Rasa?il-i Farsi-yi Jurjani

From the time that ?Ali b. Musa al-Rida (d. 203/818) was designated to be the successor of al-Ma?mun b. Harun al-Rashid (d. 218/833) and then murdered shortly after that, various Shi?a groups have been at odds with whoever opposed their claim to leadership in Islam. The author of the Persian dissertations contained in the present volume, the otherwise unknown Diya? al-Din b. Sadid al-Din Jurjani (ca. 9th/15th cent.), clearly issues from this polemic tradition. Reading his work, it is clear that Jurjani had a full command of all the theological registers to be played upon in a traditional sectarian debate. This is especially the case for the first treatise in this collection, in which he opposes such movements as the Ash?aris, the Hanbalis, the Isma?ilis, and the Sufis. The treatises that follow, too, are all about religious dogma (?aqa?id), with some of them showing clear signs of thematic, not to say temporal, association.