Volume 74, Issue 1

The so-called Materialismusstreit evolved in the second half of the 19th century as a new genre of popular literature and was carried out as a public debate mainly by German popularisers. In the Ottoman context, however, the reception of the Materialismusstreit demonstrates how a universalised perception of the West had already become the main frame of reference among secularly educated Ottoman intelligentsia in the course of late Ottoman modernity. This fact not only constitutively shaped their modern discourse on Islam. Moreover, it brought about at the same time fundamental semantic shifts in concepts holding a prominent role within the Islamicate epistemological tradition. Consequently, the entanglement between this abovementioned frame of reference and concepts inherited from a traditional knowledge order resulted in a conceptual rupture with the traditional epistemologies. In an attempt to exemplify the argument, this paper builds on a less-known dispute on materialism between Celal Nuri and Ahmed Hilmi (Filibeli), and shows the transformation in their usage of epistemic concepts such as ʿilm , fenn , and dīn , as well as their reception of the Orientalist Islam discourse. Prior to the analysis of two core primary sources, the first part of this paper elaborates on the theoretical and methodological modalities of making fruitful the intellectual output of late Ottoman modernity for a globally entangled intellectual history.

This article discusses the new divorce on grounds of discord procedure ( taṭlīq li-š-šiqāq ) within the context of the Moroccan family law reform of 2004. Literature available in English and French has, so far, focused primarily on the improvements the Moroccan family law reform has brought in regard to women’s rights. The reform is considered one of the most progressive legislative projects in the MENA region and a milestone for gender equality, notably the reform of divorce law. Divorce on grounds of discord was seen as the long-awaited divorce guarantee for women. However, legal scholars maintained that case law jeopardised the divorce guarantee. This legal-anthropological study is informed by fieldwork at the family court in Rabat, as well as official statistics, case law and the standard legal commentary. It aims to scrutinise how divorce on grounds of divorce is put into practice by the judiciary, how Moroccan men and women make use of it and how changes on a procedural and institutional level affect the implementation of the new divorce procedure. My empirical findings show that divorce on grounds of discord effectively guarantees Moroccan women’s right to divorce. Well beyond the discussion on women’s rights in divorce, I will demonstrate that, within a decade, divorce on grounds of discord developed into a standard divorce procedure for both men and women across socio-economical milieus and age groups.

This article presents a hitherto unnoted and unpublished thirteenth-century Arabic work on riddles. Zaynaddīn Ibn al-ʿAǧamī’s (591–674/1195–1276) Kitāb iʿǧāz al-munāǧī fī l-alġāz wa-l-aḥāǧī (The Confidant’s Bemusement: On Riddles and Charades) is the first surviving Arabic collection of literary riddles by a single author. The Aleppine littérateur and religious scholar Ibn al-ʿAǧamī composed this book for al-Malik an-Nāṣir Yūsuf, the last Ayyubid ruler of Aleppo and Damascus (r. 634–658/1236–1260). The work is an extensive collection of riddles in verse and prose. All the riddles were composed and subsequently solved and explained by Ibn al-ʿAǧamī himself. The book, which testifies to the popularity of this genre in Ayyubid Syria, survives in a unique manuscript that has been falsely catalogued as a copy of an earlier work on riddles. Despite its importance for the history of the Arabic literary riddle, its existence has therefore remained unknown.

The aim of this article is to present two early examples of eye-witness-like reports found in Arabic historiography. The two events in question are the death of al-Marwān, the last Umayyad caliph, in 750 CE, and a massacre ordered or let happen by the new governor of Mosul, which took place in the same year. In the narration of the flight and killing of al-Marwān, the protection of the female family members is the main motive for al-Marwān’s actions. The Massacre of Mosul must have been a traumatic experience that endured in the collective memory, involving unprecedented atrocities against civilians. The historian al-Azdī (d. 945 CE) could base his account on the living tradition of the local families even 150 years after the event. There are reports from the perspectives both of victim and perpetrator. The prominent role of women is a characteristic feature of the narrations concerning both events. In the presentation of the texts, particular weight is given to details and nuances which communicate the emotional attitudes or the narrators towards the events and the moral lessons exemplified by them. This is the only way to recognize what could be called the “soul” of the text.

This paper discusses the idea of the “local” as it applies to Persian history writing across the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and produced in South Asia. Geographers ordered land and space with the concepts of climes (s. iqlīm ) and regions ( kishvar ) which reflected different peoples and climates. Historians more generally related geography to power, and kingdoms (s. mamlakat ) served as the primary geographical framework. How did imperial ideologies formulated in thirteenth and fourteenth-century Islamic courts define India through geographical and historical concepts? Does the idea of the “local” exist as a conceptual idea in history writing? This paper is concerned to understand how historical knowledge was used in this political context to define the localities and regions of India in relation to Delhi and other Islamic courts of India.

Despite his familiarity with the well established Indo-Persian history‐writing traditions, ‘Abdullāh Muḥammad al-Makkī al-Āṣafī al-Ulughkhānī ‘Ḥājjī al-Dabīr’ (b. 1540) chose to write his history of the Gujarat Sultanate and of other Indo-Muslim polities in Arabic. Ulughkhānī consulted several Persian chronicles produced in Delhi and Ahmedabad, including Sikandar Manjhū’s Mir’āt-i Sikandarī (composed c. 1611) that has served as the standard history of the Gujarat Sultanate for modern historians. Despite its ‘exceptionalism’, Ulughkhānī’s early seventeenth-century Ẓafar al-wālih bi Muẓaffar wa ālihi has largely been seen as a corroborative text to Persian tawārīkh . This article re-evaluates the importance of Ulughkhānī’s Arabic history of Gujarat by situating the text and its author in the social, political and intellectual context of the sixteenth-century western Indian ocean. Specifically, it demonstrates how the several historical digressions in the text are not dispensable aberrations to his narrative but integral to Ulughkhānī’s expansive social horizons at the time of robust commercial, pilgrimage, diplomatic and scholarly connections between Gujarat and the Red Sea regions.

In his work ʿUmdat al-ʿārifīn , Šayḫ al-Ašrafānī, a Druze scholar living in Syria in the 11th/17th century, composed a Druze history of origins for the entire community. This universal history portrays Druzism as an inherent part of human history, like the other monotheistic doctrines. The author thus offers a theological account of the birth of Druzism by tracing a linear discourse of world history from Adam to the Druze daʿwa (preaching) in the 5th/11th century. Al-Ašrafānī also attributes an Islamic character to Druzism by drawing on the Druze sacred text as well as exegetical literature from the late 9th/15th century, while highlighting the Islamic nature of Druzism and its pre-eminence. This rewriting of history in the 11th/17th century contributed to the popularization of Druzism, as attested in other texts from the same period. While al-Ašrafānī did not greatly influence his contemporaries, his work was of considerable importance in the Druze communities of Bilād al-Šām afterwards. Indeed, ʿUmdat al-ʿārifīn had such a substantial impact on Druze historiography that it became a historical source for writing and rewriting the Druze history of origins. Despite being quoted extensively by modern Druze historians, it remains unpublished, being kept secret in the community.

The Arabic chronicle ( Ta’rīkh ) of the Maldives composed by the qadi Ḥasan Tāj al-Dīn (d. 1139/1727) and continued by his nephew Muḥammad Muḥibb al-Dīn (1118/1706-1199/1785) and his grandson Ibrāhīm Sirāj al-Dīn (d. after 1243/1827) is major but unexploited source for not just Maldivian but also Indian Ocean history more broadly. Covering Maldivian history from the purported date of the islands’ conversion to Islam in 548/1143, the Ta’rīkh is also imbued with a specific pious and ethical agenda. It seeks to situate the Maldives in the broader context of Islamic history stretching back to the Rāshidūn Caliphs, while using the past to impart ethical lessons to its audience, ostensibly the Maldivian sultans. However, its authors were also deeply involved in the Maldives’ tumultuous political life, and their presentation of events is also influenced by their own personal experiences and factional affiliations. This article explores the pious, ethical and political agenda of the Ta’rīkh .