Volume 93, Issue 1

Abstract: The principal objective of Muḥammad’s incessant warfare against Dūmat al-Jandal has proven to be remarkably resistant to conventional analysis. Part of the difficulty arises from the fact that these military campaigns ( maghāzī ) are largely treated in isolation. Framing the problem in terms of the economic realities of late antique Arabia, the present article challenges the prevailing scholarly view that Dūma fell in the prophet’s lifetime. To this end, the final and decisive expedition against Dūma is reconstructed. Through a thorough analysis, the tangled strands of maghāzī historiography are carefully unraveled to expose the strategy behind these northern campaigns.

Abstract: The authorship of the Naṣīḥat al-mulūk of Pseudo-Māwardī has attracted considerable attention since Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Munʿim Aḥmad refuted its attribution to al-Māwardī in the introduction to his edition of 1988 and at greater length in a subsequent dedicated monograph. In the former publication, Aḥmad tentatively suggested the authorship of Abū Zayd al-Balkhī (d. 322/934). In a recent article, Hassan Ansari , returning to the question of the mirror’s authorship, has proposed its composition by a student of the Muʿtazilī theologian Abū l-Qāsim al-Kaʿbī (d. 319/931). The present article proposes that the mirror, produced in Balkh, reflects close associations with both Abū Zayd and Abū l-Qāsim, who studied together in their youth and remained friends and colleagues throughout their lives. Both men served in the brief administration of the dihqān and commander Aḥmad b. Sahl (d. 307/920), appointed governor of Khurasan, and both spent the latter periods of their lives in Balkh. The article argues for the book’s participation in the Kindian tradition, in which writings on the subject of siyāsa featured prominently. Pseudo-Māwardī’s Naṣīḥat al-mulūk provides one of the few extant sources for this body of writings, and illuminates the intellectual-cultural trajectory that passes from al-Kindī to al-ʿĀmirī.

Résumé: Joseph Schacht pense que la matière dont fut formée la loi islamique était dans une large mesure non islamique, J. Schacht , Esquisse d’une histoire du droit musulman , trad. de l’anglais par Jeanne et Félix Arin, Paris, 1953, 9; le même, “ Sharīʿa ”, EI 1 , IV, 1934, 331‒336, p. 335. c’est-à-dire qu’elle était essentiellement fondée sur la coutume ( ʿurf, ʿāda ). L’objet de cette étude est de nous interroger sur cette thèse, en parlant du malikisme en Occident musulman, puisque la majorité des études faites sur cette source de droit concerne particulièrement le ḥanafisme. Nous traitons en premier lieu l’importance du ʿurf dans le droit malikite Notre approche dans cette partie sera différente de celle de Christian Müller qui a cherché à «examiner la place du droit coutumier, tel qu’il est défini par la sociologie du droit, dans le fiqh malikite» («Us, coutumes et droit coutumier dans le fiqh malikite », traduit de l’allemand par Rania Abdellatif, dans Annliese Nef et Élise Voguet (éd.), La légitimation du pouvoir au Maghreb médiéval , Collection de la Casa de Velázquez (XXX), Madrid, 2011, 35‒54, p. 35). Nous remercions l’auteur qui a eu l’amabilité de nous envoyer une copie de cet article dans ses deux versions. et l’attitude des juristes vis-à-vis de cette source de droit. En second lieu, nous étudions les modes d’intégration du ʿurf dans ce droit, et les abus que peut engendrer une telle intégration.

Abstract: This study focuses on the significance of the Dīwān al-Daʿāʾim ( Pillars ) – an anthology of poetry by Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. Sulaymān b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Aḥmad b. al-Khiḍr b. Sulaymān, known after the name of his clan as Ibn al-Naẓar. The anthology presents poems steeped in Ibāḍī theology and doctrine. However, rather than focusing on those aspects, this study intends to analyse commentaries on the Dīwān from a historical angle so as to obtain a general picture of the ideas supporting it, as well as the questions it has raised at various times over the centuries since it was written. ʿAbd Allāh b. Ḥumayd al-Sālimī, al-Lumʿa al-marḍiyya min al-ashiʿʿa al-ibāḍiyya , 73, Ministry of Heritage and Culture: Muscat, 1984; Sayf b. Ḥamūd al-Baṭṭāshī, Itḥāf al-āʿiyān fī tārīkh baʿḍ ʿulamāʾ ʿUmān , v. 1, 381‒391; Muscat, 1994; John C. Wilkinson , Bio-bibliography background to the Crisis Period in the Ibāḍī Imamate of Oman, Journal of Arabian Studies , v. 3 (1976): 137‒164; Martin Custers , Al-Ibāḍiyya: A Bibliography, v. 1, 161, Maastricht, 2006. The commentaries on al-Daʿāʾim reveal a centuries-long intellectual interaction between Oman and North Africa (which lasted from the time they first appeared right up to the last century), as well as the close ties which existed between the eastern and western Ibāḍī schools. Al-Daʿāʾim was regarded as a significant work and it – together with its commentaries ‒ is indeed a unique example of Omani scholarship.

Abstract: The function of small glass discs, some with inscriptions some without, made in Egypt between the Fāṭimid and Mamlūk period, have been the topic of a debate between two prominent numismatists. Michael-L. Bates maintains that the coin-like discs were used as coin weights ( sanaǧāt ), as it had been in the Early Islamic period. On the contrary, Paul Balog and other scholars consider that these objects were used as tokens with monetary function. They point to the absence of bronze coins in contemporary circulation, and the fact that quantities of them were sometimes found as a hoard. They regard them as fiduciary coinage for low value transactions. In an attempt to settle this controversy, the article suggest, by re-iterating the numismatic arguments, the silence of textual sources regarding the possible monetary function, and a rare passage in the work of al-Muqaddasī, a dual use of the glass discs as coin weights and as substitutes for monetary purposes.

Abstract: Muslim authors composed a number of polemics against the employment of non-Muslim state officials in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Egypt and Syria. This essay argues that the majority of these works drew directly or indirectly on a previously unremarked sixth/twelfth century common source. Although the common source cannot yet be securely identified, its existence and influence have significant implications for historians’ understanding of interreligious tensions in late medieval Egypt and Syria and for the Nachleben of innovative literary compositions in this period. Specifically, the detection of this source stretches accepted chronologies of the late-medieval surge of anti- dhimmī sentiment in the Islamic Middle East decades earlier and raises the question of literary works’ role in catalyzing religious violence and exclusion.

Abstract: The martyrdom of the mystic Ḥusayn b. Manṣūr, better known as al-Hallāj (executed in Baghdad in 922 CE), has been a compelling story for Muslim audiences for centuries. An Ottoman Turkish narrative poem on the subject, composed sometime in the 15th century, proved to be especially popular. It was hand-copied repeatedly, into the 19th century, and lithographed at least twice. Nearly a century ago, Louis Massignon drew attention to what he saw as two distinct, but related versions of that text. More recently Mustafa Tatci published an edition of one of them. Neither scholar adequately described the curious history of this narrative poem. This essay will offer answers to questions prompted by that history.

Abstract: This article follows the transmutations of narratives, material structures and rituals focused on Mashhad Ḥusayn. It begins with the alleged discovery of the head of the martyred grandson of the Prophet by the Ismāʿīlī Fāṭimids at the end of the eleventh century in Ascalon, spans the millennium and ends with the recent revival of pilgrimage to the site, dominated by tourists affiliated with the Bohra Dāʾūdiyya. It is based on medieval and modern historical, ethnographical and geographical accounts, hagiography, epigraphy, archaeology, travelers’ and pilgrims’ itineraries, state and military archives, maps, photographs and oral accounts. The establishment of the shrine in Ascalon, the transferal of the relic to Cairo and the visitation of the site under the Sunni Ayyubids, Mamluks and Ottomans are studied in their political and religious contexts. The final part of the article explores the development of a Palestinian popular celebration ( mawsim ) in the vicinity of the shrine in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, the demolition of the shrine by the IDF in 1950 and the establishment of a commemorative prayer dais in 2000 ‒ the result of a joint initiative of the 52nd dāʿī muṭlaq of the Dāʾūdī Bohras from India and an Israeli entrepreneur of tourism.