The Date of the Great Fitna

Dados Bibliográficos

ID16645451
AutoresG H A Juynboll (autor correspondente)
Ano1973
Volume20
Fascículo2
Páginas142-159
Data de publicação1973-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoArabica (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0570-5398 • E-ISSN: 1570-0585
EditoraWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1163/157005873x00347
OpenAlexW2011173302
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas7

WHEN Schacht published his The origins of Muhammadanjurisprudence in 1950, the book immediately met with immense approval. However, no scholar has ever attempted to subject the mass of material contained in it to detailed criticism. Only N. J. Coulson, J. W. Flick and A. Guillaume offered criticism of one or a few issues 1. The structure of the book with its numerous cross-references was so difficult that it obviously discouraged the reviewers from writing more than very superficial reviews 2. One of the theories Schacht set forth, which was never refuted but which did and does not find general recognition, concerns the date of the political event called al-fitna. This theory I should like to scrutinize in the following lines, thus hoping to make a contribution to a badly needed evaluation of Schacht's book. When thinking of the fitna scholars in general have hitherto associated that immediately with the murder of the caliph 'Utman in 35/656. Muslim tradition has it that on the day that 'Utman met his death the Islamic world entered upon the time of the fitna. Western scholars have always accepted this dating without question. Wellhausen, for example, did not even mention an Arabic source when he introduced the wordfitna for the first time in his book Das arabische Reich und sein Sturz 3. In later studies we find nothing that might indicate that this date of the fitna is not fully taken for granted 4. Only Schacht presented a new theory, when he postulated that the great fitna of Islam began with the murder of the Umayyad caliph

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