A Shiʿite Anthology by William C. Chittick; Allamah TabātabāʾīReview by: Annemarie SchimmelJournal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 104, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1984), pp. 778-779Published by: American Oriental SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/601936 .

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778 Journal of the American Oriental Society 104.4 (1984)

Islamic Art in the Kuwait National Museum. (The Al-Sabah Collection). Edited by MARILYN JENKINS. Pp. 156. Totowa, N.J.: SOTHEBY PUBLICATIONS. 1983. $39.95.

The foundation of a Museum of Islamic Art in Kuwait in 1983 was an event of great importance for historians of Islam. The art collection which Shaikh al-Sabah and his wife, Shaikha Hussa have brought together over the years (and which they continue to enrich constantly) contains a number of most beautiful objects. To look at the more than hundred objects shown in this book on fine color plates gives the reader an idea of the variegated treasure of the museum- treasures from all periods of Islamic history as well as from the four corners of the Islamic world. Persian and Turkish pottery and superb carpets, remarkable copies of the Qur'an and exquisite pieces of jewelry, not to mention some extraor- dinary medieval pieces of metalwork, are part of the Al- Sabah collection. Marilyn Jenkins, long associated with the growth of the museum, has written a brief, instructive intro- duction. The explanations of the published pieces are short; inscriptions on objects are usually given in text and transla- tion. One sometimes wishes that the explanatory notes were longer, but hopes that one day there will appear a full cata- logue which gives all the details and assigns the objects to their place in Islamic art history. However, this elegant book, with a delightful foreword by Shaikh al-Sabah himself, is thought of as an introduction-and a very successful one!- into a collection unique in scope and intention. One is happy to see that masterpieces of Islamic art are now beautifully housed in an Islamic country, to inspire the people of Kuwait and visitors from abroad.

ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

The Tarjuman Al-Qur'an: A Critical Analysis of Maulana Abu'-Kalam Azad's Approach to the Understanding of the Qur'an. By I. H. AZAD FARUQI. Pp. vi + 119. New Delhi: VIKAS PUBLISHING HOUSE. 1982.

Dr. Faruqi attempts in this book to analyze one of the most influential modern Indian commentaries on the Qur'dn, the incomplete Tarjuman al-Qur'dn by Abfi'l-Kalam Azdd, India's first minister of education after 1947. The first chap- ter is devoted to a brief survey of the "Origin and Develop- ment of tafsTr Literature," the second one deals with the "Formation of Maulana Azad's Thought" and gives a sum- mary of the commentary. Azad, born in 1888 from an Indian father and an Arab mother, went through a period of agnos- ticism, but developed, after the age of twenty, his own reli- gious attitude. He became the founder of some of the most

influential Muslim journals in British India after 1912 and was several times detained by the British, being a faithful supporter of the Congress and follower of Gandhi. The "Main Sources" (Chapter 3) of his work seems to be the Manar commentary of Muhammad 'Abduh, but the distinguishing feature of his commentary is his interpretation of the Fatiha which, for him as for many pious souls before him, is the quintessence of the Qur'An and therefore deserves a very special interpretation. Azad has filled a whole volume with his commentary on the Fatiha in which his central ideas are expressed: his deep faith in God's rubiibiyya, which consists of His all-pervading guidance for everything created, from the instinct of animals to human faith, culminates in his emphasis on God's rahma, His infinite mercy of which His justice is part. Azad stresses the idea of the unity of dTn, re- ligion as such, as contrasted with the multiplicity of the outward forms of religions, manifested in the sharc of each religion. Faruqi surveys briefly the sources quoted by Azad, which contain practically all historians of religion from the early twentieth century, including Soderblom. The Urmonotheismus of Father W. Schmidt seems to have in- fluenced him considerably. Strangely, the book makes no mention of the name of Shah Wallulldh who, though per- haps not quoted or used by Azad, had voiced two hundred years earlier, many ideas similar to those put forward by him, especially his conviction that the Koran should work as a living force among Muslims and not be obscured by count- less commentaries; it was this convinction that made Shah Wallulldh write his Persian translation of the Qur'dn and inspired the two Urdu translations by his sons. At this point, Faruqi's study could be complemented with an analysis of the Tar/uman al-Qur'dn in the light of the specifically Indian tradition.

ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

A Shicite Anthology. Edited and translated by WILLIAM C. CHITTICK. Selected by ALLXMAH TABkTABX2I, with an In- troduction by SEYYED HOSSEIN NASR. Pp. 152. Albany: STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS. 1980. Paper.

In his introduction to this anthology, S. H. Nasr rightly emphasizes the fact that Shi'ite hadTth (which comprises not only the words of the Prophet but also of the Imams) has been little known in the non-Shi'a world. As much as the superb Arabic prose of the Nahj al-baldgha (attributed to 'All ibn Abl Talib) attracted the admiration of Western scholars in a still early stage of Oriental studies, only a few Europeans have studied it in depth. This anthology aims at

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Brief Reviews 779

remedying the situation. It contains fine English translations of Arabic texts selected by one of the great contemporary Persian theologians, 'Allamah Tabataba'T. These fall into three categories: the first part deals with the Unity of God as

described by the Prophet, by 'AlT and several later Imams to

'AlT ar-Rida. The second one contains a translation of cAlT's instructions to Malik al-Ashtar, in which the rules of state- craft are laid down, and the third part are prayers ascribed to the third, fourth and twelfth Imams. They maintain their

exquisite beauty and rhythmical flow even in the translation. Chittick has added numerous notes and explanations. The booklet, its brevity notwithstanding, forms an excellent in- troduction to Shica thought and spirituality and deserves wide circulation.

ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

The Storl' of Muhammad Hanafiyvah. A Medieval Muslim Romance. Translated from the Malay by L. F. BRAKEL.

(Bibliotheca Indonesica. Koninklijk Instituut voor Iaal-, Land- en Volkenskunde, Vol. 16.) Pp. 131. The Hague: MARTINUS NIJHOFF. 1977. Gld. 45.

This is the translation of a Malay text which Brakel pub- lished in 1975. The story of Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya, son of 'AlT ibn AbM Talib from a woman adopted into the clan of Hanffa, is a favorite in the eastern Muslim world: through a Persian version it found its way into Dakhni Urdu, Malay, and several neo-Indian languages. The Malay version narrates in its first part the story of the Prophet and early Islam up to the battle of Kerbela; in the second part Muhammad ibn al-Hanafiyya appears as the avenger of his stepbrothers Hasan and Husain, and performs all kinds of marvelous acts of bravery against Yazid and his uncanny helpers until God puts an end to his martial achievements. The translator gives the parallels and a number of interesting details in appendices and notes, partly in addition to his notes in the edition of 1975. The book is a useful contribu- tion to our knowledge of popular religious literature in Southeast Asia, that is, to a field whose importance is in- creasingly acknowledged by Islamicists (who formerly knew mainly Muhammad ibn al-Hanifiyya's role in the develop- ment of early Shi'a thought).

ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Die Kultur der Bosniaken, Supplement 1: Inventar des bos-

nisehen literarischen Erbes in orientalisehen Sprachen. By

SMAIL BALI(. Pp. 111. Vienna: ADOLF HOLZHAUSENS NFG.

1978.

This volume is a supplement to the same author's Kultura

Bo~njaka, Muslimanska Komponenta (Die Kultur der Bos-

niaken, Die muslimisehe Komponente) (Vienna, 1973), which

offered the first general survey of the culture of this Muslim

community in Yugoslavia. Although the original work was

written in Serbo-Croatian, the language of the Bosnians, the

supplement volume (with the exception of addenda to the

original work and a separate forward in Serbo-Croatian) is

in German. It includes a survey of the history of Bosnian

literature, a glossary of its technical terms, and a catalog of

its known writers and works. Bali6 has provided cross-refer-

ences in his catalog to the appropriate sections of both his

original work and the supplement volume, as well as to the

posthumously published literary history of the Muslims of

Bosnia and Hercegovina in Oriental languages by the Otto-

manist Hazim Sabanovi6 (Knjiievost Muslimana BiH na

orientalnim jezicima, Sarajevo, 1973), which this supplement volume is also intended to complement. These three works

used together provide complete references to the editions,

translations, and studies of the works of Bosnian literature,

as well as to the manuscripts of these works and their loca-

tion. As Bosnian literature includes works written in Arabic,

Persian, and Ottoman Turkish in addition to the limited

Aljamiado literature (i.e., Serbo-Croatian written in Ottoman

script) whose first work dates from the end of the 16th cen-

tury, it is easy to understand how the author tends to see as

Bosnian many authors whom other scholars are less willing to consider as specifically Bosnian rather than just Ottoman

(see the reviews of the original work listed on p. 14 of the

supplement volume). Since, Bosnian or not, the writers and works included in the catalog formed an integral part of

Ottoman literature as well, this supplement volume not only

enhances the value of the author's original work and the

posthumous (and to some degree incomplete) work by

Sabanovi6, it can also prove to be a useful research tool for

the study of Ottoman literature and history.

ULI SCHAMILOGLU

INDIANA UNIVERSITY, BLOOMINGTON

Contributions to South Asian Studies 2. Editor GOPAL

KRISHNA. Pp. 213. Delhi: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS. 1982. Cloth.

The label "multidisciplinary" is here attached to a volume of articles which have nothing in common except that their material is taken from the vast South Asian subcontinent.

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