Born in the late 9th century Baghdad, the ʿAbbāsid grammarian ‘Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Saḥl Ibn al-Sarrāj came to be remembered as the Banisher of Madness and the virtuous scholar whose life has exemplified the culture of Arabs in its fullness. Lauded as the arch-enemy of Hellenistic sciences and, at the same time, as the main source of transmission of Aristotelian logic from the 10th century philosophers to the grammarians of Baghdad; Ibn al-Sarrāj nonetheless remains a shadowy figure in the history of Arabic grammar studies up until today. This book addresses this issue by examining...

The Kitāb al-Aghānī (the Book of the Songs) stands as one of the most important extant sources for Arabic literature and Islamic history. Compiled during the first half of the tenth century, the Kitāb al-Aghānī emerges from a pivotal period in the formation of Islamic sectarian identities, a subject of keen and ongoing scholarly debate that is fundamental to our understanding of the later development of Shīʿī Islam. While its compiler, Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī (died after 356/967), is generally viewed as a 'Zaydī Shīʿī', no in-depth study has investigated what can be gauged...

This monograph examines the principle of dispensation in the Qur'an, which seems to be, if not unique, articulated in a new manner compared to previous religions (cf. Deut 12,32). The Qur'anic dispensations have never been systematically studied and this monograph aims to fill this vacuum in the fields of Qur'anic studies and the Study of Religion.

Through a critical, introduced, translated and commented edition of his sum of legal theory entitled Nukat al-Mahsul fi 'ilm usul, this present work shows how the legal thought of the Qadi is articulated between language and theology.