The Antiquity of the Commandments in the Thought of Yaqb al-Qirqisānī: An Analysis of Kitāb al-Anwār w-al-Marāqib 4:52–58

The question of whether the divine commandments were observed prior to the revelation at Sinai has vast theological and hermeneutical implications. The first known systematic account that has reached us on the question of the antiquity of the commandments is found in the tenth-century Karaite scholar Yaqb al-Qirqisānī’s Kitāb al-Anwār w-al-Marāqib. Qirqisānī discusses two theories: according to the first, the divine commandments were given already to Adam; and according to the second, God’s law was given in an accumulative process, the Torah being developed in accordance with the historical circumstances. This article analyzes the two theories and demonstrates that they are rooted in a Muslim-Jewish debate, conducted in the first half of the ninth century, about the Muslim principle of abrogation (naskh), and that the historical context of the argument on the subject probably was that of the interreligious debates that took place in Qirqisānī’s time.