The at-Tamhīd fī bayān at-tawḥīd (“The Preparation concerning the Exposition of the Divine Unity”) is a Shāfiʿite theological treatise in Persian by Abū Shakūr as-Sālimī, who lived in Persia in the second half of the fifth century of the Hegira (eleventh century C.E.). The work is identified by Voorhoeve as the principal source of the *Tibjān fī maʿrifat al-adyān* of Nuruddin ar-Raniri: more than a quarter of the text of the Tibjān is translated literally from the Tamhīd, especially from its last chapter, on orthodoxy and the rejection of innovation (bidʿa).
Content and character
The Tamhīd is a Shāfiʿite manual of kalām — dialectical theology — and of the refutation of sectarian deviation. Its last chapter, Fīʾs-sunna waʾl-jamāʿa waʾr-radd ʿalāʾl-bidʿa (“On the Sunna and the Community and the Refutation of Innovation”), supplies the material from which Raniri, working more than five centuries later in Acheh, composed the bulk of his survey of the pre-Muslim religions and the sects of Islam. The Tamhīd enumerates six original Islamic sects — Rāfiḍiyya, Qadariyya, Jabriyya, Mushabbiha, Muʿattila, and Murjiʾa — from which the seventy-two sects are derived by twelvefold subdivision; this is the same schematic classification that Raniri adopts in the *Tibjān*, with minor variations in the names of the six heads.
Manuscripts
The printed edition of the Tamhīd (Cairo 1338 H, per Brockelmann GAL I, 419) was not available to Voorhoeve; he therefore cited the work from the Leiden manuscript Cod. Or. 5664. This manuscript belongs to a collection sent to Leiden by Snouck Hurgronje in 1906, and is almost entirely of Banten provenance. It is written on Javanese paper of particularly fine quality, damaged by book-worm and to a lesser extent by rajap, but without much loss of text. There are many Javanese glosses, both interlinear and in the margin. The colophon reads only: tammat al-kitāb min yawm al-arbaʿ fī shahr Ramaḍān fī balad al-kabīr (“the book was completed on Wednesday in the month of Ramadan in the great city”) — giving no indication of age or place. By appearance the manuscript dates certainly from the eighteenth, if not from the late seventeenth, century; although the oldest Javanese glosses are in a different hand from the text, there is no indication that it was not written on Java.
Voorhoeve collated the Leiden manuscript with three Indian copies — India Office Library Loth 384, Levy 1888, and 1890 (the first two sent for use in Leiden; of the last a microfilm was received) — and with KBG Arab. CCCXI in Jakarta. Comparison showed that only the Banten manuscript contains errors that must have stood also in Raniri’s own exemplar. The most important of these are:
- Cod. Or. 5664, f. 169v r. 5: Kubtiyya (“the Copts”), which the other manuscripts and the context show to be an error for al-Muʿattila (“the sect that denies all divine attributes”). The same error appears in the *Tibjān* p. 24 r. 6.
- Cod. Or. 5664, f. 179r: a lacuna between lines 10 and 11; the missing text occupies, in India Office Library manuscript 1888, f. 134r r. 2 v.o. to f. 135r r. 4 — that is, more than a full page. Precisely this same passage is missing in the *Tibjān* p. 30 r. 4 after the words dariada tanah itu djua. In the missing passage begins the fourth group of the Tanāsuḥiyya; Raniri, translating, evidently did not notice the loss, so that the Tibjān announces four groups but treats only three.
Voorhoeve concludes that it was “a very happy accident” that the Leiden manuscript of the Tamhīd preserves a text practically identical with that of Raniri’s own exemplar.
Sources of the Tibjān drawn from the Tamhīd
The following passages of the Tamhīd are translated more or less literally in the *Tibjān*:
| Tamhīd folio | Tibjān page |
|---|---|
| 157v.15 – 158v.1 | 40.7 – 42.12 |
| 122.15 – 124.5 | 42.13 – 45.7 |
| 161v.3 – 162r.4 | 50.13 – 51.4 |
| 163r.5 – 164r.4 | 50.13 – 55.4 |
| 164r.6–7 | 53.2 – 55.13 |
| 166r.1–3 | 55.10–12 |
| 166r.4–5 | 56.5 – 57.3 |
| 166r.8–9 | 56.10–11 |
| 166r.9–10 | 56.14 – 57.3 |
| 166v.4–5 | 57.3 – 57.6 |
| 166v.7 | 62.15 – 63.3 |
| 166v.7–10 | 63.4 – 66.8 |
| 167r.6 – 167v.11 | 70.6 – 72.7 |
| 167v.12–14 | 84.4 – 84.9 |
| 168r.3–5 | 9.15 – 13.12 |
| 168r.11 – 169v.4 | 13.12 – 15 |
| 169v.4 – 170v.15 | 16.7 – 20.2 |
| 170v.15 – 171v.7 | 24.6 – 26.5 |
| 172v.3–5 | 31.8 – 34.10 |
| 173r.7 – 174r.5 | 26.5 – 30.14 |
| 174r.13 – 175r.13 | 33.13 – 39.15 |
| 175r.14 – 176r.11 | 26.5 – 34.14 |
| 176r.11 – 177r.8 | 177v.9 – 179r.15 |
| 177v.9 – 179r.15 | 31.8 – 34.10 |
Voorhoeve notes that Raniri rearranged the material from the Tamhīd: “what stands there jumbled together he has arranged in a regular ‘historical’ order.” The whole first part of the *Tibjān* — that is, the survey of pre-Muslim religions — is, save for the sections on the philosophical schools and on the Barāhima, translated from the Tamhīd; the introduction to the Muslim sects is also drawn from the same source.
Significance
The Tamhīd is, after the Maʿrifat al-madhāhib and the al-Insān al-kāmil, the third of the principal sources that Raniri translated into Malay in composing the *Tibjān*. Its identification by Voorhoeve was the most original contribution of the 1955 edition: it established that a substantial part of Raniri’s encyclopaedia of religions is, in fact, a Malay translation of an eleventh-century Persian Shāfiʿite treatise, transmitted through a Banten manuscript that preserved the very errors of Raniri’s own exemplar. The Tamhīd thus stands at one of the most remarkable textual conjunctions in the history of Malay religious literature: a Persian treatise of the eleventh century, copied in Banten not later than the eighteenth century, and translated into Malay in Acheh in the seventeenth century by a Gujarati shaikh of the Rifāʿiyya.
See Also
- Abu Syakur as-Salimi
- Acheh
- Banten
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- G. W. J. Drewes
- J. Schacht
- Ma’rifat al-madhahib
- Najm ad-Din an-Nasafi
- P. Voorhoeve
- Raniri
- Stichting De Goeje
- Tibjan fi ma’rifat al-adyan
Source
Twee Maleise geschriften van Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī: in facsimile uitgegeven met aantekeningen door P. Voorhoeve. Uitgaven van de Stichting De Goeje, No. 16. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1955. Inleiding §2b (“De bronnen van de Tibjān”), pp. 9–13, where the Tamhīd is identified as source I and tabulated in detail.
C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur (GAL), I, 419.
The at-Tamhīd fī bayān at-tawḥīd (“The Preparation concerning the Exposition of the Divine Unity”) is a Shāfiʿite theological treatise in Persian by Abū Shakūr as-Sālimī, who lived in Persia in the second half of the fifth century of the Hegira (eleventh century C.E.). The work is identified by Voorhoeve as the principal source of the *Tibjān fī maʿrifat al-adyān* of Nuruddin ar-Raniri: more than a quarter of the text of the Tibjān is translated literally from the Tamhīd, especially from its last chapter, on orthodoxy and the rejection of innovation (bidʿa).
Content and character
The Tamhīd is a Shāfiʿite manual of kalām — dialectical theology — and of the refutation of sectarian deviation. Its last chapter, Fīʾs-sunna waʾl-jamāʿa waʾr-radd ʿalāʾl-bidʿa (“On the Sunna and the Community and the Refutation of Innovation”), supplies the material from which Raniri, working more than five centuries later in Acheh, composed the bulk of his survey of the pre-Muslim religions and the sects of Islam. The Tamhīd enumerates six original Islamic sects — Rāfiḍiyya, Qadariyya, Jabriyya, Mushabbiha, Muʿattila, and Murjiʾa — from which the seventy-two sects are derived by twelvefold subdivision; this is the same schematic classification that Raniri adopts in the *Tibjān*, with minor variations in the names of the six heads.
Manuscripts
The printed edition of the Tamhīd (Cairo 1338 H, per Brockelmann GAL I, 419) was not available to Voorhoeve; he therefore cited the work from the Leiden manuscript Cod. Or. 5664. This manuscript belongs to a collection sent to Leiden by Snouck Hurgronje in 1906, and is almost entirely of Banten provenance. It is written on Javanese paper of particularly fine quality, damaged by book-worm and to a lesser extent by rajap, but without much loss of text. There are many Javanese glosses, both interlinear and in the margin. The colophon reads only: tammat al-kitāb min yawm al-arbaʿ fī shahr Ramaḍān fī balad al-kabīr (“the book was completed on Wednesday in the month of Ramadan in the great city”) — giving no indication of age or place. By appearance the manuscript dates certainly from the eighteenth, if not from the late seventeenth, century; although the oldest Javanese glosses are in a different hand from the text, there is no indication that it was not written on Java.
Voorhoeve collated the Leiden manuscript with three Indian copies — India Office Library Loth 384, Levy 1888, and 1890 (the first two sent for use in Leiden; of the last a microfilm was received) — and with KBG Arab. CCCXI in Jakarta. Comparison showed that only the Banten manuscript contains errors that must have stood also in Raniri’s own exemplar. The most important of these are:
- Cod. Or. 5664, f. 169v r. 5: Kubtiyya (“the Copts”), which the other manuscripts and the context show to be an error for al-Muʿattila (“the sect that denies all divine attributes”). The same error appears in the *Tibjān* p. 24 r. 6.
- Cod. Or. 5664, f. 179r: a lacuna between lines 10 and 11; the missing text occupies, in India Office Library manuscript 1888, f. 134r r. 2 v.o. to f. 135r r. 4 — that is, more than a full page. Precisely this same passage is missing in the *Tibjān* p. 30 r. 4 after the words dariada tanah itu djua. In the missing passage begins the fourth group of the Tanāsuḥiyya; Raniri, translating, evidently did not notice the loss, so that the Tibjān announces four groups but treats only three.
Voorhoeve concludes that it was “a very happy accident” that the Leiden manuscript of the Tamhīd preserves a text practically identical with that of Raniri’s own exemplar.
Sources of the Tibjān drawn from the Tamhīd
The following passages of the Tamhīd are translated more or less literally in the *Tibjān*:
| Tamhīd folio | Tibjān page |
|---|---|
| 157v.15 – 158v.1 | 40.7 – 42.12 |
| 122.15 – 124.5 | 42.13 – 45.7 |
| 161v.3 – 162r.4 | 50.13 – 51.4 |
| 163r.5 – 164r.4 | 50.13 – 55.4 |
| 164r.6–7 | 53.2 – 55.13 |
| 166r.1–3 | 55.10–12 |
| 166r.4–5 | 56.5 – 57.3 |
| 166r.8–9 | 56.10–11 |
| 166r.9–10 | 56.14 – 57.3 |
| 166v.4–5 | 57.3 – 57.6 |
| 166v.7 | 62.15 – 63.3 |
| 166v.7–10 | 63.4 – 66.8 |
| 167r.6 – 167v.11 | 70.6 – 72.7 |
| 167v.12–14 | 84.4 – 84.9 |
| 168r.3–5 | 9.15 – 13.12 |
| 168r.11 – 169v.4 | 13.12 – 15 |
| 169v.4 – 170v.15 | 16.7 – 20.2 |
| 170v.15 – 171v.7 | 24.6 – 26.5 |
| 172v.3–5 | 31.8 – 34.10 |
| 173r.7 – 174r.5 | 26.5 – 30.14 |
| 174r.13 – 175r.13 | 33.13 – 39.15 |
| 175r.14 – 176r.11 | 26.5 – 34.14 |
| 176r.11 – 177r.8 | 177v.9 – 179r.15 |
| 177v.9 – 179r.15 | 31.8 – 34.10 |
Voorhoeve notes that Raniri rearranged the material from the Tamhīd: “what stands there jumbled together he has arranged in a regular ‘historical’ order.” The whole first part of the *Tibjān* — that is, the survey of pre-Muslim religions — is, save for the sections on the philosophical schools and on the Barāhima, translated from the Tamhīd; the introduction to the Muslim sects is also drawn from the same source.
Significance
The Tamhīd is, after the Maʿrifat al-madhāhib and the al-Insān al-kāmil, the third of the principal sources that Raniri translated into Malay in composing the *Tibjān*. Its identification by Voorhoeve was the most original contribution of the 1955 edition: it established that a substantial part of Raniri’s encyclopaedia of religions is, in fact, a Malay translation of an eleventh-century Persian Shāfiʿite treatise, transmitted through a Banten manuscript that preserved the very errors of Raniri’s own exemplar. The Tamhīd thus stands at one of the most remarkable textual conjunctions in the history of Malay religious literature: a Persian treatise of the eleventh century, copied in Banten not later than the eighteenth century, and translated into Malay in Acheh in the seventeenth century by a Gujarati shaikh of the Rifāʿiyya.
See Also
- Abu Syakur as-Salimi
- Acheh
- Banten
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- G. W. J. Drewes
- J. Schacht
- Ma’rifat al-madhahib
- Najm ad-Din an-Nasafi
- P. Voorhoeve
- Raniri
- Stichting De Goeje
- Tibjan fi ma’rifat al-adyan
Source
Twee Maleise geschriften van Nūruddīn ar-Rānīrī: in facsimile uitgegeven met aantekeningen door P. Voorhoeve. Uitgaven van de Stichting De Goeje, No. 16. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1955. Inleiding §2b (“De bronnen van de Tibjān”), pp. 9–13, where the Tamhīd is identified as source I and tabulated in detail.
C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur (GAL), I, 419.