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Select Papers on Their Governing Institutions, Social and Cultural Organization, Religious Appeal, and Rivalries
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The chapters of this volume contain a series of detailed studies of various aspects of Fatimid rule in the regions of its Mediterranean and Near Eastern empire, 909 to 1171 AD, including separately the role of the imam-caliph, wazīr, chief qāḍī and dāʿī, and other political and public offices of this Shīʿī caliphate. Geographically it covers North Africa, Sicily, the Levant, Hijaz, Cairo and Egypt in the medieval period, with special attention to books, science and libraries, court society, festivals, intellectual traditions and Ismaili doctrines, its religious appeal, military, enemies and rivals, among them the Abbasids, Umayyads, and Ibadis.
The Scholarly Transmissions of Asad b. al-Furāt from Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī. An Edition of Three Manuscripts from the Ancient Library of Raqqada-Kairouan Attributed to al-Asadiyya: The Books of Prayer, Manumission and Theft and Brigandage
تُعدّ الأسدية منطلقا لمدونة سحنون في الفقه المالكي. وينسب فهرس مكتبة رقادة بالقيروان ثلاث قطع مخطوطة إلى الأسدية. فحصنا هذه القطع من ناحية المنهج فشككنا في صحّة تلك النسبة. ثم حققناها، فتبين أنها لم تكن الأسدية. فهي تمثّل سماعا أخذه أسد بن الفرات عن محمد بن الحسن الشيباني، وتهمّ الفقه الحنفي.
هذه القطع هي فريدة من نوعها، وهي تتجاوز في أهمّيتها الأسدية ذاتها. ولتحقيق تلك القطع، اعتمدنا على مختصر لها ألّفه الحاكم الشهيد في كتاب الكافي في الفقه، وقد شرح السّرخسي هذا المختصر في المبسوط، كما قارنّا هذه القطع أيضا بمدوّنة سحنون.

The Asadiyya is considered to be the foundation of Saḥnūn's Mudawwana, one of the most important works of the Malikī school of jurisprudence. The catalog of the Raqqada Library in Kairouan attributes three manuscript fragments to the Asadiyya. This work examines these fragments from a methodological point of view, since the validity of that attribution is questionable. From the edition by Nejmeddine Hentati, it becomes clear that they do not belong to the Asadiyya. These are rather witnesses of the scholarly transmissions of Asad b. al-Furāt from Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī, and they contain Ḥanafī jurisprudence.
These fragments are unique, and their importance stretches beyond the Asadiyya. For the edition, Hentati relied on al-Ḥākim al-Shahīd's compendium in al-Kāfī fī l-fiqh, as well as on al-Sarakhsī al-Mabsūṭ, which is a commentary on this compendium. Hentati also compared these fragments to Saḥnūn's Mudawwana.
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ضمن كتاب من تريبوليتانيا إلى أطرابلس، يتناول حافظ عبدولي مسألة انتقال إقليم/كورة طرابلس الغرب من الفترة القديمة المتأخرة إلى الفترة الإسلامية المبكّرة. وذلك وفق مقاربة منهجية تقوم من جهة على مقارعة المعطيات التي توفّرها مختلف المصادر الأدبيّة مع نظيرتها الطوبونيميّة والأونومستكية والأثرية ومن جهة أخرى تعتمد تشبيك المناهج المتنوّعة.
وقد خلص باعتماد هذا المنهج إلى نتائج مجدّدة تستند إلى براهين علميّة تؤكّد – على خلاف ما كان شائعا – أنّ المرور من تريبوليتانيا اللاتينية-المسيحيّة إلى أطرابلس العربية-الإسلامية لم يكن بصفة فجائية عبر إحداث قطيعة فوريّة وهوّة فاصلة بين الفترتين القديمة والوسيطة، بل كان كما الحال في بقيّة مجالات بلاد المغرب تدريجيّا وبطيئا في كل المستويات الحضارية. وقد كانت المسائل المتعلّقة بتفسير كيفية حدوث هذا الانتقال والآليات التي حكمته وانعكاس ذلك على تشكّل المشهد التعميري خلال العصر الوسيط المتقدّم، من أهمّ الهواجس المعرفية التي حاول الكتاب الإجابة عنها.

In From Tripolitania to Tripoli, Hafed Abdouli deals with the transition of Tripolitania from late Antiquity to the early Islamic period. He compares a detailed analysis of all the literary sources with the evaluation of the archaeological, onomastic and toponymic findings. For this purpose, he makes use of various research methodologies.
This approach brings about new results. It confirms that — contrary to what has been so far commonly assumed — the transition from the Latin-Christian Tripolitania to the Arabic-Islamic Tripoli was not sudden. There was no rigorous break that seperated the ancient from the medieval period. On the contrary, as was also the case in the rest of the Maghreb, the transition was progressive and slow at all levels of civilization. The interpretation of how this transition occurred, the mechanisms that determined it, and its reflection on the urban landscape during the early medieval period, are among the most important epistemological concerns that this book tries to answer.
The Middle East, Africa and Asia
Modern Intellectual Trends is a peer reviewed book series that includes monographs, edited volumes, critical editions (for text from the pre-print age) in the original languages and scripts, and annotated translations on intellectual history from the 18th century to the present. The coverage includes philosophy, theology, hermeneutics, mysticism, views and debates on science and the so-called occult sciences, political thought, gender, legal theory, nahḍa studies, postcolonial studies, and adjacent areas, i.e. in intellectual history in the broadest sense. The series welcomes transregional and transcultural contributions.
The series will be open for publications on modern thought from the global south, with a special focus on the Middle East (Arab world, Turkey, Iran), but also the Balkans, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Africa, as well as the Muslim diaspora. Submissions in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and other non-Western languages, will also be considered, in addition to English, French, and German.
Libya Islamica is a peer reviewed book series that focuses on the different historical, geographical and cultural aspects within the borders of present-day Libya, from the Islamic conquest (1st/7th century) until the establishment of the Ottoman rule (10th/16th century). The series covers a range of topics, such as the study of autonomous powers, networks and prosopography, local and regional histories, popular memories, intellectual productions, documents and deposits, linguistic variety, archaeology and epigraphy, material cultures and heritage, etc.
Libya Islamica welcomes the submission of monographs, edited volumes, critical editions in the original languages and scripts, and annotated translations. The series aims to make available material from manuscripts held in Libyan libraries through critical editions and translations of primary sources. This makes accessible previously undisclosed materials and contributes to improved historiographical perspectives.
The series serves as a publishing platform for the academic output of the LibMed project that started in 2021 and aims to uncover hitherto unknown aspects and material from medieval Libya.
The submissions will mainly be in Arabic, English and French, but works in other languages can be considered too.
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Ibn Ibrāhīm al-Dukkālī’s Historical Chronicle, edited and translated by Norman Cigar, is a valuable contemporary manuscript source from Morocco’s poorly documented and seldom-studied mid-eighteenth century, a period marked by weak rulers and conflicts, but also a golden age for local political actors and the autonomous power centers in the cities. As a well-placed observer and active participant in events in his native city of Fes, al-Dukkālī provides unique data that helps us address key questions about cities in the Muslim world raised in multiple disciplines, such as whether cities could be considered communities or were simply an agglomeration of disparate elements, and to what extent cities enjoyed autonomy in their relations with the central government, and in what sense they were “Islamic.”
In: The Historical Chronicle of Abū ʿAbdallāh Maḥammad Ibn Ibrāhīm al-Dukkālī
In: The Historical Chronicle of Abū ʿAbdallāh Maḥammad Ibn Ibrāhīm al-Dukkālī
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Abstract

In the Islamic world, the idea of the “philosopher-king” became a relevant theme particularly from the tenth century onwards. Al-Fārābī, the political philosopher of Islam par excellence, discussed the perfect city ruled by the philosopher-king along the lines of Plato. Although al-Fārābī’s political thinking is susceptible to various interpretations, it contains a key idea that was most particularly significant for his readers: that human beings must seek perfection and the utmost happiness in theoretical life, but that utmost perfection and felicity are only possible within the virtuous city ruled by the philosopher-king. In al-Andalus, al-Muʾtaman ibn Hūd, king of Saragossa (r. 474/1081-478/1085) seems to follow these ideals. Al-Muʾtaman was a philosopher and a mathematician when he ascended the throne. Given that the scholars of his time and of the generations that followed criticised him for his religious beliefs and philosophical opinions, it may well be that he attempted to rule as a philosopher-king. This article presents, on the one hand, a study of the personal and intellectual biographies of al-Muʾtaman, and on the other, an analysis of the relationship between the rational sciences and the society that generated a king of his calibre, focusing above all on its intrinsic complexity and its roots (the intellectual legacy of Umayyad Cordova). In this way, the article provides insights into the relationship between knowledge and power and, more particularly, into the legitimising role of secular knowledge inside religiously oriented societies.

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In: Studia Islamica
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Abstract

The Shūdhiyya is a Sufi strand that flourished in the south-east region of al-Andalus, particularly in the area of Murcia, in the late 6th/12th century until the second half of the 7th/13th century. It thus extended from the second half of the Almohad period to the early Naṣrid period. The Shūdhiyya is named after the enigmatic figure, al-Shūdhī (fl. 6th/12th c.), a Sufi saint linked to Tlemcen. Nevertheless, the two main figures of the Shūdhiyya were the theologians and Sufis, Ibn al-Marʾa (d. 611/1214) and Ibn Aḥlā (d. 645/1247). Faced with the advance of Christian forces in the region of Murcia, Shūdhīs relocated to the nascent kingdom of Granada and to the central Islamicate world where, as followers of Ibn Sabʿīn (d. 669/1270), they were known as the Sabʿīniyya. The Shūdhiyya flourished in al-Andalus at roughly the same time that Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240) lived in al-Andalus. And, like Ibn ʿArabī, the Shūdhiyya ultimately came to be known for espousing the unity of existence although in a more radical, absolute way. Even though intellectual Sufism in al-Andalus is mostly associated with Ibn ʿArabī, his actual influence on his contemporaries in al-Andalus was rather scarce as he emigrated in his thirties to the East where he wrote his main works. However, in the field of intellectual Sufism, the Shūdhiyya was far more influential in al-Andalus than Ibn ʿArabī. Nevertheless, since the main representatives of the Andalusī Shūdhiyya did not relocate to the East, their works were not widely disseminated across the eastern and central Islamicate world and, consequently, except for Ibn al-Marʾa, most of their works are not known to be extant. Thus, the main witnesses are biographical and polemical literature. Despite the historical and intellectual relevance of the Shūdhiyya for the social, political and intellectual history of al-Andalus, only Massignon has devoted some attention to this Sufi strand. In this article the available sources on the Shūdhiyya in al-Andalus are surveyed and contextualized.

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In: Studia Islamica