Atlas al Hadarah al lslamiyah

Abstract

Atlas was first published in its original English edition in 1986. The collaborationof Temple University, the International Institute of Islamic Thought(IIIT), and the American Trust Publications with Macmillan made the publicationpossible. At the time, the book clearly marked a qualitative leap in termsof writings on Islamic culture and civilization. With its large format, over 500pages, and hundreds of maps, tables, charts, chronologies, photographs, andillustrations, it sought to catch the eyes (and minds) of a wide range of readers,sacrificing little in the way of erudition or pertinent detail and shunning bothgeographical and chronological arrangements. These two approaches, theauthors pointed out, would have been unsuitable for such a work, seeking tohighlight the “essence” of the Muslim experience in the midst of and despitethe bewildering diversity of that experience. Nor was the new venture merelya blend of the two methods with their perceived “shortcomings,” but one whichfollowed the “phenomenological” method, where “the observer let[s] the phenomenaspeak for themselves rather than force them into any predeterminedideational framework.”The Faruqis saw themselves as innovators in applying this method (traced toEdmund Husserl and Max Scheler) to the study of Islam. The method wasadvantageous as it allowed them to escape both the “epistemological ethnocentrism”of Western Islamicists and the “uncritical” assumptions of Muslimscholars. In the tradition of other Muslim harmonizers, and with a mix of genuinehumility and some unconscious trepidation, they also stressed that theirwork was “a beginning.”Surely Atlas was no starting point for the Faruqis. For many years they hadworked together, or individually, on many a project, book, and seminar -papers on music, compendiums on world and Asian religions, books on Islam,symposiums on the dialogue of the Abrahamic faiths. Their numerous intellectualand academic achievements, including Isma‘il al Faruqi’s pivotal role inthe founding and empowerment of the IIIT, deserve far more coverage thanthat provided by this cursory review. But the experiences and insights as wellas the team spirit they developed over the years, and through a great deal ofglobe-trotting, were to stand them in good stead as they approached a task ofencyclopedic proportions. Indeed, any glimpse into the features of Atlas, one ...