A Medieval Critique of Anthropomorphism: Ibn al-Jawzi's Kitab Akhbar as-Sifat, A Critical Edition of the Arabic Text.

• Author: Stewart, Devin J.
• Position: Book Review

A Medieval Critique of Anthropomorphism: Ibn al-Jawzi's Kitab Akhbar as-Sifat: A Critical Edition of the Arabic Text. By MERLIN SWARTZ. Islamic Philosophy, Theology, and Science: Texts and Studies, no. 46. Leiden: BRILL, 2002, Pp. 297 + 107.

Brill has over the years produced many handsome volumes in Islamic Studies, including some of the most important reference works, editions, and studies in the field. It is a shame, therefore, that the process of editing and review for Brill's many series is not more rigorous. In the reviewer's opinion, the editors (H. Daiber and D. Pingree) of this series do not deserve the title, for it appears that they have not done any actual editing. While a great deal of time and effort have obviously gone into the production of Swartz's edition of this text by Ibn al-Jawzi, the translation, representing the bulk of the work under review, is seriously flawed and should have been thoroughly corrected and revised before publication. This having been said, Swartz deserves credit for making this unpublished critique of the anthropomorphic interpretation of scriptural texts available and for bringing out its importance in Islamic intellectual history.

Swartz's informative introduction to the work includes a biographical sketch of Ibn al-Jawzi, a discussion of the authorship of the work and its date of composition, a presentation of the argument of Kitab Akhbar al-Sifat, and a description of the manuscript used to edit the text. In addition to the edition and translation of the text, each with its own indices, Swartz provides the translation of a treatise by the Hanbali jurist al-'Althi which sets out to refute Ibn al-Jawzi's attack on anthropomorphic interpretation. The edition of Ibn al-Jawzi's text is based on a unicum, MS 1561 in the Sehid Ali Pasa collection of the Suleimaniye Library, Istanbul. While the title Kitab akhbar al-sifat is given on the title page of the manuscript, it does not appear in bibliographies of Ibn al-Jawzi, and attempts to identify it with other titles are not conclusive. The work is closely related to the published work Daf' shubhat al-tashbih wa'l-radd 'ala al-mujassimah, published in Damascus in 1926, which would seem to be an abridged version of the Kitab akhbar al-sifat.

Swartz argues that Kitab akhbar al-sifat was composed sometime in the 580s (between 1185 and 1192) and represented Ibn al-Jawzi's mature views, at a time when he had already begun to fall afoul of his opponents in the traditionalist wing of the Hanbali madhhab, but before his exile to Wasit in southern Iraq in 590/1193. The work shows him to be drawing on predecessors within the Hanbali madhhab, such as Ibn 'Aqil (d. 513/1119), in order to right what he considered a terrible failing on the part of fellow Hanbalis: the interpretation of scriptural references to God, in both the Qur'an and hadith, in a grossly...