INTRODUCTIONvicarious credit for its achievement. Lambton reconciled both ap-
proaches by identifying the changes that produced Islamic civilization
as (1) the influence of Islamic legal theory on the development of social
and economic institutions, and (2) the modification of Islamic theory
by "the attitude of mind and custom prevailing in the conquered
territories. "
Monist approaches have largely been abandoned in recent decades
in favor of a pluralist approach that sees the formation of Islamic
civilization as ;~ultural synthesis of many traditions of diverse origin.
In this form, pluralist explanations probably go back to Mas'udi (d.
965), who saw Islamic civilization as the heir to the cultural contri-
butions of Persians, Chaldaeans, Greeks, Egyptians, Turks, Indians,
Chinese, and Arabs.^4 Hodgson balanced the ancient heritage against
Islamic originality by proposing a cultural dialectic composed of three
"moments." In the first moment a new cultural tradition begins in a
creative action, in an inventive, revelatory, or charismatic encounter.
The second moment is the creation of a group of people who are
committed to its importance and who perpetuate and institutionalize
it. The third, rather extended, moment is one of cumulative interaction
in which the new tradition maintains its vitality through debate and
dialogue, contrasting interests, secondary commitments and discov-
eries, and conflicting sets of presuppositions about what the tradition
should involve. For Hodgson, Islamic civilization was unique in spite
of its pre-Islamic heritage because of "the relative weighting of dif-
ferent elements in the culture."s
One of the main problems with the cultural synthesis approach to
Islamic civilization is the tendency to treat it as a monolithic whole.
Even in Islam's first century one finds many different and conflicting
trends among Muslims. It is more productive to think in terms of what
Muslims did than in terms of what Islam did, and even a dialectic
treatment of issues is an oversimplification. Multidimensional expla-
nations will be closer to reality, and creative adaptation (but then by
whom?) is a better explanation than cultural "borrowing." Even very
3 A.K.S. Lambton, Landlord and Peasant in Persia (London, 1953), p. 16.
4 T. Khalidi, Islamic Historiography: The Histories of Mas'udt (Albany, 1975), pp.
81-142.
S M.G.S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam (Chicago, 1974), I, 80-83, 104. In the same
vein, M. A. Cook, in "The origins of kaliim," BSOAS 43 (1980):43, declares his belief
that "the raw materials of this culture are for the most part old and familiar, and that
it is in the reshaping of these materials that the distinctiveness and interest of the
phenomenon resides."