Prophet Parents Problem

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The Prophet's Parents Problem ( Arabic مسألة أبوي النبي, DMG masʾalat abawai an-nabī ) is a dogmatic dispute in Islamic theology that revolves around the post-mortem status of Muhammad's parents Āmina bint Wahb and ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-Muttalib : Are they, as infidels, addicted to hell or are they as parents of Prophets saved from hellfire? The controversy around this point began at the end of the 10th century and peaked in the 16th through 18th centuries, only to ebb away in the period thereafter.

Basics of the problem

The starting point of the discussions about this question was the fact, established according to Islamic tradition, that the parents of the prophets were different even before the proclamation of Islam by their son. From this one could conclude that they had died as unbelievers and thus, like all other unbelievers, had no chance of salvation in the hereafter. Such a position is already reflected in the canonical hadith , according to which the Prophet himself is said to have said of his deceased father that he was in hellfire (nār) .

Another hadith that representatives of this position could refer to reports that one day the Prophet visited his mother's grave and wanted to ask for forgiveness for her, but was prevented from doing so by a divine hint. According to a hadeeth narrated by ʿAbdallāh ibn Masʿūd , this was also the occasion for revelation for sura 9: 113: “The prophet and the believers are not allowed to ask for forgiveness for the companions , even if they are relatives, after they have realized has become that they will be inmates of Hellfire. ”From this it was deduced that Muhammad's mother must also be in Hell.

The resurrection hadith

At the end of the 10th century, the Baghdad preacher and traditionist ʿUmar ibn Ahmad Ibn Shāhīn (d. 995) disseminated a hadith which apparently aimed to resolve the paradox of the prophet's parents burning in hellfire. It appears as a variant of the tradition about Muhammad's visit to his mother's tomb and reads: “The Prophet said, 'I went to the tomb and asked God, my Lord, to bring her back to life. Then he brought her to life, and she accepted to believe in me. Eventually God brought them back to their previous state. '”This tradition, which was supposed to show that the mother of the Prophet had become a Muslim during a brief second life and thus escaped Hellfire, was later incorporated into many other collections of unsafe hadiths and therefore generally known. In the later versions, both of the Prophet's parents are included in the resurrection.

Although there was general agreement among the Sunni traditional scholars about the weakness of this hadith, the facts conveyed in it were nevertheless accepted by many later scholars as "likely" or "true". The verses of the Syrian traditional scholar Ibn Nāsir ad-Dīn (d. 1438) are representative of this ambivalent attitude:

Ḥabā Llāhu n-nabiyya mazīda faḍlin ʿalā
faḍlin wa-kāna bi-hī ra'ūfan
Fa-aḥyā umma-hū wa-kaḏā abā-hu
li-īmāni bi-hā faḍlan munīfan
Fa-sallama fa-l-qadīmuadī qadīmuadī qadīmuadī
wa-in kāna l-ḥadīṯu bi-hī ḍaʿīfan

God showed the prophet benevolence over
grace and was merciful with him.
He raised his parents to life,
to believe in him, as sublime grace
He saved, the beginning eternal has the power to
do this, even if the hadith is weak.

The Early Modern Prophet Parents Controversy

The idea of ​​the posthumous salvation of the Prophet's parents was particularly popular with the Ash'arites . A counter-position to this view emerged in the area of ​​the Hanafi Madhhab , which over time developed its own theological teaching direction, which was known as Maturidiyya from the 15th century and was recognized as the second orthodox theological school alongside the Ashʿariyya. One of the differences between the Ash'ari-tic and the Hanafi-māturīdite teachings was that the former emphasized the breadth of divine grace, while the latter, based on Muʿtazilite positions, emphasized non-observance of the divine promise (ḫulf al-waʿīd) in the case of unbelievers and thus also denied the prophet's parents a posthumous divine pardon. How important this doctrine was for the Hanafi-Māturiditic self-understanding is shown, among other things, in the fact that it was devoted to a separate doctrine in the popular Hanafi-Māturiditic confession, the so-called Fiqh akbar II. It can be found at the very end of the scriptures and reads: “The parents of the Messenger of God died as unbelievers” (wa-wālidā rasūli Llāhi (s) mātā ʿalā l-kufr) .

Through this doctrine, other scholars who believed in the divine salvation of the prophet's parents felt called to defend their views. The first to write his own treatise on this question was the Shafiite Muhammad Ibn al-Jazari (d. 1429). Some time later, the Egyptian scholar Jalāl ad-Dīn al-Suyūtī (d. 1505) dedicated five tracts to the proof of the salvation of the Prophet's parents. In the course of the 16th century, two Ottoman scholars, Ibn-i Kemal (d. 1533) and Burhān ad-Dīn al-Ḥalabī (d. 1549), dealt with this question in separate treatises.

It is noteworthy that in their writings the two Ottoman scholars opposed the view that the prophet's parents died in disbelief. This shows that within the Hanafi Maḏhab approval of the doctrine of the Prophet's parents found in Fiqh akbar II gradually began to crumble. Although later individual Hanafis such as the Meccan scholar ʿAlī al-Qārī (d. 1606) and the Ottoman rigorist Meḥmed Qāḍīzāde (d. 1635) tried to defend the doctrine of the disbelief of the Prophet's parents , with this position they were able to defend themselves Madhhab hardly ever prevail. Al-Qari affirmed his view of the Prophet's parents not only in his own commentary on Fiqh akbar II, but in a monographic treatise that was conceived as a refutation of al-Suyū Suī's treatises, as well as in several other texts in his extensive oeuvre. This in turn triggered a flood of counter-writings, some of which have Hanafis as their author.

Another opposing position to the conception of the salvation of the prophet's parents was formed in the area of ​​the Hanbali madhhab , which over the course of time developed the theology of the Athari . Thus Ibn Taimiya deals with the question and gives again that there are no reliable (saheeh) traditions ( hadith ) about the fact that the parents of the prophets were saved. Rather, the opposite is the case, there are reliable hadiths that stand for their deaths as unbelievers. In the treatise, he describes the “resurrection hadith” as an invention and a lie.

Later tendencies to taboo the problem

It is noticeable that in many of the textual witnesses of Fiqh-akbar II (both manuscripts and printed editions) the proposition of the prophet's parents is not included. Obviously, over time, more and more copyists found this theorem to be offensive and left it out in the copying process. In his Fiqh-akbar commentary, al-Qārī already points to the wish of his Hanafi colleagues to delete the relevant passage from the confession and puts it in an association with Shiite doubts about the authenticity of the Koran. Many handwritten copies of Fiqh akbar II as well as its commentaries in German and Turkish libraries actually show clear interpolation traces (strikethroughs, erasures, pasting over etc.) at the point in question . They can be interpreted as manifestations of a collective rewriting process that took account of the changed beliefs within Hanafi scholarship. The māturīditic theorem that the prophet's parents had fallen into disaster could obviously no longer be upheld in view of the ever advancing idealization of the prophetic figure .

The Ottoman scholar Katib Çelebi (d. 1657), who dealt with the problem of the Prophet 's parents in his treatise Mīzān al-ḥaqq fī iḫtiyār al-aḥaqq , opposed a taboo on the question. Later his treatise itself fell victim to this taboo. Chapter 8, dealing with the controversy over the Prophet's parents, was omitted from 19th century print editions.

Such efforts to ignore the old issue could not prevent the problem from being discussed further. Even the well-known reformist Raschīd Ridā (d. 1935) had to deal with it in his capacity as editor of the magazine al-Manār . Confronted by a reader with the question of the salvation of the Prophet's parents' souls, he replied that, because of the honesty of their characters, they would certainly be able to pass the end-time test.

literature

Arabic tracts on the parents of the prophet
  • Muḥammad Ibn al-Ǧazarī: ar-Risāla al-bayāniyya fī ḥaqq abaway an-nabī (cf. Brockelmann GAL II² 260)
  • Ibn Kamālpaša: Risāla fī tafṣīl mā qīla fī abaway ar-rasūl (cf. GAL II² 599 No. 32)
  • Burhān ad-Dīn al-Ḥalabī: Risāla fī ḥaqq abaway-hi (s) (cf. GAL II² 571 No. 9)
  • ʿAlī al-Qārī : Adillat muʿtaqad Abī Ḥanīfa al-imām fī abaway an-nabī . Ed. Mašhūr ibn Ḥasan ibn Salmān. Maktaba al-Ġurabāʾ al-aṯarīya, Medina, 1993. Digitized
  • Muḥammad Ibn ʿAllān al-Bakrī: Mawrid aṣ-ṣafā bi-abaway al-Muṣṭafā (GAL II² 500)
  • Awḥad ad-Dīn an-Nūrī: Taʾdīb al-mutamarridīn fī ḥaqq al-abawayn (GAL II² 455)
  • Muḥammad al-Barzanǧī: Sadād al-ʿilm wa-sidād ad-dīn fī iṯbāt an-naǧāt wa-d-daraǧāt li-l-wālidayn (GAL S II 530)
  • Muḥammad Sāčaqlīzāde: Risālat al-Faraḥ wa-s-surūr (GAL S II 498)
Secondary literature
  • Mustafa Aksay: "Hz. Peygamber'in Anne Babasının (Ebeveyn-i Resûl) Dînî Konumuna Dair Ebû Hanîfe'ye Atfedilen Görüş Etrafındaki Tartışmalar" in Sakarya Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakältesi Dergisi. 19 (2009) 1-27 Digitized
  • Patrick Franke : Are the parents of the Prophet in Hell? Tracing the history of a debate in Sunnī Islam . In: Lale Behzadi u. a. (Ed.): Bamberger Orientstudien . University of Bamberg Press, Bamberg 2014, pp. 135–158 ( PDF ).
  • Marco Schöller: The Living and the Dead in Islam. Studies in Arabic Epitaphs. II Epitaphs in Context . Wiesbaden 2004. pp. 17-21.
  • Kim Sitzler: Humanism and Islam . In: Richard Faber: Humanism in the past and present . Tübingen 2002, pp. 187-212.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Kitāb al-Īmān No. 347.
  2. ↑ Cf. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Kitāb al-Ǧanā'iz No. 105.
  3. ↑ Cf. ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad al-Wāhidī: Asbāb nuzūl al-Qurʾān . Ed. Aḥmad Ṣaqr. Cairo 1969, Ad 9: 113.
  4. ↑ Quoted in Schöller 18.
  5. ↑ See e.g. B. the entry ḥadīṯ iḥyā 'abaway an-nabī ("Hadith on the resuscitation of the Prophet 's parents ") in the collection of popular hadiths from Shams ad-Dīn as-Saḫāwī al-Maqāṣid al-ḥasana fī kaṯīr min al-aḥādīṯ al-muštahara alā l-alsina . Beirut 1424/2003, p. 44.
  6. ↑ Quoted in as-Saḫāwī, p. 44f.
  7. ↑ On the main differences between Ash'ariyya and Māturīdiyya cf. Montgomery Watt, Michael Marmura: The Islam II. Political developments and theological concepts. Translated from d. Engl. By S. Höfer. Stuttgart u. a. 1985, pp. 315-318, on the question of ḫulf al-waʿīd cf. the monographic treatise of ʿAlī al-Qārī: al-Qawl as-sadīd fī ḫulf al-waʿīd . Tanta 1412/1992.
  8. ↑ See the Engl. Translation by AJ Wensinck: The Muslim Creed. Its Genesis ans Historical Development . Cambridge 1932, p. 197. Wensinck only mentions the theorem in a footnote because it is not included in all of the scriptural witnesses. See the explanations below.
  9. ↑ Brockelmann (GAL II² 185) even lists a total of six tracts (nos. 43–48), but no. 47 is probably a duplicate.
  10. ↑ On Qāḍīzāde's position cf. Madeline C. Zilfi: The Politics of Piety: The Ottoman Ulema in the Postclassical Age (1600-1800) . Minneapolis 1988, p. 136.
  11. ↑ Minah ar-Rawḑ al-azhar fī Sharḥ al-Fiqh al-akbar . Ed. WS Ġāwǧī. Beirut 1419/1998. P. 310f.
  12. ↑ Quoted in Majmoo al-Fatwa by Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz , Volume 4, on pages 325–327.
  13. ↑ Minaḥ ar-rawḍ al-azhar p. 310f.
  14. ↑ One example is the copy of al-Qārī's Fiqh-akbar commentary kept in the library of the German Oriental Society in Halle (Ms. BDMG 30a, there fol. 98b).
  15. ↑ See the pioneering article by Fritz Meier: A Resurrection of Mohammeds at Suyuti in Der Islam 62 (1983) pp. 20–58.
  16. ↑ Cf. Florian Zemmin: Islamic ethics of responsibility in the 17th century. A Weberian understanding of Kātib Čelebī's ideas of action . Hamburg 2011, p. 88.
  17. ↑ See Zemmin p. 35.
  18. ↑ See Sitzler, p. 194.