Speaking for Islam : religious authorities in Muslim societies /
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Who speaks for Islam? To whom do Muslims turn when they look for guidance? To what extent do individual scholars and preachers exert religious authority, and how can it be assessed? The upsurge of Islamism has lent new urgency to these questions, but they have deeper roots and a much longer history, and they certainly should not be considered in the light of present concerns only. The present volume - grown out of an international symposium at the Free University, Berlin in 2002 - is not so much concerned with religious authority , but with religious authorities , men and women claiming, projecting and exerting religious authority within a given context. It addresses issues such as the relationship of knowledge, conduct and charisma, the social functions of the schools of law and theology, and the efforts on the part of governments and rulers to organize religious scholars and to implement state-centred hierarchies. The volume focuses on Middle Eastern Muslim majority societies in the period from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, and the individual papers offer case studies elucidating important aspects of the wider phenomenon. Individually and collectively, they highlight the scope and variety of religious authorities in past and present Muslim societies. This book is also available in paperback .
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047408864 :
1385-3376 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Al-Qand fī dhikr ʿulamāʾ Samarqand /
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In the Arabic literary tradition, biographies form a class of their own and have always been widely used. Whether about a single person or about some group, their shared objective was to provide an authoritative account of someone's lineage, social or literary career, academic or religious background or affiliation, or connection to some historic event. As examples one could mention Ibn Hishām's (d. 218/834) Sīrat Muḥammad rasūli ʼllāh , Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa's (d. 668/1270) Kitāb ʿuyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ , or Nūr al-Dīn al-Ṭūkhī's (d. ca 900/1494) Quḍāt Miṣr . The author of the present work, Najm al-Dīn al-Nasafī (d. 537/1142-43), was a long-time resident of Samarqand and widely known and respected as jurist. He wrote more than 30 works, in Persian and in Arabic. The present volume contains an inventory of ḥadīth scholars bearing some connection to Samarqand. Its importance lies mainly in the many names of people, places, and books which are otherwise entirely unknown.
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1 online resource. :
9789004402614
9789646781122
Early Islam between Myth and History : Al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 110H/728CE) and the Formation of His Legacy in Classical Islamic Scholarship /
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This volume examines the process through which a historical character named al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī was transformed into a myth by several groups in medieval Islam. Al-Ḥasan lived in the city of Basra, southern Iraq, and was famed for his piety, which attracted to him a large number of disciples who went on to play important roles in the formation of several religious trends. The literary corpus (sayings, stories and letters) ascribed to him has been used as a window into early Islamic religious and intellectual thought. But as this study shows, this corpus was largely forged in different periods, in some cases even a thousand years after al-Ḥasan's death. It tells us more about the beliefs of those who forged the sayings, stories and letters rather than about al-Ḥasan's thought and time.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047416708
9789004148291
The theology of Abu l-Qasim al-Balkhi/al-Ka'bi (d. 319/931) /
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This is the first comprehensive monograph on the theology of Abū l-Qāsim al-Kaʿbī al-Balkhī (d. 319/931), a leading Muʿtazilī who flourished at the end of the Baghdādī school and at the beginning of the scholastic phase of Muʿtazilī history. The study of al-Kaʿbī's theology has been hindered by historiographical barriers: the fragmentary nature of extant articles, and the difficulties of reconstructing their contexts. This work investigates the twofold challenge of recovering al-Kaʿbī's theology on the basis of a source-critical reconstruction of major extant fragments. One result of this study positions al-Kaʿbī's theology as influenced less by the precepts of a Baghdādī school, and guided more by his individual views and affinity for earlier independent Muʿtazilī positions. Another result not only corroborates al-Kaʿbī's previously noted contributions in epistemology and cosmology, but also argues for their centrality to his theology as a whole.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004259683 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.