Cultures of Taḥqīq between the Mongols, the Mughals, and the Mediterranean

Abstract

Across wide-ranging areas of Islamic thought, taḥqīq is an essential “way of knowing,” an epistemology broadly rooted in independent reasoning, empirical observation, openness to allegorical interpretation, and skepticism towards “received tradition.” Over the past few years, it has attracted the attention of an increasing number of scholars of both the Islamic Mediterranean and the Indo-Persian world, who have found taḥqīq to be a richly productive frame for re-interpreting and re-invigorating the study of intellectual, cultural, scientific, and literary life during the centuries stretching, roughly speaking, from around 1300 to around 1700. As they have done so, however, Mediterraneanists and Indo-Persianists have developed ways of conceptualizing taḥqīq that are vastly divergent – in some sense, even incommensurate. Against this background, the present collection of essays proposes a new, shared history of early modern taḥqīq as an epistemology of empire, with common origins in the Mongol conquests of the thirteenth century, and with ramifications stretching well into the era of European modernity.