Al-Ma'mun, the Inquisition and the Quest for Caliphal Authority
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Lockwood Press
Published:11th Feb '16
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
The "inquisition" (Mihnah) unleashed by the seventh Abbasid caliph, 'Abdallah al-Ma'mun (r. 813-833), has long attracted the attention of modern scholars of the intellectual, political, and religious history of the early Abbasid era. Historians have seen it as the key to a wide array of puzzles and problems in early Islamic history.
In this incisive study, John Nawas subjects the various proposed explanations of these events to a sober and searching analysis and, in the process, presents a new interpretation of al-Ma'mun's political and religious policies, contextualized against the background of early Abbasid intellectual and social history.
Appended to the volume is a reprint edition of Walter M. Patton's Ahmed ibn Hanbal and the Mihna (Leiden 1897), which still has much that is useful for modern scholarship, including one enormous additional benefit; it contains most of the relevant passages in Arabic from the primary sources
Nawas makes a compelling and eloquent argument that requires our attention. To begin understanding the minha, one must start here. The editors of the series are to be commended for their efforts to gain the larger audience that is its due.
-- John P. Tucker * Journal of the American Oriental SocieISBN: 9781937040550
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 655g
360 pages