Politics, Patronage, and Scholarship in Nishapur

Abstract

From the death of the Prophet in CE 632 through the fourth/tenth century, intense political, theological, and legal debates divided the Muslim community. And though debates continued long after, the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries are recalled as the period in which the theological and legal identity of Sunnī Islam was cemented through the consolidation of the four schools of law: the H ̣anafī, the Mālikī, the Shāfiʿī, and the H ̣anbalī, and the two schools of theology: the Ashʿarī and the Māturīdī. The creation of this identity, however, should not be confused with strength, as scholars writing during these centuries continued to respond to threats, both internal and external, perceived and actual. It was these actual threats that faced al-Juwaynī in his hometown of Nishapur. Nishapur, alongside the three other great cities of the intellectually fertile province of Khurasan in northeastern Persia, namely, Marw, Herat, and Balkh, was the regional capital for politics, scholarship, and commerce starting in the third/ninth century. Despite being located in