Sunni views on the Prophet's Companions -- Muʻtazilī views on the Companions -- Some Imāmī Shiʻi views on the Companions -- Imāmī Shiʻi views on the participants in the Battles of Camel and Ṣiffīn -- The accepted Companions -- The Companions as authorities -- Some Zaydī views on the Companions -- The term "rāfiḍa" in Imāmī Shiʻi usage -- The evolution of the Shiʻa -- Imam and community in the pre-Ghayba period -- From Imāmiyya to ithnā ʻAshariyya -- Early attestations of the term "ithnā ʻAshariyya" -- The term "muḥaddath" in Twelver Shiʻism -- In praise of the few -- Taqiyya in Shiʻi theology and religion -- ʻAlī b. Mūsā ibn Ṭāwūs and his polemic against Sunnism -- Some Shiʻi views of the antediluvian world -- Authoritative scriptures in early Imāmī Shiʻism -- Vision and the imams -- An unusual Shiʻi Isnād -- al-Uṣūl al-arbaʻumiʼa -- The Abū Baṣīr tradition: Qurʼanic verses on the merits of the Shiʻa -- The development of the Imāmī Shiʻi doctrine of jihād -- The position of the walad zinā in Imāmī Shiʻism -- Aspects of Akhbārī thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
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SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
"In Praise of the Few: Studies in Shiʻi Thought and History is a selection of Etan Kohlberg's research on Shiʻi Islam over a period of fifty years. It includes previously published articles, revised dissertation chapters, and a full bibliography of the author's work. Divided into two parts, the collection begins with chapters from Kohlberg's Oxford doctoral dissertation (1971) and related articles that investigate Sunni and Shiʻi views on the Prophet's Companions and debates concerning the extent of their authority as sources of religious knowledge. Part Two traces the doctrinal and historical developments pertaining to various dimensions of Imāmī Shiʻi intellectual tradition such as theology, hadith, law and jurisprudence. and exegesis"--