Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In Dante’s Divine Comedy he makes multiple direct references to Islam and Muslims, but there is debate about the amount of influence, if any, Islam had on him while composing his masterwork. This paper attempts to show how the poet, consciously or unconsciously, responded to Islam as a theological and political threat. This is done through analysis of Saladin, the Sultan of Egypt and Crusader leader who was well respected in Europe in Dante’s era; analyzing the Prophet Muhammad’s suffering in Canto XXVIII; and comparing the Divine Comedy to the Prophet Muhammad’s own Night Journey, the al-Isrā wa al-Mi’rāj with a brief discussion on how Mi’rāj texts might have reached Dante.

By the dawn of the fifth/eleventh century, al-Bukhārī (d. 256/870) was recognized as the most highly regarded hadith scholar and his Ṣaḥīḥ as the most authoritative book, after the Qur'an. This canonical status promoted a romanticized version of al-Bukhārī that does not reflect the reality that his pre-canonical historical record presents. This study recovers the reality of al-Bukhārī and provides a critical biography of him, tracing the progress of his career and detailing the objectives of his work. It provides a re-assessment of al-Bukhārī's own juridical, theological, and hadith-criticism principles based on an analysis of his own works, arguing that al-Bukhārī was shaped by the split between hadith and ra'y. It distinguishes three stages in his career: early education under ra'y authorities, conversion to hadith-based school, and his critique of the ra'y-based scholars in Transoxania. Al-Bukhārī was a significant contender of theology and law in his own day and certainly promoted a moderate position in theology and law that proved crucial to his future renown. He appears to have been Medinese in law and Iraqi in hadith criticism. His legal theory adopts some of Mālik ibn Anas' (d. 179/795) views and al-Shāfi'ī's (d. 204/820) hermeneutical concepts. His legal method and positive law appear to be systematically anti-ra'y and exhibit a virulent disparage of Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 150/767) and al-Shaybānī (d. 192/804-5). It appears that al-Bukhārī composed the Ṣaḥīḥ over a long period, at least a decade, as the Ṣaḥīḥ itself tends to confirm a chronological progress. This progress, the author contends, was the outcome of al-Bukhārī's long project in Transoxania, combating ra'y and promoting hadith. Al-Bukhārī achieved prominence within hadith-based circles for his unique transmitter-criticism (rijāl) works, particularly al-Tārīkh, but when he conceded that one's utterance (lafẓ) of the Qur'an is created, he was immediately denounced by the hadith-based school. This controversy caused the collapse of al-Bukhārī's career, leading to his demise in Khartank near Samarqand in 256/870.

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