Replete with a cast of giants in Islamic thought and philosophy, Ahmad S. Dallal’s pathbreaking intellectual history of the eighteenth-century Muslim world challenges stale views of this period as one of decline, stagnation, and the engendering of a widespread fundamentalism. Far from being moribund, Dallal argues, the eighteenth century--prior to systematic European encounters--was one of the most fertile eras in Islamic thought.

Across vast Islamic territories, Dallal charts in rich detail not only how intellectuals rethought and reorganized religious knowledge but also the reception and impact of their ideas. From the banks of the Ganges to the shores of the Atlantic, commoners and elites alike embraced the appeals of Muslim thinkers who, while preserving classical styles of learning, advocated for general participation by Muslims in the definition of Islam. Dallal also uncovers the regional origins of most reform projects, showing how ideologies were forged in particular sociopolitical contexts. Reformists’ ventures were in large part successful--up until the beginnings of European colonization of the Muslim world. By the nineteenth century, the encounter with Europe changed Islamic discursive culture in significant ways into one that was largely articulated in reaction to the radical challenges of colonialism.

Early modern Islamic reform can be classified under two general rubrics: the first encompasses the eighteenth-century reform activities that preceded the cultural impact of Europe. The second includes a spectrum of nineteenth-century reforms that were articulated in response to this impact. Naturally, there can be no single date that marks the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the modern period, as European penetration and domination took hold at different dates in different places. Moreover, since the extent and significance of the encounter with Europe was not simultaneously appreciated in all parts of the Muslim world, the cultural eighteenth century sometimes lingered past the colonial takeover.
Traditional scholarship asserts that the eighteenth century is a century of political and economic decline and of intellectual stagnation, and that an era of political and intellectual revival and reform ensues in the nineteenth century primarily as a result of the growth of European influence in, and the resulting intellectual challenges to, the Muslim world. The reaction or response to Europe became the central criterion for defining Islamic reform. This approach has privileged one particular kind of intellectual activity, namely that which responded to the ‘European challenge’ by adapting itself to it. While the idea of economic and political decline has been largely discredited in a substantial number of studies, especially by historians of the Ottoman Empire and the Ottoman provinces, the present chapter will focus on the less-studied realm of culture.