É. Apor , I. Ormos (ed.): Goldziher Memorial Conference, June 21–22, 2000, Budapest.

ESS, Josef van: Goldziher as a Contemporary of Islamic Reform

GOLDZIHER AS A CONTEMPORARY OF ISLAMIC REFORM Meanwhile the spiritual climate had changed. Mustafa al-SibäT had acquired a certain reputation; originating from an old Syrian family he had become the founder of the Muslim Brethren in his country and a professor of Islamic law at Damascus university.

1" His book went through many editions and is read even today. The style of his polemics was pretty rough and unpolished." This is, however, a matter of audience and academic level. There were other scholars, younger than SibäT and writing in languages other than Arabic, who criticised Goldziher with well-founded and far-reaching arguments, e.g. Fuat Sezgin

1

2 or Mohammad Mustafa Azmi (= alA'zamT).

1

3 In Egypt, "All Hasan 'Abdalqädir could peacefully pursue his career. He was elected dean of the Faculty of Theology at al-Azhar University, and he published, in 1962, Junayd's mystical treatises, an extremely difficult text which demanded high editorial skill and was included in the Gibb Memorial Series.

1

4 It is possible, though, that his tum to Sufism was also a turn to less delicate subjects'

5, for the famous Hungarian mustashriq whose ideas he had tried to propagate remained a target of popular polemics. Even Shaykh Muhammad al-GhazälT, a prominent spokesman of moderate Islamic revivalism like SibäT, but now in Egypt, could be accused, as late as 1989, of owing his aberrations to unbelievers like Goldziher.

1

6 SibäT had, of course, never read Goldziher himself. In Syria, educated people knew French but not German. But he did not quote Léon Bercher's French translation of the second volume of the Studien either which had appeared in 1952.

17 In the Arab context this was of no importance. Ultimately he was not engaged in a discussion with Goldziher, but with 'Abdalqädir and the current of thinking his '" J. Reissner, Ideologie und Politik der Muslimbrüder Syriens, Freiburg 1980, 121 ff.; Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World IV. 71 f. '' Cf. Juynboll, Authenticity 105 ff. 1

2 Buhárí'nin kaynaklari hakkinda ara^tirmalar. Istanbul 1956. 1

3 Studies in Early Hadith Literature. With a critical edition of some early texts, Beirut 1968; reprint: Indianapolis 1978, again a PhD thesis, but now submitted to a Western University (Cambridge) and supervised by an "orientalist" (R. B. Serjeant). Like Sezgin, Azmi deals with Goldziher mainly in his introduction (8 ff.), but it is interesting to see that when he argues against him in detail he does so with regard to the same point which had already been raised by SibäT when he was still a student: Goldziher's comments about al-Zuhri (289 ff. and before). 1

4 The Life, Personality and Writings of al-Junayd, London 1962. (Cf. my review in Oriens 20 (1967), 217 ff.) 1

5 He had been working on the topic for years; cf. his article 'The Doctrine of Al-Junayd. Analytical Study of the Doctrine of Al-Junayd Based on his Letters', Islamic Quarterly 1 (1954), 167 ff. and 219 ff. 1

6 Ashraf b. 'Abdalmaqsüd Ibn 'Abdarrahim, Jindyat al-shaykh Muhammad al-Ghazáli 'alá l-hadith wa-ahlihi, Ismailia 1989, 53 ff.; cf. D. Brown, Rethinking tradition in modern Islamic thought, Cambridge 1996, 130. 1

7 Etudes sur la tradition islamique. Paris 1

952. 39