The Archetypal Sunni Scholar, livre ebook

This is a rare study of a late premodern Islamic thinker, Ibrahim al- Bājūrī, a nineteenth-century scholar and rector of Cairo's al-Azhar University. Aaron Spevack explores al- Bājūrī's legal, theological, and mystical thought, highlighting its originality and vibrancy in relation to the millennium of scholarship that preceded and informed it, and also detailing its continuing legacy. The book makes a case for the normativity of the Gabrielian Paradigm, the study of law, rational theology, and Sufism, in the person of al- Bājūrī. Soon after his death in 1860, this typical pattern of scholarship would face significant challenges from modernists, reformers, and fundamentalists. Spevack challenges beliefs that rational theology, syllogistic logic, and Sufism were not part of the predominant conception of orthodox scholarship and shows this scholarly archetype has not disappeared as an ideal. In addition, the book contests prevailing beliefs in academic and Muslim circles about intellectual decline from the thirteenth through nineteenth centuries.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Al-Bājūrī’s Life and Scholarship
A Traditional Shaykh al-Azhar in an Era of Attempted Reform
Al-Bājūrī’s Character
Al-Bājūrī’s Works
Al-Bājūrī’s Commentaries and Their Predecessors
Al-Bājūrī’s Literary Sources and the Commentary Tradition
2. Al-Bājūrī’s View of Religion and Method in the Egyptian Milieu
The Archetype and Method
The Gabrielian Paradigm: Al-Bājūrī’s View of the Three Dimensions of Islam
The Ijmā’-Ikhtilāf Spectrum
The Egyptian Milieu
3. Al-Bājūrī in Dialogue with His Archetypal Predecessors
Al-Bājūrī’s Theological Predecessors
Al-Bājūrī’s Predecessors in Law
Al-Bājūrī’s Sufi Predecessors
The Independent Jurist-Theologian-Sufis and Their Affiliations
4. Al-Bājūrī’s Legal, Theological, and Mystical Thought
Al-Bājūrī on Law: Ijtihād and Taqlīd
Al-Bājūrī on Sufism: Its Goals, Methods, and Explanations or Exclamations
Al-Bājūrī on the Rational Sciences
5. Legacy and Conclusion
Al-Bājūrī’s Legacy
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index