Christopher Melchert
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 697722 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Christopher Melchert |
| PRENOMES | Christopher |
| SOBRENOME | Melchert |
| ASSINATURA | MELCHERT C |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of Oxford |
| VERIFICADO | Não |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 57 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 32 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 58 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 1996 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 3 |
The Relative Lenience or Strictness of the Sunni Schools of Law
ʿAbd al-Wahhāb b. Aḥmad al‐Shaʿrānī (d. Cairo, 973/1565), al-Mīzān, is a survey of agreements and disagreements among the Sunni schools of law. For each question, it locates the rules of the different schools on a spectrum from lenient to strict, suggesting that a believer may choose whichever suits his situation, such as his capacity for self-control. The Ḥanafī school has a reputation for relative lenience, which al-Shaʿrānī’s survey tends to c…
Mathieu Tillier, Naïm Vanthieghem, Supplier Dieu dans l’Égypte toulounide. Le florilège de l’invocation d’après Ḫālid b. Yazīd (iiie/ixe siècle)
‘Florilegium’ is an Early Modern translation of Greek anthologia, literally a collection of flowers, to which a collection of short poems and epigrams seemed analogous. The title page of the collection edited by Tillier and Vanthieghem apparently calls it Kitāb mā yataḍammanu l-duʿāʾ and says it was set down from Khālid b. Yazīd, presumably by dictation, in the year 267/880-1. It comprises 39 hadith reports pertaining to supplication (duʿāʾ), mos…
Ibn Ḥabīb's Book of Scrupulosity
ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Ḥabīb (d. Cordova, 238/853?), Kitāb al-Waraʿ, is a series of about 350 quotations, topically organized. Most section headings name things to avoid, waraʿ referring to scrupulosity, meaning to keep away from the forbidden by avoiding even the doubtful. Quotations go back to persons of all generations, from earlier prophets to Ibn Ḥabīb himself. Particularly notable is a section on trade, in which the Prophet calls traders and cul…
Sufi Warrior Saints
Journal Article Sufi Warrior Saints: Stories of Sufi Jihad from Muslim Hagiography By Harry S. Neale Get access Sufi Warrior Saints: Stories of Sufi Jihad from Muslim HagiographyBy Harry S. Neale (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2022), xv + 182 pp. Price HB £85.00. EAN 978–0755643370. Christopher Melchert Christopher Melchert Oxford University E-mail: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Goog…
Ziad Bou Akl, Une doxographie sunnite du ive/xe siècle. « Kitāb al-Maqālāt » d’Abū al-ʿAbbās al-Qalānisī
Ziad Bou Akl provides an edition with translation and commentary of a reconstructed statement of contending theological positions apparently from the 10th century ce. His text comes from the margins of a 543/1148 Escorial manuscript of Ġazālī, al-Iqtiṣād fī al-iʿtiqād. They seem to be quotations from an earlier work, arranged as a sort of commentary on Ġazālī. Their concern strays often enough from Ġazālī’s to reassure us that they do faithfully …
Kitāb al-Ḥujjah ʿAlā Ahl al-Madīnah and the Transition from Regional Schools to Personal
K. al-Ḥujjah ʿalā ahl al-Madīnah by Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī (d. 189/804-5) is a witness to the state of the regional school of Medina before it had been absorbed by (survived only in) the Mālikī personal school. Schacht asserts that each regional school had its characteristic authorities among the Followers, and the Ḥujjah confirms that, sometimes appealing to Kufan Followers against Medinese, sometimes complaining that the Medinese are…
Ṣūfī Apologist of Nīshāpūr
Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021) is the most famous Khurasani Sufi of his time, of whose many works a remarkable proportion have survived. Classical Sufism, which crystallized around al-Junayd (d. 298/910?) in Baghdad, reached Nishapur with Abū Bakr al-Wāsiṭī (d. after 320/932), an immigrant from Baghdad, and Abū ʿAlī al-Thaqafī (d. 328/940), a Nishapuran who travelled to Baghdad and back. Al-Sulamī was conscious of adhering to the Malā…
Studies in Legal Hadith By Hiroyuki Yanagihashi
Al-Shāfiʿī Against the Kufan School
One of the short works of al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820) is Ikhtilāf ʿAlī wa-ʿAbd Allāh ibn Masʿūd (“the disagreements of ʿAlī and ʿAbd Allāh ibn Masʿūd”). It comprises first quotations of the Companions ʿAlī and Ibn Masʿūd advocating rules that the Kufans reject, secondly counter-reports supporting the rules that al-Shāfiʿī advocates. It seems to be one of the earliest of al-Shāfiʿī’s works. It argues mainly by authority against an undifferentiated Kuf…
Inquisition outside Baghdad
The Inquisition (miḥna) of al-Maʾmūn (d. 218/833) was a serious attempt to establish the caliph as arbiter of Islamic orthodoxy . It was actively prosecuted by the succeeding two caliphs, and finally abolished by his nephew, the caliph al-Mutawakkil, in 237/852 . The most information we have about it by far is how it was carried out in Baghdad . Various sources, mostly biographical, also tell us something of its prosecution in Basra, Kufa, Damasc…
Before Sufism
Christopher Melchert proposes to historicize Islamic renunciant piety ( zuhd ). As the conquest period wound down in the early eighth century c.e., renunciants set out to maintain the contempt of worldly comfort and loyalty to a greater cause that had characterized the community of Muslims in the seventh century. Instead of reckless endangerment on the battlefield, they cultivated intense fear of the Last Judgement to come. They spent nights weep…
Before Sufism
Ibrāhīm al-Naḫaʿī (Kufan, d. 96/714)
Ibrāhīm al-Naḫaʿī (d. 96/714) was the most prominent Follower ( tābiʿī ) in the Kufan legal tradition, also prominent in the areas of hadith transmission, koranic commentary, and piety. Later adherents of both hadith and raʾy cited his opinions as authoritative precedents. Presumptively, most quotations of him give us the gist of what he said, not his very words; an undetermined proportion of quotations represents not recollection of his position…
The Musnad of al-Shāfiʿī
A collection of hadith called Musnad al-Shāfiʿī is associated with the Nishapuran traditionist Abū al-ʿAbbās Muḥammad ibn Yaʿqūb al-Aṣamm (d. Nishapur, 346/957). It was apparently assembled by students from what al-Aṣamm had heard from al-Rabīʿ ibn Sulaymān al-Murādī (d. 270/884) in his youth. Around 40 percent of the hadith in the Umm of al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820) shows up also in the Musnad of al-Aṣamm. Comparisons between the Musnad and the Umm c…
The Book of the Jihad of ʿAli ibn Tahir al-Sulami (d. 1106) Text, translation and commentary by Niall Christie
This author and his work, of which Niall Christie now offers an edition and translation, are not included in either Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, nor Kaḥḥāla, Muʿjam al-muʾallifīn. They have been cited from two Ẓāhiriyya manuscripts in several modern studies. Extracts of the Arabic text were earlier edited and translated by Emmanuel Sivan, ‘La genèse de la contre-croisade: une traité damasquin du début du XIIe siècle’, Journa…
Before ṣūfiyyāt
Some scholars have attempted to identify a distinctive, feminine spirituality among early Muslim renunciants and Sufis. Studies by Roded, Azad, Dakake, and Silvers are reviewed. Content analysis of Ibn al-Jawzī, Ṣifat al-ṣafwa , suggests that renunciant women and men (of the period before classical Sufism) were remembered for similar devotional activities in similar frequencies. The Damascene Yazīd b. Maysara (fl. earlier 2nd/8th cent.) is quoted…
The Early Controversy Over Whether the Prophet Saw God
Some early commentators interpreted Kor 53, 5-11 as referring to the Prophet’s seeing God. Some versions of the story of the Prophet’s Ascension, thought to be alluded to at Kor 17, 1, include his seeing God. Other hadith reports assert that he saw God with reference to Kor 38, 69, 17, 36, and 6, 75. Controversy seems to have begun in the second/eighth century. Disagreement revolved around three main points: whether the Prophet saw God at all; if…
Was wir wirklich über die frommen Altvorderen (as-salaf as-sâlih) und ihre Vorstellungen vom islamischen Recht wissen können
Basra and Kufa as the Earliest Centers of Islamic Legal Controversy
The starting point of this essay is an observation by Patricia Crone
Origins and Early Sufism
La destrucción de libros por los tradicionistas
Este artículo ofrece una panorámica de la destrucción de libros especialmente por parte de los tradicionistas (compiladores, transmisores, críticos del hadiz), especialmente en el siglo IX de la era cristiana y antes, que sirve como una adenda al estudio (en curso de publicación) de Omar Ali de Unzaga sobre la quema de libros en el islam. La destrucción de libros a causa de la desconfianza hacia la transmisión escrita ha sido analizada en profund…
Hadith
Hadith means “speech” in Arabic.
Caliphs, rightly guided
Caliphs, rightly‐guided (Ar. Al‐khulafa' al‐rashidun) are, according to Sunni Muslims, the first four successors to the Prophet Muhammad and, in descending order, the most virtuous of the Prophet's Companions: Abu Bakr (r. 632–4), 'Umar (r. 634–44), 'Uthman (r. 644–56), and 'Alī (r. 656–61).
Was wir wirklich über die frommen Altvorderen (as-salaf as-sâlih) und ihre Vorstellungen vom islamischen Recht wissen können
Ahmad ibn Hanbal
Introduction CHAPTER 1: LIFE Religious knowledge Family man Ahmad's character The Inquisition The end CHAPTER 2: HADITH The character of hadith The age for collecting hadith Writing down hadith Ahmad's quest for hadith The Musnad Hadith criticism CHAPTER 3: LAW The spectrum of opinion in the ninth century Hanbali literature Ahmad's jurisprudence The Hanbali school of law CHAPTER 4: CORRECT BELIEF Who is in, who is out? What Ahmad believed Rejecte…
The Transition from Asceticism to Mysticism at the Middle of the Ninth Century C.E
Early Renunciants as Hadīth Transmitters
Traditionist-Jurisprudents and the Framing of Islamic Law
The traditionist-jurisprudents (fuqahā' ashāb al-hadīth) of the earlier ninth century C.E. proposed that Islamic law be inferred from hadith, reports of what the Prophet, his leading Companions, and the Followers had said or done, without significant resort to reason. Contradictions among hadith reports they either resolved by means of isnād comparison or simply let stand, refusing to define the law by their own preferences. Their adversaries the…
The Piety of the Hadith Folk
One of the most remarkable surveys of Islamic history and civilization remains Marshall G. S. Hodgson's The Venture of Islam , published posthumously in 1974. 1 For an introductory text, it has some bad faults—notably, a very dense style. Moreover, it has inevitably fallen out of date at many points. For example, one may admire Hodgson for coming up with his own critique of modernization theory in volume 3, but modernization theory has fallen so …
Ibn Mujahid and the Establishment of Seven Qur'anic Readings
Ibn Mujāhid (Bagdad, 245/860-324/936) est connu pour avoir etabli sept variantes ou lectures («qirā'āt») textuelles acceptables du Coran, ce qui n'autorisait personne a aller au-dela. L'article commence par l'etude des cercles dans lesquels les lectures coraniques etaient transmises et etudiees jusqu'a Ibn Mujāhid. Il examine ensuite les ressemblances, puis les differences, entre le Coran et les sciences «hadith», pour arriver enfin a l'etablisse…
Exaggerated fear in the early Islamic Renunciant Tradition
The Sunni tradition of the ninth and tenth centuries often reports Muslims from the seventh and eighth centuries so fearful of God and the Last Judgement that they wished they had never been born, wept uncontrollably, and otherwise carried on as we seldom hear of from later centuries. My first object is therefore to make out what these fearers were up to. To look forward, I would characterise the piety on display as being intensely ascetical . It…
Khargūshī,Tahdhīb al-asrār
Khargushi (d. Nishapur, 407/1016?),Tahdhīb al-asrār, is a fairly large collection of sayings in the renunciant/Sufi tradition, comprising over twice as many items as Sarrāj,al-Lumaʿ and Sulamī,Ṭabaqāt al-sufiyya. A first printed edition appeared in 1999. Examination of theTahdhībconfirms that Khargūshī was Shāfiʿi in law, Ashʿari in theology, but mainly a preacher devoted to piety. It also tends to confirm current common wisdom about the history …
Sufis and Competing Movements in Nishapur
Bukhārī and Early Hadith Criticism
Norman Calder has questioned the attribution of al-Ta⊃rīkh al-kabir to al-Bukhārī (d. 256/870). Quotations from Ibn Abi Hātim al-Rāzī and al-Khatib al-Baghdādī, together with comparisons among the rijāl works of Bukhari, suggest that al-Ta⊃rīkh al-kabir was one of Bukhari's last works, subject to some correction and rearrangement after his death. It cannot have been retrospectively derived from Bukhari's Sahih, as Calder thought, yet neither can …
How Hanafism Came to Originate in Kufa and Traditionalism in Medina
The Hanafī and Mālikī personal schools of law are said to have derived from the earlier Kufan and Medinese regional schools. The regional stage of developing Mālikī jurisprudence is plain in works such as the Mudawwana, but early Hanafī works are already focused on Abū Hanīfa and his disciples, so that a regional stage is hard to make out. The biographical dictionaries of Khalīfa ibn Khayyāt and Ibn Sa'd show that there were active traditionists …
State, Society, and Law in Islam
The Transition from Asceticism to Mysticism at the Middle of the Ninth Century C.E
The Adversaries of Aḥmad Ibn ḥanbal
L'A. presente les polemiques qui opposent ahmad Ibn Hanbal a ses adversaires musulmans. Il confirme que dans le camp des rationalistes, les Mu'tazila n'etaient pas plus importants que les autres. Le parti qui a le plus critique Ahmad n'etait pas le Mu'tazila, le Sī'a ou le rationaliste Hanafīya, mais le parti semi-rationaliste, c'est-a-dire un groupe de traditionalistes auto-proclames. La grande polemique theologique du IX e siecle se situe entre…
George Makdisi and Wael B. Hallaq
Les ecoles de droit islamique sunnites tiennent leur nom de celebres juristes des VIII e et IX e siecles, mais il est particulierement difficile de les distinguer dans la litterature juridique ou biographique de la periode. On n'est pas sur de savoir si elles ont fonctionne de maniere classique et familiere comme on le decouvre dans la litterature des X e et XI e siecles. Les articles recents de George Makdisi et Wael B. Hallaq eclairent de manie…
How Hanafism Came to Originate in Kufa and Traditionalism in Medina
The Hanafī and Mālikī personal schools of law are said to have derived from the earlier Kufan and Medinese regional schools. The regional stage of developing Mālikī jurisprudence is plain in works such as the Mudawwana, but early Hanafī works are already focused on Abū Hanīfa and his disciples, so that a regional stage is hard to make out. The biographical dictionaries of Khalīfa ibn Khayyāt and Ibn Sa'd show that there were active traditionists …
The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law, 9th-10th Centuries C. E
The Sunni schools of law are named for jurisprudents of the eighth and ninth centuries, but they did not actually function so early. The main division at that time was rather between adherents of ra'y and h adith. No school had a regular means of forming students. Relying mainly on biographical dictionaries, this study traces the constitutive elements of the classical schools and finds that they first came together in the early tenth century, par…
On Schacht's "Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence"
Ibn Mujahid and the Establishment of Seven Qur'anic Readings
Ibn Mujāhid (Bagdad, 245/860-324/936) est connu pour avoir etabli sept variantes ou lectures («qirā'āt») textuelles acceptables du Coran, ce qui n'autorisait personne a aller au-dela. L'article commence par l'etude des cercles dans lesquels les lectures coraniques etaient transmises et etudiees jusqu'a Ibn Mujāhid. Il examine ensuite les ressemblances, puis les differences, entre le Coran et les sciences «hadith», pour arriver enfin a l'etablisse…
Louis Massignon
The Hanābila and the Early Sufis
L'objectif de cet article est de caracteriser avec precision la relation entre les premiers Hanābila de Bagdad (VII-Xe siecles) et leurs contemporains lors de la naissance du mouvement soufi. L'A. montre qu'il n'y a pas d'evidence de proximite entre le soufisme des debuts et le mouvement hanbalī. Son fondateur, Ahmad ibn Hanbal n'etait proche d'aucun soufi de renom, de plus il etait hostile a deux d'entre eux, de meme qu'a des institutions soufie…
Traditionist-Jurisprudents and the Framing of Islamic Law
The traditionist-jurisprudents (fuqahā' ashāb al-hadīth) of the earlier ninth century C.E. proposed that Islamic law be inferred from hadith, reports of what the Prophet, his leading Companions, and the Followers had said or done, without significant resort to reason. Contradictions among hadith reports they either resolved by means of isnād comparison or simply let stand, refusing to define the law by their own preferences. Their adversaries the…
Sufis and Competing Movements in Nishapur
The Origins of Islamic Law
Bukhārī and Early Hadith Criticism
Norman Calder has questioned the attribution of al-Ta⊃rīkh al-kabir to al-Bukhārī (d. 256/870). Quotations from Ibn Abi Hātim al-Rāzī and al-Khatib al-Baghdādī, together with comparisons among the rijāl works of Bukhari, suggest that al-Ta⊃rīkh al-kabir was one of Bukhari's last works, subject to some correction and rearrangement after his death. It cannot have been retrospectively derived from Bukhari's Sahih, as Calder thought, yet neither can …
Early Renunciants as Hadīth Transmitters
The Piety of the Hadith Folk
One of the most remarkable surveys of Islamic history and civilization remains Marshall G. S. Hodgson's The Venture of Islam , published posthumously in 1974. 1 For an introductory text, it has some bad faults—notably, a very dense style. Moreover, it has inevitably fallen out of date at many points. For example, one may admire Hodgson for coming up with his own critique of modernization theory in volume 3, but modernization theory has fallen so …
Miracle et Karama
International audience
The Early History of Islamic Law
Ibn Hafif as-Sirazi und seine Schrift zur Novizenerziehung (Kitab al-iqtisad)
Aḣmad Ibn Ḣanbal and the Qur'an
Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (d. Baghdad, 241/855) was the central, defining figure of Sunnism in the earlier ninth century CE. He was a major collector and critic of ḥadīth, as well as stories of early renunciants, and his collected opinions would form the literary basis of the Ḥanbalī school of law. Men would assert as a badge of orthodoxy that their creed was Aḥmad's (e.g. Muzanī, Ṭabirī, Ashcarī). He famously resisted the Inquisition of Maↄmūn and his su…
Aḣmad Ibn Ḣanbal and the Qur'an
Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (d. Baghdad, 241/855) was the central, defining figure of Sunnism in the earlier ninth century CE. He was a major collector and critic of ḥadīth, as well as stories of early renunciants, and his collected opinions would form the literary basis of the Ḥanbalī school of law. Men would assert as a badge of orthodoxy that their creed was Aḥmad's (e.g. Muzanī, Ṭabirī, Ash c arī). He famously resisted the Inquisition of Ma ↄ mūn and hi…
The Formation of Islam
Part I. The Near East before Islam: 1. Introduction 2. The religions of late antiquity 3. Arabia before Islam 4. The early seventh century Part II. The Emergence of Islam, 600-750: 5. Approaches and problems 6. The origins of the Muslim community 7. Early Islam in the Near East 8. The Umayyad period 9. The beginnings of sectarianism 10. The non-Muslims of early Islam 11. The 'Abbasid revolution Part III. The Consolidation of Islam, 750-1000: 12. …
Intent in Islamic Law. Motive and Meaning in Medieval Sunnī
The Relation of the Ten Readings to One Another
A randomly selected sample of ayas over which there are disagreements among the Ten Readers is analysed in two ways. First, agreements and disagreements among them are counted to see whether there are regular patterns to these. The strongest tendencies to agree unite Khalaf with two of the Kufan readers before him, Ḥamza and al-Kisāʾī, while the strongest tendencies to disagree divide Ḥamza from Ibn Kathīr and Nāfiʿ. However, no pattern of agreem…
Vida y obras de Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī
Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī (d. Basra, 275/889) was a prominent collector of prophetic hadith. He seems to have collected in Iraq, Mecca, and Syria A.H. 220-35, then Khurasan till the early 240s, then Iraq, Syria, and Egypt till around 250. He claimed to have collected 500,000 in all. He spent most of the years 250-70 in Tarsus, composing his famous Sunan, then the last five years of his life teaching near Basra. This article reviews Abū Dāwūd's known…
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