Abstract
Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1013) was a preeminent scholar and an influential participant in a diverse range of Islamic discourses including the Ashʿarī school of theology and the Mālikī school of law. Al-Bāqillānī’s texts are often studied within the context of individual disciplines, but this article demonstrates that an interdisciplinary reading of his scholarly production uncovers significant areas of overlap. These intersections bring to light topics of sustained concern for al-Bāqillānī that crosscut his work and allow him to draw together various Islamic intellectual discourses. Through looking at three such intersections, on the topics of bayān, muḥkamāt and mutashābihāt, and the so-called Mysterious Letters, this article shows that al-Bāqillānī’s argument in favor of the clarity and eminent understandability of language, including all of the Qurʾān, is best understood through a cross-disciplinary reading of al-Bāqillānī’s oeuvre. Bringing to-gether al-Bāqillānī’s thought in the two seemingly disparate genres of uṣūl al-fiqh (legal theory) and iʿjāz al-Qurʾān (the inimitability of the Qurʾān) serves the dual purpose of examining the relationship between these fields and shedding light on al-Bāqillānī’s work across disciplines. It thus contributes to a more com-plete picture of the identity of a scholar who was concerned with providing a consistent and multifaceted theory of language within a broader synthesis of Islamic thought.Key words: Language, al-Bāqillānī, uṣūl al-fiqh, iʿjāz al-Qurʾān, bayān, interdisciplinary
Highlights
This article explores the intellectual contribution of Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1013), a preeminent scholar who was an influential participant in a diverse range of Islamic discourses.1 Famous for his wide-reaching impact on the Asharī school of theology and the Mālikī school of law, al-Bāqillānī authored a body of work that has proved difficult for scholars to conceptualize and characterize as a whole, due to its participation in Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 16 (2016): 99-123 © Rachel Anne Friedman, Williams College, Williamstown, USARachel Anne Friedman diverse specialized disciplines, and to the circuitous structure of al-Bāqillānī’s texts.2 Extant studies contextualize and analyze aspects of specific books that al-Bāqillānī composed without bringing into view his broader scholarly identity and contribution
The three realms of overlap between al-Bāqillānī’s uṣūl al-fiqh and ijāz al-Qurān treatises described here are but a few examples of this phenomenon, but many such connections occur within these books and more broadly within al-Bāqillānī’s wide-ranging oeuvre
Al-Bāqillānī’s sustained cross-disciplinary concern for these topics suggests an awareness on al-Bāqillānī’s part of the importance of language and its interpretation, a topic that would continue to be a source of contention
Summary
This article explores the intellectual contribution of Abū Bakr al-Bāqillānī (d. 403/1013), a preeminent scholar who was an influential participant in a diverse range of Islamic discourses. Famous for his wide-reaching impact on the Asharī school of theology and the Mālikī school of law, al-Bāqillānī authored a body of work that has proved difficult for scholars to conceptualize and characterize as a whole, due to its participation in. It does so by bringing together al-Bāqillānī’s writings in two seemingly disparate fields, uṣūl al-fiqh (jurisprudence) and ijāz al-Qurān (inimitability of the Qurān), highlighting important areas of overlap and intersection It analyzes the ways in which these texts express al-Bāqillānī’s theory of language, a central topic in his thought, devoting particular attention to his understanding of the roles of rhetoric and figurative language. A recent spate of attention has been given to theories of linguistic communication in Islamic legal theory, ideas regarding the correct ways of interpreting Qurānic verses and humans’ utterances in order to determine their legal force and its scope.4 Those two fields still constitute separately treated realms of thought, other studies that are mindful of interdisciplinary connections have affirmed the importance.
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