Forgot your password?  

Not What You Meant?  There are 4 definitions for Islamic jurists.  Also try: Ulama.

ʿUlamāʾ | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

Print-Friendly   Order the PDF version   Order the RTF version
About 6 pages (1,925 words)
Ulema Summary

Purchase our ʿUlamāʾ


ʿUlamĀʾ

ʿULAMĀʾ ("the learned"), the religious scholars of Islam, are the guardians, transmitters, and interpreters of its sciences, doctrines, and laws and the chief guarantors of continuity in the spiritual and intellectual history of the Islamic community. The term is a generic one and embraces all who have cultivated the religious disciplines or fulfilled certain practical functions such as judgeship. [See figure 1 for individual titles given to ʿulamāʾ.]

It is an axiom that the scholars are the heirs of the prophets; the emergence of the ʿulamāʾ as a distinct group had, therefore, to await the passing of the prophet Muḥammad and the completion of revelation. However, the Qurʾān itself indicates the necessity and excellence of a learned class, quite apart from extolling, in numerous verses, the virtue of knowledge (ʾilm). The word ʿulamāʾ appears in sūrah 35:28, although obviously not in the precise sense later usage conferred on it, and the expressions "those well rooted in knowledge" (3:7), "the people of remembrance" (16:43), and "those who have been given knowledge" (58:11) have also been interpreted as referring to the ʿulamāʾ. Numerous utterances attributed to the Prophet define the purpose and status of the ʿulamāʾ: in addition to being "the heirs of the prophets," they are described as "the best of my community," "the trustees of the prophets" (in the sense of being repositories of the laws promulgated by the prophets), "the trustees of God over his creation," "the lamps of the earth" (in that through their knowledge they dissipate the darkness of ignorance), and "equivalent to the prophets of the children of Israel" (in stature and authority).

This page contains 201 words.

Purchase our ʿUlamāʾ article ʿUlamāʾ article
Read the rest of this article.
This article contains 1,925 words (approx. 6 pages at 300 words per page).
Ask any question on Ulema and get it answered FAST!
Answer questions in BookRags Q&A and earn points toward
discounted or even FREE Study Guides and other BookRags products!
Learn more about BookRags Q&A
Copyrights
ʿUlamāʾ from Encyclopedia of Religion. Copyright © 2001-2006 by Macmillan Reference USA, an imprint of the Gale Group. All rights reserved.

Join BookRagslearn moreJoin BookRags

Join BookRagslearn moreJoin BookRags