Muslim Writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible deals with the way in which Judaism and its holy scriptures were viewed by nine medieval Muslim writers representing different genres of Arabic literature: Ibn Rabban al-ṭabarī, Ibn Qutayba, al-Ya'qūbī, Abū Ja'far al-ṭabarī, al-Mas'ūdī, al-Maqdisī, al-Bāqillānī, al-Bīrūnī and Ibn ḥazm. After an introductory chapter on the reception of Biblical materials in early Islam and a presentation of the authors under review, the book focuses on their knowledge of...

Abū ʿAlī Muḥammad Ibn Khallād al-Baṣrī was a distinguished disciple of the Muʿtazilī theologian and founder of the Bahshamiyya, Abū Hāshim al-Jubbāʾī (d. 321/933). He is reported to have written a theological summa, Kitāb al-Uṣūl, as well as an autocommentary. None of the works of Ibn Khallād has come down to us directly, although substantial portions of his Kitāb al-Uṣūl and/or Sharḥ al-Uṣūl have reached us embedded in the Kitāb Ziyādāt Sharḥ...

The present volume--the first of its kind--deals with takfīr: accusing ones opponents of unbelief (kufr). Originating in the first decades of Islam, this practice has been applied intermittently ever since. The nineteen studies included here deal with cases, covering different periods and parts of the Muslim world, of individuals or groups that used the instrument of takfīr to brand their opponents--either persons, groups or even institutions--as unbelievers who should be condemned, anathematized or even persecuted. Each case presented is placed in its...

This volume represents the state of the art in research on the controversial Muslim legal scholar, theologian and man of letters Ibn Ḥazm of Cordoba (d. 456/1064), who is widely regarded as one of the most brilliant minds of Islamic Spain. Remembered mostly for his charming treatise on love, he was first and foremost a fierce polemicist who was much criticized for his idiosyncratic views and his abrasive language. Insisting that the sacred sources of Islam are to be understood in their outward sense and that it is only the Prophet Muḥammad whose example may be followed, Ibn...

Islam at 250: Studies in Memory of G.H.A. Juynboll is a collection of original articles on the state of Islamic sciences and Arabic culture in the early phases of their crystallization. It covers a wide range of intellectual activity in the first three centuries of Islam, such as the study of ḥadīth, the Qurʾān, Arabic language and literature, and history. Individually and taken together, the articles provide important new insights and make an important contribution to scholarship on early Islam. The authors, whose work reflects an affinity with Juynboll's research interests, are all...