Teaching Documents by Matthew B Ingalls
Al-Ghazālī on the Censure of Deceit (Kitāb Dhamm al-ghurūr), Book XXX of the Revival of the Relig... more Al-Ghazālī on the Censure of Deceit (Kitāb Dhamm al-ghurūr), Book XXX of the Revival of the Religious Sciences (trans.) (Fons Vitae, commissioned).
Papers by Matthew B Ingalls
Mysticism and Ethics in Islam, 2022
The essay below analyzes the substance and rhetoric of ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī’s (d. 973/1565)... more The essay below analyzes the substance and rhetoric of ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī’s (d. 973/1565) book Laṭāʾif al-minan wa-l-akhlāq (Subtle Blessings and Morals). While giving particular attention to the text’s introduction and concluding sections, in my analysis here I use the Laṭāʾif as a case study to illustrate how Sufi authors like al-Shaʿrānī attempted to relieve the tension between the antipodal Sufi virtues of, on the one hand, concealing one’s spiritual state to preserve the purity of one’s intention and, on the other, speaking openly about God’s blessings upon one as a demonstration of gratitude to God and a means to guide others along the Sufi Path.
Light Upon Light: Festschrift in Honor of Gerhard Böwering Presented by His Students, 2020
The satirical intent behind many of Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī's (d. 398/ 1008) Maqāmāt has been... more The satirical intent behind many of Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī's (d. 398/ 1008) Maqāmāt has been suggested previously by Monroe and dismissed more recently by Kennedy.1 While not proposing a definitive solution to this earlier debate, the present essay argues that reading al-Hamadhānī's Maqāmāt through the lens of social satire provides a further dimension of meaning to the entertaining work while simultaneously allowing for an important reconciliation between it and the author's autobiographical writings. After providing literary and historical justifications for a satirical reading of the text, this essay analyzes four satirical themes in the Maqāmāt of al-Hamadhānī, with a particular emphasis on the social and ethical implications that ensue from reading them as satire.
Review of Middle East Studies, 2009
No mercado competitivo da atualidade, as organizações buscam qualificar seu gerenciamento e tomad... more No mercado competitivo da atualidade, as organizações buscam qualificar seu gerenciamento e tomada de decisão a partir da análise das informações. O simples fato de armazenar e recuperar esta informação já proporciona um grande benefício às organizações. Contudo, apenas resgatar a informação não propicia todas as vantagens possíveis. As técnicas de mineração de dados permitem que se explorem grandes conjuntos de dados a fim de estabelecer relações, associações e descobrir padrões úteis que tenham valor para a organização com o propósito de se entender o fenômeno gerador dos dados. O presente trabalho expõe os conceitos de metodologias, técnicas e algoritmos de mineração de dados como fundamento teórico, bem como a aplicação do algoritmo de classificação Árvore Aumentada do Naïve Bayes (TAN) com a descoberta não supervisionada. Utilizou-se a ferramenta de mineração de dados WEKA com o intuito de descobrir conhecimento útil da especialidade médica de oncologia na base de dados de uma Casa de Saúde. Palavras-chave: Mineração de Dados. Descoberta de Conhecimento. Oncologia.
Religion Compass, 2016
The essay that follows examines the life and thought of one particular Egyptian scholar to illust... more The essay that follows examines the life and thought of one particular Egyptian scholar to illustrate recent trends in the study of Muslim commentary works. As they embody many of the social and intellectual trends of their time, the life, and works of Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī (d. 1520), the subject of this study, function as a synecdoche for the intellectual history of the later Islamic Middle Period (roughly 1258 to 1500 CE), which intellectual historians are only beginning to unravel. Before addressing the state of the field including some of the challenges that define it, the essay provides a sketch of al-Anṣārī's life, an assessment of his written corpus, and a sample passage from his scholarly writings to link him back to larger methodological themes in the study of commentary works from this period.
Journal of Sufi Studies, 2013
The scholarly works of the Egyptian Sufi and chief qadi Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī (d. 926/1520) often r... more The scholarly works of the Egyptian Sufi and chief qadi Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī (d. 926/1520) often reflect a late-medieval Muslim trend of subtle intellectual innovation—that is, innovation that cloaks itself in the received tradition while often diverging markedly from it. It is particularly his celebrated Iḥkām al-dalāla ʿalā taḥrīr al-Risāla, a commentary on ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī’s (d. 465/1072) Risāla in Sufism, that embodies such an intellectual trend quite starkly. This study examines the Iḥkām to understand how Anṣārī adapted an eleventh-century Nishapuri handbook in Sufism to his own fifteenth-century Egyptian context. It argues that Anṣārī’s redirecting of Qushayrī’s Risāla occurs through three broad interpretative techniques: a recasting in content, a recasting in form, and a recasting in tone and objective of the original text. After exploring these techniques in depth, a few larger implications for the field of commentary theory are noted in a concluding section. A prel...
Oriens, 2013
This article examines Zakariyyā al-Anṡārī's (d. 926/1520) I˙hkām ad-dalāla, a commentary on ʿAbd ... more This article examines Zakariyyā al-Anṡārī's (d. 926/1520) I˙hkām ad-dalāla, a commentary on ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī's (d. 465/1072) Risāla on Sufism, particularly those areas where the commentator employs a legal language to relieve tensions between his worldview and that of the Sufis in the Risāla. The commentator's approach effectively treats the Sufis' lives as scripture and is a function of the integration of the legal, theological, and mystical realms within the worldview of late-medieval scholars. Moreover, a commentarial form known as the shar˙h mamzūj facilitated such an approach by endowing commentators with new forms of control over the received tradition while influencing the appreciation of such commentaries by increasing their processing fluency. Keywords Zakariyyā al-Anṡārī, processing fluency, shar˙h mamzūj, Sufism, ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī * I would like to thank Asad Q. Ahmed and Walid Saleh for including me as a latecomer in the "Ḣāshiyya and Islamic Intellectual History" conference, which was the catalyst for the present article. I also wish to thank the anonymous reviewer of this article whose comments were consistently insightful and invaluable.
Oxford Handbooks Online, 2017
This article examines the historiography of Islamic law during the reign of the Mamluks. It asks ... more This article examines the historiography of Islamic law during the reign of the Mamluks. It asks what is specifically “Mamluk” about Islamic law and legal scholarship during the Mamluk sultanate and whether it is fruitful to view legal scholarship and the application of law through the lens of this particular political dynasty. The article first considers the historiography of Mamluk legal institutions from the Mamluk executive to the judiciary and law enforcement before discussing Mamluk madrasas, or Islamic educational institutions. It also explores three larger intellectual trends that would shape the development of medieval Islamic law but which are not readily confined to the Mamluk period alone: the proliferation of commentary works, the institution of the ijaza (license; certification) and encyclopaedism in Mamluk literature. The article concludes by assessing the state of the field and raising some questions for future research.
SAMER AKKACH ED., Letters of a SufiScholar: The Correspondence of 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (... more SAMER AKKACH ED., Letters of a SufiScholar: The Correspondence of 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (1641-1731) Islamic History and Civilization, vol. 74 (Brill: Leiden and Boston, 2009). Pp. 560 (Arabic and English). $ 211.00 cloth.The monograph under review contains a critical edition of seventy-two letters received and written by the famous Damascene Sufiand polymath 'Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (1641-1731). In the introduction, editor Samer Akkach describes al-Nabulusi's correspondents as "Arab and Turkish friends, colleagues, mystics, highranking officials, and individuals unknown to him, all residing outside Damascus in various cities of the region" (p. 1). The letters deal with a wide variety of issues, from the finer points of the Muslim creed, to God's role as the ultimate cause of natural causes and human actions, to the unitive/monistic metaphysics of Ibn [al-]'Arabi (d. 1240) and his school of thought, to holy war, to religious ethics, to the permissibility of certain substances (e.g., tobacco and coffee), and so on. To help the reader to locate al-Nabulusi's correspondents geographically, the editor provides a map and a list of "Places, Towns, and Correspondents" (pp. 75-78). The book is divided into the English text that contains the editor's introduction and summary of some of the letters and the Arabic part that features an Arabic version of the English introduction and a critical edition of the Arabic text of al-Nabulusi's letters. In what follows I will be quoting passages from the editor's English introduction to the book.One should point out that the letters were carefully assembled by the author himself under the title Wasa'il al-ta?qiq wa rasa'il al-tawfiq, which the editor translates as "The Means of Truth-Seeking and the Letters of Providential Guidance" (p. 1). This fact indicates that al-Nabulusi valued these letters enough to take the trouble of copying each one of them (either by his own hand or by hiring a scribe) and collecting them under one cover. The editor provides a helpful account of possible reasons for al-Nabulusi's concern for the preservation of the letters for his posterity as well as the culture of private correspondence in his age in general (pp. 21-31). He also describes the author's intellectual milieu and personal religious and philosophical predilections (pp. 32-34).For those familiar with Akkach's earlier works, especially his 'Abd al-Ghani a-Nabulusi: Islam and the Enlightenment (Oxford: Oneworld, 2007), this collection will serve as a documentary sequel of sorts. Its purpose, as I perceive it, is to marshal textual evidence in support of Akkach's understanding of the beginnings of an Islamic "enlightenment" and intellectual emancipation that he has detected in the intellectual legacy of some Muslim thinkers of the late Ottoman epoch ('Abd al-Ghani a-Nabulusi, pp. 69-75), including al-Nabulusi, Hajji Khalifa (1609-1657), Evliya Celebi (1614-1682), Ibrahim Muteferriqa (d. 1745), Ibrahim Haqqi (d. 1780), and 'Abd al-Mannan (d. after 1779). Akkach's musings about the Islamic variant of the European Enlightenment are not the primary subject of the present volume, but, it is worth mentioning here that Akkach has discovered signs of al-Nabulusi's broadmindedness and tolerance (conceivably, an intellectual attitude indicative of "enlightenment") in his advocacy of Ibn [al-]'Arabi's doctrine of the unity of being (wa?dat al-wujud), his defense of human free will versus divine predetermination of all events, as well as, somewhat more controversially, in his approval of the public consumption of tobacco and coffee. In regard to wa?dat al-wujud, Akkach seeks to demonstrate the subtlety of al-Nabulusi's interpretation of this doctrine as opposed to what he considers to be a much cruder and confrontational approach to it taken by Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328). As someone who has written at length about Ibn Taymiyya's criticism of Ibn [al-] 'Arabi's monism and its impact on the subsequent polemic over his intellectual legacy in my Ibn 'Arabi in the Later Islamic Tradition, (Albany, Suny Press, NY: 1999), chap. …
Review of Middle East Studies
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Teaching Documents by Matthew B Ingalls
Papers by Matthew B Ingalls