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‘A Booth Like the Booth of Moses …’ A Study of an Early Ḥadīth1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

M. J. Kister  and
M. Hiskett
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Extract

The chapter about innovations in mosques in al-TurtŪshī's Kitāb al-hawādith wa-'l-bida‘ contains a remarkable tradition about the building of the mosque of the Prophet in Medina which deserves special attention. This tradition, not included in the orthodox collections of hadith, is of considerable importance: it seems to belong to a large body of early traditions omitted by later collectors of hadīth, and it may throw some light on an attitude of the Prophet which was later ignored by Muslim scholars. This tradition may help us to understand the views and opinions of the early Muslim scholars.

Type
Notes and Communications
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , February 1962 , pp. 150 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1962

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References

page 150 note 2 Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. al-Walīd al-Ṭurṭūshī, Kitāb al-ḥawādith wa-'l-bida‘, ed. al-Ṭālibī, Muḥammad, Tunis, 1959, pp. 93–9Google Scholar.

page 150 note 3 Professor Serjeant remarks that he has often seen roofs built in such a way in South Arabia. He writes (in a letter): ‘Khashab would be beams, perhaps palm-trunks. These would be covered with smaller branches, and then with thumām. On top of this would be added some wet ṭīn and tibn, clay mixed with chopped straw, and this would form the roof. Khushaybāt is better than khashab because it would mean presumably little branches’.

page 150 note 4 P. 94, n. 6.

page 150 note 5 II, 58, ‘arsh ka-‘arsh Mūsā; 59, ‘arīsh ka-‘arīsh Mūsā thumām wa-khushaybāt wa-'l-amr a‘jal min dhālika.

page 150 note 6 II, 226, 228.

page 150 note 7 IX, 204, ed. Cairo, A.H. 1353.

page 151 note 1 II, 540, ed. Cairo, A.H. 1349.

page 151 note 2 II, 347, ed. Cairo, A.H. 1348.

page 151 note 3 ‘In a modern text from al-Shiḥr: idhā jarā amr Allāh ‘alā [fulān] "if so and so dies˝. I am translating this phrase as "God's command˝. The context is that if a fisherman dies, i.e. God's command comes to him, yet his family will continue to receive his share in the fishing crew's earnings till the end of the fishing season’ (R. B. Serjeant).

page 151 note 4 Ibn al-‘Arabī, Muḥāḍarāt al-abrār, I, 193.

page 151 note 5 This tradition was emended; the clause added states, ‘except the expenses of building mosques’. These expenses will, of course, be rewarded. See al-Iktisāb, 79. Cf. Musnad al-Ṭayālisī, p. 341: ‘Ibn ‘Abbās: the Prophet said: He who builds a mosque for Allah even like a hollow (dug by) a sand grouse (for laying eggs), Allah will build for him a house in Paradise’.

page 152 note 1 Kitāb al-sunan ai-kubrā, II, 439.

page 152 note 2 Ibn Qutayba, al-Qurṭayn, i, 242, ed. Cairo, A.H. 1355; cf. P. Casanova, Mohammed et la fin du monde, 15.

page 152 note 3 Das Leben Muhammeds, 145, 157.

page 152 note 4 Mohammed, 43.

page 152 note 5 al-Majāzāt al-nabawiyya, p. 36; cf. Casanova, op. cit., 18 (1), 20, 57.

page 152 note 6 Bāb al-fitan, ix, 60.

page 152 note 7 I,9.

page 153 note 1 The word ‘arch’ is used here to translate Arabic ṭāq. According to Professor Serjeant (letter dated 20 August 1960), ‘ṭāq or ṭāqa is in South Arabian usage a window, an aperture (especially in a technical sense, to a tomb), a niche in a wall for holding a lamp or something of the kind. Such a niche in my experience is usually made in a clay wall and may be topped by a round arch or pointed arch (in clay), or it could simply have a wooden top on the post and lintel principle’. These features of building, mentioned by Professor Serjeant, did not exist in the mosque of the Prophet, and orthodox circles were opposed to them. It was ‘Umar b. ‘Abd al-‘Azīz who was the first to build the miḥrāb in the form of a niche when he rebuilt the mosque in Medina by order of al-Walīd (details about this innovation, Creswell, A short account of early Muslim architecture, 44). The ṭāq al-imām in the traditions quoted by al-Ṭurṭūshī seems thus to be identical with the miḥrāb (cf., eg., p. 94, fa-min dhālika al-maḥārīb… fa-taqaddama al-Ḥasan wa-‘tazala al-ṭāq an yuṣalliya fīhi … wa-Kariha al-ṣalāt fī ṭāq al-imām al-Nakha‘ī …). The fundamental sense of miḥrāb, as elucidated by Professor Serjeant, was in fact columns and a space between them. Miḥrāb in the form of an arched niche was an innovation; it was introduced at the end of the seventh century and was fiercely opposed by the orthodox. Ṭāq as miḥrāb was considered as bid‘a.

page 153 note 2 Al-Bayhaqī, al-Sunan, II, 439.

page 153 note 3 Ed. Cairo, A.H. 1340, p. 107; compiled by Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Marwazī.

page 153 note 4 P. 78

page 153 note 5 Ed. Beirut, p. 238. Also ‘Umdat al-akhbār, p. 81. Cf. Ibn Qayyim al-Jauziyya, Zād al-ma‘ād, II, 146.

page 154 note 1 Quoted from Ibn Sa‘d in Nuwayrī, Nihāyat al-arab, xvi, 345.

page 154 note 2 See his biography, Tahdhīb al-tahdhīb, IV, 369

page 154 note 3 Ed. Cairo, A.H. 1320, n, 71; Sīrat Dahlān (on margin of Ḥalabiyya), I, 357.

page 154 note 4 Ed. As‘ad Ṭarābzünī, p. 80. According to a tradition mentioned in the Sīrat al-Dimyāṭī, quoted in the Ḥalabiyya (loc. cit.), the explanation of the booth of Moses is given by al-Ḥasan, who reported the tradition.

page 154 note 5 Razīn b. Mu‘āwiya b. ‘Ammār al-‘Abdārī (d. 535/1140), cf. Brockehnann, GAL, Suppl., I, 630.

page 154 note 6 The saying of Anas is not mentioned in the Ḥalabiyya. Libn, here translated ‘bricks’, means, as Professor Serjeant points out, fundamentally clay bricks, but one may assume fairly safely that in a hastily constructed building they would be of unbaked clay, cf. Landberg, Gloss. , III, Leiden, 1942, 2611 [reference supplied by Professor Serjeant, who also refers to the terms ājur and libn in RSO, xxviii, 1953, 8, and madra and lubna in Le Muséon, LXII, 1–2, 1949, 160]. In the sources relating to our tradition there is, however, a controversy over the question of these bricks and their form. Some support for taking libn to mean unbaked clay bricks in this tradition may be adduced from the following tradition about the mosque built in Baṣra by Abū Mūsā. al-Ash‘arī: wa-banā Abū Mūsā, al-Ash‘arī al-masjid wa-dār al-imāra bi-libn wa-ṭīn wa-saqqafahā bi-'l-‘ushb (al-Balādhuri, Futūḥ, ed. Cairo, A.H. 1319, p. 355)—he built it from clay bricks and clay and covered it with brushwood [using this word for ‘ushb at Professor Serjeant's suggestion].

page 154 note 7 ‘Umdat al-akhbār, 81; al-Ḥalabiyya, loc. cit.

page 155 note 1 See Ibn Sa‘d, loc. cit.; Yāqūt, Buldān, s.v. Yathrib; El, s.v. ‘’ (Pedersen); Creswell, Early Muslim architecture, 2–11, 25Google Scholar.

page 155 note 2 cf. Tha‘lab’s explanation of the verse of al-A‘shā (Dīwān, ed. Geiger, xxix, 4). It was a construction of trunks covered with dry branches, where people used to seek shelter from the heat. Cf. Abū Dharr’s commentary, ed. Brönnle, p. 424, and cf. the verse of Mutawakkil al-Laythī, Aghānī, XI, 38.

page 155 note 3 On the poet (757–837/1356–1433–4) see Browne, LHP, III, 473–86; F. Köprülü in his article Anaṭolu'da İslāmiyet (Dār ül-Fünūn Edebiyāt Fakültesi Mejmü‘asi (Istanbul), Year 2, No. 6, 1339/1923, 467–8) gives a valuable summary of the sources on Qāsim al-Anvār. His promise of a monograph on the life and works of the poet has so far remained unfulfilled.