Appropriation of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya 27
than merely analysing results.^101 To understand current appropria-
tion of works of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim in, for example,
Malaysia and Indonesia, the tool of intertextuality is not sufficient;
an intertextual approach requires transparency in order to even per-
ceive, much less analyze the different layers of influence and refer-
ences. This is not possible with the “invisible” editors who produce
the pamphlets that are sold on street corners.
4.2. Quotation and CompilingTo start, the religio-legal literature of the so-called Koranic sciences
is full of quotations from the holy sources of Koran and Hadith. In
varying quantities, but especially by Ḥanbalī scholars, such quota-
tions are constantly interpolated in the course of an oral or written
production and presentation of sense. A particularly striking example
is the legal sub-genre of Fatwa literature, whose condensed line of
argumentation is often structured and fed according to the hierarchy
of the sources of jurisprudence the author acknowledges. In order to
constantly explore and expand the realm of pious knowledge, various
techniques of quoting and compiling are applied. While it is true that
Ibn al-Qayyim quoted Ibn Taymiyya excessively, scholarly attention
has not focused enough on the plethora of other authors he cites or
employs.^102 He himself had assembled an impressive number of manu-
scripts from various disciplines in his library, and the implications of
this possession and passion have not yet been explored in detail. At
any rate, in those times “the concept of authorship and ‘copy-right’
was quite different from our understanding” and Ibn al-Qayyim is
definitely a “great recycler” of the work of others and – to a great
degree – also of himself.^103 This feature of multiple and even lengthy
quotations has led Holtzman to label Ibn al-Qayyim as a “mimetic”
101 For example, Holthuis endeavours to assemble prototypes of the different
manifestations of intertextual relations between literary texts in the sense of a
taxonomy; Holthuis, Susanne: Intertextualität. Aspekte einer rezeptionsorien-
tierten Konzeption, Tübingen 1993, pp. v, 34.
102 Ibn Ḥazm is but one example. Holtzman scrutinizes Ibn al-Qayyim’s reading
of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī in this edited volume. On Samau’al al-Maghribi see
our n. 21.
103 Krawietz, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawzīyah, p. 62.
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