al-Juwayni's Thought and Methodology, with a Translation and Commentary on Luma al-Adilla.

• Author: Griffel, Frank
• Position: Book Review

by MOHAMMAD MOSLEM ADEL SAFLO. Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, vol. 227. Berlin: KLAUS SCHWARZ VERLAG, 2000. Pp. 377.

In recent years, the importance of the Ash arite theologian Abu l-Ma ali al-Juwayni (419-478/1028-85) has become more and more apparent. Ibn Khaldun's view, expressed in his Muqaddima, that he stands at the turning point of Muslim Sunni theology where it started to become seriously concerned with the methodological challenge of peripatetic philosophy, is now much better understood than it was only decades ago. Hem, we find the fascinating element of a new thinking that is brought into the Ash arite school and that can first be found in al-Juwayni's obvious appreciation for a number of philosophical arguments. We find as well the theological system of the early Ash arite school, its engaging occasionalist ontology and its complicated interpretation of the divine attributes, which finds one of its highest peaks in the works of al-Juwayni. Unfortunately, nothing of the fascination of this thinker can be found in Mohammad Saflo's book which emerged from a 1998 dissertation at Exeter University, supervised by Ian Richard Netton.

The main problem of Saflo's book is its methodological and bibliographical backwardness. In his introduction, the author writes that he was unable to find a single book by Western writers dedicated to al-Juwayni (p. 3). Any good subject catalogue of a major library would have led him to Tilman Nagel's remarkable work Die Festung des Glaubens published 1988 with Beck Verlag in Munich. On the next page Saflo says that only two books of al-Juwayni have been translated into Western languages, the relatively small Shifa al-ghalil and Luma al-adilla, both translated by Michel Allard into French. He did not notice the edition and French translation of al-Irshad by J.-Dominique Luciani (Paris: E. Leroux, 1938), or Leon Bercber's French translation of the Kitab al-Waraqat fi usul al-fiqh (published under the title Les fondements du Fiqh [Paris: Ed. Iqra, 1995]), or Helmut Klopfer's German albeit unsatisfatory translation of al-Aqida al-nizamiyya, contained in his 1958 dissertation monograph Das Dogma des Imam al-Haramain al-Djuwaini und sein Werk al-Aqidat an-Nizamiya (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz). Recently, Paul Walker added his translation of the Irshad (Guide to the Conclusive Proofs for the Principles of Belief [Reading: Garnet Publishing, 2001]). The list of editions of al-Juwayni's works in Saflo's bibliography...