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Abstract
The article analyzes a 2002 edition of Tuḥfat al-murīd ʿalā Jawharat al-tawḥīd, a supercommentary written by Ibrāhīm al-Bājūrī (d. 1860) on Ibrāhīm al-Laqānī’s (d. 1632) base text in Ashʿarī theology. The edition was edited by the Muslim religious scholar and former grand mufti of Egypt, ʿAlī Jumʿa (b. 1952). The article shows that in Jumʿa’s edition taḥqīq is a practice of selecting a text that has been widely available, reframing its importance in the introduction and footnotes, and making the text understandable to contemporary readers. In his selection and framing of the text, Jumʿa situates al-Bājūrī’s ḥāshiya against Salafī opponents, while his explicit audience for the edition consists of Muslim students. The article argues that Jumʿa’s taḥqīq, which is both ideologically and pedagogically oriented, reflects his larger religiopolitical project of bolstering the authority and intellectual legacy of al-Azhar in the context of inter-Sunni rivalry in the late twentieth century.
Abstract
This paper studies an account of the “inquisition” (miḥna) of Muḥammad b. Idrīs al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820) by the caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd (r. 170–193/786–809). In this account, al-Shāfiʿī is twice brought to the court of the caliph in chains but he is able to win the caliph’s favor through his rhetorical eloquence. The account is compared to that of the inquisition of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d. 241/855) during the reign of the caliph al-Muʿtaṣim (r. 218–227/833–42). The paper shows the resonances between the two accounts, especially the heroic resistance to the caliphal questioning and the steadfast adherence to each jurist’s theological beliefs. The story of al-Shāfiʿī’s miḥna is structured so as to create a story for him that is reminiscent of the story of Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal.
Abstract
Information regarding the provenance of papyrological material that was acquired in the Egyptian antiquities market in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is scarce and often unreliable. This article investigates the provenance of Hamburg’s Papyrus Bilinguis 1, famed for containing the apocryphal Acta Pauli. By researching archival files documenting the acquisition and the context of the find, the papyrus is shown to have been acquired in breach of the Egyptian antiquities law of 1912. The article reveals how Carl Schmidt (1868–1938), the collector who acquired the manuscript for the Hamburg library, by concealing information, tried to cover up his own criminal involvement in the smuggling of the manuscript. Through the investigation of a manuscript that was acquired by a public German institution in awareness of its illegality, the article hopes to contribute to current debates on the translocation of cultural heritage artefacts to Europe and the US in the age of European colonialism and imperialism.
Abstract
This essay seeks to retrace, retrieve, recover, and reclaim the voices of women thinkers and philosophers throughout the history of Indian philosophy. The aim is to initiate a discussion on the conventional and ‘malestream’ character of established knowledge in philosophy. We focus on a few women thinkers to underline the fact that by acknowledging and elevating their previously erased and marginalized works, an alternative, and enriched, trajectory of the entire philosophical corpus of Indian thought is possible. To create a slice of such an alternate trajectory, we discuss the contributions of Ṛṣikās (women sages), Sarojini Naidu, and Jaishree Odin in the ancient, modern, and contemporary domains of Indian philosophy to argue and underline that these otherwise erased and absent women are thinking-beings actively involved in the give and take of philosophical progress in the Indian context.
Abstract
One of the most conspicuous features of the Gorkhaland movement is the development of a strong sense of community that has subsumed many diverse voices within the dominant discourse of ethnicity. However, such ethno-nationalism is also problematic as it often results in the erasure of intersecting identity markers such as class, caste, and gender. In addition, the exclusive nature of the over-encompassing Nepali or Gorkha identity has led to harmful consequences for marginalized groups, particularly the lower castes. This paper thus brings to the fore alternative voices and perspectives, particularly those of women who come from the margins of caste society or who have been labelled as ideological adversaries. This paper further illustrates their unique experiences and perspectives, which are often ignored in mainstream discussions about the social reality of the Gorkhaland movement.
Abstract
In the early phases of the modern study of Buddhism, it was widely assumed that the Buddhist canon preserved in the Pali language by the Theravāda tradition of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia represented the only original record of the “words of the Buddha” (buddha-vacana). But the notion of Pali primacy has been steadily eroded by discoveries of vast numbers of early Buddhist manuscripts in the formerly Buddhist regions of northwestern India and adjoining countries and in Central Asia. These discoveries have provided ample evidence of the existence in antiquity of voluminous bodies of Buddhist literature in Sanskrit and Gandhari that are parallel to and as historically valid as the Pali versions. They have shifted the perception of Buddhism away from a linear model and toward a wider understanding of the many Buddhisms that coexisted in antiquity. This article surveys some of the major discoveries of Buddhist manuscripts and summarizes the new perspectives that they have engendered.
Abstract
This essay tries to reflect on the least digestible aspects of the well-known poet and fiction writer Kamala Das / Surayya’s thought. It seeks to examine her foray into politics in the light of the history of the discursive shaping of modern gender in Kerala on the one hand, and of feminist thought that has sought to revalue love as a virtue in public life on the other. I seek to read her repeated calls to infuse politics with love as part of an attempt to articulate an ‘affective politics’. I focus on three aspects of her writing that have been sources of ‘interpretative trouble’ for literary criticism in Kerala: self-love, love for the Masculine Other, and ‘love for the people’. What results is an imagining of politics strikingly similar to feminist imaginations elsewhere, which does encourage us to re-examine Das’s self-professed anti-feminism.
Abstract
In this paper I compare various aspects of the philosophies of Frances Power Cobbe and Karl Marx, with a focus on their arguments regarding religion and science. I argue that while these two philosophers begin from radically different ideological standpoints, they still share fascinating areas of overlap that deserve attention and can shed new light on aspects of each of their philosophies. This paper is heavy on evaluation as a tool to recover the ignored philosophy of Cobbe, showing that her works have value despite their omission from the traditional philosophical canon. I argue that by comparing Cobbe as a neglected figure to a well-known figure such as Marx, not only do we gain insight into the complex ideas of Cobbe by choosing a well-known foundation on which to base our analysis, but at the same time we also establish her relevance to modern discourse.
Abstract
In this article I analyze the different historiographical models that have contributed to the ‘interpretative heritage’ of Anne Conway. I argue that, due to the current state of scholarship on the history of women philosophers, the main mission of this scholarship is to increase the interpretative heritage of their works in general and of Anne Conway in particular. For this purpose, it is necessary to apply a pluralistic perspective regarding models. A pluralist perspective would argue that there are different historiographical models that apply to the study of the text and that each model, even the failed ones, increases the interpretative heritage. In this sense, I identify six main models used in the study of Conway’s Principia and propose that the sixth, the contextual/eclectic model, is more fundamental for the study of Anne Conway because it assists us in laying the foundations for other more restricted or specialized models.