Fortresses of the Intellect Ismaili and Other Islamic Studies in Honour of Farhad Daftary
Edited by Omar Alí-de-Unzaga
I.B.Tauris Publishers LONDON • NEW YORK in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies London Published in 2011 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd 6 Salem Road, London W2 4BU 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 www.ibtauris.com in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies 210 Euston Road, London NW1 2DA www.iis.ac.uk
Distributed in the United States and Canada Exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © Islamic Publications Ltd, 2011
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978 1 84885 626 4
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress catalog card: available
Typeset in Minion Tra for The Institute of Ismaili Studies Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall
Contents
Foreword Azim Nanji xi
List of Illustrations xiv List of Contributors xv
1. Introduction: A Biographical Sketch Omar Alí-de-Unzaga 1
2. Bibliography of the Works of Farhad Daftary 33
3. Persian, the Other Sacred Language of Islam: Some Brief Notes Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi 59
4. Sunni Claims to Imam Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq Hamid Algar 77
5. The Kitāb al-Rusūm wa’l-izdiwāj wa’l-tartīb Attributed to ʿAbdān (d. 286/899): Edition of the Arabic Text and Translation Wilferd Madelung and Paul E. Walker 103
6. Abū Tammām on the Mubayyiḍa Patricia Crone 167
vii viii Fortresses of the Intellect
7. The Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ: Between al-Kindī and al-Fārābī Abbas Hamdani 189
8. Ibdāʿ, Divine Imperative and Prophecy in the Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ Carmela Baffioni 213
9. Some Aspects of the External Relations of the Qarāmiṭa in Baḥrayn István Hajnal 227
10. A Distinguished Slav Eunuch of the Early Fatimid Period: al-Ustādh Jawdhar Hamid Haji 261
11. Al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān and his Refutation of Ibn Qutayba Ismail K. Poonawala 275
12. The Risāla al-Mudhhiba Attributed to al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān: Important Evidence for the Adoption of Neoplatonism by Fatimid Ismailism at the Time of al-Muʿizz? Daniel De Smet 309
13. Cosmos into Verse: Two Examples of Islamic Philosophical Poetry in Persian Alice C. Hunsberger 343
14. Early Evidence for the Reception of Nāṣir-i Khusraw’s Poetry in Sufism: ʿAyn al-Quḍāt’s Letter on the Taʿlīmīs Hermann Landolt 369
15. A Dream Come True: Empowerment Through Dreams Reflecting Fatimid–Sulayhid Relations Delia Cortese 387 Contents ix
16. From the ‘Moses of Reason’ to the ‘Khiḍr of the Resurrection’: The Oxymoronic Transcendent in Shahrastānī’s Majlis-i maktūb…dar Khwārazm Leonard Lewisohn 403
17. Poems of the Resurrection: Ḥasan-i Maḥmūd-i Kātib and his Dīwān-i Qāʾimiyyāt S. Jalal Badakhchani 431
18. Further Notes on the Turkish Names in Abu’l-Faḍl Bayhaqī’s Tārīkh-i Masʿūdī C. Edmund Bosworth 443
19. A Book List from a Seventh/Thirteenth-Century Manuscript Found in Bāmyān Iraj Afshar 453
20. What’s in a Name? Tughtegin – ‘the Minister of the Antichrist’? Carole Hillenbrand 459
21. Safavids and ‘Subalterns’: The Reclaiming of Voices Andrew J. Newman 473
22. Compromise and Conciliation in the Akhbārī–Uṣūlī Dispute: Yūsuf al-Baḥrānī’s Assessment of ʿAbd Allāh al-Samāhījī’s Munyat al-Mumārisīn Robert Gleave 491
Bibliography 521 Index 573
List of Illustrations
Photograph of Farhad Daftary (Sadruddin Verjee/IIS). frontispiece Map: Centres of learning in the Islamic World and other places mentioned in this volume (Oxford Designers and Illustrators). xvii Fig. 1: A mounted Turkish warrior, galloping at speed into battle, carrying a tugh, from the Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh of Rashīd al-Dīn Ṭabīb, Edinburgh University Library MS. Arab 20 (dated 714/1314), fol. 109r. 466 Fig. 2: Ottoman tughs captured at the Battle of Vienna, 1683, offering of King John Sobieski to the Church of St Ann, Cracow. By permission of the Church of St Ann, Cracow, Poland (photo- graph courtesy of New York University Press). 466
xiv
List of Contributors
Iraj Afshar* University of Tehran (emeritus) and Centre for the Great Islamic Encyclopaedia, Tehran Hamid Algar University of California, Berkeley Omar Alí-de-Unzaga The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London M. A. Amir-Moezzi Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes – Section de sciences religieuses (Sorbonne), Paris and The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London S. Jalal Badakhchani The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London Carmela Baffioni Universitá degli Studi di Napoli ‘L’Orientale’ and Universitá ‘La Sapienza’ di Roma C. Edmund Bosworth University of Manchester (emeritus) Delia Cortese Middlesex University Patricia Crone Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton Daniel De Smet Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris Robert Gleave University of Exeter Hamid Haji The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London István Hajnal Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
xv xvi Fortresses of the Intellect
Abbas H. Hamdani University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (emeritus) Carole Hillenbrand University of Edinburgh (emerita) Alice C. Hunsberger Hunter College, City University of New York Hermann Landolt McGill University, Montreal (emeritus) and The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London Leonard Lewisohn University of Exeter Wilferd Madelung University of Oxford (emeritus) and The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London Azim Nanji Stanford University Andrew J. Newman University of Edinburgh Ismail K. Poonawala University of California, Los Angeles Paul E. Walker University of Chicago
* Professor Iraj Afshar sadly passed away on 9 March 2011.