“In carefully orchestrated arguments, with massive documentary evidence, Dallal addresses eighteenth century theological/juridical issues across the span of the Muslim world. He touches on intellectual giants and reform movements from Senegal to Syria, from Yemen to India, delving deeply into complex debates that continue to resonate. Islam without Europe catapults Dallal into the company of revisionists who are also global historians, those looking for a way to redefine Islam outside the parameters of European historical conventions.” Professor B. Lawrence, Vol. 36, No. 4, 2019, American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences.
An extract from the author’s Introduction ‘Reimagining the Eighteenth Century’.
“Sometime around the middle of the nineteenth century, the intellectual world of Muslims began to crumble and the great traditions of the past were forgotten. Contrary to common modern assertions, the recession of these traditions was sudden and unexpected. Throughout the eighteenth century and the early decades of the nineteenth, the Muslim world had witnessed one of the most lively and creative periods in its intellectual history. Echoes of this intellectual activity could still be felt in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, yet nothing in this latter period approximated the erudition and depth of eighteenth-century thought. In the eighteenth century, enormous energies were devoted to a systematic and comprehensive restructuring of Islamic thought. The erudition of eighteenth-century thinkers and their honed historical consciousness enabled them to mold the past and fully appropriate its legacies. Classical styles of thinking were preserved, despite a great awareness of the need to reorganize religious knowledge and identify those aspects of Islam that were shared by all. From within the framework of classical learning, these thinkers dramatically restructured the intellectual world of Muslims. Diverse Islamic ideologies were forged and employed in Islamic sociopolitical as well as intellectual movements. Eighteenth-century models of Islamic activity ranged from political mobilization under the banner of classical Islamic ideology to the creation of a centralized network of Sufi settlements to purely intellectual reform embodied in new approaches to the study of traditional Islamic disciplines.
From the banks of the Ganges to the shores of the Atlantic, masses and elites alike embraced the relentless appeals of eighteenth-century Muslim thinkers. No other earlier period in Islamic history can boast of intellectual activities as self-consciously transformative and inclusive in their conception. Eighteenth-century thinkers were fully aware of the intellectual and political significance of their undertakings, and they embarked upon them with great self-confidence and optimism. Despite their alarmist tone, eighteenth-century thinkers had great hopes for the future: they asserted the potential superiority of later generations of Muslims over earlier ones and then proceeded to demonstrate this superiority; they articulated and espoused an Islam that transcends the boundaries of the schools of law and eradicates sectarian and legal differences; and they advocated the active participation of all Muslims in the definition of Islam and set out meticulously to chart the practical venues for this participation. From the perspective of the late nineteenth century, the intellectual ventures of the eighteenth century had failed to stand the test of time. Yet, judging by the record of the eighteenth century and its immediate aftermath, and not from later, hazy perceptions of this century, these ventures were quite successful and influential. The cultural vitality of the eighteenth century was not limited to certain regions but was spread over most of the Muslim world. The distinguished thinkers of this period came from India and Arabia, North Africa and West Africa, as well as Syria and Yemen. The diverse and rich legacies of this period—the vibrant eighteenth-century intellectual activities in the Muslim world that developed independent of European influence—are the subject of this book.
