RT Article
T1 Jews for ʿ⁠Alī: Rabbinic Support for the Waṣiyy in Majlisī’s Biḥār al-Anwār
JF Medieval encounters
VO 28
IS 4
SP 311
OP 335
A1 Rubinstein-Shemer, Nesya 1978-
A1 Magen, Zeʾev 1964-
LA English
PB Brill
YR 2022
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/183513047X
AB What is a creature within a creature, with no consanguinity or kinship between them? Upon what place did the sunshine once, but then never again? These and host of other Judeo-ʿ⁠Alīd brain-teasers are adduced by the seventeenth-century Shiʿite encyclopedist Muḥammad Bāqir al-Majlisī in order to shore up the most pristine and essential of Shiʿite claims: that ʿ⁠Alī should have been the successor to the Prophet Muḥammad. The material examined in this essay sheds light both upon aspects of the Sunni-Shiʿī polemic and on Shiʿism’s outlook on the previous monotheistic dispensations. This article analyzes the series of interlocutions adduced by Majlisī (and his sources) as part of the campaign to retroactively unseat the caliphs enshrined by Sunnism. As with Islamic tradition in general, Shiʿism displays in this material a penchant for drafting the exponents of surrounding creeds to shore up its political and religious claims.
K1 Biḥār al-Anwār
K1 Muslim-Jewish polemic
K1 Sunni-Shīʿī polemic
K1 al-Majlisī
K1 ʿ⁠Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib
DO 10.1163/15700674-12340146