Reviewed by: The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction by Muhsin J. Al-Musawi Brian Welter The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction by Muhsin J. Al-Musawi, 2015. University of Notre Dame Press, 456 pp., £45.95. ISBN: 978-0-268-02044-6 (pbk) Columbia University professor Muhsin J. Al-Musawi succeeds at showing the great depth and breadth of knowledge in the middle Arabic-Islamic period from the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The author offers convincing material to support his argument that "the long-established Western equation between secularism and humanism needs to be challenged whenever it is applied outside the specific domain of a European Renaissance" (311). Al-Musawi aims to apply Foucault's archaeology of knowledge to this civilisation, which leads to demanding sentences like the following: "[E]pistemological shifts from a basic ternary mode, which collapses signs and the signified into one of resemblance, to a binary mode that assigns representation to signs" (82). Such annoying language comes up repeatedly, slowing down the reading and accomplishing little for the overall argument. A more straightforward prose would have made the book more convincing. Readers soon become accustomed to the ceaseless barrage of names. This flood makes the author's point. The Arabic-centred Islamic civilisation in this oft-disparaged period possessed a dense, dynamic, and creative written and intellectual environment. The author likens medieval Cairo up to the eighteenth-century to Paris from the early modern period onward as the cultural centre for an entire civilisation. Cairo's literary circles reached all the way down to the street and all the way up to the chancery. Self-sustaining, they repeatedly outlived political turmoil. Though Professor Al-Musawi claims to write this book in opposition to major western assumptions of cultural decadence and the resulting lack of intellectual depth during the Islamic middle period, in fact he takes the iconic western stance, "knowledge is power." Detailing the power of the written word in society, the author highlights the importance of all social strata, from the street to the mosque to Sufi brotherhoods [End Page 231] and finally the chancery. Mirroring western assumptions and practices, this takes spirituality out of the equation, which will disappoint many readers. Is Islamic culture not more than the sum of all power? Al-Musawi writes as a western materialist. He therefore offers a far different perspective and reading experience than Henry Corbin or Seyyed Hossein Nasr. His examination of Sufi writings exemplifies the knowledge-is-power mindset. He portrays these mystics less as spiritual seekers and guides than as writers upsetting text-based power structures because they push hermeneutical boundaries and thereby cause "epistemological shifts." This includes a broadening of registers, which "undergo semantic navigation and a blurring of boundaries" (253). Such an analysis, however correct from a certain viewpoint, seems unfaithful to the Islamic tradition, as Sufi teachings in this perspective no longer invite one on a spiritual path, but apparently engage in nothing more than linguistic gymnastics. This reminds one of Hossein Nasr's remarks on Religionwissenschaft in Knowledge and the Sacred (1989): "Religion was studied as fact belonging to various human cultures to be documented and described as one would study and catalogue the fauna of a strange land. The question of faith was of little importance; historical 'facts,' myths, rites, and symbols were more attractive since such aspects of religion could be made subjects for scientific study more readily than what appeared as the nebulous question of faith. … This approach amassed a great deal of information about religions but rarely succeeded in providing meaning for what had been studied" (284). Yet Al-Musawi's dissection of lexis, style, genre, and discourse offers insights to the reader that Corbin or Hossein Nasr tend not to offer, even if this makes The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters more impersonal. The author shows precisely where, linguistically, certain Sufis caused the trouble that led to sometimes violent reactions by the authorities or other Islamic scholars. Mystical writings were not simply for spiritual seekers, but had practical and even political consequences. As Al-Musawi observes, taking the innocence out of spiritual life: "Heavily influenced by the preoccupation with...
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Jan 1, 2023
Radwa Zaki 
Open Access
