Islamic Theology in Thirty Topics: a Yemeni Zaydī Tradition Preserved in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana

Abstract

Abstract For five centuries, Yemeni Zaydī scholars composed theological works that adhered to a thirty-topic framework. This article identifies the origins of this framework in a treatise by Qāḍī Jaʿfar al-Buhlūlī (d. 573/1177-1178) and shows that four Zaydī scholars who lived in the decades following him adopted it in at least some of their writings. I then trace the development of commentaries and versifications on the two core texts of the thirty topics tradition, Aḥmad al-Raṣṣāṣ’s (d. 621/1224) Miṣbāḥ al-ʿulūm and his al-Khulāṣa al-nāfiʿa. Altogether, I identify eighteen Zaydī writings that follow the thirty-topic framework, seventeen of which are held in manuscript in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan. The article concludes with critical editions of excerpts from three commentaries on Miṣbāḥ al-ʿulūm on the topic of the Prophet Muḥammad’s intercession on Judgement Day.