Akbar's Chamber - Experts Talk Islam

Dervish Poets and ‘Vernacular Islam’ in Medieval Turkey

While the Quran was revealed in Arabic, for more than a thousand years Muslims have explored its meanings and implications in many other languages.  In the medieval period, this process of ‘vernacularization’ accelerated as wandering holy men — known as dervishes and abdals — preached profound mystical doctrines in languages understood by ordinary people. Their preferred medium was poetry, leading distant contemporaries like Yunus Emre (d.1321) in Anatolia and Amir Khusro (d.1325) in Delhi to lay the foundations of Turkish and Hindi literature. This episode looks at these developments through the Turkish poems of Kaygusuz Abdal, whose verses are still read — and sung — across Turkey to this day.  Nile Green talks to Zeynep Oktay Uslu, the translator and editor of Mesnevî-i Baba Kaygusuz (Harvard University Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures, 2013). 

The Magazine That Took Salafism to the World

In 1898, an obscure Syrian scholar called Rashid Rida founded a magazine in Cairo called al-Manar (‘The Lighthouse’). Over the next forty years, it reached readers as far apart as India and Argentina, Africa and Indonesia, spreading worldwide the new form of Islam called Salafism. Despite never holding any formal religious office, by seizing the opportunities of the Arabic media revolution Rida became the preeminent Muslim influencer of the age of print. Urging readers to return to the pure Islam of the ‘pious ancestors,’ he aimed to free his fellow believers from the shackles of tradition that prevented them from embracing modernity. As both prosperity gospel and means of empowerment, Rida’s magazine reveals the attractions of early Salafism. Nile Green talks to Leor Halevi, the author of Modern Things on Trial: Islam's Global and Material Reformation in the Age of Rida (Columbia University Press, 2019).

Introduction to Akbar's Chamber

Akbar’s Chamber offers a non-political, non-sectarian and non-partisan space for exploring the past and present of Islam. It has no political or theological bias other than a commitment to the Socratic method (which is to say that questions lead us to understanding) and the empirical record (which is to say the evidence of the world around us). By these methods, Akbar’s Chamber is devoted to enriching public awareness of Islam and Muslims both past and present.

The podcast aims to improve understanding of Islam in all its variety, in all regions of the world, by inviting experts to share their specialist knowledge in terms that we can all understand. And in terms that we can find interesting. Because as I’ve learned in decades spent travelling, researching and writing about the Islamic world, its cultural wealth and historical complexity are endlessly fascinating.

What the Prophet Muhammad Said… (and How We Know)

Almost everyone nowadays has heard of the Quran. But what about the Hadith? Far larger than the Quran itself, the Hadith comprise several hundred thousand reports about what the Prophet Muhammad said and did. For almost fourteen centuries, learned Muslim have drawn on these reports for myriad purposes, whether moral or mystical, political or legal. With such high stakes, assessing the authenticity of sometimes contradictory reports became a core intellectual discipline, leading both male and female scholars to memorize thousands of Hadith and debate their implications. Turning from past to present, we’ll finally ask how the Hadith are interpreted today. Nile Green talks to Asma Sayeed, the author of Women and the Transmission of Religious Knowledge in Islam (Cambridge University Press, 2013).

Deobandism: The Indian Origins of a Global Muslim Reform Movement

From its humble origins as a small-town madrasa founded in colonial India in 1866, the Deoband movement has become one of the most influential molders of contemporary Islam. By tracing its trajectory of expansion, and unpacking its doctrines, this podcast follows Deobandism from provincial India to the world, before turning to its complex relationship with Sufism, on the one hand, and the Taliban, on the other. Together with its allied Tablighi Jamaat missionary society, the impact of Deobandism points us to the leading but little-recognized role of South Asia in contemporary global Islam. Nile Green talks to Brannon D. Ingram, the author of Revival from Below: The Deoband Movement and Global Islam (University of California Press, 2018).

Ismaili Entanglements in the Indian Ocean World

Among the many varieties of Islam, and the numerous Muslim minorities, few are less known but more fascinating than the Bohras. A minority within a minority, this million-strong community of Ismaili Shi‘is emerged in Egypt before their leaders fled to Yemen then finally found refuge in India. In this podcast, we’ll follow the Bohras from medieval Cairo via the remote Haraz mountains of Arabia to their third homeland in Gujarat, where they adopted many aspects of Indian culture, and grew rich from the Indian Ocean trade. But they maintained throughout their loyalty to their hereditary leaders, telling us much from the margins about Muslim religious authority. Nile Green talks to Olly Akkerman, the author of a forthcoming book entitled The Alawi Bohras and the Making of a Neo-Fatimid Library.

The Man Who Founded the Muslim Brotherhood

Founded in Egypt in 1928, the Muslim Brotherhood became the key promoter of the political visions of Islam that spread more widely as the century progressed. By following the biography of its founder, Hasan al-Banna, this episode examines the circumstances, debates and idiosyncrasies that gave shape to the world’s most influential Islamist movement. As well as al-Banna’s adept organizational skills, we’ll look closely at his teachings as recorded in his various Arabic writings. At the center of his mission, at once practical and ideological, lay the leading political role which Islam had to play in a modern world he saw dominated by colonialists, nationalists and communists. Seven decades after his death, we’ll finally ask what al-Banna’s legacy is today. Nile Green talks to Gudrun Krämer, the author of Hasan al-Banna (Oneworld, 2010).

Between Indo-Persian and Anglo-Persian: Cultural Encounters in the Bay of Bengal

How did Muslims encounter and interpret other cultures before the modern era of globalization? To answer this question, we turn to the testimony of one of the great genres of Muslim literature: the travelogue. In this podcast, we’ll rove around the Bay of Bengal, where the Persian lingua franca promoted by the Mughal then British empires became the intermediary language between Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists finally Christian Britons. Poring through unpublished manuscripts, we’ll ask what these Indo-Persian – and ‘Anglo-Persian’ – travelogues can tell us about the ways in which Muslims have understood and interacted with other cultures. Nile Green talks to Arash Khazeni, the author of The City and the Wilderness: Indo-Persian Encounters in Southeast Asia (University of California Press, 2020).

Pakistan: Bastion and Battlefield of Islamic Modernism

In the decades either side of 1900, a series of influential Muslim thinkers tried to reconcile Islam with the modern world. As their ideas gained prominence in late colonial India, the doctrines of Islamic modernism formed an informal religious charter for the founding of Pakistan in 1947. But over the subsequent seventy years, Pakistan’s ruling elite found their modernist ideals questioned from many corners, not least as they failed to live up to their democratic promises. In this podcast, we’ll follow the travails of Islamic modernism as rival religious authorities promoted competing visions of the place of Islam in the constitution, law and daily life of the world’s first ‘Islamic republic.’ Nile Green talks to Muhammad Qasim Zaman, the author of Islam in Pakistan: A History (Princeton University Press, 2018).

The Mystic Companions of Rumi: Sufi Poetry in Classical Persian

For almost a thousand years, cultured Muslims from many regions of the world turned for inspiration and solace to the Persian mystical poetry of the Sufis. Originating in medieval Iran and Afghanistan, these poems spread as far as the Balkans, Bengal and beyond, shaping the religious and cultural life of South and Central Asia no less than the Middle East. In this podcast, we’ll be introduced to the most important poets and their main spiritual themes, brought alive by sample verses recited in the original Farsi and English translation. Whether the celebrated Rumi or lesser known mystics like Sana’i and Bidel, we’ll ask why we should still read these poets today. Nile Green talks to Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak, the author of Recasting Persian Poetry: Scenarios of Poetic Modernity in Iran (University of Utah Press, 1995).

Making Sense of ‘Multiple Islams’: The View from the Indian South

Over its long history, Islam has taken on many distinctive regional forms. With its many languages and countless cultural influences, South Asia – comprising India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka – has produced a particularly rich variety of these localized versions of Islam. Taking the example of the Tamil-speaking Muslims of southern India and Sri Lanka, in this podcast we’ll explore how living by the shores of the Indian Ocean shaped the contours of their maritime Islam.  Turning to more recent times, we’ll also see how religious reformists from Pakistan and the Gulf have tried to ‘purify’ or ‘standardize’ the way Tamils practice their faith. Nile Green talks to Torsten Tschacher, the author of Race, Religion, and the ‘Indian Muslim’ Predicament in Singapore (Routledge, 2017).

At the Religious Crossroads of Central Asia

Situated in northern Afghanistan, the ancient city of Balkh was one of the great cultural crossroads of world history. Following its transformation from a sacred Buddhist center into one of the holy cities of Islam, this podcast delves into the little-known interactions of Muslim, Buddhist and Jewish peoples along the pilgrimage and trade routes of Central Asia. We’ll hear what the recent discovery of medieval manuscripts in arcane languages like Bactrian and Judeo-Arabic tells us about everyday life in this pluralistic society, as well as the gradual process of conversion as Balkh’s Buddhist stupas gave way to a new sacred geography. Nile Green talks to Arezou Azad, the author of Sacred Landscape in Medieval Afghanistan: Revisiting the Faḍāʾil-i Balkh (Oxford University Press, 2013).