The Archetypal Sunni Scholar

Aaron Spevack

Description

This is a rare study of a late premodern Islamic thinker, Ibrahim al- Bājūrī, a nineteenth-century scholar and rector of Cairo's al-Azhar University. Aaron Spevack explores al- Bājūrī's legal, theological, and mystical thought, highlighting its originality and vibrancy in relation to the millennium of scholarship that preceded and informed it, and also detailing its continuing legacy. The book makes a case for the normativity of the Gabrielian Paradigm, the study of law, rational theology, and Sufism, in the person of al- Bājūrī. Soon after his death in 1860, this typical pattern of scholarship would face significant challenges from modernists, reformers, and fundamentalists. Spevack challenges beliefs that rational theology, syllogistic logic, and Sufism were not part of the predominant conception of orthodox scholarship and shows this scholarly archetype has not disappeared as an ideal. In addition, the book contests prevailing beliefs in academic and Muslim circles about intellectual decline from the thirteenth through nineteenth centuries.
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Al-Bājūrī’s Life and Scholarship

A Traditional Shaykh al-Azhar in an Era of Attempted Reform
Al-Bājūrī’s Character
Al-Bājūrī’s Works
Al-Bājūrī’s Commentaries and Their Predecessors
Al-Bājūrī’s Literary Sources and the Commentary Tradition

2. Al-Bājūrī’s View of Religion and Method in the Egyptian Milieu

The Archetype and Method
The Gabrielian Paradigm: Al-Bājūrī’s View of the Three Dimensions of Islam
The Ijmā’-Ikhtilāf Spectrum
The Egyptian Milieu

3. Al-Bājūrī in Dialogue with His Archetypal Predecessors

Al-Bājūrī’s Theological Predecessors
Al-Bājūrī’s Predecessors in Law
Al-Bājūrī’s Sufi Predecessors
The Independent Jurist-Theologian-Sufis and Their Affiliations

4. Al-Bājūrī’s Legal, Theological, and Mystical Thought

Al-Bājūrī on Law: Ijtihād and Taqlīd
Al-Bājūrī on Sufism: Its Goals, Methods, and Explanations or Exclamations
Al-Bājūrī on the Rational Sciences

5. Legacy and Conclusion

Al-Bājūrī’s Legacy

Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Theology
• History of religions
• Islam

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 09 septembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438453729
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Archetypal Sunnī Scholar
The Archetypal Sunnī Scholar
Law, Theology, and Mysticism in the Synthesis of al-Bājūrī
Aaron Spevack
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2014 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
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Marketing by Michael Campochiaro
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Spevack, Aaron.
The archetypal Sunni scholar : law, theology, and mysticism in the synthesis of al-Bajuri / Aaron Spevack.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5371-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Bajuri, Ibrahim ibn Muhammad, 1783 or 1784–1860. 2. Muslim scholars—Egypt—Biography. I. Title. BP80.B23515S74 2014 [B] 2014001946
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Al-Bājūrī’s Life and Scholarship
A Traditional Shaykh al-Azhar in an Era of Attempted Reform
Al-Bājūrī’s Character
Al-Bājūrī’s Works
Al-Bājūrī’s Commentaries and Their Predecessors
Al-Bājūrī’s Literary Sources and the Commentary Tradition
2 Al-Bājūrī’s View of Religion and Method in the Egyptian Milieu
The Archetype and Method
The Gabrielian Paradigm: Al-Bājūrī’s View of the Three Dimensions of Islam
The Ijmā ʿ –Ikhtilāf Spectrum
The Egyptian Milieu
3 Al-Bājūrī in Dialogue with His Archetypal Predecessors
Al-Bājūrī’s Theological Predecessors
Al-Bājūrī’s Predecessors in Law
Al-Bājūrī’s Sufi Predecessors
The Independent Jurist–Theologian–Sufis and Their Affiliations
4 Al-Bājūrī’s Legal, Theological, and Mystical Thought
Al-Bājūrī on Law: Ijtihād and Taqlīd
Al-Bājūrī on Sufism: Its Goals, Methods, and Explanations or Exclamations
Al-Bājūrī on the Rational Sciences
5 Legacy and Conclusion
Al-Bājūrī’s Legacy
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
The subject of this work, Ibrāhīm al-Bājūrī, begins each of his commentaries by discussing the tradition of starting one’s works with the name of Allah, followed by praising Him, and then sending peace and blessings on the Prophet Muhammad. In keeping with al-Bājūrī’s tradition, I too begin this work as such.
This work has undergone a number of transformations since it began as a dissertation proposal at Boston University. I am very grateful for the masterful guidance of my dissertation advisers, Professors Herbert Mason, Merlin Swartz, and Diana Lobel, whose careful and patient advice led to the first incarnation of this work. Support for research and writing the dissertation was made possible through the generosity of Boston University’s University Professors Program. Some of the English translations of various Arabic passages in the dissertation, most of which remain in the current book, benefited tremendously from the careful readings and suggestions of Professor Shakir Mustafa. Prior to my graduate work at Boston University, Robert Wisnovsky’s instruction, advice, and inspiration, along with that of the many other wonderful professors in Harvard University’s Extension Division, were invaluable to my research trajectory.
I have been fortunate to have a number of mentors throughout my academic career, whose patient advising has been a tremendous source of guidance. These include Himmet Taskumur, Ahmad Atif Ahmad, Peri Bearman, Sait Ozervarli, Hikmet Yaman, Steve Yao, and a number of others from whose guidance I have greatly benefited. I have also found profound benefit in my private studies of classical Islamic legal and theological texts with Shaykhs Imadudin Abu Hijleh, Suheil Laher, Faraz Rabbani, Hamza Karamali, Taha Abdul-Basser, and Shaykha Najah Nady, to name but a few. To the latter I am also indebted for her help in procuring a number of scans of manuscripts of al-Bājūrī’s unpublished works. My knowledge of Sufism has also benefited tremendously from the many live and recorded lectures of Shaykh Nuh Keller that I have had the honor of hearing.
This work has benefited tremendously from my time spent as a visiting research fellow at the Harvard Islamic Legal Studies Program, with the guidance and support of Baber Johansen, Peri Bearman, Nazim Ali, Ceallaigh Reddy, and the many fellows I met over the several summers spent there. Additionally, a very productive month of research at McGill University’s Institute for Islamic Studies in July 2009 contributed to the first major revision of the dissertation in preparation for its submission to SUNY Press.
During a two-year Mellon Foundation post-doctoral fellowship at Hamilton College, I had the great privilege of working with a number of very supportive colleagues under the circumstances that were very conducive to research and writing. I also benefited from the support of my colleagues at Loyola University New Orleans during the two wonderful years spent among them. My colleagues at Colgate University have already provided so much support and advice in my first year with them.
For her tireless editorial wisdom, I am deeply appreciative of Valerie Turner, who has offered a great deal of assistance at several stages of this work’s development. Peri Bearman and Jawad Qureshi also offered beneficial editorial insight in the final stages. In the eleventh hour, Carl Sharif El-Tobgui, Najah Nadi, and Muhammad Eissa gave much needed interpretive advice regarding the translation of al-Sayyid Muḥammad Shihāb al-Dīn’s poem in praise of Ibrāhīm al-Bājūrī.
A portion of an earlier draft of Chapter 4 was excerpted and revised to produce my article “Apples and Oranges: The Logic of the Early and Later Logicians” in Islamic Law and Society 17, no. 2 (2010). Some of these substantially edited and revised portions have been reworked into the present work with the kind permission of Brill.
Finally, no words seem sufficient to thank my family without whose support and advice this work would never have come to fruition: My parents and sister for their support throughout it all, my wife for patiently supporting me during my transition from musician to academic, and my daughter for not pressing too many keys while I tried to type and cradle her simultaneously when she was just a few months old.
Introduction
When a young Egyptian man named Ibrāhīm al-Bājūrī left his father’s home in hopes of studying the traditional sciences of Islam in late eighteenth-century Cairo, he began a traditional course of study that had dominated for centuries. He entered al-Azhar University and studied from a curriculum that consisted of commentaries and super-commentaries on texts written, in most cases, in previous generations; cases that covered the gamut of legal, theological, philosophical, and mystical 1 thought, as it had developed over the previous millennium. His teachers had studied in this tradition, and possibly contributed to it with their own commentaries or treatises. Many, though not all, of the students and teachers had a similar disposition, a disposition that corresponded to the way in which the sciences of Islam were taught and interpreted. They were what I call “archetypal scholars.” Al-Bājūrī was one such archetypal scholar of the late pre-modern Sunnī tradition.
Al-Bājūrī was a scholar of Islamic jurisprudence of the school of Muḥammad, b. Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820); a theologian in the tradition of Abū l-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī (d. 324/935); a logician in the method of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1209); a scholar of the Arabic language; and a Sufi of the Naqshbandī order. 2 He completed at least twenty works on a variety of topics including Ashʿarī creed, Shāfiʿī jurisprudence, and syllogistic logic, as well as linguistic sciences. He wrote only a few original epistles, most of his works were commentaries ( sharḥ / shurūḥ ) or super-commentaries ( ḥāshiya / ḥawāshī ), some on those of his own teacher Muḥammad al-Faḍālī (d. 1821), others on the works of scholars who had died centuries earlier.
Al-Bājūrī’s education and career followed that of the many scholars who had preceded him. He did not break any molds, nor did he call for reformation and change. Yet he did offer his own opinion on various legal, theological, historical, philosophical, and mystical matters, and he interpreted the body of teachings that he inherited from his forefathers. He was, despite his deep knowledge of multiple subjects, committed to the tradition of scholarship that had preceded him and endured for many centuries, at least since the time of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111), and arguably prior to that. Al-Bājūrī’s scholarship was based on a pattern that stressed the mastery of the three core sciences of law, theology, and mysticism, as well as various related sciences.
Al-Bājūrī was therefore a scholar who fit the mold of a certain archetype. I make use of this term, not necessarily in a strictly Jungian sense, but rather to indicate a model of scholarship that was a result of an inner and innate inclination, as well as one that was dictated by the primary texts of Islam itself (i.e., the Gabriel ḥadīth , discussed below). The term archetype also implies a model or pattern; scholars of the three core sciences could be found across the Muslim world throughout the many centuries of Islam’s existence.
I present the archetypal scholar as one motivated by three innate drives:
• The need for authenticity and authority in belief and practice
• The need for harmony between intellect and revelation
• The need for a spiritual experience of faith achieved and explained in accordance with the law and creed.
These three innate driv