TIe Tvansnission oJ KnovIedge in MedievaI Caivo A SociaI Hislov oJ IsIanic Educalion I

JonalIan BevIe
Beviev I MicIaeI CIanIevIain
InlevnalionaI JouvnaI oJ MiddIe Easl Sludies, VoI. 26, No. 1 |FeI., 1994), pp. 124-127
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124 Reviews 124 Reviews
In
conclusion,
whether the Illuminationist
plan
defined
by
Suhrawardi and elaborated
by
Shirazi and the other
13th-century
Illuminationist
philosophers
and
commentators, notably
Sacd
ibn Mansur Ibn Kammuna and Shams al-Din
Shahrazuri,
is successful or
not,
requires
further
investigation. Walbridge's in-depth study does, however, help
establish several
points
essential to our revision of the older
opinion concerning
"decline" of science and
phi-
losophy
in Islam after the 12th
century.
First,
the
study
demonstrates that Suhrawardi's ma-
jor
Arabic
work,
the
Philosophy of
Illumination
(chap. 2),
is a coherent
system
that can be
meaningfully
discussed within a
philosophical
frame
using
accessible technical
language.
Secondly,
the
study
further demonstrates
(chaps. 3-5)
that
Shirazi,
a revered scientist and
creative member of the
Maragheh
School, accepted
Suhrawardi's views as sound rational
philosophical principles,
which
strengthens
the
position
that the Illuminationist
system
is
more
philosophy
and less esoteric
theosophy.
This latter
point,
I
believe,
is
especially
significant
because
interpreting
the Illuminationist school of Islamic
philosophy only
in es-
oteric, theosophical
terms does tend to obscure the historian's
investigation
and thus cause
a serious limitation. The limitation caused so
far, appropriately
stated
by
the late Fazlur
Rahman
(The Philosophy of
Mulla Sadra
[Albany,
N.Y., 1975], vii),
has been "at the
cost ... of its
purely
intellectual and
philosophical
hard
core,
which is of immense value
and interest to the modern student of
philosophy." Walbridge's publication
is therefore ad-
ditionally significant
because it allows the "modern student of
philosophy"
to
gain
some
access to a
neglected
and
misrepresented part
of Islamic
philosophy.
JONATHAN BERKEY, The Transmission
of Knowledge
in Medieval Cairo: A Social
History of
Islamic Education, Princeton Studies on the Near East
(Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1992). Pp.
249.
REVIEWED BY MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN, Department
of
History, University
of
Wisconsin, Madison
The
starting point
of
any study
of medieval Islamic education, and the work with which this
well-executed book will
inevitably
be
compared,
is
George
Makdisi's
path-breaking
The
Rise
of
the
Colleges.
Makdisi's book has vexed medieval historians since it
appeared.
The
book has
many
merits. It renders the often recondite
language
of medieval Islamic educa-
tion into familiar terms of reference. Its
range
is enormous, displaying
much of the medi-
eval Islamic world in a
single panorama. Unfortunately
it is also one of those books that are
undermined
by
their
greatest
virtues. When Makdisi casts Islamic terms and
concepts
into
European
ones he often effaced their most distinctive
qualities. Moreover,
the vast
scope
of
the book blurred
many
of the local uses and
meanings
of
education,
while it
occasionally
disoriented the book's most careful readers.
Finally, given
the breadth of his
study,
Makdisi
rarely
exhausted the sources for
any given region
or
period,
and the work's
strongest
areas
are
inevitably
in fields he had mined before. Whatever the book's
faults,
one cannot
deny
it
its erudition, and it
undoubtedly
resolved a number of critical and
long-standing
issues. It is
probably
the last and most successful
attempt
to describe the
origins
and diffusion of a uni-
versal "Islamic institution."
Berkey
has
deftly
avoided
many
of the
problems
Makdisi encountered. Unlike Makdisi,
Berkey
has focused on a
single place
and time-Cairo in the Mamluk
period-and
so is
much more alert to the local contexts of educational institutions and
practices. Moreover,
by restricting
himself to a
single city
he could use the available sources better.
Especially
welcome is his careful
exploitation
of a
unique
source of
original
documents from the me-
dieval Middle East, the
waqfiyyas (foundation deeds) preserved
in Cairo. No one before
Berkey
has used these sources so
extensively,
and
many
scholars will
prize
this as the
In
conclusion,
whether the Illuminationist
plan
defined
by
Suhrawardi and elaborated
by
Shirazi and the other
13th-century
Illuminationist
philosophers
and
commentators, notably
Sacd
ibn Mansur Ibn Kammuna and Shams al-Din
Shahrazuri,
is successful or
not,
requires
further
investigation. Walbridge's in-depth study does, however, help
establish several
points
essential to our revision of the older
opinion concerning
"decline" of science and
phi-
losophy
in Islam after the 12th
century.
First,
the
study
demonstrates that Suhrawardi's ma-
jor
Arabic
work,
the
Philosophy of
Illumination
(chap. 2),
is a coherent
system
that can be
meaningfully
discussed within a
philosophical
frame
using
accessible technical
language.
Secondly,
the
study
further demonstrates
(chaps. 3-5)
that
Shirazi,
a revered scientist and
creative member of the
Maragheh
School, accepted
Suhrawardi's views as sound rational
philosophical principles,
which
strengthens
the
position
that the Illuminationist
system
is
more
philosophy
and less esoteric
theosophy.
This latter
point,
I
believe,
is
especially
significant
because
interpreting
the Illuminationist school of Islamic
philosophy only
in es-
oteric, theosophical
terms does tend to obscure the historian's
investigation
and thus cause
a serious limitation. The limitation caused so
far, appropriately
stated
by
the late Fazlur
Rahman
(The Philosophy of
Mulla Sadra
[Albany,
N.Y., 1975], vii),
has been "at the
cost ... of its
purely
intellectual and
philosophical
hard
core,
which is of immense value
and interest to the modern student of
philosophy." Walbridge's publication
is therefore ad-
ditionally significant
because it allows the "modern student of
philosophy"
to
gain
some
access to a
neglected
and
misrepresented part
of Islamic
philosophy.
JONATHAN BERKEY, The Transmission
of Knowledge
in Medieval Cairo: A Social
History of
Islamic Education, Princeton Studies on the Near East
(Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1992). Pp.
249.
REVIEWED BY MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN, Department
of
History, University
of
Wisconsin, Madison
The
starting point
of
any study
of medieval Islamic education, and the work with which this
well-executed book will
inevitably
be
compared,
is
George
Makdisi's
path-breaking
The
Rise
of
the
Colleges.
Makdisi's book has vexed medieval historians since it
appeared.
The
book has
many
merits. It renders the often recondite
language
of medieval Islamic educa-
tion into familiar terms of reference. Its
range
is enormous, displaying
much of the medi-
eval Islamic world in a
single panorama. Unfortunately
it is also one of those books that are
undermined
by
their
greatest
virtues. When Makdisi casts Islamic terms and
concepts
into
European
ones he often effaced their most distinctive
qualities. Moreover,
the vast
scope
of
the book blurred
many
of the local uses and
meanings
of
education,
while it
occasionally
disoriented the book's most careful readers.
Finally, given
the breadth of his
study,
Makdisi
rarely
exhausted the sources for
any given region
or
period,
and the work's
strongest
areas
are
inevitably
in fields he had mined before. Whatever the book's
faults,
one cannot
deny
it
its erudition, and it
undoubtedly
resolved a number of critical and
long-standing
issues. It is
probably
the last and most successful
attempt
to describe the
origins
and diffusion of a uni-
versal "Islamic institution."
Berkey
has
deftly
avoided
many
of the
problems
Makdisi encountered. Unlike Makdisi,
Berkey
has focused on a
single place
and time-Cairo in the Mamluk
period-and
so is
much more alert to the local contexts of educational institutions and
practices. Moreover,
by restricting
himself to a
single city
he could use the available sources better.
Especially
welcome is his careful
exploitation
of a
unique
source of
original
documents from the me-
dieval Middle East, the
waqfiyyas (foundation deeds) preserved
in Cairo. No one before
Berkey
has used these sources so
extensively,
and
many
scholars will
prize
this as the
Reviews 125
book's most
original
contribution. It was also
gratifying
to see
Berkey's generous
acknowl-
edgment
of Muhammad Muhammad Amin's
life-long
work on the
waqfiyyas,
as Amin is a
scholar whose debt Western scholars have more often incurred than
paid
off.
The book
begins by introducing
the reader to the debate over the
"informality"
of medi-
eval Islamic
education,
the author
coming
down
firmly though discreetly
on the side of
Tibawi
against
Makdisi.
Chapter 2, "Instruction,"
describes the teacher-student relation-
ship,
and in it
Berkey
shows more
clearly
than
any
scholar before him how
personal,
rather
than
institutional,
relationships
constituted the core of education.
Chapter
3, "Institutions,"
moves from a discussion of these
personal relationships
to an examination of the educa-
tional institutions that turned Cairo into "as much as
anything
else,
a
city
of schools." It
covers the foundation of
institutions,
presents
an
interesting
and
original
discussion of the
blurring
of institutional
types
such as
madrasas,
khanqahs,
and
mosques
into one
another,
and describes their "administrative
structures," curriculum,
and
pattern
of
daily
life. It also
has a
good
section on the "informal
teaching
circles"
unsupported by religious
endowments
and on the
support
of students in endowed institutions. This
chapter
in
my opinion
is the
most
convincing
in the
book,
perhaps
because it makes use of the
waqfiyyas
to a
greater
extent than the others.
Chapter
4,
"Professors and Patrons: Careers in the Academic
World,"
discusses
patronage
and
foundation,
the "control of
appointments,"
and its
"corruption."
It also covers
professo-
rial
careers,
the means
by
which
appointments
were lobbied for and secured, and the
partial
and
always problematic
influence of
professors
over the selection of their successors.
Chap-
ter
5, "Religious
Education and the
Military Elite," covers endowment of institutions
by
the
military,
the
political significance
of
endowments, and their financial and
religious
dimen-
sions. It also discusses
religious learning among
the Mamluks themselves.
Chapter 6,
"Women and Education," is a
long-overdue
discussion of the roles of elite women in the
foundation of institutions and the transmission of
knowledge by
women
largely
outside
these institutions. Medieval Islamic historians will be
pleased by
this section, as
anything
written about women is as welcome as it is belated. Historians of
gender, however, will raise
more
questions
than
Berkey,
and the sources as we have used them, can address. How did
women make use of
acquired knowledge
in their
struggles
in their households? Did women
have a different
conception
of
knowledge
than men? The final
chapter, "Beyond
the Elite
Education and Urban
Society,"
covers the functions of educational institutions in
neighbor-
hoods. It
conveys
some
interesting
information on the nonacademic social, religious,
and
political
functions of madrasas
throughout
the
city.
Each of these
chapters
carries
interesting
and often useful information, but it is difficult to
discern a
strong argument
in the book as a whole. The core of the book-its examination of
the
waqfiyyas-one
would
expect
to be read for a
long
time to come. Its
improvements
on its
predecessors
and the seriousness with which it raises and addresses social-historical
ques-
tions
position
the book as the clearest and most accessible
study
of the transmission of knowl-
edge
in a medieval Islamic
society
to date.
Finally,
a minor
though
welcome virtue of the
book is
Berkey's gentle
criticisms of Makdisi. As Ibn al-Salah al-Shahrazuri reminded his fel-
low scholars in the 13th
century,
"we are but a little
troop,
few in number, low on
supplies,"
and this reader was
pleased
to see a
great
scholar in a small field criticized
gracefully.
One cannot fault an author for the book that he did not write, but to stimulate discussion I
will raise a few issues related
mainly
to the book's
conceptualization.
The book's finest and
most
original
research is on the
waqfiyyas, perhaps precisely
because that is where
Berkey's
most
original
sources lead him.
However, Berkey
never defines
precisely
how the
study
of
waqfs
intersects with the
study
of the transmission of
knowledge.
He
correctly
shows how
the transmission of
knowledge
was "informal" and
"personal"
and not tied to institutions
founded
by waqfs.
But then he faced the
problem
of what to do with the riiaterial he
gathered
126 Reviews
from the
waqfiyyas. Berkey goes
back and
forth, downplaying
the
importance
of the madra-
sas for
"education,"
while
devoting perhaps
the
major part
of the book to the
study
of these
institutions,
their
administration,
the careers of their
professors,
their functions in their
neighborhoods,
and so on. It seems at times that there are two books
jostling against
one an-
other between the covers of one.
Perhaps
this one book
might
have been two: one on the
waqf
and the other on the transmission of
knowledge.
Another
possibility
would have been to
ask what effect the foundation of madrasas had on the social
makeup
and social
strategies
of
the civilian elite. A third
might
have asked if the foundation of madrasas transformed the na-
ture of the
knowledge
the learned elite transmitted: as
benefitting
from
waqfs
became an ob-
ject
of
competition,
did Cairenes
begin
to
privilege
the more
agonistic
sciences?
Another issue is whether
Berkey
takes the whole notion of
"higher
education" as less
prob-
lematic than he
might
have done.
Berkey develops
a line of
reasoning
that
goes
back at least
to D. B. MacDonald's
article,
"Mahommedan
Institutions,"
in the 11th edition of the
Ency-
clopaedia
Britannica, according
to which Islamic education is "informal" and
"personal."
Berkey
both confirms this view and illustrates it with
suggestive
new material. As a basis for
comparison,
this notion of
"informality"
is
undoubtedly correct,
but it is also
largely nega-
tive. It does little but reiterate that the medieval Middle East did not have the
permanent
hierarchical institutions and
groups
of some other medieval societies. It also often focuses
most
clearly
on what is not there as
opposed
to what is.
Acknowledging
the leakiness of cat-
egories
derived from
European experience, Berkey
has nonetheless not
proposed
alternatives
to them. The critical means
by
which
knowledge
was transmitted,
the
master-disciple
rela-
tionship,
for
example,
is described in the
chapter
entitled "Instruction." The
acquisition
of
adab from
shaykhs,
a critical
aspect
of this
relationship,
if not its fundamental
point,
is not
discussed, nor is adab listed in the index. The words
by
which he describes the transmission
of
knowledge:
"academic
program," "instruction,"
"institutionalized
education,"
"curricu-
lum," "teaching appointments," "professorship," "classes,"
and so
forth,
should be defined
more
precisely
and
distinguished
from their
usage
elsewhere.
Finally, by concentrating
on
the "informal"
analogues
or
counterparts
to "formal"
European practices, higher
education
becomes an "informal
system
of
higher education";
the
mufid
becomes
Berkey's
"informal
teaching assistant,"
and so on. This reviewer's
principal
reservation is to the book's occa-
sional
acceptance
as
unproblematic
terms and
categories
derived from
European practice.
The
problem (as
this reviewer sees
it) is, how do we
separate "higher education,"
how-
ever
"informal,"
from other cultural
productions
and
practices? Might
not the
practices
we
formalize as "educational" form
part
of a
larger complex
of cultural
practices
related to the
production
of
knowledge
without
being
restricted to them? If
so,
instead of a "social
history
of Muslim education," perhaps Berkey might
have examined how elites and others
(insofar
as we can know
anything
about
them) exploited
their
knowledge
for social
purposes. By
do-
ing
so he
might
have
gotten
around a
problem
that he raised but never resolved. If "educa-
tion" was in fact "informal,"
what then were the social and
political
uses of the
practices
we
formalize as "educational"?
Precisely
because these were
"informal," might they
not
paral-
lel or
merge
with other cultural
practices?
And what are the
relationships
between these "in-
formal"
practices
and the social
struggles
and
strategies
of elite
groups?
With his close
reading
of the sources
Berkey points
out that some educational
practices
were also
partly
de-
votional. Yet the
possibilities
that this observation
opens up
he did not
pursue, especially
the
ritual character of
many
of them. The sources he
uses-especially
the Damascenes al-Subki
and Ibn Jamaca and the Cairene Maliki Ibn
al-Hajj-convey
masses of material on the ritual
and
performative aspects
of the civilian elite's
power
and social distinction.
Many
of these
were cultural
practices
that do not fit into a discussion of education as we conceive of it.
Book
production,
to mention
just
one
example,
is related to education in
many
other socie-
ties, but it is
usually
considered a distinct
sphere.
Yet the
production
of books as
Berkey's
Reviews 127 Reviews 127
sources described it shared so
many
of the ritual
aspects
of "education" that we must wonder
whether the two constituted the
separate
domains that
they
did elsewhere. As
Berkey passes
over the
ritual,
performative,
and mimetic
aspects
of some of these
practices, by
the end of
the book the reader is still not
exactly
sure how a
young
Cairene became a learned
shaykh,
nor what
becoming
a learned
shaykh
meant to the elite of Cairo.
Another
problem, probably
of more interest to this reviewer than to
others,
but one
which
might
be raised to stimulate
debate,
is how the foundation of institutions
shaped
the
social
struggles
of the civilian elite. There
is,
for
example,
no mention of the madrasa
"pro-
fessorship"
as a mansab-a source of revenue. As the number of madrasas
increased,
man-
sabs
increasingly
became social
prizes
for the learned elite. In
my reading
of the sources
for Cairo-scantier than the
author's,
let me hasten to
say-I
have
always
been struck
by
how learned-elite
struggles
for mansabs resembled warrior elite
struggles
for
iqtas.
There
are
striking
similarities in the characteristics of the revenue
sources,
in the
language
used to
represent
their
struggles
to
acquire
them,
and in the
practices by
which these
prizes
were
contested. To take
just
one
example, Berkey
discusses as "educational"
relationships
such
as
suhba, muldzama,
and
ifaida, among
others. Yet these were not restricted to the learned
elite,
as
Berkey recognizes
in one case where he discusses how some merchants conceived
of their ties to one another as suhba. But he
might
have taken this observation much fur-
ther. In a
society
without
permanent
hierarchical institutions and
groups,
elites of all
types
(and others insofar as we can know
anything
about
them)
constructed their fundamental
groups through
such
practices.
In this
respect
as in several others, underlying
the
apparently
formal domains of
knowledge
and of war, military
and civilian elites shared a
single
set of
cultural
practices
and
ways
of
seeing
the world.
By formalizing
some of these universal
cultural
practices
into
specialized aspects
of
"higher
education" we
may
overlook a chance
to address some critical issues in the social
history
of the
city.
Thus, even
though Berkey
shows
throughout
a
sophisticated awareness that these were
not institutionalized
practices
in the
European sense,
he missed (and I
hope merely post-
poned)
the chance to ferret out
relationships among
the
production
of
knowledge,
the nature
of
political power,
and the social
competition
of elites.
Occasionally
I had the
impression
that several
sociologically
distinct arenas were assembled into a
single
"informal
system
of
higher
education." I also sensed that
aspects
of wider elite social
practices
were occasion-
ally
trimmed down to fit into a discussion of education. The book thus
perhaps
does not act
on the observation that
group
structures and institutions were informal so much as reassert
it. In
subtitling
his book "a social
history
of medieval Islamic education," Berkey,
for all
his book's
genuine merits, may
have fallen into what
Merleau-Ponty
called the
great fallacy
of the human sciences-we construct the
very categories
we
analyze.
But
again many
of
these observations refer less to the book
Berkey
wrote than the one this reviewer wishes he
would have. As it is, the book is a
significant improvement
on its
predecessors, clearly
writ-
ten, very accessible,
and should be of interest to a wide audience.
YAHYA M.
SADOWSKI,
Scuds or Butter? The Political
Economy of Arms Control in the Middle
East
(Washington,
D.C.: The
Brookings Institution, 1993). Pp.
128.
REVIEWED BY MARY ANN
TETREAULT, Department
of Political Science and
Geography,
Old
Dominion
University, Norfolk, Va.
The thesis of
Yahya
Sadowski's book is an old one: states are both able and
willing
to assess
their interests
rationally
and once
they
discover or are shown what those interests are, they
will do what needs to be done to
pursue
them. The
pundit Norman
Angell,
the economist
sources described it shared so
many
of the ritual
aspects
of "education" that we must wonder
whether the two constituted the
separate
domains that
they
did elsewhere. As
Berkey passes
over the
ritual,
performative,
and mimetic
aspects
of some of these
practices, by
the end of
the book the reader is still not
exactly
sure how a
young
Cairene became a learned
shaykh,
nor what
becoming
a learned
shaykh
meant to the elite of Cairo.
Another
problem, probably
of more interest to this reviewer than to
others,
but one
which
might
be raised to stimulate
debate,
is how the foundation of institutions
shaped
the
social
struggles
of the civilian elite. There
is,
for
example,
no mention of the madrasa
"pro-
fessorship"
as a mansab-a source of revenue. As the number of madrasas
increased,
man-
sabs
increasingly
became social
prizes
for the learned elite. In
my reading
of the sources
for Cairo-scantier than the
author's,
let me hasten to
say-I
have
always
been struck
by
how learned-elite
struggles
for mansabs resembled warrior elite
struggles
for
iqtas.
There
are
striking
similarities in the characteristics of the revenue
sources,
in the
language
used to
represent
their
struggles
to
acquire
them,
and in the
practices by
which these
prizes
were
contested. To take
just
one
example, Berkey
discusses as "educational"
relationships
such
as
suhba, muldzama,
and
ifaida, among
others. Yet these were not restricted to the learned
elite,
as
Berkey recognizes
in one case where he discusses how some merchants conceived
of their ties to one another as suhba. But he
might
have taken this observation much fur-
ther. In a
society
without
permanent
hierarchical institutions and
groups,
elites of all
types
(and others insofar as we can know
anything
about
them)
constructed their fundamental
groups through
such
practices.
In this
respect
as in several others, underlying
the
apparently
formal domains of
knowledge
and of war, military
and civilian elites shared a
single
set of
cultural
practices
and
ways
of
seeing
the world.
By formalizing
some of these universal
cultural
practices
into
specialized aspects
of
"higher
education" we
may
overlook a chance
to address some critical issues in the social
history
of the
city.
Thus, even
though Berkey
shows
throughout
a
sophisticated awareness that these were
not institutionalized
practices
in the
European sense,
he missed (and I
hope merely post-
poned)
the chance to ferret out
relationships among
the
production
of
knowledge,
the nature
of
political power,
and the social
competition
of elites.
Occasionally
I had the
impression
that several
sociologically
distinct arenas were assembled into a
single
"informal
system
of
higher
education." I also sensed that
aspects
of wider elite social
practices
were occasion-
ally
trimmed down to fit into a discussion of education. The book thus
perhaps
does not act
on the observation that
group
structures and institutions were informal so much as reassert
it. In
subtitling
his book "a social
history
of medieval Islamic education," Berkey,
for all
his book's
genuine merits, may
have fallen into what
Merleau-Ponty
called the
great fallacy
of the human sciences-we construct the
very categories
we
analyze.
But
again many
of
these observations refer less to the book
Berkey
wrote than the one this reviewer wishes he
would have. As it is, the book is a
significant improvement
on its
predecessors, clearly
writ-
ten, very accessible,
and should be of interest to a wide audience.
YAHYA M.
SADOWSKI,
Scuds or Butter? The Political
Economy of Arms Control in the Middle
East
(Washington,
D.C.: The
Brookings Institution, 1993). Pp.
128.
REVIEWED BY MARY ANN
TETREAULT, Department
of Political Science and
Geography,
Old
Dominion
University, Norfolk, Va.
The thesis of
Yahya
Sadowski's book is an old one: states are both able and
willing
to assess
their interests
rationally
and once
they
discover or are shown what those interests are, they
will do what needs to be done to
pursue
them. The
pundit Norman
Angell,
the economist