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Numen | 2011

Classical Islamic Discourse on the Origins of Language: Cultural Memory and the Defense of Orthodoxy

Mustafa Shah

Classical Islamic scholarship developed two principal theses on the subject of the origin of language (aṣl al-lugha). The first of these theses, commonly referred to as tawqīf, accentuated the pre-eminent role that divine agency played in the imposition of language; axiomatic within this perspective is the view that words (lafẓ pl. alfāẓ) have been assigned their meanings (maʿnā pl. maʿānī) primordially by God. Presented as something of an antithesis to this position, the second doctrine, labeled iṣṭilāḥ, predicates that language was established and evolved via a process of common convention and agreement: words together with their meanings were assigned by human beings, although both the doctrines of tawqīf and iṣṭilāḥ posit that the actual relationship between words and their assigned meanings remains entirely arbitrary, rejecting any sort of natural or conventional link between the two. Although later Islamic scholarship accepted that both theses were plausible, within the course of the 9th/10th centuries opinions on the subject were ostensibly polarized between orthodox and arch-rationalist camps with the former endorsing tawqīf and the latter iṣṭilāḥ. In the quest to achieve a conceptual defense of traditional arguments for tawqīf it was necessary for orthodox theologians to create a connective structure, as articulated through reference to remembrance, continuation, and identity, which enabled them to anchor the construct of tawqīf in a formalized way to the scriptural exegesis and emblems of orthodoxy associated with the pious ancestors. That this was successfully accomplished through references to the past would seem to confirm the role which cultural memory played in the defense of what was deemed an orthodox belief.


Information Systems | 2015

Inquisition in Early Islam: The Competition for Political and Religious Authority in the Abbasid Empire by John P. Turner

Mustafa Shah

Copyright


Journal of Qur'anic Studies | 2003

Exploring the Genesis of Early Arabic Linguistic Thought: Qur'anic Readers and Grammarians of the Kūfan Tradition (Part I)

Mustafa Shah


Religion Compass | 2007

Trajectories in the Development of Islamic Theological Thought: the Synthesis of Kalām

Mustafa Shah


Journal of Qur'anic Studies | 1999

The Philological Endeavours of the Early Arabic Linguists: Theological Implications of the tawqīf-iṣṭilāḥ Antithesis and the majāz Controversy – Part I

Mustafa Shah


Journal of Qur'anic Studies | 2013

Al-Ṭabarī and the Dynamics of tafsīr: Theological Dimensions of a Legacy.

Mustafa Shah


Journal of Qur'anic Studies | 2008

The Quest for the Origins of the qurrāc in the Classical Islamic Tradition

Mustafa Shah


International journal for the semiotics of law | 2016

The Case of variae lectiones in Classical Islamic Jurisprudence: Grammar and the Interpretation of Law

Mustafa Shah


Archive | 2008

The Arabic Language

Mustafa Shah


Journal of Qur'anic Studies | 2008

The Oral and the Written in Early Islam. By Gregor Schoeler. Translated by Uwe Vagelpohl, edited and introduced by James E. Montgomery. Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures. London: Routledge, 2006. Pp. 248+viii. £80.00.

Mustafa Shah

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