Competitive Hagiography in Biographies of al-Awzai and Sufyan al-Thawri

The present paper examines how followers of ⊂Abd al-Rahman b. ⊂Amr al-Awza⊂l and sufyan al-Thawri tried to create boundaries between the nascent madhhabs that claimed them as eponyms. In the absence of significant differences in legal method, students turned to the two shaykhs' responses to the ⊂Abbasid revolution to draw distinctions between them. The Arabic biographical sources contain stories of their responses to the revolution that reveal a dialogue between followers of the two shaykhs about the relative merits of their choices. The changing interpretations of their attitudes toward the ⊂Abbasid regime and the exaggeration evident in the anecdotes examined have significant implications for our reading of medieval Arabic biographical sources

Arabic · Art · Exaggeration · Linguistics · Literature · Psychoanalysis · Reading (process) · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Classics · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Islamic Studies and History · Philosophy · Psychology