It is generally accepted that Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj (d. 922) was the first Sufi author who admired the Devil (Iblis) as an esoteric saint, the most perfect model of monotheism and an unapologetic lover of God. In his work Kitab al-Tawasin, al-Hallaj declared Iblis’s rank to be above that of Moses and only equal to the Prophet Muhammad. al-Hallaj’s infatuation with Iblis had a tremendous influence on the writings of other Sufi authors such as Ahmad al-Ghazali (d. 1123), and ‘Ayn al-Qudat Hamadani (d. 1131) in the following centuries. Yet there has been little study as to what set of doctrines influenced him to become a passionate defender of the Devil and motivated him to make such antinomian claims about a figure that Qur’an consider to be the ultimate enemy of man and God. This paper will attempt to demonstrate that from the beginning of 9th century to the middle of 10th century, there existed several seemingly unrelated but prominent religious movements in the heartland of Abbasid Caliphate which promulgated the doctrine of sympathy and love for the Devil. These religious movements included various Shi‘a exaggerators (ghulats) such as the followers of Muhammad ibn al-Shalmaqani (d. 934), Zoroastrian sects such as the Zurvanites who were influenced by the writings of Zoroastrian priests such as Mardan-Farrukh (d. after 830), and most importantly, the Sufis who, in various degrees, propagated their affinity for the Devil under the relative intellectual freedom of the Abbasid Caliphate in the 9th and early 10th century. Most of these Sufis such as Sahl al-Tustari (d. 896), Junayd al-Baghdadi (d. 910), and Abubakr al-Shibli (d. 946) were either teachers or colleagues of al-Hallaj who also shared his passion for Iblis. Therefore, this paper will argue that it was in this multi-confessional milieu of antinomian religiosity that al-Hallaj was able to formulate and propagate his dogma concerning the divine nature of the Devil as an uncompromising monotheist and the true lover of God.

"The study of Middle Eastern women, past and present, poses a number of methodological problems," wrote Nikki Keddie in "Problems in the Study of Middle Eastern Women." This is true for the study of all subaltern people, men and women alike, who live on society's margins--criminals, beggars, dervishes, magic-workers, the disabled, the mentally ill, sex-workers, and slaves. "The historian only has access to what her documents reveal," and most surviving medieval Islamic texts were written by and for "urban upper and middle class men." But Keddie also provides methodological insights that can help the social historian overcome these archival limits. She suggests that historians turn to "archeological records, chronicles, geographies, traveler's accounts, legal and theological writings, legal cases, prose, & poetry" ignoring conventional field boundaries and bringing together disparate disciplines in order to find those whose marginal social position is reflected by their marginalization in the archive. Taking seriously Keddie's critique and methodological insights, in this talk I bring together urban history and women's history in order to look at the urban fabric of sex-work in the medieval Islamic city--particularly Abbasid Baghdad. I use fatwas, medieval Arabic city chronicles (particularly Tarikh Baghdad and Mu'ajam al-Buldan), poetry, folktales, and belles lettres to think through the social production of space for the sex-worker in Baghdad from the 9th-11th centuries. I examine the following questions: What social spheres did the sex-worker occupy? Where do we locate sex-work in terms of the physical topography of the city? What place did sex-work have in the literary imagination of Baghdadi poets and belle lettrists? What were the economic implications of this practice—qui bono? Finally, I will make explicit the larger theoretical problems that accompany my chosen avenue of research: does an investigation of sex-work in the medieval Islamicate city merely add the brothel to the mosque, market, and Hammam? I argue that, when done with methodological rigor, taking subaltern space seriously as a site of scholarly investigation opens up archival heterotopias, disrupting old binaries and fueling new historiographical possibilities.

My paper, “Religio-legal Conceptualizations of Land Ownership in the Early Abbasid Period”, studies the work of early Muslim jurists, traditionists, and scribes in order to reconstruct their conception of land ownership. The first part of the paper develops a theoretical account of land ownership according to works like Ya?y? b. ?dam’s Kit?b al-Khar?j, Ab? Y?suf’s Kit?b al-Khar?j, M?lik b. Anas’s Muwa??a, Ab? ?an?fa’s Musnad, and al-Q?sim b. Sall?m’s Kit?b al-Amw?l. What did it mean to “own” land in the early Abbasid period? What was the difference between land owned by an individual, the Muslim community, and the caliphal regime? What was the prerogative of each of these groups vis-à-vis land; what could they do or not do, and according to which ethical or legal precepts? The second part of the paper provides a brief account of modern theories of property, and argues that due to their incommensurability, they should not be used as an analytical lens through which to understand premodern Islamic land ownership. With the development of capitalism and the rise of the modern state in the seventeenth century, property came to denote a set of enforceable rights including the right to sell, lend, bequeath, destroy, and most notably, exclude non-owners. Building on Locke’s understanding of unlimited property acquisition as a as a natural right, William Blackstone defined property as the “sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe”. Positioned at the intersection of legal philosophy and political theory, this paper accounts for the implications of the difference between these two regimes: modern property and premodern Islamic land ownership. It also contributes to the study of Islam in three ways. First, it represents an attempt to ground the study of Islamic law and politics in material reality. Second, it adds to a growing body of literature (by Michael Morony, Michel Campopiano, Marie Legendre, and Petra Sijpesteijn) on the role that land played in the history of early Islam. Finally, in light of the claim that land was not only the main instrument for wealth and power in the premodern world, but that, more specifically, its taxation was critical for the survival of the early Islamic state, it provides a nuanced and complex account of the legal understanding of land ownership in early Islam.

What determines the access an interpreter has to the Qur’an? On what bases is the Qur’an to be understood? These questions of comprehension and exegesis have far-reaching implications for Islamic thought and society. This paper examines sites of discourse on the proper means of understanding and interpreting the Qur’an in the writings of Abu Bakr al-Baqillani. Al-Baqillani (d. 403/1012) is recognized as being as the most important Ash’ari theologian of his generation, and he authored the first systematic exposition of Ash’arite thought (Kitab al-Tamhid) as well as seminal treatises in discourses including usul al-fiqh (legal theory) and i’jaz al-Qur’an (the doctrine of the Qur’an’s inimitability). These texts have often been read separately for their individual contributions to Islamic disciplines, but as this paper shows, a theme that runs through them is a concern with establishing the status of the Qur’an as clear and comprehensible to its human audience. Al-Baqillani’s multidisciplinary work engages the methods and discussions of several discourses to argue that understanding the Qur’an is possible through systematic understanding of the Arabic language. This paper seeks to understand the concerns behind this argument by situating al-Baqillani’s work in terms of methods of interpretation that were developing and being practiced during the 3rd/9th and 4th/10th centuries. Specifically, this paper makes the case that al-Baqillani was responding to the type of interpretation that came to be known as ta’wil. This method, associated with Sufi and Shi’i exegetes, was typically understood to rely on personal insight with divine guidance proffered to the select few. Rather than overtly or directly dismissing the type of ta’wil methods used by contemporaneous Sufi and Shi'i interpreters, al-Baqillani builds a case for the language, and hence meanings, of the Qur’an being clear and systematically accessible according to the lexicon, grammar, and conventions of the Arabic language. Drawing on recent scholarship on Sufism, tafsir, and Abbasid history, this paper presents an argument for reading al-Baqillani’s work as an attempt to bolster mainstream Sunni Ash’ari approaches to interpreting the Qur’an over and against ta’wil. This new perspective on al-Baqillani’s work both highlights an important theme across his writings and places these writings into the context of contemporaneous discourses on approaches to understanding and interpreting the Qur’an. The result is a historically situated reading of this foundational theologian’s work and its influence on later Ash’arite thought.

History writing in Islam’s classical period (2nd-4th/8th-10th centuries) was built from quoted discourse. The raw materials of most surviving texts were short narratives (akhbar), often transmitted from earlier sources. The quotation of treaties, wills, letters, speeches and even conversations was also integral to Islamic historiography’s structure. But where did all these documentary quotations originate? Modern scholars tend to think most (but not all) such materials were, if not entirely fabricated, then at least significantly modified in transmission. As Andrew Marsham wrote recently, “Some [documents] may be genuine, but the great majority of them were almost certainly invented purely to serve a narrative function.” In this regard, the architecture of Islamic histories fits well in the landscape of late antique Near Eastern historiographies. In some ways, however, this conclusion leaves more questions asked than answered. If it seems unlikely that the quoted materials in the histories “document” the events they describe, nevertheless historians of the period apparently found them to be indispensable tools for depicting the past. Why should this be? How did short passages of quotation relate to the broader narratives in which they were placed? In short, what did historians mean for such texts to do? In this paper, I examine the case of letters in Ibn A‘tham al-Kufi’s (fl. 3rd/9th) Futuh. First, I sketch out patterns in letters’ appearance throughout the entire work. Then, I consider the role that quoting letters plays in the narrative of a specific event (the ceding of the caliphate to Mu‘awiya b. Abi Sufyan by Hasan b. ‘Ali), revealing the particularity of Ibn A‘tham’s formulations by comparing his account to contemporary ones. Ultimately, I argue that, where modern historiography begins from the explication and interpretation of documents, Ibn A‘tham used the plastic form of the letters to work interpretations into his narrative structure. In particular, I show how the letters perform three functions: to catalyze narrative progress, to characterize the main actors, and to ethicize on their actions.