The Mizan kubra by 'Abd al-Wahhab al-Sha'rani (d. 973/1565) was cited by nineteenth-century Muslim scholars to support a wide range of mutually exclusive conceptions of religious authority. In the twentieth century, modern students of Islamic law have given different assessments of Sha'rani’s view of the relationship between the madhahib: while some stress its innovativeness and potential for legal reform, others regard it as a conservative restatement of scholastic tradition. In substantial agreement with the latter view, I discuss some of Sha'rani’s theories, focusing on the significance of his peculiar blending of Sufi and legal discourses for the cultural history of Islam in the early Ottoman period. I argue that Sha'rani’s aim is to bring Ibn 'Arabi’s spiritual hermeneutic of the revelation into line with the “age of taqlid.” As a “legal theorist” no less than a hagiographer, Sha'rani was an imaginative and reliable witness of the religious values and mentalités of his time. Far from calling into question the established system of the legal schools, he assigned a pivotal role to the metaphysical validation of ikhtilaf in order to strengthen a pluralist view of mainstream Islam.

“The meaning of the ikhtilāf al-madhāhib in ‘Abd al-Wahhāb al-Sha‘rānī’s al-Mîzān al-kubrā”

PAGANI, Gloria Samuela
2004-01-01

Abstract

The Mizan kubra by 'Abd al-Wahhab al-Sha'rani (d. 973/1565) was cited by nineteenth-century Muslim scholars to support a wide range of mutually exclusive conceptions of religious authority. In the twentieth century, modern students of Islamic law have given different assessments of Sha'rani’s view of the relationship between the madhahib: while some stress its innovativeness and potential for legal reform, others regard it as a conservative restatement of scholastic tradition. In substantial agreement with the latter view, I discuss some of Sha'rani’s theories, focusing on the significance of his peculiar blending of Sufi and legal discourses for the cultural history of Islam in the early Ottoman period. I argue that Sha'rani’s aim is to bring Ibn 'Arabi’s spiritual hermeneutic of the revelation into line with the “age of taqlid.” As a “legal theorist” no less than a hagiographer, Sha'rani was an imaginative and reliable witness of the religious values and mentalités of his time. Far from calling into question the established system of the legal schools, he assigned a pivotal role to the metaphysical validation of ikhtilaf in order to strengthen a pluralist view of mainstream Islam.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11587/105574
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