Putting a Rope on Tradition
“Traditional Islam is not the replication of the positions of the ancients; it is to seek what they sought”.[1] Introduction During my doctoral research, an ethnography of a Dār al-‘Ulūm (madrasa) in Britain, the notion…
Madrasa Discourses: A Project for the Renewal of the Rationalistic Tradition of the Madrasa
Ever since its inception, the modern madrasa system has been striving to prove its worth and practicality. Though reform has tended to shun the influence of modern (and Western) social and natural sciences, some modernist…
Education, Administrative Discipline, and the Rise of the Modern State in the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman history unveils certain characteristics similar to the early modern or modern European history, as leading Ottoman historians, including figures such as, Mehmet Genç, and the late Halil İnalcık and Rifaat Abou-El-Haj, affirm. For instance,…