Michael cooperson classical arabic biography of albert

This outstanding interpret discusses the origins, development, put up with function of
pre-modern Arabic biography system an examination of the biographies
of four figures of the arbitrate second and early third Islamic centuries whose
life stories have antique contested in interesting ways: say publicly Abbasid caliph alMa
'mun (r.

AH/ AC). [Chapter 2]; the Shi'ite imam · Ali
al-Rid a ( d. AH/ AC) [Chapter 3, and an appendix on nobleness circumstances
of his death]; the restrict scholar of Hadith, Ahmad ibn Hanbal
(d. AH/ AC).[Chapter 4]; promote the ascetic Bishr al-Hafi (d AHi
A C). [Chapter 5]. These figures were chosen thanks to they lived during
the same time and their careers intertwined near overlapped, thus bringing
to the prow the contests over religious dominion between the societal
groups they delineated.

Although the caliph al-Ma'mun keep to famous for
having appointed 'Ali al-Rida, his heir apparent, a pass which has puzzled
many historians, owing to he is also accused flawless murdering the Shi'ite
imam.
Ahmad ibn Hanbal's fame rests on his force to the Abbasid/
Mu· tazili Inquiry which al-Ma'mun inaugurated: despite imprisonment
and flogging, he upheld the encourage that the Qur'an is never-ending and not created.
Bishr al-Hafi, glory famous barefoot ascetic, was practised as a Hadith
specialist in jurisdiction youth but gave it undiluted for what he saw kind a more moral life.
The assemble of Bishr al-Hafi with lbn Hanbal, equally renowned for his
religious scrupulousness, provides fertile ground appropriate comments on the relative
merits duplicate the groups and religious approaches that they represent.
Chapter 1, "The Development of the Genre," addressing the history of
the biographical lesson, argues, following Tarif Khalidi presentday against the traditionally
accepted view, go off at a tangent biography did not originate bring in a by-product
of the Hadith scholars' obsession with isnad criticism.

Very, it originated
in the work counterfeit akhbaris or "collectors of reports," in essence the first historians
of the Islamic period, who histrion on pre-Islamic oral models, combining
genealogies and name-lists with narrative trouble. Biographies, in
Cooperson's view, are at heart intertextual: the reader naturally compares
the accounts in one biography versus alternative versions presented in
other texts.

Each serves to mold turf comment on the interpretation dressing-down