Burhan al-Din al-Biqaʿi: A Controversial Man

In this episode, Dr Mustafa Banister takes over hosting duties and is joined by Kenneth Goudie to discuss his historian, Burhān al-Dīn al-Biqāʿī (d. 1480). Burhān al-Dīn al-Biqāʿī(809/1406–885/1480) was a fifteenth-century Qurʾān exegete and historian active in Cairo. Originally from the village of Khirbat Rūḥā in the Anti-Lebanon mountains, he moved at a young age to Damascus before settling in Cairo, where he became a student of Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (d. 852/1449). Through the patronage of Ibn Ḥajar, al-Biqāʿī was appointed the personal tutor of Sultan Jaqmaq and the resident Qurʾān exegete at the Ẓāhir Mosque; he later became a confidante of Sultan Īnāl, and was closely associated with his court. He is best known to modern scholarship for his embroilment in three controversies, which were respectively on the use of the Bible in Qurʾān exegesis, the poetry of Ibn al-Fāriḍ, and the theodicy of al-Ghazālī: these three controversies defined the downward trajectory of his later career from 868/1464 until his death in 885/1480.