32 Alina Kokoschka and Birgit Krawietz
Apart from what they themselves understand as their own scholarly
merits, the ensuing contributions from an international committee of
authors demonstrate considerably different dimensions of these pro-
cesses of appropriation – from most subtle variations to considerable
changes of function. Authors have been grouped to highlight thematic
and disciplinary links. We aim to attain a differentiated perspective by
further elucidating, by means of these chapters, the concept of appropri-
ation. Part one comprises contributions to theology, more specifically
to the role of human agency: Sait Özervarli compares “Divine Wisdom,
Human Agency and the fiṭra in Ibn Taymiyya’s Thought”, a key topic
in this genre; in “Debating the Doctrine of jabr (Compulsion): Ibn
Qayyim al-Jawziyya Reads Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī”, Livnat Holtzman
traces one of the important sources of Ibn al-Qayyim; Gino Schallen-
bergh’s “Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s Manipulation of Sufi Terms: Fear
and Hope”, demonstrates inter alia how the classical theological prob-
lem of free will versus predestination is (directly or indirectly) likewise
addressed in the subgenre of Sufi writings on the mystical path. Part
three is dedicated to “Ibn Taymiyya and Philosophy”. In “The Poison
of Philosophy: Ibn Taymiya’s Struggle For and Against Reason”, Anke
von Kügelgen analyzes the ways in which Ibn Taymiyya appropriated
Greek philosophy and the thinking and/or methodology of its Mus-
lim heirs, debating whether his strategy is compatible with his out-
spoken vendetta against philosophy. With “The Curse of Philosophy:
Ibn Taymiyya as a Philosopher in Contemporary Islamic Thought”,
Georges Tamer has written a complementary article that deals with
Ibn Taymiyya’s perception in modern times and ultimately speculates
whether or not Ibn Taymiyya should be portrayed as a philosopher
or as a theologian. The other three parts do not focus on mainly one
genre, but traverse variant fields and vast spacial and temporal distanc-
es: part two, on the “Career of Books” (while the term ‘book’ has to
be understood for the earlier periods as monograph), ranges from our
Ḥanbalī authors’ century to later ones up to the beginning of the 21st.
Geographically, it travels from 14th century Damascus to the Indian
subcontinent and to contemporary Indonesia. In “The Relation of Ibn
al-Qayyim’s Kitāb al-Rūḥ: Some Literary Aspects”, Tzvi Langerman
provides insight into his ongoing research on a specific book of Ibn al-
Qayyim, which is perhaps the monograph with the most sympathetic
reception in non-partisan, wider Sunni circles. Christopher Melchert,
in “Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya to the Ḥanbalī School
of Law”, measures quoting patterns by other Ḥanbalī authors and thus
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