The Epistle of the Eloquent Clarification concerning the Refutation of Ibn Qutayba by Al-Qadi al-Nu'man b. Muhammad (d. 363/974).

• Author: Traboulsi, Samer
• Position: Book review

The Epistle of the Eloquent Clarification concerning the Refutation of Ibn Qutayba by Al-Qadi al-Nu'man b. Muhammad (d. 363/974). Edited by Avraham Hakim. Islamic History and Civilization, vol. 90. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Pp. xi + 22 + 175 (Arabic). $129, 94 [euro].

Risalat dhat al-bayan fi l-radd 'ala Ibn Qutayba is one of several polemical treatises written by the preeminent Fatimid jurist al-Qadi al-Nu'man b. Muhammad (d. 363/974). Half of the text was thought lost (Poonawala 1977: 63), but a close reading by Avraham Hakim shows that it has survived in its entirety (likewise Poonawala 2011, which probably appeared too late for the book under review).

This edition of the Arabic text is based on two manuscripts: one in the Zahid Ali collection housed at the Institute of Ismaili Studies and the other in the Fyzee collection housed at the University of Mumbai. Hakim's main concern in the short section devoted to the manuscripts used in the edition is to show that all nine parts of the text have survived--contrary to Ismail Poonawala (1977) and, following him, Delia Cortese (2003: 156-57). Interestingly, he refers the reader to Cortese's catalogue for the description of the Zahid Ali manuscript instead of including it in his introduction, which is the common practice in textual editions. It would have been useful to mention, at least, the manuscript's date, 13 Rajab 1233/18 May 1818. The Fyzee manuscript does receive the customary description, perhaps because Hakim did not know of Fyzee's own description (1973: 213), to which the reader could have been referred--it is not listed in the bibliography. (Ironically, Fyzee notes that the manuscript contains only eight parts and is missing the ninth which shows that he had not read the risala in its entirety.)

This edition could have benefited from the third available manuscript of the epistle in the Hamdani collection, also housed at the Institute of Ismaili Studies. That manuscript contains the nine complete parts in the correct order and is dated 23 Sha'ban 1291/4 October 1874. Notes by two Yemeni da'is are copied after the text, which suggests that it is a copy of an older manuscript in the da'wa library in Yemen (De Blois 2011: 29-30). Since it is not listed in Poonawala's Biobibliography, Hakim may not have been aware of its existence.

Also contrary to usual practice Hakim lays out his method of editing the text in a note to the reader (p. xi) preceding the introduction, in which he explains...