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INTELLECTUAL ACHIEVEMENT OF CLASSICAL ISLAM.
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Examines accomplishments in science, astronomy, philosophy, commerce.... More...
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Examines accomplishments in science, astronomy, philosophy, commerce. Impact of internal political strife and from foreign external invasions. Political and economic fragmenttion. Closing the gates of intellectual freedom, "ijtihad" or independent inquiry. Why the gates were closed and to what degree did the closing ccause general intellectual decline. Islamic law & legal system. Islamic faith.
Paper Introduction:
THE GATES OF IJTIHAD
Intellectual Freedom and Constraint in Classical Islam
Introduction
The brilliance of classical Islamic civilization in its first four centuries is inescapable, and for the West it is no recent discovery. Indeed, knowledge of Islamic intellectual achievements, and the fact that at one time they greatly surpassed the West, are both deeply rooted in Western intellectual lore. The medieval West recovered much of its "lost" Greek intellectual heritage, such as Aristotle, not directly from Greek or even classical Latin but through translations from Arabic (Rosenthal, 1965, p. 14).
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The discussion firstexamines the general outlook of Islam, and how this outlook raisedjurisprudence and the philosophy of law to a central role in Islamicthought. Thus all advanced legal systems tend to give great weight toprecedent, and working judges frown on novel legal theories. These same merchants werethe leading members of most Muslim communities, so their views and concernshad enormous influence. Thesucceeding local rulers never captured the prestige of the caliphsthemselves (Khalidi, 1985, p. Thus forexample a mystical, monastic or hermetic tradition has always been markedlyattenuated in Islam. Instead the civil law was promulgatedand cases judged by courts of experts whose authority depended on generalpublic regard for their opinions. The reason did notnecessarily have anything do with actual decline or even stagnation withinthe Islamic world itself, and everything to do with the startlingtransformation of the West in these same centuries. This was a further complication. The crowning achievement of classical astronomy, the work of ClaudiusPtolemy, is still known by its Arabic name, Almagest, rather than the GreekSyntaxis. As time goes on, however, the major implications of the newideas are worked out, and further progress becomes both less dramatic andmore difficult. 2, p. In contrast, Islamic civil law came into general force throughout theMuslim world. (1976). The Western perception ofsuch decline may well owe more to Western than Islamic experience. 35). was consistently effective, in letter and in spirit,among merchants (Hodgson, 1974, v. II: Religion and Society. Most of the traditional star names in Western usage --Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Rigel, and a couple of hundred others -- arelikewise of Arabic origin, as are a number of other scholarly or scientificterms such as algebra. Scattered among the West's monasteries were ahandful of first-rate thinkers and writers (such as the Venerable Bede),but amid poor communications they had little contact with each other and socould not readily build on one another's work. 4 6). (Hinduism,which flanks Islam on the other side, has a similarly strong ascetictradition, but this was not encountered until after the formative age ofIslam.) Abstract philosophical speculation of any sort has some of thecharacteristics of monastic hermeticism. The intellectual flowering of theWest happened to coincide with the Crusades and a sharp, general, andprolonged deterioration of Islamic-Western relations. This was true of the classical Islamicgolden age, of the Chinese intellectual golden age of Confucius and LaoTze, Athens golden age, the Italian Renaissance, the American intellectualflowering that produced the Constitution, and probably all others. The existence of a stifling effect on free thought due to the closureof the gates of ijtihad, however, need not imply that Islamic thought wasfrozen into utter rigidity or actual decline. The Classical Heritage in Islam. Moreover, in intellectual endeavors this filling-in process often hasthe effect of forming constraints. The Golden Age of Islam. By the sixthIslamic century, universities had sprung up across Western Europe, andevolved into peers of their Islamic counterparts. It maywell also arise from a misunderstanding of the normal development ofintellectual traditions.Absolute or Relative Decline For the period between about the second century of the Islamic eraand, say, the fifth or sixth century (i.e., between c. New York:Praeger.Fakhry, Majid (1938). Primitive Islam arose among relativelysmall if mercantile communities. This is of course a generalized application of the same principle wesaw at work earlier in Islamic law (or in any legal system). Judges ruled independently, "not aspart of a continuing 'court'" (Hodgson, 1974, v. 2 3).Related to political fragmentation is economic fragmentation. Such a view undermines the natural sciences, at least insofar asthese seek to identify natural laws.Closing the Gates of Ijtihad A more general cause of intellectual stifling and decline can befound in the general view among later Sunni Muslims that the "gates ofijtihad," or independent inquiry, were "closed" in the third Islamiccentury. Rulers for the most part had nointerest in, say, which of several merchants might have rightful claim tosome disputed merchandise. Thus it must be acknowledged that the closing of the gates ofijtihad, however reasonable to working jurists, had a deleterious spillovereffect. To the extent that Islamic thoughtcentered heavily on problems of law, "rigidity" and "stagnation" may wellhave seemed desirable in themselves. Thus both strong popularsentiment and official sanction could be brought to bear against radicalintellectual views. Emile andJenny Marmorstein, trans. The most popular cause given for Islamic decline, at least in theWest, is however the influence of Islam itself, specifically of religiousauthority stifling independent thought. "Fanatical Mohammedans" [sic] area longstanding Western trope, and for modern Western secularists theyprovide a suitable warning of the possible effects of Christianfundamentalism. Such noveltheories may help untangle the rare exceptionally complex case, or oneposing issues that never before arose. Looking back from the laterWest they appear only as scattered lights amid darkness. Thisimpulse undoubtedly, however, was strengthened by the religious basis ofthe law. This was theunusually close bond between intellectual inquiry in general and legalism.To understand this bond, something must be said about the overall characterof Islam among the world's religions. It evolved to meet the needs of a commercial society, andbusiness law then as now had to deal with tangles of conflicting rights farmore complex than those that come before many criminal courts. Viewed in this legal context, the closing of the gates of ijtihad --which was itself first and foremost legal intellectual inquiry -- takes ona different and clearer light. The political disintegration of the Caliphate in the laterclassical period has been identified as one possible cause. 2, p. In law theprocess of finding and defining intellectual limits, and drawing back from"fringe" speculation is given special force by the practical importance ofthe law itself. One important factor in the Islamic experience andthe "closing of the gates of ijtihad," however, was indeed distinctive ofIslam (if not necessarily altogether peculiar to it). Classical Arab Islam: The Culture andHeritage of the Golden Age. 1). Western schoolmen couldhave stood up syllogism for syllogism to Muslim scholars; they no longersaw Islamic civilization as a treasure house of wonders but as a people whoknew no more than they themselves did, and who in Western eyes wereinfidels to boot. A number of reasons have been given for thisdecline. Thereason for this transience of golden ages is not some inevitable law ofstagnation and decline, but the equally iron law of diminishing returns. He would not think of selling his business andmoving to a mountaintop, even as an ideal. Therefore, for example, a pious Muslim merchant wouldnot typically be drawn to or intrigued by a teacher who expounded abstractideas as a means of withdrawal (and so would not provide financial supportto that teacher's school). (We will return to this point below.) At that same time, the West was near an intellectual low point.Universities did not exist. The need for legal innovation dwindled, and the risks -- inupsetting precedents and leaving everyone uncertain of previously well-established law -- became greater. The great synthesis attempted by the Arabic philosophers, on thelines of Aristotle and Plato, thus breaks down in later times entirely.This surely is not without relation to the splintering and weakening ofthe Arab state, which proceeded apace after the fourth/tenth century(Dunlop, 1971, p. The concept had however begun to appear much earlier. THE GATES OF IJTIHAD Intellectual Freedom and Constraint in Classical IslamIntroduction The brilliance of classical Islamic civilization in its first fourcenturies is inescapable, and for the West it is no recent discovery.Indeed, knowledge of Islamic intellectual achievements, and the fact thatat one time they greatly surpassed the West, are both deeply rooted inWestern intellectual lore. 339-4 ). As a consequence,Muslim scholars themselves remained almost wholly unaware of a vibrant newcivilization to the northwest of them, and so could learn nothing from it.Few learned Muslims would have expected to learn anything from thebarbarians who had lately put the population of Jerusalem to the sword, andif one had found his way to Paris or Oxford he would have received nowelcome there. 2, p. the legal resolution of private disputes, and aframework by which such disputes can be avoided. Islamic thought had continued to make the normal progress of amature intellectual tradition, but meanwhile Western thought had beentransformed (not least by contact with Islamic sources). It is not surprising, thus, that the four great schools ofmainstream Sunni Muslim thought are essentially schools of legal analysisand interpretation. Points of contradiction are identifiedand analyzed, and these tend to confine the sweep of imagination. Vol. Much pre-Islamic business law remained in effect, where it was consistent withIslamic principles, but Islamic civil law "though largely ignored at courtand among peasants ... Islamic Occasionalism, and its Critiques byAverroes and Aquinas. For a similar reason, a relative "stagnation" of Islamic intellectualinquiry after the Golden Age was inevitable. Islamic criminal law, in fact, was rarely in force in either theclassical Islamic era or subsequently; its punishments were too few andmild, and its procedures and standards of evidence far too demanding, forthe interests of autocratic caliphs and emirs (Hodgson, 1974, v. I: The Classical Age of Islam.Chicago: University of Chicago.________ (1974). The contrast to Christianity with its strong monastic tradition isstriking, the more so considering how active Christian monasticism had beenin subsequently Islamicized lands such as Egypt. It will be suggested at the end of this essay that intellectualtraditions eventually reach mature stability, accompanied by a law ofdiminishing returns. In a commercial society like Islam, where the communityleaders had a daily concern for legal issues, than in say an agrariansociety whose legal workings are less constant and complicated. Joan Spencer, trans.New York: American Elsevier.Rosenthal, Franz (1965). When a civilization or intellectual community first gets hold of amajor set of new ideas, a period of dramatic progress-- a golden age -- is likely to ensue. 124). Law, to most people, means primarily criminal law. At least one potential source of growth for Islamicthought, interchange with the West, was therefore effectively blocked off.(This works both ways; few Westerners after about the fifth Islamic centuryconsidered the possibility of learning anything new from Muslims.) But afurther element, peculiar neither to Islam itself nor to its interaction inthe West, caused Islamic thought to become more constrained.From Brilliance to Maturity It was noted earlier that intellectual "Golden Ages" ages areinherently fairly short-lived. Instead, he would be much moreinterested in a teacher who expounded how he could draw closer to God inthe course of his business, by fair dealings with his fellows.The Central Role of Law Classical Islamic thought therefore had a significant (by no meansabsolute) bias in favor of lines of inquiry that would clarify problems ofthis sort -- what, for example, constitutes fair dealing in varioussituations -- rather than those that led away from worldly concerns.Specifically, this gave Islamic intellectual development a strong biastoward law. As a formal proposition the closing of the gates of ijtihad wasonly fully set forth in around the eighth Islamic century (Hodgson, 1974,v. The law is most effective when it need not be directlycalled upon. Finally, thebrilliance of a golden age, Islamic or any other, is inherently a temporarystate of affairs. In law as in other realms ofthought the result was a golden age. Such traditions do exist, Sufism for example(Khalidi, 1985, pp. Islam, however, taught for the most part that the path to Godlay through engagement rather than withdrawal. Yet even then they do so at therisk of accidentally overturning a host of precedents and so generatingunforeseen new complications, in turn leading to disputes that would neverotherwise have arisen. Occasionalism, a position whichholds that all natural events ("occasions") are direct actions of God,gained a substantial following in classical Islamic thought (Fakhry, 1938,p. The familiar legal proverb hasit that hard cases make bad law, and any case that comes to court is in asense a hard case. Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press.Lewis, Bernard (1974). Berkeley: University of California.Savory, R.M., ed. A concludingsection re-examines the Western perception of Islamic decline; the degreeto which this was rooted in Western rather than Islamic experience and thedegree to which a "closing of the gates" may be a natural development inany system of thought. Government was called on only whendirect enforcement of a judgment was called for, and then the authoritiessimply imposed the judgment as given. Thus it underwent little development. The Venture of Islam: Conscience andHistory in a World Civilization. 122). 59). Introduction to Islamic Civilization. II: The Expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods.Khalidi, Tarif (1985). 9 CE and 12 -13 CE) the perception of relative decline of Islamic civilization whencompared to the West is in fact quite accurate. Clearly, converts tendedto leave this impulse behind them when they became Muslims. Another feature of the Islamic classical age,dominance of the Mediterranean Sea and its commerce, is preserved by theArabic-derived word used in every European language for the commander of anaval fleet: admiral (Savory, 1976, p. Both common sense and the natural bias of jurists toward precedentthus argued for closing the gates of ijtihad, in order to protect analready-robust legal system from potentially dangerous tampering. Islamic universitieswere the centers of the intellectual world. In the communitythere can be no total error concerning the meaning of the Book of God"(quoted in Lewis, 1974, p. As the legal system matured, however, the insights and solutionsfound became established principles of law, relied upon by both juriststhemselves and the public they served. More generally, Islamic thought will be shown tobe heavily influenced by legal thought, and the legal principles of"Twelver" Shi'ism developed quite differently from those of Sunni Islam,due to the special authority of imams to promulgate doctrine (Savory, 1976,p. NewYork: Cambridge University.----------------------- 13 It is true that in Islamic thought, these principles often werelinked to articles of Islamic faith, or at least were claimed to be thuslinked by academic or religious authorities. As the system of thoughtdeveloped it identified boundaries beyond which lay risks of self-contradiction, or of undermining basic principles that had become generallyaccepted -- and for which, if undermined, no viable replacements seemed toexist. The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a WorldCivilization. Islamic law(properly Shari'a) is, in the modern West, associated exclusively with itscriminal law, particularly a handful of punishments that are harsh tocontemporary Western sensibilities. Rulers did as they saw fit incriminal matters, with only a nod to the accepted (Islamic) principles ofthe community as a whole. Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Captureof Constantinople. Actually, formal precedent as it exists in Anglo-American law did notexist as such in Islamic civil law. None of these factors by themselves absolutely refutethe common perception of Islamic decline, but they should lead Westernersto regard popular assumptions in a much more critical light. (Physical exploration of the world followed a similarcourse; once one generation had already discovered new continents, latergenerations had to undertake journeys equally or even more dangerous todiscover individual mountains.) Sweeping conceptual discoveries give way to filling in the mentalmap. The great majority of legal contracts are never in factdisputed in a court of law. The medieval West recovered much of its "lost"Greek intellectual heritage, such as Aristotle, not directly from Greek oreven classical Latin but through translations from Arabic (Rosenthal, 1965,p. ReferencesDunlop, D.M. Arab Civilization to AD 15 . 1, pp. Other forms of philosophical inquiry in some sense"piggybacked" onto this basic function of the schools, as tools forresolving complex issues of conflicting rights. These same things, viewed through adifferent lens, are stability and consistency, highly desirable to peoplewho find themselves in court or who wish to do business without ending upin one. In such a religion,philosophical speculation can be seen as one path by which a believer canwithdraw from the tumult of the world and therefore possibly draw closer toGod. 123), but a similareffect of stability was provided by the gradual accumulation of fatwa,advisory opinions by eminent jurists, to which later judges could refer. Three hundred years later, however, the situation had radicallychanged. Thus the closing of the gates had at least some genuine stiflingeffect on the range of subsequent Islamic thought. Many of these had never previously come before an Islamic court.Judges and legal scholars needed and welcomed far-ranging philosophicalinquiries that might shed light on legal and ethical problems and point theway to adequate resolution of the cases. Vol. Moreover, they took the main role in supportinglearned institutions, which thus naturally were adapted to theirinclinations and needs. If the law and its intellectual underpinnings were divine, rangingbeyond generally accepted limits was regarded as not only unfruitful butimpious. So long as taxes were paid on it, they werecontent to enforce the judgment of the respected Islamic courts. This Western consciousness of classical Islamic intellectualachievements is, however, closely linked to another long-establishedWestern perception, namely that Islamic intellectual life stagnated afterthe classical period, and has either made no subsequent progress or hasactually retrogressed. It thus draws a favorable nod even from believers who have noexpectation of withdrawing themselves. 14). This was true of Romanlaw, is true of modern Anglo-American law, and perhaps even more true ofIslamic law. Islam pervades all aspects of life, and thelaw most of all. Vol. Thus,when Western amateur archeologists first discovered Troy and Mycenae, thelegends of Homer seemed to come to life; the physical or mental touristcould suddenly stand where Achilles once stood. This again is by no means peculiar to Islam; modern science resists"fringe" speculation (e.g., UFOs or the theories of Velikovsky) for similarreasons. This outlook did not encourage seeking Godin the wilderness. Although the closurewas not formally posited till far into the middle Islamic period, it wasclearly in progress by the late classical period, and may be regarded aseffectively in force by the end of the fourth Islamic century. Muslim scholars could and did engage in abstract speculation as wellas anyone. 67-77), but they have been somewhat off the mainstreamof Islamic thought and faith. ClassicalIslam was an urban, commercial civilization; both intra-Islamic politicalstrife and external invasion (by Turks and Crusaders, and later by theMongols) broke trade links and caused economic decline of cities across theMuslim world (Lombard, 1975, p. Any such discussion, in a briefspace, must necessarily ignore a host of exceptions and howevers, yetremain broadly valid.A Worldly Faith Islam is arguably the most worldly of the great religious traditions. The Western perception may also be influenced by Westernexperience; what had been a far more advanced civilization came to appearas a merely equal one, but infidel and hostile to boot. Among Shias, the gates remained openunder certain conditions. 1 8). London: George Allen & Unwin.Hodgson, Marshall G.S. In fact, however, criminal law is onlya small part of any advanced legal system, by far the greater part of whichis "civil law," i.e. Theretrospective dating of the closure to the later classical period thusseems like an acknowledgment by Muslims themselves that their greatcreative age ended at that time. At the beginning of this period, Islamic civilization was just comingfully into its own. From this basis, the closing of the gates of ijtihad is thenshown to be a logical consequence of a legal system's needs. All parties know the legal rights involved andhow any court would rule on them; indeed a main function of the civil lawis to keep disputes from arising in the first place because rights andobligations are understood from the outset. (1974). It should be noted that the closing of the gates of ijtihad is aspecifically Sunni Muslim position. It removes the person who engagesin it, at least for the moment, from the hustle and bustle of daily life.A religion with a monastic tradition thus lends a kind of implicit supportto such speculation, and the temperament it encourages (even if authoritiesmay denounce particular speculations as heretical). (1971). The remainder of this discussion will consider the closing of thegates of ijtihad; why it happened and to what degree it may justifiably beregarded as marking general intellectual decline. New York: Harper &Row.Lombard, Maurice (1975). Moreover, with the decline of the caliphate about 25 -3 years afterMuhammad, Islamic civil law became nearly independently of government. As Islam became both the prevalent faithand the legal framework of millions of people in one of the most developedparts of the world, Islamic legal thought faced the enormous task ofdrawing on basic principles to find solutions to nearly every dispute thatmight ever arise. Islam, by virtue of being an exceptionally worldly religion, isalso conceived by its believers as a seamless web, not a "Sabbath religion"observed only on holy days. Fewer cases posed surprising newchallenges, because a large body of law was at hand to resolve most ofthem. Subsequent work byprofessionals has dimmed this magic, and Homer has given way to thedetailed study of potsherds, as often as not casting doubt on dramaticpossibilities. For civil law to be useful it has to be regular and generallypredictable. For a period of time such progressis, if not easy, at least readily available to any first-rate thinker.Each new idea opens the way to a host of others, all waiting to beexplored. Even this, however, is scarcely unique to Islam, asthe experience of Galileo demonstrates.Conclusion We have suggested that the common Western perception of Islamicintellectual rigidity and stagnation, setting in around the fourth Islamiccentury, may be an oversimplification. The Prophet Muhammad was a merchant, and the Islamic community arose in anurban, commercial milieu, among believers who saw their faith as a guidethrough everyday life rather than a means of withdrawing from it. It had absorbed the existing heritage of the Levantand Persia, and was embarked on synthesizing them and transforming theminto a distinctly Islamic intellectual tradition. Some items of evidence can be found to support thesearguments in a more sophisticated form. By any standard this was anIslamic golden age, and in the nature of things it could not last very longin its full intensity. 1 ). The classical jurist al-Shafi'i, in emphasizing the central role of the community of pious andlearned Muslims, wrote that "error arises in separation.
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