الأشعرية بفاس من الموحدين إلى المرينيين
The edition, translation and commentary of a text that had remained unpublished, documenting the implantation of Ašʿarite theology in the Almohad Maghreb.
A forgotten text, a history to be resumed
The history of theology in the Maghreb suffers from a well-known gap: the sources are scarce, scattered, and often left in manuscript. The profession of faith of Abū ʿImrān al-Ǧawrāʾī, a scholar of Fez of the 7th/13th century, was among those texts that are cited without having been read. Its edition now makes it possible to verify rather than to suppose.
What the text says
Al-Ǧawrāʾī's ʿaqīda sets out, in about a hundred propositions, what a believer is required to know of God, His attributes, prophecy and the last day. Its language is sober, its distinctions technical. What one reads there is an Ašʿarism already stabilised, but adapted to teaching: each proposition is made to be memorised and then explained.
The Almohad and Marinid context
The text is written in a Maghreb where doctrine is also a matter of state. The Almohads had imposed an official profession of faith; the Marinids, who succeeded them, favoured an Ašʿarite normalisation backed by Mālikism. Al-Ǧawrāʾī's ʿaqīda belongs to this moment of recomposition, between Almohad legacy and the new institutionalisation of the madrasas.
A work of establishment
The edition rests on the collation of the manuscript witnesses held in Morocco, the restoration of corrupt passages, and the identification of implicit sources. The complete French translation is accompanied by a commentary restoring to each formula its doctrinal stake.
What we learn
Far from the image of a Maghreb theologically dependent on the East, the text reveals a local school capable of selecting, abridging and reformulating. Maghrebi Ašʿarism is not a copy: it is an active reception, with its own emphases and its significant silences.
