COBHUNI Lecture: The Sociology of Ḥadīṯ Studies of the Mamluk PeriodLecture of Dr. Mohammad Gharaibeh, University of Bonn
28 September 2017
COBHUNI Lecture on Thursday, September 28 at 10 am c.t. in room 136, Edmund-Siemers-Allee
For a long time, commentary literature was ignored almost exclusively by Western scholarship due to the conviction, that commentaries were mere repetition of previous writings without or with little innovative potential. Only recently, the interest in the vast commentary tradition of the Islamicate world in general and of the Mamluk period in particular has increased. Locating the commentaries in a tradition of knowledge transmission and evolution, studies look into commentaries more closely to analyze the function of this genre. This paper is going a step further by analyzing, in addition, the social and mental networks of the authors of the commentaries and the original work. As a case study, the Introduction into the ḥadīṯ-science of Ibn aṣ-Ṣalāḥ aš-Šahrazūrī (d. 643/1245) will be the focus of this study. With not less than twenty-two commentaries, abridgments and versified comments in the Mamluk period, this text had a vivid reception. By analyzing the commentaries in addition to the social and mental networks of the authors, much can be learned about the intellectual climate of the Mamluk period and growing and transmission of knowledge.