Book review, Feryal Salem, The Emergence of Early Sufi Piety and Sunnī Scholasticism: Abdallāh b. al-Mubārak and the Formation of Sunnī Identity in the Second Islamic Century (original) (raw)
Related papers
American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences, 2019
The book reviewed here is a welcome addition to the library of works seeking to construct a richer picture of the early Islamic landscape after the wane of radical revisionist theories of Islamic origins of Islam. Salem has presented a thoughtful study of the scholar-ascetic-warrior ' Abdallāh ibn al-Mubārak (d. 181/797), and what the outlines of his life reveal about the proto-Sunnī milieu of the second Islamic century. Whereas early academic explorations of the development of Sunnī orthodoxy focused on theology and law, with Scott Lucas later highlighting the crucial role of ḥadīth, Salem has focused on the hitherto neglected dimension of ethics. The book is well laid out with an introduction, then a chapter outlining Ibn al-Mubārak's life, followed by chapters analyzing his activities in the fields of ḥadīth, ji-hād, and zuhd respectively, wrapped up with a brief concluding chapter. Chapter 1 begins with a succinct overview of the 'descriptive' and 'skeptical' approaches among scholars of early Islamic history, followed by the relevant observation that interpretation of source material almost inevitably reflects some of the assumptions of the scholar interpreting them. Salem makes the (unobjectionable) assertion that the contents of historical reports in early sources are indicative of attitudes and conceptions that existed among Muslims at the time of authorship, regardless of whether they are historically genuine in all their details. She then presents a representative selection of biographical details that paint Ibn al-Mubārak as a devout worshipper with high moral character, a scholar of ḥadīth and fiqh, yet also a wealthy and philanthropic trader and a brave man who spent much time
American journal of Islam and society, 2018
The book reviewed here is a welcome addition to the library of works seeking to construct a richer picture of the early Islamic landscape after the wane of radical revisionist theories of Islamic origins of Islam. Salem has presented a thoughtful study of the scholar-ascetic-warrior ' Abdallāh ibn al-Mubārak (d. 181/797), and what the outlines of his life reveal about the proto-Sunnī milieu of the second Islamic century. Whereas early academic explorations of the development of Sunnī orthodoxy focused on theology and law, with Scott Lucas later highlighting the crucial role of ḥadīth, Salem has focused on the hitherto neglected dimension of ethics. The book is well laid out with an introduction, then a chapter outlining Ibn al-Mubārak's life, followed by chapters analyzing his activities in the fields of ḥadīth, ji-hād, and zuhd respectively, wrapped up with a brief concluding chapter. Chapter 1 begins with a succinct overview of the 'descriptive' and 'skeptical' approaches among scholars of early Islamic history, followed by the relevant observation that interpretation of source material almost inevitably reflects some of the assumptions of the scholar interpreting them. Salem makes the (unobjectionable) assertion that the contents of historical reports in early sources are indicative of attitudes and conceptions that existed among Muslims at the time of authorship, regardless of whether they are historically genuine in all their details. She then presents a representative selection of biographical details that paint Ibn al-Mubārak as a devout worshipper with high moral character, a scholar of ḥadīth and fiqh, yet also a wealthy and philanthropic trader and a brave man who spent much time
Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī’s Texts and Contexts: Producing a Sufi Environment in the Cairo Sultanate
New Readings in Arabic Historiography from Late Medieval Egypt and Syria, 2021
was a famous religious scholar and historian, whose reputation in ḥadīth studies was unparalleled in Cairo at the time of his death.* He stood and was remembered as a man of knowledge, wealth, and influence, both socially and scholarly. Son of a wealthy merchant family on his maternal side and a famous and ancient Shāfiʿī bayt al-ʿilm on his paternal side, he occupied a position of mudarris in various institutions of Cairo and was appointed many times as qāḍī l-quḍāt of the Shāfiʿī school, for a total of 23 years. His life is relatively well known, mainly due to his fame but also the very extensive biography that his student Muḥammad al-Sakhāwī (d. 902/1497) dedicated to him, al-Jawāhir wa-l-durar fī tarjamat shaykh al-islām Ibn Ḥajar. Ibn Ḥajar himself wrote his autobiography and gave the list of his mashāyikh, and most of the 9th/15th-century historians of the Cairo Sultanate provided information and biographic notices about him. Modern research also took an interest in this character and at least four academic books have been written in the last decades that deal with Ibn Ḥajar's life: S. Kawash's Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (1372-1449 ad), Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī muʾarrikh by K. ʿIzz al-Dīn, The life and works of Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī by Aftab A. Raḥmānī, mostly an organized compendium of al-Sakhāwī's Jawāhir, and Ibn Ḥajar by R. Kevin Jacques. Thus, when it comes to his personal life, his writings, his institutional positions and his travels, we comparatively know a lot about him. It should not come as a surprise, since Ibn Ḥajar was remembered as one of the greatest Islamic scholars of his time, due mainly to his involvement in ḥadīth studies and, among many works, his famous commentary on the Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, the Fatḥ al-bārī. Nevertheless, many things are still unknown * This article has been finalized within the context of the project "The Mamlukisation of the Mamluk Sultanate ii: Historiography, political order and state formation in fifteenth-century Egypt and Syria" (Univeristy of Gent, 2017-21); this project has received funding from the European Research Council (erc) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Consolidator Grant agreement No 681510).
Islam at 250
Gautier 'Gual' Juynboll was a great scholar and a remarkable person. Anyone who interacted with him or his work could not help but be struck by his passionate investment in the world of early Islam, his total immersion in the sources of the period, and his almost confrontational engagement with the research questions that the field brings up. His presence in the Oriental Reading Room of Leiden University Library offered at one and the same time a sense of reassuring regularity and a refreshing disturbance to the academic routine. Students and colleagues were regularly invited to join in unexpected finds from his annotated Mizzī, which formed the basis of his research on hadith, and regaled with anecdotes on sundry topics. His last great expression of his lifelong commitment to scholarship was his decision to leave his books to his beloved library and to bequeath his possessions and property to a fund to further research, which resulted in the Juynboll Foundation, established in 2011 to promote the study of Arabic and Islam at Leiden by providing financial support to (especially younger) scholars. After Gual's untimely death in December 2010 it was immediately obvious that his contribution to the study of early Islam should be honoured with a scholarly meeting and a publication. In fact, two meetings were organised at Leiden University to recognise his achievement. The first conference took place in 2011, followed by a second one in 2015. We are very grateful to the Juynboll Foundation and Leiden University Centre for the Study of Islam and Society (LUCIS) for sponsoring these two meetings, and we would like to thank all of the participants in these meetings, not all of whose presentations have ended up in this publication, for their contributions to honouring Gual's memory through their stimulating discussions and-in keeping with Gual's spirit-inspiring company and sociability. This volume could not have been realised without the help of a number of people. We are grateful to the anonymous readers for their helpful remarks on earlier versions of the papers. Annemarie van Sandwijk, Nienke van Heek, Birte Kristiansen and Nynke van der Veldt of Leiden University deserve special mention for their assistance during the editorial process. The bibliography has been compiled by Arjan Post. We would also like to thank LUCIS, the Leiden Institute for Area Studies (LIAS), and the European Research Council (ERC, grant agreement ID 683194) for making this assistance available. Particular thanks are due to the Juynboll Foundation for sponsoring the open access format in which this volume appears next to its printed form, as well as to our Brill editors, Teddi Dols, Abdurraouf Oueslati and Maurits van den Boogert, who