Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Note on transliteration
- Note on dating systems
- Glossary
- 1 The development of the genre
- 2 The caliph al-Maʾmūn
- 3 The Imam ʿAlī al-Riḍā
- 4 The Ḥadīth-scholar Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal
- 5 The renunciant Bishr al-Ḥāfī
- Conclusions
- Appendix: The circumstances of ʿAlī al-Riḍā's death
- Bibliography
- Index
Conclusions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Note on transliteration
- Note on dating systems
- Glossary
- 1 The development of the genre
- 2 The caliph al-Maʾmūn
- 3 The Imam ʿAlī al-Riḍā
- 4 The Ḥadīth-scholar Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal
- 5 The renunciant Bishr al-Ḥāfī
- Conclusions
- Appendix: The circumstances of ʿAlī al-Riḍā's death
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Ever since I developed a taste for literature and learning, I sought out the biographies of scholars and men of letters … like one enamored and impassioned, searching as a lover for his beloved.
Yāqūt al-ḤamawīWith ardor I sought out the biographies and death-dates of worthy men of the past, reading of those whom each period had brought together; and the material I collected compelled me to seek more of it, and pursue the subject further.
Ibn KhallikānThis study began by suggesting that the notion of heirship proved formative of the Arabic biographical tradition. The genre originated among akhbārīs, not Ḥadīth-scholars. It appears to have grown out of the pre-Islamic practice of combining a genealogy with a narrative about the persons named. However, it assumed its characteristic form by adopting a particular kind of genealogy – the transmission of knowledge – as a model. Nearly any ṭaʾifa, that is, any group of persons engaged in the transmission of ʿilm, could attain sufficient dignity to merit the composition of a collective biography. Some early subjects of biography, such as singers and poets, had little or nothing to do with the religious sciences. Other groups, such as scholars of language, used biography to argue that they did have a role to play in matters of faith.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Classical Arabic BiographyThe Heirs of the Prophets in the Age of al-Ma'mun, pp. 188 - 192Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000