The Slave Girls of Baghdad: The Qiyān in the Early Abbasid Era

Abstract

̇ ih ̇ h ̇ atihā wajhān (p. 27); yuqāl anna should be yuqāl inna (p. 32); baʿs ̇ should be baʿd ̇ (p. 57). The bibliography is quite impressive as far as the formal study of the Arabic text is concerned (catalogues, manuscripts, biographies). However, works on the issues of agents and causality are missing. The reader would have appreciated seeing references to previous research on agents in Islamic theology and philosophy by J. Obermann, L. Gardet, M. Fakhry and S. Vasalou. Vasalou’s study Moral Agents and their Deserts: The Character of Muʿtazilite Ethics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008) could have helped the author to frame his discussion. These minor criticisms do not detract in any way from the overall quality of this book, however. The author enriches the library of Muʿtazilı̄ studies with this fine critical edition and study of Kitāb al-Muʾaththirāt. Moreover, the book also fills a gap in the field of later Muʿtazilı̄ treatments of agents and helps to make more distinguishable the division into early, classical and later Muʿtazilı̄ thought. The study also increases awareness of the Yemeni-Zaydı̄ context of Muʿtazilı̄ kalām. Certainly, Muslim intellectual historians, theologians, philosophers and specialists in legal hermeneutics should welcome this publication.