فصلنامه تاریخ فرهنگ و تمدن اسلامی
پیاپی 7 (تابستان 1391)

Rapid spread of Islam in Prophet`s lifetime has attracted the attention of scholars, in particular, that of orientalists. They know the spread of Islam due to numerous agents; yet they know holy war as the main. This paper has presented a classification of orientalists in brief at first and, then, assessed and criticized the view claiming holy war as the main agent. Finally, it deals with the tax paid by people of the Book and primary holy war as two agents thought by orientalists as misuse of power in spreading Islam. It has been made clear that the tax has been taken in turn for the services of the governments and primary holy war for defending Divine and human rights and preparing the grounds for optional faith.

Conflict and quarrel may be counted essential for human societies. In some cases, lack of wise management leads quarrels to crisis in such a way that its foundation comes to be destroyed. The importance of the problem has led scholars in the field of management to deal with it and study to find a solution. This paper has studied the solutions of the Prophet for thequarrels of peoples in Medina to find his manner of managing them.

Lack of norm and arbitrary use of ijtihad among Sunni scholars along with other causes led to many jurisprudential denominations and opinions. Among 138 jurisprudential denominations present in the second and third centuries after Hijra followed by people, only four including Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi`i and Hanbali were formally accepted, the others were soon left. The period in which such an event happened, however, is not exactly clear and, therefore, it has been viewed by historians differently from third to seventh century. This paper, having sought to survey different views, has preferred the view knowing it to be seventh century.

Imams` struggle and political positions against ruling currents was set based upon the states of society. Imam Hassan `Askari also during his imamate took appropriate political positions according to political limitations and, therefore, prepared the grounds needed for the absence of the promised Mahdi. In spite of the weakness of the ruling system of caliphate, Abbasid caliphs never left out Imam and his activities of consideration and finally killed imam and thus made him a martyr. This paper, using an analytico-descriptive method, has described the political climate dominant the caliphate`s realm and Abbasid policy toward Imam and Shiites. Finally Imam`s most important political positions and manners of life have been explained.

Genealogy is counted among those Pre-Islamic few sciences of A`rab that found a new position to Islamic sciences and continued to its life. Furthermore, it found some applications in the shadow of Islamic jurisprudential teachings. Consequently in Islamic age many books were compiled and Islamic genealogy was established. Those scholars dealing with the classification of sciences accepted it as a science and the compilers in this field used genealogical methods and terms to confirm its state of being a science. The compilers may be classified in special schools. This paper has intended to explain the place of genealogy in the classification of sciences and introduce the methods and terms of the field.

Shiites have played a considerable part in different fields of knowledge and there can be found a valuable heritage of them, though many of their works have been lost and only some parts of them can be found in historical Sunni sources. On the one hand, an attempt for reconstructing Shiite lost works and, on the other hand considerable steps by hard-working researchers in correcting remained texts may be known as the grounds for explaining Shiites` part in Islamic civilization. Al-Jamal wa al-Nusrah lisayyid al-'Itra fi harb al-Basrah by Shaykh Mofid has been regarded as one old and historical Shiite text, being of important effect in Shiite historiography and being corrected during recent years. With regard to the high place of the work, it is necessary for us to pay much attention to its different aspects. This paper, therefore, has centered on its sources critically for getting a reasonable judgment on it.