TY - JOUR
T1 - Ar. 3001 and the apotheosis of mĀlik b. anas
AU - Brockopp, Jonathan
N1 - Funding Information:
Support for this research came from the History Department, the Center for Humanities and Information, and the Center for Global Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. I have presented portions of this paper at two meetings of the American Academy of Religion, at a workshop at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, and at a workshop at the University of Maryland. I am particularly grateful to Anna Bigelow, Sheila Blair, Antoine Borrut, Barry Flood, Kambiz Ghanea Bassiri, Leor Halevi, Gudrun Krämer, Nicola Denzey Lewis, Richard McGregor and the reviewer of this article for their constructive comments.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020, The Max Schloessinger Memorial Foundation, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. All rights reserved.
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Mālik b. Anas (d. 179/795) is much more than a famous jurist from Medina and the author of al-Muwaṭṭaʾ, he is also known as a larger-than-life figure who founded the Mālikī school of law. His followers recorded the most mundane details of his life, and he even appeared in dreams after his death, continuing to guide his devotees. In this article, I hope to trace some of the process by which Mālik attained this extraordinary status. It is my contention that whatever Mālik’s personal gifts may have been, scholarly authority is ultimately produced by a community of followers. It is their selective memory of his life, and their transmission of his words, that help to establish his authority. In the case of Mālik, this process coincides with the transformation of scholarly writings into books, in which the master’s words were carefully preserved verbatim and transmitted to future generations. Eventually, as Mālik’s authority increased, so also devotion to his Muwaṭṭaʾ increased. We can see this process in the physical copies of this text, preserved in manuscript. While the earliest manuscripts are simple, utilitarian vehicles for recording words, later manuscripts, such as the magnificent volume preserved in the Chester Beatty library in Dublin, display impressive techniques of calligraphy and illumination, normally reserved for the Qurʾān.
AB - Mālik b. Anas (d. 179/795) is much more than a famous jurist from Medina and the author of al-Muwaṭṭaʾ, he is also known as a larger-than-life figure who founded the Mālikī school of law. His followers recorded the most mundane details of his life, and he even appeared in dreams after his death, continuing to guide his devotees. In this article, I hope to trace some of the process by which Mālik attained this extraordinary status. It is my contention that whatever Mālik’s personal gifts may have been, scholarly authority is ultimately produced by a community of followers. It is their selective memory of his life, and their transmission of his words, that help to establish his authority. In the case of Mālik, this process coincides with the transformation of scholarly writings into books, in which the master’s words were carefully preserved verbatim and transmitted to future generations. Eventually, as Mālik’s authority increased, so also devotion to his Muwaṭṭaʾ increased. We can see this process in the physical copies of this text, preserved in manuscript. While the earliest manuscripts are simple, utilitarian vehicles for recording words, later manuscripts, such as the magnificent volume preserved in the Chester Beatty library in Dublin, display impressive techniques of calligraphy and illumination, normally reserved for the Qurʾān.
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M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85107703368
VL - 2020
SP - 249
EP - 274
JO - Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam
JF - Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam
SN - 0334-4118
IS - 49
ER -