Religious Scholars and the Umayyads: Piety-Minded Supporters of the Marwanid Caliphate.

AuthorAfsaruddin, Asma
PositionBook review

Religious Scholars and the Umayyads: Piety-Minded Supporters of the Marwanid Caliphate. By STEVEN C. JUDD. Culture and Civilization in the Middle East. Abingdon, UK: ROUTLEDGE, 2013. Pp. x + 197. S145.

A basic objective of Steven Judd in this book is to question and undermine what he calls "the piety-minded opposition paradigm" (p. 25) dominant among scholars of Islamic history concerning the Umayyad period. According to this paradigm, "reputable, pious scholars avoided associations with the ruling elite" and "stood apart from the largely secular, cynical Umayyad rulers" (p. 4). Modern scholars such as Goldziher, Wellhausen, Hodgson, Watt, and others propagated such assumptions, and these views have achieved a near-canonical status among historians of the early period. According to Judd, the problematic nature of such views is compounded by the fact that modern scholars have not typically paid much attention to the Umayyad period and have focused mainly on legal and theological developments during the Abbasid period. This book is an attempt to establish the converse position, viz., that pious scholars in fact not only consorted with the Umayyads, particularly during the Marwanid period, but actively colluded with them in articulating Islamic doctrine and legal praxis, and that the Umayyad period is worthy of our attention as a critical watershed era for the development of such doctrine and praxis.

Judd is well aware of the paucity of early contemporary sources for reconstructing the religious and intellectual landscape of the Umayyad period in a definitive manner. Abbasid sources, particularly historical chronicles such as al-Tabari's Ta'rikh, are unreliable on this topic because of their innate hostility toward the Umayyad rulers. Judd proposes that we sidestep this problem by focusing instead on biographical and prosopographical sources that were compiled after the Umayyad period but were composed for different ends and often served the needs of the hadith scholars (muhaddithun). The different agendas and perspectives embedded within these "alternate" sources can provide a useful contrast to the official narratives of the Abbasid historians. Numerous scholars who are absent from the master-narratives may be encountered in these biographical sources, which consequently provide a fuller account of the activities of such scholars and chart their influence during the Marwanid period. The sources consulted by Judd for this enterprise of reconstruction are Ibn Sa'ds al-Tabaqat al-kubra; Khalifa b. Khayyats Tabaqat and Ta'rikh; Waki's Akhbar al-qudat; Ibn Abi Hatim al-Razis Taqdima and Kitab al-Jarh wa-l-ta'dil; al-Kindi's Kitab al-Wulat wa-l-qudat fi Misr; Abu Nu'aym al-Isfahani's Hilyat al-awliya' wa-tabaqat al-asfiya'...

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