Al-Jāḥiẓ and Religious Knowledge: A Forgotten Islamic Rationalism by Hussein Ali Abdulsater, James Montgomery (foreword) ISBN 9781399521970, 9781399521994, 9781399522007, 1399521977, 1399521993, 1399522000 instant download

Al-Jāḥiẓ and Religious Knowledge: A Forgotten Islamic Rationalism by Hussein Ali Abdulsater, James Montgomery (foreword) ISBN 9781399521970, 9781399521994, 9781399522007, 1399521977, 1399521993, 1399522000 instant download

• Expands the discussion of Islamic rationalism by engaging with a naturalist, empiricist and humanist outlook instead of the pervasive metaphysical and traditionalist approaches

• Provides an unprecedented meticulous engagement with numerous dense texts (covering several thousand pages)

• Reconstructs Jāḥiẓ’s epistemology through a systematic reading of his oeuvre

• Fills a gap within the humanities by showing the vitality of Islamic intellectual history as a source for comparative study

While it may seem paradoxical to combine trust in rational religion with distrust of human reason, this is exactly what a group of understudied Muslim theologians proposed. Known as the Epistemists, they pushed for an inclusive epistemology that broadened the scope of knowledge. They argued that humans can acquire rational knowledge without discursive arguments, through an unconscious process of social exposure. In this, the Epistemists presented a radical alternative to other Islamic conceptions of rationalism, with immense promise for modern contexts.

This book reconstructs a worldview prominent among the Epistemists, and explores how it correlates with their rise and fall as a theological trend. It examines the intellectual project of their premier advocate, al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 868-9), offering a systematic reading of his oeuvre as an Epistemist, and situates it in the formative ʿAbbasid moment of Islamic history.

"This is a most original and distinctive contribution to the subject. A towering figure in pre-modern Islamic culture, al-Jahiz, receives in this work a completely novel reappraisal."

– Tarif Khalidi, American University of Beirut