Islamic Intellectual History in the Seventeenth Century
Scholarly Currents in the Ottoman Empire and the Maghreb

This book investigates the intellectual currents among Ottoman and North African scholars of the early modern period.

Khaled El-Rouayheb (Author)

9781107617568, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 27 July 2017

415 pages, 15 b/w illus. 3 maps
23 x 15.3 x 2.5 cm, 0.63 kg

'This is an important book. … one that scholars of the early modern period will no doubt read avidly. … In its nuances and detailed reading of the long seventeenth century, El-Rouayheb's book contains numerous insights into the significance and nature of both earlier and later periods and should be read by intellectual historians of Islam, regardless of the period in which they specialize.' Justin Stearns, Journal of the American Oriental Society

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 Ottoman-controlled territory.

Part I. 'The Path of the Kurdish and Persian Verifying Scholars': 1. Kurdish scholars and the reinvigoration of the rational sciences
2. A discourse of method: the evolution of ?d?b al-bahth
3. The rise of 'deep reading'
Part II. 'Saving Servants from the Yoke of Imitation': 4. Maghrebi 'theologian-logicians' in Egypt and the Hejaz
5. The condemnation of 'imitation' (taql?d)
6. Al-Hasan al-Y?s? and two theological controversies in seventeenth-century Morocco
Part III. 'The Imams of Those Who Proclaim the Unity of Existence': 7. The spread of mystical monism
8. Monist mystics and neo-Hanbal? traditionalism
9. In defense of wahdat al-wuj?d.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Middle Eastern history [HBJF1]