Bišr al-Ḥāfī und die Barfüßigkeit im Islam

Jarrar, Maher

doi:10.1515/islm.1994.71.2.191

Cited by 34 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Barefootedness is a convenient example, as Maher Jarrar recently devoted a special study to it. 51 Barefootedness connoted humility and was especially practiced in connection with collective pious enterprises such as seeking hadith and walking in funeral processions. 52 Bishr al-Hafi's barefootedness at all times and in all places connoted humility before God at all times and in all places.…”

Section: T H E M O R a L I S T I C C O M M U N I T Ymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Piety of the Hadith Folk

Melchert¹

2002

Inter. J. Middle East Stud.

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One of the most remarkable surveys of Islamic history and civilization remains Marshall G. S. Hodgson's The Venture of Islam, published posthumously in 1974. 1 For an introductory text, it has some bad faults-notably, a very dense style. Moreover, it has inevitably fallen out of date at many points. For example, one may admire Hodgson for coming up with his own critique of modernization theory in volume 3, but modernization theory has fallen so completely before other critiques that we hardly need Hodgson any longer. However, Hodgson has had some permanent effects on the way scholars approach Islamic history. For example, we may not have adopted many of his neologisms, but he certainly has made us self-conscious when we use the traditional terminology. The mere mention of "Jama i-Sunni," "Islamicate," "Arabist bias," and other special terms immediately alerts us to the dangers of some customary approaches to Islamic history. One of Hodgson's most notable challenges was to the traditional periodization. Instead of dividing Islamic history according to Sunni dogmatic preferences-mainly, the Rightly Guided Caliphs (to 661), then the Umayyads, excluding Uthman (to 750), then the Abbasids (to 1258)-Hodgson proposed a primitive period running up to the advent of the Marwanids (685), then a classical period running up to the advent of the Buyids (945), then a high middle period to the Mongol conquest. 2 One of the main objects of this essay is to identify more precisely the elements that went into the Sunni synthesis that crystallized in the early 10th century-in particular, competing forms of piety. Piety was important to Hodgson, for part of his enterprise was to show why it was fair to call a civilization "Islamic" (hence his subtitle, "Conscience and History in a World Civilization"). As a Quaker, he assumed that Muslims also had their inner lights, which must be taken seriously. His description of what he calls the "Shari ahminded" is unsurpassed as an account of one party's basic worldview. These were the Muslims who elaborated and transmitted the revealed law and thought that the law, more than custom, good taste, personal experience, or anything else, should mold the lives of the faithful. Yet clearly Hodgson's own sympathies lay mainly with Sufi mystics, whom he treats at much greater length. Accordingly, further sympathetic attention to the "Shari ah-minded" seems in order, especially in the formative 9th

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Section: T H E M O R a L I S T I C C O M M U N I T Ymentioning

confidence: 99%