CIVILIZATION STUDIES PROGRAM (AUB)
CVSP 202: The Monotheistic Traditions from Late Antiquity to the 13th Century
INTRODUCTION TO ‘CLASSICAL ISLAMIC
THOUGHT’: CHANGE AND CONTINUITY
DAHLIA E. M. GUBARA
October 6, 2015
I. INTRODUCTION:
 What does the past mean to us today?
What is ‘CLASSICAL’ - What is ‘ISLAMIC’ What is ‘THOUGHT’?
II. LATE ANTIQUITY,
ISLAM AS A TRADITION
 Two conventional theories on the formation of
Islam: ‘Out of Arabia’ and/or the Late Antique Near
East
 More than an epoch: Late Antiquity as a ‘shared
epistemic space’ (a space of knowledge-making)
 Balancing the old and the new: Revelation and
Prophecy as the linchpin of tradition
Expansion of the Islamic State
Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ wa Khullān al-Wafāʾ wa Ahl al-Hamd
wa Abnāʾ al-Majd (the Brethren of Purity, the Loyal
Friends, People of Praise, and Sons of Glory)
Al-Ghazālī’s Wanderings
The Harūniyya, (Seljuk-Ilkhanid mausoleum in
Tus, near Mashhad, Iran) where al-Ghazālī is
said to be buried
(http://archnet.org/sites/3885/media_contents/62839)
III. COMMON NARRATIVES, CONTEXTUAL MATTERS:
Our authors, their times, their works, and their reception
Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ
Anonymous collective – esoteric
fraternity
Possibly active in the last quarter of the
10th century A.D. in Basra and Baghdad
Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad
ibn Muḥammad
al-Ghazālī
Renowned figure of ‘mainstream Islam’
Born 1058 near Tus, northeastern Iran
Died in 1111 A.D.
Sunni, Ash’ari, Shafi’i, and close to
Political, sectarian and creedal affiliation
Seljuk vizir Nizam al-Mulk and the
unknown
Abbasid court
Prolific corpus spanning many
Other works unknown
disciplines (jurisprudence, theology,
philosophy and Sufism)
Rasāʾil – encyclopedic, classification of
Munqidh - Intellectual, autobiographical
knowledge
Critical of falsafa, reconciles legal
Philosophically neo-Platonist and
ecumenical in spirit
orthodoxy with Sufi mysticism
Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ, Epistle 22: The Case of the Animals vs. Man before the King of
the Jinn (online source)
Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ: Epistle 22: The Case
of the Animals vs. Man before the
King of the Jinn:
Al-Ghazālī, Al-munqidh min al-ḍalāl:
The Trial: disputation, debate, proof
and the methods of reasoning
Diving into the Profound Sea of
Knowledge
Cosmological doctrines (Creation and
Creator)
Severing the Fetters of Servile
Conformism
Mediation on power and justice
(mastery/bondage; tyranny/mercy;
truth/falsehood-ignorance)
Deducing the True Meaning of
Things
Ethical-spiritual ecology (ayāt Allah,
earth as a Trust)
The Primordial Covenant, Prophecy
and the Question of tawātur
Knowledge as Ḥikmah
The Ḥakīm’s antidote (sickness of the
heart)
The fable as a form (universal truth,
the speech of the powerful vs. the
powerless)
IV. LEVELS OF INTERPRETATION:
• Epistemic certainty:
Integrated Methods, Modes of Reasoning
• The Ends of Knowledge:
 Social: pedagogy, instruction, initiation, social
and political order
Individual: happiness, salvation (soteriology the final return to God, yawm al-ḥisāb)
V.FINAL CONSIDERATIONS:
Reason vs. Revelation? (al-manqūl and alma’qūl)
Syncretism and Reconciliation
Philosophy vs. Religion?
Postscript – ‘Polymathesis,’
Education, Edification
the ‘CVSP Man’