The Virtues of Divergence

Hiroaki Kawanishi sheds light on theological trends of the eleventh/seventeenth century Ottoman world, an area of research that remains understudied in existing scholarship. The author challenges the "intellectual stagnation" thesis that has often framed post-classical Islamic intellectual history as a period of decline. In particular, he argues that the eleventh/seventeenth century Ottoman period was a time of intellectual prosperity by examining in depth the polymath of Ottoman Damascus ¿Abd al-Ghan¿ al-N¿bulus¿'s (d. 1143/1731) commentaries on the ninth/fifteenth century Maghrib¿ theologian Müammad ibn Y¿suf al-San¿s¿'s (d. 895/1490) Creed . The author focuses on N¿bulus¿'s theological project, which synthesises Ash¿arite speculative theology ( kal¿m ) and Akbarian Sufism, while giving special attention to epistemology, cosmology, metaphysics, prophetology, and ethics.