Lutz Wiederhold

Lutz Wiederhold (born November 9, 1963 in Nordhausen ; † March 18, 2012 in Halle (Saale) ) was a German Arabist and Islamic scholar who, as a researcher, mainly dealt with Islamic legal theory in late medieval and early modern Egypt. From 1995 until his death he worked as a librarian at the University and State Library of Saxony-Anhalt , where from 1998 he built up the special collection area “Middle East including North Africa” in a leading position .

Life

Lutz Wiederhold was the son of the scientific secretary Dr. Herrmann Wiederhold and began studying Middle East Studies at the Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg in 1985 . In 1990 he completed this as a graduate Arabist with a thesis on the discussion within Sunni Islam on the admissibility of ijschtihād , which was based on an anonymous Arabic manuscript from the Gotha Research Library . In his dissertation, which he wrote between 1990 and 1993, he dealt with the legal lexicon Qawāʿid al-fiqh by the Mamluk scholar Badraddīn az-Zarkaschī (st. 794/1392), also based on a manuscript from the Gotha library.

After completing his doctorate, Wiederhold initially pursued habilitation plans and for this purpose went from 1994 to 1995 for research stays at St Antony's College in Oxford and at the Oriental Seminary at Kiel University , where Ulrich Haarmann , a specialist in the field at that time , was there the Mamluk research , was active. One of the fruits of this period was the article published in the journal Islamic Law and Society in 1996 on the boundaries between the various Sunni schools of law as reflected in an anonymous treatise on legal theory from the 17th century. Wiederhold showed that the script he examined was an attempt to define the boundaries between the schools of law in such a way that these could also be exceeded under certain circumstances. In further essays he dealt with the possibility of divisibility of ijtihād competence, with the role of blasphemy accusations in the literature of the Shafiite school of law, with an uprising in Mamluk-era Syria aimed at restoring the authority of the Abbasid caliphate , and with the political role of Maliki judges in the Mamluk Empire.

After training as a scientific librarian at the Humboldt University in Berlin , Wiederhold took up a position as a specialist in Arabic studies at the university and state library in Halle (Saale) in 1995. After the special collection area “Middle East / North Africa” of the German Research Foundation was moved from the University Library of Tübingen to Halle in 1997, he became its director at the beginning of 1998. In this position he built up the information portal MENALIB (Middle East North Africa Library) from 2000 with the support of the German Research Foundation, which made the advantages of digital information available for research on the Middle East and for some time now, in addition to bibliographical databases as part of the MENAdoc Collection also offers free access to electronic full texts. Lutz Wiederhold had a strong international network with colleagues from the Orient-related library system and, since 1997, has been a member of MELCom International, the international professional association of librarians dealing with the Middle East.

Lutz Wiederhold died suddenly of a heart attack on March 18, 2012.

Fonts

• The manuscript Ms. orient. A 918 of the Gotha Research Library as the starting point for some reflections on the term “iǧtihād” in Sunni law. In: Journal of the German Oriental Society . Vol. 143, No. 2, 1993, pp. 328-361, JSTOR 43378626 .
• Legal Doctrines in Conflict the Relevance of Madhhab Boundaries to Legal Reasoning in the Light of an Unpublished Treatise on Taqlīd and Ijtihād. In: Islamic Law and Society. Vol. 3, 1996, ISSN  0928-9380 , pp. 234-304, JSTOR 3399456 .
• Specialization and shared competence - Sunni legal scholars on the admissibility of iǧtihād. In: The World of the Orient . Vol. 28, 1997, pp. 153-169, JSTOR 25683645 .
• Blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad and his Companions (sabb al-rasūl, sabb al-ṣaḥābah). The Introduction of the Topic into Shāfiʿī Legal Literature and its Relevance for Legal Practice under Mamluk Rule. In: Journal of Semitic Studies. Vol. 42, No. 1, 1997, ISSN  0022-4480 , pp. 39-70, doi : 10.1093 / jss / XLII.1.39 .
• Legal-Religious Elite, Temporal Authority, and the Caliphate in Mamluk Society: Conclusions Drawn from the Examination of a "Zahiri Revolt" in Damascus in 1386. In: International Journal of Middle East Studies. Vol. 31, No. 2, 1999, ISSN  0020-7438 , pp. 203-236, JSTOR 176293 .
• Some remarks on Mālikī Judges in Mamlūk Egypt and Syria. In: Stephan Conermann, Anja Pistor-Hatam (ed.): The Mamlūken. Studies of their history and culture. In memory of Ulrich Haarmann (1942–1999) (= Asia and Africa. Vol. 7). EB-Verlag, Schenefeld 2003, ISBN 3-930826-81-X , pp. 403-413.
• The legal encyclopedia Qawāʾid al-fiqh and its author. Law and legal practice in the time of Badraddīn az-Zarkašīs (st. 794/1392). (Dissertation), ed. by Stephan Conermann. Mamluk Studies - Volume 011. Göttingen: V&R unipress, Bonn University Press, [2016], ISBN 978-3-8471-0361-5 .

literature

• Sara Binay: Lutz Wiederhold (1963–2012). In: Journal of the German Oriental Society. Vol. 163, No. 1, 2013, pp. 7-10, JSTOR .