Hadith Commentary

Continuity and Change

Joel Blecher, Stefanie Brinkmann (Herausgeber)

Buch | Softcover

320 Seiten

2025
Edinburgh University Press (Verlag)
9781474461054 (ISBN)

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The first collection of scholarly essays on the key texts and critical themes of hadith commentary—a central site of Islamic intellectual life for more than a millennium—across diverse periods, regions, and sects.

Hadith commentary has been a central site of Islamic intellectual life for more than a millennium, across diverse periods, regions and sects. This is the first volume of scholarly essays ever collected on the key texts and critical themes of hadith commentary. The book unfolds chronologically from the early centuries of Islam to the modern period, and readers will discover continuities and changes as a group of international experts offer illuminating studies of Sunnis, Shi’is and Sufis who interpret and debate the meaning of hadith over a wide terrain: Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, India, and further. The volume also models a variety of methodological approaches, including social history, intellectual history, the study of religion, and digital history. By highlighting both differences and commonalities as the practice of hadith commentary circulated across distant eras and lands, this volume sheds new light on the way Muslims have historically understood the meaning of Muhammad’s example.

Joel Blecher is Associate Professor of History at the George Washington University in Washington, DC, the author of Said the Prophet of God: Hadith Commentary Across a Millennium (University of California Press, 2018), and co-translator of Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī’s Merits of the Plague (Penguin Classics, 2023). His other writings have appeared in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Islamic Law & Society, Oriens, and several edited volumes. His work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Library of Congress, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Stefanie Brinkmann is Research Fellow at the “Bibliotheca Arabica Project” at the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig. Trained in Arabic, Persian, and Roman Studies, she had acting professorships at the universities of Freiburg and Hamburg, and was member and principal investigator of a number of manuscript projects. She has published in the fields of manuscript studies, especially on hadith manuscripts, material culture in hadith, and classical Arabic poetry.

List of Figures

Notes on Contributors

Preface

Introduction: What is Hadith Commentary?

Joel Blecher and Stefanie Brinkmann

Part I Formations and Developments in the Early and

Middle Periods

1 Between Philology and Hadith Criticism: The Genre of

Sharḥ Gharīb al-Ḥadīth

Stefanie Brinkmann

2 The Hermeneutics of al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā: The Interpretation

of akhbār al-āḥād in Kitāb al-Amālī

Ali Aghaei

3 ‘Blessed are the Strangers (ghurabāʾ)’: An Apocalyptic Hadith

on the Virtues of Loneliness, Sadness and Exile

Youshaa Patel

4 Sufi Contributions to Hadith Commentary

Samer Dajani

5 Ibn Rajab’s Commentary on al-Nawawī’s Forty Hadith:

Innovation and Audience in the Jāmiʿ al-ʿulūm wa-l-ḥikam

Mohammad Gharaibeh

6 The Words of the Imām beyond Philosophy and Tradition:

Shīʿī Hadith Commentaries in the Ṣafavid Period

Sajjad Rizvi

Part II Modern Recollections and Reimaginings

7 Contesting Ḥanaf ī Thought in a Twentieth-century Turkish

Hadith Commentary

Susan Gunasti

8 Debating Authority and Authenticity in Modern South Asian

Hadith Commentaries: Muḥammad Zakariyyā Kāndhalawī’

Awjaz al-masālik

Ali Altaf Mian

9 ʿAllāma Ṭabāṭabāʾī and Exegetical Hadiths in al-Mῑzān:

A Contemporary Imāmī Commentary on Hadith?

Shadi Nafisi

10 Studying Hadith Commentaries in the Digital Age

Maroussia Bednarkiewicz, Aslisho Qurboniev and

Gowaart Van Den Bossche

Afterword: More Comments, Further Questions

Joel Blecher

Index

Erscheinungsdatum	11.07.2023
Reihe/Serie	Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Scripture and Theology
Zusatzinfo	9 black and white illustrations
Verlagsort	Edinburgh
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Religionsgeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Islam
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Spezielle Soziologien
ISBN-13	9781474461054 / 9781474461054
Zustand	Neuware