Conceptual history, translated from the German Begriffsgeschichte, emerged as a field of study and set of methodologies in post-War Germany, most famously through the work of Reinhart Koselleck. Koselleck’s aim was to analyze the development of the modern world, which he posited could be traced through the emergence of key concepts—their contestations and transformations. In the late twentieth century, numerous fields emerged that built or touched on similar questions and problematics as Begriffsgeschte, such as French discourse analysis, exemplified in the work of Michel Foucault, and the Cambridge School of Quinten Skinner and J.G.A. Pocock, to name a few. Yet it is only in very recent years that scholars have begun to explore the possibilities of applying and developing the theories, methods, and frameworks of conceptual history to historical contexts and languages outside of Europe.
Following recent pioneering work on conceptual history in non-European contexts, our panel explores the historical development of key concepts in Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and Arabic in the Middle East from the nineteenth to twenty-first century. The first paper treats the semantic development of the concept of tarih-i umumi, or universal history, in nineteenth-century Ottoman historiography, connecting this development to changes in conceptions of temporality and spatiality. The second paper analyzes the Persian discourse on shura, or consultation, demonstrating that since the mid-nineteenth century Qajar period, shura emerged as a concept entangled in religious and secular visions of political power. Moving to the early twentieth century, the third paper explores the concept of Asia in the writings of Muslim intellectuals, asking how Asia as a conceptual space with Afghanistan at its center became a galvanizing framework for the formation of modern political identities. The fourth paper approaches the Persian concept moqavemat, or resistance, in Iranian political writings from the early to late twentieth century, situating its historical transformations in relation to domestic politics and the international order. The last paper examines the concept of manhaj al-Azhar, or Azhar methodology, in the writings of Muslim religious scholars in twenty-first century Egypt, analyzing the development of this concept in relation to late-twentieth century leftist debates about decolonization and Islamist visions of religion and politics. Taken together, these papers explore how conceptual history can help scholars in Middle East Studies think beyond the fixed geographies, categories, and identities that have structured the study of the modern Middle East.
Interdisciplinary
History
Religious Studies/Theology
-
Dr. Mary Elston
In 2015, the social media team of the former grand mufti of Egypt, Ali Juma (1952-), uploaded a YouTube video titled, “What are the characteristics of the manhaj al-Azhar?” In the video, Juma sits on a low wooden chair in a mosque as he explains the components of the manhaj al-Azhar, or the methodology of al-Azhar, to a group of students assembled at his feet. In Juma’s explanation, the manhaj al-Azhar refers to an approach to Islamic knowledge that is Ashari in creed, madhhabi in jurisprudence, and Sufi in ethics. In the last decade, manhaj al-Azhar has become a key concept for the Muslim religious scholars of al-Azhar, as evidenced by the dissemination of numerous articles, YouTube videos, and public lectures that delineate the concept and its importance. In their statements and writings, the manhaj al-Azhar is a panacea, representing not only “true” Islam, but also the solution to contemporary social ills like religious extremism.
Although Muslim scholars like Juma claim that the concept manhaj al-Azhar represents a continuation of premodern practices and discourse of Islamic knowledge transmission, this paper demonstrates that in both form and content, the concept is of recent vintage. Drawing on the theories and methods of conceptual history, this paper analyzes the concept of manhaj al-Azhar in the writings of Juma and his colleague and former student, Usama Sayyid al-Azhari (1971-). The paper demonstrates that the concept of manhaj al-Azhar is entangled with several kinds of intellectual and political discourses, such as the efforts of the Egyptian state to counter Islamism, late-twentieth-century Islamist writings on Muslim politics, and mid-twentieth-century leftist debates about decolonization. The paper shows how conceptual history can broaden scholarly understandings of Muslim religious scholars and their efforts to bolster their religious authority. In their appropriation and articulation of key political concepts like manhaj, Muslim scholars implicitly situate themselves in relation to a range of intellectual, political, and religious discourses.
-
Mustafa Akay
This research treats the semantic evolution of the concept of "tarih-i umumi", or universal history, within nineteenth-century Ottoman intellectual circles. The study examines the new temporal and spatial perspectives that contributed to the formation of modern universal historical narratives and the new positionings pertaining to these narratives.
Defined by the Ottoman author and historian Ahmed Midhat (d. 1912) as "the biography of the progress of human civilization," the concept referred to a narrative in which taking part became a struggle for political existence.
Focusing particularly on Midhat’s writings, this paper traces the concept of "tarih-i umumi" through a wide range of sources, including history literature, encyclopedic and lexical works, archival documents, and newspaper articles. It analyzes how new universal historical temporalities led to new spatial dichotomies, such as civilized/uncivilized, progressed/backward, center/periphery. In particular, the paper explores how Ottoman scholars, like Midhat, using the concept of "tarih-i umumi" positioned the Ottoman Empire geographically between Asia and Europe, politically between colonizer and colonized, and normatively between civilized and uncivilized.
In summary, this research aims to illuminate the intricate interplay of temporal and spatial shifts within nineteenth-century Ottoman history-writing, offering a nuanced understanding of the semantic transformation of "tarih-i umumi" and its profound implications on Ottoman intellectual thought and societal constructs.
-
Dr. Alireza Shams Lahijani
This article examines the historical transformations of the concept resistance (moqavemat) within Iranian political language in the twentieth century. In contemporary Iranian discourses, resistance is often associated with foreign policy and a specific international order. However, a conceptual history approach shows how particular political experiences and expectations shaped resistance and its entanglements with other key concepts, such as survival and independence, in the twentieth century. This paper charts the historical transformations of the concept of resistance in Iranian political language, demonstrating that resistance became a pivotal concept in Iran in the 1920s. It traces the concept’s semantic transformations in the late twentieth century in relation to historical events associated with non-alignment. Analyzing political writings, newspaper archives, and debates in the parliament in twentieth-century Iran, the article details how the concept emerged out of imperial rivalries, continues to shape contemporary geopolitical conflicts, and refers to various spheres of the international order, both political and religious. In doing so, the article charts the co-constitution of the concept of resistance within domestic politics and the international order.
-
Marya Hannun
This paper draws on the approach of conceptual historians to explore how Asia emerged as a conceptual space with Afghanistan at its center in the minds and writings of Afghan and Muslim intellectuals in the twentieth century. Reacting to European civilizational divides, transnationally-connected Muslim reformers of the early-twentieth century like the Afghan writer and statesman Mahmud Tarzi (1865-1933) conceived of a broader Asia in which Afghanistan figured prominently. It draws on a variety of sources, including newspapers, articles in translation, geography textbooks, travelogues and colonial archives, to trace the concept of ‘Asia’ and ‘Asianess’ that featured prominently in the work of Tarzi and his interlocutors. Though Japan and China were central to their understanding of this concept, they were not only looking east but also south and west across the transregion of what we call the Middle East and South Asia to connect with and imagine the east and Asia. Through Tarzi and the transregional press, Asia became a galvanizing political framework that shaped material solidarities on the ground in Afghanistan. At the same time, the tensions and contradictions in Tarzi’s vision of Asia, and the political realities facing Afghanistan, led to disillusionment and competing claims about what Asia represented. Rather than receiving this category as fixed, then, a conceptual history of Asia prompts us to examine its various meanings and how they might have informed one another and shaped politics. Beyond shedding light on important intellectual developments, this paper also puts forward conceptual history as a method for thinking about areas studies and writing regional histories. It illustrates the potentials of situating and tracking the development of the geographic terms we use across time and languages, noting how they changed over time, through space. How did our historical interlocutors understand these terms? This kind of conceptual teasing-out helps us to argue that these designations are not natural or inevitable, nor do they purely reside in the realm of the imaginary. Instead, by interrogating these regional conceptualizations we find that they are actively contested, and their various meanings historically informed (and continue to shape) political and economic realities.
-
Alisa Shablovskaia
In classic Islamic political theory, the concepts of consultation (shura) and reason (‘aql) are inherently connected, as only the learned men (‘oqala) are entitled to counsel the sovereign. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Iranian discourse on shura was inseparable from that on ‘aql, consultation being presented as a primary means to improve the ruler’s capacity to use his reason and thus govern in justice. During the years of the Constitutional Movement (1905-1911), both shura and ‘aql acquired a new meaning, introducing to the Iranian audience the new concepts of political representation and intelligentsia (‘oqala) correspondingly. However, such a change cannot be reduced to a mere transfer of concepts from the West to the East; instead, it should be contextualized within the framework of the gradual evolution of shura and ‘aql as entangled concepts. While the possession of ‘aql was considered by Iranian scholars as a prerequisite of economic, military and social development, shura represented a major tool to conduct politics with reason and thus enabled the introduction of the idea of collective reason. This paper demonstrates that throughout the nineteenth century the concepts of shura and ‘aql were systematically used to curb the sovereign’s power, enlarge the horizon of expectation and increase the agency of Iranians. A careful reading of Qajar political treatises (andarznameha-ye siyasi) shows that Sufi literature and doctrine on the ‘perfect man’ played a considerable role in the evolution of the Iranian political discourse based on the principle of ‘aql. Though Sufi influence was far from straightforward, it can be perceived in the authors’ use of Qur’anic and poetical references such as Jalal al-Din Rumi (d. 1273). The quality of perfection being traditionally reserved to the Prophet in classic Shii‘ theology, the Qajar authors not only attributed it to the Shah but also outlined for him a path of endless self-improvement towards the perfect reason (‘aql-e koll) through consultation (mashvarat). Moreover, consultation was recommended to Islamic scholars thus breaking the ‘oqala’s monopoly on sound judgement. The paper posits that the idea to extend the circle of ‘oqala, which finally enabled the practice of national consultation, was already present in the nineteenth-century Qajar discourse on consultation. It concludes that the dialectical relationship between perfect reason and universal consultation in the Qajar political thought paved the way towards the conceptual change which marked the constitutional debates.
