Al-Ḥasan al-Yūsī (d. 1102/1691) on Books, Knowledge Acquisition, and Manuscript Correction in the Seventeenth-Century Maghrib

Abstract This article examines the practices of textual transmission and correction adopted by seventeenth-century Maghribī scholars, focusing on al-Ḥasan al-Yūsī (d. 1102/1691) and his comprehensive manual al-Qānūn fī aḥkām al-ʿilm wa-aḥkām al-ʿālim wa-aḥkām al-mutaʿallim (The Canon on the Principles of Knowledge and the Rules for the Scholar and the Student). In this work, al-Yūsī reflects on the importance of books in the acquisition and transmission of knowledge, outlines the conditions under which it is permissible to extract knowledge directly from books and argues for the application of strategies of textual criticism developed by ḥadīth scholars. This study examines al-Yūsī’s views on these practices and the role they played in rural Sufi lodges in the Western Maghrib. Examples from the library of the Sufi brotherhood Nāṣiriyya in Tamgrūt, with which al-Yūsī was closely associated, illustrate how these theoretical principles were put into practice. By shedding light on these practices, the article contributes to our understanding of scholarly methods in early modern Islamic intellectual history.