432 Dominik Schlosser
gana already conjectured,^42 suggests itself when one considers that the
evidence that Ibn al-Qayyim presents for the biblical pericopes in the
Hidāyat al-ḥayārā repeatedly proves to be inaccurate, for example
when he classifies a passage from the First Epistle of John as part of
the Acts of the Apostles.^43 Supporting this assumption, for instance,
is the fact that, in the Hidāyat al-ḥayārā, Ibn al-Qayyim keeps Shihāb
al-Dīn al-Qarāfī’s^44 (d. 683–684/1285) and his teacher’s erroneous iden-
tification of the “Ruler of the World” with the promised Paraclete.^45 It
must also be noted that, to support his own positions, Ibn al- Qayyim
presents in the Hidāyat al-ḥayārā pseudo-biblical material, i. e., text
passages that are of neither Old nor New Testament origin, nor taken
from apocryphal writings, but that he nonetheless identifies as Bible
quotations.^46 Finally, it should be mentioned that in the Hidāyat
al-ḥayārā Ibn al-Qayyim also implies that he has gained knowledge
first-hand, for example when he reproduces a disputation (munāẓara)
that he claims to have conducted with unnamed scholarly Jews during
one of his visits to Egypt^47 and cites Muslim converts as guarantors of
information noted in the Hidāyat al-ḥayārā.^48
2. Reasons for Composing the Hidāyat al-ḥayārā
What was Ibn al-Qayyim’s main intention in composing the Hidāyat
al-ḥayārā and what group of readers was his intended audience? A text-
immanent answer to the question of its place in life is offered, first, by
the programmatic title, which suggests that Ibn al-Qayyim’s aim with
the Hidāyat al-ḥayārā was to strengthen the faith of the ordinary Mus-
42 Alphonse Mingana postulates that Ibn al-Qayyim used the Kitāb al-Dīn wal-
dawla (The Book of Religion and Empire) by the erstwhile Nestorian ʿAlī b.
Rabban al-Ṭabarī (d. 250/864) for his Bible quotations; see Mingana, Alphonse:
Remarks on Ṭabari’s Semi-official Defence of Islam, in: Bulletin of the John
Rylands Library 9 (1925), pp. 236–240, here p. 237. On this, see generally Lazarus-
Yafeh, Intertwined Worlds, p. 118; Accad, Muḥammad’s Advent, pp. 229–230.
43 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Hidāyat al-ḥayārā, p. 342.
44 See al-Qarāfī, Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad b. Idrīs: Kitāb al-Ajwiba al-fākhira ʿan
al-asʾila al-fājira, printed on the margins of Bājajizāda, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān: al-Fāriq
bayna al-khāliq wal-makhlūq, Cairo 1322/1904, pp. 2–265, here p. 245.
45 Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya, Hidāyat al-ḥayārā, pp. 223, 340–341.
46 See, for example, ibid., p. 494.
47 Ibid., pp. 384–385.
48 See, for example, ibid., pp. 370, 420.
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