Intellectual Traditions in Islam

Leading scholars have collaborated here to undertake a broad study of an issue which has perplexed observers of the Islamic world.

Hugh Kennedy begins with a survey on intellectual life in the first centuries of Islam while Oliver Leaman compares the concepts of scientific and philosophical enquiry in Muslim history; Muhsin Mahdi sets out the traditions for rationalism within Islam and the late Norman Calder's chapter demonstrates the limits of Islamic orthodoxy when faced with the impulse to enquire; Farhad Daftary provides an overview of intellectual life among the Ismailis and Alice Hunsberger focuses on Nasir Khusraw, the great Fatimid thinker and intellectual; Annemarie Schimmel writes on reason and mystical experience, the late John Cooper's study provides his observations on the religious intellectual milieu of Safavid Persia and Abdulaziz Sachedina examines the crisis of male epistemology in Islamic jurisprudence.

Finally Mohammed Arkoun surveys the ways in which present-day Islam, grounded in its intellectual tradition, is relating its history and culture to the demands of modernity and globalisation.