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The Sin of Ghība in Early Islamic Thought: Disciplining the Tongue in the Zuhd Tradition and Its Late Antique Background

CitationRazzaque, Arafat Abdur. 2020. The Sin of Ghība in Early Islamic Thought: Disciplining the Tongue in the Zuhd Tradition and Its Late Antique Background. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences.

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The Sin of Ghība in Early Islamic Thought: Disciplining the Tongue

in the Zuhd Tradition and Its Late Antique Background

A dissertation presented

by

Arafat Abdur Razzaque

to

The Committee on Middle Eastern Studies

in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

in the subject of

History and Middle Eastern Studies

Harvard University

Cambridge, Massachusetts

May 2020

© 2020 Arafat Abdur Razzaque

All rights reserved.

Advisor: Afsaneh Najmabadi, Roy Mottahedeh Author: Arafat Abdur Razzaque

The Sin of Ghība in Early Islamic Thought: Disciplining the Tongue

in the Zuhd Tradition and Its Late Antique Background

ABSTRACT

This dissertation explores the form, substance and social context of pious exhortations

in medieval Islamic history, focusing on ideas about gossip and slander. It is a study on a single

concept of enduring significance in Islamic ethics, the notion of ghība or backbiting, defined as

unwelcome statements of fact as opposed to false slander (buhtān). Prohibited by the Qurʾān,

the mundane social vice of speaking ill about other people in their absence was a source of

great moral concern, with ramifications in discourses of piety, religious ethics, ritual law, and

eschatology. Early proponents of the isnād method for the authentication of ḥadīth had to

frequently address the ethical quandary that their criticism of transmitters might be

tantamount to sinful gossip. I demonstrate that the discourse on ghība stems from a broader

ethics of “disciplining the tongue” among the early Muslim renunciants of the so-called zuhd

movement. A major work by the Baghdadi scholar Ibn Abī l-Dunyā (d. 281 AH/894 CE), the Kitāb

al-Ṣamt wa-ādāb al-lisān or “Book of Silence and Etiquettes of the Tongue” serves as a key point

of departure for this study. I examine the traditions, stories and wise maxims on ghība in the

iii

context of zuhd, ḥadīth, tafsīr and fiqh sources, as well as their broader reception in pious ethics

literature of the ninth and tenth centuries CE. Through close attention to motifs, I argue

further that some early Muslim ideas about gossip and slander reflect older traditions of

religious thought in late antiquity. The commonalities are evident especially in the

Apophthegmata Patrum or Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Resonances can be traced as well

through eschatological motifs common to Jewish, Christian and Zoroastrian apocalyptic

literature and Islamic imaginations of hell, in which the sin of backbiting is met with severe

punishments. In contrast to conventional ancient punishment motifs for slander, Islamic

eschatology introduces new types of scenes informed by the Qurʾānic metaphor of ghība as

eating the flesh of another. Early Muslim ethical discourses thus interpreted a universal moral

concern through a combination of inherited traditions and original elements.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ..................................................................................................................................................... iii

List of Tables ............................................................................................................................................... x

Acknowledgments.………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………ix

Chapter 1: Introduction: Towards a Serious History of the Trivial ........................................... 1

I. Slander in the Foundational Narratives of Islam ....................................................................... 8

A. The Ḥadīth al-Ifk ................................................................................................................... 10

II. Gossip and the Problem of Terminology .................................................................................. 17

III. Historicizing Talk and Reputation in Medieval Society ......................................................... 22

A. The Notion of ʿIrḍ ................................................................................................................ 24

B. The Principle of ʿAdāla ....................................................................................................... 27

C. The Social Institution of Majālis ........................................................................................ 31

IV. Traditionist Ethics: Sources and Methods ................................................................................ 37

Chapter 2: Imprisoning the Tongue: Early Islamic Piety and the Ethics of Speech ............. 52

I. Debating Speech in ʿAbbāsid Baghdad: al-Jāḥiẓ on the Virtues of Silence .......................... 58

II. Zuhd: The Movement for Pious Renunciation .......................................................................... 64

A. Asceticism between Late Antiquity and Islam ............................................................... 67

i. The Desert Fathers and the Apophthegmata Patrum ............................................ 71

B. What is Zuhd? ...................................................................................................................... 76

III. Ḥifẓ al-lisān: The Ethics of Speech in the Zuhd Tradition ........................................................ 82

A. The Kitāb al-Zuhd of Ibn al-Mubārak and its Recensions .............................................. 89

i. “Ḥifẓ al-lisān” in Ibn al-Mubārak’s Zuhd ............................................................. 95

B. The Kutub al-Zuhd of the 3rd/9th Century ....................................................................... 104

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i. Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ (d. 197/812) ............................................................................. 107

ii. Hannād b. al-Sarī (d. 243/857) ............................................................................. 113

IV. Ibn Abī l-Dunyā and the Epitome of Islamic Speech Ethics ................................................. 116

A. Ḥadīth and Zuhd in Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s Scholarly Formation ....................................... 123

i. The Influence of Abū l-Shaykh al-Burjulānī (d. 238/852) ................................ 130

B. The Works Attributed to Ibn Abī l-Dunyā ..................................................................... 135

C. The Book of Silence .......................................................................................................... 142

i. The Kitāb al-Ṣamt vs. Dhamm al-Ghība: Two Texts or One? .......................... 142

ii. The Manuscripts and Recension History of Kitāb al-Ṣamt ............................. 147

iii. The Structure and Contents of Kitāb al-Ṣamt ................................................... 151

Chapter 3: The Semantics of Slander in Scripture and Tradition .......................................... 158

I. Exegesis as Ethics: The Qur’ān and Islamic Morality ............................................................ 163

II. Slander in Early Qurʾānic Apocalyptic .................................................................................... 168

A. Abū Lahab’s Rumormongering Wife: ḥammālat al-namīma ......................................... 168

B. Sūrat al-Humaza: The Chapter on “The Slanderer” ...................................................... 172

i. Mashshāʾ bi-namīm: The Rumormongers of Q 68:11 ....................................... 176

ii. Hamz vs. Lamz: Varieties of Insult and Injury .................................................. 178

III. Sūrat al-Ḥujurāt: A Qurʾānic Passage on Speech Etiquettes ................................................ 187

A. On Raised Voices ............................................................................................................... 191

B. On Rumor and Trust ......................................................................................................... 193

C. On Mockery and Insult ..................................................................................................... 194

D. On Suspicion as a Source of Gossip ................................................................................ 200

IV. The Injunction on Ghība and its Interpretations ................................................................... 207

A. What is Backbiting? The mā al-ghība Tradition ............................................................ 208

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i. Precursors to the mā al-ghība tradition in the Apophthegmata Patrum ..... 212

ii. Variants of the Tradition and Nuances to Ghība .............................................. 214

B. The Flesh-Eating Idiom of Slander ................................................................................. 219

i. “Akala laḥman” in Early Arabic Poetry ............................................................... 219

ii. The Term q-r-ṣ in Semitic Languages ................................................................. 222

iii. Slander as “Devouring Flesh” in Biblical and Early Christian Discourse ...... 226

iv. Dead Brother’s Flesh: Interpretations of the Metaphor in Tafsīr Literature 230

C. Traditions on the Occasion of Revelation for Q 49:12 ................................................. 233

i. The Tale of Salmān al-Fārisī and the Two Men ................................................. 235

V. The Social Registers of Gossip and Slander in Early Islam ................................................... 242

A. Gendered Gossip: “Nor let women deride one another” ............................................ 243

B. Slander as Betrayal: State and Society in the Concept of Namīma ............................ 249

i. Qattāt: State Informants and the Majlis .............................................................. 254

VI. Conclusion: Conceiving the Community in Early Islam ....................................................... 259

Chapter 4: The Ritual Consequences of Gossip in Early Islamic Law ..................................... 264

I. Slander and the Religious Body in Near Eastern Thought ................................................... 267

A. Fasting and the Flesh of One’s Brothers ........................................................................ 271

i. Sayings of Hyperechios ........................................................................................ 272

ii. Sermons of John Chrysostom .............................................................................. 276

II. Ṭahāra and the Tongue .............................................................................................................. 281

A. Does Ghība Require Wuḍūʾ? .............................................................................................. 284

i. Poetry and Verbal Abuse in Shīʿī Ritual Law ..................................................... 294

III. Speech in the Adab of Fasting ................................................................................................... 299

A. Does Ghība Break One’s Fast? .......................................................................................... 304

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Chapter 5: Ghība and the Somatics of Sin in Islamic Ethics ...................................................... 314

I. Towards an Islamic Reinvention of the Ascetic Tradition on Slander ............................... 319

II. Fleshing Out a Metaphor ........................................................................................................... 324

A. Exorcising Sin: The Tale of Two Fasting Women ......................................................... 325

B. Prophetology and the Sight or Smell of Ghība .............................................................. 329

i. “Traces of Meat in Your Teeth:” The Tale of Zayd b. Thābit .......................... 331

III. The Motif of Ghība as Decaying Flesh ...................................................................................... 340

A. The Taboo on Carrion ...................................................................................................... 344

B. Contemplating on Corpses in the Ascetic Tradition ................................................... 349

C. The Sensorium of Early Islamic Piety ............................................................................ 353

i. Putrefaction and the Moral Inflections of Smell .............................................. 357

IV. Autosarcophagy: The Punishment for Slander in Islamic Eschatology ............................. 361

D. Prophetic Visions of Hell ................................................................................................. 368

i. Literary Conventions of Late Antique Apocalypses ......................................... 370

a. Punishment Motifs in the Tour-of-Hell Tradition .................................................... 374

ii. The Shīʿī Tradition on Women’s Punishment in Hell ...................................... 379

iii. Ghība in the Enumeration of Sins in Miʿrāj Narratives ..................................... 384

V. Traditions of Thought in a Sinful Society ............................................................................... 394

Bibliography .......................................................................................................................................... 400

Primary Sources in Arabic ................................................................................................................ 400

Other Sources and Secondary Literature ....................................................................................... 412

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1 – Chapters on Speech in the Zuhd of Wakīʿ.…………………………………………………….………..111

Table 2.2 – Chapters on Speech in the Zuhd of Hannād b. al-Sarī.………..……………………………….…115

Table 2.3 – Topics Covered in the Kitāb al-Ṣamt of Ibn Abī al-Dunyāʾ.……………………………………...153

Table 5.1 – The enumeration of sins in Prophetic tours of hell.……………………………………………….387

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ACKNOWELDGMENTS

This dissertation has been the outcome of a long and arduous journey in graduate

school, through many uneven paths and unforeseen turns. My two most constant sources of

support during these years, from the very beginning until now, have been my co-advisors Roy

Mottahedeh and Afsaneh Najmabadi. Their kindness and guidance have left me humbled. I

remain in awe of the respective examples they have set as historians, and the sheer breadth of

knowledge and intellectual curiosity they embody. I am equally grateful to my third reader,

Khaled El-Rouayheb. In addition to his generous advice and incisive comments on my work, he

has been an influential teacher and played a crucial role in my initiation into research on

classical Islamic texts. To all three members of my committee I owe much of my intellectual

formation at Harvard, and I would like to thank them wholeheartedly for helping me become a

better scholar and thinker. Needless to say, the inevitable shortcomings of this dissertation

reflect entirely my own failings.

The course of this research and my graduate studies more broadly have been shaped by

a number of teachers and mentors. I have benefited tremendously from advice and suggestions

on various occasions by Ahmed Ragab, Shady Nasser, Kecia Ali, Justine Landau, Bill Granara,

Malika Zeghal, and Cemal Kafadar. My early coursework in Islamic law with Baber Johansen

was foundational. The idea for this dissertation came about somewhat serendipitously in the

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course of a seminar with the late Shahab Ahmed, who also played a decisive role through his

lack of enthusiasm for another idea I was considering earlier. I am not sure if he would have

approved of what this became. The training in research methods I gained from his courses

have proven crucial to my scholarly aspirations. His memories continue to live with me.

Though this project evolved considerably, the original prospectus benefited from

comments by Michael McCormick and Ann Blair, two of the most important historians I have

had the privilege of learning from and who have helped expand my horizon of interests to the

late antique world and book history, respectively.

Many have helped in countless ways in the course of the research and writing of this

dissertation, not all of whom I can possibly remember to thank. I am especially indebted to

Rachel Schine and Raashid Goyal for taking the time to closely read drafts I shared, and for

their incredibly helpful feedback. Ahmed El Shamsy kindly indulged a conversation on some

ideas about early Islamic social history that I am still trying to formulate. Christopher Melchert

and Alessandro Bausi have been generous in their responses to queries over e-mail. The

archivists and librarians at the British Library, the Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul, the

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale, the Bodleian Library at Oxford and several

other institutions deserve gratitude for satisfying my curiosity about manuscripts even when I

xi

did not know what I was looking for; the resources they have helped me identify will prove

fruitful for years to come.

I have been fortunate to cross paths with a number of scholars I greatly admire, and

discussions with whom have helped improved my knowledge and understanding of various

aspect of Middle Eastern and Islamic history. I would especially like to thank Khaled Fahmy,

Anver Emon, Saadia Yacoob, Laury Silvers, Nebil Husayn, Rodrigo Adem, Mohamad Ballan, and

Nadirah Mansour for many rich conversations. I am incredibly grateful to Juliane Hammer for

her generosity of support and friendship time and again.

Numerous friends and colleagues at Harvard have similarly enriched my understanding

of all things medieval and/or Islamic, and have variously contributed to the improvement of

my work. I have enjoyed conversations with Shane Bobrycki¸ Nuri Friedlander, Mohsen

Goudarzi, Naseem Surhio, Nancy Khalil, Rushain Abbasi, Lidia Gocheva, Paul Anderson, Youssef

Ben Ismail, Ari Schriber, and many others. The Workshop on Arabic & Islamic Studies

convened by Caitlyn Olson and Arjun Nair helped provide a wonderful community of

interlocutors. Avigail Noy and John Zalesky read and shared feedback on very early and indeed

embarrassing drafts for part of what is now Chapter 2. I am grateful to the friends who have

organized and participated in the Middle East Beyond Borders workshop over the years, where

I have had several opportunities to discuss drafts, including ones that had to be eventually left

xii

out of this thesis but feedback on which were crucial to my thinking. The Arabic reading group

at NELC organized by Ozzy Gündüz and Hadel Jarada, under the guidance of Shady Nasser and

Khaled El-Rouayheb, has proven a wonderful opportunity to read and translate texts together,

and to decipher manuscripts. I thank Tarek Abu Hussein for his help one afternoon in

examining the recension history of the Kitāb al-Ṣamt.

Needless to say, the friends I have met during my time at Harvard will remain the most

cherished part about graduate school. They are the ones who have made for most of its

happiest memories, and they have been there through trying times. I am incredibly fortunate

to know Neelam Khoja, Sarah Shehabuddin, Namita Dharia, Mou Banerjee, Andy McDowell,

Daniel Majchrowicz, Abbas Jaffer, Katie Merriman, Aslıhan Gürbüzel, Akif Ercihan Yerlioğlu,

Lulie El-Ashry, Michal Hasson, Kimberly Wortmann, Farhad Dokhani, Yasser Kureshi, Joe

Vignone, Caitlyn Olson, Mary Elston, Hardeep Dhillon, Rubina Salikuddin, Jennifer Gordon, Ali

Asgar Alibhai, Ceyhun Arslan, Han Hsien Lieuw, Magda Mohamed, Nabil Ahmad Khan, and so

many friends I am surely forgetting to name but whom I hold dear. Shireen Hamza and Anand

Venkatkrishnan merit special mention for their brilliant comradeship, kindness and countless

conversations over chai.

The final stages of this dissertation found me relocated to Cambridge, England, where I

have gotten to know a number of brilliant scholars I must thank for their collegial welcome,

xiii

including especially Andrew Marsham, Philip Wood and Ed Coghill. I have learned a great deal

from them, and look forward to learning more. It has been a privilege to reconnect with Feriel

Bouhafa, whom I thank for excellent conversations and for kindly inviting me to give a talk at

the Divinity faculty, where I received some very helpful questions. My office-mate Deniz

Türker I have only been “stalking” across three different institutions over the course of a

decade and a half, so she already knows how much I admire her. Two friends here in particular

deserve heartfelt gratitude, simply for being who they are: Mudit Trivedi and Charu Singh

have helped me get through this the past few months in ways only they could have.

My parents, siblings and family are obviously the reason I am who I am and where I am

today, and I could not possibly recount the debts I owe them. I can only thank them for

patiently enduring the inexplicable mystery of my being “still a student” for so many years.

My wife, a partner in every way, deserves gratitude more than I can express in words.

Meeting her is still the best thing that has happened to me at Harvard. Her brilliance, her

tireless work ethic, and the success of her scholarship continue to serve as my inspiration, and

a source of great pride. I am fortunate to have her in my life, and thank her for being so

supportive and for everything that she has made possible.

This is for you, Elise Burton!

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Towards a Serious History of the Trivial

The third century of Islam witnessed the beginnings of a scholarly movement

that would decisively shape its religious history ever since. Faced with a voluminous

corpus of Prophetic traditions potentially compromised by the spurious interpolations of

moralizing preachers or activists with a partisan agenda, concerned critics like

Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī (d. 256/870) undertook a systematic effort to produce

compilations of what they deemed only the most rigorously sourced ḥadīth, books that

came to be considered canonical among Sunnī Muslims. For the purpose, these critics

hearkened to a tradition of analysis they claimed to inherit from earlier generations of

scholars, namely the practice of enquiring into the reputation of individuals named in

the isnād of every ḥadīth. This was, however, a controversial practice. Muslim b. al-Ḥājjāj

(d. 261/875) defends it at length in a prologue (muqaddima) to his ṣaḥīḥ collection,

possibly our earliest extant treatise on methods in ḥadīth criticism. He records a series of

accounts demonstrating how esteemed scholars would question the credentials of every

purveyor of religious knowledge. Among these, we find an example of the kinds of

objection the critics were faced with, as personally experienced and recounted by the

prodigious Baghdādī muḥaddith ʿAffān b. Muslim (d. 220/835) when he pointed out to

1

someone at a gathering that the informant for a ḥadīth he was narrating had not been

verified as trustworthy. The man retorted: “You have slandered him!” (ightabtahu). Upon

hearing this, Ismāʿīl b. ʿUlayya, in whose company they were assembled, intervened to

defend ʿAffān: “He has not slandered him, rather he has pronounced the judgment that

he is unreliable (laysa bi-thabtin).”1

This dissertation is an attempt to understand the concept of ghība invoked in this

exchange. In its most basic and etymological sense, the term refers to speaking ill of an

absent person, and may be translated as gossip, slander or backbiting. As a moral

concern, ghība appears to have been a source of anxiety among early scholars of ḥadīth in

their efforts to introduce the system of isnād criticism, which raised the possibility that

such peer reviews—so to speak—may involve what is considered a serious sin in Islamic

ethics. The learned shaykh who dispels this concern in the quoted anecdote, Ismāʿīl b.

Ibrāhīm b. Miqsam (d. 193/809), had reason to be familiar with ghība in his own life. He

too was a distinguished muḥaddith, and later served as a court official under the caliph

Hārūn al-Rashīd. He hailed from a prosperous mercantile family in Baṣra, and owed his

1 Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, ed. Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī (Cairo: ʿĪsā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī wa-Shurakāhu, 1374–75/1955–56), 26; G. H. A. Juynboll, “Muslim’s Introduction to His ‘Sahih,’ Translated and Annotated with an Excursus on the Chronology of ‘Fitna’ and ‘Bidʿa,’” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 5 (1984): 290; repr., G. H. A. Juynboll, Studies on the Origins and Uses of Islamic Hạdīth, Collected Studies Series (Brookfield, VT: Variorum, 1996), chap. III.

2

upbringing to a charismatic and intelligent mother, ʿUlayya bint Ḥassān.2 In fact, Ismāʿīl

himself was commonly known after his famous mother, as Ibn ʿUlayya. But he apparently

hated this, and used to say: “Whoever calls me Ibn ʿUlayya, he has slandered me!”3 To

address him by this moniker instead of his given name or patronymic, he would insist,

was a form of ghība.

Noting this curious fact about Ibn ʿUlayya over six centuries later, the historian

Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī (d. 838/1374) regards it an instance of poor character (sūʾ khulq),

for even some of the Prophet’s Companions were named after their mothers.4 The

biography of Ibn ʿUlayya is blemished further by rumors of his intellectual proclivity for

kalām or speculative theology. Despite having to his credit many illustrious students in

ḥadīth, from Shuʿba to al-Shāfiʿī, Ibn ʿUlayya was accused by an embittered Aḥmad b.

Ḥanbal of despising him and his fellow ahl al-ḥadīth right up to the end of his life.5 But

others would claim that Ibn ʿUlayya publicly recanted and repented from his alleged

2 Muḥammad Ibn Saʿd, Kitāb al-Ṭabaqāt al-kabīr (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjī, 2001), 9:327.

3 Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh Madīnat al-salām, ed. Bashshār ʿAwwād Maʿrūf (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 2001), 7:199.

4 Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ, 11th ed. (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risālah, 1417/1996), 9:108.

5 Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh, 7:209. Cited and discussed by Nimrod Hurvitz, The Formation of Ḥanbalism: Piety into Power (London: Routledge, 2002), 46.

3

endorsement of khalq al-Qurʾān, the controversial doctrine of the createdness of the

divine word. Emphasizing this detail about Ibn ʿUlayya’s life, which he feels should

vindicate his ultimately hagiographic account of the famed scholar, al-Dhahabī regrets

having had to reproduce the aspersions against him. He writes: “I fear God that our

mentioning this is ghība.”6

What is this notion of ghība and why did it hold such sway in the moral discourse

of Muslims, as reflected above in these three very different scenarios from across the

span of medieval Islamic history? The aim of my dissertation is to answer this basic

question, by investigating the early sources through which Muslims themselves grappled

with the idea of sinful gossip. It is primarily therefore the history of an idea. Far from the

kind of trivial subject matter that the English term “gossip” tends to imply, ghība

represents a serious sin in Islamic thought. It is expressly condemned by the Qurʾān. The

topic has garnered little attention in current scholarship in Islamic Studies, but as I

demonstrate, the morality of talk was a major and pervasive concern in the formative

period of Islamic history. Obvious evidence of this persists in the norms of everyday

Islamic piety to this day, and teachings on speech etiquette are found throughout the

6 Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī, Mīzān al-iʿtidāl fī naqd al-rijāl, ed. ʿAlī Muḥammad al-Bajāwī (Beirut: Dār al-Maʿrifa, 1382/1963), 1:220.

4

religious classics of Islam, including well-known aḥādīth in the canonical Sunnī

collections and their Shīʿī counterparts.

But these norms and their formulation in classical Islamic literature originate in a

particular historical context, especially in terms of the emphasis on gossip and slander.

Certainly, as basic moral precepts, they reflect the simple recognition of what are

perhaps universal social ills, on which similar teachings may be found across the various

ethical traditions of the world. In the context and language of Islamic ethics, however,

the discourse on sinful talk was the legacy of a distinct tradition of thought, animated

further by the urban social context of the early Islamic Near East. The teachings on

various aspects of speech ethics were abundant enough to lead the prolific Baghdādī

scholar Ibn Abī l-Dunyā (d. 281/894) to compile a dedicated volume of 759 traditions

titled the Kitāb al-Ṣamt wa-ādāb al-lisān (Book of Silence and Etiquettes of the Tongue),

possibly one of his largest compilations. The text is a veritable archive of wisdom

traditions on speech—one of the earliest known sources in the world to record, for

instance, the well-known proverb: “silence is golden.”7 The Kitāb al-Ṣamt has been briefly

analyzed in a previous study by Ida Zilio-Grandi, who draws attention to the broad scope

7 An earlier source is al-Jāḥiẓ. See the classic study on this proverb: David Wasserstein, “A West-East Puzzle: On the History of the Proverb ‘Speech Is Silver, Silence Is Golden,’” in Compilation and Creation in Adab and Luġa: Studies in Memory of Naphtali Kinberg (1948-1997) (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 239–59.

5

and subtleties of the notion of “silence” in the Islamic ethics of speech.8 She

demonstrates that while the Qurʾān itself does not “attribute any ethical import to

silence,” the traditionist and advice literature articulate a discourse on ḥifẓ al-lisān, which

she translates as “government of the tongue.”9

My dissertation examines the treatment of ghība in the Kitāb al-Ṣamt, and also

situates it in relation to the text’s earlier sources, as well as its resonances in the broader

ḥadīth literature of the ninth and tenth centuries CE—which I will define as representing

“early Islamic thought,” for the purposes of this dissertation. As a composite work of

adab, the Kitāb al-Ṣamt includes a variety of material that may be identified with genres

other than ḥadīth, including fiqh and tafsīr. Ibn Abī l-Dunyā also records material derived

ultimately from the religious current known as the zuhd movement, as it has been

termed in recent scholarship. This refers to the major tradition of pious renunciation or

asceticism in early Islam, the leading proponents of which were active especially in Baṣra

around the second century AH/eighth century CE, and whose purported sayings and

others pious traditions made their way into the kutub al-zuhd compiled in the third

8 Ida Zilio-Grandi, “Silence and Speech Etiquette: A Contribution to the Study of Islamic Ethics,” Annali Di Ca’ Foscari. Serie Orientale, 2016, 7–29, https://doi.org/10.14277/2385-3042/ANNOR-52-16-1.

9 Zilio-Grandi, 10.

6

century AH. The zuhhād or renunciants practiced a cultivated detachment from the

world and sought to live a life of scrupulous ethics, including an idealized reticence and

avoidance of immoral talk. The realities of life in the early Islamic empire, however,

animated serious moral anxieties about mundane gossip and backbiting: the danger of

sinful talk about others lurked forever in an urban world marked by great diversity and

social disparities, intense competition for status and reputation, and bitter rivalries in

theology and sectarian identities. The renunciants sought to articulate and set an

example for the virtuous life in the world they occupied. I demonstrate that it was

specifically thanks to the zuhd movement and its literary tradition that the sin of ghība

became an enduring object of pious Muslim concern.

At the same time, I will further argue that some early Muslim ideas about gossip

and slander reflect older traditions of religious thought in late antiquity. The

commonalities are evident especially in the legacy of the Desert Fathers, the ascetics of

fourth- and fifth-century Egypt (and Syria/Palestine) who became the fountainhead of

the Christian monastic tradition. The Apophthegmata Patrum or the “Sayings of the Desert

Fathers” presents a number of striking and obvious textual resonances with traditions

about ghība in the zuhd and ḥadīth literature. Similar resonances can be traced through

eschatological motifs common to Jewish, Christian and Zoroastrian apocalyptic literature

7

and Islamic imaginations of hell, in which punishments for the sin of backbiting are

prominent. The point of this broader perspective is not to simplistically redirect our

attention to the influence of other religious traditions on Islamic thought, or to trace the

“origins” of Islamic ideas in non-Muslim sources. Rather, it is to identify the ways in

which Islamic texts actively reshaped a common stock of ideas and expressions and gave

new life to ancient moral concerns. Indeed, the comparative approach throws into relief

the original motifs and interpretations of gossip that Muslims contribute to late antique

tradition, helping us better recognize and understand the specific historical context in

which the ethical traditions of Islam took shape. Focusing on the idea of ghība thus

allows us to look backwards and forwards from ninth-century Baghdad, and appreciate

the significance of gossip as an enduring moral problem in Near Eastern religious

thought.

I. Slander in the Foundational Narratives of Islam

Ghība is addressed in the Qurʾān itself, and its scriptural prohibition remains

central to the Islamic ethics of speech. It is the direct object of a verse in Sūrat al-Ḥujurāt

(Q 49:12), which commands believers to shun undue suspicion of each other and not to

engage in backbiting, which it describes as akin to “eating the flesh of your dead

brother.” This peculiar metaphor, which captured the imagination of early Muslims,

8

reflects a common ancient Near Eastern idiom for defamation and slanderous accusation.

Late antique ascetics in the Christian monastic tradition counseled against feeding on

the flesh of one’s brothers. The Qurʾān, in other words, highlighted a moral issue that

had concerned earlier communities. Muslims would interpret and understand it in their

own way, and give new meaning to ancient idioms. They would do so principally by

rooting it in the foundation narrative of their own community, such that the tales and

traditions of the Prophet Muḥammad would illuminate the timeless moral lessons of

scripture.

The strongest Qurʾānic condemnation of slanderers is delivered in the oracular

voice conventionally associated with the early Meccan period of the Prophet

Muḥammad’s mission. Muslim commentators often interpreted such verses as referring

to the pagan opponents of the Prophet and their revulsion of him through mockery and

taunting. As the revelation of the Qurʾān divided society in two, between those who

accepted the divine truth and those who rejected it, the tongues of the unbelievers

became the vehicle of their denial and their weapon of oppression. The evil tongue,

however, was not a monopoly of the Prophet’s Meccan enemies, as its effects would

persist within the community of believers in Medina with the emergence of the

munāfiqūn or hypocrites. Possessing of two tongues (dhū l-lisānayn, as the Kitāb al-Ṣamt

9

dubs hypocrites), these duplicitous Muslims outwardly declared their belief and

allegiance to the Prophet while secretly plotting against him. In traditions recorded by

the ḥadīth collectors, the Prophet draws attention to the noxious behavior of backbiting

hypocrites as an illustrative lesson on ghība and how it can tear apart a community.

A. The Ḥadīth al-Ifk

Perhaps no other episode in the narrative of the Prophetic era underscores the

destructive potential of wagging tongues more powerfully than the so-called “story of

the lie” (ḥadīth al-ifk), the scandal ensuing from an accusation of adultery against ʿĀʾisha.

Remarkably, the rumors led to the Prophet doubting his own wife, who was socially

ostracized until she was ultimately vindicated through divine intervention.10 Muslims

have traditionally identified this story as the historical referent behind Q 24:11–17 in

Sūrat al-Nūr, and as the “occasion of revelation” for the Qurʾānic injunction against qadhf

i.e. the unfounded accusation of illicit sex. The only form of criminalized slander in

Islamic law, qadhf ranks among the group of offences for which there is a ḥadd or

scripturally defined punishment. The ḥadīth al-ifk has been a recurring subject of

fascination among modern scholars, especially in the context of a broader interest in the

10 For an early recension of the full account, see: Maʿmar ibn Rāshid, The Expeditions: An Early Biography of Muḥammad = Kitāb al-Maghāzī, trans. Sean W. Anthony, Library of Arabic Literature (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 148–59.

10

figure of ʿĀʾisha. In her monograph on ʿĀʾisha’s vast and contested legacy in the Islamic

tradition, Denise Spellberg has shown how the story of the scandal acquired doctrinal

implications in later religious history, especially with the hardening of Sunnī and Shīʿī

communal identities from the tenth century onward.11

The ḥadīth al-ifk has interestingly also proven valuable for a series of major

studies in early Islamic historiography since at least John Wansbrough’s The Sectarian

Milieu (1978), no doubt since it represents a unique and complex narrative in the

Prophet’s biography but also because involves at its very origin a “famous piece of

gossip,” in G. H. A. Juynboll’s words. For Wansbrough, interested generally in extending

the methods of Biblical form criticism to Islamic sources, the versions of the story as

related in sīra and ḥadīth illustrate the literary dynamics between “the mythic and

normative preoccupations” of early Muslim tradition.12 What concerns him is not

11 Denise A. Spellberg, Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of ʻAʼisha Bint Abi Bakr (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). ʿĀʾisha’s characterization in the ḥadīth al-ifk narrative has been superbly analyzed by Ashley Manjarrez Walker and Michael A. Sells, “The Wiles of Women and Performative Intertextuality: ʿAʾisha, the Hadith of the Slander, and the Sura of Yusuf,” Journal of Arabic Literature 30, no. 1 (1999): 55–77, https://doi.org/10.1163/157006499X00072. See also, on the significant though uneven role that ʿĀʾisha came to play as an authoritative source for the tafsīr tradition: Aisha Geissinger, Gender and Muslim Constructions of Exegetical Authority: A Rereading of the Classical Genre of Qurʾān Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2015).

12 John E. Wansbrough, The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History, London Oriental Series, v. 34 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 78.

11

necessarily the substance of the ḥadīth al-ifk, nor the themes of slander and scandal per se,

but rather the narrative’s functional relationship to the “apostolic” authority of

Muḥammad and the “recourse” to scripture that solves a communal crisis.13 In marked

contrast, approaching it with different methodological aims, two studies respectively by

Juynboll and Gregor Schoeler published in close succession in the mid-1990s, take an

interest in the story for its potential use in the historical dating of ḥadīth through isnād

analysis.14 Carefully parsing the attribution and transmissions of the numerous widely

circulated versions of the narrative, both arrive at the striking conclusion that it is an

authentic early account likely originating with ʿĀʾisha herself. Schoeler’s treatment, the

more comprehensive, is concerned with demonstrating the utility of isnād-cum-matn

analysis. Of course, neither claims to prove with certainty the incident actually

happened. But it is especially interesting to note that, extraneous to the methodology of

technical isnād analysis, Juynboll brings to bear on his observations some basic intuitions

about the subject. ʿĀʾisha herself, he argues, could hardly be “so foolish as to bring into

13 Wansbrough, 78. Cf. Walker and Sells, “Wiles of Women,” 73.

14 G. H. A. Juynboll, “Early Islamic Society as Reflected in Its Use of Isnāds,” Le Muséon 107, no. 1 (1994): 151–94, https://doi.org/10.2143/MUS.107.1.2006025; Reprinted in: Juynboll, Studies, chap. XI; Gregor Schoeler, The Biography of Muhammed: Nature and Authenticity, ed. James E. Montgomery, trans. Uwe Vagelpohl (New York: Routledge, 2011), 80–116.

12

circulation an invented tale about herself.”15 Moreover, the story is “too full of human

shortcomings,” and departs from the typical laudatory portrayal of ʿĀʾisha’s virtues in

early Muslim sources. Juynboll therefore concludes: “Let us admit that it is conceivable

that there was once a fire that did produce smoke, even if it was kindled by sheer slander,

malicious or otherwise. And nobody succeeded in suppressing it altogether and nobody

could forget it” (italics original).16

In other words, whereas for Wansbrough and Schoeler the ḥadīth al-ifk merits a

historiographic analysis irrespective of its substance, the issue of slander itself and the

social phenomenon of rumor become for Juynboll its most distinctive and telling feature

and the mark of “a historically plausible anecdote.”17 This kind of an assessment relates

as well to what Reinhart has otherwise termed “the sociology of ḥadīth transmission.”18

The plausibility of the ifk scandal rests on the fact of its truly collective narration, i.e. a

“bundle” of isnāds that stand in sharp contrast to the many traditions with solitary lines

of transmission. Now, the historicity of the ḥadīth al-ifk need not concern us here. But we

15 Juynboll, “Early Islamic Society,” 182.

16 Juynboll, 182.

17 Juynboll, 185.

18 A. Kevin Reinhart, “Juynbolliana, Gradualism, the Big Bang, and Ḥadīth Study in the Twenty-First Century,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 130, no. 3 (2010): 421.

13

can observe from the foregoing the distinct appeal of rumor and slander as historical

phenomena if not also as mechanisms that move history, and indeed even as carrying

potentially significant explanatory power for the process of historical memory in a

primarily oral society.

Though it remains surely the most famous case of slander in the collective

memory of Muslims from the first century of their history, the ḥadīth al-ifk is not a major

or direct interest in my dissertation. This is not only due to the considerable attention it

has received in previous scholarship, but more significantly because it happens to

remain almost entirely marginal in the sources on which I focus here. This curious

absence of any reference to the ifk in the literature on speech etiquettes proves most

instructive, however, in highlighting the functions of genre in Islamic thought as well as

the crucial difference between qadhf and ghība. The scandal involving ʿĀʾisha is mainly

recorded in early sīra and maghāzī literature concerned with the Prophet’s life and

expeditions. The story’s setting relates to a ghazwa or raid, since the rumors began when

ʿĀʾisha left the encampment and fell behind the army on its way back to Medina. It

therefore makes sense why the narrative is recounted in the context of maghāzī

traditions. Moreover, in the grand scheme of things, the story serves to identify yet

again the enemies of the Prophet, now labeled the ahl al-ifk or those who perpetrated the

14

slander—reportedly led by none other than the notorious munāfiq, ʿAbdallāh b. Ubayy.19

The ḥadīth al-ifk thus effectively serves as a dramatic episode in the epic narrative of

Prophetic biography, vindicating the truth of divine revelation against its detractors

who tried to sow discord in the community through their false words.

In the context of ḥadīth literature, elements of the ifk narrative can serve a

variety of normative purposes, or what Wansbrough calls exemplum.20 In addition to

recording versions of the story in his chapters on tafsīr and maghāzī, al-Bukhārī cites it in

his chapter on testimony (kitāb al-shahādāt) as a prooftext for the procedural law of

certifying the reliability of a witness—in the wake of the scandal, the Prophet is said to

have sought the counsel of a number of individuals for their opinion of ʿĀʾisha.21 But

apart from this and a limited number of other issues in which aspects of the ḥadīth al-ifk

19 The identity of the ahl al-ifk may have been a matter of exegetical curiosity, since the opening of the related Qurʾānic pericope, Q 24:11 declares: “those who brought the lie (jāʾū bi-l-ifk) are a group (ʿuṣba) among you.” That this was a key element of interest is hinted in a report on the Umayyad caliph ʿAbd al-Malik b. Marwān’s alleged letter to ʿĀʾisha’s nephew ʿUrwa querying him about the names of the slanderers. Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭabarī, Tafsīr al-Ṭabarī: Jāmiʿ al-bayān ʿan taʾwīl āy al-Qurʾān, ed. ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbd al-Muḥsin al-Turkī, 1st ed. (Cairo: Dār Hajar, 2001), 17:190. See the analysis by Schoeler, Biography of Muhammed, 103–04.

20 Wansbrough, The Sectarian Milieu, 78. His conclusion as to al-Bukhārī’s version being a later stage of narrative development has been challenged by Schoeler, Biography of Muhammed, 98.

21 Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī, al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaḥīḥ, ed. Muḥibb al-Dīn al-Khaṭīb and Muḥammad Fuʾād ʿAbd al-Bāqī (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿat al-Salafiyya wa-l-Maktabatuhā, 1400/1979–80), 2:246, no. 2637 (kitāb 52. al-shahādāt, bāb 2. idhā ʿaddala rajul...); 253–57, no. 2661 (bāb 15. taʿdīl al-nisāʾ baʿḍihinna baʿḍa).

15

become relevant, it appears to have played a far more subdued role as exemplum than

Wansbrough’s analysis implies. Whatever the moral of the story, it remained confined by

genre.22

Indeed, it may come as a surprise that for a compilation dedicated to “the

etiquettes of the tongue,” Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s Kitāb al-Ṣamt does not once mention qadhf in

any form, let alone the ifk story. Nor do the books of zuhd in their relevant sections on

speech ethics. Of course, this literature displays a profound concern with the sinfulness

of lying in general, and the recognition of rumor as a basic social problem implicitly

informs much of its teachings on defamation. But the form of gossip and slander that

overwhelmingly plagued the early pious was ghība, not buhtān. The latter is the term

used by the Qurʾān itself to characterize the ifk, in Q 24:16. It also appears in a ḥadīth

commonly used to define ghība as precisely a counterpart: buhtān refers to malicious and

slanderous lies, while ghība entails even mundane and truthful remarks about other

persons they would dislike hearing about themselves.

Ghība and qadhf thus reflect different understandings of slanderous talk in early

Islamic discourse, not to mention the latter applies specifically to sexual slander. The

22 Cf. Andreas Görke, “The Relationship between Maghāzī and Ḥadīth in Early Islamic Scholarship,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 74, no. 2 (2011): 171–85, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0041977X11000012.

16

two are also categorically different insofar as qadhf is punishable by law, whereas ghība

remains simply a moral sin. To be sure, ghība is not entirely irrelevant to juridical

considerations; as we shall see in Chapter 4, at least some thinkers in the early period

were concerned about its possible ritual effects, such as nullifying one’s state of ritual

purity or breaking one’s fast. Nonetheless, it is primarily in the domain of ethics that

medieval Muslims would grapple with the problem of sinful backbiting. Interestingly,

ʿĀʾisha does not recede from the purview of this other kind of gossip, for she happens to

be the protagonist of a widespread ḥadīth illustrating ghība: she comments on the

appearance of another woman, only to be chided by the Prophet that she has unwittingly

sinned. From the tragic victim of malicious slander in the ḥadīth al-ifk, the didactic

traditions on ghība thus portray ʿĀʾisha herself as a quintessential gossip.

II. Gossip and the Problem of Terminology

The decisive conceptual fault line between ghība and buhtān that emerges from

the foregoing account draws our attention to problems of terminology, as well as the

broader question of gossip as a category of historical analysis. Throughout my writing, I

often use the terms gossip, slander, backbiting (and to a lesser extent, defamation and

calumny), sometimes synonymously though not always interchangeably. Nearly all of

these terms can and do approximate the connotations of ghība, depending on the

17

context. I would even suggest that the broad, open-ended possibility of interpreting

ghība explains why it occupies center stage in the Islamic ethics of speech. Nonetheless,

ghība was one among a host of terms referring to various kinds of verbal transgressions

in early Islamic sources, as explored at length in Chapter 2. Obviously, we have to be

wary of projecting back onto medieval Arabic sources the particular meanings and

connotations that our terms may now have, and which they did not necessarily always

have even in the history of their usage in the English language. This is especially so with

a vexed term like gossip, etymologically meaning “god-related” and originally referring

to a godparent, until it acquired its current meaning of “idle talk,” rumor or tattle only in

recent centuries.23

In our case, however, it helps to retain the term gossip as a heuristic since its use

in English too has strong moralistic overtones, and since the concept itself is under

consideration here as we examine how and why it became a stated concern in Islamic

23 Patricia Meyer Spacks, Gossip (New York: Knopf, 1985), 25–26. The term’s medieval usage is nevertheless instructive and sheds light on the social functions of talk: “Old English godsibb (relative in God) was associated in the medieval period with good friends and neighbors, with events following the birth of a baby, and with drinking (which accompanied the celebratory feasting that occurred in some places). Gossip’s semantic narrowing to denote the idle talk of women did not appear in a dictionary until the eighteenth century.” Thelma S. Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail, eds., Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 9, citing Melanie Tebbutt, Women’s Talk? A Social History of “Gossip” in Working-Class Neighbourhoods, 1880-1960 (Aldershot, England: Scolar Press, 1995), 19–22.

18

ethics. “Gossip” also makes sense as an equivalent to the notion of ghība given that both

are understood primarily as talk about other persons who are absent.24 In terms of

substance, gossip is often assumed to be true or at least factually ambiguous, which

captures the further moral point about ghība in Islamic thought, that the truth of such

talk does not absolve it of sinfulness. Modern ethicists reflecting on gossip have noted

that it is in the nature of “unwelcome” talk about another person that makes it morally

controversial, even if it does not do any obvious harm.25 This recalls the Prophetic ḥadīth

that ghība is to mention about a person what he or she dislikes (yakrahu), even if it is

true.26 The term slander, since by definition it involves false statements, is thus better

reserved for buhtān. The etymological sense of ghība, derived from the Arabic root

meaning to be absent or hidden (gh-y-b), is perhaps best conveyed in the somewhat

archaic word “backbiting,” which refers to speaking ill behind another’s back. It

originates in similarly moralist discourse on the “sins of the tongue” in thirteenth-

24 The element of absence or secrecy as essential to gossip has been emphasized by the moral philosopher Sissela Bok, who defines it as: “informal personal communication about other people who are absent or treated as absent.” Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 91, 93.

25 Emrys Westacott, The Virtues of Our Vices: A Modest Defense of Gossip, Rudeness, and Other Bad Habits (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 64.

26 Abū Bakr Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Kitāb al-Ṣamt wa-ādāb al-lisān, ed. Najm ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Khalaf, 1st ed. (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1406/1986), 329, nos. 211–12.

19

century England, condemning “those who spread false or unkind rumors.”27

Coincidentally, the idiom of biting also resonates with the ancient Near Eastern imagery

of slander as eating up the flesh or pieces of another, a metaphor that heavily informs

early Islamic thought on ghība.28 The term backbiting clearly therefore best

approximates ghība, though it tends to make for awkward translations in some cases and

the connotations of spite and fault-finding does not always apply to ghība.

These various, overlapping shades of meaning in our vocabulary of gossip and

slander does help draw attention to the fact that the early Islamic literature itself seems

to highlight terminology as a problem inherent to its moralizing discourse. Naturally,

when expounding an ethics of speech strongly critical of ghība, the basic question

remained as to what exactly counts as ghība. Its differentiation from outright calumny

and false slander was only the base line, and indeed the very basis for tremendous

concern among the scrupulous ascetics of the zuhd movement, who feared that even

seemingly harmless practices such as referring to others by potentially derogatory

nicknames might be sinful. This is why Ibn ʿUlayya could insist that to call him after his

27 Sandy Bardsley, “Sin, Speech and Scolding in Late Medieval England,” in Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe, ed. Thelma S. Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 149.

28 In early modern English literature, backbiters were frequently described as ravenous animals or venomous insects: Spacks, Gossip, 27.

20

mother’s name was ghība, because he took personal offence at this. As such, for instance,

Devin Stewart’s recent example of consistently translating ghība as “malicious gossip”29

does not necessarily work, since the limits of ghība were frequently open to question and

pious Muslims worried that intentional malice alone may not be the threshold of sin.

The advocates of zuhd in particular sought to impose scrupulous reflection on the

otherwise habitual, hasty utterances that characterize much small talk. This reflects an

understanding of gossip that persists in modern thought: as the literary critic Patricia

Meyer Spacks points out, most gossip is that which issues “not from purposeful malice

but, as Kierkegaard and Heidegger suggest, from lack of thought, the kind of gossip

accurately characterized as ‘idle talk.’ It derives from unconsidered desire to say

something without having to ponder too deeply.” The zuhd tradition portrays the pious

forebears as pondering the serious implications of even the minutest of mundane,

unconsidered language, such as the common medieval practice of adding epithets to

individual names based on distinguishing physical features or other attributes. The sage

al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī supposedly expressed the fear that simply addressing “Ḥumayd the

Tall” in this manner might be ghība, presumably referring to his fellow Baṣran scholar

29 Devin J. Stewart, “Zayn Al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī’s Kashf al-Rība ʿan Aḥkām al-Ghība and Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī’s Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn,” Shii Studies Review 1, no. 1–2 (2017): 130–50, https://doi.org/10.1163/24682470-12340004.

21

Ḥumayd b. Abī Ḥumayd who is known as “al-Ṭawīl.”30 The conceptual umbrella of ghība

could cast its shadow far and wide, and therein lay its great potential for moral danger.

III. Historicizing Talk and Reputation in Medieval Society

In the spirit of broadening our perspective beyond familiar notions of gossip, it is

well worth embracing the advice of Thelma Fenster and Daniel Smail, who have argued

for a social history of “talk” in their important edited volume on fama in medieval

Europe. To this end, they have called for a disavowal of the narrow and moralizing term

“gossip” for analytical purposes.31 They contend, rightly, that preconceptions about

gossip risk obscuring from the historian’s view the broader social functions of talk, since

something that is trivial by definition tends to be therefore also dismissed as worthy of

serious study. After all, “gossip insists on its own frivolity,” as literary historian Patricia

Spacks aptly puts it in her classic book on the topic.32 But the compelling history of fama

proves otherwise: the concept dates back to ancient Rome, and it meant rumor or

reputation and later came to denote public opinion and fame. It was officially recognized

in medieval jurisprudence, and a person’s bona fama or mala fama could affect his or her

30 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 330, no. 213.

31 Fenster and Smail, Fama, 10.

32 Spacks, Gossip, 6.

22

status at court as a witness or party to a lawsuit.33 Fama thus referred to one’s social

reputation as well as related gossip, denoting both the process (a means for the social

production of knowledge), and the ensuing construct (that which is commonly known).

Fenster and Smail can therefore remind us that “in medieval societies, talk did many of

those things that in modern society are handled, officially, by bankers, credit bureaus,

lawyers, state archives, and so on.”34

This characterization of social talk as a mechanism for trust and truth in the

medieval world should be familiar to historians of the Middle East as well, even if we do

not possess an exact Arabic equivalent to Latin fama. Of course, even gossip in its trivial

sense has not ceased to play crucial roles in the modern world, as usually betrayed by

moments of social or political crisis that threaten the public-private boundary.35 But in

medieval society, the scope of formal conventions when it came to the spoken word was

often wider and more nebulous, in ways that could make gossip and slander matter far

more than they do now. Roy Mottahedeh’s influential account of Būyid society proves

33 This was the case in both legal theory and practice, as shown through studies of court proceedings in medieval Italy, Germany, France and Spain. See the essays by Wickham, Kuehn, Caviness and Nelson, Akehurst, and Bowman in: Fenster and Smail, Fama.

34 Fenster and Smail, 9.

35 Michael Herzfeld, “The Performance of Secrecy: Domesticity and Privacy in Public Spaces,” Semiotica 2009, no. 175 (2009), https://doi.org/10.1515/semi.2009.044.

23

insightful here, as he has emphasized the immense social and political significance of

oaths and vows that could subject even an immoral king to their binding power. He also

illustrates the complex dynamics of status and honor, whether acquired or inherited, in

mediating the dense fabric of social ties and obligations.36

A. The Notion of ʿIrḍ

Honor in the abstract sense of the term ʿirḍ happens to merit a chapter in Ibn Abī

l-Dunyā’s book on speech, driven by a corpus of Prophetic ḥadīth urging that one must

defend the honor of a fellow Muslim in his absence. Bishr Farès points out, in what may

still be our only study on this topic, that ʿirḍ in ancient Arab tradition was conceived

negatively: something to be protected from loss through dishonoring, rather than a trait

that is possessed.37 The primary, pervasive vehicle of insult targeting the ʿirḍ of a man or

his clan since the pre-Islamic period was of course the hijāʾ, encompassing lampoon,

satire and invective poetry. It is no accident that one of the main culprits said to have

slandered ʿĀʾisha in the ḥadīth al-ifk is the poet Ḥassān b. Thābit, named among those

sentenced to the punishment for qadhf. But he would go on to convert to Islam and

became the Prophet’s bard, perhaps recruited for his prowess in the battlefield of

36 Roy P. Mottahedeh, Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society, Rev. (London: I.B. Tauris, 2001), 42–72, 98–104.

37 Bishr Farès, L’honneur chez les Arabes avant l’islam (Paris: Adrien-Maisonneuve, 1932), 34–43.

24

words.38 In the Islamic period, hijāʾ retained a fairly mixed legacy, as Geert Jan van Gelder

has explored in his definitive monograph.39 The inexhaustible obscenity of hijāʾ could

already provoke moral ambivalence before Islam, and the Prophet’s teachings against

insult, abuse and cursing surely made it all the more controversial. Yet its status as

poetry, and therefore as a ritualized transgression of norms, enabled hijāʾ to not only

survive but indeed thrive in medieval Arabic literature, with the emergence of “foul-

mouthed” (khabīth al-lisān) poets who specialized in this genre.40

In fact, I would argue that the zuhd movement was in at least some respects an

active response to the values embodied by such poets. The pious ethics of speech

advocated by the ascetics, and their insistence on restraining the tongue, was informed

by a social world they shared with those who reveled in precisely the opposite. Van

Gelder’s account stresses what he deems the relative tolerance for hijāʾ in medieval

Muslim society, notwithstanding the frequent case of poets facing retaliation or

punishment. He rightly points out that beyond the general ambivalence about poetry in

38 Ḥassān b. Thābit is named by Ibn Iṣḥāq as one of three individual who received the ḥadd punishment for qadhf: Schoeler, Biography of Muhammed, 85–86. See also: W. Arafat, “A Controversial Incident and the Related Poem in the Life of Ḥassān b. Thābit,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 17, no. 2 (1955): 197–205.

39 Geert Jan van Gelder, The Bad and the Ugly: Attitudes towards Invective Poetry (Hijāʾ) in Classical Arabic Literature, Publication of the De Goeje Fund 26 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1988).

40 van Gelder, 20.

25

religious thought driven by the Qurʾānic suspicion of poets, Muslim jurists were not

concerned with hijāʾ in particular.41 But there is good reason to believe the culture of

lampoon and obscenity deeply disturbed the pious, who would have seen it as shameless

violation of propriety. The tension is captured in the legends about the Baṣran poet

Bashshār b. Burd’s encounters with the great ascetics of his hometown, al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī

and Mālik b. Dīnār, one of whom he derided in a verse as “clergyman” (qass). Mālik

reportedly paid a visit to Bashshār and rebuked him for insulting people’s honor (tashtum

aʿrāḍ al-nās) and singing loves poems about their women (tushabbib bi-nisāʾihim).42

Discomfort with hijāʾ may well have been a basis for the debate in early Islamic

law on whether recitation of poetry called for ritual ablution (the wuḍūʾ), as discussed in

Chapter 3. To illustrate pious Muslim indulgence of invective poetry, Van Gelder cites

the example of another celebrated Baṣran ascetic Ibn Sīrīn (d. 110/729), who once made a

point of reciting an obscene verse about al-Farazdaq’s wife before proceeding to perform

41 van Gelder, 129. On the Qurʾānic polemic against poetry, see the discussion and references cited in: Jane Dammen McAuliffe, ed., Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān (Leiden: Brill, 2001–06), 4:110–14, s.v. Poetry and Poets.

42 Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, Kitāb Al-Aghānī (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, 1927), 3:169–70. The “qass” poem is said to have been addressed to al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, unlikely because the poet was still very young when the latter died. See: Suleiman Ali Mourad, Early Islam between Myth and History: Al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 110H/728CE) and the Formation of His Legacy in Classical Islamic Scholarship (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 74–5.

26

his prayers.43 But he did so because someone asked whether poetry requires wuḍūʾ, a

question that clearly reveals a prevailing concern. It may be telling as well that the zuhd

tradition does not record such an anecdote. It remembers instead the learned Abū Ṣāliḥ

al-Sammān (d. 101/719–20) of the Followers’ generation (tābiʿī), who apparently rinsed

his mouth after reciting verses of hijāʾ.44 The culture of poetic insults and invective

poetry permeated the social context in which early Muslims ascetics articulated a pious

ethics of speech.

B. The Principle of ʿAdāla

One particular incarnation of status and reputation in medieval Islamic social

thought was the notion of ʿadāla, arguably a cognate of fama in some respects. While it

derives from ʿadl, in the sense of just and well-balanced, the term refers to uprightness,

probity or good character. The two main domains where Muslims invoked ʿadāla were

judicial procedure and ḥadīth scholarship, though political theorists like al-Māwardī (d.

450/1058) would also include it among the qualifications of a ruler.45 In the court of law,

43 van Gelder, The Bad and the Ugly, 34.

44 Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. ʿAmr Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim, Kitāb al-Zuhd, ed. ʿAbd al-ʿAlī ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd Ḥāmid, 2nd ed. (Bombay: al-Dār al-Salafiyya, 1408/1987), 61, no. 122 & 125.

45 The first of seven conditions for the imāmate listed by al-Māwardī (including such factors as good health, knowledge, courage, and being a descendent of the Quraysh), is al-ʿadāla ʿalā shurūṭihā al-jāmiʿa, “moral integrity, along with all of its conditions.” Furthermore, ʿadāla is also

27

where oral testimony (shahāda) remained the primary basis for proof and evidence, an

acceptable witness had to be ʿadl i.e. a person of known integrity. The qāḍī was

responsible for making inquiries about individuals before accepting their testimony, a

process called tazkiya that may resemble what we still known today as the solicitation of

character witnesses. By analogy with legal testimony, scholars of ḥadīth understood their

methodology of isnād citations in light of the presumption that the moral integrity of

transmitters helped guarantee the trustworthiness of the traditions they claimed to hear

and pass on.

In practice, and in its theoretical elaboration by jurists, ʿadāla was inflected by

social class as one’s standing in society could obviously determine the worth of one’s

word. This was less so, at least in principle, in the more egalitarian world of ḥadīth, as

recognized by the Kūfan master al-Aʿmash (d. 148/765): “If I were a bean-seller, you

would think nothing of me – without these traditions we would no better than

greengrocers.”46 The business of law and order was another matter, and al-Sindī b.

the first of three conditions to be met by those who can elect or choose the imām. Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Māwardī, Kitāb al-Aḥkām al-sulṭāniyya wa-l-wilāyāt al-dīniyya, ed. Aḥmad Mubārak al-Baghdādī (Kuwait: Maktabat Dār Ibn Qutayba, 1409/1989), 4–5.

46 Patricia Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought, The New Edinburgh Islamic Surveys (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), 126; Quoting from: Abū Bakr al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Sharaf aṣḥāb al-ḥadīth, ed. Mehmed Saîd Hatîboǧlu (Ankara: Kulliyat al-Ilāhiyyāt, Jāmiʿat Anqara, 1389/1969), 135, no. 320.

28

Shāhak, chief of police under caliph Hārun al-Rashīd, apparently would not accept the

oaths of tricksters, weavers, and sailors.47 Hence the truism in Farhat Ziadeh’s now-

classic essay on ʿadāla: “The mark of a ‘gentleman’ in an Islamic society is the acceptance

of his testimony at court (maqbūl al-shahādah).”48

Categorical considerations of social class aside, it scarcely needs pointing out that

similar to fama, the notion of ʿadāla also depended on reputation. A person could be

recognized as ʿadl only insofar as others knew him or her to be upright. The issue of

social talk here comes to the fore. The functions of reputation has been amply

demonstrated in better-documented contexts from later history, as in Leslie Peirce’s

masterful study of the Ottoman court records for the provincial town of Aintab from 948

AH (1540–41 CE). She finds a vast “amount of talk about honor and reputation” in the

archive, illustrating a society in which the ability to testify was “a measure of civic

47 “kāna…lā yastaḥlaf al-makārī wa-lā ḥāʾik wa-lā al-mallāḥ,” ʿAbdallāh b. Muslim Ibn Qutayba al-Dīnawarī, Kitāb ʿUyūn Al-Akhbār (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī, n.d.), 1:70. Cited by Josef van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft im 2. und 3. Jahrhundert Hidschra: eine Geschichte des religiösen Denkens im frühen Islam (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991), 2:239–40; Theology and Society in the Second and Third Centuries of the Hijra: A History of Religious Thought in Early Islam, trans. John O’Kane (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 2:275.

48 Farhat Ziadeh, “Integrity (ʿAdālah) in Classical Islamic Law,” in Islamic Law and Jurisprudence, ed. Nicholas Heer (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990), 75. Of course, such a general statement requires contextualizing with greater historical specificity. Ahmed El Shamsy has lucidly described the changing interpretations of ʿadāla in 2nd/8th century Egypt: The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 105–07.

29

membership.”49 Peirce’s analysis reveals a deep communal investment in moral

accountability, and a relentless use of the court by all kinds of people to protect one’s

reputation from imputations or accusations (töhmet).

Such case studies in existing historiography can help us appreciate the social

stakes of normative ethics literature. Arguably, the moral quandary of gossip implicitly

reflects an underlying anxiety about the double role of social talk, crucially in the

making and management of reputation but also in its dangerous unmaking. While ghība

was understood in a variety of ways, part of its condemnation in early Islamic ethics

clearly had to do with a desire to safeguard honor and reputation. This becomes most

evident in a discourse of exceptions to the prohibition on ghība, which was considered

not to apply to criticisms of someone who is openly sinful (mujāhir bi-l-fisq). To the

contrary, one ḥadīth even insists on the necessity of talking about immoral persons (dhikr

al-fājir), as a warning to people.50 Conversely, as noted in a ḥadīth quoted by Ibn Abī l-

49 Leslie Peirce, Morality Tales: Law and Gender in the Ottoman Court of Aintab (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 207.

50 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 336–37, no. 221.

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Dunyā in the same context, to partake in the honoring of an immoral person through

encomium or panegyric (madḥ) is to displease God.51

C. The Social Institution of Majālis

The role of talk in the making and unmaking of reputation was a basic building

block of the scholarly community in medieval Muslim society. A key spatial locus for

such talk was the majlis, the ubiquitous social institution that extended in range from

scholarly gatherings, to literary salons, to grand settings for panegyrics before rulers and

elite patrons. Samer Ali’s insightful monograph, which distinguishes the formal royal

majlis from relatively intimate mujālasāt widespread among the middle ranks of ʿAbbāsid

society, has underscored the salon as a crucial context for the communal reception and

success of ninth century adab literature.52 The majlis was clearly no less instrumental

among ḥadīth scholars, even if they were wary of gatherings that could devolve into

sinful consumption. For our purposes, it need not refer to a specific well-defined

practice, and included sessions or sittings at a mosque or often at a scholar’s house. The

pious simply re-appropriated the institution, and it is notable that the zuhd literature

recognizes the majlis while warning against its immoral tendencies. Ibn Ḥanbal’s Kitāb al-

51 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, 339–41, no. 229–30.

52 Samer M. Ali, Arabic Literary Salons in the Islamic Middle Ages: Poetry, Public Performance, and the Presentation of the Past (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010).

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Zuhd quotes the Umayyad-era Damascene jurist Sulaymān b. Mūsā (d. 119/737) as saying

that “every majlis has dignity (sharaf), and the most dignified of majālis turns towards the

qibla.”53

However, as a social embodiment of the scholarly community, even majālis

devoted to pious traditions induced a host of ethical concerns. Foremost was the

temptation to show off one’s knowledge, especially through the disputations inevitable

in the incredibly fertile ground of early Islamic theology. Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s Ṣamt includes

a chapter on mirāʾ (argumentation), compiling some well-known ḥadīth and ancient

wisdom in this regard, such as Luqmān advising his son not to seek knowledge for the

sake of display at majālis (turāʾī bihi fī l-majālis).54 Ibn Sīrīn is quoted in the same context

as recalling a saying of yore: “most people are sinful, most of them for mentioning the

faults of people.”55 The admonition is general, but speaks to the reality of the majlis as a

site of critical talk, where names were mentioned and opinions were shared. Among

53 Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Kitāb al-Zuhd, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Salām Shāhīn (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1420/1999), 175, no. 1199. The same Sulaymān b. Mūsā is also quoted in another zuhd tradition as saying that the evil of mujālasa lies in three things: stinginess (shuḥḥ), obscenity (fuḥsh), and bad character (ʿilm al-rijāl). ʿAbdallāh Ibn al-Mubārak, Kitāb al-Raqāʾiq, riwāyat Nuʿaym b. Ḥammād al-Marwazī, ed. ʻĀmir Ḥasan Ṣabrī, 2nd ed. (Bahrain: Wizārat al-ʿAdl wa-l-Shuʾūn al-Islāmiyya wa-l-Awqāf, 2014), 2:400, no. 854.

54 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 283–84, no. 142. On this topic, see: Franz Rosenthal, Knowledge Triumphant: The Concept of Knowledge in Medieval Islam (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 315.

55 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 280–81, no. 138.

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ḥadīth critics, praise and blame could be uttered in the same breath. Ibn al-Mubārak (d.

181/797) admitted doing so himself, about a scholar who was renowned for his devotion,

but discredited in ḥadīth transmission: “Whenever I was in a majlis where ʿAbbād was

mentioned, I praised him for his piety (dīn) but then I would say: don’t accept [ḥadīth]

from him.”56 The Baṣran scholar Ayyūb al-Sakhtiyānī (d. 131/749) was once talking about

a neighbor, and described his virtues (faḍl) but proceeded to declare that he would never

accept his testimony (shahāda) even about two pieces of dates.57 Some did not hesitate to

describe such remarks as ghība, as Maʿmar b. Rāshid (d. 153/770) would when praising

the same Ayyūb, claiming that he had “never seen him backbite anyone, except ʿAbd al-

Karīm,” the latter being an unreliable traditionist.58

Recognizing the majlis as the social context for the construction of scholarly

reputations helps appreciate the attendant moral risk of gossip. If we accept some of the

stories that Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj records in his muqaddima, the business of ḥadīth in its

early years of development seemed to involve a lot of talk about others, and that too in

their absence. The blind qāṣṣ Nufayʿ b. al-Ḥārith, prone to relating traditions on behalf of

56 Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj, Ṣaḥīḥ, 17; Juynboll, “Muslim’s Introduction,” 280.

57 Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj, Ṣaḥīḥ, 21; Juynboll, “Muslim’s Introduction,” 284.

58 Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj, Ṣaḥīḥ, 21; Juynboll, “Muslim’s Introduction,” 284.

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veterans of Badr he had never met, reportedly once came to see Qatāda b. Diʿāma (d.

117/735) and was dismissed by the latter as a delusional liar as soon as he left.59 It is

striking how such anecdotes use spatial topoi to highlight the setting of these exchanges,

which never quite take place in front of the critiqued scholars themselves. ʿĪsā b. Yūnus

(d. 187/803) relates that he was once at the door of ʿAbbād b. Kathīr, when Sufyān al-

Thawrī was inside; when he came out, ʿĪsā asked him about ʿAbbād and Sufyān replied:

“he is a liar.”60 The same ʿAbbād, also the object of Ibn al-Mubārak’s critique above, is

incidentally known for transmitting the widely circulated ḥadīth that ghība is worse than

fornication, a detail which al-Dhahabī cares to point out in his biography.61

These anecdotes illustrate something of the social historical backdrop to the

production of the sources we rely on for much of our knowledge of medieval Islamic

scholarship. As a repository of testimonies about scholars left behind by colleagues and

contemporaries who knew them, the enduring enterprise of Arabic “biographical

dictionaries” (ṭabaqāt or tarājim) bears witness both to a social world that valued such

talk and to an intellectual tradition in which epistemic authority was grounded on the

59 Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj, Ṣaḥīḥ, 21–22; Juynboll, “Muslim’s Introduction,” 285.

60 Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj, Ṣaḥīḥ, 17; Juynboll, “Muslim’s Introduction,” 280.

61 Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām, 7:106.

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personal. Ḥadīth specialists basically codified the same principles in the so-called

“science of men” (ʿilm al-rijāl), developed in the literature of jarḥ wa taʿdīl (impugnment

and accreditation), the latter meaning literally to determine as ʿadl. To be sure, this was a

highly technical discipline, concerned mainly with scholarly performance and precision

in ḥadīth transmission rather than personal or social reputation.62 Nevertheless, insofar

as scholars’ opinions about each other formed the backbone of their collective tradition,

proper etiquettes of speech remained crucial to the communal ethos and to the integrity

of the intellectual enterprise as whole.

This is why, I would argue, Muslims scholars were invested in the traditions on

ghība, since the lessons related all too well to their own vocation. In fact, the ethical

implications may have been decisive enough to shape the course of the zuhd movement.

In a paper on the role of zuhhād as ḥadīth transmitters, Christopher Melchert finds that

their representation in the rijāl literature shows a marked decline between the second

and third centuries AH.63 No doubt this was partly a result of specialization and the

62 See the discussion on “extrinsic considerations” to isnād analysis by Eerik Dickinson, The Development of Early Sunnite Ḥadīth Criticism: The Taqdima of Ibn Abī Ḥātim al-Rāzī (240/854-327/938) (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 90–92. On the early history of rijāl, see: Raashid Goyal, “The Gestation of Arabic Biography: Lives of the Traditionists,” in The Oxford Handbook of Hadith Studies, ed. Mustafa Shah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, “forthcoming”).

63 Christopher Melchert, “Early Renunciants as Hadīth Transmitters,” The Muslim World 92, no. 3–4 (2002): 407–18, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-1913.2002.tb03750.x.

35

increasingly demanding nature of ḥadīth scholarship. But Melchert also speculates

whether ghība was an issue that dissuaded the pious renunciants from professional

pursuit of ḥadīth, since “rijāl criticism looked like ghība.”64 As we already saw above,

Muslim’s Ṣaḥīḥ responds to the concern by citing Ibn ʿUlayya’s defense of the practice.

But Melchert highlights compelling evidence that the anxiety abides well into the ninth

century. The famed wandering zāhid Abū Turāb al-Nakhshabī (d. 245/859), upon hearing

Ibn Ḥanbal refer to so-and-so as weak (ḍaʿīf) and so-and-so as trustworthy (thiqa),

objected: “O shaykh, do not backbite the ʿulamāʾ!” Ibn Ḥanbal responded that this was

counsel (naṣīḥa), not ghība.65 Part of the concern was clearly with the terms used by

ḥadīth specialists to describe the scholars they criticized.66 I am not sure if the sources

allow us to definitively address this aspect of Melchert’s particular hypothesis about the

apparent rift between zuhhād and ḥadīth specialists. But the general observation stands

64 Melchert, 413.

65 Ibn Abī Yaʿlā, Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanābilah, ed. Muḥammad Ḥāmid al-Fiqī (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Sunna al-Muḥammadīya, 1952), 1:249; Quoted by Melchert, “Early Renunciants as Hadīth Transmitters,” 413. On the “wandering ascetic,” see: Leonard Librande, “Ibn Abī l-Dunyā,” in EI3, ed. Kate Fleet et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2018), s.v. Abū Turāb al-Nakhshabī, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_30663.

66 The terminology use in rijāl criticism can be remarkably uneven, and took time to be standardized. It is nevertheless telling that al-Bukhāri almost never refers to anyone as a “liar” (kaddhāb), and adopts a generally reticent approach in his assessments of traditionists. See the discussion on this by Goyal, “Lives of the Traditionists.”

36

that the ethics of ghība remained an implicit problem in the business of Islamic

scholarship.

IV. Traditionist Ethics: Sources and Methods

The historian’s fundamental challenge in approaching normative religious texts

of the past is the question of how to read and interpret them. I have attempted to outline

above in broad strokes a discernible social context in which the early Islamic discourse

on speech ethics would have mattered. In particular, I highlight the conditions for the

transmission of knowledge as an attempt to reflect on how Muslim scholars experienced

the relevance of the moral lessons on ghība they learned and taught. While their own

social world could thus animate these teachings, the compilers of our sources

nevertheless claim to merely represent an inherited intellectual tradition: the very form

and substance of the aḥādīth were purportedly dictated in their original

pronouncements, while the practice of citing isnāds self-consciously embodies that

legacy. What kinds of historical judgments can we then reasonably formulate about such

texts? I aim to deal with this question in a few different ways.

While my dissertation explores an aspect of Islamic morality, it is obviously not a

study of ethics in its theoretical sense, that is to say the field of interest in the underlying

principles of what is right and wrong. The sources I examine do relate collectively to

37

what scholarship in Islamic ethical theory usually refers to as religious or traditionist

ethics. The latter term can usefully denote both the foundation of moral authority in this

worldview i.e. the religious tradition, as well as its embodiment in the specific form of

the ḥadīth. Since “traditionist” is effectively synonymous with muḥaddith in Western

academic writing, some have introduced the further term “traditionalist” to denote the

worldview and theoretical outlook, its counterpart being the rationalist currents of

Islamic thought.67 In Majid Fakhry’s survey of ethical theories in Islam, a work by Ibn Abī

l-Dunyā (Makārim al-akhlāq) happens to serve as a prime example of “ethical

traditionalism:” though meriting only a few lines of discussion, it helps illustrate a

“traditionalist approach to moral discussion, with its thorough reliance on the Koran and

the Traditions.”68 In contrast to the systematic efforts in philosophical or theological

ethics that flourished especially from the tenth century onward, Fakhry finds little in the

ḥadīth literature to allow for a coherent or substantive theory of moral responsibility. In

67 Unfortunately, however, there is still a great deal of inconsistency in the literature in this regard, and I can only echo Crone’s sentiment that “the entire terminology is unfortunate” albeit “too entrenched” to be changed. She points out that such terms fail to distinguish between ḥadīth and competing notions of sunna, not to mention that the so-called Traditionalists (ahl al-ḥadīth) were indeed “radicals when they first appeared.” Crone, Medieval Islamic Political Thought, 125n1. Nevertheless, for a typology of distinctions between traditionists, traditionalists and even “traditionalistics,” see: Binyamin Abrahamov, “Scripturalist and Traditionalist Theology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology, ed. Sabine Schmidtke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 263–64, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199696703.013.025.

68 Majid Fakhry, Ethical Theories in Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 151, 158.

38

short, he concludes: “it would be a mistake to place profound and far-reaching moral

constructions upon circumstantial utterances, legal pronouncements or reports of

personal and communal expressions of opinion.”69 This judgment is no doubt subject to

criticism from those keen to excavate the same sources for evidence of intellectual

trends in the early history of Islam, as Christopher Melchert attempts for the zuhd

tradition and Josef van Ess pursues more broadly in his magnum opus, Theologie und

Gesellschaft. But Fakhry’s observation can still help us preemptively acknowledge that the

corpus of pious traditions on ghība span a range of frequently inconsistent material, and

hardly submits to a single, coherent body of thought.

That said, the notion of “traditionist ethics” usefully describes the subject matter

of this dissertation, and serves as an umbrella term for the range of sources I examine

across genres. I frequently also refer to “pious ethics,” particularly in association with

the zuhd movement. In the context of our sources from the third century and beyond,

traditionist ethics and piety are broad terms applicable beyond the respective outlooks

of the zuhd tradition or the ninth-century ahl al-ḥadīth. Besides the work of Ibn Abī l-

Dunyā, the main zuhd texts I focus on for their treatment of speech etiquettes include:

69 Fakhry, 28.

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» Ibn al-Mubārak (d. 181/797), attributed: Kitāb al-Zuhd wa-l-raqāʾiq

o Recension of Nuʿaym b. Ḥammād (d. 228/843)

o Recension of al-Ḥusayn b. al-Ḥasan al-Marwazī (d. 246/860-1)

» Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ (d. 197/813), Kitāb al-Zuhd

» Hannād b. al-Sarī (d. 243/857), Kitāb al-Zuhd

» Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim (d. 287/900), Dhikr al-dunyā wa-l-zuhd

There are other major zuhd works, such as the compilation attributed to Ibn Ḥanbal,

which I discuss and draw upon for relevant material, but the above stand apart for their

dedicated chapters on speech ethics. Another text of particular interest is al-Bukhārī’s al-

Adab al-mufrad, a compilation of etiquette-related ḥadīth extraneous to his Ṣaḥīḥ. Of

course, I also pay attention to relevant material in the major ṣaḥīḥ works and other ḥadīth

collections such as the partially-extant Jāmiʿ attributed to Ibn Wahb (d. 197/813), notable

for its early papyrus witness and for its inclusion of a chapter entitled kitāb al-ṣamt.

In addition to genre-specific investigations in some of the well-known early tafsīr

and fiqh sources, the research for my dissertation further utilizes a set of later works, all

from the Iranian world of the mid- to late-tenth century CE:

» Abū l-Shaykh al-Iṣfahānī (d. 369/979), al-Tawbīkh wa-l-tanbīh

» Abū l-Layth al-Samarqandī (d. 373/983), Tanbīh al-ghāfilīn

» ʿAlī b. Yaḥya al-Zandawīstī (fl. 380s/990s), Rawḍat al-ʿulamāʾ

40

These works include significant material on ghība, reproducing common aḥādīth

alongside lesser-known traditions and more recent commentary. The three texts

certainly differ from each other and are difficult to assign a particular genre, but they all

seek to cultivate an Islamic morality on the basis of pious tradition. They prove insightful

in illustrating the reception of ideas about ghība beyond their initial codification,

especially in a vernacular context as evidenced by the occasional Persian quotations by

al-Zandawīstī, an influential Ḥanafī jurist of Bukhārā whose works still remain in

unedited manuscripts.

Methodologically, my approach to these texts conforms to that outlined recently

by Stephen R. Burge, whose work extends to ḥadīth literature the original insights of

Fedwa Malti-Douglas on the literary effects of structure, organization and selection of

anecdotes in medieval Arabic compilations.70 Proposing a model of what he calls

“compilation criticism,” Burge has shown that ḥadīth collections are rarely just

repositories of traditions without any underlying logic or style.71 Rather, the

organization of a collection and indeed even the ordering of individual ḥadīth reports can

70 Fedwa Malti-Douglas, “Structure and Organization in a Monographic Adab Work: Al-Taṭfīl of al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 40, no. 3 (1981): 227–45, https://doi.org/10.1086/372893.

71 S. R. Burge, “Reading between the Lines: The Compilation of Hadīt and the Authorial Voice,” Arabica 58, no. 3 (2011): 168–97, https://doi.org/10.1163/157005811X561523.

41

reflect the author’s choice in shaping the interpretation of the material, often resulting

in an implicit overarching narrative that illustrates the ethical lessons at stake. I have

found this particularly relevant to understanding Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s method in the Kitāb

al-Ṣamt, despite the uneven and incomplete nature of its thematic ordering. Burge’s

analysis could be criticized for overestimating authorial intent for early compilations of

uncertain redaction history: this is an acute problem for many of the zuhd compilations I

examine, which clearly reached their final form only in the generations succeeding the

authors to which they are attributed, often with interpolated traditions from other

sources. Nevertheless, we are not concerned with authorship but with the gradual

consolidation of a body of pious traditions on ghība, to whom they are attributed, and

how they are understood.

Burge has more recently attempted an insightful generic characterization of

“ḥadīth literature,” a concept that he finds to lack any concrete definition. This is so

because, he observes, there ultimately exists no “definitive list of what is included in the

‘ḥadīṯ literature,’” nor the kinds of ḥadīth that a collection might include.72 Instead, the

genre functions as an abstract conceptual category, a greater whole that remains a

72 Stephen R. Burge, “The ‘Ḥadīṯ Literature’: What Is It and Where Is It?,” Arabica 65, no. 1–2 (2018): 67, https://doi.org/10.1163/15700585-12341481.

42

“vehicle of authority” that can be instantiated in individual compilations.73 The

implication, counterintuitively, is that a collection of ḥadīth attains authority neither

from the isnād nor from the matn but from its relationship to the larger “living” body of

traditions.74 I find this observation relevant to my purposes because the texts I examine

include much that is easily dismissed by ḥadīth critics as apocryphal material. Such a

judgment can stem either from a conventional evaluation of the isnād or as an affective

response to a matn that might strike one as peculiar, fantastical or appealing to popular

religious beliefs. A classic example would be the eschatological traditions that indulge in

vivid imaginations of punishment in the hereafter, which thrive as a genre in the late-

medieval period.75 There are also numerous ḥadīth about ghība which use gruesome,

sensory imagery for the purpose of moral exhortation. Considerations of isnād aside, the

nature of a ḥadīth collection or its canonical reputation does not necessarily dictate

whether it might include such material or not.

It might be an understatement to observe that scholarship in the field of ḥadīth

studies remains beholden to the isnād, for good reason. In the Western academy, ever

73 Burge, 80.

74 Burge, 80–81.

75 See: Christian Lange, Paradise and Hell in Islamic Traditions (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 93–119.

43

since the stage was set by Goldziher, the historicity of traditional Muslim narratives

about the Prophet Muḥammad has been a defining preoccupation of Islamic Studies. This

results partly from an overwhelming interest in certain genres of sources, especially law

and historiography. The fruits of such research have proven incredibly valuable, and

have led to significant methodological improvements as evident for instance in the

recent trend of isnād-cum-matn analysis discussed earlier in relation to the ḥadīth al-ifk.

The debates have also led scholars to argue that the isnād is something of a red herring, a

“pseudo-problem” as Wael Hallaq famously put it, because Muslim traditionists “studied

ḥadīth insofar as it leads to what they called ʿamal.”76 In the same vein, Jonathan Brown

has shown how the “pedagogical utility” of unreliable ḥadīth was an accepted fact and

practice in the Sunnī tradition, the broader ethos of which is often mistakenly conflated

with the narrow discourse of epistemic certainty articulated by legal theorists like al-

Shāfiʿī.77

76 Wael B. Hallaq, “The Authenticity of Prophetic Ḥadîth: A Pseudo-Problem,” Studia Islamica, no. 89 (1999): 83, https://doi.org/10.2307/1596086.

77 Jonathan A. C. Brown, “Did the Prophet Say It or Not? The Literal, Historical, and Effective Truth of Hadiths in Early Sunnism,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 129, no. 2 (2009): 259–85; Jonathan Brown, “Even If It’s Not True It’s True: Using Unreliable Hadīths in Sunni Islam,” Islamic Law and Society 18, no. 1 (2011): 1–52, https://doi.org/10.1163/156851910X517056.

44

For all that, the “charisma” of Prophetic ḥadīth, to use an expression by Brown,

tends to still dominate the purview of research in the field.78 He suggests astutely that

the authority of ḥadīth stemmed not from the technical evaluations of their authenticity,

but from “the intimidating power of knowledge phrased in the prophetic idiom,”

signaled by the prefatory formula: “the Messenger of God said.”79 But where does this

leave the non-Prophetic traditions? The collections put together on the authority of Ibn

al-Mubārak, the paragon of both zuhd and ḥadīth, comprise for the most part traditions

attributed not to Muḥammad but to his Companions and their Successors. This is also the

case with Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s Kitāb al-Ṣamt, similarly comprising about a third of Prophetic

material. How then did such texts acquire their authority? This is where Burge’s notion

of the ḥadīth as an abstract entity may be useful: “A ḥadīṯ compilation has significance,

not because of the person who wrote it, or because of the person to whom the

statements are attributed, but because the ḥadīṯ within a collection come from the ‘ḥadīṯ

literature.’”80

78 Brown, “Did the Prophet Say It or Not?,” 280.

79 Brown, 280.

80 Burge, “The ‘Ḥadīṯ Literature,’” 81.

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Apart from the work of scholars like Leah Kinberg, Melchert and others

interested in the history of zuhd, the sources I examine in this dissertation have suffered

a relative neglect in Islamic Studies. This has resulted in gaps in our knowledge and

understanding of how medieval Muslims actually used ḥadīth, and what gave it meaning

and power. The charismatic figures named in the isnād absolutely do matter, and I

continue to pay attention to the attribution of reports for insights on their provenance.

But in the context of our sources, no less significant is the ethical message of a ḥadīth and

the way in which it is conveyed in the matn. Since this is a study concerned with the idea

of ghība, I naturally focus on the terms and tropes, and the metaphors and motifs that

were used to talk about it in the early Islamic period. Beyond the cultural history of

gossip that this allows us to portray, I believe this approach has significant

methodological implications. Tracing the persistence or evolution of such motifs and

topoi across variant traditions can often help evaluate the relationship between them, a

strategy regularly used by scholars of early Jewish and Christian history. Martha

Himmelfarb’s monograph on the ancient apocalyptic literatures on hell serves as a

valuable model, which I use as a guide to some of the Muslim eschatological traditions

related to sinful speech. As a general contribution on the literature of traditionist ethics,

this method of analysis reminds us that what made a ḥadīth memorable and useful was

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often the particular motif or imagery it employs, such as the trope of a decaying corpse

by the wayside associated with parables on the repulsive nature of ghība. Such textual or

narrative elements were sometimes indeed just tropes, easily traveling along circuits of

oral communication. But identifying a text as a trope can also help uncover surprising

relationships and moments of cultural originality, as when a Prophetic ḥadīth turns out

to be challenging an old Christian apothegm and arguing contrary to wisdom that in fact,

“gossip is worse than fornication.”

Mining the material on ghība across a swath of texts from largely disparate times

and places certainly risks overlooking the specificities of their local contexts, and cannot

do justice to the circumstances of their individual production. However, these texts draw

upon more or less the same available corpus of ḥadīth, and therefore reflect a larger,

shared intellectual history. Indeed, by linking citations across these sources, I implicitly

demonstrate that the persistent concern with gossip was not only—and not necessarily—

the effect of the realities of everyday life as witnessed by moralizing preachers, but

largely also the product of an old tradition of thought—one that in some respects

actually goes back even farther to the late antique monastic world. From the

Apophthegmata first put together most likely in late-fifth century Palestine, to the Arabic

compilations I examine from late-tenth century Iran, the ideals of a virtuous life were

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captured in the language of traditional wisdom as preserved in the words and deeds of

pious men as well as some women. In the Islamic context, this body of wisdom took the

distinctive form of ḥadīth, which remains the common denominator of the sources I

study, and which included not only traditions about the Prophet, but indeed of other

prophets past and of righteous men among the early generations of Muslims.

* * *

The rest of the chapters in this dissertation are primarily organized by theme,

intersecting with a focus on the particular genre of source material analyzed in each

case. I present a survey of the zuhd movement and its textual tradition in Chapter 2,

situating the Islamic ethics of speech in its religious and intellectual context. I review the

current scholarship on the definition of zuhd as well as the question of its relationship to

the Christian monastic tradition. The notion of “disciplining the tongue” serves as a

guide to both this broader historical question and to the specific problem of gossip. The

legacy of the early zuhhādd came to be thoroughly appropriated by the Sufi tradition

upon its emergence, and the early movement is therefore often studied in that context.

For the purposes of focusing on its own historical context, this dissertation looks at zuhd

without reference to Sufism, though I do discuss the relationship. The issue of silence

has not received much attention in the scholarship on Islamic piety, but I demonstrate

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that speech etiquettes were a paramount concern for the early Muslim renunciants. The

traditions on speech ethics in the zuhd literature form the backdrop to Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s

Kitāb al-Ṣamt, which I situate here in terms of its genre and context.

In Chapter 3, I examine the normative texts on ghība as a way to map the

semantic range of gossip and slander in early Islamic thought. In addition to the ḥadīth

which define ghība and its cognates, a major focus of this chapter is on tafsīr literature as

we look at the Qurʾānic pronouncements related to ghība. Given the lexicological

interests of much exegesis, the tafsīr tradition serves as a useful guide to the Arabic

vocabulary of gossip and slander and their various connotations. Moreover, early

exegetical commentaries frequently involve efforts to situate specific verses in concrete

historical contexts supposedly behind the “occasion of revelation.” Scholars in Qurʾānic

Studies in the Western academy have come to largely dismiss such traditions as

irrelevant at best, and fanciful imagination at worst. For our purposes, however, they

remain an insightful source of cultural history as they vividly illustrate the ideas and

assumptions that early Muslims brought to bear on scripture, and how they used the

Qurʾān as a basis for moral exempla. I demonstrate how Muslims relied on exegetical

tales to elaborate and reflect on the kinds of talk that count as immoral backbiting.

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We then turn to a very different discourse in Chapter 4, which looks at ghība in

the fiqh literature. As a moral sin rather than a criminal offense, ghība is strictly not a

problem of law. However, it appears to have come up in early Islamic legal debates in

relation to two specific issues: ritual purity and fasting. To put this in perspective, I draw

attention to earlier historical precedents for slander as a ritual problem in the religious

traditions of the Near East. The question for Muslims was whether sinful speech violates

one’s state of ritual purity thereby requiring ablution (wuḍūʾ), and whether it nullifies

one’s fast. The fiqh literature and other sources indicate that this was a matter of some

debate in the early community. In particular, a handful of early scholars especially in

Kūfa are known to have held views contrary to the eventual consensus, and traditions

about them continue to circulate in the zuhd literature. I suggest that their irrelevance to

law in fact lent them greater force in traditionist ethics, as models of exemplary pious

practice with regard to shunning gossip and backbiting.

The conception of sinful speech as a problem in bodily ethics underlies the theme

of the final chapter, which examines at length the Islamic reception of the Qurʾānic

analogy of ghība as tantamount to eating one’s dead brother. The image thoroughly

captured the early Muslim imagination. The rotting corpse as a symbol of decay, both

material and moral, was a central object of contemplation for the zuhd movement. In

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Islamic eschatology, hell is frequently populated by slanderers facing measure-for-

measure punishments, and thus made to eat their own flesh. Such scenes are said to have

been witnessed by the Prophet during his Night Journey and Ascension, thus placing the

concern with ghība in a central religious narrative. I analyze the punishment motifs in

Muslim imaginations of hell in relation to their counterparts in Jewish, Christian and

Zoroastrian apocalyptic texts, which highlights the unique features of the Islamic

tradition. The flesh metaphor was ultimately central to Muslim ideas about ghība,

because it powerfully conveyed a fundamental lesson in speech ethics. To speak ill of

another was not only to hurt the other, but to affect oneself—for it was to consume, and

to be consumed by, sin. From everyday ethics to eschatology, the lessons on ghība

illustrated by pious traditions thus encapsulated a foundational principle of Islamic

ethics: the self was the seat of moral reform.

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CHAPTER 2

Imprisoning the Tongue: Early Islamic Piety and the Ethics of Speech

There supposedly lived during the reign of Roman emperor Hadrian (r. 117–138

CE) a Greek sage named Secundus who became known for his radical vow of silence, and

whose dramatic life story gained some popularity in the late-antique Near East, among

the Christian monastic circles of Iraq around the seventh century CE. The legend goes

that as a student of philosophy in Athens, Secundus encountered the shocking

proposition that all women are whores.81 Offended by the possibility that this would

implicate even his own mother, he felt compelled to seek verification by putting the

claim to “test” (imtiḥān wa tajriba, as worded in the Arabic textual tradition). Secundus

returned to his homeland to find his mother now living as a widow. Unrecognized as a

grown man, he managed to persuade her to sleep with him for one night in exchange for

81 Such is the maxim in the Greek vita of Secundus, which also survives in a number of languages including Armenian, Syriac, Arabic and Ethiopic. The Arabic text says here: “In the books of wisdom and accounts of the philosophers, he found a statement (kalām) written as follows, that among women are none who are chaste but rather fornicators” (innā l-nisāʾ laysa fīhinna ḥurra bal zawānī). Martin Heide and Stefan Weninger, Secundus taciturnus: die arabischen, äthiopischen und syrischen Textzeugen einer didaktischen Novelle aus der römischen Kaiserzeit, Äthiopistische Forschungen 81 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2014), 70. On the text’s complex transmission, its sources in ancient Greek myth, and the particular significance of the copious Arabic recension, see Oliver Overwien, “Secundus the Silent Philosopher in the Ancient and Eastern Tradition,” in Fictional Storytelling in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond, ed. Carolina Cupane and Bettina Krönung (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 338–364.

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money. They remained chaste through the night, but when Secundus eventually

revealed his identity, the mother was horrified and, overtaken by shame, hanged herself.

Blaming the tragedy on his own tongue, Secundus vowed to never speak again for the

rest of his life.

Salacious misogyny and the Oedipal motif aside, the crux of this tale remains the

vow that lends Secundus his fame as “the Silent Philosopher.” It is curious that he

blames the faculty of speech rather than his own preposterous plan, as if the revelation

of his identity is only where things fall apart. In the Arabic recension, preserving an

extensive version of the text, Secundus is said to have exclaimed: “O wicked tongue, you

have killed your mother!” (ayyuha al-lisān al-radīʾ qatalta ummak).82 The most widely

recorded versions of the narrative in extant Syriac and Armenian manuscripts focus

mainly on the alleged episode in which Secundus was summoned by the Caesar and his

extraordinary resolve tested by a threat of execution, but he still would not give up; in

fact, Hadrian had secretly instructed the executioner to kill Secundus if he did break his

82 Heide and Weninger, Secundus taciturnus, 75; Ben Edwin Perry, Secundus, the Silent Philosopher : The Greek Life of Secundus, Critically Edited and Restored so Far as Possible, Together with Translations of the Greek and Oriental Versions, the Latin and Oriental Texts, and a Study of the Tradition, Philological Monographs 22 (Chapel Hill, NC: American Philological Association, 1964), 126.

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vow.83 It was precisely this steadfast discipline that came to be admired by Eastern

Christian ascetics like the great Isaac of Nineveh (d. ca. 700), originally from Beth Qaṭraye

(Qatar), who alludes to Secundus in the example of an unnamed philosopher

demonstrating a lesson on patience: “One of them had mastered the will of the body to

such an extent that…he did not even allow his mind to be disturbed when the sword was

drawn.”84 Within a generation or so of Isaac, his Muslim counterparts in Iraq would often

admire the spiritual aspirations of monks like him, including their devotion to mastery

of the will and discipline of the body. They would also have their own pious exemplars to

boast of, some of whom regarded speech as a serious problem.

The practice of silence as an ethical or ascetic discipline has a long and vast

history, ranging from the so-called “Pythagorean silence” in the Hellenistic context, to

the concept and practice of mauna in various Indic religions, to the Benedictine and

83 Adequately impressed, Hadrian proceeded to engage in a dialogue with Secundus, convincing him to respond in writing to a series of questions like “what is God?”, “what is the universe?” and so on. On how the Secundus legend relates to the larger philosophical tradition of question-and-answer dialogues, see: Lloyd W. Daly, “The Altercatio Hadriani et Epicteti and the Question-and-Answer Dialogue” (Ph.D., University of Illinois, 1936).

84 S. P. Brock, “Secundus the Silent Philosopher: Some Notes on the Syriac Tradition,” Rheinisches Museum Für Philologie, Neue Folge, 121, no. 1 (1978): 94–95. Though he wrote in Syriac, Isaac was influential in the Christian-Arabic literature of the ʿAbbāsid era; it may be interesting to note that the tenth-century redaction of his teachings by Ḥanūn b. al-Ṣalt uses the term zuhd (and rahbana, “monasticism”) to denote his pious maxims. See: David Thomas and Alex Mallett, eds., Christian-Muslim Relations: A Bibliographical History, Volume 2 (900–1050) (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 160.

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other rules of monasticism in medieval Europe.85 In the Islamic tradition, a significant

discourse on the ethics of speech took shape in the eighth and ninth centuries CE. Stories

were circulated of pious men admired for their reticence or even remarkable feats of

silence, and ḥadīth were compiled on the manners of talk that good Muslims should

adhere to. The tongue was regarded in this discourse the most troublesome organ of the

human body, as conveyed by the striking image in a saying attributed by a devout Kufan

named to ʿAbdallāh b. Masʿūd, the notable Companion of the Prophet: “By Him besides

whom there is no other god, there is nothing on earth more in need of long

imprisonment than the tongue!”86 Further extending that metaphor, and seemingly

85 A concise overview on silence in the Christian monastic tradition is available in: Scott G. Bruce, “The Tongue Is a Fire: The Discipline of Silence in Early Medieval Monasticism (400-1100),” in The Hands of the Tongue: Essays on Deviant Speech, ed. Edwin D. Craun (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007), 3–32. For a schematic comparison with Hindu and Buddhist asceticism: Mayeul de Dreuille, The Rule of Saint Benedict and the Ascetic Traditions from Asia to the West, trans. Mark Hargreaves (Herefordshire, UK: Gracewing, 2000), chap. VII. On the Pythagoreans, and more broadly on critiques of loquaciousness in Mediterranean traditions of wisdom from the Hellenistic period through late antiquity, see: Daniele Pevarello, “Criticism of Verbosity in Ancient Philosophical and Early Christian Writings: Jesus’ Critique of the ‘Polylogia’ of Pagan Prayers (Matthew 6:7) in Its Graeco-Roman Context,” in Religio-Philosophical Discourses in the Mediterranean World: From Plato, through Jesus, to Late Antiquity, ed. Anders Klostergaard Petersen and George H. van Kooten (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 244–275.

86 Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ, Kitāb al-Zuhd (Medina: Maktabat al-Dār, 1404/1984), 2:548–49, no. 285; Hannād b. al-Sarī, Kitāb al-Zuhd, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Faryawāʾī (Kuwait: Dār al-Khulafāʾ li-l-Kitāb al-Islāmī, 1406/1985), 2:532, no. 1095; Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim, Zuhd, 26, no. 23–24; Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 190, no. 16; 559, no. 617. There also exists a truncated variant of the same quote: “nothing is more worthy of long imprisonment than the tongue,” (mā min shayʾ aḥaqq bi-ṭūl al-sijn min al-lisān), reported in: ʿAbdallāh Ibn al-Mubārak, Kitāb al-Zuhd wa-al-raqāʾiq, ed. Ḥabīb al-

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echoing a famous ḥadīth that labels this world a prison for believers (sijn al-muʾmin) but a

paradise for infidels, the ascetic legend Fuḍayl b. ʿIyāḍ (d. 187/803) would thus describe

the difficult challenge of disciplining speech: “The prison of the tongue is the believer’s

prison, and there is nobody in greater affliction (ghamm) than the one whose tongue is

imprisoned;” this was because, he declared, “neither the pilgrimage, nor frontier

residence (ribāṭ), nor jihād is more difficult than arresting the tongue (ḥabs al-lisān).”87

Centered on this notion of restraint, and under the rubric of the Arabic term ḥifẓ

al-lisān or “guarding the tongue,” a tradition of speech ethics thus developed in Islamic

thought and practice by at least around the late-second/eighth century. An epitome of

this literature, and the text that became a classic on the subject, is the Kitāb al-Ṣamt of Ibn

Abī l-Dunyā (d. 281/894). As discussed in this chapter, the text came out of a wider body

of sources representing the zuhd tradition, most notably the early collection attributed

Raḥmān al-Aʿẓamī (Malegaon, India: Majlis Iḥyāʾ al-Maʿārif, 1966), 141, no. 384; Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim, Zuhd, 26, no. 25; Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 141, no. 23.

87 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 577, no. 655. The sijn al-muʾmin dictum, widely invoked in the literature of Islamic asceticism, was deemed ṣāḥīḥ by a number of ḥadīth scholars and appears in the chapters on zuhd in the collections of Muslim, Tirmidhī and Ibn Mājah, as indexed in: A. J. Wensinck et al., Concordance et indices de la tradition musulmane (Leiden: Brill, 1936), 2:431, s.v. sijn: “al-dunyā sijn al-muʾmin wa jannat al-kāfir.” On the historical significance of Fuḍayl b. ʿIyāḍ, see the following noteworthy studies: Jacqueline Chabbi, “Fuḍayl b. ‘Iyāḍ‚ Un précurseur du Hanbalisme (187/803),” Bulletin d’études orientales 30 (1978): 331–45; Deborah G. Tor, “God’s Cleric: Al-Fuḍayl b. ʿIyāḍ and the Transition from Caliphal to Prophetic Sunna,” in Islamic Cultures, Islamic Contexts, ed. Behnam Sadeghi et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 195–228.

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to Ibn al-Mubārak (d. 181/797). The advocates of this tradition embraced a self-conscious

piety and a variety of ascetic dispositions, and their scholarly contributions defined the

social and religious landscape of ninth century Iraq, a formative time and place for

several key movements in Islamic history, including Ḥanbalism and Sufism.

In the discourse of Islamic piety, the censure of ghība was part of a broader

regimen of proper speech etiquettes. Current scholarship on zuhd has dealt little with

the discipline of the tongue that I argue was quite central to the conception of

renunciant piety for many of its advocates. In this chapter, I map the intellectual history

of this ethical tradition, situating it in context and attempting to trace its broader

contours to show how the concern with speech ethics ultimately pervaded beyond the

piety movement and contributed to the work of someone like Ibn Abī l-Dunyā. As a

whole, these texts bear witness to considerable anxieties in the medieval Islamic Near

East about the power and perils of speech, and reflect an urban social world still largely

defined by oral culture. Nonetheless, in keeping with the trends towards what would

eventually constitute mainstream Sunnī definitions of a moral worldview, what we find

in the sources is by and large an ethics of moderation and a general appreciation for

reticence, rather than a celebration of spectacular extremes like the fabled vow of

Secundus.

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I. Debating Speech in ʿAbbāsid Baghdad: al-Jāḥiẓ on the Virtues of Silence

The boldest if indirect evidence for the existence of a flourishing early Islamic

debate on the virtues of silence may lie in a short text on the topic by none other than al-

Jāḥiẓ (d. 255/869), the prolific writer and thinker from Baṣra who was one of the pioneers

of classical Arabic prose and had a lifelong interest in human language. Titled Risālat

Tafḍīl al-nuṭq ʿalā l-ṣamt (Epistle on the Preference of Speech over Silence), the text

belongs to his large and diverse corpus of essays collectively referred to as the Rasāʾil.

Taking the iconic classical Arabic form of the risāla or epistolary monograph, these

essays provide occasion for al-Jāḥiẓ to engage with a single topic from any number of

social, political or theological issues: from drinking wine or the feeling of homesickness,

to the vices of jealousy or pride, to the merits of Turkish slave-soldiers or the faults of

Christian theological polemics. These writings thus embody what had been deemed by

Charles Pellat’s somewhat old-fashioned typology as the “original works” of al-Jāḥiẓ, in

comparison to the more derivative nature of his adab anthologies. Read historically

though, these essays not only represent literary exercises and intellectual disputations,

but may also evoke the real social context in which al-Jāḥiẓ was writing.

The Risālat Tafḍīl al-nuṭq is staged as a response to an unnamed addressee who had

allegedly penned an apologia for the virtues of silence. With characteristic wit and

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eloquence, al-Jāḥiẓ presents his literary polemic, critiquing the logic and reasoning of his

assumed opponent and making counter-arguments for his own position. Before he can

do so, however, he must first represent his interlocutor. Thus, following a formulaic

opening invocation of blessings upon the addressee, the text introduces its premise and

occasion:

I have read your epistle (kitāb) in which you described the virtues of silence and explained the merits of keeping quiet. You outlined their obvious occasions, and approved the benefits ensuing from them. You went through diverse sayings about them, and stated that you find silence (ṣamt) preferable to words (kalām) in most contexts, even if they are correct. And you find quietness (sukūt) more commendable than talking (manṭiq) in many situations, even if it is right to do so. You claimed that the tongue is a pathway for obscenity (al-khanā), bringing misfortune (balā) upon its owner. And you said: “Indeed, guarding the tongue is more ideal than getting embroiled in speech” (tawarruṭ fī l-kalām).88

al-Jāḥiẓ thus summarizes the case for ḥifẓ al-lisān that he intends to criticize. Certainly we

must note what makes the text typically Jāḥiẓian, a certain irony evident already in the

opening passage above. Thus he alludes to his addressee’s elaborate use of words in

defense of silence, even relying on various quotations (funūn al-aqāwīl) by others who

spoke on the matter—including the Persian Emperor Anushirwān. In other words,

88 al-Jāḥiẓ, Rasāʾil al-Jāḥiẓ, ed. ʿAbd al-Salām Hārūn, Maktabat al-Jāḥiẓ (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjī, 1964), 4:229. The epistle has been translated as “Why Speech is Superior to Silence” in Jim Colville, Sobriety and Mirth: A Selection of the Shorter Writings of al-Jāhiz (London: Kegan Paul, 2002), 145–150.

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arguments for silence cannot but draw on the full resources of Arabic eloquence and

exuberance, and al-Jāḥiẓ proceeds to a litany of adjectives that his addressee uses to label

different personalities: the reticent as “forbearing” (ḥalīm) or “intelligent” (labīb), the

eloquent as “verbose” (mafriṭ) or “prolix” (muṭnib), and so on.89 Thus offering not only a

satire, according to Hefter, this risāla more than any other exemplifies what he calls the

“double-edged parody” in many of al-Jāḥiẓ’s writings.

Interestingly as it happens, we do have a specific, potentially historical evidence

of the kind of eloquent arguments for silence that al-Jāḥiẓ may have been thinking of, in

the form of a putative sermon by an early eighth-century Egyptian jurist named Yazīd b.

Abī Ḥabīb, discussed later in this chapter. Of course, the purported addressee here

represents a literary convention, familiar across the writings of al-Jāḥiẓ and recently

studied by Thomas Hefter in his monograph on this phenomenon. In Hefter’s analysis,

what he terms the “epistolary frame” of texts like Tafḍīl al-nuṭq is part of a distinct,

sophisticated authorial strategy on the part of al-Jāḥiẓ, one that allows him to construct

a dialogic relationship with the reader in the service of greater rhetorical persuasion. It

would be a mistake, in other words, to assume this addressee to have been a real

historical figure—even though Hefter takes care to not rule out that possibility

89 Thomas H. Hefter, The Reader in Al-Jāḥiẓ: The Epistolary Rhetoric of an Arabic Prose Master (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 82.

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altogether, especially in some cases where al-Jāḥiẓ actually names an individual patron

or recipient.

But to regard the question of a specific referent as largely moot should not mean

isolating the text entirely from its historical context. After all, al-Jāḥiẓ was writing

precisely around the same time and place that witnessed the circulation of a fairly

extensive body of moralist traditions advocating ḥifẓ al-lisān. As such, al-Jāḥiẓ’s use of this

particular phrase in the quotation above, and his attribution of it to his interlocutor, is

telling. It strongly suggests not only that we can read this text in light of the pious

discourse of speech ethics, but also that the Tafḍīl al-nuṭq is al-Jāḥiẓ’s ironic and possibly

even polemical response to that literature. Such a reading would even agree with, and

further support, Michael Cooperson’s provocative interpretation of al-Jāḥiẓ’s famous

“Book of Misers” (al-Bukhalāʾ) as a reference to renunciant ascetics, in particular the

proto-Sunnī ahl al-ḥadīth community whose members came to theological confrontation

with the ʿAbbāsīd caliphs during al-Jāḥīz’s lifetime, and in which as a Muʿtazilī he sided

with the latter.90 The advocates of zuhd, according to Cooperson, were known for many

90 Michael Cooperson, “Al-Jāḥiẓ, the Misers, and the Proto-Sunnī Ascetics,” in Al-Jāhiẓ: A Muslim Humanist for Our Time, ed. Arnim Heinemann et al., Beiruter Texte Und Studien 119 (Beirut: Orient-Institut, 2009), 197–220. Cooperson’s argument seems to have been approved, in passing, by Christopher Melchert, “Exaggerated Fear in the Early Islamic Renunciant Tradition,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 21, no. 3 (2011): 296, http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1356186311000241.

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of the characteristics displayed by Jaḥīẓ’s imaginary misers—including deliberate

embrace of discomfort, extreme scrupulosity, an obsessive wariness about the slightest

possibility of transgressions, and so on. But whereas the Bukhālāʾ in Cooperson’s

interpretation involves “talking about one thing to mean another,” what we have here in

al-Jāḥiẓ’s epistle on silence is a reference to a discourse that did in fact exist, in more or

less the same terms as he spells out.

If a thinly veiled response to the ascetic advocates of silence, the Tafḍīl al-nuṭq

would thus testify to the prominence of their ideas. Doubly ironic, then, is the fact that

al-Jāḥiẓ himself penned another epistle advocating reticence, in his Kitmān al-sirr wa-ḥifẓ

al-lisān (Keeping Secrets and Holding the Tongue). This is written for an addressee whom

he praises for embodying perfection in every manner, except for two blameworthy

traits: “speaking at the wrong time and forfeiting a secret by broadcasting it.”91 Yet al-

Jāḥiẓ admits to not knowing a single person of his time (dahrī) whose “control (ḍabt) of

his tongue” or whose ability to keep secrets he can approve. The essay thus focuses on

the control of speech in relation specifically to secrets, hence the title kitmān al-sirr. It

presents a rich and sophisticated discussion on indiscretion and what is portrayed as the

91 “waḍʿ al-qawl fī ghayr mawḍiʿihi wa-iḍāʿat al-sirr bi-idhāʿatihi,” al-Jāḥiẓ, Rasāʾil al-Jāḥiẓ, 1:141; William M. Hutchins, trans., Nine Essays of al-Jāḥiẓ (New York: Peter Lang, 1989), 14.

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almost inherent quality of secrets that they need to be shared.92 Al-Jāḥiẓ reflects at

length on human nature and some all too familiar social behavior, including the

ubiquitous phenomena of rumor and gossip. It is in people’s disposition (ṭabʿ al-insān), he

writes, to love giving and seeking news (maḥabbat al-ikhbār wa-l-istikhbār).93

Thus, although it reproduces some of the same Prophetic ḥadīth and wise

admonitions against excess or futile speech as preached by the ascetics, al-Jāḥiẓ

maintains a pragmatic outlook throughout his essay on ḥifẓ al-lisān. The tongue is merely

an “instrument to be used” (adāt mustaʿmala) and not in itself to be praised or blamed.94

After all, the same faculty of speech that can be blamed for slanderous gossip is also what

enables religious and historical knowledge by means of akhbār. This subtle approach

allows al-Jāḥiẓ to ultimately make a more effective and rational case for the dignity and

virtue of controlling one’s tongue. He suggests that the person to blame for the divulging

of a secret is not the one who is told it, but the person whose secret it was in the first

place, for he failed to restrain his tongue.95 The person of intelligence—his unnamed

92 This aspect of the essay is the subject of a study by Ruqayya Yasmine Khan, Self and Secrecy in Early Islam (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2008), chap. 3.

93 al-Jāḥiẓ, Rasāʾil al-Jāḥiẓ, 1:143; Hutchins, Nine Essays of al-Jāḥiẓ, 15.

94 al-Jāḥiẓ, Rasāʾil al-Jāḥiẓ, 1:142; Hutchins, Nine Essays of al-Jāḥiẓ, 15.

95 al-Jāḥiẓ, Rasāʾil al-Jāḥiẓ, 1:147; Hutchins, Nine Essays of al-Jāḥiẓ, 18.

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addressee—is therefore advised to carefully consider the merits of restrained speech,

however difficult. The Kitmān al-sirr thus serves as a fascinating counterpoint to the Tafḍīl

al-nutq, and their diametrically opposed premises illustrates the literary ethos of adab

that al-Jāḥiẓ has perfected. Nevertheless, the two essays present complementary

reflections on the power of human speech, despite the contradictory stances they seem

to adopt on the notion of ḥifẓ al-lisān. They both demonstrate al-Jāḥiẓ’s engagement with

a topic that was clearly a major cultural preoccupation at the time, namely the proper

etiquettes of the tongue.

II. Zuhd: The Movement for Pious Renunciation

Ethical norms concerning good and bad speech can be found across the classical

ḥadīth literature, which remains a primary locus of moral thought in Islam. In the early

period, however, the historical backdrop for the transmission of pious Muslim teachings

on speech ethics was largely defined by the zuhd movement of the second/eighth

century. The textual legacy of that tradition, represented by a genre of so-called kutub al-

zuhd or “books of piety,” uses the phrase ḥifẓ al-lisān as a rubric for ideas on the subject.

This is not to say that the concept or the expression “guarding the tongue” did not have

currency before or outside of the zuhd literature. The Muwaṭṭaʾ of Mālik b. Anas (d.

179/795), arguably our earliest extant book of Islamic law and tradition, includes the

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heading “What has been commanded about being guarded in speech” (mā yuʾmar bi-hi

min al-taḥaffuẓ fī al-kalām) for a pair of reports in a section at the end of the book dealing

with etiquettes of speech.96 The zuhd literature, on the other hand, prominently

advocates a large corpus of such traditions on disciplining the tongue.

To contextualize the discourse of Islamic speech ethics therefore requires us to

understand the piety movement of the second and third centuries AH. Modern

scholarship on zuhd has devoted considerable energy to clarifying the meaning of the

term and the range of ideas and practices it came to denote at various times. Despite the

occasional qualm, zuhd is still frequently translated as “asceticism.” Specialists

increasingly favor the term “pious renunciation,” while some use have rendered it as

“abstinence” or even simply “piety.” All of these capture to varying degrees the lexical

96 This is in the so-called vulgate recension i.e. that of Yaḥyā b. Yaḥyā al-Laythī (d. 234/838), as for example in the following copy: BnF MS Arabe 4538, fol. 107a (dated 576 CE/1181 AH). The bāb is one of twelve such headings on various aspects of good or bad speech, and appears in the final “miscellany” chapter (kitāb al-jāmiʿ) of the Muwaṭṭaʾ. The section on speech as a whole, although not demarcated as such in the manuscript tradition (nor in the recent Moroccan critical edition: Majlis al-ʿIlmī al-ʿAlā, 2013, 2:346–54), is often separately labeled as kitāb al-kalām or the “Book of Speech” in some modern editions, such as in the collation of eight recensions: Mālik b. Anas, al-Muwaṭṭaʾ, ed. Salīm b. ʿĪd al-Hilālī (Dubai: Majmūʿat al-Furqan al-Tijāriyya, 2003), 4:500. The textual division into thematic, frequently-brief abwāb do appear already in our earliest albeit undated witness to the Muwaṭṭaʾ, papyrus fragment PERF 731 which includes the phrase “bāb al-targhīb fī l-ṣadaqa.” See: Nabia Abbott, Studies in Arabic Literary Papyri (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 2:114. As for the vexed question of dating the compilation of the Muwaṭṭaʾ, see the recent overview and discussion appears by Jonathan E. Brockopp, Muhammad’s Heirs: The Rise of Muslim Scholarly Communities, 622-950 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 105–110.

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sense of the term, meaning “to relinquish” something or “abstain from it,” as conveyed

in the key expression zuhd fī l-dunyā, “turning away from the world.”97 Of course, what

actually entails this withdrawal then becomes the question. Surveying the tradition as a

whole, Geneviève Gobillot has observed a two-fold dimension to zuhd: “The term

embraces numerous nuances, divided between two principal meanings: on the one hand,

‘renunciation’ in the sense of detachment, of indifference to things of this inferior world;

on the other, ‘asceticism’ in the sense of privation, mortification, tests imposed on the

carnal soul (nafs).”98 As Gobillot proceeds to note, the concrete aspects of life to which

zuhd might apply were subject to considerable diversity of interpretation in the course of

Muslim religious history. The study of ideas and practices related to zuhd, moreover,

have raised persistent questions about the relationship of asceticism in Islam to that in

other religious traditions, especially Christian monasticism. In fact, a frequently

recurring objection to the interpretation of zuhd as “asceticism” stems from a certain

wariness about the term’s predominant connotations, though it needs to be recognized

that even Christian asceticism in the late antique period was hardly a monolithic

enterprise.

97 Edward William Lane, An Arabic-English Lexicon (London: Williams and Norgate, 1863), s.v. زھد.

98 Geneviève Gobillot, “Zuhd,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, ed. P. J. Bearman et al., vol. XI (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 560a.

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A. Asceticism between Late Antiquity and Islam

It is true that generally speaking, Islamic history mostly presents what Peter

Brown might describe as “less dramatically world-challenging forms” of religiosity

compared to that of the “holy men” of late antiquity who were the subjects of his own

groundbreaking studies.99 But it would be a mistake to assume a priori that the

development of early Islamic asceticism happened in total distinction let alone isolation

from the religious context of Syria and Iraq—home to the rich traditions of Syriac

Christian monasticism. The question of “influence” or “borrowing,” as usually dubbed,

has long been a major preoccupation of modern scholarship on the origins of Sufism in

particular. Put simplistically, the debate concerns whether asceticism and mysticism in

Islam are to be recognized as indigenous developments derived internally from its

primary sources, or to be understood in relation to the influence of other religious

traditions in the milieu of early Islamic history. Needless to say, the problem thus framed

is reductive and not necessarily helpful to the study of historical movements in their

own right. Moreover, as Christopher Melchert has judiciously observed, attempts to

answer the question are often fraught with methodological problems, such that

“whatever seems to fit with the fourth/tenth-century Sunnī synthesis is assumed to be

99 The phrase is from Peter Brown, A Life of Learning: Charles Homer Haskins Lecture for 2003, ACLS Occasional Paper 55 (New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 2003), 12.

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authentically Qurʾānic and prophetic, whatever fits less well is assumed to have extra-

Islamic origins.”100

The bibliography on the relationship between zuhd and monasticism is vast and

growing. Following the influential early works of Louis Massignon and Tor Andrae,

scholars have more recently explored the same question with a generally more refined

approach.101 The paradigm of late antiquity has helped to reorient the framing of the

debate, while the advantage of a larger and more diverse body of evidence has

considerably advanced our knowledge of early Islamic piety. Arabic inscriptions from the

late-first century and early-second century AH presents a wealth of data on the religious

beliefs of early Muslims, and reflects an overwhelming concern with divine forgiveness

and the afterlife, frequently expressed in explicitly Qurʾānic language.102 A question then

remains as to the subsequent development of these earliest evident modes of piety.

Melchert suggests an inevitable tempering in the wake of mass conversion, such that

100 Christopher Melchert, “Asceticism,” in EI3, ed. Kate Fleet et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2007), http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_COM_0022.

101 Louis Massignon, Essay on the Origins of the Technical Language of Islamic Mysticism (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997); Tor Andræ, In the Garden of Myrtles: Studies in Early Islamic Mysticism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987).

102 Robert Hoyland, “Early Islam as a Late Antique Religion,” in The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity, ed. Scott Fitzgerald Johnson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 1062–63; Christopher Melchert, “Origins and Early Sufism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Sufism, ed. Lloyd Ridgeon (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 4.

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“ascetical, renunciant piety came under suspicion of demanding too much by the later

eighth century.”103

Muslim articulations of renunciant piety in the eighth century clearly took place

in a world populated by Christian monks. Elizabeth Key Fowden has insightfully argued

that this was as much a matter of ideas as it was about Muslims’ experience of the

material landscape of Syria and Iraq, dotted with churches and monasteries.104 The zuhd

tradition itself testifies to this milieu, with accounts of the fabled meetings between

famous Muslims and pious Christians on the one hand, and on the other hand through

the anxieties of difference expressed through such well-known if non-canonial Prophetic

maxims as the idea that “there is no monasticism in Islam” (lā rahbāniyya fī l-islām), with

variants referring to celibacy (ṣarūra) or wandering (siyāḥa).105 Hence, in the words again

of Melchert, “the question of external influence should be reconceived as one of

103 Melchert, “Origins and Early Sufism,” 4.

104 Elizabeth Key Fowden, “The Lamp and the Wine Flask: Early Muslim Interest in Christian Monasticism,” in Islamic Crosspollinations: Interactions in the Medieval Middle East, ed. Anna Akasoy, James E. Montgomery, and Peter E. Pormann (Cambridge, UK: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2007), 1–28.

105 Massignon, Essay on the Origins of the Technical Language of Islamic Mysticism, 99; Sara Sviri, “Wa-Rahbānīyatan Ibtadaʿūhā: An Analysis of Traditions Concerning the Origin and Evaluation of Christian Monasticism,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 13 (1990): 195–208. Cf. Christian C. Sahner, “‘The Monasticism of My Community Is Jihad’: A Debate on Asceticism, Sex, and Warfare in Early Islam,” Arabica 64, no. 2 (June 13, 2017): 149–83, https://doi.org/10.1163/15700585-12341453.

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differentiation.”106 That is to say, historians must be attentive to the broader context

while also appreciating the development of distinctly Islamic identities as a historical

process.

There is no doubt that early Muslims renunciants frequently and explicitly

admired the religious devotion of Christian monks. Legend has it that the famed Baṣran

ascetic Mālik b. Dīnār (d. 130/747-48) once visited a monastery to borrow a book, and on

another occasion conversed about asceticism with a monk he met on a mountain.107 As

discussed later in this chapter, Ibn Abī l-Dunyā relates with admiration the tale of a

monk named Anthony that he claims to have found in a book, in addition to his redaction

of the Kitāb al-Ruhbān, compiling traditions of wisdom inspired by Christian monks. Such

texts evince the ability of Muslims to derive inter-confessional lessons on piety and

morality stripped of any overt reference to Christian theology, and indeed often “edited

to reflect the Muslim world-view.”108 It is true that the debates on the precise nature and

106 Melchert, “Asceticism.”

107 Ofer Livne-Kafri, “Early Muslim Ascetics and the World of Christian Monasticism,” Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 20 (1996): 107–8; Fowden, “The Lamp and the Wine Flask: Early Muslim Interest in Christian Monasticism,” 12.

108 Suleiman Mourad, “Christian Monks in Islamic Literature: A Preliminary Report on Some Arabic Apothegmata Patrum,” Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Interfaith 6, no. 2 (2004): 88. See the analysis of the K. al-Ruhbān by Bradley Bowman, “Refuge in the Bosoms of the Mountains: A

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extent of influence will remain inconclusive without concrete evidence of direct contact,

but it remains significant that some traditions in the zuhd literature openly acknowledge

their own textual dependence on the legacy of Christian asceticism.

i. The Desert Fathers and the Apophthegmata Patrum

The full extent of the debates on the relationship between Christian and Muslim

asceticism lie beyond the scope of this dissertation. Nevertheless, it has to be taken into

consideration given the comparative perspective that I bring to bear on the Islamic

traditions about sinful speech. As I demonstrate through a number of specific cases of

textual parallels, the pious Muslim concern with sins of the tongue represents a much

wider and older tradition of thought, traceable especially to the Desert Fathers who

stand as the fountainhead of Christian monasticism. Retreating into the deserts of Egypt,

especially at Scete in the Nitrian valley (Wādī al-Naṭrūn), these fourth century Christians

set a definitive precedent for the languages and practices of asceticism in the late

antique world. Traditions about these exemplary figures, their saying and their deeds,

came to be recorded in the Apophthegmata Patrum literature, likely compiled in Palestine

Ninth-Century Muslim Appraisal of Monastic Piety,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 30, no. 4 (2019): 459–82, https://doi.org/10.1080/09596410.2019.1690835.

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by the end of the fifth century CE.109 The Sayings of the Desert Fathers survive in a

bewildering variety of textual recensions in nearly all of the major languages of

Christianity in the Near East, including Arabic. Extant collections of Apophthegmata in

Arabic, known in the Coptic church as the Bustān al-ruhbān (Paradise of the Monks), are

copious and remarkably rich and diverse in content. Unfortunately, most of the

significant manuscripts remain unedited and the history of the Arabic recensions is yet

to be fully understood, though research is advancing rapidly.110 The earliest dated

manuscript, MS Strasbourg 4225, was copied in the year 288 AH/900–01 CE and comes

from the Monastery of St. Catherine in Mount Sinai. Zaborowski’s analysis of some of the

109 Studies on the Desert Fathers tradition include: Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness in Early Christian Monasticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Derwas J. Chitty, The Desert a City: An Introduction to the Study of Egyptian and Palestian Monasticism under the Christian Empire (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995); William Harmless, Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); John Wortley, An Introduction to the Desert Fathers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). For a concise overview on the textual redaction history of the Apophthegmata, see: John Wortley, ed., The Anonymous Sayings of the Desert Fathers: A Select Edition and Complete English Translation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 1–7.

110 On the state of research on Arabic Apophthegmata, see: Samuel Rubenson, “The Apophthegmata Patrum in Syriac, Arabic and Ethiopic. Satus Questionis,” Parole de l’Orient 36 (2011): 319–28; Jason Zaborowski, “Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: Approaching Arabic Recensions of the Apophthegmata Patrum,” in Monastic Education in Late Antiquity: The Transformation of Classical Paideia, ed. Lillian I. Larsen and Samuel Rubenson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 326–42. A major earlier study is that of Joseph-Marie Sauget, Une Traduction Arabe de La Collection d’Apophthegmata Patrum de ʿEnānīsōʿ: Étude Du Ms. Paris Arabe 253 et Des Témoins Parallèles, Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 495 (Louvain: E. Peeters, 1987).

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contents of this redaction in comparison to the Greek have revealed fascinating

adaptations of the sayings into an Arabic idiom, including the use of familiar Qurʾānic

expressions.111 In other words, Christian translations of the Apophthegmata into Arabic

already reflect the Islamic milieu.

Raising the issue of our incomplete knowledge of the reception of the Desert

Fathers traditions in the early Islamic context, Ute Pietruschka has observed: “Wir sind

also nicht in der Lage, zu bestimmen, welche Apophthegmata in welcher Form und in

welchem Wortlaut Anfang des 8. Jahrhundert umliefen – also der Zeit, als muslimische

Asketen sich mit dem christlichen Mönchtum vertraut machten.”112 Pietruschka

highlights the enigmatic references to Mālik b. Dīnār’s quest for a book at a monastery as

alluding to the possibility of Muslim access to the written literature of Christian

monasticism. Nonetheless, the question of oral versus written transmission of ascetic

wisdom remains difficult to settle. Moreover, textual parallels are not necessarily

111 Zaborowski, “Greek Thought, Arabic Culture,” 334–37. The manuscript was previously the subject of a well-known but unpublished dissertation, which I have not seen: Jean Mansour, Homélies et légendes religieuses: un florilège arabe chrétien du Xe siècle (Ms. Strasbourg 4225) (PhD dissertation, Strasbourg, 1972).

112 Ute Pietruschka, “Apophthegmata Patrum in muslimischem Gewand: Das Beispiel Mālik ibn Dīnār,” in Begegnungen in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart: Beiträge dialogischer Existenz ; eine freundschaftliche Festgabe zum 60. Geburtstag von Martin Tamcke, ed. Claudia Rammelt, Cornelia Schlarb, and Egbert Schlarb (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2015), 163.

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evidence of direct transmission, and Pietruschka speculates that some of the stories

found in Sufi literature resembling those in the Apophthegmata could have been ascribed

to Mālik b. Dīnār precisely because he was said to have had close contact with Christian

monks.113 Pietruschka’s study advocates an agenda for future studies in this field focused

on textual analysis by tracking motifs and other “stable” elements, akin to research in

gnomology.114 In fact, I would suggest that some of the parallels between the

Apophthegmata and the zuhd literature may have escaped the attention of previous

researchers due to a tendency to focus on overt stories of Christian-Muslim encounters,

involving a handful of exemplary figures such as Mālik b. Dīnār.115 A comparative reading

of the sources with a focus on select topic or themes can yield fruitful insights, as Ofer

Livne-Kafri’s earlier study has demonstrated to some extent.116

The significance of the Apophthegmata Patrum literature for the purposes of this

present study is the rich material it presents on gossip and slander. Speech was naturally

a major problem for the desert ascetics: they recognized its necessity for preaching the

113 Pietruschka, 170.

114 Pietruschka, 170.

115 See also, for instance: Sabino Chialà, “Les mystiques musulmans lecteurs des écrits chrétiens: quelques échos d’apophtegmes,” Proche-Orient chrétien 60, no. 3/4 (2010): 352.

116 Livne-Kafri, “Early Muslim Ascetics.”

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good word, but were all too troubled by the incessant risk of idle chatter and worse,

speaking ill of others.117 We shall see from the examples discussed in Chapters 3 and 4

that some of the Desert Fathers’ pronouncements on slander and backbiting had lasting

resonances well beyond the Christian monastic tradition, as they came to be reiterated

or restated in early Islamic literature. At the same time, such a comparative reading of

the sources also throws into relief the differences in vocabulary and the conceptual

innovations of Islamic thought on gossip and slander. For one thing, the ascetics of early

Islam were by and large operating in a rather different context than that of the Christian

monks. The latter dealt with backbiting and gossip as specifically monastic problems—

both eremitic and cenobitic, illustrated by the challenges they faced despite withdrawal

from society. The ethical teachings that emerge from their stories and pronouncements

on those challenges would come to have a long afterlife, including occasionally verbatim

echoes in the literature of Islamic piety. The Muslim reception of that earlier tradition,

however, appears to have been filtered through an already distinct vocabulary.

117 For two superb discussions on the problem of talk in the thought of the Desert Fathers, see: Burton-Christie, Word in the Desert, chap. 5; Maud Gleason, “Visiting and News: Gossip and Reputation Management in the Desert,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6, no. 3 (1998): 501–552.

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B. What is Zuhd?

Considerations of the broader historical context aside, the notion of zuhd as

invoked in Islamic sources obviously needs to be understood on its own terms.

Undertaking precisely the task of explaining “what is meant by zuhd?” is Leah Kinberg’s

now-classic article of that name.118 Surveying the definitions offered in sayings

attributed to a number of zuhhād (plural of zāhid, the one who practices zuhd) from the

first two or three centuries of Islam, she identifies some key, related concepts as

essential to zuhd: riḍā or contentment, tawakkul or trust in God, and qiṣar al-ʾamal, a “hope

for short duration” or a life lived with the persistent cognizance of and even yearning for

death. Related further is waraʿ, one of the most commonly used terms in Arabic for piety,

and which Kinberg characterizes as “scrupulosity” about ḥalāl and ḥarām i.e. the morally

and legally permissible versus that which is prohibited. For Muslim pietists, the riddle of

how to both reject the world and live in it, not least the problem of earning a living that

is morally sound, was solved through a kind of compromise, an emphasis on

“indifference” rather than outright abandonment: “the zāhid is most often introduced as

a human being who does not care about this world, but is involved in its affairs.”119 These

118 Leah Kinberg, “What Is Meant by Zuhd,” Studia Islamica, no. 61 (1985): 27–44, https://doi.org/10.2307/1595406.

119 Kinberg, 38.

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values of zuhd were thus for more than just a specialized religious elite, as also revealed

in statements to this effect by pious exemplars like Ibrāhīm b. Adham (d. 160/777) and

Aḥmbad b. Ḥanbal (d. 241/855).120

A major shortcoming in Kinberg’s appraisal of zuhd is its lack of chronological

specificity, and indeed she even argues against the possibility of accurate dating for

much of the source material, primarily constituted as they are of sayings attributed to

earlier figures. Certainly, the existence during the medieval period of other, competing

but overlapping terms of spiritual significance, and their semantic evolution over time as

well as the tendency of the developed tradition of Sufism to appropriate on its own

terms the legacies of an earlier, more diffuse spectrum of religious figures, can pose

serious challenges to reconstructing the history of early Islamic piety. The rather broad

landscape of zuhd and the unclear relationship between its numerous components led

Nimrod Hurvitz to propose the term “mild asceticism,” which echoes the thrust of

Kinberg’s argument, but with the attempted goal of throwing into relief specific

historical trends or social movements within the “blurred image” of the current as a

whole.121 That objective has been achieved especially in the work of Christopher

120 Kinberg, 41–42.

121 Nimrod Hurvitz, “Biographies and Mild Asceticism: A Study of Islamic Moral Imagination,” Studia Islamica, no. 85 (1997): 42–43, https://doi.org/10.2307/1595871.

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Melchert, currently the leading authority on the history of early Islamic piety. As a

baseline, Melchert reasserts the general consensus that the origins of Sufism lay in the

early pious community, and that there was a transition at some point from nascent

asceticism to mysticism in the technical sense, even as it continues to be debated where

exactly and how sharply to draw the so-called “borderline that divides asceticism from

mysticism,” in the oft-repeated words of R.A. Nicholson.122 From a purely textual

perspective, the ninth century CE in particular seems to be the heyday of zuhd,

notwithstanding the fact that this literature was ostensibly an effort to preserve the

traditions of an earlier community from the prior century. In many ways, therefore, our

primary sources on the Islamic ethics of speech were largely produced at a time when

the original context for those who espoused its values had already transformed.

In regard to the historiographic challenge posed by the tradition, the case of al-

Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 110/728) is archetypal: considered since medieval times as the

progenitor of Islamic mysticism, his actual role and influence proves difficult to

122 Based on a schematic, prosopographical approach, Christopher Melchert has proposed the mid-ninth century CE as a decisive turning point, identifying various figures and their styles of religious devotion as falling on either this or that side of the boundary, whereas Alexander Knysh doubts the applicability of such a “crisp” distinction, whether “chronological or conceptual.” Christopher Melchert, “The Transition from Asceticism to Mysticism at the Middle of the Ninth Century C.E.,” Studia Islamica, no. 83 (January 1, 1996): 51–70, https://doi.org/10.2307/1595736; Alexander Knysh, Islamic Mysticism: A Short History, Themes in Islamic Studies (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 20.

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determine. Born in Medina to a freed captive from the Arab conquests of Persia, al-Ḥasan

b. Yasār belonged to the immediate second generation of Muslims known as al-Tābīʿīn,

“the Successors” to the Companions of the Prophet. But it was in Basra, as one of that

city's influential community of pioneering renunciants, that al-Ḥasan made his name.

Centering on his outstanding piety, his legacy attained by the tenth century CE a quasi-

mythical status that made him attractive as a “founding father” for a number of spiritual

and theological movements, most notably the Qadariyya and the Muʿtazila, who took

interest in al-Ḥasan's advocacy of human free will against the doctrine of divine

predestination.123 He was also attributed a treatise on zuhd, purportedly one of several

letters of advice to the pious caliph ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, and which, if authentic, would

have been the earliest known composition on the subject. However, as shown in

Suleiman Mourad’s thorough investigation of the sources on al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, there is

no record of this Risalat al-zuhd from before the eleventh century CE, nor does it match in

content any earlier quotations of al-Ḥasan, and must therefore be a later fabrication.124

Mourad wants to also cast doubt on the widespread portrayals of al-Ḥasan as an

123 The idea of the “founding father” is proposed and emphasized by Mourad, Early Islam between Myth and History, 14, 240. Hasan’s exceptional piety was the subject of an earlier study: Hellmut Ritter, “Studien zur Geschichte der islamischen Frömmigkeit,” Der Islam; Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kultur des Islamischen Orients 21 (1933): 1–83.

124 Mourad, Early Islam between Myth and History.

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exemplary zāhid, and draws attention to some other contrasting descriptions of him as a

relatively “world-affirming” personality, one open especially to the enjoyment of food,

including meat.125 But this may not be as much a contradiction as Mourad insists, given

as we have seen above the nuanced conceptions of zuhd to begin with. Rather, as Mourad

himself observes, the accounts of al-Ḥasan in the zuhd literature portray someone who

shunned extremes in piety, especially when tantamount to insincere displays of

spectacular asceticism.126

In any case, regardless of how well we can answer the question of authenticity for

materials attributed to such early figures like al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī and his contemporaries,

clearly their memory soon became a medium for the articulation of pious ideals. Thus,

the Kitāb al-Zuhd of Ibn al-Mubārak already includes a substantial body of sayings by and

about al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, marking him as one of the many important sources of wisdom,

and identifying him especially with the classic tropes of ḥuzn (sadness) and bukāʾ

(weeping), borne out of a deep skepticism about one’s judgement by God. One of his

major disciples, Yūnus b. ʿUbayd (d. 139/756) claimed: “I have not seen anyone from

among the people surpass al-Ḥasan in sadness. And al-Ḥasan would say: ‘We laugh, but

125 Mourad, 71–73.

126 Mourad, 67–68.

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we do not know if some of our works have come before God and perhaps he said: “I am

not accepting from you anything.”’”127 Reports like this helped construct an ideal of

Islamic piety defined by seriousness and sobriety. Moreover, such constant wariness of

divine recompense for human action in the world was also the basis for some of al-

Ḥasan’s sayings on the perils of speech. He was attributed a striking metaphor in which

the angels to the right and left of every human being, the so-called “Noble Scribes”

(kirāman kātibīn) who record good and bad actions respectively, are described as using

each person’s tongue as their pen and saliva as their ink.128 One’s words are therefore no

less consequential than one’s deeds—a view that correlated with a pair of Qur’anic verses

believed to refer to the recording angels: “When the two receivers receive, seated on the

right and on the left, no word does he utter without a ready watcher beside him” (Q Qāf

50:17-18).129 The tafsīr tradition reports al-Ḥasan’s own exegesis of this verse as meaning

that one “does not say anything without it being written against him.”130 Restraint in

speech was thus paramount to righteous living, as al-Ḥasan further emphasized in one of

127 Ibn al-Mubārak, Zuhd, 413–14, no. 1499. Quoted in Mourad, Early Islam between Myth and History, 66.

128 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 245, no. 85.

129 Seyyed Hossein Nasr, ed., The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary (New York: HarperOne, 2015), 1267.

130 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:425.

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his most quoted sayings: “whoever does not guard his tongue, has not understood his

religion” (mā ʿaqala dīnahu, man lam yaḥfaẓ lisānahu).131 By virtue of such aphorisms, al-

Ḥasan al-Baṣrī would become a notable authority on the ethics of speech, cited

frequently throughout the books of zuhd. Given his legacy as a pioneering zāhid, his

pronouncements on various aspects of ḥifẓ al-lisān help underscore the centrality of the

subject to the classical Islamic model of piety.

III. Ḥifẓ al-lisān: The Ethics of Speech in the Zuhd Tradition

Like the revered al-Ḥasan, two generations later the zāhid ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak

al-Marwazī (d. 181/797) would also consider words as weighty as one’s deeds. On this he

reportedly preached a saying ascribed to the pious caliph ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz:

“Whoever counts speech a part of his actions, his words decrease” (man ʿadda kalāmahu

min ʿamalihi, qalla kalāmuhu).132 Ibn al-Mubārak was apparently unsure but likely heard it

from the devout Meccan ʿābid Wuhayb b. al-Ward (d. 153/770), claimed elsewhere as the

source of this adage himself.133 The dictum is nevertheless associated most frequently

131 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 207–8; 532, nos. 34; 563.

132 Ibn al-Mubārak, Zuhd, 141, no. 383; Raqāʾiq, riwāyat Nuʿaym, 2:170, no. 385. The isnād registers an uncertainty, as Ibn al-Mubārak is said to have heard it “from Wuhayb or someone else.”

133 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 532, no. 562. Reported by way of ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī, known for his transmission of Meccan traditions. In Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s compilation, it immediately precedes the aforementioned “man ʿaqala dīnahu” saying of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī.

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with ʿUmar II, including as part of an alleged letter or epistle by him that the Syrian

jurist al-Awzāʿī (d. 157/774) is said to have preserved, in which the ethics of speech is

linked to the major theme of zuhd: “Now then (ammā baʿd), one who increases

remembrance of death is content with little of this world, and one who counts speech a

part of his action, decreases speaking of what does not benefit him.”134

The idea was partly to try one’s best to avoid the possibility of any wrongdoing in

speech, as explained in another version of ʿUmar II’s dictum relayed by the distinguished

Kufan jurist Sufyān al-Thawrī (d. 161/778), cautioning that to not realize that speech is

action means to unwittingly allow one’s sins to increase (kathurat dhunūb).135 The basic

point here certainly reflects common ancient wisdom and mirrors similar aphorisms

found in the Hellenistic tradition. Apollonios of Tyana, a neo-Pythagorian sage and

134 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, 208, no. 35. The report has al-Awzāʿī claiming that ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz “wrote to us” a risāla, which only he and the Damscene jurist Makḥūl al-Shāmī (d. ca. 112/730 or later) preserved or remembered (lam yaḥfaẓhā ghayrī wa-ghayr Makḥūl). A variant of this same quote of ʿUmar II, without the epistolary framing and via a different informant—the Baṣran traditionist ʿAlī b. Zayd b. Judʿān (d. 129/747 or 131/749)—is related by ʿAbdallāh b. Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal as part of the supplements to his father’s book: Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Zuhd, 240, no. 1708.

135 Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī, Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ wa-ṭabaqāt al-aṣfiyāʾ (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1416/1996), 5:290; Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Zuhd, 236, no. 1684 (addition by ʿAbdallāh, with variant/defective wording: “lam yaʿudd kalāmihi min dhunūbihi,” instead of ʿamalihi). Another variant in the same vein is a Companion tradition attributed to Abū Hurayra: “One who does not see that his speech is part of his action and that his character is part of his religion, he will perish while he does not perceive it.” ʿAbdallāh Ibn Wahb, al-Jāmiʿ fī l-ḥadīth, ed. Muṣṭafā Ḥasan Ḥusayn Muḥammad Abū l-Khayr (Dammām: Dār Ibn al-Jawzī, 1416/1996), 496, no. 381; Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 531, no. 561 (adduced via Ibn Wahb). A related pithy aphorism attributed again to ʿUmar II

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ascetic of the first century CE from Roman Cappadocia, is alleged to have said in a letter

to his disciples: “Loquaciousness entails many blunders, but silence is safe.”136 The

particular connotation of blunders in or through speech is similarly captured in a pithy

variant of ʿUmar II’s dictum: “Whoever speaks a lot, slips a lot” (man kathura kalāmuhu,

kathura saqaṭuhu); the same adage is also associated with the Egyptian tābiʿī Shufayy b.

Mātiʿ al-Aṣbaḥī (d. 105/723–24), using the word khaṭīʾa instead.137 Early Muslims were

thus restating ancient wisdom, and may well have been aware of as much. An account of

Socrates in the Arabic translations of Greek gnomologia describes how the philosopher

was once asked about this very proposition, that “mistakes occur in verbosity” (anna l-

kalām al-kathīr yaqaʿ fīhi l-khaṭaʾ). He replied that this does not affect the person who

knows what he is talking about (man yadrī mā yatakallam bihi), whereas one who does not

“will make mistakes whether he talk [sic] much or little.”138 Whether or not they were

136 Robert J. Penella, The Letters of Apollonius of Tyana: A Critical Text with Prolegomena, Translation and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 1979), 87, no. 93; cited by: Pevarello, “Criticism of Verbosity,” 256.

137 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 221–22, no. 53; 248–49, no. 89. The saying is also included as part of Shufayy’s biography in: Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām wa-wafayāt al-mashāhīr wa-al-aʿlām (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 2003), 3:60–61.

138 Dimitri Gutas, Greek Wisdom Literature in Arabic Translation: A Study of the Graeco-Arabic Gnomologia, American Oriental Series 60 (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1975), 104–05, no. 39.

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consciously repurposing ancient wisdom, Muslims associated it with their own pious

exemplars. The adage linked persistently to ʿUmar II is a perfect example.

On the other hand, to speak good things was a good in itself. Recognizing the

ethical equivalence of words and deeds therefore also demands that one must practice

what one preaches—as Ibn al-Mubārak would duly remind his disciples by way of a bit of

Qur’anic exegesis he learned from his teacher Maʿmar b. Rāshid (d. 154/770) the

historian, who in turn ascribed it to al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī. Offering a gloss on verse Q 35:10 in

Sūra Fātir, “Unto Him ascends the good word, and He elevates the righteous deed,” the

report seeks to explain the relationship between the key terms al-kalim al-ṭayyib and al-

ʿamal al-ṣāliḥ: “The righteous deed elevates good speech to God Almighty. For if words are

good but deeds are bad, then the saying is repudiated (rudda) by the action, and his

action becomes truer of him than his speech (kāna ʿamaluhu aḥaqqa bi-hi min qawlihi).”139

Good Muslims, in other words, should practice what they preach.

139 Saʿīd b. ʿAlī b. ʿAbdallāh al-Asmarī, “Kitāb al-Zuhd wa-al-raqāʾiq li-ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak: Dirāsat wa-taḥqīq” (Master’s thesis, Saudi Arabia, Umm al-Qurā University, 2012), 255, libback.uqu.edu.sa/hipres/FUTXT/13555.pdf. Note that Aʿẓami’s edition, based on Istanbul MS Carullah 834, reads here: kāna ʿamal aḥmaqa min qawlihi, which would seem to mean “his action seems foolish on account of his words.” Ibn al-Mubārak, Zuhd, 71, no. 91. But as al-Asmarī’s edition suggests, the rest of the manuscripts (or at least MS Leipzig 296) have aḥaqq instead of aḥmaq, and therefore also conform to a version of the same report in another early source: ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī, Tafsīr ʿAbd al-Razzāq, ed. Maḥmūd Muḥammad ʿAbduh (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1999), 3:68, no. 2435. The explanation attributed above to al-Ḥasan corroborates al-

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These pious wisdoms transmitted by ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak were collected in

the Kitāb al-Zuhd wa al-raqāʾiq, typically regarded as the earliest surviving book of the

genre, notwithstanding reservations about exact dating.140 Currently the most-studied of

the classical zuhd compilations, the book also holds the distinction of being for our

purposes the first major textual witness to an Islamic ethics of speech, and indeed of

bearing perhaps the earliest recorded instance of the phrase ḥifẓ al-lisān. Among the most

prominent names of the second century of Islam, ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak has been

recognized in Feryal Salem’s recent monograph on him as a formative figure for the so-

called proto-Sunnī movement. He played an especially important role for the history of

both ḥādīth and zuhd, and indeed in the eyes of a later biographer like Ibn Khallikān (d.

681/1283), looking back past the end of the classic era, Ibn al-Mubārak’s significance

would lie precisely in how he appeared to have “harmonized between knowledge and

Ṭabarī’s paraphrase via another isnād: “Al-Ḥasan and Qatāda [b. Diʿāma, d. 117/735] said God does not accept speech without action; the one who speaks and does a good deed, God accepts from him.” Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 19:340. On the ambiguities of this Qur’anic statement, and specifically the common interpretation of al-kalim al-ṭayyib to mean ritual utterances and invocations of God, see: Nasr, The Study Quran, 1058–59.

140 On the title and the notion of raqāʾiq, seeming referring to traditions which “soften one’s heart,” see: Feryal Salem, The Emergence of Early Sufi Piety and Sunnī Scholasticism: ʻAbdallāh b. al-Mubār̄ak and the Formation of Sunnī Identity in the Second Islamic Century (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 114.

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piety” (kāna qad jamaʿa bayn al-ʿilm wa al-zuhd).141 He was thus remembered for a remark

typifying the anxiety of the zuhhād about scholarship and its social or material

investments, while also asserting that true learning is that which leads to greater virtue:

“We sought knowledge for the sake of this world, but then it led us to abandon the

world” (taʿallamnā al-ʿilm li l-dunyā fa-dallanā ʿalā tark al-dunyā).142 Ibn al-Mubārak was

born in 118 AH/737 CE to a well-off merchant family in Merv, and as a boy had witnessed

firsthand the momentous Khurāsān campaigns of Abū Muslim on the eve of the ʿAbbāsid

Revolution.143 Beginning in his twenties until the end of his life, Ibn al-Mubārak traveled

extensively in search of religious knowledge, studying with giants like Mālik b. Anas in

Medina and al-Awzāʿī in Syria, and leading to acclaim by one contemporary as being

“among the people of ḥadīth like an amīr al-muʾminīn” (“leader of the Believers” i.e. the

caliph).144 The classical Sunnī corpus reflects Ibn al-Mubārak impressive résumé of ḥadīth

141 Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt al-aʿyān wa-anbāʾ abnāʾ al-zamān, ed. Iḥsān ʿAbbās (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1977), 3:32.

142 Ibn Khallikān, 3:34.

143 Salem, Emergence of Early Sufi Piety, 10.

144 The remark was by Kūfan ḥadīth transmitter Abū Usāma (d. 201 AH): Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām, 8:384, 397. Cited from elsewhere in Salem, Emergence of Early Sufi Piety, 34–35. On the epithet amīr al-muʾminīn as the highest rank among ḥadīth scholars, and a list of twenty-six individuals who were granted this honor throughout Islamic history, see Abū Ghudda’s tract on this topic published as a supplement to the Jawāb of al-Mundhirī (d. 656/1258): ʿAbd al-Fattāḥ Abū Ghudda, Jawāb al-Ḥāfiẓ Abī Muḥammad ʿAbd al-ʿAẓīm al-Mundhirī al-Miṣrī ʿan asʾilah fī l-jarḥ wa-l-taʻdīl: wa-yalīh

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scholarship, with over five hundred names he narrated from, and with 776 of his

transmissions preserved in the canonical Six Books.145 No less important, he had also

dedicated himself to jihād against the Byzantines at the frontiers of the Eastern

Mediterranean, thus exemplifying what Thomas Sizgorich has described as a typically

late antique ideal of “militant devotion.”146 Ibn al-Mubārak is even attributed the earliest

extant book on the subject of jihād, in which a variety of pious traditions exhort warfare

as a means of ascetic renunciation.147 It was reportedly after an expedition in the year

181/797 that Ibn al-Mubārak passed away in western Iraq at the settlement of Hīt on the

Euphrates.

Umarāʾ al-muʾminīn fī l-Ḥadīth wa-kalimāt fī kashf abāṭīl wa-iftirāʾāt (Ḥalab: Maktab al-Maṭbūʿāt al-Islāmīya, 1411), 103–136.

145 Based on the estimation by Muḥammad Saʿīd Bukhārī, Al-Imām ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak al-Marwazī: al-muḥaddith al-nāqid (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd, 2003), 80; 178–84. Cited in Salem, Emergence of Early Sufi Piety, 45.

146 Thomas Sizgorich, Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity: Militant Devotion in Christianity and Islam, Divinations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009).

147 Besides the monograph by Sizgorich, studies of Ibn al-Mubārak on jihād include: Michael David Bonner, Aristocratic Violence and Holy War: Studies in the Jihad and the Arab-Byzantine Frontier, American Oriental Series 81 (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 1996), 119–25; Christopher Melchert, “Ibn Al-Mubārak’s Kitāb al-Jihād and Early Renunciant Literature,” in Violence in Islamic Thought from the Qurʾān to the Mongols, ed. Robert Gleave and István Kristó Nagy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), 49–69; Salem, Emergence of Early Sufi Piety, 76–104.

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A. The Kitāb al-Zuhd of Ibn al-Mubārak and its Recensions

In terms of reception history, Ibn al-Mubārak’s Kitāb al-Zuhd was clearly the most

important of the books attributed to him, and survives in at least eight medieval copies—

compared to the single known manuscripts for his Kitāb al-Jihād and his Musnad.148 The

text was likely composed posthumously by his disciples based on lecture notes and

survives in two different recensions, which do not fully overlap in content and also

include “extraneous” material collected from other sources by the respective

transmitters, Nuʿaym b. Ḥammād al-Khuzāʿī (d. 228/843) and al-Ḥusayn b. al-Ḥasan b.

Ḥarb al-Marwazī (d. 246/860-1).149 Of these, the former is the minor recension, insofar as

it is preserved in only two known manuscripts circulated in North Africa and Spain. Like

his teacher Ibn al-Mubārak, Nuʿaym was of Khurāsānī origin but had immigrated to

Egypt, from whence he disseminated what thus became a western transmission (riwāyat

al-maghāriba) of the Zuhd. The limited textual witnesses to Nuʿaym’s recension may be

partly a result of his questionable reputation among ḥadīth critics, as he was deemed

prone to indulging in errors (wahm), despite having to his credit illustrious students like

148 The most complete description of all manuscripts of the Zuhd is given by Asmarī, “Kitāb al-Zuhd: Dirāsat,” 77–91. Cf. Fuat Sezgin, Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums (Leiden: Brill, 1967), 1:95.

149 For a discussion of the text’s authorship and transmission, see Melchert, “Ibn Al-Mubārak’s Kitāb al-Jihād,” 51–53.

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Ibn Maʿīn and al-Bukhārī.150 But opinions on him were clearly mixed, as summed up in

the oft-repeated phrase “some people praised him, while others discredited him,”151 and

it helped his doctrinal credentials that he would die while imprisoned at then-capital

Sāmarrā during the ʿAbbāsid Inquisition (miḥna). Nuʿaym is further recognized for some

independent scholarship of his own right: for his command of succession law (hence his

epithet al-Fāriḍ); for allegedly being the first to compose a musnad work of ḥadīth i.e. a

collection organized by isnād; and for his Kitāb al-Fitan, a unique book of apocalyptic

traditions that has sparked considerable interest among modern historians.152

150 It is telling that Bukhārī recorded Nuʿaym’s reports only in collation with other sources (maqrūnan bi-ghayrihi). Yūsuf b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Mizzī, Tahdhīb al-Kamāl fī asmāʾ al-rijāl, 1st ed. (Bayrūt: Muʾassasat al-Risālah, 1980), 29:467. See also p. 477 for mistakes in the isnād of two of Nuʿaym’s ḥadīth transmissions from Ibn al-Mubārak as identified by al-Mizzī. He was also accused of suspect doctrinal affinities, recapitulated by Pellat in EI2, s.v. Nuʿaym B. Ḥammād.

151 “Qad athnā ʿalayhi qawm, wa-ḍaʿʿafahu qawm,” Mizzī, 29:479. But first quoted in ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan Ibn ʿAsākir, Tārīkh madīnat Dimashq, ed. ʿUmar b. Gharāma al-ʿAmrawī (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1415–21/1995–2000), 62:159.

152 The Kitāb al-Fitan has now been translated: Nuʿaym b. Ḥammād, “The Book of Tribulations”: The Syrian Muslim Apocalyptic Tradition, trans. David Cook, Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Apocalypticism and Eschatology (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017). See also: Michael Cook, “An Early Islamic Apocalyptic Chronicle,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 52, no. 1 (1993): 25–29; Jordi Aguadé, “Messianismus zur Zeit der frühen Abbasiden: das Kitāb al-fitan des Nuʻaim ibn Ḥammād” (PhD dissertation, Tübingen University, 1979), http://hdl.handle.net/10498/11060. On Nuʿaym’s theological views, in particular his sometime affinity with the Jahmiyya, see van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, 2:723-726.

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On the other hand, it was al-Ḥusayn al-Marwazī who came to be usually

designated ṣāḥib Ibn al-Mubārak or the author’s “companion,” and his so-called eastern

recension (riwāyat al-mashāriqa) of the Zuhd was the relatively more widely disseminated

of the two.153 Hailing from Merv like both his teacher and his fellow transmitter, al-

Ḥusayn had settled in Mecca and could count among his students several noted ḥadīth

scholars, including Ibn Mājah and al-Tirmidhī. But in stark contrast to the copious

attention given to Nuʿaym b. Ḥammād in the Arabic biographical tradition, al-Ḥusayn’s

sole claim to fame seems to have been as transmitter of Ibn al-Mubārak’s teachings.

Besides the Kitāb al-Zuhd, he also preserved the only extant recension of the Kitāb al-Birr

wa al-ṣila (Book of Righteousness and Relations), a small collection of pious traditions

encouraging care for relatives.154 Interestingly, al-Ḥusayn himself was identified as its

153 Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām, 12:190. The designations mashriqī and maghribī for the two recensions of the Kitāb al-Zuhd are by the text’s modern editors, al-Aʿẓamī and al-Asmarī: see the discussion in Asmarī, “Kitāb al-Zuhd: Dirāsat,” 48–61. It may be worth noting that although one particular manuscript of al-Ḥusayn’s recension is held at the library of the Grand Mosque of Meknes, Morocco (MS 201), the text in that too was copied in a mashriqī script. On the other hand, both manuscripts of the other recension are in maghribī scripts, including one held in Egypt (Alexandria MS Maktabat al-Baladīya 1331 bāʾ) and another in Morocco (Fez MS Qarawiyyīn 186). An edition of Nuʿaym’s recension based on these two latter manuscripts has recently become available as of 2013, thanks to ʿĀmir Ḥasan Ṣabrī: Ibn al-Mubārak, Raqāʾiq, riwāyat Nuʿaym.

154 al-Ḥusayn b. al-Ḥasan al-Marwazī, Kitāb al-Birr wa-al-ṣila, ed. Muḥammad Saʿīd Bukhārī (Riyadh: Dār al-Waṭan li-l-Nashr, 1419/1998–99). Published earlier as part of ʿAbdallāh Ibn al-Mubārak, Musnad ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Mubārak: wa-yalīhi Kitāb al-Birr wa-al-ṣila (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīyah, 1411/1991). For a summary of the text, see Salem, Emergence of Early Sufi Piety, 41–42. Both editions of the text, and the survival of its source manuscript (MS Ẓāhirīya majmūʿ 76, fols. 221a–

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author (muʾallifi-hi) in the important Andalusī bibliography of Ibn Khayr al-Ishbīlī (d.

575/1179), even as the earlier catalogue of Ibn al-Nadīm (d. 385/990) had listed the same

title under Ibn al-Mubārak’s name.155 It appears that, as Melchert correctly surmised

from just Ibn Khayr’s notice, al-Ḥusayn’s recension is a combination of “material he

heard from Ibn al‑Mubārak with material he heard from other shaykhs.”156 Given the

preponderance of the latter, the text’s recent editor Muḥammad Saʿīd Bukhārī has

decided to maintain the attribution as inscribed in the manuscript itself: “written by al-

Ḥusayn b. al-Ḥasan al-Marwazī [transmitting] from Ibn al-Mubārak and others.”

Nevertheless, Saʿīd Bukhārī’s careful research also reveals evidence of a different, now

lost recension of Ibn al-Mubārak’s Kitāb al-Birr circulating until at least the

ninth/fifteenth century.157

It remains worth highlighting that al-Ḥusayn’s redaction of the Kitāb al-Zuhd

serves as a testament to the veneration of Ibn al-Mubārak’s pious legacy in Islamic

251a), appear to have escaped the attention of Christopher Melchert, who claims to “know of no other trace” of the book besides the few medieval Arabic references to it: “Ibn Al-Mubārak’s Kitāb al-Jihād,” 51.

155 Ibn Khayr al-Ishbīlī, Fahrasat Ibn Khayr al-Ishbīlī, ed. Bashshār ʿAwwād Maʿrūf and Maḥmūd Bashshār ʿAwwād, Silsilat al-Tarājim al-Andalusiyya 4 (Tunis: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 2009), 374, no. 744.

156 Melchert, “Ibn Al-Mubārak’s Kitāb al-Jihād,” 53.

157 Marwazī, Kitāb al-Birr, 7–11.

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religious history. Thanks to detailed samāʿāt (audition) notices, the extant manuscripts

for this recension provide documentary evidence of the text’s “consumption” across Iraq

and the Levant in the late-medieval period, with traces left of Mosul, Damascus and

Nablus in particular. For instance, one of the Syrian manuscripts, Leipzing MS Vollers

296, seems to have been read often at the Umayyad Mosque of Damascus over the course

of more than two hundred years between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries CE,

including among its readers Jamāl al-Dīn Yūsuf al-Mizzī (d. 742/1341), the distinguished

rijāl encyclopedist and father-in-law of Ibn Kathīr.158 Being mindful of such transmission

histories can matter: for early Islamic texts of opaque origins, the difficult question of

authorship let alone authenticity may be simply moot if what we want to understand

instead is their social currency at a certain time and place. From that perspective, the

relative indeterminacy of the textual corpus of Ibn al-Mubārak’s Zuhd matters less than,

say, the interesting phenomenon of its augmentation by subsequent generations of

transmitters who kept a body of traditions alive through circulation and active

participation. That said, the text itself bears witness to its stabilization by the end of the

ninth century CE, as Melchert agrees: in the major recension of the Zuhd, the bulk of

158 Transcriptions of the some of the samāʿāt records are given in Asmarī, “Kitāb al-Zuhd: Dirāsat,” 79–82; Ibn al-Mubārak, Zuhd, 14; 25. Al-Aʿẓamī’s edition includes the notice of a reading of the MS Alexandria 1331b (copied 466 AH) at Valencia in the year 446/1055: Op. cit., 24.

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interpolations (about 23% of the 1,627 reports) are by al-Ḥusayn al-Marwazī, with

considerably fewer (less than 3%) by his student Ibn Ṣāʿid—which “demonstrates that

interpolations markedly declined over time.”159 Perhaps also worth noting is that

according to the isnād for this recension, the text’s transmission in the ninth through

eleventh centuries CE was very much a Baghdādī enterprise. All of the scholars named as

passing it down from al-Ḥusayn lived and studied in Baghdad:160

1. Yaḥyā b. Muḥammad b. Ṣāʿid (d. 318/930)

2. Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl al-Warrāq (d. 378/988)

3. Abū ʿUmar Muḥammad b. al-ʿAbbās Ibn Ḥayyuyah al-Khazzāz (d. 383/993)

4. Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī al-Jawharī (d. 454/1062)

It was at Ibn Ṣāʿid’s gate-house (ʿinda bāb dārihi) in 315/927, that Abū Bakr and Abū ʿUmar

together heard from their teacher the first two sections of the book, the latter having

heard the rest from him earlier in 309 AH. Their student Abū Muḥammad al-Jawharī then

passed it on: six months before his death in 454/1062, every Monday over a period of five

weeks from May 27 to June 24 during a study circle in the Bāb al-Marātib quarter of

159 Melchert, “Ibn Al-Mubārak’s Kitāb al-Jihād,” 52.

160 These details are based on al-Aʿẓamī and al-Asmarī’s respective readings of the manuscripts: Editor’s “Preface” in Ibn al-Mubārak, Zuhd, 14–26; Asmarī, “Kitāb al-Zuhd: Dirāsat,” 48–53.

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Baghdad, he listened as a traveling scholar from Rayy named Ẓāhir al-Nīshāpūrī

(d.482/1089-90) read aloud his manuscript copy of the whole book in the company of

other students, among them one of the text’s subsequent transmitters Abū ʿAlī al-Dulafī

(d. 484/1092). These men were all scholars well regarded in the biographical literature.

Abū Bakr al-Warrāq, for instance, had taught the distinguished ḥadīth critic al-Dāraqutnī

(d. 385/995), and a generation later al-Jawharī had taught the historian al-Khaṭīb al-

Baghdādī (d. 463/1071). Thus, the Kitāb al-Zuhd as we have it was a dynamic product of a

religious milieu defined especially by large-scale efforts to compile and review Prophetic

traditions, at the same time as there was a flowering of ascetic literature seeking to

preserve the memory of pious forebears.

i. “Ḥifẓ al-lisān” in Ibn al-Mubārak’s Zuhd

In terms of scope, the Kitāb al-Zuhd wa-l-raqāʾiq is arguably the largest known

compilation on the subject of renunciant piety, perhaps second only to the partially-

extant Zuhd of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 241/855). The book attributed to Ibn al-Mubārak

assembles a thematically organized collection of reports (aḥādīth or akhbār) comprising

various sayings of, or anecdotes about, early Muslim religious figures. Between the two

extant recensions combined, the text amounts to a total of 2,063 such reports—of which

roughly a third are Prophetic traditions, another third are attributed to various

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Companions of the Prophet, and the rest deal with pious individuals from the subsequent

generations of Muslims.161 The topical arrangement of the book, and its vast scope

compared to other collections in the genre, give it the sense of an encyclopaedia of zuhd:

its contents span the range of issues and dispositions at stake in the cultivation of a pious

life. The text opens with a series of ḥādīth exhortations about the ephemerality of life

gathered under the heading “incitement to obeying God” (Bāb al-taḥḍīḍ ʿalā ṭāʿat Allāh),

before proceeding to separate chapters on a variety of topics, including: ritual worship

(ʿibāda), sincerity (ikhlāṣ), fear (khawf), sadness and weeping (ḥuzn wa bukāʾ),

remembrance of death (dhikr al-mawt), humility (tawāḍuʿ), contentment (qanāʿa), censure

of luxury (tanaʿʿum) and vanity (riyāʾ wa l-ʿujb), and so forth.162 We need not

overemphasize these divisions in the text, given its clear lack of a perfectly systematic

structure: there are, for instance, multiple sections on the same topic (tawāḍuʿ) and not

every bāb seems coherent in content. Topical subheadings cease altogether for the 666

reports in the last four of the book’s eleven parts (juzʾ) in al-Ḥusayn’s version. Not to

mention, of course, the issue of textual differences including variant headings between

161 Estimates based on: Salem, Emergence of Early Sufi Piety, 114–15. The recension of al-Ḥusayn has 1,627 reports, and the edition by al-Aʿẓamī includes an additional 436 reports from the recension of Nuʿaym. The new standalone edition of Nuʿaym’s recension by Ṣabrī enumerates 1,674 reports. The two recensions thus appear to be similar in size, despite the non-overlapping content.

162 For a summary treatment of the book as a whole, see: Salem, 114–29.

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manuscripts, and especially between the two recensions: indeed, compared to the 50

chapters/sections in Ḥammād’s recensions, Nuʿaym’s has 177 headings for much smaller,

specific groupings of reports.163 Nonetheless, the chapter headings remain significant

insofar as they do reveal an attempt towards an organized treatment of the major

aspects of zuhd during the period of the text’s transmission. It is also telling that by and

large, the variations are often minor and synonymous, for example Nuʿaym has “chapter

on intention (niyya) and action” in place of al-Ḥusayn’s “chapter on what has been

transmitted regarding sincerity and intention (al-ikhlāṣ wa al-niyya).”

The book deals with the ethics of speech primarily within its own section entitled

Bāb ḥifẓ al-lisān. The chapter comprises two dozen brief reports, opening with an

emblematic ḥadīth that characterizes the god-fearing as being mindful of what one says,

for “God is at the tongue of every speaker (ʿind lisān kull qāʿil).”164 A second cluster of

about ten reports directly on the subject is marked only in the version of Nuʿaym as a

“chapter on silence and listening” (Bāb fī al-ṣamt wa al-istimāʿ), but in the major recension

falls under the heading of “those who seek knowledge for worldly goods (ʿaraḍ).” The

discussion here stems again from that most frequent concern among the zuhhād, but

163Asmarī, “Kitāb al-Zuhd: Dirāsat,” 58.

164 Ibn al-Mubārak, Zuhd, 138, no. 367.

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interestingly articulated in terms of speech. Why so may be inferred from the ostensible

references to the context of early Islamic legal scholarship, dominated in both principle

and practice by debate and disputation. By way of an unnamed Syrian informant (rajul

min ahl al-Shām), Ibn al-Mubārak recapitulates a fascinating sermon—or at least an

unusually long quotation—attributed to Yazīd b. Abī Ḥabīb (d. 128/745-6), an important

Umayyad-era Egyptian legal official:165

Indeed, among the temptations (fitna) of the learned scholar (al-ʿālim al-faqīh) is that he loves talking more than listening. But if he finds one who spares him from it, then it is in listening that is safety (salāma) and the growth of knowledge. The listener is a partner to the speaker. And in speech—except that of the one whom God holds back—there is rambling (tawahhuq),166 embellishment (tazayyun), and exaggeration and omissions (ziyāda wa nuqṣān). Among them is the one who thinks that some people, due to their nobility (sharaf) and prominence (wajh), are worthy of his conversation more than others, and he condescends to the poor (yazdarī al-masākīn), seeing no place in it for them. And among them is the one who hoards his knowledge and regards its imparting as a loss (ḍīʿa) and prefers that it be found only with him. And among them is the one who takes hold

165 On Ibn Abī Ḥabīb as one of the first non-Arabs of mawālī background in Egypt to receive official recognition and an appointment as muftī by ʿUmar II, see El Shamsy, Canonization of Islamic Law, 101.

166 The reading here is somewhat uncertain due to variants in the manuscript tradition, indicating obscurity of the word used. Tawahhuq appears in the Alexandria MS (recension of Nuʿaym), and Aʿẓamī prefers this reading to the word tawammuq that appears in the text of the Istanbul MS (recension of Ḥusayn), otherwise the basis of his edition. The latter manuscript records a further variant in a marginal notation, which Aʿẓamī reads as tamarruq but Asmarī reads as tamawwuq. See their respective critical apparatus: Ibn al-Mubārak, Zuhd, 60n8; Asmarī, “Kitāb al-Zuhd: Dirāsat,” 193n3.

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of his knowledge with the grasp of authority (bi-akhdh al-sulṭān) such that he becomes angry when something he said is repudiated or when something from among his rights is ignored. And among them is one who appoints himself to issue responsa (futyā), and when he is perhaps approached with a matter on which he knows nothing, he is embarrassed to say: “I do not know,” so he conjectures (yarjim), and is then written off as one of the pretenders (mutakallifīn). And among them is the one who narrates everything he hears, to the extent that he reports the words of the Jews and Christians, desiring to be abundant in speech (yaghzur kalāmuh).167

This remarkable jeremiad reads almost like a pre-emptive anti-thesis to the risāla of al-

Jāḥiz, albeit one that would also prove his point about the irony of an eloquent defense of

silence. It is surely a valuable piece of source material for insights into social history, and

raises more questions than we have scope to discuss here.168 Suffice it to note that this

critique in the guise of an ethics of speech was obviously addressing a mode of

scholarship conducted predominantly through oral exchange. As such, it only makes

sense for the advocates of zuhd to have emphasized restraint of the tongue as a basic

means to exercise selflessness among the growing scholarly elite. Being taciturn could

also help avoid unnecessary controversy, and the same Yazīd b. Abī Ḥabīb is attributed

167 Ibn al-Mubārak, Zuhd, 60–61, no. 48. Cf. Ibn al-Mubārak, Raqāʾiq, riwāyat Nuʿaym, 23–24, no. 43; Asmarī, “Kitāb al-Zuhd: Dirāsat,” 194. For an alternative translation and discussion of this report, see Salem, Emergence of Early Sufi Piety, 119–20.

168 I plan to discuss in greater detail the above text, the question of its authenticity, and a forged ḥadīth based on it, in a forthcoming paper: “An Early Islamic Social Critique of Scholars: Yazīd ibn Abī Ḥabīb’s Sermon on the Fitna of Scholars and its Plagiarized Imitation in the Guise of Ḥadīth.”

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another pithy remark to that effect: “the speaker waits for incitement (fitna) while the

listener waits for compassion (raḥma).”169 Of course, the dangers of the social status that

came with learning were not limited to jurists and theologians. Interestingly also

appearing to evoke the sectarian milieu as in the closing of the above speech, Ibn al-

Mubarak quotes the famous early exegete al-Ḍaḥḥak b. Muzāhim (d. 105/723) as saying

that the one Qur’anic admonition her fears most is verse 5:63 of Sūra Māʾida: “Why do

the sages (al-rabbāniyyūn) and the rabbis (al-aḥbār) not forbid them from their sinful

speech and their consuming what is forbidden?”170 The point here though seems to be

about the individual moral responsibility of religious scholars.

Ibn Abī Ḥabīb’s rebuke of people who repeat everything they hear echoes a ḥadīth

appearing elsewhere in the Kitāb al-Zuhd, in a short section of five reports under the

tantalizing chapter heading, “On the one who lies in his speech to make people laugh”

(Bāb man kadhiba fī ḥadīthihi liyaḍḥika bihi al-qawm”). Far from explicating what that

entails, however, the reports in this section are mostly just injunctions of the Prophet

against lying—but revealing a clear concern about the social prevalence of gossip, as

when he warns that “it would be enough for a person to lie, if he relates everything he

169 Ibn al-Mubārak, Zuhd, 62, no. 54.

170 Ibn al-Mubārak, 63, no. 57. Translation of the verse from Nasr, The Study Quran, 310.

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hears.”171 Besides these few discrete sections dealing directly with the ethics of speech,

there are other scattered materials on the subject throughout the book. Four out of the

sixteen items in the chapter on sorrow (Bāb mā jāʿa fī al-ḥuzn wa'l-bukā, “What has been

transmitted on sadness and weeping”) include references to speech in addition to other

exhortations: for instance, in a widely cited anecdote, the Companion ʿAbdallāh b.

Masʿūd is said to have advised someone to “remain in your house, weep over your faults,

and restrain your tongue (kuff lisānak).”172 This tripartite precept appears to convey the

essential elements of an ascetic life and recurs throughout the literature of early Islamic

piety, in different wording or order, and sometimes ascribed to the Prophet or even

Jesus. In one account, Mālik b. Dīnār was heard saying that “the pious (abrār) used to

advise three things: imprisonment of the tongue (sijn al-lisān), frequent pleas for

forgiveness, and isolation (ʿuzla).”173 These two accounts are all the more interesting in

171 Ibn al-Mubārak, Zuhd, 229, no. 735.

172 Ibn al-Mubārak, 79, no. 130. The expression liyasʿak baytuka, literally “let your house be ample for you,” seems to indicate ascetic isolation, or what has been characterized by Bernd Radtke (and subsequently Melchert) as “anti-social tendencies.” See: Christopher Melchert, “Baṣran Origins of Classical Sufism,” Der Islam 82, no. 2 (January 12, 2005): 225–27, https://doi.org/10.1515/islm.2005.82.2.221. In fact, the tripartite exhortation attributed to ʿAbdullah b. Masʿūd above also recurs in the words of others.

173 Iṣfahānī, Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ, 2:377. Cited in Melchert, “Baṣran Origins,” 226.

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comparison because, as mentioned earlier, it was also ʿAbdallāh b. Masʿūd who

reportedly first invoked the prison metaphor.

Somewhat more tangentially, but still concerned with the role of speech in

asceticism, Ibn al-Mubārak’s chapter on luxury (Bāb mā jāʿa fī dhamm al-tanaʿʿum fī al-

dunyā, “What has been transmitted in censure of enjoying comfort in the world”)

includes a ḥadīth in which the Prophet declares the worst of his people (sharār ummatī) to

be those “born into luxury and sustained by it, whose only concerns are the colors of

their food and their clothes, and who speak with affectation” (yatashaddaqūn fī al-

kalām).174 There may be a small insight here into mannerisms of speech related to class

hierarchy in early Islamic society. By and large, however, the discussion of speech in the

Kitāb al-Zuhd mostly revolves around the idea of reticence and the text reveals little else

on the question of social distinctions in speech. Nevertheless, humility was clearly

paramount in the pious worldview, to the point that excess in even Qur’anic recitation

was frowned upon. A ḥadīth on this circulated especially among Baṣran transmitters, and

Ibn al-Mubārak quotes it twice in his chapter on ḥifẓ al-lisān, since he apparently heard it

from two different sources: “Indeed, a part of glorifying God is to honor the gray-haired

Muslim and the one who bears the Qur’an, except those who overdo it (ghālī fīhi) and

174 Ibn al-Mubārak, Zuhd, 234, no. 758.

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those who are rough with it (jāfī ʿanhu).”175 Less obviously dealing with speech but

preceding this report is another ḥadīth in which the Prophet describes true believers as

gentle and soft (al-muʾminūn hayyinūn layyinūn), like a docile camel who yields easily.176

For ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak, presumably this enjoins people to be soft-spoken. In other

words, in a text of this nature, constructed as it is from the aggregation of bare reports

without further commentary, part of the implicit exegesis lies in the organization of the

material. In that sense, therefore, the inclusion of a distinct chapter on ḥifẓ al-lisān is

itself telling and significant, and becomes crucial evidence for us on the place of speech

ethics in Islamic conceptions of piety.

175 Ibn al-Mubārak, 142–43, nos. 388-89. The expression used in this report, ḥāmil al-qurʾān (putative singular of ḥamalat al-qurʾān, literally “carriers of the Qur’an”), would come to mean one who memorizes or “knows it by heart,” but is linguistically ambiguous from the perspective of Semitic philology: Theodor Nöldeke et al., The History of the Qurʾān, trans. Wolfgang H. Behn, Texts and Studies on the Qur’an 8 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 223n4. On the usage of ḥamalat al-qurʾān and its synonym ahl al-qurʾān in very early sources dealing with the battle of ʿAqrabaʾ in 632 CE, and the intriguing argument that these were distortions from the term ahl al-qurā or “people of the village,” see G. H. A. Juynboll, “The Qurʾān Reciter on the Battlefield and Concomitant Issues,” Zeitschrift Der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 125, no. 1 (1975): 11–27. Regardless, for our purposes, the context of Ibn al-Mubārak’s citation of the above ḥadīth indicates that the issue here is oral recitation of the Qur’an.

176 Ibn al-Mubārak, Zuhd, 142, no. 387.

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B. The Kutub al-Zuhd of the 3rd/9th Century

Chronologically on the basis of attribution, the known textual successors to Ibn

al-Mubārak’s Kitāb al-Zuhd that contain dedicated chapters on ḥifẓ al-lisān are the books of

the same title by Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ (d. 197/813), Hannād b. al-Sarī (d. 243/857), and Ibn

Abī ʿĀṣim (d. 287/900). There are several other extant zuhd texts from the same period,

which do not include separate chapters dealing with speech: these are the compilations

attributed to Muʿāfā b. ʿImrān al-Mawṣilī (d. 185/801 or 204/819), Asad b. Mūsā (d.

212/827), and Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 277/890). It must be noted, of course, as Melchert

also insists, that establishing an accurate chronology for this literature can be tricky,

given the uncertainties about authorship and transmission for texts before the mid-

ninth century CE; in particular, we know that the books attributed to Wakīʿ and Hannād,

like that of Ibn al-Mubārak, were in fact “redacted a generation or two later than their

putative authors.”177 Nevertheless, a comparative survey of the genre proves insightful,

and reveals a diversity of approaches during the ninth century CE to the intellectual

legacy of early Islamic asceticism. This is so not only with regard to content but also

form, such that despite major shared interests across the board, some texts do highlight

particular concerns more than others. The Zuhd of Muʿāfā b. ʿImrān, for example,

177 Christopher Melchert, “The Life and Works of Abū Dāwūd Al-Sijistānī,” Qanṭara: Revista de Estudios Arabes 29, no. 1 (2008): 38, https://doi.org/10.3989/alqantara.2008.v29.i1.48.

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appears to take a relatively bolder pro-vegetarian stance through a short chapter on

“meat-eating and moderation in it” (Bāb al-laḥm wa al-iqtiṣād fīhi), even though scattered

reports on the topic are certainly also included in the books of the others.178

The respective zuhd compilations by two of the most illustrious scholars of the

era, Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 241/855) and Abū Dawūd al-Sijistānī (d. 275/889), include a lot

of reports dealing with speech but are both organized biographically according to pious

figures and therefore do not overtly identify the ethics of speech as a distinct thematic

concern. Similarly organized by name is the sizeable kitāb al-zuhd of Ibn Abī Shayba (d.

235/849), which forms a part of his vast Muṣannaf, arguably one of the most important

early collections of ḥadīth. Of course, traces of this alternative scheme had appeared

already in Ibn al-Mubārak’s Zuhd, where some of the sections in parts six and seven

(immediately preceding the last four parts without any subheadings) are on traditions by

or about certain legendary figures like Abū Rayḥāna Shamʿūn and ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz.

In the same vein, a short text transmitted by Ibn Abī Ḥātim (d. 327/938) and projected

back to ʿAlqama b. Marthad (d. 120/737-8) of Kūfa, is titled Zuhd al-thamāniya min al-tābiʿīn

(“The Piety of the Eight Successors”) and lists the ascetic virtues of eight exemplars from

178 Muʿāfā b. ʿImrān, Kitāb al-Zuhd, ed. ʻĀmir Ḥasan Ṣabrī (Beirut: Dār al-Bashāʾir al-Islāmīya, 1999), 323–326.

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the second generation of Muslims, including al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī.179 But the Kitāb al-Zuhd of

Ibn Ḥanbal, compiled and supplemented by his son ʿAbdallāh (d. 290/903) and only

partially extant today, was an enterprise of a much grander scale altogether, attempting

a universalist history of pious renunciation, from the Biblical prophets down to the

Companions of the Prophet Muḥammad and their Successors.180 The hagiographic

framework of such collections makes them obvious precursors to the tradition of

monumental Sufi biographical dictionaries, notably the Ḥilyat al-awliyāʾ of Abū Nuʿaym

al-Iṣfahānī (d. 430/1038). Interestingly, the two different organizational styles were later

remarked upon by Ibn Taymīyya (d. 728/1328) in one of his fatāwā, where in the course of

listing some sources on zuhd, he states: “the best (ajwad) of what has been written on it is

the Zuhd of Imām Aḥmad, however it is written on the basis of names and the Zuhd of Ibn

al-Mubārak on the basis of chapters (abwāb).”181

179 Published as: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAbd al-Jabbār al-Faryawāʾī, ed., Zuhd al-thamāniyah min al-tābiʻīn: li-ʿAlqama b. Marthad, riwāyat Ibn Abī Ḥātim (Medina: Maktabat al-Dār, 1404). Listed under Ibn Abī Ḥātim in Sezgin, GAS, 1:179. The text is discussed briefly in Dickinson, Early Sunnite Ḥadīth Criticism, 38. On the rather obscure ʿAlqama b. Marthad, see van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, 1:186.

180 On the textual history of Ibn Ḥanbal’s Zuhd, and an important observation that significant lost portions of it may be recuperated through citations in Abū Nuʿaym’s Ḥilya, see: Christopher Melchert, “Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal’s Book of Renunciation,” Der Islam 85, no. 2 (2011), https://doi.org/10.1515/islam.2011.007.

181 Ibn Taymīyah, Majmūʿ fatāwā Shaykh al-Islām Aḥmad ibn Ṭaymīyah, ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Muḥammad b. Qāsim (Medina, Saudi Arabia: Mujammaʿ al-Malik Fahd li’l-Ṭibāʿa al-Muṣḥaf al-

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i. Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ (d. 197/812)

The influential ḥadīth scholar Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ al-Ruʾāsī, born in Kufa in 129/746,

was a younger contemporary of Ibn al-Mubārak and could rival him in fame among the

scholars of their generation. The latter himself is said to have learned traditions from

him “even though he was older than him,” as al-Dhahābī remarks.182 The biography of

Wakīʿ reflects a profile of spiritual commitment despite nobility and wealth. He

reportedly inherited a hundred thousand dirhams from his mother, and his father—

himself also interested in ḥadīth—served as head of the treasury (bayt al-māl) under

caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd and previously as head of the mint (dār al-ḍarb) in Rayy.183 Wakīʿ,

on the other hand, famously made it a point to distance himself from the government,

and in a story evoking that classic topos in the history of Muslim ʿulamāʾ, he turned down

Sharīf, 1995), 11:580. The remark was quoted by Kâtip Çelebi (d. 1068/1657) in the Kashf al-Ẓunūn in the section listing zuhd titles known to him. Melchert takes this to mean that Ibn Taymīyya preferred the arrangement of Ibn Ḥanbal’s collection to that of Ibn al-Mubārak, though lākinna in the statement might suggest otherwise. Melchert, “Ibn Ḥanbal’s Book of Renunciation,” 9.

182 Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, 4:1230. The isnāds recorded in available ḥadīth collections do not seem to reflect that relationship. In the extant works attributed to Ibn al-Mubārak, only the Kitāb al-Zuhd contains 13 citations of Wakīʿ albeit all for traditions narrated on his behalf directly by al-Ḥusayn and independently of Ibn al-Mubārak, and are thus part of the interpolations in the major recension.

183 Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām, 9:142, 168. Dhahabī includes conflicting information that he served in Baghdad (Dhahabī says “he oversaw the bayt al-māl in the government of al-Rashīd”).

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al-Rashīd’s offer of an appointment to judgeship with the excuse of weak eye-sight.184

Going even beyond, he apparently fled the company of Hafṣ b. Ghiyāth, a fellow Kufan,

after he became a judge in Baghdad, and would not transmit ḥadīth from one Hushaym

“because he associated with power” (kāna yukhāliṭ al-sulṭān).185

The Kitāb al-Zuhd is the only one of several known works attributed to Wakīʿ that

is still extant, apart from his numerous putative transmissions recorded in the ḥadīh

literature.186 The text survives in a single known three-volume manuscript in Damascus,

copied sometime before its earliest dated samāʿa notice of 529/1135 and subsequently

read in Iṣfahān and Herāt before circulating primarily among the Ḥanbalīs of Damascus,

including the famed Diyāʾ al-Dīn al-Maqdisī (d. 643/1245) and the aforementioned Yūsuf

al-Mizzī.187 The book is arranged into 73 topical sections (bāb) but is a far shorter

184 Dhahabī, 151.

185 Dhahabī, 9:144; Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī, Suʾālāt Abī ʿUbayd al-Ājurrī Abā Dāwūd Sulaymān ibn al-Ashʿath al-Sijistānī fī maʿrifat al-rijāl wa-jarḥihim wa-taʿdīlihim, ed. ʿAbd al-ʿAlīm ʿAbd al-ʿAẓīm al-Bastawī (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Rayyān, 1997), 284, no. 434. Note, however, that other accounts portray Ḥafṣ b. Ghiyāth as accepting his judicial appointment only with reluctance.

186 Wakīʿ is known for a Muṣannaf compilation cited in Ibn Ḥanbal’s Musnad and a Tafsīr that was used by al-Thaʿlabī: Sezgin, GAS, 1:96–97. He is said to have further compiled al-Sunan and al-Maʿrifa wa-l-tārīkh: P. Bearman et al., eds., Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition (Leiden: Brill, 1960–2009), s.v. Wakīʿ; Khayr al-Dīn al-Ziriklī, al-Aʿlām: qāmūs tarājim li-ashhar al-rijāl wa-l-nisāʾ min al-ʿarab wa-l-mustaʿribīn wa-l-mustashriqīn, 15th ed. (Beirut: Dār al-ʿIlm li-l-Malāyīn, 2002), 8:117.

187 The samāʿāt notices are copied and listed in Faryawāʾī’s superb editorial introduction: Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ, Zuhd, 173–203.

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collection, comprising 539 reports i.e. less than a third the number in al-Ḥusayn’s

recension of Ibn al-Mubārak. There are overwhelming thematic similarities between the

two texts, but certainly also some notable differences in emphasis. In her comparative

survey of the genre vis-à-vis Ibn al-Mubārak’s Zuhd, Feryal Salem points to Wakīʿ’s

opening chapters on cognizance of death and exhortations to sadness as reflecting “a

more morose perspective on the material world.”188 The difference may not be quite so

stark: a ḥadīth she quotes from Wakīʿ, in which the Prophet counsels a companion to “be

in this world as though you were a traveler or a passerby, and count yourself from

among the dead,” also appears in the very first chapter of Ibn al-Mubārak’s Zuhd, with

slightly different wording but with the exact same isnād via Sufyān al-Thawrī (d.

161/778).189 This is unsurprising since both were putative disciples of Sufyān, who served

as a major source for both texts, contributing nearly 200 reports to the Zuhd of Ibn al-

Mubārak and over 150 reports to that of Wakīʿ. By comparison, Wakīʿ’s second biggest

source, Misʿar b. Kidām (d. 155/771-2) accounts for a mere 29 reports in his collection.

These numbers no doubt reflect the towering status of Sufyān al-Thawrī in Iraq among

the ascetics of the second Islamic century, and especially as a teacher to so many of the

188 Salem, Emergence of Early Sufi Piety, 130.

189 Salem, 130. Citing Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ, Zuhd, 230–32, no.11. The version in Ibn al-Mubārak omits the Prophet’s addressing the companion as “O ʿAbdallāh!” and ends with the phrase: “count yourself among the people of the grave.” Ibn al-Mubārak, Zuhd, 5, no. 13.

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scholars who would help preserve their traditions—including Muʿāfa b. ʿImrān, author of

the other extant early zuhd compilation. But Sufyān’s traditions do not fully overlap

between the collections of his students: Wakīʿ is the only one, for instance, who relates

from him a saying about speech attributed to Masrūq: “There is nothing greater to God

than speech, and the servant does not take a single step without there being recorded on

him something good or bad.”190

The schema of Wakīʿ’s book reflects a fairly developed attention to the ethics of

speech as it relates to pious renunciation. No less than eight sections, as listed in the

table below, cover material falling broadly under the subject. His discussion thus

considerably expands on the topics addressed in Ibn al-Mubārak’s Zuhd, though certainly

with some shared material in a different guise, notwithstanding the similar lack of

perfect systematization into discrete categories.191 Reports on affectation, dealt with by

Ibn al-Mubārak in relation to luxury, appear in Wakīʿ’s book under the heading of tartīl, a

term usually referring to the harmonic recitation of the Qur’an, but used in this case to

190 Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ, Zuhd, 588,, no. 228.

191 This may be why the Zuhd of Wakīʿ has been described as “randomly arranged” by Melchert, “Life and Works of Abū Dāwūd,” 38.

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chastise those who overdo their enunciations in a public speech: for, “a man can only be

ostentatious in his sermon by annoying God until he shuts up.”192

Bāb/Heading Topic Number of reports

al-Tawba wa-ḥifẓ al-lisān repentance; guarding the tongue 14

al-Tartīl fī al-khuṭba “enunciating in sermons”/affectation 7

al-Balāʾ muwakkal bi'l-qawl troubles brought about by an utterance

13

al-Kadhib wa al-ṣidq lying and truthfulness 7

al-Ghība backbiting 8

al-Namīma slander 8

al-Satr discretion/privacy 8

al-Inṣāṭ eavesdropping 12

Table 2.1 – Chapters on Speech in the Zuhd of Wakīʿ

Wakīʿ’s juxtaposition of a key ascetic concern, tawba or repentance, with ḥifẓ al-

lisān seems to especially highlight an understanding of the tongue as being both prone to

unintended ills but also the primary means to seek divine grace. Thus he reports a saying

attributed to the Prophet’s companion ʿAbdallāh b. Masʿūd, also included in nearly all

the major zuhd sources with various isnāds: “The people with most sins (dhunūb) on the

Day of Resurrection will be those who most wade into idle talk (khawḍ fī al-bāṭil).”193 What

192 Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ, Zuhd, 567, no. 296.

193 Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ, 547, no. 284.

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the pious should instead have on their tongues is clarified at the closing of the chapter,

in which the same Companion shares a formula for supplication: “the words most loved

by God are when the servant says: ‘I admit (my) sins, and recognize (your) blessings, so

forgive me.’”194

Such admonitions would make particular sense in a world where utterances can

have almost magical powers, and not always for the good. This forms the topic of Wakīʿ’s

section dedicated to a proverb, “misfortune is in the charge of an utterance” (al-balāʾ

muwakkal bi'l-qawl)—repeated twice with different isnāds and attributions, including to

the Prophet himself.195 The expression seems to be glossed by the two subsequent

reports: firstly, the early Kufan jurist Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī (d. 96/714-5) supposedly said,

“If I see something bad that I disapprove, nothing would prevent me from speaking of it,

except the fear of being afflicted by it.”196 Elaborating this further using an old, rather

graphic Arabic idiom describing someone sordid and miserly, another Kufan ʿAmr b.

Shuraḥbīl recounted: “They used to say: ‘If I see “a man suckling from his goat” and then

194 Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ, 559–60, no. 292.

195 Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ, 585–88, no. 310-12. Transmitting from Wakīʿ, his student Aḥmad b. Ḥanbāl recapitulates it with the attribution to ʿAbdallāh b. Masʿūd: Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Zuhd, 134, no. 895.

196 Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ, Zuhd, 588, no. 313.

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mock him, I fear that I would become like him.’”197 These epigrams could certainly mean

different things, and the zuhd texts themselves indicate as much. For Ibn al-Mubārak, for

instance, the morale here is to focus on oneself first before judging others, as he adduces

an alternative version of the above quote on mockery in a different section on

“reforming discord between people” (Bāb iṣlāḥ dhāt al-bayn).198 But for Wakīʿ and his

followers, the ascetic imperative for self-reflection necessarily implies a social ethics that

strongly disavows gossip, and vice versa. Thus, his student Hannād reiterated all of the

above sayings, albeit on behalf of his other main teacher, in his own Kitāb al-Zuhd under

the chapter heading, “talk” (Bāb al-ḥikāya). Indeed, his version of the abovementioned

quote of Ibrāhim on seeing someone do something bad and then “speaking of it,” instead

has the words “backbiting him” (ghībatihi).

ii. Hannād b. al-Sarī (d. 243/857)

The chapters on gossip and slander in the Zuhd of Wakīʿ might be the earliest

organized treatment of the subject in the literature of Islamic ethics. It was also

197 Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ, 589, no. 314. Franz Rosenthal, “The History of an Arabic Proverb,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 109, no. 3 (July 1989): 372, https://doi.org/10.2307/604139.

198 Ibn al-Mubārak, Zuhd, 230, no. 741. His version has the Companion Ibn Masʿud saying: “If I were to ridicule a dog, I fear that I would become a dog; even though I dislike seeing an idle man, with neither the hereafter nor this world affecting his actions.”

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influential, at least in serving directly as the basis for the substantial treatment of speech

ethics in Hannād’s Kitāb al-Zuhd. A student of both Ibn al-Mubārak and Wakīʿ, Hannād b.

al-Sarī b. Muṣʿab (d. 243/857) was the major ḥadīth scholar of Kufa in his time. By virtue

of belonging to a generation straddling the early initiatives in ḥadīth compilations and

the so-called ṣāḥīḥ movement of the mid-ninth century CE, Hannād would serve as one of

the major conduits for the collection of Prophetic ḥadīth—having to his credit

transmissions recorded in all of the major Sunnī canonical books. The Zuhd, however, is

the only surviving text he authored himself, and is notable especially for its local

character—an “extreme example,” in Melchert’s words, of a tendency among some of the

early zuhd compilers to largely transmit material from their own home towns.199 Indeed,

the two single biggest sources for Hannād’s materials in the Zuhd are his fellow Kufan

teachers: Wakīʿ and Abū Muʿāwiya al-Ḍarīr (d. 195/810-11), each accounting for 273 and

315 reports respectively.200 The collection as a whole, though somewhat smaller than

that of Ibn al-Mubārak, is nearly three times that of Wakīʿ, comprising a total of 1,443

199 Melchert, “Exaggerated Fear,” 299. Needless to say, this assessment would not apply to an exceptionally well-traveled collector like Ibn al-Mubārak, whose immediate sources for the material in all his extant works appear to have spanned Iraq, Syria and Arabia. That said, the redaction history of his putative collections complicates this question. For some statistics on this, see Melchert, “Ibn Al-Mubārak’s Kitāb al-Jihād,” 56–57.

200 These numbers are based on a count of the reports as indexed in al-Faryawāʾī’s editorial introduction: Hannād b. al-Sarī, Zuhd, 1:16n47, 18n55.

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reports arranged topically. Interestingly, in comparison to all of the zuhd texts reviewed

thus far, most of the material on speech in Hannād’s book are gathered in a

consecutively ordered series of 13 sections, and thus reflect a certain level of textual

sophistication. These chapters are assigned headings as follows:

Table 2.2 – Chapters on Speech in the Zuhd of Hannād b. al-Sarī

No. and Heading of Bāb/Chapter Number of

reports

88 Guarding the tongue (ḥifẓ al-lisān) 12

89 On the saying, “I won’t speak of anything but good” 25

90 Silence (al-ṣamt) 6

91 “The Muslim is the one who protects Muslims from his

tongue and hands” 8

92 “The man whose speaking displeases God,” and the

disapproval of laughter (karāhiyat al-ḍaḥk) 11

93 Affectation in speech (tashqīq al-kalām) 4

94 Quarreling (mirāʾ) 6

95 Disapproval of insulting the dead (sabb al-mawtā) 11

96 Backbiting (ghība) 17

97 Talk/gossip (ḥikāya) 8

98 Ritual purification (wuḍūʾ) from backbiting 3

99 Backbiting by one who is fasting (ṣāʾim) 8

100 Slander (namīma) and socializing with trust (majālis bi'l-

amāna) 18

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In addition to the sizeable chunk of 137 reports in these sections, two separate later

chapters on sitr and ṣidq wa al-kadhb contain further material dealing with the subject.

The extensive scope and mature form of Hannād’s Kitāb al-Zuhd as a whole, and its

discussion of speech in particular, thus immediately foreshadows the work of his notable

student, Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, perhaps the most prolific of the ninth century Iraqi scholars

associated with zuhd.

IV. Ibn Abī l-Dunyā and the Epitome of Islamic Speech Ethics

Abū Bakr ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad b. ʿUbayd b. Sufyān al-Qurashī, better known as

Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, was born in Baghdad in 208/823 and died there in 281/894. His family

had Kufan origins, and were mawālī of the Umayyads. He has been justifiably described

by Reinhard Weipert as “one of the most productive authors of the 3rd/9th century.”201

The range and nature of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s vast corpus of writings, however, have proven

something of a challenge for modern Western scholars attempting to characterize his

place in the Islamic tradition. R. A. Nicholson labels him a “theologian and censor morum,”

201 Reinhard Weipert, “Review of Kitāb al-Mawt (The Book of Death) and Kitāb al-Qubūr (The Book of Graves), by Ibn Abī ad-Dunyā (d. 280/892) by Leah Kinberg,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 107, no. 1 (1987): 180.

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based on the impression formed by James Robson’s influential 1938 edition and

translation of an excerpted recension of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s Dhamm al-malāhī (Censure of

instruments of diversion), a compilation of pious traditions condemning music, singing,

and games such as backgammon and chess.202 Some of these āthār do reflect renunciant

themes such as righteous earning (kasb), thus shunning for instance the income from

reed-pipes.203 Interestingly, the censure of singing (ghināʾ) is partly a matter of speech

ethics, and draws upon a host of exegetical traditions on Q Luqmān 31:6 which gloss the

202 R. A. Nicholson, “Review of Tracts on Listening to Music by James Robson,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 2 (1940): 241–42; James Robson, Tracts on Listening to Music: Being Dhamm al-malāhī by Ibn abī ’l-Dunyā and Bawāriq al-ilmāʿ by Majd al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī al-Ghazālī, Oriental translation fund 34 (London: The Royal Asiatic society, 1938). On the enduring influence of Robson’s work especially in current scholarship on music, which refers to Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s “violent” condemnation as representative of “legalists who wanted to ban music entirely,” see: Amnon Shiloah, Music in the World of Islam: A Socio-Cultural Study (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995), 34; Lisa Nielson, “Visibility and Performance: Courtesans in the Early Islamicate Courts (661–950 CE),” in Concubines and Courtesans: Women and Slavery in Islamic History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 95n64. Nielson’s discussion on singing girls (qiyān) in ʿAbbāsid courtly culture serves as a valuable illustration of the social context possibly animating a text like Dhamm al-malāhī, which has been interpreted further as a response to the emergent Sufi practice of samāʿ or mystical “listening.” Cf. Arthur Gribetz, “The Samāʿ Controversy: Sufi vs. Legalist,” Studia Islamica, no. 74 (1991): 43–62, https://doi.org/10.2307/1595896.

203 Attributed to Anas b. Mālik: “The filthiest earning (akhbath al-kasb) is that of the reed-pipe (zammāra).” Robson, Tracts, 30, 52; Abū Bakr Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, “Dhamm al-malāhī,” in Mawsūʿat Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, ed. Fāḍil b. Khalaf al-Ḥummāda al-Raqqī, vol. 3 (Riyadh: Dār Aṭlas al-Khaḍrāʾ, 2012), 46, no. 66. Note that the latter offers the best available edition, uniquely based on Istanbul MS Laleli 3664 in addition to the defective Damascus MS. The Berlin MS utilized by Robson is an excerpt of the text that trims the asānīd and omits repeated traditions, as pointed out by Reinhard Weipert and Stefan Weninger, “Die erhaltenen Werke des Ibn Abī d-Dunyā. Eine vorläufige Bestandsaufnahme,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 146, no. 2 (1996): 423, no. 8.

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reference to “idle talk” (lahw al-ḥadīth) as singing.204 Robson was led to surmise from

these the “puritan nature” of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā.205 Yet the same figure is dubbed by A. J.

Arberry an “important and entertaining author,” in his 1951 article on a valuable

recension of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s tract on repentance, Kitāb al-tawba.206 These contrasting

judgments may reflect different underlying assumptions about the nature of edifying

literature in classical Arabic. Arberry appears to have been simply reiterating

Brockelmann’s earlier appraisal of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s oeuvre (“Unterhaltung und

Erbauung zugleich bezwecken”), though observing further that most of his compilations

deal with “various ascetic themes.”207 Indeed, Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s reception in the Islamic

intellectual tradition itself was defined primarily in terms of zuhd. The Fihrist of Ibn al-

Nadīm assigns Ibn Abī l-Dunyā to his chapter on ascetics and Sufis, describing him as a

devout and pious renunciant (waraʿan zāhidan) but also as learned in history and

204 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, “Dhamm al-malāhī,” 34–36, 38, nos. 25–29, 31, 44.

205 Robson, Tracts, 13.

206 A. J. Arberry, “Ibn Abi ’l-Dunyā on Penitence,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 1/2 (1951): 488. Arberry was only aware of the Chester Beatty manuscript of al-Tawba, but there also exists another copy in Damascus. See: Weipert and Weninger, “Die erhaltenen Werke,” 449, no. 51.

207 Arberry, “Ibn Abi ’l-Dunyā on Penitence,” 48; Carl Brockelmann, Geschichte Der Arabischen Litteratur, 2nd ed. (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1932–49), 1:160.

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traditions (ʿāliman bi-l-akhbār wa-l-riwāyāt).208 Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī’s biographical entry

on Ibn Abī l-Dunyā opens by identifying him as an “author of categorized books on

renunciation and the softening-of-hearts” (ṣāḥib al-kutub al-muṣannafa fī l-zuhd wa l-

raqāʾiq).209

Unlike some zuhhād, however, Ibn Abī l-Dunyā had a close association with the

court. He was employed as a tutor to several ʿAbbāsid princes, a major aspect of what

Hilary Kilpatrick has aptly termed “the enigma of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā.”210 Khaṭīb al-

Baghdādī’s biography states that Ibn Abī l-Dunyā had “educated (yuʾaddib) more than one

of the sons of the caliphs.”211 These included no less than two future caliphs: al-Muʿtaḍid

(who reigned from 892 to 902 CE, returning the imperial capital to Baghdad after the fifty

208 Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist, ed. Riḍā Tajaddud (Tehran: Dār al-Masīra, 1350 SH/1971 CE), 236; Bayard Dodge, trans., The Fihrist of al-Nadīm: A Tenth-Century Survey of Muslim Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 1:458–59. This chapter on “wanderers, renunciants, worshippers and Sufis” (akhbār al-suyyāḥ wa-l-zuhhād wa-l-ʿubbād wa-l-mutaṣawwifa…) is the fifth and last of Ibn al-Nadīm’s section on theology. He lists Ibn Abī l-Dunyā as the sixth among eight who are identified as having written books, notably starting with al-Hārith al-Muḥāsibī. On the peculiarities of this chapter and Ibn al-Nadīm’s “pejorative” representation of Sufis, see the insightful discussion by Devin Stewart, “The Structure of the Fihrist: Ibn al-Nadim as Historian of Islamic Legal and Theological Schools,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 39, no. 3 (2007): 380–82.

209 Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh, 11:293.

210 Hilary Kilpatrick, “Review of Stefan Weninger, ‘Qanâ’a (Genügsamkeit) in Der Arabischen Literatur Anhand Des Kitâb al-Qanâ’a Wa-t-Ta’affuf von Ibn Abî d-Dunyâ,’” Journal of Arabic Literature 25 (January 1, 1994): 85–89.

211 Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh, 11:293.

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five-year long Sāmarrāʾ period), and his son al-Muktafī (r. 902–908 CE). Thus, Ibn Abī l-

Dunyā appears to have enjoyed years of patronage by al-Muwaffaq (r. 870–891 CE), the

powerful ʿAbbāsid prince and military leader who ended the so-called “Anarchy at

Sāmarrāʾ,” suppressed the Zanj rebellion, and exercised power as de facto ruler during his

brother al-Muʿtamid’s titular caliphate.212 Most likely in the 870s and 880s CE, al-

Muwaffaq entrusted Ibn Abī l-Dunyā with the education first of his own son al-Muʿtaḍid

and then his grandson, al-Muktafī. In light of these facts, Ella Almagor therefore

contends that his employment by someone like al-Muwaffaq might temper Ibn Abī l-

Dunyā’s “stereotypic image of a pious ascetic.”213

Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s scholarship need not seem divorced from his services as a royal

tutor, as long as we recognize his works as not only collections of ḥadīth but also as adab.

As Almagor suggests, what his pupils were “expected to learn (and later, as rulers, to

display) was above all adab, into which zuhd had been integrated as one of the

212 On the political history of this period, and “the unusual personality and career” of al-Muwaffaq, see: Hugh Kennedy, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates: The Islamic Near East from the Sixth to the Eleventh Century, 2nd ed. (Harlow, England: Pearson, 2004), 173–79. The circumstances of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s life has led Kilpatrick to wonder: “While it is probably impossible to establish what influence Ibn Abî l-Dunyâ's troubled times had on him, it is inconceivable that they did not affect him at all.” “Review of Stefan Weninger,” 87–88.

213 “Introduction” Abū Bakr Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Kitāb dhamm al-dunyā, ed. Ella Almagor, The Max Schloessinger Memorial Series 6 (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, 1984), 10.

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constituents of the adīb’s erudition.”214 The literary scope and characteristics of many of

Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s compilations clearly reflects the adab ethos. In spite of their strict

adherence to the basic structure of ḥadīth or akhbār, including full documentation of

isnāds, the material that interests Ibn Abī l-Dunyā is remarkably heterogeneous in subject

or theme, ranging from ancient wisdom and pious traditions, to proverbs, homilies,

Qurʾānic commentary, eschatology, history and moral fables. His compilations of

traditions typically comprise, in Almagor’s words, “an admixture of literary forms such

as anecdotes, aphorisms, sermons, poetic verses” and so on.215 Underlying this diverse

material is a distinct “predilection for edifying and hortatory themes.”216 While this

impetus and variety in content is also true of some of the zuhd texts reviewed thus far,

Ibn Abi l-Dunyā generally commands a more eclectic genre of sources, including a much

greater commitment to adducing quotations of poetry.217

The eclecticism of his interests was already a theme in the medieval biographical

tradition on Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, captured in the oft-repeated idea that he could “make one

214 Almagor, “Introduction,” Dhamm al-dunyā, 10.

215 Almagor, “Introduction,” Dhamm al-dunyā, 12.

216 “Introduction,” Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Dhamm al-dunyā, 13.

217 See, for example, the substantial poetics excerpts from his Kitāb al-tawba highlighted by Arberry, “Ibn Abi ’l-Dunyā on Penitence,” 52–56.

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laugh or cry as one wished.”218 The claim seems to derive from an interesting anecdote in

which al-Muktafī explains to his grandfather why he loves his tutor: “How can I but like

him when he was the first to make me pronounce the name of God (fataqa lisānī bi-dhikr

Allāh), and yet he can make you cry or laugh as you will.”219 Al-Muwaffaq summons Ibn

Abī l-Dunyā, who brings him to tears with accounts of past caliphs and their sermons

(akhbār al-khulafāʾ wa-mawāʿiẓihim). When chided by the chamberlain, Ibn Abī l-Dunyā

changes the topic to amusing stories of the Bedouin (nawādir al-aʿrāb), which has al-

Muwaffaq laughing profusely. Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī records this story as narrated by

Ibn Abī l-Dunyā himself and retold by Abū Dharr al-Qāsim b. Dāwūd b. Sulaymān (d.

332/943–44), but even if legendary or embellished, it perfectly encapsulates the spirit

and scope of his known works—including the title Akhbār al-khulafāʾ, which does not

survive.220 The informant Abū Dharr, who was a state secretary (kātib), adds further that

218 Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām, 13:400; Ziriklī, Aʿlām, 4:118. Quoted from al-Kutubī’s (d.764/1363) Fawāt al-wafayāt by Almagor in “Introduction,” Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Dhamm al-dunyā, 11n8.

219 Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh, 11:294; translation of the account by Almagor in “Introduction,” Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Dhamm al-dunyā, 11n8. Note that the summary of this story in the EI3 entry on Ibn Abī l-Dunyā unfortunately misidentifies al-Muktafī as the son rather than grandson; moreover, al-Muwaffaq is inaccurately termed caliph and given the regnal dates instead for his son al-Muʿtaḍid. Librande, “Ibn Abī l-Dunyā.”

220 Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh, 11:293–94. The title Akhbār al-khulafāʾ is listed by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Munajjid, “Muʿjam muṣannafāt Ibn Abī l-Dunyā,” Majallat Majmaʿ al-Lugha al-ʿArabiyya bi-Dimashq 49 (1974): 583.

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the vizier Aḥmad b. al-Furāt was instructed to pay Ibn Abī l-Dunyā a monthly

remuneration of fifteen dīnārs, which Abū Dharr claims to have received on his behalf

until his death.221 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s prestige at the ʿAbbāsid court and among his

contemporaries is unquestionable. Upon his death in the late-summer of 281/894, the

funeral prayer was led by the prominent judge Yūsuf b. Yaʿqūb (d. 297/910), who was a

friend of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s.222

A. Ḥadīth and Zuhd in Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s Scholarly Formation

The breadth and diversity of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s interests reflect his intellectual

formation and his exposure to an apparently vast network of scholars. The biography by

Jamāl al-Dīn al-Mizzī lists by name 120 teachers from whom he transmitted.223 These

include some of the most distinguished figures of the era, notably Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim b.

Sallām (d. 224/838) and Muḥammad b. Saʿd (d. 230/845), the author of the Ṭabaqāt, as

221 Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh, 11:294.

222 Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, 11:295. On Abū Muḥammad Yūsuf b. Yaʿqūb, who served as the qāḍī of Baghdad’s Eastern Quarter (al-Jānib al-Sharqī) and is said to be the author of a ḥadīth collection title al-Sunan, see: Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, 6:1069. Cf. James A. Bellamy, “Pro-Umayyad Propaganda in Ninth-Century Baghdad in the Works of Ibn Abī ’l-Dunyā,” in Prédication et propagande au Moyen Age: Islam, Byzance, Occident, ed. George Makdisi, Dominique Sourdel, and Janine Sourdel-Thomine, Penn-Paris-Dumbarton Oaks Colloquia 3 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983), 73.

223 As counted by Fāḍil b. Khalaf al-Ḥummāda al-Raqqī, ed., Mawsūʿat Ibn Abī l-Dunyā (Riyadh: Dār Aṭlas al-Khaḍrāʾ, 1433/2012), 1:52; Mizzī, Tahdhīb al-Kamāl fī asmāʾ al-rijāl, 16:72–74.

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well as Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī, who was an older contemporary of Ibn Abī l-

Dunyā. Perhaps most influential for his education was his own father, Muḥammad b.

ʿUbayd. He is said to have taught him “righteous traditions” (aḥādīth mustaqīma), and

appears as a frequently cited source in Ibn Abī Dunyā’s works—including for ten reports

found in the Kitāb al-Ṣamt.224

The isnāds appearing in the Ṣamt name a total of 215 direct sources from whom

Ibn Abī l-Dunyā claims to have reported the material in the book.225 As a matter of fact,

tallying the putative informants named in all of his extant compilations results in a sum

manifold the number of teachers identified in conventional lists like Mizzī’s. Taking up

the task, Fāḍil al-Raqqī has computed a total of 992 individuals in the course of editing

the Mawsūʿat Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, the most recent of several available editions of Ibn Abī l-

Dunyā’s collected works.226 That is an astonishing number of sources by any measure,

224 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 33n1. Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s father merits a brief biographical notice in Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh, 3:644. He is noted for transmitting mostly from Kūfan traditionists, namely: Hushaym b. Bashīr (d. 183/799), Jarīr b. ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd (d. 188/804, qāḍī of Rayy), Abū Bakr b. ʿAyyāsh (d. 194/809–10), Sufyān b. ʿUyayna (d. 198/814), and Hishām b. al-Kalbī (d. 204/819).

225 As computed and reported by Najm Khalaf in the preface to his edition: Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 32.

226 Raqqī, Mawsūʿat Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, 1:52. For references to at least four other collected editions, see: Weipert and Weninger, “Die erhaltenen Werke,” 418–19; Reinhard Weipert, “Die erhaltenen Werke des Ibn Abī l-dunyā. Fortsetzung und Schluss,” Arabica 56, no. 4 (2009): 451, https://doi.org/10.1163/057053909X12475581297641.

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though surely including many more than those he had personal contact with and reflects

his use of written sources or other methods of adducing traditions. In fact, some ḥadīth

critics would already allege that Ibn Abī l-Dunyā had a propensity to spuriously attach

isnāds to sayings (kāna yaḍāʿ li-l-kalām isnādan).227 He is also accused of contravening the

traditionist ethos by relating “disapproved” stories of his own accord, tantamount to

“lying” in the manner of fabulists or storytellers (wa-kāna kadhdhāban yarwī aḥādīth min

dhāt nafsihi manākīr).228

Such a criticism almost certainly refers to the type of material represented for

instance by the lengthy tale of the Christian monk Anthony that Ibn Abī l-Dunyā relates

in his Kitāb al-Wajal wa-l-tawthīq bi-l-ʿamal, on “Fear and Confidence in Deeds.” In his

preface to the narrative on Anthony, Ibn Abī l-Dunyā explicitly acknowledges his

reliance on an unnamed written source:

Now, among the works of the ancients (al-awwalūn) dealing with wise sayings and parables, we have found a book of wise sayings and parables (ḥikam wa-amthāl) that will make a sensible person want to abandon the fleeting life of this world and inspire him to working with confidence for

227 Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh, 11:294.

228 Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, 11:294.

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the other world (al-wathīqa fī l-ʿamal li-l-ājila). This is a book ascribed to Anthony, the saintly ascetic.229

Elsewhere in Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s compilations, however, traditions involving Biblical

prophets, Jesus, or other forebears of wisdom such as Persian kings or Indian sages,

typically do include an isnād like any other ḥadīth, and related on the authority of early

Muslims from the generation of Companions or Successors.

This practice underscores his traditionist methodology, which gives almost all of

Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s compilations a uniformity of style and a characteristic form. In the

words of Weipert, his books are “nearly identical in structure: no muqaddima, ḥadīths

with full isnād arranged side by side without comment from the author, sometimes

mixed with a few poetical fragments or akhbār.”230 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s commitment to this

style puts him in marked contrast to the more distinguished representatives of ninth-

century adab, notably al-Jāḥiẓ (who was nearly half a century older, and died when Ibn

Abī l-Dunyā was about 45) and Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889), an exact contemporary. In

229 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Kitāb al-Wajal wa-l-tawthīq bi-l-ʿamal, in Raqqī, Mawsūʿat Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, 6:472; translation by Franz Rosenthal, “The Tale of Anthony,” Oriens 15 (1962): 44, https://doi.org/10.2307/1579838.

230 Weipert, “Review of Kitāb al-Mawt (The Book of Death) and Kitāb al-Qubūr (The Book of Graves), by Ibn Abī ad-Dunyā (d. 280/892) by Leah Kinberg.” Cf. Stefan Weninger, Qanāʿa (Genügsamkeit) in der arabischen Literatur: anhand des Kitāb al-Qanāʿa wa-t-taʿaffuf von Ibn Abī d-Dunyā, Islamkundliche Untersuchungen 154 (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1992), 63.

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contrast to the strong and original voice typified by these two figures, Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s

authorial presence recedes almost entirely into the background of his compositions.

Similar to the kutub al-zuhd, however, his classification of reports into topical abwāb

reflect his interpretive decisions about the traditions adduced. Moreover, careful reading

has further revealed subtleties to his method of compilation, such as in the Makārim al-

akhlāq, where the list of ten virtues in a famous ḥadīth of ʿĀʾisha serves as a framing

device for the book’s contents and serve as its chapter headings.231 The Makārim also

includes a set of remarks by Ibn Abī l-Dunyā himself in the same vein as his preface to

the tale of Anthony.232 These examples, though unusual, reveal that Ibn Abī l-Dunyā was

not incapable of commentary. His overwhelming priority was nevertheless to collect

traditions, identify their putative sources, and organize them by topic.

Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s immersion in a vast and diverse range of sources should be

entirely expected of a voracious adīb with access to the burgeoning book market of

231 “Introduction,” Abū Bakr Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Kitāb makārim al-akhlāq, ed. James A. Bellamy, Nasharāt al-Islāmiyya 25 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1973), 2–3. See also the analysis of his Kitāb al-yaqīn: Leonard Librande, “Ibn Abī Al-Dunyā: Certainty and Morality,” Studia Islamica, no. 100/101 (2005): 5–42.

232 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Makārim al-akhlāq, introduction: 2–3, Arabic text: 9–10, nos. 38, 43, 45.

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ninth-century Baghdad.233 His own extensive engagement with writing, however, may

have met with the disapproval of the ahl al-ḥadīth. Ibrāhīm b. Isḥāq al-Ḥarbī (d. 285/898),

himself a renowned zāhid and a disciple of Ibn Ḥanbal, apparently used to say: “God have

mercy on Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, we would all go to ʿAffān to listen to him, and we would see

Ibn Abī l-Dunyā ignoring (yadaʿ) ʿAffān and sitting [instead] with Muḥammad b. al-

Ḥusayn al-Burjulānī, writing on the backs of greengrocers’ palm-leaf bags (sharījat

baqqāl).”234 The anecdote seems ambiguous in tenor: it could be praising the young Ibn

Abī l-Dunyā’s devotion to his own master Burjulānī, but it also expresses something of

the enduring anxieties about the primacy of oral over written transmission of knowledge

in Islam.235 From an ahl al-ḥadīth perspective, however, failing to prioritize learning from

someone so esteemed as ʿAffān b. Muslim (d. 220/835) was to invite incredulity, and the

233 On adab in relation to book culture, see the rich study by Shawkat M. Toorawa, Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr and Arabic Writerly Culture: A Ninth-Century Bookman in Baghdad (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005).

234 Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh, 11:294. The anecdote may be a chronological stretch: Ibn Abī l-Dunyā was only twelve years old when ʿAffān b. Muslim is said to have passed away, in 220/835.

235 The early Muslim debates on writing have been discussed, among others, by: Michael Cook, “The Opponents of the Writing of Tradition in Early Islam,” Arabica 44, no. 4 (1997): 437–530; Gregor Schoeler, The Oral and the Written in Early Islam (New York, NY: Routledge, 2006), 111–41.

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anecdote may be further symptomatic of what Melchert has identified as the growing

rift between the muḥaddithūn and the emergent Sufis.236

To be sure, Ibn Abī l-Dunyā was not a total outsider to the ahl ḥadīth or the

community shaped by the influence of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal. He would be claimed by the

Ḥanbalī tradition, and appears to have known Ibn Ḥanbal himself. There are at least two

reported instances in which Ibn Abī l-Dunyā is said to have asked Ibn Ḥanbal for his

juridical opinion on issues related to prayer rituals, but his writings typically only

transmit Ibn Ḥanbal’s traditions indirectly, with an intermediary between the two.237 The

pioneering rijāl critics Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 277/890) and his son Ibn Abī Ḥātim (d.

327/938) both claim to have written down traditions dictated by Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, and

considered him ṣadūq (“trustworthy”) in ḥadīth.238 His standing in the circles of ḥadīth

236 Melchert, “Early Renunciants as Hadīth Transmitters.”

237 Ibn Abī Yaʿlā, Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanābilah, 1:193–95. The two cases on which Ibn Abī l-Dunyā sought a fatwā from Ibn Ḥanbal are related to the issue of a funeral prayer for a miscarried fetus (here said to be necessary after four months of pregnancy, along with naming of the unborn), and a question about what to recite between the takbīratayn in the ʿEīd prayer.

238 Ibn Abī Ḥātim al-Rāzī, Kitāb al-Jarḥ wa-al-taʻdīl (Beirut: Dār Iḥyā al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1952), 5:163. The technical assessment of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s reliability as a ḥadīth transmitter thus fell short of the highest level, thiqa (“reliable”)—meaning that while his narrations may be recorded and studied, they may not be cited as proof texts for doctrinal or legal purposes. On these definitions, see: Dickinson, Early Sunnite Ḥadīth Criticism, 96. Cf. Almagor, “Introduction,” Dhamm al-dunyā, 11.

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scholarship of his time may be deduced further from the extant works of his teachers

and students recognized as authors and authorities in their own right.239

i. The Influence of Abū l-Shaykh al-Burjulānī (d. 238/852)

Apart from his relationship to ḥadīth specialists, by far the most important figure

in shaping Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s intellectual profile was unquestionably the aforementioned

Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn, also known as Abū l-Shaykh al-Burjulānī (d. 238/852). The

anecdote by Ibrāhīm al-Ḥarbī appears to recollect Burjulānī’s formative influence on his

devoted disciple, who would be about 30 years old when the master passed away.

Burjulānī’s reputation also rests primarily on being a compiler of books on piety (ṣāḥib

kutub al-zuhd wa-l-raqāʾiq).240 His contemporaries appear to have recognized his specialty,

and Ibn Ḥanbal reportedly recommended Burjulānī to someone who once asked him to

239 According to Sezgin’s data (GAS, 1:106, 160), some of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s teachers with extant ḥadīth collections (usually a juzʾ) include: Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAwn al-Hilālī al-Kharrāz (d. 231/845), Abū Yaḥyā Kāmil b. Ṭalḥa al-Jaḥdarī al-Baṣrī (b. 145/762, d. Baghdad), and Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥārith b. Muḥammad al-Tamīmi al-Baghdādī (d. 282/895). On the other hand, Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s students in the field of ḥadīth with extant works of their own, though not necessarily citing him, include: Abū ʿAbdallāh b. al-Qāsim b. Jaʿfar al-Kawkabī (d. 327/938), Abu l-Ḥusayn ʿUmar b. al-Ḥasan al-Ushnānī (d. 339/950), Abū l-Ḥusayn ʿAbd al-Ṣamad b. ʿAḥmad al-Ṭastī—known as musnid Baghdād (d. 346/957), Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. Salmān al-Najjād (d. 348/959), Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Shāfiʿī al-Baghdādī al-Bazzāz (d. 354/965). See: Sezgin, GAS, 1:178, 184, 187, 513, 191.

240 Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh, 3:5.

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share something from the traditions on zuhd (shayyʾ min ḥadīth al-zuhd).241 The

significance of Burjulānī’s connection to Ibn Abī l-Dunyā is implicit from their

appearance together in the same chapter of Ibn al-Nadīm’s Fihrist, which includes a list of

six works attributed to the former.242 Though his student’s more prolific oeuvre would

ultimately outshine his own, Burjulānī’s known titles are significant and telling—as

Almagor has also pointed out—insofar as they reflect the same type of compilations that

Ibn Abī l-Dunyā is known for: topical muṣannaf works dedicated to a single theme.243

Burjulānī’s decisive influence on Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s writings was apparently

common knowledge in later tradition: Abū Mūsā al-Madīnī (d. 581/1185) was told that

Ibn Abī l-Dunyā “only compiled his books according to the books of (innamā ṣannafa

kutubahu ʿalā kutub) Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn al-Burjulānī, and this is indicated by the

abundance of his narrations from him.”244 Madīnī further notes that there probably

books in which Ibn Abī l-Dunyā relates from no other source but Burjulānī, such as the

241 Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, 3:5.

242 Kitāb al-Ṣuḥba, K. al-Mutayyamīn, K. al-Jūd wa-l-karam, K. al-Himma, K. al-Ṣabr, K. al-Ṭāʿa. Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, 236; Dodge, Fihrist of al-Nadīm, 1:458.

243 Almagor, “Introduction,” Dhamm al-dunyā, 15.

244 Abū Mūsā Mūḥammad b. ʿUmar al-Madīnī, “Dhikr Abī Bakr ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad b. ʿUbayd b. Abī l-Dunyā wa-hālihi wa-mā waqaʿa ʿāliyan min ḥadīthihi,” in Majmūʿat ajzāʾ ḥadīthiyya, ed. Mashhūr b. Ḥasan Āl Salmān, vol. 1 (Jeddah: Dār al-Kharrāz, 1422/2001), 356.

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Kitāb al-Ruhbān. This is the title of Burjulānī’s most famous but lost work, significantly

also the earliest known source to apparently mention Rābiʿā al-ʿAdawiyya.245 The

manuscript in India preserving selections from Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s purported redaction of

the book has unfortunately omitted the isnāds, so it remains impossible to test Madīnī’s

claim about his exclusive reliance on Burjulānī.246 Nevertheless, Burjulānī is indeed one

of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s most frequently cited sources elsewhere, if unevenly so. The Kitāb al-

Ṣamt has only eight reports on his authority, but Makārim al-akhlāq includes fifty—

comprising fully ten percent of the 487 reports in the book.247

Fortunately, a single work of Burjulānī does survive, the Kitāb al-Karam wa-l-jūd,

“Book on Nobility and Generosity.”248 It is a short compilation of 73 traditions, only about

a third of which are Prophetic ḥadīth. But like Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s works and the kutub al-

245 Massignon, Essay on the Origins of the Technical Language of Islamic Mysticism, 104; Rkia Elaroui Cornell, Rabiʿa From Narrative to Myth: The Many Faces of Islam’s Most Famous Woman Saint, Rabiʿa Al-ʿAdawiyya (London: Oneworld Academic, 2019), 38.

246 Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Munajjid, “Morceaux choisis du Livre des moines,” Mélanges de l’Institut dominicain d’études orientales du Caire 3 (1956): 349–58.

247 Based on the indices in: Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 682; Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Makārim al-akhlāq, 164.

248 Sezgin, GAS, 1:638. The text is preserved in a nine-folio unicum, Damascus MS Ẓāhiriyya majmūʿ 38, 104a–115a, edited and published as: Muḥammad b. al-Ḥusayn al-Burjulānī, Kitāb al-Karam wa-l-jūd wa-sakhāʾ al-nufūs, ed. ʿĀmir Ḥasan Ṣabrī (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 1412/1991). The text has been translated into German, with annotations: Bernd Radtke, Materialien zur alten islamischen Frömmigkeit, Basic Texts of Islamic Mysticism 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 1–43.

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zuhd more broadly, it is guided by the same methodological interest in supplying an isnād

for each tradition, even when this involves a saying attributed to an unnamed figure.249

In other words, if Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s scholarly oeuvre represents “a merger between

ḥadīth and adab,” as Almagor rightly proposes, then he appears to have been carrying on

a tradition established already in the generation preceding him, notably by his most

important teacher.250

It may be therefore also quite misleading to suggest, as claimed in the most

recent of the three entries on Ibn Abī l-Dunyā in successive editions of the Encyclopedia of

Islam, that he was “not a specialist on ḥadīth” in comparison to Bukhārī and Muslim.251

The distinction instead is one of genre and disciplinary interest rather than method:

whereas the works of Bukhārī and Muslim are guided primary by fiqh issues and the

extra burden of certainty necessary to substantiate proof-texts in legal reasoning, Ibn

Abī l-Dunyā seems to have been concerned little with law and devoted his energies

instead to the use of ḥadīth for moral edification. Regional differences might be a factor

here as well, with Ibn Abī l-Dunyā being more representative of Baghdādī ḥadīth

249 For instance, Burjulānī, Karam wa-l-jūd, no. 37; Radtke, Materialien, 24.

250 Almagor, “Introduction,” Dhamm al-dunyā, 15.

251 Librande, “Ibn Abī l-Dunyā.” See also the probalmetic suggestion elsewhere that Ibn Abī l-Dunyā merely “imitated” the isnād method: Librande, “Certainty and Morality,” 12.

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scholarship, especially of an earlier generation before the primacy of the musnad format

took hold, while most of the canonical Sunnī collections were produced farther east, in

Khurāsān and Transoxania.252 Certainly, Ibn Abī l-Dunyā was unaffected by the “saḥīḥ

movement” that began to dominate the activity of ḥadīth specialists by the end of the

ninth century CE. As such, he was more like those traditionists who remained open to

the didactic value of sayings and stories that might be otherwise deemed of suspect

provenance.253 They were traditionists nonetheless, who were keen to uphold the

symbolic power of the chains of transmission with meticulous attention if disregard for

the stringent criteria of isnād criticism being developed by other specialists. No less

significantly, Ibn Abī l-Dunyā himself would in posterity attain the rank of a crucial link

252 The possible significance of regional developments has been argued by Roy Mottahedeh, “The Transmission of Learning: The Role of the Islamic Northeast,” in Madrasa: la transmission du savoir dans le monde musulman, ed. Nicole Grandin and Marc Gaborieau (Paris: AP Éditions Arguments, 1997), 63–72. On specific local developments in approach to ḥadīth scholarship in the early period, see also: Goyal, “Lives of the Traditionists.”

253 Cf. Bellamy’s observation: “It is clear that Ibn Abī l-Dunyā was running against most of the literary currents of his own age; obviously it was for his sheikhs and earlier predecessors that he felt the greatest affinity, and the style of composition he followed was one he had inherited from them,” in the introduction to Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Makārim al-akhlāq, x. On how the process of compiling the ṣaḥīḥ collections departed from earlier ḥadīth activity, see: Jonathan A. C. Brown, The Canonization of Al-Bukhārī and Muslim: The Formation and Function of the Sunnī Ḥadīth Canon (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 54–59. Brown adopts the term “ṣaḥīḥ movement” from Muḥammad Abdul Rauf, “Ḥadīth Literature—I: The Development of the Science of Ḥadīth,” in Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period, ed. A. F. L. Beeston, Cambridge History of Arabic Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 274.

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in chains of transmission, as embodied in a text compiled in his recognition by a twelfth-

century ḥadīth scholar in Iṣfahān, Abū Mūsā al-Madīnī (d. 581/1185). Abū Mūsā compiled

a biography of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā based on al-Khaṭīb and other sources, prefacing a small

collection of traditions with prestigious ʿāli or “elevated” isnāds by way of Ibn Abī l-

Dunyā, thanks to whom he could narrate a handful of aḥādīth with only eight or nine

intermediaries between himself and the Prophet.254 From Abū Mūsā’s perspective, Ibn

Abī l-Dunyā remained a valued conduit in the legacy of ḥadīth.

B. The Works Attributed to Ibn Abī l-Dunyā

The exact number and titles of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s works have been difficult to

establish with any certainty, despite numerous cataloguing attempts in both the

medieval and the modern period.255 Ibn al-Nadīm’s Fihrist, preserving our earliest known

list, names thirty three books by Ibn Abī l-Dunyā.256 The Fahrasa of Ibn Khayr also

254 The text is known from a modern manuscript copied in 1957 by Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī and held at the Ẓāhiriyya library in Damascus, published as: Madīnī, “Dhikr Ibn Abī l-Dunyā.” On the spiritual prestige of the isnād ʿāli in the later Islamic tradition, see: Eerik Dickinson, “Ibn Al-Ṣalāḥ al-Shahrazūrī and the Isnād,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 122, no. 3 (2002): 498, https://doi.org/10.2307/3087517.

255 An incredibly extensive list of the various lists of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s works is included in Kinberg’s introduction to Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Morality in the Guise of Dreams: A Critical Edition of Kitāb al-Manām with Introduction, ed. Leah Kinberg (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994), 28n1.

256 Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, 236–37; Dodge, Fihrist of al-Nadīm, 1:459.

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happens to list thirty three titles, for nine of which he had authorized recensions with a

full isnād.257 But only five of Ibn Khayr’s titles overlap with Ibn al-Nadīm’s: between the

two bibliographies, discounting at least one instance of a repeated title, Ibn Abī l-Dunyā

was known for a total of sixty works before the sixth/twelfth century. Khaṭīb al-

Baghdādī does not mention any of his titles, nor do most other biographers. It became

common in the later Islamic tradition to speak of “more than a hundred books” by Ibn

Abī l-Dunyā, while a well-known tendency to exaggerate, whether justified or not, raised

the number to an incredible three hundred.258 Perhaps most significant in this regard is

an interesting four-folio manuscript in Damascus entitled Asmāʾ muṣannafāt Abī Bakr

ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad b. ʿUbayd b. Abī l-Dunyā ʿalā ḥurūf al-muʿjam, which lists a

remarkable 198 titles in alphabetical order and served as the basis for Ṣalāh al-Dīn

Munajjid’s 1974 catalogue of works attributed to Ibn Abī l-Dunyā.259 The original source

of this list is unknown, but Muḥammad Ziyād b. ʿUmar al-Tukla has recently identified

257 Ibn Khayr al-Ishbīlī, Fahrasa, 350–53.

258 Citing Ibn Kathīr, ʿUmar Riḍā Kaḥḥāla, Muʿjam al-muʾallifīn: tarājim muṣannifī l-kutub al-ʿarabiyya (Beirut: Dār Iḥyā al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1376/1957), 6:131; Munajjid, “Muṣannafāt Ibn Abī l-Dunyā,” 580.

259 Damascus MS Ẓāhiriyya 3779 ʿāmm (majmūʿ 42), fol. 56–59; edited and published by Munajjid, “Muṣannafāt Ibn Abī l-Dunyā.”

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the script as recognizably in the hand of al-Mizzī (d. 742/1341).260 Moreover, while

Munajjid was concerned only with the list itself, Tukla draws attention to a set of sigla

(mīm and mīm-ḥāʾ, occasionally with a numerical suffix, 1 or 2) that appear to annotate

some of the titles. Tukla speculates that these may indicate Mizzī’s personal record of

texts which he had heard at a reading session (hence mīm perhaps denoting masmūʿ) or

which he had copied.

There is good reason to be skeptical of this list of 198 titles, especially given what

seem like repetitive attributions of the same work with variant titles, such as Akhbār al-

khulafāʾ, Tārīkh al-khulafāʾ, and al-Khulafāʾ.261 Nonetheless, if it as at all representative of

the size of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s oeuvre, then only about a third or a quarter of his works

have survived. In addition to a list of 162 titles attributed to him, Dhahabī named only

twenty works of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā that he had access to.262 The past century, however, has

witnessed a steady and remarkable progress in the recovery and publication of Ibn Abī l-

Dunyā’s extant works, thanks to the efforts of scholars in the Arab world and others like

260 Muḥammad Ziyād al-Tukla, “Asmāʾ muṣannafāt Ibn Abī l-Dunyā ʿalā ḥurūf al-muʿjam li-l-Ḥāfiẓ al-Mizzī,” Alukah, August 30, 2012, https://www.alukah.net/library/0/43752/.

261 Munajjid, “Muṣannafāt Ibn Abī l-Dunyā” nos. 5, 40, and 66. The title Mawāʿiẓ al-khulafāʾ (no. 186), which does not appear to have survived, is attested with a recension history by Ibn Khayr al-Ishbīlī, Fahrasa, 353.

262 Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām, 13:401. The count is by Munajjid, “Muṣannafāt Ibn Abī l-Dunyā,” 581.

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Leah Kinberg and Ella Almagor. To document these numerous editions and the known

manuscripts, and to update Brockelmann’s incomplete list of forty four titles in the GAL,

Reinhard Weipert and Stefan Weninger undertook the laborious task of establishing a

systematic catalogue of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s surviving works—published in a 1996 article,

followed by an update in 2009 by Weipert.263 Based on their assessment, which disputes

several attributions (including Dhamm al-ghība, discussed below), Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s

extant corpus amounts to 58 known titles.

These works span a broad range of topics and themes. Based on their titles, Stefan

Weninger has proposed four broad categories of works compiled by Ibn Abī l-Dunyā:264

1. On general ethics, such as: al-Ṣamt (Silence), al-Shukr (Gratitude), al-Ṣabr

(Patience), al-Ḥilm (Judiciousness), etc.

2. On ascetic themes, such as: Dhamm al-dunyā (Censure of the world), al-Jūʿ

(Hunger), al-ʿUzla (Seclusion), etc.

3. On eschatological topics, such as: Ṣifat al-janna (Description of paradise),

Ṣifat al-nār (Description of hell), Man ʿāsha baʿd al-mawt (Those who live

after death), etc.

263 Weipert and Weninger, “Die erhaltenen Werke”; Weipert, “Fortsetzung.” These catalogues thus precede Fāḍil al-Raqqī’s 2012 edition of Mawsūʿat Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, which offers a substantially newer edition of a previously unused manuscript for at least one text, Dhamm al-malāhī.

264 Weninger, Qanāʿa (Genügsamkeit), 62–63.

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4. On exemplary early Muslims, such as: Ḥilm Muʿāwiya (Muʿāwiya’s

wisdom), Tazwīj Fāṭima (Fāṭima’s wedding), Maqtal amīr al-muʾmīnīn ʿAlī

(The martyrdom of ʿAlī), etc.

These categories could be regrouped or refined further, and Weninger’s proposed

division between general ethics and asceticism is certainly open to question in light of

the debates on the meaning of zuhd. Some titles clearly represent more specific genres,

such as the series of maqtal works: only that on ʿAlī survives, but Ibn Abī l-Dunyā is said

to have compiled maqtal accounts for a number of other figures, including ʿUmar,

ʿUthmān, al-Ḥusayn, Ibn al-Zubayr, Saʿīd b. Jubayr.265 If we can accept these attributions,

Ibn Abī l-Dunyā was an active participant in what was evidently a popular mode of

historical writing in the ninth century CE.

Likewise perhaps reflecting a specific genre are the titles Sidrat al-muntahā and

Shajarat al-Ṭūbā, denoting respectively the lote tree at the limit of the seventh heaven

and the tree of “blessing” (ṭūbā) said to grow in paradise.266 Both terms derive from the

Qurʾān, in verses Q Najm 53:14 and Q Raʿd 13:29. Though related to eschatological

265 Munajjid, “Muṣannafāt Ibn Abī l-Dunyā,” 592. On the popularity of maqtal works in the eighth and ninth centuries CE, see: Chase F. Robinson, Islamic Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 34.

266 Bearman et al., EI2, s.v. Sidrat al-Muntahā; McAuliffe, EQ, 2:284b (s.v. Garden), 4:13a (s.v. Paradise).

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themes, these titles most likely therefore represent compilations of exegetical material.

Somewhat unusually among zuhd authors, Ibn Abī l-Dunyā appears to have had

considerable knowledge of tafsīr traditions and Dhahabī points out that he was cited as a

direct source in the Tafsīr attributed to Ibn Mājah (d. 273/887?).267 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā makes

use of exegetical reports in the Kitāb al-Ṣamt, as I discuss in Chapter 2. His interest in

tafsīr may be an additional factor in identifying Ibn Abi l-Dunyā’s disciplinary orientation

more broadly with adab than narrowly with zuhd, as Melchert has argued that “Quran

commentary is closer to the tradition of adab than to that of zuhd.”268

Indeed, Ibn Abī l-Dunyā made significant and often pioneering contributions to

some iconic genres of the classical Arabic adab tradition, such as the literature on faraj

baʿd al-shidda (“relief after hardship”). His book with this title is the earliest surviving

work of the genre, only the second known after the lost work of al-Madāʾinī (d. 215/830)

and a sure influence on al-Tanūkhī’s (d. 384/994) more famous Kitāb al-Faraj baʿd al-

shidda, which explicitly mentions and draws from Ibn Abī l-Dunyā.269 Another major title

267 Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām, 13:400.

268 Christopher Melchert, “Locating Hell in Early Rununciant Literature,” in Locating Hell in Islamic Traditions, ed. Christian Lange (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 119.

269 Alfred Wiener, “Die Farağ baʿd aš-šidda-Literatur,” Der Islam 4 (1913): 270–98; Nouha Khalifa, Hardship and Deliverance in the Islamic Tradition : Theology and Spirituality in the Works of Al-Tanūkhī

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is the Kitāb Makārim al-akhlāq (Nobilities of Character), available in a definitive critical

edition by James Bellamy.270 Although not the earliest we know about, the Makārim

remains the earliest surviving prose text under the rubric of akhlāq, and it has been

suggested that the work of the same title by the great litterateur Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī

(d. 429/1039) may have drawn upon a number of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s other compilations on

various virtues and vices.271 The ethos as well as the literary practice and encyclopedic

impulse of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s compilations made them a valuable source for many later

and more influential works in Islamic ethics, perhaps most notably the Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn

of al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111).272

(London: I.B. Tauris, 2010), 13. See also James A. Bellamy, “The Makārim Al-Akhlāq by Ibn Abi’l-Dunyā (a Preliminary Study),” The Muslim World 53, no. 2 (April 1, 1963): 106–7.

270 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Makārim al-akhlāq.

271 Bellamy, “Makārim Al-Akhlāq: A Preliminary Study,” 107; “Introduction,” Bilal Orfali and Ramzi Baalbaki, eds., The Book of Noble Character: Critical Edition of Makārim al-akhlāq wa-maḥāsin al-ādāb wa-badāʾiʿ al-awṣāf wa-gharāʾib al-tashbīhāt, Attributed to Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī (d. 429/1039) (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 5.

272 Mohamed Ahmed Sherif, Ghazali’s Theory of Virtue (SUNY Press, 1975), 94–95; Kinberg, “Introduction,” Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Kitāb al-Manām, 42–43.

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C. The Book of Silence

i. The Kitāb al-Ṣamt vs. Dhamm al-Ghība: Two Texts or One?

There are currently two published titles attributed to Ibn Abī l-Dunyā on the

subject of speech ethics: the Kitāb al-Ṣamt wa ādāb al-lisān (Book of Silence and Etiquettes

of the Tongue), and secondly, al-Ghība wa l-namīma (Gossip and Slander). Both have been

edited or reprinted multiple times, occasionally with slightly variant titles: instead of

ādāb, the former sometimes has the more familiar ḥifẓ al-lisān, while the latter is often

referred to as Dhamm al-Ghība (Censure of Gossip).273 There is a question as to the

relationship between the two texts, since Reinhard Weipert and Stefan Weninger have

argued against treating them as separate titles and omitted al-Ghība from their

enumeration of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s extant works. They rightly point out that in its extant

form, the contents of al-Ghība are simply identical to a portion of the Kitāb al-Ṣamt:

specifically, reports numbers 139 through 302 in the edition of Najm ʿAbd al-Raḥmān

Khalaf.274 Moreover, the shorter book does not simply excerpt the chapters of al-Ṣamt

273 At least six respective editions exist of each, whether separately or as part of collected works. Apart from the most recent edition by Fāḍil al-Raqqī in the Mawsūʿat Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, the rest are catalogued in: Weipert and Weninger, “Die erhaltenen Werke”; Weipert, “Fortsetzung.”

274 Weipert and Weninger, “Die erhaltenen Werke.” They have further expressed indignation as to why editors would bother to repeat their efforts to separately al-Ghība wa-l-namīma: “Warum Halaf, dem dieser Umstand besser als jedem anderen bekannt ist, das Buch noch einmal separat

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one might expect given the title al-Ghība, but instead opens with a ḥadīth from the middle

of the fourth chapter on al-mirāʾ (quarreling) and concludes with the fourteenth chapter

on expiation for ghība. The published text of al-Ghība records a few additional details,

though not in substantive content. For the dream story of Khālid al-Rabaʿī, to be

discussed in Chapter 5, it includes an additional isnād following the main version of the

report.275 On the other hand, there are at least two reports, numbers 144 and 208, which

appear in the Ṣamt but not in al-Ghība.276

From the viewpoint of reception history, it should be noted that the shorter text

exists in an independent manuscript with a separate recension. The editions are all based

on a single manuscript, a thirteen folio copy within a larger collection of works by Ibn

Abī l-Dunyā in a manuscript held at the library of Aḥmad Bāshā al-Jazzār Mosque in

Akko/Acre (MS Nūr Aḥmadiyya 9).277 According to Najm Khalaf, the copy dates to 583 AH

i.e. 1187–88 CE. Khalaf also provides the manuscript’s sanad or chain of transmission,

ediert hat, ist nach philologischen Gesichtspunkten völlig unverständlich. Bezeichnend ist, daß es ihm drei weitere Editoren nachgetan haben!”

275 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 312–13, no. 182.

276 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, 285, 327.

277 For details on the manuscript, see: Weipert and Weninger, “Die erhaltenen Werke,” 418–19, 427; Abū Bakr Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Dhamm al-ghība wa-l-namīma, ed. Najm ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Khalaf (Cairo: Dār al-Iʿtiṣām, 1989), 77.

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though its ambiguous if this pertains only to the text of al-Ghība or to the manuscript as a

whole. Regardless, the recension is attributed to Abū Jāʿfar Mūḥammad b. ʿAmr b. al-

Bakhtarī al-Razzāz, said to have received the text from Ibn Abī l-Dunyā in the year 278

AH (891–92 CE). This is therefore a different recension than that of the Kitāb al-Ṣamt

transmitted by al-Ḥusayn b. Ṣafwān al-Bardhaʿī, who is known as a rāwī of Ibn Abī l-

Dunyā’s works. Al-Razzāz (d. 339/950), on the other hand, was a notable scholar in his

own right, given the epithet musnid Baghdād and with an attributed collection of ḥadīth

dictations (amālī) still extant.278

It is quite plausible that the extant redaction of al-Ghība is an authentic but

merely a partial transmission of the Kitāb al-Ṣamt, perhaps based on a set of a lectures by

the author. Whether or not Ibn Abī l-Dunyā ever intended to separately publish a

compilation dedicated to ghība is more difficult to determine. The early lists of titles

attributed to Ibn al-Nadīm and Ibn Khayr do not mention such a title, and only the

former includes a book on ādāb al-lisān.279 Both lists include a number of titles with the

278 There also exists a juzʾ of ḥadīth in addition to his Amālī: Sezgin, GAS, 184; Ziriklī, Aʿlām, 6:319. For a brief biography, see: Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh, 4:222. Note that Khalaf gives a variant name for him, either as transcribed from the manuscript of al-Ghība or due to a misreading or typos: Muḥammad b. ʿUmar b. al-Buḥturī (or al-Baḥtarī), instead of ʿAmr(w) b. al-Bakhtarī.

279 The available editions of the Fihrist, however, list a Kitāb al-Ṣabr wa-ādāb al-lisān: Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, 237; cf. Kitāb al-Fihrist: mit Anmerkungen herausgegeben, ed. Gustav Flügel (Leipzig: F. C. W.

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designation dhamm, which may be a relevant consideration as well for the attribution of

a text on ghība: as is well known, Ibn Abī l-Dunyā composed a series of dhamm treatises

condemning various principal vices, including muskir (intoxicants), baghy (rebellion), the

aforementioned malāhī (amusements) and more broadly on the zuhd theme, dhamm al-

dunyā.280 The late-medieval lists attribute a further eight or ten dhamm titles to Ibn Abī l-

Dunyā, including Dhamm al-ghība.281 The extant manuscript in Akko has the title al-Ghība

wa l-namīma, but the text was clearly otherwise known as Dhamm al-ghība. The

anonymous catalogue now ascribed to Mizzī lists both al-Ṣamt and Dhamm al-ghība

separately, though only the former bears a notation (mīm) suggesting that the

bibliographer had access to it; likewise, al-Dhahabī lists the two separately, but only had

access to the Ṣamt.282 However, and perhaps most significantly, al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505)

Vogel, 1871–72), 1:185. This could be a scribal error replacing ṣamṭ with ṣabr, but Ibn Abī l-Dunyā is also attributed the extant title al-Ṣabr: Weipert and Weninger, “Die erhaltenen Werke,” 447.

280 These are the extant titles: Weipert and Weninger, “Die erhaltenen Werke,” 422–24; Weipert, “Fortsetzung,” 453. Ibn al-Nadīm lists Dhamm al-malāhī, al-fuḥsh, al-muskir, and al-dunyā, while Ibn Khayr repeats these except for al-dunyā and the title al-malāhī without dhamm, as well as an additional dhamm al-ghaḍab: Ibn al-Nadīm, Fihrist, 236–37; Ibn Khayr al-Ishbīlī, Fahrasa, 350–53.

281 The anonymous Ẓāhiriyya MS lists a total of twelve dhamm titles: Tukla, “Asmāʾ muṣannafāt.” Munajjid adds four more from other sources, to list a total of fourteen dhamm treatises: Munajjid, “Muṣannafāt Ibn Abī l-Dunyā,” 587.

282 Tukla, “Asmāʾ muṣannafāt”; Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām, 13:401–02. Dhamm al-Ghība is also the title by which the Ottoman bibliographer Kâtip Çelebi/Ḥājj Khalīfa (d. 1068/1657) refers to the text in Kashf al-Zunūn, where the two books are listed separately: Kâtip Çelebi, Kitāb Kashf Al-Ẓunūn ʿan

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appears to have had access to both titles. His tafsīr encyclopedia, al-Durr al-manthūr,

adduces reports from “Ibn Abī l-Dunyā fī (kitāb) Dhamm al-ghība” on eight occasions and

from “Ibn Abī l-Dunyā fī (kitāb) al-Ṣamt” in seven instances.283 Suyūṭī would also abridge

and summarize the Kitāb al-Ṣamt in a well-known mukhtaṣar, titled Ḥusn al-samt fī l-ṣamt

(The Best Manner in Silence).284

It is also noteworthy that Suyūṭī refers to the book simply as al-Ṣamt, as do most

sources.285 The single word conforms to many of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s works, and may reflect

the book’s original title as intended by the author. The title ādāb al-lisān is attested by Ibn

al-Nadīm as noted above, and is given by at least one of the manuscripts of the Ṣamt,

albeit as adab al-lisān. The term adab applied in this context does convey the broader idea

of “discipline of the tongue.” It nevertheless remains uncommon in comparison to the

phrase ḥifẓ al-lisān as we have seen in the zuhd literature proper, and as also employed by

Asāmī al-Kutub Wa-l-Funūn, ed. Şerefettin Yaltkaya and Kilisli Muallim Rifat (Istanbul: Maṭabiʻ Wikālat al-Maʻārif al-Jalīlah, 1941–55), 1:827, 2:433.

283 The reports from Ṣamt appear as part of the commentary on Q 3:134, Q 4:114 (twice), Q 4:142, Q 17:36, Q 29:28, Q 31:12, Q 49:17, Q 83:22. Reports from Dhamm al-ghība appear in the treatment of: Q 1:275, Q 18:49, Q 40:51, Q 49:11–12, Q 104, and Q 111. These citations are based on a search on Maktabat al-Shāmila and only indicate instances where Suyūṭī names either title, whereas in other cases he often cites Ibn Abī l-Dunyā without naming the source text.

284 Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī, Ḥusn al-samt fī l-ṣamt, ed. Najm ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Khalaf (Damascus: Dār al-Maʾmūn li-l-Turāth, 1405/1985).

285 See: Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 113.

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Ibn Abī l-Dunyā for the heading of his first chapter in the book. The phrase is also

adopted by other sources with chapters on speech ethics as well as specialized books on

the subject post-dating Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s, including the lost Kitāb Ḥifẓ al-lisān by the

prominent Khurāsānī ḥadīth scholar Ibn Ḥibbān al-Bustī (d. 354/965) and a handful of

titles from the later medieval period.286 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s Kitāb al-Ṣamt remains the most

well-known, and was a major influence on subsequent discussions on the etiquettes of

speech in the Islamic tradition. It served as a direct source for al-Ghazālī in his fairly

substantial chapter on “vices of the tongue” (kitāb āfāt al-lisān) in the third quarter (rubʿ

al-muhlikāt, “the ways to perdition”) of his magnum opus, the Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn.287

ii. The Manuscripts and Recension History of Kitāb al-Ṣamt

The extant redaction of the Kitāb al-Ṣamt is attributed to Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn b.

Ṣafwān al-Bardhaʿī (d. Baghdad, 340/952). He is known in the biographical literature

primarily as a disciple (ṣāḥib) of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā and transmitter (rāwī) of his books.288

The text exists in at least four manuscripts known to date, most of which are incomplete

on their own. They represent two different recensions, one from Damascus and another

286 See the known titles surveyed by Najm Khalaf: Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 131–37. Cf. Zilio-Grandi, “Silence and Speech Etiquette,” 15.

287 As discussed by Khalaf: Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 124.

288 Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh, 8:594; Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām, 15:442.

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from Cairo, but both transmitting from Baghdadi sources with a lineage back to Bardhaʿī

through the following sanad:289

1. Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn b. Ṣafwān al-Bardhaʿī (d. 340/952)

2. Abū l-Qāsim al-Ḥasan b. al-Ḥasan b. al-Mundhir (d. 411/1020–21)

3. Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad b. Ṭalḥa al-Naʿʿālī (d. 493/1099–1100)

The earlier of the extant manuscripts dates to the generation of al-Naʿʿālī’s students,

namely shaykha Fāṭima bint Muḥammad b. ʿAlī Abū l-Faḍl (d. 561/1165–66) and Abū l-

Faḍl Ṣadaqa al-Simsār (d. 585/1189–90). On behalf of these two scholars, the Damascus

recension was transmitted by none other than Ibn Qudāma al-Maqdisī (d. 620/1223), the

major Ḥanbalī scholar and author of al-Mughnī.

The Cairo recension is identified with Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Muʾmin b. Khalaf,

known as al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Dimyāṭī (d. 705/1306). His immediate source (ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn al-

Najjār) was an immigrant to Cairo from Baghdad, where he obtained his license for the

book from the famous female scholar and scribe (kātiba) Shuhda bint Abī Naṣr al-Ibarī (d.

574/1178), known as fakhr al-nisāʾ or “the pride of women” and said have auditioned a

289 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 145.

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number of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s books.290 Dimyāṭī had also read the Kitāb al-Ṣamt at the

mosque of al-Azhar with another former student of Shuhda named Abū l-Qāsim Yaḥyā b.

Abī l-Suʿūd (d. Baghdad, 650/1252), who transmitted the book from Umm ʿItab Tajannī

bint ʿAbdallāh al-Wahbāniyya (d. 575/1180), who in turn obtained it from al-Naʿʿālī.291

The recension histories of the Kitāb al-Ṣamt thus reflect the role of pious women in the

transmission of ḥadīth in the late-medieval Middle East.

Existing editions of the Kitāb al-Ṣamt are all based on the first two of the four

known manuscripts listed below. The fourth, which may be the most complete copy,

remains unnoticed in previous scholarship:

1. Damascus, Zāhiriyya 3768 ʿāmm (majāmiʿ 31) / 1, fol. 4a–49b292

This is our earliest dated manuscript of the Ṣamt, copied in Baghdad in 561 AH i.e. 1165–

66 CE. The title given is Kitāb al-Ṣamt wa-adab (singular) al-lisān. The text was divided into

four quires or parts (ajzāʾ), but this is an incomplete copy missing almost the entirety of

290 Ziriklī, Aʿlām, 3:178. Najm Khalaf refers to her samāʿāt: Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 141.

291 A contemporary of Shuhda, Tajannī al-Wahbāniyya was also a major female scholar, and a teacher of Ibn ʿAsākir. See the short biographical notice in: Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām, 20:550–51.

292 Weipert and Weninger, “Die erhaltenen Werke,” 447, no. 46(b).

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the first juzʾ at the beginning.293 The manuscript records a samāʿ by Ibn Qudāma (d.

620/1223).

2. Cairo, Dār al-kutub 2124 ḥadīth294

This copy dates to the eighth/fourteenth century. The text is divided into six quires or

parts (ajzāʾ). The manuscript is incomplete at the end, and is missing twenty three

reports (nos. 736 to 759) as enumerated in Najm Khalaf’s edition.295

3. Riyadh, Jāmiʿat al-Imām Muhammad b. Saʿūd 3/2/656 [5278], fol. 22-27296

This is a modern manuscript in the hand of Saʿd b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb Ṭalas, dated 1936 CE.

The title page identifies it as the riwāya of Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn b. Ṣafwān al-Bardhaʿī, and

the text begins and ends with Ibn Qudāma’s chain of transmission, as also in the

Ẓāhiriyya manuscript. The copy is identified as the second juzʾ, and includes selections

from twelve chapters of the book, beginning with Khalaf’s report no. 241 (from Bāb

dhamm al-namīma, here unlabeled) until Bāb fi qillat al-kalām. The text is excerpted

293 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 143–44.

294 Weipert and Weninger, “Die erhaltenen Werke,” 447, no. 46(a); described by Khalaf in: Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 139–40.

295 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 139.

296 Listed by Weipert and Weninger based on a catalogue entry and without further details: Weipert and Weninger, “Die erhaltenen Werke,” 447, no. 46(c).

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further; it appears to omit a number of reports, and truncates the isnād for each report to

only the first authority.

4. Meknes, Maktabat al-Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr 426297

The title given here is simply Kitāb al-Ṣamt. According to the catalogue, this manuscript

in 137 folios is a copy of the recension of Dimyāṭī. This may be a complete copy, as the

excipit identified in the catalogue appears to reflect a variant of report no. 759 in

Khalaf’s edition, the last ḥadīth in the book. The manuscript comes from the collection of

Sultan Sīdī Muḥammad III b. ʿAbdallāh al-ʿAlawī (d. 1204/1790), and was endowed to the

library of the Great Mosque of Meknes.

iii. The Structure and Contents of Kitāb al-Ṣamt

The contents of the Kitāb al-Ṣamt are organized into topical abwāb following the

convention of the muṣannafāt adopted in most of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s compilations.

According to the enumeration in Najm Khalaf’s edition, there are a total of 759 traditions

in the book, including some repetitive material with variants texts or isnāds. Only the

first 611 reports are categorized, into a total of twenty-five chapters of uneven size.

While the contents within a chapter do not necessarily all cohere strictly, the chapter

297 ʿAbd al-Salām al-Barrāq, Fihris al-makhṭūṭāt al-maḥfūẓa fi Khizānat al-Jāmiʿ al-Kabīr bi-Miknās (Rabat: Wizārat al-Thaqāfa, 2004), 107, no. 187.

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headings do convey the overall topic or theme of each and reflect the compiler’s decision

to adduce and interpret particular traditions in that light. Listed in the table below are

the topic headings, and the number of reports included under each:

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Bāb/Chapter Number of reports

1 Guarding one’s tongue (ḥifẓ al-lisān) and the virtue of silence

(faḍl al-ṣamt) 68

2 Prohibition of superfluous talk (fuḍūl al-kalām) and wading in

the futile (khawḍ al-bāṭil) 38

3 Prohibition of talking about what does not concern you (al-

kalām fīmā lā yaʿnīk) 16

4 Censure of quarreling (mirāʾ) 24

5 Censure of affectation in speech (taqaʿʿur fī al-kalām) 6

6 Censure of feuds (khuṣūmāt) 9

7 Backbiting and its censure (ghība wa-dhammihā) 43

8 Explanation of backbiting (tafsīr al-ghība) 14

9 Backbiting the one whom it is permissible to talk about 21

10 The Muslim’s defending of his brother’s honor (ʿirḍ) 13

11 Censure of slanderous rumor (namīma) 23

12 Censure of the two-tongued (dhū l-lisānayn) 8

13 That which worshippers have been prohibited of ridiculing

(yusakhkhar) one another 9

14 The expiation for backbiting (kaffārat al-ightiyāb) 10

15 That which people have been commanded to practice with

regard to good speech (al-qawl al-ḥasan) about everyone 16

16 Censure of obscenity (al-fuḥsh wa l-badhāʾ) 25

17 That which is prohibited from saying 29

18 Censure of those who curse (al-laʿʿānīn) 17

19 Censure of jesting (al-muzāḥ) 14

20 The guarding of secrets (ḥifẓ al-sirr) 7

21 Moderation in talking (qillat al-kalām) and reticence in speech

(al-taḥaffuẓ fi l-manṭiq) 32

22 Truthfulness (ṣidq) and its virtue 13

23 Keeping promises (al-wafāʾ bi l-waʿd) 13

24 Censure of lying (kadhb) 129

25 Censure of the panegyrists (al-maddāḥīn) 15

Table 2.3 – Topics Covered in the Kitāb al-Ṣamt of Ibn Abī al-Dunyāʾ 153

The chapters of the Kitāb al-Ṣamt thus show considerable variation in length. The

shortest comprises only 6 reports, dealing with taqaʿʿur or “affectation” in speech, which

Zilio-Grandi renders as “fastidious speech.”298 The longest by far is the chapter on lying

(kadhb), with 129 traditions. This number seems to reflect the sheer abundance of

traditions warning against such a basic and major sin. The size of the corpus for each

topic could therefore reflect something of its significance or at least the amount of

attention it received in the pious wisdom and ethical traditions available to Ibn Abī l-

Dunyā. Thus, the next largest corpus, 68 reports in the very first chapter, deal with the

title theme of silence and ḥifẓ al-lisān.299 The chapter on the censure of ghība—the likely

inspiration for the title dhamm al-ghība discussed earlier—is the next largest, with 43

reports. However, this is only one of several chapters dealing with various aspects of

ghība, two of which follow immediately: a corpus of 14 reports dealing with the meaning

of ghība, and 21 reports dealing with exceptions to ghība.

A further section dealing overtly with ghība comes later in the book, and

comprises 10 reports on the ritual expiation or kaffāra incumbent upon one who has

engaged in backbiting. Only the first four of these, however, expound directly on the

298 Zilio-Grandi, “Silence and Speech Etiquette,” 16.

299 The contents of this chapter have been analyzed by Zilio-Grandi, “Silence and Speech Etiquette.”

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topic, and only one of these—the opening report—is a Prophet ḥadīth, declaring simply

that “the kaffāra for the one you have backbitten is to seek his forgiveness.”300 Setting

aside the issue of substantive coherence, these four chapters on ghība collectively

amount to a total of 88 traditions—about 14.4 percent of the organized material, or 11.6

percent of the whole book. In other words, with respect to specific aspects of speech

ethics, the issue of ghība receives extensive attention in the Kitāb al-Ṣamt, second only to

kadhb and with evidently more traditions dealing with it than on the broader theme of

disciplining the tongue. This could be a factor in explaining the partial reception of the

book under the title of Dhamm al-ghība.

The twenty-five chapters of the Kitāb al-Ṣamt as listed in Table 1.3 comprises a

total of 611 traditions. Beyond these, there is a further uncategorized assortment of 148

reports at the end of the book. Some of these are repetitions of material found earlier in

the chapters, with a variant text or an additional isnād, though not necessarily. For

instance, report no. 612, reasonably considered the first item not to belong to the

previous chapter, is an exact reproduction of report no. 47 in the very first chapter, a

300 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 383–84, no. 292. Related on the authority of Anas b. Mālik, the ḥadīth is generally considered ḍaʿīf at best, but was also recorded in the Musnad of al-Ḥārith b. Abī Usāma (d. 282/896). Nūr al-Dīn ʿAlī b. Abī Bakr al-Haythamī, Bughyat al-bāḥith ʿan zawāʾid musnad al-Ḥārith (Medina: al-Jāmiʿat al-Islāmiyya, 1413/1992), 2:974, no. 1080.

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version of the “silence is golden” proverb attributed to Solomon by al-Awzāʿī.301 For the

most part, however, this miscellaneous section includes unique material that the

compiler simply left unassigned to particular chapters. The miscellany, which comprises

almost twenty percent of the book as a whole, may have originated in notes that the

author or compiler did not manage to incorporate into the book’s schema. It could,

however, reflect a deliberate choice to end the book in a manner that reinforces what

Zilio-Grandi perceives to be “an overall aesthetic intent in the order – or rather

disorder.”302 She suggests insightfully that the book, far from the disorder it conveys on

first compression, embodies a stylistic choice by Ibn Abī l-Dunyā to “present his material

in the most varied manner possible, pre-empting any comfortable expectations on the

reader’s part;” the order and manner in which he assembles traditions reflects a

deliberate “motive for switching personalities and settings, tones and registers, for

passing abruptly from a lapidary saying to an extended narrative, or a poetic text, for

touching on a certain theme to then return to it unexpectedly...”303 As examined in the

rest of this dissertation, the material on ghība in the Kitāb al-Ṣamt draws upon traditions

from a variety of genres, including Qurʾānic commentary and eschatology, as well as wise

301 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 557, no. 612; 216, no. 47. Cf. Wasserstein, “A West-East Puzzle,” 247.

302 Zilio-Grandi, “Silence and Speech Etiquette,” 18.

303 Zilio-Grandi, 18.

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maxims and pious exhortations of the kind we have seen in the kutub al-zuhd. The range

of material compiled in the Ṣamt thus reflect something of an encyclopedic impulse, true

to Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s vocation as an adīb and a muʾaddib. It serves as a fitting point of

departure for an exploration of ideas about gossip and slander in the early Islamic

period.

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CHAPTER 3

The Semantics of Slander in Scripture and Tradition

In their treatment of the etiquettes of speech, the works of zuhd and pious adab

typically compile a number of Prophetic and other early Muslim traditions that seek to

define or illustrate various forms of gossip and slander. This implies at times that the

meaning of a concept such as ghība may not have been entirely self-evident, or at least

that Islamic ethics sought to redefine its scope beyond intuitive or familiar

understandings of slander. The inclusion of a chapter on “the explanation of backbiting”

(tafsīr al-ghība) in Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s Kitāb al-Ṣamt testifies to such a need. It opens with a

well-known ḥadīth that speaks directly to the conceptual problem at stake: the Prophet

asks, in the characteristic rhetorical fashion, “Do you know what ghība is?”304 His

Companions respond with the usual deference: “God and his Messenger know best.” The

Prophet explains: “It is your mentioning about your brother what he dislikes” (dhikruk

akhāka bi-mā yakrahu). The statement, however, is met with an objection: what if you

304 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 325 no. 205; Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Dhamm al-ghība, 138 no. 71. This version of the ḥadīth is also recorded, via the same isnād, in: Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj, Ṣaḥīḥ, 4:2001, no. 70, kitāb al-birr wa-l-ṣila, bāb taḥrīm al-ghība.

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only speak of what is true about someone?305 The Prophet then clarifies further that “if

there is to him what you say (in kāna fī-hi mā taqūl), then you have backbitten him. But if

not, then you have slandered him (bahattahu).” Ghība, in other words, is precisely not

slander.

No doubt given its status as a Prophetic ḥadīth with a sound isnād, this tradition

and its variants dominated the classical Islamic discourse on ghība. Abū l-Shaykh al-

Iṣfahānī (d. 369/979) would include the ḥadīth no less than four times in his book of pious

admonition, while some traditions have a Companion or another early pious figure

stating the same definition in more or less the same words.306 The report may be a

perfect example of the epistemic drive of traditionalist ethics, in which the objective is

to know by means of authoritative tradition what is right and wrong. And to do so, in the

first instance, involves naming the virtues and the vices. Whereas this particular ḥadīth

adopts the effective strategy of defining a term by contrasting it with a counterpart, the

conceptual terrain of gossip and slander in early Islamic discourse was not always so

305 In the version reported by Mālik and Ibn Mubārak, the objection is worded: “even if it is true?” (wa-in kāna ḥaqqan).

306 Abū l-Shaykh al-Iṣfahānī, al-Tawbīkh wa-l-tanbīh, ed. Abū l-Ashbāl Ḥasan b. Amīn b. al-Mandūh, 1st ed. (Giza: Maktabat al-Tawʿīya al-Islāmiyya, 1408/1987–88), nos. 186, 190, 192, 241. Additionally, no. 191 ascribes the dictum to ʿAbdallāh b. Masʿūd, as recorded earlier in: Ibn al-Mubārak, Zuhd, 223 no. 706 (in fact, Abū l-Shaykh’s source via Ḥusayn al-Marwazī); Raqāʾiq, riwāyat Nuʿaym, 2:421 no. 891; Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 329 no. 212.

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clear-cut. As we shall see, a variety of terms were often used synonymously, sometimes

for the very purpose of defining one or the other. Such cases of semantic overlap

notwithstanding, the sources also delineate particular shades of meaning to the various

terms. While they prove hard to date and locate historically with any precision, they do

sometimes capture a sense of the broader social and cultural milieu in which these

traditions circulated.

Of the numerous terms that denote gossip, slander, defamation and calumny in

classical Arabic, the notion of ghība unquestionably occupies center stage in the Islamic

ethics of speech. Why and how that came to be the case is a question that merits multiple

answers, including the role of late antique and early Islamic ascetic cultures emphasized

throughout this dissertation. Perhaps one key factor was precisely the broad and open-

ended nature of the concept, as indicated by the abovementioned ḥadīth describing it as

talk of anything about another individual that he or she would dislike. This resulted in

much effort not only to define, elaborate and circumscribe it, but also to warn pious

Muslims time and again about the dangers of inadvertently committing ghība. In this

chapter, we attempt to understand what early Muslims meant by ghība. We do so by

examining the stories and traditions they circulated about it, as well as by situating it in

the context of other terms and concepts related to it.

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Besides the material compiled in Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s Kitāb al-Ṣamt, the books of zuhd

and the major ḥadīth collections, a key focus of this chapter is the tafsīr tradition.

Muslims understood the moral condemnation of ghība as the result of an explicit divine

proscription. The exegetical literature thus remains a repository of the concepts and

vocabulary that Muslims brought to bear on their interpretation of the Qurʾān. Beyond

their attempts to gloss the words and phrases found in the Qurʾānic text, exegetes also

related traditions they believed were connected to particular verses and assumed to

elucidate their meaning, including the so-called asbāb al-nuzūl or “occasions of

revelation.” Modern scholarship in the field of Qurʾānic Studies has come to largely

dismiss such traditions as irrelevant to considerations of the text itself, primarily on

account of their doubtful historicity as well as their narrative inconsistencies. For our

purposes, however, they prove insightful as a source for cultural history, since the

stories they told about Qurʾānic precepts on speech ethics reflect early Muslims’

understanding of what constituted bad speech. While the Prophetic dicta on ghība leave

it broadly open to interpretation, the social settings and the cast of characters in many

other aḥādīth and exegetical traditions help illustrate with concrete examples the kind of

talk construed as backbiting.

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Tales of the Prophetic era said to constitute the social context for divine

pronouncements on slander would thus provide fertile material for generations of

Muslim preachers warning their communities against the vices of the tongue. Often, it

was less the Qurʾān itself than these stories that accumulated around it that became

timeless illustrations of basic moral lessons, while the ḥadīth literature further expanded

and expounded on the Qurʾān’s message. The effect, I would argue, is that Muslims’

understanding of slander and backbiting came to be rooted in the foundation narrative

of Islam. Certainly, the ḥadīth al-ifk, the scandal involving ʿĀʾisha may be the most

obvious and well-known case. The slander in this instance was deemed buhtān, an

outright lie. Ghība, on the other hand, comprised of anything but: it could thus refer to

the verbal assaults to which the pagans of Mecca subjected Muḥammad at the beginning

of his Prophetic mission, and yet it would also be used to describe seemingly harmless

remarks reportedly made by ʿĀʾisha herself about another woman. It was this broadly

defined notion of sinful speech that made ghība such a potent conceptual tool in early

Islamic piety. For the zuhhād, it had far reaching implications that called for nothing

short of a moral revolution in even the most mundane aspects of their lives. But for all

Muslims, it served as the underpinning for an ethics of individual moral responsibility in

the social world.

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I. Exegesis as Ethics: The Qur’ān and Islamic Morality

Any account of Islamic morality must contend with the pivotal role it grants in

principle to the divine word. Of course, medieval people surely did not need scripture to

tell them about the potential wrongs of something as mundane as slanderous talk. Nor

should we assume that Qurʾān was the only or even primary reason why Muslims came

to lay so much weight on the concepts of ghība and namīma. Nevertheless, the Qurʾān and

especially the abundant exegetical traditions that accrued around it, would serve as an

enduring moral force and a rich source of vocabulary and imagery underpinning pious

Muslim teachings on this topic. The Qurʾān includes a number of scattered references to

gossip and slander appearing in a variety of settings. And it was in the literature of

scriptural exegesis and commentary that early scholars often expressed or developed

these ideas, eventually manifest in texts where genres would intertwine and where tafsīr

would be brought to bear on moral issues, as we see for instance in the chapter on ghība

in al-Zandawīstī’s Rawḍat al-ʿulamāʾ.

Before delving into the exegetical literature for the purposes of our discussion on

speech etiquettes, it may be worth considering the generic or disciplinary relationship

between tafsīr and zuhd. In his dissertation on the kutub al-zuhd, Yunus Yaldiz maintains

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that the Qurʾān was a primary and influential source of ideas for zuhd doctrine.307 No

doubt, it was liturgically central to renunciant practice, and numerous traditions speak

of ascetics devoting themselves to constant recitation of the Qurʾān or being moved to

tears from hearing specific parts of it.308 A question remains, however, as to the extent of

the role played by Qurʾānic citations or exegesis in the textual tradition of zuhd. As

compilations of aḥādīth and āthār, the third/ninth century zuhd literature invoke the

Qurʾān only occasionally. That said, a sizeable corpus of reports in these works include

exegetical content. In the Kitāb al-Zuhd attributed to Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ, about 10 percent

of the reports (59 out of 539) cite the Qurʾān directly; the ratio is somewhat higher in

that of Hannād b. al-Sarī, nearly 14 percent (198 of 1442 reports).309 The Zuhd of Ibn al-

Mubārak reflects a similar proportion: based on al-Aʿẓamī’s edition, Melchert estimates

about 6 percent, but the edition of Nuʿaym’s recension identifies nearly 12 percent of

307 Yunus Yaldiz, “The Afterlife in Mind: Piety and Renunciatory Practice in the 2nd/8th- and Early 3rd/9th-Century Books of Renunciation (Kutub al-Zuhd)” (Ph.D., Utrecht University, 2016), 269, 315.

308 Yaldiz, 54, 73–74; Christopher Melchert, “Asceticism” in “Ibn Abī l-Dunyā.” The early Kūfan ascetic Abū l-Bakhtarī (d. 83 AH/701 CE), for instance, is described as “tender-hearted” (raqīq) and said to weep on hearing Sūra Nūḥ: Abū Bakr Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Muṣannaf, ed. ʿḤamad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Jumʿa and Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Luḥaydān (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd, 1425/2004), 12:303, no. 35944 (kiāb 34. al-zuhd, 49. Abū l-Bakhtarī = ed. Bombay 13:322).

309 These estimates are based on the respective editorial indices of Qurʾānic citations: Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ, Zuhd, 3:865–66; Hannād b. al-Sarī, Zuhd, 2:659–63.

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reports (195 of 1674) as quoting or glossing Qurʾānic verses.310 These numbers are by no

means insignificance when put in perspective: for example, just about 1% of Mālik’s

Muwaṭṭaʾ, in its main recension by Yaḥyā al-Laythī (d. 234/848), includes references to

the Qurʾān.311

The issue is partly also one of specialization and quasi-disciplinary formation

among early Muslim scholars, or at least in their reception history. As Melchert points

out, for instance, despite Ibn al-Mubārak’s omnipresence in ḥadīth and zuhd reports, he is

rarely cited as either an authority or a transmitter in exegetical reports—even within the

same work that includes both types of traditions, such as Bukhārī’s Ṣaḥīḥ.312 Conversely,

some of the leading early second/eight century authorities who dominate tafsīr

literature, such as Mujāhid, Qatāda and al-Suddī, do not appear so prominent in the zuhd

tradition.313 Nevertheless, the data above underscores the fact that zuhd compilations do

310 Melchert, “Ibn Al-Mubārak’s Kitāb al-Jihād,” 51. Estimates on Nuʿaym’s recension based on the index in: Ibn al-Mubārak, Raqāʾiq, riwāyat Nuʿaym, 272–87.

311 Roberto Tottoli, “Interrelations and Boundaries between Tafsīr and Hadith Literature: The Exegesis of Mālik b. Anas’s Muwaṭṭāʾ and Clasical Qur’anic Commentaries,” in Tafsīr and Islamic Intellectual History: Exploring the Boundaries of a Genre, ed. Andreas Görke and Johanna Pink (Oxford: Oxford University Press; London: Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2014), 148–49, 164n6.

312 Melchert, “Ibn Al-Mubārak’s Kitāb al-Jihād,” 51. Similarly, in the case of Mālik b. Anas, even his known exegetical comments by and large do not make it into the tafsīr literature, as discussed by Tottoli, “Interrelations and Boundaries,” 156–63.

313 Melchert, “Locating Hell,” 118.

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often adduce exegetical traditions wherever appropriate. As such, I further suspect that

thematic relevance could strongly determine how much compilers drew upon Qurʾānic

material. Melchert has described tafsīr as “closer to the tradition of adab than to that of

zuhd,” and observes in this regard that the Ṣifat al-nār of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā—whom he

identifies with adab—is 42 percent comprised of exegesis. But clearly, the Qurʾān proved

more resourceful for descriptions of hell than on the etiquettes of speech, for the Kitāb

al-Ṣamt by comparison has a meager 3.7 percent of reports (only 28 out of 759) that cite

or refer to the Qurʾān.314

Notwithstanding such issues of genre, even in strictly ḥadīth literature, exegetical

reports or relevant verses from the Qurʾān can also function as interpretive guidelines or

as framing devices for the thematic organization of material. This is most notably the

case in the Ṣaḥīḥ of al-Bukhārī, somewhat unique among the classical sunan works or

ḥadīth compilations per se to use subheadings that frequently incorporate Qurʾānic

citations or other kinds of brief notes by the author.315 In his chapter on etiquette (kitāb

314 Based on the editorial index in: Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 627–28.

315 These were conventionally referred to as tarājim abwāb or “chapter introductions.” The commentary tradition on the Ṣaḥīḥ would include efforts to critically evaluate these topic headings and prefatory remarks, the classic of this sub-genre being the work of Nāṣir al-Dīn Ibn al-Munayyir (d. 683/1284), al-Mutawārī ʿalā tarājim abwāb al-Bukhārī, ed. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Maqbūl Aḥmad (Kuwait: Maktabat al-Maʿallā, 1987). For a detailed discussion of al-Bukhārī’s textual strategies, see: Mohammad Fadel, “Ibn Hajar’s Hady al-Sārī: A Medieval Interpretation of the

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al-adab), among a group of 29 reports dealing with insult, slander and related topics

subdivided into units of mostly just one or two reports, the heading for a section on ghība

quotes Q 49:12, as follows: Bāb al-ghība wa qawl Allāh taʿālā wa-lā yaghtab baʿḍukum baʿḍa…

(Section on backbiting and the statement of God Almighty: ‘And do not backbite one

another…’).316 This creates an impression of ḥadīth as an elaboration of or commentary

on the Qurʾān, even when the reports at hand are not overtly exegetical.317 Bukhārī’s

textual strategy thus made explicit a perspective broadly shared by Muslims, wherein

the divine pronouncements of scripture served as conceptual pegs supporting the

overall edifice of Islamic ethics.

Structure of al-Bukhārī’s al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaḥīḥ: Introduction and Translation,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 54, no. 3 (1995): 161–97.

316 Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 4:100 (kitāb 78. adab, bāb 46. ghība). While in standard editions, this heading continues until the end of the verse, the recension of Abū Dharr al-Harawī (d. 434/1042) only includes the abbreviated part quoted above, followed by the denotation al-āya: see the critical apparatus of al-Yūnīnī (d. 701/1302) preserved in the Sulṭāniyya edition of 1895, reprinted as al-Jāmiʿ al-Ṣaḥīḥ, ed. Muḥammad Zuhayr b. Nāṣir al-Nāṣir (Dār Ṭawq al-Najāh, 1422), 8:16. Of course, bāb titles can vary across manuscripts, though al-Yūnīnī’s notes suggests a fair degree of consistency between the recensions available to him.

317 On the exegetical use of ḥadīth and how al-Bukhārī’s approach compares to that of the other sunan, see: R. Marston Speight, “The Function of Ḥadīth as Commentary on the Qur’ān, as Seen in the Six Authoritative Collections,” in Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Qurʼān, ed. Andrew Rippin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 63–81.

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II. Slander in Early Qurʾānic Apocalyptic

A. Abū Lahab’s Rumormongering Wife: ḥammālat al-namīma

In the chapter labeled dhamm al-namīma (censure of slander) in his Kitāb al-Ṣamt,

Ibn Abī l-Dunyā includes a terse report on a single phrase from the Qurʾān, “ḥammālat al-

ḥaṭab” in Q 111:4 of Sūrat al-Masad. He cites one of his frequent sources, the shaykh

Aḥmad b. Jamīl (d. 230/844–5), a Marwazī immigrant to Baghdad known mainly for

passing on teachings of Ibn al-Mubārak—in this case, a gloss attributed to the early

Meccan exegete Mujāhid b. Jabr (d. 104/722). The quotation states simply that ḥammālat

al-ḥaṭab, literally “gatherer of firewood,” means that “she used to spread slanderous

rumors” (kānat tamshī bi-l-namīma).318 Though perplexing without any additional context,

its mere usage of the keyword namīma seems to have earned the statement a citation

among traditions on slander.

Yet this bit of tafsīr has a potentially broader significance here, besides conveying

a certain encyclopedic impulse behind Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s project of compilation, and

318 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 364, no. 265. The gloss ostensibly quotes the recension of Mujāhid’s tafsīr by Manṣūr b. al-Muʿtamir al-Kūfī (d. 132/749) as transmitted by Sufyān al-Thawrī (whence Ibn al-Mubārak). This is version “D” of Mujāhid’s tafsīr as classified by Claude Gilliot, “Mujāhid’s Exegesis: Origins, Paths of Transmission and Development of a Meccan Exegetical Tradition in Its Human, Spiritual and Theological Environment,” in Tafsīr and Islamic Intellectual History: Exploring the Boundaries of a Genre, ed. Andreas Görke and Johanna Pink (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 63–112. Ibn Abī l-Dunyā also has the same isnād for a report from a different recension, Ibn Abī Najīḥ : Ṣamt, 314, no. 185. Shabāba’s recension of Ibn Abī Najīḥ via Warqāʾ: 509–10, no. 518

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beyond what might seem like mere philological curiosity. The Qurʾānic verse in question

refers to the wife of the accursed Abū Lahab, the main target of this short sūra’s fierce

condemnation. According to Muslim tradition, Abū Lahab was the Prophet’s uncle ʿAbd

al-ʿUzzā b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib who became one of his leading opponents. In fact, he is said

to have turned against Muḥammad at the first public proclamation of his prophetic

message, to which Abū Lahab reacted with aggravation: “Damn you (tabban laka), is this is

what you called us for?”319 Sūrat al-Masad is then revealed as a divine retort to Abū

Lahab’s abuse, cursing him with the same word (tabba) and foreboding his damnation in

hellfire. The sūra is therefore conventionally regarded as one of the earliest of the

Meccan revelations, going back to a pivotal moment in the narrative of the Qurʾān’s

319 The basic narrative permeates several textual variants recorded by Bukhārī, Muslim, Ṭabarī and others, as cited in: Musāʿid b. Sulaymān al-Ṭayyār et. al., ed., Mawsūʿat al-tafsīr al-maʾthūr (Jeddah: Markaz al-Dirāsāt wa-l-Maʿlūmāt al-Qurʾāniyya bi-Maʿhad al-Imām al-Shāṭibī, 2017), 23:661–63. This is the more famous account of the sūra’s occasion, in which Muḥammad preaches openly from the hill of al-Ṣafā after three years in secret. It appears in three versions in: Abū l-Ḥasan Wāḥidī, Asbāb nuzūl al-Qurʾān, ed. Aḥmad Ṣaqr (Cairo: Dār al-Kitāb al-Jadīd, 1969), 507–09. An alternative is the so-called ʿashīra tradition (based on Q 26:214, “And warn your tribe, your nearest relations”), in which he proclaims his mission more privately at a meal. Other reports, especially in sīra literature, suggest altogether different contexts or connotations to Abū Lahab’s tabban lahu invocation. Uri Rubin has critically reviewed these traditions: “Abū Lahab and Sūra CXI,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 42, no. 1 (1979): 13–28; The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muḥammad as Viewed by the Early Muslims: A Textual Analysis (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1995), chaps. 7–8.

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origins.320 Abū Lahab meanwhile came to represent in the Muslim historical imagination

“a prototype of the Meccan polytheist who persecutes Muḥammad,” in Uri Rubin’s

words.321 Moreover, what the tafsīr tradition on Sūrat al-Masad highlights is the

predominantly verbal nature of this persecution, of which Abū Lahab’s wife Umm Jamīl

was no less guilty. The Qurʾān calls her a lowly “gatherer of firewood” because, according

to one early opinion, “she used to insult (tuʿayyir) the Messenger of God for being

poor.”322 Other exegetes would read this into the verse itself, interpreting the expression

ḥammālat al-ḥaṭab metaphorically as meaning that she went about slandering, “collecting

gossip” as it were (taḥṭib al-kalām). In fact, a variant recension of Mujāhid’s tafsīr explains

this paraphrastically by restating the Qurʾānic phrase itself as ḥammālat al-namīma i.e.

“gatherer of slander.”323 Qatāda b. Diʿāma (d. 118/736), on the other hand, is said to have

320 In the traditional chronology attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās as related by ʿAṭāʾ al-Khurāsānī (d. 135/753) and recorded by Ibn al-Ḍurays (d. 294/906), Sūrat al-Masad Q 111 appears fifth in sequence from the beginning of revelation: Muḥammad b. Ayyūb Ibn al-Ḍurays, Faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān, ed. Ghazwa Budayr (Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 1987), 33. The list is cited and briefly discussed by Uri Rubin, “Muḥammad’s Message in Mecca: Warnings, Signs, and Miracles,” in The Cambridge Companion to Muḥammad, ed. Jonathan E. Brockopp (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 40n1.

321 Uri Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muḥammad as Viewed by the Early Muslims: A Textual Analysis (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1995), 147.

322 Though appended to a gloss by Qatāda, this quote is from an unnamed source (wa-qāla baʿḍuhum): Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 24:721.

323 The paraphrasis here is a variant of the report quoted earlier from K. al-Ṣamt, and also further includes the same gloss found there: tamshī bi-l-namīma, “she spread slander.” This is from the

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spelled out what that meant: “she used to pass on rumors (tanqul al-aḥādīth) from one

person to another.”324 This is the idea then that Ibn Abī l-Dunyā tersely recapitulates in

the words and on the authority of Mujāhid—even though other interpretations exist,

which assert that Umm Jamīl’s crime was to collect thorns or prickly shrubs and throw

them in the Prophet’s way.325 As Rubin has discussed, some accounts even portray Umm

Jamīl as offended by the sūra, which she perceived as Muḥammad’s hijāʾ or invective

against her: in response, she recited insulting verses of her own in which she calls him

Mudhammam, “the despised one.”326

A quoted gloss on a Qurʾānic phrase then need not be a spurious or pedantic

citation in the context of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s book on speech ethics. In this instance, it

could serve to recall a verse understood as specifically condemning an enemy of the

Prophet for the evil of slander. It not only brings scripture into the purview of a

published edition based on the Cairo MS of Ibn Abī Najīḥ’s recension transmitted by Warqāʾ (d. 160/776): Mujāhid b. Jabr, Tafsīr al-Imām Mujāhid ibn Jabr, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Salām Abū l-Nīl (Cairo: Dār al-Fikr al-Islamī al-Ḥadītha, 1410/1989), 759. The is the version termed “A.1.b” by Gilliot, “Mujāhid’s Exegesis,” 72, 76–78.

324 Qatāda as cited by Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 24:721.

325 Ṭabarī endorses this as the more accurate opinion based on the plain sense (aẓhar maʿnā) of the Qurʾānic text: 24:721. Rubin considers this tradition a later development: “Abū Lahab and Sūra CXI,” 26.

326 Rubin, The Eye of the Beholder, 142–43.

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discussion on basic morality, but even more, it implicitly situates the immediate lesson

against a larger backdrop of salvation history itself. Perhaps the effect proves

particularly profound on the issue of speech, since the Prophet preached in Mecca only

in the face of constant mockery and conspiracy that eventually forced him into exile.

Medieval Muslims read parts of the Qurʾān as condemnations of those who reviled him,

and as a text which actively partook in the vigorous oral culture of lampoon and curses

albeit in the voice of God. As the life of Muḥammad came to be remembered in epic

terms, the themes of verbal abuse and slander seemed to represent a core element of his

Prophetic biography.

B. Sūrat al-Humaza: The Chapter on “The Slanderer”

Pagan opposition to Muḥammad was believed to have further instigated a divine

response to slanderers elsewhere in the Qurʾān: “Woe to every slandering backbiter”

(waylun li-kulli humazatin lumazatin), it declares in typical Meccan style in Q 104:1, the

opening of a short sūra named after this accursed ḥumaza. The alliteration made for a

powerful, memorable condemnation. Ibn Abī l-Dunyā brings up the verse in his chapter

on injunctions against ghība, quoting an exegetical report attributed to Mujāhid b. Jabr,

who explains that “the humaza is a vilifier” (ṭaʿʿān) and “the lumaza is he who consumes

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the flesh of people,” meaning a backbiter.327 The sūra itself proceeds to describe the

accursed as those who heedlessly hoard wealth, and whose promised destiny is

punishment in al-ḥuṭama, the crushing fire of hell.328 However, it was the enigmatic

opening of this so-called sūra of The Slanderer that drove Muslim exegetes to relate

asbāb al-nuzūl traditions and to speculate about the nature and even identity of the

condemned. Indeed, several early commentators claimed that the verse—if not the whole

sūra—was revealed about a specific individual from the time of the Prophet, even though

they disagreed about who exactly it was: some suggested al-Akhnas b. Sharīq and others

Jamīl b. ʿĀmir al-Jumaḥī, while yet others named Ubayy b. Khalaf or Walīd b. al-

Mughīra.329 The latter are both prominent members of the Quraysh notorious for their

enmity with the Prophet. But with regard to al-Akhnas, the mufassir Ibn al-Sāʾib al-Kalbī

327 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 314 no. 185; Dhamm al-ghība, 121–22 no. 47. This is quoted with the same isnād as for the exegetical report discussed earlier (Aḥmad b. Jamīl < Ibn al-Mubārak < Sufyān), but from a different recension of Mujāhid’s tafsīr, by Ibn Abī Najīḥ (d. 131/749 or later).

328 This is the only instance where the Qurʾān refers to hell as al-ḥuṭama. On this term, see: Devin Stewart, “Poetic Licence and the Qurʾanic Names of Hell: The Treatment of Cognate Substitution in al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī’s Qurʾanic Lexicon,” in The Meaning of the Word: Lexicology and Qur’anic Exegesis, ed. S. R. Burge, Qur’anic Studies Series 13 (Oxford: Oxford University Press; The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2015), 231–32.

329 Reports aggregated in: Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī, al-Durr al-manthūr fī l-tafsīr bi-l-maʾthūr, ed. ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAbd al-Muḥsin al-Turkī (Cairo: Markaz Hajar li-l-Buḥūth wa-l-Dirāsāt al-ʿArabiyya wa-l-Islāmiyya, 1424/2003), 15:645; Mawsūʿat al-tafsīr, 23:545–55.

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(d. 146/763–64) simply claims that “he used to slander (yaqaʿ fī) people and backbite them

(yaghtābahum).”330

The intended addressee of Q 104:1 was clearly a matter of some speculation and

debate, for Mujāhid asserts instead that “it is not specifically about one person,” an

opinion cited in the Tafsīr of Abū Jaʿfar al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923) in defense of his own

argument that the text speaks explicitly of “everyone” (kull) who meets the description

of a humaza and a lumaza.331 In contrast to the historical claims about this verse, an

alternative tradition thus sought to find a broader moral to it. The very first report in

Ṭabarī’s treatment of Sūrat al-Humaza cites the early Baṣran ascetic Abū l-Jawzāʾ Aws b.

ʿAbdallāh al-Rabaʿī (d. 83/702) relating an interpretation on behalf of Ibn ʿAbbās, whom

he had supposedly asked: “Who are those whom God calls on to woe?” The fabled father-

of-tafsīr explained that they are those who “spread slanderous rumors” (al-mashshāʾ bi-l-

330 Reported by al-Thaʿlabī (d. 427/1035) and al-Baghawī (d. 516/1122): Mawsūʿat al-tafsīr, 23:544. In the historical chronicles, al-Akhnas b. Sharīq is otherwise known for having dissuaded the Banū Zuhra clan from heeding Abū Jahl’s call to participate in the battle of Badr: Abū Jaʻfar al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh al-rusul wa-l-mulūk, ed. Muḥammad Abū ’l-Faḍl Ibrāhīm (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1960–69), 2:438; trans. The History of al-Ṭabarī (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1985–99), 7:46. Ubayy b. Khalaf is said to have taunted the Prophet and threatened to kill him, until he was himself killed at Uḥud: ibid., 2:518–20; trans. 7:123–4.

331 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 24:620. Mujāhid’s explanation is quoted from Ibn Abī Najīḥ’s recension via two different paths of transmissions, those of al-Ḥasan al-Ashyab and ʿĪsā b. Maymūn—versions “A.1.c” and “A.2” per Gilliot, “Mujāhid’s Exegesis,” 72.

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namīma), create division between brothers and incite all to discord.332 This concern about

a divinely pronounced anathema might accord well with Abū l-Jawzāʾ’s reputation as a

man who evidently took the power of the spoken word rather seriously. Known for his

fervent devotion, he claimed to have never once uttered a curse about anything or

consumed food that had been cursed—a memorable apothegm quoted elsewhere in Ibn

Abī l-Dunyā’s Ṣamt and a standard feature of Abū l-Jawzāʾ biography.333 Apparently by

way of Baṣran lore (rajul min ahl al-Baṣra), his exchange with Ibn ʿAbbās on the humaza

came to be widely recorded, thanks largely to its transmission by Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ.334

The zuhd texts and Kitāb al-Ṣamt include the report in their chapters on namīma, clearly

based on its use of the expression mashshāʾ bi-l-namīma to describe rumormongers.

Evidently, the tradition helped make Q 104:1 ethically relevant to far beyond its original

Qurʾānic context.

332 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 364, no. 264; Suyūṭī, al-Durr al-manthūr, 15:646. All of the several known versions of this report vary in the wording of the second part, but the phrase al-mashshāʾ bi-l-namīma remains a common denominator. The query by Abū l-Jawzāʾ is phrased as either “badaʾahum Allāh bi-l-wayl” or “nadabahum Allah ilā l-wayl,” both adduced by Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 24:616–17.

333 “mā laʿantu shayʾan qiṭṭ, wa-lā akaltu malʿūnan qiṭṭ,” Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 588, no. 680; Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām, 4:371–72.

334 Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ, Zuhd, 3:764, no. 447; Hannād b. al-Sarī, Zuhd, 2:576, no. 1214.

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i. Mashshāʾ bi-namīm: The Rumormongers of Q 68:11

As a gloss on the term humaza, the expression mashshāʾ bi-l-namīma used by Ibn

ʿAbbās actually echoes Q Qalam 68:11, where it appears in apposition with another form

of the same root h-m-z. Sūrat al-Qalam is also an early Meccan sūra, stylistically

noteworthy for its short verses.335 Seemingly addressing the Prophet and defending him

from detractors, the sūra proceeds to advise him in Q 68:10–14 against a variety of

immoral characters listed in a series of verses:

10: And do not obey every contemptible swearer 11: Backbiter, spreader of slander (hammāzin mashshāʾin bi-namīmin) 12: Hinderer of good, transgressor, sinner, 13: Greedy, moreover, ignoble, 14: Because he has wealth and sons.336

The reference to vile oath-mongers or swearers (ḥallāf) presumably means those who

take profuse, worthless oaths. Qatāda and Ḥasan al-Baṣrī are said to have described them

as “loquacious in evil” (mikthār fī l-sharr).337 The next verse then refers to the hammāz,

which exegetes unanimously gloss as a mughtāb i.e. one who engages in ghība and “eats

335 In fact, ʿAṭāʾ al-Khurāsānī’s list considers Sūrat al-Qalam the second to be revealed: Ibn al-Ḍurays, Faḍāʾil al-Qurʾān, 33. It also belongs stylistically to the first of Nöldeke’s three Meccan periods: The History of the Qurʾān, 77–78.

336 Alan Jones, trans., The Qurʾān (Cambridge: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2007), 531.

337 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 23:158–59.

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the flesh of people.”338 In the verse itself, the hammāz is said to be a “spreader of slander”

(mashshāʾ bi-namīm). Qatāda’s exegesis spells out the meaning of this phrase as

“transmitting talk from one person to another,” in other words, going around with

rumors.339

Early commentators had little else to say about this verse, apart from al-Kalbī

naming the individual it supposedly referred to: again al-Akhnas b. Sharīq, as in the case

of Q 104:1.340 Linking the two verses was clearly a common interpretive move, as both

refer to backbiters using different forms of the same word. The root h-m-z has another

occurrence in the Qurʾān, in Q Muʾminūn 23:97, but there it refers to the goading

“suggestions” of the devils (hamazāt al-shayāṭīn). The tafsīr attributed to Ibn Zayd, i.e. the

Medinan scholar ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Zayd b. Aslam (d. 182/798), explicitly invokes Q 104:1

in its exegesis of Q 68:11 and makes the interesting claim that the hammāz is actually one

who assaults people physically, not verbally.341 This alludes to an apparent exegetical

338 Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr, ed. ʿAbdallāh Maḥmūd Shiḥāta (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 2002), 4:404; Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 23:159. Use of the flesh-eating idiom here is attributed to Qatāda, and reiterated by Ṭabarī himself.

339 “yanqul al-aḥādīth min baʿḍ al-nās ilā baʿḍ.” Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 23:160.

340 ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī, Tafsīr, 3:331; Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 23:160.

341 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 23:159.

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debate on the modes of personal injury connoted by the term, and which pervades the

discussions on Q 104:1.

ii. Hamz vs. Lamz: Varieties of Insult and Injury

Being effectively synonymous, the two terms humaza and lumaza apparently

posed some confusion among early Muslim commentators as to possible differences in

connotation. Ṭabarī observes as much, after recounting Mujāhid’s aforementioned gloss

in addition to a variant of the same in which the humaza is said to “eat the flesh of

people” while the lumaza is a “vilifier” (ṭaʿʿān), rather than the other way around.342 This

was partly the effect of variants across the numerous recensions of Mujāhid’s tafsīr, as

Ṭabarī himself recognizes through isnād records. But also, Ṭabarī suggests, the

transmitters must have found the interpretation of the two words equivocal (qad kāna

ushkila ʿalayhi taʾwīl al-kalimatayn).343 He goes on to reproduce further testimonies to the

same pair of glosses, offered by Qatāda and in a slightly different form by Saʿīd b. Jubayr

(d. 95/714), who attributes to Ibn ʿAbbās an exegetical paraphrase of the verse: “woe

unto every vilifying (ṭaʿʿān) backbiter (mughtāb).”344 In his own remarks that typically

342 Ṭabarī, 24:617.

343 Ṭabarī, 24:618.

344 Ṭabarī, 24:618.

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preface the inventory of traditions for each aspect of a Qurʾānic verse, Ṭabarī seems to

indicate his agreement with these statements, as he explains in his opening passage on

this sūra that humaza means a slanderer who “backbites and disparages” people

(yaghuḍḍuhum), while lumaza means one who “finds fault with people and vilifies them”

(yaʿīb al-nās wa-yaṭʿunu fī him).345 These were grave offences in Ṭabarī’s estimation of the

verse, for those condemned are destined to a valley in hell flowing with the blood and

pus of its inmates. That valley is called Wayl, and Ṭabarī reasserts here a persistent

strand of Muslim exegetical tradition that took this Qurʾānic word as not merely a woe

proclamation but as a literal toponoym referring to a place in hell.346 The verse Q 104:1

then becomes a terrifying warning that consigns every slandering backbiter to the

depths of hell.

In spite of Ṭabarī’s own reading of the verse, a number of the reports he

assembles depict a tendency among earlier exegetes to distinguish the connotations of

the two terms humaza and lumaza. In fact, this small interpretive exercise had become a

way for scholars to reflect on the differences between various forms of abuse, verbal or

345 Ṭabarī, 24:616.

346 Nasr, The Study Quran, v. Q 2:79. A number of other Qurʾānic words were similarly turned into place-names in the eschatological imagination: Lange, Paradise and Hell, 134. Cf. Stewart, “Qurʾanic Names of Hell.”

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even physical. Thus, in a further gloss attributed to Mujāhid, he claims that “the humaza

is by hand, and the lumaza is by the tongue.”347 Another distinguished Meccan, the legal

scholar Ibn Jurayj (d. 150/767) is reported elsewhere as teaching a similar, broader

understanding of humaza as the use of one’s eyes, mouth, and hands.348 It may not be

intuitive what it means to assault someone with the eyes, but such interpretations were

presumably informed by stories of how al-Akhnas b. Sharīq would taunt (yaskhar) people

by gesturing at them with his eyes, his eyebrows and his lips.349 This association of

slander with sukhriyya or mockery is made by the Qurʾān itself in Q Ḥujurāt 49:11-12 as

discussed later. But if the depiction of al-Akhnas suggests a relatively milder, non-

physical and indeed non-verbal form of abuse, other exegetes claimed more violent

connotations to hamz. The tafsīr of Ibn Zayd again contrasts the hand and the tongue,

arguing that the humaza is “one who hits (yahmiz) people with his hand and hurts (yaḍrib)

347 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 24:618.

348 Interestingly, this report is extant not in any tafsīr work but among the traditions on slander and defamation in: Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn al-Bayhaqī, Shuʿab al-īmān, ed. Mukhtār Aḥmad Nadwī (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd, 2003), 9:106, no. 6328. It would thence be adduced by Suyūṭī, al-Durr al-manthūr, 15:647.

349 Abū l-Layth al-Samarqandī, Tafsīr al-Samarqandī, al-musammā Baḥr al-ʿulūm, ed. ʿAlī Muḥammad Muʿawwaḍ, ʿĀdil Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Mawjūd, and Zakariyyā ʿAbd al-Majīd al-Nawtī (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1993), 4:510.

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them with his tongue,” while the lumaza “is one who blames (yalmiz) them with his

tongue and defames (yaʿīb) them.”350

These interpretations thus focus on the extent and seriousness of abusive

behavior, from the nonverbal to the physical. But the ideas that would ultimately find

favor in standard Muslim commentary on the verse pivot instead on the distinction

between an affront and an aspersion: that is to say, on whether the wrong is done in the

victim’s presence or absence. Among the earliest commentators said to have made this

point in glossing Q 104:1 was the Baṣran tābiʿī and pioneering Qurʾān scholar Abū l-ʿĀliya

al-Riyāḥī (d. ca. 93/712), who explained that the humaza insults one to his face (fī wajhihi),

while the lumaza does so behind his back (min khalfihi).351 Predictably, other

commentators might swap these respective definitions. The Tafsīr attributed to Muqātil

b. Sulaymān (d. 150/767 or 158/775), possibly our earliest surviving book of Qurʾānic

exegesis, does exactly that and in slightly greater elaboration: the humaza is a “vilifying

backbiter (al-ṭaʿʿān al-mughtāb) who, when a man disappears, backbites him from behind”

while a lumaza is an “insolent person (al-ṭāghī) who, when he sees him, wrongs him (ṭaghā

350 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 24:618.

351 Ṭabarī, 24:618. Abū l-ʿĀliya’s gloss is the very first adduced in the discussion of the verse by Abū l-Layth al-Samarqandī, Tafsīr, 3:510. It is also quoted from the tafsīr of ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd (d. 249/863) in Suyūṭī, al-Durr al-manthūr, 15:647.

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ʿalayhi) in his face.”352 In a way, these commentators simply make explicit what some of

the others had only implied by glossing humaza as mughtāb, as the etymological sense of

ghība directly informs the notion of speaking in one’s absence. A somewhat different line

of thought construed this issue of the victim’s presence or absence as instead a matter of

public versus private insult. Ibn Hishām (d. 218/833), the famed biographer of the

Prophet, reportedly explained that the humaza shames someone “openly” (jahran), either

verbally or physically, while the lumaza does so “in secret” (sirran), with the eyes or

eyebrows.353

The exegesis of Q 104:1 thus became a vehicle for generic reflections on the

variety and nuances of interpersonal offense, ideas that flowered even more in the ḥadīth

literature on ghība. But unlike the latter, commentary on hamz focused mainly on the

manner of insulting rather than the substance of it. Of course, this would be a moot point

for asbāb al-nuzūl traditions identifying the condemned as specific opponents of the

352 Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr, 4:837. Interesting, this is the same idea basically restated, for instance, in the classic Sufi tafsīr ascribed to Sahl al-Tustarī (d. 283/896): Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm, ed. Ṭaha ʿAbd al-Raʾūf Saʿd and Saʿd Muḥammad Ḥasan ʿAlī (Cairo: Dār al-Ḥaram li-l-Turāth, 1425/2004), 328; Tafsīr Al-Tustarī, trans. Annabel Keeler and Ali Keeler, Great Commentaries on the Holy Qurʼān 4 (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae; Amman, Jordan: Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, 2011), 306.

353 Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Māwardī, al-Nukat wa-l-ʿuyūn: tafsīr al-Māwardī, ed. al-Sayyid b. ʿAbd al-Maqṣūd b. ʿAbd al-Raḥīm (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya; Muʾassasat al-Kutub al-Thaqāfiyya, n.d.), 6:336.

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Prophet, who insulted him because they rejected his message. But the tafsīr of Muqātil

even betrays the prevailing emphasis by noting how al-Walīd b. al-Mughīra would

slander the Prophet both in his absence and to his face.354 Muqātil does go a bit further in

a narrative excursus on the sūra that follows his first round of interlinear paraphrastic

exegesis and where he offers a second set of glosses on the terms humaza and lumaza,

now defined respectively as “spreading slander among people” (yanumm al-kalām ilā l-

nās) and “calling a man by a nickname he dislikes” (yulaqqib al-rajul bi-mā yakrahu).355 The

latter is clearly an intertextual reference to another Qurʾānic instance of the root l-m-z in

Q 49:11, which proscribes both insulting and nicknaming. By way of “haggadic”

exposition, Muqātil then relates that al-Walīd b. al-Mughīra was a slanderer (nammām)

who used to deride and call people names out of pride and arrogance, as he was a

354 Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr, 4:837. Similarly, Ibn ʿAbbās is said to have described al-Akhnas (the subject of this verse in his opinion) as slandering and insulting people both “in front of and behind” (muqbilayn wa mudbirayn). Abū l-Qāsim Sulaymān b. Aḥmad al-Ṭabarānī, al-Tafsīr al-kabīr: tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm, ed. Hishām ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Badrānī al-Mawṣilī (Irbid, Jordan: Dār al-Kitāb al-Thaqāfī, 2008), 6:555.

355 Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr, 4:838. This two-part commentary marked by the transitional phrase wa-ayḍan (also in some other sūras), remains a curious structural feature of the Tafsīr and may be a clue to its composition history. Rather than consider it a source doubts about authorship per se, Nicolai Sinai suggests a synthesis by Muqātil’s students of lessons about the same Qurʾānic verses from different occasions. See: Fortschreibung und Auslegung: Studien zur frühen Koraninterpretation, Diskurse der Arabistik 16 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009), 241n61.

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wealthy landowner.356 These details introduce an additional layer of social meaning to Q

104:1, clearly informed by Muqātil’s apparent impulse to connect the sūra’s opening

verse to those that follow, something that does not seem to have much concerned most

other exegetes.

A notable exception though is the landmark Shīʿī tafsīr attributed to ʿAlī b.

Ibrāhīm al-Qummī (d. after 307/919), who interprets Q 104:1 in a similar spirit to Muqātil,

as referring to one who “derides (yaghmiz) people and despises (yastaḥqir) the poor.”357

Qummī’s additional, peculiar explication of lumaza as someone who turns away in

irritation when he sees a beggar undoubtedly stems from the rest of the sūra itself, as it

refers to those who hoard and gloat in wealth. While Qummī’s take on the verse appears

unique, some earlier Muslims were also compelled to find greater textual coherence in

the ṣūra, as suggested by the non-canonical variant recitation attributed to al-Ḥasan al-

Baṣrī, who read the emphatic verb in Q 104:4 in its dual form, layunbadhānna instead of

356 Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr, 4:838.

357 ʿAlī b. Ibrāhīm al-Qummī, Tafsīr al-Qummī, ed. al-Sayyid Muḥammad Bāqir al-Muwaḥḥid al-Abṭaḥī (Qom: Muʾassasat al-Imām al-Mahdī, 1435), 3:1181.

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the singular layunbadhanna, thereby denoting that both the slanderer and the hoarder

“will be thrown” into the ḥuṭama.358

The vivid if enigmatic imagery of hell in the rest of Sūrat al-Humaza made it ripe

for Muslim eschatology, and some of the brief exegetical reports on those verses end up

in the books of zuhd and in texts like Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s Ṣifat al-nār.359 This redeployment

of exegetical material in wider ninth-century literature reflects the potential

significance of Qurʾānic commentary beyond mere linguistic exercise, and the perceived

ethical import to even a single word of divine revelation. When Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s Kitāb al-

Ṣamt quotes Mujāhid’s brief gloss on Q 104:1, the report serves to recall this Qurʾānic

verse as relevant to the context of a chapter on “backbiting and its condemnation” (Bāb

al-ghība wa-dhammihā).360 In the course of various exhortations against backbiting, the

citation has the effect of introducing the appellation lumaza to now describe those who

eat the flesh of others, a kind of reverse glossing that invokes Qurʾānic vocabulary to

inform the discussion at hand.

358 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 24:622.

359 Abū Bakr Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣifat al-nār, ed. Muḥammad Khayr Ramaḍān Yūsuf (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 1417/1997), nos. 60, 107–8, 139–40. On the place of this text in the broader context of Islamic eschatology, see Lange, Paradise and Hell, 79.

360 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 314, no. 185.

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Of course, the Qurʾān was also more than just its arcane vocabulary. Medieval

Muslims frequently recount pious traditions on how a specific verse of revelation had

caused deep moral consternation among the early believers. The Kitāb al-Zuhd of Wakīʿ

relates one such anecdote involving Ibn ʿUmar: when he was told that “woe to every

slandering backbiter” was revealed about the “aṣḥāb of Muḥammad,” he responded: “If

we are not concerned by that (mā ʿunīnā bi-hā), then we are not concerned about a whole

tenth of the Qurʾān!”361 The implication, it seems, is that if the Prophet’s Companions

deserved such warning, then it is so much more serious for those afterwards. But others

saw fit to interpret their own times in light of Qurʾānic rhetoric. The Khārijite leader

Shabīb reportedly chose to recite this sūra in prayer before leading battle in 76/695

against a state representative he deemed an apostate.362 The broad semantic scope of an

otherwise obscure Qurʾānic term allowed for its application to a similarly wide variety of

contexts. The Umayyad-era poet Ziyād al-Aʿjam, for example, used the two key terms

from Q 104:1 to recite a verse criticizing a friend who feigns affection: “You present

friendliness when we meet, deceivingly; for when I go away, you are a slandering

361 Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ, Zuhd, 3:767, no. 449. Recorded also by Ibn Abī Ḥātim, as adduced in: Suyūṭī, al-Durr al-manthūr, 15:645.

362 This was Muḥammad b. Mūsā b. Ṭalḥa b. ʿUbaydalla, who was on his way to take up post as the newly-appointed governor of Sijistān, but was delegated by al-Ḥajjāj to fight Shabīb; he died in the battle. Ṭabarī, Tārīkh, 6:247; trans. The History of al-Ṭabarī, 22:77.

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backbiter” (tudlī bi-wuddī idhā lāqaytanī kadhiban, wa-in ughayyab fa-anta l-hāmizu l-

lumazah).363 By dint of its status as ancient poetry, the line itself would then become a

valid instance of shawāhid or poetic witness to the meaning of Q 104:1, cited in the tafsīr

literature from Ṭabārī onwards.

III. Sūrat al-Ḥujurāt: A Qurʾānic Passage on Speech Etiquettes

In contrast to the portrayal of slanderers in Qurʾānic polemic, the prohibition of

ghība is framed in very different terms. The relevant verse, Q 49:12, appears in the midst

of Sūrat al-Ḥujurāt, a short chapter of eighteen verses dealing primarily with matters of

communal life such as trust, mutual respect, factional strife and reconciliation. The sūra

is therefore typically Medinan in theme, as well as in its textual style. While formal

considerations of the text and the methodological problems of interest to Qurʾānic

Studies need not directly concern us here, the conventional division between Meccan

and Medinan parts of the Qurʾān remain useful for appreciating the thematic contrast

between the foregoing discussion and that below. In the attempts to interpret an

underlying chronology to the Qurʾānic text, both the medieval Islamic tradition and

modern scholarship unanimously associate Sūrat al-Masad (Q 111) and al-Humaza (Q 104)

363 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 24:616.

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with the early Meccan period, while Sūrāt al-Ḥujurāt (Q 49) is classified as Medinan. The

thematic and stylistic contrast is emblematic of these categories. From two sūras with

relatively short verses, we find in Q 49 some of the longest verses of the Qurʾān.364 From

overt polemic and eschatological warning, we shift towards an ethical and legislative

discourse characterized by exhortations addressed to “O you who believe.”365

In terms of slander, this means a transition from polemic against the Prophet’s

opponents to a concern with ghība and related vices as a problem within the community

of believers. Interestingly, much of Sūrat al-Ḥujurāt as a whole reflects a distinct

preoccupation with matters of speech. From respectful salutation to abusive name-

calling, and from the dangers of hearsay to the question of sincerity in oral declarations

of faith, the sūra effectively centers on the spoken word as the primary vector of social

relations. Speech ethics arguably constitutes a running theme of the chapter and

perhaps even served as an organizing principle behind the text’s composition as it

stands, notwithstanding the different possibilities of reading for each apparent cluster of

364 According to the order of sūras by mean verse length as recently computed by Nicolai Sinai, Q 104 and Q 111 respectively appear 28th and 31st on the list starting with the shortest, while Q 49 ranks 13th among sūras with the longest average verse length. Nicolai Sinai, The Qur’an: A Historical-Critical Introduction (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017), 119–20.

365 This vocative formula was already regarded in Muslim tradition as a mark of Medinan revelation: Sinai, 111.

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verses. While the Muslim exegetical tradition understood the text of the Qurʾān in

typically discrete units, with variant opinions about the original setting behind each, the

first part of the sūra leading up to Q 49:12 nevertheless coheres in some respects and

helps to contextualize the scriptural impulse behind the injunction on backbiting and

slander. This thematic unity and focus made it relevant to the pious ethics literature

interested in speech: over half the Qurʾānic citations in Abū l-Shaykh’s al-Tawbīkh wa-l-

tanbīh are to Sūrat al-Ḥujurāt, and the book concludes with a section comprised almost

exclusively of exegetical traditions related to verses Q 49:10–13, roughly following their

sequence.366

The sūra itself takes its name from a reference to the ḥujurāt in Q 49:4, understood

to be the private living quarters of the Prophet’s wives. According to Muslim

commentaries, the first five verses of the sūra were meant to reprimand a large

delegation of Bedouin from the Banū Tamīm tribe who came to see the Prophet at an

inopportune time and called out to him “from behind the apartments” (min warāʾ al-

ḥujurāt) instead of patiently waiting for him to come out.367 Presumably the issue was

366 See the index of Qurʾānic citations, Abū l-Shaykh al-Iṣfahānī, Tawbīkh, 262. The section dealing with Q 49:10–13 is on pp. 248–59, where the exegetically relevant reports include: nos. 229–32, 235, 238–39, 240, 243–45.

367 In the sīra literature, the episode is part of the “year of the deputations” (9 AH) following the Conquest of Mecca, and the Tamīm are said to have come with their poets and orators for a tribal

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disturbance of peace and quiet, as well as encroachment on the privacy of domestic

space. Narratives about the episode emphasize noise and clamor, and the people are said

to have been yelling for the Prophet to come out of the house: one report has them

shouting in a “harsh voice” (ṣawt jāf).368 The story seemed to also explain the sūra’s

opening admonitions, which command believers to not be too “forward” (lā tuqaddimū)

in front of God and His Messenger (Q 49:1) and to not raise their voices “above the voice

of the Prophet” (Q 49:2).369 The verses leading up to the condemnation of ghība in Q 49:12

include a series of such negative imperatives. They address a variety of speech

etiquettes, proceeding from the basic matter of voice and sound to norms of social talk

and sources of conflict.

mufākhara or boasting match. A poetic contest ensues, but they eventually concede to the superior eloquence of the Prophet’s bard Ḥassān, and accept Islam. Ibn Hishām, al-Sīrat al-nabawiyya, ed. Muṣṭafā al-Saqā, Ibrāhīm al-Abyārī, and ʿAbd al-Ḥafīẓ Shalabī, 2nd ed. (Cairo: Maktaba wa Maṭbaʿa Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1955), 560–67; A. Guillaume, trans., The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Isḥāq’s Sīrat Rasūl Allāh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), 628–31.

368 From an Ibn ʿAbbās tradition recorded by Ibn Mardawayh (d. 410/1019), adduced in: Suyūṭī, al-Durr al-manthūr, 13:543; Ṭayyār et. al., Mawsūʿat al-tafsīr, 20:377.

369 However, being forward or forthright was otherwise interpreted as rushing to decisions ahead of explicit instruction from the Prophet—before “God has decreed it upon his tongue,” as in an explanation attributed to Mujāhid. Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:336.

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A. On Raised Voices

The commentary literature suggests that some early Muslims interpreted the

reference to raised voices in Q 49:2 quite literally. The Companion Thābit b. Qays b. al-

Shammās, an orator of the Anṣār, is said to have been deeply worried that the revelation

of this verse specifically targeted him and spelled his doom, since he was hard of hearing

and therefore loud-voiced (ṣayyit), but the Prophet reassured him his salvation.370 Even

so, more idiomatic interpretations were also offered. Though he too asserts that the

verse was revealed about Thābit, Muqātil’s own paraphrasis glosses ṣawt (voice) as kalām

(speech), explaining that the text commands people to “restrain their speech” in the

Prophet’s presence (iḥfazū al-kalām ʿindahu).371 Moreover, where the same verse further

commands believers to not be jahr in speaking to the Prophet, “as you are with one

another” (ka-jahri baʿḍikum li-baʿḍ), most early exegetes understood this to forbid the

practice of addressing the Prophet by name rather than by his title and some expression

370 Compiling four reports, including a family tradition as well as Zuhrī and ʿIkrima relating a first-person narrative by Thābit himself: Ṭabarī, 21:339–41. Coincidentally, Thābit figures prominently in the sīra narrative on the Banū Tamīm delegation, as he leads the first round of the boasting contest and delivers an oration (khuṭba) on behalf of the Muslims. Ibn Hishām, Sīra, 2:562; Guillaume, Life of Muhammad, 629. Thābit is denoted as khaṭīb al-anṣār in his biography by Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī, Maʿrifat al-ṣaḥāba, ed. ʿĀdil b. Yūsuf al-ʿAzāzī (Riyadh: Dār al-Waṭan li-l-Nashr, 1419 AH/1998 CE), 464.

371 Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr, 4:89. The text in the edition erroneously identifies two figures by splitting the name Thābit b. Qays “wa” (read bin) Shammās al-Anṣārī.

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of reverence, such as “Messenger of God.” Though jahr bi-l-qawl means to speak in a

raised voice, they seemed to prefer something closer to the lexical meaning of the root j-

h-r, in the sense of plain or open, hence overly frank or candid. Here, Muqātil and his

predecessor al-Ḍaḥḥāk b. Muzāḥim (d. 106/724) propose an intertextual interpretation

by drawing a specific analogy with another Qur’anic verse which says: “Do not make the

summoning (duʿāʾ) of the messenger among you like your summoning of one another” (Q

24:63).372 The issue of proper salutation in general comes up again a few verses later

within Sūra al-Ḥujurāt, where believers are asked to avoid calling each other by

disparaging nicknames (Q 49:11). Nevertheless, the literal injunction against speaking

loudly is emphasized in yet another narrative recorded in a canonical ḥadīth, still set in

the context of the Banū Tamīm event, but the verse now said to have been occasioned by

a heated altercation between Abū Bakr and ʿUmar in the Prophet’s presence, when they

disagreed about who among the delegates to appoint as leader.373 Supposedly, ever since

the divine rebuke, ʿUmar would speak to the Prophet in such a soft whisper that he

would have to be asked to clarify his words.374

372 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:339; Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr, 4:90; both cited in: Ṭayyār et. al., Mawsūʿat al-tafsīr, 20:370. Translation of Q 24:63 from Jones, The Qurʾān, 328.

373 Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 3:166, no. 4367 (kitāb 64. al-maghāzī, bāb 67. wafd Banī Tamīm).

374 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:342.

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B. On Rumor and Trust

From the initial section on etiquette towards the Prophet, the sūra moves on to

socio-political concerns. It brings up the problem of rumor in verse Q 49:6, which

instructs believers that if some corrupt person (fāsiq) “comes to you with information,

then ascertain [it], lest you hurt a people in ignorance and become regretful over what

you have done.” Notwithstanding the definition of a fāsiq, this otherwise basic tenet is

believed in the tafsīr tradition to have been occasioned by an incident in which Walīd b.

ʿUqba, dispatched by the Prophet as a tax-collector to the newly converted tribe of Banū

Muṣṭaliq, nearly instigated an armed conflict as his pre-existing enmity with them led

him to fear and misunderstand their reception for him, so he came back claiming that

they refused the zakāt and tried to kill him.375 Besides recounting a version of this

anecdote, al-Daḥḥāk is said to have already interpreted the lesson more generally: that if

a fāsiq comes to you and “tells you that so-and-so is doing this-and-that of some evil act

(kadhā wa kadhā min masāwiʾ al-aʿmāl), then do not believe him.”376 The explanation,

though unique to al-Daḥḥāk and known solely from the now-lost Tafsīr of Ibn al-Mundhir

(d. 318/930), is noteworthy for its description of what amounts to slander, that it is

375 The account is summarized in: Nasr, The Study Quran, v. Q 49:6–8n.

376 Citing Ibn al-Mundhir, Suyūṭī, al-Durr al-manthūr, 13:552.

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specifically the false accusation of wrong deeds. Contrary to this advice to dismiss an

untrustworthy person, some Muslim scholars in later tradition would actually express

admiration for the wisdom behind the Qurʾānic invitation to scrutinize and investigate a

piece of information rather than simply dismiss it.377 In jurisprudence, on the other

hand, the operative concern here remained with the term fāsiq and the verse would

serve as proof-text for the inadmissibility of legal testimony from people deemed

iniquitous.378

C. On Mockery and Insult

The sūra will return to issues of social etiquette after an intervening pair of verses

addressing communal strife and asserting brotherhood among the believers. But even

for the verse on fighting (Q 49:9), some of the asbāb al-nuzūl traditions center on an

episode that ensued from verbal altercation: reportedly, the notorious munāfiq ʿAbdallāh

b. Ubayy once jeered at the Prophet: “Get away from me, the stench of your donkey is

offending me,” to which a Companion responded: “By God, the Prophet’s donkey smells

377 See the quote by Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 751/1350) in Ṭayyār et. al., Mawsūʿat al-tafsīr, 20:390n6089.

378 Aḥmad ibn ʻAlī al-Jaṣṣāṣ, Aḥkām al-Qurʾān, ed. Muḥammad al-Ṣādiq Qamḥāwī, 2nd ed. (Cairo: Dār al-Muṣḥaf, 1965), 5:278–79 (bāb ḥukm khabar al-fāsiq); al-Mawsūʿat al-fiqhiyya (Kuwayt: Wizārat al-Awqāf wa-l-Shuʾūn al-Islāmiyya, 1983–2006), 32:143 s.v. فسق.

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better than you do.”379 While traditionally unconnected, the story seems a fitting prelude

to the Qurʾān’s admonition against mockery that comes next in the text, in verse 11:

O you who believe, let not a people scorn [lā yaskhar] another people who

may be better than them; nor let women scorn women who may be better

than them. Do not find fault [lā talmizū] with one another, nor insult each

other with nicknames. Evil is the term ‘vicious conduct’, after belief [biʾsa

al-ismu l-fusūqu baʿd al-īmān]. Those who do not turn in repentance – those

are the wrong-doers. (Q 49:11)380

Following Mujāhid, the mufassirūn usually gloss the initial commandment here as lā

yastahziʾ (“do not scoff/jeer”), to which Muqātil adds that this entails debasing someone

by saying something like: “You have a vile livelihood” (innaka radiʾ al-maʿīsha) or “lowly

status” (laʾīm al-ḥasab).381 But differences in opinion led Ṭabarī to observe two possible

connotations for sukhriyya or ridicule: first, the mockery of poor people by the rich,

according to the explanation attributed to Mujāhid.382 The putative context of revelation,

connecting the verse back to the earlier part of the sūra, is identified by Ḍaḥḥāk as the

Banū Tamīm delegates’ reaction to the “shabby state” (rathātha ḥālihim) of some of the

379 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:359.

380 Jones, The Qurʾān, 476.

381 Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr, 4:94; Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:364–65; Ṭabarānī, Tafsīr, 6:82; Abū l-Layth al-Samarqandī, Tafsīr, 3:264.

382 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:364–365.

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Prophet’s Companions of lesser social status, such as Bilāl, Ṣuhayb, Khabbāb, and Salmān

al-Fārisī—all of whom were formerly slaves.383 These explanations are noteworthy

because some of the asbāb al-nuzūl stories on the next verse about ghība display a similar

attention to hierarchy as the basis of derision, and specifically feature Salmān al-Fārisī.

The other more unusual and interesting interpretation of sukhriyya is attributed

to ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Zayd (d. 182/798), who explains that it means to mock someone for

a misdeed or fault (khaṭīʾa) that became somehow disclosed—thus invoking here the

notion of satr or concealment.384 This could reflect a specific local understanding in

Medina, since Ibn Zayd is known primarily for relaying the teachings of his father Zayd b.

Aslam (d. 136/753), a pivotal figure of Medinan tradition, and for having taught the

Mālikī scholar Ibn Wahb—whose recension of Ibn Zayd’s lost tafsīr is excerpted by Ṭabarī

in copious citations.385 In concluding his discussion on this unit of Q 49:11, Ṭabarī argues

383 Abū Iṣḥāq Aḥmad al-Thaʿālibī, al-Kashf wa-l-bayān al-maʿrūf tafsīr al-Thaʿlabī, ed. Abū Muḥammad Ibn ʿĀshūr (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1422/2002), 9:80–81; cited in: Ṭayyār et. al., Mawsūʿat al-tafsīr, 20:403. A variant account appears in Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr, 4:94.

384 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:365.

385 On Ibn Zayd, see: Sezgin, GAS, 1:38. A book of tafsīr compiled on the authority of Zayd b. Aslam, apparently in the hand of one al-Sukkarī, is included by Ibn al-Nadīm in his list of works on the Qur’an from the first three centuries, and is implicitly identified as part of a Medinan “school” along with a putative tafsīr of Mālik b. Anas. See Dimitry Frolow, “Ibn Al-Nadīm on the History of Qur’anic Exegesis,” Wiener Zeitschrift Für Die Kunde Des Morgenlandes 87 (1997): 68; 79.

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that it is best understood as a generalized commandment against mockery in “all of its

meanings” (jamīʿ maʿānī al-sukhriyya) whether concerning a fellow believer’s destitution,

any sins he may have committed, or anything else.386

The moral lesson is further echoed in Ṭabarī’s analysis of the subsequent phrase

“do not defame yourselves” (lā talmizū anfusakum), which he explains with reference to

the principle of universal brotherhood: “do not find fault (yaʿib) with one another, nor

cast aspersions (yaṭʿan) against one another…for the one who criticizes his brother

criticizes himself (lāmaza nafsihi), because the believers are like a single person.”387 This

provides an occasion for Ṭabarī to then quote the famous Prophetic ḥadīth that “the

believers are like one body.”388 Understandably, a number of variant manuscripts of

Ṭabarī’s Tafsīr record yaghtab (backbite) instead of yaʿib in the above comment.389 Of

course, the two words look nearly identical in the Arabic script, but they are also both

closely-related synonyms of the Qur’anic term l-m-z being glossed here. Thus, most

commentators explain lā talmizū using the notion of ṭaʿn i.e. to blame or cast aspersions,

386 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:365–366.

387 Ṭabarī, 21:366.

388 Ṭabarī, 21:366.

389 The editor, ʿAbd al-Muḥsin al-Turkī identifies five manuscripts with yaghtab; Ṭabarī, 21:366n2.

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while Ḍaḥḥāk simply comments: “al-lamz is al-ghība.”390 The explanation appealed to Ibn

Abī l-Dunyā, who adduces it in his treatment of ghība in the Kitāb al-Ṣamt—and which

thereby happened to become a rare textual witness to this particular bit of exegesis.391

Elsewhere, also unusually, Ḍaḥḥāk is said to have understood lā talmizū as “do not curse

(yalʿān) one another.”392

Nevertheless, the standard interpretation found favor on intertextual grounds

given Q Humaza 104:1, where the Qurʾān uses the noun form lumaza to mean a

“slanderer.” In fact, Ibn Abī l-Dunyā saw it useful for his purposes to include a pair of

390 Suyūṭī, al-Durr al-manthūr, 13:561–562.

391 Citing Ibn Abī l-Dunyā as a unique source for this gloss by Ḍaḥḥāk, Suyūṭī includes it in his tafsīr encyclopedia: al-Durr al-manthūr, 13:562. But the report was actually known also to Abū l-Shaykh al-Iṣfahānī, who records a version with an additional gloss on the subsequent Qurʾānic phrase about insulting nicknames: “al-tanābuz is to say to one’s brother: ‘yā kāfir!,’” Tawbīkh, 250. The term ghība in this report poses a minor textual problem: Abū l-Shaykh’s version corresponds to what Suyūṭī reproduces from Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, but Najm Khalaf’s edition of the latter has instead: “al-lamz is al-namīma,” Ṣamt, 317–318, no. 191. This reflects the Cairo MS (Dār al-Kutub Ḥadīth 2124), which nevertheless has a collation note on the margin indicating the variant “al-ghība” from another recension of the book. As for the Damascus MS (Ẓāhiriyya Majāmīʿ 31), this part of the text unfortunately falls in the lacuna at the bottom of fol. 2a.

392 Cited by al-Ṭabarsī (d. 548/1153) and al-Qurṭubī (d. 671/1273), thence collated in: Muḥammad Shukrī Aḥmad al-Zāwaytī, ed., Tafsīr al-Ḍaḥḥāk (Cairo: Dār al-Salām, 1419/1999), 2:778, no. 2285. Note that al-Ḍaḥḥāk is a relatively marginal authority in Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s al-Ṣamt (cited only three times), while Abū l-Shaykh in especially the Kitāb al-ʿAẓama preserves a sizeable corpus of his exegesis; both derive his gloss on lamz as ghība from the recension of Juwaybir (the so-called Tafsīr Juwaybir) by way of Muḥammad b. Yazīd al-Wāsiṭī, on which see: Claude Gilliot, “A Schoolmaster, Storyteller, Exegete, and Warrior at Work in Khurāsān: Al-Ḍaḥḥāk b. Muzāḥim al-Hilālī (d. 106/ 724),” in Aims, Methods and Contexts of Qurʼanic Exegesis (2nd/8th-9th/15th Centuries), ed. Karen Bauer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 338–339.

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exegetical reports on both verses together, in his chapter on ghība in the Kitāb al-Ṣamt.393

Elsewhere in the book, he further adduces Mujāhid’s explication of lā talmizū anfusakum

in Q 49:11 as “do not cast aspersions (lā yaṭʿan) against one another.”394 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s

method of compilation does not allow him to directly comment on this verse as Ṭabarī

can, but seemingly inspired by the same spirit, his citation of Mujāhid is framed in

between two reports that elucidate its import. The first quotes Ibn ʿAbbās saying that “if

you wish to mention your friend’s fault, mention your own first.”395 The one after quotes

an adage attributed to ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib: “Silence is an invitation to love” (al-ṣamt dāʿiyya

ilā l-maḥabba).396 For Ibn Abī l-Dunyā as for Ṭabarī, the moral lesson of Q 49:11 concerns

fraternal love and communal harmony, which is threatened by mutual suspicions and

defamation. This is the heart of the message reiterated in the next verse of the sūra,

which directly links such fault-finding to ghība.

393 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 313–314, nos. 184–185.

394 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, 602, no. 711.

395 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, 601–02, no. 710.

396 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, 602, no. 712.

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D. On Suspicion as a Source of Gossip

The verse on ghība, Q 49:12 marks the major textual turning point in Sūrat al-

Ḥujurāt, concluding the series of exhortations on social conduct with one final address to

the believers:

O you who believe! Avoid much suspicion (ẓann); indeed some suspicion is sin. Do not spy (lā tajassasū), and do not backbite one another. Would any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother? You would abhor it. Be wary of God; indeed God is relenting, most merciful. (Q 49:12)

The immediate context within the verse clearly regards ghība as part of the same

sphere of interpersonal attitude and behavior as ẓann and tajassus, that is, undue

assumptions about others and spying upon them. In fact, for some Muslim exegetes, the

first part of this verse could be fully explained only in light of the subsequent injunction

against backbiting, for suspicion is frequently at the root of gossip. The term ẓann

required elaboration because lexically it could have a neutral connotation, meaning just

a thought, opinion or assumption. Early commentators converged on one of two possible

ways to explain the Qurʾānic phrasing, based on the way they understood moral liability

for thought as opposed to action.

In an exegetical tradition on the text’s command to “avoid much suspicion”

(ijtanibū kathīran min al-ẓann), Ibn ʿAbbās explains that what God prohibits here is for a

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believer to think badly of another believer (an yaẓunn bi-l-muʾmin sharran).397 This is the

only report that Ṭabarī in his Tafsīr deemed sufficient to adduce on this point, which he

emphasizes further in his own comments by noting that the Qurʾān does not say “avoid

all ẓann,” but rather sanctions believers elsewhere to make good assumptions about each

other.398 Here al-Ṭabarī cites Q 24:12 of Sūrat al-Nūr (“Why, when you heard it, did not

the believing men and women think well of their own, and say, ‘This is a manifest lie’”), a

verse associated with the ḥādīth al-ifk. Ṭabarī’s Baghdadi contemporary al-Zajjāj (d.

311/923) in his philological commentary likewise maintains that ẓann in Q 49:12 means to

think badly of “good people,” although by doing so he thus invokes a category (ahl al-

khayr) different from that of “believers” as addressed by the Qurʾān and retained in

Ṭabarī’s exegesis.399

Another tradition of intepreting this verse adopts a distinct approach to the

exhortation against ẓann, drawing a more direct connection between suspicion and

397 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:374. Included also by Ibn al-Mundhir (d. 318/930) and Ibn Abī Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 327/938) in the lost portions of their respective tafsīrs, as reported by Suyūṭī, al-Durr al-manthūr, 13:565. Derived from the latter in the partly-reconstructed edition of Ibn Abī Ḥātim’s Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm, ed. Asʿad Muḥammad al-Ṭayyib (Riyadh: Maktaba Nizār Muṣṭafā al-Bāz, 1997), 10:3305.

398 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:373.

399 Abū Iṣḥāq Ibrāhīm b. al-Sarī al-Zajjāj, Maʿānī l-Qurʾān wa iʿrābuhu, ed. ʿAbd al-Jalīl ʿAbduh Shalabī (Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1988), 5:36.

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rumor that Ṭabarī leaves only implicit by quoting the other verse linked to the ḥādīth al-

ifk. The operative distinction for this alternative understanding was not between

thinking well and thinking badly of others, but rather between unspoken assumptions

and those realized through speech. The idea appears already in some detail in the Tafsīr

of Muqātil b. Sulaymān:

[God] is saying: do not actualize conjecture (lā taḥaqqaqū al-ẓann). And that is, if a man hears from his brother words by which he does not mean anything bad—or he acts in a way by which he does not mean anything bad—and he sees or hears his Muslim brother and has a poor opinion of him, there is no problem in this as long as he does not speak of it. But if he speaks of it, he commits a sin. Hence [God’s] saying: “Indeed, some conjecture in sin.”400

Whereas the plain sense of the Qurʾānic text indicates that some thoughts themselves

are sinful, the argument presented here seems to take a more pragmatic view instead,

such that harboring negative opinions about others is not problematic in itself but that

one becomes morally culpable if and when committing those thoughts to utterances.

This insistence on speech as the decisive factor may derive from the command against

backbiting within the same verse, although the exegetes do not explicitly say so.

Regardless, the interpretation had enough currency that Sufyān al-Thawrī (d. 161/778)

reportedly summed it up in a pithy formulation: “Suspicion is of two types (al-ẓann

400 Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr, 4:96.

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ẓannān), one of which is sin: and that is for you to think and speak of it. The other is not

sinful, and that is to think but not speak.”401

Beyond the domain of Qur’ānic interpretation, the same basic idea of suspicion as

the root of gossip and slander found perhaps its most powerful expression in a famous

and canonical Prophetic ḥadīth: “Beware of ẓann, for ẓann is the most untruthful of

speech (akdhab al-ḥadīth).”402 Al-Tirmidhī (d. 279/892) happens to elaborate on it as part

of the appended critical notes in his compilation, by adducing Sufyān al-Thawrī’s

explanation of ẓann as a pertinent commentary on the ḥadīth.403 The possible exegetical

provenance of Sufyān’s dictum is suggested by the fact that Tirmidhī heard it directly

from the famous mufassir and also ḥadīth collector ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd (d. 249/863), who in

turn claimed to relate it from “one of the companions of Sufyān.”404 Unlike Ṭabarī, it

401 In tafsīr literature, the quote is adduced for Q 49:12 by Abū l-Layth and al-Baghawī: Tafsīr, 3:265; Tafsīr al-Baghawī: Maʿālim al-tanzīl, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh al-Nimr, ʿUthmān Jumʿa Khumayriyya, and Sulaymān Muslim al-Ḥarash (Riyadh: Dār Ṭība, 1409), 7:345.

402 Recorded by Bukhārī, Muslim, Tirmidhī, Ibn Ḥanbal, and also in the Muwaṭṭāʾ of Mālik, as indexed in: Wensinck et al., Concordance, 4:87, s.v. ẓann: “iyyākum wa-l-ẓann...”

403 Abū ʿĪsā Muḥammad b. ʿĪsā al-Tirmidhī, al-Jāmiʿ al-kabīr: Sunan al-Tirmidhī, ed. ʿIṣām Musā Hādī (al-Jubayl, Saudi Arabia: Dār al-Ṣiddīq, 1433/2012), 613, no. 1988 (kitāb 28. al-birr wa-l-ṣila, bāb 56. mā jāʾa fī l-ẓann al-sūʾ).

404 The statement does not, however, appear in the extant redaction of an incomplete Tafsīr attributed to Sufyān (in Rampur MS Raza Library 399, a unicum), which includes only two reports for Sūrat al-Ḥujurāt: Sufyān al-Thawrī, Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-karīm, ed. Imtiyāz ʿAlī ʿArshī, Raza Library Publication Series 13 (Rampur: Ministry of Education, Government of India, 1965), 240.

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became fairly common for other authors of traditionist commentaries as well as

linguistically-oriented maʿānī l-Qurʾān books to attempt a synthesis of these ideas by

reproducing both of the interpretive strands on what constitutes ẓann. Abū l-Layth al-

Samarqandī, for instance, writes periphrastically that the sin is to think badly of a

Muslim. But he then proceeds to quote Sufyān’s dictum, presumably to support his initial

glossing of “avoid much ẓann” as meaning “do not actualize ẓann,” which echoes the

expression used by Muqātil.405

Some tafsīrs, however, proceed directly to the next part of the verse that

commands against spying (lā tajassasū) without any perceived need to comment on the

term ẓann, just as many commentators skip discussing Q 49:12 altogether. Meanwhile,

other scholars such as Zajjāj introduce a further subtlety on the meaning of ẓann by

differentiating between assumptions that are obvious and those that are uncertain, or

the seen versus the unseen. The implication, as he spells out, is that only unjustified

suspicion of good people is condemned, since one has the right to think poorly of sinful

and evil people (ahl al-sūʾ wa-l-fisq) in accordance with what is manifest of them.406 This

clearly relates to the prohibition on spying or prying (tajassus), which engendered a

405 Abū l-Layth al-Samarqandī, Tafsīr, 3:265.

406 Zajjāj, Maʿānī l-Qurʾān, 5:36–37.

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juridically-significant concept of visibility that would inform the far-reaching classical

Muslim debates on the regulation of moral behavior.407 Ṭabarī’s Tafsīr emphasizes the

relevance of this factor to individual moral judgment, in his explanation of the Qurʾānic

phrase lā tajassasū: he says this means one should not pursue another’s private moral

failings (ʿawra) or secrets (sarāʾir), “intending by it to expose his sins (ʿuyūb). But rather,

be content with what is visible to you of his affairs, and praise or blame him according to

that, not according to what you do not know of his secrets.”408 This principle and the

attendant imperative to conceal the sins of others (satr al-ʿuyūb) plays a central role in

medieval Muslim ideas about reputation and shame.

The piecemeal method of early tafsīr literature means that it does not always

explicitly link tajassus and ghība, despite being addressed in the same Qurʾānic verse. But

some clues suggest that these were understood as two closely-related vices. The Tafsīr of

Muqātil b. Sulaymān invokes the notion of ʿayb, meaning a fault, sin or something

shameful, to explain both terms: tajassus is for a man to seek out (yabḥath) a fault in his

407 For an overview of the relevant disucssions in Islamic law, see: Roy Mottahedeh and Kristen Stilt, “Public and Private as Viewed through the Work of the Muhtasib,” Social Research 70, no. 3 (Summer 2003): 735–48; Michael Cook, Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 43–44, 80–82.

408 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:374.

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Muslim brother, while ghība is to speak of a fault that exists in his brother.409 There is

also a ḥadīth, putatively originating in the context of a sermon and recorded in the Kitāb

al-Ṣamt and elsewhere, which addresses both vices together. Reportedly, the Prophet

once preached loud enough such that the women in their homes could also hear, and

said: “O people who believe with your tongues, but have not believed with your hearts:

do not backbite the Muslims, and do not pursue their faults, for he whose faults God

pursues He can disgrace even if he is in the innermost part of his house.”410 The main

thrust of this ḥadīth lies clearly in the issue of satr al-ʿuyūb, hence the narrative framing

that echoes and underscores the rhetorical point about the inner privacy of domestic

space, here associated with the women of the household. Since this version of the

sermon opens by warning against backbiting, Ibn Abī l-Dunyā includes it in his chapter

on “ghība and its censure,” and the Sunan of Abū Dawūd likewise assigns it to a chapter

409 Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr, 4:96.

410 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 302–03 no. 167; Dhamm al-ghība, 109 no. 28. Traced back to the Companion al-Barāʾ b. ʿĀzib through a unique isnād, Ibn Abī l-Dunyā reports this from a respected Baghdādī muḥaddith, Ibrāhīm b. Dīnār al-Tammār (d. 232/846–47). This seems to be the sole instance of a contribution by Ibrāhīm in Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s extant corpus, but the same ḥadīth was also reported from him by Abū Yaʿlā al-Mawṣilī (d. 307/826), who became a source for its appearance in a major 5th/11th-century text of the Zaydī tradition. See: Musnad Abī Yaʿlā al-Mawṣilī, ed. Ḥusayn Salīm Asad (Damascus: Dār al-Thaqāfat al-ʿArabiyya, 1992), 3:237–38 no. 1675 (musnad al-Barāʾ b. ʿĀzib, no. 22); al-Murshad bi-llāh Yaḥyā b. al-Ḥusayn al-Shajarī, Kitāb al-Amālī: wa-hiya l-shahīra bi-l-Amālī al-Khamīsiyya (Cairo 1957; repr., Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1983), 2:215.

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on ghība.411 In a sense, the ḥadīth appears to re-assert the moral lessons of Q 49:12 as a

whole, and would in fact be adduced by later mufassirūn in their discussions of the

verse.412

IV. The Injunction on Ghība and its Interpretations

For all its prominence in the discourse of Islamic piety, the term ghība in the

sense of backbiting occurs only once in the Qurʾān. The text in Q 49:12 seems to assume

knowledge of what it means, apart from the acute rhetorical analogy to eating the flesh

of one’s dead brother. But confronted with the phrase “and do not backbite one another”

(wa-lā yaghtab baʿḍukum baʿḍan), medieval Muslim exegetes concede a need to define ghība

and thereby explain the object of this Qurʾānic condemnation. Not every mufassir

discusses the verse, especially among the incomplete early commentaries that deal only

with select verses instead of an exhaustive treatment of the Qurʾān. This is notably the

411 Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī, al-Sunan, ed. Abū Turāb ʿĀdil b. Muḥammad and Abū ʿAmr ʿImād al-Dīn b. ʿAbbās (Cairo: Dār al-Taʾṣīl, 2015), 7:355 no. 4799 (kitāb 34. al-adab, bāb 35. al-ghība). The report has a different isnād here than Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s, going back to Abū Barza al-Aslamī—and is thus also recorded among the latter’s narrations in Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Musnad, ed. Shuʿayb al-Arnaʾūṭ et. al. (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1413–21/1992–2001), 30:20 & 40, nos. 19776 & 19801. Another version of this tradition, recorded by Tirmidhī on the authority of Ibn ʿUmar, differs in detail and wording; instead of ghība, it commands against abusing and insulting: “lā tuʾdhū l-muslimīn wa-lā tuʿayyirūhum.” Tirmidhī, Sunan, 623–24, no. 2032 (kitāb 28. al-birr wa-l-ṣila, bāb 85. mā jāʾa fī taʿẓīm al-muʾmin).

412 For example: Ismāʿīl b. ʿUmar Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qurʾan al-ʿaẓim, ed. Sāmī b. Muḥammad al-Salāma (Riyadh: Dār Ṭība li-l-Nashr wa-l-Tawzīʿ, 1418/1997), 7:380.

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case with the Shīʿī tafsīr compilations attributed to Qummī and Furāt b. Ibrāhīm al-Kūfī

(fl. ca. 300/912), neither of which has anything to say about Q 49:12.413 The pioneering

philological commentary by Abū ʿUbayda (d. ca. 210/825) does not comment on ghība

either, and only takes an interest in the notion of jāsūs (spy) based on the lā tajassasū

injunction in the verse.414 For traditionist tafāsīr, such omissions likely reflect gaps in the

surviving body of earlier exegetical opinions available to an author. They might

nevertheless also suggest that certain terms and verses were deemed obvious enough to

not need any explanation: the Qurʾān’s pronouncement on backbiting could well have

been such an instance of a clear text, in the eyes of some. The abundant corpus of pious

traditions on ghība, on the other hand, set the stage for everyone else.

A. What is Backbiting? The mā al-ghība Tradition

The Tafsīr of Muqātil b. Sulaymān comments on the lā yaghtab injunction in the

verse by explaining that ghība is for a man to speak of a fault or failing (ʿayb) in a fellow

413 Unusually, Qummī comments on nearly the entirety of Sūrat al-Ḥujurāt except for Q 49:12. Qummī, Tafsīr, 3:996–1002. Furāt includes exegesis of only verses 4, 6, 7–9, and 14. Abū l-Qāsim Furāt b. Ibrāhīm b. Furāt al-Kūfī, Tafsīr Furāt al-Kūfī, ed. Muḥammad al-Kāẓim (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Tārīkh al-ʿArabī, 1432/2011), 2:425–34. On the latter’s significance, see: Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, “Ibn Abī l-Dunyā,” s.v. Furāt b. Furāt al-Kūfī.

414 Abū ʿUbayda Maʿmar b. al-Muthannā, Majāz Al-Qurʾān, ed. Fuat Sezgin (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjī, 1374–81/1954–62), 2:220.

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Muslim. But if he were to say something untrue, he would be falsely slandering him

(bahatahu).415 This explanation more or less paraphrases the influential ḥadīth

distinguishing between ghība and buhtān, and which underlies the commentary on Q

49:12 in most works of tafsīr—at least in spirit if not in the words of the Prophet himself.

In other words, rather than glossing the text in the usual mode of exegesis,

commentators recall or reiterate the ghība versus buhtān precept as a way to explicate

the lā yaghtab injunction in the verse. The dictum still serves as a template even for

attempts at paraphrastic exegesis, such as that by Abū l-Qāsim al-Ṭabarānī (d. 360/971):

The saying of [God] Almighty: “And do not backbite one another,” that is: do not malign (yatanāwal) one another behind one’s back (bi-ẓahr al-ghayb) for something bad about him (bi-mā yasūʾ mimmā huwa fī-hi), for if one maligns him for what is not there in him, then it is buhtān.416

The synonym employed here to gloss yaghtab derives from the term nāla, which is typical

of the expression nāla min ʿirḍihi, literally meaning to injure one’s honor.417 Having thus

415 Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr, 4:96.

416 Ṭabarānī, Tafsīr, 6:85.

417 Lane, Lexicon Supplement, s.v. نیل. The term occasionally also appears in the ḥadīth literature on ghība, such as a report in which ʿĀʾisha maligns a man (nālat minhu) but regrets it upon hearing that he passed away, and then recounts the Prophet’s command to only speak well of the dead. Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 603, no. 714.

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explained the distinction between ghība and buhtān, Ṭabarānī then cites a version of the

famous Prophetic ḥadīth on this matter, which he simply reproduces without any isnād:

The Messenger of God was asked about ghība. He said: “It is for you to mention of a man what he would dislike if he heard it” (an tadhkur min al-rajul mā yakrahuhu idhā samiʿahu). So it was said: “Even if it is true?” (wa-in kāna ḥaqqan). He replied: “Even if it is true. But if it is untrue (bāṭil), then that is buhtān.”418

The narrative premise here is a minor variant of what I will call the mā al-ghība topos,

which in other versions has the Companions asking to know: “what is backbiting?”419 As

described at the beginning of this chapter, a further variant that Ibn Abī l-Dunyā reports

has the Prophet himself asking those present: “hal tadrūna mā l-ghība?”420

The ḥadīth is regarded as canonical in the Sunnī tradition, recorded by Muslim,

Abū Dāwūd, and Tirmidhī, as well as in the major collections of Ibn Ḥanbal and al-

418 Ṭabarānī, Tafsīr, 6:85.

419 Mālik b. Anas, Kitāb al-Muwaṭṭaʾ (Casablanca: al-Majlis al-ʿIlmī al-Aʿlā, 2013), 2:349, mā jāʾa fī l-ghība, no. 2777. Reportedly transmitted from Mālik by his student Ibn al-Mubārak in Zuhd, 222–23 no. 704; Raqāʾiq, riwāyat Nuʿaym, 2:420 no. 889, bāb fī l-ghība wa-ayy shayy. While Mālik’s version is considered mursal (disconnected), it is also reported on the authority of Abū Hurayra in several of the major Sunnī ḥadīth collections (Tirmidhī, Ibn Ḥanbal and al-Dārimī),

420 Alternately: “atadrūna mā al-ghība,” as in the variant of Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj, Ṣaḥīḥ, 4:2001, no. 2589 (kitāb 45. al-birr wa-l-ṣila, bāb 20.70 taḥrīm al-ghība). One of Mulim’s two informants for this report is also Ibn al-Dunyā’s source and a mutual teacher, the pious Baghdādī ʿābid, Yaḥyā b. Ayyūb (d. 234/848).

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Dārimī.421 The version in these ṣaḥīḥ collections is related on the authority of Abū

Hurayra, but for which Juynboll identifies the “key figure” in its dissemination as Ismāʿīl

b. Jaʿfar (d. 180/796), a Medinese traditionist settled in Baghdad and who served as a

tutor to the caliph Mahdī’s son ʿAlī.422 However, the tradition was widely circulated in a

number of versions, including on the authority of early figures other than the Prophet.

The Tafsīr of al-Ṭabarī assembles no less than a dozen variants (four of which are

Prophetic traditions), comprising an overwhelming majority of the 18 reports related to

this part of the verse.423 Juynboll argues, based on a comparison of the web of available

isnāds, that the sheer popularity of the ḥadīth led many transmitters to create “diving”

isnāds ascribed directly to Ismāʿīl’s “alleged” master (al-ʿAlāʾ b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān).

However, the popularity of the ḥadīth, and the fact that the same pronouncement is

421 Abū Dāwūd al-Sijistānī, Sunan, 7:351–52, no. 4793 (kitāb 34. al-adab, bāb 35. fī l-ghība); Tirmidhī, Sunan, 602, no. 1934 (kitāb 28. al-birr wa-l-ṣila, bāb 23. mā jāʾ fī l-ghība); Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Musnad, 14:537, 552, nos. 8985, 9009 (musnād Abī Hurayra). Indexed by: Wensinck et al., Concordance, 5:30 s.v. “qīla yā rasūl allāh mā al-ghība.”

422 The isnād is related as follows: Abū Hurayra < ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Yaʿqūb < (his son) al-ʿAlāʾ b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān < Ismāʿīl b. Jaʿfar. As per Juynboll’s terminology, Ismāʿīl would be the (S)CL, suggesting that the isnād bundle hardly permits a definitive conclusion as to the transmitter responsible for the wording of a report, the so-called common link. G. H. A. Juynboll, Encyclopedia of Canonical Ḥadīth (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 258. On Ismāʿīl b. Jaʿfar b. Abī Kathīr, see: Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām, 8:228–30.

423 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:376–80.

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known on the authority of not only the Prophet but many other early Muslims, reflects

its common origins in a much older and more widely shared tradition.

i. Precursors to the mā al-ghība tradition in the Apophthegmata Patrum

The two-part literary form of the mā al-ghība tradition, as we see above, typically

includes a narrative counterpoint which serves to reassert that ghība is precisely to speak

of things that are true and thus distinguish it from false slander. The Apophthegmata

Patrum (AP) relates a very similar tradition, in the anonymous collection:

A brother asked an elder: “What is backbiting?” The elder said: “If you say that brother so-and-so is zealous and intelligent, but somewhat casual when it comes to such-and-such a matter, here you have bitten back at him. But if you say he is a liar and a perjurer, that is condemnation and it is worse than backbiting.”424

The term used here for backbiting is katalalia, discussed below in the context of its

Biblical usage and elsewhere in the Apophthegmata. The motif, the question-and-answer

format, and the two-part explanation immediately helps indicate the shared origins of

this tradition and its Islamic counterpart. The precise history of this intertextual link—

whether literary or oral—may be impossible to determine. It suffices to recognize this as

clear evidence of a shared concern in late antique religious discourse.

424 APanon, no. 503, Wortley, Anonymous Sayings, 337–39.

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It also helps us understand the clearly distinct nature of the Islamic counterpart

of this tradition, in which the emphasis is rather on broadly defining the nature of talk

that constitutes ghība rather than the content of it. Unlike the above report, the ghība

versus buhtān dictum also does not care to designate one as worse than other. The Desert

Fathers clearly wrestled with the limits of gossip and slander, but along somewhat

different lines. The primary concern for them, it seems, was more internal rather than

the act of the utterance itself. As such, they deliberated whether such talk entailed the

sin of judging one’s neighbor, and it was at least theoretically possible for it to not count

as backbiting. Under the topic of passing judgment, another report from the AP attempts

to explore this possibility and identify the underlying basis of gossip:

A brother asked one of the elders to give an opinion on a hypothetical question. “Supposing,” he said, “I see somebody doing something and I tell it to somebody else. As I see it,” he said, “I am not passing judgement; it is only that we are speaking about it, so it is not malicious talk, is it?” The elder said: “If you speak in a passionate way and have something against him, then it is malicious talk. But if one is free of passion, this is not speaking maliciously but so that the evil may be limited.”425

This is a notably different and more developed tradition, but clearly related to the same

concern with delineating the meaning of slanderous talk. By identifying one’s feeling or

425 APanon, no. 475, Wortley, 305. Cf. John Wortley, trans., The Book of the Elders: Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Systematic Collection, Cistercian Studies Series 240 (Trappist, Kentucky: Cistercian Publications, 2012), 141.

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state mind behind an utterance as the decisive factor, the unnamed ascetic appears to

introduce a subtle hierarchy of problematic speech—similar to the attempt above to

identify “condemnation” as worse “casual” backbiting. This was surely not to excuse a

lesser sin, but to rather enable a monk to refine their self-understanding and the

relationship between body and soul as implicated in the ethics of speech. It should be

possible to identify a similar impetus in the developed mystical thought of the later Sufi

tradition. In the form in which we have it, however, the early ḥadīth literature does

extend to such considerations.

ii. Variants of the Tradition and Nuances to Ghība

The corpus of traditions invested in defining ghība do attempt to nevertheless

delineate further shades of meaning to it beyond its basic sense of unwelcome talk

behind one’s back. In the Tafsīr of Ṭabarī, whereas the main version of the mā al-ghība

tradition—the Prophetic, as well as a variant ascribed to the Companion Ibn ʿUmar—

simply defines ghība as mentioning what is true of someone, small variations in the matn

often help to qualify this further, while continuing to assert the key distinction between

ghība and buhtān. The Zuhd of Wakīʿ records a version that somewhat uniquely and

succinctly captures the substantive scope of ghība, and has the Prophet explaining that it

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is to speak of man’s “physique or character” (khalqihi aw khulqihi).426 The statements of

other early authorities and exegetes frequently offer specific nuances. Masrūq b. al-Ajdaʿ

(d. 62/63 AH), an early tābiʿī, is said to have specified that ghība means speaking about

“the worst” of someone (aswaʾ mā fī-hi), or “the worst that you know to be in him.”427 In

the same vein, al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī reportedly explained that ghība is “to mention of your

brother something that you know to be there from among his bad actions” (masāwīʾ

aʿmālihi).428

The notion of gossiping about what one knows to be true lies at the heart of a

Companion tradition attributed to ʿAbdallāh b. Masʿūd, another variant of the ghība vs.

buhtān dictum which defines the former as “mentioning of your brother what you know

is in him” (mā taʿlam fīhi).429 This was noteworthy enough to be one of only two versions

of the tradition to be recorded in the Zuhd of Ibn al-Mubārak, the other being the

Prophetic “mā al-ghība” ḥadīth, which it is immediately paired with in both recensions of

426 Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ, Zuhd, 3:751, no. 437.

427 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:377–78. This tradition ascribed to Masrūq appears in four variants here via different isnāds, only one of which has the additional clause about what one knows to be true.

428 Ṭabarī, 21:378.

429 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 329 no. 212; Dhamm al-ghība, 141 no. 77.

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the text.430 For Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, the significance of Ibn Masʿūd’s statement lies clearly in

its additional clause about knowingly backbiting, for in the Kitāb al-Samt it is adjoined to

a somewhat similar idea expressed by ʿAwn b. ʿAbdallāh (d. mid-110s/730s), an early

Kūfan ascetic of sometime Murjiʿī persuasion. ʿAwn reportedly explained that “if you say

what is in a man, while you know that he would hate it, then you have backbitten him;

and if you say what is not there, then you have slandered him.”431 This statement,

however, puts the emphasis on a different aspect of ghība—defining it not as talk about a

known fault in someone, but as talk of something that the person would surely dislike.

The contemporaneous exegete Qatāda similarly underscored the intent and effect of

ghība rather than what it is to speak of: he relates an unspecified tradition (kunnā

nuḥaddath, “we used to be told”) that defines ghība as mentioning one’s brother in a way

that “dishonors him” (bi-mā yashīnuhu), and blaming or shaming him about something in

him (taʿībahu bi-mā fī-hi).”432

430 Ibn al-Mubārak, Zuhd, 223; Raqāʾiq, riwāyat Nuʿaym, 2:421 no. 891. As mentioned in note 306 above, Ibn al-Mubārak was also the source of this report in Abū l-Shaykh al-Iṣfahānī, Tawbīkh, 218 no. 191.

431 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 329 no. 211; Dhamm al-ghība, 141 no. 76. On the figure of ʿAwn b. ʿAbdallāh, see: Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām, 5:103–05.

432 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:380. Sourced from both Ṭabarī and ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd in Suyūṭī, al-Durr al-manthūr, 13:576.

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This kind of additional nuance to what defines ghība is where traditionists and

exegetes found opportunity to express a spectrum of slightly different opinions. More

illustrative however are anecdotes that describe a specific setting when such

pronouncements were made, including the kinds of derisive comments that elicited the

moral admonition. Such traditions are naturally more characteristic of the ḥadīth

literature, and comprise the bulk of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s treatment of ghība in the Kitāb al-

Ṣamt. Nevertheless, a number of them were deemed useful by Ṭabarī in his commentary

on Q 49:12. One such report has Muʿādh b. Jabal relating that the Companions once

started talking about a man, and described him as someone so weak that he “cannot eat

except what he is fed, and cannot move except when he is moved.” But the Prophet then

reprimands that they have backbitten him.433 Another such anecdote on the authority of

Abū Hurayra describes an occasion when a man got up to depart the Prophet’s presence,

and the Companions remarked on how old or frail he was (mā aʿjaza fulān). The Prophet

chided: “You have eaten [the flesh of] your brother and slandered him.”434 Perhaps the

most well-known ḥadīth of this type is the one in which ʿĀʾisha describes a woman as

short (innahā qaṣīra), reportedly gesturing to the Prophet with her thumb to show how

433 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:380. Apparently a variant of the same report, with different wording and a more complete isnād: Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 326, no. 206; Dhamm al-ghība, 138, no. 72.

434 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:379; Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 328, no. 209; Dhamm al-ghība, 139–40, no. 74.

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short she was.435 Even beyond the ḥadīth of the first generation, Ṭabarī recounts further

that the early Baṣran scholar Muʿāwiya b. Qurra (d. 113/731–32) reportedly advised that

if an amputee (aqṭaʿ) passes by and you refer to him as “that amputee,” then you have

committed ghība.436

This corpus of illustrative traditions on ghība thus centers on physical attributes

of people as a recurring theme, denoting perhaps an all too common social habit then as

now. It serves as an ideal topos for the ghība versus buhtān dictum, since remarks

describing another person’s obvious appearance are by definition factually accurate.

Equally emphasized in these narratives is the fact that such comments are uttered

behind one’s back; hence the trope of a person departing from a meeting or gathering,

and being talked about by those remaining. Beside highlighting the kind of mundane talk

that involves unwittingly engaging in a sin, these anecdotes thus convey a key point

about the meaning of ghība. As the early exegete Ḍaḥḥāk is said to have explained in his

commentary on the Qurʾānic injunction: “It is to speak of a man behind his back (min

khalfihi): ‘He is such’ (huwa kadhā), to speak disapprovingly of him (yusīʾ al-thanāʾ

435 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:378; Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 326–28, nos. 207–08; Dhamm al-ghība, 139, no. 73.

436 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:379. Recorded as well by: Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 622, no. 757; ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd’s Tafsīr, whence excerpted in: Suyūṭī, al-Durr al-manthūr, 13:578.

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ʿalayhi).”437 Ṭabarī’s own comment in his tafsīr on the verse similarly alludes to the lexical

basis of this notion of backbiting, noting it means to speak “in one’s absence” or “behind

his back” (bi-ẓahr al-ghayb) about that which one would dislike being said to his face (fī

wajhihi).438 Thus, for all the traditionist effort to decipher and elaborate the semantics of

ghība, its most basic and crucial aspect ultimately resides in the word itself.

B. The Flesh-Eating Idiom of Slander

i. “Akala laḥman” in Early Arabic Poetry

In its moral suasion against backbiting, the Qurʾānic verse on ghība immediately

pairs the commandment with a striking image: “Would any of you like to eat the flesh of

his dead brother?” (ayuḥibbu aḥadukum an yaʾkula laḥma akhīhi mayyitan). The rhetorical

nature of the question posed here implies that the idiom, which we can term the

“sarcophagy” metaphor, may have been already familiar to the Qurʾān’s original

audience. Mustansir Mir has portrayed this as an instance in which the Qurʾān adopts a

well-known verbal idiom to give it new meaning.439 The expression akala laḥma fulānin,

437 Adduced from the Tafsīr of Ibn al-Mundhir by Suyūṭī, al-Durr al-manthūr, 13:576.

438 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:376.

439 Mustansir Mir, “Language” in Andrew Rippin and J. A. Mojaddedi, eds., The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Qurʾān, 2nd ed. (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2017), 101.

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literally “to eat someone’s flesh” but idiomatically meaning to slander him or her, is

widely attested in classical Arabic. A proverb recorded by al-Thaʿālibī (d. 429/1038)

describes a habitual backbiter as one who “eats his bread with the flesh of people”

(yaʾkulu khubzahu bi-luḥūmi l-nās).440 In early Arabic poetry, the metaphor appears to be

invoked primarily to describe the behavior of spiteful friends who speak ill of each other.

The great anthology of al-Mufaḍḍal al-Ḍabbī (d. 164/780 or after) provides one such

example in a verse attributed to the pre-Islamic poet ʿAbd Qays b. Khufāf al-Burjumī,

known to be a rival of the more famous al-Nābigha at the Lakhmid court of al-Ḥīra under

its last ruler, the Christian king al-Nuʿmān III b. al-Mundhir (r. ca. 580–602 CE). Singing

about his bygone past when he had a tongue “as sharp as a spear-point, and a lance long

of shaft” (lisānin ka-ḥaddi l-sināni wa-rumḥan ṭawīla), the poet recites:

wa-aṣbaḥtu lā naziqan li-l-liḥāʾi, wa-lā li-luḥūmi ṣadīqī akūlan441

No more am I ready in the strife of reviling, nor greedy to feed on the flesh of my friends.442

440 Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī, Lubāb al-ādāb, ed. Aḥmad Ḥasan Basaj (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1417/1997), 71; G. W. Freytag, Arabum proverbia: vocalibus instruxit, latine vertit, commentario illustravit (Bonn: A. Marcum, 1838–43), 2:940, no. 139; cited in: Manfred Ullmann, ed., Wörterbuch der klassischen arabischen Sprache, vol. II.1 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1983), 357 s.v. لحم.

441 Charles James Lyall, ed., The Mufaḍḍalīyāt: An Anthology of Ancient Arabian Odes compiled by al-Mufaḍḍal (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1918–21), 1:754, no. CXVII, l. 2; cited in: Ullmann, Wörterbuch, II.1:357.

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Ibn al-Anbārī’s (d. 328/940) commentary on the verse equates this with ghība, explaining

that the poet claims to no longer slander a friend (lā aqaʿ fī l-ṣadīq) nor backbite him when

he disappears from sight (wa-lā aghtābuhu idhā ghāba ʿan ʿaynī).443 The idea is explicitly

adduced from a line in a qaṣīda attributed to Suwayd b. Abī Kāhil, who was a mukhaḍram

i.e. a Jāhilī poet who lived into the Islamic era:

wa-yuḥayyīnī idhā lāqaytuhu wa-idhā yakhlū lahu laḥmī rataʿa444

“He wishes me long life when he meets me face to face: when he is alone by himself, he feeds on my flesh.”445

This is exactly the same image reiterated in the aforementioned verse by Ziyād al-Aʿjam,

who replaced the flesh-eating idiom with an allusion to the Qurʾānic terms humaza and

lumaza.446 The connotation in all of these cases thus centers around spitefulness and

specifically, derision behind one’s back.

Reflecting on the phrase akala laḥman, Semitic philologist Werner Arnold has

noted that the idiom is still attested in the Levantine Arabic dialect. Arnold’s interest lies

442 Lyall, Mufaḍḍalīyāt, 2:324, no. CXVII, l. 2.

443 Lyall, 1:755.

444 Lyall, 1:402, no. XL, l. 73; cited in: Ullmann, Wörterbuch, II.1:357.

445 Lyall, Mufaḍḍalīyāt, 2:144, no. XL, l. 73.

446 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 24:616.

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in the historical linguistics of a set of cognate terms in Neo-Aramaic, and therefore

includes some speculation on common ancestors. He suggests that the Arabic expression

may have originated as a calque of an Aramaic equivalent going back to Akkadian, but

nevertheless observes that “it could also be the case that a common Semitic idea is

behind the expression which is connected with eating the meat of a person who has been

denounced or offended by somebody.”447 Regardless of the etymological question, the

prevalence of this idiom in Arabic and other Semitic languages clearly reflects a shared

ancient Near Eastern context, as illustrated especially in the Bible.

ii. The Term q-r-ṣ in Semitic Languages

The Qurʾānic admonition on ghība has a distinct resonance with elements in

Biblical discourse, and which helps to further highlight the sarcophagy motif as an

enduring common denominator in the cultural vocabulary of slander. The Hebrew Bible

employs a parallel idiom in two verses appearing in the first part of the book of Daniel,

which is comprised of court legends from the period of the Babylonian exile; both come

447 Werner Arnold, “The Roots qrṭ and qrṣ in Western Neo-Aramaic,” in Aramaic in Its Historical and Linguistic Setting, ed. Holger Gzella and Margaretha L. Folmer, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Mainz: Veröffentlichungen der Orientalischen Kommission 50 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2008), 308.

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from the section of the text that is in Aramaic rather than Hebrew.448 The first instance

concerns an episode in which a group of men conspire against the three Jewish friends of

Daniel serving as administrators, and accuse them before King Nebuchadnezzar:

“Accordingly, at this time certain Chaldeans came forward and denounced (ʾaḵalū

qarṣêhôn) the Jews” (Daniel 3:8). The Aramaic idiom used here is ʾkl qrṣ, literally to “to eat

pieces of” but meaning “to defame, to accuse (falsely).”449 The same expression reappears

in Daniel 6:24, similarly referring to the conspiracy against Daniel by his enemies at the

court of Darius: “The king gave a command, and those who had accused (ʾaḵalū qarṣôhî)

Daniel, were brought and thrown into the den of lions.” The literary context in both

cases thus involves court intrigues and malicious false accusations—a theme that also

underlies some of the exhortations on slander in early Islamic traditions, but conveyed

by the term namīma rather than ghība.

The consensus among Biblical philologists deems the Aramaic expression ʾkl qrṣ to

be a loan phrase derived from the Akkadian akālu karṣī.450 The root q-r-ṣ, literally meaning

448 Michael D. Coogan, ed., The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version with the Apocrypha, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 1233.

449 Holger Gzella, ed., Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, Volume XVI: Aramaic Dictionary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018), s.v. אכל ʾkl.

450 Stephen A. Kaufman, The Akkadian Influences on Aramaic, Assyriological Studies 19 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 63; Hayim Tawil, An Akkadian Lexical Companion for Biblical

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“to pinch (off),” is common to a number of Semitic languages, including Arabic. This

particular root poses a problem for philologists given the phonological processes that

link it with two other related roots: q-r-ḍ and q-r-ẓ, both of which exist in Arabic and

carry the related meaning of “to cut” (or in the case of the former, “to gnaw”).451 Perhaps

most interestingly, the root k/q-r-ṣ alone seems to have acquired the connotation of

slander, independent of the phrase “to eat pieces of.” This was the case already by the

Old Babylonian stage of Akkadian, in which karṣu meant “defamation.”452 It has been

argued therefore that its pairing with ʾ-k-l is a case of intensification, and that “the

association of damaging, defamatory speech with the root was a distinctive of the root

qrṣ in general—a ready assumption since pinching with mouth provides an image for

hurtful speech.”453

This sense of the root q-r-ṣ is fully retained in classical Arabic. Thus, qāriṣa (or

kalima qāriṣa) refers to “a saying that hurts,” while the expression qaraṣahu bi-lisānihi

Hebrew: Etymological-Semantic and Idiomatic Equivalents with Supplement on Biblical Aramaic (Jersey City, NJ: KTAV Publishing House, Inc., 2009), 452, s.v. קרץ. A cuneiform tablet from the third century BCE, for instance, describes the goddess Sarpanitu as akilat karṣu or the “accuser.” F. Thureau-Dangin, Rituels Accadiens (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1921), 135, l. 258.

451 Arnold, “The Roots qrṭ and qrṣ in Western Neo-Aramaic,” 306.

452 Gzella, Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, s.v. אכל, IV. (ʾkl) qrṣ.

453 Kaddari and Kottsieper, in Gzella, s.v. אכל, IV. (ʾkl) qrṣ.

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means “he hurt him with his tongue, by saying something which gave pain.”454 Terms for

backbiting are also derived from the related q-r-ḍ, such as qarrāḍa meaning mughtāb li-l-

nās, one who defames others; synonymous with ightābahu is the expression iqtaraḍa

ʿirḍahu, literally to “cut off [somewhat] from his honor.”455 The phrase is common, and

appears for instance in a Prophetic ḥadīth on ghība that warns against dishonoring one’s

brother.456 The term q-r-ṣ on the other hand is not employed in the ḥadīth literature or

the texts on speech etiquettes I examine, though its connotations are highlighted

prominently in the early Arabic lexicons.457 It is notably attested in another poem

attributed to the abovementioned ʿAbd Qays b. Khafīf, in which he counsels his son with

a series of wise precepts, including:

wa-daʿi l-qawāriṣa li-l-ṣadīqi wa-ghayrihi, kaylā yarawka mina l-liʾāmi l-ʿuzzali458

“Let alone biting speech whether to friends or to others, lest they look upon thee as one of the vile-natured, to be shunned by men.”459

454 Lane, Lexicon, s.v. قرص.

455 Lane, s.v. قرض.

456 Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, 8:415, no. 25934 (kitāb 18. al-adab, bāb 27. mā qālū fī l-nahy ʿan al-waqīʿa = ed. Bombay 8:577).

457 Khalīl b. Aḥmad al-Farāhīdī, Kitāb al-ʿAyn, ed. Mahdī al-Makhzūmī and Ibrāhīm al-Sāmarrāʾī (Baghdad: Dār al-Rashīd, 1980), 5:61; Ṣāḥib b. ʿAbbād, al-Muḥīṭ fī l-lugha, ed. Muḥammad Ḥasan Āl Yāsīn (Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1414/1994), 5:263.

458 Lyall, Mufaḍḍalīyāt, 1:751, no. CXVI, l. 6.

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To avoid qawāriṣ or injurious words is thus described as virtue. The poet nevertheless

goes on to instruct later that if he that should be the victim of such from his enemies,

then to respond with the same (fa-qruṣ kadhāk) rather than saying “I did it not” i.e.

denying whatever they accuse him of.460 This seems to suggest that qawāriṣ constitutes of

slanderous accusations against another. To the extent we can reliably associate such

poetry with the cultural context for the reception of the Qurʾān, these expressions thus

help reconstitute the broader semantic field for the concept of ghība.

iii. Slander as “Devouring Flesh” in Biblical and Early Christian Discourse

Beyond the Aramaic phrase ʾkl qrṣ, the idiom of devouring flesh recurs

throughout the Tanakh and the New Testament, indicating its religious currency in both

Hebrew and Greek. In the book of Job, one of his speeches addressed to the oppressive

friends who “break [him] in pieces with words” (19:2), appears to refer to slander when it

pleads: “Why do you, like God, pursue me, never satisfied with my flesh?” (Job 19:21).

This could be rendered idiomatically as “maligning me insatiably,” by eating their fill

459 Lyall, 2:322, no. CXVI, l. 6.

460 Lyall, 1:752, 2:323, no. CXVI, l. 11.

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(ṯiśbāʿū) of his flesh.461 Similarly, in the book of Psalms, a supplication to God in one of the

psalms of trust refers to enemies thus: “When evildoers assail me to devour my flesh—

my adversaries and foes—they shall stumble and fall” (Psalm 27:2). The image may be of

their animal-like behavior as elsewhere in the Psalms, but the Hebrew phrase lęʾęḵōl ʾeṯ-

beśārî (to eat my flesh) resonates with the Aramaic expression in the Daniel verses above,

and therefore has been also read idiomatically as referring to backbiting.462

The use of this imagery seems more typical of the Hebrew Bible than of the New

Testament, though it is not entirely absent from the latter. It appears to inform an

expression in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, in which a reminder of the commandment to

love thy neighbor leads to the following exhortation: “If, however, you bite and devour

one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another” (Galatians 5:15). Of

course, the New Testament is elsewhere replete with moral warnings against backbiting,

as when James 4:11 commands: “Do not speak evil against one another, brothers.” Early

Christian ascetics in the late antique period would take these lessons of scripture to

heart, as they wrestled with the challenges of living righteously in the material world.

461 Adele Berlin, Marc Zvi Brettler, and Michael Fishbane, eds., The Jewish Study Bible: Jewish Publication Society Tanakh Translation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 1529.

462 Coogan, New Oxford Annotated Bible, 794; Berlin, Brettler, and Fishbane, Jewish Study Bible, 1311.

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Much given to a dietetics particularly sensitive to the consumption of meat, they seemed

to find in the flesh-eating metaphor a fitting image for the vice of backbiting.463

Of particular interest to our discussion here is a tradition from The Sayings of the

Desert Fathers, which records the Abba Hyperechios as declaring: “It is better to eat meat

and drink wine and not to eat the flesh of one’s brethren through slander.”464 The vice is

here termed in Greek the same as that on which James 4:11 above exhorts: katalalia, from

literally “to speak against” but also used to mean slander, defamation, evil speech, and

backbiting.465 It was rendered however as daynūna (judgment) in the ninth-century

Arabic recension of the Apophthegmata Patrum (AP).466 The term d-y-n of course has an

incredibly rich polysemy in Arabic, but the form daynūna relates to its primary Semitic

463 On this theme, see: Blake Leyerle, “Monastic Formation and Christian Practice: Food in the Desert,” in Educating People of Faith: Exploring the History of Jewish and Christian Communities, ed. John H. Van Engen (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004), 85–112.

464 APalph, Hyperechios 4, Benedicta Ward, trans., The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1984), 238; APsys 4.59, Wortley, Book of the Elders, 49.

465 James 4:11 uses Strong’s Greek word no. 2635 (katalaleō), James Strong, The Strongest Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, ed. John R. Kohlenberger III and James A. Swanson (1890; repr., Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001), 1507. The saying of Hyperechios invokes Strong’s no. 2636 (katalalia). Jean-Claude Guy, ed., Les Apophtegmes des Pères: Collection systématique. Texte critique, traduction et notes, Sources chrétiennes (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1993–2005), 1:214.

466 The whole saying is formulated thus: “akhyar li-l-insān yākul laḥm wa-yashrib khamr wa-lā yākul laḥm ikhwatih bi-l-daynūna min warāhim,” MS Strasbourg 4225, fol. 81r; Monastica – a Dynamic Library and Research Tool (Lund University, 2013–), para. VIII.122, https://monastica.ht.lu.se.

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meaning of “judging” or “rendering judgment” as also in Hebrew and Aramaic, though

perhaps best known from the Qurʾānic term for the Last Judgment, yawm al-dīn.467

Interestingly, the translation of Hyperechios’s dictum refers to daynūna min warāʾ or

“passing judgment from behind,” thus carrying a similar sense to backbiting. In at least

one other Arabic recensions of the AP that likely dates to a later period, the term used is

waqīʿa, another synonym of ghība occasionally used in Islamic sources as well; moreover,

the metaphor invoked by Hyperechios is developed even further, as he is made to

condemn “eating the flesh of one’s brothers and drinking their blood.”468 From the

characteristic imagery of Biblical discourse to late antique monastic wisdom, the idiom

of eating another’s flesh thus remained an enduring feature of the religious rhetoric on

slander.

467 Bearman et al., EI2, s.v. Dīn; Arthur Jeffery, The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qurʾān (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 131–33.

468 Lane, Lexicon Supplement, s.v. وقع. From the published edition of MS St. Macarius, Hagiography 4: “innahu jayyid an yaʾkul al-insān laḥman wa-yashrib khamran, wa-lā yaʾkul luḥūm al-ikhwa wa-yashrib dimāʾihim bi-l-waqīʿa fī-him.” al-Anbā Ibīfāniyūs (Epiphanios), Bustān al-ruhbān, 2nd ed., Silsilat Dayr al‐qiddīs anbā Maqqār, barriyyat Shīhīt (Cairo: Dār Majallat Marqus, 2014), 352, no. 857.

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iv. Dead Brother’s Flesh: Interpretations of the Metaphor in Tafsīr

Literature

Reading Q 49:12 in light of this wider cultural backdrop, however, throws into

relief what appears to be a distinct and original element introduced by the Qurʾān into

an otherwise shared motif: the image of dead brothers. This element caught the

attention of early Muslim exegetes as they sought to understand its rhetorical function

in the verse. An insightful clue lay in the notion of ghība itself, and its lexical allusion to

absence. The early Tafsīr of Muqātil b. Sulaymān already ponders on this at some length

in its discussion of the verse. After explaining the meaning of ghība, he turns to consider

the analogy:

Then He [God] sets an example for backbiting (ḍaraba li-l-ghība mathalan). He stated: “Would any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother?” [This] is to say: if a Muslim has departed from your presence (ghāba ʿanka), when you speak evil of him then he has the status of something dead (bi-manzilat al-shayʾ al-mayyit), because he cannot hear your blaming (ʿaybik) of him, just as the dead cannot hear what you say. Hence His saying: “…You would detest it.” Meaning: just as you would abhor eating the flesh of the dead, so abhor the backbiting of your brothers (fa-krahū l-ghība li-ikhwānikum).469

469 Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr, 4:96.

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For Muqātil, the sarcophagy metaphor in Q 49:12 thus serves a dual purpose, enabled

precisely by an emphasis on the reference to dead flesh. Through this analogy, the Qurʾān

in his view captures the meaning of ghība as well as the moral revulsion it should elicit.

Muqātil’s commentary in this regard echoes the known exegetical opinions

attributed to his earlier contemporaries. Ibn al-Sāʾib al-Kalbī is said to have claimed,

through a form of narrative exposition, that this rhetorical question was posed by the

Prophet to some people who had gossiped about two men. They are compelled to admit:

“No, by God, O Messenger of God, we are not capable (mā nastaṭīʿ) of eating it nor would

we like it,” so the Prophet commands: “Thus abhor ghība.”470 Qatāda b. Diʿāma apparently

extended the metaphor to its logical extreme as way of demonstrating its import: “Just

as you would abhor eating of it if you came across a worm-eaten corpse (jīfa mudawwida),

likewise you must abhor backbiting him while he is alive.”471 The early exegetical

tradition does not relate much more on this element of the verse beyond these

comments. Mujāhid’s reported gloss simply responds to the rhetorical question posed by

470 The report is from the lost parts of the tafsīr of Yaḥyā b. Sallām (d. 200/815) as excerpted by the Andalūsī scholar Ibn Abī Zamanīn (d. 399/1008), in Tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-ʿazīz, ed. Abū ʿAbdallāh Ḥusayn b. ʿUkāsha and Muḥammad b. Muṣṭafā al-Kanz (Cairo: al-Fārūq al-Ḥadītha li-l-Ṭibāʿah wa-l-Nashr, 1423/2002), 4:264; cited in: Ṭayyār et. al., Mawsūʿat al-tafsīr, 20:420.

471 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:381. Recorded also in the Tafsīr of ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd, as cited by Suyūṭī, al-Durr al-manthūr, 13:576.

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the verse: “They said: we abhor it.”472 The minimal commentary might suggest that the

flesh-eating analogy was fairly self-evident, and did not call for much explanation.

There did exist another strand of thought adopted by Ṭabarī, which invokes the

religious prohibition on the consumption of carrion. He draws upon an exegetical report

attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās arguing that God prohibits ghība in this verse “just as he has

prohibited carrion (al-mayta).”473 By contrast, Ṭabarī’s younger contemporary Ṭabarānī

offers a more rationalist and original take on the reasoning behind the rhetoric of the

verse: “Just as by innate disposition (ṭabʿan) you abhor eating the flesh of the dead, so by

reason (ʿaqlan) abhor backbiting the alive. For the intellect has more right to be followed

than disposition.”474 In the same vein as Muqātil, Ṭabarānī then observes that the

similitude (tashbīh) of ghība with eating dead flesh lies in the fact that the slandered

person does not perceive (yuḥiss) that he is spoken ill of, just as the dead cannot feel its

flesh being eaten. Once again, the element of Q 49:12 that dominates such interpretations

resides in a single but significant word, mayta. This is indeed the aspect of the Qurʾānic

invocation of the ancient idiom of slander that remains most distinct about it. The rich

472 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:381.

473 Ṭabarī, 21:381. Recorded also in: Abū l-Shaykh al-Iṣfahānī, Tawbīkh, 257, no. 242.

474 Ṭabarānī, Tafsīr, 6:87.

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symbol of a dead corpse also remains the overwhelming center of attention in the ḥadīth

and pious ethics literature on ghība, as examined in Chapter 5.

C. Traditions on the Occasion of Revelation for Q 49:12

To understand what the Qurʾān is speaking of when it admonishes against ghība,

exegetes often resorted to the illustrative example of sabab al-nuzūl. Muqātil’s Tafsīr

comments on the lā yaghtab injunction by immediately noting that it was revealed with

regard to a certain servant of the Prophet named either Futayr or Fuhayr, who had been

called “dirty, sluggish and greedy” (wakhīm thaqīl bakhīl) by someone unspecified.475 He

proceeds to explain, as discussed above, the distinction between ghība and buhtān. By

appending this explanation to the alleged story of the Prophet’s servant, Muqātil

implicitly acknowledges that the servant may well have been what was described, but

that it was precisely the kind of truthful but derogatory talk being censured by the

Qurʾān.

Variant traditions about the occasion for the revelation of Q 49:12 mostly center

on the same basic details, while disagreeing about the identity of the subject. According

to a report by Ibn Abī Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 327/938), Muqātil’s fellow Khurāsānī and

475 Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr, 4:96.

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namesake Muqātil b. Ḥayyān (d. 135/753) claimed that the verse concerned an unnamed

man who used to serve the Prophet, and who had been described by some of the

Companions as “dirty and greedy” (bakhīl wakhīm) after they sent him off to get some

food.476 These details seem to reflect the bare elements of an alternative, more elaborate

tradition also recorded by Ibn Abī Ḥātim: attributed to the Kūfan exegete Ismāʿīl b. ʿAbd

al-Raḥmān al-Suddī (d. 127/745), it the earliest known version of an enduring narrative

about the Companion Salmān al-Fārisī that was linked to Q 49:12 and its injunction

against ghība.477 The only other known report among early asbāb al-nuzūl traditions for

this verse happens to also name Salmān al-Fārisī, and was recorded in the now-lost Tafsīr

of Ibn al-Mundhir (d. 318/930). It has Ibn Jurayj recounting that some unnamed earlier

authorities would claim (zaʿamū) that the lā yaghtab injunction was revealed because

Salmān once ate and fell asleep, and two men commented about him on seeing his

swollen belly.478 Remarkably, Salmān’s alleged connection to Q 49:12 is acknowledged

476 Suyūṭī, al-Durr al-manthūr, 13:576. Based on Suyūṭī, but misreading wakhīm as rakhīm (“gentle”), in the reconstructed edition: Ibn Abī Ḥātim al-Rāzī, Tafsīr, 10:3306. The report only includes a first name, but although the two figures are frequently confused, Muqātil b. Ḥayyān is a known source of exegeses for Ibn Abī Ḥātim, and indeed among his most cited. See: Mehmet Akif Koç, “Isnāds and Rijāl Expertise in the Exegesis of Ibn Abī Ḥātim (327/939),” Der Islam 82, no. 1 (2005): 151, https://doi.org/10.1515/islm.2005.82.1.146.

477 Suyūṭī, al-Durr al-manthūr, 13:575.

478 Suyūṭī, 13:575.

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already as well in the early linguistically oriented commentary of al-Farrāʾ (d. 207/822),

who notes tersely that the verse was “revealed specifically (khāṣṣatan) about Salmān,

whom they had maligned (wa-kānū nālū minhu).”479 These snippets and allusions

prefigure the peculiar, fully-developed narrative, which embeds the Qurʾānic

pronouncement on ghība in the mundane lives of some Companions of the Prophet.

i. The Tale of Salmān al-Fārisī and the Two Men

The story involving Salmān al-Fārisī clearly emerged in the tafsīr tradition,

though it may have found greater appeal in the literature of pious traditions. The most

elaborate version as far as I am aware appears in the Rawḍat al-ʿulamāʾ of al-Zandawīstī

(fl. 380s/990s), where it forms one of the longest narratives in the chapter on ghība and is

identified as the occasion for Q 49:12, on which Zandawīstī offers his own periphrastic

exegesis to open the discussion.480 The narrative is attributed—through his teacher, but

without an isnād—to Ibn ʿAbbās. Similarly related on the authority of Ibn ʿAbbās is a

variant recorded by Abū l-Layth al-Samarqandī (d. 373/983) in his Tanbīh al-ghāfilīn but

479 Abū Zakariyyāʾ Yaḥyā b. Ziyād al-Farrāʾ, Maʿānī l-Qurʾān, 3rd ed. (Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1403/1983), 3:73.

480 ʿAlī b. Yaḥya al-Zandawīstī, “Rawḍat al-ʿulamāʾ wa-nuzhat al-fuḍalāʾ” (MS, n.d.), fols. 143v–44r, Or. 9421, British Library.

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not in his Tafsīr.481 Significantly, Ṭabarānī’s Tafsīr includes the story as the opening of his

discussion of Q 49:12, albeit without naming Ibn ʿAbbās.482 Regardless of its merits, the

attribution seems to be echoed as well in the so-called Tafsīr Ibn ʿAbbās, compiled by an as

yet uncertain author perhaps around the turn of the fourth/tenth century: it tersely

alludes to the story as part of the sabab al-nuzūl for Q 49:12, stating simply that the verse

was addressed to two men from among the Prophet’s Companions who had backbitten

Salmān.483 The extended versions recorded by Ṭabarānī, Abū l-Layth, and Zandawīstī—

which also differ from each other in detail—represent considerable narrative elaboration

that likely grew out of oral preaching.

Even the earlier witness to the tradition already betrays a populist context, given

Ismāʿīl al-Suddī’s (d. 127/745) reputation for “people’s exegesis” (tafsīr al-qawm) and as a

preacher who gathered crowds at the porch of the mosque in Kūfa—whence his epithet,

from sudd or “porch.”484 Suddī’s commentary on the Qurʾān is known almost exclusively

481 Abū l-Layth al-Samarqandī, Tanbīh al-ghāfilīn, ed. Yūsuf ʿAlī Bidīwī, 6th ed. (Damascus: Dār Ibn Kathīr, 2014), 156–57, no. 210.

482 Ṭabarānī, Tafsīr, 6:83.

483 Tanwīr al-miqbās min tafsīr Ibn ʿAbbās (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1992), 549; Mokrane Guezzou, trans., Tafsīr Ibn ʿAbbās, Great Commentaries of the Holy Qurʾān 2 (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2008), 693.

484 G. H. A. Juynboll, in “Ibn Abī l-Dunyā,” s.v. al-Suddī. His exegesis was characterized as tafsīr al-qawm by Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī.

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through its recension by his disciple Asbāṭ b. Naṣr, who did not enjoy a reputation for

reliability among ḥadīth scholars.485 The account of the Salmān tradition recorded on

Suddī’s authority by Ibn Abī Ḥātim may be a synopsis of a longer narrative, but already

includes all key elements of the full story. It describes Salmān’s employment as a servant

by two unnamed men while they are traveling. When the masters cannot find him one

day because he has fallen asleep, they complain to each other that Salmān has no

interest in anything but “a bit of food and a fixed tent.”486 These remarks amount to

ghība, for when they later send Salmān to the Prophet asking for some food, the Prophet

responds that they have already had some: “You have eaten of Salmān by what you said”

(bi-qawlikumā).487 In other words, as the sarcophagy analogy would have it, the men’s

comments about Salmān behind his back were tantamount to them having eaten his

flesh.

485 Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, 4:304. Exegetical traditions attributed to Suddī are adduced by Ibn Abī Ḥātim with three different isnāds, all via Asbāṭ. See: Koç, “Isnāds and Rijāl Expertise,” 151–52 (nos. V, VII, and XII; cf. no. XVII).

486 “mā yurīd Salmān ghayr hadhā, an yajīʾ ilā ṭaʿām maʿdūd wa-khibāʾ maḍrūb.” Suyūṭī, al-Durr al-manthūr, 13:575.

487 Suyūṭī, 13:575. The term used for food, both in this story and in the Muqātil b. Ḥayyān report cited earlier, is idām which specifically implies meat—as something to be eaten with bread: Lane, Lexicon, s.v. أدم.

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The motif clearly helped link the narrative to Q 49:12, and was further developed

in other variants. Abū l-Layth al-Samarqandī’s Tafsīr, which opens with Suddī’s account

in its commentary on the verse, also relates a claim (yuqāl) that Salmān was on a journey

with Abū Bakr and ʿUmar, whom he would cook for.488 This appears to reflect a variant

tradition attested elsewhere and associated with the Baṣran ascetic Thābit al-Bunānī (d.

123/741 or 127/745), which names Abū Bakr and ʿUmar but not the servant whom they

derided.489 The two Companions remain unnamed in the Ibn ʿAbbās tradition, which

otherwise develops a more detailed setting to illustrate the social context for this

incident. It explains that the Prophet would attach a needy man as a servant to more

well-to-do persons during a trip or a raid. In addition to the spotlight on Salmān as

protagonist, the narrative introduces another character, Usāma b. Zayd: he is said to be

the khāzin or keeper of the storehouse, to whom Salmān comes asking about any leftover

idām i.e. meat or stew to eat with bread.490 Unlike Suddī’s account, the ghība in this

version entails in the masters distrusting Salmān’s word that Usāma had nothing to give;

they remark that he would claim even the well of Samīḥa has run out of water. They

488 Abū l-Layth al-Samarqandī, Tafsīr, 3:265.

489 Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Jaʿfar Kharāʾiṭī, Masāwīʾ al-akhlāq wa-madhmūmahā, ed. Muṣṭafā b. Abī l-Naṣr al-Shalbī (Jeddah: Maktabat al-Sawādī li-l-Tawzīʿ, 1992), 95–96, no. 188.

490 Usāma b. Zayd figures in the narrative only in the versions by: Ṭabarānī, Tafsīr, 6:83; Zandawīstī, “Rawḍat al-ʿulamāʾ,” fol. 143v.

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decide to go directly to the Prophet, only to be asked: “Why do I see the redness of meat

(ḥumrat al-laḥm) in your mouths?”491 And so the verse is said to have been revealed, as

the Prophet explains how they ate the flesh of their brother behind his back.

This tradition about the occasion for the revelation of Q 49:12 had a relatively

limited reception in the tafsīr canon, possibly on account of its dubious provenance.

Although Ibn Abī Ḥātim and Ibn al-Mundhīr in their respective compilations note the

alleged connection of Salmān to the verse on ghība, their contemporary Ṭabarī makes no

mention of it, nor does he record any other sabab account for the verse. Suddī was a

major source for Ibn Abī Ḥātim throughout his Tafsīr, so it may be no surprise that it

remains the main witness to his version of the story.492 Curiously, al-Wāḥidī’s (d.

468/1075) classic work on asbāb al-nuzūl, which also draws frequently on material

attributed to Suddī, has nothing to say about Q 49:12 despite a fairly extensive treatment

of the rest of Sūrat al-Ḥujurāt.493 Nevertheless, the Salmān tradition hardly disappeared

491 Ṭabarānī, Tafsīr, 6:83; Abū l-Layth al-Samarqandī, Tanbīh al-ghāfilīn, 156; Zandawīstī, “Rawḍat al-ʿulamāʾ,” fol. 144r.

492 On Ibn Abī Ḥātim’s extensive reliance on Suddī, see: Koç, “Isnāds and Rijāl Expertise,” 151–52.

493 Ṣaqr has identified 36 citations to al-Suddī in his edition: Wāḥidī, Asbāb nuzūl, 518–19.

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from tafsīr literature, and was available for citation in the major late-medieval

commentaries by al-Qurṭubī (d. 671/1273) and Ibn Kathīr (d. 774/1373).494

But the tale of Salmān did find traction among pious traditionists, especially in

the fourth/tenth-century Iranian world. Besides the extended narratives recounted by

Abū l-Layth and Zandawīstī, the early version of Suddī is included by Abū l-Shaykh al-

Iṣfahānī in his Tawbīkh, concluding his group of reports at the end of the book related to

the ethical exhortations of Sūrat al-Ḥujurāt.495 The fact that the story features Salmān al-

Fārisī as the protagonist may not be incidental to its reception. In her compelling

monograph on historiography in early Islamic Iran, Sarah Savant highlights the case of

Salmān al-Fārisī as “a site of memory for Persians and particularly for the people of

Iṣfahān.”496 She has shown how Salmān’s fabled conversion narrative and the

connections to his putative hometown was a matter of great local interest: in his famous

494 Like Ṭabarānī’s, a version of the Ibn ʿAbbās tradition without any attribution: Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad b. Aḥmad Qurṭubī, al-Jāmiʿ li-aḥkām al-Qurʾān, ed. Aḥmad al-Bardūnī and Ibrāhīm Aṭfīsh (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, 1384/1964), 16:330–31. Citing Suddī’s version: Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr, 7:383–84.

495 Abū l-Shaykh al-Iṣfahānī, Tawbīkh, 257–58, no. 243. This is the only source known to me which includes a full isnād for the tradition going back to Suddī < Asbāṭ (b. Naṣr al-Hamdānī) < ʿĀmir (b. al-Furāt) < al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī < al-Walīd (b. Ābān b. Būna? d. 310/922–23). This is the same recension as for one of Ibn Abī Ḥātim’s sources for Suddī’s exegeses: Koç, “Isnāds and Rijāl Expertise,” 152 (no. XII).

496 Sarah Bowen Savant, The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran: Tradition, Memory and Conversion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 62.

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book on the history and biography of Iṣfahān’s great men, Abū l-Shaykh writes: “among

the ways in which God beautified Iṣfahān and its people was that he made Salmān al-

Fārisī be from it.”497 It may be no accident either then that Ṭabarānī, who hailed from

Tiberias but spent most of his long life in Iṣfahān, opens his commentary on Q 49:12 with

the narrative about Salmān.

Regardless of the particular significance of Salmān in medieval Muslim

interpretations of the Qurʾānic injunction on ghība, the story has a basic yet striking

commonality with the few other asbāb al-nuzūl traditions for Q 49:12. They all feature a

servant (khādim), whether named or unnamed, and whether a servant to the Prophet as

claimed by both Muqātils, or a servant to other Companions. The condemned incident of

backbiting appears to involve dissatisfaction with the servant for being lazy or

incompetent. All of these reports are clearly related, and could well have originated with

a common source as it were. No less interesting is its reception and transmutation across

the variants, which help illustrate the narrative strategies by which medieval Muslims

could preach about ghība, in spite of the concerns of more rigorous scholars.

497 Savant, 77.

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V. The Social Registers of Gossip and Slander in Early Islam

The traditions that early Muslims related concerning Sūrat al-Ḥujurāt reflect

certain ideas about social difference that animated their interpretation of its moral

exhortations. The narrative about Salmān al-Fārisī rests on stereotypes about the

treatment of servants by their masters. Similarly focusing on social status and hierarchy,

the commandment against mockery (sukhriyya) was specifically understood by some

exegetes as the derision of the rich towards the poor. At least one early scholar referred

to the Banū Tamīm’s alleged contempt for some of the Prophet’s Companions who had

humble origins as mawālī or formers slaves, including Salmān. Seen through the lens of

such details, whether in the context of narrative elaboration or otherwise, the abstract

pronouncements of scripture was made more concrete. The ḥadīth and early traditions

were crucial to this interpretive effort. Whereas the Qurʾān simply forbids backbiting,

numerous traditions identify specific types of utterances as ghība. As we have seen, a

distinct preoccupation in these teachings is people’s comments about the appearance of

others. Interestingly, a stream within tafsīr literature betrays an assumption among some

early exegetes that women were especially prone to such talk. The bulk of the pious

exhortations on ghība are otherwise gendered quite differently, insofar as they address a

default masculine audience about the sin of backbiting one’s “brother.” The exegetical

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traditions about the Prophet’s household add another perspective to this, illustrating the

kind of ghība expected of women.

A. Gendered Gossip: “Nor let women deride one another”

The Qurʾān frequently addresses women expressly along with men—perhaps

“uniquely among monotheistic scriptures,” as Tamar Sonn contends.498 The verse in

Sūrat al-Ḥujurāt preceding that about ghība is one such instance. After exhorting those

who believe to not let a people (qawm) scorn or mock one another, the text then

reiterates this imperative specifically addressing women: wa-lā nisāʾun min nisāʾin ʿasā an

yakunna khayran minhunna, “and let not women [scorn] women, it may be that they are

better than them” (Q 49:11). The early commentary of Ibn Zayd adduced by Ṭabarī, as we

have seen before, uniquely interprets lā yaskhar as an injunction against mocking others

for an uncovered sin or shortcoming (khaṭīʾa). He then observes: “and He [God] has said

likewise about women.”499 In the same vein, Ṭabarī’s own exegesis simply reiterates his

gloss of the injunction as applying equally to women.500 Many appear not to have

498 Tamara Sonn, “Introducing,” in Rippin and Mojaddedi, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Qurʾān, 9. For a brief overview of such verses, see Ruth Roded, “Women and the Qurʾān” in McAuliffe, EQ, 5:523–24.

499 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:365.

500 Ṭabarī, 21:364.

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commented on this part of the verse at all.501 However, in the mode of Qurʾānic

commentary where potentially every unit of a verse could hold a discrete meaning or

context behind it, this separate address to women caught the attention of some

mufassirūn, prompting recollections of anecdotes said to explain its revelation.

These accounts invariably concern the Prophet’s household. According to an

opinion attributed to Anas b. Mālik and recorded by Wāḥidī and al-Thaʿlabī (d. 427/1035),

albeit without any isnād, the part of Q 49:11 addressing women was supposedly revealed

about wives of the Prophet who mocked Umm Salama for her shortness (ʿayyarna Umm

Salama bi-l-qiṣar).502 This might recall the ḥadīth on ʿĀʾisha backbiting a short woman, and

indeed Muqātil’s Tafsīr already identifies her as the source of this insult. The wa-lā nisāʾ

injunction, he claims, “was revealed about ʿĀʾisha bint Abī Bakr—may God be pleased

with them both; she had made fun of the shortness (istahzaʾat min qiṣar) of Umm Salama

bint Abī Umayya.”503 Abū l-Layth al-Samarqandī’s commentary even includes an

additional flourish, quoting ʿĀʾisha as having said: “Umm Salama would be beautiful if

501 Notably, Suyūṭī’s compilation of earlier exegetical opinions has nothing directly addressing this part of Q 49:11. Suyūṭī, al-Durr al-manthūr, 13:560–61.

502 Abū Iṣḥāq Aḥmad al-Thaʿālibī, al-Kashf wa-l-bayān al-maʿrūf tafsīr al-Thaʿlabī, ed. Abū Muḥammad Ibn ʿĀshūr (Beirut: Dār Iḥyāʾ al-Turāth al-ʿArabī, 1422/2002), 9:81; Wāḥidī, Asbāb nuzūl, 416.

503 Muqātil b. Sulaymān, Tafsīr, 4:95.

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she weren’t so short.”504 ʿĀʾisha is also named in a variant account, in which she is said to

have gossiped with Ḥafṣa about Umm Salama’s dress and how it dragged behind her,

presumably due to her height. The narrative does not neglect to mention vivid details:

Umm Salama is said to have worn a wrapping (sabaniyya, which the text glosses as “a

white garment”) around her waist with its end hanging behind her, which led to ʿĀʾisha’s

alleged comment: “Look how she drags it behind her, as if it’s a dog’s tongue” (unẓurī mā

tajurr khalfihā ka-annahu lisān kalb).505

The exegetical function of the report is made clear in its concluding phrase: “and

this was their sukhriyya (mockery).” This suggests an editorial note at some stage when

the anecdote came to be appropriated in tafsīr literature and linked to Q 49:11. That these

stories evoke the ḥadīth on ghība was not lost on commentators who note that ʿĀʾisha is

also “said” (yuqāl) to have indicated Umm Salama’s height with her hand. But ʿĀʾisha

herself is not the only one to backbite in such stories, and is also depicted as passing on

the moral lesson to others. An anecdote similar to that concerning Umm Salama’s dress

504 “Inna Umm Salama jamīla lawlā annahā qaṣīra.” Abū l-Layth al-Samarqandī, Tafsīr, 3:264.

505 Wāḥidī, Asbāb nuzūl, 416; Thaʿālibī, Kashf, 9:81. Also cited by the Shīʿī commentator al-Ṭabarsī (d. 468/1153) as the occasion for this unit of the verse: Abū ʿAlī al-Faḍl b. al-Ḥasan Ṭabarsī, Majmaʿ al-bayān fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān (Beirut: Dār al-Murtaḍā, 2006), 9:172. The edition of Thaʿālibī has minor textual variants: sababiyya for sabaniyya, and khaṣrayhā instead of ḥaqwayhā—both meaning waist.

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speaks about a Bedouin woman who came to see ʿĀʾisha, and when she left, the daughter

of Ṭalḥa (also named ʿĀʾisha) remarked: “How long is her hem!” (mā aṭwal dhayluhā).

ʿĀʾisha immediately reproaches her for backbiting.506 Whereas the tafāsīr relate the Umm

Salāma stories in connection to sukhriyya, the report involving ʿĀʾisha bint Ṭalḥa comes

from the ḥadīth tradition (by way of the early collector Ibn Wahb, in Abū l-Shaykh’s

version) and names the problem as ghība. In any case, across the different literary

settings and contexts, the recurrence of the motif itself rest on its association with

women and portrays them as habitually making observations about each other’s

appearance and dress.

A variant sabab al-nuzūl tradition about the verse on sukhriyya, however,

associates it with the Prophet’s Jewish wife Ṣafiyya. Related on the authority of Ibn

ʿAbbās via ʿIkrima, the ḥadīth portrays an altogether different kind of insult: reportedly,

she came to the Prophet and complained that women were addressing her as “Jewess

daughter of two Jewish parents” (yahūdiyya bint yahūdiyyayn). In response, the Prophet

exclaimed: “Now tell them: ‘Indeed, my father is Aaron, and my uncle is Moses, and my

husband is Muḥammad’.”507 He advised her, in other words, to proudly reclaim her

506 Abū l-Shaykh al-Iṣfahānī, Tawbīkh, 219–220, no. 193.

507 Wāḥidī, Asbāb nuzūl, 416.

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Biblical ancestors. The invocation of this story in the context of Q 49:11 may relate to the

injunction later in the same verse to not call each other by nicknames (wa-lā tanābazū bi-

alqāb). Most early exegetes interpreted this as calling a fellow Muslim an infidel (kāfir) or

a sinner (fāsiq), but Ḥasan al-Baṣrī is said to have explained that when Jews and

Christians became Muslim, people would still address them as “O Jew” or “O Christian.”

He claims the revelation was meant to prohibit this practice.508 The anecdote about

Ṣafiyya clearly resonates with this, but is also related elsewhere in the context of

biographical traditions about the Prophet’s wives. In fact, as Barbara Stowasser has

previously noted, the Prophet’s advice concerning Ṣafiyya’s Jewish heritage is said to

have been offered in relation to a story about ʿĀʾisha and Ṣafiyya reviling (istabbat) each

other’s fathers.509

Such narratives belong to a much larger stock of traditions centering on the

theme of jealousy and envy among the Prophet’s wives. These “household” narratives, as

termed in Barbara Stowasser’s analysis of the topos, may even comprise the bulk of

classical biographical accounts on the Mothers of the Believers, portraying them “as

508 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:371.

509 Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, 10:123; Barbara Freyer Stowasser, Women in the Qurʼan, Traditions, and Interpretation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 110.

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‘ordinary women’ possessed and motivated by petty jealousies.”510 By relating such

anecdotes to explicate a part of Q 49:11, commentators identified the reference to

women in the verse with specifically the women of the Prophet’s household, even

arguing that certain incidents elicited the revelation. In doing so, they also effectively

upheld broader stereotypes about women’s behavior, including a supposed propensity

for spiteful judgments about each other. These anecdotes implicitly associate a particular

kind of ghība with women, namely remarks centered on physique or dress. Yet at the

same time, as evident from the overall corpus of tafsīr and ḥadīth literature reviewed so

far in this chapter, early Muslims do not appear to have regarded the problem of insult

and backbiting as a particularly feminine predicament. They did not insist, as some

Muslims later would, that in this regard the Qurʾān deemed women especially worthy of

admonition. If anything, as generally the case with our source left behind by the

medieval ʿulamāʾ, the overwhelming majority of the traditions on pious ethics center on

the lives and attitudes of men.

510 Stowasser, Women in the Qurʼan, 107.

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B. Slander as Betrayal: State and Society in the Concept of Namīma

The kind of small talk associated especially with ʿĀʾisha in the ḥadīth literature on

ghība stands in marked contrast to the valences of a related but quite different notion in

Islamic thought, denoted by the term namīma. It is clearly basic to the classical Arabic

vocabulary of gossip and slander, as evident from its recurrence throughout the

exegetical commentaries on sūras al-Masad and al-Humaza discussed at the beginning of

this chapter. Together as a pair, the two terms ghība and namīma could be felt to capture

the whole semantic field of gossip in Islamic discourse, conveyed for instance by the

anonymous scribe at the end of the sixth/twelfth century or later who identified a

partial manuscript copy of Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s Ṣamt with the title: Kitāb al-ghība wa-l-

namīma.511 The concepts were already paired within some early traditions, including an

eschatological saying found in the same text, which has Qatāda recalling that

punishment in the grave results from three things: a third for ghība, a third for

uncleanliness from urine (bawl), and a third for namīma.512 This echoes a canonical ḥadīth

about the torment in two graves the Prophet once passed by, prompting him to warn of

two minor but fateful offences that may not seem serious (kabīr): namīma and the failure

511 Editor’s introduction, Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Dhamm al-ghība, 75.

512 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 317, no. 190; Dhamm al-ghība, 124–25, no. 52.

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to protect oneself from urine—a major concern for ritual purity.513 Most of the traditions

about namīma portray it as something quite dangerous indeed: though it refers to gossip

in general and especially to repeating and spreading talk, namīma had specific

connotations in the social context of early Islam that were a source of serious moral

concern.

As with ghība, the term namīma occurs only once in the Qurʾān, in the reference to

rumormongers in Q 68:11 of Sūrat al-Qalam as discussed earlier. Regarding this verse, the

grammarian al-Farrāʾ simply notes that namīm and namīma belong to kalām al-ʿarab, the

authoritative register of Arabic.514 Like the mufassirūn, philologists could use the word to

explain other related notions: for instance, the early lexicons by al-Khalīl b. Aḥmad (d.

175/791), Ibn Durayd (d. 321/933) and al-Ṣāḥib b. ʿAbbād (d. 385/995) all use namīma to

define nayrab, a peculiar term denoting the calumny and misrepresentation

513 Recorded in all of the Six Books: Wensinck et al., Concordance, 7:1, s.v. namīma: “wa-kāna l-ākhar yamshī bi-l-namīma...” See also: Juynboll, Encyclopedia of Canonical Ḥadīth, 92–93. Bukhārī files the report under the heading bab al-ghība, an inconsistency that did not escape the attention of later commentators: Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 4:100–101, no. 6052 (kitāb 78. al-adab, bāb 46. al-ghība); Ibn al-Munayyir, al-Mutawārī, 358.

514 Farrāʾ, Maʿānī l-Qurʾān, 3:173.

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characteristic of someone who “mixes” truth and falsehood in his speech.515 A similar

notion of “embellishing” speech with lies informs the word tarqīsh, which can mean to

incite discord by propagating rumor (tablīgh al-namīma).516 Incitement (ighrāʾ) and

dissension (tawrīsh) are also key aspects of namīma underscored when the term itself is

elaborated in later dictionaries like Ibn Manẓūr’s (d. 711/1311) Lisān al-ʿarab, which

defines it as “communicating talk in the manner of circulation and corruption” (rafʿ al-

ḥadīth ʿalā wajh al-ishāʿa wa-l-ifsād).517 This idea of rumormongering stems from its

etymology, as the verb namma can refer to the spread of a smell. But as already the case

in the Qurʾān, the term is typically used in the phrase mashā bi-l-namīma, meaning to

spread slanderous rumor. This particular image of walking about with slander (from m-

sh-y, “to go on foot”) appears to reflect an ancient idiom that finds an interesting

paralleled in the Biblical Hebrew word rāḡal for slandering, derived from the root

515 Khalīl b. Aḥmad al-Farāhīdī, ʿAyn, 8:269; Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan Ibn Durayd, Jamharat al-lugha, ed. Ramzī Munīr Baʿalbakī (Beirut: Dār al-ʿIlm li-l-Malāyīn, 1987), 1:330; Ṣāḥib b. ʿAbbād, Muḥīṭ, 10:233–34. Cf. Lane, Lexicon, s.v. نرب.

516 Ṣāḥib b. ʿAbbād, Muḥīṭ, 5:237; Lane, Lexicon, s.v. رقش.

517 Jamāl al-Dīn Abū l-Faḍl Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān al-ʿArab (Beirut: Dār Ṣādir, 1968), 12:592.

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meaning of “foot” (r-g-l, as in Arabic r-j-l).518 In fact, the same usage is also recognized in

Arabic, as mashshāʾ alone—or mushāt—can mean a slanderer.

The traditionist literature is replete with the strongest condemnations of namīma.

The dedicated chapter in Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s Kitāb al-Ṣamt opens with a well-known

tradition, attributed to Ḥudhayfa: upon hearing of a man who was divulging rumors

(yanumm al-ḥadīth), the Companion recalled the Prophetic declaring that “a calumniator

will not enter paradise” (lā yadkhulu l-janna nammām).519 A much more common variant

cited by the kutub al-zuhd uses the term qattāt, to which some transmitters append a gloss

indicating that it is synonymous with nammām.520 Both are condemned together in a

saying attributed in Shīʿī tradition to the fifth imām, al-Bāqir (d. 117/733): “Paradise is

518 Francis Brown, Samuel R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament: With an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic, Based on the Lexicon of William Gesenius as Translated by Edward Robinson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1906), s.v. רגל.

519 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 357, no. 253; Dhamm al-ghība, 167, no. 115. Recorded also by Muslim and Ibn Ḥanbal: Wensinck et al., Concordance, 7:1 s.v. “nammām: lā yadkhul al-janna...”

520 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 357–58, no. 254; 369, no. 273; Dhamm al-ghība, 167–68, no. 116; 179, no. 134; Ibn al-Mubārak, Zuhd, 222, no, 703; Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ, Zuhd, 756, no. 442; Hannād b. al-Sarī, Zuhd, 574, no. 1208; Kharāʾiṭī, Masāwīʾ al-akhlāq, 106, no. 215. The gloss “and qattāt is nammām” is added by al-Aʿmash. Variants recorded by most of the Ṣiḥāḥ: Wensinck et al., Concordance, 5:265 s.v. qattāt. Reported also in Shīʿī tradition, by Shaykh al-Ṭūsī (d. 460/1067): Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī, Wasāʾil al-shīʿa (Qom: Muʾassasat Āl al-Bayt, 1414/1993), 12:310, no. 16382 (kitāb al-ḥajj, bāb 164.14 bāb taḥrīm al-namīma).

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prohibited against the qattāt and those going about with namīma.”521 A further synonym

is introduced in a ḥadīth of the rhetorical question and answer type, in which the

Prophet states: “Should I not inform you of ʿiḍah? It is namīma, what-is-told (al-qāla)

between people.”522 This ḥadīth echoes in formula the mā al-ghība tradition, and thus

helps distinguish between the two concepts of backbiting versus rumormongering. ʿIḍah

(or ʿaḍīha) has a wider semantic application, including sorcery and soothsaying, but

Khalīl’s lexicon defines it primarily as ifk, buhtān, and false statements (qawl al-zūr).523

The corpus of reports grouped by Ibn Abī l-Dunyā under the rubric of namīma further

captures some of these connotations, such as a Prophetic warning that one who falsely

testifies against a Muslim will perish in hellfire.524 Similar eschatological

pronouncements are made against those who publicize (ashāda) a baseless claim against

a Muslim seeking to disgrace him (li-yushīnahu).525

521 Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb al-Kulaynī, al-Kāfī (Qom: Dār al-Ḥadīth, 1434/2013), 4:109, no. 2804 (al-Uṣūl, kitāb 5. al-īmān, bāb 159.2 al-namīma = ed. Ghaffārī 2:369); Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī, Wasāʾil al-shīʿa, 12:306, no. 12370 (kitāb al-ḥajj, bāb 164.2 taḥrīm al-namīma wa-l-muḥākāt).

522 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 359, no. 256; 511, no. 521 (variant with a longer matn on kadhb); Dhamm al-ghība, 169, no. 118. For variant by Muslim, Abū Dāwūd and Ibn Ḥanbal, see: Wensinck et al., Concordance, 7:1 s.v. “namīma: ...mā al-ʿadhu.”

523 Khalīl b. Aḥmad al-Farāhīdī, ʿAyn, 1:99.

524 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 362, no. 260; Dhamm al-ghība, 172, no. 122.

525 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 360, no. 258; Dhamm al-ghība, 170, no. 120.

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i. Qattāt: State Informants and the Majlis

At least some of these severe condemnations seem related to a particular form of

slander that could have all too dangerous consequences in the medieval world, namely

that involving spies or political informants. This is distinctly conveyed in a variant

narrative framing to the abovementioned ḥadīth which portends the qattāt’s denial of

entry into paradise, a tradition recorded by most of the canonical Sunnī collectors.

Bukhārī includes it in his chapter on adab, as one of two reports on namīma each with its

own tarjama or topic heading. The first argues that it is an enormity (bāb al-namīma min

al-kabāʾir), illustrated by a ḥadīth in which the Prophet identifies two sinners being

tormented in their graves, one of whom is a slanderer. The second heading concerns

“what is abhorred about namīma” (bāb mā yukrahu min al-namīma) and quotes the

aforementioned verses Q Qalam 68:11 and Q Humaza 104:1, followed by a brief gloss of

the hammāz/humaza as one who “blames, criticizes and defames” (yahmizu wa-yalmizu

yaʿīb).526 Bukhārī thus appears to link the Qurʾānic references to the ḥadīth that follows, a

variant of the tradition attributed to Ḥudhayfa (d. 36/656) in which he quotes the

Prophet’s damnation of the qattāt. In this version, he does so upon being told about an

unidentified individual who communicates or “brings up” rumors (yarfaʿ al-ḥadīth) to

526 Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, 4:101 (kitāb 78. adab, bāb 50. mā yukrahu min al-namīma).

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ʿUthmān.527 This setting for the anecdote seems a bit cryptic until a comparison across

the sources reveals that the reference here must be to ʿUthmān in his capacity as caliph,

based on the details supplied in the variants recorded by Muslim, Tirmidhī and Ibn

Ḥanbal:

» A man passed by Ḥudhayfa b. al-Yamān and it was said to him: “This one communicates the talk of people to the rulers” (yuballigh al-umarāʾ al-ḥadīth ʿan al-nās). So Ḥudhayfa said…528

» A man would pass on rumors to the ruler (yanqul al-ḥadīth ilā l-amīr). So we were sitting in the mosque, and the people said: “This is one of those who transmits rumors to the ruler.” [The narrator said:] Then he came over to sit with us. Then Ḥudhayfa said...529

» We were sitting with Ḥudhayfa at the mosque, and a man came and sat with us. It was said to Ḥudhayfa that this one takes things up to the government (yarfaʿ ilā l-sulṭān ashyāʾ). So Ḥudhayfa said, intending that he hears him…530

According to these versions of the tradition, Ḥudhayfa invoked the Prophetic dictum

specifically in relation to someone spying for the authorities. Another brief variant

527 Recorded also in: Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 369, no. 273; Dhamm al-ghība, 179, no. 134.

528 Tirmidhī, Sunan, 622, no. 2026 (kitāb 28. al-birr wa-l-ṣila, bāb 79. mā jāʾa fī l-nammām). Recorded also with the same isnād but additionally prefaced: “we were with Ḥudhayfa…” (kunnā maʿa Ḥudhayfa), Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Musnad, 38:428, no. 23434.

529 Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj, Ṣaḥīḥ, 1:101, no. 169 (kitāb 1. al-īmān, bāb 45. bayān ghilaẓ taḥrīm namīma).

530 Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj, 1:101, no. 170.

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captures the point succinctly by describing the man in concern as an “informant to the

rulers” (muballigh al-umarāʾ).531

The qattāt condemned by the ḥadīth was therefore understood as not just any kind

of rumormonger, but an informant or eavesdropper who specifically divulges people’s

conversation to political authorities. Connotations of slander and spying equally inhere

in the term itself, as the verb qatta can be used to mean both lying and following in one’s

footsteps while taqattat al-ḥadīth refers to relentlessly pursuing knowledge of a

conversation.532 Ibn Durayd’s lexicon also defines al-qatt as sowing discord between

people, by passing rumors between them.533 But it was particularly the aspect of betrayal

that seems to drive the traditions about namīma that invoke qatt, an understanding

conveyed implicitly in Tirmidhī’s placement of the Ḥudhayfa tradition above in a bāb on

namīma immediately after a bāb on hypocrisy, which adduces a ḥadīth declaring the “two-

faced” to be the most evil of people on the day of Resurrection.534 Betrayal could also be

felt on a personal level, and on a more intimate scale than that of being reported to the

531 Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Musnad, 38:356, no. 23331. However, as noted by the editors, manuscripts differ in rendering this is as either yuballigh or muballigh.

532 Lane, Lexicon, s.v. قت.

533 “qatta bayn al-qawm qattan idhā mashā baynahum bi-l-namīma, wa-huwa l-qattāt,” Ibn Durayd, Jamharat al-lugha, 1:79 s.v. قتت.

534 Tirmidhī, Sunan, 622, no. 2026 (kitāb 28. al-birr wa-l-ṣila, bāb 78. mā jāʾa fī dhī l-wajhayn).

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authorities. The related chapter in the Zuhd of Hannād, Bāb al-namīma wa-l-majālis bi-l-

amāna, interestingly treats the issue of slander jointly with that of social trust and

confidentiality—a thematic juxtaposition also reflected in the chapter on adab in Abū

Dāwūd’s Sunan. Besides the corpus of traditions on namīma, Hannād includes material on

khiyāna (betrayal), held to denote not only treachery or treason but also, as proclaimed

by a Prophetic ḥadīth, “for a man to talk about his brother’s secret.”535 The Meccan

ʿUthmān b. al-Aswad (d. 150/767) once asked the city’s leading jurisconsult ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī

Rabāḥ for his opinion on whether to inform a man that someone had insulted him

(yaqdhifuhu) and he was advised not to, because “meetings are in trust” (al-majālis bi-l-

amāna).536 To do so, in other words, would be to betray the confidence of the original

conversation.

The majlis may represent here a microcosm of society at large, and concerns

about social trust and communal harmony inform the strong moral revulsion to namīma

expressed in pious traditions, no doubt animated by the series of internecine political

rifts that disrupted much of early Islamic history. Ibn Abī l-Dunyā records a ḥadīth found

535 “min al-khiyāna an yuḥaddith al-rajul bi-sirr akhīhi,” Hannād b. al-Sarī, Zuhd, 578, no. 12121.

536 Hannād b. al-Sarī, 579, no. 1222. Given the question and answer format, the report could be construed as a juristic responsum or fatwā similar to much of the material attributed to ʿAṭāʾ in the early Meccan fiqh tradition, on which see: Harald Motzki, The Origins of Islamic Jurisprudence: Meccan Fiqh before the Classical Schools, trans. Marion H. Katz (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 79–80.

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also in Shīʿī sources, which has the Prophet asking an unidentified audience: “Should I

not tell you about the most evil of you?” (sharārikum). He then enumerates three groups:

those who spread slander, cause dissension between loved ones (mufsidūn bayn al-aḥibba),

and seek the fault of innocent people (al-bāghūn li-l-burāʾ al-ʿanat).537 This reiterates

almost verbatim the explication of Sūrat al-Humaza in Abū l-Jawzāʾ’s exchange with Ibn

ʿAbbās, but here to a different end—classifying rumormongers among threats to peace

and order.

The Zuhd of Wakīʿ records a rare saying that even imagines a community free of

slanderers: his father was informed by the Kūfan traditionist ʿAṭāʾ b. al-Sāʾib (d. 136/753–

54) that when he was in Mecca, he heard ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ibn Sābiṭ (d. 118/736) saying:

“Let not live (lā yaskun) in Mecca one who sheds blood, consumes usury, or spreads

slanderous rumors.” ʿAṭāʾ was surprised to hear namīma being compared to murder and

usury, but when he relayed this to his teacher ʿĀmir al-Shaʿbī in Kūfa, he responded:

“That surprises you? But does one shed blood or permit the unlawful except by

537 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 359–60, no. 257; Abū l-Shaykh al-Iṣfahānī, Tawbīkh, 237–38, no. 217; Kharāʾiṭī, Masāwīʾ al-akhlāq, 112–13, no. 234 (variant matn). The Shīʿī sources relate a slight variant, with “mufarriqūn bayn al-aḥibba” and ʿayb/maʿāyib instead of ʿanat: Ḥusayn b. Saʿīd al-Ahwāzī, al-Zuhd, ed. Mahdī Ghulām ʿAlī (Qom: Dār al-Ḥadīth, 1384 SH/2005 CE), 66, no. 1.8 (bāb al-ṣamt); Kulaynī, al-Kāfī, 4:108–9, no. 2803 (al-Uṣūl, kitāb 5. al-īmān wa-l-kufr, bāb 159. al-namīma).

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namīma?”538 Ibn Sābiṭ’s dictum is elsewhere claimed to be a Prophetic ḥadīth, as reported

by Hannād without the framing anecdote.539 In the same vein, Hannād also records a

wisdom tradition of the isrāʾiliyyāt type quoting Solomon son of David, who is said to

have counseled his son: “Beware of slander (namīma), for it is like the edge of a sword.”540

This may be reminiscent of a powerful image from the psalms of David, in which

evildoers scheming against the righteous are said to “whet their tongues like swords”

(Psalm 64:3). From the Biblical era to the early Islamic world, the persistent concern with

slanderous rumors centered on the dangerous power of the tongue to slash through the

fabric of society as woven through a predominantly oral culture.

VI. Conclusion: Conceiving the Community in Early Islam

The scriptural injunction on ghība in Sūrat al-Ḥujurāt is followed immediately by

what might be one of the most famous verses of the entire Qurʾān: “O people, We have

created you male and female and made you races and tribes that you may know one

another. The noblest of you in the sight of God is the most god-fearing. God is Knowing

538 Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ, Zuhd, 3:763–64, no. 446.

539 Hannād b. al-Sarī, Zuhd, 575, no. 1210.

540 Hannād b. al-Sarī, 575, no. 1212.

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and Informed” (Q 49:13).541 The verse is traditionally linked to the Prophet Muḥammad’s

farewell sermon, and understood to embody a spirit of egalitarianism foundational to the

religious message of Islam. A single word from this verse, shuʿūb (groups, or peoples),

came to acquire enormous cultural significance in medieval Islamic history, thanks to its

adoption by the so-called Shuʿūbiyya movement. In his classic essay on the topic, which

also remains still a singular example of the use of tafsīr literature as a source for social

history, Roy Mottahedeh has observed: “As the Arabs come into contact with many

nontribal peoples, and members of these communities became Muslim, the word shaʿb

was naturally asked to do new work.”542

What kind of conceptual work did ghība and namīma do in that same world?

Arguably, these too must be understood in light of the formation of medieval Islamic

society. Despite the variety of nuances to the terms depicted and deliberated in the

literature of early Islamic traditions, ghība and namīma were ultimately both related to

the broader question of communal ethics: how should Muslims live and deal with each

541 Jones, The Qurʾān, 476. On the reception of this single verse in the modern Muslim context, see: Leah Kingberg, “Contemporary Ethical Issues” in Rippin and Mojaddedi, The Wiley Blackwell Companion to the Qurʾān, 543–561.

542 Roy Mottahedeh, “The Shu’ubiyah Controversy and the Social History of Early Islamic Iran,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 7 (1976): 170, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743800023163.

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other? It is telling that in their monumental ḥadīth collections, Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj and

Abū ʿĪsa al-Tirmidhī both classify the topics of gossip and slander under a chapter on al-

birr wa-l-ṣila, “righteousness and relations.” It is surely no less telling that the traditions

on both topics only ever concern the relationship between Muslims themselves.

Questions about the ethics of slander against disbelievers does not even arise, at least not

in the ḥadīth literature. The overwhelming focus is rather on the assertion of Muslim

fellowship. The verse quoted above mirrors in effect the earlier declaration in the same

sūra: “The believers are brethren” (Q 49:9). Persistent moralizing about namīma in

particular was an attempt to invoke unity in a reality beset by social rivalries and

political intrigues.

But the believers also comprised an incredibly diverse group from its very

origins, differentiated by social status, wealth, power, and at a minimum, the basic facts

of human physical difference. Abū l-Shaykh al-Iṣfahānī concludes his book of pious

admonitions, just after recounting the story of Salmān al-Fārisī, by reproducing a

proclamation of the Prophet otherwise known from his putative final sermon: “Your

Lord is one, and your ancestor is one, and your Prophet is one. The Arab has no virtue

over the non-Arab (ʿajam), nor the non-Arab over the Arab, nor the Red over the Black,

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nor the Black over the Red, except in god-fearing (taqwā).”543 The textual logic follows

that of the Qurʾan itself, as Abū l-Shaykh moves from Q 49:12 to a tradition linked to the

famous verse 13. But the overall effect is to highlight the stakes of the moral lesson on

ghība.

The nature of ḥadīth literature might defy historical specificity, but they are also

by definition compilations of traditions deemed worth reiterating. Nearly two centuries

after the lifetime of Ibn Sīrīn, a remark he supposedly once made about ghība still proved

memorable for Abū l-Shaykh. The fabled ascetic referred to someone as “that black

man,” but immediately regretted the utterance: “astaghfir Allāh, I fear I have backbitten

him.”544 When it came to the basic ethics of living in the world, an anecdote likely

informed by the social context of early eight century Baṣra could still be pertinent in

tenth century Iṣfahān. The same was equally if not more true of traditions about the men

and women of the Prophetic era, including the stories of ordinary behavior that

permeate the exegetical literature. Certainly, in relating such tales, preachers and

storytellers often projected back vivid details onto the lives and characters of past

figures. But in doing so, they left traces of their own understanding of human nature.

543 Abū l-Shaykh al-Iṣfahānī, Tawbīkh, 259, no. 245.

544 Abū l-Shaykh al-Iṣfahānī, 220, no. 194.

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The corpus of pious traditions on ghība thus remains a distinct record of Muslim

reflections on social life, at times betraying perceptible concerns unique to medieval

society and the early Islamic empire.

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CHAPTER 4

The Ritual Consequences of Gossip in Early Islamic Law

The brief extant compilation on zuhd attributed to the pious Baṣran ḥadīth scholar

turned judge in Iṣfahān, Abū Bakr ibn Abī ʿĀṣim al-Nabīl (d. 287/900) records a series of

early traditions suggesting that Muslims would have to cleanse themselves ritually if

they engage in gossip or backbiting. One such claim is attributed to Rajāʾ b. Abī Salama

al-Filasṭīnī (d. 161/777–78), a devout and well-respected traditionist from Baṣra settled in

Ramla, who reportedly once asked Mujāhid b. Jabr: “O Abū l-Ḥajjāj, does ghība invalidate

the wuḍūʾ?” The famed Meccan exegete replied: “Yes, and it breaks the fast.”545 Neither

part of this response conforms to what became the established consensus in the classical

Islamic jurisprudence of ritual purity and fasting. Yet this terse report on someone

questioning Mujāhid about his opinion betrays evidence not only of a debate on the

topic, but also of the apparent existence of an alternative interpretation before the

majority settled on different conclusions. The khabar’s transmission in the context of Ibn

Abī ʿĀṣim’s collection is a perfect example of how the textual legacy of the zuhd

movement might long preserve ideas and statements deemed worthy of pious education

545 Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim, Zuhd, 60, no. 120. For biographical details on Rajāʾ b. Abī Salama al-Filasṭīnī: Ibn ʿAsākir, Tārīkh madīnat Dimashq, 18:116–20.

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regardless of their juridical significance. To Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim, however, these may not have

seemed mere anodyne traditions at all, given the suspicions that he adhered to the

eventually-defunct Ẓāhirī madhhab. For this so-called “literalist” or “textualist” school of

jurisprudence, what others interpreted as pious encouragement could amount to an

actual obligation—and indeed its most famous and unique spokesperson Ibn Ḥazm did

consider ghība a nullifier of the fast, though not of the ablution.546

The fact that this was a matter of some debate is evident from the classical fiqh

literature itself, which forms the focus of our discussion in this chapter. The books of

substantive law by medieval jurists deal with the sin of ghība only occasionally. Of course,

Muslims unanimously regarded backbiting as a sin given the clear scriptural injunction,

even if they might disagree about whether it counts as one of the enormities (kabāʾir) or

the minor sins (ṣaghāʾir). Where it became an issue for juridical consideration is with

regard to whether it was a matter of any ritual or legal consequence. It seems that the

question arose only in connection to two specific areas of the law: ritual purity (ṭahāra)

and fasting (ṣawm/ṣiyām). In both cases, the eventual consensus reached was that ghība

has no direct legal significance, in spite of its recognition as a vice that all Muslims

546 ʿAlī b. Aḥmad Ibn Ḥazm, al-Muḥallā bi-l-āthār, ed. ʿAbd al-Ghaffār Sulaymān al-Bundārī, 3rd ed. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1424/2003), 1:240–41 (on ablution, masʾala 169), 4:304–08 (on fasting, masʾala 734).

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should strive to shun. Nevertheless, the extant record of enquiries on the topic remains

significant and reveals that this accepted interpretation was subject to contention in the

early period.

Some Muslims, especially in second/eighth century Kufa, evidently shared the

same anxieties about slander and its impact on purity and fasting as did many other

ancient religious communities. While we are not concerned here with the much-debated

problem of origins in Islamic legal studies, it does help to retain a broader perspective to

understand why it was that certain questions might naturally have gained traction in the

early medieval Near East. The two areas of ritual law where ghība became a fiqh issue,

purity and fasting, both have precedents in Jewish and Christian thought on slander.

Late antique monastic practice of fasting in particular would have a long-lasting

influence on the way that later communities thought about bodily discipline and the

etiquettes of the tongue. In fact, as well shall see, some early Muslim traditions speak of

fasting in very much the same language that was popular among fourth and fifth century

Christian ascetics in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The long legacy of such ways of thinking would fuel the early Muslim juridical

debates on foul speech and its potential ritual effects. The concern of the jurists was to

define the rules of conduct and worship, on the basis of established principles for

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deriving and understanding divine law. Jurists would adjudicate between the strictures

of inherited tradition to outline a coherent system, and to delimit the role of speech in

Muslim ritual life. The outcome of this discourse was to set aside ghība as a problem of

law per se, and to defer it instead to considerations of ethics. But it is precisely this

sublimation, I will argue, that helped retain the value of earlier traditions—now

reclassified as pious lore. It is what would allow the later zuhhād and ḥadīth scholars like

Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim to continue to preach and compile traditions that no longer have legal

significance, but still held tremendous weight on the lives and imaginations of pious

Muslims.

I. Slander and the Religious Body in Near Eastern Thought

The problem of divisive social talk as a ritual concern has earlier resonances in

the history of the Near East. In an ancient Sumerian text, a wise maxim warns that

“slander finds its way to the place of purification,” apparently in the context of a

reference to quarrel within the scribal cohort.547 Biblical tradition reflects a similar view

of slander and backbiting as a threat to the sacred space of the Temple. Psalm 15:3 lists

among those eligible for admission to the presence of God in the tabernacle those “who

547 Bendt Alster, Proverbs of Ancient Sumer: The World’s Earliest Proverb Collections (Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 1997), 1:83, SP 3.18; 2:379.

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do not slander with their tongue (lō-rāḡal ʿal-ləšōnōw), and do no evil to their friends, nor

take up a reproach against their neighbors.” The verse is of particular interest to us here

because it seems to identify one’s ability to uphold a moral and ethical precept as a

precondition for worship—which is the same basic definition of purity upheld in the

Islamic tradition, namely the condition that qualifies one for the ritual prayer.548 This

ethos found a particularly elaborate manifestation in the religious milieu of Qumran that

left behind the Dead Sea Scrolls, in which the so-called Serekh ha-Yaḥad or Community

Rules outlines a robust code of verbal conduct hardly limited to slander in the strict

sense. Among the members of the community, “No-one should speak to his brother in

anger or muttering.”549 The punishment for verbal crimes thus defined could be severe,

typically in the form of exclusion “from the pure food of the Many:” expectedly, outright

excommunication for speaking against the priests, but even a year’s expulsion for

“whoever goes around defaming (yelekh rakhil) his fellow.”550 On the other hand,

defaming the community as a whole merits permanent expulsion.

548 For this insight on Psalm 15, I draw from the discussion in: Rémi Brague, The Law of God: The Philosophical History of an Idea (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 55.

549 1QS 5.25. Florentino García Martínez and Eibert J.C. Tigchelaar, eds., The Dead Sea Scrolls: Study Edition (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 83.

550 1QS 7.2–3, 7.15–17. García Martínez and Tigchelaar, 87. Of course, the much-debated uncertainties around the textual history of the Community Rules, and the kind of genre or artifact

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Gossip and slander in ancient religious thought was thus often a matter of

protecting the boundaries of the community from internal tensions, a logic that can

manifest itself in rules of ritual purity and its underlying implicit discourse of the body—

both the individual body and the body social. As Russell Arnold points out in his

discussion of law and ritual in the Qumran scrolls, the particular significance of the

“element of speech” lies partly in the role of liturgy as a form of speech act that brings

the community itself into being.551 In other words, religious liturgy has a social context,

which in turn requires the delimiting of proper speech in relation to the holy.

In the more immediate historical backdrop to the early Islamic period, similar

themes persist in late antique Christian monastic thought. Slander was a serious matter

in monasteries. Unsurprisingly within the confines of small, tightly knit communities, it

had the power to create social discord of an intensity and persistence perhaps

unmatched by outright conflict. The subtle violence of speech thus troubled monastic

leaders no less than physical violence. In fact, laws governing monastic life in the Syriac

it represents, means that we cannot be sure what these rules meant in practice in the sect which copied these writings. For a good recent discussion of the textual problems, see: Jutta Jokiranta, “What Is ‘Serekh Ha-Yahad (S)’? Thinking About Ancient Manuscripts as Information Processing,” in Sibyls, Scriptures, and Scrolls: John Collins at Seventy, ed. Joel Baden, Hindy Naiman, and Eibert Tigchelaar (Brill, 2016), 611–635, https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004324749_034.

551 Russell C. D. Arnold, The Social Role of Liturgy in the Religion of the Qumran Community (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 14–15. The speech rules in 1QS are discussion on pp. 47–50.

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tradition appear to have stipulated considerably more severe punishments for the verbal

offense of slander than for physical assault. An undated anonymous compilation of rules

prescribes that a monk who slanders his brothers (literally, “eats their flesh”) is treated

as “an enemy of the peace” and is to be expelled from the monastery if he does not cease

his behavior.552 Similarly, the so-called Canons of Marūtā ascribed to the bishop of

Martyropolis/Mayyāfāriqīn at the turn of the fifth century CE, prescribes that “a brother

who slanders, goes from the monastery immediately.”553 Of course, these elements of

Syriac canon law have not counterparts in Islamic jurisprudence. But the larger ethos

that informed such rules become relevant in that the penitential regimen and the bodily

disciplines that Christian ascetics adopted to battle the vices of the tongue appear to

have cast a long shadow. The domain where this is particularly evident is the language of

fasting.

552 “Anonymous Rulers for the Monastic Communities,” no. 24 in Arthur Vööbus, Syriac and Arabic Documents Regarding Legislation Relative to Syrian Asceticism (Stockholm: Etse, 1960), 76. Cited by, albeit with inaccurate page numbers: Michael Gaddis, There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage 39 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 237n123.

553 “The So-Called Canons of Marūtā,” no. 54.7 Vööbus, Syriac and Arabic Documents Regarding Legislation Relative to Syrian Asceticism, 139.

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A. Fasting and the Flesh of One’s Brothers

The late antique monastic discourse of fasting, specifically as preserved in the

Saying of the Desert Fathers and related literatures, is where we find some direct

precursors to the language that early Muslims would also use for the concept of ghība.

This results largely from the enduring power of the vocabulary that the ascetics chose to

use in the accounts of their struggles to discipline the body. It also reflects the major

preoccupations of monastic thought and the broader discourses it influenced, since

fasting played such a central role in the lives of desert ascetics. Fasting as one of the

primary forms of penance is a distinct legacy of the monastic tradition. An undated

Syriac canon for nuns, for example, prescribes the fast for anyone who abuses her sisters

or calls her names.554 The early Muslim zuhhād would adopt an attitude towards fasting

that does echo certain practices of Christian monks, but Islam does not otherwise inherit

much of the Christian penitential tradition. But the Islamic tradition does reiterate

central components of older ideas about fasting, including the notion of the fast as a

discipline of the body and as a means of protecting oneself from engaging in the vices.

554 “The Rules for the Nuns,” no. 12 in Vööbus, 68.

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i. Sayings of Hyperechios

One of the Desert Fathers who seemed particularly concerned with gossip and

slander, and a number of whose statements on the topic were deemed worthy of

reproducing in the monastic tradition, is Abba Hyperechios. Significantly for our

interests here, he is the source of an aphorism that overtly prefigures the Qurʾānic

analogy for backbiting. The various Apophthegmata Patrum compilations record about a

dozen statements by Hyperechios, but there is also an extant independent work of

monastic advice literature attributed to him called the Adhortatio ad monachos

(“Exhortation to the monks”).555 Composed in Greek and comprising 160 sayings

organized according to an alphabetical acrostic alongside other literary strategies, the

Adhortatio allows us a more comprehensive outlook on the ascetic thought of a single

monk compared to most of the obscure protagonists of the Apophthegmata.556 It was also

likely one of the written sources utilized for the compilation of the latter. Beyond the

words of wisdom attached to his name, however, nothing else is known of Hyperechios.

Based on some sparse clues in the sayings themselves, and the textual history of the

555 Jacques Paul Migne, ed., Patrologiae cursus completus, series graeca (Paris, 1857–66), 79:1471–90.

556 The Adhortatio ad monachos has been studied and translated into English by James Vaughan Smith, “Resurrecting the Blessed Hyperechius” (Ph.D., Loyola University Chicago, 2003).

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extant sources, James Vaughan Smith has suggested in his dissertation on Hyperechios

that he lived in the late fourth century in Palestine.

The alphabetic collection of the AP records eight statements attributed to

Hyperechios, five of which—along with two others—are categorized in the systematic

collection under the heading of “self-control.” Several of these sayings deal with the

ethics of speech, as follows:

He also said, “He who does not control his tongue when he is angry, will

not control his passions either.”557

He also said, “It is better to eat meat and drink wine and not to eat the

flesh of one’s brethren through slander.”558

He also said, “It was through whispering that the serpent drove Eve out of

Paradise, so he who speaks against his neighbour will be like the serpent,

for he corrupts the soul of him who listens to him and he does not save his

own soul.”559

The second saying above (Hyperechios 4) seems to draw upon the ancient idiom of slander,

as discussed in Chapter 2. Moreover, given the context he was addressing, Hyperechios

557 APalph, Hyperechios 3, PG, 65:429–30; Ward, Sayings, 238. APsys IV.57, Wortley, Book of the Elders, 49. Adhortatio, no. 97, Smith, “Resurrecting the Blessed Hyperechius,” 123.

558 APalph, Hyperechios 4; APsys IV.59; Adhortatio, no. 144, Smith, “Resurrecting the Blessed Hyperechius,” 131.

559 APalph, Hyperechios 5; APsys IV.60; Adhortatio, no. 153, Smith, 133.

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refers to the flesh of one’s brothers—presumably one’s fellow members in the monastic

community. This distantly foreshadows the similar image of backbiting one’s brothers

instantiated in the Qurʾān as well.

The overall context of the wisdom attributed to Hyperechios also illuminates

some of the concerns about ghība that we find in the ḥadīth literature. The theme that

drives the above sayings is self-control through ascetic discipline, specifically in the form

of fasting. Hence the force of Hyperechios’s analogy, that to abstain from meat and wine

is pointless if a monk continues to engage in backbiting and other habits destructive to

the soul. The AP’s systematic collection conveys this point in the very chapter heading

for these sayings: “Self-Control [Egkrateia] Should Be Achieved Not Only in the Case of

Food but Also in Other Movements of the Soul.”560 Meat in particular serves as the

recurring motif in this discourse, since the avoidance of meat was a basic foundation of

the Christian fast. A number of sayings across the Apophthegmata thus mirror the analogy

in Hyperechios 4. Preaching against the vainglory of one who fasts, Isidore the priest of

Scete said: “It is better for a man to eat meat than to be inflated with pride and to glorify

himself.”561 In another anecdote, when the attendant at a church meal loudly publicizes a

560 Wortley, Book of the Elders, 38.

561 APalph, Isidore 4, Ward, Sayings, 106–7. APsys X.41, Wortley, Book of the Elders, 153.

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brother’s strict dietary regimen, an elder reprimands that “it would be better to be

eating meat in your cell today” than to lend an ear to what was said.562

The Desert Fathers thus tended to frame the ethics of talk specifically in relation

to the discipline of fasting, especially from meat. Fasting is one of the central themes in

Hyperechios’s monastic thought, and informs many of his pronouncements on the

virtues and vices. He describes the body as “dried out by fasting,” presumably reflecting

ancient humoral theory as Smith insightfully observes.563 By fasting, a monk “dries up

the sensual streams” and thus protects himself from temptations.564 This explains

another one of his dicta reproduced in the Apophthegmata collections: “For the monk,

fasting is a bridle against sin,” or as it was rendered into ninth-century Arabic: al-ṣawm

huwa lijām al-rāhib ʿan al-khaṭīʾa.565 The Prophet Muḥammad reportedly also characterized

fasting in similar terms, as a “shield” (junna) or even a “fortress” (ḥiṣn).566 Moreover, as

562 APsys VIII.26, Wortley, Book of the Elders, 129–30.

563 Smith, “Resurrecting the Blessed Hyperechius,” 122, 174–75,.

564 Adhortatio, no. 90, trans. Smith, 122; APsys IV.55, Wortley, Book of the Elders, 48; APanon, no. 667, Wortley, Anonymous Sayings, 535.

565 APalph, Hyperechios 2; APsys IV.54, trans. Wortley, Book of the Elders, 48.

566 See the numerous ṣaḥīḥ reports indexed in: Wensinck et al., Concordance, 1:380, s.v. “al-ṣiyām junna.” The variant with the additional gloss, “a fortress protecting from the fire” (ḥiṣn ḥaṣīn min al-nār) appears in: Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Musnad, 15:123, no. 9225 (musnad al-mukthirīn min al-ṣaḥāba, musnad Abī Hurayra). Another version explicates the metaphor as “as a shield from the

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we shall see, the particular intersection of concerns we find in the literature of the

Desert Fathers, including slander as a threat to the serenity of fasting, would persist in

the early Islamic tradition, often using a very similar language. A purported ḥadīth, for

instance, has the Prophet declare that one who “keeps eating the flesh of people” does

not really fast.567 These resonances between the two textual traditions remain despite

very different contexts, insofar as fasting in Christian monasticism was a matter of

ascetic discipline for the spiritually elect, whereas in Islam it became a ritual and an

obligation upon all believers. But that step in the transition from asceticism to mass

religion already took place in late antique Christianity, and the monks’ discourse on

slander was sometimes taken far beyond the walls of monasteries.

ii. Sermons of John Chrysostom

If Hyperechios did indeed live in the fourth-century Levant, he would have been

contemporary to a towering figure in the early church who hailed from Antioch, John

Chrysostom (d. 407). They certainly shared the same religious milieu, given Chrysostom’s

life-changing conversion to asceticism as a young man, including the four years he spent

punishment of God, like one of your shields from attack.” Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, 29:436, no. 17909 (musnad al-shāmiyyīn, ḥadīth ʿUthmān b. Abī l-ʿĀṣ).

567 “mā ṣāma man ẓalla yaʾkul luḥūm al-nās,” Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, 4:10, no. 8975.

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as a monk on Mount Silpius outside his hometown.568 Unlike Hyperechios and the other

fathers of the Apophthegmata, whose wisdom circulated as texts primarily within

monastic circles, Chrysostom’s career as an incredibly popular priest and eventually

bishop of Constantinople resulted in a universalizing attempt to bring his ascetic

education to a wider audience. Many of his writings and famous homilies from various

occasions were clearly informed by his early experimentation with the monastic life, and

reflect some of the same basic themes as the Sayings of the Desert Fathers.

Chrysostom’s views on proper discipline in fasting and the sins of the tongue

foreshadow early Islamic debates on these two issues, in more or less the same

conceptual and idiomatic registers. In the third of his twenty-two Homilies on the Statues,

Chrysostom speaks at length about what he calls “real fasting,” not the ordinary fast that

most people observe.569 These sermons were delivered during Lent in the year 387 CE in

the wake of tax riots in Antioch, known as the Riot of the Statues since protesters

568 On Chrysostom’s ascetic formation: J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Ambrose and John Chrysostom: Clerics between Desert and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 127–131 and Ch. 6.

569 “Homily III,” §8, John Chrysostom, On the Priesthood, Ascetic Treatises, Select Homilies and Letters. Homilies on the Statues, ed. Philip Schaff, vol. 9, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series (1889; repr., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2004), 357. This particular sermon is believed to have been delivered on the Sunday before Lent, i.e. the 7th of March, 387 CE. On the dating of the text, see: Frans van der Paverd, St. John Chrysostom, The Homilies on the Statues: An Introduction, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 239 (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1992), 297.

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destroyed statues of the imperial family, inducing panic among the city’s populace as it

awaited the wrath of Emperor Theodosius I. Liebeschueltz has dubbed this “probably the

best-documented urban riot in the whole of antiquity,” thanks partly to the writings of

Chrysostom himself and another eyewitness, the philosopher Libanius—both of whom

were involved in negotiations.570 Since historians thus have the benefit of knowing

remarkably well the precise socio-political context in which Chrysostom delivered these

sermons, his moral exhortations can be interpreted in light of the connotations they

would have had for his local and indeed his imperial audience. Nonetheless, as a text that

became a religious classic in its own right, copied and read widely over the centuries, it

clearly also had the power to hold universal meaning well beyond the context in which

the sermon was delivered, potentially even beyond the Greek rhetorical tradition.

The point of interest for us in Chrysostom’s Homily III is when he turns to describe

fasting as a discipline in which one must partake through every limb and organ of the

body, for the real fast in his view is “not merely an abstinence from meats; but from sins

too.”571 He goes on to assert even more boldly that “he who limits his fasting only to an

570 Liebeschuetz, Ambrose and John Chrysostom, 210. For a detailed reconstruction of the events: van der Paverd, Chrysostom, chap. 2.

571 Homily III §8, Chrysostom, Homilies on the Statues, 9:357.

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abstinence from meats, is one who especially disparages it.”572 The argument, in other

words, is that to go through the ritual of abstaining from meat without abiding by the

penitential spirit of Lent is to effectively dishonor the ritual itself. Chrysostom then

spells out the actions through which one can demonstrate the spirit of fasting: to feed a

poor man, to quell one’s envy of a fortunate friend, to divert a lustful gaze. He explains:

“For let not the mouth only fast, but also the eye, and the ear, and the feet, and the

hands, and all the members of our bodies.”573 We shall encounter this idea again, in more

or less the same words, in the early Islamic literature on fasting. As also the case there, it

is the ethics of speech in particular that most concerns Chrysostom:

Let the ear fast also. The fasting of the ear consists in refusing to receive evil speakings and calumnies. “Thou shalt not receive a false report,” it says [Exodus 23:1]. Let the mouth too fast from disgraceful speeches and railing. For what doth it profit if we abstain from birds and fishes; and yet bite and devour our brethren? The evil speaker eateth the flesh of his brother, and biteth the body of his neighbour. Because of this Paul utters the fearful saying, “If ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another” [Galatians 5:15]. Thou hast not fixed thy teeth in the flesh, but thou hast fixed the slander in the soul, and inflicted the wound of evil suspicion.574

572 Homily III §11, Chrysostom, 9:359.

573 Homily III §11, Chrysostom, 9:359.

574 Homily III §11–12, Chrysostom, 9:359.

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Chrysostom then proceeds to lecture at length on this theme of evil speech: the

overwhelming focus on the ethics of the tongue, nearly half the length of the entire

sermon, reveals the urgencies of the immediate context to which he was speaking. The

sermon proposes a program of individual moral reformation for the people of Antioch, as

the city awaits an imperial decision from Constantinople regarding the punishment of

those who wreaked havoc during the riots.

Looking back through the lens of Muslim tradition, the striking feature of

Chrysostom’s words is the immediately recognizable metaphor he employs. Like

Hyperechios, Chrysostom too speaks of backbiting as eating the flesh of one’s brothers.

Moreover, they both express their concerns about slander specifically as part of an

attempt to discipline speech through fasting, for which Chrysostom uses the enduring

image of the fasting organs of the body. To be sure, my claim here is not that Chyrostom

is the sole and final origin of words we will later find attributed for example to Jaʿfar al-

Ṣādiq, the sixth Imām of the Shīʿī community. Rather, at the very least, these earlier

textual witnesses to a set of very similar ideas and imagery reveal a shared late antique

tradition. Furthermore, the Christian monastic background of Chrysostom’s own views

and of this tradition of thought in general might help us appreciate why the topic of

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ghība in Islamic law and ethics was frequently a concern specifically in relation to

fasting.

II. Ṭahāra and the Tongue

Ṭahāra is central to Muslim religious life, as captured in the well-known Prophetic

maxim that “purity is half of faith” (al-ṭuhūr shaṭr al-īmān), or in a variant tradition: “the

ablution (wuḍūʾ) is half of faith.”575 The practice of wuḍūʾ itself is attested as a

precondition and part of the prayer in one of our earliest known documentary sources

describing the ritual prayer in Islam, a papyrus fragment from the second century AH

with detailed instructions for the ṣalāt.576 The subject of ritual purity typically forms the

575 In earlier collections, this is a discrete saying and sometimes attributed to other figures (most prominently, ʿAlī), including variants with “niṣf al-īmān” and wuḍūʾ instead of ṭuhūr/ṭuhr: Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim b. Sallām, al-Ṭahūr, ed. Mashhūr Ḥasan Salmān (Jeddah: Maktabat al-Ṣaḥāba, 1414 AH/1994 CE), 123–128, nos. 35 & 36; Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, 1:311, no. 1813; 10:315–16, nos. 30947–49 (= ed. Bombay 1:170 & 11:45–46). In the better-known ṣaḥīḥ tradition, the saying is part of a series of proclamations in a ḥadīth which Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj uses to introduce his chapter on purity and the “virtue of ablution.” Ṣaḥīḥ, 1:203, no. 223, kitāb al-ṭahāra, bāb faḍl al-wuḍūʾ. The same longer version is recorded by Ibn Ḥanbal, Abū Dāwūd, and al-Tirmidhī (with the variant al-wuḍūʾ instead of al-ṭuhūr), as indexed by Wensinck et al., Concordance, 4:33, s.v. “al-ṭuhūr shaṭr.” It has been cited with a misleading transliteration (shāṭir instead of shaṭr) in: Ze’ev Maghen, “Much Ado about Wuḍū’,” Der Islam 76, no. 2 (1999): 229, https://doi.org/10.1515/islm.1999.76.2.205.

576 “min al-ṣalāt ḥusn al-wuḍūʾ huwa minhā fataḥahā,” P.Utah.Ar. inv.205. See the edition of the text and an examination of its corollaries in the ḥadīth literature: W. Matt Malczycki, “Instructions for Islamic Prayer from the Second Century AH/Eighth Century CE,” The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 49 (2012): 41–54; Matt Malczycki, “A Comparison of P.Utah.Ar. Inv. 205 to the Canonical Hadith Collections: The Written Raw Material of Early Hadith Study,” in

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first and one of the lengthiest chapters in the classics of fiqh, expounding an elaborate

scheme of details that make or break the right conditions for the performance of ritual

worship. The system comprises two basic forms of impurity: najāsa—caused by external

factors such as inherently defiling substances, and ḥadath—caused by bodily functions.

The state of ḥadath is further subdivided into janāba, which is caused by sexual activity

and requires the major ablution (ghusl), and a more basic state of impurity that requires

the wuḍūʾ or minor ablution. Of course, this structure is an interpretation and the same

typology could be understood differently, such as the three-fold scheme of najas, janāba

and ḥadath described in some recent scholarship.577 It remains difficult to do justice to a

variety of others terms that were also used—often interchangeably—in the early and

classical discourses of ṭahāra, not to mention the effects of synchronic efforts at

systematization by later jurists.578

New Frontiers of Arabic Papyrology, ed. Sobhi Bouderbala, Sylvie Denoix, and Matt Malczycki (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 101–112, https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004345171_007.

577 A. Kevin Reinhart, “Impurity/No Danger,” History of Religions 30, no. 1 (1990): 1–24; Marion Holmes Katz, Body of Text: The Emergence of the Sunnī Law of Ritual Purity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 2.

578 For a comparative survey of the topic from the perspective of the mature fiqh tradition, see: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Jazīrī, Kitāb al-Fiqh ʿalā l-madhāhib al-arbaʿa, 2nd ed. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 2003), 5–12; Islamic Jurisprudence According to the Four Sunni Schools, Volume I: Modes of Islamic Worship, trans. Nancy Roberts (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2009), 3–14.

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The question of ghība relates specifically to the state of ḥadath, or what is

sometimes also termed the minor impurity (al-ḥadath al-aṣghar) as opposed to janāba.

However, as we shall see later, the notion of the najas or unclean substances might still

underlie or animate some of the pious anxieties about ghība beyond strictly juridical

concerns. The varieties of ḥadath or the events which result in either major or minor

impurity mostly involve bodily emissions, or acts such as sleep and certain cases of touch

and physical contact that might require wuḍūʾ. It was therefore by underscoring oral

communication as a bodily function that it was possible for some early Muslims to

appropriate the notion of ḥadath to characterize bad speech as ritually defiling. The idea

was captured perfectly in an aphorism attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās: “Impurity is of two kinds

(al-ḥadath ḥadathān): that of the tongue and that of the genitals. And the more serious is

that of the tongue.”579 The tradition had enough appeal to generate a clearly spurious

variant that some tried to ascribe to the Prophet himself, with an additional phrase at

the end: “and wuḍūʾ is [required] in both cases.”580

579 Ibn Ḥazm, Muḥallā, 1:240; Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm Ibn al-Mundhir al-Naysābūrī, al-Awsaṭ min al-sunan wa-l-ijmāʿ wa-l-ikhtilāf, ed. Aḥmad b. Sulaymān b. Ayyūb et. al., 2nd ed. (Faiyum: Dār al-Falāḥ, 2009), 1:336.

580 Abū l-Faraj ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿAlī Ibn al-Jawzī, al-ʿIlal al-mutanāhiya fī l-aḥādīth al-wāhiya, ed. Irshād al-Ḥaqq al-Atharī, 2nd ed. (Faisalabad: Idārat al-ʿUlūm al-Athariyya, 1401/1981), 1:365.

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A. Does Ghība Require Wuḍūʾ?

Whether ghība has any effect on purity thus falls within the ambit of a broader,

basic question of ritual law: can acts of speech invalidate wuḍūʾ? The issue does not

always come up in discussions of wuḍūʾ, such as in the distinct early compilation on ritual

purity by the famed philologist Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim b. Sallām (d. 224/838).581 But his

illustrious teacher in law, Muḥammad b. Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820) did address the

question, as evident from a brief section on speech (bāb al-kalām) included in the chapter

on ṭahāra in his magnum opus, the Kitāb al-Umm.582 A series of statements detail al-

Shāfiʿī’s view that speech does not require ablution (lā wuḍūʾ min al-kalām) even if one

swears (ʿaẓuma), nor if one laughs during prayer—which can potentially invalidate the

prayer itself.583 The proof-text that al-Shāfiʿī adduces here is a Prophetic ḥadīth

instructing that if one swears by the goddess al-Lāt, then he should proclaim the shahāda

581 Abū ʿUbayd al-Qāsim b. Sallām, al-Ṭahūr. Another early but lost book on ṭahāra is attributed to the Baghdādī jurist and possible founder of his own madhhab, Abū Thawr (d. 240/854): Sezgin, GAS, 1:491.

582 Of course, the Umm is a large and complex work that both retains al-Shāfiʿī’s authorship of texts within, as well as the supplementary efforts of his students in the production of its extant form. See the rich discussion on its compilation in: El Shamsy, Canonization of Islamic Law, 149–66.

583 Muḥammad b. Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī, Al-Umm, ed. Rifʿat Fawzī ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib (al-Manṣūra: Dār al-Wafāʾ, 1422/2001), 2:47. The issue of whether laughter invalidates prayer was subject to disagreement: in the Shāfiʿī school, it depended on the nature of the sound. See: Jazīrī, Kitāb al-Fiqh ʿalā l-madhāhib al-arbaʿa, 1:278; Translated as: Jurisprudence According to the Four Sunni Schools, 400n188.

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and say “lā ilāha illa llāh.” Prima facie, the report concerns the problem of swearing by

anyone other than God and typically appears in chapters on īmān or oaths and vows in

the canonical ḥadīth collections, but al-Shāfiʿī’s version has the transmitter Ibn Shihāb al-

Zuhrī (d. 124/742) appending a further juridical point that he did not know of the

Prophet mentioning wudūʾ in this context.584 Al-Shāfiʿī thus concludes that the ritual

ablution is not required in that case, nor in the case of any other verbal offenses such as

hurting (adhā) someone or engaging in qadhf (false accusation of illicit sex), because

these are not means of ḥadath.585

The Kitāb al-Umm seems unique among early works of fiqh for this relatively

systematic approach to the issue, especially in its attempt to justify the ruling on the

basis of an accredited Prophetic tradition. The question does not even arise in the

earliest authoritative Mālikī texts, the Muwaṭṭaʾ attributed to Mālik b. Anas (d. 179/795)

and the Mudawwana of Saḥnūn (d. 240/854). Perhaps not in the juristic doctrine of

Medinese custom, but it was clearly a concern in formative debates on ritual law in Iraq,

and the fiqh literature across emergent schools of thought would continue to

acknowledge it to varying degrees—if only to reassert the consensus on a settled matter.

584 The ḥadīth exists in a number of variants, all featuring al-Zuhrī in the isnād. See the references listed by Juynboll, Encyclopedia of Canonical Ḥadīth, 143.

585 Shāfiʿī, Al-Umm, 2:47.

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The early Zaydī tradition yields a terse but telling documentation of the issue in the so-

called Majmūʿ al-fiqh (edited and published as Corpus Iuris), a collection of juristic opinions

ascribed to the eponymous Imām, Zayd b. ʿAlī (d. 122/740) and assembled by the Kūfan

muḥaddith and tafsīr scholar Ibrāhīm b. al-Zibriqān (d. 183/799).586 The book in its extant

form records in the opening chapter on ṭahāra that Zayd b. ʿAlī was asked whether

“namīma or ghība invalidates the wuḍūʾ,” and the Imām’s answer was no.587 Regardless of

its dubious attribution according to current specialists, who find it too reflective of Iraqi

views rather than Zayd b. ʿAlī’s native Medinan context, the text at least attests to the

fact that the ritual consequences of ghība was a question in late-second/eighth century

Kūfan thought.

586 Eugenio Griffini, ed., “Corpus Iuris” di Zaid ibn ʿAlī (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1919). The text’s attribution is much debated, and the contents have been judged by Wilferd Madelung to reflect an early Kūfan tradition of Zaydī thought: Bearman et al., EI2, s.v. Zayd b. ʿAlī. The reports are transmitted by Abū Khālid al-Wāsiṭī, a formative figure in the nascent Jārūdī school of what would become Zaydī Shīʿism, and their collection in turn by Ibn al-Zibriqān exists in a redaction by Naṣr b. Muzāḥim (d 212/827), a Kūfan historian resident in Baghdād. The extant recension indicates further editorial involvement by Ibn Baqqāl, a Shīʿī theologian and qāḍī in Baghdad from the early Būyid perid. On the text’s history in theological context, see: van Ess, Theologie und Gesellschaft, 1:262–65; Theology and Society, 1:302–06.

587 Griffini, “Corpus Iuris” di Zaid ibn ʿAlī, 13, no. 56. The more securely attributed Amālī of Aḥmad b. ‘Īsā (d. 247/862), a grandson of Zayd b. ʿAlī, does not appear to address the question; the text is available as part of the published commentary by ʿAlī b. Ismāʿīl b. ʿAbdallāh al-Muʾayyad al-Ṣanʿānī, Kitāb raʾb al-ṣadʿ, 3 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Nafāʾis, 1990). Note, however, that a large portion of the Corpus is said to be reflected in the Amālī: Sezgin, GAS, 1:554.

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As the self-proclaimed inheritors of Kūfan legal tradition, the foundational

literature of the Ḥanafī madhhab might be expected to address the topic. The Kitāb al-Aṣl

or al-Mabṣūṭ of Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī (d. 189/805), one of the trio of Abū

Ḥanīfa’s leading students, does do so and simply records without comment his teacher’s

ruling in the conventional qultu/qāla dialogic formulation: “I asked: What is your opinion

(a-raʾayta) on indecent speech (al-kalām al-fāḥish), does it nullify wuḍūʾ? He said: No.”588

Unlike the many other cases in the book supplemented by some discussion, this

particular question did not seem to merit any further justification or evidentiary basis,

and instead remains a characteristic example of raʾy or personal opinion in legal

reasoning.589 Nor does the issue arise in al-Shaybānī’s Kitāb al-Āthār, in spite of its

overwhelming focus on traditions attributed to the early Kūfan jurist Ibrāhīm al-Nakhāʿī

(d. 96/714–15), who apparently held that foul speech did require ablution as discussed

588 Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī, al-Aṣl, ed. Muḥammad Būynūkālin, 1st ed. (Qatar: Wizārat al-Awqāf wa-l-Shuʾūn al-Islāmiyya, 1433/2012), 1:45.

589 A term with a complex legacy in both the conventional polemics of classical fiqh and its modern historiography, raʾy is best understood according to Ahmed El Shamsy as a “style” of dialectic reasoning in law (evident in use of the phrase a-raʾayta, as in the above quote) which emerged in early ʿAbbāsid Iraq especially around Abū Ḥanīfa’s circle in Kūfa: Canonization of Islamic Law, 22–28.

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below, a doctrine from which his intellectual successors in the circle of Abū Ḥanīfa

clearly departed.590

The most valuable records of divergent early views are preserved in the Muṣannaf

of ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī (d. 211/826) and especially the Muṣannaf of Ibn Abī Shayba

(d. 235/849).591 Both draw upon the same stock of akhbār, but Ibn Abī Shayba includes

some additional and insightful material: judging solely from the total of nine reports in

his chapter on “ablution from filthy speech and backbiting” (fī l-wuḍūʾ min al-kalām al-

khabīth wa-l-ghība), of which seven make a positive case for it, one gets the impression of

an overwhelming stance precisely against the later consensus. It seems, moreover, that

this earlier view prevailed mainly among Kūfan authorities, namely al-Ḥārith b. Suwayd

590 The inheritance of Kūfan tradition may be a retrospective self-representation of the nascent Ḥanafī school: Christopher Melchert, “How Ḥanafism Came to Originate in Kufa and Traditionalism in Medina,” Islamic Law and Society 6, no. 3 (1999): 318–47, https://doi.org/10.1163/1568519991223801. On the textual composition of al-Āthār and its record of the relationship between the views of Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī, Abū Ḥanīfa and al-Shaybānī, see the detailed and compelling analysis by Behnam Sadeghi, “The Authenticity of Two 2nd /8th Century Ḥanafi Legal Texts: the Kitāb al-āthār and al-Muwattaʾ of Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī,” Islamic Law and Society 17, no. 3 (November 1, 2010): 291–319, https://doi.org/10.1163/156851910X522212.

591 ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī, al-Muṣannaf (Cairo: Dār al-Taʾṣīl, 1436/2015), 1:294, bāb al-wuḍūʾ min al-kalām; Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, 1:245–247 (corresponding to 1:134–35 of the classic Bombay edition).

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al-Taymī (d. before 72/692),592 ʿAbīda b. ʿAmr al-Salmānī (d. 72/691–92),593 and most

notably the prominent tābiʿī and the leading figure of Kūfan jurisprudence, Ibrāhīm al-

Nakhāʿī.594 Not all of the akhbār on the topic entail direct statements of legal doctrine,

but serve as rhetorical exhortations or illustrative anecdotes—and some of which

circulated as pious lore among Baṣran traditionists, assuming from the isnāds. For

instance, the esteemed Baṣran imām and muḥaddīth (of Kūfan origin) Ismāʿīl b. ʿUlayya (d.

193/809) relates a story from Ibn Sīrīn, about how an Anṣārī shaykh once passed by a

majlis and on hearing the talk of those gathered, admonished them: “Redo your wuḍūʾ, for

some of what you are saying is worse than ḥadath.”595 Similarly, Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī is

592 He is not quoted for his own opinion on the topic, but as the transmitter of a tradition on the authority of the Companion Ibn Masʿūd: Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, 1:245, no. 1434. Apparently, al-Ḥārith himself would be considered a Companion: Iṣfahānī, Maʿrifat al-ṣaḥāba, 2:807. Biographical details on him are scant, but entries appear in: Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabaqāt, 8:287; Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām, 4:156.

593 Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām, 4:40–44.

594 He is evidently the protagonist named simply as Ibrāhīm in an anecdote by his follower al-Ḥārith (b. Yazīd al-Taymī), related in turn by the latter’s known disciple Muḥammad b. ʿAjlān. Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, 1:246, no. 1438.

595 Ibn Abī Shayba, 1:246, no. 1436. The report also appears in: Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 256–57, no. 105; Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim, Zuhd, 59, no. 116; Bayhaqī, Shuʿab al-īmān, 9:90, no. 6299.

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said to have once asked his student al-Ḥārīth b. Yazīd to go and perform the wuḍūʾ in the

midst of a lesson, because the latter had engaged in ghība by gossiping about someone.596

Ibrāhīm al-Nakhāʿī remains widely attested to have personally observed a

doctrine of purification from foul speech, and perhaps uniquely so. The Muṣannaf of Ibn

Abī Shayba itself quotes him elsewhere, in relation to the separate question of multiple

prayers with the same ablution, claiming that he would perform all the five daily prayers

with a single wuḍūʾ, “as long as I have not had a ḥadath or said something reprehensible

(aqūl munkar).”597 The latter part of this statement is corroborated by the Kitāb al-Ṣamt of

Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, who includes a report in which Ibrāhīm explicitly proclaims that

ablution is necessary from both ḥadath and offending Muslims (al-wuḍūʾ min al-ḥadath wa

adhā l-muslim).598 A similar statement is elsewhere also attributed to ʿAbīda al-Salmānī.599

596 Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, 1:246, no. 1438; Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim, Zuhd, 59–60, no. 118.

597 Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, 1:53, no. 290. Cited in: Richard Gauvain, “Ritual Rewards: A Consideration of Three Recent Approaches to Sunni Purity Law,” Islamic Law and Society 12, no. 3 (2005): 349n54, https://doi.org/10.1163/156851905774608251; Katz, Body of Text, 64. This same report is included twice by ʿAbd al-Razzāq, once in each chapter relevant to the two parts of Ibrāhīm’s statement: Muṣannaf, 1:246, no. 163; 1:294, no. 475.

598 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 257, no. 106; Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim, Zuhd, 61, no. 123.

599 Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, 1:246, no. 1437 (= ed. Bombay 1:134); Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim, Zuhd, 59, no. 117. Reflecting some vagueness in the transmission of the wording but not the general idea, ʿAbd al-Razzāq’s version of this tradition has the same isnād but attributes to ʿAbīda something “similar” (mithlahu) to Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī’s statement about the same wuḍūʾ for five prayers unless there is ḥadath or bad speech. Muṣannaf, 1:294, no. 476.

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Interestingly, unlike the dictum that ḥadath is of two kinds including that of the tongue,

this particular statement seems to imply that hurtful speech is not a ḥadath itself but

rather its own category—a potential logical problem if ḥadath is defined as that which

calls for ablution.600 Regardless, the context and spirit in which Ibn Abī l-Dunyā cites

Ibrāhīm al-Nakhaʿī does not posit his view on the issue as a legal ruling so much as a

pious exhortation; it appears in the Kitāb al-Ṣamt immediately after Ibn Sīrīn’s anecdote

about the man from al-Anṣār who chided a group for defiling themselves with gossip.601

Ibn Abī Shaybā concludes his corpus of traditions on this issue with the reported

opinions of two authorities who did rejected the necessity of wuḍūʾ for bad speech---

whether poetry or otherwise, according to Ibn Shihāb al-Zuhrī (d. 124/742), or even

shouting and cursing (al-sibāb wa l-ṣakhab), according to ʿAbū l-ʿĀliya al-Riyāḥī (d. ca.

93/712).602 The section in ʿAbd al-Razzāq’s Muṣannaf adopts a similar template, also

reporting al-Zuhrī’s opinion as related by their direct intermediary Maʿmar. The

600 As Reinhart has aptly put it: “The transient effect (ḥadath) is that which negates the ablution and therefore requires a new act of ritual ablution (wuḍūʾ).” “Impurity/No Danger,” 9.

601 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 256–57, no. 105.

602 Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, 1:246–47, no. 1441 & no. 1442. Incidentally, ʿAbū l-ʿĀliya is also well-known for a story in which the Prophet asks some Companions to repeat their wuḍūʾ because they laughed during prayer—an issue sometimes associated with the question of ablution from bad speech, as seen above in the case of al-Shāfiʿī. See: Librande, “Ibn Abī l-Dunyā,” s.v. Abū l-ʿĀliya al-Riyāḥī.

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pioneering Medinan scholar’s putative ruling on this matter was therefore quite

influential if not decisive, as we have already seen from al-Shāfiʿī’s citation of him in the

Umm. Compared to Ibn Abī Shayba even at the level of the wording of their respective

reports on al-Zuhrī, ʿAbd al-Razzāq’s treatment of the topic has a clearly more limited

purview and does not include the concerns about invective poetry. He concludes with a

Companion tradition by another one of Maʿmar’s main teachers, Hammām b. Munabbih

(d. 101/719), in which Abū Hurayra simply declares that “wuḍūʾ is from ḥadath,” thus

implicitly dismissing speech as a source of ritual impurity.603

Beyond the residual archive of early traditions assembled by ʿAbd al-Razzāq and

Ibn Abī Shayba, perhaps the most comprehensive treatment of the topic in fiqh comes

from Abū Bakr Ibn al-Mundhir (d. 318/930), the distinguished jurist from Nīshāpūr who

had studied in Egypt with al-Shāfiʿī’s leading student. Ibn al-Mundhir devotes a section

on ghība and wuḍūʾ in his al-Awsaṭ fī l-sunan wa-l-ijmāʿ wa-l-ikhtilāf, an encyclopedic

compilation of juridical ḥadīth demonstrating a copious knowledge of early traditions

and their role in all matters of consensus and disagreement.604 The discussion on “wuḍūʾ

from backbiting, lying and insulting a Muslim” forms part of a series of sections on the

603 ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī, Muṣannaf, 1:294, no. 478.

604 On the remarkable scope of Ibn al-Mundhir’s scholarship as a maverick jurist, see the biography by Scott Lucas in Librande, “Ibn Abī l-Dunyā,” s.v. Ibn al-Mundhir al-Naysābūrī.

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factors behind ritual impurity on which there was ikhtilāf. Ibn al-Mundhir observes a

consensus among the majority of jurists in their rulings on this issue, while also

recording traditions to the contrary:

If a man has purified himself, then he remains in his purity except for [cases with] proof indicating the undoing of his purity (naqḍ ṭahāratihi). All of the scholars of the cities (ʿulamāʾ al-amṣār) whose statements we have recorded have agreed that qadhf, false testimony, lying, and ghība does not nullify ṭahāra and does not necessitate wuḍūʾ. Likewise, the madhhab of the Medinans, the Kufans among the proponents of raʾy and others, and this is the position of al-Shāfiʿī and Aḥmad and Iṣḥāq.605

Ibn al-Mundhir goes on to identify and discuss the relevant proof-texts, including the

ḥadīth on swearing by al-Lāt that al-Shāfiʿī utilizes, and another tradition attributed to

Ibn ʿAbbās: responding to a query from Mujāhid, he denies any effect on ritual purity as a

result of several otherwise sinful acts: theft, betrayal (khiyāna), lying, immorality (fujūr),

and looking at the forbidden.606 Here, Ibn al-Mundhir also cites the early Meccan jurist

605 Ibn al-Mundhir al-Naysābūrī, al-Awsaṭ min al-sunan wa-l-ijmāʿ wa-l-ikhtilāf, 1:334.

606 Ibn al-Mundhir al-Naysābūrī, 1:335. The report however concludes enigmatically with an echo of the “al-ḥadath ḥadathān” dictum of his quoted earlier: “ritual impurity is of two kinds: ḥadath from above, and ḥadath from below.” What this could possibly mean remains unclear unless we contend it may well be a case of textual distortion, as another variant has fīka instead of fawqa, thus restating the same idea of ḥadath from the mouth and that from the lower part of the body.

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Ibn Jurayj (d. 150/768) reporting that his teacher ʿAṭāʾ b. Abī Rabāḥ (d. 115/733) did not

know of wuḍūʾ being incumbent from any kind of speech, cursing or otherwise.607

Nevertheless, Ibn al-Mundhir then acknowledges that more than one of the

ancients (al-mutaqaddimīn), such as ʿAbīda al-Salmānī, enjoined wuḍūʾ from foul speech or

from insulting Muslims. He cites the aforementioned dual-source-of-impurity (al-ḥadath

ḥadathān) dictum attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās, as well as two Companion traditions ascribed

to ʿAbdallāh b. Masʿud and ʿĀʾisha arguing that ablution from vile or abusive speech is as

preferable as from food that is pure (ṭayyib)—obviously referring to the corollary debate

on the necessity of wuḍūʾ after eating cooked food.608 Perceptively underscoring the

wording of such traditions (alfāẓ aḥādīthihim), Ibn al-Mundhir concludes that those who

called for wuḍūʾ in this case only did so as a recommendation (istiḥbāb). In other words,

the evidence of tradition on this issue does not make a case for juridical necessity, but for

good ethical practice. Ibn al-Mundhir is thus able to justify and pronounce consensus on

what by his time must have seemed a long-settled matter.

i. Poetry and Verbal Abuse in Shīʿī Ritual Law

607 Ibn al-Mundhir al-Naysābūrī, 1:335.

608 Ibn al-Mundhir al-Naysābūrī, 1:336.

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The consensus appears to have also prevailed in the Imāmī Shīʿī tradition,

although the classical Shīʿī literature appears to preserve much less of a discussion on

the issue compared to the sources surveyed thus far. The earliest of the most

authoritative texts, al-Kāfī of Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb al-Kulaynī (d. 329/941), does not raise

the issue in its chapter on the conditions which nullify wūḍūʾ. Rather, any consideration

of speech is implicitly dismissed by the basic principle attributed to the sixth Imām, Abū

ʿAbdallāh Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq (d. 148/765), reportedly identifying the nullifiers of wuḍūʾ as

“only that which exits from your two lower points (ṭarafayk al-asfalayn).”609 On the other

hand, Ibn Bābawayh al-Qummī, “al-Shaykh al-Ṣadūq” (d. 380/991) raises the question of

speech only tangentially through a single report in his compendium of legal traditions,

Man lā yaḥḍurhu l-faqīh. Also attributed to Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, the report simply relates that

the Imām was asked if reciting poetry (inshād al-shiʿr) nullified the wuḍūʾ, and the answer

was no.610 This is the only one of twelve sayings in Ibn Bābawayh’s chapter on the

nullifiers of wuḍūʾ that deals with speech.

609 Kulaynī, al-Kāfī, 5:112, no.3968 (al-Furūʿ, kitāb al-ṭahāra, bāb 23.1 mā yanquḍ al-wuḍūʾ wa mā lā yanquḍuhu). A variant further details the effective bodily emissions: ibid., 4:114, no. 3973.

610 Ibn Bābawayh al-Qummī, Man lā yaḥḍurhu l-faqīh, ed. Ḥusayn al-Aʿlamī (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Aʿlamī li-l-Maṭbūʿāt, 1406/1986), 1:50, no. 142; Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī, Wasāʾil al-shīʿa, 1:269, no. 701 (kitāb al-ṭahāra, bāb 8. anna inshād al-shiʿr lā yanqiḍ al-wuḍūʾ).

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The last of the most authoritative classical jurists of Imāmī tradition, Abū Jaʿfar

al-Ṭūsī (d. 460/1067) does not include in his Tahdhīb al-aḥkām any aspects of speech

among the ten things that nullify the wuḍūʾ.611 Later in this chapter on ritual impurities,

however, he discusses a very interesting variant of the tradition concerning poetry, in

which a different narrator (Samāʿa) relates that he inquired about reciting poetry, lying,

and mistreating a friend (ẓalama l-rajul ṣāḥibahu).612 Here, the unnamed Imām responds

yes, these do nullify the wuḍūʾ, unless the poetry is truthful or limited to three or four

verses. The curious ruling is qualified by Shaykh al-Ṭūsī, who deems the report an

unreliable proof-text for not specifying who was asked the question, and who could

therefore be anybody other than an Imām. Based on the above maxim of Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq

as well as the other report denying the necessity of wuḍūʾ from poetry, both of which he

now adduces, al-Ṭūsī suggests that if the ruling did come from an Imām, it can be

interpreted as something desired and recommended (la-ḥamalnāhu ʿalā l-istiḥbāb wa-l-

611 Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Ṭūsī, Tahdhīb al-aḥkām fī sharḥ al-muqniʿa, ed. ʿAlī Akbar al-Ghaffārī (Tehran: Dār al-Kutub al-Islāmiyya, 1384 SH/2005–06 CE), 1:4 (bāb 1. al-ahdāth al-mūjiba li-l-ṭahāra).

612 Ṭūsī, 1:16, no. 35. The report also appears in: Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī, Wasāʾil al-shīʿa, 1:269, no. 703 (k. al-ṭahāra, bāb 8. inshād al-shiʿr).

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nadab).613 Regardless of its peculiarities and the limited extent of the discussion, this

report at the very least attests to an awareness in early Shīʿī tradition of the debate on

the potential ritual consequences of bad speech. It may be no surprise therefore this

report has an ostensibly Kūfan isnād, and was transmitted by none other than al-Ḥusan b.

Saʿīd al-Ahwāzī (d. 254/868), the notable jurist and scholar of Kūfa and author of the

Kitāb al-Zuhd.

* * *

The debate among at least some Muslims in the early period on whether bad

speech invalidates the wuḍūʾ may have ultimately had a limited reach, with only a few

dissidents against the consensus. But it remains a facet of what Marion Katz has

described as the “archaic stage at which even the basic lineaments of the idea of purity

were still largely undefined.”614 Katz’s remark pertains, among other issues, to the

intriguing and far-reaching controversy over whether ablution was required after eating

cooked food i.e. “that which has been touched by fire” (mā massat al-nār), alluded to

above in the two Ibn Masʿūd and ʿĀʾisha traditions. In fact, most of the texts examined

613 Ṭūsī, Tahdhīb al-aḥkām, 1:17. It would also be pointed out by al-Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī (d. 1104/1693) that ʿAlī himself included poetry in some of his sermons from the pulpit and he is not known to have performed the wūḍūʾ on such occasions. Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī, Wasāʾil al-shīʿa, 1:269, no. 702.

614 Katz, Body of Text, 143.

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here devote far greater attention to the problem of cooked food than to that of foul

speech, in part because the former has many more aḥādīth that attend to it.615 The

eventual consensus across all schools of law would consider neither among the list of

things that undoes one’s ablution. Both cases shared the same underlying discursive

problem in the impetus towards a coherent system of ritual purity, insofar as ḥadath

results primarily from bodily expulsions: the basic nullifiers of wuḍūʾ are urination,

defecation, and flatulence. At the other end of the process of somatic boundary-crossing,

as Katz describes it—alongside the classic theories of ritual purity in modern

anthropology, the debate on ablution from eating posed a hypothetical question about

matter going into the body. The issue with speech, on the other hand, seems to fit much

better Kevin Reinhart’s proposed model of ṭahāra as fundamentally about self-control,

such that ritual impurity results from acts that represent the will’s loss of control over

615 Katz (Body of Text, 101–23) offers a detailed study of the aḥādīth on ablution from cooked food. However, a wider cultural history of the phenomenon remains a desideratum. While the debates on wuḍūʾ remain a distinctly Islamic problem, there is good reason to believe that the anxieties about cooked food represents another facet of the continuous tradition dating back to the Desert Fathers, for some of whom it was a luxury one must abstain from altogether: the fourth-century Egyptian ascetic Ammonios “never ate anything that had been cooked except bread.” Wortley, Introduction to the Desert Fathers, 90. The Apopthegmata also refer to other anonymous figures who avoided cooked food, e.g. APsys VIII.26, Wortley, Book of the Elders, 129. Katz does briefly acknowledge this larger backdrop, while speculating further that some of the ḥadīth on this debate were the outcome of “a somewhat obscure purity practice” current in Baṣran ascetic circles. Body of Text, 122, 124n122.

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the body.616 Yet the notion of ghība in particular could encompass both of these

conceptual models. As Katz points out, Ibn Masʿūd is also reported to have said: “Wuḍūʾ is

from what comes out, and fasting is from what goes in and not from what comes out.”617

Thanks to the metaphor it wielded in early Islamic discourse, ghība was also seen as

something that enters the body. Thus, wuḍūʾ was not the only aspect of Islamic ritual law

for which jurists had to consider the effects of the sins of the tongue. A similar debate

took place with regard to fasting.

III. Speech in the Adab of Fasting

Fasting is unquestionably the domain of Muslim ritual life most directly

implicated in the pious etiquettes of speech. As one of the basic acts of worship or ʿibādāt,

indeed what came to be termed one of the foundations or pillars (arkān) of the religion,

the various obligations and conditions for its observance constitute an extensive body of

substantive laws detailed in the fiqh tradition. For their discursive purposes, Muslim

jurists would eventually define the fast (ṣawm or ṣiyām) in strictly technical terms, as

“the abstinence in specific ways from that which breaks the fast” (imsāk ʿan al-mufṭir ʿalā

616 Reinhart, “Impurity/No Danger,” 19–20.

617 ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī, Muṣannaf, 1:326, no. 664. Quoted in Katz, Body of Text, 102. A variant of the same dictum is also attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās: Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, 1:92, nos. 539, 542; Katz, Body of Text, 107.

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wajh makhṣūṣ).618 The objects of this abstinence, and hence the overwhelming focus of the

rules about it, are food, drink and sex—the same three things also explicitly addressed by

the Qurʾān in one of its key verses on fasting, Q al-Baqara 2:187. Nevertheless, other

habits and aspects of the body were also at issue. The Qurʾānic text itself acknowledges

the notion of fasting from speech, as Q al-Maryam 19:26 uses the term ṣawm to describe

Mary’s vow of silence when she gives birth to Jesus.

In fact, the reference to Mary’s fast in this verse gets quoted in a brief homiletic

report attributed to Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq in the Shīʿī tradition, and included by al-Kulaynī (d. )

and Ibn Bābawayh in discussions on etiquettes (ādāb) of fasting and the conditions which

nullify it. The Imam is said to have preached: “Fasting is not from food and drink alone.

For Mary said: ‘I have vowed to al-Raḥmān a fast,’ that is, in silence. So guard your

tongues, lower your gazes, and do not envy nor dispute with each other. For envy (ḥasad)

consumes faith just as fire consumes wood.”619 Similar wisdom is ubiquitous across the

618 al-Mawsūʿat al-fiqhiyya, 28:7.

619 Kulaynī, al-Kāfī, 7:437, 441, nos. 6322 & 6328 (al-Furūʿ, kitāb 14. al-ṣiyām, bāb 11.3, 9 adab al-ṣāʾim); Ibn Bābawayh al-Qummī, Man lā yaḥḍurhu l-faqīh, 2:72–73, no. 1857; Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī, Wasāʾil al-shīʿa, 10:162–63, nos. 13122–23 (kitāb al-ṣawm, bāb 11.3–4 istiḥbāb imsāk samʿ al-ṣāʾim...). The Wasāʾīl also includes an expanded and more developed, page-long version of this sermon attributed Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq, with exhortations about a host of vices to beware when fasting: ibid., 10:166, no, 13132. The metaphor of envy as a fire that “consumes good deeds” (ḥasanāt) appears in a Sunnī canonical ḥadīth recorded by Abū Dāwūd and Ibn Māja in their respective chapters on

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early Islamic tradition, as in the variants of this report (albeit without the use of Q 19:26)

attributed to ʿAlī and to ʿUmar in the Muṣannaf of Ibn Abī Shayba: “Fasting is not from

eating and drinking alone, but from lying, falsehood (bāṭil), futile speech (laghw), and

swearing (ḥalif).”620 Yet another rare variant attributed to the Prophet himself sums up

that one fasts not from food and drink, but from all sins (al-ṣiyām min al-maʿāṣī).621 These

teachings thus echo the same message as John Chrysostom’s sermon on real fasting. Not

unlike the Christian discourse of a higher spiritual fast beyond literal abstinence, the

pious Maymūn b. Mihrān (d. 117/735–6) is said to declared: “the least significant (ahwan)

fast is to abandon food and drink.”622 Even Chrysostom’s specific rhetoric of the fast of

various organs of the body too had a clearly enduring appeal and found vivid expression

in the Islamic tradition, attributed to the Companion Jābir b. ʿAbdallāh in Sunnī

literature, and to Imām Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq in the Shīʿī literature. According to an early

version recorded by Ibn Abī Shayba, Jābir is said to have taught:

zuhd. See: Wensinck et al., Concordance, 1:465, s.v. “al-ḥasad yaʾkul al-ḥasanāt kamā taʾkul al-nār al-ḥaṭab.” Recorded also by Abū l-Shaykh al-Iṣfahānī, Tawbīkh, 91–93, no. 59–60.

620 Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, 4:9, nos. 8967 & 8969. The latter report (attributed to ʿAlī) does not list “swearing,” and is also reproduced in: Bayhaqī, Shuʿab al-īmān, 5:248, no. 3376.

621 Abū Dāwud al-Ṭayālisī, Musnad, ed. Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Muḥsin al-Turkī (Giza: Dār Hijr, 1420/1999), 4:270, no. 2660.

622 Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, 4:9, no. 8968 (= ed. Bombay 3:4); Bayhaqī, Shuʿab al-īmān, 5:249, no. 3380.

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“If you fast, let your hearing and your sight and your tongue fast too, from lying and from sins. Cease abuse (adhā) of your servants, and let there be gravity and tranquility (waqār wa sakīna) upon you on the day of the fast. Do not make equal the day you fast and the day you don’t.”623

This same report informed ʿAbdallāh b. al-Mubārak’s teachings on zuhd, while the variant

attributed to Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq speaks further of the fast of one’s hair and even skin.624

Drawing upon the late antique ascetic repertoire and a shared idiom of fasting organs of

the body, these traditions sought to enjoin the fast as a holistic discipline beyond simply

the literal abstention from food and drink.

The control of speech, however, commands greater attention in this discipline

over all other concerns, just as in the case of Chrysostom’s Homily III. Ibn Abī Shayba’s

chapter heading for the above reports specifically highlights speech: “The Command on

the Fasting to Speak Less and to Beware of Lying.”625 In addition to advising against lewd

speech (rafath) and foolish behavior (jahl) while fasting, the section concludes with a

623 Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, 4:8–9, no. 8965 (= ed. Bombay 3:3).

624 Kulaynī, al-Kāfī, 7:437, no. 6322 (al-Furūʿ, kitāb al-ṣiyām, bāb 11.1 adab al-ṣāʾim); Ibn al-Mubārak, Zuhd, 160, no. 460; 368, no. 1308; Raqāʾiq, riwāyat Nuʿaym, 2:245, no. 552; 2:639, no. 1359. The report would be faulted for its transmission history by the great critic al-Ḥākim al-Nīsābūrī, as its narrator Sulaymān al-Mūsā is said to have not known Jābir in person (see ibid., 2:245n4); note also that the isnād for one of the two instances of this report in Ibn al-Mubārak’s Zuhd (in both recensions) stops at Sulaymān, while the other links it back to Jābir.

625 “Bāb mā yuʾmar bihi l-ṣāʾim min qillat al-kalām wa tawaqqī al-kadhb,” Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, 4:8 (= ed. Bombay 3:3).

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series of traditions dealing with ghība. A maxim attributed to Mujāhid appears to identify

the two cardinal sins of the tongue as key targets for the discipline of fasting: “Two

habits (khaṣlatān), whoever is able to guard against them, his fast is sound: backbiting and

lying.”626 The same idea was reiterated by the Baṣran tābiʿī and Qurʾānic exegete Abū l-

ʿĀliya al-Riyāḥī, who as previously mentioned did not consider it necessary to ritually

purify oneself from foul speech, but who nevertheless said: “The one who fasts is in [a

state of] ritual worship (ʿibāda), as long as he does not backbite.”627 The tradition was

related by Abū l-ʿĀliya’s major disciple and Ibn Sīrīn’s sister, Ḥafṣa bint Sīrīn (d. after

100/718), a famed ascetic and scholar known for her relentless fasting.628 A variant

transmission adds that she would rejoice in this notion of fasting as worship even in bed,

while also quoting an adage of her own: “The fast is a shield (junna), as long as its owner

626 Ibn Abī Shayba, 4:10, no. 8972; Bayhaqī, Shuʿab al-īmān, 5:248, no. 3378. A variant of the same saying has: “Whoever desires to safeguard his fast, let him avoid backbiting and lying.” Hannād b. al-Sarī, Zuhd, 2:572, no. 1203. For yet another variant, see: ibid., no. 1202.

627 Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, 4:10, no. 8974; ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī, Muṣannaf, 4:118, no. 8037; Bayhaqī, Shuʿab al-īmān, 4:249, no. 3379.

628 On Ḥafṣa bint Sīrīn, see: Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām, 4:507, no. 198; Laury Silvers, “Early Pious, Mystic Sufi Women,” in The Cambridge Companion to Sufism, ed. Lloyd Ridgeon (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 40, 50; Asma Sayeed, Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 73–74.

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does not break it. And its breach is backbiting (kharquhā l-ghība).”629 Elsewhere, an

obscure tradition attributed to Abū Hurayra employs the same term (kh-r-q) to express a

striking metaphor contrasting two kinds of speech one might engage in while fasting,

gossiping versus uttering invocations seeking God’s forgiveness: “Ghība tears the fast,

while istighfār mends it.”630 The force of these pious exhortations would inevitably raise a

juridical question, since the fast is after all a ritual act: does committing ghība while

fasting affect the validity of one’s fast? Evidence suggests that the question did arise in

early Islamic thought, though perhaps not to the extent as the debate on ablution from

bad speech.

A. Does Ghība Break One’s Fast?

Relating a variant of the idea attributed to Abū l-ʿĀliya in the Sunnī tradition, Ibn

Bābawayh al-Qummī records on behalf of the Shīʿī Imāms a Prophetic ḥadīth to the same

effect in his book of “Dictations” (Amālī), stating that one who fasts is actively

worshipping God, “even if he is sleeping in bed, as long as he does not backbite a

629 ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī, Muṣannaf, 4:118, no. 8037. This saying of Ḥafṣa was adduced by Ibn Ḥazm, Muḥallā, 4:307.

630 Bayhaqī, Shuʿab al-īmān, 5:246, no. 3371. The report is poorly attested and Bayhaqī appears to be the only classical source to record it. His isnād for it has also been subjected to criticism as it features the Baṣran Qadarite Dāwūd b. al-Muḥabbar (d. 206/821), who was rejected (matrūk) by the ḥadīth critics. See ibid., 5:249n3371.

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Muslim.”631 The precise implication of the conditional here remains ambiguous: does

backbiting negate the fast itself or the worship, or both? In other words, the question is

whether ghība counts as a mufṭir, the technical term for things that break one’s fast—and

requires the person to at least make up for it in the case of obligatory fasts, and possibly

also perform specified acts of expiation (kaffāra). The question does not arise in these

terms in the chapter on nullifiers of ṣawm in Ibn Bābawayh’s fiqh compilation, which

discusses a host of other minutiae that Muslims jurists typically addressed in this

context, such as cupping (ḥijāma) and belching (qalas). Again, as in the case of ritual

purity, many of these concerns had to do with the crossing of the somatic boundary,

whether involving things going into or out of the body. Reportedly, Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq was

even asked about someone having a molar tooth taken out while fasting, and the Imām

assured that this would not break the fast even if it causes blood in the mouth.632

Matters of speech, on the other hand, are treated mostly in the form of pious

exhortations on the etiquettes (ādāb) of ṣawm, such as the ḥadīth against insulting one’s

slaves while fasting, and one in which Jaʿfar al-Ṣāḍiq enjoins not to recite poetry in the

631 From the 88th majlis of Rajab 11, 368 AH, Ibn Bābawayh al-Qummī, Amālī al-Ṣadūq, ed. Ḥusayn al-Aʿlamī (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Aʿlamī li-l-Maṭbūʿāt, 1430/2009), 394.

632 Ibn Bābawayh al-Qummī, Man lā yaḥḍurhu l-faqīh, 2:75, no. 1871.

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month of Ramadan, whether during the daytime or at night.633 There is, however, a

singular exception according to Shīʿī tradition in which a verbal sin does technically

infringe on the fast. The same Imām is said to have decreed: “to lie against God, and

against the Imāms—peace be upon them—breaks the fast.”634 A variant account with the

same isnād implies that this was an attempt to qualify a more general maxim on the

ritual consequences of lying, said to nullify the wuḍūʾ and void the fast: Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq

clarifies the more restricted meaning here of “lying” (al-kadhba) when his disciple Abū

Buṣīr bemoans that “we are destroyed” (halaknā).635 On the basis of this tradition, Imāmī

Shīʿī jurists typically include this specific form of kadhb among the list of things that void

the fast. Lying against God, the Prophet or the Imāms is elsewhere described as a major

sin (kabīra), and likely has to do with the assertion of communal identity and the

authority of the Imāmate in a sectarian social context.636 But its relevance to ritual law

633 Ibn Bābawayh al-Qummī, 2:73, no. 1859.

634 Ibn Bābawayh al-Qummī, 2:72, no. 1854.

635 Kulaynī, al-Kāfī, 4:43–4, no. 2691 (al-Uṣūl, kitāb 5. al-īmān wa-l-kufr, bāb 139.6 al-kadhb); 7:441–42, no. 6329 (al-Furūʿ, kitāb al-ṣiyām, bāb 11.10 adab al-ṣāʾim); Ṭūsī, Tahdhīb al-aḥkām, 4:267, no. 168 (kitāb al-ṣiyām, bāb 15.2 mā yufsid al-ṣiyām).

636 Kulaynī, al-Kāfī, 4:42, no. 2687 (al-Uṣūl, kitāb 5. al-īmān wa-l-kufr, bāb 139.5 al-kadhb). The particular terminology of “lying against the Imāms” could be used, for instance, to describe those deemed as extremists or heretics falling outside the Imāmī community, as in the case of al-Mughīra b. Saʿīd and Abū l-Khaṭṭāb who were accused of falsely ascribing their doctrines to the

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specifically in the case of ṣawm seems to spring from a basic premise about the nature of

fasting and its integral relationship to the control of speech.

Shīʿī literature nevertheless also preserves earlier traditions that reflect

consideration of a wider variety of speech beyond theologically sinful utterances. One

report in particular even has Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq declare outright that ghība breaks the fast

and requires making up for it (al-ghība tafṭir al-ṣāʾim wa ʿalayhi l-qaḍāʾ).637 Regardless of its

authenticity, the circulation of such a claim suggests that the idea appealed to some

people. Its incorporation into the written corpus of Shīʿī traditions allowed scholars to

heed the ethical import of the message despite its apparent contradiction with

established jurisprudence. Rather than accepting such statements at face value, jurists

could regard them as homiletic exhortations still worth remembering and emulating.

The voiding of one’s fast on account of lying about God, the Prophet or the Imāms

remains a distinct feature of Shīʿī doctrine—and indeed the only case in Islamic

jurisprudence at large where an act of speech can nullify the fast. A similar consensus

otherwise prevails in Sunnī jurisprudence, which does not consider ghība or any other

fifth and sixth Imāms, respectively. See: Maria Massi Dakake, The Charismatic Community: Shiʻite Identity in Early Islam (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007), 209.

637 Ḥurr al-ʿĀmilī, Wasāʾil al-shīʿa, 10:35, no. 12793 (bāb wujūb imsāk al-ṣāʾim ʿan al-kadhb...).

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kind of foul speech relevant to the validity of one’s fast.638 But once again, the range of

evidence on the topic preserved in classical sources suggests that this was a matter of

some debate among early Muslims. Perhaps most significantly, the distinguished Syrian

jurist ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Awzāʿī (d. 157/774) remains famously an outlier on this issue:

he apparently believed that “backbiting nullifies the fast and requires making up for it”

(yubṭal al-ṣawm bi-l-ghība wa yajib qaḍāʾuh).639 Al-Awzāʿī is conventionally portrayed as

alone in his view, as even the major Shīʿī scholar al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā (d. 436/1044)

observes when discussing the distinctly Imāmī rule on kadhb while fasting.640 But

perhaps al-Awzāʿī stood out on account of his stature, as an authority figure in the proto-

school of jurisprudence of the Umayyads; as a matter of fact, his close peer Sufyān al-

Thawrī (d. 161/778) is occasionally also mentioned as holding the same view, suggesting

that it was likely followed by their mutual disciples.641 Sufyān’s only known statement on

638 Saʿdī Abū Jayb, Mawsūʿat al-ijmāʿ fī l-fiqh al-islāmī, 4th ed. (Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 2011), 820–21, s.v. “ghība.” Jazīrī, Kitāb al-Fiqh ʿalā l-madhāhib al-arbaʿa, 1:510; Jurisprudence According to the Four Sunni Schools, 752.

639 Muḥyī al-Dīn al-Nawawī, Kitāb al-Majmūʿ sharḥ al-Muhadhdhab li-l-Shīrāzī, ed. Muḥammad Najīb al-Muṭīʿī (Jeddah: Maktabat al-Irshād, n.d.), 6:398.

640 Interestingly, he attributes to al-Awzāʿī the view that both kadhb and ghība voids the fast, while other sources typically only mention ghība. al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā, al-Intiṣār, ed. Muḥammad Mahdī Najaf (Tehran: al-Maʿhad al-ʿĀlī li-l-Dirāsat al-Taqrībiyya, 1438/ 2017), 1:231–32, no. 82 (kitā al-ṣawm, masʾala 5).

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this is recorded by the Sūfī scholar Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī (d. 386/996), who cite it on the

authority of Bishr b. al-Ḥārith, the famous barefoot ascetic: “whoever backbites, his fast

is ruined” (man ightāba fasada ṣawmuh).642

Representations of the minority juristic opinion on this issue clearly depend on

how one understands the reported sayings of other early figures who may well have also

shared the same doctrine, such as the Baṣrans Abū l-ʿĀliya and Hafṣa bint Sīrīn quoted

above. Another figure often acknowledged as dissenting from the eventual consensus is

the early Meccan exegete Mujāhid b. Jabr (d. ca. 100/718–104/722), who is conventionally

associated with raʾy in jurisprudence. As already mentioned above at the beginning of

this discussion, Mujāhid reportedly declared that ghība also breaks the fast when asked if

it nullifies the wuḍūʾ.643 Sources consistently ascribe to him a serious and persistent

concern with backbiting while fasting, as expressed in several variants of the well-known

641 Kamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Mūsā al-Damīrī, al-Najm al-wahhāj fī sharḥ al-Minhāj (Jeddah: Dār al-Minhāj, 1425/2004), 3:321. On al-Awzāʿī and al-Thawrī as influential representative of a nascent madhhab, see the now-classic essay: Steven C. Judd, “Al-Awzāʿī and Sufyān al-Thawrī: The Umayyad Madhhab?,” in The Islamic School of Law: Evolution, Devolution, and Progress, ed. P. J. Bearman, Rudolph Peters, and Frank E. Vogel, Harvard Series in Islamic Law 2 (International Conference on Islamic Legal Studies, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 10–25.

642 Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī, Kitāb Qūt al-qulūb, fī muʿāmalat al-maḥbūb wa-waṣf ṭarīq al-murīd ilā maqām al-tawḥīd, ed. Maḥmūd Ibrāhīm al-Raḍwānī (Cairo: Maktabat Dār al-Turāth, 1422/2001), 3:1247 (kitāb al-ṣiyām).

643 Ibn Abī ʿĀṣim, Zuhd, 60, no. 120.

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maxim in which he identifies both ghība and kadhb as the key threats to a sound fast.644

Again, these traditions would remain valuable as pious exhortation, and Mujāhid’s

dictum is quoted for instance by Abū Ṭalib al-Makkī.

Of course, the most compelling attempts to justify the case for ghība invalidating

the fast were made in the form of Prophetic traditions to this effect. A discredited but

well-known ḥadīth claims the Prophet listed five things that break the fast (khams yufṭirna

l-ṣāʾim) and according to a variant, nullify the wuḍūʾ as well: lying, backbiting, slandering

(namīma), false oath (yamīn al-kādhiba), and a lustful gaze (al-naẓar bi-shahwa).645

Ostensibly transmitted by the Companion Anas b. Mālik, the report was deemed by Ibn

Abī Ḥātim al-Rāzī (d. 327/938) to be an outright forgery by Maysara b. ʿAbd Rabbih (d. ca.

170s/780s), a Persian from Baṣra known for falsely ascribing pious traditions to respected

authorities in the interest of moral incitement.646 It sure had a successful textual life, as

the ḥadīth made it into Abū Ṭalib al-Makkī’s Qūt al-qulūb and thence into al-Ghazālī’s Iḥyāʾ

644 Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, 4:10, no. 8972; Hannād b. al-Sarī, Zuhd, 2:572, no. 1202 & 1203; Bayhaqī, Shuʿab al-īmān, 5:248, no. 3378. Cited also by Ibn Ḥazm, Muḥallā, 4:307.

645 Citing Abū l-Fatḥ al-Azdī’s (d. 374/984) lost book of weak ḥadīth, al-Ḍuʿafāʾ: ʿAlā al-Dīn ʿAlī al-Muttaqī al-Hindī, Kanz Al-ʿummāl Fī Sunan al-Aqwāl Wa-l-Afʿāl, ed. Bakrī Ḥayyānī and Ṣafwat al-Saqqāʾ (Beirut: Muʾassasat al-Risāla, 1405–06/1985–86), 8:497, no. 23813.

646 Ibn Abī Ḥātim al-Rāzī, Kitāb ʿIlal al-ḥadīth, ed. Saʿd b. ʿAbdallāh al-Ḥamīd and Khālid b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Juraysī (Riyadh: Maṭābiʿ al-Ḥumayḍī, 1427/2006), 3:144. On Maysara, who was apparently also a famous glutton, see: Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, 4:753–56, no. 299.

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as the basis for their respective discussions on spiritually superior modes of fasting.647

The report was familiar enough that juristic treatments of the question at stake would

have to acknowledge it and reiterate its inadmissibility as proof-text.648

Although they did not have probative force in fiqh, such traditions

understandably appealed to the pious renunciants of the early Islamic world, and were

recorded in the kutub al-zuhd as the backbone of their teachings on the proper etiquettes

of speech. They nevertheless also remained valuable to jurists themselves in delineating

good ethical practice beyond the strictly juridical and functional strictures. Al-Shāfiʿī

himself, while ruling that he did not consider verbal abuse a nullifier of the fast,

recommended that a person try to keep his fast “untouched by clamor or cursing (al-

laghṭ wa-l-mushātama), and if he is affronted, let him respond: ‘I am fasting!.’”649 This

directly reiterates a ḥadīth recorded in most of the ṣaḥīḥ collections, glossed with topic

headings underscoring the importance of ḥifẓ al-lisān and avoiding ghība while fasting.650

647 Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī, Qūt al-qulūb, 3:1247; Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn (Jeddah: Dār al-Minhāj, 2011), 2:111 (rubʿ al-ʿibādāt, kitāb asrār al-ṣawm).

648 For example: Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Māwardī, al-Ḥāwī al-kabīr fī fiqh madhhab al-Imām al-Shāfiʻī: wa-huwa sharḥ Mukhtaṣar al-Muzanī, ed. ʿĀdil Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Mawjūd and ʿAlī Muḥammad Maʿʿūḍ (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1414/1994), 3:465; Nawawī, Majmūʿ, 6:399.

649 Shāfiʿī, Al-Umm, 2:255.

650 The ḥadīth exists in numerous textual variants. See the listed references in: Wensinck et al., Concordance, 3:65, s.v. shātama (“wa-in imruʾ qātalahu aw shātamahu falyaqul”). It appears under

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The dialectic of law and ethics with regard to this issue is illustrated particularly well in

one of the more extensive treatments of it in early fiqh literature. It comes from the lost

Kitāb al-Mujarrad of al-Ḥasan b. Ziyād al-Luʾluʾī (d. 204/819–20), an exact contemporary of

al-Shāfiʿī and a student of Abū Ḥanīfa. Parts of it were incorporated into the existing

recensions of al-Shaybānī’s Aṣl, and in one of these sections from the chapter on fasting,

we find the following discussion of a peculiar scenario—ostensibly quoting Imām Abū

Ḥanīfa himself:

If he [a fasting person] backbites another or slanders a chaste woman (qadhafa muḥṣana), and presumes (ẓanna) that it voided his fast, or he seeks a fatwā on it from a scholar, or interprets a ḥadīth about it--and then after that he breaks his fast—then both qaḍāʾ and kaffāra becomes obligatory for him. If it is said: he broke his fast over what God has prohibited, or if it is said: “ghība voids the fast,” then its interpretation is deemed (fa-jaʿala bi-taʾwīl dhālik) to be the voiding of piety (ifṭār al-birr), not the voiding of the fast. That means he has been deprived of his piety, for he went from piety towards sin. And the proof is the people’s consensus that one can hardly escape from [the obligation of] his fast by backbiting or by lying.651

The specific consideration here is of someone who has engaged in ghība or qadhf while

fasting and decides to end the fast due to an impression (erroneous, according to this

doctrine) that it is already void. According to al-Ḥasan b. Ziyād, Abū Ḥanīfa’s view

the heading “bāb ḥifẓ al-lisān li-l-ṣāʾim in Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj, Ṣaḥīḥ, 2:806, no. 1151 (kitāb 13. al-ṣiyām, bāb 29). Abū Dāwūd’s heading is more specific: “ghība of the fasting,” Sunan, 4:287, 2351 (kitāb 8. al-ṣiyām, bāb 25).

651 Shaybānī, al-Aṣl, 2:204.

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requires the person to both make up that day’s fast and expiate for it—equivalent to

what would be required if he or she deliberately ate or drink or had sexual intercourse

while fasting. The logic, it seems, is that since ghība technically does not void the fast, the

decision to end it is a violation of the obligation and thus requires both qaḍāʾ and kaffāra.

The hypothetical, in other words, arises precisely on account of the premise that is the

standard legal ruling: ghība does not break one’s fast. In its discussion of the scenario,

however, this exceptionally rich passage provides a testimony to the history outlined

above. By raising the issue as a matter of law, it attests to a debate among early Muslims

on the seriousness of ghība in religious life: even if it does not affect the fulfillment of

their ritual obligations, it still has the power to undermine their piety and eliminate any

rewards for their worship. No less importantly, we witness here how jurists had to

grapple with the circulation of copious ḥadīth on the topic that may well lead Muslims to

believe that gossip and slander nullifies their fasts.

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CHAPTER 5

Ghība and the Somatics of Sin in Islamic Ethics

In his Kitāb al-Ṣamt, Ibn Abī l-Dunyā relates the vivid account of a bad dream that

supposedly haunted a pious Muslim man who had lived in Baṣra over a century earlier. It

illustrates a lesson in moral compunction that our author must have found compelling,

as he also reports it in his book on the topic of dreams, the Kitāb al-Manām.652 The story is

related in the first person by Khālid al-Rabaʿī, who appears to have been a contemporary

of the more famous sages of his hometown, Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (d. 110/728) and Ibn Sīrīn (d.

110/729).653 Khālid recounts that he once entered the mosque and sat with a group of

people who happened to be talking about a certain someone (dhakarū rajulan). He asked

652 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Kitāb al-Manām, 60–61, no. 109.

653 This figure is identified incorrectly by Najm Khalaf in his edition of the Kitāb al-Ṣamt, 312n4. Given a clearly Baṣran isnād, the narrative’s attribution is almost certainly to Khālid b. Bāb al-Rabaʿī al-Aḥdab (and not Khālid b. Rabaʿī al-Asadī of Kūfa, who is mostly on record for ḥadīth on behalf of Ibn Masʿūd rather than his own dicta). Biographical details on Khālid al-Rabaʿī are scant. He is mainly known for transmitting from the Syrian muḥaddith Shahr b. Ḥawshab (d. 111–12/730–31), and has a handful of sundry traditions to his credit preserved in several sources but discounted from the canonical collections—presumably on account of his mixed reputation among rijāl critics (notably, his ḥadīth were “abandoned” by Abū Zurʿa al-Rāzī; nevertheless, he would be considered thiqa by Ibn Ḥibbān as well as by the late-medieval Ḥanafī jurist Ibn Qutlūbughā). See the entries in: Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī, Kitāb al-tārīkh al-kabīr (Hyderabad: Majlis Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif al-ʿUthmāniyya, 1360–78/1941–59), 3:141–42, no. 479; Ibn Abī Ḥātim al-Rāzī, al-Jarḥ wa-al-taʿdīl, 3:322; Muḥammad Ibn Ḥibbān, Kitāb al-Thiqāt, 1st ed. (Hyderabad: Majlis Dāʾirat al-Maʿārif al-ʿUthmāniyya, 1393–1403/1973–83), 6:252; Qāsim Ibn Quṭlūbughā, al-Thiqāt mimman yaqaʿ fī l-kutub al-sitta, ed. Shādī b. Muḥammad b. Sālim Āl Nuʿmān (Ṣanʿāʾ: Markaz al-Nuʿmān li-l-Buḥūth wa-l-Dirāsāt al-Islāmiyya, 1432/2011), 4:91.

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them to stop, and they obliged. But then in the course of conversation, they inevitably

returned to gossiping about the person and Khālid too joined in on some of it (dakhaltu

maʿahum fī shayʾ min amrihi).654 That night he had a dream, in which “something dark and

very tall” offered him a dish full of pork.655 Shocked, Khālid refused and swore by God he

would not eat the flesh of swine. The apparition now scolded him sharply and ordered

him to eat, thrusting some of the meat into his mouth. Khālid began to chew without

swallowing but was too terrified to spit it out, when suddenly he woke up from the

nightmare. For thirteen days and nights afterwards, he says, he remained without eating

for fear of tasting that forbidden food in his mouth. In other versions of the story as later

recorded by Abū l-Shaykh al-Iṣfahānī (d. 369/979) and Abū Bakr al-Bayhaqī (d. 458/1066),

the distraught Khālid says he continued to feel the odor of that meat in his mouth for

nearly two months.656

654 The phrase “min amrihi” does not appear in K. al-Ṣamt, but is retained in the MS of al-Manām (albeit omitted in the earlier editions of it), as noted by Kinberg: Kitāb al-Manām, 61n2. The other variants omit this statement altogether, simply noting that “they returned to mentioning him” (thumma ʿādū fī dhikrihi), while Abū l-Shaykh’s version has Khālid adding that “it was as if I agreed with them” (fakaʾannī yaʿnī wāfaqtuhum).

655 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 312–313, no. 182. The text describes the dish as ṭabaq khilāf i.e. a straw-basket made from musk willow (Salix aegyptiaca), an item also known to have been used to serve bread at the ʿAbbāsid court of al-Muhtadī in 255/869; see Abū ’l-Faraj Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Muntaẓam fī tārīkh al-mulūk wa-l-umam, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā, Muṣṭafā ʿAbd al-Qādir ʿAṭā, and Ibrāhīm Shams al-Dīn (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmīya, 1992), 12:83.

656 Abū l-Shaykh al-Iṣfahānī, Tawbīkh, 230–31, no. 209; Bayhaqī, Shuʿab al-īmān, 9:81, no. 6287.

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Ibn Abī l-Dunyā treats Khālid’s experience as representing nothing short of a

divine intervention, in keeping with the wider cultural significance of dreams in

medieval Islamic society.657 In al-Manām, he appends to the story a succinct dictum by an

Ibn Wāṣil al-Ḍabbī, that “when God wishes well for a worshipper, He reprimands him in

his sleep.”658 The dream was thus God’s way of reprimanding Khālid for his nonchalant

participation in the sin of backbiting, precisely an example of what Leah Kinberg has

dubbed in her study of Kitāb al-Manām as “morality in the guise of dreams.”659 The

framing of the story in the Kitāb al-Ṣamt, on the other hand, emphasizes this object of

censure itself. There, Ibn Abī l-Dunyā next goes on to report that he heard one of his own

teachers, the devout Baghdadi scholar Yaḥyā b. Ayyūb (d. 234/848) claiming to have seen

a similar dream that left a greasy taste (ṭaʿm al-dasim) on his lips for days afterwards, and

that this happened because “he used to keep company with a man who backbites

657 The literature on dreams in Islamic history is now quite extensive. A representative bibliography includes: John C. Lamoreaux, The Early Muslim Tradition of Dream Interpretation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002); Louise Marlow, ed., Dreaming across Boundaries: The Interpretation of Dreams in Islamic Lands (Boston: Ilex Foundation, 2008); Özgen Felek and Alexander D. Knysh, eds., Dreams and Visions in Islamic Societies (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2012); Elizabeth Sirriyeh, Dreams & Visions in the World of Islam: A History of Muslim Dreaming and Foreknowing (London: I.B. Tauris, 2015).

658 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Kitāb al-Manām, 61, no. 110.

659 “Introduction,” Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, 21–26.

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people.”660 The currency of a pious lore thus came to be vindicated through a more

immediate witness, in a disturbing dream that recurred across generations.

The imagery of this haunting dream is clearly not incidental to the moral of the

story, as conveyed especially in the sensory detail about the aftertaste experienced and

emphasized by Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s own shaykh. The prohibited meat symbolically echoes

the central metaphor in Islamic teachings against gossip and slander, rooted in the

Qurʾānic verse (49:12) that compares ghība to eating the flesh of one’s dead brother. As

we have seen, this idiom itself goes back to biblical and late antique literature, although

it would thrive distinctly in the Islamic tradition. Numerous parables involving the

Prophet or his followers recount episodes in which the evil of backbiting became

manifest to the visual or olfactory senses as the rotting flesh of dead bodies. The

metaphor could thus become material reality, and pious Muslims over the centuries

would hear and retell these stories amidst its ever-looming danger. More frightening

still, it pervaded the eschatological imaginary, in which even mundane sins committed in

this world can have grave consequences in the hereafter. Backbiters are said to be

prominent among the sinners in hell, subjected to measure-for-measure punishments

that physically enact the symbolic effects of their misdeed upon their own bodies. While

660 “wa-dhālik annahu kāna yujālis rajulan yaghtāb al-nās,” Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 313, no. 183.

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some of these eschatological ideas in particular stem from continuous older traditions,

and may even be linked to specific ancient Jewish or Christian apocalyptic works, they

are imbued in a Qurʾānic language and reflect the worldview of the pious Muslim

renunciants.

Ghība is the cardinal vice in the pious ethics of speech, and this chapter closely

follows the discourse on it across various genre of early Islamic thought. To understand

the centrality of ghība in Islamic ethics requires that we historicize its conception in light

of the Zuhd movement. In turn, the distinct preoccupation with the sin of slander helps

us understand the broader ethos of late antique asceticism and its inheritors among

early Muslim renunciants. The rhetoric and vocabulary through which they spoke about

it obliges us to take seriously the metaphor of consuming flesh. Much of the ḥadīth and

other early traditions about ghība revolve around this metaphor, developed to its fullest

potentials through deliberately sensory language and sometimes extremely graphic

details. A sin would thus remain not only a clear scriptural prohibition, but could become

a matter of emotive and indeed embodied ethics. Through a discourse of “word made

flesh,” in an altogether very different sense than in our familiar idiom, pious Muslims

contemplated and experienced the implications of backbiting through various senses—

sight, smell, taste and touch. The sin of ghība was therefore a primary means by which to

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conceptualize speech as a bodily function with effects in the material world. I argue that

the early Muslim pious sought to cultivate a somatic response to ghība through an

embodied ethics: vices, even of mere words, could have ritual consequences. The Zuhd

movement embraced a conscious discipline of disgust in response to sinful vices, just as

it sought to inculcate the virtues through ritual and embodied piety. Even a passive

engagement in ghība could thus elicit the taste of forbidden flesh lingering for days on

the lips of a devoted Muslim.

I. Towards an Islamic Reinvention of the Ascetic Tradition on Slander

The story of Khālid al-Rabaʿī’s nightmare, while it does not appear in the extant

zuhd compilations per se but in related literature, nevertheless places him squarely

within the tradition of the zuhd movement. It portrays the characteristic scrupulosity of

the early Muslim ascetics, or at least a case of serious compunction over a lapse as such.

It also brings into purview the ascetic cultures of the late antique Near East more

broadly, and their deep concern with the perils of mundane talk. In fact, a somewhat

similar anecdote about a visionary experience in response to gossip is also related in the

Christian tradition about one of the Desert Fathers named John the Sabaite, recorded in

the Apophthegmata Patrum collections as well as in a work conventionally attributed to

Anastasius of Sinai (d. ca. 701 CE), the prolific seventh-century theologian and an

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important early witness to the emergence of Islam in his environs. The latter presents

the story as a reminder of how “slander is something terrible and grievous.”661 Despite

the broader and more specific continuities we have charted between late antique and

early Islamic ascetic thought on slander, some similar tropes nevertheless reveal

differences of emphasis and thus help identify where and how Muslims adopted a

distinctly new language.

The story of John the Sabaite’s vision appears in both the AP (in the second part,

the “anonymous” collection) and in Anastasius’s Tales of the Sinai Fathers as a first-person

narrative.662 John relates that during his withdrawal in the desert, a fellow monk came to

661 Anastasius of Sinai, “Collection I: Tales of the Sinai Fathers,” in Daniel F. Caner, ed., History and Hagiography from the Late Antique Sinai: Including Translations of Pseudo-Nilus’ Narrations, Ammonius’ Report on the Slaughter of the Monks of Sinai and Rhaithou, and Anastasius of Sinai’s Tales of the Sinai Fathers, Translated Texts for Historians 53 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2010), 187. While conventionally attributed to Anastasius and dated to the 660s, this particular compilation might be the work of another earlier author, before 629 CE. On this debate, see the references cited by Stephen Shoemaker, “Anastasius of Sinai and the Beginnings of Islam,” Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies 1, no. 2 (2018): 139, https://doi.org/10.1353/joc.2018.0019.

662 Anastasius of Sinai, “Collection I” in History and Hagiography from Sinai, 187, I.25 [Nau 17]; Wortley, Anonymous Sayings, 623, N.761bis. Regarding the identity of John the Sabaite, so-called for his sometime affiliation with the Mar Saba monastery and who may have lived in the first half of the sixth century CE, see: Caner, History and Hagiography from Sinai, 181n52; Chitty, The Desert a City, 172–73. This vision is the only account of John that made it into the Apophthegmata Patrum, but he features in a number of other stories in Anastasius of Sinai’s text, as well as in the famous Ladder of Divine Ascent by John Climacus (d. 649), who appears to have known the Sabaite.

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visit him so he inquired about a father back at the monastery who had “a bad name.”663

When told that his reputation was unchanged, John responded with an “oof!” (Οὔφ) but

as soon as he uttered the expression of disapproval, he got carried off into a trance in

which he saw himself in Golgotha standing before Christ on the crucifix between two

criminals. John rushed to venerate him, but Jesus ordered the angels surrounding him to

throw out John, for “he is an Antichrist, because he has condemned his brother before I

myself have judged him.” John was chased out but his cowl or pallium got stuck in the

gate, at which point he awoke from his stupor and informed his visitor that this was a

terrible day on which he lost that symbolic protection of God. From that day forward,

John the Sabaite roamed the desert in silence for seven years, without bread or shelter,

until he was given back his cowl through another vision. The unnamed transmitters of

the narrative conclude that when they “heard this about the wondrous John, we said: ‘If

the righteous will scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and sinner appear?’”664 This

is a quotation from the Gospels, 1 Peter 4:18.

663 Wortley, Anonymous Sayings, 623. Cf. “a bad reputation stuck to his name,” History and Hagiography from Sinai, 187.

664 Wortley, Anonymous Sayings, 623. The variant in Anastasius adds here: “and the lascivious.” History and Hagiography from Sinai, 188n88.

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Spanning the gulf of a few centuries and between the Greek and Arabic literary

traditions, the tales about John the Sabaite and Khālid al-Rabaʿī share a number of basic

narrative elements. Both concern a moment of casual backbiting about an absent

individual which then instigates a traumatic dream or vision, by means of which the

ascetic realizes his error and continues to suffer from a prolonged remorse experienced

as an after-effect of the vision. But the similarities end there, as all the other details

differ in both context and symbolism. Khālid sinned through careless participation in

urban society, whereas John’s was the outcome of mere social contact in the lonely

desert. This difference in context certainly helps to illustrate the nature of their

respective worldly struggles and some of the differences in ethos between the askēsis of

the Desert Fathers and the zuhd of the Baṣran renunciants—though we should by no

means reduce this to a strict dichotomy and overlook other forms of late antique

monasticism.

Reading the account of Khālid al-Rabaʿī against that of John the Sabaite, an overt

and significant contrast remains in the different symbolic idioms by which the two

figures experienced and articulated their remorse about the same vice. John’s vision

centers on the Crucifixion itself, and the removal of divine protection in the figurative

loss of his vestment. Khālid’s dream, on the other hand, adopts a distinctly Islamic

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language: even without spelling it out, the image of being forced to eat pork meat would

immediately recall for a Muslim audience the Qurʾānic metaphor for backbiting. While

the Qurʾān compares ghība to specifically eating the flesh of one’s dead brother,

forbidden flesh in general would remain the language by which the Islamic tradition

would speak of it. Admittedly, John’s story also features a dietary motif, as during his

seven years of withdrawal he is said to have refrained from both speech and bread—thus

avoiding the staple food, reminiscent of the Boskoi monks or “grazers” who lived off wild

herbs.665 This typically penitential response, however, markedly differs from the

outcome of the dream experienced by Khālid al-Rabaʿī and others after him—for whom it

is enough to be reminded of the taste of their sin. Other Islamic legends will take this

farther: the consumed flesh will have to be excised from the bodies of those who

committed ghība. Interestingly, some of these stories are set in the context of fasting, and

thus continue the strain of thought in late antique asceticism in which gossip was

perceived as especially dangerous when fasting.

665 The Boskoi are attested primarily in the Pratum Spirituale or “The Spiritual Meadow” of the sixth-century Damascene monk John Moschos (d. 619 CE). See John Wortley, “‘Grazers’ (Βοσκoί) in the Judaean Desert,” in The Sabaite Heritage in the Orthodox Church from the Fifth Century to the Present, ed. Joseph Patrick, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 98 (Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 37–48.

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II. Fleshing Out a Metaphor

As we have seen from the discussion in Chapter 4, classical works of Islamic

jurisprudence and the related ḥadīth literature retain buried layers of an early debate on

the ritual implications of bad speech, including the problem of whether ghība nullifies

one’s fast. No less important to appreciate than the substance of those debates is the

language in which it was carried out, and the narratives circulated by the zuhd tradition

as useful for moral education. The juridical question may have been settled, but as late as

the mid-third century AH, the Kūfan muḥaddith Hannād b. al-Sarī (d. 243/857) would

collect and transmit pious dicta preaching that ghība broke one’s fast.666 In particular, the

ancient and Qurʾānic idiom of slander as eating the flesh of another continued to seize

the pious imagination. As moralizing ascetics since at least the fourth century have put it

time and again, how could one claim to be fasting if they bite others behinds their backs?

The Prophet Muḥammad is alleged have said, in a ḥadīth taught by Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ and

recorded by no less than two of his famous students, Ibn Abī Shayba and Hannād: “He

does not fast, who keeps eating the flesh of people.”667 Since ghība was understood as a

666 “When the one who is fasting backbites, he has broken his fast” (idhā ghtāba l-ṣāʾim afṭara): Companion tradition attributed to Anas b. Mālik, and recorded from Wakīʿ in the chapter on ghība and fasting in: Hannād b. al-Sarī, Zuhd, 2:573, no. 1204.

667 “mā ṣama man ẓalla yaʾkul luḥūm al-nās,” Ibn Abī Shayba, Muṣannaf, 4:10, no. 8975 (= ed. Bombay 3:4); Hannād b. al-Sarī, Zuhd, 2:573.

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kind of consumption, it is no surprise that it was discussed so much in relation to fasting;

conversely, it only makes sense why the ascetics were so fearful of gossip while fasting,

as they regarded it as effectively eating flesh. The implications of this premise were

imagined rather vividly in some examples of Prophetic lore circulating in Baṣra by at

least the early second century AH, and which would captivate the pious and the ḥadīth

scholars for generation.

A. Exorcising Sin: The Tale of Two Fasting Women

A number of the traditions assembled in Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s chapter on critiques

(dhamm) of ghība in the Kitāb al-Ṣamt relate to fasting, and some of these describe the

Prophet helping others recuperate their fasts by making them realize they had failed to

stop backbiting. One such story about a pair of gossiping women appears in two long

reports—clearly different versions of the same basic motif, with expanded narratives

derived from an oral preaching context.668 Both feature Baṣran isnāds with devout men

known for their worship or renunciation (as ʿābid or zāhid). The version by Sulaymān al-

Taymī (d. 143/761) came from an unidentified narrator whom he heard sharing it at a

majlis of his senior shaykh Abū ʿUthmān al-Nahdī (d. ca. 100/718–19), and is recorded as

668 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 304–07, nos. 170 & 171.

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well in the Musnad of Ibn Ḥanbal with the notation “al-maʿnā,” meaning what we have is a

gist rather than a verbatim account.669 It is attributed to a mawlā of the Prophet named

ʿUbayd, who relates that two unnamed women of al-Anṣār had been fasting and a man

went over at some point to inform the Prophet that they were dying of thirst,

presumably imploring to let them break the fast, but the Prophet turned away. When the

man came back again because they were nearly dying, the Prophet summoned the two

and asked to be brought a goblet or bowl (ʿusṣ aw qadaḥ). He then ordered each woman in

turn to vomit, and out came a lot of blood, pus (qayḥ), serum (ṣadīd), and fresh meat (laḥm

ʿabīṭ) until the bowl was full. The Prophet then declared: “These two abstained from what

God has made permissible to them but broke their fast with what God has prohibited, as

one sat with the other and started eating the flesh of people.”670 In the other account, the

Prophet is sent word of what the two girls (fatāt) vomited upon his instruction, and what

came out was “a clot of blood” (ʿalaqa min dam). Upon hearing this, he swore: “By Him

669 Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Musnad, 39:59–60, no. 23653 (musnad ʿUbayd mawlā al-Nabī). Ibn Ḥanbal had two informants relating it from Sulaymān b. Ṭarkhān al-Taymī, whose unnamed source would obviously leave this isnād open to criticism. Biographies of Sulaymān, however, mention that Ibn Ḥanbal considered him thiqa and preferred his transmissions of Abū ʿUthmān al-Nahdī over those of another (ʿĀṣim al-Aḥwal). Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām, 6:197.

670 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 307; Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Musnad, 39:60.

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who has Muḥammad in His hands, if it had remained in their stomachs, the Fire would

have consumed them.”671

The shock of the narrative climax in this story lies in the details of the repulsive

bodily matter expelled by the two women. In fact, the text relishes the moment and

repeats the same list as the Prophet turns to each and asks her to vomit. This stylistic

element hints at the narrative’s likely origins in an oral storytelling context. But even a

serious scholar like Ibn Ḥanbal could not readily dismiss it as mere populist fable: the

attribution merited attention, given ʿUbayd’s status as a mawlā of the Prophet and hence

theoretically a Companion, though he remains otherwise obscure with only this and

another ḥadīth to his credit, both with flawed isnāds.672 Of course, Ibn Ḥanbal was also a

voracious ḥadīth collector relative to his contemporaries in the ṣaḥīḥ movement who

ignored this tale of the two women, and he owed his confidence here to the multiple

extant transmissions—including the corroborating testimony of ʿUthmān b. Ghiyāth (d.

ca. 150s/770s), a Baṣran murjiʿī who was present at the same gathering (ḥalqa) at al-

671 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 305. This version of the story is attributed to Anas b. Mālik, and is also recorded with the same isnād in: Ṭayālisī, Musnad, 3:577, no. 2221.

672 Both were known to al-Bukhārī and regarded as “mursal” (disconnected). He refers to the above as “the ḥadīth on fasting.” Kitāb al-tārīkh al-kabīr, 5:440, no. 1433.

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Nahdī’s where the unnamed man narrated the story.673 What we see here is the incessant

popularity of a tradition despite its ḍaʿīf transmission in the eyes of later ḥadīth critics:

Ibn Ḥanbal recorded it from no less than four teachers, one of whom (Yazīd b. Hārūn)

was the mutual source for Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s informant. The matn and the motif of the

tradition had a distinct appeal, especially for the theme of the Kitāb al-Ṣamt. It offered a

vivid illustration to the ubiquitous canonical ḥadīth describing the fast as a junna or

protective shield—albeit one that could be broken by ghība, as Ḥafṣa bint Sīrīn and others

would add.674 Fasting can help guard one from sin and hence from the Fire, as a variant of

the junna tradition puts it, but the spiritual wisdom attributed to Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq was a

reminder that the fire of envy can still burn up inside. The Prophetic miracle in this

legend of the two fasting women was therefore to exorcise the potential fire within

them—and indeed, al-Bayhaqī (d. 458/1066) would even include this story among the

“dalāʾil al-nubuwwa” or the proofs of Muḥammad’s prophecy.675 The logic of this miracle

673 Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Musnad, 39:61, nos. 23655–56 (musnad ʿUbayd mawlā al-Nabī). On the method of Ibn Ḥanbal’s compilation, and why it would explain his inclusion of this report and its variants, see: Christopher Melchert, “The Musnad of Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal: How It Was Composed and What Distinguishes It from the Six Books,” Der Islam 82, no. 1 (2005), https://doi.org/10.1515/islm.2005.82.1.32.

674 Wensinck et al., Concordance, 1:380, s.v. “al-ṣiyām junna”; ʿAbd al-Razzāq al-Ṣanʿānī, Muṣannaf, 4:118, no. 8037. See the discussion in Chapter 4.

675 Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. al-Ḥusayn al-Bayhaqī, Dalāʾil al-nubuwwa wa maʿrifat aḥwāl ṣāḥīb al-sharīʿa, ed. ʿAbd al-Muʿṭī Qalʿajī (Cairo: Dār al-Bayān li-l-Turāth, 1408/1988), 6:186.

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rests squarely on the language of slander as consumption, a theme developed further in

other traditions.

B. Prophetology and the Sight or Smell of Ghība

The tale of the two fasting women relies on prophetology as a literary device for

moral instruction, Muḥammad being the seer with an ability to disclose the ultimate

reality of things—in this case, the great evil of seemingly ordinary speech. Since the

fundamental problem with ghība is that one can engage in it almost unwittingly, the

Prophet intervenes to correct the behavior of those around him and reveal the gravity of

their mistakes. Ibn Abī l-Dunyā and al-Kharāʾiṭī both record a tradition about ʿĀʾisha

recounting one such scenario, as she exhorts: “Do not backbite one another! For I once

said about a woman, while I was in the presence of the Prophet: ‘This one has got a long

tail!’ And he said: ‘Spit it out! Spit it out!’ Then I spit out a morsel of meat.”676 This is

clearly a variation on the common ḥadīth about ghība we have already seen in Chapter 3,

in which ʿĀʾisha makes a disparaging remark on the appearance of someone else—

676 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 332, no. 216; Dhamm al-ghība, 132–33, no. 67; Kharāʾiṭī, Masāwīʾ al-akhlāq, 100–01, no. 201. The report’s isnād available to Ibn Abī l-Dunyā and al-Kharāʾiṭī go back to an obscure source relating from ʿĀʾisha, a woman named Ghibṭa in the former or Rābiṭa (bint Khālid) in the latter—with further variants ʿAṭiyya and Qibṭa noted on the margin in the Cairo MS of K. al-Ṣamt, as per Najm Khalaf’s editorial note on p. 332n5. The report is later reproduced, without any isnād, in the following texts: Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, 5:513; Orfali and Baalbaki, Book of Noble Character, 115–16.

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frequently another of the Prophet’s wives, but here an unnamed woman and presumably

referring to the hem of her long dress dragging behind her. But whereas in other

versions the Prophet simply reprimands that she has just committed ghība, in this

instance things take a more dramatic turn as he immediately asks her to spit out what

she turns out to have swallowed unawares. It is as if the moment she gossiped, ʿĀʾisha ate

an actual lump of flesh but thanks to the Prophet’s miraculous intervention, she could

metaphorically undo her error as it were by literally expelling it from her mouth.

Early Islamic traditions thus portray the mundane reality of gossip and

backbiting as a material fact of this world, albeit unseen and imperceptible until pointed

out by the Prophet himself. This explains a fairly well-known ḥadīth, which immediately

follows the above in the Kitāb al-Ṣamt and in fact opens the section on ghība in Bukhārī’s

Adab al-mufrad: reportedly according to Jābir b. ʿAbdallāh, some Companions were with

the Prophet once when there arose a “disgusting putrid smell” (rīḥ khabītha muntina). The

Prophet told them: “Do you know what that is? It is the smell of those who backbite

believers (muʾminīn).”677 A variant of the same ḥadīth specifically blames “a group of

677 Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 332–33, no. 217; Dhamm al-ghība, 134–35, no. 69; Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī, al-Adab al-mufrad, ed. ʿAlī ʿAbd al-Bāsiṭ Mazīd and ʿAlī ʿAbd al-Maqṣūd Raḍwān, 1st ed. (Cairo: Maktabat al-Khānjī, 1423/2003), 335, no. 732. The only major collectors to include this ḥadīth: Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Musnad, 23:97, no. 14784 (musnad Jābir b. ʿAbdallāh); ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd, al-Muntakhab min Musnad, ed. Abū ʿAbdallāh Muṣṭafā b. al-ʿAdawī, 2nd ed. (Riyadh: Dār Balansiyya, 1423 AH/2002 CE), 2:140, no. 1026 (min musnad Jābir b. ʿAbdallāh). Among later

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hypocrites” (munāfiqūn) backbiting Muslims.678 This additional detail recalls a similar

motif from another tradition also associated with Jābir, in which an abrupt strong smell

felt outside Medina was declared by the Prophet to mark the death of a munāfiq, as

indeed turned out to be the case when they returned to the city and learned of the

funeral of a leader figure among the hypocrites.679 Like a duplicitous member of the

community of believers, the sin of ghība is thus portrayed as hiding in plain sight until its

pernicious odor is disclosed and identified by the Prophet. By extension of its effects on

the individual and his or her relationship to those slandered, ghība becomes a malaise of

the social body as a whole.

i. “Traces of Meat in Your Teeth:” The Tale of Zayd b. Thābit

Of course, Muḥammad’s prophetic abilities were understood to include

knowledge of things he did not himself see or hear. This naturally motivates some of the

pious legends about ghība, since it is by definition that which is uttered in one’s absence.

thematic works to adduce this report in discussions of ghība: Kharāʾiṭī, Masāwīʾ al-akhlāq, 97, no. 191; Abū l-Layth al-Samarqandī, Tanbīh al-ghāfilīn, 155, no. 208 (bāb al-ghība); Zandawīstī, “Rawḍat al-ʿulamāʾ,” fol. 144r.

678 Bukhārī, al-Adab al-mufrad, 335, no. 733; Kharāʾiṭī, Masāwīʾ al-akhlāq, 96, no. 189.

679 Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj, Ṣaḥīḥ, 2145–46, no. 2782 (kitāb 50. ṣifāt al-munāfiqīn wa-aḥkāmihim); Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, Musnad, 22:276 no. 14378; 23:35, no. 14676; 23:71, no. 14732 (musnad Jābir b. ʿAbdallāh).

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Sensing the incidence of slander in his community, the Prophet could point out the

wrong to those engaged in it. The theme is developed in the two elaborate tales

involving Salmān al-Fārisī and Zayd b. Thābit respectively, the former discussed already

in Chapter 3 as the alleged occasion of revelation for the Qurʾānic verse on ghība, Q 49:12.

Both traditions may well be variants of the same basic story, since they share a similar

plot: some Companions send off the protagonist to the Prophet asking him for food, only

to be told by the Prophet that they have already just eaten, by talking about and

backbiting their delegate as soon as he was gone. As far as the telling of these store is

concerned, it almost does not matter what their ghība was about, the exact substance of

which varies between different accounts if they even care to detail it. Instead, the moral

of the story centers on the idiom of ghība as consumption.

The desire for meat in particular drive the plot of the story involving Zayd b.

Thābit al-Anṣārī, regarded in Islamic tradition as one of the scribes of the Prophet. The

premise describes Zayd relating ḥadīth at the Prophet’s mosque one day, when some

meat is brought to the Prophet as a gift. The Companions assembled at the mosque send

Zayd indoors to request some of it. But as they begin talking derisively about Zayd while

he is inside, the Prophet instructs him to return and tell them they have already eaten

meat just now. The Companions swear they have not had any for a while, and Zayd gets

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sent back and forth. Finally, the others come to plead before the Prophet themselves but

he informs them: “You have just now eaten the flesh of your brother Zayd, and the trace

of the meat (athar al-laḥm) is between your teeth.”680 So they spit until they saw the

bloody redness of meat (ḥumrat al-laḥm) coming out of their mouth. The Companions

immediately realize their misdeed and repent, asking Zayd for his forgiveness: “We did

not mean by those words anything but good.”

Like some of the other extended narratives discussed here, this tradition has the

hallmarks of oral storytelling—including the ways in which its two known variants

diverge in certain details but retain other key elements. The story appears to have

circulated mainly if not almost exclusively among pious traditionists in the Khorāsān

area. Abū l-Layth al-Samarqandī (d. 373/983) heard it from his father, one of the many

didactic ḥikāyāt or tales recorded on his behalf in Tanbīh al-ghāfilīn.681 Al-Ḥākim al-

Naysābūrī (d. 405/1014) recorded it from a local teacher, the Ḥanafī jurist and devout

renunciant Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Zāhid (d. 338/949), while al-Zandawīstī’s source was

680 Zandawīstī, “Rawḍat al-ʿulamāʾ,” fol. 144v; Abū l-Layth al-Samarqandī, Tanbīh al-ghāfilīn, 155, no. 207 (bāb al-ghība).

681 As in about half a dozen other instances, Abū l-Layth introduces this story with the phrase “samiʿtu abī yaḥkī” and without any isnād (Tanbīh al-ghāfilīn, 155) as opposed to other narratives designated with the terms ḥaddathanā or rawā. On his life and work, and the “morally uplifting and edifying tales” learned from his father, see: Wilferd Madelung and Farhad Daftary, eds., Encyclopaedia Islamica (London: Brill, 2008–), s.v. Abū al-Layth al-Samarqandī.

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possibly also from Nīshāpūr or a local Bukhāran like many of his teachers.682 Among the

three authors, al-Ḥākim is the only one to provide a full isnād, and indeed the only

serious ḥadīth critic to deem it worthy of attention: he includes it in his Mustadrak as a

ḥadīth that should be deemed ṣaḥīḥ by the standards of Bukhārī and Muslim but was not

recorded by either.683 Interestingly, whereas the putative narrator of al-Zandawīstī’s

version is a different Companion’s son (ʿAbdallāh b. ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ), the version by al-

Ḥākim is related on the authority of Zayd himself, seemingly without concern for the

resulting awkwardness of referring to him in the third person. Moreover, the story is

presented as ostensibly a piece of family lore in Medina transmitted by his great-

grandson Ismāʿīl b. Qays b. Saʿd b. Zayd b. Thābit al-Anṣārī, a known but discredited

ḥadīth scholar.684 It is clear why Bukhārī would not record the story even if he knew it, as

682 Al-Zandawīstī names Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Ṭarāyifī as his informant, whom I have not been able to identify. On al-Ḥākim’s source, who is given the epithet al-ʿAdl al-Zāhid (“the righteous ascetic”) Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh b. Dīnār al-Naysābūrī, see: Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, 7:721, no. 266.

683 Abū ʿAbdallāh al-Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī, al-Mustadrak ʿalā l-ṣaḥīḥayn, ed. Ashraf b. Muḥammad Najīb al-Maṣrī et. al. (Damascus: Dār al-Minhāj al-Qawīm, 1439/2018), 8:725, no. 8054 (kitāb al-īmān wa-l-nudhūr).

684 According to the claim of al-Ḥākim’s isnād, the story was transmitted by Zayd b. Thābit’s son Khārija b. Zayd to his grandson (presumably the latter’s nephew) Qays b. Saʿd b. Zayd, whose son is Ismāʿīl. It may be worth noting that the name of Ismāʿil’s father, on whose authority he is said to relate the above story (“ḥaddathanī abī”), is also epigraphically attested in a recently discovered inscription in Medina, which includes his full name and genealogy as part of a standard invocation seeking divine forgiveness, as follows: “allāhumma ghfir li-Qays b. Saʿd b.

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he deemed Ismāʿīl unreliable (munkar) in ḥadīth.685 But al-Ḥākim only sought to certify

what was already known to his younger contemporaries al-Samarqandī and al-

Zandawīstī who did not care for the isnād as much, that it was a valuable and edifying

tale worth continuing to tell.

Remarkably, we do have an earlier attestation of a terse literary germ that was

probably at the genesis of this narrative about Zayd. The tafsīr attributed to ʿAbd b.

Ḥumayd (d. 249/863), which is no longer extant apart from a small fragment but was still

available to al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505), apparently recorded the following as an exegetical

tradition connected to Q 49:12, the verse about ghība. It was adduced on the authority of

ʿIkrima:

The Prophet came up to (laḥiqa) a group of people, and told them: “Pick your teeth!” (takhallalū). They replied: “O Prophet of God, we swear by God we have not eaten any food today.” The prophet said: “By God, I see the

Zayd b. Thābit al-Anṣārī.” Published online by Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh al-Ruthayʿ al-Maghdhawī, Twitter, March 19, 2016, 7:34 p.m., https://twitter.com/mohammed93athar/status/711274582951518212.

685 Bukhārī, Kitāb al-tārīkh al-kabīr, 1:370, no. 1172; Abū Aḥmad ʿAbdallāh Ibn ʿAdī al-Jurjānī, al-Kāmil fī ḍuʿafāʾ al-rijāl, ed. ʿĀdil Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Mawjūd and ʿAlī Muḥammad Muʿawwaḍ (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1418/1997), 1:489–91. On the other hand, Zayd’s son Khārija is remembered as an esteemed imām and jurist of Medina in the generation after the Companions: Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām, 4:437–41, no. 169.

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flesh of so-and-so in the gaps of your teeth (thanāyākum).” And they had been backbiting him.686

The report offers no context for the anecdote, but retains the key motif common to both

the story of Zayd and that involving Salmān al-Fārisī—which immediately succeeds the

above quotation in al-Suyūṭī’s tafsīr encyclopaedia, al-Durr al-manthūr. This suggests,

therefore, that both narratives emerged in the context of early sermons and storytelling

connected to the Qurʾānic admonition about ghība.

Why and how such a lesson was attached to Zayd b. Thābit remains unclear,

especially since the substance of the alleged gossip remains implicit: al-Ḥākim’s account

simply notes that Zayd had taken the Prophet’s place as he was preaching ḥādīh to those

gathered, but they were senior to him in age.687 The allusion here to envy and

resentment is spelled out in the other variant, according to which the Companions said

to each other when went inside: “Zayd has met the Prophet just as we have. So how does

686 Suyūṭī, al-Durr al-manthūr, 13:578. Cited in reference to the Zayd story by Yūsuf Bidīwī, editor of Abū l-Layth al-Samarqandī, Tanbīh al-ghāfilīn, 155n3. On Suyūṭī’s quotations from the Tafsīr of ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd and its brief extant recension on the margins of another tafsīr, see the observations by: Shahab Ahmed, Before Orthodoxy: The Satanic Verses in Early Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 139n260.

687 Lit. “he was younger than them in age” (kāna aḥdathahum sinnan). Ḥākim al-Naysābūrī, Mustadrak, 8:725, no. 8054 (kitāb al-īmān wa-l-nudhūr).

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he sit and narrate to us?”688 This retrojected dialogue may be informed by the

egalitarianism implicit in the later Sunnī doctrine of ʿadālat al-ṣaḥāba, the idea that the

Companions as a whole were virtuous and authoritative sources of ḥadīth.689 The

narrative uses it to imagine and understand tensions among the Companions that could

lead some to resent Zayd for his perceived special favor and talk behind his back. Of

course, resentment against Zayd is something of a trope in other traditions about him as

well, such as the disparaging remarks attributed to both Ubayy b. Kaʿb and Ibn Masʿūd,

who referred to Zayd’s Jewish past and claimed they already knew more of the Qurʾān

when Zayd was still a young boy “with two sidelocks.”690 These anecdotes arose from the

alleged controversies around Zayd’s unique role in the scribal redaction and codification

of the Qurʾān during the early caliphate after the Prophet’s death. Interestingly, the age-

based rivalry underpinning Ubayy and Ibn Masʿūd’s insulting comments about Zayd

clearly also animates al-Ḥākim’s version of our story above. If we were to accept al-

Ḥākim’s isnād for this ḥadīth at face value, then its provenance as a family tradition

688 Abū l-Layth al-Samarqandī, Tanbīh al-ghāfilīn, 155; Zandawīstī, “Rawḍat al-ʿulamāʾ,” fol. 144v.

689 On the development of this notion, see: Nancy Khalek, “Medieval Biographical Literature and the Companions of Muḥammad,” Der Islam 91, no. 2 (2014), https://doi.org/10.1515/islam-2014-0012.

690 The remarks also associate Zayd with the Michael Lecker, “Zayd b. Thābit, ‘A Jew with Two Sidelocks’: Judaism and Literacy in Pre-Islamic Medina (Yathrib),” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 56, no. 4 (1997): 259–73, https://doi.org/10.1086/468576.

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acquires a rather distinct meaning altogether: as a moralizing polemic that served Zayd’s

descendants in defending the legacy of their ancestor from such slander perpetuated by

embittered rivals among the Prophet’s Companions.691

When Muslims scholars and preachers over the centuries made use of such

stories to illustrate timeless moral lessons, they could perhaps expect their audience to

be already familiar with the cast of characters in the early Muslim community and their

respective contributions or legacies that made them memorable or relatable. Unlike the

case of Zayd b. Thābit, the similar story about Salmān al-Fārisī focuses on his role as a

lower-status servant to the other Companions who spoke derisively about him. But as

noted earlier in Chapter 3, the symbolic role of Salmān as the protagonist in such a

narrative was far from insignificant in a Persian context. For Salmān too had self-

proclaimed descendants, the so-called ahl bayt Salmān who sought to appropriate his

legacy.692 More broadly, in the gradually Islamizing world of early medieval Iran, the

figure of Salmān al-Fārisī served as what Sarah Savant has termed a “site” of cultural

691 Relevant to note here as well is the fact that much of the existing biographical details on Zayd were “preserved by ḥadīth transmitters from among his offspring who were intensely interested in the life and work of their great ancestor.” M. Lecker in EI2, s.v. Zayd b. Thābit.

692 Savant, New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran, 84.

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memory.693 While Bukhārā is not Iṣfahān, Salmān’s alleged place of origin according to

some traditions, Zandawīstī and his audience may still have found special meaning in

stories about Salmān as did Abū l-Shaykh and Abū Nuʿaym in Savant’s assessment. When

Zandawīstī opens his discussion on the harmful vice of ghība with a lengthy exegetical

tradition on Q 49:12, the tale of Salmān al-Fārisī could breathe life into an abstract

Qurʾānic injunction in a way that was particularly meaningful to a Bukhārān Muslim

audience.

Nevertheless, I would contend that the motif of these edifying tales was as

powerful as the message or the characters. As the brief anecdote from ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd’s

tafsīr helps demonstrate, a vivid motif has a long shelf-life and proves adaptable across

different stories and their settings. In this case, the scene of the Prophet exposing the

traces of blood or meat in the teeth of those who backbite embodies the moral at the

heart of the message: one might get away with gossip behind another’s back without

being heard, but it can still leave its mark in oneself—perhaps even a bitter taste in one’s

mouth, as it were. A tradition of the Desert Fathers, who gave so much thought to the

troubles of body and soul, describes how an old man once came to visit Abba Achilles and

found him spitting blood. When he asked the ascetic what the matter was, Achilles

693 Savant, 62.

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replied: “The word of a brother grieved me, I struggled not to tell him so and I prayed

God to rid me of this word. So it became like blood in my mouth and I have spat it out.

Now I am in peace, having forgotten the matter.”694 In other words, the virtuous Achilles

restrained himself from quarrelling with the person who offended him, but instead of

letting it go out of forgiveness, he let the poisonous word fester inside until it was

burning him up. He started feeling better only once he could spit it out. It may not be the

same motif, but something of this spirit continues in the ḥadīth literature on the bloody

manifestations of ghība in one’s mouth or stomach. But in the Islamic counterparts, the

Prophet appears center stage as the ultimate moral guide of his community to help save

people from themselves, lest their sins become fuel for the consuming Fire.

III. The Motif of Ghība as Decaying Flesh

In the early Muslim imagination, the sin of ghība did not only materialize as

consumed flesh in one’s mouth. Conflict in the community could be felt in the air, as in

the Prophet’s explanation for the repulsive smell in the ḥadīth of Jābir. Efforts to

similarly understand the dangerous nature of ghība through sense experience are a

defining theme of the literature. Ibn Sīrīn was reportedly once asked about ghība, to

694 APalph, Achilles 4, Ward, Sayings, 29. APsys 4.9, Wortley, Book of the Elders, 39. Quoted and analyzed by Burton-Christie, Word in the Desert, 141.

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which he responded: “have you not seen a putrid, blackish corpse?” (jīfa khaḍrāʾ

muntina).695 This small but sharp detail opens the chapter on backbiting, entitled “bāb al-

ghība,” in the Kitāb al-Zuhd of Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ, the earliest of the zuhd texts to have a

separate section on the topic. It follows up Ibn Sīrīn’s curious statement with that of

another in the same vein albeit instigated by a particular animal corpse: reportedly, ʿAmr

b. al-ʿĀṣ was once walking with some friends when they came by a dead mule. This

provoked ʿAmr to admonish his entourage that for any one of them to eat his fill of that

carcass would still be better than “to eat the flesh of his Muslim brother.”696 The rhetoric

certainly recalls the style of the Apophthegmata and especially Hyperechios’s saying on

slander. Beyond the world of fasting Christian monks, however, it no longer suffices to

say that even meat and wine would be better than to eat the flesh of one’s brother.

Instead, the Muslim holy men turned to specifically contemplate the Qurʾānic emphasis

on the flesh of one’s dead brother. For the zuhhād, ever conscious of death, the material

corruption of flesh itself thus became a rich source of symbolism.

Presumably on account of its being a Companion tradition, the saying of ʿAmr b.

al-ʿĀṣ is widely reproduced across the zuhd and akhlāq texts dealing with ghība, including

695 Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ, Zuhd, 3:747, no. 432; Hannād b. al-Sarī, Zuhd, 564, no. 1175.

696 Wakīʿ b. al-Jarrāḥ, Zuhd, 3:748, no. 433.

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twice in Ibn Abī l-Dunyā’s Ṣamt as he had it from two different sources.697 The version of

the anecdote in Bukhārī’s Adab al-mufrad adds that the mule’s body was swollen (baghl

mayyit qad infatakha), implying that its decomposition had already proceeded to a typical

second phase when the corpse becomes bloated on account of putrefactive gases forming

inside.698 Such a detail highlights the deliberately sensory language of these traditions, as

above with Ibn Sīrīn’s choice of the term khaḍrāʾ for his corpse analogy to ghība: although

referring to verdure in its basic sense, it can describe a range of colors including ash,

brown and an intense black with a greenish hue.699 The corpse he had in mind would

thus be well on its way to the stage of so-called “black putrefaction,” by when the skin

697 The respective isnāds for this report in all of these sources share as a common-link the Kūfan tābiʿī and prolific traditionist Ismāʿīl b. Abī Khālid al-Bajalī (d. 146/763–64), who was Wakīʿs direct informant; attesting to its circulation in Kūfa, Hannād lists two additional informants besides his teacher Wakīʿ. Hannād b. al-Sarī, Zuhd, 563, no. 1174; Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Ṣamt, 310, no. 177; 316, no. 188; Ibn Abī l-Dunyā, Dhamm al-ghība, 117, no. 38; 123–24, no. 50; Bukhārī, al-Adab al-mufrad, 337, no. 736; Kharāʾiṭī, Masāwīʾ al-akhlāq, 101, no. 202; Abū l-Shaykh al-Iṣfahānī, Tawbīkh, 230, no. 208. While its appeal lay mainly in this type of pious ethics literature, the report also appears in two tafsīr works as a commentary on Q 49:12, such as: Abū l-Ḥasan Wāḥidī, al-Wasīṭ fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān al-majīd, ed. ʿĀdil Aḥmad ʿAbd al-Mawjūd et. al. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1994), 4:157; Abū l-Muẓaffar Manṣūr Samʿānī, Tafsīr Al-Qurʾān, ed. Abū Tamīm Yāsir b. Ibrāhīm and Abū Bilāl Ghunaym b. ʿAbbās b. Ghunaym (Riyadh: Dār al-Waṭn, 1997), 5:228. A statement similar to that of ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ, but without the anecdotal context of a dead mule, is attributed to the Prophet himself via a weak isnād in a ḥadīth recorded by Kharāʾiṭī, Masāwīʾ al-akhlāq, 97, no. 192.

698 On the stages of decomposition: Clifton D. Bryant and Dennis L. Peck, eds., Encyclopedia of Death and the Human Experience (Los Angeles: SAGE, 2009), 1:339 (s.v. decomposition), 2:829–30 (s.v. putrefaction research).

699 Lane, Lexicon, 1:755.

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has changed from a greenish to a brown and eventually black color, and the body starts

to break down and release the bloating gases. This is also when a corpse is at its most

odoriferous. Indeed, the stench of a corpse would become a recurring motif in the

literature on ghība, and as we shall see, early Muslims had a distinct olfactory

preoccupation like many others in the ancient and late antique Near East.

Although these narratives form a part of ḥadīth literature, it may be hard to avoid

the impression that they are effectively commentaries on the Qurʾān, perhaps even

creative literary outgrowths of the related tafsīr tradition on the injunction against ghība.

In fact, the ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ story strongly echoes an exegetical report attributed to Qatāda,

in which he comments on Q 49:12 using a similar analogy to explain the logic of the

commandment: “‘Would any of you like to eat the flesh of your dead brother? You would abhor

it.’ He [God] is saying: Just as you would abhor eating of it if you came across a worm-

eaten corpse (jīfa mudawwida), likewise you must abhor backbiting him while he is

alive.”700 Both traditions thus expand on the Qurʾānic rhetoric by furnishing the

repulsive image of dead flesh with further sensory details. Otherwise, however, the ʿAmr

story has the trappings of a moral fable, highlighting a different literary context and the

pragmatic functions of pious ḥadīth.

700 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:381. Recorded also in the Tafsīr of ʿAbd b. Ḥumayd (d. 249/863), as cited by Suyūṭī, al-Durr al-manthūr, 13:576.

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A. The Taboo on Carrion

Apart from eliciting disgust, which is clearly the point, these particular traditions

about ghība may be also alluding to the basic Islamic taboo on carrion (mayta). The flesh

of a dead animal, i.e. which has not been purposefully slaughtered, is ritually impure and

prohibited for consumption by explicit scriptural decree—along with blood, pork meat,

and “that on which any other than God has been invoked.” This set of dietary

interdictions appears no less than four times in the Qurʾānic text (Q 2:173, 5:3, 6:145 and

16:115), and the commandment against carrion was perceived by outsiders already from

early on as one of the key tenets of the new religion—at least according to the

anonymous Armenian chronicle of the mid-seventh century CE.701 Carrion further

represents an intrinsic, tangible impurity (najāsa) in Islamic ritual law, with serious

implications for anything that it comes into contact with and thus defiles: in their

discussions of ṭahāra, jurists spent an inordinate amount of energy trying to delinate the

701 (Pseudo-)Sebēos writes: “So Mahmet legislated for them: not to eat carrion, not to drink wine, not to speak falsely, and not to engage in fornication.” R. W. Thomson and James Howard-Johnston, trans., The Armenian History Attributed to Sebeos, Translated Texts for Historians 31 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), 96.

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minutiae of various prohibitions and procedures around substantive impurities, such as

if a dead organism affects a body of water.702

That some Muslims did understand the Qurʾānic metaphor for ghība in relation to

the taboo on carrion is explicitly acknowledged in al-Ṭabarī’s discussion of Q 49:12,

where a section dealing with the analogy in the verse is framed precisely in this light:

you would abhor eating your dead brother’s flesh, he writes, “because God has made it

unlawful to you.”703 In support of this interpretation, al-Ṭabarī adduces Qatāda’s

abovementioned remark on worm-eaten corpses, as well as an exegetical report on this

verse attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās which states: “God has prohibited (ḥarrama) backbiting a

believer for something, just as he has prohibited carrion (al-mayta).”704 The story

involving ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀṣ could thus be understood as drawing from this same repertoire,

702 On the taboo against carrion, as well as its conceptual significance to related discussions in both Jewish and Islamic law, such as the use of its tanned hides or cheese made from carrion-derived rennet, see Joseph Schacht, “Mayta,” in EI2. It should be noted, however, that the Islamic legal implications of contact with a najis substance are not necessarily intuitive. Moreover, although a matter of some early debate, most Sunnī jurists came to understand the human body even after death as fundamentally pure. See the discussions in: Katz, Body of Text, 145–76; Ze’ev Maghen, “Close Encounters: Some Preliminary Observations on the Transmission of Impurity in Early Sunnī Jurisprudence,” Islamic Law and Society 6, no. 3 (1999): 348–92, https://doi.org/10.1163/1568519991223784.

703 Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 21:380.

704 Ṭabarī, 21:381.

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and to be using the dead mule as a foil to effectively argue that backbiting is an even

greater sin than consuming something outright ḥarām and filthy.