We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
andrew: I want to return to this generation. I want to know about your life as a shaykh.
shaykh khalaf: About me? About my life?
andrew: Yes.
shaykh khalaf: Yes. At first there was [the tribe of] ʿAbbad. The shaykh of ʿAbbad back then was Kayid Ibn Khatlan. Shaykh of the shaykhs of ʿAbbad …
From Andrew Shryock, Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal JordanAkhbār, Ḥadīth, and Sīra
Until recently, modern scholarship (following Otto Loth) has tended to assume that classical Arabic biography arose in conjunction with the study of Ḥadīth and Ḥadīth-transmitters. Muslim scholars, we are told, set out to collect information on the reliability of transmitters. Eventually they extended their inquiries “to other groups – legal scholars, doctors, Sufi masters, and so on,” with the intention of showing “that the history of the Muslim community was essentially that of the unbroken transmission of truth and high Islamic culture.” This understanding of the genre is accurate in some respects: classical Arabic biography undoubtedly emphasizes the notion of transmission, and some of the earliest collections do list transmitters of Ḥadīth. Yet the genre itself did not originate among the Ḥadīth-scholars. Were this so, we would expect the earliest compilations to consist exclusively of entries about transmitters.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
