Abstract
The intellectual history of the Muslim world during the post-formative period is poorly understood compared to the centuries in which the initial development of the principal Islamic intellectual traditions occurred. This article examines the legal status of the natural sciences in the thought of the Moroccan scholar al-.asan al-Yusi (d. 1102/1691) and his contemporaries, both in terms of the categorization of knowledge and in terms of developments in conceptions of causality in post-formative Ash.ari theology. In the latter respect, al-Yusi's writings on causality are compared to those of his contemporary in Damascus, .Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi, with attention to the broader historiographic perils in comparing intellectual developments in the Early Modern period to those occurring in Europe. By placing al-Yusi's views in intellectual context, I seek to demonstrate how a more productive history of the natural sciences in the post-formative Muslim world might be written.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 49-80 |
Number of pages | 32 |
Journal | Islamic Law and Society |
Volume | 21 |
Issue number | 1-2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2014 |
Keywords
- Morocco in the seventeenth century
- categorization of knowledge
- legal status of natural science
- post-formative intellectual developments in Islam
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Sociology and Political Science
- Law