Described in popular & academic writings as ‘scientific academy, institution of knowledge, premodern centre of learning, or univ-library,’ the House of Wisdom (بيت الحكمة) in medieval Baghdad is a fine example of modern fanciful imaginations back-projected into history. A 🧵1/

https://twitter.com/culturaltutor/status/1755345773074501687

Did the House of Wisdom really exist? If so, what was its function? Two historiographical approaches can be discerned in modern scholarship: maximalist & minimalist positions. The maximalists offer imaginary reconstructions on basis of one-line references in sources 2/

In his الكشف عن مناهج الادلة, Averroes, dedicates a chapter to the various proofs for the demonstrability of God’s existence in which he surveys and critiques the viewpoints of the major intellectual traditions in Islam. 1/ The major traditions are: the Ashʿaris, whom he says are representative of the Sunnis; the Muʿtazilis; the Sufis, whom he describes as bāṭiniyya (esotericists); and the Ḥashawiyyah, the stern literalists. 2/

2/Counted among the earliest followers of the Prophet, ʿAlī was Muḥammad’s cousin & son-in-law. A great many authorities and groups came to admire ʿAlī and hold him in high regard, whether Sufis, Sunnis, Shiʿis, or Christians. ʿAlī occupied a prominent place in medieval memory 3/Ibn Shādhān al-Qummī (d. 1029), Shiʿi jurist and ḥadīth scholar, recounts one hundred virtues (فضائل) of ʿAlī in the ḥadīth corpus, among them: “If trees were pens, oceans ink, the jinn as count, and humans as scribes; not even then could the virtues of ʿAlī be exhausted".

In 2017 al-Azhar (traditionally described as dogmatic magisterium of contemporary Sunnism) refused to declare terror group ISIS as guilty of kufr, or unbelief. Takfir, or the accusation of unbelief, is a complex issue in Islam. Some preliminary remarks to follow in thread 1/ Takfir is accusing someone—Muslim—of holding deviant beliefs or committing actions indicative of unbelief. Takfir leads to pronouncements of apostasy (ارتداد), which in Islamic penal law can lead to corporal punishment, or death 2/

A thread on Aqa Bozorg Tehrani (d. 1970), the inimitable bio-bibliographer who penned over 55,000 entries, 15,000 pages on Shii authors, list of extant & lost manuscripts around the world, in sciences, theology, philosophy, history, linguistics, hadith, Quran, etc. 1/ Unknown to many is that Aqa Bozorg collaborated with another two Shi’i scholars, Hasan Sadr & M Husayn Kashif Ghita. Together they responded to claim of Lebanese historian, Jujri Zaydan (d. 1914) that Shi’i authors played insignificant role in making of Islamic civilisation 2/

Medieval Muslim sources speak of a Jewish sect that believed in the prophethood of Muḥammad. Who were they? A mini-thread 🧵🧵 1/ We read al-Juwaynī's (d. 1085) Kitāb al-irshād, a sophisticated kalām work full of gems, “a sect among the Jews, called al-ʿIsāwiyya, believed in the prophethood of Muḥammad, peace upon him..." 2/

(1) In 1978 John Wansborough published his Sectarian Milieu, arguing that most of Quranic material characterise a text that crystallised over 2 centuries, and largely outside confines of Arabia. To date Fred Donner has offered perhaps the best response to Wansboroug. Thread (2)Donner is not convinced of Wansborough's claim that both the Quran and the ḥadīth (which latter calls "sub-canonical" versions of the Quranic material) belong to the same historical circumstance, that is, both coalesced around the same time and in same locality.

1/ On the issue of early Muslim religious identity, let us turn to the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. The new status of Constantinople as the New Jerusalem played a direct role in the development of early Muslim religious identity. 🧵🧵🧵 2/Muslim propagandists touted caliphs ʿUmar I (d. 644) and ʿAbd al-Malik (d. 705) Davidic Messiahs who would restore (old) Jerusalem back to its former glory. For decades academics debated the motivations behind the construction of the Dome of Rock on an ancient holy Jewish site.

The Satanic Verses controversy has a long and recent past. The incident reached global fame after the 1988 publication of Salman Rushdie’s novel. Long before, however, the topic was fiercely debate in medieval Muslim scholarship. A general 🧵 for non-specialists. 1/ The Satanic Verses incident is known as the Story of the Cranes (قصة الغرانيق) in the Islamic tradition. It narrates the occasion when the Prophet Muhammad (died 632 CE) mistook the whispers of Satan for divine revelation. 2/

The Garden of Martyrs (روضة الشهداء) is perhaps the most popular modern account of the tragedy of Karbala and the death of Husayn b. 'Ali on Ashura in 680 CE. Composed in 1502-03, its author, Husayn Va’iz Kashifi was a Persian Hanafi Sunni who belonged to the Naqshabani Order. 1/ Kashifi was a prolific author & prominent intellectual of the Timurid period. Described as a polymath (ذو فنون) by contemporaries, he authored works, in Persian, on quranic exegesis (المواهب العالية), hadith, occultism, poetry & rhetoric, fiction & storytelling, & Hanafi fiqh. 2/

1/Millions of Shiʿi Muslims around the world will be celebrating what they consider the appointment and designation of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib as the legitimate successor to the Prophet Muḥammad. A short thread on #EidGhadir. 2/The "investiture" of ʿAlī according to the Shiʿi sources took place on 18 Dhu l-Ḥijjah in 10 H (= March 632 AD) at a pond between Mecca and Medina, known as Ghadīr Khumm. What do they sources say happened exactly?

Are we alone? Does life exist elsewhere in our universe? Some responses from medieval Muslim authorities. A short thread. 1/ Jaʿfar al-Sadiq (died 765 CE) is reported to have said: "There are seven heavens. Each contains life...and there are seven earths; five of which contains life". 2/

In light of the stunningly beautiful images of the Webb telescope, a thread on medieval Muslim accounts of the heavens. 1/ al-Jaghmini writing in the 13th century gave us a detailed account of the heavens that examines celestial orbits and movement of planets. 2/

A pictorial thread on horses in medieval Arabic manuscripts. First diagram offers a fairly detailed anatomy of horse (MS Arabe 2817 Bibliothèque nationale de France) 1/ Identifying a good stallion is key. Here the diagram offers tips on understanding the different bodily parts of a horse (MS 4689 Istanbul) 2/

The فرق الشيعة (published) and كتاب الاراء و الديانات (lost) by al-Ḥasan b. Mūsā al-Nawbakhtī and the كتاب التحريش by Ḍirār b. ʿAmr, written circa mid-800s and circa late 700s, respectively, are probably oldest heresiographical works in Islam. We can add a third now. 1/ The recently published (unicum manuscript) heresiography by Khushaysh b. Aṣram al-Nasāʾī was most probably written circa 840-860 CE. It bears the title الاستقامة في السنة والرد على أهل البدع والأهواء. h 2/

Quirky remarks. The Muʿtazila emerged in the eighth century AD. Their theological inquiry was based on reason. For the Muʿtazila, rational inquiry about God, divine essence, and human agency, etc., had to be grounded in scripture. 1/ In other words, reason became a basis for theological deliberations, but reason took scriptures and revelation as its starting and end point. This epistemological orientation towards scripture is consistently found in 2/

I'm spending a good fair of my time right now on the Ṣaḥīfah al-Sajjādiyyah which claims to carry the religious and philosophical teachings of the 4th Shiʿi Imam ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn (659-713). 1/ The content is quite brilliant. It reports the supplicatory prayers of ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn to mark different occasions and auspicious moments in the religious calendar, such as the whispered prayer of the lovers (see below). 2/

I'm preparing a grant proposal for a project on the Qurʾan. It picks up where Patrica Crone left off. For a while I disliked the work of Crone. Now I am in awe of her. Crone was misunderstood. In what follows I collate her answers to questions she frequently encountered. 1/ Did Crone think Islam was original? She thought its teachings were both endogenous and exogenous. All ideas are influenced by context. She disliked term "borrowing" but preferred "intertextual". Islam inherited ideas from the past, but how it appropriated them was original. 2/

This is a remarkable find! The editor discovered a unicum copy of the Expeditions (المغازي) of Mūsā b. ʿUqbah b. Abī ʿAyyāsh (d. 141/758), one of the oldest biographies of the Prophet Muḥammad. A Brief thread. 1/

https://twitter.com/OknDA1osdQmhBQJ/status/1441356589747769350

Before the discovery, we knew that the work survives in one extant manuscript held at Berlin ("fragment" Ahwardt 1552), published and translated into German by Eduard Sachau in 1904. 2/

1/Right. Finished with the family picnic in Cambridge, so let's pick this topic up again. But before I start, a facetious note is in order. I found it hilarious that less than 24 hours after the thread was posted, people still managed to woefully misread parts of the thread

https://twitter.com/abhistoria/status/1403139824710791173

2/One or two Twitter types actually read my thread as stating, 'one must know German to do ḥadīth studies.' Another managed to misquote a tweet embedded in the Twitter quote feature! I mean, the original tweet was literally below.

Tomorrow Pope Francis will travel to the Iraqi city of Najaf to meet Ayatullah ʿAlī al-Sīstānī, the primus inter pares of the Shiʿi Muslim scholars, and the Rector of the Seminary of Najaf, founded in 1055 AD. A thread on the millennium-old seminary. 1/ The present-day city of Najaf lies six-miles away from the Islamic garrison town of Kufa and the ancient Christian Lakhmid town of al-Ḥīra. Najaf is located on an elevated plateau near the Sea of Najaf (بحر النجف). The term Najaf describes "a hill beyond the reach of water". 2/