the three empires and the islamic phoenix 291their teachers. Missionary and other Western established schools had
French and English as the linguistic medium of learning in Syria,
Lebanon and Egypt. The attraction of Western modernization in as
far as the language was concerned had driven intellectuals further
into believing that to be included in the intellectual elite was to be
seen as able to speak a Western language. Politically, with the increas-
ing political dominance of western powers in the Muslim world, and
the subjugation of the Arab Muslim regions, foreign forces ensured
that school curricula included learning a Western language, and, even
further, official government documentation was to be presented in both
Arabic and Western languages. Many Syrians and Lebanese were
able to speak French, Egyptians to speak English, Libyans to com-
municate in Italian, and Moroccans, Algerians and Tunisians to con-
verse at ease in French. This continued to be the case until the mid
twentieth century. This left an unfavourable legacy for the occupied
countries after their liberation. For example, the Algerian govern-
ment after liberation from the French occupation in the early 1960s
had to embark on a serious programme of Arabicisation aimed at
educating Algerians in the Arabic language. But the Ottoman Arabia,
the cradle of Islam, remained pre-dominantly Arabic and from there
and al-Azhar University in Cairo came notable Muslim scholars who
continued to be intellectuals in their native Arabic tongues.
The Closure of the Gate of Jurisprudence
When the gate of jurisprudence was actually declared closed and
what details surrounded the closure does not seem to be very clear.
Some modern scholars even argue the contrary, maintaining that
such a metaphoric gate was never declared shut. But historical texts
refer to closure as being recommended by the jurists, Ulama", of the
eleventh century or so in an attempt to curb intruders from injecting
illegitimate juristic opinion under the claim of ijtihàd. The closure
was urged for several reasons:
By the eleventh century there appeared to be a fair mixture of
scholars of different affiliation that may not be exactly Islamic. That
did not meet the qualifications forijtihàd.
To begin with, for a jurist to claim ijtihàd, he ought to fulfill strict
conditions, of which the command of the language of the Qur"àn,
Arabic, the full understanding of the Holy Text and the Sunnah of