Appropriation of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya 29
Thereby, he often transgresses familiar boundaries and genre-catego-
ries and deliberately blurs and possibly even constitutes or co-devel-
ops new genres.^105 In an article in 2006, Krawietz attempts to subsume
Ibn al-Qayyim’s oeuvre under genre-headings, only to ultimately find
that his contributions cannot be deciphered and evaluated within a
corset of clear-cut genre-categories.^106 His fusing creativity, increasing
manoeuvres of criss-crossing, redirecting, compiling, and “reframing”
are perhaps a much truer expression of his scholarly merits than any-
thing else that has hitherto been discussed in this introductory chapter.
Frenkel has pointed out that such techniques of Ibn al-Qayyim’s work
are detached from predictable topic-genre correlations, since “there
is no clear evidence that he preferred particular genres for specific
themes; rather, he addressed the same topic in several works, regularly
manipulating this line of reasoning in order to serve his aim.”^107 It is
therefore important to keep in mind that genres should be conceptual-
ized as dynamic entities with a heterogeneous internal structure.^108 We
are confronted with texts that, on the surface, are reproductive and try
to deny their subjectivity, although they constantly and in a rather sub-
versive manner produce new significance.^109 It must be added that our
Ḥanbalī author seems to derive intense spiritual blessing from this type
of creative textual journeying. Frenkel has emphasized: “Through the
extensive use of Hadith quotations and citations from earlier scholars,
Ibn Qayyim al-Ǧawziyyah virtually obliterated the boundaries of time
and space, creating connections between remote eras and areas.”^110 In
this sense, writing – or more precisely rewriting, which entails a process
of detecting new dimensions by which the divine guidance, through
innumerable perspectives, holds the world together – provides him and
105 Perho, The Prophets’s Medicine.
106 Krawietz, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawzīyah, p. 62 et passim. Krawietz, Transgressive
Creativity, analyses the degree to which his Iʿlām al-muwaqqiʿīn oscillates
between the format of an adab al-muftī treatise and an uṣul al-fiqh manual.
Various later writings of his are much more genre-transgressive than this early
example.
107 Frenkel, Islamic Utopia, p. 70.
108 Zymner, Rüdiger: Gattungen aus literaturwissenschaftlicher Sicht, in: Stephan
Conermann (ed.): Was sind Genres? Nicht-abendländische Kategorisierungen
von Gattungen, Berlin 2011, pp. 7–21, here p. 18.
109 Conermann, Stephan and El Hawary, Amr: Ausklang. Das Problem der Gat-
tungsbestimmung in transkultureller Perspektive, in: Conerman, Was sind
Genres?, pp. 316–324, here p. 322.
110 Frenkel, Islamic Utopia, p. 86.
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