Maghreb studies

The history of Sunnism and its establishment as orthodoxy are generally considered in terms of hadith transmission and kalām-theology. In fact, from the 12th century onwards, the veneration of the Prophet forms an important aspect of the doctrinal and historical articulation of Sunnism, too. The famous Kitāb al-shifā bi-ta‘rīf ḥuqūq al-Muṣṭafā (“The Book of Healing through the Knowledge of the Rights of the Chosen One”) of al-Qādī Iyāḍ (d. 1149), himself one of the most important figures in the formative period of North-African Islam, played a central role in this respect. Written in the context of the opposition of Maliki-Sunni scholars against the Almohad rule in Morocco, the book argues in favour of the religious necessity of respecting the Prophet’s “rights” (ḥuqūq), that is, the necessity not only to believe and to imitate, but also to venerate him, even after his death. In other words, according to this conception the believer needs to develop a personal and living relationship with the being of the Prophet in order to attain salvation. The Kitāb al-shifā became an influential standard work of Sunnite prophetology diffused in the whole Islamic world and popular amongst scholars, Sufis and ordinary Muslims alike.
In this lecture, we will ask about the relation between al-Qāḍī ‘Iyāḍ’s prophetology and his self-representation in the Kitāb al-shifā. Textual analysis and historical contextualisation makes it possible to get insights about how the author portrays his own role and how he defines the distinctive feature of Sunnism in the background of medieval Islamic schisms. Within the wider scope of the intellectual history of Islam, the study of the Kitāb al-shifā contributes to our understanding of the role of the scholar in Sunni thought as representative and heir of the Prophet within the Islamic community.