al-Hanifiyya wa al-Arab - ضمن "Athar al-Muallimi
- Author died
- 1386 AH
- Editions
- Dār ‘Ālam al-Fawā’id lil-Nashr wa-al-Tawzī‘
al-Hanifiyya wa al-Arab (al-Ḥanīfiyya wa-l-ʿArab, "The Hanifiyya and the Arabs") is a concise historical and theological treatise by the Yemeni scholar Abd al-Rahman al-Muallimi al-Yamani (1313–1386 AH / 1895–1966 CE). The work examines the historical endurance of primordial monotheism (Hanifiyya, the religion of Abraham) among the Arab descendants of Ishmael in comparison with the Israelites prior to Islam.
Manuscript and Publication
The author titled the work al-Hanifiyya wa al-Arab at the head of its first page. It survived in a single autograph manuscript preserved in the Library of the Grand Mosque in Makkah under accession number 4673, comprising eight large-format pages with approximately thirty lines per page and displaying numerous authorial revisions and strike-throughs. Another bibliographic catalog record lists it as existing in ten pages with some damaged sheets. The treatise was published as the fourth treatise within Volume 6 of the collected works project Athar al-Shaykh al-Allama Abd al-Rahman al-Muallimi al-Yamani.
Thesis and Content
The core thesis of the treatise is that pure Abrahamic monotheism persisted among the Arabs of the Hejaz and surrounding regions for more than twenty centuries after Abraham, prior to the introduction of idolatry, demonstrating their steadfastness despite the absence of continuous prophets. Al-Muallimi contrasts this with the history of the Israelites, who repeatedly lapsed into idolatry—such as worshipping the Golden Calf—despite the frequent succession of prophets sent among them. He concludes that the succession of prophets sent specifically to the Israelites was due to their repeated recalcitrance and deviance, rather than an innate spiritual superiority over the Ishmaelites.
To substantiate his argument, al-Muallimi draws upon Biblical passages (citing the 1870 Beirut Arabic translation of the Bible), genealogical traditions, and historical chronologies:
- Biblical Textual Evidence: He cites Jeremiah 2:10–11, where God rebukes the Israelites by contrasting their apostasy with the steadfastness of Kedar (Qaydar, the son of Ishmael), noting that Jeremiah wrote around six centuries before Christ and over ten centuries after Abraham, when the descendants of Kedar were still adhering to true worship without having had an intervening prophet. He also analyzes Isaiah 54, comparing its prophecy of the "barren" and "desolate" woman to Makkah rather than Jerusalem, offering modifications to the analysis presented by Rahmatullah al-Kairanawi in Izhar al-Haqq.
- Arab Genealogy and History: Al-Muallimi correlates the Biblical "Kedar" and "Nebaioth" with Arab lineages, citing lines of pre-Islamic poetry by Qusayy ibn Kilab that mention Qaydhar and al-Nabit. He demonstrates that the Adnanite Arabs descend from Kedar, while the Nabataeans descend from Nebaioth.
- Chronological Calculations: Relying on data from Abu al-Fida's chronicle and al-Shahrastani's al-Milal wa-l-Nihal, al-Muallimi calculates that 2,705 years separated the death of Abraham from the prophetic mission of Muhammad ﷺ. Estimating that Amr ibn Luhayy first introduced idol worship to Makkah during the reign of the Persian king Shapur I—approximately 375 years before the Prophet's mission—he deduces that the Ishmaelite Arabs preserved pure monotheism for approximately 2,330 years after Abraham.
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