Miriam Ovadia (Bar Ilan University)
Tanzīh and the Methodology of Ḥadīth Censorship in Shihāb al-Dīn al-Qasṭallānī’s (d. 923/1517) Irshād al-sārī
This presentation discusses al-Qasṭallānī’s methodology of censoring objectionable expressions in the Ḥadīth, as it appears in his commentary of Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī entitled Irshād al-Sārī. Al-Qasṭallānī relied on a long tradition of scholars who transmitted the text while applying systematic censorship on the corpus known as aḥādīth al-ṣifāt (traditions of the divine attributes). This censorship resulted from the fundamental Ashʿarī doctrine of tanzīh (transcendentalism) which was conceived to dissociate inappropriate descriptions from God. Instead of deleting anthropomorphisms altogether, al-Qasṭallānī and his predecessors inserted a special sign of deletion (kashṭ) above the problematic words in the Ṣaḥīḥ’s text. These words therefore remained written in the text but were not uttered aloud. By revisiting the extreme case-study of ḥadīth ḥaqw al-raḥmān (the ḥadīth about the loin of the Merciful) our discussion expands and reframes previous observations on the subject.
This lecture will be held online on Zoom. Please register using the following link:
https://uni-bonn.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5Mocuqsrz4qGtDUBosLWwwCysT-uCGO-A6_
Contact the organizer: anna.kollatz@uni-bonn.de