Scholars and Charlatans on the Baghdad-Khurasan Circuit from the Ninth to the Eleventh Centuries

Abstract

Sunni Islam emerged as a sect that built its claims to legitimacy on the primacy of revealed knowledge ( ilm ) and its preservation from the whims of the masses, the vagaries of heresy and the temptations of power. The emergence of the Muslim scholarly class, the ulama , took place through a communal valorization of sacred knowledge, a gradual consensus on major pious figures who transmitted this knowledge, and the networks of the teacher/student relationships. By the middle of the tenth century, the institutional security that Sunni Muslim scholars enjoyed enabled them to become more active participants in the belle-lettrist cosmopolitanism of the ninth to the eleventh centuries. Ibn al-Jawzi's Stories of Cunning People and his Reports on Idiots invert the scholar/charlatan relationship and the duties of the ulama . The books feature detailed, full-length chains of transmission from Ibn al-Jawzi back to the Prophet and to innumerable titans of the Sunni past. Keywords:Baghdad-Khurasan Circuit; charlatans; eleventh centuries; scholars; Sunni Islam; ulama