In this paper I examine presentations of Companions and Successors to the Companions of the Prophet (sahaba and t?abi’?un) in pre-Mongol Iranian urban histories. I argue that these urban histories were avenues through which Muslims in early Islamic Iran between the 9th and 12th centuries expressed identity, legitimacy, and piety. Pre-Mongol Iranian urban histories demonstrate a pattern not seen elsewhere: there is tremendous attention paid to Companions and Successors as defining characteristics of the virtues (fada’il) of a city. These texts employ Companions and Successors as foundational members of the city in order to bind the city to the Prophet and prophetic authority. Companions and Successors are also notable as hadith transmitters in these cities, and they therefore elucidate the state of what would become non-canonical hadith, its importance, and its variety in early Muslim Iran. My research employs a new methodological approach to hadith study and research of the Companions and Successors. Functionally, I adopt a skeptical methodology. However, both my assumptions and my conclusions differ greatly from those of the skeptics in the fields of hadith study and Islamic historiography. Most of my sources are pre-Mongol city histories written in Iran. These are generally bilingual Persian-Arabic texts, and they include: Tarikh-i Bayhaq, Tarikh-i Sistan, Tarikh-i Qum, Fada’il-i Balkh, Tarikh-i Tabaristan, Tarikh-i Ruyan, Rawzat al-Jannat fi Awsaf-i Madinat Herat, Tarikh Gurgan, Kitab dhikr akhbar Isbahan and the Gurgan-name. Futuh Misr by Ibn ‘Abd al-Hakam (d. 257/870) is one very notable exception to the general pattern that Iranian local histories are more focused on the Companions and Successors as virtues of the city than histories written elsewhere, such as in Sham, Yemen, Arabia, or Oman. Futuh al-Andalus by the same author is another counter-example. I will examine why this quality, evident in Iran generally and in Ibn ‘Abd al-Hakam’s work, is absent elsewhere. I conclude that in their portrayal of the Companions’ and Successors’ ties to the city, these local Iran histories sought legitimation for their city through claimed connections to the Prophet. The varied representations of the Companions and Successors also highlights the diversity of Iranian-Muslim urban identity in the medieval period. These regionally differentiated understandings of Islam and expressions of Islamic piety and self-identity were precisely what canonizers of the early hadith collections found they needed to supersede in order to create a universally acceptable corpus of canonical hadith.

The Quran promises rewards for believers who participate in warfare against the enemies of God. It also demands voluntary gifts for “the poor,” meaning in particular those believers who wish to join the army but lack the means for doing so. Under the Rashidun and Umayyad caliphates, there was disagreement over how to include these “Quranic gifts” within newly-emerging fiscal and military institutions and practices. Among the jurists, it was the Medinans or early Malikis who remained most attached to the memory of the old “Quranic gift.” This can be seen in their teachings regarding ja‘a’il, or military substitution (a kind of organized draft-dodging), which I have discussed previously. In this paper I examine an array of Medinan/early Maliki sources regarding the law of war and gifts. Here, especially in the Mudawwana attributed to Sahnun, we find several striking and (apparently) unusual teachings. We also find the idea that revenues from conquest (fay’) must be distributed according to a principle of equity among individuals or, alternatively, according to a principle of equity among regions; either way, the Quranic right (haqq) of the poor Muslim is paramount and dominates (at least in theory) the construction of military and fiscal institutions. In the later doctrines of the Maliki school, these distinctive teachings were blurred, sidestepped, or made to look more like the doctrines of the Hanafi and other madhhabs. However, they had consequences for later developments, especially in North Africa under the Aghlabid amirate.

The writings of masters of Sunni kalam, as they sought to defend the Sunni tradition against rationalist theologians (Mu`tazilites), Neoplatonist esotericists (Batinites) and Aristotelian philosophers, and felt increasingly seduced by the appeal of rational systems, express a sense of profound internal conflict. At times, Al-Juwayni (d. 1085) and his disciple al-Ghazali (d. 1111) both seem enthusiastic and confident about the possibility of surpassing the knowledge of the salaf (the pious predecessors). Al-Juwayni contends in his al-Kafia fi’l-jadal that the salaf themselves “realized that there will be after them those who God will chose for excellence in endeavor, greater understanding, perspicacity and intelligence … they therefore did not engage in depth (with contentious issues) and remained brief and satisfied with allusions.” In his later writings, however, our theologian yearns for “the faith of the old women of Nishapur,” declaring elsewhere that the salaf “were the most intelligent of people and best in speech.” (al-Ghiyathi) Al-Ghazali, not one to accept his teacher’s injunction to stay away from rational sciences, engaged in kalam under the same presumption of surpassing the simple-minded piety of the salaf in understanding. But some of his writings express a similar sense of conflict and cynicism towards reason. The way these authors, seeing themselves as the keepers of Sunni orthodoxy, struggle with the cultural memory of the early Muslim teachers, finding ways to transcend it when ebullient, but resigning to the salaf’s surpassing wisdom and piety when faced with self-doubt or crisis of faith, offers an excellent way to investigate how cultural memory has been processed, contended and used in medieval Islamic thought.

The wars against the tribes in the Arabian peninsula immediately after the death of the Prophet Muhammad are often called the ?ur?b al-Ridda (wars of Apostasy). The Ridda wars were carried out by the first caliph of Islam, Abu Bakr (d. 634). The Islamic classical sources exclusively characterize the two-year period of Ab? Bakr’s rule as being concentrated on the expeditions that were set out in different parts of the peninsula to bring the rebellious tribes under the authority of the new caliph. How different were the Ridda wars from the fut?? (Islamic conquests) expeditions is a question that has been previously examined by the scholars (see E. Shoufani, F. Donner). It is clear that early fut?h compilers portrayed the Ridda wars under a different light. However, the question of how Ab? Bakr as a caliphal figure was portrayed in these accounts has never been raised. The events and expeditions taking place around the Ridda wars, and the way Ab? Bakr directed several expeditions from Madina are narrated in the sources in a quite detailed manner. Since the role Ab? Bakr plays in those narratives exclusively define how the later Muslims perceived him as a caliphal figure, an analysis of his agency and the characterizations ascribed to him in the accounts on Ridda will be the major undertaking in this paper. How do the accounts portray Ab? Bakr as a ruler, as a military commander, and as the religious leader of the nascent Muslim community in these narratives? What different images of Ab? Bakr we get when we contrast him with the roles attributed to him as the best companion of the Prophet and as the model of piety who was prone to weeping in all matters during the lifetime of the Prophet? The examination will be carried out through the combination of two different methods, namely (a) matn-cum-isn?d analysis; (b) narrative analysis. Panel Category: "'Popular' Fut?? Historiography and Its Uses"

Ibn Hanbal’s (d. 241/855) Argumentative Strategies In this paper I will address the argumentative and epistemological paradigm of Ibn Hanbal, who became the symbol of opposition to the mode of thinking about religion, advocated and aggressively imposed by the proponents of syllogism-based rationalism. Ibn Hanbal’s al-Radd ‘ala l-Jahmiyya wa-l-Zanadiqa (“The Refutation of the Jahmites and the Heretics”) gives us a number of significant insights into the issue at hand, of which I will analyze three aspects: [I] Ibn Hanbal’s reconciliation of “contradictory” verses of the Qur’an and his refutation of the doctrine of the created Qur’an. The syllogistic system tends to operate with binaries, meaning that everything is either something or its opposite with no modalities tolerated. This system leads the heretics to see contradictions in the Qur’an and the Jahmites to conflate ja‘ala, to make, with khalaqa, to create. The traditionalist system avoids absolute categories and operates within a matrix of modalities, which allows maintaining the complexity of any issue at hand. [II] The narrative of a discursive encounter between Muslims and non-Muslims, which may serve as an illustration of how the adoption of the syllogism-based rationalism might have happened. Still a religious and ethnic minority, Muslims were forced to adopt the mode of discourse common to the conquered people. The upside of this was that they could dispute effectively; the downside, however, was that they had to deal with issues, which were [1] outside of the nascent Islamic teaching, as well as with [2] those, which were imposed by this very new mode of thinking. It seems that eventually all but traditionalists adopted this new system of reasoning, in which “captious questions” (maghalit), basically — sophisms, served as the main offensive tactics. [III] Ibn Hanbal’s instructions on how to deal with these “captious questions” (e.g. “Is the Qur’an God, or other than He?”). Ibn Hanbal penetrates the nature of this offensive discursive device, showing that it is meant to render unsophisticated opponents defenseless, since either answer will be equally discrediting. Ibn Hanbal offers tactics of parrying these questions. To sum up, close reading of Ibn Hanbal’s epistle shows that the traditionalist system is way more sophisticated than conventionally considered as well as anything but literal. Undeniably, it is less effective as argumentative strategy, but way more subtle as epistemological system.