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Gubara: Flysheet (Oct. 6, 2015)
CIVILIZATION STUDIES PROGRAM, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT
CVSP 202: The Monotheistic Traditions from Late Antiquity
to the 13th Century
Common Lecture: “Introduction to Classical Islamic Thought”
(FALL 2015)
Dahlia Gubara
CLASSICAL ISLAMIC THOUGHT: CHANGE AND CONTINUITY
I:
INTRODUCTION: ‘CLASSICAL’ ‘ISLAMIC’ ‘THOUGHT’ – AND THE TASKS OF THE HISTORIAN
What does the past mean to us today?
II:
LATE ANTIQUITY AND ISLAM AS A TRADITION
Two conventional theories on the formation of Islam: ‘Out of Arabia’ and/or the Late Antique
Near East
More than an epoch: Late Antiquity as a ‘shared Epistemic Space’ (a space of knowledgemaking)
Balancing the old and the new: Revelation and Prophecy as the linchpin of tradition
III: 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 of ‘mainstream Islam’
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’ari, Shafi’i, and close to Seljuk vizir Nizam
al-Mulk and the Abbasid court
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Gubara: Flysheet (Oct. 6, 2015)
Other works unknown
Prolific corpus spanning many disciplines
(jurisprudence, theology, philosophy and Sufism)
Rasail – encyclopedic, classification of knowledge
Munqidh - Intellectual, autobiographical
Philosophically neo-Platonist and ecumenical in
spirit
Critical of falsafa, reconciles legal orthodoxy with
Sufi mysticism
IV: LEVELS
OF INTERPRETATION
1.
Epistemic certainty (Method)
2.
The Ends of Knowledge:
2a) Social: Pedagogy, Instruction and Initiation
2b) Individual: Happiness, Soteriology and the Final Return to God
Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ: Epistle 22: The Case of the Animals vs. Man before the King of the Jinn:
 The Trial: Disputation, Debate, Proof and the Methods of Reasoning
 Cosmological Doctrines (Creation and Creator)
 Mediation on Power and Justice (mastery/bondage; tyranny/mercy; truth/falsehoodignorance)
 Ethical-Spiritual Ecology (ayāt Allah, Earth as a Trust)
 The Fable as a Form (the speech of the powerful vs. the powerless)
 Knowledge as Hikmah
Al-Ghazālī, Al-munqidh min al-ḍalāl:
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V:
Diving into the Profound Sea of Knowledge
Severing the Fetters of Servile Conformism
Deducing the True Meaning of Things
The Primordial Covenant, Prophecy and the Question of tawātur
The Hakim’s Antidote
FINAL CONSIDERATIONS:
Reason vs. Revelation? (or al-manqūl and al-ma’qūl)
Gubara: Flysheet (Oct. 6, 2015)
Syncretism and Reconciliation
Philosophy vs. Religion?
Postscript – ‘Polymathesis’: Education, Edification and the ‘CVSP Man’
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