Classical Arabic Biography

Abstract

This outstanding study discusses the origins, development, and function ofpre-modern Arabic biography through an examination of the biographiesof four figures of the late second and early third Islamic centuries whoselife stories have been contested in interesting ways: the Abbasid caliph alMa'mun (r. 198-218 AH/813-833 AC). [Chapter 2]; the Shi'ite imam · Alial-Rid a ( d. 203 AH/818 AC) [Chapter 3, and an appendix on the circumstancesof his death]; the renowned scholar of Hadith, Ahmad ibn Hanbal(d. 241 AH/855 AC).[Chapter 4]; and the ascetic Bishr al-Hafi (d.227 AHi842 A C). [Chapter 5]. These figures were chosen because they lived duringthe same period and their careers intertwined and overlapped, thus bringingto the fore the contests over religious authority between the societalgroups they represented. Although the caliph al-Ma'mun is famous forhaving appointed 'Ali al-Rida, his heir apparent, a move which has puzzledmany historians, since he is also accused of murdering the Shi'iteimam.Ahmad ibn Hanbal's fame rests on his resistance to the Abbasid/Mu· tazili Inquisition which al-Ma'mun inaugurated: despite imprisonmentand flogging, he upheld the opinion that the Qur'an is eternal and not created.Bishr al-Hafi, the famous barefoot ascetic, was trained as a Hadithspecialist in his youth but gave it up for what he saw as a more moral life.The association of Bishr al-Hafi with lbn Hanbal, equally renowned for hisreligious scrupulousness, provides fertile ground for comments on the relativemerits of the groups and religious approaches that they represent.Chapter 1, "The Development of the Genre," addressing the history ofthe biographical genre, argues, following Tarif Khalidi and against the traditionallyaccepted view, that biography did not originate as a by-productof the Hadith scholars' obsession with isnad criticism. Rather, it originatedin the work of akhbaris or "collectors of reports," in essence the first historiansof the Islamic period, who drew on pre-Islamic oral models, combininggenealogies and name-lists with narrative material. Biographies, inCooperson's view, are fundamentally intertextual: the reader naturally comparesthe accounts in one biography with alternative versions presented inother texts. Each serves to mold and comment on the interpretation of ...