RETHINKING THE CANONS OF ISLAMIC INTELLECTUAL HISTORY

Abstract

Modern research on Islamic intellectual history has been selective in its coverage. A number of historic figures are by now relatively well-known and well-researched and their works available in numerous editions easily accessible in modern university libraries. Others, by contrast, have elicited little interest and their works are available only in rare early prints or manuscripts. Selectivity is of course unavoidable, but the criterion on which it is based is often not clear: is it for example intrinsic merit, or historical impact, or contemporary relevance? Such questions become all the more pressing in light of the fact that the “canons” of Islamic intellectual history have changed quite dramatically in the past century: Some of the figures who now loom large were not nearly so prominent a century ago, whereas others who were extremely influential until the mid-nineteenth century are now largely forgotten. My paper will discuss some examples of such dramatic shifts and will argue that unreflective acceptance of historically contingent and shifting canons has seriously limited our understanding of the nature and development of the Islamic intellectual tradition. RETHINKING THE CANONS OF ISLAMIC INTELLECTUAL HISTORY Khaled El-Rouayheb Harvard University The Eleventh Annual Victor Danner Memorial Lecture Indiana University April 15, 2013 RETHINKING THE CANONS OF ISLAMIC INTELLECTUAL HISTORY The canons of Islamic intellectual history have changed quite significantly in the past century: some of the figures who now loom large were not nearly so prominent a century ago. Two relatively straightforward examples are the philosopher Averroes (d.1198) and the Hanbali religious thinker Ibn Taymiyya (d.1328). Both have to a large extent been rediscovered since the second half of the nineteenth century. The secondary literature on them is extensive, and their extant writings are available in modern editions easily accessible in modern university libraries. They also tend to feature prominently in modern histories of Islamic philosophy and Islamic religious thought. By contrast, other scholars who were extremely influential until the mid-nineteenth century are now almost forgotten. Examples are the North African Ashʿari theologian Muḥammad b. Yūsuf al-Sanūsī (d.1490) and the Central Asian scholar Saʿd alDīn al-Taftāzānī (d.1390). The historical influence of both until the nineteenth century far overshadowed that of Ibn Taymiyya and Averroes. Sanūsī’s theological and logical works were studied for centuries throughout the Arabic-speaking Sunni world and even beyond: there are pre-modern Turkish, Berber, Fulfulde, Malay, and Javanese translations or adaptations of his works. Taftāzānī’s works on philosophy, theology, jurisprudence, rhetoric and logic were a core part of the curricula of Ottoman, Iranian and IndoMuslim colleges for half a millennium. Both have seen their influence wane in the course of the twentieth century. They have elicited little scholarly attention, and even their names are unfamiliar to many specialists in Islamic studies. There are a number of reasons for such shifts in posthumous reputation. The renewed prominence of Ibn Taymiyya, for example, surely has something to do with the noticeable rise of Salafism in the Sunni world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Interest in Averroes has tended to be especially keen in modernist Arab circles in which he is often seen as a tragic hero whose rationalist and philosophic outlook was for long submerged by religious obscurantism. The fact that his works were translated into Latin and exerted a profound influence on the Latin philosophical tradition has also been an understandable source of pride for Arab intellectuals writing under the shadow of western political, economic and technological ascendancy. By contrast, Taftāzānī and Sanūsī have not found comparable modern advocates. Rather, their philosophically—and logically-informed brand of Ashʿari theology fell out of fashion in the modern period, giving way to a renewed interest in either the supposedly more “rationalist” outlook of the Muslim philosophers and Muʿtazili theologians or the supposedly more “Islamic” approach of the Hanbalis. The scholastic prose of Sanūsī and Taftāzānī also fails to appeal to many modern readers: it is compressed, analytic, densely argumentative, and presupposes familiarity with a range of instrumental sciences such as logic, rhetoric and jurisprudence. Furthermore, the fact that they adopted the typical scholastic literary forms of compressed handbook, commentary and gloss for their writings has also not endeared them to modern observers who—mistakenly as it were —often assume that such literary forms are inherently unoriginal or pedantic. A final obstacle is that the works of Sanūsī and Taftāzānī are often not available in reliable and easily accessible editions. The best editions of their major works are more than a century old. The few editions that have appeared in recent years are often unreliable and betray the editors’ lack of familiarity with the thought and technical terminology of the authors: punctuation and paragraphing is often arbitrary and confusing; explicatory footnotes are often unhelpful and irrelevant.1 The editions produced in Istanbul and Cairo in the late nineteenth century are far superior, despite lacking the paraphernalia of modern editions. Typesetters and proofreaders of that time clearly had an intimate knowledge of these texts, a knowledge that is now lamentably scarce. But these older editions are rare and difficult to use for 1 See for example the terrible edition of Taftāzānī’s Sharḥ alMaqāṣid published in Cairo in 1984-89 by Maktabat al-Kulliyyāt alAzhariyya, or the equally terrible edition of Sanūsī’s Sharḥ al-ʿAqīda alKubrā published in Beirut by Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya in 2006. modern readers, lacking as they do punctuation, paragraphing and explanatory footnotes. A lot of attention has been given in recent decades to the question of “orientalism” and the ways in which western scholarship has constructed a distorted image of Islamic history. The examples I have mentioned point to a current of influence that flows in the opposite direction: the ways in which western scholarship on Islamic intellectual history mirrors contemporary trends in the Islamic world, and inherits the partisan historical narratives of such contemporary trends. Further examples are easy to adduce: European scholars in the nineteenth century gave some attention to figures such as Ījī (d.1355), Jurjānī (d.1413) and Sanūsī (d.1490)—these were after all the figures who were being studied in Ottoman, Egyptian and North African colleges at that time.2 But such interest waned in the twentieth century, in step with the waning influence of such figures in the Islamic world. At the same time, western scholarly interest in Ibn Taymiyya has increased dramatically in the course of the twentieth century, in step with his increased resonance in modern Sunni Islam. To take two more examples: The idea that ijtihād is the “principle of movement in 2 See for example T. Soerensen, ed., Statio quinta et sexta et appendix libri Mevakif. Auctore ʼAdhad-ed-Dîn el-Îgî cum comentario Gorgânii (Leipzig: Engelmann, 1848); J.D. Luciani, ed. and trans., Les prolégomènes théologiques de Senoussi (Algiers: Fontana, 1908); M. Horten, “Sanūsī und die griechische Philosophie,” Der Islam 6 (1915): 178-88; M. Horten, trans., Muhammedanische Glaubenslehre: Die Katechismen des Fudali und des Sanūsī (Bonn: Marcus & Weber, 1916). Islam”, and that the Islamic intellectual tradition stagnated in later centuries due to ijtihād being proscribed or curtailed, is not simply an orientalist construction, as is often believed, but seems rather to have been taken over by western scholars from self-styled Muslim reformers such as Muḥammad ʿAbduh (d.1905), Muḥammad Rashīd Riḍā (d.1932), and Muḥammad Iqbāl (d.1938). The predominance of “the school of Isfahan” in western accounts of later Islamic philosophy reflects quite closely the dominant narrative in Iranian madrasas since the nineteenth century. There are various ways in which this “east-to-west” influence works: western scholars often spend part of their student years in Islamic countries and sometimes develop strong connections with local intellectuals. Furthermore, the bulk of printed editions with which western scholars tend to work are published in the Islamic world. What gets published there is, understandably, a reflection of contemporary trends and interests. Such editions make their way to university libraries in the west and are then used by researchers and students. Few western scholars and graduate students have the inclination to read obscure, technical and demanding scholastic works in manuscripts or rare early prints, at least not without a clear idea of why they should do so. It is of course an illusion to think that we can give equal attention to each and every author whose works have come down to us. Selectivity is inevitable in any coverage of Islamic intellectual history, and this selectivity arguably cannot but reflect modern concerns and tastes. To quote the Italian author Italo Svevo, writing approximately a century ago: The past is always new; as life proceeds it changes, because parts of it that may have once seemed to have sunk into oblivion rise to the surface and others vanish without a trace because they have come to have such slight importance. The present conducts the past in the way a conductor conducts an orchestra. It wants these particular sounds, or those— and no others. That explains why the past may at times seem very long and at times very short ... The only part of it that is highlighted is the part that has been summoned up to illumine, and to distract us from, the present.3 There is surely some truth to this. Nevertheless, I would want to argue that as academic historians we should not simply succumb to the unrefle