In Defense of the Bible SALEH_f1_i-vi.indd i 5/28/2008 8:36:00 PM Islamic History and Civilization Editorial Board Sebastian Günther Wadad Kadi VOLUME 73 SALEH_f1_i-vi.indd i 5/28/2008 8:36:01 PM In Defense of the Bible A Critical Edition and an Introduction to al-Biqā{ī’s Bible Treatise By Walid A. Saleh LEIDEN • BOSTON 2008 SALEH_f1_i-vi.indd i 5/28/2008 8:36:01 PM Cover illustration: © Partimonio Nacional, Expediente G. F. no. 2007/0394. Escorial ms. Arabes 1539, fol. 1a. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Saleh, Walid A. In defense of the Bible : a critical edition and an introduction to al-Biqa‘i’s Bible treatise / by Walid A. Saleh. p. cm. — (Islamic history and civilization. Studies and texts, ISSN 0929-2403 ; v. 73) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-16857-2 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Biqa’i, Ibrahim ibn ‘Umar, 1406 or 7-1480. 2. Koran—Relation to the Bible. 3. Bible. O.T.—Infl uence. 4. Judaism—Relations—Islam. 5. Islam—Relations—Judaism. 6. Islam— Relations—Christianity. 7. Christianity and other religions—Islam. I. Title. II. Series. BP134.B4S35 2008 220.6088’297—dc22 2008021189 ISSN 0929-2403 ISBN 978 90 04 16857 2 Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands SALEH_f1_i-vi.indd iv 5/28/2008 8:36:01 PM CONTENTS Acknowledgements .................................................................... vii Introduction ............................................................................... 1 Chapter One: A Hermeneutical Biography of al-Biqā{ī ........... 7 Chapter Two: The Qurxān Commentary, the Bible Controversy, and the Treatise ................................................. 21 Chapter Three: The Manuscripts of al-Aqwāl and the Plan of the Edition ................................................................. 37 Illustrations ................................................................................. 49 Arabic Edition ............................................................................ 57 General Index ............................................................................ 193 Index of Book Titles .................................................................. 207 Index of Æadīth and Āthār ........................................................ 211 Index of Qurxān Citations ......................................................... 219 Bibliography ............................................................................... 221 SALEH_f1_i-vi.indd v 5/28/2008 8:36:01 PM SALEH_f1_i-vi.indd vi 5/28/2008 8:36:01 PM ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Editing this work has been a humbling experience. One is tested by every word, by every twitch in the script of the scribe, by every smudge on the page. One is also unable to avoid admitting that one knows so little. Soon one realizes that the edition being produced is another copy that will always lack the authority of the manuscripts it claims to improve upon. The edition being a copy itself generates its own mistakes. On the bright side, editing texts is an unavoidable task in our fi eld. If one can name a thousand reasons for not editing a text (mostly face-saving), one can think of more reasons to edit a text. Facing one’s limitations is no match for making a text available to fellow scholars. I have also learned much about Mamluk educational and intellectual history. If anything I am now a committed Mamlukist. I came across this document while researching the history of tafsīr. The last four years have been spent in its company. I have accumulated a great debt of gratitude while working on this treatise, not least to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) which has awarded me a very generous grant to work on the history of Quranic exegesis. Working with manuscripts is a very expensive endeavor, and this book and the articles that preceded it would have been impossible without the grant. I am grateful for their support. Moreover, I am grateful for my colleagues in the Department and Centre for the Study of Religion and the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto. John Mar- shall and Frances Garrett encouraged me to refi ne my scattered ideas about how to do an edition by insisting that I give a seminar on how to edit texts for the Religion Department faculty colloquium. Frances also invited me to the workshop she organized on manuscript edition in Toronto. I have also been lucky to have met wonderful colleagues in Cairo and Spain who helped me while working on the manuscripts there. I especially want to thank Professor Emad Hillal of Suez University in Egypt. He went beyond the call of duty in helping me obtain material in Cairo, and made my stay an enjoyable experience. I am grateful to him and his family for their wonderful hospitality. Lourdes Alvarez of SALEH_f1_i-vi.indd vi 5/28/2008 8:36:02 PM viii acknowledgements Catholic University was always there for me when material in Spanish needed to be sorted out. I am also grateful to Professor Ramzi Baalbaki of the American University of Beirut who gave me valuable advice on the edition. Pro- fessor Natalie Zemon Davis took a special interest in my work and she kindly translated the Latin blurb on the Escorial manuscripts describing the content of the treatise. Professor Dimitri Gutas of Yale University was more than generous in his help. Professor Maria Subtelny helped with many queries. I am also thankful to Professors Suzanne Akbari, Karla Mallette and Aziz al-Azmeh who provided opportunities to present my work on al-Biqā{ī. Professor Akbari was also instrumental in helping me look into the history of the Escorial Arabic collection. Professor Everett Rowson kindly informed me about the existence of some relevant material in ARCE library. Finally it was Karen Bauer who hastened my decision to study al-Biqā{ī. It was her conference on Tafsīr at Princeton University that forced me to take the necessary steps to venture beyond the Nishapur school of Tafsir. My graduate student, Shuaib Ally, read the edition with me and helped me compare the texts. My students Mohammadreza Ardehali and Amar Baadj read the text with me in one of the seminars I taught. I am fortunate to teach and benefi t from my students. Ardehali went over the Arabic text to check for typos and missed shaddahs. My dear friend Professor Marc Witkin of the Classics Department at Middlebury College, remains as ever my touchstone and my guard- ian angel, always looking after me and making sure my style is not incomprehensible. I am dedicating this book to him. There is fi nally a coincidence that, though inconsequential, is very dear to my heart. Al-Biqā{ī, as his name makes clear, stems from the region of al-Biqā{ in Lebanon, or the Bekaa Valley as it is known in the news. I myself grew up there in a village some few kilometers away from his village. SALEH_f1_i-vi.indd vi 5/28/2008 8:36:02 PM INTRODUCTION The treatise edited here represents a unique document in the Islamic religious tradition. Its signifi cance lies in the fact that it represents a point of intersection for many issues: Islamic-Jewish and Islamic- Christian interactions, internal Islamic polemics regarding the manner of approaching the Qurxān, the status of the Bible (both the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels) in Muslim imagination, and the history of Quranic exegesis. It is a rich and multilayered text, and we have only begun to realize its importance. The purpose of the present critical edition is to situate the text in its proper historical context, and to make it available to the scholarly community. The treatise, al-Aqwāl al-qawīmah fī ˜ukm al-naql min al-kutub al-qadīmah, (The Just Verdict on the Permissibility of Quoting from Old Scriptures), was written by al-Biqā{ī (d. 885/1480), a famous Qurxān commentator who lived in the last days of Mamluk rule in the Near East. He wrote it to defend his use of the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels in interpreting the Qurxān. An ambitious and ingenious scholar, al-Biqā{ī wrote a Qurxān commentary which he claimed is original in its approach. He asserted that rhetoric had been an underused tool in interpreting the Qurxān, and was determined to rectify this aspect of the practice of Quranic exegesis. This was not in itself problematic; Tafsīr, or Quranic exegesis, is a fl uid genre that has accommodated a variety of approaches to the Qurxān. However, al-Biqā{ī did something unexpected and unique: he decided to quote the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels, in their offi cial Arabic translations, when interpreting Bible-related material in the Qurxān. This represented a total break with Islamic religious and schol- arly practice. Indeed, his decision was so unusual that it was bound to attract attention. His enemies—and he had many—seeing his use of the Bible as a break with the tradition, accused him of heresy, and called for the book to be burned. Eventually, one of the leading scholars of Cairo and a bitter enemy of al-Biqā{ī, al-Sakhāwī (d. 902/1492), wrote a treatise espousing the traditional Islamic legal prohibition against the religious use of the Bible. Al-Biqā{ī could hardly afford to let an accusation of heresy go unanswered. He had built his reputation on a solid record of zealous protection of the Sunnah, or the practice, of Muhammad. He had SALEH_f2_1-6.indd 1 5/9/2008 1:26:26 PM