A Medieval Critique Of Anthropomorphism

This study consists of a critical edition of Ibn al-Jawzī’s Kitāb Akhbār as-Sifāt (KAS) along with an annotated translation and introduction. KAS is a critique of anthropomorphic conceptions of God, directed in the first instance against Ibn al-Jawzī’s fellow Hanbalī, but also against Sunnī traditionalists more generally. As an intra-Hanbalīr polemic, KAS sheds important new light on the intellectual fault-lines within medieval Hanbalism, and reveals the extent to which kalām had penetrated the Hanbalite school by the 12th century. In his work, Ibn al- Jawzī’s makes extensive use of kalām, drawing on its technical language and crafting his arguments against anthropomorphism on the basis of the dialectical methods developed within the great theological schools of medieval Islam. The study also contains a translation of al-ʿAlthī's Risāla, a pointed response to Ibn al-Jawzī, written by a fellow Hanbalī from a traditionalist perspective.

This monumental study examines issues of anthropomorphism in the three Abrahamic Faiths, as viewed through the texts of the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament and the Qur’an. Throughout history Christianity and Judaism have tried to make sense of God. While juxtaposing the Islamic position against this, the author addresses the Judeo-Christian worldview and how each has chosen to framework its encounter with God, to what extent this has been the result of actual scripture and to what extent the product of theological debate, or church decrees of later centuries and absorption of Hellenistic philosophy. Shah also examines Islam’s heavily anti-anthropomorphic stance and Islamic theological discourse on Tawhid as well as the Ninety-Nine Names of God and what these have meant in relation to Muslim understanding of God and His attributes. Describing how these became the touchstone of Muslim discourse with Judaism and Christianity he critiques theological statements and perspectives that came to dilute if not counter strict monotheism. As secularism debates whether God is dead, the issue of anthropomorphism has become of immense importance. The quest for God, especially in this day and age, is partly one of intellectual longing. To Shah, anthropomorphic concepts and corporeal depictions of the Divine are perhaps among the leading factors of modern atheism. As such he ultimately draws the conclusion that the postmodern longing for God will not be quenched by pre-modern anthropomorphic and corporeal concepts of the Divine which have simply brought God down to this cosmos, with a precise historical function and a specified location, reducing the intellectual and spiritual force of what God is and represents, causing the soul to detract from a sense of the sacred and thereby belief in Him.

Through a close, contextualized, and interdisciplinary reading in Hadith compilations, theological treatises, and historical sources, this book offers an evaluation and understanding of the traditionalistic endeavours to define anthropomorphism in the most crucial and indeed most formative period of Islamic thought.

Scholars have come to recognize the importance of classical Islamic philosophy both in its own right and in its preservation of and engagement with Greek philosophical ideas. At the same time, the period immediately following the so-called classical era has been considered a sort of dark age, in which Islamic thought entered a long decline. In this monumental new work, Frank Griffel seeks to overturn this conventional wisdom, arguing that what he calls the "post-classical" period has been unjustly maligned and neglected by previous generations of scholars. The Formation of Post-Classical Philosophy in Islam is a comprehensive study of the far-reaching changes that led to a re-shaping of the philosophical discourse in Islam during the twelfth century. Earlier Western scholars thought that Islam's engagement with the tradition of Greek philosophy ended during that century. More recent analyses suggest that Islamic thinkers instead integrated Greek thought into the genre of rationalist Muslim theology (kal=am). Griffel argues that even this new view misses a key point. In addition to the integration of Greek ideas into kal=am, Muslim theologians picked up the discourse of classical philosophy in Islam (falsafa) and began to produce books in the tradition of Plato, Aristotle, and Avicennaa new and oft-misunderstood genre they called ".hikma"in which they left aside theological concerns. They wrote in both genres, kal=am and .hikma, and the same writers argued for opposing teachings on the nature of God, the world's creation, and the afterlife depending on the genre in which they were writing. Griffel shows how careful attention to genre demonstrates both the coherence and ambiguity of this new philosophical approach. A work of extraordinary breadth and depth, The Formation of Post-Classical Philosophy in Islam offers a detailed, insightful history of philosophy in Iraq, Iran, and Central Asia during the twelfth century. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of philosophy or the history of Islam.

Never before translated into English, this work presents to the reader perhaps the most important source for an intensifying medieval Christian-Jewish debate.

In Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya and the Divine Attributes Miriam Ovadia offers a thorough study of his voluminous theological work on anthropomorphism, al-Ṣawāʿiq al-Mursala (written ca. 1350), in which he rationalistically systemized the hermeneutics of his renowned mentor Ibn Taymiyya.

This comprehensive study of Muslim jurist Ibn Taymiyya's (d. 1328) theodicy of perpetual optimism exposits and analyses his writings on God's justice and wise purpose, divine determination and human agency, the problem of evil, and juristic method in theological doctrine.

Sources, which have so far often been overshadowed by chronicles and normative literature, are also the focus of interest of this book. Treatises against unacceptable innovations, pilgrims guidebooks, travel reports, prosopographical and biographical writings, journals and diaries, folk novels, documents and law manuals can provide us with valuable information. But what generally applies for Mamlukology is the fact that an enormous amount of fundamental work in the edition of texts remains yet to be done. Many Mamlukists are primarily engaged in this activity. It may also have been this unavoidable focus on handwritten materials that resulted in the fact that the scholars studying the Mamluk Era have only very rarely occupied themselves with interdisciplinary questions or theoretical hypotheses. Nevertheless, during the last ten years a lot of innovative research has been done in this field. For the first time, this book presents the state of the art with regards to the Mamluk Empire.