Al-Jāḥiẓ and Religious Knowledge

Hussein Ali Abdulsater is Associate Professor of Arabic Culture and Islamic Studies in the Department of Classics at the University of Notre Dame. His research is concerned with uncovering the historical roots and social contexts of major theological themes in Islam. It also traces the ethical and philosophical aspects of Islamic religious thought as expressed in humanistic disciplines such as historiography and literature.His publications include:· “A Jāḥiẓian Contribution to Reason in Islam? Revisiting al-Muḥāsibī’s Māʾiyyat al-ʿaql,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 142:1 (2022), 1-32.· Shiʿi Doctrine, Muʿtazili Theology: al-Sharīf al-Murtaḍā and Imami Discourse (Edinburgh University Press, 2017).· “Reason, Grace and the Freedom of Conscience: The Period of Investigation in Classical Islamic Theology,” Studia Islamica, 110:2 (2015), 233-262.

• Foreword by James MontgomeryAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Expansive Empire and Inclusive ReligionIslamic Rationalism and its DiscontentsThe Afterlife of a MaverickThe Great VentureThe Semantics of a ParadigmPassions, Beliefs, ActionsThe Intelligent and the ReasonableEpistemological Road MapTheological ConsequencesConclusion: Social Empiricism and the Quest for Rational ReligionAppendix: Notes on a Few Terms and TranslationsBibliographyIndex

Professor Abdulsater’s monograph deeply enriches our understanding of al-Jāḥiẓ as a humanistic intellectual of the medieval Arabic tradition, and he has written one of the most compelling portraits of him available in the English language. Here, we encounter al-Jāḥiẓ not merely in his usual guise, as a somewhat mischievous theologian with an unrivaled talent for literary prose, but also as a keen observer of humans and their curious quibbles: an astute psychologist and an intuitive cognitive scientist avant la lettre.