Обсуждение:Ас-Суйути

Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle

849-911 г.х. (1445—1505). Египет. Родился в Каире, но имел персидское происхождение. ас-Суюти преподавал хадисы, юриспрюденцию, филологию, историю и суфизм, а его произведения охватывали все аспекты исламской науки. Он написал более 500 работ по различным темам, включая предание Пророка (сунну), рассказы и хадисы, юриспруденцию (фикх), лингвистику, географию, историю и литературу. Во всех этих областях он важен не только для его собственного понимания, но и для многих ранее утраченных источников, которые он точно цитирует. В области истории он внес несколько вкладов. Он написал историю Египта, Хусн аль-Мухадара и историю халифов, называемых Тарих аль-хулафа, и другие биографические коллекции. Он умер на острове Равда на реке Нил. Его Хусн аль-мухадара фихабар аль-Миср ва’л Кахира (Согласие Коллокви на Мисре и Каире) — это история Египта и Каира, которая также включает в себя его собственную автобиографию. Тарих аль-хулафа использует ранние исторические источники для халифов от смерти Пророка до жизни автора, в том числе аль-Дахаби, аль-Хатиба аль-Багдади, Ибн Асакира, аль-Динавари и других. Биографии первых халифов очень детализированы, что дает нам ключевые события их царствования. Когда он приходит к халифам Омейядов, информация уже не столь детализирована, но он все ещё сообщает нам об их характере, о том, как они пришли к власти, и отмечает важные события во время их правления, заканчивая их кончиной. Эта же закономерность соблюдается для истории правителей Аббасидов. После этого нам дают информацию об египетском халифате и монгольской оккупации Багдада. История халифов заканчивается Мустасиком Биллахом, современным халифом Суюти, а также обзором халифов династии Омейядов в Испании. Работа важна для информации, которую она предлагает, чем для старых потерянных текстов, которые она сохраняет. Husn al-Muhadara выживает в Лейдене, УБ, Ор. 113 (408 листов). Ta’rīkh al-khulafā' можно найти в Париже, BnF, arabe 6743.

849-911 ah (1445—1505 ad). Egypt. Born in Cairo, but of Persian origin, al-Suyūtī was a teacher of hadith, jurist, philologist, historian and Sufi, and his works embrace all the aspects of Islamic science. He wrote over 500 works on diverse themes, including the tradition of the Prophet (Sunna), narrations and hādith, jurisprudence (fiqh), linguistics, geography, history and literature. In all of these fields he is important not only for his own insights but for the many earlier lost sources which he quotes precisely. In the field of history he made several contributions. He wrote a history of Egypt, the Husn al-muhadara and a history of the caliphs called Taʾrīkh al-khulafāʾ, and other biographical collections. He died on the island of Rawda in the river Nile. His Husn al muhadara fi akhbār al Misr waʾl Kahirah (Agreeable Colloqui on Misr and Cairo) is a history of Egypt and Cairo which also includes his own autobiography. The Taʾrīkh al-khulafāʾ uses earlier historical sources for the Caliphs from the death of the Prophet until the author’s lifetime, including al-Dhahabi, al-Khatib al-Baghdadi, Ibn ʿAsakir, al-Dīnawarī and others. The biographies of the first caliphs are very detailed, providing us the key events of their reigns. When he comes to the Umayyad caliphs the information is no longer so detailed, but he still informs us about their character, how they came to power, and notes important events during their rule, ending with their demise. This same pattern is followed for the history of the Abbasid rulers. After this we are given information about the Egyptian Caliphate and the Mongol occupation of Baghdad. The history of the caliphs ends with Mustamsik Billah the contemporary caliph of Suyūtī and an overview of the caliphs of the Umayyad dynasty of Spain. The work is important less for the information it offers than for the older lost texts which it preserves. The Husn al-Muhadara survives in Leiden, UB, Or. 113 (408 folios). The Taʾrīkh al-khulafāʾ can be found in Paris, BnF, arabe 6743.

Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition / al-Suyūṭī

Abu ’l-Faḍl ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Abī Bakr b. Muḥammad D̲j̲alāl al-Dīn al-K̲h̲uḍayrī, famous Egyptian scholar, at present recognised ¶ as the most prolific author in the whole of Islamic literature.

1. Life. Through his father, al-Suyūṭī was of Persian origin. He himself states that his ancestors lived at al-K̲h̲uḍayriyya, one of the quarters of Bag̲h̲dād (hence his second nisbd ). In the Mamlūk period his family settled in Asyūṭ [q.v.], where its members were engaged in important religious and administrative duties. Al-Suyūṭī was born on 1 Rad̲j̲ab 849/3 October 1445 in Cairo where his father taught Shafi'i law and acted as substitute kadi. An anecdote prefigures Djalal al-Dln's fertile career: his mother, a Circassian slave, is said to have borne him while she found herself in the family library. To this, al-Suyuti owes the surname "son of books" (ibn al-kutub) (A. al-Aydarusf, Ta'fikh al-nur al-safir can akhbdr al-karn al-fashir, Baghdad 1934, 51). His father died prematurely in 855/1451, and so the son had several teachers. At the age of fourteen, he deepened his education in the various religious sciences (tafsir, hadith, Shafi'i law, etc.) as well as in Arabic. Among his numerous teachers were Alam al-Din al-Bulkfnf, Sharaf al-Dln al-Munawf and Muhyf al-Din al-Kafyadjf. Al-Suyuti includes among them Ibn Hadjar al-cAskalanf [q.v.], but he attended only once his courses, and that at the age of three (Ta3nkh al-nur al-sāfir, 54). He studied hadith under the aegis of a dozen women specialising in this discipline (M. al-Shakca, ^aldl al-Din al-Suyuti, masiratuhu al-cilmiyya wa-mabdhithuhu al-lughawiyya, Cairo 1981, 35-40). In 867/1463, hardly eighteen years old, he inherited his father's position, taught Shafi'i law in the mosque of Shaykhu and gave juridical consultations in which he handled various sciences in a brilliant way (an example of a complex fatwā given at that early age is reported by S. Abu Djlb in Hay at Dialdl al-Din al-Suyuti mac al-cilm min al-mahd ilā 'l-lahā, Damascus 1993, 189-93). In 872/1467 al-Suyuti took up again the tradition of dictating (imla) hadith in the mosque of Ibn Tulun, where his father had been a preacher. This method had been interrupted twenty years earlier at the death of Ibn Hadjar. As a result, al-Suyuti obtained in 877/1472 the post of teacher of hadith at the Shaykhuniyya. Though nominated by his teacher al-Kafyadjf, it seems that he obtained this post because of the support of a Mamluk amir. From 891/1486 he was also in charge of the Baybarsiyya khānkāh [q.v.]. These obligations left him time to write his works and to see to their spread outside Egypt. Before he had reached thirty years of age, his works were sought after in the entire Near East, and later circulated from India to Takrur in Sahilian Africa, where he, from Cairo, played the role of counsellor in matters of Islamisation (see the As'ila wārida min al-Takrur, in the Hāwl presented below, i, 377-85).

In fact, his career developed much more smoothly abroad than in Egypt. Here he found himself in the middle of numerous polemics: the intransigence and arrogance he displayed certainly contained elements which irritated his colleagues and stirred up their jealousy. These controversies touched upon questions of theology and law as well as mysticism, and the Hāwi li 'l-fatāwā (new ed. Beirut, n.d.), through the titles of thefatwās and chapters which the work brings together, attests that al-Suyuti must have refuted (al-radd cald...) many times the views of his adversaries. His main detractor was Muhammad al-Sakhawf (d. 902/1497 [q.v]), a traditionist who took offence at the fame of his colleague (as is admitted by al-Shawkani in al-Badr al-tāli‘ bi-mahāsin man bafd al-karn al-sābif, Cairo 1348/1929-30, ij 328-35). Al-Sakhawf's acrimony appears in the pages which he reserves for al-Suyuti in al-Daw3 al-lamic fl a'ydn al-karn al-tāsi‘ (Beirut n.d., iv, 65-70). The tension came to a head when al- Suyuti, probably in 888/1483, pretended to have reached the degree of mudjtahid mutlak muntasib, that is to say that he exercised iajtihād [q.v.] by following the method of one of the four imams, in this case that of imam al-Shafii. He thus does not present himself as an "independent" muajtahid (mustakill). In al- Radd cald man akhlada ild }l-ard (Algiers 1907), he reminds the reader that iajtihād is a collective duty (ford kifaya], underlined not only by the masters of the Shafii school but also by Ibn Taymiyya. He also affirms that his iajtihād is not at all limited to the Shari'a but also applies to the disciplines of the hadtth and of the Arabic language. Al-Suyuti's allegations aroused a real fitna (this term is used by Muhammad Abu '1-Hasan al-Bakrf; cf. al-Shacram, al-Tabakat al-sughrā, Cairo 1970, 78), and so it becomes understandable that al- Sha'ranf devoted the greater part of his entry on al- Suyuti, whom he venerated, to the justification of the latter's points of view with regard to iajtihad (op. cit., 17-36). In consistency with his pretentions to idjtihād, al-Suyutl, two or three years before the year 900/1494, announces himself as the renewer of Islam (muajaddid) [q.v.] for the 9th century of the Hiajra (see his epistle on this subject in the Hawi, ii, 248 ff. and his autobiography with the tide al-Tahadduth bi nicmat Allah, ed. E.M. Sartain, Cambridge 1975, 215-27).

From 891/1486, at the age of about forty, al-Suyuti decided to retire from public life. Progressively he resigned his functions and stopped delivering fatwas. Apart from the resentment of his colleagues towards him, the reasons he put forward were corruption in the milieu of the 'ulamd' and their ignorance. Indeed, the decline of the cultural level at the end of the Mamluk period was manifest. At the same time, al- Suyutl's relations with sultan Ka'it Bay [q.v.] became more acrimonious. He refused to pay a visit to the sultan at the beginning of each month: frequenting the wordly rulers, he profounded, was condemned by the first Muslims (cf. his epistle Ma rawāhu al-asdtln fi cadam al-madjic ild 'l-saldtin, Tanta 1991). On several occasions, he clashed with Ka'it Bay (see hisfatwā in the Hawi, ii, 154-79) and declined the offer made later by sultan al-Ghawn [q.v] to assume direction of his madrasa. Al-Suyuti always rejected peremptorily the de facto power of the Mamluks whom he, following the example of al-clzz Ibn £Abd al-Salam (d. 660/1261), considered as "slaves" (mamluk). He never missed the opportunity to point this out in one or the other of his fatwās (Ham, i, 206-10). He reproached sultan Baybars [q.v] for having weakened the Shafi'i rite— and, beyond that, Islam—by designating a grand kadi for each of the three other rites. Conversely, the cAbbasid caliphs were for him the incarnation of legitimacy, for they were the best guarantors of the revealed Law and of the prophetic Sunna (see J.C1. Garcin, Histoire, opposition politique et pietisme traditionaliste dans le Husn al-muhadara de Suyuti, in AI, vii [1967], 33-88; see also Le sultan et le Pharaon, in Hommage d Francois Daumas, Montpellier 1986, 261-72). The indestructible support al-Suyuti gave to the caliphate is also explained by the bonds which his father wove with the caliphs residing in Cairo, and from which he himself profited: in 902/1496, he succeeded in having himself nominated "supreme kadi" by al-Mutawakkil, but the latter had to retract when faced with the hostility of the 'ulama’.

Al-Suyuti's complete retreat into his house on Rawda island took place in 906/1501, following the conflict which opposed him to the residents of the Baybarsiyya. For him, who venerated the masters of tasawwuf, the residents of that khankah were only pseudo-Sufis. Forced to reduce their salaries, he was obliged to hide in order to escape the persecution of sultan Tuman Bay, who supported his adversaries. He was then dismissed from his functions, but, as E.M. Sartain has shown in her Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti, biography and background, Cambridge 1975, 101, this certainly did not happen because of mismanagement of the finances of the establishment. In his house on Rawda, he concentrated on the editing and revision of his works. He died there on 19 Djumada I 911/18 October 1505. His reputation as a scholar and the aura of godliness which were already his during his lifetime, then reached their zenith; his clothes were bought as if they were relics (Ibn lyas, Badā'i al-zuhur fl wakdY fal-duhur, Istanbul 1934, iv, 83).

2. Al-Suyuti as a scholar, and his works.

The self-confidence of al-Suyuti was based on his being aware of his own gifts. He had a prodigious memory (he knew by heart all the hadithi, which had come to his knowledge, namely 200,000) and his remarkable synthetic mind enabled him to edit or to dictate several works at the same time. He certainly did not lack ambition (at the age of twenty, during the Pilgrimage, he asked God to grant him more knowledge in fikh and in hadlth than the two great scholars of his time had in these disciplines; cf. al- Nur al-sājir, 55), and this prompted him to write on the most clivers subjects. He olid not want to remain ignorant in any field of knowledge (see Goldziher's judgement on this matter, in J.O. Hunwick, Ignaz Goldziher on al-Suyuti, in MW, Iviii (1978), 94, 96). He asserted, however, that it was not a question of pride on his side, but of concern for bearing witness to the blessings with which God had favoured him (al-tahadduth bi-nicmat Allah; cf. also Hawi, ii, 562). Moreover, we know that he led a rather frugal life. He was convinced that he had been invested with a mission which prevailed over every other consideration, in particular, over the opinion others had of him. This mission consisted in assembling and transmitting to coming generations the Islamic cultural patrimony before it might disappear as a result of the carelessness of his contemporaries. In fact, he quotes in his works numerous ancient texts which are now lost, in particular in the field of the Arabic language. Al-Suyuti represents the apex of mediaeval science (among others, David King makes this point with respect to al-Suyuti's treatise on cosmology (al-Hayca alsaniyyafi 'l-hay'a al-sunniyyd] in his review of A. Heinen, Islamic cosmology, Beirut-Wiesbaden 1982; cf. JAOS, cix/1 [1989], 125, and D^amcal-a^awāmif, Cairo 1984, 9 vols., al-Suyuti's great—unfinished—compilation of the prophetic tradition). At the same time, he prefigures the modern period by certain aspects, such as being partly an autodidact, presenting to a public, which he wanted to be widened, manuals which were centred around precise themes (this is, e.g., the case with his Itkānfl culum al-Kur'dn (many editions), which remains a work of reference wherever Kur'anic sciences are taken up. Moreover, his epistles and fatwās are often the fruits of a request from the public, Egyptian or foreign. In the same spirit of vulgarisation, he epitomised the works of others, as well as his own (e.g. al-D^ami' al-saghir, a summary of the Djam' al-ajawāmic quoted above). For all that, al-Suyuti cannot be considered as a mere compiler. He indeed takes up themes which were usually neglected in Islamic literature. He is the first to have introduced Muslim mystics into the field of the fatwa (in this, he was to be followed by other Shafi'i scholars of the 10th/16th century, such as Nadjm al-Din al-Ghaytr and, above all, Ibn Hadjar al-Haytaml [q.v.]. As for the form, al-Suyuti's procedure is scientific in so far as he quotes his sources with precision and presents them in a critical way. In the introduction to a work, he often defines the method which he is going to follow. His works benefit from a clear structure, and he often broke new ground by expounding his material according to its alphabetical order.

Regarding the number of his works, Arab and Western authors have brought forward different figures, and these go up parallel to our knowledge. A study of 1983 mentions up to 981 works (A. al- Khazindar and M.I. al-Shaybanl, Dalil makhtutāt al-Suyutl wa-amākin wud^udiha, Cairo), whereas al-Suyuti lived only for sixty solar years. In our days, his manuscripts are published with great success, and from this point of view, he has won the battle which laid him open to his detractors. Al-Suyuti's versatility is the illustration of the Islamic ideal, according to which there is no really profane science. He explored geography as well as lexicography, pharmacopeia, dietetics and erotica. Certain works of his are studded with the most anecdotal details, which in his eyes are all worthy of interest (cf. al-Kanz al-madfun wa 'l-fulk almashhun, Cairo 1991—if this indeed is his—or "The hundred questions" to which he answers in his Hawl, ii, 527-67). More profoundly, his approach of a subject is often multidisciplinary. The purpose of his small treatise al-Ahadith al-hisān Ji fadl al-taylasān is to prove to sultan Ka'it Bay that wearing the taylasān is a sunna, but he does not deprive himself of introducing philological expositions. Moreover, he asserts that, at the elaboration of his al-Khasd'is al-kubrā, on the specific virtues of the Prophet (Beirut 1985, 2 vols.), he made use of the sciences of tafslr, hadith, law and its foundations (usul), of Sufism, etc. (S. Abu Djlb, op. cit., 52).

However, a well-defined main line of al-Suyuti's attachment to the Prophet and his Sunna stands out from this versatility. In his field of vision he includes the most scattered sciences as long as they do not contradict the Revelation which has come down upon Muhammad. That is why he condemns in several texts Hellenistic logic (al-mantik) (cf. in particular Sawn al-mantik wa 'l-kaldm canfann al-mantik wa 'l-kaldm, Cairo 1947). He is a man of Tradition, and for him every speculation is submitted to it. From this comes al- Suyuti's salafi aspect, which explains why he often walks in the footsteps of Ibn Taymiyya, although he dissociates himself from him in certain points (cf. E. Geoffroy, Le soufisme en Egypte et en Syrie, IFEAD, Damascus 1995, 448-9). Among the disciplines which he says he controls (Husn al-muhadara fi akhbdr Misr wa }l-Kāhira, Cairo 1968, i, 238-9; al-Tahadduth, 204), that of the hadith prevails, for its impregnates the greater part of his works. The various sciences which are related to the Arabic language perhaps represent his favourite subject (this is what he asserts in al- Ashbdh wa 'l-nazd'irfi 'l-lugha, Haydarabad 1940, i, 3-4), but the influence of cilm al-hadith is quite distinctly to be noticed in his major work on the language, al- Muzjiir fi culum al-lugha wa-anwā‘ihā (see e.g. B. Weiss, Language and tradition in medieval Islam: the question of al- Tariq ila Ma'rifat al-Lugha, in IsL, Ixi [1984], 98-9), and al-Suyutl himself acknowledged this in the prologue of his Muzftir (Beirut 1986, i, 1). In the same way as he did for the hadith, al-Suyutl reintroduced the "dictation of the language" (imla3 al-lugha) after this had been interrupted for almost five hundred years (Hunwick, op. cit., 92). It is worthwhile to note that, in his other works on language, al-Suyuti follows the method of the religious sciences, that of the usul al-fikh, in al-Iktirāh fi cilm usul al-lugha, and that of fikh in al-Ashbdh wa 'l-na^ir Ji 'l-lugha, which he puts side-to-side with al-Ashbdh wa 'l-nagd'tr fi fkh alimam al-Shafii (Cairo 1959). Though claiming that he innovated the science of the "foundations of the Arabic language" (usul al-lugha), he worked as a philologist rather than as a linguist. Another pole of al- Suyutr's work are the Kur'anic sciences (about twenty works), and if the above-mentioned Itkān gives a generous share to language and rhetoric, al-Suyutis main commentary, al-Durr al-manthur fi 'l-tafsir bi 'l-ma'thur (Beirut 1990, 8 vols.) is exclusively supplied with hadith and the sayings of the first Muslims. In this field should also be mentioned the very practical Tafslr al- Dj.aldlayn (many editions), the commentary begun by Djalal al-Din al-Mahalll (d. 864/1459 [q.v.]), one of al-Suyutis teachers, and perfected by the latter. Brockelmann wrongly identified this work with the Lubdb al-nukul fi asbdb al-nuzul, which deals with the "circumstances of the revelation" (Cairo n.d.; see El1 art. al-Suyutl, at IV, 573b).

If in al-Suyutis eyes the discipline of the hadith represents "the noblest of sciences" (Husn al-muhadara, i, 155), this is because it is related to the prophetic model, which for him is the only way leading to God. In this field, al-Suyutl completes Ibn Hadjar's contribution by establishing the chain of guarantors and the degree of reliability of certain traditions introduced by his precursor. Here al-Suyutis key work is perhaps Tadrib al-rdwi fi sharh taknb al-Nawawi (Beirut 1979), which deals with the terminology of hadith (see e.g. the extensive use made of it by S. Salih in his cUlum al-hadith wa-mustalahuhu, Beirut 1982), but many others could be quoted. The prophetic model evoked previously cannot be transmitted exclusively by bookish science; it must be vitalised from inside. Al-Suyuti, who claimed to have seen the Prophet more than seventy times while awake (al-Shacranf, op. cit., 29; al-Suyuti justifies this faculty in a long fatwā in Hawl, ii, 473-92), assures people that, during a vision, one may be entertained directly by the Prophet about the validity of a hadith (Tahdhir al-khawwās min akādhib al-kussās, Beirut n.d., 50). He attached importance to the complementarity between the esoteric and exoteric aspects of the Prophet in a work with the explicit title al-Bdhir fi hukm al-nabi (S) bi 'l-bdtin wa 'l-gdhir (Cairo 1987). As a Sufi, al-Suyutl found in the Shadhiliyya [q.v.] a just equilibrium between the Law and the Way (cf. his Ta'yid al-hakika al-caliyya wa-tashyid altanka al-shadhiliyya, Cairo 1934). As master, he had a shaykh of this order, Muhammad al-Maghribf (d. 910/ 1504), and his principal disciple, who served him for forty years, was called cAbd al-Kadir al-Shadhill. In accordance with this personal engagement, al-Suyuti profited from his fame as cdlim and jurisconsult to spearhead a clear-sighted apology for Sufism and its masters. He saw the highest form of adoration in the dhikr, showed that one must interpret the sayings of the Sufis and not stop at their first appearance, maintained that the saints had the gift of ubiquity, put the initiatory hierarchy of the saints back into a Sunn! perspective, defended the orthodoxy of Ibn al-Farid and Ibn al-cArabf, etc. (the relationship between al- Suyutl and Sufism is treated in detail in the abovementioned Le soufisme en Egypte et en Syne). Among the supernatural favours attributed to al-Suyutl we may cite his predictions on the first Ottoman period (Ibn lyas, op. cit., v, 218; al-Shacram, op. tit, 30-2). Moreover, the eschatological dimension is very much present in his work (see the many fatwas in his Ham, e.g. ii, 213-56, 358-66, etc.; see also Bushrā al-ka'ib bilika3 al-habib, Cairo 1969).

Finally, it should not be forgotten that al-Suyuti also was a historian and biographer. In this field, he took up theory (e.g. al-Shamarikh f i cilm al-ta'nkh, but above all he wrote on several concrete subjects, such as a history of the caliphs (Ta'rikh al-khulafā’, Cairo 1964), a history of Egypt (Husn al-muhadara, quoted above), and a great number of biographical collections, chosen according to specialities (tabakāt of commentators, traditionists, grammarians, poets, etc.). He did not neglect literature, but this was hardly ever an end in itself. He took it up, in particular, under its historical angle (al-Musia^raf rain akhbdr al-ajawāri, Beirut 1963) or under its erotic one (his Rashf al-zuldl min al-sihr al-haldl has been translated by Rene Khawam under the title Nuits de noces, Paris 1988), and his poetry is dedicated to the praise of the Prophet.

Bibliography:

Add to the sources quoted in the article, al-Suyuti's biography, written by his disciple cAbd al-Kadir al-Shadhilf, Bahajat al-cdbidin bitarajamat DJalal al-Din (mss. in London, Dublin, Kuwayt), as well as Shams al-Din al-Dawudf, Tarajamat al-Suyuti (ms. Tubingen); Nadjm al-Din al-Ghazzf, al-Kawākib al-sā‘ira bi-dydn al-mi3a al-cdshira, Beirut 1945, i, 226-31. E.M. Sartain, Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti, remains the most complete study in a Western language; see also eadem, Jalal al-Din as- Suyuti's relations with the people of Takrur, in JSS, xvi (1971), 193-8. In his bibliography, S. Abu Djfb mentions several studies in Arabic (op. cit.., 331-2). In his Muhammad's birthday festival (Leiden 1993, 45- 70), NJ. Kaptein presents and translates al-Suyuti's fatwā which validates the practice of the mawlid nabawi. (E. GEOFFROY)