Ibn al-Farrā '

Abū Yaʿlā Muhammad ibn al-Husain Ibn al-Farrā ' ( Arabic ابو يعلى محمد بن الحسين ابن الفرّاء, DMG Abū Yaʿlā Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusain Ibn al-Farrāʾ ; * April 990; † August 15, 1066 ), also known under the name al-Qādī Abū Yaʿlā ( Arabic القاضي ابو يعلى, DMG al-Qāḍī Abū Yaʿlā ) was one of the most important Hanbali scholars of Baghdad during the time of the two Abbasid caliphs al-Qādir bi-'llāh and al-Qā'im .

Life

While Ibn al-Farrā's father, who had acted as a notary, was a Hanafit , Ibn al-Farrā 'received training in the Hanbali doctrine himself. His most important teacher was Ibn al-Hāmid, who gave his lessons in a mosque at the " Barley Gate " ( Bāb aš-Šaʿīr ) and, shortly before his death in 1012, put Ibn al-Farrā 'as his successor. In 1025 Ibn al-Farrā 'made the pilgrimage to Mecca, after which he devoted himself to the teaching of hadith and Hanbali fiqh . In 1037 he accepted the post of notary with the Hanafi Ober-Qādī . A year later he was violently attacked by a group of Ashʿarite theologians who accused him of advocating an anthropomorphic doctrine of God in his book on the divine attributes . In 1040 he attended the solemn ceremony in the caliph's palace, at which al-Qādir made his confession al-Qādirīya an official doctrine. In 1053 he was again present at a meeting in the caliph's palace, at which the vizier Ibn al-Muslima laid down the official teaching of the caliphate regarding the divine attributes and the uncreated nature of the Koran. Through Ibn al-Muslima's intercession, Ibn al-Farrā 'was appointed qadi of the court of the caliphs in 1055, with the right to stay away from all official receptions of the caliph's court. Later he was also responsible for the two cities of Harran and Hulwān. In addition, he held teaching sessions in hadith every Friday in the mosque of Caliph al-Mansur until his death .

Works

• al-Aḥkām as-Sulṭānīya , treatise on Islamic constitutional law, in which the various offices and institutions (e.g. Friday prayer ) in the Islamic state are dealt with one after the other . The work has many similarities to the treatise of the same name by al-Māwardī , but in contrast to him only offers the Hanbalitic perspective on the topics covered.
• Kitāb al-Muʿtamad fī uṣūl ad-dīn , systematic presentation of Hanbali dogmatics based on the model of Muʿtazilite textbooks. Modern edition by Wadi Z. Haddad (Beirut: Dar El-Machreq 1974). Ibn al-Farrā 'also goes into great detail in this work on the duty of amr bi-l-maʿrūf wa-n-nahy ʿani-l-munkar .
• Ibṭāl at-taʾwīlāt li-aḫbār aṣ-ṣifāt , refutation of the Ashʿaritic interpretation of the statements in the religious texts about the divine attributes while affirming the Hanbali doctrine, according to which these statements are to be accepted without question. Edition Muḥammad ʿUṯmān (Bairūt: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīya 2009).
• al-ʿUdda fī uṣūl al-fiqh , work on Islamic legal theory . Edition in five volumes by Aḥmad Ibn-ʿAli Sīr al-Mubārakī ( Riyadh : al-Muḥaqqiq, 1990).

literature

• Muḥammad ʿAbd-al-Qādir Abū-Fāris: al-Qāḍī Abū-Yaʿlā al-Farrāʾ wa-kitābuhu al-Aḥkām as-sulṭānīya . Bairūt: Muʾassasat Dār ar-Risāla 1403 [1983]. Digitized
• Wadi Z. Haddad: Kitāb al-Muʿtamad fī uṣūl ad-dīn . Beirut: Dar El-Machreq 1974. Edition of Ibn al-Farrā's work of the same name with a long biographical introduction (pp. 13–28).
• Nimrod Hurvitz: Competing Texts: The Relationship Between al-Mawardi's and Abu Ya'la's al-Ahkam al-sultaniyya . Cambridge, Mass .: Islamic Legal Studies Program, Harvard Law School; 2007. Digitized
• Henri Laoust : Art. "Ibn al-Farrāʾ" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition Vol. III, pp. 765b-766b.
• George Makdisi: Ibn ʿAqīl et la résurgence de l'islam traditionaliste au xi ^e siècle (v ^e siècle de l'Hégire) . Damascus 1963. pp. 232-237.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cf. Makdisi 234.
2. ↑ See H. Laoust 766a.
3. ↑ See the study by Hurvitz.
4. ↑ See Michael Cook: Commanding Wright and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought . Cambridge 2000. pp. 129-136.