The Institute of Asian and African Studies

The Max Schloessinger Memorial Foundation

Offprint from

JERUSALEM STUDIES IN
ARABIC AND ISLAM
45 (2018)
A SPECIAL ISSUE ON AUTHORSHIP
IN MEDIAEVAL ARABIC AND PERSIAN LITERATURES

Zoltan Szombathy

THE CONCEPT OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IN

MEDIAEVAL MUSLIM LITERARY CULTURE

THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM

THE FACULTY OF HUMANITIES
JSAI 45 (2018)

THE CONCEPT OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IN MEDIAEVAL

MUSLIM LITERARY CULTURE

Zoltan Szombathy
Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest

Naḥnu maʿshar al-shuʿarāʾ asraqu min al-ṣāgha

(We poets are apter thieves than the goldsmiths.)
al-Akhṭal, (d. before 92/710)

The ‘preservation’ and ‘guardianship’ of the authorial composition are terms

that indicate an awareness of what is today commonly called ‘intellectual
property.’ You may ‘guard’ an authored content and ‘preserve’ it as your own
if there exists a sense of entitlement, whether well-defined or vague, which
you can evoke in an effort to protect your text from various sorts of
intrusions. More broadly speaking, the idea of intangible property (as
opposed to the ownership of tangible objects) is necessary if one is to regard
an essentially incorporeal entity, such as a text, as one’s own in any sense. In
what follows, I wish to raise some questions and make a few observations
about pre-modern Muslim ideas concerning intellectual property. I will focus
on a few terms and phenomena that I believe clearly betray a sense of
intellectual property, and will try to define a few characteristics that
informed mediaeval Muslim perceptions of the ‘ownership’ or ‘guardianship’
of texts.

1. What is intellectual property?

To begin, let me quote the typical legal notice that tends to appear next to
the title page of practically any book that is published these days in the

1
 2 Zoltan Szombathy

United States, as well as in much of the English-speaking world. Given the

ubiquity of this paragraph in all published volumes subject to copyright
regulations, the set of sentences might be said to be the common intellectual
property of all English speakers:

Copyright: So-and-So, [year of publication]. All rights reserved.

The moral right of the authors has been asserted. [...] Except in
the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the
condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the
publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other
than that in which it is published and without a similar
condition including this condition being imposed on the
subsequent purchaser.

This legalese may appear cumbersome to someone totally unfamiliar with

courtrooms and litigation — such as myself — but even such a person can
make at least two important observations regarding this piece of prose.
Between them, these observations reveal to us a great deal about the
contemporary western understanding of intellectual property. First, the
function of the above passage is to establish a legal means of controlling and
restricting the circulation and use of the material according to the authors’
and publishers’ interests. By acquiring a copy of the book, the buyer does not
become entitled to treat the text in any way he or she wishes to. Notably, the
rights over the text — whether moral or legal — are primarily owned by the
authors (and possibly by the publishers). Second, and even more
importantly, the clause explicitly recognises certain moral rights in addition
to strictly legal ones. I take this latter point as my main guideline that will
structure all that I wish to say in this essay. However, before I turn to the
issue of mediaeval Muslim notions of intellectual property, an important
terminological caveat must be made.
A vague and ill-defined use of a term that has by now acquired fairly
strict legal connotations is inherently and inescapably anachronistic to some
extent. While the term ‘intellectual property’ seems to be such a well-defined
legal concept currently, it is important to realise the extent to which it still
 Intellectual property in mediaeval Muslim literary culture 3

continues to be used fairly indiscriminately to refer to various

understandings of proprietorship of texts or ideas. As I have just emphasised,
two very fundamental — and fundamentally different — senses of the term
are particularly salient. I am referring to a legal and a moral understanding of
intellectual property. The fact that these two aspects of the concept are
typically combined (as they are in the copyright clause cited above) greatly
complicates the issue. Nevertheless, it is perhaps fair to say that a marked
shift towards an increasingly legalistic understanding of intellectual
property seems to have taken place in recent Western history. Witness the
changing treatment of cases of plagiarism, which nowadays would typically
involve the suspension of the culprit’s university studies, the demand and
payment of legal damages where applicable, and in general lengthy lawsuits
and the seeking of legal redress. This trend certainly cannot be projected
back into the past. In pre-modern times, unwritten or explicit norms, rather
than official legal sanctions, tended to protect authors’ rights (intellectual
property). Thus, I hope it will be clear that in referring to mediaeval Muslim
notions of intellectual property, in no way do I wish to imply that all the
modern western connotations of the term were present. Indeed, my
contention is that they were not.
Taken in its broadest sense, the concept of intellectual property is
apparently as old as human society. Two examples from the aboriginal
societies of Papua New Guinea will perhaps suffice to demonstrate this. The
anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski mentions that among the Trobriand
Islanders specialists of magic and sorcery would usually demand payment for
passing on to others (save close kin) their knowledge of magical formulae
and spells, while the Danish traveller Jens Bjerre reports that among the
Kuman highlanders authors of ceremonial songs expected honoraria from
those eager to learn their compositions. 1 However, it should be emphasised
that it is only a vague perception of ‘rights’ over texts — rather than any
clear-cut sense of legal entitlement comparable to the contemporary notion
familiar to us — that was present in pre-modern societies. Thus, as I observed
above, to a certain degree it is inevitably anachronistic to speak of

1
Malinowski, Argonauts, pp. 73-74; Bjerre, Az utolsó kannibálok, p. 130. (I have been unable to
access the English version of the latter source, which was published under the title The Last
Cannibals. The reference is to Chapter 14 of the book.)
 4 Zoltan Szombathy

‘intellectual property’ in a pre-modern culture, including pre-modern

Muslim culture. For that reason, other terms might be preferable; for
instance, it may be argued that the neutral phrase ‘guardianship of the
authorial composition’2 is preferable to the heavily loaded term ‘intellectual
property,’ which carries so many connotations not applicable to the
mediaeval Muslim milieu. Alternatively, certain terms that would have
sounded more familiar to a pre-modern Muslim might also have served as
the starting-point of this analysis. For instance, ‘transmission’ — the act of
passing on some specific knowledge to another person, who is then more or
less entitled to utilising it for his own purposes — has quite a few Arabic (and
surely also Persian) equivalents, such as riwāya, naql, ikhbār, and so on.
Nevertheless, I do think that the slight anachronism of speaking of
‘intellectual property’ among mediaeval Muslims is outweighed by the
advantage of its serving as a convenient rubric in which one may include
various related phenomena. I will therefore keep this term, while constantly
alerting the reader to the fact that whenever it is used below in reference to
a pre-modern Muslim setting, it is to be understood heuristically as a vague
notion rather than as a technical term. As I will argue, even if the term itself
had no exact Arabic equivalent, mediaeval Muslims were quite aware of and
eagerly concerned with many aspects of ‘intellectual property.’

2. Plagiarism: The ‘theft’ of intellectual property

Plagiarism is a sin and/or a civil wrong that can exist only in a cultural
environment that has at least a vague conception of intellectual rights over
cultural products, including texts. In the absence of any possibility of
personal claims over a text, the charge of unauthorised use of a text is
meaningless. That plagiarism was a common charge among mediaeval Arab
authors is perhaps the strongest indication of their appreciation of the
concept of intellectual property. The very existence of the notion of
‘plagiarism’ in belles-lettres shows that the idea of authors’ rights over
literary works was not alien to this milieu. It is also instructive that the most

2
As in the title of the workshop that served as the basis for this collection of essays.
 Intellectual property in mediaeval Muslim literary culture 5

frequently used Arabic term expressing ‘plagiarism,’ sariqa, literally means

‘theft,’ the unlawful removing of property from its rightful owner. Acts as
well as accusations of plagiarism were rampant in mediaeval Arabic
literature and humanistic culture, and it has been the subject of much
valuable scholarship. I will not go into the details of most aspects of this
topic; the reader is advised to consult the extensive literature on this
phenomenon.3
One thing that is glaringly obvious from the sources is that although
the term sariqa, ‘theft’, was widely applied to refer to plagiarism, it was used
in a strictly metaphorical sense when referring to literary ‘theft,’ and there
was little if any possibility, and willingness, to press authorial rights in a
meaningful legal way. This is somewhat surprising, given the extremely well-
defined nature and consequences of the crime that Islamic law calls sariqa.
This too is a well-researched subject by which we need not be detained here;
suffice it to say that the prescribed and non-negotiable punishment of theft
(sariqa) is conditional upon a number of elements, most importantly the
value of the stolen objects exceeding a certain amount and the thief having
removed the stolen objects from a protected and private sphere (ḥirz).4 Even
at a superficial glance these preconditions make it obvious that Islamic law
conceives of theft as the stealing of a tangible object, there being no logical
allowances for the theft of intellectual property. 5 For how is one to put a price
tag, an exact value, to an intellectual product? And how is one to determine
if it has been removed from a reasonably well-protected private space? It is
little wonder that the standard sources of Islamic law have nothing to say
regarding cases of plagiarism. Traditional Islamic law defines the concept of
‘theft’ very narrowly because of the severe punishment thereof, and the
deliberately narrow definition precludes any idea of applying it to ‘stealing’
intellectual property.

3
E.g., Bonebakker, “Ancient Arabic poetry”; Haddāra, Mushkilat al-sariqāt; Heinrichs, “An
evaluation of sariqa”; Sanni, “From value judgement”; Ṭabāna, al-Sariqāt; von Grunebaum, “The
concept of plagiarism.”
4
For a brief summary, see Schacht, Introduction, pp. 179-180.
5
Some Muslim men of letters apparently took note of this fact. In verse as well as in prose, the
celebrated vizier and littérateur al-Ṣāḥib b. ʿAbbād (d. 385/995) wittily exploited the
contradiction between plagiarism being a kind of theft and the lack of any fixed punishment
being prescribed for it; see Naaman, “Sariqa,” p. 282.
 6 Zoltan Szombathy

Nonetheless, mediaeval Arabic sources do mention plagiarism

frequently, mostly using the metaphorical term sariqa. The term was usually
applied in a literary context; as I will argue later on, experts in the religious
sciences would normally handle the issue of intellectual property in a
different conceptual (and terminological) framework, even though one
occasionally finds the explicit charge of ‘plagiarism’ (expressed by the word
sariqa) levelled against ḥadīth experts.6 However, regardless of genres, most
cases of plagiarism discussed in the sources substantiate the observation that
Islamic law is ill-suited to, or rather unconcerned about, sanctions on
intellectual ‘theft.’ In other words, in the context of literature and non-
religious subjects, owners’ rights existed, at best, only in a moral sense. The
protection of authorial rights was only a metaphor, precisely as was the term
denoting literary ‘theft.’ There was no feasible legal way of stopping a
plagiarist,7 and it is not surprising that we find acts of plagiarism by poets
frequently reported in the sources. The practice was obviously widespread
despite the palpable moral condemnation attached to it,8 which even gave

6
A man called ʿAbd al-Malik b. al-Ṣabbāḥ al-Ṣanʿānī was accused of this (wa-yuttaham bi-sariqat
al-aḥādīth). In the context of ḥadīth-scholarship, it was defined (e.g., in al-Sakhāwī’s Fatḥ al-
mughīth) as transmitting the ḥadīths of someone and then omitting him from the isnād as though
the transmitter had heard the text directly from an earlier authority; and certain other forms of
duplicitous tinkering with the isnād could also be described as sariqa. See al-Khalīlī, Kitāb al-
irshād, vol. 1, p. 280; and see another example in Shākir, Bāʿith, p. 64. Yet another passage in
which the term sariqa (plagiarism or theft) is used in reference to a ḥadīth scholar attributing to
himself the ḥadīths recorded by another in a session of ḥadīth transmission is a story regarding
Abū ʿUbayd Allāh b. ʿAbda (d. 313/925-6) and Mūsā b. Hārūn in Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ, p. 383. It is also
noteworthy that the concept of plagiarism could occasionally be applicable, albeit to a very
limited extent, to the ‘stealing’ of sizeable whole ḥadīth collections. For an account of such an
accusation against one of the greatest ḥadīth scholars, see Brown, The canonization, p. 95; and cf.
also Heck, “The epistemological problem,” p. 100, n. 38 on al-Hujwīrī complaining about a
plagiarist having stolen a whole book of his. However, this use of the term ‘theft’ in reference to
ḥadīth material seems to me somewhat unusual; the concept of sariqa tends to be associated with
literary materials.
7
I do not consider here the important observation of Erez Naaman that power relations could
play a role as a deterrent to plagiarism. A high-ranking man like al-Ṣāḥib b. ʿAbbād had the
means to dissuade some would-be plagiarists at his court from availing themselves of his literary
works. See Naaman, “Sariqa,” pp. 282-283, 285.
8
We do encounter usages of the term sariqa which were obviously not meant in a pejorative way,
as, for instance, in the book title Sariqāt al-Kumayt min al-Qurʾān by Muḥammad b. Kunāsa (d.
207/822), where the word refers to borrowing from the Qurʾān; see Orfali and Pomerantz, “I see
 Intellectual property in mediaeval Muslim literary culture 7

rise to full-length treatises denouncing certain poets’ habit of

misappropriating others’ products. However, the force of law offered no
protection against such thieves. Consider the following report, which
appears in Yāqūt’s (d. 626/1229) biographical dictionary of authors. The
account is illuminating regarding prevalent notions of authorial rights over
a composition, and deserves to be quoted at some length:

[The philologist al-Farrāʾ (d. 207/822)] went out to the people

and began dictating his Kitāb al-maʿānī, his copyists being
Salama b. ʿĀṣim and Abū Naṣr b. al-Jahm. Abū Burayda [al-
Waḍḍāḥī] said: We wanted to count the people who had
gathered for the dictation of the Kitāb al-maʿānī, but we were
unable to count the number [because a great multitude were
present]. Now when he had completed dictating it, the copyists
withheld the text from the people so as to profit from it
(khazanahu al-warrāqūn ʿan al-nās li-yatakassabū bihi). They said:
“We don’t hand it to anyone except to people who commission
us to copy it for them with the condition that [copying] every
five folios will cost a dirham.” The people complained to al-
Farrāʾ, whereupon he summoned the copyists and discussed
the matter with them. He said: “Do a favour to the people to
benefit them and to gain a benefit for yourselves.” They
refused to oblige, so he said: “I’ll show you what.” And he said
to the people: “I want to dictate another Kitāb al-maʿānī [which
will have] a fuller commentary and easier wording than the
one I have previously dictated.” He sat down to dictate [this
new version], and just on the [conventional phrase of] praising
[God] he dictated a hundred folios. [Seeing their monopoly
evaporating,] the copyists came to him and said: “We’ll give the
people access to whatever text they wish.” [From that moment

a distant fire,” p. 192. An account in the Kitāb al-aghānī presents Abū Nuwās as happily
acknowledging strutting in borrowed plumes (to wit, a poem of fellow-poet al-Ḥusayn b. al-
Ḍaḥḥāk); see al-Iṣfahānī, Aghānī, vol. 7, p. 165. But then Abū Nuwās is the ultimate shameless
libertine of Arabic literary history, and the general view was that plagiarism was a
dishonourable act.
 8 Zoltan Szombathy

on,] they would copy [at the reasonable rate of] ten folios for a
dirham.9

The specificities of this interesting case aside,10 one general observation that
it is possible to make is that once an author had presented his text to an
audience and someone had recorded it in writing, it was extremely difficult
to regulate its circulation.11 This is apparent especially in the case of such
literary texts as were likely to be in demand and bring a hefty profit, a fact
which would be freely exploited by copyists and other peddlers of belles-
lettres. Significantly, al-Farrāʾ seems not to have even considered the
possibility of claiming his authorial rights or seeking legal redress; he had to
resort to intimidation tactics and blackmail to regain some control over his
own text. Likewise, authors would often strive, by various inventive means,
to retain control over their own works, yet such efforts all too often proved
futile. A linguist-cum-belletrist called Abū ʿAmr al-Harawī (d. 255/869) did all
he could to stop the unauthorised circulation of one of his works, and even
his inheritor tried to maintain the monopoly, as Yāqūt notes with apparent
disapproval:

When he completed the book, he kept it to himself throughout

his life. God did not bless him in what he did. No one copied the
book right until his death; and after his death one of his
relatives stored this book [for his exclusive use]. Eventually it
sank [during a ride in a boat], along with other possessions of
that man, so he did not benefit from it. Abū Manṣūr al-Azharī
said: “I have seen some scattered parts of this book, and leafing
through its chapters, I found it extremely valuable. May God
forgive all of us and Abū ʿAmr [in particular] and pardon his

9
Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, vol. 6, p. 2814.
10
An especially pertinent question, which the text is regrettably not specific enough to help
resolve, concerns the composition of the audience and their relationship with al-Farrāʾ. It makes
quite a difference if they were mainly his disciples, or else his colleagues, or again just customers
of a reputable intellectual product.
11
Cf. the description of what constituted the mediaeval Muslim equivalent of ‘publishing’ a book
in Robinson, “Technology and religious change,” pp. 235-236.
 Intellectual property in mediaeval Muslim literary culture 9

error, since trying to keep knowledge for oneself (al-ḍann bi-ʼl-

ʿilm) is not commendable and brings no blessing.”12

A noteworthy aspect of these cases is the usually abortive attempt (by

author, inheritor, or copyist) at creating exclusive control over a successful
text, a strategy also employed in other intellectual fields which I will discuss
below. The effort to control an intellectual product posed serious difficulties
in a manuscript culture that did not seek to protect intellectual rights by
legal means. Thus the celebrated Egyptian belletrist Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad al-
Naḥḥās (d. 337/948-9) refused to lend the Andalusī scholar al-Mundhir b.
Saʿīd al-Ballūṭī his manuscript of the Kitāb al-ʿayn for copying, trying to
impede the latter’s scholarly improvement. However, when al-Ballūṭī found
another accessible manuscript of the work, al-Naḥḥās realised he was trying
in vain to block access to the book, and permitted him again to proceed with
the copying.13 The great prose writer Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī (d. 414/1023)
attempted to destroy all his writings shortly before his death, arguing in an
eloquent letter that authors are fully the owners of what they have written
and may therefore even annihilate their oeuvre if they so wish. 14 They may
indeed try but they cannot: contrary to his own declared decision, al-
Tawḥīdī’s numerous writings have survived to this day.
It bears repetition, then, that once a written work had been made
known to the public and copies of it had been made, neither the author nor
other ‘authorised owners’ of the text had effective control over the
multiplication of copies. As a consequence, typical beneficiaries of a book’s
success tended to be copyists and booksellers15 rather than the author. Some
texts were highly sought-after, and copyists specialising in such works
became remarkably rich. A copyist and religious scholar called Ibn Shihāb al-
ʿUkbarī (d. 428/1036-7) amassed quite a fortune (between real estate and
cash) by copying successful works, such as the dīwān of al-Mutanabbī (d.

12
Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, vol. 3, p. 1421. In another version of the story, the book drowned when
Abū ʿAmr al-Harawī was still alive.
13
Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, vol. 1, p. 469.
14
For a thought-provoking analysis of the implications of this incident, see al-Qāḍī, “Scholars,”
esp. pp. 635-637.
15
I am oversimplifying here. The term warrāq meant more than just copyist and bookseller; see
Canova, “Libri,” p. 236.
 10 Zoltan Szombathy

354/965). He gives a very interesting reckoning of costs and profits, saying

that he would buy five dirhams’ worth of writing-paper, onto which he would
copy al-Mutanabbī’s collected poems in three nights, and then sell the work
for a hundred and fifty to two hundred dirhams. He adds that other
successful adab works fetched similar profits.16 It is little wonder that some
authors would also make efforts to profit from the thriving business.
However, their attempts to ensure a share of the profits from their own
works are strikingly exotic to a modern observer accustomed to the concept
of legally enforced authors’ rights. It is not by claiming moral or legal rights
but by the production of copies that a mediaeval Muslim author could hope
to cash in on his own product. The linguist and jurist Abū Saʿīd al-Ḥasan al-
Sīrāfī (d. 368/979), earning a regular income from copying other people’s
books, also tried to make money by marketing pseudo-authorised copies of
his own compositions:

[A man] known as Ibn al-Khazzāz the copyist in Baghdad, and

Abū Bakr al-Qanṭarī and Abū l-Ḥusayn ibn al-Khurāsānī, both
of whom are also copyists [reckoned] among the élite of this
profession, related this: When Abū Saʿīd [al-Sīrāfī] wanted to
sell a book [authored by him] he made one of his disciples copy
it. Desiring a profit from it and considering his meagre
livelihood, he would write at the end of [the copy], even if he
had not checked a single letter in it: “Al-Ḥasan b. ʿAbd Allāh [al-
Sīrāfī, i.e., himself] declares: This book has been read [aloud] to
me [for correction] and has been found correct.” The goal was
to make it sell for more than such [an unchecked manuscript]
would normally fetch...17

16
Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, vol. 2, p. 866. On the remarkable profits that could be derived from
producing certain types of literary works, see Szombathy, Mujūn, pp. 233-236.
17
Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, vol. 2, p. 893. (Note that apart from the dishonest authorisation
process, the author’s goal seems remarkably close to something like modern copyright.)
 Intellectual property in mediaeval Muslim literary culture 11

3. Literature and ḥadīth scholarship:

Differing grounds for intellectual rights

Before discussing some additional aspects of intellectual property in

mediaeval Muslim culture, it will be useful, indeed necessary, to make an
important distinction regarding the notion of people having ‘rights’ over
certain texts. As will be argued here, one finds contrasting grounds for
claiming rights over texts in belles-lettres and ḥadīth scholarship
respectively.
Moral (and possibly also legal) claims over a text may be established
through creativity — i.e., by inventing, ‘authoring’ it — or else by special
expertise — i.e., by thoroughly ‘acquiring’ it through a painstaking learning
process. In the former case, you ‘own’ a text because you made it (whether
through original composition or compilation); in the latter case, you ‘own’ it
because you are uniquely qualified to handle it. Ḥadīth experts obviously had
the expertise-based claim of control over their texts, whereas men of letters
would typically base their claims of ‘ownership’ on creativity.18 I should
emphasise that creativity is understood here in a very broad sense that
includes creative compilation (i.e., the re-use of earlier materials in novel
ways), a typical practice in various genres of adab literature, wherein a
variety of already existing texts would be rearranged and refashioned to
produce a new work.19
In a sense, the status of ‘creativity’ in ḥadīth transmission is
diametrically opposed to its status in belles-lettres. Creativity is a
disqualifying error in the former field (being tantamount to forgery) and a
desideratum, a requisite quality in the latter (in the broad sense just

18
Cf. the observations of Sabine Schmidtke on the difference between permissions granted by
scholars for their own texts and for other people’s compositions respectively. Schmidtke, “The
ijāza,” p. 69; and also cf. Eickelman, “The art of memory,” p. 495.
19
On the remarkably creative ways of compiling earlier material in Muslim historiography and
the inadequacy of defining such practices in terms of plagiarism, see Conermann (ed.), Innovation
oder Plagiat?, especially the editor’s introductory essay.
 12 Zoltan Szombathy

described).20 In the study of ḥadīth, the more unique the content of a ḥadīth
text, the less its value. In principle, the coveted quality for a ḥadīth
transmitter was to be part of a prestigious isnād tradition rather than to
acquire some unique content.21 Furthermore, any effort to improve on a
ḥadīth text after learning it was unthinkable, as it would have amounted to
illegitimate tampering with the tradition. This would seem to suggest that
the notion of ‘ownership’ in ḥadīth scholarship must have been very different
from its counterpart in literary circles. I rather believe, however, that this
was not always and necessarily so. Firstly, ‘creativity’ came to play some
limited role in the study and transmission of ḥadīth, witness such phenomena
as the compilation of collections of various types of suspect ḥadīth texts (e.g.,
gharīb al-ḥadīth, mawdūʿāt) and various dishonest techniques of ‘laundering’
suspect ḥadīth texts (tadlīs, tadrīj, etc.). Thus in practice if not in principle,
ḥadīth scholars did strive to locate unique and even suspect ḥadīths in order
to enhance their own prestige. 22 Secondly, the trademark element of ḥadīth,
the chain of transmitters (isnād), came to appear in certain literary works as
well to signal reliable transmission of knowledge or for other purposes.23
Furthermore, various forms of mastering and presenting the traditions of the
past were highly valued in belles-lettres as well, even though these practices
did involve a good measure of creativity. Expertise in transmitting existing
materials played quite a role, given the prominent presence of citation,
compilation and a host of other intertextual practices in mediaeval Arabic
literature.24 Thus, it is fair to say that even in literature, it is not just purely
original authorship that could be grounds for claim to a text. This makes the

20
Indeed, certain ḥadīth authorities even disallowed the correction of obvious instances of laḥn
(grammatical and lexicographical errors in Classical Arabic) in a ḥadīth text. This suggests that
a ḥadīth text was never considered fully the intellectual property of even its rightful
transmitters, a view shared by all ḥadīth experts even if not always carried to such an extreme
conclusion.
21
Think of the suspicions concerning little-known texts (āḥād, and especially gharīb) and the
high value ascribed to widely transmitted (mutawātir) ḥadīth texts.
22
For a condemnation of such practices, cf., for instance, Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, vol. 1, pp. 112-114.
23
Balda-Tillier, “La prose amoureuse,” pp. 187-189, 210-211.
24
For some useful remarks on the tendency of “fragmenting older works and reassembling
them” as a legitimate technique in much mediaeval Arabic writing, see Atassi, “The
transmission,” pp. 66-67.
 Intellectual property in mediaeval Muslim literary culture 13

whole issue more complex than the clear-cut opposition suggested above
(i.e., creativity versus expertise) makes it appear.

4. Permission to transmit:
Intellectual property among ḥadīth experts

Like plagiarism (sariqa) in literature, ḥadīth scholarship also had a key

concept that betrays a clear awareness of intellectual rights, of people having
prerogatives over certain texts. This key concept is ijāza (lit., ‘giving
permission’). Familiar to all students of pre-modern Muslim culture, this
Arabic term denotes a scholar’s explicit permission to someone else — not
necessarily his disciple — to transmit a ḥadīth or some other piece of
information on his authority. The permission may be valid for a written text,
such as a book, or for multiple texts, or for orally transmitted material. I
suggest that the very notion of the need for a permission to circulate a
certain text is a strong indication of a recognition of, and indeed,
preoccupation with, what we now call intellectual property.25 Permissions
were asked for and given in other disciplines and genres as well, and even for
purely literary texts,26 but I am chiefly concerned here with the role of ijāza
in the study of ḥadīth.
The umbrella term ijāza in fact covers a variety of practices.27 In
certain types of ijāza, the donor would insist on retaining some form of

25
Besides obtaining an ijāza, a number of other means existed for a scholar to acknowledge his
debt to his immediate sources, such as listing one’s teachers (mashyakha or barnāmaj, and the
very similar Maghribī genre of fahrasa), and the occasional bibliography. However, the former
does not allow precise specification of the provenance of particular contents, whereas the latter
practice was too sporadic to be described as an established custom. On these, see Ahmed,
“Mapping the world,” pp. 24-25; Witkam, “The human element,” pp. 126-127; and also
Schmidtke, “The ijāza,” pp. 64-65.
26
MacKay, “Certificates,” p. 6; Fayyāḍ, Ijāzāt, p. 30.
27
Moreover, the sources tend to be vague about the type of certificate to which they make
reference by using this term; see Schmidtke, “The ijāza,” pp. 65-66. On the varied technicalities
of granting a permission (e.g., in oral or written form, recorded in the transmitted book or in a
separate document, etc.), see Fayyāḍ, Ijāzāt, pp. 21-30. For an overview of the evolution of the
various types of permission, see al-Sāmarrāʾī, “al-Ijāza.”
 14 Zoltan Szombathy

control over the accuracy of the text transmitted, but this was not always (or
even typically) so. In many cases ijāza meant the relinquishing of any
pretense of control whatsoever over the subsequent fate of the text.
Furthermore, the recipients of such freely distributed permissions often had
no intention of actually studying or utilising the texts to which they obtained
moral entitlement. In the words of Shahab Ahmed, “the accumulation of
licenses eventually became a scholarly status-symbol and they were often
obtained in a pro forma manner [...],” an act by which the petitioner wished
“merely to pad his curriculum vitae.”28 In such cases, the ijāza amounted to
giving a blank cheque to another person, or even a multitude of people, for
transmitting practically whatever they wished. Here is a passage about a
certain Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-ʿAsqalānī, who received just such a blank cheque at
the tender age of twelve (in the year 785/1383-4) from the greatest living
ḥadīth expert of Ḥijāz at the time:

[…] It is known for sure that he did not listen to the whole [of
the Ṣaḥīḥ of al-Bukhārī from the mouth of his respectable
teacher] but rather obtained a general permission for all [the
material] transmitted by him (ijāza shāmila li-marwiyyātihi).29

Indeed, it was not uncommon for ḥadīth scholars to give permissions for
transmission, either by correspondence or through intermediaries, to people
with whom they were unacquainted.30 In his autobiography, al-Suyūṭī (d.
911/1505) tells his readers in all sincerity that he regards himself as entitled
to transmit the works of the same Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (d. 852/1449) despite
having never met him personally. Here is the reason in his own words:

There can be no doubt that I do have an ijāza from him, since

my father often attended his sessions, and a person whom I

28
Ahmed, “Mapping the world,” p. 25.
29
Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ, p. 62. On the issue of children’s transmission of ḥadīth, see Dickinson, “Ibn al-
Ṣalāḥ,” pp. 494, 498-499.
30
Atassi, “The transmission of Ibn Saʿd’s biographical dictionary,” p. 68; Heck, “The
epistemological problem,” p. 86. See, for instance, the text of a ‘carte blanche’ ijāza giving
explicit permission to any Sunnī Muslim to transmit the scholar’s whole oeuvre in al-Silafī, Wajīz,
pp. 66-67. Here the motive seems to have been pietistic.
 Intellectual property in mediaeval Muslim literary culture 15

trust told me that [Ibn Ḥajar] would give permission to [all

those] who attended his sessions and their descendants [or:
their sons, awlādahum].31

Permissions would routinely be granted for the completely unchecked

contents of whole volumes, even for entire personal libraries. The fact that
permissions were often indiscriminately distributed without regard for
ensuring the accuracy of transmission is sarcastically commented upon in a
bon mot by a certain Abū Ṭāhir al-Dabbās: “When a sheikh says, ‘I give you
permission [to transmit my words],’ he means, ‘I give you permission to lie
on my authority’.”32 The motives behind this curious laxity varied; some
pious scholars were simply keen to pass their knowledge on as widely as
possible and avoid withholding their scholarship from anyone interested. 33
Others simply strove to do a favour by giving a generalised permission, and
yet others were seeking fame by being featured in a great number of isnāds.34
Such people would be only too glad to pass on their ḥadīths to anyone
interested, but only on condition that they should be specified as the
authority the ḥadīth had been taken from.35 Incidentally, this latter motive is
curiously close to the function of the modern literary author’s ‘moral rights’;

31
Al-Suyūṭī, Taḥadduth, p. 45. Giving permissions of transmission to minors, indeed to infants
unable to understand a word of the text in question, was far from unusual; see, for instance,
some cases in MacKay, “Certificates,” pp. 10, 12; Atassi, “The transmission of Ibn Saʿd’s
biographical dictionary,” p. 67; Fayyāḍ, Ijāzāt, pp. 38-39.
32
Al-Silafī, Wajīz, p. 39.
33
Traditions from the Prophet were often described as a special type of knowledge which in
principle must be passed on to the maximum possible number of people and should not be
withheld unless for a compelling reason. For various ḥadīths and pious stories expressing this
ideal, see al-Khaṭīb, Jāmiʿ, pp. 328-331.
34
On the latter motive, see, for instance, Ibn al-Jawzī, Talbīs, p. 168. Even scholars who voiced
their disapproval in principle of granting general and unspecified ijāzas for transmission would
sometimes give such permissions on occasion; see, e.g., al-Khaṭīb, Kifāya, pp. 334-335. Moreover,
ḥadīth scholars would also strive to be featured in the most prestigious isnāds possible. As al-
Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī notes, not all ḥadīth transmitters are equal in prestige and status (darajāt al-
ruwāt lā tatasāwā) and this ought to be considered when one makes decisions as to which ḥadīth
expert to transmit from. See al-Khaṭīb, Jāmiʿ, p. 40; and cf. Ibn Ṭūlūn, Naqd, p. 102. See also
Dickinson, “Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ,” pp. 490-491 on the emergence in the Ayyubid era of a type of
transmitter that might be called isnād connoisseur.
35
Ibn al-Jawzī, Talbīs, p. 183; for some concrete examples, see al-Khaṭīb, Kifāya, pp. 321-322.
 16 Zoltan Szombathy

here we have intellectual property understood almost in its modern sense.

Interestingly, pre-modern Muslim authors tend to condemn such attitudes
in no uncertain terms, taking the pietistic ideals of ḥadīth scholarship (see
below) as their startingpoint.
Whatever the motives, the custom of granting generalised
permissions to total strangers meant abandoning even a modicum of control
over the text. A cynic might say it was an act of acquiescence, of accepting
the inevitable, since many ḥadīth experts opined that permissions made no
difference anyway. According to this opinion, one may pass on a ḥadīth even
without the explicit permission of its immediate source. If a scholar confirms
that a certain ḥadīth has indeed been transmitted by him, then another man
may transmit it to others even if he does not receive explicit permission to
do so. In fact, even if a scholar explicitly forbids the transmission of his
ḥadīths, the prohibition is invalid. The Mālikī al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ al-Yaḥṣubī (d.
544/1149) argues that if the transmitted text is unassailable in and of itself,
then the refusal of its immediate authority to grant permission is
irrelevant.36 Similarly, if one lends a book of ḥadīths to another man for
making a copy of it (an act called munāwala) and later changes his mind and
retracts the permission of copying the text, he may not stop the other from
circulating it.37
Obviously, the chief concern of ḥadīth experts was ensuring the
accuracy of the transmitted text, not upholding personal rights over it.
(Nevertheless, I will argue shortly that practice seems to have diverged
significantly from theory.) The point that the accuracy of the transmitted
material takes precedence over any notion of ‘owner’s rights’ is made explicit
by al-Suyūṭī in a passage that addresses the issue on a general level, not only
in reference to ḥadīth transmission:

36
E.g., ʿIyāḍ, Ilmāʿ, pp. 108-110, 114. A 7th/13th-century Shāfiʿī fatwa also states that once given,
an ijāza cannot be withdrawn even on the grounds of the recipient’s moral shortcomings; see al-
Suyūṭī, Itqān, p. 653.
37
ʿIyāḍ, Ilmāʿ, pp. 82-83. Not all authorities accepted this principle; see the instructive case of a
quarrel between Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj (d. 261/875) and al-Dhuhlī (258/873) in Brown, The
Canonization of al-Bukhārī and Muslim, p. 85. On munāwala, see, for instance, Shākir, Bāʿith, pp. 103-
105.
 Intellectual property in mediaeval Muslim literary culture 17

An ijāza [obtained] from a sheikh is not a precondition (sharṭ)

of legitimately engaging in teaching and passing on knowledge
(al-iqrāʾ wa-ʼl-ifāda). Whoever perceives himself as qualified
(man ʿalima min nafsihi al-ahliyya) [to do these activities] may do
so even if no one has given him an ijāza. [...] The same is true in
all fields of learning — [like] teaching and giving legal opinions
— contrary to what stupid people think who consider it [viz.
the ijāza] a precondition [of passing on knowledge]. The only
reason people have made the ijāza a widely accepted practice
is because a person’s qualifications are usually unknown to
beginners and similar [unexperienced people] who wish to
learn from him, given their lack of ability [to ascertain] that.
Yet an examination of qualifications is a precondition of
dispensing knowledge, and therefore the ijāza has been
adopted as a kind of testimonial (ka-ʼl-shahāda) by the sheikh
regarding the qualifications of the recipient of the ijāza.38

Since the chief concern was the protection of the integrity of ḥadīth texts,
this moral obligation paradoxically gave ḥadīth experts some degree of
authorial control. Manuals of ḥadīth scholarship routinely emphasise that
scholars are morally obliged not to give their books or transmit their ḥadīths
to unqualified people who are likely to misunderstand or misapply them;
qualification is, of course, in the eye of the beholder. Thus ḥadīth scholars
were authorised, indeed urged, to withhold ḥadīths from people they
distrusted.39 For instance, the founder of the Mālikī legal school is quoted as
saying that one must never grant a permission for transmitting ḥadīths to
those who cannot understand them properly.40 The superficial resemblance
to modern notions of moral rights over a text is quite deceptive, since the

38
Al-Suyūṭī, Itqān, p. 652.
39
Some authorities classified the failure to discriminate on the grounds of intellectual
qualifications as makrūh (disapproved but not prohibited). See, for instance, ʿIyāḍ, Ilmāʿ, p. 95;
al-Khaṭīb, Jāmiʿ, p. 173.
40
Al-Khaṭīb, Kifāya, pp. 316-317. Al-Suyūṭī says the same about Qurʾān readers and unqualified
students, also observing that qualified students must be given permission. For him, the giving of
permissions is ideally a formality that leaves little to the teacher’s discretion. See al-Suyūṭī,
Itqān, p. 653.
 18 Zoltan Szombathy

issue here is one of ensuring the integrity and accuracy of the transmitted
text instead of maintaining the rights of learned transmitters.41 Al-Khaṭīb al-
Baghdādī (d. 463/1071) mentions the custom among particularly
conscientious scholars of destroying all their books before their death, or
ordering their inheritors to do so, for fear of the tomes getting into the hands
of unqualified readers (khawfan min an taṣīr ilā man laysa min ahl al-ʿilm).42 In
another passage, he ascribes many scholars’ reluctance to lend their books
to the same concern:

A cultured man said: Withholding knowledge from those who

do not deserve it is [tantamount to] giving it its rights and
recognising its eminence (al-bukhl bi-ʼl-ʿilm ʿalā ghayr ahlihi
qaḍāʾ li-ḥaqqihi wa-maʿrifa bi-faḍlihi). A certain scholar,
whenever approached by a man asking for his knowledge or
for his books to be lent, would test [the petitioner]. If he found
him worthy of it, he would lend him [the book], otherwise he
would deny him his request...43

Thus, proprietor’s rights over a ḥadīth text were of a moral character, and
resembled trusteeship rather than genuine ownership. And yet some ḥadīth
experts, driven by less than pietistic motives, did try to behave as ‘owners’
of their own ḥadīth corpus, and made an effort to guard and monopolise it.
Here is the great Ḥanbalī scholar Ibn al-Jawzī (d. 597/1201) depicting
behaviour that is strikingly at odds with the beau ideal of disinterested
trusteeship just described:

The ambition of [a type of ḥadīth scholar] is [to boast of] the

shortest possible isnāds (ʿawālī) [connecting him to the
Prophet] and rare ḥadīth texts (gharāʾib). Such men will go
abroad so that they should be able to say [boastfully]: “I have
met such-and-such [a ḥadīth expert] and I have isnāds that no-

41
Cf. Eickelman, “The art of memory,” pp. 492, 501.
42
Al-Khaṭīb, Taqyīd, p. 66. On piety-motivated attempts at destroying one’s own works, see
Szombathy, “Freedom of expression,” pp. 6-8.
43
Al-Khaṭīb, Taqyīd, p. 189.
 Intellectual property in mediaeval Muslim literary culture 19

one else has, and I have ḥadīths that no-one else has.” [...] Now
this has nothing to do with bona fide [scholarship] (wa-hādhā
kulluhu min al-ikhlāṣ bi-maʿzal). Their only goal is leadership and
vainglory; that is why they hunt for bizarre and rare ḥadīth
texts. Some of these scholars may acquire a manuscript (juzʾ)
containing [the ḥadīths] heard and recorded by another
Muslim, and then he will hide it in order to monopolise its
transmission.44

This passage allows us to make two important observations. First, ḥadīth

experts worked in an atmosphere of fierce competition for scholarly fame
that drove many scholars to unscrupulous practices; and second, those
unscrupulous practices included efforts to monopolise knowledge of certain
ḥadīth texts. In other words, some ḥadīth experts would try to make sure they
were the only authorities on a certain body of texts by denying access to
these texts. This practice was obviously far from unusual, since other authors
also express their disapproval of it while noting its prevalence.45 The
personal motives behind these incidents are quite obvious and are
commented upon in the sources. For instance, the manual of ḥadīth
transmission by the Andalusī qāḍī ʿIyāḍ al-Yaḥṣubī mentions two cases of
scholars retracting a permission previously granted for motives that seem to
have been personal.46 Competition among ḥadīth experts was obviously keen,

44
Ibn al-Jawzī, Talbīs, pp. 166-167. He also makes it clear that many ḥadīth scholars were perfectly
ignorant of, and uninterested in, the content and meaning (let alone the legal implications) of
the ḥadīths they transmitted. For many, ḥadīth transmission was obviously a way of acquiring
fame and glory instead of being an honest scholarly endeavour. See pp. 164, 166. A century later,
the great ḥadīth scholar al-Dhahabī (d. 748/1348) paints a quite similar picture of the behaviour
of his contemporary colleagues; see al-Dhahabī, Bayān, p. 7; cited (apparently in agreement) in
Ibn Ṭūlūn, Naqd, pp. 95, 97. On juzʾ as a technical term, see Witkam, “The human element,” p.
128.
45
E.g., al-Shahrazūrī, ʿUlūm, p. 248. Furthermore, all ḥadīth experts might have been motivated
by unstated but vital worldly concerns. Paul Heck makes the interesting (and, to me, convincing)
proposal that their continuing insistence on oral chains of transmission might have had to do
with the fear that the massive use of books would threaten the authority of their whole scholarly
community. See Heck, “The epistemological problem,” pp. 94-95. As Eerik Dickinson wryly notes,
by the Ayyubid period “the last reason one attended the transmission of a ḥadīth text was to
master its contents” (Dickinson, “Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ,” p. 503).
46
ʿIyāḍ, Ilmāʿ, pp. 110-111.
 20 Zoltan Szombathy

and jalousie de métier widespread, which led many to attempts at jealously

denying access to their collections of ḥadīth texts. Some of these attempts
strike the modern reader as positively ridiculous, such as a ḥadīth expert
tearing apart a rival’s manuscript or casting it into the Tigris river to crush
all potential competition with his own collection of ḥadīths.47
In sum, the actual practices subsumed under the rubric of ijāza
varied enormously, ranging from attempts at monopoly to dispensing
permissions to all and sundry. Some ḥadīth scholars would jealously refuse to
transmit their ḥadīths to anyone; others would indiscriminately transmit
their ḥadīths to anyone interested. In neither case were the rigorous ideals of
proper ḥadīth transmission to qualified recipients applied in practice.
However, the ideal remained unchanged: a ḥadīth scholar is a guardian and
trustee, rather than the owner, of the texts with which he deals.

5. Intellectual property in the courtrooms

In the first pages of this essay, we made a distinction between the moralistic
and legalistic senses of ‘intellectual property.’ In the arguments made thus
far, the mediaeval Muslim understanding of intellectual property had
nothing to do with legal rights in the proper sense. It appeared instead as a
vaguely defined sense of moral entitlement at best. However, the issue does
have a legal dimension as well, and it is the legal aspect of intellectual
property to which I turn my attention in the rest of this essay. What legal
content, if any, did the pre-modern Muslim sense of intellectual property
have? Were authorial rights enforceable at all in that social environment?
Although I would not like to overstate this point, mediaeval Muslim
juridical sources do offer a few arguments that seem to betray a legalistic
understanding of intellectual property. For instance, the ḥadīth specialist
Abū Ṭāhir Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Silafī (d. 576/1180) states that the act of
giving permission for transmitting a text (ijāza) is a legally binding action
which is not affected by the character of the recipient. That is the reason a
valid permission may, as we have seen, be given to a minor, and even to

47
Al-Khaṭīb, Jāmiʿ, pp. 323-327.
 Intellectual property in mediaeval Muslim literary culture 21

someone not yet born. In this, al-Silafī argues, an ijāza is analogous to other
legally binding transfers of property like establishing a pious endowment
(waqf) or giving a present (hiba).48 As you will notice, this approach treats
certain types of knowledge similarly to tangible alienable property, and in so
doing comes fairly close to a contemporary understanding of intellectual
property.49 Nevertheless, despite sporadic indications of such an approach in
the sources, it is in quite another context that a legalistic understanding of
intellectual property really comes to the fore.
Let us now consider two stories, occurring in practically all manuals
of ḥadīth transmission, which emphasise the possibility of the legal
enforcement of rights — even if they were limited — over ḥadīth material in
certain circumstances. Both stories show two litigants trying to establish
their respective rights over certain ḥadīths that they have ‘acquired,’
whatever that might mean in this context. Here are the two cases as narrated
by al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī:

[Case One:] We were told by ʿAlī b. Aḥmad ʿAlī al-Muʾaddib, who

was told by Aḥmad b. Isḥāq al-Nahāwandī, who was told by al-
Ḥasan b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Khallād, who was told by al-Ḥasan
b. ʿUthmān al-Tustarī, who was told by Abū Zurʿa al-Rāzī, who
said: A man sued another in Kūfa for [his rights over some
ḥadīths he transmitted] that [the defendant] denied him
[access to his records] (iddaʿā rajul ʿalā rajul bi-ʼl-Kūfa samāʿan
manaʿahu iyyāhu). They went to the judge Ḥafṣ b. Ghiyāth, who
was the qāḍī of Kūfa. Ḥafṣ said to the owner of the notebook:
“Hand me your books. Whatever [acknowledgement of] this
man having heard [the material in it] is recorded in your

48
Al-Silafī, Wajīz, p. 43. Interestingly, we find the concept of a gift of an intellectual product in
literary contexts as well, where poets are sometimes depicted as asking for or giving away as
presents some of their verses. See Ibn Rashīq, ʿUmda, pp. 536-537.
49
On the other hand, Muslim jurists seem to have ruled out all possibility of payment for
permissions, even though in practice some scholars were apparently not above demanding
payment in exchange for an ijāza — thereby treating their knowledge exactly as a piece of
personal property, a marketable commodity. See the summary of a fatwa of the Egyptian Shāfiʿī
Ṣadr al-Dīn Mawhūb b. ʿUmar al-Jazarī (d. 665/1266-7) on this issue in al-Suyūṭī, Itqān, p. 653;
and also cf. Brown, The canonization of al-Bukhārī and Muslim, p. 57, note 26; and Shākir, Bāʿith, p.
88.
 22 Zoltan Szombathy

handwriting, we will order you [to lend him] (fa-mā kāna min
samāʿ hādhā al-rajul bi-khaṭṭ yadika alzamnāka); and whatever in
them is in his handwriting we will leave at your discretion
(aʿfaynāka minhu).” [...] Ibn Khallād said: I asked Abū ʿAbd Allāh
al-Zubayrī about this, and he said that there can be no better
decision in this matter than [the one cited in the story],
because the handwriting of the notebook’s owner is evidence
of his approval of the transmission of the other man. However,
other people say that it is worthless [as a legal argument] (laysa
bi-shayʾ).50
[Case Two:] I have been told by the qāḍī Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. al-
Ḥasan al-Jarrāḥī, who had been told by Muḥammad b. Aḥmad
b. Yaʿqūb b. Shayba b. al-Ṣalt, who said: I saw a man taking
another man to the qāḍī Ismāʿīl b. Isḥāq, suing him for [his
rights over] ḥadīths he had heard and transmitted that were
recorded in the notebook of [the defendant] (iddaʿā ʿalayhi anna
lahu samāʿan fī al-ḥadīth fī kitābihi), which the latter refused to
lend him [for copying]. Ismāʿīl asked the defendant, who
admitted [his opponent’s claim] yet said: “There is indeed
material in it that he’s listened to (samāʿ), but I will not lend it.”
Ismāʿīl bowed his head and reflected on it for some time, then
he lifted his head and, looking at the defendant, said: “May God
keep your health. If [the acknowledgement of] his having
listened to this (samāʿuhu) [recorded] in your book is in your
own handwriting, you must lend it to him [since thereby you
acknowledge his having transmitted this material by your
permission]. However, if [the acknowledgement of] his having
heard [the material] is in someone else’s handwriting, [the

50
I am not sure that my interpretation of this passage is quite accurate. Just who had listened to
whose reading of ḥadīths, and who had recorded what, are less than crystal-clear in this account,
but that is perhaps less important here than the obvious fact that two men are litigating over
access to the material of a ḥadīth-transmission session. On the precise meaning of samāʿ (lit.,
‘listening’) in reference to a ḥadīth session, see, for instance, MacKay, “Certificates,” pp. 5-6; on
the practice of recording the names of those present at a ḥadīth audition as evidence that they
are entitled to transmitting the material, see Dickinson, “Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ,” p. 499. For more on this
type of documents, see Leder, “Hörerzertifikate,” and al-Munajjid, “Ijāzāt al-samāʿ.”
 Intellectual property in mediaeval Muslim literary culture 23

decision] is at your discretion (fa-anta aʿlam).” He answered:

“[The acknowledgement of] his having heard [the material]
recorded in my book is in my handwriting. But he is slow to
return books he borrows.” [The judge] said: “[He is] your
brother in religion. I want you to lend him the book.” Then he
turned to the defendant and said: “If he lends you something,
don’t be slow to return it.”51

Although both cases seem to have been concluded amicably, the important
point is the sense they convey of the possibility of suing another person over
the ‘ownership’ of, and personal ‘rights’ over, some ḥadīth text. Yet even here
it is only partly the ‘ownership’ of a text — as an immaterial entity, a piece of
information — that is disputed. In fact, what gave the issue a legal character
may well have been the existence of a palpable object, the notebook
containing the text, since books as physical objects were certainly subject to
all juridical regulations on property. However, the issue is yet more
complicated. It is obviously not just a manuscript as a physical object that
was disputed in these courtroom cases. If that were so, the judge would have
decided in favour of the complete freedom of the book’s owner to do as he
pleased. The judges’ decision was based on the special content of the book,
which they ruled was not the absolute property of the owner of the
manuscript: he must lend it, even if this means that he runs the risk of causing
harm to his rightful property.52
These considerations apart, it remains true that the legal aspects of
intellectual property became dominant only when the ownership of books as

51
Al-Khaṭīb, Jāmiʿ, p. 117. For slightly different versions of the stories, see al-Shahrazūrī, ʿUlūm,
pp. 206-207; ʿIyāḍ, Ilmāʿ, pp. 212-213. Ibn al-Salāḥ al-Shahrazūrī (d. 643/1245) notes that the two
stories, taken together, suggest a near-consensus on the issue among the Sunnī schools of law,
given the prominent position of Ḥafṣ b. Ghiyāth among the early followers of Abū Ḥanīfa, of Abū
ʿAbd Allāh al-Zubayrī in the early Shāfiʿī school, and of the judge Ismāʿīl b. Isḥāq in the Mālikī
school. See al-Shahrazūrī, ʿUlūm, p. 207. However, the Mālikī qāḍī ʿIyāḍ al-Yaḥṣubī disagrees
somewhat with the reasoning of the judges in these cases. In his opinion, it is only local custom
(ʿurf) that justifies such a decision, but the law does not make it mandatory. See ʿIyāḍ, Ilmāʿ, pp.
223-224.
52
This point is noted in al-Shahrazūrī, ʿUlūm, p. 207 [wa-in kāna fīhi badhl mālihi].
 24 Zoltan Szombathy

physical objects was contested.53 Books were considered physical objects that
could be sold, bought, or inherited, thus obviously qualifying for the status
of personal property. This juridical principle inevitably influenced the
treatment of the content of the books as well. Thus al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī
says that it is quite acceptable for a ḥadīth scholar to invite a disciple to his
personal library and grant him a general ijāza for all its contents. It is
instructive that he bases this verdict on a legal analogy involving a gift of
personal property, an argumentation reminiscent of the view of al-Silafī
discussed above.54
Since books were physical objects, the inheritance and sale of books
were fully fledged legal proceedings, as was the lending thereof. However,
even the ownership of books as physical objects might give rise to moral
issues when the books in question contained ḥadīths. Indeed, at times all
aspects of the proprietorship of texts — moral, legal, and physical — were
entirely inseparable. Regarding the inheritance of books of ḥadīth upon the
death of a scholar (al-riwāya ʿan al-waṣiyya bi-ʼl-kutub), scholars usually
advised that by inheriting a manuscript of ḥadīths, one also became entitled
to transmit the texts contained in the volume, although sources betray a
certain amount of palpable hesitation and uncertainty on this issue. The
argument was that bequeathing a book to another person was analogous to
handing it to him for copying or other forms of transmission, and thus
constituted a tacit form of permission for transmission. 55 But really this is
just a point at which the various aspects of intellectual rights over a text
became hopelessly entangled. Thus, in a frequently cited case, Muḥammad
ibn Sīrīn (d. 110/729) is said to have first endorsed the view that one was free
to do whatever one wished with books legally acquired, but on further
reflection, with palpable unease, he disowned all moral responsibility for
such dubious practices of ḥadīth transmission (lā āmuruka wa-lā anhāka).56

53
It is noteworthy that an ijāza would only be regarded necessary in the absence of oral delivery
of a text. If someone had listened to an oral ḥadīth session, he would be free to transmit the
material that he had heard. In such a case, the professor had effectively (if implicitly)
relinquished his control over the material by delivering it to his audience.
54
Al-Khaṭīb, Kifāya, p. 329.
55
E.g., ʿIyāḍ, Ilmāʿ, pp. 115-116.
56
In other stories, Ibn Sīrīn is portrayed as flatly rejecting all such indisputably licit yet morally
wrong shortcuts to ‘acquiring’ ḥadīths. See al-Khaṭīb, Kifāya, pp. 351-353.
 Intellectual property in mediaeval Muslim literary culture 25

Another issue with a moral aspect is the loan and timely return of books. The
pietistic discourse of manuals of ḥadīth scholarship urges ḥadīth experts to
lend their books of ḥadīth to all those who show an interest in them. 57
However, it is noteworthy that it is only a moral recommendation and is not
legally enforceable, since lending such a book is only meritorious
(mustaḥabb) but not compulsory, and refusing such a request is only
disapproved (makrūh) but not prohibited. Likewise, refusing to return
borrowed books is disapproved but not prohibited, which must have made
owners think twice before lending them. 58 The decisive factor here seems to
have been whether one appeared to be late returning the book or to have
‘stolen’ it for good — which was to be treated as any other act of theft.
The ideals of ḥadīth scholarship were of course completely
irrelevant when it came to handling books of non-religious content, such as
belles-lettres. When moral obligations concerning the dissemination of the
Prophet’s example were absent, books were clearly chattels, and the owner
could dispose of them as he (or, more infrequently, she) wished to. They
could be lent, sold, and inherited at will. We should say again that certain
types of books — especially copies of successful literary works — represented
quite a great value and could sometimes be sold for exorbitant prices. For
instance, upon his death, the Baṣran littérateur Abū Ḥātim al-Sijistānī (d.
255/869) left a huge personal library, which was bought wholesale for
fourteen thousand dīnārs.59 Books of belles-lettres were clearly valuable
objects. It is little wonder, then, that lending and borrowing such works were
as prone to dishonest practices as in the field of ḥadīth, and the returning of
borrowed books was as much of a problem.60 It was deemed admirable and
worthy of comment that a man of letters called Abū Saʿd al-Ḥasan b.

57
See, for instance, the chapter titled Bāb al-targhīb fī iʿārat kutub al-samāʿ wa-dhamm man salaka fī
dhālik ṭarīq al-bukhl wa-ʼl-imtināʿ (Chapter on the desirability of lending books of ḥadīth
transmission and on the condemnation of those who are miserly and deny book-loans) in al-
Khaṭīb, Jāmiʿ, pp. 116-117. Also see al-Shahrazūrī, ʿUlūm, p. 206.
58
Al-Khaṭīb, Jāmiʿ, pp. 116, 117. Nevertheless, Abū al-Walīd al-Ṭayālisī is said to have imprisoned
a man for not returning a borrowed book of ḥadīth; see ibid., p. 118.
59
Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, vol. 3, p. 1406.
60
See, for instance, a story about al-Jāḥiẓ’s problems with a disciple in al-Khaṭīb, Jāmiʿ, p. 118.
 26 Zoltan Szombathy

Muḥammad (d. 608/1211) would willingly lend his books to any student
interested in them.61 Clearly, such behaviour was highly unusual.

6. Conclusions:
The specificities of intellectual property in mediaeval Muslim society

Cases and accusations of plagiarism as well as the widespread requirement

of acquiring permissions for certain types of texts — especially ḥadīths —
show that a vague general notion of ‘ownership’ or ‘guardianship’ of texts
did exist among mediaeval Muslim intellectuals. Despite the fact that the
underlying notion of a sort of ‘intellectual property’ seems to be present in
both ḥadīth scholarship and belles-lettres, perceptions of entitlement to, or
ownership of, texts were in some respects strikingly different in the two
fields. The difference was due to the differing bases of establishing ‘rights’
over a text in the two intellectual fields. In belles-lettres the grounds for
‘authorship’ were usually creativity, while in ḥadīth scholarship they were
proficiency and conscientiousness in handling an already existing text
having religious significance. As a literary author, one was not supposed to
take a text from someone else and utilise it in an unchanged form — that
would have been plagiarism. In the field of ḥadīth, a text would ideally be
passed on in an unchanged form. Ḥadīth experts were encouraged to make
their knowledge available to all serious and qualified students and to hold it
back from the ignorant unlikely to make proper use of it. In practice, scholars
would frequently err on both sides: they would pass on their ḥadīths
indiscriminately to any and all, or else they would try to monopolise their
own ḥadīths so as to become the sole authority on them. Yet the ideal
remained the expectation that they were morally obliged to ensure the
proper use of their texts by subsequent transmitters. By contrast, there was
no similar moral preoccupation with the fate of literary works.
The bottom line seems to be that there was no concept of ‘ownership
of a text’, of ‘intellectual property’, independent of the content of the text in

61
Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ, vol. 3, pp. 1013-1014. As was typical, the whole issue is discussed in
terms of magnanimity versus avarice.
 Intellectual property in mediaeval Muslim literary culture 27

question. ‘Ownership’ of a text, inasmuch as it was thought to exist,

depended on the content of that text. However, underlying all content-
related differences was a great unifying factor, namely the ownership of
manuscripts — books in their physical form. Here there seems to have been
no significant difference between ḥadīth and belles-lettres: books were
objects with a price tag — often a hefty price tag — and with an identifiable
owner, regardless of what texts they contained. The three main principles
governing the issue of intellectual proprietorship can thus be recapitulated
as follows:
1. In belles-lettres, one could borrow literary motifs (e.g., poetic
conceits) and even bits of text from others but one had to improve on one’s
predecessors for the operation to be respectable.62 Otherwise it would have
been plagiarism and, as such, morally wrong, though not legally
prosecutable. Mediaeval Arabic literary criticism abounds with comparisons
of several poets’ and authors’ use of the same tropes and themes and claims
of a later author falling short of a predecessor in his use of a certain borrowed
motif. (The criticism tends to be mild, and any suggestion of a serious wrong
having been committed is absent.)
2. In contrast, it was a serious moral obligation to transmit any
instructions and examples from the Prophet as accurately as possible. No
unsubstantiated material might be passed on. Ideally, the transmitter would
obtain explicit permission (ijāza) to pass these texts on. However, this
obligation tended to operate as a moral principle only and in most cases it
could not be legally enforced. Existing sanctions were not of a legal
character, usually taking the form of condemnation and perhaps ostracism
by the ḥadīth experts’ community.
3. On the other hand, books were chattel and could be freely
disposed of by the owner (regardless of the content of the book). Inheritors
had the right to use them as he or (rarely) she wished to. No moral problem
was involved here, but the ownership of books did have a strong legal aspect
which allowed for the possibility of lawsuits over the proprietorship of
manuscripts.

62
Heinrichs, “An evaluation of sariqa,” pp. 358-359; and also see, for instance, Ibn Rashīq, ʿUmda,
pp. 532, 541.
 28 Zoltan Szombathy

At the end of the day, it is perhaps not justified to speak of author’s

rights, in any meaningful sense, in pre-modern Muslim culture. Properly
speaking, there were only texts’ rights63 rather than author’s rights. The
most significant difference between the transmission of literary and ḥadīth
material, respectively, is that any idea of ‘regulating’ the transmission of
literary texts was entirely absent, while there was a conscious effort to create
rules for transmitting ḥadīth. In literature, we find nothing comparable to the
ḥadīth scholars’ elaborate ‘rules of transmission’ (qawāʿid al-riwāya). The
reason is obvious: for a text to deserve regulations designed to protect its
accuracy and integrity, it had to have religious significance. 64 Ḥadīths had
religious significance, literary texts did not. On the other hand, from the
ʿAbbasid period onwards, the typical medium of transmitting sizeable
collections of knowledge was through books. 65 And once books appeared on
the scene in great numbers, the issue of intellectual property inevitably
acquired a legal dimension. Books, regardless of their content, were clearly
property in the full legal sense of the term. They could be sold, bought,
inherited, given as presents, or endowed. They also allowed for the
possibility of lawsuits over their possession. In the case of religiously
important texts (e.g., ḥadīths), owners’ rights over manuscripts in their

63
This is my way of paraphrasing the mediaeval Muslim notion of knowledge (especially
religious knowledge) having its own rights. For example, al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī cites the
following scholarly adages (note the use of the root denoting “rights” in both cases): “Whoever
lends a book [containing religious] knowledge to persons having no knowledge is ignorant and
neglectful of the rights of knowledge” (man aʿāra kitāb ʿilmin ghayra ahl al-ʿilm fa-qad jahila ḥaqq
al-ʿilm wa-aḍāʿahu), and “a book is a trust and has the right of being protected [viz. from
unqualified persons]” (al-kitāb amāna wa-huwa ḥaqīq bi-ʼl-ṣiyāna). See al-Khaṭīb, Taqyīd, p. 191.
64
For some very perceptive general considerations about the consequences of the canonisation
of a text, see Brown, The canonization of al-Bukhārī and Muslim, p. 20, and see also pp. 33-34 for the
important observation that the whole gigantic ḥadīth corpus can be regarded as a kind of
canonised collection of texts.
65
This statement is a gross oversimplification. My essay has focused on written modes of
transmission, yet oral and written means of transmitting knowledge have continued to coexist
in various combinations and in a variety of contexts in the Islamic world (and elsewhere) up to
the modern period; see for instance the relevant observations of Eickelman in “The art of
memory,” p. 487. However, this being an extremely complex issue, I will not pursue it further
but alert the reader to the existence of a vast literature on this subject, of which especially
pertinent are Cook, “The opponents”; Heck, “The Epistemological problem”; Kister, “Lā taqraʾū”;
Schoeler, “Die Frage”; Schoeler, “Weiteres”; Schoeler, “Writing and publishing”; and a collection
of Schoeler’s essays on the subject published as Schoeler, The oral and the written.
 Intellectual property in mediaeval Muslim literary culture 29

possession could be overruled to some extent by the right of the text to be

circulated as widely as possible. In the case of literary texts (and texts of
religiously neutral content in general), the rights of the owner of a
manuscript were virtually absolute. Thus, authors and subsequent
‘proprietors’ of a work only had rights over the manuscripts, if they managed
to enforce such rights — which quite often they did not.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary sources

Al-Dhahabī, Bayān =

Al-Dhahabī, Shams al-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. Aḥmad.

Bayān zaghal al-ʿilm wa-ʼl-ṭalab. Cairo, n.d.

Ibn Ḥajar, Rafʿ =

Ibn Ḥajar, Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-ʿAsqalānī. Rafʿ al-iṣr ʿan
quḍāt Miṣr. ʿAlī Muḥammad ʿUmar, ed. Cairo, 1418/1998.

Ibn al-Jawzī, Talbīs =

Ibn al-Jawzī, Abū al-Faraj ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Baghdādī. Talbīs Iblīs.

Muḥammad al-Ṣabbāḥ, ed. Beirut, 1409/1989.

Ibn Rashīq, ʿUmda =

Ibn Rashīq, Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan al-Qayrawānī. Kitāb al-ʿumda fī naqd al-
shiʿr wa-tamḥīṣihi. ʿAfīf Nāyif Ḥāṭūm, ed. Beirut, 1424/2003.

Ibn Ṭūlūn, Naqd =

Ibn Ṭūlūn, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Ṣāliḥī al-Dimashqī. Naqd al-

ṭālib li-zaghal al-manāṣib. Muḥammad Aḥmad Dahmān and Khālid
Muḥammad Dahmān, eds. Beirut, 1412/1992.

Al-Iṣfahānī, Aghānī =

Al-Iṣfahānī, Abū al-Faraj. Kitāb al-aghānī. Yūsuf ʿAlī Ṭawīl et al., eds.
25 vols. Beirut, 1415/1995.
 30 Zoltan Szombathy

ʿIyāḍ, Ilmāʿ =

ʿIyāḍ b. Mūsā al-Yaḥṣubī. Al-Ilmāʿ ilā maʿrifat uṣūl al-riwāya wa-taqyīd

al-samāʿ. Aḥmad Ṣaqr, ed. Cairo and Tunis, 1398/1978.

Al-Khalīlī, Kitāb al-irshād =

Al-Khalīlī, Abū Yaʿlā al-Khalīl b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Qazwīnī. Kitāb al-irshād

fī maʿrifat ʿulamāʾ al-ḥadīth. Muḥammad Saʿīd b. ʿUmar Idrīs, ed.
Riyāḍ, 1409/1989.

Al-Khaṭīb, Jāmiʿ =

Al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Abū Bakr Aḥmad b. ʿAlī. Al-Jāmiʿ li-akhlāq al-

rāwī wa-ādāb al-sāmiʿ. Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Ṣalāḥ b. Muḥammad b.
ʿUwayḍa, ed. Beirut, 1417/1996.

Al-Khaṭīb, Kitāb al-kifāya =

Idem. Kitāb al-kifāya fī ʿilm al-riwāya. Hāshim al-Nadwī et al., eds.

Ḥaydarābād, 1357/1938.

Al-Khaṭīb, Taqyīd =

Idem. Taqyīd al-ʿilm. Saʿd ʿAbd al-Ghaffār ʿAlī, ed. Cairo, 1429/2008.

Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ =

Muslim b. al-Ḥajjāj. Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim bi-sharḥ al-imām Abī Zakariyyā Yaḥyā

b. Sharaf al-Nawawī. Ṣidqī Jamīl al-ʿAṭṭār, ed. 9 vols. Beirut, 1415/1995.

Al-Shahrazūrī, ʿUlūm =

Al-Shahrazūrī, Abū ʿAmr ʿUthmān b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Ṣalāḥ. ʿUlūm

al-ḥadīth. Nūr al-Dīn ʿItr, ed. Beirut, 1981.

Shākir, Bāʿith =

Shākir, Aḥmad Muḥammad. Al-Bāʿith al-ḥathīth: sharḥ Ikhtiṣār ʿulūm

al-ḥadīth li-ʼl-ḥāfiẓ Ibn Kathīr. Cairo, 1399/1979.
Al-Silafī, Wajīz =

Al-Silafī, Abū Ṭāhir Aḥmad b. Muḥammad. Kitāb al-wajīz fī dhikr al-

mujāz wa-ʼl-mujīz. ʿAbd al-Ghafūr ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq Ḥusayn Burr al-
Bulūshī, ed. Medina, 1414/1994.
 Intellectual property in mediaeval Muslim literary culture 31

Al-Suyūṭī, Itqān =

Al-Suyūṭī. Al-Itqān fī ʿulūm al-Qurʾān. 7 vols. Medina, 2011.

Al-Suyūṭī, Taḥadduth =

Idem. Kitāb al-taḥadduth bi-niʿmat Allāh. E. M. Sartain, ed. Cairo, 2003.

Yāqūt, Muʿjam al-udabāʾ =

Yāqūt, Shihāb al-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥamawī. Muʿjam al-udabāʾ.

Iḥsān ʿAbbās, ed. 7 vols. Beirut, 1993.

Secondary sources

Ahmed, “Mapping the world” =

Ahmed, Sh. “Mapping the world of a scholar in sixth/twelfth

century Bukhāra: Regional tradition in medieval Islamic scholarship
as reflected in a bibliography.” Journal of the American Oriental Society
120 (2000): 24–43.

Atassi, “The transmission of Ibn Saʿd’s biographical dictionary” =

Atassi, A. N. “The transmission of Ibn Saʿd’s biographical dictionary

Kitāb al-ṭabaqāt al-kabīr.” Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 12 (2012):
56–80.

Balda-Tillier, “La prose amoureuse” =

Balda-Tillier, M. “La prose amoureuse arabo-islamique médiévale,

de l’isnād traditionnel aux sources livresques.” Journal of Arabic and
Islamic Studies 12 (2012): 186–214.

Bjerre, Az utolsó kannibálok =

Bjerre, J. Az utolsó kannibálok [The last cannibals]. Budapest, 1962.

Bonebakker, “Ancient Arabic poetry” =

Bonebakker, S. A. “Ancient Arabic poetry and plagiarism: A

terminological labyrinth.” Quaderni di Studi Arabi 15 (1997): 65–92.
 32 Zoltan Szombathy

Brown, The canonization of al-Bukhārī and Muslim =

Brown, J. The canonization of al-Bukhārī and Muslim. The formation and

function of the Sunnī Ḥadīth canon. Leiden and Boston, 2007.

Canova, “Libri” =

Canova, G. “Libri e artigiani del libro: le raccomandazioni dei giuristi

musulmani (XIV secolo).” Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 12
(2012): 235–263.

Conermann (ed.), Innovation oder Plagiat? =

Conermann, S., ed. Innovation oder Plagiat? Kompilationstechniken in

der Vormoderne. Berlin, 2015.

Cook, “The opponents” =

Cook, M. “The opponents of the writing of tradition in early Islam.”

Arabica 44 (1997): 437–530.

Dickinson, “Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ” =

Dickinson, E. “Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ al-Shahrazūrī and the Isnād.” Journal of

the American Oriental Society 122 (2002): 481–505.

Eickelman, “The art of memory” =

Eickelman, D. F. “The art of memory: Islamic education and its social
reproduction.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 20 (1978):
485–516.

Fayyāḍ, Ijāzāt =

Fayyāḍ, ʿAbd Allāh. Al-Ijāzāt al-ʿilmiyya ʿinda al-muslimīn. Baghdad,

1967.

Haddāra, Mushkilat al-sariqāt =

Haddāra, Muḥammad Muṣṭafā. Mushkilat al-sariqāt fī al-naqd al-ʿarabī.

Beirut, 1395/1975.
 Intellectual property in mediaeval Muslim literary culture 33

Heck, “The epistemological problem” =

Heck, P. L. “The epistemological problem of writing in Islamic

civilization: al-Ḫaṭīb al-Baġdādī’s (d. 463/1071) Taqyīd al-ʿilm.” Studia
Islamica 94 (2002): 85–114.

Heinrichs, “An evaluation of sariqa”=

Heinrichs, W. “An evaluation of sariqa.” Quaderni di Studi Arabi 5–6

(1987-8): 357–368.

Kister, “Lā taqraʾū” =

Kister, M. J. “Lā taqraʾū l-qurʾāna ʿalā l-muṣḥafiyyīn wa-lā taḥmilū l-ʿilma

ʿani l-ṣaḥafiyyīn. Some notes on the transmission of ḥadīṭh.” Jerusalem
Studies in Arabic and Islam 22 (1998): 127–162.

Leder, “Hörerzertifikate” =

Leder, S. “Hörerzertifikate als Dokumente für die islamische

Lehrkultur des Mittelalters.” In R. G. Khoury, ed. Urkunden und
Urkundenformulare in klassichen Altertum und in den orientalischen
Kulturen. Heidelberg, 1999, pp. 147–166.

MacKay, “Certificates” =

MacKay, P. A. “Certificates of transmission on a manuscript of the

Maqāmāt of Ḥarīrī (MS Cairo, Adab 105).” Transactions of the American
Philosophical Society (N.S.) 61 (1971): 1–81.

Malinowski, Argonauts =

Malinowski, B. Argonauts of the Western Pacific. An account of native

enterprise and adventure in the archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea.
London and New York, 1922.

Al-Munajjid, “Ijāzāt al-samāʿ” =

Al-Munajjid, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn. “Ijāzāt al-samāʿ fī al-makhṭūṭāt al-

qadīma.” Majallat maʿhad al-makhṭūṭāt al-ʿarabiyya 1 (1375/1955):
232–251.
 34 Zoltan Szombathy

Naaman, “Sariqa” =

Naaman, E. “Sariqa in practice: The case of al-Ṣāḥib Ibn ʿAbbād.”

Middle Eastern Literatures 14 (2011): 271–285.

Orfali and Pomerantz, “I see a distant fire” =

Orfali, B. and M. Pomerantz. “‘I see a distant fire’: Thaʿālibī’s (d.

429/1030) Kitāb al-iqtibās min al-Qurʾān al-karīm.” In N. Alshaar, ed.
The Qurʾān and Adab: The shaping of literary traditions in classical Islam.
London, 2017, pp. 191–215.

Al-Qāḍī, “Scholars” =

Al-Qāḍī, W. “Scholars and their books: A peculiar Islamic view from

the fifth/eleventh century.” Journal of the American Oriental Society
124 (2004): 627–640.

Robinson, “Technology and religious change” =

Robinson, F. “Technology and religious change: Islam and the

impact of print.” Modern Asian Studies 27 (1993): 229–251.

Al-Sāmarrāʾī, “al-Ijāza” =

Al-Sāmarrāʾī, Qāsim Aḥmad. “Al-Ijāza wa-taṭawwuruhā al-taʾrīkhī.”

ʿĀlam al-Kutub 2 (1981): 278–285.

Sanni, “From value judgement” =

Sanni, A. “From value judgement to theoretical formalism: the

development of Arabic theory on sariqa (plagiarism).” In [BRISMES]
ed. Proceedings of the 1989 International Conference on Europe and the
Middle East held at the University of Durham, 9–12 July, 1989. Oxford,
1989, pp. 384–394.

Schacht, Introduction =

Schacht, J. An introduction to Islamic law. Oxford, 1964.

Schmidtke, “The ijāza” =

Schmidtke, S. “The ijāza from ʿAbd Allāh b. Ṣāliḥ al-Samāhījī to Nāṣir

al-Jārūdī al-Qaṭīfī: A source for the Twelver Shiʿi scholarly tradition
 Intellectual property in mediaeval Muslim literary culture 35

of Baḥrayn.” In F. Daftary and J. W. Meri, eds. Culture and memory in

medieval Islam: Essays in honour of Wilferd Madelung. London, 2003, pp.
64–85.

Schoeler, “Die Frage” =

Schoeler, G. “Die Frage der schriftlichen oder mündlichen

Überlieferung der Wissenschaften im frühen Islam.” Der Islam 62
(1985): 201–230.

Schoeler, The oral and the written =

Idem. The oral and the written in early Islam. U. Vagelpohl, tr. And J. E.
Montgomery, ed. London, 2010.

Schoeler, “Weiteres” =

Idem. “Weiteres zur Frage der schriftlichen oder mündlichen

Überlieferung der Wissenschaften im Islam.” Der Islam 66 (1989): 38–
67.

Schoeler, “Writing and publishing” =

Idem. “Writing and publishing: On the use and function of writing

in the first centuries of Islam.” Arabica 44 (1997): 423–435.

Szombathy, “Freedom of expression” =

Szombathy, Z. “Freedom of expression and censorship in mediaeval

Arabic literature.” Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 7 (2007): 1–24.

Szombathy, Mujūn =

Idem. Mujūn: Libertinism in mediaeval Muslim society and literature.

Oxford, 2013.

Ṭabāna, al-Sariqāt =

Ṭabāna, Badawī. Al-Sariqāt al-adabiyya: dirāsa fī ibtikār al-aʿmāl al-

adabiyya wa-taqlīdihā. Beirut, 1394/1974.

Von Grunebaum, “The concept of plagiarism” =

Von Grunebaum, G. E. “The concept of plagiarism in Arabic theory.”

Journal of Near Eastern Studies 3 (1944): 234–253.
 36 Zoltan Szombathy

Witkam, “The human element” =

Witkam, J. J. “The human element between text and reader: The Ijāza
in Arabic manuscripts.” In Y. Dutton, ed. The codicology of Islamic
manuscripts. Proceedings of the Second Conference of Al-Furqān Islamic
Heritage Foundation, 4–5 December 1995. London, 1995, pp. 123–136.