The Group Ijāza Referred to by Ibn al-Fuwaṭī in the Late 13th Century

Connections between the Scholarly Communities in Baghdad, Damascus and Mecca

Abstract

This paper discusses the “group ijāza,” a special kind of ijāza (permission) of transmission sent from a group to a person or to another group without a direct contact between the conferring and conferred parties, and examines its meanings and social background. This group ijāza is referred to as "ijāza jāmi‘a" in the Majma‘ al-ādāb fī mu‘jam al-alqāb, an Arabic biographical dictionary written in early 14th-century Baghdad by the Baghdadi scholar, Ibn al-Fuwaṭī (1244-1322).
　Ibn al-Fuwaṭī refers to the requests and conferments of group ijāzas that took place between Mecca and Baghdad and between Damascus and Baghdad. Meccan scholars sent a group ijāza from Mecca to Ibn al-Fuwaṭī in 1280/81 through an intermediary, a Baghdadi friend of Ibn al-Fuwaṭī. The conferrers included a member of the famous Meccan Ṭabarī family. Groups of Damascene scholars and notables repeatedly sent group ijāza requests to Baghdad between 1288 and 1299. In these requests, they asked not only Ibn al-Fuwaṭī but also probably other Baghdadi scholars to confer ijāzas on their children. The names of 150 Damascene children were written in a group ijāza request dated 1296/97.
　The group ijāza was an effective means of collecting ijāzas from distant cities. Although the ulama had ceased to travel widely in pursuit of knowledge by the late 13th century, they maintained their intention to get ijāzas from ulama in distant scholarly centers. The group ijāza could be substituted for a studying trip. It contributed to the formation and perpetuation of the intellectual elite class of a city since only some specific ulama families had access to it. The exchange of ijāzas between Baghdad and Damascus in the late 13th century indicates that a close social connection existed between the two cities.