{"title":"The Veil of Purity: Tropes of Nineteenth-Century Islamic Reform and Ahmad Khan’s naicar","authors":"Fatima Burney","doi":"10.1163/24519197-bja10043","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Syed Ahmad Khan (1817–1898) was one of the most prominent Indian Muslim reformists of the nineteenth century and was exceptional for the ways in which he proposed that nature and observations of nature were central to Islam. Like many nineteenth-century reformist narratives, Khan’s ideals on naicar (nature) routinely employed a rhetoric of ‘break,’ ‘renewal,’ and ‘purity’ to imply that Indo-Persian culture was in a state of malaise and in need of rejuvenation. Yet despite this outward denunciation, Khan’s reformist project also ironically reflected many qualities of Persianate Islam that had characterized Indo-Muslim culture before the nineteenth century. This article reconsiders Ahmad Khan’s modernism in light of the Persianate modes that he maintained to point out some of the rhetorical inconsistencies of modernist writing, and the historical lacunae which they create.","PeriodicalId":36525,"journal":{"name":"Philological Encounters","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Philological Encounters","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1163/24519197-bja10043","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract Syed Ahmad Khan (1817–1898) was one of the most prominent Indian Muslim reformists of the nineteenth century and was exceptional for the ways in which he proposed that nature and observations of nature were central to Islam. Like many nineteenth-century reformist narratives, Khan’s ideals on naicar (nature) routinely employed a rhetoric of ‘break,’ ‘renewal,’ and ‘purity’ to imply that Indo-Persian culture was in a state of malaise and in need of rejuvenation. Yet despite this outward denunciation, Khan’s reformist project also ironically reflected many qualities of Persianate Islam that had characterized Indo-Muslim culture before the nineteenth century. This article reconsiders Ahmad Khan’s modernism in light of the Persianate modes that he maintained to point out some of the rhetorical inconsistencies of modernist writing, and the historical lacunae which they create.
赛义德·艾哈迈德·汗(Syed Ahmad Khan, 1817-1898)是19世纪印度最杰出的穆斯林改革家之一,他提出的自然和对自然的观察是伊斯兰教的核心,这是他的独特之处。就像许多19世纪改革派的叙述一样,可汗关于奈卡尔(自然)的理想经常使用“打破”、“更新”和“纯洁”的修辞来暗示印度波斯文化处于萎靡不振的状态,需要复兴。然而,尽管有这种外在的谴责,可汗的改革计划也讽刺地反映了波斯伊斯兰教的许多品质,这些品质在19世纪之前是印度-穆斯林文化的特征。本文从艾哈迈德·汗所坚持的波斯模式出发,重新审视他的现代主义,指出现代主义写作中存在的一些修辞上的不一致,以及由此造成的历史空白。