“Ilbiri, Abu Ishaq al-”

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 41 (1978): 43-76., 1978

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Abū Isḥāq is best known as the author of an infamous invective against the Jews of Granada, tied to the 1066 "pogrom" in which the Jewish minister Yūsuf ibn Naghrīla lost his life. This article explores the wider production of Abū Isḥāq, revealing the interplay between his public and poetic persona throughout the main stages of his life and career.

Studia Islamica, 2000

Islamic Legal Thought: A Compendium of Muslim Jurists

ʿIyāḍ b. Mūsā—better known as Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ—was an eminent jurist whose career coincided with the 6th/12th-century expansion and consolidation of Mālikism into the Far Maghrib or Islamic West. This was especially significant in the region south of the historically more settled Mediterranean coast. Until the end of his life, ʿIyāḍ remained fiercely loyal to the Almoravid dynasty (al-murābiṭūn, 445–544/1054–1149), a Berber tribal confederation from the Saharan south, which, as the first major non-Arab Islamic power of the region, made use of Mālikī jurists as both legitimiz- ing and administrative agents. A prolific author, ʿIyāḍ’s most influential surviving works include the first major biographical dictionary of the Mālikī school (the dominant legal school in al-Andalus, the Maghrib, and West Africa), a bio-bibliographical work on his teachers and transmitters, and a treatise—famous far beyond the boundaries of his legal school— describing the life, attributes, miracles, and ritual and religious law surrounding the figure of the Prophet Muḥammad.

University of Chicago PhD Dissertation, 2019

This dissertation explores the relationship between intellectual networks, royal patronage and developments in political thought in late medieval Islamic Spain and North Africa. It proposes a new reading of the history of the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada (635/1238–897/1492) that examines these broader issues by closely studying the life and works of Lisān al-Dīn Muḥammad b. al-Khaṭīb (713/1313–776/1374), the most prominent Spanish Muslim historian, chancellor and philosopher during the 8th/14th century, situating this figure within a larger network of scholars, statesmen and functionaries in the late medieval Islamic West. This dissertation illustrates the manner in which the crisis and transformation that characterized the territorial fragmentation of Islamic Spain and North Africa contributed to the rise of a distinct class of scholar-officials who reshaped the intellectual and political culture of the Western Mediterranean. It argues that the gradual concentration of executive political authority in the hands of scholar-officials, such as Ibn al-Khaṭīb, was part of the process of the consolidation of royal power at the expense of the nobility during the late Middle Ages. For their part, these scholar-officials composed works across a variety of genres that sought to legitimate and rationalize the centralization of royal authority. To examine this phenomenon, this dissertation draws upon a corpus of Arabic, Castilian and Aragonese manuscripts, as well as coinage and epigraphy. It investigates the lives of those individuals who existed in close proximity to royal power during the late medieval period in order to explore how their own experiences and ideas fashioned discourses about sovereignty, governmentality and the craft of history during the 14th century. The rise of a distinct class of scholar-officials, whose members included Christians, Muslims and Jews working for different (often competing) dynasties, was underpinned by similar networks of patronage, intellectual interests and a shared geography. These highly-educated individuals rose to prominence as chancellors, treasurers, and councilors within the royal courts in Iberia and were responsible for producing a multitude of works, while patronizing pieces of art and architecture that embodied their particular worldview. Lisān al-Dīn b. al-Khaṭīb provides us with an illustrative example of this class of individuals during the 8th/14th century. This figure followed in the footsteps of leading Spanish Muslim scholar-officials such as Abū Bakr b. al-Khaṭṭāb, Ibn ‘Amīra, Ibn Sa‘īd and Ibn al-Abbār, individuals who had exercised significant administrative and political authority while also being deeply involved in various intellectual and literary pursuits during the 7th/13th century. Ibn al-Khaṭīb authored over 50 works, including historical chronicles, epistolography, biographical dictionaries, poetry, medical texts, and political treatises, throughout his career. This dissertation illustrates his role at the intersection of intellectual and political developments and demonstrates how his literary production was closely intertwined with his function as a statesman. It provides the first comprehensive study in English of Ibn al-Khaṭīb’s life, from his birth into a minor family in the small town of Loja in 713/1313 to his rise as a physician and scribe in the Nasrid court, his transformation from a client and servant of the Nasrid dynasty into an itinerant scholar-official who sought to establish his own individual power and influence across the Islamic West, to his controversial assassination in Fez in 776/1374. It looks particularly closely at the letters that he exchanged with his broader network of scholars, nobles, functionaries and kings across the Mediterranean world to think about the question of loyalty, ties of obligation and individual strategies of survival in the Islamic West during this period. https://search-proquest-com.proxy.uchicago.edu/docview/2202894085?accountid=14657

Tariq led the first wave of Muslim settlement into Spain after conquering the Visigoths in 711. The process of establishment reflected the assimilation of the Spanish and Berber’s into the Arab/Islamic world. In spite of establishing a weak regime, the Arabs were able to create a strong and prosperous caliphate, which lasted several decades.

Journal of Arabic Literature, 1989

Among al-Farazdaq's contemporaries was the poet, al-Akhtal.1 His judgment of al-Farazdaq's poetry was not restricted to a particular genre; rather, it was of a general nature and was the product of a combination of motives. In the first place, it is possible that as a Christian poet who was chosen by the Caliph cabd al-Malik as his Court Poet, al-Akhtal thought it prudent to assess the degree to which competition from the Muslim poets, Jarir2 and al-Farazdaq,3 was something really to be feared. Such a reading of motives has the attraction of fitting in nicely with the version of events offered by Ibn Sallam in his Tabaqiit Fuhul al-Sh u ca rii l: 4 "When al-Akhtal received news of the personal satires and al-' Farazdaq were writing against each other, he said to his son, Malik, 'Go to clrdq and listen to the poetry written by both of them! And bring back with you whatever other information about both you can find'. Malik went to 'Irdq as he was instructed and heard the poetry of both al-Farazdaq and Jarir. When he returned to his father he expressed himself as follows: Jarir scoops water from the sea, but al-Farazdaq hacks as from boulders'. And then his father replied: 'So Jarir is the better poet'. Then he uttered the following verses, 'Impartially have I judged, having heard what I needed to know: Dried up is the milk of al-Farazdaq's camel, he has been bitten by a malevolent snake [I.e. , Jarir] issuing from his own tribe' ".. But according to another version of the same story told by Ibn Sallam (also in the Tabaqiit), al-Akhtal's judgment of al-Farazdaq's poetry was * This article is based on a paper read at the 4th J.A.L. Symposium on Classical Arabic Poetry, August 1987, (with a grateful salutation to the participants who offered their useful remarks). 1 Al-Akhtal, Ghiyath b. Ghawth b. al-Salt, Ab� Malik, belonged to the (partially) Christian tribe of Taghlib, within the tribal conglomeration of Rab��a. He lived approximately 20-92 H./640-710 A.D. See F. Sezgin, Geschichte des Arabischen Schrifttums, II, Leiden 1975, 318 ff. 2 Jar�r b. �At�ya b. al-Khataf�, Ab� Harza, belonged to the (Muslim) tribe of Kulayb b. Yarb��, part of the conglomeration of Tamim. He lived about 35-115 H./656-733 A.D. (Sezgin, G.A.S. II, 356 ff.). 3 Al-Farazdaq, Hammam b. Ghalib b. Sa�sa�a, Ab� Firas, belonged to the noble family of Muj�shi� of the tribe Darim, and like jar�r's tribe, Darim was part of the Tamim conglomeration. Al-Farazdaq lived about 20-114 H./640-732 A.D. (Sezgin, G.A.S. II, 359 ff.). 4 Muhammad Ibn Sall�m al Jumah� lived 139-231 H., that is, slightly more than one century after the events he describes here in his Tabaq�t Fub�l al-Shu�ar�¸, Cairo 1973-74, I, 451-52.