Volume 90, Issue 2

Abstract: Hagar and Ishmael have been portrayed in Jewish sources in an increasingly negative way, even before the rise of Islam. The culmination of that negative portrayal constitutes the story of the expulsion of mother and son as rendered by Pirke de rabbi Eliezer. This story in its basic pre-Islamic form, functioning as a midrash interpretation of the Bible relating Hagar’s expulsion and the twofold visit of Abraham to Ishmael, was to serve as the point of departure for Islamic stories about Hagar. The first Islamic source for the story of Hagar, ʿAbd al-Razzāq, had already transformed the Jewish story into a highly positive account of Hagar as trusting in God and worthy of miracles. Simultaneously, this Islamic version harmonized the story with Qurʾānic statements about Abraham building the House, connected it to an utterance of Muhammad and buttressed the ritual of the Saʿy, the running between the two hills in Mecca, thereby refuting pagan associations as secondary deviations. As for Ishmael, he becomes associated with the pure Arabic tribe of the Jurhum. The story of the two wives of Ishmael, which serves in the Jewish version as a an exegesis of Gen 21:21 by adducing a derogatory statement on the Moabites and ending in a reconciliation between Abraham and Ishmael, is transformed into a foundation story of the Arabic offspring of Ishmael who marries into the Jurhum tribe. Whereas the Islamic stories, transmitted by al-Ţabarī and Bukharī, can be traced back two generations earlier than the latter, namely to ʿAbd al-Razzāq, his isnad in turn proves to be reliable up to Ibn Jubayr. Ibn Jubayr’s debate about different versions of the story took place around 700 C.E., an attribution that can be trusted, hence corroborating Harald Motzki’s overall but careful thesis about the reliability of the isnad. The integration of the Hagar story into the Qurʾānic story of Abraham building ‘the House’ together with Ishmael dates, at the latest, from 700 C.E.

Abstract: The thesis put forth in this study is that, while coitus interruptus ( ʿazl ) was known to the early Muslims, it was not practiced for reasons that were primarily theological. For ʿazl is in obvious conflict with the rule that prevailed until the third/ninth century, that of enjoining the believer to marry and procreate without trying to curb one’s fertility. A careful examination of the oldest traditions on the subject leads us to conclude that only about the end of the first/seventh century some religious authorities spoke in favor of resorting to this contraceptive method, in a limited context – the relationship between a master and his slave girl. And it is probably during the same period that the controversy over coitus interruptus arose. This is why it is anachronistic to see traditions (Ahadith) in favor of coitus interruptus as testimony on how long this type of birth control has been practiced in the Islamic world. In addition to relying on textual criticism, the study uses prosopographical information to show that the first Muslims often had many children with concubines. Some Muslim authorities encouraged believers to resort to coitus interruptus , not in order engage in «birth control» but because of the negative reputation of slave girls. To avoid having children with them was to avoid having «illegitimate» children – who were considered evil – and especially to avoid increasing their number so as not to hasten the end of the world. Later, when the rule that believers must marry and produce offspring ceased to be a dogma, allowing for celibacy to be an option, albeit for a tiny minority, coitus interruptus came to be permitted as a means of limiting births, but only if the purpose was religious in nature. Birth control for strictly economic reasons continued to be strictly forbidden.

Abstract: Regionalism is a key element in narratives pertaining to the rise of the formal Muslim law schools. It is generally believed that these legal schools were influenced by the customary practices of the prominent urban centers of the early 2nd/8th century. Such assumptions are rooted in the Muslim legal works themselves, which distinguish between the legal views of important regional centers. This article tests the purported regional associations of individual law schools by utilizing traditions pertaining to ritual law (i.e., the daily prayer) to reconstruct the dominant practice (or practices) of major Muslim cities (i.e., Mecca, Medina, Baṣra and Kūfa) of the early 2nd/8th century. In the process, it models a method for deriving historical information from newly datable legal source material.

Abstract: While Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī is known to posterity primarily as a historian and commentator on the Qurʾan, his most creative work may have been in the law, and Ibn al-Nadim (d. 380/990) places his main entry on al-Ṭabarī in Book VI of the Fihrist , on law. Unfortunately, most of his legal works have been lost. Building on and revising George Makdisi ’s analysis of the relationship between the ṭabaqāt genre and the theoretical justification of the legal madhhabs , this study argues that one of these lost books, Marātib al-ʿulamāʾ “Degrees of the Scholars,” was devoted to the generations of jurists and intended to provide a theoretical basis for the authority of the Jarīrī madhhab , one among a number of pieces of evidence that suggest al-Ṭabarī was consciously designing and creating his own legal madhhab , in contrast to earlier jurists, such as Abū Ḥanīfah and al-Shāfiʿī, whose legal madhhabs were created by subsequent generations of students.

Abstract: The medieval Karaite grammarian and exegete Abū l-Faraj Hārūn b. al-Faraj (Jerusalem, 5th/11th century) was a broad reader of the literature available in Arabic, in a variety of genres. Earlier studies have demonstrated that in his grammatical works on the Hebrew language, Hārūn adapted discussions from well-known compositions focused on Arabic and the Qurʾān. The following examination of Hārūn’s treatment of the subject of biblical majāz , non-literal language, aims to show that in constructing his sophisticated and innovative discussion of the topic, the Karaite scholar read widely – and adapted creatively – incorporating the methods of a variety of genres in Arabic, including uṣūl al-naḥw , uṣūl al-fiqh and even iʿjāz al-Qurʾān and combining them together with earlier Jewish and Karaite scholarly tradition to produce what seems to be the first comprehensive discussion of non-literal language in Judeo-Arabic.

Abstract: Three unpublished ayyubid letters are presented here. They are addressed to ascetics, fuqarāʾ and ṣūfī , residing in the great mosque of Damascus, and devoted to reading the Qurʾān and praying at the tomb of prophet Zakariyyāʾ. This veneered shrine or ziyāra had been ignored until now, although it was known and it is common knowledge nowadays, that some rituals took place around the location where the head of John the Baptist, known in the lands of Islamic world as Yaḥyā b. Zakariyyāʾ, was kept. Our research seeks to present aspects of the rituals held in the tomb of Zakariyāʾ, arguing that it was initially established with an impetus from Saladin, then thrived under his ayyubid successors, to start dwindling until it was abandoned by the end of the mamluk era.