Knowledge Triumphant The Concept of Knowledge in Medieval Islam by Franz Rosenthal (Leiden: Brill, 2007. 355 pages.)

Abstract

Brill’s new “Classics in Islam” series, a systematic reprinting of some of
the seminal works in Islamic studies that have been out of print for
decades, is a welcome initiative.As Dimitri Gutas, a former student, indicates
in his introduction, Rosenthal’s achievement in this monograph is outstanding
within an exceptionally productive and influential career. It is
also somewhat unusual that a work first published over thirty years ago still
remains unsurpassed, even if one may question some of the argument’s
details and tendencies. Rosenthal often worked with manuscripts and
unedited sources and, while we have the luxury of criticizing his judgments
based on our access to superior critical editions, the contribution of the book
remains singular.

As befits a social and intellectual historian, Rosenthal’s survey commences
with the philology of the word knowledge (`ilm) and works through
instances in early Islam andArabic poetry before moving on to chapters on
definition, theology, Sufism, philosophy, and finally concluding with a chapter
on the social contexts and uses of knowledge. While there are now a
number of works that deal with aspects of these chapters, no one has
attempted to reconstruct a survey quite like this. Each chapter could well be
the subject of monographs and, as Gutas suggests, numerous sections could
act as inspiration for “untold dissertations.” Rosenthal begins with the claim
that civilizations tend to revolve around meaningful concepts of an abstract
nature that,more than anything else, give themtheir distinctive nature; in the
case of Islam, this is the centrality of knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge.
While he shifts from the plural to the singular and back, one retains the
central point that the field of knowledge is unified. The fact is that Muslim
scholars in very different fields of inquiry were able to retain a concept of
`ilm that was broadly cognate and transferable ...