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Who Were the Attendants? What puzzles us more is this: Although Baghdad during that time was full of famous scholars, be they Shi`is or Sunnis, the same book does not provide us with anything about those twenty scholars who participated in that debate whom he describes as among the most prominent scholars of Baghdad from both sects. Yes, there are four names who, the author claims, are scholars; they are: al-Husain ibn Ali, nicknamed “al-`Alawi,” Ahmed `Othman, Sayyid Jamal ad-Din and Shaikh Hasan al-Qasimi. We could not get any information about these names, nor about their scholarly degrees nor roles and influence on the land and its inhabitants. Why were the famous scholars of Baghdad, Sunnis or Shi`a, absent from that sensitive and fateful debate or, say, why no names of any of those “famous” scholars were mentioned? |