428 Dominik Schlosser
and accusations reproduced in the Hidāyat al-ḥayārā are only too well
known,^20 since they belonged for several centuries to the basic stock of
seldom questioned Muslim polemics against Christianity^21 and, con-
sidering their veritably habitual employment, they possess a character
as topos. Viewed in this light, the real achievement of Ibn al-Qayyim
and his originality in selecting such platitudes as the accusation of falsi-
fying scripture (taḥrīf) or the thesis that the appearance of the Prophet
Muḥammad is already prophesied in the revelatory scriptures of the
People of the Book (ahl al-kitāb) is that he provided bolstering content
and combined them in a more or less coherent whole.
However, the present paper will not attempt to make the doubtless
instructive comparison between Ibn al-Qayyim’s polemical writing and
the works of his predecessors in the area of Muslim polemics against
Christianity and the delineation of continuities, parallels, and charac-
teristic divergences. The primary interest here is rather a text-imma-
nent analysis of the Hidāyat al-ḥayārā in regard to central aspects of
the depiction and refutation of Christianity as well as the tendencies
underlying it. Additionally, the question of the sources Ibn al-Qayyim
consulted when composing the Hidāyat al-ḥayārā and the occasion for
writing this treatise and its “place in life” will be briefly touched upon.
1. Sources of the Hidāyat al-ḥayārā
The first source for the Hidāyat al-ḥayārā that should be mentioned is
Ibn Taymiyya’s voluminous al-Jawāb al-ṣaḥīḥ: Ibn al-Qayyim not only
takes up the themes and arguments of the anti-Christian polemical writ-
ing of his teacher. As a close comparison of the texts of the two works
shows, he also adopts passages almost verbatim, only in the rarest cases
marking them as such with formulations like qāla shaykh al-islām.^22
Dependent on Ibn Taymiyya’s work are, for instance, the passage treating
20 See Cohen, Mark R.: Under Crescent and Cross. The Jews in the Middle Ages,
Princeton 1994, p. 151.
21 Instructive lists of the objections to Christianity that were part of the standard
repertoire of Muslim anti-Christian polemics in the Middle Ages, taking up
Erdmann Fritsch, are offered in Wilms, Franz-Elmar: Al-Ghazālīs Schrift wider
die Gottheit Jesu, Leiden 1966, pp. 223–243; and Waardenburg, Muslim Studies
of Other Religions, pp. 49–51.
22 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad: Hidāyat al-ḥayārā fī
ajwibat al-yahūd wal-naṣārā, edited by Muḥammad Aḥmad al-Ḥājj, Damascus
and Beirut 1416/1996, pp. 323–341.
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