This article examines Silk al-Durar, an eighteenth-century Arabic sīrah authored by Muḥammad Ṣiddīq Lāhōrī (d. 1779), and situates it within shifting Prophetic conceptions in late Mughal India. Focusing on the post-Akbarid period, the study explores how political and intellectual transformations reshaped sīrah writing among South Asian Muslim scholars. Composed in al-ḥurūf al-muhmalah (undotted letters), Silk al-Durar represents a rare formal experiment and a deliberate engagement with earlier Mughal models. The article frames the work as a literary response (naẓīrah) to Abū ’l-Fayḍ Fayḍī’s (d. 1595) Mawārid al-Kalim. It interprets this relationship not as a polemic rebuttal, but as a literary emulation aimed at asserting textual and intellectual superiority. Through a comparative codicological and textual analysis of two manuscripts, including a previously unnoticed copy preserved in the Süleymaniye Manuscript Library in Istanbul, this study reconsiders the view that eighteenth-century sīrah writing was merely derivative. It argues instead that Prophetic conception operated as a locus of literary authority and intellectual contestation within the scholarly milieu of the South Asian ‘ulamā’.
This study examines the historical and ontological dimensions of Prophet Muḥammad (peace be on him) within the fifteenth-century Turkish Sufi tradition, considering different regions and Sufi orders. In Islamic scholarship, the Prophet occupies a central position as the messenger who conveys divine revelation and as an exemplary figure who brings about transformation at both the individual and societal levels. Sufi literature expands this understanding through the perspective of the Nūr-i Muḥammadī (the Muhammadan Light), which regards the Prophet as the ontological source of creation and thus situates him as a cosmic and metaphysical reality. The present research focuses on the regions of Khorasan, Azerbaijan, and Anatolia, selecting as case studies three prominent Sufi figures representing these intellectual and geographical spheres: Sayyid Yaḥyā Shirvānī (d. 1466), Eşrefoğlu Rûmî (d. 1469), and ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 1492). Representing different Sufi orders and distinct Turkish-Islamic regions, the works of these figures are comparatively analysed to reveal how the Prophet’s historical personality and ontological status were conceptualized. In doing so, the study offers, for the first time in the literature, a comparative perspective on the Prophet’s portrayal in these Sufi traditions and provides significant insights into the conception of the Prophet among fifteenth-century Turkish-Muslim societies.
This article studies the way modern Arabic Islamic thought on injustice (ẓulm) evolved in recent decades, emphasizing three Islamic viewpoints on injustice (traditional homiletic theology, social-ethical, and political-civilizational discourses). This theological-ethical discursive field, which extensively uses the texts of the Qur’ān and the hadith, advances a set of norms for what defines just individuals, societies, and states. Furthermore, it is pertinent to the politics of the Middle East insofar as various groups used this theology to oppose state policies in the region. It is argued here that Modern Islamic ethics of injustice holds the unjust accountable while also promising the victims of injustice delayed justice and reward.
This article examines the figure of al-Sāmirī in the Qur’ānic narrative of the golden calf by foregrounding the epistemic authority of classical Qur’ānic exegesis. In Qur’ānic verses 20:85-97, the Qur’ān exonerates Prophet Aaron and identifies al-Sāmirī as the agent of deviation. This narrative shift has often been read in Western scholarship through the category of the “Samaritan error.” This article challenges that reading by arguing that the Sāmirī narrative operates within the Qur’ān’s own theological logic, especially its concern with prophetic infallibility and moral accountability. Through an examination of classical exegetical tradition, the article shows that the diversity of explanations regarding al-Sāmirī’s origins reflects hermeneutical flexibility. Classical Qur’ānic exegesis, therefore, should be approached as a tradition of knowledge with its own epistemic autonomy, not merely as historical material for confirming Western literary genealogies. While the name al-Sāmirī bears intertextual resonances with Israelite memory, Jewish-Samaritan polemic, and Late Antique religious debates, classical Muslim interpreters did not systematically turn this figure into a political weapon against living Samaritan communities. Ultimately, al-Sāmirī emerges as a theological figure through whom classical Qur’ānic exegesis negotiates prophetic authority, moral boundaries, and the legitimacy of Qur’ānic interpretation within Islamic intellectual history.
