Devin J. Stewart

Ritual, Politics, and the City in Fatimid Cairo

In 358 AH, the Fatimid general Jawhar conquered Egypt on behalf of the caliph al-Mu`izz and began the construction of the new capital of Cairo, thus beginning a two century long period of Fatimid rule in the region. The Fatimids were Isma`ilis, Shi’ites who believed that their caliph was not only descended from Fatima daughter of Muhammad and her husband `Ali but was also the imam, the spiritual heir to Muhammad and the rightful leader of Islam. Histories of the Fatimid period have traditionally focused upon political or religious history, cataloguing the turbulent events of the age. However, Paula Sanders, in Ritual, Politics and the City in Fatimid Cairo, takes a new approach to the Fatimids. Analyzing mostly Mamluk sources, she asserts that ritual within Fatimid society served as a means of legitimizing caliphal rule, negotiating power and denoting status. Moreover, as the political and religious situation changed, so too did the rituals. Of course, ritual was not unique to the Fatimids but the significance of ritual to this dynasty, especially within the “ritual city” of Cairo, causes Sanders to investigate what was unique about Fatimid ritual and what it can tell us about the society in which it emerged. After a brief but useful introduction to the tumultuous history of the Fatimid caliphs and wazirs, Sanders first examines the use of protocol and symbolism within the Fatimid court, especially in comparison to that of the Abbasid court. While outwardly similar, the Fatimid protocols of homage and salute took on a religious as well as a socio-political meaning that resulted from the role of the Isma`ili caliph as both political leader and imam. Indeed, the caliph was central both spatially and symbolically to the Fatimid court and everything from his clothes to his insignia of authority took on enhanced meaning. Spatial proximity to the caliph both established caliphal authority and also denoted status, while symbols

The First Shaykh al-Islām of the Safavid Capital Qazvin@@@The First Shaykh al-Islam of the Safavid Capital Qazvin

Previous scholarship on the Safavids has noted the importance of the office of shaykh al-islam, or chief jurist, of Isfahan during the seventeenth century as an institutionalized locus of the highest religious authority of the empire. It is suggested here that this special status dates to ca. 963/1555-56, when Shah Tahmasb appointed Shaykh Husayn b. Abd al-Samad al-Harithi al-Amili (d. 984/ 1576) shaykh al-islam of Qazvin. The abrupt dismissal of al-Harithi from this office ca. 970/1563 probably resulted from his being challenged and replaced by his outspoken contemporary, Sayyid Husayn b. Hasan al-Karaki (d. 1001/992-93), who enjoyed the support of the Qizilbash and was known for his extreme anti-Sunni views.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE FIHRIST: IBN AL-NADIM AS HISTORIAN OF ISLAMIC LEGAL AND THEOLOGICAL SCHOOLS

Compiled in 987–88, Ibn al-Nadims work al-Fihrist (The Catalogue) needs little introduction to scholars of Middle Eastern and Islamic history. Countless specialized studies have used the Fihrist as a source of data. Because it includes the titles of a large number of works that are no longer extant, as well as biographical information on little-known early authors, it throws light on otherwise obscure facets of medieval Islamic intellectual history in many fields. Choice anecdotes, such as the account of al-Maءmuns (r. 813–33) conversation with Aristotle in a dream, considered to have triggered the translation movement, have been quoted in numerous studies. Little attention has been paid, however, to Ibn al-Nadim as a thinker, despite the fact that the Fihrist , like Deweys decimal system, is as much an exercise in mapping out the organization of human knowledge as a simple inventory of book titles. The following remarks focus first on the methods Ibn al-Nadim adopted in compiling the Fihrist and second on the arguments he makes about the history of Islamic sciences, in many cases not explicitly but through order, presentation, and the calculus of inclusion and exclusion, emphasis and de-emphasis. Particular attention will be paid to the Islamic legal madhhab s and theological schools. Determining Ibn al-Nadims views on these topics, as an Imami Shiʿi and Muʿtazili theologian, promises to provide a better understanding of his conception of the Islamic sciences, the overall message of his work, and Islamic intellectual history itself.

The Maqāmāt of Amad b. Abī Bakr b. Amad al-Rāzī al-anafī and the Ideology of the Counter-Crusade in Twelfth-century Syria

Abstract This essay argues that the little-studied Maqāmāt of Amad b. Abī Bakr b. Amad al-Rāzī al-anafī was completed in Aleppo in 573–575/1178–1179, during the reign of the Zengid ruler al-Malik al-āli Ismā‘īl. The work glorifies the counter-Crusade of the Zengids while expressing opprobrium for Christians, Twelver Shiites, and the Assassins or Nizārī Ismā‘īlīs of Syria. It should thus be interpreted as part of the jihād propaganda patronized by Nūr al-Dīn and later Muslim rulers, which espoused the theory of unified jihād, linking the internal threat of Shiism with the external threat of the Crusader Franks.

ḥusayn b. ʿAbd al-Ṣamad al-ʿāmilī's Treatise for Sultan Suleiman and the Shīʿī Shāfiʿī Legal Tradition

This study draws on the work Nūr al-ḥaqīqah wa-nawr al-ḥadīqah , a treatise on ethics written by ḥusayn b. ʿAbd al-Ṣamad al-ḥārithī extant in two autograph manuscripts, in an effort to explain how the author and his close companion Zayn al-Dīn al-ʿāmilī, two of the most important Twelver Shiʿi jurists of the sixteenth century, were able to obtain appointments as professors of law at Sunni madrasahs under Ottoman control. Evidence from Nūr al-ḥaqīqah , corroborated by information from biographical sources, shows that they obtained these appointments by claiming affiliation with the Shāfiʿī madhhab and presenting themselves as accomplished Shāfiʿī jurists. Their efforts were in fact part of a long and developed tradition of association with the Shāfiʿī madhhab among Twelver Shiʿi scholars.

Of rhetoric, reason, and revelation: Ibn al-Jawzī’s Maqāmāt as an anti-parody and Sefer Taḥkemoni of Yehudah al-Ḥarīzī

ABSTRACT The Maqāmāt of Ibn al-Jawzī may be viewed as a sustained effort to rectify and reform the parodic and irreverent features of earlier works in the maqāmāt genre, particularly those of al-Hamadhānī and al-Ḥarīrī. An understanding of this facet of his work confirms the interpretation of al-Hamadhānī’s Maqāmāt in particular as a parody of religious discourse. Ibn al-Jawzī’s work presents rhetoric as an effective tool for analysis and comprehension in the search for the truth, rather than as a tool for concealment, deception, and subterfuge, undoing the writings of al-Hamadhānī and al-Ḥarīrī. In the use of rhetoric for pious purposes, in championing the side of seriousness over frivolity, and in the personification of reason, Ibn al-Jawzī’s work likely was an important source for Yehudah al-Ḥarīzī’s collection of Hebrew maqāmāt, the Sefer Taḥkemoni.

Editing the Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadīm

Arabic and Islamic studies, whether of the Abbasid or later periods, suffer from the lack of reliable editions of fundamental resources such as al-Ṭabarī’s Tārīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk, al-Masʿūdī’s Murūj al-dhahab wa-maʿādin al-jawhar, Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣbahānī’s Kitāb al-Aghānī, and others, despite a long history of scholarly interest in, and intensive use of these particular texts. The appearance in 2009 of the new edition of the Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadīm (d. 380/990) by Ayman Fuʾād Sayyid (hereafter afs) provides an opportunity to reflect on this general problem by considering the historical progress made in the editing and contextualization of this text that is central to the understanding of Abbasid history and letters and to nearly all the intellectual traditions that had arisen in the Islamic world by the fourth/tenth century. As will become clear, the complex history of scholarship on the Fihrist is an object lesson on the problem of failing adequately to take into account the work of earlier editors and scholars, made particularly difficult in this case by linguistic barriers and limited access to widely scattered publications. The following remarks attempt to review afs’s edition of the Fihrist, to compare the views of afs, the Russian scholar Valeriy V. Polosin, and others regarding the context and background of the Fihrist, and to give an overview of the current state of knowledge about Ibn al-Nadīm and the Fihrist. It will be argued that, beyond reliably publishing the contents of the earliest extant manuscript of the Fihrist, substantial emendations to the text are required to produce a reliable edition of the work. An evaluation of afs’s emendations to the text is followed by a number of additional proposed emendations.

Cognate and Analogical Curses in Moroccan Arabic: A Comparative Study of Arabic Speech Genres

This study describes the form and function of Moroccan Arabic cognate and analogical curses. Drawing on scholarship on curses in other Arabic dialects, it provides a comparative discussion of the Moroccan variety and analyzes a corpus of cognate curses that includes many of the standard members of the genre. It then defines the analogical curse, arguing that this particular type of curses derives from proverbs based on the simile. It suggests that the speech genre of curses in the Arabic dialects goes back to a common repertoire that predates the Islamic period.

Polemics and patronage in Safavid Iran: The debate on Friday prayer during the reign of Shah Tahmasb

This study argues that five treatises on the legal status of Friday prayer in Twelver Shiite law that were composed between 1555 and 1563, in the middle of the reign of Safavid Shah Tahmasb, were all penned as part of a heated competition over the post of shaykh al-islām of the Safavid capital Qazvin. Detailed analysis of the first four treatises and the context in which they were produced, building on a 1996 article that discussed the fifth, demonstrates the influence of politics and academic rivalry on texts of Islamic law and other sciences, the types of rhetorical strategies used by scholars in the competition for patronage, and the importance of support of scholars for the establishment of legitimate rule and an official religion.

An Episode in the ‘Amili Migration to Safavid Iran: Husayn b. ‘Abd al-Samad al-‘Amili's Travel Account

After emigrating from Ottoman territory to Safavid Iran in the mid-sixteenth century, the Shiite scholar Husayn b. ‘Abd al-Samad al-‘Amili wrote an eloquent letter-cum-travel account describing his experiences to his teacher Zayn al-Din al-‘Amili who had remained in Jabal ‘Amil. A manuscript of this fascinating document has now come to light and been edited twice, in 2001 and 2003. An analysis of the undated letter shows that it was written in 961/1554 and describes a journey that occurred earlier that same year. Husayns statements do not spell out the exact cause of his flight from Ottoman territory but suggest that he was wary of being denounced to the authorities and felt that his academic career was severely limited there. He evidently supported Safavid legitimacy wholeheartedly, though he harbored misgivings about the moral environment in Iran and had sharp criticisms for Persian religious officials.