Intellectual Currents in Early Modern Islam

The seventeenth century, contrary to popular belief, was a time of great originality and change for scholars in the Ottoman Empire and the Maghreb. In this interview, Khaled El-Rouayheb debunks the many myths of intellectual decline by showing how the intellectual production changed in tandem with major migrations across the Islamic world. We start with the influx of Kurdish and Azeri logicians into the Ottoman Empire, and the new disciplines that they brought with them. We then discuss the movement of scholars from North Africa to Egypt and the Hejaz, and how they insisted on methods of taḥqīq, or verification, rather than taqlīd, or the acceptance of knowledge based on authority alone. Finally, we touch on how the spread of Sufi orders from India and Central Asia into Arabic-speaking regions impacted the development and disputation of the concept of waḥdat al-wujūd, or the unity of being. How does this detailed research on intellectual trends change our understanding of "modernity" and the period we call the "early modern"?