Classical Arabic Biography: The Heirs of the Prophets in the Age of al-Ma'mun (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization)
Cambridge University Press, 5/25/2000
EAN 9780521661997, ISBN10: 0521661994
Hardcover, 242 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
Pre-modern Arabic biography has served as a major source for the history of Islamic civilization. In this 2000 study exploring the origins and development of classical Arabic biography, Michael Cooperson demonstrates how Muslim scholars used the notions of heirship and transmission to document the activities of political, scholarly and religious communities. The author also explains how medieval Arab scholars used biography to tell the life-stories of important historical figures by examining the careers of the Abbasid Caliph al- Ma'mun, the Shiite Imam Ali al-Rida, the Sunni scholar Ahmad Ibn Hanbal and the ascetic Bishr al-Hafi, each of whom represented a tradition of political and spiritual heirship to the Prophet. Drawing on anthropology and comparative religion, as well as history and literary criticism, the book considers how each figure responded to the presence of the others and how these responses were preserved by posterity.
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Note on transliteration
Note on dating systems
Glossary
1. The development of the genre
2. The caliph al-Ma'mun
3. The Imam 'Ali al'Rida
4. The Hadith-scholar Ahmad Ibn Hanbal
5. The renunciant Bishr al-Hafi
Conclusions
Appendix
the circumstances of 'Ali al-Rida's death
Bibliography
Index.