Tag Archives: culture

The word āmīn in Arabic

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Jean Druel

Director of IDEO

icon-calendar Tuesday November 7ᵗʰ, 2017

In his short treatise entitled A glitter in the debate about the word āmīn used in supplication and its rules in Arabic, Ibn al-Ḫaššāb al-Baġdādī (d. 567/1172) presents the state of the art of the grammatical knowledge on the word āmīn in his time. All grammarians agree that āmīn is not an Arabic word, but a Hebrew one (or Persian, or Syriac), which is however well attested in the Ḥadīṯ: the Prophet and his companions would conclude the recitation of the first sūra, al-Fātiḥa, by saying āmīn. This situation has triggered the curiosity of both Qurʾānic commentators and grammarians, who have studied the following issues: the validity of both forms, long āmīn and short amīn; the part-of-speech āmīn belongs to; its meaning; and the possibility that āmīn be a name of God.

Grammarians agreed on the analysis of āmīn as an ism fiʿl ‘verb name’ (a category refering to the verbs’ proper names, see Levin 1991), based on a commentary by Muǧāhid (d. 104/722) and ʿIkrima (d. 105/723) that the dual in Qad uǧībat daʿwatukumā (Q10, Yūnus, 89) refers to the invocation of Moses and Aaron, and that Aaron’s invocation consisted in saying āmīn. In order for āmīn to be an invocation, it has to be a full sentence. This means that āmīn is comparable to ṣah ‘sh!’, which is a ‘verb name’ whose meaning is the imperative ‘hush!’. Grammarians have thus interpreted āmīn as being a ‘verb name’, and its meaning is Allāhumma staǧib ‘Lord, answer!’

Lastly, although four ḥadīṯs transmitted by Hilāl b. Yasāf (or Yisāf), Muǧāhid and Ḥakīm b. Ǧābir mention that āmīn is a name of God, both Abū ʿAlī al-Fārisī (d. 377/987) and Ibn al-Ḫaššāb (d. 567/1172) agree that it cannot be so, although for different reasons. The former argues that an invariable noun cannot be a name of God, whereas the latter argues that it is because āmīn is a complete sentence that it cannot be one of God’s names.

Certainty and probability, from theology to the ‘servant’ sciences

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Ahmad Wagih

​​Doctor in Islamic Philosophy, Faculty of ​Dār al-ʿUlūm, Cairo University

icon-calendar Wednesday October 18ᵗʰ, 2017

Muslim theologians (al-mutakallimūn) relied on the concepts of ‘certainty’ (al-qaṭʿiyya) and ‘probability’ (al-ẓanniyya) to build their theological argumentation and classify knowledge, in order to distinguish between what could be relied on and what could not. Practically speaking, however, each theological school reached different conclusions about what is certain and what is probable in their knowledge, thus leading to the differences between these schools on the mere definition of ‘certainty’ and ‘probability’.
 
This situation pervaded the other Islamic sciences, such as Ḥadīṯ and Uṣūl al-Fiqh, under the manifold influence of theology. This is for example the case of al-Ḫaṭīb al-Baġdādī (d. 463/1071) in his al-Kifāya fī ʿilm al-riwāya, in Ḥadīṯ sciences, where the influence of these concepts can be seen, especially in the matter of ‘uninterrupted’ (mutawātir) ḥadīṯ. Similarly in Uṣūl al-Fiqh, some issues have been influenced by these theological discussions: issues related to ‘independent judgment’ (iǧtihād), ‘differenciated truth’ (taʿaddud al-ḥaqq) or issues linked to the distinction between different types of semantics (dalālāt al-alfāẓ).

Excavation of an Umayyad castle

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Jean-Baptiste Humbert

Archaeologist at the Biblical and Archaeological School of Jerusalem

icon-calendar Tuesday May 2nd, 2017

Archeology consists of luck and surprises. By searching for traces of the Aramean people (often mentioned in the Bible, but not well known), Jean-Baptiste Humbert, OP became interested in the site of Mafraq in the north of Jordan in 1986.

An initial excavation revealed traces of a much more recent occupation on the site:  a palace of the Umayyad period, whose furnishings found on location displayed the brilliant decor of a great cosmopolitan civilization (objects coming from Armenia, Egypt, Yemen or Syria), still marked by the Byzantine administration of the previous period.

A particularly remarkable piece was a brazier made of bronze with an often erotic décor. This is consistent with ornaments of the Umayyad Palace in Jericho (Ḫirbat al-Mafgar, or Hisham’s Palace), and shows a side of this early Islamic civilization far different from the conventional image. This perhaps may explain in part why research was discontinued.

An epistemological shift: From Sunna to Šarīʿa and the breach of modern times

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Rocio Daga Portillo

Professor of Islamology at Munich University

icon-calendar Tuesday March 28ᵗʰ, 2017

It is striking to note that in the Qurʾān and the oldest texts the term Sunna is used more often than the term Šarīʿa in order to mean the law. The word Sunna used to refer to the oral law transmitted by the tradition and the forefathers. For Christian and Muslim authors, Sunna it is part of the non written revelation. Starting with the eleventh century, an epistemological shift happened: Sunna was canonized as a written text and the word Šarīʿa takes the meaning of the Islamic law, along to the expression aḥkām al-islām. Modern authors such as Ḥasan al-Bannā and Sayyid Quṭb progressively used the term Šarīʿa to refer to the corpus of written laws.

The first edition of the commentary of al-Tilimsānī on ʿUmar ibn al-Fāriḍ’s poem

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Giuseppe Scattolin

Professor of Sufism and Islamology

With Mr. ʿAbd al-Samīʿ Salāma, editor of manuscripts at the Egyptian National Library

icon-calendar Tuesday February 14ᵗʰ, 2017

The  commentary of al-Tilimsānī (d. 690/1291) on ʿUmar ibn al-Fāriḍ’s (d. 632/1235) poem entitled al-Tāʾiyya al-kubrā is one of the oldest commentaries of this poem, after the one by Saʿīd al-Dīn al-Farġānī (d. 699/1300). Al-Farġānī and al-Tilimsānī lived at the same period in Konya and were both disciples of Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī (d. 673/1274), the favorite disciple of Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī (d. 638/1240). This commentary therefore clarifies the beginnings of the Šuruḥ al-akbariyya series on Ibn al-Farīḍ’s dīwān.

Giuseppe Scattolin and ʿAbd al-Samīʿ Salāma edited this commentary according to the only known manuscript (Dār al-Kutub 1328 Taṣawwuf Ṭalʿat). It clearly appears from the text that al-Tilimsānī took advantage of his commentary on the Tāʾiyya al-kubrā to criticize some of al-Farġānī’s ideas, at the expense of the text of the Tāʾiyya and Ibn al-Farīḍ’s positions on Sufism.

The oldest manuscripts of the Qurʾān

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Emilio Platti

IDEO, Professor Emeritus of the Catholic University of Leuven

icon-calendar Tuesday January 24ᵗʰ, 2017

Following the discovery of extremely old manuscripts of the Qurʾān, and the Birmingham folios having been dated between 568 and 645 AD (56 before Hiǧra and 25 after) with Carbon 14 techniques, scholars largely refuse today the late dating of the earliest copies of the Qurʾān proposed for example by John Wansbrough in his book entitled Quranic studies (Oxford University Press, 1977). See also Patricia Crone and Michael Cook who suggested that there was no indication of the existence of the Qurʾān before the end of the 1st/7th century (Hagarism, Cambridge University Press, 1977). It now seems that a better dating should be closer to the middle of the 1st/7th century, or even earlier.

The discovery in 1972 of very old Qurʾānic manuscripts in Ṣanʿāʾ elicited new studies, and the ultraviolet techniques that are now available revealed that one of the codices is actually a palimpsest, i.e. it contains an older text that has been washed away and replaced by a later one. A first edition of this older text was published by Behnam Sadeghi and Mohsen Goudarzi in Der Islam 87 (2010) under the title “Ṣanʿāʾ 1 and the origin of the Qurʾān” and an analysis of the manuscript was published between 2008 and 2014 by Elizabeth Puin under the title “Ein früher Koranpalimpsest aus Ṣanʿāʾ”. A new edition of the text is due to be published on February 28, 2017 by Asma Hilali at the Oxford University Press under the title The Sanaa palimpsest. Unfortunately, these two editions only contain the text of the 36 folios from the manuscript of Dār al-Maḫṭūṭāt (Ṣanʿāʾ) and not the 40 other folios of the same codex that were found recently in al-Maktaba al-Šarqiyya (also in Ṣanʿāʾ).

Interestingly, this older version that has been washed away seems to be, until now, the only one among all the copies of the Qurʾān to differ from the ʿUṯmānic canonical version. After the ʿUṯmānic unification of the Qurʾānic text, variant versions have indeed been erased and replaced by the canonical text. The Ṣanʿāʾ palimpsest is a convincing proof that different versions from the time of the Pophet’s companions did actually exist, a fact that was common knowledge in the Islamic medieval tradition represented among others by Ibn Abī Dāwūd’s book Kitāb al-maṣāḥif.

Archeology and water in medieval Morocco

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Thomas Soubira

Archeologist, PhD student in Toulouse University

icon-calendar Monday December 19ᵗʰ, 2016

The archeological site of Sijilmasa is being excavated by a French Moroccan team. This “harbour” of transsaharian trade between the 8th and the 15th centuries has remarkable hydrolic archeological remnants that can be observed on the entire excavation zone: water harvesting, transportation, storage, and disposal of sewage water. All this equipement reveal a creative human effort and a great diversity of techniques used to manage such a precious resource in this arid zone.

Located in the Tafilalt lowland, this site is inhabited since prehistoric times. The city of Sijilmasa—or, probably rather an agglomerate of fortified houses—was founded around the mid-8th century by the Berber tribe of the Banū Midrār, at the convergence point of many caravan routes. In the beginning of the 16th century, Leo Africanus (d. 957/1550) describes it as a ruined city.

At the end of the 18th century, this very oasis zone is also the cradle of the Alaouite dynasty, that still rules Morocco today. The site of Sijilmasa was only preserved from destruction because it was used as the burial site of the Alaouites.

Reflection on the argument from cannibalism in Islamic theology

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Eric van Lit

PhD in Islamic studies

 Tuesday December 13ᵗʰ, 2016

seminar-ericA little problem keeps popping up century after century, in the writings of all kinds of Muslim theologians (80 to 90 authors have been identified so far); what happens if one person were to eat another person, can they both have bodily resurrection?

The first occurrence of this theological question is to be found long before the advent of Islam, in Athenagoras’ De resurrectione in the second century and Augustin (fifth century) does not hesitate to call it the strongest argument against bodily resurrection. It is also discussed by Thomas Aquinas and many medieval christian theologians.

When al-Sayyid al-Šarīf al-Ǧurgānī (d. 816/1413) deals with this issue, making a distinction between essential and non essential body parts, he actually answers the anthropological and philosophical question of what is a person. What is the link between our identity as separate persons and our body? Another question that emerges from this one is: What is resurrection, the gathering of scattered body parts or a new creation? These questions are actually what makes the cannibalism argument relevant in the end.

Some theologians argue that the body is but a mere instrument, and the soul alone will be judged at resurrection. ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (d. 877/1472) is an early example of this. This nips in the bud the very point of the discussion, that has gone as far as whether the bodily parts of a righteous person would suffer hell’s fire if these parts had been eaten by a sinner, thus becoming part of his body.

Al-Fārābī’s “fourth philosophy”

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Aziz Hilal

PhD in Arabic philosophy

icon-calendar Tuesday October 25ᵗʰ, 2016

farabi25oct2016In his Kitāb al-ǧadal, al-Fārābī (d. 339/950) mentions a “fourth philosophy”. What he intends with this expression is a philosophy that would be adapted to non-specialists, both technicians in a particular given art (medicine, grammar, poetry…) and simple people (al-ǧumhūr). Unlike the first three philosophies (metaphysics, practical philosophy and logic), this fourth philosophy relies on commonly admitted premises (al-mašhūrāt), i.e. on the common cultural and ethical heritage (“justice is better than injustice”, “usury is a sin”, “one should honor his parents”, …) In other terms, a philosopher who needs to teach truth to non-philosophers should resort to the “local sciences” that common people share. This fourth philosophy is political and changing by essence. It is fundamentally a pedagogy and thanks to it, dialectics (al-ǧadal) is not considered to be a mere preparation to philosophia perennis but indeed a self-standing philosophy.

It is only in 1986, with the publication of the three volumes of al-Fārābī’s philosophical works by Rafīq al-ʿAǧam (Dār al-Mašriq, Beirut), that the major importance of al-Fārābī as a philosopher was re-established.

Ibn Taymiyya (728/1328) et son Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wa-l-naql

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Ahmad Wagih

Doctorant en théologie musulmane à Dār al-ʿUlūm (Université du Caire)

icon-calendar Mardi 19 mai 2015 à 17h00

WaguihIbn Taymiyya (m. 728/1328) occupe une place très particulière dans la tradition musulmane. Il accusait régulièrement les oulémas de son époque d’avoir une approche non critique des sciences musulmanes, ce qui lui a valu plusieurs séjours en prison. Il est paradoxalement aujourd’hui l’un des auteurs de référence des courants islamistes les plus extrêmes.