Akbar's Chamber - Experts Talk Islam

The Meaning of Muslim Dreams: Landscapes of the Imagination in Egypt

According to a famous saying of the Prophet Muhammad, “A true dream constitutes one forty-sixth part of prophethood.” Over the following centuries, countless Muslim thinkers discussed the hidden problem in that saying: how to distinguish a ‘true dream’ from other kinds of dreams, whether mundane ones caused by illness and indigestion or more worrying ones sent by Satan. Consequently, Muslims developed a rich tradition of dream theory, drawing on sources as varied as ancient Greek texts, Sufi theosophy, and in more recent times European psychology. In this episode, we’ll see how these theories and debates play out in the modern Middle East. Focusing on Egypt, we’ll examine how the dreams of ordinary Muslims are understood by Sufi masters, TV dream interpreters, religious reformists, and secular psychoanalysts. Nile Green talks to Amira Mittermaier, author of Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination (University of California Press, 2010), which won the Clifford Geertz Prize from the American Academy of Religion.

The Medieval Arabic World of Books: A Tour of a Lost Syrian Library

In this episode we explore the contents of a remarkable medieval library: the Ashrafiya of Damascus. What makes the Ashrafiya important isn’t so much its fame in its own time, but the survival of an extraordinary document: the oldest Arabic library catalogue ever discovered. Using this as our guide, we take a tour of the library, from its location between the eighth century Umayyad mosque and the mausoleum of Saladin’s nephew to the bookshelves placed opposite the windows to avoid the risk of burning lamps. Although the Ashrafiya was far from the largest medieval Arabic library when the catalogue was written in the 1270s, it still held over 2000 books – a number that even the University of Cambridge wouldn’t reach for another century. Still more significant is the sheer variety of subjects it covered, helping us reconstruct the larger intellectual context in which Muslim religious ideas took shape. Nile Green talks to Konrad Hirschler, the author of Medieval Damascus: Plurality and Diversity in an Arabic Library (Edinburgh University Press, 2016), which was awarded the biennial Best Book prize by the Middle East Medievalists society. It is available open-access here: https://www.academia.edu/13464354/Medieval_Damascus_Plurality_and_Diversity_in_an_Arabic_Library_-_The_Ashrafiya_Library_Catalogue

Comparing Christianity & Islam: Debating Religions in the Age of Print

Usually in Akbar’s Chamber we pursue questions of inter-religious understanding. But in this episode, we explore its flip side by way of the religious misunderstandings—and plain disagreements—between Christians and Muslims which were amplified in modern period by the spread of printing through the Middle East. After outlining the context in which Muslim scholars began both debating Christianity and debating with Christian missionaries, we’ll turn to a case study of an especially important figure in the Muslim public sphere: Rashid Rida (1865-1935). By examining his sources of information on Christianity, we’ll see the curious co-dependence of Christian and Muslim scholars who increasingly relied on the same sources of information, and misinformation. Nile Green talks to Prof. Umar Ryad (Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Leuven in Belgium and the Director of the Leuven Centre for the Study of Islam, Culture and Society). He is he the author of Islamic Reformism and Christianity: A Critical Reading of the Works of Muhammad Rashid Rida and his Associates (1898-1935) (Leiden: Brill, 2009), which is available open-access here: https://brill.com/view/title/16450

 

Rediscovering and Reconnecting: How the Hui Muslims of China Encountered their Co-Religionists

Studies of 19th and 20th century Chinese history often focus on Christian missionary activities in China. But the same period saw members of China’s Hui (or Sino-Muslim) community reconnect with their co-religionists overseas. Armed with knowledge of Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, and trained in new religious schools overseas, these Hui scholars began to "rediscover" aspects of Islam and in the process rewrite the history of Islam in China both for audiences within China and for non-Chinese audiences elsewhere. In this episode, we examine why these Sino-Muslim exchanges with colonial India and Egypt took place and explore some of the implications for Islam in China. Yiming Ha of the Chinese History Podcast talks to Nile Green, the regular host of Akbar’s Chamber, about some of the themes of his new book, How Asia Found Herself: A Story of Intercultural Understanding (Yale University Press, fall 2022). This episode is a collaboration with The Chinese History Podcast.

The Other Shi‘ites: Recreating Karbala in Pakistan and India

Shi‘ism is usually thought of in relation to the Middle East, especially Iran and Iraq. But India and Pakistan have a combined population of up to 50 million Shi‘ite Muslims. While venerating the sacred history of the battle of Karbala—where the third Shi‘i imam Husayn was martyred in 680 CE—these Indian and Pakistani Shi‘ites have developed their own rich regional traditions, especially in terms of ceremonies, buildings, and material culture. Such is the aesthetic and emotional appeal of these traditions that they have also attracted not only Sunni participants, but even certain Hindus, such as the centuries-old community of Husayni Brahmins. In this episode, we’ll learn about the rituals, relics, and sacred sites through which the Shi‘is of South Asia and their non-Shi‘i sympathizers annually recreate Karbala in cities and villages across the subcontinent. Nile Green talks to Karen Ruffle (Associate Professor of History of Religions at the University of Toronto), the author of Everyday Shiʿism in South Asia (Wiley-Blackwell, 2021).

One Islam or Many? Making Sense of the Varieties of Islam

“Two facts confront someone studying Islam. One is the astounding variety of practices and beliefs that from place to place and time to time are considered to be Islam. The other is that Muslims, despite their manifest differences in practice and belief, tend to recognize one another as fellow Muslims”.  So writes Kevin Reinhart in explaining the problem that confronts anyone, Muslim or non-Muslim, in facing the visible facts of Islam in practice. In this episode, we explore ways to make sense of what is at once the plurality and unity of lived Islam. By using the analogy of language, we see how Islam can be interpreted as being ‘like’ a language that has ‘dialect’ features and ‘shared’ (or koiné) features, as well as a ‘standard’ version that, like the English of grammatical textbooks, isn’t necessarily followed by most speakers of English. Nile Green talks to A. Kevin Reinhart (Associate Professor of Religion at Dartmouth College), the author of Lived Islam: Colloquial Religion in a Cosmopolitan Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

From ‘Failed States’ to ‘Hidden Caliphs’: How Muslim Scholar-Saints became Pillars of Social Order

In this episode we’ll explore the history of a ‘hidden caliphate’ through which scholar-saints of the Naqshbandi Sufi order provided social stability during times of tremendous political upheaval. The Sufis in question were followers of Ahmad Sirhindi, who in the years after his death in 1624 – or 1034 in the Muslim calendar – designated him as the ‘Renewer of the Second Millennium.’ In the following centuries, his network expanded from northern India through Afghanistan to Central Asia, Russia and China, bringing his teachings to men and women from every rank of society. We’ll explore the doctrines, both moral and mystical, practical and spiritual, that enabled these ‘scholar-saints’ to maintain social order and justice after the tumultuous collapse of the Mughal Empire. Nile Green talks to Waleed Ziad, the author of Hidden Caliphate: Sufi Saints Beyond the Oxus and Indus (Harvard University Press, 2021).

An African Spiritual Odyssey: The ‘Ajami Traditions of African Islam

Africa’s Islamic traditions receive far less attention than is warranted by their intellectual and spiritual wealth. Because African Muslims have not only been major contributors to Arabic learning for a millennium or more. They also developed writings in their own languages that enriched Islam through insights and idioms drawn from the experience of African life. Known collectively as ‘Ajami literatures, these “African languages in Arabic-script” range from Fulani and Wolof in the west of the continent to Somali and Swahili in the east. In this episode of Akbar’s Chamber, we trace the emergence of these African traditions and dip our toes into the deep waters of their moral and spiritual doctrines. By way of example, we’ll also talk about the teachings of the great Senegalese master, Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba (1850-1927). Leading us on our journey is Fallou Ngom, the author of Muslims beyond the Arab World: The Odyssey of ʿAjami and the Muridiyya (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Islam and Yoga: Sitting Together, or Worlds Apart?

For anyone entering a yoga studio today, the world of Islam might feel a million miles away. Yet for more than a thousand years, practitioners of Yoga have lived side by side with the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent. The history of Islam and Yoga, of Muslims and Hindus, is more than a tale of simple coexistence, though. It’s also a story of close interactions and careful comparisons, of Persian translations of Sanskrit texts, and Arabic investigations of Yogi doctrines, along with a shared concern with the spiritual value of breath-control. In this episode of Akbar’s Chamber, we’ll be looking at some of the most influential Muslim authors on such topics, including al-Biruni (d.1048) and Muhammad Ghaws (d.1562). But far from burying our heads in recondite manuscripts, we’ll be placing these figures in their living environments, where Sufis regularly encountered ‘Jogis,’ and wondered what they had in common. We’ll also be asking how these medieval encounters can inform our understanding of religious pluralism in Asia today. Nile Green talks to Carl W. Ernst, the author of Refractions of Islam in India: Situating Sufism and Yoga (Sage, 2016).

Science, Faith, and the Search for True Knowledge: The Thought of Said Nursi

In the twentieth century, the rise of science and secularism became major preoccupations for countless religious thinkers, Muslim or otherwise. Among them was Said Nursi, an influential Kurdish-Turkish thinker who grappled with such timeless questions as what is a human being, and what constitutes true knowledge? After living through the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and spending years in Siberia as a prisoner-of-war, Nursi spent the second half of his life trying to expand the insights of traditional Islam in ways that were relevant to modern times. The result was his 6000-page Risala-i Nur (‘Epistles of Light’), which he smuggled out of the remote Anatolian village where the secularizing rulers of republican Turkey had condemned him to internal exile. In this episode, we draw on the Risala-i Nur to explore Nursi’s ideas about knowledge, science and the human condition. Nile Green talks to Mustafa Tuna, the co-author of A Glossary of Islamic Terms in the Light of the Risale-i Nur (Neşriyat, 2021).

The Ottoman Legacy in Southeast Europe: The Deep Roots of Balkan Islam

Discussions of Islam in Europe often focus on the northern and western regions of the continent, where Muslim communities only evolved in the late twentieth century. But the history of Islam in southeastern Europe is far older, reaching back to the mid-1300s. Over the course of almost seven centuries, the Balkan region – encompassing today’s Greece, Albania, Romania, and Bulgaria, as well as the former Yugoslavian republics – fostered a variety of Muslim communities, and correspondingly varied forms of Islam. Through centuries of coexistence as well as conflict, these European Muslims shared countless cultural traditions with their Christian and Jewish neighbors. This episode delves into this long, enduring and intertwined history by following these developments down to the present day. Nile Green talks to Nathalie Clayer, the author (with Xavier Bougarel) of Europe's Balkan Muslims: A New History (Hurst, 2017).

Technology and Religious Change: How Printing Transformed the Islamic Tradition

Historians have long recognized how the spread of printing in early modern Europe was a major contributor to the Reformation and Renaissance. So, when printing spread across the Islamic world in the nineteenth century, what were the consequences for the religious and cultural life of Muslims? In this episode, we’ll explore this question by looking at the Middle East, with a particular focus on Cairo, which became the epicenter for not only Arabic printing but also for the ‘Arab renaissance,’ or nahda, and the religious reform movement that was later dubbed ‘Salafism.’ By bringing to light a technological revolution so successful that it’s now all but invisible, we’ll see how many of the things we take for granted about Islam were shaped by decisions made by the first few generations of Arab editors and printers. Nile Green talks to Ahmed El Shamsy, the author of Rediscovering the Islamic Classics: How Editors and Print Culture Transformed an Intellectual Tradition (Princeton University Press, 2020).