Abstract
The focus of the present study is Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya's (d. 1350) al-Kāfiya al-Shāfiya fī al-Intiṣār li-l-Firqa al-Nājiya (The Sufficient and Healing [Poem] on the Vindication of the Saved Sect) or al-Qaṣīda al-Nūniyya (the Ode Rhyming with Nūn), a long didactic poem of nearly six-thousand verses. This poem, which received some attention in modern scholarly works in Arabic, is usually perceived as a theological-polemical work, which was meant to address Muʿtazilī and Ashʿarī attacks on the traditionalist perception of the divine attributes. However, the present study shows that the poem is a rendition of the 1306-1307 trials that were held in Damascus and Cairo against Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya's venerated mentor, Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328). The story of Ibn Taymiyya's ordeals (miḥan, sing. miḥna), related repeatedly by Ibn Taymiyya and his contemporaries, is discussed in modern researches, which base their findings on a wide range of sources: Mamluk chronicles, biographical dictionaries, biographies of Ibn Taymiyya written by his admiring disciples, and Ibn Taymiyya's own testimony on the events. This story was supposedly never recounted by Ibn Taymiyya's most prominent disciple, Ibn al-Qayyim. Nevertheless, a close reading reveals that parts of al-Kāfiya al-Shāfiya are actually literary depictions of Ibn Taymiyya's miḥan. Ibn al-Qayyim does not assume the role of a witness to these events, because he was not one of Ibn Taymiyya's acquaintances at the time of the trials (the two met only in the year 712/1313). The reading of al-Kāfiya al-Shāfiya presented here is intended to place the poem among Ibn al-Qayyim's most conspicuous works, and draw more attention to the genre of didactic verses in the Mamluk period.
Translated title of the contribution | Let this Anthropomorphist be put to Trial': Ibn Taymiyya's Miḥan as Reflected in Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya's al-Kafiya al-Shafiya |
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Original language | Hebrew |
Pages (from-to) | 7-33 |
Number of pages | 27 |
Journal | המזרח החדש |
Volume | 53 |
State | Published - 2014 |
IHP Publications
- ihp
- Arabic poetry
- Criticism
- Ibn Taymiyah, Ahmad ibn 'Abd al-Halim -- 1263-1328
- Political poetry
- אבן קים אל-ג'וזיה, אבראהים בן מחמד -- 1319-1365
- אבן תימיה, אחמד בן עבד אל-חלים -- 1263-1328
- ביקורת ספרותית
- שירה ערבית
- שירה פוליטית