السيرة الذاتية للأستاذ الدكتور صبحي عبد المنعم محمد أبوزيد / التاريخ الإسلامي والحضارة الإسلامية / مصر .

السيرة الذاتية 

للأستاذ الدكتور/ صبحي عبد المنعم محمد أبوزيد

أولاً : البيانات الشخصية :

الإسم : صبحي عبد المنعم محمد أبوزيد

الوظيفة : أستاذ بقسم التاريخ الإسلامي والحضارة الإسلامية

ثانياً : المؤهلات العلمية :

1 – ليسانس في اللغة العربية والعلوم الإسلامية من كلية دار العلوم جامعة القاهرة سنة 1973م

2 – ماجستير في التاريخ الإسلامي عام 1986م بتقدير " ممتاز " من كلية دار العلوم – جامعة القاهرة عن موضوع " الحسبة في التاريخ الإسلامي " دراسة مقارنة لكتابي نهاية الرتبة في طلب الحسبة للشيزري والحسبة في الإسلام لابن تيمية " وقد طبعت الرسالة في كتاب تحت عنوان : الحسبة في الإسلام بين النظرية والتطبيق ونشرتها دار رياض الصالحين للنشر والتوزيع بالفيوم سنة 1994م

3 – الدكتوراه في التاريخ الإسلامي من كلية دار العلوم – جامعة القاهرة سنة 1993م بمرتبة الشرف الأولى عن موضوع " العلاقات المصرية الحجازية في عهد الفاطميين والأيوبيين وتأثيرها السياسي والحضاري " وقد طبعت الرسالة تحت عنوان : العلاقات بين مصر والحجاز زمن الفاطميين والأيوبيين ونشرتها دار العربي للنشر والتوزيع بالقاهرة سنة 1993م

ثالثاً : التدرج الوظيفي :

1 - عين مدرساً مساعداً بقسم التاريخ الإسلامي بالكلية بتاريخ 14/6/1990م

2 – عين مدرساً بذات القسم بتاريخ 29/4/1992م

3 – عين أستاذا مساعدا بذات القسم بتاريخ 29/11/2000م

4 – عين أستاذا بذات القسم بتاريخ 12/7/2009م

رابعاً : الدورات التدريبية :

1- دورة استخدام المكتبات الرقمية المنعقدة بكلية الهندسة – جامعة الفيوم في الفترة من 6 – 7 أبريل 2009م 0

2- دورة مشروعات البحوث التنافسية بمركز تنمية قدرات أعضاء هيئة التدريس والقيادات بجامعة الفيوم في الفترة من 12-14/4/2009م

3- دورة معايير الجودة في العملية التدريسية بمركز تنمية قدرات أعضاء هيئة التدريس والقيادات بجامعة الفيوم في الفتــــرة من 26 – 28 /4/2009م

4- دورة أخلاقيات البحث العلمي بمركز تنمية قدرات أعضاء هيئة التدريس والقيادات بجامعة الفيوم في الفترة من 5-7/4/2009م

5- دورة نظام الساعات المعتمدة بمركز تنمية قدرات أعضاء هيئــــة التـــدريس والقيــادات بجـامـعة الفــيـــــوم في الفـــتــــــرة مـن 10 -12/5 /2009م

6- دورة إدارة الفـريق البـحثي بمركز تنـميـة قـدرات أعضـاء هيئـــة التــدريس والقيــادات بجامعـــة الفيـــوم في الفتـــــــــــــــرة من 19 -21/5/2009م

خامساً : المؤلفات العلمية :

1 – العلاقات بين مصر والحجاز زمن الفاطميين والأيوبيين – دار العربي للنشروالتوزيع بالقاهرة سنة 1993م

2 – تاريخ ابن أبي الهيجاء – تحقيق ودراسة – دار رياض الصالحين للنشر والتوزيع بالفيوم سنة 1994م

3 – تاريخ مصر السياسي والحضاري من الفتح الإسلامي حتى عهد الأيوبيين – دار العربي للنشر والتوزيع بالقاهرة سنة 1994م

4 – الحسبة في الإسلام بين النظرية والتطبيق – دار رياض الصالحين للنشر والتوزيع بالفيوم سنة 1994م

5 – إمارة الأكراد الهذبانية في إربل – بحث نشر بمجلة " ندوة قسم التاريخ الإسلامي " كلية دار العلوم جامعة القاهرة 0العددالحادي عشر1994م

6 – دراسات في تاريخ الشرق الإسلامي – دار رياض الصالحين للنشر والتوزيع بالفيوم سنة 1994م

7 – الشرق الإسلامي زمن المماليك والعثمانيين – دار العربي للنشر والتوزيع بالقاهرة سنة 1995م

8 – المجتمع الحجازي في العصر المملوكي – دار العربي للنشر والتوزيع بالقاهرة سنة 1996م

9 – دراسات في تاريخ المغرب العربي – دار العربي للنشر والتوزيع بالقاهرة 1997م

10 – منهج المقريزي في كتابه " اتعاظ الحنفا " بحث نشر بمجلة كلية دار العلوم بالفيوم وألقي في المؤتمر العلمي الثاني سنة 1997م

11 – المغول والمماليك – السياسة والصراع – دار العربي للنشر والتوزيع بالقاهرة سنة 2001م

12 – الأوضاع السياسية للإمارات التركمانية في جنوب آسيا الصغرى بحث ألقي في المؤتمر الدولي بأكاديمية العلوم بدولة تركمانستان في الفترة من 22 إلى 26 فبراير 2011م ونشر بمجلة المؤتمر

13 – دراسة نقدية لأهم المصادر لتاريخ الإمارات التركمانية – دار الفيروز للنشر والتوزيع بالقاهرة سنة 2002م

14 – تقي الدين الفاسي – رائد المؤرخين الحجازيين – دار العربي للنشر والتوزيع بالقاهرة سنة 2002م

15 – المؤرخ ابن فهد ومنهجه في التأليف التاريخي في ضوء كتابه " اتحاف الورى بأخبار أم القرى " بحث نشر بمجلة كلية دار العلوم – جامعة الفيوم – العدد الثاني عشر - ديسمبر 2004م

16 – النظم الإسلامية السياسية والإدارية والعسكرية – دار الرشد للنشر والتوزيع بالرياض – المملكة العربية السعودية سنة 2004م

17 – دراسات في السيرة النبوية الشريفة – دار الرشد للنشر والتوزيع بالرياض – المملكة العربية السعودية سنة 2004م

18 – دراسات في تاريخ الدولة العثمانية – دار الرشد للنشر والتوزيع بالرياض – المملكة العربية السعودية – سنة 2005م

19 – إمارات الطوائف في آسيا الصغرى –بحث نشر بمجلة ندوة التاريخ الإسلامي بكلية دار العلوم – جامعة القاهرة – العدد التاسع عشر سنة 2005 م

20 – المستشرق برنارد لويس ومنهجه في دراسة التاريخ الإسلامي – بحث نشر بمجلة كلية دار العلوم بالفيوم – العدد الصادر في 13 يونيو سنة 2005م

21 – الحياة الاقتصادية في مصر زمن سلاطين المماليك – بحث نشر في مجلة كلية دار العلوم بالفيوم سنة 2005 م

22 – أمراء بني دلغادر وعلاقتهم بالدولة المملوكية – بحث نشر بمجلة كلية الآداب – جامعة أسيوط – العدد الصادر سنة 2005م

23 – المؤرخ علم الدين البرزالي ومنهجه في التأليف التاريخي في ضوء كتابه " المقتفى على كتاب الروضتين " بحث ألقي في المؤتمر العلمي العاشر لكلية دار العلوم بالفيوم المنعقد في الفترة من 22 -23 أبريل سنة 2008م ونشر بمجلة الكلية الصادرة في نفس العام

24 – الوزير الفاطمي اليازوري – أعماله الداخلية والخارجية وأثرها في تدعيم الدولة (442 – 450 هـ /1050 -1058م ) بحث ألقي في المؤتمر الدولي للفلسفة الإسلامية المنعقد بكلية دار العلوم جامعة الفيوم في الفترة من 27 – 29 أكتوبر 2008م ونشر بمجلة الكلية

25 – الحياة الاجتماعية في المدينة المنورة زمن سلاطين المماليك – بحث نشر بمجلة كلية دار العلوم – جامعة الفيوم العدد العشرون ديسمبر 2008م

26 – السياسة الخارجية لدولة المغول الإيلخانية (654- 744هـ /1256 – 1244م ) بحث نشر بمجلة كلية الآداب – جامعة أسيوط

27 – أمير التركمان أوزون حسن وأعماله الداخلية والخارجية في آسيا الصغرى – بحث ألقي في المؤتمر الدولي المنعقد بأكاديمية العلوم بدولة تركمانستان في الفترة من 22 – 26 فبراير 2011م ونشر بمجلة المؤتمر

28 – دراسات في تاريخ الدولة العباسية (العصر العباسي الأول ) 132 – 232 هـ / 749 – 846 م) وصدر عن دار العلم والإيمان بالفيوم سنة 2014م

29 – دراسات في تاريخ الأندلس الإسلامي – الناشر دار العلم والإيمان بالفيوم سنة 2014م

30 – المصادر الأولى للتاريخ الإسلامي – الناشر دار العلم والإيمان بالفيوم سنة 2014م

سادساً: المؤتمرات العلمية :

1 – رئيس لجنة الإعداد والتقديم للمؤتمر العلمي الأول بكلية دار العلوم – جامعة الفيوم والمنعقد في الفترة من 3-4 مايو سنة 1995 م

2 – شارك في المؤتمر العلمي الثاني بكلية دار العلوم – جامعة الفيوم والمنعقد في الفترة من 8 – 9 أبريل سنة 1997م وقدم بحثا بعنوان " منهج المقريزي في كتابه اتعاظ الحنفا بأخبار الأئمة الفاطميين الخلفا "

3 – شارك في فعاليات " المؤتمر الدولي لأنظمة وتقنيات وتطبيقات الإستشعار عن بعد المتطورة لمراقبة الأرض " والذي عقد بمدينة الملك عبد العزيز للعلوم التقنية بالرياض بالمملكة العربية السعودية في الفترة من7 – 11 مايو سنة 2005 م

4 – رئيس لجنة الإعداد والتقديم للمؤتمر العلمي العاشر المنعقد بكلية دار العلوم – جامعة الفيوم بعنوان " التفكير المنهجي في العلوم العربية والإسلامية " خلال الفترة من 22 – 23 أبريل سنة 2008 م

5 – شارك في المؤتمر الدولي للفلسفة الإسلامية المنعقد في الفترة من 27 – 29 أكتوبر 2008 م بكلية دار العلوم – جامعة الفيوم وقدم بحثا بعنوان " الوزير الفاطمي اليازوري – أعماله الداخلية والخارجية وأثرها في تدعيم الدولة "

6 – شارك في المؤتمر الدولي المنعقد بأكاديمية العلوم بدولة تركمانستان في الفترة من 22 – 26 فبراير سنة 2011م وقدم بحثين نشرا في مجلة المؤتمر وهما : الأوضاع السياسية للإمارات التركمانية في جنوب آسيا الصغرى والبحث الثاني : أمير التركمان أوزون حسن وأعماله الداخلية والخارجية في آسيا الصغرى

سابعاً : الرسائل العلمية (إشراف ومناقشة ) :

أ – الإشراف خارج جمهورية مصر العربية :

1 – الإشراف على رسالة الطالبة نورة بنت سعد بن ناصر الداود المعيدة بكلية التربية للبنات بالمدينة المنورة وهي رسالة ماجستير عنوانها " العلاقات السياسية بين الخلافة العباسية والدول المستقلة في المشرق الإسلامي " (256 – 279 هـ / 870 – 892م ) وقد حصلت الطالبة على تقدير " ممتاز "

2 – الإشراف على رسالة الطالبة جميلة بنت محمد بن أحمد فلاته بكلية التربية للبنات بالمدينة المنورة وهي رسالة ماجستير عنوانها " إمارة آل الجراح في فلسطين " (358 – 420 هـ / 969 – 1029م ) وقد حصلت الطالبة على تقدير " ممتاز "

3 – الإشراف على رسالة الطالبة مشاعة بنت جهيم العتيبي بكلية التربية للبنات بالرياض وهي رسالة ماجستير بعنوان " الحياة الاجتماعية في العراق في صدر الإسلام (14 – 132 هـ / 635- 749م) وقد حصلت الطالبة على تقدير " ممتاز "

4 – الإشراف على رسالة الطالبة أميرة بنت محسن الردادي بكلية التربية للبنات بالرياض وهي رسالة ماجستير بعنوان " الحالة الاجتماعية والفكرية في الحجاز والتأثيرات الخارجية عليها زمن الأشراف العلويين " (358 – 648هـ /969 – 1250م ) وقد حصلت الطالبة على تقدير " ممتاز "

5 – الإشراف على رسالة الماجستير المقدمة من الطالبة : أمل صالح الشمراني لقسم التاريخ بكلية التربية للبنات بالرياض بعنوان " سياسة المغول تجاه دولة المماليك في الفترة الثالثة من حكم الناصر محمد بن قلاوون وأثرها الحضاري (709 – 741 هـ ) وقد حصلت الطالبة على تقدير " ممتاز "

6 – الإشراف المشترك على رسالة دكتوراه مع الأستاذ المساعد الدكتور أحمد ميرزا ميرزا بجامعة صلاح الدين – كلية الآداب – قسم التاريخ –كردستان العراق وعنوان الرسالة " الكرد في كتاب ابن خلدون منهجه ومصادره "

ب – الإشراف داخل جمهورية مصر العربية :

ا – الإشراف على رسالة الطالب وليد كمال شعبان بكلية دار العلوم بالفيوم وهي رسالة ماجستيربعنوان " الحياة السياسية والحضارية لإمارة الآق قوينلو ( الشاة البيضاء ) 780 – 914 هـ / 1378 – 1508م ، وقد حصل الطالب على تقدير " ممتاز "

2 – الإشراف على رسالة الطالب أحمدحسن السيد خلف الله بكلية دار العلوم بالفيوم وهي رسالة ماجستير بعنوان " دور جزيرة صقلية في تجارة حوض البحر المتوسط ( 296 – 484 هـ /909 – 1094م) وقد حصل الطالب على تقدير " ممتاز "

3 – الإشراف على رسالة الدكتوراه المفدمة من الطالب : حمادة محمد حسين شرقاوي إلى قسم التاريخ بكلية دار العلوم – جامعة الفيوم تحت عنوان " الفقهاء والعامة في الأندلس في عصر الإمارة والخلافة (138 – 366 هـ / 755 – 976 م ) وقد حصل الطالب على مرتبة الشرف الأولى

4 – الإشراف على رسالة الماجستير المقدمة من الطالب حمادة سعد عويس علي المعيد بكلية دار العلوم جامعة الفيوم وعنوانها : القبائل العربية في العراق وعلاقاتها بالمغول الايلخانيين 656 – 744هـ /1258 -1344م وقد حصل الطالب على تقدير " ممتاز "

جـ – المناقشات خارج جمهورية مصر العربية :

1 – مناقشة رسالة الماجستير للطالبة ريم بنت معيض بن عايض الحربي المعيدة بكلية التربية للبنات بالمدينة المنورة وهي بعنوان : إقليم الحجاز زمن الدولة الفاطمية

2 – مناقشة رسالة الدكتوراة للطالبة منيرة بنت مدعث بن منير القحطاني المعيدة بكلية الآداب بالرياض تحت عنوان " ابن شهاب الزهري مؤرخا "

3 – مناقشة رسالة الدكتوراة للطالبة خيرية بنت محمد آل سنة المعيدة بكلية التربية للبنات بالرياض تحت عنوان : " الحياة الاقتصادية والاجتماعية والعلمية في العراق في عهد الإيلخانات المسلمين " 694 – 736هـ /1294 – 1335 م

د – المناقشات داخل جمهورية مصر العربية :

1 – مناقشة رسالة الماجستير المقدمة من الطالبة آمال محمد تامر إسماعيل بكلية الدراسات الإنسانية – جامعة الأزهر - فرع البنات بالقاهرة وهي بعنوان : " قيام نظام إمرة الأمراء في العراق وآثاره السياسية والاقتصادية والاجتماعية (324 – 334 هـ /936 – 946 م)

2 – مناقشة رسالة الدكتوراه المقدمة من الطالب وليد على محمد السيد الطنطاوي بكلية دار العلوم – جامعة الفيوم وهي بعنوان : " الحياة السياسية ومظاهر الحضارة في برقة وطرابلس منذ منتصف القرن الثامن الهجري "

3 – مناقشة رسالة الدكتوراة المقدمة من الطالبة ثناء عبد العظيم بكلية الدراسات الإنسانية – جامعة الأزهر – فرع البنات بالقاهرة وهي بعنوان

" تاريخ الترجمة في مصر الإسلامية " ( 21 – 648هـ/640 -1250م)

4 – مناقشة رسالة الدكتوراة المقدمة من فاطمة الزهراء عبد العزيز فرج الطالبة بكلية الدراسات الإنسانية – جامعة الأزهر – فرع البنات بالقاهرة وهي بعنوان : " الرحالة المسلمون إلى أوربا في القرن الرابع الهجري / العاشر الميلادي

5 – مناقشة رسالة الدكتوراة المقدمة من وائل أحمد إبراهيم المدرس المساعد بقسم التاريخ بكلية دار العلوم – جامعة الفيوم وهي بعنوان :التاريخ السياسي والحضاري لمدينة هراة منذ الغزو المغولي حتى نهاية حكم آل كرت (617 – 783 هـ)

6 – مناقشة رسالة الماجستير المقدمة من الطالب العراقي /حيدر كتاب عبيسي إلى قسم التاريخ بكلية دار العلوم –جامعة القاهرة –وعنوانها : " الاستخبارات في الدولة الزنكية "(521 – 577هـ /1127-1181م)

7 – مناقشة رسالة الماجستير المقدمة من الباحث إبراهيم السيد شحاته المعيد بقسم التاريخ الإسلامي بكلية دار العلوم – جامعة القاهرة وعنوانها : الصناعات في المغرب من بداية القرن الثالث الهجري إلى منتصف القرن الخامس الهجري

8 – مناقشة رسالة الماجستير (خلال أيام إن شاء الله ) للطالب محمود عبد المنعم أمين حميدة والمقدمة لقسم التاريخ بكلية دار العلوم – جامعة الفيوم وعنوانها :"الأوضاع الداخلية والخارجية للدولة الفاطمية زمن وزارة اليازوري ( 442 – 450 هـ / 1050 -1058 م)

9- مناقشة رسالة الدكتوراة المقدمة من احمد عبد الفتاح حسين ابو هشيمة - قسم التاريخ بكلية دار العلوم – جامعة الفيوم وعنوانها العلاقات السياسية والحضارية بين دولة المماليك والإمبراطورية البيزنطية (648- 857هـ/ 1250- 1453م) ، 2019.

ثامناً : تحكيم أبحاث وتقييم كتب :

1 – تحكيم الأبحاث المقدمة من أمانة المجلس العلمي بجامعة الأميرة نورة بنت عبد الرحمن بالرياض بالمملكة العربية السعودية والتي تخص الدكتورة / خيرية بنت محمد على آل سنة لترقيتها لوظيفة أستاذ مشارك يقسم التاريخ والحضارة بكلية الآداب بالجامعة

2- تحكيم بحث " تاريخ مكة المكرمة في العصر العباسي "المقدم من مجموعة من الباحثين لدارة الملك عبد العزيز لنشره ضمن موسوعة الحج والحرمين الشريفين التي يشرف عليها أ.د/عبدالله بن صالح الرقيبة

3 – تحكيم أبحاث الدكتور / عوض عبد الكريم الذنيبات الأستاذ المشارك بقسم التاريخ بكلية العلوم الاجتماعية – بجامعة مؤتة – بالمملكة الأردنية الهاشمية للترقية لوظيفة أستاذ 0

4 – تقييم كتاب :" صفحات من تاريخ المغرب الإسلامي " المقدم من مكتب الوكيل لكليات البنات بالمملكة العربية السعودية في 14/2/1427هـ

تاسعاً : أنشطة تتعلق بالعملية التعليمية وخدمة المجتمع :

1 – تدريس المواد الآتية للطلاب :

- السيرة النبوية الشريفة

- تاريخ الخلفاء الراشدين

- تاريخ الدولة الأمويـــــة

- تاريخ الدولة العباســــية

- تاريخ الدولة الفــاطـمية

- تاريخ الدولة الأيــوبـية

- تاريخ المغرب الإسـلامي

- تاريخ الأندلس الأسلامي

- الــنـــظــم الإســلامـــيــة

- الحـضــارة الإســلامــيــة

- تاريخ دولة سلاطين المماليك

- مـصــادر الـتاريــخ الإســلامي

2- المشاركة في وضع مناهج قسم التاريخ الإسلامي والحضارة الإسلامية وتوصيفها بكلية دار العلوم – جامعة الفيوم

3 – عضو لجنة المكتبة في العامين الدراسيين 2008-2009م

4 – عضو اللجنة الثقافية في العام الدراسي 2013 م

5 – عضو لجنة الدراسات العليا في العام الدراسي 2014/2015م

6 – عضو مجلس الكلية في العام الدراسي 2015/2016 م

7 – المشاركة في لجان اتحاد الطلاب وتكوين الأسر الطلابية

( اللجنة الاجتماعية 1993 – 1994 – 1995 -1996 ومستشار اللجنة الرياضية 2009م )

8 – مقرر أسرة الفجر بالكلية في العام الدراسي 2008 -2009م

9 – رئيس لجنة النظام والمراقبة لكنترول الفرقة الثالثة بالكلية في العام الدراسي 2008 – 2009 م

10 – عضو اتحاد المؤرخين العرب

11 – عضو بنادي مدينة 6 أكتوبر الرياضي

12 – عضو بنادي هيئة التدريس جامعة القاهرة

13 – عضو بنادي هيئة التدريس جامعة الفيوم

14 – مؤسس وصاحب مكتبة التاريخ والحضارة والقراءة للجميع للباحثين والباحثات مجانــــــــاً بأبراج الشروق بشارع الملك فيصل بالهرم بجوار إدارة الهرم التعليمية .

عاشراً : النشاط الإعلامي :

- مقال في جريد الحياة التي تصدر في لندن باللغة العربية – العدد11276 الأربعاء 29 ديسمبر 1993م – 16 رجب 1414هـ بعنوان " الأبعاد السياسية والاقتصادية للعلاقة بين مصر والحجاز في زمن الفاطميين والأيوبيين - جاء المقال في صفحة كاملة لأحد المحررين بالجريدة.

- مقال في جريدة المساء ( المساء الأدبي ) العدد الستون الصادر يوم الثلاثاء 15 فبراير 1994م كتبه أحد المحررين بالجريدة تحت عنوان " كلمة في كتاب " العلاقة بين مصر والحجاز.

- لقاء في قناة النجاح التليفزيونية عن كتاب الحسبة في الإسلام

- لقاء في إذاعة صوت العرب القاهرية عن الأعياد عند العرب قبل الإسلام

- لقاء في قناة النجاح التليفزيونية مع أ.د/ أحمد عرفات القاضي عن الخلافة الإسلامية نشأتها وتطورها

اقرأ المزيد

Download PDF | Justin K. Stearns - Revealed Sciences_ The Natural Sciences in Islam in Seventeenth-Century Morocco-Cambridge University Press (2021).

Download PDF | Justin K. Stearns - Revealed Sciences_ The Natural Sciences in Islam in Seventeenth-Century Morocco-Cambridge University Press (2021).

332 Pages 

Demonstrating the vibrancy of an Early Modern Muslim society through a study of the natural sciences in seventeenth-century Morocco, Revealed Sciences examines how these sciences flourished during this period, without developing in a similar way to the those in Europe. Offering an innovative analysis of the relationship between religious thought and the natural sciences, Justin K. Stearns shows how nineteenth and twentieth-century European and Middle Eastern scholars jointly developed a narrative of the decline of post-formative Islamic thought, including the fate of the natural sciences in the Muslim world. Challenging these depictions, Stearns uses numerous close readings of legal, biographical, and classificatory texts – alongside medical, astronomical, and alchemical works – to establish a detailed overview of the place of the natural sciences in the scholarly and educational landscapes of the Early Modern Maghreb, and considers non-teleological possibilities for understanding a persistent engagement with the natural sciences in Early Modern Morocco. 

Justin K. Stearns is Associate Professor of Arab Crossroads Studies at New York University Abu Dhabi, where his research interests focus on the intersection of law, science, and theology in the pre-modern Muslim Middle East. He is the author of Infectious Ideas: Contagion in Premodern Islamic and Christian Thought in the Western Mediterranean (2011) and an edition and translation of al-Hasan al-Yusi’s The Discourses, Vol. 1 (2020).

Preface: Paths not Taken When some years ago I began writing a dissertation on how Muslims and Christians responded to the Black Death in Iberia in the fourteenth century, I thought that I was writing a comparative study of social and intellectual responses to a devastating epidemic. And, to some degree, this is what the resulting book became.1 Yet, working on the subject of contagion in the premodern Muslim world also confronted me with the extent to which nineteenth to twenty-first century debates on the tension between modern science and religion on the one hand, and the marginal position of the Muslim world in modern scientific production on the other, had distorted historians’ understanding of Muslims writing about the natural sciences in the pre-modern world. 

Thus, scholars such as the Granadan Lisa¯n al-Dı¯n Ibn al-Khat˙ ¯ıb (d. 776/1374), who affirmed the phenomenon of contagion, had in much of the previous scholarship on Muslim responses to plague been described as exceptions proving the rule of general Muslim fatalism and anti-empiricism when faced with epidemic disease.2 The sources I found suggested, instead, that while innovative and creative, his response and his defense of the transmission of disease was not unique and was part of a larger body of writings by Muslim authors that drew in various and diverging ways on religious, medical, and empirical evidence and authorities to address the challenge posed by the transmission of disease.3 

The historiography surrounding contagion had been substantially distorted by our present day understandings of disease transmission and of the necessity of distinguishing between religious and medical discourses. As I finished this first project, a figure marginal to one of its later chapters, the eleventh/ seventeenth-century Moroccan polymath al-H˙ asan al-Yu¯sı¯ (d. 1102/1691), increasingly preoccupied me and became the impetus for writing the book the reader holds now. I had initially become interested in al-Yu¯sı¯for his views on contagion, eloquent but not particularly innovative.4 Yet, reading al-Yu¯sı¯ pushed me to broaden my interest in the contemporary framings and concomitant distortions of Islamic intellectual history from contagion to the natural sciences in general. 

Specifically, I became interested in how contemporary teleologies of the rise of modern science had encouraged historians to either ignore developments in Islamic thought that had no place in its genealogies or to more starkly dismiss them as pseudoscience or intellectual decline. There were two central issues here, the first more clearly related to what I had observed with contagion and which could be summarized as the reduction of past intellectual thought to those elements that had a role in shaping our current understandings of science, or at least represented a parallel with them. The second was distinct, if related, and consisted of clarifying the social and intellectual context of the natural sciences and the ways Muslims drew on them within the religious discourses of law, theology, and Sufism – aspects largely unexplored for the post-formative period. This engagement with the writings of al-Yu¯sı¯ and the scholarly dynamism of his age, along with the accident of my own specialization in the Islamic West, led to my pursuing these interests through the prism of Morocco in the eleventh/seventeenth century, a period of intellectual and political ferment that I describe in Chapter 1. Much of what I have addressed above could be summarized under the rubric of Whig History or writing the story of the past with the values of the present, something that all students of history and especially of the history of science are repeatedly warned against. 

Yet this belongs to the class of imprecations that are especially poignant because we sense that they are in vain: while in the following I have done my best to establish the nature and significance of the natural sciences for the scholars of early modern Morocco, my own interest in doing so is a profoundly modern one that situates itself in conversation with a host of other modern voices. Many of these are scholarly ones whose names the reader will find in the body of the book itself. But there are also two conversations taking place in the broader public sphere that have played a role in my choosing to write Revealed Sciences, although neither finds much support among students of Islamic intellectual history today. The first of these is the argument that Islam or the Islamic world has opposed the development and study of philosophy and the natural sciences since a purported Golden Age that ended sometime in the (European) Middle Ages after European scholars translated what Muslims had preserved of Greek philosophy.5 

Once widespread among historians and some orientalists, this view is today especially prevalent among the so-called New Atheists, including Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, but also among other prominent scientists who have turned to writing histories of science, such as Steven Weinberg, and populizers of science such as Neil DeGrasse Tyson. At their most benign, these figures depict all religion as inimical to scientific inquiry; more perniciously they can represent Islam as particularly opposed to science and to modernity in general.6 In the Introduction below, I will discuss how at the end of the nineteenth century two narratives became widespread: 1) the story of Western European history containing a struggle between religion and science culminating in science’s victory; and 2) the description of the Muslim world having been in a state of intellectual decadence and decline since the Middle Ages. Here, I would like to draw attention to how the simplistic civilizational discourse that underlies these narratives and locates both science and modernity in a uniquely European rationality adds to the force of the Islamophobia that both Europe and the United States are witnessing in the first decades of the twenty-first century.

An opposing view that is nonetheless based on the similar premise of the Islamic world having witnessed its last moment of vibrancy and contribution to world history during the European Middle Ages is found in the exhibition 1001 Inventions and the associated publications that have proceeded from the work of the British-based Foundation for Science, Technology, and Civilization.7 Here we have a narrative that not only celebrates the achievements of Muslim scholars during a Golden Age that stretched from roughly the third/ninth to sixth/twelfth century celebrated, but they are described as the origin of modern science and modernity in general. As with the first group, the intellectual production of the Muslim world during the Early Modern period is passed over entirely and assumed to be either irrelevant or in decline.8 This narrative also originated in the late nineteenth century, this time in the works of Muslim reformers who responded to the writings of European orientalists and colonial administrators by stressing the past glory of Muslim achievements and the need to return to that glory through dramatic reforms. 

Here I note that such attempts to emphasize the importance of the work of scholars working in the Muslim world during the European Middle Ages – based on the same Hegelian civilizational approach shared by many of the first group – not only distort the past, but also lead Muslims and non-Muslims alike to a lack of interest in those aspects of Islamic intellectual history that were not valued by European scholars or which did not lead to developments in European intellectual history.9 The misleading relay-race narrative in which the Muslims receive the baton of science from the Greeks and then pass it on to the Europeans is shared with varying emphases by both groups, and contributes to a general lack of interest in what happened intellectually in the Muslim world after Europeans stopped translating Arabic texts.10 Even more important for this book, however, is that the bulk of the scholarly research on the natural sciences in the Muslim world over the past century has focused on the socalled “Golden Age” associated with the ʿAbbasid caliphate from the third/ nineth to seventh/thirteenth centuries and subsequent Mongol and Timurid states into the nineth/fifteenth centuries, with less attention being paid to the Islamic West, much less Morocco, following the division of much of the Islamic world into the Mughal, Safavid, and Ottoman Empires in the sixteenth century.11

 This generalization should clearly not be pushed too far, for as Chapters 2–4 will show, there is a growing body of work addressing the natural sciences during what we can tentatively call the post-classical period of Islamic intellectual history – chronology being a constant bugbear for historians – which stretched from the thirteenth to eighteenth centuries.12 Yet the balance of research and interest is still clearly in the Eastern Mediterranean and Central Asia during the eleventh–fourteenth centuries and that is where much of the best work is being done.13 The richness of secondary scholarship on this region and period has no parallel in either the later centuries or in the Islamic West. An exception to this last statement is the study of the natural sciences in alAndalus, which has received considerably more attention than North Africa, but which also ended, at the most generous estimate, with the expulsion of the Moriscos at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Revealed Sciences aims to address this imbalance by focusing on the natural sciences in seventeenth century Morocco, but the lacuna that it mainly attempts to fill is not principally geographic but methodological. Instead of focusing on the works of a scholar who specialized in one or more of the natural sciences, or on a specific site of scientific production, it seeks to contextualize the role played by the natural sciences within the broader scholarly production of the time. Doing so entails the reading of biographical dictionaries, scholarly autobiographies, legal opinions, theological asides, mystical and moral reflections, as well as works on astronomy, medicine, and alchemy. I am interested here not so much in intellectual influence or progress, terms with their own connotations, as much as I am in establishing the presence and range of the natural sciences in knowledge production and transmission.15 Accurately carrying out this task necessitates first sidestepping the teleological questions of progress and development that characterize so much writing in the history of science in order to fully establish the range and nature of the natural sciences during this period.

 Only once we have described an epistemological field that included Prophetic and humoral medicine, astronomy, alchemy, astronomy, magic and mathematics, and the various debates in which scholars discussed the categorization and the value of these sciences, can we turn to the broader historical question of change over time. Put differently: we should describe what Muslim scholars of seventeenth century Morocco perceived as natural sciences and the uses to which they put them before we can begin to move to tracing how their understandings differed from those of their colleagues from previous or subsequent centuries. Finally, if we wish to understand the broader social impact of the natural sciences, we need to move our focus from the work of the exceptional scholar of one of these sciences to the more general reception of these disciplines by both nonspecialists and their more ordinary representatives. I am well aware that the approach taken here will not appeal to a number of groups. For those who believe in a singular teleology of science that can be traced from Aristotle through the European Middle Ages to the European Scientific revolutions of the seventeenth–nineteenth centuries, and then to the present day, the story told here will have the value of a historical curiosity at best, proof of civilizational decline at worst.16 Many historians of science in the Muslim world, for their part, who tend to focus on the work of a scholar specializing in one of the natural sciences, may look askance at the marginal place of the discussion of texts in the natural sciences, and note that there is little of scientific interest here in general. While more sympathetic to the second than the first group’s concerns, Revealed Sciences represents an argument for shifting our focus from exceptional scholarly production to the context of what might be called the more pedestrian types of Kuhnian normal science.17 

I do not subscribe to a “strong” version of Kuhn’s evocative, influential, and thoroughly critiqued theory of scientific paradigms setting out research agendas for normal science that experiences crises leading to scientific revolutions, nor do I think that it readily applies to the material under consideration. Yet, Kuhn’s description of normal science as “mop-up work” dealing with “puzzle-solving” the problems set out by an initial paradigm does go some way toward explaining the types of scholarship produced in the natural sciences in seventeenth-century Morocco.18 The reference is imprecise, and not only because Kuhn himself understood science and its revolutions, regardless of how one understands the much debated term “incommensurability” that he used to describe distinct paradigms, as decidedly a story of Western European modern science.19 Nevertheless, it was a passage at the end of Thomas Kuhn’s classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions that precipitated my thinking at an early stage of this book. Describing Darwin’s greatest challenge in gaining acceptance for the theory of evolution, Kuhn notes that it was Darwin’s arguing that evolution had no goal where he encountered the greatest resistance: “What could ‘evolution,’ ‘development,’ and ‘progress’ mean in the absence of a specified goal? To many people, such terms suddenly seemed self-contradictory.”20 

Darwin’s famous tree of life, ever branching outwards in many directions but not moving toward any single goal, provided Kuhn with a powerful analogy to his own description of scientific progress – one that offered a sustained critique of modern science as an asymptotic movement toward absolute truth. Insofar as the analogy remains useful, it helps us understand the story of the natural sciences in early modern Morocco not as one of retardation or decline, but of divergence from the path taken in Europe during the same centuries – distinct, but no less rational or curious. If the main impulses of this book are, first, to draw attention to the nature and place of the natural sciences in the Muslim world in the Early Modern period, and, second, to focus on engagement with these sciences beyond the writings of exceptional thinkers, the third is to add nuance to the now rather stale debate about the compatibility between science and religion. 

Proceeding from the assumption that both this debate and the two central terms assumed their current significance at the end of the nineteenth century, Revealed Sciences dwells on the porous nature of the natural and transmitted sciences during this period, tracing how they lent their authority to each other and the ways that individual scholars saw them as compatible. While these and related questions emerge from a decidedly twenty-first century context and are those of a scholar writing from within a modern, secular, institution that is distinct from those in which the scholars discussed here lived and wrote, I do not think that these questions would have been wholly unintelligible to them (or incommensurable with their own).

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اقرأ المزيد

Download PDF | Khaled El-Rouayheb - Islamic Intellectual History in the Seventeenth Century_ Scholarly Currents in the Ottoman Empire and the Maghreb-Cambridge University Press (2015).

Download PDF | Khaled El-Rouayheb - Islamic Intellectual History in the Seventeenth Century_ Scholarly Currents in the Ottoman Empire and the Maghreb-Cambridge University Press (2015).

418 Pages 

Islamic Intellectual History in the Seventeenth Century Scholarly Currents in the Ottoman Empire and the Maghreb For much of the twentieth century, the intellectual life of the Ottoman and Arabic-Islamic world in the seventeenth century was ignored or mischaracterized by historians. Ottomanists typically saw the seventeenth century as marking the end of Ottoman cultural florescence, while modern Arab nationalist historians tended to see it as yet another century of intellectual darkness under Ottoman rule. This book is the first sustained effort at investigating some of the intellectual currents among Ottoman and North African scholars of the early modern period. Examining the intellectual production of the ranks of learned ulema (scholars) through close readings of various treatises, commentaries, and marginalia, Khaled El-Rouayheb argues for a more textured – and text-centered – understanding of the vibrant exchange of ideas and transmission of knowledge across a vast expanse of Ottomancontrolled territory. 

Khaled El-Rouayheb is James Richard Jewett Professor of Arabic and of Islamic Intellectual History in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. He specializes in Arabic and Islamic intellectual history, especially in the period from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries. He is the author of Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500–1800 (2005) and Relational Syllogisms and the History of Arabic Logic, 900–1900 (2010). He is also coeditor of the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Islamic Philosophy.

Introduction Dominant narratives of Islamic intellectual history have tended to be unkind to the seventeenth century in the Ottoman Empire and North Africa. Three independent narratives of “decline” – an Ottomanist, an Arabist, and an Islamist – have converged on deprecating the period as either a sad epilogue to an earlier Ottoman florescence or a dark backdrop to the later Arab “renaissance” and Islamic “revival.” Until recently, Ottomanists typically located the heyday of Ottoman cultural and intellectual achievement in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. After the death of Suleym ¨ an the Magnificent in ¯ 1566, the Empire was supposed to have entered a period of long decline that affected both its politicalmilitary fortunes and its cultural-intellectual output.1 

Scholars of Arabic literature and thought were inclined to view the seventeenth century as yet another bleak chapter of cultural, intellectual, and societal “decadence” (inh. it.at¯.) that began with the sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258 and came to an end only with the “Arab awakening” of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.2 Historians who study self-styled Islamic “reformist” and “revivalist” movements of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have often portrayed the immediately preceding centuries as marked by unthinking scholarly “imitation” (taqlıd¯ ), crude Sufi pantheism, and “syncretic” and idolatrous popular religious practices.3 To be sure, such assessments are no longer accepted unquestioningly in academic circles. But their influence is still felt in the woefully underdeveloped state of research into the intellectual history of the seventeenth century in the Ottoman Empire and North Africa. The tide is turning, though, and recent years have seen a number of valuable monographs, doctoral dissertations, and editions of scholarly works.4 

The present book is intended as a contribution to the ongoing reassessment of the period. Its focus is on a number of hitherto unnoticed intellectual trends among the scholarly elite – the ulema – in the Ottoman Empire and North Africa in the seventeenth century. Though the ulema are mentioned in almost any history of the period, our knowledge of their intellectual preoccupations is still much more meager than our knowledge of their institutional contexts and their potential political role as intermediaries between rulers and ruled.5 This gap in our knowledge has tended to be reinforced by a number of factors. Most scholarly writings by seventeenth-century Ottoman ulema are in Arabic (not Turkish) and tend to be dense and technical – neither characteristic endearing them to Ottomanists. Modern historians have also tended to assume that the interests of the Ottoman ulema were by the seventeenth century quite narrow (largely confined to Islamic law, Quran exegesis, and grammar), and that their writings overwhelmingly consisted of unoriginal and pedantic commentaries and glosses on earlier works –assumptions that have not exactly invited closer study.6 Furthermore, intellectual history has itself been under something of a cloud in recent years. 

The tendency of historians of ideas to focus on the intellectual elite and to situate ideas in the context of other ideas (as opposed to social and political realities) is sometimes seen as unfashionable.7 Many historians now prefer to explore new avenues of research untainted by suspicions of elitism and old fashion, for example, popular culture and mentalities. Some of this new research is impressive and very welcome.8 Less welcome, I think, is an unintended consequence of this shift in academic focus. “High” intellectual life in the Ottoman Empire and North Africa largely remains unexplored territory. Resting satisfied with this state of affairs and simply shifting research to other topics risks reinforcing the impression that on one side of the Mediterranean in the seventeenth century one encounters Galileo, Kepler, Bacon, Newton, Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Locke, and Leibniz, whereas on the other side one encounters popular chroniclers, Sufi diarists, popularizers of medical or occult knowledge, and the like. Studies of popular chroniclers, Sufi diarists, and popularizers of medical or occult knowledge are of course most welcome, but the present book is written with the assumption that there is still a legitimate place for the study of the ideas, issues, and controversies that preoccupied the “academics” of the period.

The book is divided into three parts, each consisting of three chapters. The first part deals with the influx into the Ottoman Empire of scholars from the Kurdish and Azeri areas, in part due to the conquest of these areas by the Shiite Safavids under Shah ʿAbbas I (r. ¯ 1588–1629). This westward movement seems to have had a profound impact on Ottoman scholarly culture. 

Contemporary observers spoke of the “opening of the gate of verification,” the introduction of new works and teaching techniques, and the reinvigoration of the study of the rational and philosophical sciences. Two consequences are explored in some detail: the first is the explosion of interest in the science of dialectics (ad¯ ab al-bah ¯ . th) among Ottoman scholars from the seventeenth century; the second is the closely related rise of conscious reflection on the proper manner of perusing scholarly books (ad¯ ab al-mut ¯ .ala ¯ ʿa). Part II deals with the eastward movement of scholars and works from the Maghreb, connected both to the turmoil in Morocco that followed the collapse of the Saʿdid dynasty in 1603 and to the institution of the Hajj which brought North African scholars eastward, some settling in Egypt or the Hejaz. Again, this development had significant consequences. It led to the spread of the influence of the fifteenth-century North African scholar Muh. ammad b. Yusuf al-San ¯ us¯ ¯ı (d. 1490), whose works came to dominate the teaching of theology and logic in the Azhar college in Cairo from the seventeenth century to the end of the nineteenth. One of the hallmarks of this tradition is that it insisted on the inadequacy of “imitation” (taqlıd¯ ) as a basis for assent to the Islamic creed and instead stressed the necessity for the “verification” (tah. qıq¯ ) of the creed through demonstrative argument. 

This in turn led to the writing of creedal works explicitly aimed at nonscholars, conveying the amount of rational theology (kalam¯ ) that every believer should know. Another characteristic of this tradition was an enthusiasm for logic (mant.iq) and an extensive use of logical concepts and argument forms in the field of rational theology – leading one eighteenth-century observer to complain of the predominance in Cairo in his time of what he called “theologian-logicians” (al-mutakallimın al- ¯ manat¯.iqa). Part III deals with the spread of Sufi orders from India and Azerbaijan into the Arabic-speaking areas of the Near East in the seventeenth century. This development led to the strengthening of the influence of the idea of “the unity of existence” (wah. dat al-wujud¯ ) associated with the followers of Ibn ʿArab¯ı (d. 1240) – an idea that until then had enjoyed little support from members of the ulema class in Syria, Hejaz, and Egypt. This led to the weakening of the hold of Ashʿar¯ı and Matur ¯ ¯ıd¯ı theology in these areas and to the reassertion of more “traditionalist,” near-H. anbal¯ı positions on a range of core theological issues. Paradoxical as it may sound, seventeenthcentury supporters of mystical monism seem to have played an important role in rehabilitating the ideas of the H. anbal¯ı thinker Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), for centuries an object of suspicion or neglect on the part of Ashʿar¯ı and Matur ¯ ¯ıd¯ı theologians. Some of the better-known scholars of the seventeenth century, such as Ah.med Muneccimb ¨ as¯ ¸¯ı (d. 1702), al-H. asan al-Yus¯ ¯ı (d. 1691), Ibrah¯ ¯ım Kur¯ an¯ ¯ı (d. 1690), and ʿAbd al-Ghan¯ı al-Nabulus ¯ ¯ı (1641–1731), feature prominently in the pages that follow. But my aim has been to discuss them as representatives of larger intellectual trends within the ulema class in their time, not as heroic figures who somehow managed to stand out in an otherwise bleak century. 

After all, even older studies that perpetuated the image of seventeenth-century intellectual stagnation or decline were sometimes prepared to admit that there were “exceptions.”9 More recent scholarly literature has not succeeded in properly laying this idea to rest; indeed it has often succumbed to the temptation to underline the importance of an individual figure by portraying his background and opponents in dark colors.10 The list of “exceptions” has simply become too long for the idea to be taken seriously: Ah.mad al-Maqqar¯ı, al-H. asan al-Yus¯ ¯ı, Yah. ya al-Sh ¯ aw¯ ¯ı, and Muh. ammad al-Rud¯ an¯ ¯ı in the Maghreb; Ibrah¯ ¯ım Kur¯ an¯ ¯ı and his student Muh. ammad Barzinj¯ı in Medina; ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Baghd ¯ ad¯ ¯ı in Cairo; Khayr al-D¯ın alRaml¯ı in Palestine; Qasim al-Kh ¯ an¯ ¯ı in Aleppo; ʿAbd al-Ghan¯ı al-Nabulus ¯ ¯ı in Damascus; Ah.med Muneccimb ¨ as¯ ¸¯ı, K. ara Ḫal¯ıl T¯ırev¯ı, and Meh. med Sac¯ ¸ak. l¯ızade in Ottoman Turkey; Mus ¯ .t.afa M¯ ost ¯ ar¯ ¯ı in Bosnia; and Ah.mad H. usaynab¯ ad¯ ¯ı and his son H. aydar H. usaynab¯ ad¯ ¯ı in the Kurdish regions.11 It is high time to stop expanding the list of purported “exceptions” and to embark instead on an overall reappraisal of the period. What follows is an attempt to contribute toward this task. The three developments that I discuss are of course not exhaustive of the intellectual concerns of seventeenth-century ulema in the Ottoman Empire and North Africa.

 Nevertheless, they should hopefully be sufficient to belie received views of the seventeenth century as intellectually barren or stagnant, passively awaiting “revival” and “reform,” and encourage further research on a rich intellectual tradition that has been overlooked for too long. Each of the three parts of the book opens with a chapter that traces scholarly lineages and the diffusion of works based on contemporary biographical and bibliographical sources. In each case, this is followed by chapters that discuss the contents of illustrative works belonging to the intellectual trends in question: on dialectic, on the proper manner of reading, on rational theology, and on mystical metaphysics. Some of these works are dense and technical, and the chapters that discuss their contents will to some extent have to engage with this density and technicality – this is simply unavoidable in any serious probing of the intellectual life of the ulema. Members of this group underwent years of arduous training in a range of scholarly disciplines, and their concerns were often abstruse and highbrow – not less so than those of present-day academics in the humanities and non-applied sciences. 

To recover these concerns means not glossing over the contents of their works or treating them simply as epiphenomena of social context or political structures. It is all very well to complain that intellectual historians treat ideas as if they were divorced from institutional, social, and economic realities.12 But such worries seem misplaced when we know much more about the institutional, social, and economic realities than about the ideas. It is hardly controversial to point out that the study of the institutional, social, and economic history of the Ottoman Empire is significantly more developed than the study of its intellectual history. The more pressing danger, as I see it, is the tendency to think that the study of social, political, and institutional context somehow makes the close study of scholarly works superfluous – that intellectual history can simply be read off social and institutional history.13 Two aspects of the present book may occasion some surprise or concern. 

One is that there will be next to no discussion of Islamic law or jurisprudence.14 Surely, one might object, those two fields were a major concern of the ulema class. The response to this is twofold: First, as already mentioned, I do not pretend that this book is an exhaustive survey of the intellectual history of the period. Second, it is precisely one of the points of the book that the question of “stagnation” and “decline” in Islamic intellectual history has unhelpfully tended to be associated with the development (or lack of development) of Islamic law and specifically with the question of ijtihad¯ – whether “the gate of ijtihad¯ ” was closed or remained open (or at least slightly ajar). This focus has, or so I would suggest, tended to elide the centrality of the ideal of “verification” (tah. qıq¯ ) for premodern Islamic scholarly culture.15 To put it bluntly, ijtihad¯ – the derivation of legal rulings directly from the acknowledged sources of Islamic law without being bound by legal precedent – was of little or no import for logicians, dialecticians, mathematicians, astronomers, grammarians, theologians, philosophers, and mystics. Even if one were to assume, for the sake of argument, that the “gate of ijtihad¯ ” was in fact closed, this would tell us nothing about the dynamism or stagnation of nonlegal fields of Islamic scholarship. The present book also eschews the use of terms such as “enlightenment” and “humanism.” 

The study of Islamic and Ottoman intellectual life in the early modern period has been stimulated by the works of Reinhardt Schultze and Stefan Reichmuth – scholars who have contributed toward the rising interest in this period within the field of Islamic Studies.16 Nevertheless, their deployment of Western historical concepts such as “enlightenment” and “humanism” to characterize Islamic intellectual traditions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries must, I think, be rejected. To apply with even a minimum of plausibility to the Islamic early modern period, the meanings of such terms have to be stretched to such an extent that they arguably become devoid of historical content and become free-floating “ideas” not associated with any particular region or period. 

Any emphasis on the need for critical reflection on received views or any rhetoric of praise for novelty and individual “illumination” is equated with “enlightenment”; any concern with letter-writing, collating manuscripts, and polymathy is equated with “humanism”; any fideist rejection of rationalist or mystical speculation is equated with “pietism,” and so on. Furthermore, the whole enterprise of attempting to capture a “zeitgeist” seems highly questionable, especially at a time when European historians are stressing the heterogeneity of intellectual and cultural pursuits in the early modern period and hence rethinking the usefulness of terms such as “the enlightenment” and “the scientific revolution.”17 

Even apart from this point, the broad characterizations involved in speaking of an early modern Islamic “enlightenment” or “humanism” must surely be premature given just how little the period has been studied. In light of all this, it seems better to leave aside stimulating but overhasty attempts at capturing the age by a few “isms” imported from Western European historiography, and to start afresh by focusing on a number of intellectual currents and works, and describing these as far as possible in a language that would have been recognizable to the scholars whose outlook we as historians seek to understand. Once reasonably grounded narratives of the intellectual history of the period have been established, it may be fruitful to go further and ask comparative and “global” questions.18 But to let research in the fledgling field of Ottoman and North African intellectual history be guided from the outset by the desire to relate it to the much more advanced field of European intellectual history is sure to lead to lopsided emphases and tendentious readings of the sources.19

 Instead of genuinely developing our sketchy knowledge of the intellectual history of the period, we would be stuck in a situation that development theorists once referred to as “the development of underdevelopment.” Having said this, preliminary methodological discussions and polemics will not take us far. At the end of the day, a historical approach is vindicated if it yields accounts of the past that are deemed instructive and worthwhile. To put it more proverbially, “the proof of the pudding is in the eating.” The chapters that follow are themselves my main argument for taking the intellectual preoccupations of seventeenth-century Ottoman and North African ulema seriously, on their own terms.

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