[In the following essay, Coope explores Ibn Hazm's explication of the essentials of Muslim faith in his Kitab al-fasl fi al-milal wa al-ahwa' wa al-nihal.]

A student in my undergraduate Religious Studies seminar recently told me he wanted to write his term paper on the topic of solidarity within religious communities. As a believing Christian, he said, the fellowship and common beliefs he shared with members of his church gave him strength, peace of mind, and clarity of intention like nothing else in his life. Yet as he worked his way through our readings on the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, he was struck by how the sense of community that gave his life meaning has at times turned into a lethal weapon against outsiders. Confessional solidarity's double nature—as source of meaning and destroyer—is the theme of much recent scholarship on relations among religious communities in the Middle Ages under both Islamic and Christian rule.¹ Our interest in past inter-faith relations reflects our concern over present-day religious conflict; the troubles between India and Pakistan and in the Balkans, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the conflict in Sudan all hinge on, among many other factors, a tightening of boundaries between confessional groups.

The Andalusian Muslim author Ibn Hazm of Córdoba (994-1064) has periodically come to the attention of scholars interested in interreligious conflict for his polemics against Judaism and Christianity, and more specifically for the attacks on the Hebrew Bible and New Testament in his treatise on religions and heresies, Al-faṣl fi al-milal wa al-ahwā wa al-niḥal.² Attention falls on Ibn Hazm because of his unusual status as a Muslim knowledgeable about Jewish and Christian scripture, more knowledgeable about other religions than was common in the Middle Ages for either Christian or Muslim polemicists, and perhaps because his knowledge of other religions coexists in interesting ways with a profound contempt for them; his polemic is a combination of erudition and furious outrage at the stupidity and wickedness of non-Muslims.

Less attention has been paid in recent scholarship, at least scholarship in European languages, to Ibn Hazm's Zāhirism, his method of Qur’ānic exegesis.³ Ibn Hazm's polemic connects clearly with the social history of al-Andalus: how Muslims perceived their subject religious population, in what contexts Muslims were on friendly terms with dhimmīs (Christians and Jews under Islamic rule) and at what points not. Zāhirism in contrast seems to lead us away from the push and shove of social history and into the more abstract realm of language theory. In reality, though, Ibn Hazm's method of reading leads us back to social history, not away from it. His Zāhirism is an attempt to establish a single discourse community for all Muslims which will serve to differentiate them from others, and he believes the methods of Zāhirism directly strengthen his polemic against Jews and Christians. His theory of language is political. In this article I will focus on a small section of Al-faṣl fi al-milal, the Kitāb al-īmān or book of faith, to illustrate the connections between Ibn Hazm's anti-Christian and anti-Jewish polemic and his method of Qur’ānic exegesis.⁴

Zāhirism is usually defined as an Andalusian madhhab or school of law which favored acceptance of scripture's outer, obvious, commonsense meaning, its zāhir, over its bāṭin or hidden, esoteric meaning, and which rejected the use in jurisprudence of ra’y (personal opinion of a legal expert) or qiyās (argument by analogy).⁵ In this account Zāhirism appears to demand a literal reading of scripture and a rejection of philosophical interpretations, making it similar to the scripturalist Hanbalī school. Ibn Hazm is not however simply proposing a literalist, anti-philosophical reading of scripture. While he believes that revelation rather than reason must have the final word in matters of religious law, he does not reject rationalism, and dislikes charismatic bases for faith such as the inspired visions of sufis or the special esoteric knowledge Shī‘īs attribute to the Imām just as much as he dislikes philosophy.⁶ His reason for rejecting both philosophical and mystical or gnostic readings has nothing to do with their rationality or lack thereof. He rejects them because most people do not know what mystics and philosophers are talking about; philosophers create a jargon which gives words meanings that are not accessible to the ordinary reader.⁷ As St. Paul points out in 1 Corinthians 14:4, charismatic inspiration is valuable only to the extent it can be shared with the whole community. Prophesy is therefore a more important gift than speaking in tongues because the congregation cannot understand what someone speaking in tongues is saying: “Those who speak in a tongue build up themselves, but those who prophesy build up the church.” The point of scriptural interpretation, according to Ibn Hazm, is to communicate something to the Muslim community and give it something it can understand, consider, and accept or reject. A reading which has meaning only to a small group of experts, or only to the author, cannot be valid.

Ibn Hazm's Zāhirism is predicated on the assumption that the audience for his works is homogeneous, made up of literate Muslims who share the language of scripture and will agree on basic definitions of words. Ibn Hazm never articulates explicitly who he thinks the audience for his Al-faṣl fi al-milal is, and it is possible to argue that he is directly addressing Jews and Christians in some sections. Like most medieval religious polemic, though, Al-faṣl fi al-milal is more likely aimed at the author's own religious group and intended to increase solidarity and pressure free-thinkers back into line; while recent scholarship largely focuses on the parts of Al-faṣl fi al-milal that discuss Christianity and Judaism, the majority of the work is a critique of what the author regards as deviant forms of Islam.⁸ The members of his imagined audience who are Ibn Hazm's particular targets seem to be Muslims who in his view hold too high an opinion of Jews and Christians, and who regard Judaism and Christianity as so close to Islam as to be almost indistinguishable from it. That such an attitude existed among Muslims in al-Andalus during Ibn Hazm's lifetime is plausible given the relatively tolerant and pluralistic nature of Taifa society.⁹ According to Ibn Hazm such toleration is wrong-headed, and it is his goal to correct it. Still, rightly or wrongly, he implicitly views his audience as culturally homogeneous and capable of general agreement about the terms of the argument he presents.

His confidence that language is transparent and its meaning easily agreed upon seems strange to modern sensibilities; anyone who has served on a jury for example can tell you that defining the term “reasonable doubt” to the satisfaction of everyone on the panel can be a formidable task. Ibn Hazm however can feel confident about such agreement, at least among Muslims, because of his assumptions about language.¹⁰ For a word to qualify as language, according to Ibn Hazm, it must have two characteristics: it must correspond to something that exists—perhaps to an abstract something such as “truth,” but one that does exist—and it must be intelligible to others who speak the same language. Words are unambiguous. Their one-on-one correspondence with reality is guaranteed by the fact that God created language. Ibn Hazm rejects any theory positing a natural origin or gradual evolution of language. Language cannot have developed gradually, he argues, since humans could not exist as humans, as social creatures, without language. Therefore when God created human beings he must have created language for them at the same time. He takes Qur’ān 2:31 in which God teaches Adam the names of things as proof of language's divine origins. We cannot know what the language of Adam was—it no longer exists—but Ibn Hazm is sure that it would have been transparent, easy to understand, with one word meaning one thing.

Although Ibn Hazm believes in language's divine origins, he recognizes the effect the practical logistics of human society have on language; he sees for example that communities separated by distance develop different languages, and that languages change over time. No current human society in his view speaks the language of Adam, and he gives no special place to any language as being closer to the original language than others. In contrast with Sufyān Thawrī and other commentators, who held that God sends all revelations in Arabic, then has Gabriel translate them into the language of the recipients,¹¹ Ibn Hazm grants the language of the Qur’ān no special status. God revealed the Qur’ān in Arabic because he wanted to communicate with Arabs, not because Arabic has any unique qualities.

Still, however much people influence and change language, it ultimately comes from God. God decides what words mean, and without him there would be no meaning. Ra'y is bad because it allows the reader to construct a personal language that does not communicate with others—by Ibn Hazm's standards, not real language at all—and it subverts God's right to assign meaning. At times God changes the meaning of words; in Arabic some words mean something quite different in sharī‘a than they meant before the revelation of the Qur’ān. Going against a long tradition of exegesis using the reconstructed language of pre-Islamic Bedouins as a guide to meaning in the Qur’ān,¹² Ibn Hazm argues that Bedouins who lived before the Qur’ān's revelation could have no insight into what words would mean after the revelation. He takes as an example the first form verb kafara.¹³ One meaning of kafara, and the one familiar to Bedouins, was to cover something up; so a farmer who sowed and then covered his seed could be called a kāfir, one who covers up. The primary meaning of kāfir in post-revelation Arabic, however, is an unbeliever, one who rejects Islam. God has changed the word's meaning, and Bedouins have nothing to say in the matter.

Historical etymologies of the kind Ibn Hazm rejects turn up in our own society. At my institution a few years ago an argument broke out among some of the women faculty when a new woman department head made a point of referring to herself as “chairman” rather than “chair” or “chairperson” because, she said, in eighth-century Anglo-Saxon English “man” referred to any human being, not necessarily to a male. Most of us took a Zāhirite position arguing that in late twentieth-century American English “man” refers to a male, and that what eighth-century Anglo-Saxons thought is not relevant to the discussion.

Ibn Hazm's Zāhirite system of scriptural analysis assumes that language is divine rather than natural, and that God therefore has the final authority as to its meaning; that words have transparent and unambiguous meanings; that language is flexible, changing over time in accordance with God's will or ordinary usage; and that the best reading of a word assigns it the meaning that would be most obvious to the community of people who speak the language. Any interpretation the reader makes that takes him beyond that obvious meaning must be based on evidence from the text that is clear (jalī) and necessary (ḍarūrū).¹⁴ Let us turn now to see how Ibn Hazm applies these principles in the Kitāb al-īmān, the Book of Faith, and how his Qur’ānic exegesis relates to his evaluation of Jews and Christians.

The goal of the Kitāb al-īmān, the shorter treatise I am focusing on within Al-faṣl fi al-milal, is to define Muslim faith, or īmān: that is, to define what it means to be a Muslim. Ibn Hazm begins by introducing four possible definitions of īmān: that it is belief in the heart, or taṣdīq; that it is verbal profession of belief, or iqrār; that it is a combination of belief and profession; or that it is belief in the heart, verbal profession, plus the carrying out of the physical works or a‘māl which God commands, for example fasting, prayer, and recitation of the Qur’ān. The Kitāb al-īmān strongly supports the latter theory—that īmān is made up of belief, profession, and works together—and places particular emphasis on works, at times giving works precedence over belief or profession.

A great part of the Kitāb al-īmān is concerned with demonstrating that taṣdīq (belief) and īmān are not identical. According to Ibn Hazm the Ash‘arīs and Hanafīs maintain that God revealed the Qur’ān in the language of the Bedouins, and that in Bedouin Arabic īmān means the same thing as taṣdīq; on the other hand works (a‘māl) does not have the same meaning as īmān.¹⁵ Ibn Hazm attacks this equation of taṣdīq with īmān, saying that it is God who determines the meaning of language. His proof text is Q. 2:31, “And God taught Adam all of the names,” which he takes to mean that God taught Adam the names of everything that exists, abstract or concrete; in short that God taught him language.¹⁶ If you say that belief is the only criterion of faith, Ibn Hazm argues, then it follows that anyone who believes anything has īmān, even if they believe in something idiotic like the divinity of Christ. Ash‘arīs and Hanafīs, however, quite correctly recognize only those who believe in God and his prophet and the Qur’ān as possessing īmān. They are tacitly conceding that God shifted the meaning of īmān with his revelation, and that īmān and taṣdīq are no longer synonyms. The assigning of meaning, al-tasmiya, is up to God, not to us, and certainly not up to Imru-l-Qays and the other pre-Islamic poets.¹⁷

Ibn Hazm also objects to the equating of īmān with taṣdīq on the grounds that even those who believe in God and his Prophet and the Qur’ān may not possess īmān. Iblīs (Satan) knows the truth and believes it in his heart; he was present when God created the world and states in the Qur’ān that he knows both he and human beings are God's creations (Q. 7:12). Therefore he can be said to have taṣdīq. Yet no person in possession of his senses would say that Satan possesses īmān. The reason that he counts among the damned is that he failed to perform a work ordered by God; God told him to bow down to Adam, and he refused.¹⁸

Although belief is not the same as faith, it does play an important role in faith, a role that Ibn Hazm emphasizes when he argues against the idea that iqrār or verbal profession of belief is the same as īmān. He recognizes the importance of profession, conceding that the Muslim community assumes someone who recites the shahāda, confessing his faith in one god and in Muḥammad's prophethood, is a person of faith at least on the surface; yet, he says, it is up to God to see what is truly in the person's heart.¹⁹ Those who profess faith with their tongues but do not believe in their hearts are the hypocrites, the munāfiqūn, and according to Q. 4:140, “God will gather up the hypocrites and the unbelievers together in hell.” It is also clear that īmān and iqrār are not the same thing because Muslims who recite verses from the Qur’ān recording statements of the unbelievers, or Muslims who pretend to renounce Islam under threat of death, are not guilty of unbelief, because they do not mean what they say.

Neither belief, profession, nor the two together can constitute īmān, because works (a‘māl) are an equally important aspect of īmān. It is the importance of the work of the limbs, ‘amal al-jawāriḥ, that Ibn Hazm defends most vigorously in the Kitāb al-īmān. By works Ibn Hazm means performance of a‘māl al-birr, works of piety, including the five pillars of Islam and additional duties such as reciting the Qur’ān; he also means abstaining from actions God prohibits. His condemnation of historical etymologies is linked to his defense of a‘māl al-birr. The word ṣalāt, prayer, among the Bedouins meant du‘ā’, or invocation of the gods. In sharī’a, however, it means du‘ā’ plus a set series of movements: standing, kneeling, and bowing. The post-revelation meaning of ṣalāt is not only a calling upon God but a set of works involving the entire body.²⁰

Ibn Hazm is particularly intent on showing that the work of the limbs is valuable in and of itself, and not simply as a product of belief in the heart.²¹ Some people, he says, maintain that pious acts are important “in that these acts demonstrate that there is faith in the heart.” To refute this idea he refers to Q. 8:72-75 in which the Qur’ān makes distinctions between those believers who take action based on their beliefs and those who do not. Those who have believed and who made the hijra and have struggled in the way of God are the true faithful; those who believe but did not make the hijra are “not associated with you” (that is, are not fully part of the Islamic community or umma) until they make the hijra. To be one of the truly faithful (al-mu‘minūn haqqan) requires physical action, not just belief. The culmination of this argument comes with a quotation from Q. 98.5, in which God equates pious acts such as ritual prayer and tithing with “religion of the true faith” (dīn al-qayyima). Ibn Hazm then works out the (rather strained) equation that pious deeds are religion (dīn); for God, religion means Islam; observance of Islam is the essence of faith (īmān); therefore works are equal to īmān.²²

Ibn Hazm's argument does not dismiss the Muslim's inner convictions as unimportant; indeed, taṣdīq is a fundamental ingredient of īmān. He does, however, resist seeing works as merely a result of true belief. He resists what we might characterize as a Lutheran understanding of works: that good works come naturally out of a faithful person just as good fruit comes naturally from a sound tree. For Ibn Hazm works bear a relationship to belief, but they are not identical with it. A‘māl al-birr are an equally important and distinct part of īmān.

By following what he sees as sound Zāhirite technique—choosing the most clear and obvious meanings of words, eschewing mystical or symbolic interpretations of scripture, and recognizing that God has shifted the meaning of many Arabic words through his revelation—Ibn Hazm concludes that works are a central part of īmān. They cannot be interpreted away or ignored in favor of a pre-revelation understanding of the word. This emphasis on works is essential to one of the Kitāb al-īmān's main arguments: that no member of the Islamic community can doubt that Jews and [Christians] are unbelievers.²³ The main reason Ibn Hazm believes Christians and Jews will go to hell is that they do not perform the pious works God has ordained.²⁴ Some may argue that the people of the book have īmān because they believe in God. In fact, Ibn Hazm asserts, the Qur’ān does not confirm this argument. While it is true that Jews and Christians believe in God, the Qur’ān does not say that only those who do not believe in God will burn in hell; it says in 92:15 that those who give the lie and turn their backs will burn. Ibn Hazm takes that verse to mean that anyone who rejects any part of Islam without which the religion would not be whole, including all the works legislated by God, is a kāfir.²⁵

For his condemnation of Jews and Christians Ibn Hazm depends not only on Qur’ānic passages pertaining to īmān and to pious works, but also on those verses which specifically relate to the ahl al-kitāb (people of the book: monotheists such as Jews and Christians who are accorded special protections under Islamic law). Because its statements about the ahl al-kitāb are contradictory or at least ambiguous, the Qur’ān can support a variety of positions on that subject.²⁶ Selecting only the most negative passages about Jews and Christians allows Ibn Hazm to argue that they cannot possess īmān or go to heaven.

On the subject of Jews and Christians there are two voices in the Qur’ān. One voice speaks of God's message in universal terms, as one which he sent to Abraham and all of Abraham's descendants. In this universalist category are the verses which use the term muslim in its most general sense of one who submits to God, for example Q. 2:131 in which God asks Abraham to submit to him, and Abraham answers, “I have submitted (aslamtu) to the lord of worlds.” The Qur’ān's assertion that Abraham was the first muslim claims for Islam the chronological precedence that logically belongs to Judaism, but it also implies a family relationship among all three of the Abrahamic religions: all of Abraham's descendants participate in his submission or islam to God.

Q. 2:62 makes the strongest statement of that kinship, promising a reward and freedom from fear to “those who believe” (presumably Muslims), “and those who are Jews, and the Sabians and Christians, whoever believes in God and the last day and do works of righteousness.” Here salvation comes from the basics: belief in God and the last judgement coupled with good works (but not the specific a‘māl al-birr mandated by Islam). Jews and Christians are clearly capable of winning God's favor.

While the Qur’ān echoes this possibility of reward for all of the ahl al-kitāb elsewhere (for example 2:112, 2:256, 3:114), other verses condemn Jews and Christians for not believing even in their own revelations (2:89), for wishing ill upon Muhammad (2:105), and for distorting the truths of scripture (3:71, 5:14). In these verses the Qur’ān speaks of Jews and Christians in a second voice, a voice filled with frustration at those among the ahl al-kitāb who do not recognize Islam as superior to their own religions.

Ibn Hazm clearly favors those Qur’ānic verses that condemn Jews and Christians, and he follows Muslim polemicists like Ibn Rabban al-Tabarī (d. ca. 865) and Abū Ja‘far al-Tabarī (d. 923) in implying that Islam abrogates and therefore invalidates earlier religions.²⁷ Even granting that Jews and Christians originally received true revelations, because God's revelation to Muhammad constitutes the final and complete version of scripture, that revelation must displace whatever came before it. While it is well known, Ibn Hazm concedes, that Jews and Christians accept part of the truth—almost any Muslim has heard Christians and Jews declaring belief in God and in Moses as his prophet²⁸—the people of the book have failed to recognize Muhammad as a prophet who abrogates (nabī nāsikh), that is, who abrogates previous religions of the book in favor of Islam.²⁹ He also follows Abū Ja‘far al-Tabarī and al-Maqdisī (d. ca. 966) in arguing that Jews and Christians have subjected their scripture to such severe distortion (taḥrīf) as to render it illegitimate.³⁰ A number of Qur’ānic verses support his view. According to Q. 5:14, the Jews corrupt the text or “distort the words from their proper meaning” (yuḥarrifūna al-kalim ‘an mawāḍi‘ihi). Christians, too, have forgotten a portion of what was sent to them (Q. 5:15), leading them to the incorrect and blasphemous conclusion that God has a son (Q. 19:88-92).

Ibn Hazm's reading of Q. 2:146 is an instructive example of his Zāhirite technique, and also tells us something about his intended audience.³¹ Q. 2:146 suggests that Jews and Christians are able to recognize religious truth when they hear it, yet perversely refuse to acknowledge that truth. That verse and the verse directly before it read as follows:

And truly if you brought to the people of the book
All of the signs together, they would not follow your qibla,
And you will not follow their qibla,
And they will not follow each other's qibla.
If you followed their whims
After the knowledge that has come to you,
You would be among the wrong-doers.
The people of the book know it as
They know their own children; but a faction of them
Hide the truth, knowing it all the time.

The preceding verses, Q. 142-44, discuss the change in qibla (the direction believers must face during prayer) toward the “sacred mosque,” a discussion generally taken to represent the changing of the qibla for the early Islamic community from Jerusalem to Mecca. Verse 145 continues this topic, and condemns the people of the book for their unwillingness to acknowledge the new qibla.

Verse 146 can be interpreted in different ways depending on how one takes the masculine direct object “hu” which I have translated as “it” as in “the people of the book know it as they know their own children.” Given the context “hu” could refer to the truth about the qibla, so that the verse would mean “The people of the book know the true qibla as they know their own children.”³² If you take verse 146 as shifting topics from verse 145, “hu” can be read as referring to a more abstract truth, meaning something along the lines of “The people of the book know the truth of the Qur’ān as they know their own children.”³³ “Hu” can also mean “him,” though, and Ibn Hazm changes the verse's emphasis by reading “hu” as referring to Muḥammad: “The people of the book know Muḥammad (recognize him as God's prophet) as they know their own children.”³⁴ And while the immediate context of this verse does not support such a reading, other sections of the Qur’ān state that Muḥammad's prophethood is predicted in both Jewish and Christian scripture.³⁵

Ibn Hazm accuses some Muslims of deliberately misinterpreting Q. 2:146 to excuse the unbelief of Jews and Christians. They take the verse, he says, to mean that Jews and Christians could not have been sure of who Muḥammad was because no man can ever be sure who his children are. Ibn Hazm dismisses this argument as nonsense. The verse, like all verses in scripture, is aimed at women as well as men; and unlike a man, a woman can be quite certain whether or not a child is hers. His argument represents a typical Zāhirite reading. The verse says that Jews and Muslims recognized something—the Qur’ān or Muḥammad or the true qibla—as they recognized their own children. To interpret that statement as meaning they did not recognize it is not a very plausible reading; under normal circumstances, people easily recognize their own children. By Zāhirite rules one cannot simply interpret away the verse's obvious meaning.

I am not suggesting that Ibn Hazm's views of Christians and Jews in fact reflect logical arguments or even cogent readings of the Qur’ān. His assumption that Islam of necessity abrogates Judaism and Christianity, for example, presents problems textually since it simply ignores inconvenient Qur’ānic passages such as 2:62 which speak of a reward for righteous Jews and Christians. Even Q. 2:146 only says that a faction of the ahl al-kitāb hide the truth, not that all of them do so. Like most medieval religious polemic, the Kitāb al-īmān and the larger Al-faṣl fi al-milal are aimed at people who share the author's religion. It is the tenets of that religion rather than disinterested intellectual inquiry that shape the argument. Such polemic is intended to strengthen bonds and regulate belief within the religious community, not to convert outsiders through logical argumentation. In this work Ibn Hazm begins by making a plausible argument, based on his understanding of language, that pious deeds are an important part of Islam. He then moves to the more tenuous conclusion that the people of the book are kuffār who will go to hell because they do not perform all of the physical actions prescribed by God. His main purpose in writing the Kitāb al-īmān is to show Muslims that they are a community bound together by common beliefs, a common discourse about scripture, and by the pious works they all perform. Works provide the best vantage point from which to demonstrate the differences between Muslims and non-Muslims; however much a Muslim considers a Christian to be his friend and to have similar beliefs, the Christian does not join in with him when he attends mosque on Friday or fasts during Ramadan, and the Christian friend drinks wine while the Muslim abstains. Every kāfir believes in something, Ibn Hazm points out;³⁶ but Muslims must make distinctions among people based on their actions, or be forced to admit kinship with every unbeliever on the face of the earth.

Notes

1. See among many others Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982); José Jiménez Lozano, Judios, moriscos y conversos (Valladolid: Ámbito, 1982); Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1987); Norman Roth, Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995); Luís Suárez Fernández, La expulsión de los judíos de España (Madrid: Editorial MAPFRE, 1991).

2. Miguel Asín Palacios originally translated Al-faṣl fi al-milal into Spanish (with some abridgments) beginning in 1927; the most recent edition of that translation with commentary is Abenházam de Córdoba y su historia crítica de las ideas religiosas, 5 vols. (Madrid: Ediciones Turner, 1984). Recent works include Muhammad Abu Laylah, In Pursuit of Virtue: The Moral Theology and Psychology of Ibn Hazm al-Andalusi (London: TaHa Publishers, 1990); Camilla Adang, Muslim Writers on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible: From Ibn Rabban to Ibn Hazm (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996); Ibrahim Hardallo, Al-tawrāh wa-al-yahūd fi fikr Ibn Hazm (Khartoum, Sudan: Dār Jāmi‘at al-Kharṭūm, 1984); Theodore Pulcini, Exegesis as Polemical Discourse: Ibn Hazm on Jewish and Christian Scriptures (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998).

3. The amount of Arabic language material on the subject is, not surprisingly, greater; for example Sa‘īd al-Afghanī, Nazarāt fi al-lughah ‘inda Ibn Hazm (no publisher indicated, 1969); Sharaf al-Dīn ‘Abd al-Hamīd Amīn, Ibn Hazm al-Andalusī wa naqd al-‘aql al-uṣūlī (Kuwait: Dār Su‘ād al-Sabāḥ, 1995); Anwār Khālid Zu’bī, Zāhiriyat Ibn Hazm al-Andalusī: nazarīyāt al-ma‘rifah wa-manāhij al-baḥth (Amman, Jordan: Al Ma‘had al-‘alamī lil-fikr al-islāmī: Dār al-Bashīr, 1996).

4. The Kitāb al-īmān is located in Al-faṣl fi al-milal wa al-ahwā' wa al-niḥal, 5 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-ma‘rifah, 1975), 3:188-259.

5. This standard account can be found for example in W. M. Watt and Pierre Cachia, A History of Islamic Spain (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1965), 128-31.

6. Amīn, Ibn Hazm, 65-75.

7. Amīn, Ibn Hazm, 65-75; Roger Arnaldez, Grammaire et théologie chez Ibn Hazm de Cordoue (Paris: J. Vrin, 1956), 73-87.

8. For a discussion of Ibn Hazm's audience see Pulcini, Exegesis as Polemical Discourse, 143-68.

9. Miguel Asín Palacios argues for the existence of a minority of free-thinking Muslims in this period who regarded the three Abrahamic religions as equally valid in “La indiferencia religiosa en la España musulmana, según Abenházam, historiador de las religiones y sectas,” Cultura Española 5, February 1907, 297-310.

10. I am relying here on Arnaldez, Grammaire et théologie, 37-47 and 73-87.

11. John Wansbrough, Qur’ānic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 218.

12. See Wansbrough, Qur’ānic Studies, 85-118 on the formation of this tradition.

13. Fasl, 3:211.

14. Amīn, Ibn Hazm, 76.

15. Faṣl, 3:189.

16. Faṣl, 3:190-92.

17. Faṣl, 3:208.

18. Faṣl, 3:198.

19. Faṣl, 3:206-9.

20. Faṣl, 3:196.

21. Faṣl, 3:207-12.

22. Faṣl, 3:194-95.

23. Faṣl, 3:198.

24. Faṣl, 3:198.

25. Faṣl, 3:223-24.

26. For an overview on the Qur’ān's attitude toward the people of the book see Faruq Sharif, A Guide to the Contents of the Qur’ān (Reading, U.K.: Ithaca Press, 1995), 117-139.

27. Adang, Muslim Writers, 192-222.

28. Faṣl, 3:203.

29. Faṣl, 3:213-14.

30. Adang, Muslim Writers, 223-48; Pulcini, Exegesis as Political Discourse, 57-128.

31. Faṣl, 3:198-202.

32. For example Abdullah Yusuf Ali, The Holy Qur’ān (Elmhurst, New York: Tahrike Tarsile Qur’ān, Inc., 1988), 59, takes hu as referring to the truth about the qibla.

33. A. J. Arberry follows this interpretation in The Koran Interpreted (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955), two volumes, 1:47.

34. See Ali, The Holy Qur’ān, 59 note 151.

35. For example 3:81 and 61:6. For a discussion of the biblical verses Muslims take as predictions of Muḥammad, see Pulcini 18-29.

36. Faṣl, 3:205.