Religious Studies: A Global View

in specialized works. (.. .) [B]y this evolutionary end, the two opposing

currents that we noted at the beginning of the second century (refutation

and description) are now both transmuted into the third genre.

(Monnot 1985: 46 [my translation])

This literature on religious others, which reflects the emergence of a pre-

modern study of religions in Islamic history, is not widespread, as the numbers

in the chart above indicate. Yet in terms relative to the production of knowledge

during that pre-modern period of history, it represents more than isolated cases.

The content of this literature and especially its methodologies in terms of the

pre-modern study of religions point towards a cultural milieu that produced

a strong basis for what I prefer to call a ‘proto-scientific study of religions’.

So how did it all begin?

At the turn of the ninth century CE, a competition arose in the form of the

shu‘b¥yahmovement between mostly Iranian converts to Islam, who sought

to reclaim different aspects of their pre-Islamic Sassanian heritage, and Arab

Muslims who emphasized elements of their pre-Islamic Arab heritage (Hodgson

1974: 461). This context throws light on the works of Ibn al-Kalb¥(d. ca.820)

who both boasted of Arab ancestry with solid Islamic credentials and rejected

any of the idolatrous practices of this Arabic heritage. He was probably the

first Mu‘tazil¥to talk about ‘concepts’ (al-ma‘Çn¥) (Nader 1984: 36), and that

may have allowed him to produce the most ancient general treatise in Arabic

on religious others: KitÇb yaªtaw¥‘alÇ‘asharat kutub f¥al-radd ‘alÇahl al-

milÇl(Book composed of ten books of refutation against people of different

nations) (Monnot 1985: 52). However, for the later Muslim scholar and

scientist al-B¥rn¥(973–after 1050 CE), the only ‘objective’ author was al-

Iranshahr¥(10th century CE?), who towards the last quarter of the third Islamic

century (ca. 900 CE) wrote two books no longer extant, entitled KitÇb al-ath¥r

(Book of heights) and KitÇb al-dal¥l([or jal¥l?]) (Book of lowliness [or glories?])

(Monnot 1985: 56). Other works were written in a composite style reflecting

a natural propensity for fluid generic boundaries. The unknown author of

AkhbÇr al-s¥nd wa-al-hind(Annals of China and India) compiled his travelogue

work around 851 CE. Ibn Qutaybah (d. 889 CE) wrote his ‘Uyn al-akhbÇr

(Choice narratives) as a large work on adab(culture or manners) in which

countless details about religious others can also be found.

The fourth and fifth Islamic centuries marked the peak of the development

of a proto-scientific study of religions in Muslim writings, not so much in terms

of numbers—they were in fact smaller than in the second and third Islamic

centuries—but in terms of quality, which reflected the beginning of a

methodological self-reflexivity. This period was also a golden age in Arabic

literature in general, made possible by a concentration of economic and political

power accumulated in various cities vying to control the vast Islamic empire

or large segments of it (Hodgson 1974: 495). This competition produced

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PATRICE BRODEUR