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What Is Islam? What Is Islam? Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 03.12.15 05:57 Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 03.12.15 05:57 What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic Shahab Ahmed PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS Princeton and Oxford Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 03.12.15 05:57 Copyright © 2016 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW press.princeton.edu Jacket image © Heritage Auctions. All Rights Reserved ISBN 978- 0- 691- 16418- 2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2015948828 British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Linux Libertino O Printed on acid- free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 03.12.15 05:57 Analysis is the distinguishing of things that exist sound and true in combination—but that have become confused in the mind—in such a way that each of them is rendered separate from the others in its potential and in its definition; or in such a way that each of them comes to indicate the exis- tence of the other, so that when one considers the state of one of them, one is transported from the one to the other. —Al- Shaykh al- Ra’īs Abū ʿAlī Ibn Sīnā [Avicenna] (980–1037 A.D.) They do not comprehend how a thing agrees at variance with itself; it is an attunement turning back on itself, like that of the bow and the lyre. —Heraclitus (fl. ca. 487–521 B.C.) Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 03.12.15 05:57 Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 03.12.15 05:57 For my parents, who raised me in the Islam of their cosmopolitanism and in the cosmopolitanism of their Islam Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 03.12.15 05:57 Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 03.12.15 05:57 Contents List of Illustrations xi Preface xiii Part One Questions What Is Islam? 3 Chapter 1 Six Questions about Islam 5 Part Two Conceptualizations Chapter 2 Islam as Law, islams- not- Islam, Islamic and Islamicate, Religion and Culture, Culture and Civilization 113 Chapter 3 Religion and Secular, Sacred and Profane, Theocentric and Anthropocentric, Total Social Fact, Family Resemblance 176 Chapter 4 Culture, Meaning, Symbol System, Core and Nucleus, Whatever- Muslims- Say- It- Is, Discursive Tradition, Orthodoxy, Process 246 Part Three Re- Conceptualizations Chapter 5 Hermeneutical Engagement, Pre- Text, Text, and Con- Text, Meaning- Making for the Self, Spatiality of Revelation, Hierarchy, Exteriority- Interiority, Public and Private, Language and Vocabulary, Ambivalence and Ambiguity, Metaphor and Paradox 301 Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 03.12.15 05:57 x • Contents Chapter 6: Applications and Implications: Coherent Contradiction, Exploration, Diffusion, Form and Meaning, Modern 405 The Importance of Being Islamic 542 Works Cited 547 Index 593 Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 03.12.15 05:57 Illustrations Figure 1. White jade wine- jug made in Samarqand for Sultan Uluġ Bēg (1394–1446), acquired in 1613 by the Mughal Emperor Jahāngīr. 69 Figure 2. Gold coin struck by the Mughal Emperor Jahāngīr in 1611 (1020 hijrī) to commemorate the sixth year of his accession. 72 Figure 3. Map showing the Balkans- to- Bengal complex, and those regions living under its strong immediate influence. 74 Figure 4. Calligraphic tableau dated 1289 hijrī (1872), probably done in Syria. 375 Figure 5. Humāy meets Humāyūn in a Dream- Garden. Miniature painted in Herat circa 1430, depicting a scene from the poem Humāy va Humāyūn by Khwājū- yi Kirmānī. 411 Figure 6. The angel of mercy raised the cup of the pleasures of intimate company / From the draught: upon the cheek of houri and fairy: a rose- hue! Miniature painted in Herat circa 1520 by Sulṭān Muḥammad, illustrating a couplet of Ḥāfiẓ. 418 Figure 7. The Invention of the Mirror in the Presence of Iskandar/Alexan- der. A two- panel miniature painted in Lahore circa 1595 by Nanhā for the copy of the Sikandarnāmah of Niẓāmī prepared for the Mughal Emperor Akbar. 441 Figure 8. Ẓaḥḥāk brought in submission before Farīdūn. Miniature painted in Iran circa 1544 illustrating a scene in the Shāhnāmah of Firdawsī. 443 Figure 9. Angels Casting Trays of Light on the poet Saʿdī. Miniature painted between 1556 and 1565 for the copy of the Haft Awrang of Jāmī commissioned by the Safavid prince, Ibrāhīm Mīrzā. 495 Figure 10. A candle standing, a witness- of- Divine- Beauty sitting, wine spilled, goblets broken, and the Qāḍī in a drunken dream oblivious to the world of being. Miniature painted in India circa 1645 by Lālchand, illustrating a scene from the “story of the Qāḍī of Hamadān” in the Gulistān of Saʿdī. 500 Figure 11. The drunk Qāḍī of Hamadan. Miniature painted under Ottoman patronagecirca 1565, illustrating the same scene from the Gulistān of Saʿdī as in Figure 10. 501 Figure 12. Photograph taken from within the Masjid al- Ḥarām in Mecca in 2013, showing the Kaʿbah and the Burj al- Bayt. 533 Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 03.12.15 05:57 xii • Illustrations Figure 13. Photograph taken in 1989 of a structure believed to be the House of Khadījah bt. Khuwaylid, first wife of the Prophet Muḥammad, which was the residence of Muḥammad in the first years of his Prophethood. 534 Figure 14. Photograph of the Jannat al- baqīʿ, the graveyard in Madinah of the Companions of the Prophet, in circa 1880, and photograph of the Jannat al- baqīʿ in 2008. 536 Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 03.12.15 05:57 Preface The first draft of this book was written between January 2012 and Sep- tember 2013 while I was teaching fulltime as Associate Professor of Is- lamic Studies at Harvard University. A visiting appointment as Lecturer on Law and Research Fellow in the Islamic Legal Studies Program at Har- vard Law School in the academic year 2014–15 enabled me to revise the manuscript between July 2014 and November 2014. In making revisions, I deliberately chose not to look at any material pub- lished in 2014 (and it is likely also that I have missed some salient material published in 2013 that was slow to come to hand). I apologize to any authors I have neglected, and to my readers for any shortfall that this has incurred. This book draws on a range of primary source material translated from various languages. Unless otherwise indicated in the footnotes, all the trans- lations have been done by me—but not without the privilege of having con- sulted expert friends and colleagues who have graciously disputed, corrected, confirmed, or simply tolerated my renderings: Mohsen Goudarzi (Arabic and Persian), Moeen Lashari, Amer Latif and Hasher Ahmed Majoka (Panjabi, Siraiki, and Urdu), Sukidi Mulyadi (Javanese and Malay), Himmet Taşkömür (Ottoman), and Muḥammad Muḥsin Khān and Sayyid Muḥammad Khālid (Pashtō). I am most grateful. I have provided full transliterations of all those passages from primary texts that I have translated in Chapter 1, since these passages are foundational to the argument. In subsequent chapters, in the interest of making the book no longer than necessary, I have only supplied transliterations ḥasab al- ḍarūrah. Rather than follow any single established transliteration system, I have followed the principle that the original orthography (rasm al- khaṭṭ) should be represented as far as is sensible, and thus be readily apparent to the reader. I should note that in transliterating vowels from Persian, I have fol- lowed the historical South Asian pronunciation in which I myself “hear” the language—I apologize to native speakers of modern Persian for any auditory distress that this may cause them. I thank Scott Walker at the Harvard Map Collection for patiently and skill- fully preparing the map that appears in this book. My deep thanks go to my friend and colleague Michael Grossman for all variety of “bookman’s” help. I am especially grateful to the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon; the Wal- ters Museum in Baltimore; and to Sayyid Irfan al- Alawi, Director of the Is- Bereitgestellt von | New York University Bobst Library Technical Services Angemeldet Heruntergeladen am | 03.12.15 05:57 xiv • Preface lamic Heritage Research Foundation, Mecca, for allowing me to reproduce photographs from their collections without charge (I am indebted to Amina Chaudary for putting me in touch with Dr al- Alawi), and to “Mardetanha” for making his photograph of the Jannat al- baqīʿ available on Wikimedia Com- mons. Abolala Soudavar kindly permitted me to reproduce an image from the Art and History Trust Collection. I should like also to record my thanks to Massumeh Farhad, Elizabeth Stein, Betsy Kohut, and Simon Rettig at the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C., for supplying me with an image on very short notice, and to acknowledge the efficient co- operation of the staff of theBritish Museum, the Rare Books Divi- sion at Princeton University library, the Sackler Collection at Harvard Art Museums, and the Fine Arts Library of Harvard University.
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