Ebû Abîde el-Hazrecî ve Hıristiyanlığa Reddiyesi: Makâmi‘u’s-Sulbân
Abū Abīda al-Khazrajī and His Refutation of Christianity Maqāmiʿ al-Ṣulbān

Summary/Abstract: Works written within the tradition of refutation (radd) occupy a significant place in Islamic intellectual history. This activity has been sustained across various periods and geographies of Islamic thought, and the same tradition continued in al-Andalus as well. Researchers generally trace the beginning of the refutation-writing tradition in al-Andalus to the famous work of Ibn Hazm (d. 456/1064), known simply as al-Faṣl, in the fifth century AH. In the subsequent period, Abū Abīda al-Khazrajī (d. 582/1187), a relatively lesser-known scholar who lived in the sixth century AH, perpetuated this tradition with his work Maqāmiʿ al-Ṣulbān. According to historical sources, al-Khazrajī lived during a politically, militarily, and socio-politically turbulent era in al-Andalus marked by the collapse of the Almoravid state and the establishment of the Almohad state. Having fallen captive to Christians during this period, and numerous works are attributed to him. Among those that have survived to the present day are the refutation work entitled al-Ṣulbān and the Qur’anic exegesis entitled Nafas al-Ṣabāḥ. In the course of our research, apart from a brief mention of al-Ṣulbān in Mehmet Özdemir’s article “Refutations Directed Against Christianity in al-Andalus,” we have not encountered any detailed study on the work. Accordingly, with the aim of contributing to the Turkish literature on refutation, we have chosen al-Khazrajī and his refutation work as the subject of our study. al-Ṣulbān is a work written by a Muslim scholar while in captivity during a period when Christianisation efforts in al-Andalus were accelerating, the Crusader alliance (Reconquista) was approaching its objectives, and pressure and violence against Muslims were intensifying. In terms of its comparative treatment of Islam and Christianity, Sulbān exhibits characteristics that may be regarded as belonging to the history of religions in a comparative perspective. This feature is particularly evident in the sections addressing Christian doctrine. Another prominent aspect of the work is al-Khazraji’s rational and scholarly critique of how priests and the Church exploited the religious sentiments of the populace by appealing to miraculous events and using them to consolidate their own authority. In summary, al-Ṣulbān influenced later scholars renowned for their refutation works both in the Andalusian context and in the Eastern Islamic world—such as al-Qurṭubī (d. 671/1273), al-Qarāfī (d. 684/1285), and al-Jawziyyah (d. 751/1350)—through the evidence and methodology it employed. Our objective is to introduce al-Khazraji and his work, to trace his position within the Andalusian refutation tradition and its subsequent historical trajectory, and to examine, through a descriptive method, certain noteworthy aspects of the style, methodology, and content he followed in the work from the perspective of kalām (Islamic theology).

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