Definitions of poverty and the rise of the Muslim urban poor

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society

Volumn 6, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 335-344

  Bonner, Michael ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33751168660     PISSN: 13561863     EISSN: 14740591     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s1356186300007768     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. This can also mean "the unarmed," see R. Dozy, Suppĺement aux dictionnaires arabes (Leiden, 1881), ii, p. 123. There seems to be confusion in some places between al-'urāt, "the naked," and al-ghuzāt, "the warriors for the faith." The difference is only of two diacritical points.
2. Mas'ūdī, Murūj al-dhahab (Paris, 1861-77), vi, pp. 452-3.
3. More generally, see F. Gabrieli, "La successione di Hārūn al-Rašīd e la guerra fra al-Amīn e al-Ma'mūn," Rivista degli studi orientali XI (1926-8), pp. 383-4;
4. H. Kennedy, The Early Abbasid Caliphate (London, 1981), pp. 145-6;
5. M. Fishbein, tr. and ed., The History of al-Tabari. Vol. xxxi, The War between Brothers (Albany, 1992), pp. 139-77;
6. G. Hoffman, "Al-Amīn, al-Ma'mūn und der 'Pöbel' von Baġdād in den Jahren 812/13," Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, CXLIII (1993). pp. 27-44.
7. Hoffman, art. cit., p. 35.
8. Tabarī, Ta'rikh (Leiden, 1879-1901), ser. III, p. 900.
9. C. Cahen, Mouvements populaires et autonomisme urbain dans l'Asie musulmane du moyen âge (Leiden, 1959).
10. e siècles (Paris, 1981); and the article by Hoffman cited above.
11. From a more literary point of view, C.E. Bosworth's The Mediaeval Islamic Underworld: The Banū Sāsān in Arabic Society and Literature (Leiden, 1979) is invaluable.
12. For charitable institutions and the treatment of the poor, see N. Stillman, "Charity and social service in medieval Islam," Societas, V (1975), pp. 105-15;
13. and M.W. Dols, Majnūn: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society (Oxford, 1992), esp. pp. 546-74.
14. Hoffman, art. cit., p. 44.
15. Distinctions between these two terras became an element in the legal literature relating to alms. An early example is the discussion by al-Shāfi'ī, Kitāb al-umm (Beirut, n.d.), ii, pp. 711"., 81f., built on a distinction between the faqīr (poor man) and the miskin (poor man, wretch). At the same time Shāfi'ī acknowledges (at ii, p. 80) that everyday Arabic speech treats these two as synonyms; Shāfi'ī's technical distinction derives from the fact that in the relevant passage from the Qur'ān (9:60), the word faqīr appears first. In most of the early legal and hadīth texts used for this paper, the distinction between faqr and maskana is not applied in any systematic way.
16. M.M. Bravmann, "'The surplus of property': an early Arab social concept," Der Islam, XXXVIII (1962), pp. 28-50,
17. repr. in The Spiritual Background of Early Islam (Leiden, 1972), pp. 229-53.
18. Bravmann, Spiritual Background, pp. 241-2.
19. See M. Bonner, Aristocratic Violence and Holy War: Studies in the Jihad and the Arab-Byzantine Frontier (New Haven, 1995), pp. 5-7;
20. N. Calder, Sudies in Early Muslim Jurisprudence (Oxford, 1994).
21. I. Goldziher, Muhammedanische Studien (Halle, 1889-90);
22. tr. S.M. Stern and C.R. Barber (London, 1967-71), as Muslim Studies, vol. ii.
23. J. Wansbrough, The Sectarian Milieu (Oxford, 1978).
24. A. Noth, Heiliger Krieg und heiliger Kampf in Islam und Christentum (Bonn, 1966);
25. Quellennktische Studien zu Themen, Formen und Tendenzen frūhislamischer Geschichtsūberlieferung (Bonn, 1973).
26. See now the revised edition of the latter, prepared in collaboration with L. Conrad, on the basis of a translation by M. Bonner, entitled The Early Arabic Conquest Tradition (Princeton, 1994).
27. The patterns and types relating to the poor which appear in the hadith literature also appear in the historical akhbār, especially for the periods of the Rāshidūn caliphs (632-61) and the Umayyad dynasty (661-750). The following section is based on legal and hadith texts, where the concepts are discussed more deliberately. But even when the akhbār are also taken fully into account, there can never be anything like a neat division of the literary sources into "descriptive" and " prescriptive" elements.
28. Bukhārī, Jāmi' (Leiden, 1862-1908), i, p. 352, Zakāt 2; i, p. 369, Zakāt 41; i, p. 380, Zakāt 63.
29. Ibn Abī Shayba, Musannaf (Beirut, 1409/1989), ii, p. 353, no. 9822; iii, p. 392, no. 10284.
30. Malik, Muwatta (Cairo, 1370/1951), ii, p. 282, Zakāt 26, nos. 49, 50;
31. Bukhārī, i, p. 379, Zakāt 59;
32. Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, Musnad (Bulaq, 1313, repr. Beirut, 1389/1969), i, p. 25, ii, p. 55.
33. C. Décobert, Le mendiant et le combattant: l'institution de l'ision (Paris, 1991), p. 238f.
34. O. Carré, Mystique et politique: lecture révolutionnaire du Koran par Sayyid Qutb (Paris, 1984), p. 152f.
35. Ibn Abī Shayba, ii, p. 392, no. 10286, Ibrāhīm al-Nakha'ī declares that if a person has decided to give an object in charity, and then cannot find his intended recipient, he should give it to someone else, because he should never return to something which he has made over to God (wa-lā yarji'fi shay'in'alahu lillāhi).
36. Bukhīrī, i, p. 122, Salāt 38; i, p. 159, Mawāqīt 41;
37. Ahmad, Musnad, i, pp. 197, 198, 199, ii, pp. 177, 222.
38. Ibn Abī Shayba, ii, p. 350, no. 9803.
39. See M. Mauss, The Gift (London, 1966), p. 6f.
40. Abū Dāwūd, Sunan (Cairo), ii, p. 165, Zakāt 573, no. 1648; note the differing views on the meaning of the "upper hand" (one who gives, or else one who refuses what is offered to him, by raising both his hands).
41. Abū Dāwūd, ii, pp. 163-4, Zakāt 573, no. 1644.
42. Bukhārī, iv, pp. 219-20, riqāq 16; iii, p. 505, at'ima 37.
43. Mālik, Muwatta', i, p. 268, Zakāt 17 (mursal, Mālik-Zayd b. Aslam-'Atā' b. Yasār-Prophet);
44. Abū Dāwūd, ii, pp. 159-60, Zakāt 534, no. 1235 (same isnad); no. 1236, with Abū Saīd al-Khudrī added in place of the formerly missing link; no. 1237, Sufyān al-Thawrī, complete isnād.
45. According to Jesus son of Mary, at Ibn Abī Shayba, ii, p. 353, no. 9824; cf. ii, p. 353, no. 9823.
46. Mālik, Muwatta, ii, p. 268, Zakāt 17, no. 29.
47. Ibn Abī Shayba, ii, p. 384, no. 10191 (Ibn 'Umar).
48. Ibn Abī Shayba, ii, p. 422, no. 10646. 'Umar II used to take half the sadaqa of the Arab nomads, and "return" the rest among their poor.
49. Abū Dāwūd, ii, p. 158, Zakāt 533, no. 1630;
50. Ibn Abī Shayba, ii, p. 422, no. 10644.
51. cf. Ibn Abī Shayba, ii, p. 351, no. 9811.
52. Ibn Abī Shayba, ii, p. 402, no. 10410, 10412, 10414, from Ibrāhīm al-Nakha'ī and al-Hasan.
53. Ibn Abī Shayba, ii, p. 423.
54. Abū Dāwūd, ii, 158, Zakāt 533, no. 1631;
55. On this see Bonner, "Ja'ā'il and holy war in early Islam," Der Islam LXVIII (1991), pp. 50-3.
56. Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, Musnad, ii, p. 168.
57. Ibn Abī Shayba, ii, p. 404, no. 10436.
58. Abū Dāwūd, ii, p. 159, Zakāt 533, no. 1234;
59. Ibn Abī Shayba, ii, p. 424, nos. 10663-7; ii, pp. 403-4, no. 10431.
60. Shāfi'ī, Umm, ii, p. 79.
61. M. Bonner, "Work, poverty, surplus and rights," delivered at meeting of the American Oriental Society, Salt Lake City, March 1995.
62. e siècles (Paris 1977).
63. On the relation between the abnā' and the poor fighters in the siege, see Hoffman, "Al-Amīn, al-Ma'mūn und der 'Pöbel' von Baġdād," pp. 32-3.