The Study of Religions in Premodern Muslim Civilization: Some Distinctions Concerning Its Disciplinary Status

Muhammad Akram

doi:10.3390/rel12020096

Abstract

Scholars have made contesting claims about the nature and scale of works on religions by Muslim scholars before modern times. The present paper explores various primary and secondary sources, especially the classical bibliographical indexes that the scholarly tradition under scrutiny itself produced, and classifies these works into three types: (a) polemics, (b) works that present authentic knowledge about various faith traditions or introduce methodological novelties but carry some degree of apologetic undertone, and (c) descriptive writings on religions which resemble the modern-day academic study of religion. Based on these distinctions and an assessment of the number of works in each type, the paper maintains that a sprouting tradition of descriptive studies of religions existed in the pre-modern Muslim societies, which introduced certain methodical novelties such as comparative method, historiography, and, last but not least, textual criticism, which seems to have heralded the modern biblical studies in some respects. However, this tradition could not mature into a full-fledged discipline at par with many other branches of knowledge that flourished in the heyday of Muslim civilization. These findings imply that the descriptive study of religions other than one’s own is not necessarily a modern Western phenomenon. It can take root in multiple cultural settings.

Highlights

A bulk of writings about religions other than Islam has reached us from the premodern Muslim civilization, from its classical (Hodgson 1977; Lassner and Bonner 2010; Peters 1994) or medieval (Lasker and Stroumsa 1996; Saunders 1965; Von Grunebaum 1961) period that lasted from the middle of the seventh century up to the end of the fifteenth century (Waardenburg 1999, p. 18)
The above numbers help put into perspective the volume of various types of writings on religions produced by the premodern Muslim civilization
Did the study of religions exist in premodern Muslim civilization? The answer to this question depends on which writings one precisely refers to out of many types because distinctions and nuances are critical here

Summary

Introduction

A bulk of writings about religions other than Islam has reached us from the premodern Muslim civilization, from its classical (Hodgson 1977; Lassner and Bonner 2010; Peters 1994) or medieval (Lasker and Stroumsa 1996; Saunders 1965; Von Grunebaum 1961) period that lasted from the middle of the seventh century up to the end of the fifteenth century (Waardenburg 1999, p. 18). For the present undertaking, we propose a single point criterion Those works on religions from Muslim history that are mostly descriptive and not explicitly polemical or apologetic can be considered as the study of religion even if they differ from the modern religious studies in some respects. On noting that the percentage of the descriptive works on religions that resemble the modern-day religious studies is considerable, this paper discusses whether they signify a sustained disciplinary tradition with continued teacher–student lineages and intertextuality In this regard, the article considers if the classical Muslim mappings of various sciences mention the study of religions as a distinct branch of knowledge

A Typology of Muslim Writings on Religions

Distinguishing the Study of Religions from the Polemics

The Question of Disciplinary Status in the Hierarchy of Sciences

Conclusions