Ali Humayun Akhtar. Philosophers, Sufis, and Caliphs

Ali Humayun Akhtar’s Philosophers, Sufis, and Caliphs: Politics and Authority from Cordoba to Cairo and Baghdad is an ambitious intellectual history of Islamic philosophy, mysticism, and the politics of authority that spans the “golden ages” of Islam. In his conclusion, Akhtar states that he aims to show how different groups during these different golden ages answered the following question: “What constituted sound models of political leadership and communal guidance of the general faithful populace?” (238). I say “golden ages” because different parts of the Islamic world make an appearance on his stage. Scholars and mystics of Baghdad under the Abbasids, Cairo under the Fatimids, Cordoba under the Umayyads, and Marrakech under the Almohads all have a starring role in this work. The chronological span of this book, from around 750 to 1200 c.e., is truly vast, encompassing almost a third of the history of Islam. In essence, the book argues for placing the philosophical, mystical, and religious-legal heroes of the Islamic world in the center of the story. In this way, Akhtar challenges the prevailing tendency in studies of Islamic history to highlight the rift between political and religious authority. One can restate his question: How have politics and religion (whether conceived philosophically, mystically, or doctrinally) reconciled, or failed to reconcile, during the formative centuries of Islam? This is, of course, a question of great importance and enormous controversy, and one I wish the author could have tackled more directly from the beginning. At times the book seems to be weighed down by the author’s own impressive specialist knowledge on the topic, a knowledge that seems to hide or soften the potential impact of the book beyond the field of Islamic intellectual history. One of the great ironies of the history of Islam is that it was a faith founded by a religious and political leader with distinct political examples of how to live a moral life as a community. The attempt to re-create that political ideal after the death of the Prophet Muhammad has almost always failed. Bernard Lewis, for all of the criticism, fair nor not, of his work, famously pointed out that Jesus said “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” while Muhammad, in contrast, wished to establish an ideal religious-political union. In effect, however, what Muhammad desired never came to pass: religious scholars (called ulama) won against caliphs (successors of the Prophet) in their claim as true interpreters of religious law. Also, what Jesus may have feared—the combination of political and religious power—was actually achieved. The conversion of Constantine to Christianity and the establishment of the Catholic Church on the ruins of Roman bureaucracy seemed the mirror opposite of the breakdown of caliph and religious authority in Islam.

Ancient history · Formative assessment · Islam · Mysticism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Theology · Classics · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender · Philosophy · Religious studies