Title: A Treatise on the Division of Theoretical Scholarship

Description

This four-page essay on the difference between pre-theoretical belief and theoretical imagination was written by the prominent Shafi’i theologian Muhammad al-Amidi (died 1233 [631 AH]). The manuscript copy shown here was made in the early 19th century by an unknown scribe. It is from the Bašagić Collection of Islamic Manuscripts in the University Library of Bratislava, Slovakia, which was inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World register in 1997. Safvet beg Bašagić (1870–1934) was a Bosnian scholar, poet, journalist, and museum director who assembled a collection of 284 manuscript volumes and 365 print volumes that together reflect the development of Islamic civilization from its inception to the early 20th century. The manuscript is item 282 in Jozef Blaškovič, Arabské, turecké a perzské rukopisy Univerzitnej knižnice v Bratislave (Arab, Turkish, and Persian manuscripts in the University Library, Bratislava).