Volume 89, Issue 1-2

Abstract: In a recent issue of Der Islam , Stephen R. Shoemaker has contributed an extensive article in which he challenged the processes and findings of a number of studies conducted by Gregor Schoeler , Harald Motzki , and Andreas Görke . The following article offers a response to his findings. Whereas the three authors argued the case for the possibility that authentic traditions of the first century of the Hijra can be reconstructed, Shoemaker holds the contrary point of view, as already stated in the abstract of his study: “While az-Zuhrī and occasionally other authorities of his generation can often be persuasively linked with the tradition in question, the reach back to ’Urwa is generally not convincing …” Yet he is not entirely consistent in his views. In his study several statements are to be found that in fact support the views of the authors whose studies he critically examines. Overall, Shoemaker makes more concessions towards the possible authenticity of some of the material traced back to the first century than any “sceptic” prior to him. Unfortunately, Shoemaker ’s criticism and rendering of the three authors’ studies is fraught with misunderstandings and inconsistencies. They are the focus of attention in this critical review. In addition, hitherto unknown traditions as well as sources that Shoemaker mentions without quoting or paraphrasing them will be presented. This material also challenges a number of Shoemaker ’s key conclusions.

Abstract: The article investigates the earliest appearance of a group of words which are identified in the literature as the shahāda but are rarely defined on the assumption that everyone knows what the shahāda is. The basic argument is that there was more than one version of the shahāda circulating in the Islamic world at the beginning of the eighth decade A.H./690s C.E. and that scholars need to define which version they mean when using the term “shahāda” for this early period. Evidence for the argument includes data from stelae from Aswan to the Fatimid era, the Dome of the Rock and early Muslim coinage.

Abstract: The question as to whether or not it was allowed to dye one’s hair, became heavily discussed in early Islam. So we find controversial traditions (ḥadīṯ) on this problem. Dyeing the hair however, was not only under discussion in religious circles, but also in topics taken by poets. In Arabic poetry, grey hair meant old age. As a consequence, it was the end of love and youthful life. Dyeing the hair therefore, was a means to cheat the ladies about the real age of the poet. The poets did not have so much religious scruples, since for them the effectiveness of dyeing was the point. On this however, some poets had their doubts. The article gives an overview on how Arabic poets treated the pro and contra of dyeing the hair – some doing it in a self-ironical way.

Abstract: The written renderings of Turkish names, so frequently encountered in the history of the pre-modern ruling dynasties of the Central and Eastern Islamic lands (these dynasties being themselves in large part the creations of Turkish military men), suffered badly in the past from the deformations of authors and copyists, mainly Arabs and Persians, who did not themselves know Turkish. Moreover, these renderings have often been perpetuated by modern historians of Islam, few of whom have bothered to elucidate these names and to set forth their correct forms and meanings. The present study discusses some of the very diverse principles behind medieval Turkish onomastic and uses these specifically for a consideration of the names of some prominent military commanders of the Great Seljuq sultans, ruling essentially in Persia and Iraq during the 11th and 12th centuries.

Abstract: Mu1ammad Taqiyy al-Dīn al-Maqrīzī is undoubtedly the historian with the most expansive repertoire of the entire fifteenth century Arabic historiography. His al-Mawā’iẓ wa-l-i’tibār bi-dhikr al-khiṭaṭ wa-l-āthār (abbrev. Khiṭaṭ ), in particular, is a unique achievement, which manages to present a general historical discourse through the chronicling of buildings and topography. This unprecedented book, this paper argues, may have benefited from the author’s extended association with Ibn Khaldūn, the great interpreter of the notion of ’umrān (civilization, in the sense of human settlements). Ibn Khaldūn was al-Maqrīzī’s revered teacher for at least thirty years. He seems to have influenced his pupil’s thinking about the city as the domain of civilization in two ways: analytical, that is to look for causes and effects behind events and appearances, and interpretive, that is to see in the urban and architectural history of the city the illustration of the underlying civilizational cycle. In the Khiṭaṭ , al-Maqrīzī seems to have applied his master’s theory to a concrete example – the city of Cairo – and drew from it pronounced moral lessons on the decline he was observing in the Mamlūk sultanate. This is probably why the Khiṭaṭ ’s influence has endured for more than five centuries: a tribute to its author’s ardent passion and filial affinity with his city and country, as well as his interpretive framework, which he probably absorbed from Ibn Khaldūn.

Abstract: A rich array of twelfth to fifteenth century Arabic texts captures the advent of a supererogatory prayer known as ṣalāt al-raghā’ib (the prayer of great rewards), on the eve of the first Friday of the month of Rajab in late eleventh-century Jerusalem, and its wide dissemination. This corpus offers an unusually vivid picture of the formation and the transformation of a medieval bid’a (to use the Islamic term), or, of an ‘invention of tradition’ (to use Hobsbawm ’s term). Combining our expertise in Islamic law and in Ayyūbid and Mamluk era history, we use this corpus for an in-depth study of popular piety, power politics, scholarly polemics and legal discourse. Twenty eight translated excerpts of various texts are presented in this paper, preceded by a detailed introduction. Exploring legal reasoning in its concrete political and social context provides a nuanced understanding of the development, mass proliferation and ensuing debate over a highly controversial and extraordinary potent religious practice.