rivalries between courts, many of which sought knowledge to gain and secure
political power. Many fields benefited from this surplus of patronage, allowing
many Muslims to devote their time fully to research and writing, including on
religious others. Some leaders benefited from understanding better the variety
of religious others they had to govern. This interdependence between various
fields of literary production and political needs marks the context within which
the following examples of proto-scientific study of religions writings must be
understood.
In the fourth and fifth Islamic centuries, roughly from 900 to 1111 CE, the
nomenclature changed. It is contained in, but not synonymous with, the use
of the word maqÇlÇt, as first noticed by Monnot. Not all books on religious
others were necessarily about religions other than Islam. The first book of this
period, al-MaqÇlÇt wa-al-firaq(Treatises and sects) of al-Ash‘ar¥al-Qumm¥(d.
914 CE), focused on the different Muslim Shi‘ite sects, as did one of the many
books written by al-Nawbakht¥(d. between 912 and 922 CE) entitled Firaq
al-sh¥‘ah (Shi‘ite sects). Both books were written in the polemical style of
refutations. Al-Nawbakht¥also wrote an important refutation of the dualists
at about the same time that al-Misma’¥(d. ca. 900 CE) wrote his. Both
refutations became the primary references for the classic work written three-
quarters of a century later over a period of twenty years (970–990 CE) by the
last major Mu‘tazil¥theologian, ‘Abd al-JabbÇr (ca.932–1025 CE): al-Mughn¥
f¥abwÇb al-tawª¥d wa-al-‘adl (Complete reference on unicity and justice). This
twenty-volume work, of which fourteen volumes are still extant, is best
described as an encyclopedia. In its fifth volume, ‘Abd al-JabbÇr refuted not
only the dualists but also the Zoroastrians, the Christians, the Sabians, and
the idolaters of the pre-Islamic Arabs (Monnot 1985: 65–66). His approach
was closer to that of a treatise in format yet still refutational in style, while
the overall presentation marked it as encyclopedic.
This work was by no means the only such complex work. The KitÇb al-
aghÇn¥(Book of songs) of Abal-FarÇj al-IsfahÇn¥(897–967 CE) is a multi-
volume work full of stories and anecdotes, many of which refer to religious
others. Al-Mas‘d¥’s (d. 956 CE) famous Murawwij al-dhahab wa-ma’Çdin al-
jawhar(Promoter of golden [knowledge] and means of jewels) is another multi-
volume work of adabin which much information on religious others is
integrated in a way similar to that employed by ‘Abd al-JabbÇr. Al-Mas‘d¥
also wrote profusely on religious others in works the genre of which fall more
immediately within the formative generic system on religious others (Shboul
1979). Such production ‘makes him one of the most notable authors of
maqÇlÇt’ (Monnot 1985: 62). Finally, the summum of literary produc-
tion on literature in general is the unique encyclopedia al-Fihrist composed in
987 CEby Ibn al-Nad¥m (d. ca. 990 CE). This work not only takes the maqÇlÇt
form, but also contains a series of maqÇlÇt. It reflects the human need for
integration of ever expanding parts into a newer whole. Yet strangely enough,
1111
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1011
1
2
3111
4 5 6 7 8 9
20111
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
30111
1
2
3
4
35
6
7
8
9
40111
42222
3
411
NORTH AFRICA AND WEST ASIA
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