Guided Reading for The Western Traditions.

Find the answer to each of these questions as it is given in the textbook before moving on to the next question. Some answers, drawn from the textbook alone, will be rather simplistic. They can, and should, be elaborated upon as your knowledge of the subject grows.

Pages 368 - 416:

The symbol (*) after a question indicates that these might be used for longer essays in your quizzes.

 

1. What happened to Islam within a century of the Prophet’s death?

 

2. What happened to Islam on the death of the Prophet, Muhammad?

 

3. Who were the first four kalifah (Caliphs, or successors to Muhammad)?

 

4. What specific event led to the division of the Islamic Community into Shi’is and Sunnis? (*)

 

5. What happened to the capital city of Islam under Ali’s rule?

 

6. Who was Mu’awiyah?

 

7. Who were the Khawarij or Kharijis?

 

8. Who were known as “the Companions of the Prophet?”

 

9. Who were the Umayyads?

 

10. What happened to the capital city of Islam under the reign of Mu‘awiyah?

 

11. Who was the successor to Mu‘awiyah?

 

12. Who were Hasan and Husayn?

 

13. What distinction was drawn for Muslims by the death of Husayn?

 

14. What was Ali’s relation to the Prophet Muhammad?

 

15. Who were the Abbasids? Why were they so named?

 

16. Why did the Abbasid, Al-Mansur, view Baghdad’s location as ideal?

 

17. What is the Mahdi?

 

18. Who was Harun al-Rashid? With which European ruler was he contemporary?

 

19. What was the attitude of the Abbasid rulers to Shi’i Islam?

 

20. What was Bayt al-Hikmah?

 

21. Whom did Shi’i Muslims recognize as the only legitimate holders of authority in the Muslim community?

 

22. In what countries were there competing claimants for the office of Caliph by the tenth century of the Christian era (fourth century AH)?

 

23. How and when did the last Abbasid Caliph die?

 

24. What does the term imam mean for Sunni and Shi’i Muslims respectively?

 

25. What are mawali?

 

26. What is the day of Ashura? What late 20th century political event is said to have initiated on this day?

 

27. What does it mean to say that a Shi’i leader has gone into “occultation?”

 

28. Who is the Agha Khan?

 

29. Who are the Druzes and in what countries do they still exist?

 

30. What is the sunnah? What do Imami Shi‘i Muslims add to this concept which Sunni Muslims do not?

 

31. What fraction of the world’s Muslims are Shi’i?

 

32. What is the ulama?

 

33. What is the “first and most important religious science” for Islam?

 

34. What does the Qur’an place next in importance to the worship of God?

 

35. What does the Qur’an forbid as a means of increasing one’s wealth?

 

36. What is hadith? When have some scholars asserted that this began?

 

 

37. Of what does a hadith consist?

 

38. What are hadith qudsi?

 

39. How many canonical (that is, official and closed) collections of hadith are there? Name the oldest two.

 

40. What did the term shari‘ah originally signify? What does it signify now?

 

41. To what are differences between the various legal schools for the most part due?

 

42. How many sources of Islamic law are there? What are they?

 

43. What do the terms ijtihad and ijma signify?

 

44. For what ability were Mu‘adh ben Jabal and other Companions of the Prophet known?

 

45. Name the five major schools of Islamic Law.

 

46. What is the Musnad?

 

47. What did “the closing of the gate of ijtihad” mean?

 

48. What does it mean to say that a mufti has issued a fatwa?

 

49. What is the essential point of difference between the Shi‘i and Sunni legal traditions?

 

50. What was the relationship of Islamic theology and law during their formative period?

 

51. What is philosophy called in Arabic?

 

52. What mistaken assumption gave Islamic philosophy its distinct character? What was that character?

 

53. What were the two theological schools produced by the political crisis occasioned by the death of the Prophet?

 

54. By what was Mu‘tazili theology influenced?

 

55. What is tawhid?

 

56. What was the Mu‘tazili understanding of all anthropomorphic assertions about God (such as saying that he has hands and a face etc.)?

 

57. What view of creation did al-Razi reject? On what did he base his own view?

 

58. What was religion for al-Farabi?

 

59. To what did ibn Sina (Avicenna) compare the soul?

 

60. Over what particular aspect of the resurrection did ibn Sina and al-Ghazali disagree?

 

61. What is a mujaddid? Who was said to be the mujaddid of the sixth Islamic century?

 

62. How could certain knowledge be attained according to al-Ghazali?

 

63. What does the Qur’an affirm, free will and human responsibility or divine predestination?

 

64. Over what did the Muslim community come to be theologically divided? Which position triumphed in the end?

 

65. Who were the two most important philosophers of the twelfth century (CE) in Muslim Spain?

 

66. Who was the greatest Muslim commentator on Aristotle?

 

67. How did ibn Rushd view the relation of religion to philosophy?

 

68. Who were “Avicenna” and “Averroes?”

 

69. What is tasawwuf?

 

70. What is said to be an essential aspect of (Islamic) mysticism?

 

71. Who was Rabiy‘ah al-‘Adawiyah?

 

72. What is the Prophet’s mi‘raj? To whom and for what has it been a guide?

 

73. Sufism is Islamic mysticism. In what are its beginnings?

 

74. These beginnings of Islamic mysticism were soon transformed. In what did this transformation have its basis?

 

75. What was Rabi‘ah perhaps the first to introduce into Islamic mysticism?

 

76. Between what two things was Dhu al-Nun the first to distinguish?

 

77. What is fana?

 

78. What did the mystic al-Hallaj preach, as expressed in the verses quoted?

 

79. For what reason did al-Hallaj forgive his executioners?

 

80. Is Sufism a "sect" of Islam or something else?

 

81. What must happen to the novice Sufi?

 

82. Who managed to combine mysticism with "impeccable Sunni orthodoxy?"

 

83. The "spiritual journey" of a Sufi disciple consists of many "stations" and "states." As what is such a state described? (*)

 

84. Is fana the final object of the Sufi’s quest?

 

85. What is said to be a "third way" between rational wisdom and esoteric gnosis?

 

86. To which ancient tradition, from what source, did Suhrarwardi belong?

 

87. What did Ibn ‘Arabi’s doctrine of the unity of being imply about the various religions?

 

88. What did Ibn ‘Arabi’s idea of the Perfect Man do for Muhammad?

 

89. How did ‘Attar’s allegory, The Conference of the Birds, depict the final realization of the mystical quest?

 

90. What is the Mathnavi?

 

91. The Arabic faqir and the Persian darvish are two terms for whom? What did they originally mean?

 

92. What is a Sufi silsilah? How does it begin?

 

93. In what way do the shayks of Sufi orders resemble Catholics saints? In what way are they unlike them?

 

94. What are the two practices said to be particularly characteristic of Sufi devotional practice? (*)

 

95. Why are the "whirling dervishes" called the "Mevlevi" order?

 

96. Why did both Islamic reform movements and Western secularism reject Sufism?

 

97. "Sufism is an other worldly religious movement that neglected the social, political, and military requirements of jihad." Is this a true claim?

Additional Notes: