Sabine Schmidtke

The authenticity of the Kitāb al-dīn wa-al-dawla by the Nestorian convert to Islam, Abū al-asan ʿAlī b. Sahl Rabban al-abarī (d. ca. 251/865), has been discussed since the publication of the text by A. Mingana in 1922 Mingana, A. (1922) The Book of Religion and Empire. A Semi-Official Defence and Exposition of Islam Written by Order at the Court and with the Assistance of the Caliph Mutawakkil (A.D. 847–861) by ʿAlī abarī. Translated with a critical apparatus from an apparently unique MS. in the John Rylands Library (Manchester/New York). [Google Scholar]/23. A comparison between the chapter of the Twelver Shīʿī Sadīd al-Dīn Mamūd b. ʿAlī al-immaī al-Rāzī's (d. after 600/1204) Munqidh min al-taqlīd discussing the biblical predictions of the Prophet Muammad and the corresponding sections of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī's (d. 606/1209) Mafāti al-ghayb reveals a substantial degree of verbal and structural agreement. It becomes evident that Fakhr al-Dīn, like al-immaī, are using material from Ibn Rabban's Al-dīn wa-al-dawla, although they were both relying on an intermediate source, Abū al-usayn al-Barī's (d. 436/1045) Kitāb ghurar al-adilla.

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.

In a recently published article, Daniel Gimaret has offered a first study on the Kitāb Hidāyat al-mustaršidīn, Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī’s (d. 403/1013) most comprehensive and, as it would seem, last work in the field of kalām. Gimaret consulted and described two manuscripts containing different parts of the work, viz. ms. Qarawiyyīn 692 (Fez) and ms. al-Azhar III 337, ʿilm al-kalām [21] 342 (Cairo). The purpose of the present article is to introduce two additional partial manuscripts of al-Bāqillānī’s work, ms. St. Petersburg, The Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences, # C 329 and ms. Tashkent, al-Biruni Institute of Oriental Studies, Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan, # 3296, constituting Volumes Five and Eleven of the work.

One of the most avid readers of Arabic manuscripts at the Berlin State Library between June 1898 and April 1921 was Friedrich Kern (1874–1921). Kern never held an academic position, his published scholarly output is slim, and he is nowadays primarily remembered for his edition of a fragment of Muḥammad b. Ǧarīr al-Ṭabarī’s (224–5/839–310/923) Iḫtilāf al-fuqahāʾ which was owned at the time by the Khedival Library in Cairo (published in 1902). However, the sheer mass of some 800 manuscripts which he consulted at the Berlin State Library over the course of two decades, in addition to countless manuscripts held by other libraries throughout Europe and the United States, as well as in the libraries of Cairo, Istanbul, and Algiers, suggests that Kern was an exceptional and deeply knowledgeable scholar, something which is corroborated by Eugen Mittwoch’s (1876–1942) obituary for him, published in 1924. The manuscripts Kern consulted, as well as his publications, reflect the wide spectrum of his scholarly interests, ranging from Islamic law and dogma, history and biography, to dialectology, popular culture, Egyptian shadow theatre, poetry and adab. ...

The prominent Twelver Shiʿi scholar and poet, Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn "al-Sharīf al-Raḍī" (d. 406 AH/1015 CE), author of a Qurʾān commentary in ten volumes, Ḥaqāʾiq al-taʾwīl fī mutashābih al-tanzīl, which has only partly been preserved, and compiler of the renowned anthology of testimonials, opinions, and sayings attributed to Imām ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib (d. 40 AH/661 CE), Nahj al-balāgha, also composed a comprehensive, and largely unprecedented book on the metaphors in the Qurʾān, Talkhīṣ al-bayān ʿan majāzāt al-Qurʾān. A remarkable manuscript containing volume two of the work is currently offfered for sale by the UK auctioneer Dreweatts ...

Among the refutations, that were written against Christian missionaries at the turn of the 18th/19th century following the order of Fatḥ 'Alī Shāh (reigned 1212/1797-1250/1834), was the extensive Rādd-i shubuhāt al-kuffār by ēqā Muḥammad 'Alī Bihbahānī Kirmēnshēhē (d. 1216/1801). The present article investigates the literary sources of this work among them particularly Ibn Kammūna's (d. 683/1284) Tanqīḥ al-abḥēth li-l-milal al-thalāth and Samaw'al al-Maghrībī's (d. 570/1175) Ifḥām al-yahūd. Other prominent sources of the work are Ḥawārīnāmah written by the Jesuit Father Jérôme Xavier between 1602 and 1607, Lawāmi'-i rabbāniyya by Sayyid Aḥmad Alawī (d. between 1054/1644 and 1060/1650), and Hidāyat al-ḍāllīn of 'Ali Qilī Jadīd al-Islām, the Augustinian convert to Islam of the 12th/17th century.

The two earliest extant Muslim works containing comprehensive lists of biblical predictions of the Prophet Muhammad from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are the Kitāb al-dīn wa-al-dawla by the Nestorian convert to Islam ʿAlī Ibn Rabban al-Ṭabarī (b. ca. 194/810, d. 251/865) and the Aʿlām al-nubuwwa by Ibn Rabban's contemporary Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muslim ibn Qutayba (b. 213/828, d. 276/889). Ibn Qutayba's Aʿlām al-nubuwwa clearly eclipsed Ibn Rabban's Kitāb al-dīn wa-al-dawla in popularity – the text was used over the following centuries by various authors as a reference text for the biblical material it contained. An incomplete and (as it seems) unique manuscript of Ibn Qutayba's work, which is preserved in the Dār al-Kutub al-Ẓāhiriyya in Damascus, has mostly escaped scholars' attention until now. This article contains a critical edition of the first eight sections of the text, which contain biblical materials.

Recently, two codices have been discovered that significantly augment what was hitherto known about Ibn Abī Jumhūr al-Aḥsā'ī's (d. after 906/1501) life and oeuvre. The codices, which are nowdays in the possession of the Kitābkhāna-yi Madrasa-yi 'ilmiyya-yi Marwī in Tehran (MSS Marwī 855 and 874), consist exclusively of writings of Ibn Abī Jumhūr and were evidently copied during his lifetime as is indicated by the numerous autograph ijāzas and marginal notes in the hand of the author. The present paper not only outlines the significance of these findings, but also contains an editio princeps of Ibn Abī Jumhūr's ijāza 'āmma that is contained in MS Chester Beatty 3810 (ff. 328-329b).

The seventh/thirteenth-century Imami scholar Raḍī al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Mūsā Ibn Ṭāwūs (d. 664/1266) is well known for his rich personal library. He compiled a catalogue of its holdings, al-Ibāna fī maʿrifat (asmāʾ) kutub al-khizāna, which is lost, as well as a supplement to the catalogue, Saʿd al-suʿūd li-l-nufūs manḍūd min kutub waqf ʿAlī b. Mūsā b. Ṭāwūs, which is partly preserved and was perhaps never completed. In the latter work, Ibn Ṭāwūs provided detailed information on selected books in his possession, together with extensive quotations. Here, he describes in detail an Arabic translation of the Pentateuch. The paper discusses Ibn Ṭāwūs’s description of the Pentateuch manuscript and offers tentative conclusions as to its provenance.