Classical Arabic Biography

Abstract

This outstanding study discusses the origins, development, and function of pre-modern Arabic biography through an examination of the biographies of four figures of the late second and early third Islamic centuries whose life stories have been contested in interesting ways: the Abbasid caliph alMa 'mun (r. 198-218 AH/813-833 AC). [Chapter 2]; the Shi'ite imam · Ali al-Rid a ( d. 203 AH/818 AC) [Chapter 3, and an appendix on the circumstances of his death]; the renowned scholar of Hadith, Ahmad ibn Hanbal (d. 241 AH/855 AC).[Chapter 4]; and the ascetic Bishr al-Hafi (d.227 AHi 842 A C). [Chapter 5]. These figures were chosen because they lived during the same period and their careers intertwined and overlapped, thus bringing to the fore the contests over religious authority between the societal groups they represented. Although the caliph al-Ma'mun is famous for having appointed 'Ali al-Rida, his heir apparent, a move which has puzzled many historians, since he is also accused of murdering the Shi'ite imam. Ahmad ibn Hanbal's fame rests on his resistance to the Abbasid/ Mu· tazili Inquisition which al-Ma'mun inaugurated: despite imprisonment and flogging, he upheld the opinion that the Qur'an is eternal and not created. Bishr al-Hafi, the famous barefoot ascetic, was trained as a Hadith specialist in his youth but gave it up for what he saw as a more moral life. The association of Bishr al-Hafi with lbn Hanbal, equally renowned for his religious scrupulousness, provides fertile ground for comments on the relative merits of the groups and religious approaches that they represent. Chapter 1, "The Development of the Genre," addressing the history of the biographical genre, argues, following Tarif Khalidi and against the traditionally accepted view, that biography did not originate as a by-product of the Hadith scholars' obsession with isnad criticism. Rather, it originated in the work of akhbaris or "collectors of reports," in essence the first historians of the Islamic period, who drew on pre-Islamic oral models, combining genealogies and name-lists with narrative material. Biographies, in Cooperson's view, are fundamentally intertextual: the reader naturally compares the accounts in one biography with alternative versions presented in other texts. Each serves to mold and comment on the interpretation of ...