Classical Arabic Biography The Heirs of the Prophets in the Age of al-Ma'mun by Michael Cooperson. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press???? 2000. 196 pages.)

Abstract

This outstanding study discusses the origins, development, and function of
pre-modern Arabic biography through an examination of the biographies
of four figures of the late second and early third Islamic centuries whose
life stories have been contested in interesting ways: the Abbasid caliph alMa
'mun (r. 198-218 AH/813-833 AC). [Chapter 2]; the Shi'ite imam · Ali
al-Rid a ( d. 203 AH/818 AC) [Chapter 3, and an appendix on the circumstances
of his death]; the renowned scholar of Hadith, Ahmad ibn Hanbal
(d. 241 AH/855 AC).[Chapter 4]; and the ascetic Bishr al-Hafi (d.227 AHi
842 A C). [Chapter 5]. These figures were chosen because they lived during
the same period and their careers intertwined and overlapped, thus bringing
to the fore the contests over religious authority between the societal
groups they represented. Although the caliph al-Ma'mun is famous for
having appointed 'Ali al-Rida, his heir apparent, a move which has puzzled
many historians, since he is also accused of murdering the Shi'ite
imam.
Ahmad ibn Hanbal's fame rests on his resistance to the Abbasid/
Mu· tazili Inquisition which al-Ma'mun inaugurated: despite imprisonment
and flogging, he upheld the opinion that the Qur'an is eternal and not created.
Bishr al-Hafi, the famous barefoot ascetic, was trained as a Hadith
specialist in his youth but gave it up for what he saw as a more moral life.
The association of Bishr al-Hafi with lbn Hanbal, equally renowned for his
religious scrupulousness, provides fertile ground for comments on the relative
merits of the groups and religious approaches that they represent.
Chapter 1, "The Development of the Genre," addressing the history of
the biographical genre, argues, following Tarif Khalidi and against the traditionally
accepted view, that biography did not originate as a by-product
of the Hadith scholars' obsession with isnad criticism. Rather, it originated
in the work of akhbaris or "collectors of reports," in essence the first historians
of the Islamic period, who drew on pre-Islamic oral models, combining
genealogies and name-lists with narrative material. Biographies, in
Cooperson's view, are fundamentally intertextual: the reader naturally compares
the accounts in one biography with alternative versions presented in
other texts. Each serves to mold and comment on the interpretation of ...