Sabine Schmidtke

Volume Two of the journal "Uranos: Blätter für ungeschmälertes Menschentum" is lost. Fragments of the volume, containing some publications by Elisàr von Kupffer, are preserved in the Archiv Elisarion (www.elisarion.ch)

The growing interest for shi'ite islam in general and for twelver shi'ism in particular, as well as the growing difficulty of access to libraries in the traditional intellectual centers of shi'ism (namely in Iran and Irak) are the main reasons of the present bibliographical work. The latter consists in the presentation of the main imamite collections in Europe: the shi?ite collection of the Oriental Department of the University of Cologne, as well as the Henry Corbin and Shaykhī collections in the Religious Sciences Section of the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris. Considering the importance of the Shaykhī literature in the history of modern imamite thought and keeping in mind that it is almost unexplored, the complete catalogue of the Shaykhī collection is also presented. Lastly, an appendix deals with the problem of censorship of older sources in some recent editions, prepared in two shi'ite countries, and with the necessity of resorting to older editions or to manuscripts which, to a large extent, are preserved in the above-mentioned European collections.

This paper investigates the attitudes of the Illuminationists towards metempsychosis. It considers Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī's (executed 587/1197) treatment of issue in his Ḥikmat al-ishrāq, Muḥammad b. Maḥmūd al-Shahrazūrī's (d. after 688/1288) notion of metempsychosis in his Shajara al-ilāhiyya and Ibn Abī Jumhūr al-Aḥsā'ī's (d. after 906/1501) concept of transmigration in his Kitāb al-Mujlī. Whereas the aforementioned thinkers adhered to the temporal origin of the soul, other Illuminationists, namely the Jewish philosopher Sa'd al-Dīn Manṣūr b. Kammūna (d. 1284) and the Imanite Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī (d. 710/1311 or 716/1316) believed in the pre-eternity of the soul. Their notion of metempsychosis therefore necessarily differs from the concept of Suhrawardī, Shahrazūrī and Ibn Abī Jumhūr.

This volume focuses on the theological views of the Imāmī Shī‘ite theologian Muḥammad b. ‘Alī b. Ibrāhīm b. Abī Jumhūr al-Aḥsā’ī (d. after 906/1501), who combined traditional thought of the Mu‘tazilites with the philosophical tradition of Ibn Sīnā (d. 428/1037), with the Illuminationist (Ishrāqī) tradition of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī (executed in 587/1191 and his followers, and with the speculative mysticism of Ibn al-‘Arabī (d. 638/1204). Ibn Abī Jumhūr moreover attempted to harmonize traditional Shī‘ite views which were deeply influenced by the Mu‘tazilite traditional with typical Ash‘arite notions. The book sets out to investigate thoroughly the impact of the various traditions on the theological views of Ibn Abī Jumhūr. It further investigates the place of this theologian within the development of Shī‘ite theological thought. The volume also includes a comprehensive study of Ibn Abī Jumhūr as well as a detailed bibliographical examination of his writings.

Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, one of the highly esteemed figures of the intellectual life of the Eastern lands of Islam during the late 13th and early 14th century AD, authored two major works in the field of philosophy. One of these works, Durrat al-Tāj li-Ghurrat al-Dubāj, written in Persian, is investigated in this article. The fact that, with the exception of portions of the section on logic, no part of the philosophical sections of Durrat al-Taj was originally written by Quṭb al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, suggests that his significance as a philosopher should be reconsidered.

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.