Kitab al-wadih bi-l-haqq
The Kitāb al-wāḍiḥ bi-l-ḥaqq (Arabic: كتاب الواضح بالحق), known in Latin as the Liber denudationis (lit.
[6] The full title chosen by the Latin translator, Liber denudationis siue ostensionis aut patefaciens, means "Book of Denuding or Exposing, or the Discloser".
[9] At some point in the 17th century, a gloss was added to the sole Latin manuscript giving it the title Contrarietas alfolica, meaning "the disagreement of the fuqahā", that is, the Islamic jurists.
Alternatively, it may derive from the Arabic tālif al-fuqahā, "destroyer of the legists", a play on the established term with a stronger meaning.
[13] The chapter divisions and titles of both the Arabic and Latin versions seem to be later scribal additions to the original.
[9] The work begins with a Christian invocation reminiscent of the Islamic basmala:[18] In the name of the Father, the Father of Ages, and of the Son, the Son of Resurrection, and of the Holy Spirit, the Enlivener of those who are in the tombs, united in Trinity, triple in unity, the Lord of lords and the God of the world and the ages.
[19] The introduction continues with praise of God, an explanation of the author's conversion and the purpose of his writing, which is to "clarify to my opponents their error and their unbelief" on the basis of the Qurʾān and the ḥadīth.
[20] Ibn Rajāʾ classifies Muslims into four categories: those compelled by violence; sincere believers, who are deluded by Satan; mere followers, who continue in the faith of their parents without true belief because it is better than paganism; and those who follow Islam for worldly reasons.
[23] Ibn Rajāʾ describes Muḥammad as being educated by the Christian monk Baḥīrā and two Jewish rabbis.
[25] The main portion of the book ends with a series of critiques of the Ḥajj (based in part on personal experience), the Islamic prohibition on wine and Muḥammad's Night Journey.
He seems to have been familiar and made use of al-Qāḍī al-Nuʿmān's Disagreements of the Jurists, Ibn Qutayba's Treatise on Ḥadīth Differences and the arguments of Ibrāhīm al-Naẓẓām.
[32] He cites anti-Umayyad ḥadīths of Shīʿī origin, including one that claims the Caliph Muʿāwiya I died a Christian with a golden cross around his neck.
[33] He also cites several events that show a knowledge of Islamic history, including the sack of Mecca in 930 by Qarmatian leader al-Jannābī.
[41] The Arabic Kitāb was at some point transmitted to Islamic Spain, where it circulated among the Mozarabs, native Arabic-speaking Christians.
An alternative suggestion is that it was translated by Dominicans under the patronage of Archbishop Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada of Toledo (r. 1209–1247).
[50] The thirteenth and final chapter of the Latin version is in fact a critique of Islam drawn from the works of Petrus Alfonsi of the 12th century.
[51] In addition, the Latin version contains some short polemical asides and glosses not found in the original.
[53] In one case, the translator changed Ibn Rajāʾ's theologically monophysite statement that Jesus "was one God perfectly incarnate with one nature, one hypostasis, and one will" into "the perfect and one God incarnate with two natures and two wills, a divine and a human.
[62] In the early 14th century, Riccoldo da Monte di Croce quoted from and paraphrased it extensively in his Contra legem Sarracenorum, which is found in many manuscripts.
[64] Paul Sbath [fr] (1887–1945) claimed in his Fihris that he had produced an edition and French translation of the Arabic Kitāb.
[66] The scholarly consensus at the time of Burman's edition was that the Liber was composed in Arabic by a Mozarab in or around Toledo.
[67] Although it was recognized that internal evidence suggested it was composed shortly after 1009, scholars preferred a date after the conquest of Toledo by Castile in 1085, when a Christian would feel more free to openly criticize Islam.
[12] It was known to Ramon Martí (d. 1284), who may have used the Arabic version for his Explanatio simboli apostolorum and De seta Machometi.
[73] In his Liber de fine Ramon Llull (d. 1316) also used the Arabic text, which he proposed giving to Muslim captives to read.
[74] Llull also shows knowledge of the Latin text in his Llibre de la doctrina pueril.
[75] It may have been one of the sources of the Book of Muḥammad's Ladder, a mid-13th-century composite work from the circle of Alfonso X, available in Spanish, French and Latin.
[76] The greatest user of the Liber denudationis, however, was Riccoldo da Monte di Croce (d. 1320), who uses material from it, sometimes verbatim, in 51 instances in his Contra legem Sarracenorum and Itinerarium.
The former treatise was the major vector for its influence, since it was translated into Greek by Demetrios Kydones (d. 1398), whence back into Latin and thence into German at the urging of Martin Luther.
[79] It has even been cited in a modern edition of a Shīʿī text, based on a manuscript once owned by Marʿashi al-Najafī.
