The Islamic Scholarly Tradition Islamic History and Civilization Studies and Texts Editorial Board Sebastian Günther Wadad Kadi VOLUME 83 Michael Cook, 1976 Michael Cook, 2010 The Islamic Scholarly Tradition Studies in History, Law, and Thought in Honor of Professor Michael Allan Cook Edited by Asad Q. Ahmed Behnam Sadeghi and Michael Bonner LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011 Cover illustration: Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris: Ms Arabe 6094, folio 167: al-Maqāmāt, maqāma 46: « Abû Zayd enseignant ». Reproduced with permission. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Islamic scholarly tradition studies in history, law, and thought in honor of Professor Michael Allan Cook / edited by Asad Q. Ahmed, Behnam Sadeghi, and Michael Bonner. p. cm. — (Islamic history and civilization. Studies and texts, ISSN 0929-2403 ; v. 83) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-19435-9 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Islam—History. 2. Islamic law. 3. Islamic civilization. I. Cook, M. A. II. Ahmed, Asad Q. III. Sadeghi, Behnam, 1969– IV. Bonner, Michael. V. Title. VI. Series. BP53.I745 2011 297.09—dc22 2010051433 ISSN 0929–2403 ISBN 978 90 04 19435 9 Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. CONTENTS Acknowledgements ............................................................................ ix Notes on Contributors ...................................................................... xi Bibliography of Professor Michael A. Cook ................................. xvii The Scholarship of Michael A. Cook: A Retrospective in Progress ........................................................................................... xxi Preface by R. Stephen Humphreys Introduction ........................................................................................ 1 Michael Bonner I. STUDIES IN EARLY ISLAMIC HISTORY “Time Has Come Full Circle”: Markets, Fairs and the Calendar in Arabia before Islam ................................................ 15 Michael Bonner The Wasiyyạ of Abū Hāshim: The Impact of Polemic in Premodern Muslim Historiography ........................................... 49 Najam Haider Building an Egyptian Identity ......................................................... 85 Petra M. Sijpesteijn The Battle of the Ditch (al-Khandaq) of the Cordoban Caliph ʿAbd al-Raḥmān III ....................................................................... 107 Maribel Fierro Dreams of Hagia Sophia: The Muslim Siege of Constantinople in 674 CE, Abū Ayyūb al-Ansārī,̣ and the Medieval Islamic Imagination .................................................................................... 131 Nancy Khalek vi contents II. STUDIES IN EARLY MODERN AND MODERN ISLAMIC HISTORY “The Second Ottoman Conquest of Egypt”: Rhetoric and Politics in Seventeenth Century Egyptian Historiography .... 149 Adam Sabra Ḥ abeşī Meḥmed Agha: The First Chief Harem Eunuch (Darüssaade Ağası) of the Ottoman Empire ............................ 179 Jane Hathaway “I Entered Mecca . and I Destroyed All the Tombs”: Some Remarks on Saudi-Ottoman Correspondence .............. 197 Samer Traboulsi III. JURIDICAL AND INTELLECTUAL HISTORY The ʿĀqila in Ḥ anafī Law: Preliminary Notes .............................. 221 Nurit Tsafrir Legal Doctrines, Historical Contexts, and Moral Visions: The Case of Sectarians in the Courts of Law ........................... 239 Nimrod Hurvitz The Legal Status of Science in the Muslim World in the Early Modern Period: An Initial Consideration of Fatwās from Three Maghribī Sources ..................................................... 265 Justin Stearns IV. REINTERPRETATIONS AND TRANSFORMATIONS “I Have Seen the People’s Antipathy to this Knowledge”: The Muslim Exegete and His Audience, 5th/11th–7th/ 13th Centuries ................................................................................ 293 Karen Bauer contents vii Lex Mahomethi: Carnal and Spiritual Representations of Islamic Law and Ritual in a Twelfth-Century Dialogue by a Jewish Convert to Christianity .................................................... 315 Leor Halevi Systematic Growth in Sustained Error: A Case Study in the Dynamism of Post-Classical Islamic Scholasticism ................. 343 Asad Q. Ahmed Index .................................................................................................... 379 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We wish to thank Karen Bauer, Patricia Crone, and Kim Hegelbach for their unfailing support along the many stages of the production of this volume. We would also like to express our gratitude to R. Stephen Humphreys for writing the preface; to Kathy van Vliet of Brill for her patience and hard work; to Sarah Massey for helping with formatting; and to the anonymous reviewer for many helpful comments. AQA BS MB NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Asad Q. Ahmed, Ph.D., Princeton (2007), is Assistant Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. He was formerly Harper Schmidt Assistant Professor in the College and Fellow in the Society of Fellows, The University of Chicago (2006–7). He has published on early Islamic social history and Islamic intellec- tual history, including the forthcoming The Religious Elite of the Early Islamic Ḥ ijāz (P&G, University of Oxford, 2011) and The Deliverance: Logic (Oxford University Press, 2011). His awards include fellowships and grants from the National Humanities Center, the NEH, the Stan- ford Humanities Center, the Mellon Sawyer Seminars, and the Insti- tute for Advanced Study, Princeton. Karen Bauer is a Research Associate in the Qurʾanic Studies unit of the Institute of Ismaʾili Studies, London. She obtained her Ph.D. from Princeton University in 2008. Her research focuses on Qurʾanic exegesis and gender. She has publications in Religion Compass and the Journal of the American Oriental Society (forthcoming). Dr. Bauer is currently working on an anthology of translations of Qurʾanic verses on women and their commentaries, and a monograph about women’s status in works of Qurʾan commentary. Michael Bonner is Professor of Medieval Islamic History in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1987. His recent publications include Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practices (Princeton University Press, 2006), and Poverty and Charity in Middle Eastern Contexts, co-edited with Amy Singer and Mine Ener (SUNY Press, 2003). He was Director of the University of Michigan Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies in 1997–2000 and 2001–2003, and Acting Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Studies in 2007–08. Maribel Fierro is Professor at the Centre of Human and Social Sci- ences at the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), Madrid. She has worked and published on the religious and intellectual history of al-Andalus and the Islamic West. Among her recent publications are Abd al-Rahman III, The first Cordoban caliph (Oneworld, 2005); xii notes on contributors “Proto-Malikis, Malikis and reformed Malikis,” in The Islamic School of Law: Evolution, Devolution, and Progress, edited by P. Bearman, R. Peters and F.E. Vogel (Harvard University Press, 2005); “Decapi- tation of Christians and Muslims in the Medieval Iberian Peninsula: Narratives, Images, Contemporary Prceptions,” Comparative Litera- ture Studies 45 (2008): 137–64; and “Alfonso X ‘the Wise’, the last Almohad caliph?” Medieval Encounters 15 (2009): 175–198. Najam Haider is an Assistant Professor in the Religious Studies Department of Barnard College. He completed his Ph.D. at Princeton University in 2007 and has published articles focusing on Islamic his- toriography and the origins of sectarian identity. His research inter- ests include Islamic law, Imāmī and Zaydī Shiʿism, and the impact of colonization on modern Islamic political and religious discourse. He is the author of the forthcoming book The Origins of Shī‘ism in 8th Century Kūfa. Leor Halevi is Associate Professor of History at Vanderbilt Uni- versity. He is the author of Muhammad’s Grave: Death Rites and the Making of Islamic Society (Columbia University Press, 2007), winner of the Albert Hourani Award, the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, and an American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence. He gradu- ated from Princeton in 1994, as a Bachelor of Arts, after completing his senior thesis under the guidance of Michael Cook. The medieval Christian dialogue about Islam that he analyzes in this volume has been a fun diversion from his current research, which concerns West- ern objects in Islamic law. Jane Hathaway is Professor of History at Ohio State University and a specialist on the Ottoman Empire before 1800. Her publica- tions include The Arab Lands under Ottoman Rule, 1516–1800 (Pear- son/Longman, 2008), winner of the Turkish Studies Association’s 2008 M. Fuat Köprülü Book Prize; Beshir