The Crisis of Knowledge in Islam (I): The Case of al-'Amiri

Abstract

The translation of corpuses of non-revealed knowledge beginning in the second AH/eighth CE century at the latest, particularly of Greco-Hellenistic philosophy, announced epistemological plurality. The regional diversification within the abode of Islam, where caliph existed alongside and in competition with political and military commanders without a claim to prophetic succession, established a plurality of authority. Confessional sectarianism, the tangible counterpart to theological disputation, pointed to the religious plurality within Islam, not to mention the existence of other religious communities to be found within the domain of Islam, such as Jews and Christians. With the rise of a cosmopolitan Islam, and an awareness of the far reaches of the globe to which Muslim travelers, traders, and emissaries ventured, there was, finally, an appreciation of a socio-ethnic plurality, that is, different peoples with different customs and laws that were more or less effective in maintaining social well-being even if not divine in origin. This article treats one response, made by a Muslim philosopher of the fourth/ tenth century, to the crisis of knowledge engendered by this far-reaching diversity. Subsequent articles, to appear elsewhere, will take up three other responses, an overview of a period that struggled to come to terms with defensible Islamic knowledge. Certainly, every age is faced with its own crisis of knowledge, and it would be stretching things to claim that only two centuries of Islam were beset with the question of knowledge apart from other periods. Rather, in contrast to works that show the consolidation and even triumph of knowledge in Islam, our goal is to treat a more neglected but arguably equally important aspect of religious history, the challenge of doubts, by focusing on a particular period in which they were embarrassingly apparent (a similar project could be undertaken in the case of contemporary ¯