The scholarly works of the Egyptian Sufi and chief qadi Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī (d. 926/1520) often reflect a late-medieval Muslim trend of subtle intellectual innovation—that is, innovation that cloaks itself in the received tradition while often diverging markedly from it. It is particularly his celebrated Iḥkām al-dalāla ʿalā taḥrīr al-Risāla, a commentary on ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī’s (d. 465/1072) Risāla in Sufism, that embodies such an intellectual trend quite starkly. This study examines the Iḥkām to understand how Anṣārī adapted an eleventh-century Nishapuri handbook in Sufism to his own fifteenth-century Egyptian context. It argues that Anṣārī’s redirecting of Qushayrī’s Risāla occurs through three broad interpretative techniques: a recasting in content, a recasting in form, and a recasting in tone and objective of the original text. After exploring these techniques in depth, a few larger implications for the field of commentary theory are noted in a concluding section. A preliminary consideration of Anṣārī’s biography, particularly those biographical details related to his scholarly training and career, his background in Sufism, and the writing of his Iḥkām, appears as a preface to the textual analysis that comprises the second half of the study.

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Abū l-Qāsim ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072) is a pivotal figure in the development of the Sufi tradition. The articles that comprise the present issue of the Journal of Sufi Studies propose to shed new light on understudied areas in Qushayrī’s thought, corpus, and posthumous reception.

Al-Ghazālī on Condemnation of Pride and Self-Admiration (Kitāb Dhamm al-kibr wa’l-ʿujb): Book XXIX of the Revival of the Religious Sciences (Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn). Translated by Mohammed Rustom. Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society, 2018. Pp. xxxvi + 190. £17.99 (paper).

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