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(2,113 words)
(a.) authorization, licence. When used in its technical meaning, this word means, in the strict sense, the third of the eight methods of receiving the transmission of a ḥadīt̲h̲ [q.v.] (the various ways are set out precisely in W. Marçais, Taqrîb , 115-26). It means in short the fact that an authorized guarantor of a text or of a whole book (his own work or a work received through a chain of transmitters going back to the first transmitter or to the author) gives a person the authorization to transmit it in his turn so that the person authorized can avail himself of this transmission. But beyond this narrow definition there is in fact involved the principle, fundamental in Islam, of the pre-eminent value attached to oral testimony, a principle which has been maintained through all the fictions to which id̲j̲āza and the other methods of transmission have given rise from a very early date and which still today continue to influence Muslim traditional thinking. It is this that gives its ideological and historical importance to the very full documentation contained in the isnāds (“chaînes de témoignages fondamentales”, L. Massignon), in the samāʿs (“certificates of hearing”) and in the id̲j̲āzas —often having indications of dates and places and details of the names of the persons who formed links in the transmission— which precede, frame or follow not only the texts of ḥadīt̲h̲ , of fiḳh or of tafsīr , but also theological, mystical, historical and philological works, and even, literary collections, of both prose and poetry. Separate from the texts there appear the systematic lists of authorities ( muʿd̲j̲am , mas̲h̲yak̲h̲a , t̲h̲abat , fahrasa [q.v.], barnamād̲j̲ ), which form in themselves a well developed branch, still flourishing and so far insufficiently exploited, of the work of the traditional Muslim scholars. In spite of the very serious reservations which had been made from the beginning, notably by the imām al-S̲h̲āfiʿī (d. 204/820), with regard to transmissions not guaranteed by the direct study of the text transmitted and the effective meeting between a transmitter and a receiver capable of understanding the text, yet practice, supported when necessary by appropriate statements of casuistic reasoning, has always tended towards the acceptance of fictions and increasing indulgence: a general id̲j̲āza without the hearing of the texts, an id̲j̲āza conferred on young children who have not yet reached the age of reason, even to those still unborn, an id̲j̲āza obtained as the result of a short interview during journeys whose aim was not exclusively study or the Pilgrimage, an id̲j̲āza requested and granted by letter without any personal contact between the authority and the candidate. Among the fictional id̲j̲āzāt , which were moreover of social and political significance, were those conferred at their request on rulers or on high state dignitaries. Examples of id̲j̲āza in verse exist from the second half of the 3rd/9th century (al-K̲h̲aṭīb al-Bag̲h̲dādī, Kifāya , 350), and these very soon became couched in turgid rhetoric (see below).
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(2,113 words)
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(2,113 words)