During the medieval period, the聽士耻濒补尘腻示Pl. of 士膩lim , meaning a religious scholar or learned man.聽had a prominent social status in Islamic dominions and were often closely connected to the sources of political power.
Yet, the historiographical sources report cases of Muslim scholars accused of apostasy and executed, thus providing examples of highly unusual socio-religious circumstances in which arbiters of good belief were themselves subjected to the ignominy of breaking with it. Contemporary scholarship has favoured narratives of 鈥渕urder鈥 and 鈥渕artyrdom鈥 as two explanatory paradigms to study famous cases of scholarly apostasy. While these categories can reveal the strategies of the medieval historians who crafted iconic figures (martyrdom) and emphasized political antagonisms as the cause of the accusations and executions (murder), they fall short of explaining the myriad of social, religious and political processes at stake.
Through the examples of 士Ayn al-Qu岣嵞乼 al-Hamad膩n墨 and Shih膩b聽al-D墨n聽al-Suhraward墨, this lecture first presents how the authors of literary sources of history constructed their narratives of scholarly apostasy in accordance with their own sectarian and political affiliations. It then presents the juridical procedure at play when scholars were accused of apostasy.
