RESOURCEStied; if "dogma" is religious doctrine formally declared by a recognized
authority, it is inappropriate in an Islamic context. Nevertheless his
book is an extensive closely argued critique of van Ess and something
of a model of critical analysis and questions the attribution of various
sectarian doctrinal tracts from the Marwani period. However, the
possibility that a tract might have been a pseudograph does not in
itself constitute proof any more than mere attribution does.
That there is an argument over these tracts at all is an improvement
over the tendency of scholars to work backwards from accounts about
sectarians in later Arabic literature, since the tracts purport to be
contemporary refutations and in some of them the sectarians speak
for themselves. The schematic presentation of differences (Ar. firaq)
among Muslims that developed as a literary genre is probably too
convenient and lends itself to static comparisons. Early examples, such
as the Maqiiliit al-isliimiytn wa ikhtiliif al-mu§alltn of Abii I-I:Iasan
'Ali ibn Isma'il al-Ash'ari (ca. 873-935), edited by H. Ritter as Die
Dogmatischen Lehren der Anhanger des Islam (Wiesbaden, 1963), are
important nevertheless. The major classifications from a Sunni point
of view are the Kitiib al-fa§l fi-l-milal wa-l-ahwii' wa-n-nihal (Cairo,
1903, 1965; Beirut, 1975) of the Andalusian 'Ali ibn Al:J.mad ibn
I:Iazm (994-1064); al-Farq bayn al-firaq (Cairo, 1910) of 'Abd al-
Qahir ibn Tahir al-Baghdadi (d. 1037), translated as Moslem Schisms
and Sects, vol. I by K. Seelye (New York, 1920, 1966) and vol. 11 by
A. Halkin (Tel Aviv, 1935); and the Kitiib al-milal wa-n-nii}al (Leipzig,
1923; Cairo, 1961, 1968) of Mul:J.ammad ibn 'Abd al-Karim ash-
Shahrastani (ca. 1086-1153). See also H. Laoust, "La classification
des sects dans le Farq d'al-Baghdadi," REI 29 (1961): 19-59.
Significant modern scholarship on early Muslim sectarian move-
ments in general begins with]. Wellhausen's Die religios-politischen
Oppositionsparteien im alten Islam (G6ttingen, 1901). It was trans-
lated into Arabic by 'A. R. Badawi as AiJziib al-mu'iiratja as-siyiistya
ad-dtntya ft §adri-l-Isliim (Cairo, 1968) and into English by R. C. Ostle
and S. M. Walzer as The Religio-Political Factions in Early Islam
(Amsterdam, 1975). On dissimulation see I. Goldziher, "Das Prinzip
der Tal.dja im Islam," ZDMG 60 (1906). W. Thomson's "The Char-
acter of Early Islamic Sects," in the Ignace Goldziher Memorial Vol-
ume (Budapest, 1948), I: 89-116, is still worth consulting. The most
recent survey is H. Laoust's Les Schismes dans l'Islam: Introduction
Cl une etude de la religion musulmane (Paris, 1965, 1977). W. Mont-
gomery Watt gave his own critique of the treatment of sectarian Islam