Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s Attitude Toward Christianity 425
vidual passages that remain sober and neutral, this work is in no way
a religious-historical book in the sense of a primarily descriptive and
indifferent depiction of the Jewish and Christian religion. Rather, the
Hidāyat al-ḥayārā is a scathing polemic directed equally against Juda-
ism and Christianity that takes, as Martin Accad points out, a “hostile
and insulting tone [...] against Christians and Jews in general”.^9
A large part of the overview depictions of Muslim perception of
Christianity or of medieval Muslim polemics against Judaism and
Christianity refer to the Hidāyat al-ḥayārā,^10 but the number of
works that go beyond merely mentioning it is relatively low, and
studies in which Ibn al-Qayyim’s polemic is comprehensively evalu-
al-Jawziyya: Hidāyat al-ḥayārā fī ajwibat al-yahūd wal-naṣārā, edited by
Muḥammad Aḥmad al-Ḥājj, Damascus 1416/1996, pp. 15–214, here pp. 14–15.
9 Accad, Martin: The Ultimate Proof-Text. The Interpretation of John 20.17 in
Muslim-Christian Dialogue (Second/Eighth-Eighth/Fourteenth Centuries), in:
David Thomas (ed.): Christians at the Heart of Islamic Rule, Leiden and Boston
2003, pp. 199–214, here pp. 211–212.
10 See amongst others: Goldziher, Ignaz: Ueber muhammedanische Polemik
gegen Ahl al-kitâb, in: Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft
32 (1878), pp. 341–387, here pp. 343, 373, 375; Steinschneider, Moritz: Pole-
mische und apologetische Literatur in arabischer Sprache, zwischen Muslimen,
Christen und Juden, Leipzig 1877, p. 108; Fritsch, Erdmann: Islam und Chris-
tentum im Mittelalter. Beiträge zur Geschichte der muslimischen Polemik gegen
das Christentum in arabischer Sprache, Breslau 1930, p. 33; Anawati, Georg-
es. C.: Polémique, apologie et dialogue islamo-chrétiens. Positions classiques
médiévales et positions contemporaines, in: Euntes Docete 22 (1969), pp. 375–
452, here pp. 411–412; Charfi, Abdelmajid: Bibliographie du dialogue islamo-
chrétien, in: Islamochristiana 4 (1978), pp. 247–267, here p. 259; Waardenburg,
Jacques: World Religions in the Light of Islam, in: Alford T. Welch and Pierre
Cachia (eds.): Islam, Edinburgh 1979, pp. 245–275, here p. 261; Perlmann,
Moshe: Muslim-Jewish Polemics, in: Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics,
New York 1987, vol. 11, pp. 396–401, here p. 399; Lazarus-Yafeh, Hava: Some
Neglected Aspects of Medieval Muslim Politics Against Christianity, in: Har-
vard Theological Review 89 (1996), pp. 61–84, here pp. 63, 65, n. 12, p. 68, n. 27,
81–82; Waardenburg, Jacques: Muslim Studies of Other Religions. The Medieval
Period; 650–1500, in: idem (ed.): Muslim Perceptions of Other Religions, New
York and Oxford 1999, pp. 18–69, here p. 45; Adang, Camilla and Schmidtke,
Sabine, Polemics (Muslim-Jewish), in: Norman A. Stillman (ed.): Encyclopedia
of Jews in the Islamic World, Leiden and Boston 2010, vol. 4, pp. 82–89, here
- Indirect reference to the Hidāya al-ḥayārā is found in Zebiri, Kate: Mus-
lims and Christians Face to Face, Oxford 1997, p. 138, Perlmann, Moshe: Islam.
Polemics Against Judaism, in: Encyclopedia Judaica, Jerusalem 1996, vol. 9,
pp. 101–102, here p. 102; and Gaudeul, Jean-Marie: Encounters and Clashes.
Islam and Christianity in History, Rome 2000, vol. 1, p. 190.
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