Russian courts

Dostoevsky and the Need for a Paternalistic Judicial System

Reforms in 1864 brought about radical changes to the law courts of Russia। These reforms meant that the Russian judicial system would be more in line with those of Western Europe, England in particular। For slavophiles like Fyodor Dostoevsky this was an unwelcome change. He felt that the system did need reform, and that the drastic change to a foreign system was not well suited to the Russian people. For Dostoevsky the judicial system needed to move slowly, if at all, toward the Western ideal if it was to work in Russia. The Russian people were not used to such a system, and they did not share all the same values as those in Europe, so this rapid switch was a dangerous one for Russian justice. Dostoevsky felt that the system was too mechanical and allowed, if not caused, attorneys to lie for the sake of their clients. The courts were slavish to the letter of the law, such that often juries were given little choice as to whether to acquit or convict defendants due to the ways the laws were written. This often caused verdicts to be either too lenient or too harsh. Noting this, Dostoevsky wanted to push for a more paternalistic court that could invoke mercy when necessary, not a mechanistic court that just churned out verdicts and sentences. We can find these ideas expressed in A Writer’s Diary, a collection of observations Dostoevsky made during his time as a journalist, most notably involving court proceedings of the day.

We can even go so far as to draw a parallel between Dostoevsky’s ideas about parenting, or lack thereof, in the Dzhunkovsky case with his issues with the courts। The Dzhunkovskys were tried for torturing three of their children but were acquitted। For Dostoevsky, the new system is similar to the Dzhunkovskys’ parenting style, absent of mercy and love. It should also be seen as lazy. It seeks to punish rather than care for those brought before it, and for those acquitted, it fails to teach them any valuable moral lesson. The Dzhunkovskys acted in a similar way. They tried to provide their children with the best that they could, including education, but they did it in a mechanical way. They let others, nannies and tutors, do the work for them, and failed to provide them with the most important things parents can give their children-- love and a good moral example. They simply doled out punishment for bad behavior, similarly to the courts. Instead of simply punishing them, they should have been molding them into better people. In other words, neither the Dzhunkovsky children nor defendants in court are receiving a proper moral education from their respective parental figures because they are absent in such a capacity.

More importantly, Dostoevsky felt strongly that this case should have never been brought to trial, at least in this system। He would like it to have been tried in a family- or community-oriented court as well as the “court of [the Dzhunkovskys’] own conscience.” (1054) Dostoevsky felt the courts should act as a guardian to the community and the job of the guardian was both protector and educator. In ‘An Imaginary Speech by the Presiding Judge,’ Dostoevsky takes the opportunity to take the role of moral educator in regard to the Dzhunkovsky parents. Some of these comments can easily be seen as applicable to the new judicial system.

Learning is one thing, but for his children a father should always be like a good, conspicuous example of all the moral conclusions their hearts and minds derive from their learning. Your heartfelt concern for them, a concern that they can always see, and your love for them would, like a friendly ray of sunshine, warm everything that had been planted in their souls; it would have borne fine and abundant fruit. (1055-1056)

All that could have been achieved by labor and love, by ceaseless work on the children and with the children; all that could have been attained through good sense, explanation, admonition, patience, training, and example—all this the weak, lazy, but impatient fathers hope to achieve by the birch rod…. And what is the result? The sly, secretive child will certainly submit and deceive you, and your birch rod will not correct him but will only corrupt him. The weak, cowardly, and tender-hearted child you’ll crush. Finally the good, artless child with a frank and open heart will first suffer torments and then will become embittered, and you will lose his heart. (1056)

This passage shows that Dostoevsky would implore parents to be more merciful and nurturing to their children, and by extension, the court should be so with those brought before it। The courts should not be quick, deliberate, and harsh with their punishments according to the law, but be more accommodating to individual situations.

This case also demonstrates the moral lessons that ought to be involved with court proceedings that Dostoevsky feels are unfortunately absent। The acquittal of the Dzhunkovskys, in addition to the fact that there were no corrective remarks made by the judge, displays this lack of moral education in the courts. Dostoevsky felt that while they shouldn’t have been convicted according to the law, they certainly should have been made to acknowledge that they had done something morally reprehensible. The verdict could also send the wrong message not only to the Dzhunkovsky parents, but also to parents across Russia. To claim that it is acceptable under the law to treat children the way the Dzhunkovskys did is a pernicious statement to make other Russian parents.

This sense of the courts needing to teach moral lessons through compassion can also be seen in the proceedings of the Kornilova case। The case involved a woman who threw her stepdaughter out of a fourth-story window. She was initially convicted in what seemed like an open and shut case, but she was eventually retried and acquitted due, in part, to Dostoevsky’s commentary about her potentially altered mind-state brought on by her pregnancy.

For Dostoevsky, the outcome of this case was nearly ideal। Kornilova was repentant and had deep feelings of guilt. Dostoevsky felt that the initial sentence was far too harsh and might have broken her spirit. The fact that she was initially found guilty and then acquitted allowed for the public and personal acknowledgment of guilt on Kornilova’s part as well as the capacity for mercy on the part of the courts. This shows the potentiality for the judicial system to take account of a person’s mind-state as well as their feelings of repentance when deciding a case. Dostoevsky felt that personal reform was much more important than simply punishing according to the precedents of law. “Is it not better to reform, to find, and to restore a human being than to simply cut off his head? Cutting off heads is easy if one follows the letter of the law, but it is always much more difficult to settle a matter in accordance with the truth, in a humane and paternal fashion.”(1239) Dostoevsky’s use of “paternal’ here is telling. Instead of sticking to the letter of the law, like a parent, the courts should be more sensitive to each individual. While this may damage the use of precedent, it would both diminish over-punishment and promote edifying moral lessons.

Another case that displays Dostoevsky’s desire for a judicial system with the paternal ability to teach moral lessons and be merciful is that of Kairova, another woman accused of attempted murder who was acquitted। This case also involved the problem of accounting for the mental-state of the accused. However, in this case, while Dostoevsky was glad Kairova was released because of her altered mental-state and that a prison sentence would be her undoing, he was upset that Kairova was acquitted because she did not have to acknowledge her wrongdoing. (474) Obviously, attempting to kill someone should be a punishable act, but because the new courts were not equipped to deal with the intricacies of such a case, she was released with no punishment or moral lesson. Dostoevsky would rather have seen her convicted of a crime with a commuted sentence, because she would have to come to terms with her act but not be punished more than necessary.

It was very important that people who did something morally questionable, such as the Dzhunkovskys, Kornilova, or Kairova, be held accountable in the sense that they acknowledge the wrongness of what they’ve done। The new court system, however, was not well equipped to do so, at least to the standards of Dostoevsky. The system was only set up to acquit or punish, not to teach lessons. Instead of being parental, the judicial system is just that, a system-- cold, mechanical, and lacking compassion. It is a lazy system, only able to churn out verdicts and punishments, instead of acting as a father figure ready to judge and punish, but also ready to be merciful and morally nurturing.

The new courts were not indigenously Russian and did not share the Russian sense of morality, at least according to Dostoevsky. They were set up in the mold of those of Europe where the culture was steeped in Enlightenment values, including democracy and science. It was the European emphasis on science and rationality that Dostoevsky felt tainted the judicial system to make it purely mechanistic and led it away from being a paternalistic, morally efficacious one. The previous Russian system of autocracy, with the Tsar as the ‘father,’ had instilled paternalism as cultural value, and the new system lacked this central value. Dostoevsky was looking for a father not a machine. Mercy and moral education would be much more advantageous to Russian society than a system that coldly assigned defendants innocence, guilt, and punishment. The Russian people and their morality should be nurtured by the system, not neglected by it.

Work Cited

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. A Writer's Diary. Trans. Kenneth Lantz. Vol. 1&2. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 1993.

Moonshine

Sonny Boy Williamson’s ‘Moonshine’: A Study of the Adverse Effects of Alcohol on a Community

In 1938, the walls of an Aurora, Illinois recording studio must have been rocking, and, if he had any true love for music, tears of joy must have been rolling down the engineer’s face as John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson laid down one of his greatest and most low-down blues numbers, ‘Moonshine’. His vocal performance is haunting and his accompanists are top-notch performers and certainly were on their games that day. His trademark country harmonica style was in its full glory as he used it to great effect to accentuate the melody of the lyrics as well as drive home the feelings those lyrics are meant to represent. Those feelings are of a need for change in behavior, not only for himself but also for those around him. ‘Moonshine’ is a cautionary tale about the bad things that can come about from consuming illegal whiskey.

The song begins slowly with a fantastic harp roll as Sonny Boy leads us into the world of debauchery he’s about to show us the pitfalls of. The band, including Big Joe Williams on guitar, comes in with a staccato rhythm just before Sonny Boy begins to shed light on what this particular blues is all about:

Now an’ this moonshine, moonshine’d have harmed many men
Now an’ this moonshine, moonshine’d have harmed many men
Now that is the reason why, Yank I believe I’ll make a change

This is essentially the refrain that serves as the anchor and moral instruction of the song. Sonny Boy is speaking to Yank Rachel, whose mandolin expertly echoes Williamson’s vocal melody. He does this to show that he’s not only making a statement for himself, but that he is speaking directly to his friends. He’s telling us that he’s going to stop drinking moonshine because of the problems that ensue from its consumption, and that we should also refrain from the practice.

Each verse gives us examples of the types of things that can happen to you if you get drunk on moonshine, because for Sonny Boy, moonshine is the cause of all these problems, and the way to stop doing such things is to not drink moonshine. The first verse tells us that drinking moonshine causes you to gamble, fight, and not “treat your wife right”. He goes on to describe the hallucinogenic effects of alcohol by the examples of imagining that a “policeman is a little delivery boy” and a “streetcar is a little children’s play-toy”, and leaving us to contemplate the somewhat obvious problems that those two things entail. The third verse involves passing out and not listening to your wife, which, for Sonny Boy at least, should not be considered acceptable behavior. The final verse tells us that having too much to drink will allow you to go out into the street and “cuss out most anybody you meet”. All of these stories are examples of the type of behavior Sonny Boy wants to eliminate not only in himself, but also his friends and greater community. He feels that alcohol is a major problem in the community and his song is meant as both a warning and a moral example. If Sonny Boy can “make a change”, so can anyone.

A curious point is whether this song is made up of examples from Williamson’s personal problems with alcohol, people he knows, or just stories he’d heard. In any case Sonny Boy offers us a stark picture of what kind of damage drinking can do to a person’s life, which by extension shows us the overarching effect alcohol abuse can have on an entire community. Whether or not ‘Moonshine’ is a personal story, if you come away from the song thinking that Sonny Boy wasn’t sincere in his delivery of his hope and plea for change, I would suggest a second listen. Both the vocals and instrumentation sound desperate and yearning, at times like a dog’s howl. The tempo slowly accelerates as the message is driven home and the ensemble gets into their groove. Both Sonny Boy’s vocal and instrumental deliveries are at their best, and lyrically, the song delivers not only a message but also great poetry.

Only in the first instance of the refrain do we encounter the common AAB style. The rest of the song is of the also common AB-Refrain type. But this blues is anything but common and it shows why Sonny Boy was such a strong influence on future blues greats, even those who did not play harmonica, such as John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. I would argue that many of Hooker’s songs mirror Williamson’s in their style and delivery, so much so that I was searching frantically to find out if Hooker had recorded a version of ‘Moonshine’ to compare the two, but to no avail. Luckily though, we have Sonny Boy’s infectious and moving version to treasure.

Al Ma'mun

Al Ma’mun: An Unsung Hero of Philosophy?
How One Caliph Affected Muslim and Western Thought

One might imagine the road of Western philosophy as going directly from Ancient Greece to Medieval Europe, but it happens that the road is not as direct as that. Much of what the West knows about Classical thought was handed down from Muslim sources, and rarely from the Greek originals. So Western thought owes a great deal to the thinkers and translators of the Medieval Muslim world, without whom, the face of philosophy and science might look completely different. As important as this was for the West, it was equally important to Muslim philosophy and science. The texts they found and translated, had quite an impact on the thinkers of the time, and many ideas were incorporated into Muslim thought as well. All of this sharing of information was made possible by the translation movement that took place around the foundation of the Bayt al-Hikma, or ‘House of Wisdom’, in Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate. This movement was spearheaded by the seventh Abbasid Caliph, al-Ma’mun, whose rule can been seen as a triumph for science and philosophy. However, his rule can also be seen as controversial considering the impact al-Ma’mun had on Muslim theology and dogma, an impact few Caliphs ever had, or wanted to have. On the other hand if he didn’t have a great thirst for knowledge of all kinds, we might be quite unaware of the great Classical works we continue to study and cherish to this day. Can one imagine a world without Plato and Aristotle? Fortunately we have al-Ma’mun to thank for a world of thought with a grand tradition. Although translation work had been going on for some time, it wasn’t until the time of al-Ma’mun that a need for translated texts to legitimize the roles of the caliph in religion and of philosophy in the centralization and stabilization of the state was central to the Abbasid court.

Al-Ma’mun ruled from 813-833 CE. He succeeded his father Harun al-Rashid, after a struggle for power with his brother al-Amin, in which al-Ma’mun murdered his brother and claimed the legitimacy of his rule by bringing religion into his aspirations for the Caliphate, while al-Amin was more typically content to keep to the state’s business rather than be involved with religion. Al-Ma’mun wanted to “revive the original meaning of ‘caliph’: that is, God’s Deputy on earth.” He used this ideal to help him attain the positions of Caliph and imam and continue to assert this stance during his rule, becoming directly involved in religious matters. One of the implications of this zeal for religion was his interest in texts and the knowledge they hold. For al-Ma’mun, the more knowledge with which he could learn more about God, the better. But he also had great interests in rationalism and science. “In addition to surrounding himself with kalam-debaters, he sponsored the activities of translators, astronomers, mathematicians, engineers, physicians, an other practitioners of what today would be called the sciences.” These activities were fueled by ancient texts and the ideas they contained, but his focus on rationality and the implications that held for religious thought was looked down upon as dangerous if not potentially heretical by some of the more conservative members of Abbasid society.

Al-Ma’mun’s desire for knowledge began early in his life. As the son of a caliph, he was well educated but he always sought more. “Al-Ma’mun comes off as a quick learner who had gained a real mastery of all the best that had been thought or said in the world… His training in Qur’an and Hadith equipped him to engage in the religious debates of the day, and his exposure to kalam and fiqh contributed to his penchant for independent reasoning.” This passion for “independent reasoning” would lead to both great academic advances but also to religious controversy. But inquiry ruled in al-Ma’mun’s court, so controversy or not, accumulation of knowledge and active debate would remain hallmarks of al-Ma’mun’s reign.

The culmination of all of this inquiry was the founding of the Bayt al-Hikma in 830. It was there that much of the scientific and translation works stemmed from to promote Muslim culture.

The foundation of the Bayt al-Hikma in Baghdad confirmed [al-Ma’mun’s] interest in the development of a new culture, Arabic in expression and Islamic in inspiration, integrating the contributions of the various peoples of the Orient, including the neighbors of the Abbasid Empire whether they were commercial partners (India) or political enemies (Byzantium). Scholars of all persuasions (Muslims, Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and Sabians)… contributed to the advancement of Arab science, heir to the sciences of antiquity, adopted and adapted according to the requirements of Arab-Islamic civilization.

Many of the great works of antiquity were scrutinized and some were even assimilated by Muslim thinkers and translators. These were not just Muslims, nor were they only Arabs; Persians and Byzantines were among the best translators, commentators, and practitioners of the new ideas. It was in fact the Byzantines who kept the Bayt al-Hikma’s shelves stocked. “In order to stock the library with important scientific and philosophical works, al-Ma’mun sent emissaries to Byzantium to seek out and purchase for him books of ‘ancient learning,’ which were then ordered to be translated by a panel of scholars.” Some of the more important texts handed down to us from the translation movement include those from Aristotle, Plato, Galen, Hippocrates, Ptolemy, and Euclid. The impact that the rediscovery and application of these texts had on philosophers, physicians, astronomers, and mathematicians is immeasurable.

Many scientific and mathematical feats and breakthroughs were made at this time. Under al-Ma’mun’s encouragement, there were breakthroughs in astronomy such as the accurate measurement of the circumference of the Earth. There was the first treatise on Algebra, which became practical for both engineering and inheritance law problems. The use of Greek medical techniques such as humoral therapy, the changing of one’s diet in order to bring one’s ‘humors’ into balance, also became more common. These breakthroughs would eventually take root in the West and grow dramatically. For example, if it weren’t for the development of astronomy by Muslim scientists based on the work done by Ptolemy, scholars like Copernicus might not have been inspired to revolutionize our cosmological view.

Philosophical inquiry and debate was another major activity under al-Ma’mun. Al-Ma’mun especially enjoyed debating and listening to debates about kalam, or Islamic theology, but he also indulged in discussions of falsafa, or foreign philosophy. This however got him into trouble with the Literalists and teachers of the hadith (the words and life of Mohammed) who felt that the words of God and the Prophet are all that matter and are certainly not up for discussion or debate, and were especially opposed to using non-Muslim thought to influence policy and doctrine. Al-Ma’mun worried that his people would more readily listen to these detractors and wished they would be more akin to his interests, especially rationality. “In fact, it was perhaps his interest in theological discussions that led by degrees not only to the promotion of a popular interest in theology, but also to the support of the cause of a theological party (the Mu’tazilite) that had sought to apply Greek thought to Muslim dogmas and the use of the decisive resources of the state in the defense and consolidation of this position.” The Mu’tazilite party was one that sought to ground the doctrines and laws of Islam in logic and reason, which they found the classical texts to be very useful for. Al-Ma’mun did support many Mu’tazilite tenets, including believing that God is nothing like humans, and in the metaphorical reading of the Qur’an, but not, for instance, their belief in free-will. Rather, he believed that “all human actions are determined by God… and that everything other than God, including the Qur’an, is a created object.” He also displayed a healthy skepticism toward Hadith and preachers of it, and the combination of these thoughts as well as sympathy for Shiites, put him in a distinct minority. He eventually even instituted a minha, or inquisition, against Hadith scholars. His interest in falsafa had impacted his thought and policies profoundly to the point that he was persecuting a popular group to uphold an unpopular doctrine, that of the created Qur’an. So for many, philosophy was seen as al-Ma’mun’s vice, but it was one he couldn’t give up. Al-Ma’mun was not only an appreciator of philosophy; he was truly a philosopher in his own right. “[H]e himself composed a number of treatises, which dealt mainly with theological questions in a Mu’tazilite spirit… which are preserved in ancient sources and testify to his brilliance.” Without his impetus toward rationality, the academic world might look vastly different.

However, the effects of al-Ma’mun’s reign were far-reaching and not contained to 9th century Baghdad. Muslim philosophers would wrestle with the problems they faced in the works of Greece for centuries to come. And their work would find further interpreters in Latin Europe. Many texts made their way in Arabic form to the schools of Europe and were further translated into Latin. This allowed scholars to investigate classical texts and apply them to Christian doctrine as Arab scholars had done to Muslim doctrine. These interpretations further made it to the minds of modern scholars, and then made it to us, although the moderns had much more access to the original Greek texts. However, the interest in them might have been diminished if not for their applicability, or lack thereof, to religious doctrines. Therefore, the activities of the Muslim scholars, in wanting to reconcile, say, Aristotle with Mohammed, allowed Christian scholars to attempt to reconcile Aristotle with St. Peter (or al-Ghazali for that matter), and further, for Descartes to reconcile Aristotle with Avicenna and Aquinas.

There were some translators and interpreters of note both under al-Ma’mun’s rule and in the centuries following. One of the first as well as the most notable was Hunain ibn Ishaq, a Christian, whose “activity marks a decisive stage in the history of translation.” He mostly translated the medical works of Hippocrates and Galen, but also produced some of his own work. His focus for translations was on accuracy, as he compiled numerous copies of texts and proceeded to compare the originals to make on cohesive version and then translate that version multiple times to insure its soundness. This emphasis on accuracy made working on a text grueling but made future use of the translation virtually worry-free.

One of the earliest Muslim philosophers, al-Kindi, was one of the scholars who benefited from such diligence. Al-Kindi and his followers continued the translation project but he also produced many of his own works on “a startling array of fields, ranging from metaphysics, ethics, and psychology (i.e., the study of the soul), to medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and optics, and further afield to more practical topics like perfumes and swords.” They introduced new philosophical terminology and al-Kindi made great use of Greek ideas in his own thought.

Later, thinkers such as ibn-Rushd (Averroes), ibn-Sina (Avicenna), and al-Ghazali (Algazel) used Greek texts to grapple with interpreting the Qur’an and sort out the mysteries of the world and the God that created and ruled it. They also made use of earlier interpretations that stemmed from the initial translation movement, such as those of al-Kindi. Their works in turn inspired European scholars. They were having trouble dealing with the problems that the works of Aristotle implied for Christian teachings as their Muslim counterparts had. Cosmology and issues such as the immortality of the soul, the natures of God and Man, and transubstantiation became difficult in the face of Ptolemy, Plato, Aristotle and Galen. Both Muslim and Christian thinkers argued about the value of classical thought to their particular religious institutions as well as the everyday lives of their people.

Thomas Aquinas, for example, was greatly inspired by al-Ghazali. While the two may have disagreed on the applicability of Aristotle to their own particular faith (Aquinas felt Aristotle’s ideas could and should be applied to Christian dogma, al-Ghazali vehemently discouraged such an application by Muslim scholars), Aquinas was enamored by al-Ghazali’s work. He was, of course inspired by those others that al-Ghazali had debated. And it was their emphasis on Aristotle that helped Aquinas look into how to best interpret Aristotle as best to serve Christianity.

Later on, Rene Descartes was influenced by Aquinas’ work and was in turn led to the work of Muslim philosophers like Avicenna. Their works had a big impact on him and their influence can be seen in his Discourses; his formulation of the immortality of the soul and the nature of God stems from the work of Aristotle, Aquinas, and the Muslim philosophers. Descartes’ thought went on to spur David Hume to criticize his work, and further, Hume’s philosophy incited Immanuel Kant to set to work on his Critiques, and Western philosophy as we know it was off and running. And while it could claim its ancestry to be Greek, it owed its heritage to Arabs and Persians. If they had not taken the time to pour over the ancient texts and try to apply them to their own ideals, Europeans might never had the inspiration or the opportunity to do the same. To this day, we still grapple with Aristotle and Plato’s theories. They’re still part of a typical philosophical curriculum, and we are taught that the evolution of thought went directly from Aristotle and Plato to Augustine to Aquinas to Descartes to Kant to contemporary philosophy, but rarely do we also examine the texts of great thinkers such as ibn-Rushd or al-Ghazali. They should certainly be considered as part of our philosophical genealogy. They should be taught along with Aquinas and the like, not pushed aside to merely Arabic or Islamic philosophy.

We can see that some of the West’s most prominent philosophers, the ones we have all heard of, Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, etc., were all somehow affected by the translation movement. Also, Muslim thought was also greatly influenced be the rediscovery of Greek texts. Both of these two great traditions of thought have this movement as part of their bloodline. Al-Ma’mun has given the world a great gift. Through his own thirst for knowledge, we can now quench our own in a much more varied, deep, and satisfying way. His interests in both religious and secular ideas and debates lead to the incorporation of varied texts from varied sources, and these texts have further been handed down through time, and has made its way into the hearts of two very distinct and important traditions of thought.

Al-Ma’mun’s motives for continuing the translation movement were varied, and historians such as Dimitri Gutas claim that they were mostly to legitimize his rule and the new role of religion in the state. “Al-Ma’mun’s new policy was based on an absolutist interpretation of Islam, with the caliph as the ultimate arbiter of dogma. This was largely unprecedented in Islamic history, and completely against the current of decentralization of religious authority that had been gaining momentum until al-Ma’mun’s time.” Furthermore, he used the translation movement to promote anti-Byzantinism and rationalism. Al-Ma’mun wanted to be both head-of-state and in charge of the spiritual and intellectual aspects of his empire. He used the translation movement and the ideas and debates that stemmed from it to promote and rationalize this ideal. But the ideas that were fostered under the guise of solidifying the Caliph’s secular and spiritual power were far-reaching, and we can be thankful for it.

Works Cited

Adamson, Peter, and Richard C. Taylor, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005.
Cooperson, Michael. Al Ma’mun. Oxford: Oneworld, 2005.
Fakhry, Majid. A History of Islamic Philosophy. New York: Columbia UP, 2004.
Gutas, Dimitri. Greek Thought, Arabic Culture. New York: Routledge, 1998.
Kennedy, Hugh. When Baghdad Ruled the Muslim World. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2004.
Rekaya, M. “Al-Ma’mun.” Encyclopedia of Islam. Lieden: E.J. Brill, 1991