Rasāʾil-i Fārsi-yi Jurjānī : Rasāʾil-i kalāmī, taʾlīf ḥudūd-i qarn-i nuhum-i hijrī /
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From the time that ʿAlī b. Mūsā al-Riḍā (d. 203/818) was designated to be the successor of al-Maʾmūn b. Hārūn al-Rashīd (d. 218/833) and then murdered shortly after that, various Shīʿa groups have been at odds with whoever opposed their claim to leadership in Islam. The author of the Persian dissertations contained in the present volume, the otherwise unknown Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn b. Sadīd al-Dīn Jurjānī (ca. 9th/15th cent.), clearly issues from this polemic tradition. Reading his work, it is clear that Jurjānī had a full command of all the theological registers to be played upon in a traditional sectarian debate. This is especially the case for the first treatise in this collection, in which he opposes such movements as the Ashʿarīs, the Ḥanbalīs, the Ismāʿīlīs, and the Sufis. The treatises that follow, too, are all about religious dogma ( ʿaqāʾid ), with some of them showing clear signs of thematic, not to say temporal, association.
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1 online resource. :
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9789645568175
Irshād : Dar maʿrifat u waʿẓ u akhlāq /
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According to Majid Fakhry, ethical theories in Islam may be divided into four categories: 1. scriptural morality (moral precepts and judgments from the Qurʾān and the Traditions); 2. theological theories (rationalist interpretations of scriptural morality based on philosophical or theological methods and categories developed in the eighth and ninth centuries); 3. philosophical theories (ultimately relying on Greek sources, mainly Plato and Aristotle in neo-Platonic interpretations); 4. religious theories (based on the Qurʾānic view of man and his position in the universe, and differing from theological theories in that they were not dialectical, not polemical, and more concerned with moral theory than with questions of methodology). The present work comes under the last category, to which it adds an element of mysticism. Besides the more general sources and authorities, it also refers to scholars and mystics from Transoxania specifically, the work having been written there in the early 6th/12th century. Contains word material from that region.
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1 online resource. :
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Early Ibadi Theology: New Material on Rational Thought in Islam from the Pen of al-Fazārī (2nd/8th Century) /
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Al-Fazārī's writings are a unique source of information about Ibadi teachings on ʿilm al-kalām and the early development of this branch of religious knowledge. It is for this reason that scholars of Islamic theology are particularly interested in early Ibadi theology. In this volume newly discovered, re-edited texts by al-Fazārī are presented, with previously lacking fragments included, texts that had already begun to offer new perspectives on Islamic ʿilm al-kalām , and on its origins and the sources of its concepts and debating techniques. In their revised state these Ibadi texts represent a major contribution to scholastic theology. They demonstrate how their respective theological debates already took place at the beginning of the second/eighth century and how associated ideas, as well as related sects and treatises, remained current for some time afterwards, thereby contradicting earlier claims that these debates started in the third/ninth century.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004459571
9789004399136
A Syriac Encyclopaedia of Aristotelian Philosophy : Barhebraeus (13th c.) Butyrum sapientiae Books of Ethics, Economy and Politics /
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This volume deals with the part on practical philosophy in Barhebraeus's "Butyrum sapientiae" or " Cream of Wisdom". The practical philosophy in this large encyclopaedia of Aristotelean thinking in this Syriac language consists of three books: Ethics, Economy and Politics. The books of Ethics and Politics have been edited, translated and commented upon for the very first time in this publication. These books are unique and probably the only specimens of its kind, surviving in the Syriac language and literature. They were written at the end of Barhebraeus's life (1285/86) during a period in which the Syriac language had been rapidly losing ground to Arabic and was to almost disappear as a living language not long after the author's death.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047414001
9789004141339
Thawāqib al-manāqib-i awliyāʾ Allāh /
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Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī (Mawlānā) is the most famous and widely quoted mystical poet of the Persiate world. Ever since he passed away in 672/1273, people have studied, commented and recited his works, both in the Muslim world and, in modern times, also in the West. After Firīdūn Aḥmad Sipahsālār's (d. before 712/1312) Risāla-yi Sipahsālār dar manāqib-i khudāwandigār , the second most detailed source on Rūmī in Persian is Shams al-Dīn Aḥmad Aflākī ʿĀrifī's (d. 761/1360) Manāqib al-ʿārifīn . A follower of Rūmī's grandson Jalāl al-Dīn Firīdūn (d. 719/1320), Aflākī could include a lot of first-hand information in his work. Aflākī's work saw at least two revised editions: the Khulāṣat al-Manāqib by Aḥmad b. Maḥmūd (early 9th/15th century), and the work published here by ʿAbd al-Wahhāb b. Jalāl al-Dīn Hamadānī (d. 954/1547). Composed in Egypt where he had sought refuge from Safavid anti-Sunnī policies, he abridged the original text, removing mistakes and redundant, inappropriate, and un-Persian, 'alien' material.
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1 online resource. :
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Der Kategorienkommentar von Abū l-Farağ ʿAbdallāh ibn aṭ-Ṭayyib : Text und Untersuchungen /
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The Commentary on the Categorie s by Abū l-Farağ ibn aṭ-Ṭayyib is an important representative of the Aristotelian tradition in Arabic culture. Formally based on late antique commentaries on Aristotle's Categories , it provides the last example of the learned tradition still alive in eleventh-century Baghdad. The introduction offers a general survey of the commentaries on Aristotelian Categories , from the first Greek texts to the Arabic version featured here. The life and works of Ibn aṭ-Ṭayyib are also discussed. Systematic comparison with surviving Greek commentaries and a series of thematic studies elucidate the author´s method. The critical edition of ibn aṭ-Ṭayyib's Commentary is accompanied by a detailed summary, which facilitates its use by readers unfamiliar with the Arabic language.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047418177
9789004149038
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. :
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Ḥikmat-i Khāqāniyya : Shāmil-i yak dawra-yi mukhtaṣar-i mantiq, ṭabīʿiyyāt u ilāhiyyāt /
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Bahāʾ al-Dīn Iṣfahānī (d. 1137/1725), better known as Fāḍil Hindī, was born into a comfortable home in Isfahan. Being a particularly precocious child, he completed his studies in the traditional and the foreign sciences by the age of thirteen, even carrying the title of mujtahid (someone authorized to issue legal opinions in Shīʿī Islam). He then accompanied his father to the court of the Mughal emperor Awrangzīb (r. 1658-1707), where he remained for several years before returning to Isfahan. At a time at which Isfahan was under the spell of the anti-speculative, literalist Akhbārī school in Shīʿism, Fāḍil Hindī was one of the few to engage in philosophy, so much so that one could call him equally a juristic philosopher or a philosophical jurist. The present work is a very readable, complete course in logic and philosophy that bears witness to his originality as a thinker in each of these domains.
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1 online resource. :
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Tuḥfat al-azhār wa-zulāl al-anhār. Volume 3 : Fī nasab abnāʾ al-aʾimma al-aṭhār ʿalayhim ṣalawāt al-malik al-ghaffār /
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In traditional societies, ancestry is an important organising principle, often determining the lives of individuals or groups from the moment that they are born. In the Arab world, nasab (pl. ansāb ) or lineage was and to some extent still is, a major factor in the distribution of wordly and religious power, while administrative positions, trades, crafts and certain offices in the world of scholarship, too, often devolved along hereditary lines. Among the Shīʿa, where blood ties with the family of the Prophet through ʿAlī and his descendants are highly regarded and a source of authority and social standing, we find a number of ansāb works that focus exclusively on the genealogy of the twelve imams. Born into a Shīʿite family of ansāb scholars in 11th/17th-century Medina, the author of the present work travelled extensively in the Shīʿa world in his search for information. The result is a voluminous work, rich in material, genealogical and historic. 3 vols. & supplement al-Rawḍ al-miʿṭār fī tashjīr Tuḥfat al-azhār ; volume 3.
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Vol. numbering from spine. :
1 online resource. :
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Uṣūl al-ḥikam fī niẓām al-ʿālam /
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Ḥasan Kāfī al-Āqḥiṣārī (951-1025/1544-1616) was born in Āqhiṣār, present-day Prusac in Bosnia, then part of the Ottoman empire. After his elementary training he went to Istanbul, studying under a number of established scholars there, focussing on law. After completing his studies he went back to Āqḥiṣār where he founded his own school in 983/1575. Eight years later he was appointed judge of Aqḥiṣār, and five years after that he transferred to the district of Srem to assume a judgeship there, writing and teaching on the side. At the outbreak of the rebellion of Moldavia and Wallachia against the Ottomans in 1004/1495 he quit his post as judge of Srem to return to Āqḥiṣār. It is there that he compiled the present collection of aphorisms, anecdotes and traditions on good governance, being the right balance between the four different 'interest groups' in any given society: military, administration, peasants, and traders/artisans.
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1 online resource. :
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9786002030153
Tafsīr-i Shahristānī al-Musammā bi-Mafātīḥ al-asrār wa-maṣābīḥ al-abrār. Volume 2 /
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Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Shahristānī (d. 548/1153) was a prominent historian of religions who was well-versed in Islamic theology and the sciences of the Qurʾān. He is mostly known for his Kitāb al-milal wal-niḥal , a ground-breaking history of religions, his Kitāb muṣāraʿat al-falāsifa , a critical exposition of the philosophy of Avicenna (d. 428/1037)-later refuted by Naṣīr al-Dīn Tūsī (d. 672/1274) in his Maṣāriʿ al-muṣāriʿ -and the Mafātīḥ al-asrār wa-maṣābīḥ al-abrār , his partial Qurʾān commentary contained in the present two volumes. The Mafātīḥ al-asrār was written in the final years of Shahristānī's life and clearly bears the stamp of Ismailism, a branch of Shīʿism to which he had been introduced as a young man by his teacher in Qurʾānic studies in Nishapur, Abu ʼl-Qāsim al-Anṣārī (d. 512/1118). Even if the Mafātīḥ al-asrār is a work that remained unfinished, it is a fine and rare specimen of the richness of Ismaili taʾwīl . 2 vols; volume 2.
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1 online resource. :
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9789648700435
Rasāʾil-i Ḥazīn-i Lāhijī /
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Born into a wealthy intellectual family in Isfahan, Muḥammad ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, better known as Ḥazīn Lāhijī (d. 1180/1766), was a particularly gifted child. Greatly stimulated by his father, he received a varied education: from literature and the traditional Islamic sciences to mysticism, logic, philosophy and more. Until the siege of Isfahan by the Afghans in 1135/1722, Ḥazīn lived mostly in that city. He then fled the capital, leading a wandering existence in Persia, Arabia and Iraq. Ten years later and seeing no future for Persia, he left the country for good to settle in India, dying in Benares, aged 74. Ḥazīn is mostly famous as a poet and intellectual who left his imprint on India's Persian-speaking, ruling élites. His attractive prose-pieces on a wide variety of subjects, from Qurʾān interpretation and knowledge of the soul to pearl-diving and the lifting of weights, are much less known. The present volume aims to fill this gap.
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1 online resource. :
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Sabʿ rasāʾil /
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The history of Islamic philosophy was shaped by many great thinkers over a long period of time. As is well known, the Persianate world played an important role in this, almost from the very beginning. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the city of Shiraz saw the rise of a number of thinkers who together came to represent the 'School of Shiraz' in philosophy. A major figure in this school was Jalāl al-Dīn Dawānī (d. 908/1502-03). A specialist in theology and philosophy, Dawānī's fame reached much beyond the confines of Shiraz, from the Ottoman empire all the way to the Indian subcontinent. Dawānī's religious proclivities have been subject of debate, the question being if he ever really was a Sunnī. It is therefore not without significance that the present volume should contain two works by him on Sunnī philosophical theology as well as three other texts of unmistakeably Shīʿī signature.
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Added t. pages in Roman script: Sabʻ Rasāʻil / ʻAllāmah Jalāl al-Dīn al-Dawānī and Mullā Ismāʻīl al-Xāǰūʼī al-Iṣfahānī :
1 online resource. :
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Ḥifẓ al-badan : Risālaʾī Fārsī dar bihdāsht wa tandurustī /
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Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī (d. 606/1210) was a prominent theologian, interpreter of the Qurʾān, philosopher, and arguably the most important critic of Avicenna (d. 428/1037). He was born in 543/1149 in Rayy, where he studied theology, philosophy and law under different masters, including his father who was a preacher. Having completed his studies, he started a wandering life which took him to different cities and courts in Transoxania and Khwārazm, where he had a number of famous disputes with local scholars. After a brief return to Rayy he finally settled in Herat where he spent the rest of his life, a wealthy and respected scholar with many followers. His works are many, mainly in philosophy and theology, besides his famous commentary on the Qurʾān called Mafātīḥ al-ghayb . Rāzī received a basic medical training during a stopover in Sarakhs 580/1184. The present work is a compendium on preventive medicine and stands in a long tradition.
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1 online resource. :
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Taḥqīq dar majālis-i tafsīri-yi Faḍl b. Muḥibb-i Nīshābūrī wa abyāt-i Fārsi-yi ān : Ganjīnaʾī az surūdhā-yi Zāhidāna-yi Fārsī az sada-yi panjum-i hijrī /
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In Persian literature, so-called ' majālis ' (sg. majlis , 'session') works typically evoke the atmosphere of a religious gathering. In some of these gatherings, a lecturer recounted parts of the history of Islam and the lives and times of its prominent representatives. In others, his focus was on the interpretation of the Qurʾān or some other subject. Sometimes, a speaker answered questions and at others, he sermonized. An early work in this genre is a majālis text on Qurʾān interpretation by Faḍl b. Muḥibb Nīshāpūrī (d. 472/1079). Issuing from a well-educated family of Nishapur, Faḍl was known for his learning and his virtue, earning him the nicknames of ustādh ('master') and wāʿiẓ ('preacher'). The lines of poetry published here were culled from a majālis text by him, the title of which remains unknown. Testimony to his use of rhetorical means to enhance the impact of his talk, these lines of poetry are also among the earliest in their genre in Khurāsān.
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1 online resource. :
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ʿAql u ʿishq yā Munāẓarāt-i khams /
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Ibn Turka Iṣfahānī (d. 835/1432) stemmed from a well-educated family in Isfahan. In 789/1387, following Tīmūr Lang's (d. 807/1405) massacre of the population of Isfahan, he and his older brother were among the artists and scholars whose lives were spared and marched off to the capital Samarqand. Ibn Turka studied the Islamic sciences under this brother for 25 years. He then went on a study tour that took him to the classrooms of such great scholars as Shams al-Dīn Fanārī (d. 834/1451) and Sirāj al-Dīn al-Bulqīnī (d. 805/1403), to finally return to Isfahan. With more than 50 philosophical works to his name, Ibn Turka is seen as a key figure in the amalgamation of voam, Peripatetic and Illuminationist philosophy and mysticism, leading eventually to the Transcendent Philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1045/1635). Written in a beautiful Persian, the present work describes the struggle between divinely-inspired love and reason, ending in their glorious unification.
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1 online resource. :
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Al-Ifāda fī tarīkh al-aʾimma al-sāda /
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As is well known, the main difference between the Imāmiyya and Zaydiyya branches in Shīʿī Islam is to do with the fact that the Zaydiyya-named so after their first leader Zayd b.ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn (d. 122/740)-did not unconditionally condemn the first three caliphs before ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, while to the Imāmiyya branch, all Sunnīs were infidels. But even though the Zaydīs did not consider Sunnīs generally as infidels, they regarded rebellion against Sunnī rule -unlawful to them-as a religious duty for all. The Imāmīs on the other hand, while radical in doctrine, did not have a militant attitude comparable to that of the Zaydīs. Geographically, the Zaydīs divided into a Yemeni and an Iranian branch, concentrated along the shores of the Caspian sea. The present work contains the biographies of 15 Zaydī imams, some from the Caspian, the author-Abū Ṭālib Hārūnī (d. 424/1033)-being a Zaydī scholar from that region.
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Sharḥ al-Muqaddama fi ʼl-kalām : maʿa ʼl-Muqaddama fi ʼl-kalām, nuskha muṣawwara min majmūʿat ʿĀṭif Efendī raqm 1338/1 /
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The Imāmī scholar Abū Jaʿfar Ṭūsī (d. 459-60/1066-7) was born in Ṭūs in Khurāsān. Having completed his basic education there, he left for Baghdad, which at the time was ruled by the Shīʿī Buwayhid dynasty. In Baghdad he attended the classes of various prominent scholars, notably the leading Imāmī rationalist of his time, al-Shaykh al-Mufīd (d. 413/1022) and his successor al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā (d. 436/1044). After the death of al-Murtaḍā, Ṭūsī, who had already made a name for himself as a thinker and a writer, became the undisputed leader of the Imāmī community. About ten years later Baghdad was invaded by the Saljuqs and Ṭūsī's house and libraries were laid to waste. Tūsī fled to Najaf where he remained until his death. Al-Muqaddima fi ʼl-kalām on concepts in theology figures among Ṭūsī's most important works. The commentary by Najīb al-Dīn al-Ḥusaynī (d. 582/1186) printed in facsimile here are lecture notes, made by one of his students.
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1 online resource. :
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9786002030658
Kitāb al-mabāḥith wal-shukūk : Nukhushtīn taʿlīqa bar al-Ishārāt wal-tanbīhāt, hamrāh bih Kitāb ʿUyūn al-masāʾil-i Fārābī wa Risāla-yi l-Asmāʾ al-mufrada-yi Kindī /...
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The Kitāb al-ishārāt wal-tanbīhāt of Avicenna (d. 428/1037) is the most influential philosophical compendium in the history of the Islamic world. Being his last major work, written towards the end of his life, the Ishārāt contains what Avicenna considered to be the gist of all there was to know in logic and philosophy. It is different from his other works in that it represents the ultimate stage of development of his philosophical method, transcending the familiar Aristotelian aporetic method of his earlier days, to culminate in an elliptical kind of discourse in which, by the use of pointers or hints, the maximum is asserted with a minimum of means. The commentary by Sharaf al-Dīn Masʿūdī (d. before 605/1208) published here in facsimile is the earliest to survive. Focussing on a limited number of questions, it is not a running commentary. Two other philosophical texts by al-Fārābī (d. 339/950) and al-Kindī (d. after 247/861) accompany it.
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1 online resource. :
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Kitāb al-tafṣīl li-jumal al-Taḥṣīl : Sharḥ Kitāb al-taḥṣīl li-muʾallifihi Ḥasan b. Muḥammad al-Raṣṣāṣ /
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From the time of its foundation in 284/897, the Zaydī Imamate of Yemen was home to Muʿtazilī ideas. During the first centuries and starting with Imam al-Hādī ila ʼl-Ḥaqq (d. 298/911), Zaydī ideology included elements very much akin to the opinions of the Baghdad School of the Muʿtazila as founded by Bishr b. al-Muʿtamir (d. 210/825). However, in the 6-7th/11-12th centuries, we see a rise in popularity of Bahshamiyya ideas, a sub-group of the Basran School of the Muʿtazila around Abū Hāshim al-Jubbāʾī (d. 321/933). These ideas were systematized and elaborated upon by the Zaydī theologian al-Raṣṣāṣ (d. 584/1188), notably in his short theological summa the Kitāb al-taḥṣīl fi ʼl-tawḥīd wal-taʿdīl . This work soon gained popularity and within 30 years after his death, as three commentaries on it were written. The one whose surviving part is published here is an early witness of Yemeni Zaydī acquaintance with Ibn al-Malāḥimī's (d. 536/1141) works and anti-Bahshamī teachings.
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1 online resource. :
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