Al-Jāḥiẓ and Religious Knowledge
A Forgotten Islamic Rationalism
Offers an unprecedented theological investigation into al-Jāḥiẓ’s social empiricism
- Expands the discussion of Islamic rationalism by engaging with a naturalist, empiricist and humanist outlook instead of the pervasive metaphysical and traditionalist approaches
- Provides an unprecedented meticulous engagement with numerous dense texts (covering several thousand pages)
- Reconstructs Jāḥiẓ’s epistemology through a systematic reading of his oeuvre
- Fills a gap within the humanities by showing the vitality of Islamic intellectual history as a source for comparative study
While it may seem paradoxical to combine trust in rational religion with distrust of human reason, this is exactly what a group of understudied Muslim theologians proposed. Known as the Epistemists, they pushed for an inclusive epistemology that broadened the scope of knowledge. They argued that humans can acquire rational knowledge without discursive arguments, through an unconscious process of social exposure. In this, the Epistemists presented a radical alternative to other Islamic conceptions of rationalism, with immense promise for modern contexts.
This book reconstructs a worldview prominent among the Epistemists, and explores how it correlates with their rise and fall as a theological trend. It examines the intellectual project of their premier advocate, al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 868-9), offering a systematic reading of his oeuvre as an Epistemist, and situates it in the formative ʿAbbasid moment of Islamic history.
Foreword by James Montgomery
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Expansive Empire and Inclusive Religion
- Islamic Rationalism and its Discontents
- The Afterlife of a Maverick
- The Great Venture
- The Semantics of a Paradigm
- Passions, Beliefs, Actions
- The Intelligent and the Reasonable
- Epistemological Road Map
- Theological Consequences
Conclusion: Social Empiricism and the Quest for Rational Religion
Appendix: Notes on a Few Terms and Translations
Bibliography
Index
Professor Abdulsater’s monograph deeply enriches our understanding of al-Jāḥiẓ as a humanistic intellectual of the medieval Arabic tradition, and he has written one of the most compelling portraits of him available in the English language. Here, we encounter al-Jāḥiẓ not merely in his usual guise, as a somewhat mischievous theologian with an unrivaled talent for literary prose, but also as a keen observer of humans and their curious quibbles: an astute psychologist and an intuitive cognitive scientist avant la lettre.
This is a most original and distinctive contribution to the subject. A towering figure in pre-modern Islamic culture, al-Jahiz, receives in this work a completely novel reappraisal.
