Preserving Islamic Tradition

Abu Nasr Qursawi and the Beginnings of Modern Reformism

Nathan Spannaus

The first major study of a little-known but influential figure in an Islamic reformist project
Features a systematic study of unpublished primary sources that have received little scholarly attention
Offers a new theoretical lens for approaching modern Islamic intellectual history

Preserving Islamic Tradition

Abu Nasr Qursawi and the Beginnings of Modern Reformism

Nathan Spannaus

Description

The end of the eighteenth century was a transformational period for the Muslim communities of the Russian Empire and their relationship with the tsarist state. Though they had been under Russian rule since the sixteenth century, it was at this time that they were incorporated into the imperial bureaucracy, most significantly through the founding of an official hierarchy for the Islamic religious scholars in 1788.

The introduction of a state-backed structure for Muslim religious institutions altered Islamic religious authority and, in turn, religious discourse. One of the major figures to emerge from this new context was Abu Nasr Qursawi (1776-1812). A controversial figure who was condemned for heresy in Bukhara in 1808, Qursawi put forward a sweeping reform of the Islamic scholarly tradition. Focusing on taqlid, the principle of conformity to established doctrine, Qursawi argued that its overuse had weakened scholarship in the areas of Islamic law (fiqh) and theology (kalam) and undermined scholars' ability to serve as religious guides.

In Preserving Islamic Tradition, Nathan Spannaus presents the first detailed analysis of Qursawi's reformist project, both in its contours and broad historical setting. Spannaus shows how state control of Muslim institutions impacted religious discourse, but also how it altered the entire religious environment into the twentieth century. Addressing issues of modernity, secularity, tradition, and intellectual history, Preserving Islamic Tradition demonstrates how the interaction with a European imperial state transformed the Islamic tradition, both directly and indirectly, and elicited new forms of religious thought and discourse.

Preserving Islamic Tradition

Abu Nasr Qursawi and the Beginnings of Modern Reformism

Nathan Spannaus

Acknowledgments
Preface
Transliteration, Dates, Ethnonyms
Map
Timeline of Volga-Ural History

Introduction

Chapter 2: An `Alim in the Russian Empire

Chapter 3: An Epistemological Critique

Chapter 4: Ijtihad and the Function of Legal Theory

Chapter 5: The Question of the Divine Attributes

Chapter 6: Post-classical Kalam

Chapter 7: Reform within the Scholarly Tradition

Chapter 8: Modernity

Chapter 9: The Transformation of Bulghar Islam

Conclusion

Bibliography
Notes
Index

Preserving Islamic Tradition

Abu Nasr Qursawi and the Beginnings of Modern Reformism

Nathan Spannaus

Author Information

Nathan Spannaus is a specialist in Islamic intellectual history and religious thought. He is a graduate of McGill University's Institute of Islamic Studies and Harvard's Deparment of Near Eastern Languages aand Civilizations, and he has held positions at Princeton and Oxford. His work has appeared in Islamic Law and Society, Muslim World, Arabica, and Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, and he has contributed to the Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology, the Encyclopedia of Islam and the two-volume Modern Islamic Authority and Social Change. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher in Islamic philosophy at University of Jyvaskyla, Finland.

Preserving Islamic Tradition

Abu Nasr Qursawi and the Beginnings of Modern Reformism

Nathan Spannaus

Reviews and Awards

"I would highly recommend this book to scholars, researchers and postgraduate students working within the Islamic legal and theological tradition. Spannaus has presented Qursawi's views in a scholarly manner that critically examines key terminologies that continue to be used today within usul al-fiqh and kalam." -- Imranali Panjwani, Religion, Vol 52, no.1

"Preserving Islamic Tradition is a milestone in the study of the history of Islamic ideas not only in the Volga-Ural region but also the history of Islamic ideas as a whole. Nathan Spannaus has shown a new direction to the scholars of Islamic thought for future research." -- The Washington Book Review

"In his research, Nathan Spannaus has used published and unpublished works in Arabic and Tatar and other languages. Many of these sources were unknown to western scholars of Islam. The result is a meticulously researched scholarly work. Preserving Islamic Tradition is a milestone in the study of the history of Islamic ideas not only in the Volga-Ural region but also the history of Islamic ideas as a whole. Nathan Spannaus has shown a new direction to the scholars of Islamic thought for future research." -- The Washington BookReview22/11/2019

"This book is a watershed in the study of Islamic intellectual history in the Volga-Ural region. Combining several subdisciplines and primary sources in various languages that are rarely commanded by a single scholar, Spannaus is able to demonstrate how a region and a scholar positioned at various sorts of so-called peripheries -- between Europe and Islam, the pre-modern and modern, the pre-colonial and colonial -- participated in reforming and preserving the contours of the broader Islamic tradition." -- Asad Ahmed, Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies, University of California, Berkeley

"Nathan Spannaus has set a new standard for how to approach Muslim scholars in the late Russian Empire. Rather than base his study on later modernist or Soviet-era interpretations of Abu Nasr Qursawi's scholarship, Spannaus has studied Qursawi's published and unpublished works in Arabic and Tatar, as well as a wide range of sources in other languages. The result is a view of Qursawi as a unique and original local voice within the diverse transregional world of post-classical Islamic thought in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries." -- Uli Schamiloglu, Department of Kazakh Language and Turkic Studies, Nazarbayev University