JOURNAL OF ISLAMIC STUDIES
Year:2005 | Volume:- | Issue:65-66|Papers Count:27

The Nag Hanmad Library was discovered over a half century ago in Egypt. The texts Incorporated fn that collection belong to a Gnostic community that retired from the main body of the chricstendom to Egyptian desert. In various respects these finds are very important, espicially for religiouls and even Islamic studies. In them we find some old Gospels that are older than the canonized Gospels. It is well" known that the Quran indicates that the true and original Gospel is other than one of the. extant Gospels. In Nag Hammadi Gospels, there is doctrinal differences from what the christians did and do believe. As well, they represent similarities with the Quranic teaching, but one can not trace these cases back to the old and New Testaments. However, the present writer doesn"t claim that the Gospel to the which the Holy Quran draws attention is decisively one of the Nag Hammadi Gospels. But he can not help expressing that the Gospel of Thomas, which is in that library, may be older than the Canonized christian Gospels.

Ramyar"s History of the Qur"an is the first Persian volume on the topic, which enjoys abundant references and is firmly composed with al-rijal (scrutiny of transmitters) as per his focus on this single discipline, ,who has pursued criticism on transmitters with sophisticated deliberation and in terse and prudent words rather than hastily; and has followed the scholarly and consistent method of the ancients and has developed a methodology of criticism.

The land of Transoxiana belonged to the last portions of the ancient Iran, which was taken over by Muslims in the late 1st/7th century. Based on sunna and Jama"a, Islam was very rapidly embraced and the Islamic sciences welcomed by the people of that region. Their great interest in the Islamic sciences, particularly in the Qur"anic and hadith sciences, is noteworthy and thought -provoking. Having resulted from the prdominance of thought and religious sanctity over all their aspects of life, this led to a general inclination towards the study, research, memorization, comprehension. and narration of the Qur"anic and hadith sciences as two sacred disciplines. This, in turn, led to the emergence of great scholars and the appearance of ,voluminous writings some of which have remained renowned and universally authoritative ,even to date. Being started in 3rJ/ 19Ih century, this dynamic movement continued inexhaustiblv and uninterruptedly until 616/1219. The present article intends to provide, from a historical viewpoint, a perspective of this scholarly movement and its outcomes as a social, scientific, and religious civilizing movement in Transoxiana in the 5th6th/ 11th - 12thcenturies through a study of firsthand sources, some of which have been authored within that area or elsewhere.

The holy Prophet (S.A.W.). in the famous famous of hadith,(arba"in) which has been narrated in different strongly by both Sunni and Shi" ite scholars, strongly emphasized the compiling, recording and preserving of such hadith. This hadith is the main focus of "writing arba"in" and has been the rnost important factor in motivating Muslims to write "arba"in books. In these books, forty hadiths attributed to the infallible Imams (A.S.) conveying a wide range of ideological and ethical issues, have been compiled, explicated, and annotated by the scholars. This body of meritorious traditions was so deeply rooted as to influence Persian literature as well. Such compilations entitled as chehel tujti chehel fasl chehel namus, chehel bab, chehel sabah, etc. are typical examples of the influence. One of these books, "AI :Arba una Hadithan", dating back to the early IIth /17th century. was written by a great philosopher named Mir Muhammad Zaman Simnani, a contemporary to Sheikh Baha"i.

There is no question about the importance of understanding the , history of monotheist communities present in the Arabian Peninsula in the first six centuries CE and the impact of this understanding on ,Various branches of Islamic studies. Similarly. knowledge about the religious tenets and doctrines of the Jewish. and Christian communities may guide the researchers through a deeper understanding of Qur"anic reports. Qur"anic studies. and recent intellectual trends in this relation outside the world of Islam. In this paper, the writer intends to provide a general perspective of the history of the Christians" presence in the Arabian Peninsula. their diaspora, as well as their key centers. In this respect. due to the more widespread presence of Nestorians and their cultural and evangelical activities, a brief account of the history of the Nestorian Church and their main cultural center and church in Hira is given here. Grasping the monotheistic tenets of the Christians would be impossible without knowledge about the essential Christian doctrines. trinity. incarnation. and Christology. It was particularly due to Christological contentions that the Syriac Christianity broke away from the main body of the Church. A brief report on these contentions from the perspective of the Church history could be functional in comparative studies.

Among the significan t issues in Fiqlh al Hadith (science of traditions) to be taken into consideration is the relation between brevity and delineation in traditions. The foremost principle concerning traditions is their explicitness and non" brevity. However, for some reasons many of the traditions enjoy a kind of brevity, which may be categorically divided into two types of substantial and accidental. Each of the above types includes other suhdivisions which are dealt with in the present article, while the most important ways of explaining brevity are touched upon as well.

Asviewed by all Muslims. the Holy Qur"an is the most significant source for getting to know the Islamic ordinances and ma "arif (knowledge). However, they came to disagreement as to how to understand the divine words, with various Muslim sects and groups trying to comprehend its meanings in their own approaches and views. In this respect, the Sufis with a different viewpoint from that of the traditionists and jurists have sought to understand and interpret the Qur"an and regarded the esoteric way as the proper procedure for understanding it, viewing other exegetical methods as proving to be of little avail. On the other hand, the traditionists and jurists have considered the Sun way of understanding the Qur"an as innovative and inadvisable. The present article reviews the principles of the Suns and mystics as well as their opponents; positions in respect to understanding and interpreting the Qur"an.

The term hanif and its plural, hunafa, have been used in the Qur"an twelve times and in the historical and narrative texts in various meanings. In this paper, the author is first of all dealing with the etymology of the term. Upon educing its literal meanings and explaining its course of development in Arabic language, he goes on to state that considering the Qur"an and the Prophet"s traditions as well as the extant evidence the term hanif has been used figuratively in early Islam. However, it has over time been applied terminologically as meaning "Muslim".

There have been, here and there, talks about and writings concerning the life and works of the well. known Qur"an scholar and religion researcher, the late Mahmud Ramyar, Professor of Mashhad University. These writings, however, are mainly incomplete, not well founded, and at times incorrect or overrated. Hence, the present writer has attempted to portray the personality, state of mind, and half a century of dynamic endeavors of this erudite professor through a survey of his books and articles, careful study of his dossier preserved in the archives of Mashhad University and the Faculty of Theology , and also by relying on his own information as well as views of some of his colleagues contemporary to the late professor. It is hoped that this article will be fruitful to both the contemporaries and the posterity.

In this paper the roots and meanings of the two frequently used Qur"anic words ism (name) and Allah have been examined. First, various forms of the word ism in some Arabic texts have been touched upon and then the origin of its derivation has been dealt with. As for the word Allah, at first this word has been studied as being a proper name and as to whether it is improvisational or derivative in its properness, and then the roots posed for the ,word Allah have been examined; In the end, different concepts of the word Allah are discussed.

The science of wounding and authentication ("ilm al-jarh wa al-ta"dil is a balance for the transmitters of hadith, that if it weighs in their favor, they will be accepted as authentic, otherwise they will be rejected. There has been widespread discussion and much controversy in recent centuries concerning Ibn Ghada"irl, one of the earlier great Shiite biographers, for his authoring a book in which he has introduced weak and blameworthv transmitters in the field of Shi"ite hadth. Some of his opponents have criticized his method of biographical criticism and accused him of undue debilitation of transmitters of hadith. Dealing with such views, the writer has argued that Ibn Ghaqa"iri has been a specialist in "ilm Muslims in the early centuries of Islam. It is not precisely known how and when the idea of "seven climates" entered the world of Islam; and its history up to the second half of the 3rj /9th century has remained ambiguous as an idea which had been used as a rather inaccurate geographical term in that period. We know that, in the first two centuries after Hijra. the word iqlim had not been common in the Arabic works, neither by itself nor in combination with "seven climates". In the aforementioned circumstance, what is of high importance in research about the history of this concept in the Islamic culture is its application in several Shi"ite traditions, mainly related from Amlr al-Mu"minln (A.S.). Given the authenticity of the documentation of these traditions, it can be concluded that the idea of "seven climates" has been " popular among lv1uslims before 40/660. it has been since then that the documentary status of these traditions has taken on a great importance in the history of the "seven climates" idea.

The science of wounding and authentication ("ilm al-jarh wa al-ta"dil is a balance for the transmitters of hadith, that if it weighs in their favor, they will be accepted as authentic, otherwise they will be rejected. There has been widespread discussion and much controversy in recent centuries concerning Ibn Ghada"irl, one of the earlier great Shiite biographers, for his authoring a book in which he has introduced weak and blameworthv transmitters in the field of Shi"ite hadth. Some of his opponents have criticized his method of biographical criticism and accused him of undue debilitation of transmitters of hadith. Dealing with such views, the writer has argued that Ibn Ghaqa"iri has been a specialist in "ilm Muslims in the early centuries of Islam. It is not precisely known how and when the idea of "seven climates" entered the world of Islam; and its history up to the second half of the 3rj /9th century has remained ambiguous as an idea which had been used as a rather inaccurate geographical term in that period. We know that, in the first two centuries after Hijra. the word iqlim had not been common in the Arabic works, neither by itself nor in combination with "seven climates". In the aforementioned circumstance, what is of high importance in research about the history of this concept in the Islamic culture is its application in several Shi"ite traditions, mainly related from Amlr al-Mu"minln (A.S.). Given the authenticity of the documentation of these traditions, it can be concluded that the idea of "seven climates" has been " popular among lv1uslims before 40/660. it has been since then that the documentary status of these traditions has taken on a great importance in the history of the "seven climates" idea.

The science of wounding and authentication ("ilm al-jarh wa al-ta"dil is a balance for the transmitters of hadith, that if it weighs in their favor, they will be accepted as authentic, otherwise they will be rejected. There has been widespread discussion and much controversy in recent centuries concerning Ibn Ghada"irl, one of the earlier great Shiite biographers, for his authoring a book in which he has introduced weak and blameworthv transmitters in the field of Shi"ite hadth. Some of his opponents have criticized his method of biographical criticism and accused him of undue debilitation of transmitters of hadith. Dealing with such views, the writer has argued that Ibn Ghaqa"iri has been a specialist in "ilm Muslims in the early centuries of Islam. It is not precisely known how and when the idea of "seven climates" entered the world of Islam; and its history up to the second half of the 3rj /9th century has remained ambiguous as an idea which had been used as a rather inaccurate geographical term in that period. We know that, in the first two centuries after Hijra. the word iqlim had not been common in the Arabic works, neither by itself nor in combination with "seven climates". In the aforementioned circumstance, what is of high importance in research about the history of this concept in the Islamic culture is its application in several Shi"ite traditions, mainly related from Amlr al-Mu"minln (A.S.). Given the authenticity of the documentation of these traditions, it can be concluded that the idea of "seven climates" has been " popular among lv1uslims before 40/660. it has been since then that the documentary status of these traditions has taken on a great importance in the history of the "seven climates" idea.