Law and tradition in classical Islamic thought: studies in honor of professor Hossein Modarressi, edited by Michael Cook, Najam Haider, Intisar Rabb, and Asma Sayeed
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Law and tradition in classical Islamic thought: studies in honor of professor Hossein Modarressi, edited by Michael Cook, Najam Haider, Intisar Rabb, and Asma Sayeed (Palgrave Series in Islamic Theology, Law, and History), (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), xix + 326 pp., ISBN: 978-0-230-11329-9, $105.00 (hb) (First paragraph) Hossein Modarressi is one of the most unique professors in Islamic studies in Western academia. Trained as a traditional Shīʿī mujtahid in Qum and Najaf, and who became established as an interesting editor of texts and intellectual historian in the 1970s (many of those texts having been recently re-published from the Marʿashī Library in Qum and in the USA), he wrote a dissertation on Islamic law at Oxford and soon after was appointed at Princeton where he has become a leading specialist on Islamic law, especially Shīʿī law, as well as on the Shīʿī tradition, and trained generations of students in law and philosophy who are a credit to him. This festschrift comprises offerings by a number of his best students and colleagues at Princeton and beyond. The articles are divided into five parts that reflect his output and his interests. The first is on source studies - complementing his work on texts that he edited such as al-Jishumī's Risālat al-Iblīs. Part two is on the Shīʿī tradition on which he has contributed major studies on attitudes to the Qurʾān, on tradition, an influential bio-bibliography of the classical period, his controversial study of the occultation and his forthcoming definitive volume of his vision for Shīʿism. Part three takes up his interests in Islamic law for which he is perhaps best known. Part four takes up his philosophical interests expressed in his supervision of students and which came from his studies in the Shīʿī seminary. The final part on historical traditions takes up his interests on the histories of Qum and similar studies. A final part lists his bibliography and includes a short summary of the significance of his Persian works (recently re-printed) by Hossein Kamaly. Modarressi's output has been significant and his works have had a major impact in the field - such a festschrift is a wonderful testament to his contribution and the role that he has played through his students in forming the current field of Islamic studies.
References
Abū Saʿd al-Ḥākim Muḥassin ibn Muḥammad ibn Karrāma al-Jishumī, Risālat al-Iblīs ilā ikhwānihī l-manāḥīs (Qum: Marʿashī, 1986).
Bulliet, Richard W., Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979).
Künkler, Mirjam & Fazaeli, Roja, "The Life of Two Mujtahidahs: Female Religious Authority in Twentieth-Century Iran," in Masooda Bano and Hilary Kalmbach (eds.), Women, Leadership, and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2012), 127-160.
Modarressi, Hossein, "Early Debates on the Integrity of the Qurʾān: A Brief Survey," Studia Islamica 77 (1993), 5-39, https://doi.org/10.2307/1595789
Modarressi, Hossein, "Rationalism and Traditionalism in Shîʿî Jurisprudence: A Preliminary Survey," Studia Islamica 59 (1984), 141-158, https://doi.org/10.2307/1595298
Modarressi, Hossein, "The Just Ruler or the Guardian Jurist: An Attempt to Link Two Different Shiʿite Concepts," Journal of the American Oriental Society 111/3 (1991), 549-562, https://doi.org/10.2307/604271
Modarressi, Hossein, An Introduction to Shīʿī Law: A Bibliographical Study (London: Ithaca Press, 1984); "Some Recent Analyses of the Concept of Majāz in Islamic Jurisprudence," Journal of the American Oriental Society 106 (1986), 787-791, https://doi.org/10.2307/603537
Modarressi, Hossein, Crisis and Consolidation in the Formative Period of Shīʿite Islam: Abū Jaʿfar ibn Qiba al-Rāzī and His Contribution to Imāmite Shīʿite Thought (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1993); Shīʿite Islam (Oxford: Oneworld, 2014?).
Modarressi, Hossein, Kharaj in Islamic Law (Tiptree, Essex-UK: Anchor Press, 1983).
Modarressi, Hossein, Qumnāma: Majmūʿa-yi Maqālāt va Mutūn dar bāra-yi Qum (Qum: Marʿashī, 1364 HS [1985]).
Modarressi, Hossein, Tradition and Survival: A Bibliographical Survey of Early Shīʿite Literature (Oxford: Oneworld, 2003).
Opwis, Felicitas and Reisman, David (eds.), Islamic Philosophy, Science, Culture, and Religion: Studies in Honor of Dimitri Gutas (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2012).
Stewart, Devin J., "Notes on Medieval and Modern Emendations of the Qurʾān," in Gabriel S. Reynolds (ed.), The Qurʾān in Its Historical Context (London & New York: Routledge, 2008), 225-248.