Abstract
Any non-Muslim writing on Islamic history must consider their approach to the topic. This chapter considers in particular the approach of one noted scholar, Albert Hourani, who conducted numerous studies of the ways in which Orientalists wrote about Islam and about the way in which he himself wrote about the religion of the ‘other’.
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Notes
- 1.
These words are strikingly similar to those he uses about the great Muslim philosopher Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (A History of the Arab Peoples, p. 170).
- 2.
Hourani , Syria and Lebanon (London, 1946), p. 265.
- 3.
Ibid., p. 119.
- 4.
Minorities in the Arab World (London, 1947), p. 124.
- 5.
Ibid., p. 123.
- 6.
Ibid., p. 125.
- 7.
A Vision of History (Beirut, 1961), p. 110.
- 8.
A History of the Arab Peoples (London, 1991), p. 170.
- 9.
Ibid., p. 169.
- 10.
Europe and the Middle East (London, 1980), p. 76.
- 11.
Islam in European Thought, p. 40.
- 12.
Ibid., p. 40.
- 13.
Ibid., p. 74.
- 14.
History of the Arab Peoples, p. 4.
- 15.
Emergence of the Modern Middle East, p. xiii.
- 16.
Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, p. 2.
- 17.
Ibid., p. 170.
- 18.
Ibid., p. 135.
- 19.
Minorities in the Arab World, p. 124.
- 20.
Hossein Modarressi and Hamid Enayat.
- 21.
Islam in European Thought, p. 97.
- 22.
Ibid., p. 102.
- 23.
Ibid., p. 101.
- 24.
Ibid., p. 102.
- 25.
J. Berque, Egypt (London, 1972), p. 7. Hourani perhaps developed the concept of the ‘other’ from the anthropologist Evans-Pritchard, his colleague at Oxford. Evans-Pritchard asserted that the main issue of anthropology was that of ‘translation’—that is finding a way to translate one’s own thoughts to the world of another culture.
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Hopwood, D. (2018). A Way of Approaching Islamic History. In: Islam's Renewal. St Antony's Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75202-0_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75202-0_7
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