ABSTRACT
In this chapter I hope to give a full view of the earliest records of ʿAyn al-Quḍāt’s writings, his initial theological, literary, and intellectual concerns. He began to write at a very young age, most probably in his teens. The range of these writings is rather extensive, quite extraordinary. A particularly significant feature of his early writings which I would like to emphasize in this chapter is his penchant for stylized prose and for literary arts. His literary flair, I contend, is constitutional to any understanding of the mad game of writing with which ʿAyn al-Quḍāt deeply engaged himself. When he was writing his Shakwā’ al-Gharīb as his defense against charges of blasphemy in 525/1131, ʿAyn al-Quḍāt felt somehow obligated to say that while he was younger he had an attraction to and a gift for literary arts, but that now he was beyond them. And yet, anyone who reads two pages of Shakwā’ cannot fail to sense ʿAyn al-Quḍāt’s inability to write without his usual and characteristic flair for literary arts, for the logic and rhetoric that constitute his unmistakable narrative.
