Christopher Melchert

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Christopher Melchert is an American professor and scholar of Islam, specialising in Islamic movements and institutions, especially during the ninth and tenth centuries. A prolific author, he is professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Oxford's Oriental Institute, and is a Fellow in Arabic at Pembroke College, Oxford.

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Melchert received a PhD in History (1992) from the University of Pennsylvania. His thesis was later published as a book, titled The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law, with Brill Publishers, Leiden. Melchert more recently published a book on Ahmad ibn Hanbal, the Sunni hadith-scholar and jurist.

Having written about whether women can be prayer leaders according to the early Sunni and Shii jurists, he is one of the few expert historians who has written authoritatively on the question. [1]

Selected publications

Academia

Related Research Articles

The Hanbali school or Hanbalism is one of the four major schools of Islamic jurisprudence within Sunni Islam. It is named after and based on the teachings of the 9th-century scholar, jurist and traditionist Ahmad ibn Hanbal, and later institutionalized by his students. It is the smallest and most strictly traditionalist of the four major Sunni schools, the others being the Hanafi, Maliki and Shafi'i schools.

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Qutb ud-Din Ahmad ibn ʿAbd-ur-Rahim al-ʿUmari ad-Dehlawi, commonly known as Shah Waliullah Dehlawi, was an Islamic Sunni scholar and Sufi of the Naqshbandi order, who is seen by his followers as a renewer. He emphasized the importance of following Sharia and believed in the unification of Hanafi and Shafi'i schools of law, aiming to reduce legal differences.

Abu Muhammad Yahya ibn Aktham was a ninth century Arab Islamic jurist. He twice served as the chief judge of the Abbasid Caliphate, from ca. 825 to 833 and 851 to 854.

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Abū Sufyān Wakīʿ ibn al-Jarrāḥ ibn Malīḥ al-Ruʾāsī al-Kilābī al-Kufī (745/47–812) was a prominent hadith scholar based in Kufa. He was one of the principal teachers of the major Sunni Muslim jurist Ahmad ibn Hanbal.

Ibn Kullab was an early Sunni theologian (mutakallim) in Basra and Baghdad in the first half of the 9th century during the time of the Mihna and belonged, according to Ibn al-Nadim, to the traditionalist group of the Nawabit. His movement, also called Kullabiyya, merged and developed into Ash'arism, which, along with Maturidism and Atharism, forms the theological basis of Sunni Islam.

References

  1. 1 2 "Whether to Keep Women out of the Mosque: A Survey of Medieval Islamic Law". Pages 59–69 in Authority, Privacy and Public Order in Islam: Proceedings of the 22nd Congress of l'Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants. Edited by B. Michalak-Pikulska and A. Pikulsi. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 148. Leuven: Peeters, 2006.
  2. "Al Tabari: A life dedicated to history and law". 20 February 2014.
  3. Melchert, Christopher (1997). The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law: 9th-10th Centuries C.E. BRILL. ISBN   978-9004109520.
  4. Sanders, Paula; Melchert, Christopher (1999). "The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law, 9th-10th Centuries C. E". The American Journal of Legal History. 43 (1): 98. doi:10.2307/846146. JSTOR   846146.
  5. "Ibn Hanbal: The architect of a school of thought". 16 October 2014.
  6. Melchert, Christopher (2006). Ahmad Ibn Hanbal. Oneworld Publications. ISBN   9781851684076.
  7. Melchert, Christopher (1 December 2012). Ahmad ibn Hanbal. Oneworld Publications. ISBN   9781780741987.
  8. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/70173862&referer=brief_results [ bare URL ]
  9. Melchert's additional works include: