Ibn Al-Ja'abi

Since I had read it when I was 7 until I was finished highschool at 17 -- this is after I'd been on this site for a couple of years as well, funny enough, so my oldest posts are from a time I didn't think about this again -- I really believed that a pair of twins, named Romulus and Remus, raised by a wolf (this part in particular is what I think was just way too dumb for a 17 year old not to think about twice) founded Rome. I only realized that's probably not the case when at 17 I thought about it again and said to myself "no, wait, that's ridiculous it never happened". I should say it obvious

Salams, A friend and I were looking for a third to read through Zaydi primary texts with us. The types of texts which will be covered are theological, legal, historical, etc. This reading circle is not for polemical purposes but for understanding Zaydism through Zaydi texts, you should want to ask yourself why did some ancient Shias choose to associate themselves with the Zaydiyya, how their Imamate works, and the intellectual tradition of this school. You should be someone open-minded and willing to learn about this legal and theological school, and of course take notes and discuss.

Well, first, if this was someone other than an Imam I might agree that the standards we are expecting are too high. But this is an Imam (at least as they say). Their conception of Imamah is also willing to drink the Kool-Aid and commit itself to what can be described as a "high Imamology" while this may still be reasonable seen as a debatable issue among the Shias. Photos like that are pretty damning, it's not an instance of Muhammad al-Baqir wearing fine textiles externally but keeping a woolen shirt underneath but we see that his private life is what we'd expect from any other obscenely rich

It is necessary to remember the relationship between tribal people who largely depended on raiding and settled people who would be the victims of raiding in pre-modern times. I'd written briefly about this and the hadiths on the Kurds a couple of years ago: Additionally, what is the Arabic of the hadith you cited? Curious to see what the word for disability was? The translations don't seem to be particularly well done.

I haven't given much thought to angelology, it's not something which interests me at all. What I had written last year was more historical research into the Bible than talking about my own personal beliefs. I don't think angels can mate with humans, this was a story from a period in Israelite history when the Jewish religion was much less sophisticated than its second temple, rabbinic, medieval, or modern forms. The philological research was what appealed to me.

I'm not sure, I've never checked. It's likely, especially in light of Islamic angelology and how these qisas al-anbiya accounts tend to be, that if on the off chance something like this does exist, it's likely just among the isra'iliyat. That being said, I've never checked myself.

The the statement that dots originated during the time of Imam Ali or even later for the first time, and until then the Arabic script was completely undotted, seems to be more myth than history. We can find dotted letters in texts prior to the caliphate of Imam Ali. Consider, for example, this Greek-Arabic papyrus from the reign of Umar b. al-Khattab which clearly has dots over a number of letters: https://www.islamic-awareness.org/history/islam/papyri/perf558 You may additionally see it here from the same period: https://www.islamic-awareness.org/history/islam/papyri/pberol

Islam, and subsequently its active participle, Muslim, acquired a distinct meaning of "surrender" in Arabic. In other Central Semitic languages -- Hebrew and Aramaic -- the verb has more the meaning to hand something over or to complete. In Hebrew, there is no "if'aal" verb stem, rather the hiph'iil stem, in which you have של''ם appear as השלים (to complete, preform, make an end of), in Aramaic you have in some varieties a he-prefix (haphel) and in other varieties an aleph-prefix (aphel). So we find in Syriac, for example, ܐܫܠܡ meaning to deliver or hand over. So while these words do have cogn

Salams, Excellent recommendations. You really cannot get better than Seeing Islam as Others Saw It, I was going to recommend it myself -- in his book In God's Path, Hoyland applies the methodologies he discusses in Seeing Islam to construct a narrative of the early Islamic conquests, OP might also wish to read this book (though it deals with the conquests). The testimony of pseudo-Sebeos also answers the question of the OP since it demonstrates that there was a religion this Muhammad came with. OP might also be interested in The Seventh Century in Western-Syriac Chronicles by Andrew Palme

Unfortunately most of the languages I study and work with are not spoken by people anymore. Aside from the three I checked above the other are Latin, Greek, Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew, Syriac, and Aramaic, having begun the basics of Classical Ethiopic recently.

What exactly is the point of this?

An interesting article relevant to this thread: Viruses and Certain Religious Beliefs: What is Deadlier? It was almost impossible to predict how the events of the coronavirus pandemic would unfold. To many, what began as propaganda or scaremongering soon morphed into a living nightmare - some eventually even losing their lives to it. A virus that ravaged China, eventually set its sights on Iran, and in the space of a few weeks, it would terrorize the entire country. At the time of writing, three cities, Qom, Gilan and Mazandaran were placed on ‘red alert’, an ominous sign of the dete

Dhu -- possessor of (masc. sing.) (a)l-Fiqaar -- the vertebrae (masc. pl. -- sing. fiqrah) This style of writing is pretentious and rather annoying. You need to present things and learn to discuss with people more maturely.

It's hard for me to buy that the group of Muslims who are apathetic at the murder of Ahlul Bayt -- other than those who've began imitating Shii practices, and I can respect that there is an effort being made though it will naturally be imperfect -- and would rather have carnivals and celebrations on Ashura share in the love of Ahlul Bayt (عليه السلام) mourning their miseries. In any case, la'nah is the siira of God, the Prophet, and Ahlul Bayt and is rightly practiced on those إنقلبوا على عاقبيهم after the death of the Prophet and were cursed by the ones they oppressed. When put to the te

Salams, For any useful discussion on Fiqh and Usul al-Fiqh we need to understand the terms we're using. I never recite the third shahada in tashahhud, and I don't really recite it in Adhan either, but when using terms like Bid'ah we need to have a good conception of them. What exactly is a bid'ah in the context of Shii Usul, you'd need to bring precedence for your definition from the works of major scholars of Usul and with reference to any relevant hadith -- this further requires you to be able to read in at least Arabic and ideally also Persian. You also would've ideally referred t