«Al-Luzumiyyāt» by Musa Bigiev and the features of the biography of Abu al-‘Ala’ al-Ma‘arri

Abstract

The article presents a brief overview of Musa Bigiev’s translation work «Al- Luzumiyyāt», in which he introduced readers to the work of the medieval Arab philosopher al-Ma‘arri, making a selective translation of his poems «Luzum mā lā yalzam» to the eighth letter of the Arab alphabet inclusive. Russian historiography was investigated, associated with the name of the poet in which the Tatar authors M. Bigiev (1907) and R. Fakhretdinov (1908) are the first representatives of the domestic scientifi c community to draw attention to the biography and work of Al-Ma‘arri, ahead of I. Krachkovsky (1910) and A. Krymsky (1911). The main points of Bigievʼs criticism of the traditions and methodology of Muslim biographical literature are shown, where he draws attention to its bias, prejudgment and distortions when describing the biographies of prominent fi gures of Muslim history. In his opinion, this approach was sharply negative on the spiritual and intellectual state of Muslims, directing them to false tasks and goals. The article reveals Bigievʼs innovative understanding, methodology and extraordinary approaches to biography as a historical and literary genre, his desire to give such research spiritual, intellectual and scientific significance. Bigiev focuses on the description of the social benefit brought by one person or another, and offers to refuse to describe his religious zeal and piety, as qualities that have a deeply personal nature and not representing value from the point of view of historical science. Thus, Bigiev denotes new value guidelines for himself and for the biographers of the future. The conclusion talks about a number of methodological and, in general, the scientific  phenomena of our time, about which Bigiev announced more than a hundred years ago, having acted as a researcher who ahead of scientific progress for the century. We are talking about his study of the subjectivity of Muslims and his instance of public identity, which are research areas that have arisen in recent decades of the development of science.