_This mirror for princes sheds light on the relationship between spiritual and political authority in early modern Egypt_ This guide to political behavior and expediency offers advice to Sufi shaykhs, or spiritual guides, on how to interact and negotiate with powerful secular officials, judges, and treasurers, or emirs. Translated into English for the first time, it is a unique account of the relationship between spiritual and political authority in late medieval / early modern Islamic society.

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 94 Heft: 1 Seiten: 284-287.

Air temperature prediction can play a significant role in studies related to climate change, radiation and heat flux estimation, and weather forecasting. This study applied and compared the outcomes of three advanced fuzzy inference models, i.e., dynamic evolving neural-fuzzy inference system, hybrid neural-fuzzy inference system, and adaptive neurofuzzy inference system for AT prediction. Modelling was done for three stations in North Dakota, USA, i.e., Robinson, Ada, and Hillsboro. The results reveal that FIS type models are well suited when handling highly (...) variable data, such as AT, which shows a high positive correlation with average daily dew point, total solar radiation, and negative correlation with average wind speed. At the Robinson station, DENFIS performed the best with a coefficient of determination of 0.96 and a modified index of agreement of 0.92, followed by ANFIS with R2 of 0.94 and md of 0.89, and HyFIS with R2 of 0.90 and md of 0.84. A similar result was observed for the other two stations, i.e., Ada and Hillsboro stations where DENFIS performed the best with R2: 0.953/0.960, md: 0.903/0.912, then ANFIS with R2: 0.943/0.942, md: 0.888/0.890, and HyFIS with R2: 0.908/0.905, md: 0.845/0.821, respectively. It can be concluded that all three models are capable of predicting AT with high efficiency by only using DP, TSR, and WS as input variables. This makes the application of these models more reliable for a meteorological variable with the need for the least number of input variables. The study can be valuable for the areas where the climatological and seasonal variations are studied and will allow providing excellent prediction results with the least error margin and without a huge expenditure. (shrink)

Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr (368/978-463/1071), uno de los mayores ulemas andalusíes del siglo V/XI, incluye un largo capítulo sobre los anwāʾ en su Kitāb al-Tamhīd, que se estudia, junto a textos afines, en sus dos aspectos fundamentales. En el plano literario, el capítulo contiene una especie de tratado de anwāʾ abreviado que constituye uno de los raros ejemplos de textos andalusíes relacionados con este género en la época de los taifas. En el plano religioso, el capítulo expresa un debate sobre la (...) licitud de los anwāʾ centrado en el hadiz transmitido por Ṣāliḥ ibn Kaysān que condena los anwāʾ en tanto que creencia preislámica. Por su tratamiento extenso y profundo del tema, el capítulo del Tamhīd es uno de los documentos que aporta un mayor conocimiento sobre el problema de fondo del sistema de los anwāʾ y la literatura derivada: su licitud teniendo en cuenta que se basa en una creencia pagana. El debate adquiere todo su sentido cuando se sitúa en una discusión más amplia, frecuente en el s. V/XI andalusi: el uso correcto de la astronomía, ya sea la astronomía matemática de origen griego o la astronomía popular árabe vinculada a los anwāʾ, en un contexto religioso, teniendo en cuenta la oposición a la astrología, considerada generalmente por los ulemas como una disciplina ilícita. (shrink)

Ṣāliḥ bin ʿAbd al-Quddūs of Persian origin was born in Basra, the crossroad of religions and teachings with its socio-cultural, scientific and intellectual structure. He grew up in a family that values religion, politics and literature. Rich scientific background and cross-cultural integration of Basra significantly influenced his scientific and intellectual development. However, in historiographical sources, he is an intellectual who has come to the fore with his literary identity. His ‘sectarian’, ‘political’, ‘wise’ (ḥikami), ‘didactic’ and 'gnomic' poems form the main (...) theme of his literary writings. Various titles have been attributed to him by the authors of history and biography. "Master of poets, street preacher, storyteller, theologian and philosopher" are a number of them. Before the translation of philosophical works, he became one of the important representatives of the 'literary theology', the dialectical technique of the period. Thus, besides his poetic and literary identity, he is mentioned as one of the six theologians of Basra. Over time, he was able to attract the attention of the political power with his theoretical and literary works for both theo-political and social adjustment. However, he was not understood adequately, and his poems did not attract the necessary attention since philosophical/wise expressions were widely found in them. In his poems, it is possible to see every tone of hope and hopelessness. He reflects hope, rights, justice, equality, freedom, moral virtues, but more often; despair, death, transience of the world, ascetism and distancing from people. For this reason, he is also referred to as the "poet of despair." From this point of view, his call to the life of ascetism was interpreted as dualism. The opinions of Ṣāliḥ calling for social adjustment, justice and equality were perceived as a threat by the political authority and he was killed with the accusation of heresy. Although it is generally accepted that he was executed due to heresy, there is much speculative information about the subject. Of two examples are that he subjected to ethnic discrimination due to his Persian origin, and that he was a philosopher of dualism and a follower of Manichaeism. However, the reason for the murder of Ṣāliḥ was neither his theological choice nor ethnic origin. His poetry, which motivated social morality, intellectual development, freedom and social enlightenment, turned him into a threat to the political power. It would appear that his opposition to Arab nationalism and privilege in the ranks of Šuʿūbiyya, a populism movement and his demand that justice and equality should spread throughout all layers of society, caused political prosecution. In this process, the rule chose the easiest way to silence any opposing voice by implementing the accusation of heresy. The concept of heresy, especially with the Abbasids, quickly turned away from its religious concerm and changed into a political notion. As a result, academic discussions conducted at the scientific and intellectual level in Basra were moved to a practical arena by politics, and the dose of criticism and violence increased. First of all, with its scientific and bureaucratic elements, the state embarked on an intellectual and actual struggle with heretical teachings, which aims to distort the essential principles of Islam by dissimulation (taqīyya). Although this political attitude towards heresy, which aims to break down Islamic values, can somehow be considered reasonable, the area of accusation of heresy expanded in time; causing every opposing movement to be evaluated within this scope. However, when the main theme of his poems is examined, the first point, attracting attention is his call to believe in God, the truth of the hereafter, reckoning consciousness, responsibility, justice, equality, freedom, etc. In fact, referring to the Qur’ān and ḥadīth in his poems already proves that he was a Muslim. Nevertheless, his poems were sometimes interpreted and presented as an evidence of his heresy and whenever he was found stating the right, his statements were found invalid because of accusation of dissimulation. Considering all these facts, this article will make a logical consistency analysis of the information and narrations about Ṣāliḥ. It will also examine the validity of the accusations of heresy against him, based on his literary discourses, religious identity and political attitude. As a result, it will determine whether the negative (theological) attribution to him is really an accusation or truth by an analytical inference. (shrink)

Following the formation of disciplines/sciences in different fields of Islamic thought, the specific concepts and terminologies of these disciplines/sciences began to emerge. Then the special meaning and the area of utilization for every concept in each discipline/science were further clarified by compiling specific epistles of definition (ḥudūd), which would contribute to this process of conceptualization. For the terminological meaning of the used concept to be determined primarily and thus for the followed theological/sectarian affiliation to be supported, works belonging to this (...) genre have been written specifically for the field of theology. Especially, the Muʿtazilī theologians undoubtedly made the greatest contribution. Thusly, specific treatises containing theological concepts were compiled by names such as al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār (d. 415/1025), and his students Abū Rashīd al-Nīsābūrī (d. after 420/1029) and Ibn Sharwīn (fl. first half of the Vth/XIth century). Zaydī theologian and jurist Abū’l-Qāsim al-Bustī’s (d. 420/1029) Tahdhīb al-ḥudūd, which has no available copy, is also contemporary to the mentioned works. This tradition found its reflection in the Imāmī-Muʿtazilī line in Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭūsī’s (d. 460/1067) al-Muqaddimah fī l-madkhal ilá ṣināʿat ʿilm al-kalām, which could be seen as a concise theological work in terms of its construct and the explanations which it comprises, and in the work called al-Ḥudūd wa-l-ḥaqāʾiq, which is attributed to al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍá (d. 436/1044). Abū Jaʿfar al-Muqrī al-Nīsābūrī’s (d. mid-VIth/XIIth century [?]) al-Ḥudūd stands out as the most voluminous example in this tradition. The most important work belonging to this genre in the Muʿtazilī tradition, as it is the first among the available works, is the Ḥudūd al-alfāẓ of al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār, which is found together with some other important Zaydī-Muʿtazilī works in a compilation discovered by us and thought to be lost until recently. In this treatise, which generally includes theological concepts and partially includes the concepts of Islamic law and the history of sects, al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār has put forward a language-based definition theory. His approach here is in line with the views he put forward on definition in his al-Mughnī. Accordingly, instead of definition (ḥadd) and description (rasm) carried out over five universals in classical logic, he adopted a method of lexical definition based on wording that agrees with the meaning of the concept in question and is clearer than it, and consequently gave a brief definition and explanation of the concept he deals with. This clearly shows that the previous Muʿtazilī theologians’ approach of language-based definition, which was used as an alternative to the conception of Aristotelian definition due to their distanced stance to philosophy was also inherited by al-Qāḍī ʿAbd al-Jabbār. The approach seen in some sources in the period following al-Qāḍī, such as Abū Rashīd al-Nīsābūrī’s al-Ḥudūd, also indicates his influence. (shrink)

Islamic thought; Islamic philosophy; history; analytical study.

صدر عن المركز العربي للأبحاث ودراسة السياسات كتاب "الشرعية الديمقراطية: من التعاقد إلى التواصل، هبرماس في مواجهة رولز"، ويسلط فيه مؤلفه، عبد العزيز ركح، الضوء على أنموذجين من الإتيقا العمومية، هما النظرية الليبرالية التعاقدية كما تجسدت حصرًا في أعمال جون رولز، والنظرية التداولية القائمة على أسس فلسفة التواصل وإتيقا الحوار كما يعرضها يورغن هبرماس، والمقترحان مشروعَا شرعنة سياسية للمسار الديمقراطي، مركزًا على إبراز أوجه اختلافهما وتشابههما، مفترضًا أن الخلاف الظاهر بينهما يُخفي في العمق تداخلًا وتشابهًا كبيرين؛ إذ يمكن القول إنهما (...) أنموذج واحد صيغ بطريقتين مختلفتين، نتيجة تباين البيئتين اللتين وُضِعا فيهما، واختلاف مرجعياتهما التاريخية والثقافية. (shrink)

Qurʼan; hermeneutics; criticism, textual; criticism, interpretation, etc.

In this article, we discuss the current trend of authoritarianism in the Islamic world, especially as embodied in the institution of taqlîd, whereby a lay person blindly follows a religious scholar. We will compare this to the mystical tradition of Ibn ‘Arabî as well as the early esoteric Shî’ite tradition, where a much more “rebellious” type of Islam was offered and provided purviews of pluralism and universalism that challenge authoritarian closures of interpretation in relationship with God. By way of further (...) comparison, we will also attend to the writings of some liberal and pluralistic thinkers in the Muslim world. Maintaining cheerfulness in the midst of a gloomy task, fraught with immeasurable responsibility, is no small feat; and yet what is needed more than cheerfulness?-Nietzsche Twilight of the Idols. (shrink)

al-Juzʼ al-awwal. Dirāsāt fī al-manṭiq wa-falsafat al-ʻulūm -- al-juzʼ al-thānī. Dirāsāt fī al-manhaj wa-al-ʻilm al-ʻArabī.

‘Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī’s _Book on the Science of Metaphysics_ is an important work that contains the influence of both Alexander of Aphrodisias and Themistius in the interpretation of Aristotle. Only chapters 13-16 belong to the Lambda. The limitation results first of all from the main purpose of the work, namely to present a new witness for the reception of Arabic metaphysics. As can be seen from the introduction of the work, the work is conceived as a unified whole and may (...) be meant as a kind of summa of metaphysics, a synopsis of four writings that hold high rank among medieval metaphysical works - especially since 'Abd al-Latif apparently regarded not only the Metaphysics but also his other sources as originating from Aristotle, the First Teacher. This translation includes only the eighth chapter of the Book Lamda. (shrink)

It would not be an overstatement to say that Mulla Sadra’s metaphysical system—commonly known as transcendent philosophy or transcendent wisdom (hikmat muta‘aliyyah)—is founded on the fundamentality of existence and the subjectivity of quiddity or whatness. I will begin this essay by drawing a rather simple picture of this principle under the title “A Common Error.” Then I will proceed by explaining its background and the reasoning supporting it, while offering a more detailed elucidation of the problem. The essay will end (...) by examining two recent interpretations that have gone to extremes in describing quiddity’s subjective nature. (shrink)

al-juzʼ 1. Min alif ilá sīn. -- al-juzʼ 2. Min shīn ilá yāʼ.