Studies in Medieval Shi'ism

This volume complements the selections of Wilferd Madelung's articles previously published by Variorum (Religious Schools and Sects in Medieval Islam, and Religious and Ethnic Movements in Medieval Islam). The first articles here examine legal and political aspects of early Shi`ism. The following studies relate to doctrinal views of the Zaydi imams al-Qasim b. Ibrahim al-Rassi and al-Natiq bi-l-Haqq and to Zaydi attitudes to Sufism. The final group focuses on the Isma`iliyya, their social and political history and aspects of their religious thought. A detailed index completes the volume.

Wilferd Madelung was Laudian Professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford, and is an Emeritus Fellow of St John's College, Oxford, UK. Sabine Schmidtke is Director of the Research Unit on Intellectual History of the Islamicate World and Professor in the Institute of Islamic Studies at the Freie UniversitÃ-t, Berlin, Germany.

Contents: Preface; Part I Shi'a: 'Abd Allah b. Abbas and Shi'ite law; Shi'ism in the age of the rightly-guided caliphs. Part II Zaydiyya: Zu einigen Werken des Imams Abu Talib an-Natiq bi l-Haqq; Imam al-Qasim ibn Ibrahim and Mu'tazilism; Al-Qasim ibn Ibrahim and Christian theology; Zaydi attitudes to Sufism. Part III Isma'iliyya: Das Imamat in der frÃ-hen ismailitischen Lehre; Abu Ya'qub al-Sijistani and metempsychosis; Abu Ya'qub al-Sijistani and the seven faculties of the intellect; The Fatimids and the Qarmatis of Bahrayn; Hamdan Qarmat and the Da'i Abu 'Ali; The religious policy of the Fatimids toward their Sunni subjects in the Maghrib; A treatise on the Imamate of the Fatimid caliph al-Mansur bi-Allah; An Ismaili interpretation of Ibn Sina's Qasidat al-Nafs; Shahriyar b. al Hasan: a Persian Isma'ili da'i of the Fatimid age; Kawn al-'Alam: the cosmogony of the Isma'ili da'i Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Nasafi; Indexes.