tradition, especially its mystical aspect – Sufism. The article claims, however, that the fundamentalists' critique of Sufism as backward, superstitious, and apolitical involved the collective forgetting of the leading role that Ṣūfī reformist brotherhoods had filled in premodern Islam and in their own upbringing. In this light the Salafī discourse and popular socioreligious movements such as the Muslim Brothers appear as modern transformations rather than negations of Sufism. On the other hand, contemporary Sufism has constituted itself as the modern Other of the hegemonic Islamic fundamentalism. The fundamentalist estrangement from Sufism, and Islamic tradition at large, engendered a dialectics of unenlightenment culminating in the present radicalization of Islam.