1. Introduction to ‘Classical Islamic Thought’: Change and Continuity
Civilization Studies Program (AUB) CVSP 202: The Monotheistic Traditions from Late Antiquity to the 13th Century  
Introduction to ‘Classical Islamic Thought’: Change and Continuity
Dahlia E. M. Gubara
October 10, 2017

2. I. Introduction:
‘The Golden Age’ - al-‘asr al-dhahabī - (broadly the 9 and 10th c)
Seen as the period in which Islam’s essential features and greatest contributions to human civilization were made before entering a long period of decline - inḥiṭāṭ - until the more recent efforts at European-led modernization beginning in the late 19thc.

3. I. Introduction: Can we think of these texts rather as:
‘The Golden Age of Islam’ - al-‘asr al-dhahabī - (broadly the 9 and 10th c)
Seen as the period in which Islam’s essential features and greatest contributions to human civilization were made before entering a long period of decline - inḥiṭāṭ - until the more recent efforts at European-led modernization beginning in the late 19thc.
What does the past mean to us today?
What is ‘Classical’? What is ‘Islamic’ ? What is ‘Thought’?
Can we think of these texts rather as:
Classics of Islamic Thought

4. Expansion of the Islamic State

5. II. Late Antiquity
Two conventional theories on the formation of Islam:
‘Out of Arabia’
the Late Antique Near East

6. Late Antiquity as a ‘shared epistemic space’
II. Late Antiquity
Two conventional theories on the formation of Islam:
‘Out of Arabia’
the Late Antique Near East
More than an epoch:
Late Antiquity as a ‘shared epistemic space’
(a space of knowledge-making)

7. III. Islam as a Tradition
The Old – the existing traditions of late antiquity
The New –
a new era (past = jāhiliyya; Hijri calendar)
a new polity (al-Madina)
a new community (ummah)
new teachings and texts (Qur’an, Sunnah)
a new Tradition

8. III. Islam as a Tradition
Balancing the old and the new – continuity and change/radical break from the past.

9. III. Islam as a Tradition
Balancing the old and the new – continuity and change/radical break from the past.
Tradition is an arena that sustains in ways both conscious (thought) and unconscious (unthought) a particular mode of life and knowledge-making

10. III. Islam as a Tradition
Balancing the old and the new – continuity and change/radical break from the past.
Tradition is an arena that sustains in ways both conscious (thought) and unconscious (unthought) a particular mode of life and knowledge-making
Revelation and Prophecy as the
linchpin of tradition

11. III. Islam as a Tradition
Balancing the old and the new – continuity and change/radical break from the past.
Tradition is an arena that sustains in ways both conscious (thought) and unconscious (unthought) a particular mode of life and knowledge-making
Revelation and Prophecy as the linchpin of tradition
Tradition is therefore not opposed to reason, debate and change, it is their condition of possibility

12. III. Islam as a Tradition
Different positions: grossly,
Rationalists –
those who appeal above all to human reason
Traditionalists –
those who assert the primacy of transmitted knowledge
Legalists –
those who adopt a legal (fiqh-based) interpretation of scripture
Mystics –
those who emphasize more esoteric or ‘spiritual’ modes of religious life

13. IV. Grounding Knowledge in Tradition
How to justify (or legitimize) knowledge as one perceives (or apprehends) it, but also as one receives it from the many pasts through transmission?

14. IV. Grounding Knowledge in Tradition
How to justify/legitimize knowledge as one perceives/apprehends it, but also as one receives it from the many pasts?
i.e. what is the relationship between:
al-manqūl [transmitted knowledge]
and
al-ma‘qūl [interpretative/demonstrative knowledge]?

15. IV. Grounding Knowledge in Tradition
How to justify/legitimize knowledge as one perceives/apprehends it, but also as one receives it from the many pasts?
i.e. what is the relationship between al-manqūl [transmitted knowledge] and al-ma‘qūl [interpretative/demonstrative knowledge]?
Or: How do I know that what I know is true? [Epistemic Certainty]

16. IV. Grounding Knowledge in Tradition
How to justify/legitimize knowledge as one perceives/apprehends it, but also as one receives it from the many pasts?
i.e. what is the relationship between al-manqūl [transmitted knowledge] and al-ma‘qūl [interpretative/demonstrative knowledge]?
Or: How do I know that what I know is true? [Epistemic certainty]
And how is this relationship demonstrated in Islamic tradition and the texts before us?

17. Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ wa Khullān al-Wafā’ wa Ahl al-Ḥamd amd
Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ wa Khullān al-Wafā’ wa Ahl al-Ḥamd amd wa Abnā’ al-Majd (the Brethren of Purity, the Loyal Friends, People of Praise, and Sons of Glory)

18. Al-Ghazālī’s Wanderings

19. The Harūniyya, (Seljuk-Ilkhanid mausoleum in Tus, near Mashhad, Iran) where al-Ghazālī is said to be buried. (

20. V. Common Narratives, Contextual Matters: Our authors, their times, their works, and their reception
Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ
Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad
ibn Muḥammad
al-Ghazālī
Anonymous collective – esoteric fraternity
Renowned figure – ‘Hujjat al-Islam’/mujadid
Possibly active in the last quarter of the 10th century A.D. in Basra and Baghdad
Born 1058 near Tus, northeastern Iran
Died in 1111 A.D.
Political, sectarian and creedal affiliation unknown
Sunni, Ash‘arī, Shāfi‘ī, and close to Seljuk vizir Nizām al-Mulk and the Abbasid court
Other works unknown
Prolific corpus spanning many disciplines (jurisprudence, theology, philosophy and Sufism)
Rasā’il – encyclopedic, classification of knowledge
Al-Munqidh - Intellectual, autobiographical
Philosophically - mainly neo-Platonist and Pythagorean. Ecumenical in spirit
Critical of falsafa? Reconciles legal orthodoxy with Sufi mysticism

21. Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ, Epistle 22: The Case of the Animals vs
Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ, Epistle 22: The Case of the Animals vs. Man before the King of the Jinn

22. “These cattle, beasts of prey and wild creatures – all animals in fact – are our slaves. We are their masters. Some have rebelled and escaped. Others obey grudgingly and scorn our service”
(Ikhwān, Epistle 22: The Case of the Animals vs. Man before the King of the Jinn, p.103)

23. “Very well,” said the King, “lets us hear them.”
“These cattle, beasts of prey and wild creatures – all animals in fact – are our slaves. We are their masters. Some have rebelled and escaped. Others obey grudgingly and scorn our service”
The King replied, “What proof or evidence have you to back up your claims?”
“Your Majesty,” said the human, “we have both traditional religious arguments and rational proofs of our position.”
“Very well,” said the King, “lets us hear them.”
(Ikhwān, Epistle 22: The Case of the Animals vs. Man before the King of the Jinn, p.103)

24. VI. 3 Levels of Interpretation:
1. Epistemic certainty
Integrated Methods, Modes of Reasoning/Knowing:
Demonstrative reasoning
Scriptural and prophetic utterances
Tafsīr (manifest/literal meaning [al-zāhir] or hidden/esoteric meaning [al-bātin])
“but only those who are well rooted in knowledge” can comprehend
Silsilah of testimonials – chain of transmission [tawātur]

25. VI. 3 Levels of Interpretation:
Epistemic certainty:
Integrated Methods, Modes of Reasoning/Knowing
The Ends (Purpose) of Knowledge:
Social: pedagogy, instruction, initiation into a community, social and political order…

26. VI. Levels of Interpretation:
Epistemic certainty:
Integrated Methods, Modes of Reasoning/Knowing
The Ends of Knowledge:
Social: pedagogy, instruction, initiation, social and political order…
Individual: happiness, salvation (soteriology -the final return to God, yawm al-ḥisāb)

27. Ghazali discusses 4 seekers of knowledge (theologians, ta’limites/batinites, philosophers, sufis) and their truth-claims,
1) theology (kalām) – ✖ – merely defensive
2) authoritative instruction (ta’līm) – ✖ –
unreasonable
3) philosophy (falsafa) – ✖ – incoherent.
4) mysticism (taṣawwuf) – ✔ – experience (dhawq), qalb

28. “In myself I know that, even if I went back to the work of disseminating knowledge, yet I did not go back. To go back is to return to the previous state of things. Previously, however, I had been disseminating the knowledge by which worldly success is attained (...). But now I am calling men to the knowledge whereby worldly success is given up. (...) It is my earnest longing that I may make myself and others better. I do not know whether I shall reach my goal or whether I shall be taken away while short of my object. I believe, however, both by certain faith and by intuition that there is no power and no might save with God, the high, the mighty, and that I do not move of myself but am moved by Him, I do not work of myself but am used by Him.”
(al-Ghazali, al-Munqidh - trans. by W. M. Watt, p.28)

29. Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ: Epistle 22: The Case of the Animals vs
Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ: Epistle 22: The Case of the Animals vs. Man before the King of the Jinn:
Al-Ghazālī, Al-munqidh min al-ḍalāl:
The Trial: disputation, debate, proof and the methods of reasoning
Diving into the Profound Sea of Knowledge
Cosmological doctrines (Creation and Creator)
Severing the Fetters of Servile Conformism
Mediation on power and justice (mastery/bondage; tyranny/mercy; truth/falsehood-ignorance)
Deducing the True Meaning of Things
Ethical-spiritual ecology (ayāt Allah, earth as a Trust)
The Primordial Covenant, Prophecy and the Question of tawātur
Knowledge as Ḥikmah
The fable as a form (universal truth, the speech of the powerful vs. the powerless)
The Ḥakīm’s antidote (sickness of the heart)

30. If knowledge is “a deep and treacherous sea,” tradition is what anchors the seeker on her journey through this life and the next, and delivers her to safety by God’s will.

31. VII. Final Considerations:
Reason vs. Revelation? (al-manqūl and al-ma‘qūl)

32. VII. Final Considerations:
Reason vs. Revelation? (al-manqūl and al-ma‘qūl)
Origins, Borrowing - Syncretism and Reconciliation?

33. VII. Final Considerations:
Reason vs. Revelation? (al-manqūl and al-ma‘qūl)
Origins, Borrowing - Syncretism and Reconciliation?
Philosophy vs. Religion?

34. Postscript – ‘Polymathesis,’ Education, Edification
Postscript – ‘Polymathesis,’ Education, Edification Polymath: a scholar with broad expertise who views knowledge as a complex organic whole, and who is accordingly able to converse on, and engage with, a wide range of topics and subjects to think through the issues of his/her day as a deeply involved citizen of the world.  

35. Postscript – ‘Polymathesis,’ Education, Edification
Postscript – ‘Polymathesis,’ Education, Edification Polymath: a scholar with broad expertise who views knowledge as a complex organic whole, and who is accordingly able to converse on, and engage with a wide range of topics and subjects to think through the issues of his/her day as a deeply involved citizen of the world.   What mattered most was the purpose to which knowledge was put, and by extension, its ability to instruct its bearer on the meaning and methods of living a good life It’s edifying function in other words.

36. the ‘CVSP [Wo]Man’