Engagements with Reason: Shi’ism and Iran’s Intellectual Culture

 

 
 

The panel encourages conversations among scholars of Shi’ite history and Iran about the delineation of reason (‘aql) and engagements with it in different historical contexts. The panel explores discourses about reason in connection to formative Shi'ism and to the narration of Iranian intellectual history. It investigates connections between reason/rationalism and social context, culture, power, and self-discovery in literary-artistic, doctrinal, juridical, and theological thought from the medieval to the modern period. (Panel convenor Rula Jurdi Abisaab)

Chair
name: 
Rula Jurdi Abisaab
Institutional Affiliation : 
Institue of Islamic Studies, McGill Univerity
Academic Bio: 
Associate Professor at the Institute of Islamic Studies. Completing her second book co-authored by Malek Abisaab on the Shi'ites of Lebanon, Civil Society and Islamic Militancy. Wrote two recent articles on marja'iyyat and on the historiography of early Islam. Research Interests: Safavid Empire, Transformation and Transmission of Legal-Juridical Thought, Socio-economic and Intellectual history of Shi'ite societies in Iran, Iraq, and Syria-Lebanon from the 15th to the 20th Century
Discussant
Name: 
Robert Wisnovsky
Institutional Affiliation : 
Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University
Academic Bio : 
Associate Professor at the Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University. Has several publications on Islamic Philosophy, theology and a major work on Ibn Sina. Research Interest: Islamic Philosophy and Theology with a particular focus on Ibn Sina and the post-classical commentaries on Avicennan philosophical thought.
First Presenter
Name: 
Setrag Manoukian
Institutional Affiliation : 
Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University
Academic Bio : 
Assistant Professor at the Institute of Islamic Studies and the History Department. Published a number of articles in Persian, English and Italian dealing with Iranian history and literature. Completed a monograph on modern Shiraz. Research Interests: History-Anthropology of Iran with a focus on the transformation of literary and artistic cultures, definitions of self, visual representation, and history of thought in modern Iran.
Concise Paper Title : 
Eclecticism and the Reasoning Individual: Fursat Shirazi’s (d.1923) journey of Self-Discovery
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
This paper considers the birth of the reasoning individual as a subject of knowledge in Iran, through a discussion of a late 19th century Shirazi intellectual, Fursat Shirazi (1854‐1923). A painter, poet, historian and passionate dilettante, Fursat opens up conceptual questions about the history of thought in Iran. In Fursat’s writings and biography one can analyze the productive intersection of first, discursive traditions in Islam (hikmat, ‘irfan and a self proclaimed “mutazilism”) and second, 19th century “European knowledge” particularly in the fields of linguistics, evolution and Copernican astronomy. Unlike what some historians have claimed in relationship to the same period, I argue that Fursat’s profile does not fit that of an Iranian discovering himself through a European inflected colonial mirroring. Rather, forms of borrowing and eclecticism, guides him to venture into disparate fields of knowledge, asserting an ethic in which “science” and “religion” ‐‐as well as Iran and Europe‐‐ are recombined under the guiding light of individual reason.
Second Presenter
Name: 
Aun Hasan Ali
Institutional Affiliation : 
Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University
Academic Bio : 
Graduate Student at the Institute of Islamic Studies. Focuses on Shi'ite Legal and Doctrinal History; Social and Intellectual History, Urdu Literature. Currently working on the publication of an article on Rationalism and Traditionism in Formative Shi'ite Thought.
Concise Paper Title : 
Formative Texts and Contexts for Rationalist and Traditionist Shi’ism
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
My paper revisits the division of formative Shi’ite texts into ‘traditionist’ and ‘rationalist’ works and the implication of this division for writing the history of early Shi’ite thought. I situate ‘traditionism’ within the context of the Occultation and discuss formal-rationalism in the context of Mu’tazilite prevalence in Baghdad. I suggest that the principal problem with textual narratives leading to the traditionist-rationalist division is the assumption that they ipso facto furnish a context for speaking about traditionist scholarship or emphasis on reason, logic, and modes of rational argumentation. The texts examined here seem to define the Imamate in ways directly tied to the local context disclosing the sensibilities of the ‘ulama and believers perturbed by the hayra (lesser occultation). Rather than being perennial questions about the essence of the Imamate, these texts provide renewed engagements with the Imamate and solutions with regard to their illocutionary character.
Thid Presenter
Name: 
Reza Pourjavady
Institutional Affiliation : 
Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University
Academic Bio : 
Completed his Ph.D. Dissertation at the Free University of Berlin (2007), and is currently a research assistant for the Islamic Philsophy Database Projected, directed by Robert Wisnovsky, Institute of Islamic Studies. Studies Islamic Philosophy and Theology with an emphasis on Iran. His monograph on Al-Nayrizi will be published by Brill. He has a number of publications on Islamic-Iranian thought.
Concise Paper Title : 
Reviving Shi’i Theology: Najm al-Din al-Nayrizi and his Commentary in Tusi’s Tajrid al-I’tiqad
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
Najm al-Din Mahmud al-Nayrizi was one of several leading theologians in Shiraz during the early Safavid period and a student of Sadr al-Din al-Dashtaki (d. 903/1497). My paper highlights his contributions to philosophy, logic and theology and examines his commentary on Nasir al-Din Tusi’s Tajrid al-I’tiqad, presumably the first work in Shi’ite theology to appear during the Safavid period. Al-Nayrizi completed it sometime before 916/1510. Evidently, this thriving tradition of theological inquiries tied to the rational sciences predated by one full century the contributions of Baha’ al-Din al-‘Amili (d. 1030/1621), Mir Damad (1041/1631-2), and Sayyid Ahmad al-‘Alawi al-‘Amili (d. 1030/1621) under Shah ‘Abbas (r. 995/1587-1038/1629). The intellectual profile of al-Nayrizi forces us to revisit the focus on the émigré ‘Amili scholars, particularly Shaykh ‘Ali al-Karaki (d. 940/1534) and his legalistic production, in order to change the perception of early Safavid intellectual history as merely fiqh-centered.
Fourth Presenter
Name: 
Rula Jurdi Abisaab
Academic Bio : 
Given Above
Concise Paper Title : 
Skeptics of Juridical Rationalism: Epistemology and the Structure of Power in Sixteenth Century Iran
Paper Abstract (maximum of 400 words) : 
Several Iranian and Arab fuqaha’, philosophers and members of the administrative elite contested the mujtahids’ legal authority derived from an association between juridical rationalism (usulism) and imperial power in the sixteenth century. I delineate the growing skepticism about the mujtahids’ epistemology, and the formation of an akhbari traditionist movement at the hands of Muhammad Amin Astarabadi (d.1033). I examine Astarabadi’s approach to the use of logic, forms of analogical reasoning, and ‘empirical’ methods for verifying the ahadith at the hands of usulis (rationalists) like al-‘Allama, al-Shahid al-Thani, and al-Muhaqqiq al-Karaki. Finally, I investigate how akhbarism, which theoretically advocated a negation of the jurist's authority, promoted itself as an alternative to rationalist ijtihadi Shi’ism.

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