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THE GENRE OF MUḤĀKAMA IN THE EXEGETICAL TRADITION:
ADJUDICATIVE GLOSSES ON AL-KASHSHĀF……………………………………………….…………………………………………………. 4
a. Method and Difficulties ……………………………………………………………………….…...…… 6
b. Outline …………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 8
2. INTRODUCING THE TEXTS …………………………..…………………………………………………… 10
a. The Fountainhead: Al-Kaššāf ……………………………………………………………………….. 10
b. The Three Adjudication Texts …………………………………………………………………....... 13
i. The Gate of Adjudication Opens: Kitāb al-Inṣāf by Ibn bint al-ʿIrāqī ….…… 13
ii. Al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya by Qinalizāde Ali Çelebi ………………………………….. 16
iii. Al-Muḥākamāt bayna Abī Ḥayyān wa Ibn ʿAṭiyya wa az-Zamaḫšarī
by Yaḥyā aš-Šāwī ……………………………………………………………………………….... 19
3. WIELDING THE DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD: THE ROLE OF GRAMMAR IN THE MUḤĀKAMĀT ………………………………………………………………………………………………….…. 23
a. Background: Philology and the Study of the Qur’an ………………………………………. 25
b. The Case of the Muḥākamāt: Grammatical Semantics ………………………….………... 28
c. Placing the Muḥākamāt within the Larger Context of Post-Classical Linguistic Theory ……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 36
4. DEBATE AND THE DYNAMICS OF ADJUDICATION ……………………………………………… 39
a. Dispute and Debate as a Way of Life …………………………………………………………….. 39
b. A Taste for Keeping Dispute Alive: The Dynamics of Debate
in the Muḥākamāt ………………………………………………………………………………………. 41
c. The Dynamics of Adjudication …………………………………………………………………….. 48
5. CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 52
APPENDIX ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 54
BIBLIOGRAPHY ………………………………………………………………..…………………………………….. 56
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INTRODUCTION
By all counts, disagreement and debate is rife and rampant throughout Islamic intellectual history. One could in fact easily argue that large-scale dispute is one of its most deep-seated and prominent qualities. What is not so common and familiar, however, is a self-appointed referee who steps forward to arbitrate between the disputing parties. These kinds of texts take two or more authorities who are in major disagreement or divergence on a significant issue, and they adjudicate between them, announcing their preference for one over the other(s). The adjudicating texts generally carry such titles as tamyīz, intiṣār, inṣāf, and muḥākama, and they are most commonly found in the disciplines of rational theology, rhetoric, logic, exegesis, and jurisprudence.1
While the idea of systematic scholarly adjudication is already quite unusual in itself, it becomes more intriguing in a field like tafsīr. This is because in tafsīr, transmitted material reigns supreme, diversity of opinion is the rule rather than the exception, and intense ambiguity verging on contradiction is the order of the day. Despite this highly pluralistic structure, the exegetical tradition does have a fair number of adjudicative texts, which address contentious issues between prominent exegetes and pass verdicts between them. Almost always categorized as tafsīr glosses, these texts generally take az-Zamaḫšarī (d. 538/1144) and al-Bayḍāwī (d. 685/1286) as their base.
This thesis takes a close look at the strand of exegetical muḥākamāt that are built on az-Zamaḫšarī’s Qur’an commentary, al-Kaššāf. Through a close reading of carefully selected sources, it aims to discover the main preoccupations and priorities of the muḥākama texts, determine the contributions they make to the field, and understand the dynamics of this particular mode of writing, which arguably constitutes an independent sub-genre in the commentarial literature.
1 Mesut Kaya, “İslâm İlimler Tarihinde Muhâkemât Geleneği: Tefsir Hâşiyeleri Merkezli Bir Deneme,” İslâm Araştırmaları Dergisi 33 (2015): 3, 8. Examples of adjudicative texts from various disciplines include: Al-Inṣāf fī Masāʾil al-Ḫilāf bayna an-Naḥwiyyīn al-Baṣriyyīn wa al-Kūfiyyīn by al-Anbarī (d. 577/1181); Al-Muḥākama bayna al-Imāmayn by Muḥammad b. Umar b. Muḥammad (d. 721/1321), which addresses the contentious issues between Buḫārī (d. 256/870) and Muslim (d. 261/875); Jilāʾ al-ʿAynayn fī Muḥākamat al-Aḥmadayn by Nuʿmān al-Ālūsī (d. 1317/1899), which adjudicates between Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) and Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī (d. 974/1567).
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The exegetical muḥākamāt prove to be a worthwhile subject of study for many reasons. Firstly, they are strictly post-classical texts; thus, they belong to a period in tafsīr history that is severely understudied. While we have to note that the use of terms like “classical” and “post-classical” are controversial in almost all branches of Islamic and Arabic Studies,2 this study nevertheless does use the term “post-classical” to denote the period between the end of the 7th/ 13th century and the 12th/18th century for the case of exegesis. Tafsīr studies have single-mindedly focused on the formative and (recently also the classical) period, and the post-classical period remains to be explored in depth.3 The muḥākamāt, as texts penned in this later episode of Islamic intellectual history, can give us clues about the trajectory and objectives of tafsīr in this period.
Secondly, the exegetical muḥākamāt are glosses; they take certain passages of interest from major works and comment on them, with a specific purpose and agenda in mind.4 Commentary and gloss, despite being one of the most fundamental vehicles of scholarly production in the post-classical period, have long been associated with intellectual decline and stagnation.5 This orientation is gradually shifting, and a new interest in the commentarial literatures of the post-classical period is emerging. Scholars now acknowledge the need to assess and understand the Islamic intellectual tradition on its own terms, as it chose to express itself.6 For this to be done, however, we need to step inside the tradition, plunge into the technical material, and try to chart a way through the layers of detail, quotes, dense descriptions, and endless debates. This, according to Asad Q. Ahmed, is the only way to assess the commentarial literature seriously and “have a go at the question of post-
2 For a critique of the term in Arabic literature studies, see Thomas Bauer, “In Search of ‘Post-Classical Literature’: A Review Article,” Mamluk Studies Review 11, no. 2 (2007): 137–66.
3 Walid A. Saleh, The Formation of the Classical Tafsīr Tradition: The Qurʾān Commentary of Al-Thaʿlabī (d. 427/1035) (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 3.
4 The boundary between the terms “commentary” and “gloss” is not always very clear. Based on their content and style, the muḥākamāt are actually closer to being commentaries; however, since their source texts are themselves commentaries (on the Qur’an), it is more sensible to categorize the muḥākamāt as glosses or super-commentaries.
5 Asad Q. Ahmed and Margaret Larkin, “The Ḥāshiya and Islamic Intellectual History,” Oriens 41, no. 3–4 (January 1, 2013): 213.
6 Robert Wisnovsky, “The Nature and Scope of Arabic Philosophical Commentary in Post‐Classical (ca. 1100–1900 AD) Islamic Intellectual History: Some Preliminary Observations,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 47 (2004): 149; Ahmed and Larkin, “The Ḥāshiya and Islamic Intellectual History,” 214.
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classical dynamism/decline”.7 This thesis is a small exercise in close engagement with the glosses: it attempts to carry out a close reading of each text, identify the main currents directing the discourse, and understand the intertextualities.
Thirdly, the muḥākamāt are an interesting group of texts to study because their self-assigned adjudicative role is a bold and unusual one. Arabic/Islamic scholarship is rife with all forms of active engagement in all manner of debates and disagreements, but a structured and self-conscious attempt to adjudicate between established authorities constitutes a distinct branch of writing. Exegetical muḥākamāt prove to be doubly intriguing because tafsīr has an especially high tolerance for ambiguity and diversity of opinion. It is therefore worthwhile to observe how these texts balance their adjudicative premise with the pluralistic nature of tafsīr as a discipline.
Method and Difficulties
The very same qualities that make the muḥākamāt an interesting subject of study also make it difficult to approach. The gloss has garnered the attention of scholars only recently, and as yet no foundational categories, terms, or theoretical frameworks have been formulated, which are necessary for a systematic approach to any subject.8 Thus, any attempt to study post-classical Islamic/Arabic commentaries and glosses has to map its own way, since the territory remains uncharted. Lacking the theoretical framework and tools for the study of the gloss, this thesis tries to make up for this drawback by enlisting the help of two groups of work from secondary literature: firstly, recent scholarly articles written on glosses in other Islamic disciplines, such as law, philosophy, and hadith; and secondly, works that provide a theoretical framework for the study of commentaries in the medieval Western tradition. The latter group has been of limited application, but the former has provided invaluable assistance for this study in terms of methodology and approach.9
7 Asad Q. Ahmed, “Post-Classical Philosophical Commentaries/Glosses: Innovation in the Margins,” Oriens 41, no. 3–4 (2013): 318.
8 Ahmed, 318–19.
9 For the study of the gloss in the Islamic tradition, the following articles are invaluable contributions that are nothing less than pioneering. In philosophy: Robert Wisnovsky, “The Nature and Scope of Arabic Philosophical Commentary in Post-Classical (ca. 1100-1900 AD) Islamic Intellectual History: Some
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While it is a welcome development that recent scholarship has abandoned the decline paradigm and recognizes that commentaries and glosses have their own intellectual dynamism, it is nevertheless not enough to simply make this claim and leave the argument unsubstantiated. As Asad Ahmed puts plainly, “the nature of such growth remains obscure”.10 In line with this fact, this study makes no a priori assumptions about the originality, dynamism, or intellectual value of the glosses, and instead tries to determine the defining characteristics and priorities of the texts by carrying out a close reading.
In formulating the subject of this thesis, the first methodological choice to be made was the selection of the muḥākamāt. This study focuses specifically on the muḥākamāt on al-Kaššāf, since each tree of commentarial activity stems from a single major work, and each tree is quite independent from the other. Limiting the study to the muḥākamāt on al-Kaššāf gives cohesion and consistency to the analysis. From among this group of works, three muḥākama texts were picked out. This selection was made by prioritizing texts that had available and complete manuscripts and also by aiming for the widest time spectrum possible. In this way, three texts were selected: Kitāb al-Inṣāf by Ibn bint al-ʿIrāqī (d. 704/1304) in manuscript format,11 Al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya fī al-Abḥāṯ ar-Raḍawiyya fī Iʿrāb Baʿḍ al-Āy al-Qurʾāniyya by Qinalizāde Ali Çelebi (d. 979/1572) also in manuscript format,12 and finally the published Al-Muḥākamāt bayna Abī-Ḥayyān wa Ibn-ʿAṭiyya wa az-Zamaḫšarī: Iʿtirāḍāt Abī-Ḥayyān al-Andalusī Ṣāḥib Tafsīr "al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ" ʿalā al-Imāmayn Ibn-ʿAṭiyya wa az-Zamaḫšarī fī Tafsīrayhimā by Yaḥyā aš-Šāwī (d. 1096/1685). Written in the thirteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries respectively, this group of texts allows us to observe
Preliminary Observations” (2004) and Asad Q. Ahmed, “Post-Classical Philosophical Commentaries/Glosses: Innovation in the Margins” (2013); in fiqh: Brannon M. Wheeler, “Identity in the Margins: Unpublished Ḥanafī Commentaries on the Mukhtaṣar of Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Qudūrī” (2003) and Ahmed El-Shamsy, “The Ḥāshiya in Islamic Law: A Sketch of the Shāfiʿī Literature” (2013); in hadīth: Joel Blecher, “Ḥadīth Commentary in the Presence of Students, Patrons, and Rivals: Ibn Ḥajar and Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī in Mamluk Cairo” (2013). Finally, in tafsīr: Walid A. Saleh, “The Gloss as Intellectual History: The Ḥāshiyahs on al-Kashshāf” (2013). This article by Walid Saleh was the inspiration behind this thesis, and it has acted as a guide and blueprint in many ways.
10 Ahmed, “Post-Classical Philosophical Commentaries/Glosses,” 319.
11 Al-Fihris aš-Šāmil lists five manuscripts of this work: one in Escorial and four in Süleymaniye. For this thesis I used two complete manuscripts from the Süleymaniye Library: Kılıç Ali Paşa 40 and Ayasofya 78 (the Fihris does not mention this MS). The former MS was my main source; I consulted the latter when I had difficulties deciphering the handwriting.
12 Al-Fihris aš-Šāmil lists only two manuscripts for this work (Leiden Or. 951 and Princeton Garrett 3817Y), but the Süleymaniye Library has two more copies (Esad Efendi 3556-1 and Mihrişah Sultan 39-3). I used the Süleymaniye manuscripts for this thesis.
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the development of the muḥākama genre across time and make more solid contributions to the study of al-Kaššāf’s intellectual legacy.
After selecting the sources, I also had to select the passages that I would use for this study, since reading the first and last muḥākama from cover to cover, which run the entire gamut of the Qur’an, would be extremely time-consuming.13 For the selection of passages, I applied the method used by Andrew Lane in his monograph on al-Kaššāf: he compares the traditional chronology of the Qur’an and that proposed by Blachère, determines the common points of intersection between them, and then chooses one sūra each from the early, middle, and late periods.14 I believe this method yields the most representative and inclusive analysis when dealing with lengthy tafsīr works.
Finally, this study approaches the sources from two angles, one from the outside and from the inside. The exterior angle looks at the biography of the author, tries to situate him in his scholarly context, traces the history of the text’s composition, and looks at its legacy since its completion. The interior angle tries to determine the specific exegetical agenda of the texts, describes their structure and methodology, and identifies the main issues that preoccupy the authors.
Outline
The first chapter introduces the three sources that are used in this study and provides brief author biographies. Where possible, it provides the historical background behind the composition of the text, and it specifies where the text falls within the larger legacy of tafsīr glosses. It also includes a section on the significance of az-Zamaḫšarī’s Qur’an commentary. The second chapter aims to examine the role of philology in the muḥākamāt: after providing an overview of the relationship between philology and the study of the Qur’an, it sketches the form of grammatical semantics that dominates the muḥākama texts. The third and final chapter approaches the sources from an angle that is genre-oriented; it aims to understand what functions the muḥākama as a specific mode of writing fulfills and how the process of
13 The second muḥākama is a short treatise consisting of 30 folios, which I have studied in its entirety.
14 Andrew Lane, A Traditional Muʿtazilite Qurʾan Commentary: The Kashshāf of Jār Allāh Al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144) (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 5.
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adjudication works. In this analysis, the concepts of debate and disputation take on special significance.
This thesis uses the DMG (Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft) system of transliteration, except that it uses the letter j instead of ǧ for the letter jīm (ج). All translations are my own. Quotes are given in translation in the main text, but the Arabic originals may be found in transliteration either in parentheses or in the footnotes.
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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCING THE TEXTS
The Fountainhead: Al-Kaššāf
All three muḥākama documents selected for this study stem from a common source that manifests itself as a powerful and pervasive presence in almost every single line of these works. It acts as the center of a galaxy of ideas, discourses, and disputations: everything in the muḥakamāt seems to be infused in its influence and nothing is able to escape its pull. This weighty and generative source is the Qur’an commentary of the Muʿtazilite scholar Abū al-Qāsim Maḥmūd b. ʿUmar az-Zamaḫšarī (d. 538/1144), titled al-Kaššāf.15 It demands and merits special attention as we engage with the muḥākamāt, and there are several reasons that justify this special treatment. Firstly, in each muḥākama, al-Kaššāf directly or indirectly constitutes one of the parties between whom the adjudication takes place. In other words, al-Kaššāf is the fixed constant; what changes is the opponents or allies it happens to take on. Secondly, it never totally recedes to the background; even when buried under the names of various authorities, layers of interpretation, and centuries of back-and-forth discussion, az-Zamaḫšarī and his Kaššāf always come back on stage as the star members of the cast. Lastly, it is the keystone of the entire arch; any other stone could easily be taken out, but without al-Kaššāf the structure collapses. Therefore, an understanding of the contents, methodologies, and dynamics of these muḥakamāt is impossible without a certain familiarity with the image and legacy of al-Kaššāf.
Finished in the year 528/1134, al-Kaššāf would in the following centuries evolve into one of the most pivotal and influential works ever penned in the Islamic religious disciplines, arousing the interest of scholars “from every maḏhab, ethnic group, and part of the Muslim world.”16 It approaches the Qur’anic text from a linguistic and semantic aspect and applies the principles of balāġa on Qur’anic verses; in Ibn Ḫaldūn’s (d. 808/1406) opinion, az-Zamaḫšarī does this so superbly that al-Kaššāf has “a greater distinction than is possessed
15 The full title of the work is Al-Kaššāf ʿan Ḥaqā’iq Ġawāmiḍ at-Tanzīl wa ʿUyūn al-Aqāwīl fī Wujūh at-Ta’wīl.
16 Lane, A Traditional Muʿtazilite Qurʾan Commentary, 87.
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by any other commentary.”17 Reflecting the outstanding linguistic acumen of its author, who was also one of the most prominent scholars of the philological disciplines in the medieval period, al-Kaššāf had a lasting influence on the study of language. In fact, Ibn Ḫaldūn believes that the more widespread cultivation of balāġa in the Eastern Islamic lands was partly due the omnipresence of az-Zamaḫšarī’s Qur’an commentary, which is virtually incomprehensible without a mastery of grammar and rhetoric.18
The most fascinating aspect al-Kaššāf, however, is its complicated reception history. Written by an openly Muʿtazilite scholar and featuring theological content that was at odds with the orthodox Ašʿarī creed, al-Kaššāf nevertheless penetrated the innermost foundations of the Sunni establishment and became an essential component of the madrasa curriculum, especially in the Ottoman Empire. Walid Saleh opines that this poses one of the most fascinating intellectual questions in Islamic religious history: how and why did a Muʿtazilite Qur’an commentary conquer the hearts and minds of the Sunni establishment?19 While this question still awaits a satisfactory answer, we can safely say that the first step in the adoption process of al-Kaššāf was to criticize it against the tenets of Sunni theology and weed out the Muʿtazilite elements, which was first done by Ibn Manṣūr b. al-Munayyir (d. 683/1284) in his work al-Intiṣāf min al-Kaššāf. Next, an invaluable gesture of approval came from al-Bayḍāwī, who drew from and endorsed al-Kaššāf in his Qur’an commentary Anwār at-Tanzīl.20 Finally, al-Kaššāf fully took on the mantle of prestige and authority it would carry for centuries, when leading Persian Ašʿarī scholars of the fourteenth century, such as Saʿd ad-Dīn at-Taftāzānī (d. 792/1390) and Šaraf ad-Dīn aṭ-Ṭībī (d. 743/1342), wrote glosses on it and integrated it into the curriculum, a phase which also coincides with the peak of the manuscript production curve of al-Kaššāf.21 From this point on, al-Kaššāf was regarded as a storehouse of brilliant philological insight into the Qur’an, and scholars developed a practical philosophy of engaging with it: as long as one is capable of identifying its problematic
17 Ibn Ḫaldūn, The Muqaddimah, trans. Franz Rosenthal, Bollingen Series (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958), 3:338–39.
18 Ibn Ḫaldūn, 3:337.
19 Walid A. Saleh, “Marginalia and Peripheries: A Tunisian Historian and the History of Qur'anic Exegesis,” Numen 58, no. 2–3 (2011): 302.
20 Saleh, 302–5.
21 Muḥammad al-Fāḍil Ibn ʿĀšūr, At-Tafsīr wa Rijāluh, vol. 1 (Cairo: Majallat al-Azhar (supplement), 2004), 89–90; Lane, A Traditional Muʿtazilite Qurʾan Commentary, 60.
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aspects, namely Muʿtazilism and some lax opinions regarding variant readings, and guarding himself against them, one is not only allowed, but also strongly encouraged to benefit from this great work.22 This method of assimilation seems to have enjoyed general acceptance; Ibn Ḫaldūn recommends it in his Muqaddima, and roughly three hundred years later, the Ottoman scholar Saçaklızade (d. 1145/1732) advises the student to do the same in his educational treatise Tartīb al-ʿUlūm.23 This attitude is also reflected in the modern editions of al-Kaššāf, which are almost invariably published with one or more of the corrective glosses on the margins, such as the one by Ibn al-Munayyir.24
Despite all this suspicion and precaution, the fact remains that al-Kaššāf was immensely popular, and one of the best places to get a sense of this popularity is manuscript catalogues. Al-Fihris aš-Šāmil, for example, lists 886 extant manuscript copies of al-Kaššāf and 83 commentaries and glosses.25 The dates point to a sustained interest in al-Kaššāf that spans roughly nine centuries and never seems to abate. Andrew Lane spells out what this implies: there was never a time when readers were not interested in al-Kaššāf, including the watershed years of the modern period.26 It comes as no surprise that it is also one of the three works in the history of tafsīr on which the greatest number of commentaries and glosses were written, the other two being Anwār at-Tanzīl by al-Bayḍāwī and Tafsīr al-Jalālayn by al-Maḥallī (d. 864/1459) and as-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505).27 The muḥākama texts that are the subject of this study thus belong to a long tradition of engrossment in al-Kaššāf, and the colossal presence and authority of this text shines through their pages.
22 For the major points on which al-Kaššāf has traditionally been criticized, see: Ibrāhīm ʿAbd-Allah Rufayda, An-Naḥw wa Kutub at-Tafsīr (Benghazi: Ad-Dār al-Jamāhīriyya li'n-Našr wa at-Tawzīʿ wa al-Iʿlān, 1990), 741.
23 Ibn Ḫaldūn, The Muqaddimah, 3:339. Saçaklızade emphasizes that both al-Kaššāf and al-Bayḍāwī’s Anwār at-Tanzīl are crucial tafsīr works, but warns that only the student who is capable of detecting the Muʿtazilite elements in the former and the hidden philosophical innovations in the latter is in a position to engage with these works: Muḥammad b. Abī Bakr al-Marʿašī Sājaklīzāde, Tartīb Al-ʿUlūm, ed. Ismāʿīl as-Sayyid Aḥmad (Beirut: Dār al-Bašā’ir al-Islāmiyya, 1988), 166.
24 Lane, A Traditional Muʿtazilite Qurʾan Commentary, 94–95.
25 Al-Fihris Aš-Šāmil li’t-Turāṯ al-ʿArabī al-Islāmī al-Maḫṭūṭ: ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān, Maḫṭūṭāt at-Tafsīr aa ʿUlūmih (Amman: Muʾassasat Āl al-Bayt, 1987), 155–88.
26 Lane, A Traditional Muʿtazilite Qurʾan Commentary, 60.
27 Walid Saleh, “The Ḥāshiya of Ibn Al-Munayyir (d. 683/1284) on Al-Kashshāf of Al-Zamakhsharī,” in Books and Written Culture of the Islamic World: Studies Presented to Claude Gilliot on the Occasion of His 75th Birthday, ed. Andrew Rippin and Roberto Tottoli (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 87.
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The Three Adjudication Texts
1) The Gate of Adjudication Opens: Kitāb al-Inṣāf by Ibn bint al-ʿIrāqī
The first muḥākama work is titled Kitāb al-Inṣāf and written by the Cairene exegete ʿAbd al-Karīm b. ʿAlī b. ʿUmar al-ʿIrāqī (d. 704/1304), who is also known as Ibn bint al-ʿIrāqī.28 One of the major figures of Qur’anic exegesis in the seventh century A.H., Ibn bint al-ʿIrāqī was of Andalusian and Iraqi parentage, but he lived his entire life in the Mamluk capital. A professor of tafsīr and fiqh in the Manṣūriyya madrasa in Cairo, he was a well-regarded scholar and authored many works in exegesis and jurisprudence (uṣūl al-fiqh).29 The main source of his reputation, however, lies in tafsīr, due mostly to the key role he played in the initial reception of az-Zamaḫšarī’s al-Kaššāf with his work Kitāb al-Inṣāf, which would become the first major defense of the work. According to Walid Saleh, he was a staunch exponent of the merits of al-Kaššāf, despite some confusion in the biographical dictionaries about his exact position.30 A public promotion of al-Kaššāf in this early period was no small feat to accomplish, however; Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (d. 852/1449) reports that Ibn bint al-ʿIrāqī raised the ire of some scholars and was censured for his defense of az-Zamaḫšārī. The exegete dismissed this accusation by saying that he had simply written “a refutation of the refutation,” implying that serious criticism of a given work – in this case Ibn al-Munayyir’s disparagement of al-Kaššāf - naturally bestows on others the right to defend it.31
The Alexandrian judge Ibn al-Munayyir holds an especially important place in the history of the debate surrounding al-Kaššāf. His gloss Kitāb al-Intiṣāf min al-Kaššāf unearths the Muʿtazilite elements in az-Zamaḫšārī’s work and attempts to refute them. Kātib Çelebi (d. 1067/1657) says that while it also contains objections to some of az-Zamaḫšārī’s
28 Kitāb al-Inṣāf does not have a fixed title and appears under various names in various bibliographic sources; for a list of these titles, see: Lane, A Traditional Muʿtazilite Qurʾan Commentary, 300. In this study I will use the title Kitāb al-Inṣāf, since the manuscript I mainly relied on (Kılıç Ali Paşa 40) has that particular version on its title page. The other manuscript I occasionally consulted (Aya Sofya 78) has the following more descriptive title: Kitāb al-Inṣāf Muḫtaṣar al-Intiṣāf min al-Kaššāf.
29 Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Ad-Durar al-Kāmina fī Aʿyān al-Miʾa aṯ-Ṯāmina, ed. Muḥammad Sayyid Jād al-Ḥaqq (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Ḥadīṯa, 1966), 3:13.
30 Walid A. Saleh, “The Gloss as Intellectual History: The Ḥāshiyahs on Al-Kashshāf,” Oriens 41, no. 3–4 (January 1, 2013): 222.
31 Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, Ad-Durar al-Kāmina, 3:13.
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grammatical and linguistic analyses, “the best thing in it is the disputation (jidāl).”32 A “topic-centered” gloss that picks on seemingly random but very specific subjects, Ibn al-Munayyir’s work became the standard Sunni orthodox response to the Muʾtazilism of al-Kaššāf and provided the screening that Sunni scholars needed to make themselves entirely comfortable with the work.33 As a perfect reflection of this attitude, Ibn al-Munayyir’s gloss was included on the margins of each edition of al-Kaššāf ever since the book started to be printed together with other works in 1890.34 It was this much-appreciated refutation that Ibn bint al-ʿIrāqī approached with a grain of salt, and he decided to weigh the merits of the two works against each other instead of directly jumping on the Ibn al-Munayyir bandwagon.
As suggested by the variety of its titles, Ibn bint al-ʿIrāqī’s Kitāb al-Inṣāf is a difficult work to categorize. Even though in this study it will primarily be treated as a work of adjudication between al-Kaššāf and Ibn al-Munayyir’s al-Intiṣāf, it is in fact simultaneously a muḫtaṣar, a ḥāšiya, and a muḥākama. Different bibliographic sources choose to emphasize different aspects: while Kātib Çelebi defines it as “a judgment (ḥukm) between al-Kaššāf and al-Intiṣāf”, the Süleymaniye Library catalogue lists some manuscripts simply as Muḫtaṣar al-Intiṣāf.35 In this composite work, Ibn bint al-ʿIrāqī first selects relevant passages from both al-Kaššāf and al-Intiṣāf and summarizes them in a relentlessly concise way, leaving behind a bare minimum. Afterwards, his commentarial activity takes one of two directions: he either adds a second layer of commentary on top of Ibn al-Munayyir’s, or he adjudicates between az-Zamaḫšarī and Ibn al-Munayyir.
Kitāb al-Inṣāf also has a strict and reliable structure, which follows the pattern “qāla Maḥmūd … qāla Aḥmad … qultu …” In this scheme, Maḥmūd refers to az-Zamaḫšarī and Aḥmad to Ibn al-Munayyir, who indeed had these first names. In addition to making a playful allusion to the common morphological root of their names, this arrangement gives a sturdy structure to Kitāb al-Inṣāf. Also, in manuscripts where the qāla is written in red ink, it serves as a much-needed reading aid. Each different qāla-qultu constellation provides a blueprint
32 Kātib Çelebi, Kašf aẓ-Ẓunūn ʿan Asāmī al-Kutub wa al-Funūn, ed. Şerefettin Yaltkaya and Kilisli Rifat Bilge, (Ankara: Milli Eğitim Basımevi, 1971), 2:1477.
33 Saleh, “The Gloss as Intellectual History,” 248, 228.
34 Lane, A Traditional Muʿtazilite Qurʾan Commentary, 95.
35 Kātib Çelebi, Kašf aẓ-Ẓunūn, 2:1477. One example of this from the Süleymaniye catalogue is MS Carullah 238.
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into the particular commentarial mode the author enters at that moment. A stand-alone “qāla Maḥmūd” is a paraphrase from al-Kaššāf that the author includes because both he and Ibn al-Munayyir agree on its inherent merit and significance; it has no element of debate. There is never a stand-alone “qāla Aḥmad”, another sign of the centrality of al-Kaššāf in this enterprise. A “qāla Maḥmūd … qāla Aḥmad” pair without an interpolation from the author, which is the most frequent constellation in the entire document, summarizes the debate between the two and most likely suggests the author’s impartiality in that matter. It is also worth noting that this part would prove very useful to a student seeking to quickly familiarize himself with the controversial points of al-Kaššāf and their accredited rebuttal. The full “qāla Maḥmūd … qāla Aḥmad … qultu …” constellation is the locus of super-glossing and adjudication, and it becomes more and more sparse towards the end of the work. The author covers the entire Qur’an and divides his work into sūra headings; in that sense it looks very similar to a traditional musalsal work of exegesis.
Kitāb al-Inṣāf features a very short introductory passage in which the author explains what he sets out to do with al-Kaššāf and al-Intiṣāf. “In this book I epitomized al-Intiṣāf min al-Kaššāf,” he begins, and states that he includes theologically significant sections where Ibn al-Munayyir responds to az-Zamaḫšarī’s attacks on the Ahl as-Sunna with equal intensity.36 The adjudicative nature of the work is revealed at the end of this passage, where he says: “I have not left out anything from the important, interesting and nuanced aspects of [this book]. Whatever corresponds to truth, I left intact, but I revealed the weaknesses and deficiencies of those elements in it that conflict with the truth.”37 In this study I will focus on the sections of this gloss that include a “qultu” interpolation from Ibn bint al-ʿIrāqī and try to understand the dynamics, priorities and implications of the process through which he judges one of the two parties as the correct one.
36 Ibn bint al-ʿIrāqī, Kitāb al-Inṣāf, fol. 4v, Kılıç Ali Paşa 40.
37 Ibn bint al-ʿIrāqī, 4v.: “wa lam adaʿ šayʾan min maʿānī ‘l-kitābi ‘l-maḏkūri wa lā min fawāʾidihi wa nukatihi fa-mā wāfaqa minhu ‘ṣ-ṣawāba abqaytuhu wa mā ḫālafa ḏālika bayyantu wajha ḍaʿfihi wa iḫtilālihi.”
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2) Al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya fī al-Abḥāṯ ar-Raḍawiyya fī Iʿrāb Baʿḍ al-Āy al-Qurʾāniyya by Qinalizāde Ali Çelebi
The second muḥākama work is from the sixteenth century and authored by the Ottoman scholar and judge ʿAlā ad-Dīn ʿAlī b. Amr-illah (d. 979/1572), who is known in the Ottoman sources as Qinalizāde Ali Çelebi and in Arabic sources as Abū al-Ḥinnāʾ.38 Born in the city of Isparta in 1510 and raised in Istanbul, he had an illustrious academic and legal career: after working as a madrasa professor in various Anatolian cities, he served as a qāḍī in Damascus, Cairo, Aleppo, Bursa, and Istanbul, finally becoming a chief judge in the military (kazasker).39 Qinalizāde was one of the leading scholars of his time in the Ottoman Empire, and his works span a diverse array of disciplines. His most famous work is Aḫlāq-i ʿAlāʾī, a very popular Turkish book on ethics. An avid historian and chronicler, he wrote a biographical dictionary of Ḥanafī jurists (Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanafiyya), in addition to other titles in jurisprudence, hadīth, math, philosophy, and poetry.40 Qinalizāde also cultivated a lively interest in tafsīr; he wrote glosses on the two works of Qurʾānic exegesis most favored by the Ottoman scholarly establishment, namely al-Kaššāf and Anwār at-Tanzīl. The adjudication epistle that is the subject of this study, al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya, is one of the more famous of his glosses, and the series of events that resulted in its composition are well-documented.
Kātib Çelebi relates the story of how Qinalizāde came to write this muḥākama, and he betrays a somewhat mysterious preoccupation with it, since he repeats the same story in slightly different wording on at least three different occasions in Kašf aẓ-Ẓunūn.41 According to this account, when Qinalizāde was the judge of Damascus, he attended a lecture by the exegete Badr ad-Dīn al-Ġazzī (d. 984/1577) at the Umayyad Mosque, where al-Ġazzī was teaching from his own versified tafsīr. At some point al-Ġazzī remarked that most of the objections directed by the grammarian Šihāb ad-Dīn al-Ḥalabī (d. 756/1355), also known as
38 H̱ayr ad-Dīn az-Ziriklī, Al-Aʿlām Qāmūs Tarājim li-Ašhar ar-Rijāl wa an-Nisāʾ min al-ʿArab wa al-Mustaʿribīn wa al-Mustašriqīn (Beirut: Dār al-ʿIlm li al-Malāyīn, n.d.), 4:265.
39 İsmail Hakkı Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Devletinin İlmiye Teşkilâtı (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1984), 152.
40 Hasan Aksoy, “Kınalızâde Ali Efendi,” İslâm Ansiklopedisi (Ankara: Türkiye Diyanet Vakfı, 2002), http://www.islamansiklopedisi.info/; Uzunçarşılı, Osmanlı Devletinin İlmiye Teşkilâtı, 234.
41 Kātib Çelebi, Kašf aẓ-Ẓunūn, 1:122-23, 223, 730-31.
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as-Samīn, against his teacher Abū Ḥayyān al-Ġarnaṭī (d. 745/1344) regarding the parsing of some Qur’an verses were groundless (ġayr wārid). Qinalizāde disagreed with this statement and interrupted the class, entering into a discussion with al-Ġazzī. This exchange apparently remained inconclusive because soon after the incident, Qinalizāde sent a letter to al-Ġazzī and demanded to know why he thought as-Samīn was off the mark. Al-Ġazzī duly penned an epistle in which he extracted ten points of disagreement between Abū Ḥayyān and his student and explained why he sides with the teacher.42 In response, Qinalizāde wrote this epistle to defend the battered as-Samīn and refute al-Ġazzī’s arguments. Kātib Çelebi claims that the scholars of Damascus preferred Qinalizāde’s work over al-Ġazzī’s and encouraged their students to read it. If this was indeed the case, it must have been a great honor for Qinalizāde, since Badr ad-Dīn al-Ġazzī was the leading Qur’an commentator of Ottoman Syria and was later held to be the most important figure of tafsīr in the 7th century A.H.43 Some modern scholars echo Kātib Çelebi’s sentiments in this regard: Ibrāhīm Rufayda calls al-Ġazzī’s epistle a strange piece of writing that does not exhibit much deep thinking on al-Ġazzī’s part, while he describes Qinalizāde’s work as “a delightful epistle” that is a commendable example of calm and serious debate.44
Delightful as it may be, Qinalizāde’s muḥākama is also the most complex and multi-layered one of the three works, featuring the largest cast of characters. It essentially joins a long line of debate about az-Zamaḫšarī’s parsing of certain Qur’an verses, and in it Qinalizāde weighs the opinions of the famous fourteenth century grammarian and exegete Abū Ḥayyān al-Ġarnaṭī against those of his student Šihāb ad-Dīn al-Ḥalabī (known as as-Samīn). The long disputation about the value and relevance of az-Zamaḫšarī’s grammatical judgments on Qur’anic verses began when Abū Ḥayyān launched a serious critique against az-Zamaḫšarī in his seminal Qur’an commentary al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ. A masterful work of philological exegesis that deals with grammar in all its shades, al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ fully engages with az-Zamaḫšarī (and to a lesser extent, his contemporary Ibn ʿAṭiyya al-Andalusī (d. 541/1147)) and takes issue with the application of grammatical principles on Qur’an verses in al-Kaššāf.45
42 This epistle is called Ad-Durr aṯ-Ṯamīn fī al-Munāqaša bayna Abī Ḥayyān wa as-Samīn.
43 Saleh, “The Gloss as Intellectual History,” 239–40.
44 Rufayda, An-Naḥw wa Kutub at-Tafsīr, 956–57.
45 Rufayda, 908–9, 945–46; Muḥammad Ḥasan aḏ-Ḏahabī, At-Tafsīr wa al-Mufassirūn (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Ḥadīṯa, 1961), 1:318.
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These objections were so scathing and controversial that Abū Ḥayyān’s student as-Samīn felt the need to defend az-Zamaḫšarī and wrote Ad-Durr al-Maṣūn fī ʿUlūm al-Kitāb al-Maknūn, which served both as a gloss on al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ and a polemic against his teacher.46 This altercation jumpstarted one of the major strands in the philological reception of al-Kaššāf, which was centered around Abū Ḥayyān and his students in Cairo and which would have a long afterlife in the coming centuries.47 This thread was picked up once more when al-Ġazzī brought up the subject in a public lecture in Damascus and Qinalizāde heard him side with Abū Ḥayyān. In his response al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya, the Ottoman judge picks out thirteen Qur’anic verses and concerns himself with the answers that as-Samīn gives to some of the conclusions reached by Abū Ḥayyān on parts of the passages in al-Kaššāf that deal with these particular verses, calling his work “a piece of refutation and settlement”.48
Structurally, al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya has much in common with the other two muḥākamāt, sharing the essential structural trait of “qāla … qultu …”. It consists of a prologue, an introduction, a main body of text that is divided into thirteen parts, and a conclusion. Each part starts with the Qur’anic verse in question, and this is followed by the relevant quote from al-Kaššāf, always introduced with the phrase “qāla ṣāḥibu ‘l-Kaššāf…” Qinalizāde then adduces Abū Ḥayyān’s objections (qāla Abū Ḥayyān…) and as-Samīn’s answers (qāla as-Samīn…), along with a host of quotes from a vast array of scholars. The opponent Badr ad-Dīn al-Ġazzī is never mentioned by name and is often hidden behind laudatory epithets; when Qinalizāde quotes him, it is preceded by the phrase “qāla ‘l-fāḍilu ‘l-muḥākimu …”49 The author’s own voice emerges from among these nuggets of scholarly opinion with a “qultu”; in contrast to the other two documents, this does not always come at the very end but
46 Kātib Çelebi, Kašf aẓ-Ẓunūn ʿan Asāmī al-Kutub wa al-Funūn, ed. Şerefettin Yaltkaya and Kilisli Rifat Bilge, vol. 1 (Ankara: Milli Eğitim Basımevi, 1971), 122; Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur (Leiden: Brill, 1943), Supp. II: 137. Another student of Abū Ḥayyān, Tāj ad-Dīn b. Maktūm (d. 749/1348), extracted from his teacher’s tafsīr all the discussions about az-Zamaḫšarī and Ibn ʿAṭiyya and collected them under the title Ad-Durr al-Laqīṭ min al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ. As opposed to his fellow student as-Samīn, he agrees with his teacher on most of the issues: Rufayda, An-Naḥw wa Kutub at-Tafsīr, 955.
47 Saleh, “The Gloss as Intellectual History,” 248.
48 Qinalizāde, Al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya fī al-Abḥāṯ ar-Raḍawiyya fī Iʿrāb Baʿḍ al-Āy al-Qurʾāniyya, fol. 2v, Esad Efendi 3556. We can get an idea about the stunning endurance and sustainability of the debate from the fact that a certain Ibn al-Fāriḍī wrote a rebuttal to Qinalizāde and titled it Nukat fī-mā Waqaʿa bayna al-Qāḍī ʿAlī Jalabī wa Abī aš-Šayḫ Raḍī ad-Dīn: Brockelmann, GAL, Supp. II: 644.
49 Qinalizāde’s oblique references to al-Ġazzī throughout the muḥākama could have posed a problem to the reader, but a marginal note on the manuscript copy identifies this anonymous character from the very beginning as “Raḍī ad-Dīn, scholar from Damascus”: Qinalizāde, Al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya, 2r.
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appears sporadically. What most distinguishes Qinalizāde’s epistle from its counterparts, however, is its long introduction, which provides a concise and elegant history of the reception of al-Kaššāf. W. Saleh, who has analyzed this passage extensively in his article on the glosses of al-Kaššāf, describes it as a piece of “first-rate intellectual history” that exhibits the profound knowledge and incisive mind of its author.50 It introduces all the scholars involved in the debate, gives a perceptive history of the most important glosses written on the Kaššāf, and lays the groundwork for his epistle by offering a detailed account of the scholarly drama played out between Abū Ḥayyān and his students. While I intend to direct most of my attention to the main body of the text where Qinalizāde carries out his adjudication, I will consult this introduction on occasion to shed some light on the author’s motives and understand the framework within which he operates.
3) Al-Muḥākamāt bayna Abī Ḥayyān wa Ibn ʿAṭiyya wa az-Zamaḫšarī: Iʿtirāḍāt Abī Ḥayyān al-Andalusī Ṣāḥib Tafsīr "al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ" ʿalā al-Imāmayn Ibn ʿAṭiyya wa az-Zamaḫšarī fī Tafsīrayhimā by Yaḥyā aš-Šāwī
The author of the third work is Abū Zakariyyā Yaḥyā b. Muḥammad an-Nāʾilī aš-Šāwī (d. 1096/1685), who was a North African theologian and jurist. Born in the Algerian city of Miliana and raised in Algiers, he left his home country in 1663 in order to perform the pilgrimage and thereafter settled in Cairo, where he gave lessons in kalām, Mālikī law, grammar, and logic at al-Azhar.51 According to Khaled El-Rouayheb, Yaḥyā aš-Šāwī belongs to a group of Maghribi scholars who were especially strong in logic and kalām, and whose steady migration to the East in the course of the seventeenth century stimulated the study of the rational disciplines in Cairo.52 A staunch Ašʿarī in his theological views, aš-Šāwī left his mark in the intellectual history of the period with a vicious altercation he had with some leading Medinan mystics about the historicity of the accounts regarding the Satanic Verses.53
50 Saleh, “The Gloss as Intellectual History,” 241.
51 Muḥammad al-Amīn Muḥibbī, Ḫulāṣat al-Aṯar fī Aʿyān al-Qarn al-Ḥādī ʿAšar, (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-Wahbiyya, 1867), 4:486.
52 Khaled El-Rouayheb, Islamic Intellectual History in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 131, 153.
53 El-Rouayheb, 159, 351.
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His contemporary the biographer al-Muḥibbī (d. 1111/1699) gushes with praise for Yaḥyā aš-Šāwī: he was “one of the signs of God in Qur’anic exegesis,” an absolute authority in law, a master in logic, uṣūl, and grammar, and a very competent teacher of semantics and rhetoric.54 Yaḥyā aš-Šāwī also figures in the sources with his travel(s) to Constantinople. In a story related by the jurist Ibn Sūda al-Fāsī (d. 1209/1795) and quoted in the biographical dictionary of al-Kattānī, the Ottoman sultan writes to the Egyptians asking for an able scholar that could prove a match for an overconfident man of letters he had at his court, who was boasting that he was undefeatable. The Cairenes decide to send Yaḥyā aš-Šāwī, who was well-known among them for his memory and intelligence, adding as an aside that in the case of defeat, they could easily disown him as a non-Cairene.55 The historical incident lying under this story, albeit less colorful, is the trip that Yaḥyā aš-Šāwī took to Istanbul (some time between 1664 and 1666) in order to participate in the scholarly gatherings at the court of the Ottoman sultan Mehmed IV (r. 1648-1687 AD).56 Judging from a very brief entry in Brockelmann that lists only two of his works and a general absence from reference literature, it is fair to conclude that Yaḥyā aš-Šāwī became a relatively obscure name later on, though the attention that El-Rouayheb lavishes on him is certainly a refreshing exception.57 In addition to works in theology, he wrote a commentary on the Tashīl of Ibn Mālik (d. 672/1274) and a short manual on the principles of grammar (uṣūl an-naḥw).58
The work by Yaḥyā aš-Šāwī that is the subject of this study, namely his Muḥākamāt bayna Abī Ḥayyān wa Ibn ʿAṭiyya wa az-Zamaḫšarī, does not figure prominently in the bibliographic literature and receives only a passing glance from modern scholars.59 However, this apparent lack of interest should be taken with a grain of salt, since it also happens to be the only one among the three muḥākamāt that has been published, despite being the lengthiest.60 Like Ibn bint al-ʿIrāqī’s muḥākamā, this work covers the entire span of the
54 Muḥibbī, Ḫulāṣat al-Aṯar, 4:486.
55 ʿAbd al-Ḥayy Al-Kattānī, Fihris al-Fahāris wa al-Aṯbāt wa Muʿjam al-Maʿājim wa al-Mašyaḫāt wa al-Musalsalāt, ed. Iḥsān ʿAbbās (Beirut: Dār al-Ġarb al-Islāmī, 1982), 2:1133.
56 El-Rouayheb, Islamic Intellectual History, 158.
57 Brockelmann, GAL, Supp. II: 701.
58 Muḥibbī, Ḫulāṣat al-Aṯar, 4:488; El-Rouayheb, Islamic Intellectual History, 160.
59 Aḏ-Ḏahabī, At-Tafsīr wa al-Mufassirūn, 1:320; Rufayda, An-Naḥw wa Kutub at-Tafsīr, 946.
60 Abū Zakariyyā Yaḥyā Aš-Šāwī, Al-Muḥākamāt bayna Abī Ḥayyān wa Ibn ʿAṭiyya wa az-Zamaḫšarī: Iʿtirāḍāt Abī Ḥayyān al-Andalusī Ṣāḥib Tafsīr “al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ” ʿalā al-Imāmayn Ibn ʿAṭiyya wa az-Zamaḫšarī fī Tafsīrayhimā, ed. Muḥammad ʿUṯmān (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2009).
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Qur’anic text and is divided according to sūra headings. Verse selection, like in the other two works, appears to be random and most likely reflects the author’s own interests. The parties subject to adjudication are three in number, and each one is allotted a code letter: ز for az-Zamaḫšarī, ح for Abū Ḥayyān, ع for Ibn ʿAṭiyya, and an additional ت for the author’s own interpolations. In the extremely short introductory note, aš-Šāwī states that his intention in this book is to collect Abū Ḥayyān’s criticisms against az-Zamaḫšarī and Ibn ʿAṭiyya and to evaluate these objections according to their likelihood.61 When it comes to ordering the layers of the debate, the work more closely resembles Qinalizāde’s epistle; while az-Zamaḫšarī tends to come first, the other authorities are quoted in a mixed order, and aš-Šāwī’s opinion appears sporadically. A single verse sometimes generates various cycles of discussion. The text thus maintains a palpable atmosphere of back-and-forth debate and gives the reader the illusion that instead of being separated by centuries, all these scholars are sitting in a room together and having a lively debate.
One of the most significant aspects of aš-Šāwī’s Muḥākamāt is that it brings Ibn ʿAṭiyya into the picture and highlights his special connection to az-Zamaḫšarī. Ibn ʿAṭiyya al-Ġarnaṭī was an Andulusian judge and exegete, who wrote a voluminous Qur’an commentary called Al-Muḥarrir al-Wajīz fī Tafsīr al-Kitāb al-ʿAzīz, which has a strong philological bent.62 That there is a remarkable connection between Ibn ʿAṭiyya and az-Zamaḫšarī is taken for granted by medieval scholars, who often categorize them together, compare their merits, and state their preference.63 Similarly, the modern scholar Ibn ʿĀšūr considers Ibn ʿAṭiyya to be the North African counterpart of az-Zamaḫšarī, emphasizing their common philological and literary method and describing them as the two luminaries who independently yet simultaneously walked through the gate opened by the epoch-making scholar al-Jurjānī (d. 471/1078).64 In his Muḥākamāt, aš-Šāwī makes this connection very clear: az-Zamaḫšarī and Ibn ʿAṭiyya form a single front and distinctly complement each other, while Abū Ḥayyān always carries his own separate banner.
61 Aš-Šāwī, I:11.
62 Aḏ-Ḏahabī, At-Tafsīr wa al-Mufassirūn, 1:238–42.
63 Two examples are Abū Ḥayyān and Ibn Taymiyya, see: Aḏ-Ḏahabī, 1:230, 241.
64 Ibn ʿĀšūr, At-Tafsīr wa Rijāluh, 1:93, 81. W. Saleh considers this another sign of this Tunisian author’s impressive acumen and opines that modern tafsīr studies in the West, which pays no attention to figures like Ibn ʿAṭiyya in its narrative, is necessarily far from achieving similar levels of insight: Saleh, “Marginalia and Peripheries,” 303.
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These three muḥākama texts, written in the thirteenth, sixteenth, and the seventeenth centuries respectively, constitute the main source material for this thesis. They serve as the basis upon which I will try to establish a preliminary understanding of the muḥākama as a sub-genre of tafsīr glosses.
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CHAPTER 2
WIELDING THE DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD:
THE ROLE OF GRAMMAR IN THE MUḤĀKAMĀT
“The end result is known in advance; what the exegete is
looking for is the best way to get there.”
Tzvetan Todorov, Symbolism and Interpretation*
The expectation brought about by a tafsīr text is reasonably one of diversity: since the Qur’an is a multifaceted source, an exegetical treatment of it has to include elements from a variety of disciplines, including philology, ethics, law, theology, and philosophy. Even a thematic tafsīr that focuses exclusively on one of these aspects cannot function without recourse to other fields of inquiry. This expectation of interdisciplinarity, however, does not hold for the glosses we have at hand. This is in keeping with the nature of the gloss; since it is a derivative genre that can afford to pick and choose, it can also have the luxury of having a single focus. In the case of the muḥākamāt that are the subject of this study, the single-minded preoccupation is with philology in general, and grammar in particular. Even though the authors could choose to arbitrate between a variety of theological, legal or philosophical issues generated by endless exegetical possibilities, the lion’s share of their efforts is taken up by linguistic considerations.
When we extract the individual cases of adjudication and determine their content, we see that a tiny minority is concerned with non-grammatical or non-semantic issues. Some of these deal with historical context: Yaḥyā aš-Šāwī, for instance, discusses whether the word kitāb refers to the Torah or some other book, and elsewhere he establishes the identity of the characters mentioned in Sūra 96.65 Lexicography also belongs in the category of the neglected disciplines, even though it is philological in nature and very much part of tafsīr. Lexicographic remarks in all three muḥākamāt can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and they tend to be cursory comments that clarify a grammatical point, such as Qinalizāde’s
* Tzvetan Todorov, Symbolism and Interpretation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), 110.
65 Aš-Šāwī, Muḥākamāt, II:56, 349.
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discussion about whether the verb da-ra-sa is transitive or intransitive, or aš-Šāwī’s speculations about whether the phrase a-raʾayta can be synonymous with a-ʿarafta.66 Theology has an undeniable presence in the earliest muḥākamā, but it disappears from the later muḥākamāt except for a handful of remarks, such as the discussion in aš-Šāwī of Abraham’s prayer for his unbelieving father.67 Finally and most surprisingly, these muḥākamāt have very little to say on the method of scriptural interpretation, other than passing remarks about, for example, the usability of a particular hadith to prove a point. The one major exception to this comes from Qinalizāde, who maintains that the Qur’an may be interpreted using reason as long as the exegete “speaks by way of probability and his interpretation is in conformity with the rules of the Arabic language and the regulations of the Islamic law”.68 With these exceptions aside, the muḥākamā texts that are the subject of this study are predominantly devoted to grammatical and semantic discussions.
It may reasonably be argued that this is an expected outcome, since all three texts have al-Kaššāf, which is a deeply philological commentary, as their base. Even when this caveat is added, however, the situation remains remarkable. Al-Kaššāf offers plenty of opportunities to engage in discourses other than philology, but these stones are left unturned by the muḥākama authors. The impression they give is that of a relentless fixation with grammar and rhetoric, and their works are thoroughly steeped in linguistic scrutiny. This philological dominance in the muḥākamāt comes into being mainly through two mechanisms: firstly, the disagreements chosen for arbitration have a predominantly linguistic character, and secondly, issues that seem to be legal or theological at first glance swiftly evolve into linguistic riddles that can only be solved through rigorous grammatical reasoning. While the first circumstance is mostly due to the reception history of al-Kaššāf, the second is a manifestation of the central place language holds in the culture of medieval Islam.
66 Qinalizāde, Al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya, 29r-30v; Aš-Šāwī, Muḥākamāt, II:362.
67 Aš-Šāwī, Muḥākamāt, I:446.
68 Qinalizāde, Al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya, 22r: "ammā iḏā qāla ʿalā sabili 'l-iḥtimāli maʿa muwāfaqati tafsīrihi li-qawāʿidi 'l-ʿarabiyyati wa aḥkāmi 'š-šarīʿati fa-lā ḥarajun…".
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Background: Philology and the Study of the Qur’an
At first glance, the intense linguistic preoccupation found in the muḥākama texts can be traced to the enduring importance and relevance of the philological disciplines in the cultural landscape of Islam before the modern period. In this intellectual structure, ʿArabiyya was much more than a language; it embodied an ideal that contained “the self-image of the Arabic-Islamic civilization” and therefore enjoyed colossal prestige.69 Thomas Bauer in fact maintains that the rhetorical and linguistic consciousness in the Islamic world was so wide in its scope and so advanced in its level that it can presumably be seen as a one-time occurrence in world history.70 With language enjoying such enormous importance, grammar also assumed a central position, forming what Adrian Gully calls a “grammatical textual culture”.71 Grammar acted as the focal point of this culture, exercising a lasting social and intellectual influence despite being an auxiliary discipline.72 Because grammar was the prerequisite for any kind of learning and knowledge production, it became a social marker distinguishing the educated from the vulgar and gave its practitioners, namely grammarians, a somewhat unexpected authority and power.
The dominant role that grammatical analysis plays in the exegetical muḥākama texts can also be explained by the special relationship between Arabic philology and tafsīr. Since the Qur’an is a linguistic phenomenon that expresses meanings through linguistic conventions, the discipline that devotes itself to its interpretation necessarily developed a very close association with philology, especially grammar. Muslim scholars even maintain that the reason behind the invention of grammar (waḍʾ an-naḥw) was to preserve the sacred text by establishing its case endings, formalizing the language, and preventing incorrect
69 Beatrice Gruendler, “Early Arabic Philologists: Poetry’s Friends or Foes?” in World Philology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015), 96.
70 Thomas Bauer, “Arabische Kultur,” in Rhetorik: Begriff - Geschichte - Internationalität, ed. Gert Ueding (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2005), 299.
71 Adrian Gully, “Two of a Kind?: Ibn Hišām al-Anṣārī on naḥw and Ibn al-Aṯīr on balāġa” in Grammar as a Window Onto Arabic Humanism: A Collection of Articles in Honour of Michael G. Carter, ed. Lutz Edzard and Janet Watson (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006), 86.
72 Kees Versteegh, “A Sociological View of the Arabic Grammatical Tradition: Grammarians and Their Professions,” in Studia Linguistica et Orientalia Memoriae Haim Blanc Dedicata, ed. Paul Wexler, Alexander Borg, and Sasson Somekh (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1989), 291; Georges Bohas, Jean-Patrick Guillaume, and Djamel-Eddine Kouloughli, The Arabic Linguistic Tradition, Georgetown Classics in Arabic Language and Linguistics (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2006), 49.
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usage (laḥn).73 The philological interpretation of the Qur’an started with works carrying such titles as Majāz al-Qurʾān, Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān, or Maʿānī al-Qurʾān, the most famous of them being Abū ʿUbayda’s (d. 209/824) Majāz al-Qurʾān.74 The bond between tafsīr and philology further solidified when the freshly-formalized discipline of rhetoric (balāġa) was put to the service of interpreting the Scripture. Parallel to this, grammar continued to reign supreme in the works of iʿrāb al-Qurʾān, which developed into an independent genre and maintained a steady level of popularity. Even well into the fourteenth century, the grammarian Ibn Hišām (d. 761/1360) described iʿrāb (syntactic parsing) as the principal key to understanding Scripture and the prophetic traditions.75
Indeed, grammar became one of the most crucial tools of the interpretative toolkit, and arguments with a grammatical bent came to carry a lot of weight in disagreements.76 Grammarians acted as the “front line troops of exegesis” because grammar had the potential to single-handedly dictate outcomes in the exegetical process.77 When we consider that even legal issues were mostly resolved based on linguistic nuances, the predominance of grammar in such a linguistically-oriented pursuit as exegesis becomes self-evident.78 Naturally, this potential authority to steer the interpretative process and settle disputes gave the grammarians an overbearing habit of policing and controlling, a phenomenon that can also be observed, for example, in their power struggles with poets in the early days of literary criticism.79 And, just as grammarians aroused the ire of poets in the ninth century and provoked a declaration of independence, there was soon a palpable tension between philologists and exegetes. The latter party began to feel threatened and alarmed: not only did the philologists have at their disposal the “foundational intellectual paradigm of medieval Islam”, but they also used this prestigious tool to produce opinions that were
73 Rufayda, An-Naḥw wa Kutub at-Tafsīr, 33.
74 Bruce Fudge, Qurʾānic Hermeneutics: Al-Ṭabrisī and the Craft of Commentary (London: Routledge, 2011), 10; Rufayda, An-Naḥw wa Kutub at-Tafsīr, 149.
75 Gully, “Two of a Kind?: Ibn Hišām Al-Anṣārī on naḥw and Ibn Al-Aṯīr on balāġa,” 88.
76 Andrew Rippin, “Tafsīr,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, 2012.
77 Michael G. Carter, “Language Control As People Control in Medieval Islam: The Aims of Grammarians in Their Cultural Context,” Al-Abḥāṯ, no. 31 (1983): 79.
78 Adrian Gully, Grammar and Semantics in Medieval Arabic: A Study of Ibn-Hisham’s “Mughni l-Labib” (Surrey: Curzon Press, 1995), 51.
79 Gruendler, “Early Arabic Philologists: Poetry’s Friends or Foes?”, 112.
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philologically sound but doctrinally dubious.80 Philology being extremely vital to the hermeneutical process, how was an exegete to control this tool that had a will of its own?
The history of Muslim exegesis tells us that the answer to this question was to rein in philology and subordinate it unconditionally to the doctrinal principles of exegesis, while making maximum possible use of its tools.81 Philological free-thinking could put a spoke in the wheel of hermeneutical coherence and continuity, threatening the “social and religious edifice that is supposed to rest on the Holy Book”.82 Thus, philology in all its forms is put to the service of doctrine as formed by tradition. Ibn al-Munayyir, for example, states in his gloss on al-Kaššāf that the discipline of variant readings (qiraʾāt) is not verified or falsified by the rules of Arabic, but it is the grammatical rules that are verified or falsified by the traditional readings.83 Similarly, lexicography is to be subordinated to the aims of Qur’anic exegesis.84 In his study of the historian and exegete Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), Claude Gilliot explains the strategy used by the exegete in reconciling grammar with exegesis: when philology and the exegetical tradition clash, Ṭabarī is seen to side with the latter. When they are in relative harmony, grammar is employed as a confirmer of tradition.85 Even exegetes who are professional grammarians voice similar opinions, at least in theory: Abū Ḥayyān, for instance, states in the introduction to his al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ that the science of exegesis cannot be allowed to rest exclusively on grammar.86 A brief foray into relevant research in medieval exegesis reveals that the practice of subordinating grammar to exterior overarching concerns, be it theological or polemical, is not an exclusive property of the Islamic exegetical tradition, but can be observed, for instance, in Jewish exegesis. In an article that discusses the parallel established by the medieval Andalusian exegete Abraham b. Ezra (d. 1164 AD)
80 Walid Saleh, “Preliminary Remarks on the Historiography of Tafsīr in Arabic: A History of the Book Approach,” Journal of Qur’anic Studies, 2010, 19.
81 Saleh, The Formation of the Classical Tafsīr Tradition, 98; Cornelia Schöck, Koranexegese, Grammatik und Logik: Zum Verhältnis von Arabischer und Aristotelischer Urteils-, Konsequenz- und Schlusslehre (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 423, 437.
82 Claude Gilliot, Exégèse, langue, et théologie en Islam: l’exégèse coranique de Tabari (m. 311/923) (Paris: Vrin, 1990), 186.
83 Quoted in: Ramzi Baalbaki, “The Treatment of Qira’at by the Second and Third Century Grammarians,” Zeitschrift Für Arabische Linguistik, no. 15 (1985): 16.
84 Saleh, The Formation of the Classical Tafsīr Tradition, 130.
85 Gilliot, Exégèse, langue, et théologie en Islam, 202.
86 Muḥammad b. Yūsuf Abū Ḥayyān al-Andalusī, Tafsīr al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, ed. ʿĀdil Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Mawjūd (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1983), I:9.
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between the Biblical vav and the Arabic particle fāʾ, the authors conclude that, on occasion, the exegete prioritized polemical and exegetical concerns over grammatical accuracy and consciously violated the rules of Arabic grammar, in both its Classical and Judeo-Arabic form.87
The Case of the Muḥākamāt: Grammatical Semantics
Doctrine and exegetical tradition may have decisively asserted their authority over grammar, but this did not mean a complete liquidation of formal grammar as a force to be reckoned with. Indeed, the muḥākama texts show that in the post-classical period, grammar remained as relevant and prestigious as ever. More importantly, they indicate that the tension between doctrine and grammar, which played out in the classical period, evolved into a tension between grammar and balāġa (rhetoric/semantics) in the later period, which is openly expressed by the muḥākama authors in terms of “iʿrāb vs. maʿnā” and “naḥw vs. balāġa”. Based on the evidence from the muḥākamāt, this study argues that balāġa became the philological vessel that was flexible enough to contain doctrine in all its difficult shapes, and it came to be vastly favored by exegetes for its ability to solve problems of exegesis and broaden the hermeneutical field of maneuver. The muḥākama authors apply grammatical semantics to exegetical disagreements by using established grammatical terms, such as taʿalluq, taqdīr, ʿāmil, ḥaml, and maḥall, but they employ them within the framework of a rhetorical paradigm and load them with additional content. Their particular treatment of exegetical material in light of grammatical semantics gives clues about the direction and priorities of philological practices in the post-classical period.
Before embarking on an analysis of the grammatical elements in the muḥākamāt, it should be stated at the outset that it is the later two texts, namely Qinalizāde’s al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya and Yaḥyā aš-Šāwī’s Muḥākamāt bayna Abī Ḥayyān wa Ibn ʿAṭiyya wa az-Zamaḫšarī that contain the great majority of systematic grammatical discussions and self-consciously apply the grammatical semantics approach. The earliest text, Kitāb al-Inṣāf by Ibn bint al-
87 Miriam Goldstein and Itamar Kislev, “Abraham b. Ezra’s ‘Spirantized Peh in the Arabic Language’: The Rules of Grammar versus the Requirements of Exegesis and Polemic,” Journal Of Jewish Studies 67, no. 1 (2016): 135–156.
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ʿIrāqī, does consist largely of linguistic discussions, but they tend to be too brief and scattered to allow a sustained reading and lack the purposeful theoretical framework that the later texts have. That’s why the greatest bulk of the examples in this chapter will stem from the later two muḥākamāt.
The absence of a developed contention between grammar and rhetoric in the earliest muḥākama is perhaps due to the fact that it predates Abū Ḥayyān, for it seems that it is he who provides the crucial spark that sets the whole issue on fire. In the stand-off between him and az-Zamaḫšarī (and to a lesser extent Ibn ʿAṭiyya), Abū Ḥayyān represents a stricter and more formal school of grammatical thinking. As such, the first point of contention that the arbitrators have to resolve is a bid for authority: Abū Ḥayyān accuses az-Zamaḫšarī and his admirers of indifference towards grammarians and disregard for the grammatical edifice that was so painstakingly built. In one instance, for example, he states that a reconstruction (taqdīr) offered by az-Zamaḫšarī is impermissible, and that it constitutes a case of indifference towards the rules that the grammarians have set down.88 He often justifies his objections simply by stating that an opinion of az-Zamaḫšarī’s cannot be permitted because mainstream schools of grammar discredit it.89 In the introduction to his work, the arbitrator Qinalizāde provides the necessary contextual background and shows the extent to which Abū Ḥayyān disliked the liberties az-Zamaḫšarī took with grammar. He quotes one of Abū Ḥayyān’s students, Ibn Maktūm, who asked his teacher one day what he thought of az-Zamaḫšarī and received the following answer:
Our colleagues say that Zamaḫšarī is no real grammarian (naḥwī). They do not consult him or heed his objections on grammatically controversial points. And they hold [his] book Mufaṣṣal in small regard; one does not preoccupy oneself with it, nor does one look at it except to point out its faults and to depreciate it.90
88 Qinalizāde, Al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya, 18v: "taqdīru 'z-Zamaḫšarī ġayru sāʾiġun wa ḏuhūlun ʿani 'l-qāʿidati 'llatī ḏakarūhā”.
89 Qinalizāde, Al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya, 27r: “wa huwa lā yajūzu ʿalā ‘ṣ-ṣaḥīḥi min maḏāhibi ‘n-naḥwiyyīn”.
90 Qinalizāde, Al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya, 10v–10r: "Aṣḥābunā yaqūlūna anna 'z-Zamaḫšarī ġayru naḥwiyyun wa lā yantahūna ilayhi wa lā ilā aḫlāfihi fī 'l-mawāḍiʿi 'llatī ḫālafa fīhā 'n-naḥwiyyūna wa Kitābu 'l-Mufaṣṣal ʿindahum muḥtaqarun lā yuštaġalu bihi wa lā yunẓaru fīhi illā ʿalā wajhi 'n-naqḍi lahu wa 'l-ḥaṭṭi ʿalayhi".
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Qinalizāde also explains that Abū Ḥayyān disagreed with the rhetoricians on strong terms and did not consider their method proper: he believed that their discourse was built on delusional ideas and that their investigations were imperfect.91
Another crime that rhetoricians commit, in Abū Ḥayyān’s view, is their departure from the categories of the linguistic school system, most commonly expressed in the Basrans vs. Kufans binary. According to I. Rufayda, Abū Ḥayyān subscribes to the Basran school, but he mainly expects a scholar to stick to the methodology of either one of these schools and not step outside of this dual framework.92 This is of course exactly what az-Zamaḫšarī fails to do. While Abū Ḥayyān tweezes out case after case of school non-conformity from az-Zamaḫšarī and expects an outcry, our arbitrator Qinalizāde dismisses his outrage quite curtly: “One need not attend too much to Abū Ḥayyān’s accusation that az-Zamaḫšarī’s position is in conflict with the consensus reached by both the Basran and the Kufan schools; this vein of attack directed by Abū Ḥayyān to the Kaššāf is very abundant.”93 It is not that there are good reasons to drill holes in the wall that separates the two schools; it is rather that the whole system of schools has become irrelevant. This diagnosis by Qinalizāde is supported by Gully’s view that in the field of grammar, it is preferable to speak in terms of personalities and their views rather than any particular school after the 6th/13th century.94 The scandalized Abū Ḥayyān is a familiar figure if one is versed in the history of Arabic grammar: like many of his colleagues in the past, he is outraged by the liberties that others take with texts under the guise of a rival philological discipline, and he struggles hard to exert some control. However, his grammatical crusade is rejected quite decisively by the muḥākama authors, who generally rule against him, and his call for dutiful adherence to strict formal grammar falls on deaf ears.
The most intense disagreements in the muḥākamāt take place between the grammatically-minded and the semantically-minded when the same construct is understood from the perspective of formal grammar by one party and from that of rhetoric by the other. The terminology that the muḥākama authors use to denote these two orientations are iʿrāb
91 Qinalizāde, Al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya, 10r.
92 Rufayda, An-Naḥw wa Kutub at-Tafsīr, 954.
93 Qinalizāde, Al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya, 25v: "wa qawluhu hāḏā muḫālifun li-ijmāʿi 'l-baṣriyyīna wa 'l-kūfiyyīna fa-lā yultafatu ilayhi wa iʿtirāḍātu Abī Ḥayyān ʿalā muḫālafati 'l-Kaššāf min hāḏā 'l-wajhi kaṯīrun".
94 Gully, Grammar and Semantics in Medieval Arabic, 75.
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for formal grammar and maʿnā for semantics. Defined as “the literal or virtual variation of word endings due to the different agents acting on the word”, and denoting the concepts of inflection, syntax, and syntactical parsing, iʿrāb is a key term in Arabic philology.95 Even though the history and function of the term does not allow it to be set completely at odds with maʿnā, the muḥākamāt nevertheless use the concept of iʿrāb to denote the strict grammatical method that is often intolerant of semantic readings.
This dichotomy between grammar and rhetoric naturally predates the Abū Ḥayyān-Zamaḫšarī altercation, and the muḥākama authors acknowledge the earlier episodes of the debate when necessary. One such case occurs in the interpretation of the basmala. Az-Zamaḫšarī says that the agent (ʿāmil) governing the basmala, in this case a hidden verb, should be post-posited while reconstructing the sentence, since it will bestow the necessary emphasis and specification on the governed unit (maʿmūl).96 Abū Ḥayyān disagrees and quotes Sībawayhi (d. 180/796), who maintains (though specifically for the case of subject and object) that pre- or post-positing (taqdīm wa taʾḫīr) do not create a great difference and constitute equally good Arabic. For Abū Ḥayyān, this principle holds for the case at hand as well, which is one of predication, and he claims there is not much more to the phenomenon of taqdīm and taʾḫīr than a certain slight interest and attention (ihtimām wa ʿināya) directed towards the pre-posited element. This difference of opinion between az-Zamaḫšarī and Abū Ḥayyān is almost an exact echo of the one between ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī and Sībawayhi, with the order of objection reversed. The same phrase from Sībawayhi that Abū Ḥayyān uses had been picked up by al-Jurjānī, who used it as a base to attack grammarians who refuse to broaden the semantic possibilities inherent in the operation of taqdīm and taʾḫīr: “It has taken root in people’s minds [while explaining this phenomenon] that it is enough to say: ‘it has been pre-posited due to ʿināya …’ without asking: where does this ʿināya come from? And why is it important?”97 The issue of pre- and post-positing indeed constitutes one of the points of juxtaposition between Sībawayhi and al-Jurjānī, where the weight of their emphasis
95 ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Jurjānī, Kitāb at-Taʿrīfāt (Beirut: Maktabat Lubnān, 1978), 31; Gully, Grammar and Semantics in Medieval Arabic, 6–7.
96 Aš-Šāwī, Muḥākamāt, I:17: "yuqaddaru ʿāmilu 'l-basmalati muʾaḫḫaran li-anna taqdīra 'l-maʿmūli yūjibu 'l-iḫtiṣāṣa".
97 ʿAbd al-Qāhir b. ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān Al-Jurjānī, Dalāʾil al-Iʿjāz, ed. Maḥmūd Muḥammad Šākir (Cairo: Maktabat al-Ḫānjī, 2004), 108: "wa qad wuqiʿa fī ẓunūni 'n-nāsi annahu yakfī an yuqāla: 'innahu quddima li-l-ʿināyati wa li-anna ḏikrahu ahammun' min ġayri an yuḏkara min ayna kānat tilka 'l-ʿināya? wa bi-ma kāna ahammun?".
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on form and meaning varies more dramatically.98 That Abū Ḥayyān uses the exact same argument from Sībawayhi without acknowledging al-Jurjānī’s verbose rebuttal of it perhaps implies that al-Jurjānī’s contributions had not yet taken root in the scholarly community. What can be said with certainty, however, is that Abū Ḥayyān revives an old contention, only to be shut down and found incorrect by his later evaluators. Yaḥyā aš-Šāwī in this case takes az-Zamaḫšarī’s side by saying that a principle intended for the subject and the object cannot be applied to predication. He also declares that one approach is the method of the grammarians, while the other is that of the rhetoricians, with the silent implication that the latter has more currency and validity, while the former might have value from an antiquarian perspective.
The divergence between the grammatical and rhetorical approaches takes a concrete form in many instances in the muḥākamāt. The essence of this disparity is summarized effectively by Yaḥyā aš-Šāwī, who explains that Abū Ḥayyān’s concern is for the bare form (mujarradu ‘l-lafẓi), whereas that of Ibn ʿAṭiyya (and by implication az-Zamaḫšarī) is for the meaning.99 The muḥākamāt list several cases where this disparity in outlook has the following result: a semantic explanation by az-Zamaḫšarī is understood in a grammatical sense by Abū Ḥayyān. In one instance, Abū Ḥayyān picks on az-Zamaḫšarī for substituting the particle “annā” with the phrase “min ayna”, and the adjudicator Qinalizāde says: “the essence of the matter is that az-Zamaḫšarī’s insertion of min ayna is an explanation of the meaning (taṣrīḥ), not a reconstruction of the original syntax (taqdīr)”.100 In another place, Qinalizāde quotes the grammarian as-Safāqusī (d. 742/1342): “this ought to be interpreted in the vein that az-Zamaḫšarī made this comment from the aspect of meaning, not from the aspect of syntax”.101 These statements suggest that Abū Ḥayyān takes the rhetorical explanations of az-Zamaḫšarī, casts them as syntactical reconstruction (taqdīr), and thus having brought them within the fold of grammar, attacks them viciously.
Another manifestation of the clash between the grammatical and semantic approaches is the application of certain grammatical terms and categories that are especially
98 Ramzi Baalbaki, “The Relation Between Naḥw and Balāġa: A Comparative Study of the Methods of Sībawayhi and Ǧurǧānī,” Zeitschrift Für Arabische Linguistik, no. 11 (1983): 17.
99 Aš-Šāwī, Muḥākamāt, II:225.
100 Qinalizāde, Al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya, 18v.
101 Qinalizāde, 27v: "hāḏā yanbaġī an yutaʾawwala ʿalā annahu arāda min ḥayṯu 'l-maʿnā lā min ḥayṯu 'l-iʿrābi".
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prone to act as an intersection zone between syntax and semantics. One such grammatical category that we frequently encounter in the muḥākamāt is the parenthetical sentence (iʿtirāḍ). The material in the muḥākamāt, external primary sources, and secondary literature confirm the view that parenthetical sentences count among those linguistic categories that put the divergences between grammar and rhetoric into extra sharp relief and set the two approaches against each other. One instance where a parenthetical sentence causes problems is the phrase “lā yaʿlamuhum illā ‘llāhu” in the Qur’an verse 14:9. Az-Zamaḫšarī maintains that the phrase is a parenthetical sentence, but Abū Ḥayyān disagrees, saying that it has to be between two interrelated parts if it is to count as iʿtirāḍ.102 In his seminal grammatical work Muġnī al-Labīb, Ibn Hišām states that the technical usage of parenthetical sentences among the rhetoricians conflicts with that of the grammarians, and he says: “Those who do not know this discipline (balāġa), such as Abū Ḥayyān, … fancy falsely that the only type of parenthesis is that claimed by the grammarian, that is to say the parenthesis between two elements that require the presence of one another (šayʾayni mutaṭālibayn)”.103 Thus dismissing Abū Ḥayyān’s objection, Ibn Hišām defines the parenthetical sentence in a manner that supports the rhetorician’s methodology and agenda, namely as a semantic tool that energizes and embellishes speech.104 According to Gully, this is one of the cases where Ibn Hišām finds his former teacher Abū Ḥayyān too restrictive, especially when it comes to the matter of interpreting revealed texts.105 Our adjudicator Yaḥyā aš-Šāwī closes the circle by discrediting Abū Ḥayyān and confirming once again the validity and triumph of a grammatical semantic approach that expands the possibilities of the exegetical endeavor, rather than a purely grammatical one that limits them.
Abū Ḥayyān’s unwillingness to see the rhetorical explanations for what they are and his willful attempt to fit them into a tight grammatical mold does not sit very well with the arbitrators, who imply that the grammarian was being deliberately obtuse. Qinalizāde says:
102 Aš-Šāwī, Muḥākamāt, I:438.
103 Jamāl ad-Dīn Ibn Hišām al-Anṣārī, Muġnī al-Labīb ʿan Kutub al-Aʿārīb, ed. Māzin al-Mubārak and Muḥammad ʿAlī Ḥamdallāh (Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 1969), 446; Gully, “Two of a Kind?: Ibn Hišām al-Anṣārī on naḥw and Ibn al-Aṯīr on balāġa,” 93.
104 Gully, Grammar and Semantics in Medieval Arabic, 78, 208.
105 Gully, “Two of a Kind?: Ibn Hišām al-Anṣārī on naḥw and Ibn al-Aṯīr on balāġa,” 93.
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What the author of al-Kaššāf says is an explanation of the meaning (bayān al-maʿnā) and a clarification of it, not an explanation of the implicit grammatical element (al-muqaddar). A similar situation had occurred before, and we have already emphasized that the likes of it are very abundant in al-Kaššāf. Abū Ḥayyān understands it as grammatical reconstruction just so that he can object to it.106
The implication here is that Abū Ḥayyān knew perfectly well what az-Zamaḫšarī was doing and why, and that his prejudicial dislike of rhetorical tafsīr led him to object for the sake of objecting. In fact, Qinalizāde argues that Abū Ḥayyān noticed his own disingeniousness in certain cases and took flimsy precautions to hide it: in one of his objections to az-Zamaḫšarī, Abū Ḥayyān says that the former “is wrong if his argument is taken at face value”.107 For Qinalizāde, this statement implies that Abū Ḥayyān knew he was wading in shallow waters, since there is no reason to take an argument at face value and abstain from going deeper unless one is determined to object unconditionally. He also argues in the introductory chapter that Abū Ḥayyān’s extreme antagonism made it easier for others to refute his claims.108 This diagnosis of obsessive dislike is echoed by later scholarship: I. Rufayda thinks that Abū Ḥayyān’s criticism of az-Zamaḫšarī and Ibn ʿAṭiyya, but especially az-Zamaḫšarī, sometimes exceeds the bounds of scholarly engagement and goes into the realm of insult and distasteful commentary.109
The examples listed until now not only illustrate the preoccupation of the muḥākamāt with the conflict between the grammatical and the rhetorical approaches, but also demonstrate that the muḥākama authors overwhelmingly favor a semantic approach with a strong grammatical foundation, i.e. grammatical semantics. That a rhetorical-semantic approach vastly broadens the elbow room of the exegete and grants him a wider range of possibilities is implicitly acknowledged by the muḥākama authors on various occasions. In
106 Qinalizāde, 30v: mā ḏakarahu ṣāḥibu 'l-Kaššāfi bayānu 'l-maʿnā wa tawḍīḥuhu lā bayānu 'l-muqaddari ka-mā sabaqa naẓīruhu wa qad ḏakarnā anna amṯālahu kaṯīratun fī 'l- Kaššāfi wa Abū Ḥayyān ḥamalahu ʿalā bayāni ‘t-taqdīri li-yaʿtariḍa ʿalayhi.
107 Qinalizāde, 27v: "in uḫiḏa hāḏā ʿalā ẓāhirihi lā yaṣuḥḥu li-annahā…".
108 Qinalizāde, 11v.
109 Rufayda, An-Naḥw wa Kutub at-Tafsīr, 911, 946; This is not to deny that Abū Ḥayyān showers az-Zamaḫšarī and Ibn ʿAṭiyya with flowery praise in the introduction to his tafsīr, describing them as "two moons that have risen in the sky of this discipline". The views expressed by the likes of Qinalizāde, however, suggest that this is mere formality. See Abū Ḥayyān al-Andalusī, Tafsīr al-Baḥr al-Muḥīṭ, 1:10.
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one instance, az-Zamaḫšarī allows a word to be both an adjective and a ḥāl, whereas Abū Ḥayyān rules out the likelihood of the word being an adjective. The arbitrator Yaḥyā aš-Šāwī opines that in az-Zamaḫšarī’s scheme the concern is with meaning, not with form (fa ‘l-muʿtabaru ‘l-maʿnā lā ‘l-lafẓ).110 Since there is an implicit approval of az-Zamaḫšarī’s stance, it is fair to conclude that aš-Šāwī appreciates the grammatical possibilities granted by a maʿnā-oriented approach. In another instance where az-Zamaḫšarī declares a case of tanāzuʾ, aš-Šāwī explains that it is only a rhetorical approach that makes it possible to consider the case as such (hāḏā ‘t-tanāzuʾu lā yutaṣawwaru illā min ḥayṯu ‘l-maʿnā).111 It is again understood here that aš-Šāwī welcomes this broadening of possibilities and the additional nuances that such an angle brings.
The dominance of grammatical semantics in the muḥākamāt also manifests itself through the particular linguistic terms and problems that the authors choose to prioritize. The types of grammatical issues that the muḥākamāt deal with demonstrate that the main preoccupation of these glosses is with text linguistics as applied to Qur’anic exegesis, not formal grammar in the abstract sense. One such grammatical problem that we frequently encounter in the muḥākamāt is the iʿrāb maḥallī, which deals with the syntactical role of the words and phrases who have agents (ʿawāmil) acting on them implicitly. This kind of problem, according to Bohas et al., is “most often raised in text linguistics and Qur’anic exegesis,” producing sophisticated discussions. Preoccupation with iʿrāb maḥallī is also one of the features of later grammatical theory, since it is such grammarians as Ibn Hišām who first devoted whole chapters to this subject.112 Other grammatical phenomena that carry heightened semantic significance and that dominate the discourse in the muḥākamāt are various categories of elision, such as ḥaḏf and taḍmīn, as well as the idea of taʿalluq, i.e. “syntactico-semantic connection”.113 Gully maintains that these three phenomena in particular are integral to having a strong semantic understanding of iʿrāb.114 Another major
110 Aš-Šāwī, Muḥākamāt, II:285.
111 Tanāzuʾ, “competition”, is a grammatical term denoting the usage of a single noun as both the object of one verb and the agent of another verb in the same sentence: Michael G. Carter and Muhammad al-H̱aṭib aš-Šāfi’ī aš-Širbīnī, Arab Linguistics: An Introductory Classical Text with Translation and Notes (Amsterdam: John Benjamins B.V., 1981), 343.
112 Bohas, Guillaume, and Kouloughli, The Arabic Linguistic Tradition, 62.
113 Gully, Grammar and Semantics in Medieval Arabic, 12.
114 Gully, 275.
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theme in the muḥākamāt that betrays semantic interests is the operation of predication; determining the object (mubtadaʾ) and the predicate (ḫabar) in a complex metaphor, for example, is a pursuit relished by the muḥākama authors.115 Predictably, it is generally the rhetoricians who have a taste for convoluted discussions about predication, while grammarians tend to take it for granted.116
Placing the Muḥākamāt within the Larger Context of Post-Classical Linguistic Theory
As exegetical and linguistic texts from the pre-modern era, the muḥākamāt give us clues about the direction and evolution of philology, especially in its exegetical flavor, in the post-classical period. The close analysis of the main themes, priorities, and preferences of the muḥākama texts yields a number of conclusions that help us make small additions to the general picture drawn by other sources.
Firstly, the muḥākamāt clearly demonstrate that Arabic grammar as a formal discipline by no means lost its prestige or relevance even as its medieval heyday was long gone. It is indeed the case that a great portion of the muḥākama authors’ energy goes into discrediting formal grammar on certain issues, but this is still done with tools that are thoroughly grammatical. They also aim to consolidate the authority of a hermeneutical tool, namely semantics-rhetoric, which itself could never be put to proper use without grammar. Also, be it critical or eulogistic, such a thorough preoccupation with a phenomenon and the sheer number of pages devoted to it naturally prove its ongoing relevance. Thus, a close reading of the muḥākamāt support the conclusion that grammar remained prestigious and influential throughout the pre-modern period and was able to reach a much wider section of the intellectual audience than would be expected.117
Secondly, the muḥākamāt demonstrate that exegesis continued its orchestrated effort to break itself free from dry, formal, and domineering syntactical analysis, which the authors describe with the umbrella term iʿrāb, and whose antagonistic representative is Abū Ḥayyān.
115 An example of this can be found in: Aš-Šāwī, Muḥākamāt, I:440.
116 Bohas, Guillaume, and Kouloughli, The Arabic Linguistic Tradition, 123.
117 Gruendler, “Early Arabic Philologists: Poetry’s Friends or Foes?,” 113; Gully, “Two of a Kind?: Ibn Hišām al-Anṣārī on naḥw and Ibn al-Aṯīr on balāġa,” 87.
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To complement, the muḥākamāt declare the supremacy of semantics-rhetoric as a hermeneutical tool, whose amiable representative is az-Zamaḫšarī. The exegetically-minded muḥākama authors are on good terms with semantics, mainly due to three reasons. Firstly, it does not pose an existential threat to the tradition of Qur’anic exegesis as much as grammar does. Secondly, it works wonderfully as a flexible vessel that can be made to take the shape of the doctrine it carries. And thirdly, it promises to broaden the scope of the hermeneutical inquiry by enriching the process of meaning-excavation. The triumph of maʿnā in exegesis, i.e. doctrinally appropriate meaning generated by a semantic interpretation, over iʿrāb, i.e. independent grammatical reasoning, is confirmed by other scholars of the period, such as as-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505). In his work Al-Itqān fī ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān, he says that when maʿnā pulls in one direction and iʿrāb in another, the former has precedence, since the consideration of compositional and syntactic features does not on principle discredit “the authenticated interpretation” (ṣiḥḥat al-maʿnā and tafsīr al-maʿnā).118 The potential of grammatical semantics to broaden the horizon of exegesis is acknowledged by the grammarian Ibn Hišām, who frequently cites az-Zamaḫšarī in his Muġnī al-Labīb and prefers a more profound interpretation of syntax and case endings.119 According to Gully, Ibn Hišām’s championing of rhetoricians at the expense of more formal grammarians associates him with “the more exegetical line of enquiry” practiced by some of the earlier grammarians from the second and third centuries A.H.120 He also maintains that Ibn Hišām had this sentiment because grammatical semantics was considered to have more insight into the deeper and more intricate aspects of meaning, especially in revealed texts.121
Thirdly, the prominent role that the muḥākamāt assign to grammatical semantics and their wholehearted validation of it are in tune with the developments in the trajectory of grammatical theory in the pre-modern period. The popularity of grammatical semantics in the muḥākamāt confirm the observation by Bohas et al. that the main radically new developments in grammatical theory in the later period came in the form of text linguistics
118 as-Suyūṭī, Al-Itqān fī ʿUlūm al-Qurʾān, ed. Markaz li’d-Dirāsāt al-Qurʾāniyya (Riyadh: Wizārat āš-Šuʾūn al-Islāmiyya, n.d.), 1235.
119 Gully, “Two of a Kind?: Ibn Hišām al-Anṣārī on naḥw and Ibn al-Aṯīr on balāġa,” 95.
120 Gully, 99.
121 Gully, Grammar and Semantics in Medieval Arabic, 275.
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and grammatical semantics.122 The muḥākamāt also concur with El-Rouayheb’s statement that semantics-rhetoric as popularized by the writings of at-Taftāzānī and al-Jurjānī “became increasingly important in later centuries”.123
122 Bohas, Guillaume, and Kouloughli, The Arabic Linguistic Tradition, 14.
123 El-Rouayheb, Islamic Intellectual History, 118.
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CHAPTER 3
DEBATE AND THE DYNAMICS OF ADJUDICATION
Reading the muḥākamāt with an eye to dissecting the workings of the genre and understanding its functions, we see that one of the most prominent and definitive qualities of these texts is an omnipresent spirit of debate and disputation. It serves as the main mode of the discourse and gives the texts their characteristic hue. Inherent in the idea of “muḥākama”, i.e. adjudicating and passing a verdict, disagreement and debate are key themes that can help us understand the inner workings of these texts and place them in their wider contexts.
Dispute and Debate as a Way of Life
The contentious tone of the muḥākamāt is in keeping with the trademark intellectual habits of the Islamic scholarly establishment, which adopted debate as a way of life and relished disputation, competitiveness, and rivalry. Disputation over differences of opinion was a common phenomenon in all aspects of the creed, grammar, and law, and any item of discussion could generate starkly contrasting points of view, as well as an array of intermediate positions.124 From the public debates held in the city’s biggest mosques to chains of books written as refutations of one another, the spirit of debate found expression both in the public sphere and the written word. As George Maqdisi points out, disputation and debate were nothing short of “a medieval Muslim pastime”, and this way of thinking left bold traces in the output of scholars and intellectuals.125
The philological disciplines received their fair share from this tradition of disputation, and the muḥākamāt are but one example of scholarly literature pivoting around linguistic disagreements. Entire books could be devoted to the differences of opinion between scholars on linguistic matters, especially because such considerations could have an enormous impact
124 Michael G. Carter, “‘Blessed Are the Cheese Makers’: Reflections on the Transmission of Knowledge in Islam,” Journal of American Oriental Society 133, no. 4 (2013): 600.
125 George Maqdisi, The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981), 135.
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on legal outcomes.126 Gully eloquently points out that these disagreements did not breach the scholarly and communal contract, but rather they “ensured the coexistence of a number of equally valid sub-contracts.”127
One of the most important sites for debate and controversy, especially in the post-classical period, was the commentary and the gloss, and the muḥākamāt constitute an example of this phenomenon. The commentary/gloss genre provided a favorable platform for scholarly disagreement and debate, offering irresistible opportunities and conveniences for endless disputation. Inevitably, in the words of Asad Ahmed, “diachronic and synchronic dialectic” came to be the defining feature of the genre.128 Speaking with the philosophical glosses in mind, he asserts that the lemmata in the commentaries and the glosses served as written reflections of a vibrant culture of debate.129 This statement holds true for the muḥākamāt as well, where disagreement, diversity of scholarly opinions, and dialectic are the core driving forces behind the whole discourse. In an article where he discusses the academic legacy of as-Sakkākī’s (d. 626/1229) Miftāḥ al-ʿUlūm, William Smyth observes that the format of the commentary in fact goes one step further than simply encouraging debate, insofar as it “emphasize[s] and remember[s] differences of opinion in a way that was particularly characteristic of the Muslim tradition.”130 This is an insightful yet laconic statement that calls for extrapolation: how and why do the commentaries/glosses record scholarly controversy, and which qualities make this act of recording especially characteristic of the Muslim intellectual tradition? The following section of this chapter attempts to apply Smyth’s statement to the muḥākamāt and discover which aspects of this debate-recording exercise prove to be particularly decisive and characteristic of the larger intellectual culture.
126 Gully, Grammar and Semantics in Medieval Arabic, 51.
127 Gully, 54.
128 Ahmed, “Post-Classical Philosophical Commentaries/Glosses,” 344.
129 Ahmed, 317.
130 William Smyth, “Controversy in a Tradition of Commentary: The Academic Legacy of al-Sakkākī’s Miftāḥ al-ʿUlūm,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 112, no. 4 (1992): 590.
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A Taste for Keeping Dispute Alive: The Dynamics of Debate in the Muḥākamāt
The muḥākama as a sub-genre is based on the concept of adjudicating between two (or more) opposing sides; hence, differences of opinion and controversy are embedded in the whole enterprise. When we read the muḥākamāt with the intention of exploring the dynamics of disputation and establishing patterns in the process of recording differences of opinion, we can see certain themes and tendencies emerge. The muḥākama texts demonstrate a particular taste for recording controversy, and this process of recording very much resembles the transcription of a live performance. It functions by treating sections of the source text (in this case, al-Kaššāf) as prompts that generate a lively and continuous dialectic. The discourse built around and on top of these prompts conveys a high tolerance of ambiguity, and it betrays a complex understanding of scholarly authority. These two qualities produce a text that consists of diachronic and cumulative layers and that sits in the middle of a tightly knit web of interrelated texts.
The three muḥākamāt we have at hand initiate the dialectic with quotes from az-Zamaḫšarī’s al-Kaššāf, which is the source text for all three glosses. The sections from al-Kaššāf naturally treat a certain Qur’anic verse, but the verse itself very quickly fades into the background amid technical discussions of linguistic nuances focused often on a very small part of the verse, such as a single pronoun. The first muḥākama, Kitāb al-Inṣāf by Ibn bint al-ʿIrāqī, takes sections of interest from al-Kaššāf and summarizes them, presenting the main ideas in a consolidated form using az-Zamaḫšarī’s terminology. The second muḥākama, written by Qinalizāde, uses extremely short yet direct quotes from al-Kaššāf, which are often less than twenty words. The third muḥākama by Yaḥyā aš-Šāwī quotes larger chunks from both az-Zamaḫšarī and Ibn ʿAṭiyya, which always come at the beginning to initiate the discussion. In all cases, the sections from al-Kaššāf serve as “prompts for perpetuating a living dialectic.”131 They jumpstart the dispute, catalyze further elaboration, provide triggers for detours, and serve as a home base for exploration.
Another quality of the muḥākamāt that dominates their approach to and remembrance of disputation is their understanding of scholarly authority. References to the
131 Ahmed, “Post-Classical Philosophical Commentaries/Glosses,” 320.
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names and works of many grammarians, jurists, theologians, and exegetes fill the pages of the muḥākamāt, and these recourses to scholarly authority often go beyond simply proving a point by dropping the name of a celebrity scholar.132 In an article on the glosses in Šāfiʿī legal literature, Ahmed El-Shamsy concludes that the gloss, at least within the scope of Islamic legal literature, “should be considered against the background of a specific theory of authority,” which in his case prevents later jurists from rethinking established positions and forces them to limit themselves to “law-related minutiae”.133 While El-Shamsy’s proposal to formulate a theory of authority concerns Šāfiʿī legal glosses, I argue that there is a similar need for a theory of authority in the study of such exegetical glosses as the muḥākamāt. This is because scholarly authority has a heightened significance in the “guild-based” discipline of exegesis,134 and an ingenious deployment of scholarly authority is the main means through which a gloss author can express a new opinion or direct the debate in new directions.
Based on the study of the three muḥākamāt that are the subject of this thesis, a preliminary sketch for a theory of authority that would facilitate our understanding and analysis of the exegetical glosses can be proposed. It posits firstly that the gloss is not only a passive receptacle of scholarly happenings but has considerable powers to generate authority itself. In the case of the second muḥākama, for example, it is undeniable that “muḥaqqiqūn” like at-Taftāzānī and Sayyid Šarīf al-Jurjānī (d. 816/1413) already have considerable scholarly standing, but the gloss itself also bestows immense authority upon these names by consulting their opinion at every turn and using their arguments to discredit other scholars.135 In a study on unpublished Ḥanafī commentaries, Brannon Wheeler arrives at a similar conclusion: he states that these manuscript sources are a case in point of “how authority is generated through the use of commentary.”136
132 Some of the scholars and works quoted most often in the muḥākamāt: the jurist aš-Šāfiʿī (d. 204/820); the grammarians Ibn Hišām (Ḥawāšī at-Tashīl and Muġnī al-Labīb), Ibn Mālik (Alfiyya and Šarḥ at-Tashīl), Abū ʿAlī al-Fārisī (d. 377/987), as-Safāqusī (d. 742/1342) (Iʿrāb al-Qurʾān), ar-Raḍī al-Astarābādī (d. 688/1289), and Abū al-Baqāʾ Ibn Yaʿīš (d. 643/1245); the prominent Kaššāf glossators at-Taftāzānī and aṭ-Ṭībī; the exegete al-Bayḍāwī; and the grammarian/rhetorician ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Jurjānī.
133 Ahmed El-Shamsy, “The Ḥāshiya in Islamic Law: A Sketch of the Shāfiʿī Literature,” Oriens 41 (2013): 303.
134 Saleh, “Preliminary Remarks,” 18.
135 There are many examples of this in Qinalizāde: “Look at the nuance of at-Taftāzānī’s explanation- how he correlates the allusion in az-Zamaḫšarī’s words and repels from it the delusions of his enemies.” Qinalizāde, Al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya, 23v.
136 Brannon M. Wheeler, “Identity in the Margins: Unpublished Ḥanafī Commentaries on the Mukhtaṣar of Aḥmad b. Muḥammad Al-Qudūrī,” Islamic Law and Society 10, no. 2 (2003): 206–7.
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Secondly, the exegetical gloss constantly reevaluates inherited authority and navigates the dichotomy of established authority versus challenges that come in the form of new proofs. As opposed to the legal glosses studied by El-Shamsy, which forbid later jurists from rethinking established positions, exegetical glosses like the muḥākamāt take a more measured stance towards the top-tier names. In this sense they are in synch with the general tendency of the discipline of tafsīr, where “the authority to interpret the Qur’an has to always be reestablished in the face of continuous challenge from other centers of authorities.”137 A clear example of this balancing act can be found in the second muḥākama, where Qinalizāde’s opponent al-Ġazzī defends Abū Ḥayyān by appealing to his scholarly repute: “Abū Ḥayyān is an esteemed authority, and there is no need for proof in what he transmits.”138 Qinalizāde takes issue with this and says: “When something is transmitted from a book or a scholar, it is recognized and accepted, but it does not mean that anything coming out from a scholar’s mouth without proof is to be accepted. The demands of the craft and the current scholarly climate do not readily accept anything from anyone without proof.”139 This example is one of the cases where appeals to a venerable authority are disregarded because convincing evidence proving otherwise is available. However, recognized names still carry a heavy weight, which remains intact and unchallenged if there is no serious objection backed up by evidence or argument. This inherent respect for scholarly authority, especially if there is a consensus, is evident when Qinalizāde, seeing that both Abū Ḥayyān and al-Astarābādī (d. 688/1289) agree on the grammatical point in question, says: “When these two distinguished scholars of the later period agree on something, then what is left for those who come after them to say?”140 These two instances show that exegetical glosses have a nuanced dynamic when it comes to accepting or rejecting scholarly authority: while authoritative names and their opinions carry a heavy weight in the interpretative process, they may be reevaluated and possibly rejected based on the availability of irrefutable arguments from other authorities.
137 Saleh, “Preliminary Remarks,” 18.
138 Qinalizāde, Al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya, 20v: "qāla wa Abū Ḥayyān ṯiqatun lā ḥājata ilā dalīlin fīmā yanqiluhu".
139 Qinalizāde, 20v: "lākin al-lāzima minhu annahu iḏā nuqila ʿan kitābin aw imāmin yuṣdaqu wa yuqbalu wa lā yulzamu minhu an yaqbala kulla kalāmin ṣadara minhu bi-lā dalīlin wa ḥujjatin fa-inna 'l-muṭāliba 'ṣ-ṣināʿiyyata wa 'l-qarna 'l-ʿilmiyyata lā taqbalu min aḥadin bidūna dalīlin".
140 Qinalizāde, 20r: "fa-iḏā 'ttafaqa hāḏāni faḥlāni ʿalamāni fī ’l-mutaʾaḫḫirin ʿalā šayʾin fa-mā 'n-nāsu baʿdahumā".
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Thirdly and lastly, a preliminary sketch for a theory of authority in the exegetical gloss would have to acknowledge that the authors can on occasion manipulate established academic authority to arrive at new syntheses and conclusions, skillfully weaving their own opinions into the statements of celebrity scholars. The caveat here, however, is a mandatory modesty that forces the gloss author to hide behind the names of the greats and blend his contribution into the fabric of previous scholarly opinion as seamlessly as possible. An example of this can be found in Qinalizāde’s commentary on Abū Ḥayyān’s objections regarding badal. Qinalizāde quotes as-Samīn’s answer to Abū Ḥayyān and praises it as a valid rebuttal, but he improves it considerably by quoting parallel examples from Abū Ḥayyān’s other works and unearthing a number of inconsistencies in his position that as-Samīn failed to notice. His ability to pull in just the right examples from Abū Ḥayyān’s oeuvre points to a formidable command of the subject, but he makes this achievement appear subdued and muted in the discourse. Similarly, Qinalizāde gives a convincing rebuttal to another one of Abū Ḥayyān’s objections, which as-Samīn had left unanswered. Qinalizāde states that previous explanations by as-Samīn contain the answer to the question at hand (“they have the ʿilla”), but this is impossible to see without Qinalizāde’s commentary and guidance. In this case as well, the glossator pegs his original arguments to a previous scholarly authority and speaks with a voice that is as modest as possible.141 Due to this tendency of camouflaging, new contributions and original opinions by the gloss author are difficult to find, but this of course does not mean that they do not exist.
In addition to this specific relationship with scholarly authority, another pattern in the muḥākama texts that defines their act of recording debate is a cumulative intertextuality. The entire textual tradition built up on and around al-Kaššāf forms the glossator’s repertoire, and text chunks are piled up on one another in both a synchronic and a diachronic manner, resulting in what Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht calls “sedimentation”.142 In such a structure, the gloss author spins connections to his liking between texts that exist in the same disciplinary ecosystem, and the top layer cannot really exist without the supportive bottom layers. In an
141 Qinalizāde, 25v-27r.
142 Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, “Fill Up Your Margins! About Commentary and Copia,” in Commentaries - Kommentare, ed. Glenn W. Most, Aporemata: Kritische Studien Zur Philologiegeschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), 448.
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apt metaphor, A. Ahmed likens the process of reading a gloss to “wandering mid-semester into a graduate seminar, in which all participants have an understanding and memory of discussions of previous weeks.”143 This sedimentation works well for a genre that seeks to record debate and controversy, since it thoroughly captures the back-and-forth nature of disputation and ensures that all sides get equal representation.
Another quality that marks the exercise of remembering and recording debate in the muḥākamāt is a high tolerance for ambiguity. Speaking specifically for the tradition of Arabic rhetoric, Thomas Bauer observes that this discipline does not regard ambiguity as a negative phenomenon and furthermore understands it as a stylistic device that makes it possible to uncover various rhetorical shades that may be hidden behind Qur’anic formulations.144 If the muḥākamāt are texts that are designed to pronounce a ḥukm, i.e. a verdict, and favor one party at the expense of another, then how does ambiguity fit into such a scheme? Firstly, their tolerance of ambiguity manifests itself in the faithful inclusion of all sides and stages of a given debate; no matter how circuitous, complex, and contradictory a point of disputation becomes, it is preserved and transmitted. The adjudication is in fact such a small part of this structure that one is always left with an impression of diversity rather than that of a memorable verdict. Secondly, the muḥākamāt treat the act of analyzing a whole Qur’anic verse with linguistic tools as an exercise that is essentially and necessarily ambiguous, a fact that is also highlighted by their semantic orientation. Thus, the adjudication always takes place on minute technical points that concern a very small part of a given verse only indirectly, and the muḥākamāt never block interpretative access to a verse itself by pronouncing a wholesale judgment between two or more exegetes. They identify “wujūh” in a given position and focus on one or two of these aspects, leaving others intact, available, and open to interpretation. Thirdly, as Christina Kraus points out, even when the meaning is fixed by a commentator’s answer, the very process of answering creates a “plurality of meanings” by hinting at new and alternative paths.145 This dynamic is also at play in the muḥākamāt,
143 Ahmed, “Post-Classical Philosophical Commentaries/Glosses,” 344.
144 Thomas Bauer, “Ambiguität in der klassischen arabischen Rhetoriktheorie,” in Ambiguität im Mittelalter: Formen zeitgenössischer Reflexion und interdisziplinärer Rezeption, ed. Oliver Auge and Christiane Witthöft (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2016), 25, 29.
145 Christina Shuttleworth Kraus, “Reading Commentaries/Commentaries as Reading,” in The Classical Commentary: Histories, Practices, Theory, ed. Roy K. Gibson and Christina Shuttleworth Kraus (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 9.
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and the plurality of meanings is more stressed than usual because the process of passing judgment is done with considerable discretion and remains limited to a small scope.
In their manner of recording debate, the muḥākamāt are also deeply immersed in a culture of live performance, and their discourse has an unmistakable performative quality. Like books that recorded various linguistic puzzles discussed in majālis,146 the muḥākamāt read like detailed transcriptions of a live debate. While speaking of a similarly transcription-like text that records a debate between two theologians in question-and-answer format, J. van Ess uses the term “Protokolle” (written minutes), emphasizing that this form of writing clearly departed from the usual theoretical tract.147 The muḥākamāt have an analogous air of live debate and transcription, but they function in the opposite direction: while the Protokolle that Van Ess has in mind are written records of a single live debate, the muḥākamāt use writing to superimpose the atmosphere of a single-episode live debate on a prolonged discussion that spans across generations and places. The effort to extract pieces from an extensive discussion and assemble them together in the form of a transcription hints at a performative element that is part of the overall scholarly structure. Speaking of the academic commentary, Smyth argues that its format of textual discourse should be considered as a “performative dimension for scholarly method”.148 This performative dimension is very dominant in the muḥākamāt, and it appears as a valid scholarly tool that has its own specific value and that complements the other dimensions.
Another quality that stands out in the muḥākamāt is a particular taste for recording controversy and a tendency to keep dispute alive. In trying to understand this phenomenon, W. Smyth’s discussion of the legacy of the dispute between as-Sakkākī and al-Qazwīnī (d. 739/1338) provides a helpful template. Smyth argues that the conflict between Miftāḥ al-ʿUlūm and Talḫīṣ al-Miftāḥ slowly evolved into a topos in its own right, so much so that the issues involved in the disagreement lost their scholarly significance and the disagreement itself became a “sub-field” for the study of rhetoric. In this scheme, it became an automatic gesture for later authors to address this conflict as a motif of this literature, and the “attitude
146 Gruendler, “Early Arabic Philologists: Poetry’s Friends or Foes?”, 95.
147 Josef Van Ess, “Disputationspraxis in der islamischen Theologie: Eine vorläufige Skizze,” Revue Des Études Islamiques, no. 44 (1976): 26.
148 Smyth, “Controversy in a Tradition of Commentary,” 597.
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of debate” became institutionalized, regardless of whether the issues under discussion retained their importance.149 According to Smyth, this kind of tribute paid to the disputes between eminent scholars gave the study of rhetoric “a certain structure of presentation and study”, acting as “frames within which to present the issues of rhetoric”.150 Finally, he adds that these famous rhetorical debates gave life and energy to the discipline by keeping alive the image of human interaction, both real and perceived.
Some of Smyth’s above observations apply to the case of the muḥākamāt, with certain exceptions and caveats. We can safely establish, for one, that the core disagreements which triggered the writing of the muḥākamāt, such as the Muʿtazilite tendencies of al-Kaššāf or Abū Ḥayyān’s discontents with az-Zamaḫšarī, have become well-known topoi in tafsīr. These debates are indeed major themes that attract attention not only because of their content but also because they have become subject headings in the study of exegesis. However, in contrast to Smyth’s diagnosis, they are not calcified categories that do not carry any real scholarly significance or dynamism any more. The recording of the debates in the muḥākamāt is more than a mere formality because they continue across several centuries, with new participants joining in and steering them in different directions. The value they carry, no matter how small, is not antiquated and secondary, but rather immediate and direct. Smyth’s observation that the stubborn recording of scholarly debates provides the discipline with a structure of presentation and study is also true for the muḥākamāt. However, the degree of organization and structure they offer is much smaller, mainly because the random selection of the topics in the muḥākamāt reflects each author’s own priorities and interests. For this reason, they do not entirely act as study aids, capsule summaries, or concise introductions to an exegetical sub-field. Lastly, Smyth’s comments about the energy of real and perceived human interaction holds true for the muḥākamāt; the intensely personal nature of the back-and-forth narrative, the drama of conflict, and the act of taking sides all add an intimate and personal energy to the works, making them intriguing and inviting.
149 Smyth, 590–93.
150 Smyth, 596.
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The Dynamics of Adjudication
The spirit of contention and debate dominates the muḥākamāt, but the quality that distinguishes it from other genres and stamps it with a seal of uniqueness is the act of adjudication. These texts make a sustained and self-conscious attempt to play the referee between disputing sides, and this feature gives them enough individuality to form a sub-category in the larger umbrella of tafsīr glosses. They extract relevant sections from large works of tafsīr and set them against each other in a way that imitates the transcription of a debate, and they proceed to make judgments about the disputing parties, favoring one at the expense of the other. This act of adjudication is an interesting process that is worth exploring in some detail.
Adjudication by definition requires taking sides, and it could easily be an environment congenial to bias and favor. Given the undying popularity of al-Kaššāf and the celebrity status of its author, it would not be unreasonable to expect a certain bias in favor of az-Zamaḫšarī, which would also affect the judgment process. However, a careful reading of the muḥākama texts reveals that the adjudication is done in a spirit of fairness and objectivity, carrying very few, if any, pre-determined judgments. In the case of the altercation between az-Zamaḫšarī and Abū Ḥayyān, for example, it is not possible for a first-time reader to foresee which way the favorable opinion of the muḥākama authors will go, even though they do end up supporting az-Zamaḫšarī most of the time. Their agreement with a party is not unconditional or total; even when they grant their favor, they may bring objections from another aspect, find fault with the reasoning, or disapprove of the method. The adjudicator Qinalizāde, for instance, despite agreeing with his position, criticizes as-Samīn for replying to Abū Ḥayyān in a way that is not well-founded, coming up with objections that are true in themselves but do not apply to the situation at hand, and misinterpreting the examples that he himself gives.151 The hair-splitting evaluations of the authors do not betray any visible signs of unwarranted bias, and this quality gives the muḥākamāt a general aura of fair-mindedness and objectivity.
151 Qinalizāde, Al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya, 29r-30v: "wa qad yaruddu as-Samīnu ʿalā Abī Ḥayyāni bi-wajhin ġayri wājihin".
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One of the main duties that the muḥākama authors perform is to subject the material to a consistency check and to fill the gaps in the general picture by drawing parallels from other relevant works. They have an impressive command of the subject, and they are able to pull in material from the entire oeuvre of the author in question in order to point out inconsistencies and resolve a conflict. In one instance, Qinalizāde discredits Abū Ḥayyān by referring to another disagreement he had with az-Zamaḫšarī on the same subject, where Abū Ḥayyān apparently arrived at a different conclusion.152 High levels of consistency and an intimate knowledge of the literature are expected from all who choose to step into the debate; Qinalizāde does not hesitate to agree with his opponent al-Ġazzī, who reprimands as-Samīn for failing to notice that the topic under discussion was already touched upon in another work of Abū Ḥayyān’s (titled an-Nahr al-Mādd).153 The adjudicators bring in material from the other works of the authors not only to resolve their conflicts but also to fill in any glaring gaps and provide a more complete picture. Aš-Šāwī, for example, draws parallels from other parts of az-Zamaḫšarī’s or Ibn ʿAṭiyya’s work when he feels like an important piece is missing.154 They may also establish connections with third parties that are not involved in the debate; Qinalizāde in one instance identifies three elements (wujūh) in a passage by az-Zamaḫšarī and mentions that these same three observations are to be found in al-Jurjānī’s commentary on the poetry of al-Ḫansāʾ (d. 24/645).155 In this way, the adjudication process places the debate at hand in a wider context, helps bring the picture into focus by filling in gaps, and prevents the discussion from getting out of hand by performing a consistency check.
The adjudicators also play a key role in the consolidation, organization, and systematization of the material. They divide the subject into manageable categories when it gets thorny, which they mainly achieve by identifying “aspects” (wujūh) and listing them in order. They also add further wujūh themselves, such as when Ibn bint al-ʿIrāqī allows Ibn Munayyir to add a fifth possible explanation of the Qur’anic construct širḏimatun qalīlūn.156 The adjudicators also make an effort to consolidate and systematize the material. One of the
152 Qinalizāde, 27v-r.
153 Qinalizāde, 24r.
154 Aš-Šāwī, Muḥākamāt, II:287.
155 Qinalizāde, Al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya, 28r.
156 Ibn bint al-ʿIrāqī, Kitāb al-Inṣāf, 107v.
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most effective methods they use to achieve that is to tie the loose ends in one neat knot, which they call “the single good answer” (ḥattā yakūna al-majmūʿu jawāban wāḥidan jayyidan).157 This includes organizing and condensing the relevant information in such a way that the reader has one well-tailored, precise, and neat rundown of all the answers to the main question of the debate by the time he finishes reading. Another way in which the adjudicators systematize the material is by providing what amounts to a “state of research”. Aš-Šāwī, while explaining the accusative state of the conditional particle, observes that there are two approaches to this question, one from the earlier scholars and the other from the later ones (mutaqaddimūn and mutaʾaḫḫirūn). He then clarifies why the latter has prevailed by providing a number of explanations, which acts as a literature summary.158 The adjudicators also help systematize the material by bringing it in line with the developments in sister disciplines. For example, when Qinalizāde has to explain that “syntactic reconstruction is not interpretation” (at-taqdīr laysa ka ‘t-taṣrīḥ), he likens it to another principle: “what is not pardoned in the primaries can be pardoned in the secondaries” (yuġtafaru fī ‘ṯ-ṯawānī mā lā yuġtafaru fī ‘l-ʾawāʾili).159 This latter statement is a part of uṣūl an-naḥw, and the principles of iġtifār in grammar are treated by as-Samīn in his Ad-Durr Al-Maṣūn.160 In this way, the adjudicator keeps the discussion up to date, gives a more well-formulated shape to the discourse, and imposes order and structure on his material.
Another conspicuous method used by the adjudicators is the policing of the supporting evidence provided by the disagreeing parties, which both eliminates circuitous dead-ends and aids the mediation efforts. The adjudicators question both the istišhād, i.e. the adducing of external evidence in the form of Qur’anic verses, hadith, poetry, etc. with the aim of supporting an argument, and the istidlāl, i.e. the method of argumentation, thereby acting as a corrective filter for the transmitted material. An example of this can be found in Ibn bint al-ʿIrāqī, who voices concerns about a hadith that Ibn al-Munayyir uses as textual evidence. While interpreting a Qur’anic verse that criticizes the people of ʿĀd for building on hilltops, Ibn al-Munayyir quotes a hadith that lists tall buildings as one of the predictors of doomsday.
157 Qinalizāde, Al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya, 21v.
158 Aš-Šāwī, Muḥākamāt, II: 361.
159 Qinalizāde, Al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya, 21v.
160 Ḫālid bin Sulaymān bin ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Malīfī, “Qāʿidat 'yuġtafaru fī 'ṯ-ṯawānī mā lā yuġtafaru fī 'l-awāʾil,’” Majallat ad-Dirāsāt al-Luġawiyya 19, no. 2 (2017): 97.
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Ibn bint al-ʿIrāqī dismisses this interpretation by observing that being a sign of the doomsday does not necessitate a thing to be ugly or forbidden.161 In a similar case, aš-Šāwī has to decide between az-Zamaḫšarī and Abū Ḥayyān: the former lays down a general rule about morphology, which dictates that there are no nouns in the form of faʿlāl except where the last radical repeats itself, and the latter responds by giving examples, such as qarʿāl. Aš-Šāwī remains unimpressed by Abū Ḥayyān’s examples, and he concludes that what is rare and very few in number does not take anything away from the prevailing rules.162 Thanks to their critical approach towards the supporting evidence, the adjudicators identify shaky arguments in the debate and supply grounds for their decisions.
Even a perfunctory glance at the muḥākamāt suffices to appreciate the extent to which they are steeped in the spirit of disputation, and this, as I have tried to show, fits in with the intellectual habits of the Islamic scholarly establishment, especially in the post-classical period. Studying the dynamics of debate in the muḥākamāt reveals the characteristic ways in which this specific strand of gloss responds to scholarly dispute. Such elements as circuitous intertextuality, tolerance for ambiguity, interplay of scholarly authorities, and the dramatic effect of live performance as a scholarly dimension emerge as significant qualities. To complement, this chapter also examines the nuts and bolts of the adjudication process, which acts as a corrective on the inherited material and makes meaningful contributions towards its consolidation and systematization.
161 Ibn bint al-ʿIrāqī, Kitāb al-Inṣāf, 107v: "wa lā tuʾḫaḏu karāhatu muṭāwalati 'l-bunyāni min hāḏā 'l-ḥadīṯi".
162 Aš-Šāwī, Muḥākamāt, II:353.
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CONCLUSION
When the construction of the new madrasa in Herat came to an end in 813/1410, it was time to celebrate. The keynote event chosen for the opening ceremony, however, reveals that a different sense of entertainment was at play. The spectacle chosen for the enjoyment of the ruler, Šāh Ruḫ (r. 1405-1447), and the attending locals of the city was a public debate between two professors. The new claimant of the professorial chair, Jalāl ad-Dīn Yūsuf Awbahī (d. 833/1430), had to prove his worth by fending against a young scholar named Šams ad-Dīn Muḥammad Jājarmī (d. 864/1459). For this publicized battle of wits, Jājarmī chose two works: al-Kaššāf and at-Taftāzānī’s gloss on it. After reciting the exegesis of verse 3:18 from al-Kaššāf, he made ten objections to at-Taftāzānī’s gloss on this passage. Awbahī, in turn, responded to each one of these objections and successfully defended at-Taftāzānī, who also happened to be his teacher. Having gained the approval of the audience and proven that he is up to the task, Awbahī could now securely enjoy his well-earned prestige among the public and his tenure at the new madrasa.163
This account neatly demonstrates many of the themes explored in this study; namely, the ongoing centrality of al-Kaššāf, the significance of the gloss in engaging with the legacy of this tafsīr, the sustained relevance of linguistic concerns, and the spirit of intense and public debate. The muḥākamāt studied in this thesis are a product of a similar intellectual outlook. At the end of a careful reading and analysis, they reveal themselves to be texts that possess an acute linguistic consciousness, striving to extract the maximum possible utility from the highly sophisticated tools of philology while expanding the boundaries of the exegetical endeavor. In this balancing act between Scripture and philology, I argue that their discursive mode leans towards the contentious and the performative, and they favor semantics-rhetoric as the most suitable philological orientation for interpreting the Qur’an.
While this thesis arrives at certain tentative conclusions about the method, dynamics, and the exegetical agenda of the muḥākama texts, it does so by relying on three titles and in the absence of a theoretical framework for the study of the gloss. For cases concerning
163 Maria Eva Subtelny and Anas Khalidov, “The Curriculum of Islamic Higher Learning in Timurid Iran in the Light of the Sunni Revival under Shāh-Rukh,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 115, no. 2 (1995): 213.
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commentarial literature such as the muḥākamāt, specific suggestions for future research are going to be superfluous, since the field is untouched, uncharted, and in need of much and any scholarly attention. While the value of such literature may be questionable for us modern minds, Walid Saleh rightly points out that the glosses on az-Zamaḫšarī and al-Bayḍāwī were among the earliest works to be published in the 19th century, a fact that intellectual historians are yet to explain.164 It is clear that the scholars and intellectuals of the pre-modern Islamic world saw much to value in commentaries and glosses; it remains our task to try to get a glimpse of what they saw.
164 Saleh, “Marginalia and Peripheries,” 308.
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APPENDIX
Fig. 1: Two pages from the MS copy of Kitāb al-Inṣāf by Ibn bint al-ʿIrāqī (Kılıç Ali Paşa 40). The “qāla Maḥmūd … qāla Aḥmad … qultu…” structure is easily traceable, thanks to the red ink.
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Fig. 2: Two pages from the MS copy of Al-Muḥākamāt al-ʿAliyya by Qinalizāde Ali Çelebi (Esad Efendi 3556). The red ink used in the margin separates the thirteen Qur’anic verses studied in the treatise, and the red lines in the body of the text mark the points where opinions from a different scholar begin to be listed.
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Eidesstattliche Erklärung
Ich versichere an Eides Statt, dass ich die vorliegende Arbeit selbständig ohne fremde Hilfe und nur mit den angegebenen Hilfsmitteln verfasst habe.