Muqātil ibn Sulaimān

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Muqātil ibn Sulaimān ( Arabic مقاتل بن سليمان; died 767 ) was an Islamic scholar of tradition, Koran exegete and theologian who wrote one of the first commentaries on the Koran, but because of his allegedly extremely anthropomorphic view of God and his borrowings from the Ahl al-kitāb (Christians and Jews) in the later Muslim scholars in not particularly good Reputation.

Life

Muqātil was born in Balkh and spent the early part of his life in Khorasan . He is said to have been on friendly terms with Sālim ibn Ahwaz al-Mazīnī, the commander of the last Umayyad governor in Khorasan, Naṣr b. Sayyār . Some biographers mention that he had a theological exchange of blows with Jahm ibn Safwān in the mosque of Marw on the attributes of God. After the Abbasid seizure of power , Muqātil emigrated to Iraq. First he settled in Basra , then he spent some time in the newly founded capital Baghdad . Various reports show him as a conversation partner of the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur . He returned to Basra shortly before his death.

Works

In recent years, Muqātil's great Tafsīr, which was published in five volumes in Cairo between 1979 and 1988, has attracted scientific interest because it is one of the earliest surviving Muslim commentaries on the Qur'an. A difference to most of the later Qur'an commentaries is that when interpreting the various passages, Muqātil does not refer to the scholars' dissent about the interpretation of these passages, but always only presents his own interpretation. John Wansbrough characterized Muqātil's way of commenting on the Koran as " Haggadic exegesis" because it enriches the Koran with numerous narrative elements and transforms it into a continuous story. Josef van Ess sees Muqātil in his enrichment of the Koran text with fantastic, legendary elements in the tradition of the chorasan "storytellers" ( quṣṣāṣ ).

Another characteristic of Muqātil's Tafsīr is that he leaves nothing unexplained. All persons, groups of persons and animals mentioned in the Koran, however vague the information may be, are given names by him. He knows, for example, that the ant that speaks to Solomon in sura 27 : 18 was actually called al-Jarmī. Many of these identifications had a long lasting effect. For example, his declaration that al-Chidr is identical to Elisha has shaped the image of Chidr in the Persian and Turkish language areas for centuries.

Muqātil's great Tafsīr was passed down in both Khorasan and Baghdad. The Kairiner Druck is based on a Western review. There was also an Eastern review, which has only been passed on through quotations in the later Quranic commentary by ath-Thaʿlabī (st. 1036). In 2008, Mehmet Akif Koç compared these two reviews. In addition to the great Tafsīr, there are two other Koran exegetical works that have been passed down by Muqātil, the Tafsīr ḫamsimīʾat āya ("Explanation of the 500 Koranic verses") and the Kitāb Wuǧūh al-Qurʾān ("Book of the aspects of the Koran").

Impact history

Later heresiographers such as Abū l-Hasan al-Aschʿarī said Muqātil had an extreme anthropomorphism. He imagined God to be like a human being, made of flesh and blood, with hair, bones, internal organs and concrete body measurements. Sirry, who examined Muqātil's commentary on the Koran from this point of view, comes to the conclusion that there is no trace of anthromorphic conceptions to be found there. He suspects that the "legend" of Muqātil's anthropomorphism arose in connection with the reports about his conflict with Jahm ibn Safwān. Since Jahm was considered to be an exponent of an extremely abstract image of God, Muqātil was assigned an extremely anthropomorphic conception.

From the late Middle Ages, it was also offended that Muqātil referred to Isrā'īlīyāt in his Tafsīr , that is, on traditions that came from Christians and Jews. This was considered to be one of the greatest flaws in this work.

literature

  • Josef van Ess : Theology and Society in the 2nd and 3rd Century Hijra. A History of Religious Thought in Early Islam. Volume II. Berlin-New York 1992. pp. 516-528.
  • Regula Forster: "Methods of Arabic Qur'ānexegese: Muqātil ibn Sulaymān, at-Ṭabarī and ʿAbdurrazzaq al-Qashani to Q 53, 1-18" in IP Michel and H. Weder (eds.): Mediation of meaning: Studies on the history of exegesis and Hermeneutics. Zurich 2000. pp. 385-443.
  • C. Gilliot: "Muqātil, Grand Exégète, Traditionniste et Théorien Maudit" in Journal Asiatique 279 (1991): 39-92.
  • Mehmet Akif Koç: "A Comparison of the References to Muqātil b. Sulaymān (150/767) in the Exegesis of Tha'labī (427/1036) with Muqātil's own Exegesis" in Journal of Semitic Studies 53 (2008) 69-101.
  • M. Plessner, A. Rippin: Art. "Muḳātil ibn Sulaymān" in The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition Vol. VII, pp. 508b-509a.
  • Mun'im Sirry: "Muqātil b. Sulaymān and Anthropomorphism" in Studia Islamica nouvelle édition / new series 3 (2012) 51–82. Digitized
  • K. Versteegh: "Grammar and Exegesis: the Origins of Kufan ​​Grammar and the Tafsīr Muqatil" in Der Islam 67 (1990) 206-242.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A Beirut reprint is available here as a digital copy.
  2. ↑ See Forster 397.
  3. ↑ See Sirry 60.
  4. ↑ Cf. van Ess 518.
  5. ↑ See Sirry 61.
  6. ↑ See Patrick Franke: Encounter with Khidr. Source studies on the imaginary in traditional Islam. Beirut / Stuttgart 2000. pp. 152-55.
  7. ↑ See van Ess 518-520.
  8. ↑ See van Ess 529 and Sirry 76.
  9. ↑ See Sirry 80.
  10. ↑ See Sirry 62.
personal data
SURNAME Muqātil ibn Sulaimān
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Koran exeget
DATE OF BIRTH 7th century or 8th century
PLACE OF BIRTH Balch
DATE OF DEATH 767