Islamic Law and Linguistics Solecisms: A Case of ‘Insulting the Prophet’ in Late 10th/16th-Century West Africa
Islamic Law and Linguistics Solecisms: A Case of ‘Insulting the Prophet’ in Late 10th/16th-Century West Africa

Summary/Abstract: A passage in the West African chronicle Tārīkh al-fattāsh recounts a tenth-/sixteenth-century case of a mosque attendant in Timbuktu having been executed for an absurdly faulty reading of a single word in a celebrated Arabic panegyric on the Prophet, al-Fāzāzī’s ʿIshrīniyyāt. In addition to presenting and analysing this instructive case of unintentional sabb al-rasūl (‘insulting the Prophet’), the essay discusses some of the juridical aspects of the incorrect use of Arabic, especially linguistic considerations affecting the sanctions against blasphemous and insulting utterances.

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