Quellenuntersuchungen zu den "Maqatil at-Talibiyyin" des Abu l-Farag al-Isfahani (gest. 356/967): Ein Beitrag zur Problematik der mundlichen und schriftlichen Uberlieferung in der mittelalterlichen arabischen Literatur.

• Author: Leder, Stefan

The case deserves to be defended against its advocate. Although it may not be obvious, the study of classical Arabic literature cannot dispense with research into the sources used by the authors of the works preserved. This is not just an obligatory exercise in response to the constitutional principles of literary history, but it is vital to our understanding of the text and the culture in which it was born. However, the task demands extensive reading--difficult to achieve in this field--because one of the main tools is the study of the corresponding and variant texts, and asks for some methodological care which meets with the particularities of this literature. The study to be discussed here, a doctoral thesis submitted to the University of Halle/Saale (former GDR) in the summer of 1989, has not met the first of these requirements at all, but does go far in presenting a sophisticated terminology which is entirely built on formal grounds. The intention of this is fine, and it may be of some use, but the reader would be misled if he took the results for more than a rather schematic isnad analysis.

Abu l-Faraj al-Isfahani, the author of the famous "Book of Songs" (Kitab al-Aghani), is a prolific author known to every student of Arabic literature. He lived and wrote in Baghdad during a period when a multitude of early source material, oral and written, was at his disposal; most, if not all of it, is preserved only in compilations such as those of Abu l-Faraj. This author provides us generously with chains of transmitters (isnads), and thus offers much data concerning the origin, transmission and literary history of the texts he gathered. After Manfred Fleischhammer's very useful, but unpublished, examination of the isnads in the Kitab al-Aghani ("Quellenuntersuchungen zum Kitab al-Agani" |Habilitationsschrift, Halle, 1965~) the complementary contribution of S. Gunther is most welcome. Like the study of his teacher, it aims at establishing a list of--as I would rather put it: possible--sources.

The "Maqatil al-Talibiyyin" is an important book, as it contains more than 200 biographical articles on descendants of Abu Talib who did not die a natural death but were murdered or slain and died in prison or exile. Events of this sort commonly attracted authors (see the indices of Ibn al-Nadim's Kitab al-Fihrist, ed. R. Tajaddud |Teheran, 1971~, under maqtal and maqatil), but with Abu l-Faraj's collection survived one of the few early works that...