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Notes
The text they discussed was ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Šaʿrānī’s Kašf al-ġumma ʿan ǧamīʿ al-umma. This work appeared in print for the first time in Cairo in 1864. This is a relatively early date for a religious text to be printed, which may indicate its popularity in the scholarly circles of Cairo in that age, liberated as they were from Ottoman restrictions on scholarly culture that were still very tangible in Damascus. Leila Hudson has shown that prints of the work were present in private libraries of Damascus in the time of al-Qāsimī as well, which makes it likely that al-Qāsimī and his group owned a copy as well. Its availability in print probably made it easier for the group to use it for their discussions than it would have been if they had to rely merely on available manuscript copies in Damascus. I have not (yet) been able to locate and look into the catalogue of the al-Qāsimī family library in Damascus, which deserves to be edited and analyzed. See Hudson, “Reading al-Shaʿrānī”, pp. 49–50.
A detailed description of this incident can be found in the autobiography of Ǧamāl al-Dīn al-Qāsimī. See al-ʿAǧmī, Imām al-Šām fī ʿaṣrihi, pp. 63–95; Ẓ. al-Qāsimī, Ǧamāl al-Dīn, pp. 48-69. David D. Commins has paid considerable attention to this incident, particularly its social ramifications, in his monograph on Syria’s religious reform movements: Commins, Islamic Reform, pp. 50–53. See also Weismann, “Salafiyya from the Damascene Angle”, pp. 211–212; Taste of Modernity, pp. 276–281.
Al-ʿAǧmī, Imām al-Šām fī ʿaṣrihi, pp. 75, 79.
El Shamsy, Islamic Classics, p. 61. For examples of skepticism towards the decline theory, see El-Rouayheb, Islamic Intellectual History in the Seventeenth Century; Gesink, Islamic Reform and Conservatism.
El Shamsy, Islamic Classics, pp. 177–178, 238.
See, for example, the definition of iǧtihād formulated in Hallaq, “Gate of Ijtihad”, p. 3. Other examples of the fiqh-centeredness of academic scholarship on taqlīd and iǧtihād are Fekry Ibrahim, “Taqlīd-ijtihād Dichotomy”; Peters, “Idjtihād and Taqlīd”. For a critique on the general law-centeredness of the field of Islamic studies, see Ahmed, What is Islam, pp. 117–129.
Weismann chooses to translate ḥašwiyya as “populists” while Commins interprets it either as “those who insert things where they don’t belong”, or as a derivative of “nonsense”. In a letter to Maḥmūd Šukrī al-Ālūsī, al-Qāsimī defines it as “every fanatic rigid emulator or Ǧahmī” (kullu muqallid mutaʿaṣṣib ǧāmid am ǧahmī). Another letter from al-Qāsimī to Muḥammad Naṣīf suggests that it is a re-enactment of a term from Islamic heresiography, which Hallaq describes as “an ill-defined objectionable indiscriminately applied against various groups who were thought to have possessed a weak apparatus of reasoning and have heavily relied on scripture”, and categorically declined iǧtihād. In his letter, al-Qāsimī describes how the label has ironically shifted from the historically accused to the accuser: “This was the case of the jealous in the age of Šayḫ al-Islām [Ibn Taymiyya], who nicknamed the followers of Aḥmad [b. Ḥanbal] with ḥašwiyya and anthropomorphists (mušabbiha). On mentioning the ḥašwiyya, I tell you that the age has changed its concept. Nowadays the people of Šām and Egypt conceptualize it as a nickname for the rigid (ǧāmidīn), the fanatics, the Ǧahmiyya and grave-worshippers (qubūriyyīn). Good riddance, this reversal that returned to them.” See Weismann, Taste of Modernity, pp. 296–297; Commins, Islamic Reform, pp. 76–77; al-ʿAǧmī, Rasāʾil, p. 126; Ẓ. al-Qāsimī, Ǧamāl al-Dīn, p. 595; Hallaq, “Gate of Ijtihad”, p. 9.
Quoted without further references in al-Istānbūlī, Šayḫ al-Šām, p. 58; al-Sarmīnī, al-Qāsimī wa-ǧuhūduhu al-ḥadīṯiyya, p. 185.
Riḍā, Tafsīr al-manār, vol. 1, p. 70. Also quoted in al-Qāsimī, Maḥāsin al-taʾwīl, vol. 1, p. 197.
Al-Dihlawī, al-Fawz al-kabīr, pp. 15–16.
See Hallaq, “Gate of Ijtihad”, pp. 4–7.
On this growth of uṣūl literature in the 18th century, Ahmad Dallal has remarked that “uṣūl were not just means of the institutional dispersion of intellectual authority, or for prescribing rules and procedures for disciplining fields of knowledge, but were also subversive disciplines through which normative disciplinary authority was questioned and radically undermined”. See Dallal, Islam without Europe, p. 280.
Perhaps only the Naqshbandiyya-Khālidiyya could qualify for that in some phases of its existence. See Weismann, Taste of Modernity, chaps 1–4.
See al-Ḥāfiẓ & Abāẓa, Taʾrīḫ ʿulamāʾ Dimašq; al-Bīṭār, Ḥilyat al-bašar.
Al-ʿAǧmī, Imām al-Šām fī ʿaṣrihi, pp. 48–49. Al-Bayqūniyya is an introductory poem of 34 verses meant for memorization that mentions the basic terminology for classification of ḥadīṯ reliability. Ǧamʿ al-ǧawāmiʿ is an introductory text focusing briefly on the four main sources of Islamic jurisprudence, Qurʾān, Sunna, iǧmāʿ, and qiyās. Šayḫ al-Azhar Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār (d. 1250/1835) named this text as an example of stifled intellectual discussions in the 19th century. See al-Subkī, Ǧamʿ al-ǧawāmiʿ; El Shamsy, “Islamic Book Culture”, p. 62.
See al-Ḥāfiẓ & Abāẓa, Taʾrīḫ ʿulamāʾ Dimašq, vol. 1, pp. 363–366.
See al-Ḥāfiẓ & Abāẓa, Taʾrīḫ ʿulamāʾ Dimašq, vol. 1, pp. 79–85.
Al-ʿAǧmī, Imām al-Šām fī ʿaṣrihi, p. 86.
See Ahmed & Filipovic, “Sultan’s Syllabus”, pp. 196–206.
Al-Tanqīḥ fī al-uṣūl by al-Maḥbūbī al-Buḫārī (d. 747/1346) and al-Uṣūl by ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Pazdawī (d. 482/1089). See Ahmed & Filipovic, “Sultan’s Syllabus”, pp. 205–206. Robinson also mentions Manār al-anwār by ʿAbd Allāh al-Nasafī (d. 710/1310), al-Muġnī by Ǧalāl al-Dīn al-Ḫabbāzī (d. 691/1272) and Muntahā al-suʾāl by Ibn Ḥāǧib in his list of the Ottoman curriculum in the second half of the 16th century. See Robinson, “Ottomans-Safavids-Mughals”, pp. 175–176.
See İzgi, Osmanlı medreselerinde ilim, pp. 156–174.
See al-Ḥāfiẓ & Abāẓa, Taʾrīḫ ʿulamāʾ Dimašq.
For the impact of al-Ǧuwaynī’s Waraqāt in later centuries, see the list of glosses mentioned in Vishanoff, Critical Introduction, p. 5. See also a letter from al-Qāsimī to Muḥammad Naṣīf on his collection of treatises on uṣūl al-fiqh, in which he points out that al-Ǧuwaynī’s Waraqāt may be a famous text already, but still needs to be accompanied by complementary works due to its brevity. See Ẓ. al-Qāsimī, Ǧamāl al-Dīn, pp. 596–597.
See Hallaq, “Uṣūl al-Fiqh Revisited”, pp. 152–153.
See Hallaq, “Gate of Ijtihad”, pp. 4–7.
See El Shamsy, Islamic Classics, chap. 2; idem, “Islamic Book Culture”.
See al-Subkī, Ǧamʿ al-ǧawāmiʿ, pp. 118–129. A letter from Muḥammad Bahǧat al-Bīṭār relates how al-Qāsimī was still teaching this text to them just a few days before he passed away. See al-ʿAǧmī, Rasāʾil, pp. 239–240.
See al-Qāsimī, Maḥāsin al-taʾwīl, vol. 2, pp. 372–373, vol. 3, pp. 431–432, vol. 4, pp. 363–365, 400–401.
The afterword of a collection of philosophical epistles gathered by al-Qāsimī that includes al-Rāzī mentions that “[o]ne of the primary reasons why the scholars in this day and age are so deficient is that the works of these imāms have become neglected and forgotten”. Quoted in El Shamsy, Islamic Classics, p. 179.
Hallaq, “Uṣūl al-Fiqh Revisited”, pp. 152–153.
See, for example, the biography of ʿAbd al-Ḥakīm al-Afġānī (d. 1908) who responded to a question from a student why he spent so much time on teaching uṣūl al-fiqh and what the use of the discipline was, that it was needed for iǧtihād. When the student responded with the remark that the gates of iǧtihād were supposedly closed, he sharply answered: “Who closed them then? May God improve your situation, but the student of knowledge in your country already claims iǧtihād while he has not even read Nūr al-īḍāḥ [the most basic instruction text in the Ḥanafī school] yet” (al-Ḥāfiẓ & Abāẓa, Taʾrīḫ ʿulamāʾ Dimašq, vol. 1, p. 274).
[Author unknown], “Kitāb al-umm”, p. 153.
Ẓ. al-Qāsimī, Ǧamāl al-Dīn, p. 588. Abāẓa and al-Sarmīnī point out that we probably do not know about many treatises edited and published by al-Qāsimī because there was not yet a strong habit of mentioning the name of the editor of a work in his age. See Abāẓa, al-Qāsimī, p. 249; al-Sarmīnī, al-Qāsimī wa-ǧuhūduhu al-ḥadīṯiyya, pp. 115–116.
See Ẓ. al-Qāsimī, Ǧamāl al-Dīn, p. 574.
Al-Qāsimī had the original publication from 1906 printed and distributed without his own name on it for reasons of safety. See Ẓ. al-Qāsimī, Ǧamāl al-Dīn, p. 597; Commins, Islamic Reform, p. 112; Weismann, Taste of Modernity, p. 281. The treatises in question are Muḫtaṣar al-manār by Zayn al-Dīn al-Ḥalabī al-Ḥanafī (d. 808/1405), the earlier mentioned Waraqāt by the Šāfiʿī scholar al-Ǧuwaynī, Muḫtaṣar tanqīḥ al-fuṣūl by the Mālikī scholar Šihāb al-Dīn al-Qarāfī (d. 684/1285), and Qawāʿid al-uṣūl by the Ḥanbalī scholar Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Baġdādī (d. 739/1338). See al-Qāsimī, Maǧmūʿ mutūn uṣūliyya; idem, Mutūn uṣūliyya muhimma.
See Ẓ. al-Qāsimī, Ǧamāl al-Dīn, pp. 534–537, 539–540, 548, 550, 567, 596, 623–624.
See Ẓ. al-Qāsimī, Ǧamāl al-Dīn, p. 597.
Ẓ. al-Qāsimī, Ǧamāl al-Dīn, pp. 534–535.
He alludes to Muḥammad Badr al-Dīn al-Naʿsānī al-Ḥalabī (d. 1943), whose Kitāb al-taʿlīm wa-l-iršād was published in 1906. He was an Azhar-trained Arabic teacher and journalist originally from Aleppo. He travelled extensively through the Arab and Islamic world, and lived in several cities. Kurd ʿAlī describes him as someone who was pro-Turkish and used to speak badly about Arabs. See Kurd ʿAlī, Muḏakkirāt, vol. 2, p. 587; al- Ziriklī, Aʿlām, vol. 7, p. 102; al-Ḥalabī, Kitāb al-taʿlīm, pp. 31-35.
See Ẓ. al-Qāsimī, Ǧamāl al-Dīn, pp. 534–537.
ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Ǧazāʾirī owned a copy of the first ever printed version from Cairo. He sent his student Muḥammad al-Ṭanṭāwī (d. 1306/1888) to Konya in 1287/1870 with the sole purpose of correcting that printed version on the basis of the manuscript to be found there attributed to Ibn ʿArabī himself. See al-Ḥāfiẓ & Abāẓa, Taʾrīḫ ʿulamāʾ Dimašq, vol. 1, p. 96. That the Futūḥāt were available in print at such an early stage of Islamic print culture is a clear indication of the strong grip Ibn ʿArabī’s thought still had on Islamic discourse in the 19th century. For his influence on post-classical book culture, see El Shamsy, Islamic Classics, chap. 2.
I have not been able to locate the printed version of this collection of treatises, which he does mention in his letter correspondence with al-Ālūsī. According to al-Sarmīnī and al-ʿAǧmī, the collection is named Maǧmūʿ šarḥ Arbaʿ rasāʾil fī uṣūl al-tafsīr wa-uṣūl al-fiqh, or Šarḥ Arbaʿ rasāʾil fī al-uṣūl, and contains beside the named treatises a treatise by Ibn Fūrak al-Aṣbahānī (d. 406/1015) and al-Suyūṭī. Al-ʿAǧmī claims it was printed in 1907 in al-Maṭbaʿa al-Adabiyya in Beirut. See his Rasāʾil, pp. 23, 131; al-Sarmīnī, al-Qāsimī wa-ǧuhūduhu al-ḥadīṯiyya, p. 156.
See Ẓ. al-Qāsimī, Ǧamāl al-Dīn, pp. 219–220, 532–534.
On the impact of al-Qāsimī’s rediscovery of the treatise by al-Ṭūfī for later scholarly discourse on maṣlaḥa, see El Shamsy, Islamic Classics, p. 178.
See Commins, Islamic Reform, pp. 112–113; Weismann, Taste of Modernity, p. 281; Ẓ. al-Qāsimī, Ǧamāl al-Dīn, pp. 209–210; al-Sarmīnī, al-Qāsimī wa-ǧuhūduhu al-ḥadīṯiyya, p. 53.
See al-Zarkašī, Luqṭat al-ʿAǧlān.
Ẓ. al-Qāsimī, Ǧamāl al-Dīn, p. 598; al-ʿAǧmī, Rasāʾil, pp. 78–79; El Shamsy, Islamic Classics, p. 190.
Al-ʿAǧmī, Rasāʾil, pp. 85–86. Al-Qāsimī’s edition also inspired an Egyptian print of the work, edited by Badr al-Dīn al-Naʿsānī. For a review of this edition see [Author unknown], “Maṭbūʿāt wa-makhṭūṭāt: al-Lumʿa fī uṣūl al-fiqh”. On al-Naʿsānī, see above.
See al-Qāsimī, Qawāʿid al-taḥdīṯ. This work has seen many publications after the first print in Damascus in 1925 that contained laudatory introductions by reformists such as Muḥammad Bahǧat al-Bīṭār, Šakīb Arslān and Rašīd Riḍā, and may be considered al-Qāsimī’s most popular work to this day.
The same goes for his close companion Ṭāhir al-Ǧazāʾirī, who also wrote a work on the fundamentals of ḥadīṯ narration, which was similarly well received in both Salafī and neo-traditionalist camps in the 20th century. These works have thus far only very lightly been touched upon by Jonathan A.C. Brown, and deserve a separate study similar to this, to see to what extent they meant a paradigm shift for the study of ḥadīṯ in their own era. See al-Qāsimī, Qawāʿid al-taḥdīṯ; al-Ǧazāʾirī, Tawǧīh al-naẓar; Brown, Canonization, pp. 310–311.
See Ẓ. al-Qāsimī, Ǧamāl al-Dīn, p. 568.
See al-Qāsimī, “Iršād al-fuḥūl”.
See Dallal, Islam without Europe.
See al-Šawkānī, Iršād al-fuḥūl.
Al-Qāsimī, “Iršād al-fuḥūl”, pp. 543–544.
See Ẓ. al-Qāsimī, Ǧamāl al-Dīn, p. 624. The treatise in question is most likely (a fragment of) Lubāb al-maḥṣūl fī ʿilm al-uṣūl, a summary of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ġazālī’s al-Mustaṣfā fī ʿilm al-uṣūl. This manuscript is still present under the shelf mark MS 2798 in the al-Ẓāhiriyya Library in Damascus. I have not been able to locate this perhaps first ever printed edition initiated by al-Qāsimī and Sulṭān ʿAbd al-Ḥafīẓ, and am thus not sure whether they pushed on with the project. Al-Sarmīnī does mention it among al-Qāsimī’s writings on fiqh as an explanation (šarḥ) of the work but does not mention a publication history. See al-Sarmīnī, al-Qāsimī wa-ǧuhūduhu al-ḥadīṯiyya, p. 153. Al-Ġazālī’s Mustaṣfā was first published only few years earlier in two volumes at the Būlāq print in Cairo, between 1904 and 1907. See al-Ġazālī, Mustaṣfā.
See al-Qāsimī, Maǧmūʿ rasāʾil.
See al-Qāsimī, al-Madīna al-munawwara, pp. 32, 37, 47; Ẓ. al-Qāsimī, Ǧamāl al-Dīn, p. 568; Ibn Ḥazm, Muḥallā. The complete Muḥallā would ultimately be edited and published between 1928 and 1933 by al-Qāsimī’s Egyptian student Aḥmad Muḥammad Šākir (d. 1958) together with the Damascene Muḥammad Munīr ʿAbduh Āġā (d. 1948), who lead the Salafī publishing house Dār al-Ṭibāʿa al-Munīriyya in Cairo. They were responsible for the publication of several rediscovered classics important to the growing Salafī movement. It would go too far to consider their choice for al-Muḥallā the direct result of the influence of al-Qāsimī, but there is an obvious link much as there is with other works later edited by al-Qāsimī’s students and colleagues. On their efforts in editing and publishing see Juynboll, “Aḥmad Muḥammad Shākir”; Shaham, “Egyptian Judge”; El Shamsy, Islamic Classics, pp. 36–37, 222; ʿAbduh Āġā, Namūḏaǧ. Something similar can be said of al-Qāsimī’s student Muḥibb al-Dīn al-Ḫaṭīb, who would start a Salafī publishing house in Cairo as well, and would among other works publish Ibn Taymiyya’s treatise on uṣūl al-tafsīr, which was partly a rediscovery of al-Qāsimī. See al-ʿAǧmī, Rasāʾil, p. 94; Coppens, “Ottoman Tafsīr Curriculum”, pp. 26–27.
Ẓ. al-Qāsimī, Ǧamāl al-Dīn, p. 627. Ibn Ḥazm was a very new phenomenon for the circle around al-Qāsimī, and was clearly only just in the process of being rediscovered. The Damascene journal al-Muqtabas dedicated quite some attention to Ibn Ḥazm’s legacy in 1906, among others under the rubrics “Forgotten Pages” (Ṣuḥuf mansiyya) and “Prints and Manuscripts” (Maṭbūʿāt wa-maḫṭūṭāt). See [Author unknown], “Ṣudūr al-Mašāriqa”; [Author unknown], “Ṣuḥuf mansiyya”; [Author unknown], “Maṭbūʿāt wa-maḫṭūṭāt: Mudāwāt al-nufūs”; [Author unknown], “Šiʿr Ibn Ḥazm”.
See Hallaq, Islamic Legal Theories, pp. 214–231; Hamzah, “From ʿIlm to Ṣiḥāfa”.
El Shamsy, Islamic Classics, p. 198.
For what follows, see Messick, Calligraphic State, pp. 1, 5, 38, 118, 251–252. On the functioning of commentary traditions as “structural textual correspondence” and their role in world making and (imagined) community building in Islamic history, see also van Lit, “Commentary and Commentary Tradition”.
For a discussion of the practice of tafsīr in 19th-century Ottoman Damascus, see Coppens, “Ottoman Tafsīr Curriculum”. On the central role of the tafsīr of al-Bayḍāwī and its glosses in madrasa education, see Saleh, “al-Bayḍāwī”. On the core tafsīr texts of the Ottoman madrasa curriculum, see Naguib, “Guiding the Sound Mind”; Ahmed & Filipovic, “Sultan’s Syllabus”, pp. 207–212; Simsek, “Missing Link”.
See Muḥyī al-Dīn, al-Šayḫ Ṭāhir al-Ǧazāʾirī, p. 70; Lūqā, al-Ḥaraka al-adabiyya fī Dimašq, p. 290. I have not been able to trace the manuscript of this gloss.
In the biographical literature of the involved scholars in the incident, ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Bīṭār (d. 1916), Tawfīq al-Ayyūbī (d. 1932), Amīn al-Safarǧalānī (d. 1916), Saʿīd al-Farā (d. 1925), and Muṣṭafā al-Ḥallāq (d. 1911), I could not find concrete information on which works of tafsīr they studied during their traditional education. Only the autobiography of al-Qāsimī and his iǧāzāt contain some clear indications on the role of al-Bayḍāwī in his curriculum. Given the number of shared teachers of these scholars it is most likely that they all followed a similar curriculum. See al-Bīṭār, Ḥilyat al-bašar, vol. 1, p. 19; al-Ḥāfiẓ & Abāẓa, Taʾrīḫ ʿulamāʾ Dimašq, vol. 1, pp. 298–230, 363–366, 368–369, 448–449, 531–534; Coppens, “Ottoman Tafsīr Curriculum”, pp. 20–24.
El Shamsy, Islamic Classics, p. 32; idem, “Islamic Book Culture”, p. 61. The al-Ẓāhiriyya Library counted 221 works of tafsīr (55 in print, 166 manuscripts) around 1900, but individual volumes of every single work were probably counted, making the total of actual works less than that. It is likely that most available works were part of the Ottoman curriculum, as can still be seen in a al-Ẓāhiriyya manuscript catalogue from 1980: al-Bayḍāwī and Abū al-Suʿūd with glosses are dominant, and it indeed lists every volume separately. The catalogue from 1900 of the nearby al-Ḫālidiyya Library in Jerusalem, established with the help of Ṭāhir al-Ǧazāʾirī and visited by al-Qāsimī in 1903, further confirms that: most of the 52 tafsīr works catalogued are typical for Ottoman scholarly culture, and separate volumes of the same work are all catalogued separately. See al-Zayyāt, Ḫazāʾin al-kutub fī Dimašq, p. 17; Ḫaymī, Fihris al-Ẓāhiriyya, vol. 3; [Author unknown], Barnāmiǧ al-maktaba al-Ḫālidiyya, pp. 14–17.
El Shamsy has shown that also in Cairo’s private libraries the basic tafsīr texts by al-Ǧalālayn, al-Bayḍāwī, al-Zamaḫšarī, and glosses on them were dominant. See El Shamsy, “Islamic Book Culture”, p. 74.
See Simsek, “Missing Link”, pp. 178–180; Coppens, “Ottoman Tafsīr Curriculum”, pp. 20–22. See also the excerpt on tafsīr from Badr al-Dīn al-Ḥalabī’s Kitāb al-taʿlīm wa-l-iršād, who offers a strikingly similar narrative on the state of the genre as an eye-witness in 1906. See al-Ḥalabī, Kitāb al-taʿlīm, pp. 19–24; idem, “al-Tafāsīr wa-l-mufassirūn”.
See Ẓ. al-Qāsimī, Ǧamāl al-Dīn, pp. 609–610.
See Saleh, “Historiography of tafsīr”, p. 15.
See Simsek, “Missing Link”, pp. 178–180; El Shamsy, “Islamic Book Culture”, p. 74.
See Nafi, “Alusi”, p. 493, n. 79.
Ẓ. al-Qāsimī, Ǧamāl al-Dīn, p. 610.
See Saleh, “Historiography of tafsīr”, pp. 10–16.
See Kanʿān, “Talāmīḏ al-Qāsimī”, pp. 405–412. On the importance of refuting the prominent cult around graves of awliyāʾ for al-Qāsimī and his scholarly companions and the role of treatises of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim in that, see El Shamsy, Islamic Classics, pp. 191–197.
See Ibn Taymiyya, Uṣūl al-tafsīr; al-Dihlawī, al-Fawz al-kabīr. Another notable premodern exception is al-Kāfiyaǧī, Qawāʿid ʿilm al-tafsīr.
For a discussion of recent developments in uṣūl al-tafsīr, see Saeed, “The Shāhīn Affair”. Saeed shows that even in our contemporary age there is still a lot of unclarity over what exactly are the fundamentals to be applied by a mufassir, and that it still is an underdeveloped genre in many ways. See also Sulaymān et al., al-Taʾlīf al-muʿāṣir fī qawāʿid al-tafsīr.
For an overview of such introductions, see Gilliot, “Traditional Disciplines”, pp. 329b–330a. For more detailed discussions of examples of such introductions, see Bauer, “Justifying the Genre”; Saleh, “The Introduction to al-Wāḥidī’s al-Basīṭ”.
See Bauer, “Justifying the Genre”, p. 52.
See al-Suyūṭī, Itqān, pp. 449–532.
See also Saeed, “Shāhīn Affair”, pp. 114–115, for some medieval scholars like al-Zarkašī and al-Ṭūfī, who lamented the underdevelopment of uṣūl al-tafsīr and stated it was not sufficient to apply the principles of uṣūl al-fiqh to the text of the Qurʾān, which entailed more than just jurisprudence.
See al-Fanārī, ʿAyn al-aʿyān, p. 5.
See al-Kāfiyaǧī, Qawāʿid ʿilm al-tafsīr, pp. 10–12. “Who has mastered these knowledge disciplines is no longer explaining the Qurʾān by one’s opinion” (Qawāʿid ʿilm al-tafsīr, p. 12).
See al-Kāfiyaǧī, Qawāʿid ʿilm al-tafsīr, p. 14.
See [Author unknown], “Maǧmūʿ rasāʾil”, p. 214.
See al-Qāsimī, Maǧmūʿ rasāʾil, pp. 3, 5, 8, 10, 21, 22, 25–26. When al-Qāsimī had just passed away in 1914, Muḥammad Bahǧat al-Bīṭār wrote to al-Ālūsī that it was their intention to publish Maḥāsin al-taʾwīl as soon as possible. It was only in the late 1950s, however, that the work was finally published for the first time. See al-ʿAǧmī, Rasāʾil, p. 240.
El Shamsy holds that this set of treatises was purposely published for instruction in those schools. See El Shamsy, Islamic Classics, p. 190.
See al-Qāsimī, Maǧmūʿ rasāʾil, p. 11.
See al-Qāsimī, Maǧmūʿ rasāʾil, pp. 7–8.
See al-Qāsimī, Maǧmūʿ rasāʾil, pp. 7–9.
Saleh, “Radical Hermeneutics”, pp. 125–126.
On his works being largely collections of sayings from other scholars and the criticism this provoked among some scholars of the generation after him, see al-Sarmīnī, al-Qāsimī wa-ǧuhūduhu al-ḥadīṯiyya, pp. 118–127.
On how he knew of these two works and how he played a role in the print of Ibn Taymiyya’s treatise, see Coppens, “Ottoman Tafsīr Curriculum”, pp. 26–27; El Shamsy, Islamic Classics, p. 188.
See al-Qāsimī, Maḥāsin al-taʾwīl, vol. 1, pp. 30–32.
See Ẓ. al-Qāsimī, Ǧamāl al-Dīn, p. 159; Commins, Islamic Reform, p. 62. The edition they discussed in Beirut and which al-Qāsimī used as a source must have been the first printed edition ever from Tunis, which appeared in 1884. The no longer extant edition from 1909, published in Kazan with a Turkish foreword from the Tatar Islamic modernist Mūsā Ǧār Allāh Bīgī, only consisted of Part One. The passages in Tamhīd ḫaṭīr are mainly derived from Part Two and Three of the Tunis edition, but it is safe to say that the complete work was available to him. See al-Šāṭibī, Muwāfaqāt. For the publication history of al-Muwāfaqāt, see Masud, Shatibi’s Philosophy, p. 82.
This point is also made by al-Sarmīnī in his explanation of why al-Qāsimī copied so much from other authors in his works. See al-Sarmīnī, al-Qāsimī wa-ǧuhūduhu al-ḥadīṯiyya, pp. 125–126.
See Vishanoff, Islamic Hermeneutics; Yunis Ali, Medieval Islamic Pragmatics. Hallaq also considers language theory one of the three main pillars of uṣūl al-fiqh, beside kalām and fiqh. See Hallaq, “Uṣūl al-fiqh Revisited”, pp. 143–144.
See El Shamsy, Islamic Classics, pp. 177–182; Coppens, “Ottoman Tafsīr Curriculum”, pp. 24–30.
See al-Qāsimī, Maḥāsin al-taʾwīl, vol. 1, pp. 215–216.
Ahmed, What is Islam, p. 521.
See al-Qāsimī, Maḥāsin al-taʾwīl, vol. 1, pp. 41–57; al-Šāṭibī, Muwāfaqāt, vol. 3, pp. 204–220.
See Keeler, “Ṣūfī tafsīr as a Mirror”, p. 2; Böwering, “Scriptural Senses”, pp. 346–365.
See al-Qāsimī, Maḥāsin al-taʾwīl, vol. 1, pp. 57–69; al-Šāṭibī, Muwāfaqāt, vol. 2, pp. 41–51.
Al-Qāsimī, Maḥāsin al-taʾwīl, vol. 1, p. 67; al-Šāṭibī, Muwāfaqāt, vol. 2, p. 51.
For a discussion of this theme within the broader context of al-Šāṭibī’s Muwāfaqāt, see Hallaq, Islamic Legal Theories, pp. 171–172, 181; Masud, Shatibi’s Philosophy, pp. 176–181.
See Saleh, “Radical Hermeneutics”.
See al-Qāsimī, Maḥāsin al-taʾwīl, vol. 1, pp. 19–26.
For his quotations from Kitāb al-īmān, see al-Qāsimī, Maḥāsin al-taʾwīl, vol. 1, pp. 136–157.
See Ibn Taymiyya, Kitāb al-īmān. This work was edited by earlier mentioned Badr al-Dīn al-Naʿsānī al-Ḥalabī. It seems he was not part of the Salafī trend per se. Perhaps he was rather interested in Kitāb al-īmān as a linguist because of the philosophy on language it contains than for its religious ideas. See Kurd ʿAlī, Muḏakkirāt, vol. 2, p. 587; al-Ziriklī, Aʿlām, vol. 7, p. 102; al-Ḥalabī, Kitāb al-taʿlīm, pp. 31-35.
See al-Qāsimī, Maḥāsin al-taʾwīl, vol. 1, pp. 136–157; Ibn Taymiyya, Kitāb al-īmān, pp. 34 ff. For an overview of the ḥaqīqa-maǧāz discussion, see Shah, “Philological Endeavors I” and “Philological Endeavors II”.
See al-Qāsimī, Maḥāsin al-taʾwīl, vol. 1, pp. 222–254; Shah, “Philological Endeavors I”, pp. 29–30, 42; “Philological Endeavors II”, pp. 43–53, 60–62; Hoover, Ibn Taymiyya, pp. 41–42, 115–116. See also Yunis Ali, Medieval Islamic Pragmatics.
ʿAbd al-Salām’s Išāra ilā al-īǧāz was first printed in Istanbul in 1896, and thus easy to obtain for al-Qāsimī. See al-Sulamī, Išāra ilā al-īǧāz.
See al-Qāsimī, Maḥāsin al-taʾwīl, vol. 1, pp. 157–162.
See, for example, a later passage taken from al-Ġazālī’s Ilǧām al-ʿawāmm ʿan ʿilm al-kalām that warns the commoners against understanding God’s attributes in any other way than how the salaf understood them. Al-Qāsimī quotes this in a chapter called “That which is right concerning the verses on the attributes [of God] is the way of the salaf”, between authorities like Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim. Al-Ġazālī’s thought on matters of kalām was of course much more complicated than that, but al-Qāsimī deliberately chose what fit his agenda. This is also one of the few chapters in which al-Qāsimī himself is very outspoken about his own opinion on the matter in between the passages he borrows from other works. The success of his tafsīr in later Salafī circles is also partly because of his approach to this matter. See al-Qāsimī, Maḥāsin al-taʾwīl, vol. 1, pp. 206–212; Coppens, “Ottoman Tafsīr Curriculum”, p. 28, n. 57.
For this discussion, see Brown, “Is Islam Easy to Understand?”.
See Lauzière, Making of Salafism; Lauzière, “Construction of Salafiyya”; Griffel, “What do we mean by ‘Salafi’?”; Wagemakers, “Salafism’s Historical Continuity”; Weismann, “New and Old Perspectives”. For an overview, see Wagemakers, “Salafism’s Historical Continuity”, p. 209, n. 13.
Saleh, “Historiography of tafsīr”, p. 16.
This point is also made by al-Sarmīnī, al-Qāsimī wa-ǧuhūduhu al-ḥadīṯiyya, pp. 118–121.
See El Shamsy, Islamic Classics; “Islamic Book Culture”; Saleh, “Historiography of tafsīr”.
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