sdfb

You have no items in your shopping cart.
Close
Menu
Menu
Search
Wishlist
Filters
  • Home /
  • Sales /
  • Islamic Origins, Arabian Custom, and the Documents of the Prophet

Islamic Origins, Arabian Custom, and the Documents of the Prophet

By Sarah Z. Mirza
Picture of Islamic Origins, Arabian Custom, and the Documents of the Prophet
Picture of Islamic Origins, Arabian Custom, and the Documents of the Prophet
Picture of Islamic Origins, Arabian Custom, and the Documents of the Prophet
Early Islamic historical literature attributes several hundred pragmatic documents to the Prophet Muḥammad. The consistent use of epistolary and legal formulae, which are found only in these documents, encourages us to treat these texts as a corpus. In addition to consistent terminology, formulaic structure, and formulae, these texts show remarkable stability through transmission. A comparison of these texts with Umayyad and ʿAbbasid papyri reveals that the Prophet's documents reflect obsolete or otherwise unattested formulae. This study will demonstrate through three case studies the particular functions of these documents in the history of social relations in late antique Arabia.
Be the first to review this product
Publisher: Gorgias Press LLC
Availability: In stock
SKU (ISBN): 978-1-4632-0644-4
  • *
Publication Status: In Print
Series: Islamic History and Thought17
Publication Date: Jun 30,2022
Interior Color: Black with Color Inserts
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Page Count: 335
Languages: English
ISBN: 978-1-4632-0644-4
$149.50
Your price: $89.70
Ship to
*
*
Shipping Method
Name
Estimated Delivery
Price
No shipping options

Along with the Qurʾān and ḥadīth, pragmatic documents negotiating land, taxes, and tribal relations are attributed to the Prophet Muḥammad (~570-632 CE) in early Islamic historiography. These are often viewed as relics reflecting the Prophet’s religio-political mission, or as anachronistic texts spuriously ascribed to him. Challenging both conclusions, this book argues that an indigenous Arabian legal and documentary tradition, distinct from classical Islamic law, can be traced in these documents. Laying out the formularies and formulae of around 200 such documents, these are compared to early Arabic papyri as well as older corpora including Aramaic conveyance documents, Sabaic letters, and Nabataean tomb inscriptions. The book also maps the variation found across medieval redactions of some of the documents; the case of one distinctive legal clause; and the tribal traditions of those who received the documents. The documents of the Prophet maintain a register of everyday transactions and customary law which survives compilation and redaction and is embedded in older local and transregional infrastructures which circulate the language, media, and forms for documents. These documents encourage a reconsideration of the concepts of authorship, literacy, and authenticity applied to medieval texts, as well as the presumed centrality of confessional identity in the legal infrastructures described by medieval Islamic genres such as sīra (biography), ḥadīth (traditions), and taʾrīkh (history). Rather than reflecting authorship as the creative acts of individuals, literacy as the decoding of written text, and authenticity as the faithful transmission of original texts over time, the documents of the Prophet are reflective of transregional communication technologies, customs that trace long-lived, geographically diffuse infrastructures of which formulae are the remnants.

Along with the Qurʾān and ḥadīth, pragmatic documents negotiating land, taxes, and tribal relations are attributed to the Prophet Muḥammad (~570-632 CE) in early Islamic historiography. These are often viewed as relics reflecting the Prophet’s religio-political mission, or as anachronistic texts spuriously ascribed to him. Challenging both conclusions, this book argues that an indigenous Arabian legal and documentary tradition, distinct from classical Islamic law, can be traced in these documents. Laying out the formularies and formulae of around 200 such documents, these are compared to early Arabic papyri as well as older corpora including Aramaic conveyance documents, Sabaic letters, and Nabataean tomb inscriptions. The book also maps the variation found across medieval redactions of some of the documents; the case of one distinctive legal clause; and the tribal traditions of those who received the documents. The documents of the Prophet maintain a register of everyday transactions and customary law which survives compilation and redaction and is embedded in older local and transregional infrastructures which circulate the language, media, and forms for documents. These documents encourage a reconsideration of the concepts of authorship, literacy, and authenticity applied to medieval texts, as well as the presumed centrality of confessional identity in the legal infrastructures described by medieval Islamic genres such as sīra (biography), ḥadīth (traditions), and taʾrīkh (history). Rather than reflecting authorship as the creative acts of individuals, literacy as the decoding of written text, and authenticity as the faithful transmission of original texts over time, the documents of the Prophet are reflective of transregional communication technologies, customs that trace long-lived, geographically diffuse infrastructures of which formulae are the remnants.

Write your own review
  • Only registered users can write reviews
*
*
Bad
Excellent
*
*
*
*
ContributorBiography

SarahMirza

Sarah Z. Mirza is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the College of Wooster.

Table of Contents (v)
Acknowledgments (ix)
Abbreviations (xi)

Introduction: Four ways of looking at the Prophet’s documents (1)
Documents can be invisible (1)
How do we define (customary) law? (5)
The corpus (12)
Four ways of looking (15)
Conclusion: Formula as technology (22)

Chapter 1. Formulae (27)
The formula exists (27)
Comparing the Prophet’s corpus to Conquest-era documents and Arabic papyri: a profile (30)
Longevity of legal formulae, or, the pre-Islamic chancery register exists (36)
Commonly found formulae (39)
Selected legal formulae: documents of conveyance (69)
Free-formed, pre-formed, and anomalous material (82)
Conclusion: Documents as products of trans-local design (86)

Chapter 2. Variance (95)
Selection of redactions (101)
Typology of variants found (104)
Types of document (107)
Conclusion: The parameters of tradition are the limits to variance (151)

Chapter 3. Infrastructure: Dhimma agreements, sanctuary systems, and a case for Arabian customary law (163)
Formulae as historical evidence (166) 
The longevity of the dhimma formula (167) 
Security agreements (182) 
Inviolability under Arabian customary law (193) 
Sanctuary system as polity (197) 
Conclusion: Orality and the materiality of law (205)

Chapter 4. Persons: A popular material culture of ḥadīth (211)
Legal, narrative, and personal value of documents (213) 
Buckets, scraps, and trash (221) 
Textual shaping of reports and the scholar as authenticator (229) 
Hierarchies of persons and of texts (246) 
What is literacy? (249) 
Conclusion: Ḥadīth as social object (255)

Conclusion. There are no originals (259)

Appendix to Chapter 1: Comparative Arabic epistolary and legal formularies, from literary and documentary sources (269)
Letters from literary and documentary sources, with shared formulae highlighted (269)
Legal Documents, from literary and documentary sources, concerning sale, with shared formulae highlighted (276)

Appendix to Chapter 4: Correspondence between kitāba and istiʿmāl in biographical reports on Companions (279)

Bibliography (283)

Index (303)

Customers who bought this item also bought
Picture of The Essence of Greek Education since Antiquity

The Essence of Greek Education since Antiquity

This book attempts to answer the question: what are the essential features of Greek education? In so doing, it explores the extent to which the educational ideals and practices of paideia have displayed continuity from classical Athens until modern times. The views of Plato, Photios the Great (9th century) and Nicodemos the Athonite (18th century) are examined in particular, revealing significant stages of development. The book offers a presentation of what paideia holds up to be its own goal on its own terms. The proponents of the paideia tradition sought an answer to the age-old question, ‘What constitutes the human person?’ The response to that enigma determined everything else. Education took shape accordingly and led to a lifelong process of harmonising the respective functions of the soul and body. On account of its value on both a personal and communal level, paideia is of paramount significance for Plato and other exponents, such as Nicodemos. Their individual legacies stand like bookends on either side of some 22 centuries of Greek education that are appraised within these pages.
$114.95 $68.97
Picture of Entangled Confessionalizations?

Entangled Confessionalizations?

This volume explores the emergence of discourses of orthodoxy and orthopraxy in the Ottoman Empire between the 15th and 18th centuries, through empirical studies on confessional dynamics in early modern Muslim, Christian and Jewish sources.
$195.00 $117.00
Picture of Islam before Modernity

Islam before Modernity

This book examines the role of tradition and discursive knowledge transmission on the formation of the ‘ulamā’, the learned scholarly class in Islam, and their approach to the articulation of the Islamic disciplines. This book argues that a useful framework for evaluating the intellectual contributions of post-classical scholars such as Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Dardīr involves preserving, upholding, and maintaining the Islamic tradition, including the intellectual “sub-traditions” that came to define it.
$130.00 $78.00
Picture of Baghdad during the time of ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī

Baghdad during the time of ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī

A study of the life and background of ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, putative founder of the Qādiriyya order, investigating the sources for his life and attributed works. The book seeks to elucidate the ideas of al-Jīlānī, and to formulate a picture of the most prominent trends of pious and mystical thought in Baghdad during the twelfth century, providing a cultural and geographical angle to the study of Islamic mysticism and piety.
$115.00 $69.00
Related products
Picture of Iraq After The Muslim Conquest

Iraq After The Muslim Conquest

Morony compares conditions in late Sasanian and early Islamic Iraq in the seventh century AD and depicts both the emergence of a local form of Islamic society, and the interaction of Muslim conquerors from Arabia with the native population.
$262.00 $157.20
Picture of Muslims, Jews and Pagans

Muslims, Jews and Pagans

Muslims, Jews and Pagans examines in much detail the available source material on the 'Āliya area south of Medina on the eve of Islam and at the time of the Prophet Muḥammad. It provides part of the necessary background for the study of the Prophet's history by utilizing in addition to the Prophet's biographies, various texts about the history, geography and inhabitants of this area.
$78.00
Picture of Seeing Islam as Others Saw It

Seeing Islam as Others Saw It

This seminal work continues to shape the thought of specialists studying the Late Antique crossroads at which Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, and Islamic histories met, by offering the field a new approach to the vexing question of how to write the early history of Islam. The new edition of the study produces the original text with the addition of a substantial forward in which Hoyland discusses how the field has developed over the two decades that proceeded the book’s first publication. Hoyland also shares some personal reflections on how his thinking has since developed and the potential impact of this on the findings of the original study. The book also includes new appendices that detail the later publications of the author.
$114.95 $68.97
Picture of The Making of the Mosque

The Making of the Mosque

“In the absence of reliable archaeological evidence, the question of how the mosque was made represents a real challenge. Its origin remains moot despite many attempts to settle the question. This study sets out to explore whether early Islam, within the framework of the Prophet’s teachings and practices, as well as the Qurʾān, might have provided the necessary prompts for the making of the mosque and the shaping of its essential functional and architectural features. It also investigates how such religious prompts may have interacted with the political, cultural and socio-economic contexts in which the mosque type materialized. As such, this book scrutinizes two dominant tendencies regarding the mosque type, the modern Western views on its non-Islamic origins and the Islamic legalist views on what it should look like.”
$149.50 $89.70
Information
Gorgias Press is an independent academic publisher specializing in the history and religion of the Middle East and the larger pre-modern world. We are run by scholars, for scholars, who believe strongly in "Publishing for the Sake of Knowledge."
My account
Customer service
Powered by PubNiche Title Management System from Ivos Solutions
Copyright © 2024 Gorgias Press LLC. All rights reserved.