A Learned Society in a Period of Transition: the Sunni 'Ulama' of Eleventh-Century Baghdad.

• Author: Ahmed, Shahab
• Position: Book Review

By DAPHNA EPHRAT. Albany: STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS, 2000. Pp. xviii + 229. $16.95.

This short book (the main text is 153 pages, including fourteen tables) is a study of the scholarly community of eleventh-century Baghdad, "a time when the fluid society of the 'learned', the 'ulama', began to emerge as a more defined and exclusive group." It sets for itself the following objective: "to define the link between the cultural and social practices involved in the process of the transmission of Islamic learning, and the construction of social bonds and identities in a historical time and a specific place." Ephrat poses a number of questions, fundamentally: "How were scholarly networks formed, and what were the bonds that made the loose associations of the 'ulama' stronger? How, without the formal and stable institutions of corporations ... were the 'ulama' able to guarantee their exclusive authority in transmitting legitimate knowledge and defining the boundaries of their group?" (p. 6). She notes that "several historians ... tend to focus on formal institutional structures and processes as a category of historical explanation"--the major institutional development in the sphere of learning in eleventh-century Baghdad was, of course, the advent of the madrasa under the auspices of the Saljuq state--this method, however, provides "only partial explanations of the problem of social change" (p. 7). Ephrat proposes, instead, "shifting the focus from the institutions or frameworks related to the application and transmission of religious lore and knowledge to the cultural and social practices which grew up around them, from the content of learning to the learned society" (p. 10). (This approach, of course, has a precedent in the work of Michael Chamberlain (1) with whom, however, Ephrat engages very little.)

Ephrat notes further that "Several historians have concluded that madrasas served as centers for the recruitment of jurists and bureaucrats, thereby planting the seeds for the creation of a religious establishment incorporated into the state bureaucracy and dependent upon the military ruling elite." In this view the madrasas are "instruments of state power, intended to control institutions of learning, which would grant the political rulers influence over the 'ulama'." However, "contrary to this accepted view, this study asserts that the 'ulama' of Baghdad enjoyed an autonomous role in the city's public sphere throughout the Seljuq period. They acted independently of the political authorities in courts and madrasas and were reluctant to become involved or assume positions in the official sphere. Moreover, the political rulers avoided the internal affairs of the 'ulama' and were careful not to meddle in religious matters in general." Also, "other historians link the development of educational institutions with the consolidation of the madhahib, ascribing a crucial role in this process to the madrasas" as "centers around which the scholarly groupings, which formed the cores of the madhahib, crystallized and created their identities." But, Ephrat asks, "Did their [the madrasas'] appearance change the process by which individuals were recognized as scholars, gaining prominence among the 'ulama class? What was the contribution of the advent of the madrasa to the transformation of the 'ulama' from loose associations into a better defined group in terms of membership and structure during the Sunni revival?" (pp. 8-9). Ephrat's answer is essentially that madrasas and madhhabs were not, in fact, of primary importance in the formation of 'ulama' identity: rather, the crucial role in the "coherence and perpetuation of 'ulama' groupings" was played by the pre-existing formation of the halqa or study circle of the individual shaykh. It was by affiliation with his teachers that a student was identified and defined as a part of descending chains of scholarly transmission of knowledge on the one hand, and as a part of radial networks of...