The foundations of Islamic law
Islamic law is not a list of rules but a theory of interpretation. This cycle takes its mechanism apart.
Teaching cycle
Ašʿarite theology
From the founders of Baghdad to the masters of Fez
علم الكلام الأشعري
How a theological school born in the East became, in the Maghreb, the official doctrine of an empire — and what it actually said.
Course objectives
- Situate Ašʿarism within the history of the theological schools of Islam.
- Master the vocabulary of kalām: ṣifāt, aḥwāl, kasb, jawhar, ʿaraḍ.
- Read and analyse a Maghrebi profession of faith (ʿaqīda) in the original.
- Understand the political stakes of the Almohad and then Marinid diffusion of the doctrine.
Syllabus
I. Birth of a school
Al-Ašʿarī between Muʿtazilism and traditionalism: the break in Basra, the formulation of a middle way, and the gradual constitution of a corpus.
II. The vocabulary of doctrine
The divine attributes, the theory of human action, the atomism of the created world: the concepts without which no text opens up.
III. The Islamic West
Al-Andalus and the Maghreb: Mālikī resistance, Almohad appropriation, Marinid institutionalisation. A doctrine that became political.
IV. Continuous reading
Complete study of a Maghrebi profession of faith of the 7th/13th century, sentence by sentence, with its early commentary.
Texts studied
- Al-Ašʿarī, al-Ibāna ʿan uṣūl al-diyāna (extracts)
- Abū ʿImrān al-Ǧawrāʾī, ʿAqīda (critical edition)
- Ibn Tūmart, Murshida (extracts)
Continue with a course
Classical Arabic grammar
Entering grammar not as one enters a textbook, but as one enters a science of language built twelve centuries ago.
Manuscripts and philology
A practical workshop: reading a Maghrebi hand, dating a copy, collating witnesses, establishing a text.