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The Najaf Ḥawzah Curriculum1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 May 2016

ROY P. MOTTAHEDEH
ROY P. MOTTAHEDEH*
Affiliation:
Harvard [email protected]
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Abstract

Najaf has been the cradle of Shī῾ī learning for many centuries. According to Najaf tradition, it has been so ever since the prominent scholar Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Ṭūsī, called shaykh al-tā'ifa or “senior scholar of the the sect”, migrated there shortly after the Saljuq conquest of Baghdad in 447/1055.

We have very little information about the teaching system and curriculum in Najaf before the nineteenth century. In this essay, I will try to present the basic elements of a Najaf ḥawza education as they exist in contemporary Iraq and compare it with a Najaf curriculum of 1913. Quite remarkably, the curriculum, teaching methods and patronage networks have been remarkably stable over the last century. Politics and reform movements have, however, had their effects on the curriculum too, as I shall explain in the course of this essay.

Type
Part IV: Beyond the Empire
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 26 , Issue 1-2 , January 2016 , pp. 341 - 351
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2016 

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Footnotes

1

The first version of this paper was a lecture delivered in 2009 at the British Academy through the kind offices of Professor Robert Gleave of Exeter University. The version given here was prepared in January 2011 and does not discuss developments after that date. I thank my colleague Professor Intisar Rabb for her very thorough proof-reading of this article.

References

2 Ḥawza al-Najaf al-Ashraf: al-Niẓām wa-mashārī‛ al-iṣlāh, 1428/2007.

3 Ibid., pp. 89–100, although on pp. 449–451 are listed the statistics for students registering and students actually taking exams in the major texts. For example, for the Kifāya of Khurāsānī, perhaps the most difficult advanced set text, in 1427 ah. 54 registered for the exam and 31 actually sat the exam (p. 452). See Appendix B for a 2010 version of an abstract Shī‛ī Ḥawza curriculum, not specific to Najaf.

4 Sabrina Mervin includes the 1913 book list in her outstanding article, “La quête du savoir à Najaf,” Studia Islamica 81 (1995), pp. 179–180, without, however, fully identifying the dates of the authors and the full titles of the books.

5 Muḥsin al-Amīn has been the subject of several very fine studies by Sabrina Mervin, including an outstanding translation along with Haytham al-Amīn, of his autobiography: Autobiographique d'un clerc chiite du Jabal ‛Āmil (Damascus, 1998). See pp. 179–180 for the books he studied in Najaf.

6 Āqā-Najafī Qūchānī, Siyāḥat-i Sharq u Gharb (Qum, 1377), pp. 201, 225, 227, 234.

7 Robinson, Francis, “Ottomans-Safavids-Mughals: Shared knowledge and connective systems”, Journal of Islamic Studies 8:2 (1997), pp. 151–184 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (especially p. 155). Many of these texts are also met with in El-Rouayheb, Khaled, “Opening the gate of verification: The forgotten Arab-Islamic florescence of the 17th century”, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 38 (2006), pp. 263–281 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 ‛Abd al-Hādī al-Ḥakīm, Ḥawza al-Najaf, pp. 120–121.

9 Ibid ., p. 155.

10 Ibid ., pp. 268–270.

11 See Nakash, Yitzhak, The Shi῾is of Iraq (Princeton, 2003), pp. 265–266 Google Scholar.

12 Among the large number of books defending Muḥammad Ṣadr, the earliest by Ra’ūf, ‛Ādil, Muḥammad Muḥammad Ṣādiq al-Ṣadr, Marja‛īya al-Maydān (Damascus, 1999)Google Scholar, gives a good general overview.

13 ‛Abd al-Hādī al-Ḥakīm, Ḥawza al-Najaf, p.159.

14 Anon., “Le programme des études chez les chiites et principalement ceux de Nedjef”, Revue du Monde Musulman 23 (June 1913), pp. 268–279.

15 Abū ‛Abdallāh Muḥammad ibn Dā’ūd al-Ṣanhājī, also known as Ibn Ājarrūm, 672–723 ah.

16 Jamāl al-Dīn Abū Muḥammad ‛Abdallāh ibn Yūsuf, also known as Ibn Hishām, 708–761 ah. The work consists of a basic text with the author's own commentary included.

17 Abū ‛Abdallāh Jamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad, also known as Ibn Mālik, 600 or 601–672 ah. The Alfīya, his thousand-verse poem, was a standard textbook. Although it was commonly known as the Alfīya, its proper title is Kitāb al-Khulāṣah fī’l-naḥw.

18 Probably the Nukat written by Jalāl al-Dīn ‛Abd al-Raḥmān al-Suyūṭī, 849–911 ah.

19 Abū’l-Fatḥ ‛Uthmān ibn Jinnī, 330–392 ah.

20 Abū Bishr ‛Amr ibn ‛Uthmān ibn Qanbar Sībawayhi, d. circa 177 ah.

21 The author attributes the ‛Awāmil to Mullā Ḥusayn, but the correct name is Mullā Muḥsin, better known as Fayḍ al-Kāshānī, d. c. 1090 ah.

22 Abū’l-Qāsim Maḥmūd ibn ‛Umar al-Zamakhsharī, 467–538 ah.

23 Muḥammad ibn Ḥusayn Bahā’ al-Dīn al-‛Āmilī, 953–1030 ah.

24 This commentary on the Kāfīya, written by Ibn al-Ḥājib, d. 646 ah, is by the celebrated Persian poet ‛Abd al-Raḥmān Jāmī, d. 898 ah.

25 This commentary of the Alfīya was written by al-Suyūṭī; see n. 5.

26 This book is most likely the Ḥāshiya ‛alā Tahdhīb al-Manṭiq written by ‛Abdallāh ibn al-Ḥusayn Yazdī, d. 981 ah, a commentary on the Tahdhīb al-Manṭiq by Mas‛ūd ibn ‛Umar Taftazānī, d. between 791 and 797 ah.

27 Quṭb al-Dīn Maḥmūd ibn Muḥammad al-Rāzī, d. 766 ah.

28 al-Ḥasan ibn Yūsuf ibn al-Muṭahhar al-Ḥillī, d. 726 ah.

29 Ibid .

30 Ja‛far ibn al-Ḥasan Muḥaqqiq al-Ḥillī, d.726 ah.

31 See n. 10.

32 This is a commentary by ‛Alī ibn Muḥammad al-Sayyid al-Sharīf Jurjānī, 740–816 ah, on the Talkhīṣ al-Miftāḥ by Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ‛Abd al-Raḥmān Qazwīnī, 666–739 ah.

33 Mas‛ūd ibn ‛Umar Taftāzānī, d. between 791 and 797 ah.

34 d. 901 ah.

35 d. 1186 ah.

36 Shaykh Ḥasan ibn al-Shahīd al-Thānī, d. 1011 ah.

37 [author still unidentified]

38 Abū’l-Qāsim ibn Ḥasan al-Qummī, d. 1231 ah.

39 Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Makkī al-‛Āmilī al-Shahīd al-Awwal, d. 786 ah.

40 See n. 22.

41 Shaykh Murtaḍā al-Anṣārī, d. 1281 ah.

42 Ibid .

43 Muḥammad Kāẓim Ākhūnd-i Khurāsānī, d. 1329 ah.

44 Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, d. 673 ah.

45 d. 879 ah. The author misspells his nisba.

46 d. 726 ah.

47 al-Faḍl ibn al-Ḥasan al-Ṭabarsī [or Ṭabrisī], d. 548 ah.

48 al-Qāsim ibn Farrukh al-Shāṭibī, d. 590 ah.