St. Petersburg: Amphora Publ., 2002, 141 p.

In the last decade, when the topic of Islam has ceased to be a semi-secret one, many publications related to this religion have appeared on the book market. Most of these products are of rather poor quality and are not worth the time spent reviewing them. However, this publication forced us to take up the pen for two reasons: first, it is a dictionary, which, despite its small volume, should provide reliable, accurate information and not mislead the reader; secondly, it was prepared in St. Petersburg (V. V. Yemelyanov-a teacher at St. Petersburg State University, Yu. B. Gavrilova-candidate of the St. Petersburg branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences), where even in the most difficult years, teaching and studying elements of Islamic studies from strictly scientific positions was supported.

Already the introductory article to this dictionary ("Images of Islam"), written by V. V. Yemelyanov, is striking with an abundance of factual errors, illegal generalizations, sloppy formulations and conjectures concerning Islam, which are based on common philistine ideas about this monotheistic religion. The article begins with fantasies about the ambiguity of the word "Islam". Not being satisfied with its Arabic meaning " to betray oneself (to Allah)", on the basis of his own etymological research, the author concludes that for this term "the true, grammatically accurate meaning is "voluntary bringing oneself to integrity and normality" "(p. 7). Alas, despite the rich semantics of the root slm/slm in various languages. In Semitic languages, there is no such meaning for the word in Arabic. The reader, even superficially familiar with the theory and practice of Islamic mysticism-Sufism, of course, cannot agree with the author's thesis that " Islam is a religion of an extroverted view of the world. We will not find here developed psychological teachings or deep mystical insight into the human soul" (p. 11). Here we also read: "A Muslim by vocation is a warrior and a poet." But what about Muslim scholars with a real cult of knowledge, which is characteristic of the heyday of medieval Islamic culture?

The real" discoveries " are made by the author of the introduction in the field of early Arabic history. So, it turns out that in ancient times the Arabs lived, including in Ethiopia (p.14), where until now no one has been able to find traces of them, at least. before the so-called "Ethiopian Hijra" in the 10s of the seventh century. As for the small number of Sabaean colonists who settled in the Horn of Africa in the eighth and sixth centuries BC, it should be borne in mind that the Sabaians were very different in both language and culture from the Arabs. "Arab robbers attacked large caravans, but did not kill anyone... "(p. 15). It turns out that you can not believe the late antique and Byzantine sources describing the outrages of the Arabian Bedouins, and the book "Days of the Arabs", where a lot of space is occupied by stories about murders, sometimes very cruel and treacherous. A specialist familiar with the pre-Islamic history of Northern and Southern Arabia is, to put it mildly, perplexed by the author's statement that "in the north there are city-states created with the support of the Romans" (p.16), and "in the south several large dams are destroyed, rivers dry up" (p. 17). It's a pity that V. V. Yemelyanov did not specify which cities of the ancient Arabs he was referring to, since both Hatra (al-Khadr) and Palmyra (Tadmur), not to mention Taim or Dedan, appeared before the Romans penetrated the Middle East, i.e. none of the urban centers of pre-Islamic Arabs appeared under Roman rule. influence. In ar-

(c) 2003

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The only major dam known to Aleppo's South Arabian civilization was the Marib dam, but the rest of the irrigation facilities created by the inhabitants of ancient Yemen are nothing compared to it.

"The Arabs were pagans, worshiped stone idols that stood in various shrines, listened to the magic prayers of their priests," the author writes (pp. 15-16). In general, the term "kamlanie" is usually used in relation to shamans, but more important here is that the priesthood among the Arabian idolaters did not exist at all. Neither the keepers of idols, nor the diviners of which, to some extent, can be likened to shamans, nor the diviners were priests-intermediaries between the deity and his worshippers.

By the way, in the article "The Koran" V. V. Yemelyanov directly calls the Kyakhins "Arabian priests" (p. 78), which is completely wrong1. And not only stone idols were worshipped by the inhabitants of pre-Islamic Arabia: the cult of sacred trees, which were considered the seat of deities, was very common among them.

V. V. Yemelyanov's excursions into medieval history, and not only Islamic history, are equally stunning. Speaking about Christianity "at the time of its formation", he suggests "remembering the first martyrs and crusades" (p. 10). The situation is no better with geography. According to the author, Islam is associated with the word "desert "(p.8): "Arabia, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Syria, Iran, Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, north-west and north-east Africa - everywhere the conditions are approximately the same. Beyond the borders of oases formed by fertile rivers, endless sands stretch" (p. 9). What, in this case, should be done with the largest country in the Muslim world - Indonesia?

Listing the Arabic words that have found their way into European languages, V. V. Yemelyanov mentions "many names of constellations (Algol, Aldebaran, Altair, etc.)" (p. 21), although it is known from the school astronomy course that these are stars (respectively (3 Perseus, a Taurus and a Eagle). Most of the names of the brightest stars came to us from Arabic, but the names of constellations accepted by astronomers either go back to the ancient tradition, or were invented in modern times. In any case, none of them owes their origin to the Arabs.

The dictionary itself is quite worthy of such an introduction, since almost every article contains errors. We will limit ourselves to analyzing those of them that are the most typical.

Although the dictionary is provided with a fairly extensive list of literature in Russian (original and translated) on Islamic studies and Arab-Muslim culture (pp. 128-134), its authors clearly did not benefit from familiarization with it. The authors used the encyclopedic dictionary "Islam" (Moscow, 1991), prepared by professional Islamic scholars based on the study of original sources and special scientific literature, as well as a general methodological approach to the study of Islam. However, the incorrect reduction of articles in this academic reference book and "dilution" of them with materials indiscriminately drawn from various publications (including propaganda pamphlets, which are now published in Russian in abundance by Muslim organizations), and their own, sometimes homegrown, judgments about Islam have turned conceptually unified studies, a systematic view of a particular teaching in the list in one row of important, fundamental provisions and particular, secondary problems, facts and conjectures (cf., for example, the articles "Allah", "Ismailism", "Kalam", etc.), in a hodgepodge of which the reader has to understand for himself. It is also surprising to include in this list works that have long been outdated (M. Mashanov, E. A. Belyaev) and completely unrelated to Islamic studies (I. M. Filshtinsky and T. A. Shumovsky).

The incompetence of the dictionary authors is already confirmed by the first article " Abbasids "(pp. 28-29). Reading it: "They came to power as a result of a military victory over the Umayyads on November 28, 749." However, on this day there was no victory, but the oath of allegiance was taken to Abu-l - ' Abass, and Marwan II continued to remain caliph. The question also arises: why, if the victory was won in November 749, does the dynasty's reign start from 750? In the same phrase, a clarification: "... consolidating with the Shiites." "Consolidated" means "united", but the Abbasids acted in secret from the Shiites. Further: "Under A. ('Abbasids), Baghdad becomes the capital of the Caliphate", although Baghdad became the capital after its construction in 762, and in the middle - 2nd half of the IX century. the capital was Samarra. After a series of poorly worded phrases (for example, the one where it is said that the Islamic world has reached "absolute heights in the world of Islam").-

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The author writes: "The Caliph of the Abbasid era was a symbol of religious power. He was isolated from the court and even from his relatives, because he was considered a representative of the divine order and "the shadow of God on earth." As a result, the Abbasids married only female slaves... "(p. 28). Speaking about the isolation of the caliphs, V. V. Yemelyanov contradicts not only the truth, but also his own characterization of their behavior (p. 10). And the caliphs did not marry only slaves: they had legitimate wives of high birth, and the slaves were concubines. In the sentence: "The concept of Ummah, which previously meant only the Arab-Muslim community, is replaced by the concept of Jama'ah, which expresses the unity of all Muslim peoples..." (p.28-29), not only the definition of the concept of ummah, but also the juxtaposition of it to Jama'ah, does not correspond to reality. The heyday of translation activity can be attributed more to the time of al-Ma'mun (813-833) than to the reign of his father ar-Rashid, moreover, not only artistic works were translated from Pahlavi, but also scientific treatises. The article does not mention such important milestones in the history of the Abbasids as their loss of political power in 945 with the arrival of the Buyids in Baghdad and the restoration of the Abbasid state in part of Iraq under Caliph an-Nasir (1180-1225).

The article "Abdo" (p. 29) contains a number of inaccuracies, for example, in its description: "Egyptian theologian, advocate of adapting the values of Islam to the conditions of bourgeois society." But ' Abdo ('Abdu-hu) was not a theologian, but a jurist, and, more importantly, not a passive "supporter of the adaptation of Islam", but an active fighter, a leader of the movement for the comprehensive modernization of Egypt, a public figure, for which he was expelled from the country (the dictionary does not say in what year), and lived not "in Beirut and Paris", but first in Paris, then received permission to return to the territory of the Ottoman Empire.

The article " Abu Bekr "(pp. 29-30), written by V. V. Yemelyanov together with Yu.B. Gavrilova, is also full of errors. Thus, Abu Bakr could not have been born in 568, because he was younger than Muhammad, whose birth year is considered to be 570; after Muhammad's death, he became the head of all Muslims, and not "the head of the Muslim community in Madinah." It cannot be said that Abu Bakr "was the first to introduce the title of Caliphate rasul Allah - "vicegerent of the Messenger of God"", he began to be called so by others. "In the campaign against Yamama, a detachment of thirty Hafiz was killed... After that, A. B. (Abu Bakr) created a commission to record the holy text." There was no separate group of Qur'anic scholars, but the Hafizs were killed in a major battle along with hundreds of other Muslims, and there is no record of any such commission. It is likely that "In the last months of the Prophet's life [Abu Bakr] stood for him at Friday prayers in the Madinah Mosque", since Muhammad only once or twice during his dying illness did not lead the prayer. The phrase "Fulfilling the covenants and continuing the work of Muhammad, he (Abu Bakr) initially refused to act as his vicegerent" should mean that immediately after Muhammad's death, Abu Bakr did not agree to lead the community, but if you do not know what is meant in it, it is impossible to understand it. "...After the death of Muhammad ... A. B. (Abu Bakr) led a campaign against the apostates, who were actually continuing the tribal wars." In reality, he was only in charge of repelling the rebel attempt to attack Medina. In addition to all these errors, this article is constructed without observing chronological or logical order, which, however, affects almost all articles of the reviewed dictionary.

Serious errors can be found even in the sections devoted to the five pillars of Islam. Thus, in the article" Zakat "(pp. 50-51), V. V. Yemelyanov suggests distinguishing between the sacred alms referred to by this term in the modern Muslim world and the"ordinary state tax". This juxtaposition is completely contrived, because today, as before in Islam, it means nothing more than a tax spent on charitable purposes. The essence of it was precisely the introduction of mandatory (although very sparing) taxation, which is so unusual for the Arabian Bedouins. By the way, Yu. B. Gavrilova in her article" Sadaka " (p. 100) should note that this term not only denotes voluntary alms, but is also used as a synonym for the concept  .

The most serious error occurs in such an important article as the Sunnah (pp. 102-103). According to V. V. Yemelyanov, "there are six collections of hadith recognized by Sunni Islam," although in fact dozens of collections of hadith are used in various legal schools of Sunnism, six of which are considered the most authoritative. However, even when drawing up the concordance to the Sunnah, carried out by leading European Islamic scholars-

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Under the leadership of A. Wensink, nine collections of traditions about the words and deeds of Muhammad, which are most popular in the Sunni community, were taken into account. According to V. V. Yemelyanov, "hadiths are interpreted by legal scholars (faqihs and mutaqallim)" (p. 58). Since when did scholastic theologians (mutakallim) begin to interpret hadiths, taking bread from professional experts in Muslim tradition-muhaddis? The expressions "orthodox Sunni Islam" and" Sunni Orthodoxies " (p. 73) suggest that there was still a Shiite, Kharijite orthodoxy, etc. This is a fundamental methodological error, a complete misunderstanding of the functioning of Islam as a religious system.

A lot of incorrect statements and inaccuracies are contained in the article by Yu. B. Gavrilova "Shiites "(pp. 125-126), which, in particular, claims that a" split "between Sunnis and Shiites occurred in the Muslim community immediately after the death of Muhammad (632), when several of his companions allegedly" declared the power of Abu Bekr and the oath of allegiance to him illegal". What kind of Sunnis could we talk about then, if the concept of Sunnah did not yet exist and the very name ahl al-Sunnah (Sunnis) appeared decades later? The attempt to attribute the birth of Shiism to the beginning of the reign of Abu Bakr also does not correspond to historical reality, although such statements can be found in some propaganda works of Shiite preachers. The first sprouts of Shiism appear at the end of the reign of Caliph Uthman (in the first half of the 1950s of the seventh century); as a political movement, it was formed during the first civil war in the Caliphate (656-661), and Shiism as a special religious trend can only be described from the end of the seventh century. Interestingly, in the article" Ali "(p.32-33), Yu. B. Gavrilova writes:" the community of Shiites " was formed after the death of Ali, i.e. after 661. Contrary to her statement, Shiite imamites do not recognize the divine nature of the imam (p. 126), protecting only the divine essence of the supreme power granted to him.

Concerning V. V. Yemelyanov's article " Ismailism "(p. 65-67), it should be said that, firstly, unlike Christianity, the concept of "sect" as well as "orthodoxy" is not applicable to Islam, so it is wrong to call Ismailism a "sectarian movement"; secondly, Zahir and batin - not the" two branches " of the Ismaili ideological system (p. 66), but its exoteric and esoteric sides. The author presents the theological and philosophical doctrine of the Ismailis in an incomplete and unclear way: he does not reveal the doctrine of emanations, which is its core; he does not say anything about their philosophy of history (which is based on the principle of cyclicity), and without this it is impossible to understand what they were guided in their practical activities.

The articles "Kharijites" (p.120) and "Shiites"written by Yu. B. Gavrilova clearly contradict each other. It defines the Kharijites as "the first Muslim religious and political party" that emerged after the battle of Siffin (657), and five pages later, without much ado, it dates the split between Sunnis and Shiites to the coming to power of Abu Bakr, i.e. 632, and the very characterization of the Kharijites as the first major trend in Islam is controversial: after all, Shiites as a group of supporters of 'Ali begin to form a few years before the battle of Siffin. Taken out of context, the claim that there are "about 20 different types of Kharijism" is misleading. Indeed, "Muslim doxo graphs list 20 Kharijite communities that operated at different times and in different parts of the Caliphate." ² As for the interpretations of Kharijism, there are three main ones: Azraqism, Ibadism and Sufism, of which only Ibadism has survived to this day. Ultimately, the Kharijite movement was defeated, and today the Ibadites make up a significant part of the population only in Oman, being represented as small relict communities in Algeria, Libya and Zanzibar, which is not mentioned in the article by Yu.B. Gavrilova. The author's thesis that the Kharijites believe that the caliphal power "should not depend on the candidate's belonging to the family of Muhammad" is extremely vague. After all, the essence of the Kharijite teaching about the imamate is the possibility of any Muslim, regardless of origin, to be elected head of the community-state.

Articles about the main figures of Muslim history (Abu Bakr was already mentioned) also do not stand up to criticism. Yu. B. Gavrilova's statement (article "Muhammad", pp. 87-92) that the future founder of Islam "was born... in the priestly family", this is completely incorrect, since the pre-Islamic Arab tribes of Northern and Central Arabia did not have priests (see above). Muhammad's father 'Abdallah, described by the author as" keeper of the keys to the Kaaba", never performed such duties. According to Yu. B. Gavrilova, Muhammad, having married a rich widow Khadija, "began to accompany her caravans." Actually, marrying her yes-

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to give the future prophet the opportunity to stop caring for his daily bread, and whether he was ever a caravan driver or not is unclear from the available sources. Regular appearances of the archangel (not "angel") Jibril Muhammad did not always expect "joy": the prophetic mission was perceived by him, rather, as a heavy duty, and after receiving revelations, he was mentally and physically exhausted. The Messenger of Allah lost his beloved wife Khadija and uncle Abu Talib not in 620, but in 619. A compromise agreement with the Meccans was indeed concluded in 628, but not as a result of the fact that Muhammad, "inspired by a vision, made a pilgrimage to Mecca with several hundred companions." On the contrary, the Prophet and his ashabs were not allowed to make the pilgrimage to Mecca at that time: the treaty concluded in al-Hudaybiyyah only provided for such a possibility in the future. Finally, Muhammad is buried not "next to the house of his third wife Aisha", but in this house itself. According to Yu. B. Gavrilova, " the capital of the Muslim community for almost a century (emphasis added). - O. B., S. P., S. F. ) became Medina, and then Damascus, Baghdad and Istanbul." But Medina lost its capital status once and for all in 656, when ' Ali, as the fourth caliph, went to quell the rebellion of Talha and al-Zubayr in southern Iraq and moved the capital to Kufa. Even if we count from the time of the Hijra, i.e. from 622, Medina was the center of the Muslim community for only 34 years. In general, the concept of "capital of a community" is absolutely not scientific. You can talk about the capital of the Caliphate or the residence of the caliphs after its collapse. In this case, this list should include, in addition to Kufa, at least Samarra (it was the ' Abbasid capital from 836 to 892) and, of course, Cairo, where after the capture of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258, the supposedly miraculously saved descendants of the 'Abbasids' settled under the protection of the Mamluks, which some Sunnis continued to consider caliphs.

The central event of Muhammad's biography, the hijrah, is defined by Yu. B. Gavrilov in his article of the same name (p. 121) as "the flight of the Prophet Muhammad and his closest supporters from their native city of Mecca to Medina." But this is not even yesterday, but the day before yesterday of Oriental studies (when this term was translated, for example, into German as Plucht). In pre-Islamic Arabia, the hijra is not a flight or even a simple migration, but the transfer of a person who is being persecuted by his tribesmen to the protection of another tribe or some sanctuary. In this case, the Prophet severed ties of kinship with the Quraysh and, having moved to Yassrib, found himself under the protection of the local tribes of al-Aws and al-Khazraj, who recognized him as an arbitrator and leader.

Since there was no theocratic system of power in the Caliphate, the appearance of an official address to the Caliph " incorrectly called by Yu. B. Gavrilova in the article "Omar I" (pp. 95-96) "by the epithet Emir al-muminin" could not be a reflection of the establishment of such a system. The murder of Caliph ' Umar (644) by a desperate Persian slave named Firuz is by no means "treacherous." The suggestion of Yu. B. Gavrilova, according to which" when choosing O. (i.e. 'Uthman) as caliph, the decisive role may have been played by his proximity to the family of the Prophet", can only be called absurd. Another candidate for the post of caliph, considered by the Shura at the same time as 'Uthman, 'Ali, was in any case much closer to the Prophet, including through kinship. And in general, the article "Osman" (pp. 97-98) was written by Yu.B. Gavrilova unsatisfactorily, since it completely bypassed the question of why his rule led to the outbreak of the civil war. Her claim that 'Ali "defeated the army of the Syrians and Egyptians, with Mu'awiyah at their head" (p.33) is also indicative of her incompetence in the history of Islam. It is known that 'Ali did not bring his only battle with Mu'awiyah (the battle of Siffin) to victory, agreeing to an arbitration court. According to Yu. B. Gavrilova, ' Ali " was engaged in the compilation of codes (? - O. B., S. P., S. F.) of the Koran" (p. 33). Perhaps he also wrote the Koran? If the authors of this illiterate compilation had known that the Shiites strongly condemned the accepted versions of the Qur'an, then perhaps there would have been one less blunder in the reviewed dictionary.

"Fatwas issued by the righteous caliphs and other companions of Muhammad" (p.115) never existed, because the concept itself appeared in Islam much later.

Articles on theology and philosophy of Islam by the number of errors were not a happy exception, although, as can be seen from the annotation placed on the cover, V. V. Yemelyanov oversees the Middle East Department at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies of the Faculty of Philosophy of St. Petersburg State University. Thus, the Qadarites, in his opinion, "in the period of the original Islam... proponents of the doctrine of predestination were called " (p. 70). However, it is well known that as soon as

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in early Islam, the problem of free will and predestination arose, supporters of the doctrine that recognized human free will were called Qadarites, and their opponents, who defended the thesis of absolute predestination, were called Jabrits. In this case, the author transferred the metamorphosis that occurred with the concept of al-Qadar, which originally meant the divine determinism of phenomena, to the term Qadari. And what can the reader learn, for example, from the article "Jabrits" (only four lines, p. 45), which V. V. Yemelyanov turned into lawyers, and immediately, neither to the village nor to the city, called Sunnis and Zahirits opponents of the Kadarites (as if the Zahirits were not Sunnis)!

Defining Kalam as "the first philosophical school in Islam" ("Kalam", pp. 71-75) is incorrect because, firstly, there were several schools in Kalam, and, secondly, Muslim thinkers themselves clearly distinguished between rationalistic theology and philosophy proper (falsafa). The originality of the kalam, which V. V. Yemelyanov insists on, is also very relative. Some of the problems faced by the Mutakallim (for example, about the creation or non-creation of the Qur'an) can be considered original, but not the methods of solving them, either going back to ancient philosophy, or having parallels in the theological and philosophical tradition of other monotheistic religions (for example, symbolic and allegorical interpretation of Scripture). The metaphysics of Kalam is also by no means original and is based mainly on the ancient heritage. Contrary to the opinion of V. V. Yemelyanov, not "all the theological constructions of K. (Kalam)" were based on the recognition of the atom as "the smallest unit of matter". Thus, among the Mu'tazilites there were both atomists (in the philosophical sense), for example, al-'Allaf and his followers, and those who, following al-Nazzam, taught about the divisibility of bodies to infinity. The Ash'arites were also divided on this issue. Some, like al-Bakillani, developed the theory of the existence of a limit to the divisibility of bodies (the atom), while others, such as al-Juwayni and Fakhr ad-din ar - Razi, left this question open. ³

According to V. V. Yemelyanov, thanks to the message of Caliph al-Qadir in 1017, "the domination of the Mu'tazilite ideology in the policy of the Caliphate was put an end to" (pp. 74-75). However, it can hardly be said that the ideology of Mu'tazilism ever had a decisive influence on the policy of the Caliphs. Attempts to give it the status of a state ideology were finally stopped by the Caliph al-Mutawakkil in 851. V. V. Yemelyanov's statement that "it was thanks to K. (Kalam) that the emergence of the school of Falsaf and Sufi philosophical thought became possible" also does not stand up to criticism, since both Muslim philosophy in the proper sense of the word (falsafa) and Sufism (tasawwuf) were formed independently of him, although falsafa was largely based on the same school of thought. on the same basis. Falsafa's definition of " Greek-Muslim rationalism "(Falsafa, pp. 111-114) is inaccurate and sloppy. The legacy of ancient philosophical thought, in the formation of which representatives of many peoples, including the Middle East, took part, was Greek only in language and came to the Arabs through "second hands" (as a rule, the works of ancient scientists and philosophers were first translated into Syriac and only then into Arabic). In addition, Arab-Muslim philosophers not only did not know the Greek language, but also did not understand many of the realities of ancient culture. It is also not entirely true that the representatives of Falsafa "are also called "Eastern peripatetics"", since among them were representatives of the Gnostic-Neoplatonic tradition, for example, Ikhwan al-Safa ("Pure Brothers"), whom V. V. Yemelyanov did not consider it necessary to mention either in the article "Falsafa" or in the book "The Holy Spirit". the article "Ismailism", although they were close to the Ismailis in their views.

The thesis that the self-restraint and abstinence of the first Sufis "manifested their protest against the enrichment of the power elite "(Sufism, pp. 103-106) is clearly borrowed from some vulgar atheistic work and looks like an inappropriate anachronism today. There were many movements and ideological trends in Islam, in which the ideas of fighting against social injustice were given a prominent place, but only early Sufism does not belong to them.

A number of carelessness makes you wonder how well V. V. Yemelyanov knows Arabic. Thus, in the article "Fatiha" (pp. 114-115), in the translation of the First Sura of the Koran, ar-Rahim is rendered as "the most merciful", although this epithet is not in the superlative degree of comparison and is traditionally translated into Russian as "merciful", but as "Lord of both worlds", despite the fact that there is no hint of a dual in this expression. None of the "most beautiful names" of Allah listed in the dictionary, with the exception of al-Quddus, carries the air of superiority that is persistently imposed on them in the translations it gives.

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V. V. Yemelyanov (p. 35). So, al-Malik means simply "king", but not "King of Kings", and the translation is as-Salam ("Peace") as "All-unifying" is completely wrong. "The Night of Power" from lai-lat al-qadr has become "Laylat al-Qadar" (p. 80), and in such proper names and terms as (p. 30), (p. 32), (p. 40) and (p. 44), the emphasis is incorrectly placed (it is necessary: In general transliteration of Arabic proper names is extremely poor and inconsistent. The components of names ('Abd and Abu), which both in the Russian and Western traditions are usually written with an uppercase letter, are often given with a lowercase one.

Summing up, we note that regardless of what guided the two certified specialists in Ancient Mesopotamia by starting to compile a dictionary of Islamic studies, they objectively caused serious harm to the difficult but necessary task of popularizing knowledge about Islam among the educated people of Russia. On October 14, 2002, at a special meeting of the Academic Council of the SPbF Institute of Islamic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, this publication was criticized as spreading poor-quality information about Islam and causing moral damage to the scientific prestige of the Institute. A certain amount of responsibility also falls on the reviewers of this work, and not so much on R. V. Svetlov, who is neither an Islamic scholar nor an Orientalist, but on E. A. Rezvan, who gave a positive assessment of this dictionary. One can only regret that the head of such a level (deputy director of the branch for scientific work) does not understand what consequences can lead in the future to the erosion of the strict criteria of scientific knowledge that have always distinguished the St. Petersburg school of classical Oriental studies, as well as the encouragement of outright amateurism and bad faith, hiding behind the newfangled "cultural approach" to the study of Eastern civilizations.

notes

¹ As M. B. Piotrovsky convincingly showed, the Kahins of pre-Islamic Arabia do not correspond to the Hebrew priests (Kohens), but to the Old Testament wandering seers See: Piotrovsky M. B. The Prophetic movement in Arabia of the seventh century // Islam. Religion, society, state. Moscow: GRVL, 1984. p. 21. Note that this collection is included in the list of literature recommended by the authors of the dictionary.

^{Prozorov S. M.} 2 al-Khawarij / / Islam. Encyclopedia, Moscow: GRVL, 1991, p. 260.

^{Ibrahim T. K., Sagadeev A.V.} 3 al-Mu'tazila; al-Ash'ariya //Ibid., pp. 176, 32.

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