Int. J. Middle East Stud. 34 (2002), 465494. Printed in the United States of AmericaDOI: 10.1017.S0020743802003033

Basheer M. Nafi

A B U A L - T H A N A A L - A L U S I : A N A L I M ,O T TO M A N M U F T I , A N D E X E G E T EO F T H E Q U RA N

Abu al-Thana Shihab al-Din al-Alusi (180254) was one of the most prominentulama of mid-19th century Baghdad. In an era in which the Ottoman drive for modern-ization and centralization was changing the fabric of society and undermining thepower and influence of the ulama class in large parts of the sultanate, al-Alusi wasemerging as a powerful local alim, in terms of both his status as a scholar and hisinfluence as a public figure. By the time of his death, the Alusis were becomingfirmly established as a recognized ulama family, members of which would continueto play important roles in the intellectual and political life of Iraq and the Arab Mash-riq. The grand Alusi, as Abu al-Thana al-Alusi was known, however, was, and stillis, a controversial Muslim scholar whose intellectual genealogy and leanings seem tobe difficult to categorize and too contradictory to pin down. Nothing illustrates theproblematic of defining al-Alusis intellectual and theological attitudes better, perhaps,than the way in which his two sons diverged. Whereas Numan Khayr al-Din al-Alusi(183699) became one of the most influential Salafi ulama in the late 19th century,his brother, Abdullah, was known as an alim with strong Sufi tendencies. MahmudShukri al-Alusi (18571924), the son of Abdullah, however, emerged as a highlyregarded member of the growing Salafi circles of the major Arab urban centers in thebeginning of the 20th century.

The purpose of this article is to present a brief study of the life of Abu al-Thanaal-Alusi, to probe the intellectual underpinnings of his major work of tafsr (exegesisof the Quran) and to try to define the position he occupied in the evolution of modernsalafiyya in the Arab-speaking part of the Muslim world. As a school of thought,salafiyya has been commonly identified with the late 19th- and early-20th-centuryIslamic reformist ulama in the Middle East and North Africa, who tended to empha-size their relatedness to the intellectual legacy of Ahmad Taqi al-Din ibn Taymiyya(12921357) and his disciples.1 David D. Commins, tracing the intellectual genealogyof the late-19th- and early-20th-century salafiyya, remarked that Ibn Taymiyyacame to hold the status of the intellectual ancestor of Salafism. Religious reformers in Syria,Iraq, Yemen, and India accorded him the greatest respect, avidly sought his works, and strove

Basheer M. Nafi teaches Islamic History at the Muslim College, London, and Birkbeck College, Universityof London, London W5 3RP, United Kingdom; e-mail: basheer.nafi@virgin.net.

2002 Cambridge University Press 0020-7438/02 $9.50

466 Basheer M. Nafito have them published. Ibn Taymiyyas position on ijtihad, emulation, reason and revelation,and myriad other issues provided elaborate arguments, which the Salafis appropriated.2

Described in the writings of modern Arab Salafi scholars as a Salafi and defenderof salafiyya, al-Alusi seems also to have been claimed as one of the intellectualancestors of modern salafiyya. Did al-Alusi really relate to and use the ideas of IbnTaymiyya? And if he did, to what extent, under which influences, and in which con-text did he do so?

Ibn Taymiyya, in his response to the Ashari and Mutazili theologies, his objectionto the excesses of tasawwuf and pantheistic Sufism of wadat al-wujud (existentialmonism), and his defense of Sunnism against non-Sunni Islamic sects, sought to up-hold the tenets of what he saw as orthodox Islam.3 In contrast to the Ashari andMutazili invocation of Greek philosophical concepts and analytical tools, Ibn Tay-miyya called for the return to and direct understanding of the primary Islamic texts,the Quran and hadith. This call implied a denunciation of madhhabi and sectariandivisions, as well as a mandate for continuous ijtihad. Although a wide range ofIbn Taymiyyas ideas had been in circulation within Hanbali circles, he was thefirst to advance these ideas in a systematic and elaborate fashion. For Ibn Taymiyya,pristine Islam is the Islam as was projected and practiced by the salaf of the umma.The term salaf (ancestors; predecessors), as he used it, indicated the first threegenerations of Muslims: companions of the Prophet, their followers, and disciples ofthe followers.4 Yet by ascribing particular theological views to those generations ofMuslims, Ibn Taymiyya laid the groundwork for his early students and followers, suchas Ibn al-Qayim, Ibn Abd al-Hadi, al-Dhahabi, and Ibn Kathir, to employ the termsalaf not only in its strict linguistic and generational sense, but also as a school ofthought.5 Ibn Taymiyyas position would thus be described as the Salafi way, Salafidoctrine, and Salafi belief. Although Ashari theology and taawwuf would domi-nate the Sunni cultural milieu during the following period, the late 17th and 18thcenturies witnessed a rising interest in Ibn Taymiyyas works. Not only Muhammadibn Abd al-Wahhab (170392) but also other eminent ulama, including Ibrahim al-Kurani (161689), Shah Wali-Allah Dihlawi (170362), Muhammad Murtada al-Zabidi (173291), and Muhammad ibn Ali al-Shawkani (17601834), were all, invarying degrees, interested in Ibn Taymiyyas intellectual legacy.6 Behind this revivedinterest was the re-emergence of Ibn Taymiyyas ideas as a major source of inspirationfor those ulama who developed critical views of AshariSufi dominance and soughtto challenge the Ashari theology and reform Sufi beliefs and practices.

Because of Ibn Taymiyyas well-known opposition to taawwuf (an aspect of histhought that was vigorously pursued by Ibn Abd al-Wahhab), it seems inconceivablefor Sufi ulama to subscribe to his teachings. However, the cases of al-Kurani, Dihlawi,and al-Zabidi, all of whom were ulama with profound Sufi affiliations, suggest the possi-bility of overlapping attitudes, where both a Sufi-reformist vision and Salafi-inspiredbeliefs could coexist. Even Ibn Taymiyyas attitudes toward taawwuf were complex anddiscriminatory, where only Sufi believers in wahdat al-wujud were condemned outright.7One of the aims of this study is to show that al-Alusi, in spite of his acute awareness ofthe Wahhabi movement (and perhaps because of this awareness), was more in accordwith al-Kurani, Dihlawi, and al-Zabidi than with Ibn Abd al-Wahhab.

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The other terms that invite clarification for their connection with this studys projec-tion of the intellectual development of al-Alusi are orthodox and traditional. I. Gold-ziher, defining the difference between Ashari theology and Hanbali theology as ex-pressed particularly by Ibn Taymiyya, employed the terms new orthodoxy and oldorthodoxy. For Goldziher, Ibn Taymiyya represented the old orthodoxy because ofhis advocacy of the theological teachings of the early Islamic generations, the salaf.In a detailed discussion of these views of the Hanbali school, George Makdisi rejectedGoldzihers concepts of dual orthodoxies, implying that Sunni orthodoxy is moreinclusive. The only orthodoxy certified in Islam by the consensus of the community,Makdisi wrote, is the Sunni orthodoxy, represented since the third/ninth century bythe four schools of Sunni law: Hanafite, Malikite, Shafiite, and Hanbalite. There isno other orthodoxy recognized by the majority of Muslims.8 But whether the Hanbaliand Ibn Taymiyyas position was more representative of the Sunni orthodoxy than theAsharis is an area into which Makdisi did not venture. From Makdisis standpoint,Hanbali and Ibn Taymiyyas theological views are traditional for being inspired bythe Quran and the sunna, whereas the Ashari kalam was a theology of rationalistinspiration. Given that this study deals with the cultural theological environment ofthe 19th century rather than the period of Ibn Taymiyya, and considering the domi-nance of Ashari theology in the intervening period, traditional Islam is used hereto denote the Ashari perspective of Islam. Tradition is therefore employed in itsbroad social-scientific sense,9 rather than to indicate relatedness to the Prophetic tradi-tions. By contrast, orthodox refers to early Islamic theological views as they wereelaborated by Ibn Taymiyya.

In his study of the history of political ideologies, Quentin Skinner has approachedthe agents acts, political choices, and ideas as subjects of examination, explored fromwithin and as part of their broader socio-political context.10 Although ideas coulddictate, constrain, and typify actions, actions on occasion require legitimating in termsof conventional cultural regimes, thus inviting modification, alteration, or concealingof a set of ideas. In other words, acts and ideas should be seen as interchangeablesignposts for interpreting historical ideologies. This, however, does not mean thatideas are treated here as a simple or direct outcome of their social base. First, for onecan understand the significance of al-Alusis intellectual development and the rele-vance of salafiyya only by also considering the intellectual context (the normative andthe subversive, the conventional, and the unorthodox cultural patterns). And second,for the interaction of cultural and structural constraints through the human agency isboundin Durkheims wordsto engender new dimensions of reality, rarely in apredetermined fashion.

T H E M A K I N G O F A N A L I M

Abu al-Thana Shihab al-Din Mahmud ibn Abdullah al-Husayni al-Alusi was born inBaghdad to a family of Muslim scholars, claiming a sharifian descent, whose surnameis derived from Alus, a village south of Anat on the upper Euphrates.11 The Alusis,who were originally residents of Baghdad, moved to Alus in the 17th century, led bytheir ancestor Ismail. It is believed that Ismail, an alim of high standing and once a

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mufti of Baghdad, was allocated the land of several villages and river islands in theAnat region by the Ottoman authorities.12 The rise of the ulama as a main force amongthe urban notables (the ayan) in major cities was a common feature of the OttomanMiddle East at the time. In Baghdad, the ulamas position was further strengthened asa result of the continuous struggle between the Ottomans and successive rulers of Iran,from the Safavids onward, over the control of Iraq. Around 175657, Mahmud al-Alusi,grandfather of Abu al-Thana al-Alusi, returned to Baghdad. It is not clear why Mahmudal-Alusi decided to bring his branch of the family back to Baghdad after almost acentury of residing in the Anat region. But because neither Abu al-Thana al-Alusi norhis descendants would make reference to land possession in Alus, it seems that thefamilyor, at least, Mahmuds branch of ithad lost the right to its land holdings.13Private land ownership had not yet been established in the Ottoman domain, and thetransfer of rights to land or land taxes from one notable to another was not rare.

Abdullah al-Alusi (d. 1830), son of Mahmud and the father of Abu al-Thana, wasalso an alim, trained in the Hanafi school of fiqh. He was perhaps one of the firstAlusis to embrace the Hanafi madhhab (school of fiqh), for the family is widelybelieved to have been of Shafii background. The attraction of official posts in theOttoman ulama hierarchy, which was exclusively a Hanafi institution, encouragedmany Arab ulama families to subscribe to the Hanafi school of fiqh in order to im-prove their sons chances in the competition for position and wealth.14 Given the statusof the Alusis as new arrivals in Baghdad, such a move was even more appealing ifthey were to re-establish their roots in the learned community and the citys ayancircles. Indeed, Abdullah al-Alusi would soon rise to become a teacher at the Mulk-hana school and would then be appointed to the prestigious school of Ali Pasha, aposition that was usually offered to the most prominent of all teachers in Baghdad.15

Although not entirely stable under the semi-autonomous rule of the Mamluks, Bagh-dad of the early 19th century was quietly emerging as a center of Sunni learning. Boththe Ottoman authorities and the local Mamluk rulers were still deeply apprehensiveof Persian interests in Iraq and commonly suspected the loyalty of the Iraqi Shiis andtheir ulama. By supporting the Sunni circles of learning, the Ottomans and the Mam-luks hoped to create a counterbalance to the powerful Shii centers of Najaf and Kar-bala. The Mamluks, in addition, never commanded the required legitimacy to justifytheir semi-independence from the Ottoman central government; support of the localpopulations, therefore, was vital for maintaining their status. In a society whose out-look was shaped by religion, this support could be garnered only by the local ulama,spokesmen of the people. The flourishing of Sunni learning in the city was by andlarge associated with a group of Arab and Arabized Kurdish notable families, includ-ing the Haydaris, the Jabburis, the Suwaydis, the Rawis, the Shawwafs, and the Alusis,who had been ulama-producing families for several generations.16 Baghdad was alsoa crossroads and a resting place for Indian and Central Asian ulama moving from eastto west or north to south. In this flourishing and evolving environment of Islamiclearning, concentrated in a wide range of ulama circles held at various schools andmosques, Abu al-Thana was to receive his education.

Abu al-Thana al-Alusi was one of three sons born to Abdullah al-Alusi, all ofwhom rose to prominence in the Sufi and ulama circles of Baghdad. To prepare hisson for a scholarly career, Abdullah paid great attention to the education of Abu al-

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Thana from an early age. Before reaching age seven, Abu al-Thana was taught vari-ous disciplines of the Arabic language and was introduced to the primary texts ofHanafi and Shafii fiqh by his father and Mulla Husayn al-Jabburi, the young Alusisfirst two teachers.17 The combination of Shafii and Hanafi education was a strongindication of Abdullah al-Alusis desire to preserve the tradition of Shafii fiqh in thefamily, although he was certainly aware that his sons career would prosper onlythrough the Hanafi school. At age ten, Abu al-Thana al-Alusi finalized the first stageof his learning and was given permission by al-Jabburi to seek other teachers. Subse-quently, Abu al-Thana al-Alusi joined the circle of his cousin Ali ibn Ahmad al-Alusito receive instruction in Ashari theology, while seeking to study additional texts offiqh with other ulama, including Mulla Muhammad al-Shawwaf, his son Abd al-Aziz,Mulla Darwish ibn Arab, and Sayyid Amin ibn Ali al-Hilli. Among his many teach-ers, however, Ala al-Din al-Musilli, Ali al-Suwaydi, and Khalid al-Naqshbandi seemto have been the most influential in shaping his outlook as an alim.

Al-Musilli, whom Abu al-Thana al-Alusi joined at age thirteen, was a distinguishedalim but a demanding teacher with a difficult personality, a reputation that left himwith only a small number of students. Through his father, Salah al-Din Yusuf, and hisother teacher, Isa al-Halabi, al-Musilli is connected to the Yemeni scholars of hadith,Muhammad ibn Ala al-Din and Abd al-Khaliq al-Mizjaji, as well as to the Dama-scene scholar of hadith Abd al-Rahman al-Kuzbari (the grand Kuzbari, d. 177172).18Both chains of knowledge indicate not only the powerful credentials of al-Musilli butalso the strong ties that connected the ulama of Baghdad with the wider circles ofknowledge in the Arab Mashriq during the 18th and 19th centuries. Al-Musillis idio-syncratic lifestyle and aversion to circles of power led him to reject a gift presentedto him by the renowned Mamluk official Dawud Pasha when he was still a dafterdar(director of finance) of vilayet Baghdad. Like other ambitious Mamluks before him,Dawud Pasha was apparently trying to pave his way toward capturing the governor-ship of Baghdad by canvassing the citys prominent ulama. Once he achieved his goalin January 1817, Dawud Pasha ordered Shaykh Ala al-Din to be exiled to the city ofMosul. Although the exile order was later rescinded on the intercession of other ulamaand notables, Dawud Pasha continued to mistreat and harass al-Musilli until his deathin 1817, a few months after the rise of Dawud Pasha to power.19 This incident, whileconforming with the ascetic image of Ala al-Din al-Musilli, reveals other aspects ofthe relationship between men of the sword and men of knowledge in early-19th-century Baghdad, which was not always equitable or smooth.

The bulk of al-Alusis basic education in fiqh and theology was the outcome of hisjoining the circle of Shaykh Ala al-Din al-Musilli, in whose companionship he spentmore time than with any other of his teachers. But though he would always be proudto extol the memory of al-Musilli, at a later stage of his life, al-Alusi seemed to feelthe need to augment his scholarly credentials with further ijazas (licenses) from othereminent ulama of his time. These he obtained from the Maliki faqih Shaykh Yahyaal-Marwazi al-Amadi of Baghdad, Shaykh Abd al-Latif ibn Ali Fath-Allah of Beirut,and the Damascene scholar of hadith Shaykh Muhammad al-Kuzbari.20 There is noevidence, however, that these ijazas were granted after a period of companionship;they were, rather, a kind of approval ijazas. Sometime in the 16th and 17th centuries,the ijaza, which had originated earlier in Islamic history to denote a personal form of

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the transmission of knowledge from teacher to student after a considerable period ofcompanionship, began to degenerate to express mere approval of existing knowledge,as well. The differentiation between the two types of ijaza is in some cases necessaryto delineate the educational background of Ottoman ulama, for the approval ijazacould be obtain by correspondence or after only a brief encounter and did not entaila period of companionship.

Shaykh Ali al-Suwaydi (17491821), al-Alusis second most influential teacher,was a different kind of alim altogether. His father, Muhammad Said, and his uncleAbd al-Rahman were both scholars of hadith who received ijazas from or establishedcontacts with the great 18th-century scholars of hadith and reformist ulama of Cairoand Madina, such as Muhammad Murtada al-Zabidi, Muhammad Hayat al-Sindi, andAbdullah ibn Salim al-Basri.21 Emerging as a main scholar of hadith and history, al-Suwaydi was deeply immersed in public and state affairs. By becoming a close adviserto Suleiman the Young (al-Saghir), the wali of Baghdad from 1807 to 1810 and repre-senting him in the inspection of the Basra customs services, al-Suwaydi crossed theline between the realm of knowledge and the realm of power, a move that wouldeventually lead to his demise.22 By encouraging Suleiman the Young to bid for greaterindependence from Istanbul, al-Suwaydi was to contribute to the final destruction ofthe highly ambitious wali. Yet the controversy surrounding al-Suwaydis career arosenot only from his association with Suleiman the Youngs short-lived drive for indepen-dence, but also from widely circulated allegations of his WahhabiSalafi beliefs. Abual-Thana al-Alusi is perhaps the only source we have that denies such allegations,pointing in support of his argument to his teachers book, al-Iqd al-Thamin, in whichal-Suwaydi adhered to the standard methodology of the traditional ulama institutionrather than the WahhabiSalafi approach.23 Al-Alusi, however, does not indicatewhether al-Iqd al-Thamin was written before or after the allegations of Wahhabismbegan to surface against his teacher. In addition, while denying the Wahhabi leaningsof al-Suwaydi, al-Alusi made clear assertions of his teachers Salafi beliefs, drawingin essence a critical line between salafiyya and wahhabiyya.

The Wahhabi question (and consequently the allegations) is, of course, a seriousone. Since the beginning of the rise of the WahhabiSaudi movement in Najd in thelate 18th century, Iraqi territories were repeatedly attacked by the WahhabiSaudiforces.24 Although the Ottoman Egyptian army of Muhammad Ali Pasha finally elimi-nated the WahhabiSaudi danger in 1818, the ideological debate about the Islamicnature of Wahhabi teachings was still simmering. Whether in Istanbul, seat of theOttoman government, or in circles of Islamic learning throughout the empire, theWahhabi movement was from the beginning seen as both an ideological and a politicalchallenge. While the Ottoman authorities were busy dealing with the political andsecurity threats emanating from the SaudiWahhabi expansion and domination of theholy cities of the Hijaz, they encouraged loyal ulama to respond to the Wahhabitheses. As they spoke in the name of Islam, the Wahhabis had to be de-legitimized byscholars of Islam. In Iraq, therefore, accusations of Wahhabi tendencies were a veryserious matter indeed.

Lines of communication between the Najdi heartland of the wahhabiyya and theIraqi urban centers had been always open, not only for bedouin raids but also for themovement of people, trade, and ideas.25 Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab himself was

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a student in Basra before embarking on his enterprise of Islamic reform.26 Husayn ibnGhannam, the early Wahhabi historian and student of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, recordeda letter that his teacher had sent to the Baghdadi alim Shaykh Abd al-Rahman al-Suwaydi (172186) in response to the latters inquiry about the reality of the newmovements teachings.27 Although Ibn Ghannam made no record of the text of al-Suwaydis inquiring letter, Ibn Abd al-Wahhabs response was written in a characteris-tically mild and welcoming tone, an indication of the positive impression that al-Suwaydis letter had left on him. It is also evident that the theological and intellectualdebate between successors of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab and the Iraqi ulama continued afterthe death of the Wahhabi movements founder.28 Although Shaykh Abd al-Rahmanal-Suwaydi died more than a quarter-century before the death of his nephew ShaykhAli al-Suwaydi, the Iraqi ulamaor, at least, a section of them, especially in Baghdadand Basrawere perhaps the first group of ulama to become aware of the Wahhabiteachings and goals. It is even tempting to assume that repeated wars and confronta-tions between the Ottoman authorities in Baghdad and the WahhabiSaudi forcescould not preclude the attraction of a few Baghdadi ulama to the puritan ideal of theWahhabi movement.

In his biography of Abd al-Aziz al-Shawi (d. 1803), Uthman ibn Sanad, the Iraqichronicler of the late Mamluk period, reported that al-Shawi embraced Wahhabi teach-ings after spending a time in Najd in an investigatory mission undertaken in 1801 onbehalf of Sulayman Pasha (the elder; r. 17801802), the wali of Baghdad.29 Abd al-Aziz, an alim and accomplished man of letters, belonged to the ShawiUbaydi clan,one of the most notable and powerful Arab Sunni tribes of Iraq in the 18th and early19th centuries. It was against reports of contacts between the Ubaydis and the Wah-habis that the Mamluk governor of Baghdad, Ali Pasha (who should be distinguishedfrom the later Ottoman governor Ali Pasha), launched an attack on the Ubaydis,which culminated in the killing of the two brothers Abd al-Aziz and Muhammad al-Shawi in 1803.30 If Shaykh Ali al-Suwaydi did indeed have Wahhabi leanings, thenhe was certainly not an exceptional case.

Mamluk rule of Iraq contributed to the development of a localized sense of identityfor the people of Baghdad and its environs, where a precarious alliance of interestsexisted among the Mamluk class, the city notables, and the ulama.31 It was not surpris-ing, therefore, that the citys inhabitants, led by the ulama, sided with Dawud Pasha(r. 181731), the last Mamluk governor of Baghdad, against forces of the centralOttoman government, which encircled the city in the early summer of 1831 with theaim of destroying Mamluk rule. Shaykh Ali al-Suwaydi, whose support of Suleimanthe Youngs political ambitions was acknowledged by Abu al-Thana al-Alusi, sharedwith the wali a vision of political independence from Ottoman control at a time thatIstanbul seemed to have relinquished its responsibility toward the protection and de-fense of Iraq. The bond that connected the alim and the wali evokedat least, to theenemies of boththe WahhabiSaudi alliance. If that was the motivation of Ali al-Suwaydi, his vision was undoubtedly not shared by many in Baghdad; nor was itinformed of the real balance of power in the Ottoman sultanate or of the capabilitiesof the Iraqi Mamluk class, a position that resulted in the final destruction of SuleimanPasha the Young and the demise of al-Suwaydi.

By denying Ali al-Suwaydis Wahhabi attitudes, al-Alusi was defending not only

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the reputation of his teacher against what was still regarded as a terrible accusation;he was also protecting himself from implications of similar measure. Recording hisviews of his teacher, as will be shown, in a turbulent time of his career and of hisrelations with the Ottoman authorities, al-Alusi was careful not to raise any kind ofdoubt about his own loyalty to the sultanate. Al-Alusi, however, could not concealthe whole truth, and that is why, while denying the Wahhabi attitudes of al-Suwaydi,he still confirms his adherence to salafiyya. A few decades later, when the Arab Salafiulama where becoming more confident of their position, al-Suwaydis salafiyya andhis defense of Ibn Taymiyya, the main source of inspiration for both the Wahhabis ofNajd and the modern Salafis of the Arab urban centers, was celebrated by a Dama-scene alim of the same school, as well as by Numan al-Alusi, son of Abu al-Thana.32But Abu al-Thana al-Alusis attempt to draw a line between wahhabiyya and salafiyyashould not be seen as a mere defense technique employed for political expediency.Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, almost none of the non-Najdi ulama,influenced by the Wahhabi reformist movement, could totally agree with its teachingsor blindly accept all of its methods and policies. Salafiyya without the spilling ofMuslim blood and free of the Wahhabis extreme theological position would be thedominant feature of the Islamic reformist circles of Baghdad, Cairo, and Damascus.

The third main figure in the education of Abu al-Thana al-Alusi was Abu al-Baha Diya al-Din Khalid al-Shahrazuri, known as Mawlana Khalid al-Naqshbandi(17761826).33 Born in Qaradagh in the district of Shahrazur in Kurdistan and edu-cated in the traditional ulama circles of Sulaymaniyya, Mawlana Khalid was introducedto the NaqshbandiyyaMujadidiyya twarqa in Delhi by successors of Shah Wali-AllahDihlawi, led by his son Shah Abd al-Aziz (17461823). Mawlana Khalid played aninstrumental role in spreading the Naqshbandiyya twarqa in Kurdistan, Istanbul, and theArab Mashriq during the early part of the 19th centuryso much so that the twarqasline initiated by him would become known as the NaqshbandiyyaKhalidiyya.

There is no dispute in the Naqshbandi writings about the significance of the Indianjourney in the making of Mawlana Khalid and his perception of his mission in life.The important aspect of his initiation into the Naqshbandiyya is the revivalist phaseinto which the twarqa was passing during the 17th and 18th centuries. In a characteris-tic shift in the development of taawwuf, Sufi revivalists extended the scope of thetwarqa from catering to personal piety and world denial to assuming responsibility forthe revival and well-being of society. The Naqshbandiyyas path with which MawlanaKhalid was connected was first defined by the austere and orthodox vision of AhmadSirhindi (15641624) in response to the syncretic theology of Akbar, the Mughalemperor of India, and the antinomianism of popular Sufism.34 With Shah Wali-AllahDihlawi (170362), NaqshbandiyyaMujaddidiyya (as it came to be known after Sir-hindi) would be projected from within a more complex structure of ideas, in whichthe Indian revivalist shared central themes with his contemporary Muhammad ibnAbd al-Wahhab, emanating from their common admiration of Ibn Taymiyya.35 Buteven if he held Salafi attitudes, Shah Wali-Allah was not a Wahhabi; nor was heconscious of the Wahhabi movement. In Shah Wali-Allahs system of thought, thecore Sufi doctrine of wahdat al-wujud was accommodated, and the reformist emphasison the supremacy of the primary texts, the Quran and hadith, was upheld. By empha-

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sizing the role of the primary texts in reconstructing the faith and the community,Shah Wali-Allah called for ijtihad.36 The legacy of Wali-Allah dominated the culturalenvironment of the Delhi school in the early 19th century, into which Mawlana Khalidwas initiated during his Indian sojourn.

Tasawwuf, however, is a way, not a tightly defined ideology, and the points ofemphasis of a given Sufi tariqa would thus repeatedly be redefined at the hands ofcharismatic figures, who appeared at different stages in the development of the tariqa.Khalid al-Naqshbandi was one of these figures. Although some reports attributed tohim claims of intercession on behalf of the sick, there is general agreement that Maw-lana Khalid, like the revivalists of Delhi, sought to bring the tariqa into line with thehigh tradition of religion by imploring his followers to observe commands of thesharia and adhere to the Quran and the sunna.37 Theologically, howeverand despitethe widening debate about the Wahhabi movement and evidence of his familiaritywith works of Ibn Qayim al-Jawziyya, the faithful student of Ibn TaymiyyaKhalidal-Naqshbandi was an Ashari. His commitment to traditional Islamic scholarship isfurther shown in his faithfulness to the Shafii madhhab.38 Until the last stage of hiscareer, he taught works by the eminent Shafiis Ahmad ibn Hajar al-Haytami, Muham-mad ibn Ahmad (al-Khatib) al-Shirbini, and Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Ramli,39 all ofwhom were Ottoman Egyptian non-Salafi scholars with deep roots in the traditionalulama institution.

Mawlana Khalid began disseminating teachings of the NaqshbandiyyaMujaddi-diyya twarqa, as he saw it, immediately after his return to Sulaymaniyya in 1811. Oninstructions from his mentor Abd al-Aziz Dihlawi, he made his first visit to Baghdadshortly after his arrival in Sulaymaniyya.40 Two years later, plotting by the local circlesof ulama at Sulaymaniyya forced him to move again to Baghdad. Although he waspersuaded to return to Sulaymaniyya by Mahmud al-Baban, the local ruler, his teach-ing career there finally ended in 1820. Mawlana Khalid left his hometown first forBaghdad, where he stayed for a few months; then he moved to Damascus, where hespent the rest of his life.41 But contrary to the trends of social consciousness andpolitical involvement that characterized the careers of Ahmad Sirhindi and the Delhirevivalists, Mawlana Khalid, especially during the Syrian years, showed strong aver-sions to political circles and people of authority.42 This position may have been agenuine reflection of his understanding of what the Naqshbandiyya twarqa was about;it could also be interpreted in light of the troubling circumstances that surroundedhis relations with the rulers of Sulaymaniyya or the religious-political tension thataccompanied the dissolution of the Ottoman janissary corps and the Bektashi twarqaconnected with them. The influence of Mawlana Khalid, in other words, stemmedfrom a message of reconciliation between Sufism and the sharia, advocated by apowerful and charismatic personality, rather than a radical departure from traditionalIslamic culture and Ashari theology.

Abu al-Thana al-Alusi, still younger than twenty years of age, met Mawlana Khalidin Baghdad during one of the eminent Sufis sojourns to the city. Like many otherBaghdad ulama, the young al-Alusi was initiated into the Naqshbandiyya twarqa byMawlana Khalid; with him he also read a text of Islamic theology,43 a strong indicationof Khalids reputation as both a Sufi leader and a scholar. Two decades later, when

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al-Alusi wrote about his teachers and his impressions of them, he would underscoreMawlana Khalids adherence to the way of Quran and the sunna. Although al-Alusidid not become a senior member of the twarqa or a main contributor to the dissemina-tion of its teachings, his attachment to the Naqshbandiyya facilitated his entry to thesenior echelons of ulama circles at a time that the Naqshbandiyya was being estab-lished rapidly in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere as the twarqa of the ulama class and oflearned circles.

This highly diversified educational background makes the task of identifying thereal orientations of Abu al-Thana al-Alusi even more difficult. It was perhaps a rareoccurrence for an Ottoman alim in the early decades of the 19th century to receivehis education at the hands of three prominent and influential scholars who were asdifferent as the traditionalist al-Musilli, the Salafi al-Suwaydi, and the Sufi revivalistKhalid al-Naqshbandi. It is not that al-Alusi consciously chose such a complex patternof education; rather, the period in which he lived and functioned created this complex-ity, as the long-held alliance between taawwuf and circles of traditional Islam beganto crack, allowing various currents of reformist Islam to rise to the surface. Like anyerudite traditional Muslim alim of the time, al-Alusi acquired broad learning of theAshari-Maturidi theology; Hanafi, Shafii, and Maliki schools of fiqh; al-Bukhari andMuslim hadith collections, the two major sources of hadith for Sunni ulama; Arabiclinguistic sciences, and Greek logic, as well as the founding texts of taawwuf andethics, such as al-Ghazalis Ihya Ulum al-Din, al-Ansari al-Harawis Manazil al-Sairin, and Ibn Arabis al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya. Yet two significant elements areclearly visible in the ijazas he granted later in his life to his students and companions.The first is his imploring of those who would receive his ijazas not to seek knowledgein sources of logic, philosophy, or extreme Sufism, unless it was vitally necessary;the second is his underlining of the reformist ulama in the chains of knowledge thathe belonged tonot only Ali al-Suwaydi and Khalid al-Naqshbandi, but also 18th-century reformists such as the Damascenes Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi and Ismail al-Ajluni, and the prominent figure of the Madinan circle, Ibrahim ibn Hasan al-Kurani.44By projecting such an image, al-Alusi attempted to qualify his traditionalist back-ground, the formal education expected and accepted in the Ottoman cultural environ-ment, through a moderate reformist genealogy that would not invite the enmity of hiscontemporaries, especially among official ulama and Sufis.

R I S E A N D FA L L O F A B U A L - T H A N A A L - A L U S I

Until the end of Mamluk power and the restoration of central Ottoman rule in 1831,al-Alusi held some teaching posts in several mosques and schools but no officialposition. Although none of these appointments was regarded as of major importance,for a young alim in his twenties to reach the rank of teacher was in itself a majorachievement. This recognition, however, would soon take al-Alusi into the first crisisin his relationship with the Ottoman administration of vilayet Baghdad. Once thetriumphant Ottoman forces entered the city in September 1831, al-Alusi was markedas a supporter of the defeated Mamluk wali Dawud Pasha and was thus accused oftaking part in organizing resistance to the Ottoman forces during the long siege of

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Baghdad, which preceded the surrender of the Mamluks.45 Because the re-establish-ment of central Ottoman rule was accompanied by indiscriminate and summary killingof the Mamluks and their supporters, al-Alusi went into hiding. Only intervention bythe new mufti of the city, Shaykh Abd al-Ghani al-Jamil (17801863),46 would savehim.

Al-Jamil was appointed to the muftiship of Baghdad immediately after Ali Pasha,the victorious Ottoman commander, was confirmed by Istanbul as the new wali. Be-fore leading the Ottoman expedition to Baghdad, Ali Pasha was a governor of Aleppo,where he came to know al-Jamil, the Baghdadi alim who was by then living in Syria.A bureaucrat of the old regime, Ali Pasha was fully aware of the importance of thewalimufti relationship for maintaining security and stability; hence, one of his firstacts as a wali was to recall his friend Shaykh Abd al-Ghani al-Jamil to take controlof the muftiship of Baghdad. Al-Alusi, searching for protection and the normalizationof his life, took refuge in the muftis house. Shortly afterward, using his special rela-tionship with the wali, al-Jamil not only secured the pardoning of al-Alusi but alsohis appointment as the amn al-fatwa (first aide to the mufti).47 Al-Alusi was furthergranted a teaching position at the Qadiriyya school of the al-Gaylani mosque, a valu-able teaching post with a regular income. The speedy recovery of al-Alusis fortunewas a strong indication of how close he became to the new mufti and how appreciativethe mufti was of his young aides abilities. But al-Alusis troubles with the governmentwere not over. In May 1832, only a few months after the inauguration of the newadministration, the mufti instigated a popular rebellion against the wali, in whichal-Alusi, out of either real conviction or mere loyalty to al-Jamil, became deeplyinvolved.

The origin of the rebellion was certainly not political, for it began as a reaction tothe killing of a Mamluk woman, who had taken refuge at the muftis house, by thewalis aides. But the mass rallying of the people of Baghdad to the muftis causeturned the issue into a political matter, illustrating the precariousness of the new order.Abd al-Aziz Nawwar, the eminent Egyptian historian writing during the heyday ofArab nationalism, painted al-Jamils rebellion in Arabist colors.48 Nawwar argued thatthe rebellion was staged in support of Muhammad Ali and the Egyptian armys ad-vance into Syria, reflecting the Iraqis wish for independence. Nawwar presented nohard historical evidence to support his case. The people of Baghdad were certainlymore sympathetic to the Mamluks and did support Dawud Pasha against the Ottomangovernment forces, but available sources do not mention any positive responses inBaghdad toward the attempt of the wali of Egypt to expand his domain into Syria,which was still in its initial stage. Muhammad Ali himself made no proclamation tothe effect that his Syrian campaign was launched to unite the Arab Mashriq and realizeits independence; even if such a perception was to develop, communications were notyet so effective as to create supportive public opinion in Baghdad. The siding of al-Alusi, and the majority of Baghdadis, with the Mamluks against the Ottoman expedi-tion in 1831 cannot be attributed to the existence of Arab nationalist feelings amongthe Iraqis of the early 19th century. The Mamluks were no different from the newOttoman rulers in terms of their non-Arab ethnic origins; nor did they promote anArabist vision, which was not yet in existence, at any rate. It was most likely the

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identification of the Mamluks with local forces and the strong perception of theirbelonging to the city that led to the Baghdadis to side with Dawud Pasha against whatappeared to be an invasion by an external army.

In fact, Abd al-Ghani al-Jamil was an old friend of Ali Pashas, and nothing in hisprevious career hinted at the existence of secessionist political ambitions. Al-Jamilwas a mufti with a powerful character who believed that his position entitled him toprovide protection to an innocent Mamluk woman; when the sanctity of his home wasbreached, he reacted in the best tradition of the city of Baghdad. Responding to thesituation, the wali did not hesitate to employ swift and harsh measures, includingdestruction of the muftis residence, to suppress the uprising and restore normality.Abd al-Ghani al-Jamil fled the city, and al-Alusi again went into hiding.49 On thisoccasion, it was his Naqshbandi associates who came to al-Alusis rescue, pleading tothe wali on his behalf. Although his life was saved and he was allowed to keep histeaching post at the Qadiriyya school, he lost his job at the muftis office, and hismovement and activities were restricted for the next year and half. As for Abd al-Ghani al-Jamil, a year after the incident, he was allowed to return to Baghdad, butthe walis offers of land grants and other enticements failed to appease the proud alimor diminish his resentment. Until his death, al-Jamil made no attempt to hide hiscondemnation of Ottoman rule, and some of his recorded poetry reflects visible anti-Turk sentiments.50

One night in January 1835, Ali Pasha arrived at the Abd al-Qadir al-Gaylanimosque to attend the usual religious congregation of the holy month of Ramadan.Either by mere chance or out of premeditation, al-Alusi delivered the sermon of thenight, which deeply impressed the wali.51 This story, relayed by almost all of the Iraqiannalists of the 19th century, is the standard explanation for the second turn of fortunethat propelled the career of Abu al-Thana al-Alusi from the days of fear and exclusionto the highest position any local alim could reach in the Ottoman ulama hierarchy. Itis believed that Ali Pasha, touched by the speech, invited al-Alusi to a private meetingthat proved to be the beginning of a deep and long-lasting friendship between the two.Sometime later, an insignificant theological disagreement between the wali and thestanding mufti, Muhammad Said al-Tabaqjali, precipitated the dismissal of the latterand the appointment of al-Alusi in his stead.

There is, of course, an element of legend in this story, in which the power of theword is made to overwhelm the worldly powera celebration of the righteousnessand the godly derived wisdom of the men of knowledge. The truth had perhaps amore mundane dimension. Ali Pasha, a ruthless official, highly generous man, andinefficient administrator, was a typical Ottoman governor who not only held strongreligious feelings but also understood the power of religion and its vital role in theprocess of governing. He was granted the vilayet of Baghdad as a reward for hissuccess in ending Mamluk rule, but the restoration of central authority meant that thewalis fate lay no longer with the local game of power but with the Sublime Porte inIstanbul. To prove his ability to maintain peace in this turbulent region of the empireand meet the financial demands made of him by the central government, he definitelyneeded the support of an active, trustworthy, and effective mufti who could secure theloyalty of the ulama institution and command respect from the population. Because

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he did not feel comfortable enough with the mufti al-Tabaqjali, Ali Pasha tried toreconcile with his old friend Abd al-Ghani al-Jamil. When he failed in this attempt,he turned to the younger, but not less illustrious or effective, al-Alusi. Al-Alusi himselfdid not deny that there was yet another element to the story.

The 1830s were testing times for Istanbul, during which the Ottoman sultanatefaced the unstoppable incursion of Muhammad Alis forces into Syria, European mili-tary and economic encroachments, and uncertainty in the modernization project. Con-sequently, the sultanate had a desperate need to reassert its legitimacy. After his intro-duction to the wali, al-Alusi was encouraged by Ali Pasha to comment on a bookdealing with Muslims duty to obey their ruler. The book, al-Burhan fi Itaat al-Sultan,was originally written by a former shaykh al-Islam, Abd al-Wahhab Effendi YasiniZadah.52 Al-Alusi added, to the short, original text a detailed and diversified commen-tary on the legitimacy of the Ottoman sultanate and the Quranic duty of all Muslimsto obey the sultan, and a refutation of Shiiimamate political theory. He is also be-lieved to have written a letter to Muhammad ibn Awn, the sharif of Mecca, warninghim against siding with Muhammad Ali and declaring the wali of Egypt a disobedi-ent aggressor, asserting that fighting him would be equivalent to a jihad.53 Despitethe Salafi influences of Shaykh Ali al-Suwaydi and the initial tumultuous episodes inhis relations with the Ottoman authorities, there is certainly no ground to doubt al-Alusis loyalty to the Ottoman sultanate or his belief in the legitimacy of its rule. Itis, however, hard to imagine that writing a treatise on Muslims obedience to thesultan or issuing a fatwa against the wali of Egypt had been on his agenda before hisrapprochement with Ali Pasha. By and large, obedience to the sultan was a genreof Ottoman writings that flourished in circles of Turkish ulama belonging to the offi-cial religious hierarchy, especially those associated with the center of the empire, andwas rarely treated by Arab or provincial, non-official ulama. By identifying with thesultanates political Islamic goals, he was resorting to the ulama class the best traditionof compromise, reconciling himself with the new realities of power in Baghdad.

Soon after al-Alusi wrote the commentary and gained the muftiship of Baghdad,the wali obtained for him the honorary title of teacher of the Asitana from thegovernment in Istanbul and granted him the guardianship of the Marjan waqf, one ofthe most rewarding endowments in the city. This addition to the income to which hewas entitled from his other teaching posts totally transformed al-Alusis life, materiallyand otherwise. He bought a large new house, where he would receive and entertainincreasing numbers of disciples, students, and fellow men of letters. A large collectionof poems written in his praise by al-Alusis contemporaries gives a clear indication ofthe influence and central position he occupied in the cultural life of Baghdad duringthe 1830s and 1840s.54 Finally, by making peace with the Ottoman authorities, heseemed to have realized his ambitionsand the ambitions of his ancestors. The emi-nence and prestige that al-Alusi acquired did not, however, come without a price. Al-Alusis contribution to the heated debate that engulfed the Ottoman realm over thelegitimacy of Muhammad Ali and his challenge to the state made him effectively anofficial spokesman of the vilayet of Baghdad and a recognized figure in Istanbul. Ina highly bureaucratized state, even records of the local muftis were kept by the shaykhal-Islam (the mufti of Istanbul and head of the religious hierarchy). As long as al-

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Alusi maintained his close relationship with the Ottoman authorities in Baghdad, thisrecognition worked in his favor, but once he fell out with the wali, it turned againsthim.

The affair of the Iranian questions, which also occurred during the governorshipof Ali Pasha, shows how closely al-Alusi became identified with the state. Al-Alusisinvolvement in this matter developed out of a list of questions covering theological,legal, and other issues of an Islamic nature that the Ottoman authorities in Baghdadreceived from a group of Iranian Shii ulama. It is certainly not clear whether the listof questions was meant to be official and thus required an official response, or whetherit was merely another episode in the long-drawn-out polemics between the Sunni andthe Shii establishments of the two countries. Either way, the OttomanPersian conflictwas not only geopolitical in nature. It also concerned some of the holiest Shii shrines,as well as a large Shii population, under Ottoman rule. This meant that the Iranianquestions had serious implications for the legitimacy of the Ottoman state and itscontrol of Iraq. According to al-Alusi and his disciples, none of the ulama to whomthe questions were passed dared to answer them until he volunteered to write thedefinitive response.55 Al-Alusis effort was rewarded with a medal from the sultan, arare honor to be bestowed on a local alim. A few years after assuming the muftishipof Baghdad, al-Alusi seems to have become so powerful a figure and so essential forthe walis scheme of things that when, in 1837, Ali Pasha succeeded in suppressingthe autonomous rulers of the emirate of al-Muhammara, on the eastern bank of Shattal-Arab, it was to the mufti that he first told the news of his victory in a formalletter.56

This symbiotic relationship between the mufti and the wali came to an end in 1842,when Ali Pasha was dismissed from the governorship of Baghdad and replaced withMuhammad Najib Pasha. The new wali was not an admirer of the mufti; nor did hewelcome his self-confidence or the aura of social influence and power that surroundedhis position. A son of a prominent family from Istanbul and a bureaucrat from the oldguard who saw in the Tanzimat (Ottoman state-sponsored modernization) a mere proj-ect of authoritarianism and the imposition of conformity, Najib Pasha sought to under-mine al-Alusis position and diminish his status. The proud mufti, now with an estab-lished scholarly reputation and a long record of loyalty to the state, was not easyprey. As relations between the two deteriorated, Najib Pasha made sure that al-Alusiscredentials in Istanbul were wiped out and that he was dismissed at the most conve-nient and opportune time.

Sometime in 1847, al-Alusi received an invitation from the shaykh al-Islam to at-tend an imperial party in Istanbul, celebrating the circumcision of Sultan Abd al-Majids sons. Although the mufti was willing to accept the invitation, the wali orderedhim to write an apology to the shaykh al-Islam and warned him of severe conse-quences if he left the city of Baghdad, perhaps fearing that al-Alusis travel to Istanbulwould consolidate his position. According to al-Alusi, the letter of apology he wrotewas passed to Najib Pasha, to be sent to Istanbul through official channels. Instead,the wali dispatched the letter via the French consulates mail, implying the existenceof suspicious relations between the mufti and the French.57 As OttomanFrench rela-tions were at a low point because of earlier French support of Muhammad Ali Pashaand the rising influence of Britain in Istanbul, the letter, and the way in which it was

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delivered, had a drastic impact on the shaykh al-Islams view of his mufti in Baghdad.Whether al-Alusi, who was certainly aware of Najib Pashas strained relations withthe French consulate, really did make approaches to the French in Baghdad hoping towin their backing against the wali, or whether Najib Pasha concocted the whole epi-sode, is not clear. What is clear, however, is that al-Alusi, in the account of his latertrip to Istanbul and his long meetings with the shaykh al-Islam, never reported theraising of this issue or defending himself against the accusations of Najib Pasha.58Although more than three years separated his travel to Istanbul from the confrontationwith Najib Pasha, the absence of the French connection issue from his long ex-changes with the shaykh al-Islam should pose some questions as to the reality of al-Alusis denial of Najib Pashas allegations.

In the summer of the same year, Najib Pasha faced the first local challenge to hisrule in Baghdad. An angry demonstration began in the popular quarter of Bab al-Shaykh, and the demonstrators marched to the summer residence of the wali in protestagainst Najib Pashas decision to increase taxes levied from the asnaf (artisans). Be-cause Baghdad was just coming out of a plague epidemic, the increase in taxationwas certainly an unwise decision and was bound to spark a popular reaction. Butrather than face his own responsibility for the situation, Najib Pasha accused the muftiand his friend and student Sayyid Muhammad Amin al-Waiz, the preacher of the Abdal-Qadir al-Gaylani mosque, of instigating the protest.59 Al-Waiz and one of his broth-ers were exiled to the southern Iraqi city of Basra, and al-Alusi was dismissed fromthe muftiship. Najib Pasha, for his injudicious management of the vilayets affairs,lost his job in the summer of 1849.60 No investigation was conducted to determine themuftis responsibility for the events of the summer of 1847, and the removal of NajibPasha from the governorship of Baghdad could not be linked to the dismissal of al-Alusi, who by then had no defenders in Istanbul to take up his case. And because allprovincial muftis belonged to the religious hierarchy of the sultanate, the dismissal ofal-Alusi was approved by the shaykh al-Islam. For al-Alusi, the consequences of los-ing the muftiship of Baghdad were heavyat least, financiallybecause he was notonly deprived of his salary as a mufti but was also stripped of the Marjan waqf, amajor source of his income. Almost nothing is known of his attempts to mend hisrelations with the government during the rule of Najib Pashas successor, Abd al-Karim Nadir Pasha (184951), or of his trying to recover his lost income. But inMarch 1851, as a result of severe deterioration in his financial situation, al-Alusiembarked on his famous overland travel to Istanbul (a detailed account of which heleft in three books), seeking a redress of his case and compensation for his services.61

In Istanbul, where he seems to have been given dignified hospitality and where hestayed until mid-1852, al-Alusi presented his complaint to Shaykh al-Islam AhmadArif Hikmat (17851858), with whom he seemed to have mended fences,62 and tothe famous modernist Grand Vizier Mustafa Rashid Pasha. Although there is no evi-dence that al-Alusi had been awarded the Marjan waqf for life by Ali Pasha or thatthe waqf by then had been passed to his successor in the muftiship of Baghdad, heapparently hoped to restore his control of it. However, the ruling of the OttomanSupreme Judicial Council, to whose jurisdiction al-Alusis case was finally referred,granted him a yearly stipend equivalent to half of the Marjan waqfs revenue. He wasalso offered the judgeship of the outlying Turkish city of Erzurum, on the assumption

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that he would receive the salary but deputize whomever he wished to do the job. Lessthan two years after his return to Baghdad, during which time he struggled againstdeteriorating health to finalize his last works, al-Alusi died on 20 August 1854, per-haps as unpleased with his times as he had been when he began his career.

The fall of al-Alusi from the muftiship of Baghdad and the deterioration in hisrelations with the Ottoman authorities in the city was a major event in his life. Under-standing this eventits causes and its impactcould shed further light on a criticalperiod in the history of Ottoman Iraq and on the making of a prominent alim who isstill an elusive figure. It has been suggested that al-Alusis crisis may have been dueto the gradual eclipse of the role of the religious establishment in the tanzimat era,and the Ottoman reformists attempts to decimate the ulamas material base throughthe confiscation and diversion of pious foundations.63 A similar explanation had beenmade earlier by Abd al-Aziz Nawwar, who went even further by asserting that al-Alusi held strong Arabist and anti-Turkish sentiments that were crucial elements indeepening the enmity between him and Najib Pasha.64 Although both proposals seemlogical, they cannot easily be sustained by hard historical evidence.

The Ottoman Tanzimat was launched in 1839 by Rashid Pasha and his coterie,which created the impression that the appointment of Muhammad Najib Pasha to thegovernorship of vilayet Baghdad two years later was meant to implement measuresof modernization in the unruly province. Seen in totality, the Tanzimat made a consid-erable leap toward the transformation of the Ottoman state and society, leading to thecentralization of administration and undermining the historical autonomy of old socialorganization. By introducing new channels of representation, uniform curricula andmodern schools, and legal codes and modern judicial systems, and by attempting tocreate a professional, modern military free of Sufi and religious influences, the Tanzi-mat weakened the ulamas position and their role in holding the societal nexus andspeaking on behalf of the community.65 The Ottoman modernist statesmen were alsohighly interested in maximizing state revenues, for the industrialization of the empireand for other purposes, and saw in the privatization of land and the states re-acquisi-tion of major religious endowments one way to generate the necessary funds for theirproject.66 Yet, the modernization vision of the Tanzimat was not born fully fledged;rather, it was largely experimental and took more than three decades to unfold. Itsimplementation was equally piecemeal and regionally uncoordinated.

In Iraq, the Tanzimat had no tangible impact until the beginning of Midhat Pashasrule (186972)67; only minor and highly tentative steps were taken in the 1850s, sev-eral years after the removal of al-Alusi. One of the main promises of the first Tanzimatdeclaration in 1839 was the abolishment of the centuries-old iltizam system, but evenNajib Pasha was appointed to the governorship of Baghdad on the basis of the iltizamcontract of the old regime.68 Although the first administrative council for the provinceof Baghdad came into being in March 1851,69 the municipality of Baghdad was notestablished until 1868,70 while modern educational and judicial systems were intro-duced by Midhat Pasha only the following year.71 There is no doubt that the statesattempts to control the public waqf began with Sultan Mahmud II in the late 1820s;however, these attempts did not take real form in Baghdad or possess the power oflaw until the issuing of the regulations for awqaf administration in the provinces in1863.72 In fact, the Marjan waqf survived until the late 19th century, when Numan

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Khayr al-Din al-Alusi succeeded in a visit to Istanbul in reacquiring it at the order ofSultan Abdulhamid II.73

This picture of slow and uncertain effort at bringing the Tanzimat vision to mid-19th-century Baghdad suggests no direct link between the program of modernizationand the crisis of al-Alusi. The ruthless reassertion of government authority in the cityof Karbala by Najib Pasha in December 1842; the war against the SaudiWahhabimovement; the destruction of Mamluk rule in Baghdad; and the termination of theJalalis autonomy in Mosul in 1834 and of the amirs of al-Muhammara three yearslater were no doubt manifestations of Ottoman attempts to re-establish the territorialintegrity of the empire. But while al-Alusis relations with the Ottoman centralizedregime survived until the end of the 1840s, the Baghdad of Najib Pasha was stilllargely a city of the pre-modern times, ruled by an authoritarian wali who, though heseems to have been a good administrator, was described by Ahmad Lutfi, the lateOttoman official historian, as an oppressive wali, a reactionary whose rule resultedin no benefits for the state or the people of Iraq.74

Najib Pashas intolerance of the power and influence of the mufti was combinedwith a desire to eclipse symbols of his predecessors long rule, of which al-Alusi wasthe most prominent, and stamp his own imprints on affairs of the vilayet. In addition,Najib Pasha was a Qadiri Sufi at a time in which relations between the al-Alusis andthe Gaylanis, whose head was traditionally the naqib al-ashraf and leader of the Qadi-riyya twarqa in Baghdad, were characterized by antagonism and hostility.75 In contrastto Ali Pasha, Najib Pasha was closely attached to the naqib al-ashraf, Sayyid Ali al-Gaylani, affirming his commitment to the Qadiriyya by organizing the large waqf ofthe Abd al-Qadir al-Gaylani mosque for the benefit of the al-Gaylani family. Untilthe spectacular success of Mawlana Khalid in spreading the Naqshbandiyya twarqa inBaghdad, with which al-Alusi was identified, the Qadiriyya was the most powerfulSufi brotherhood in the city and among the Iraqi Sunnis at large. The Naqshbandiyyatwarqa represented a threat to the traditional dominance of the Qadiriyya, and thoseamong the Naqshbandi ulama who expressed Salafi attitudes and criticized populartaawwuf were the most threatening. Not surprisingly, it was not only al-Alusi whosuffered from the alliance of the wali with the Gaylanis but also his friend, student,and fellow Salafi, Sayyid Amin al-Waiz, preacher of the very mosque of Abd al-Qadir al-Gaylani.

Hence, to explain al-Alusis crisis in terms of his Arab nationalist attitudes is toreverse the order of things, for it was most likely the outcome of al-Alusis downfallthat led to nourishing his Arabist tendencies. And it was here that the Tanzimat playeda crucial, though indirect, role. As has already been argued, Abu al-Thana al-Alusiof the early 1830s was certainly not an Arabist in the nationalist sense of the term,and his loyalty to the Ottoman sultanate during the following years should not be indoubt. But his profoundand, one might say, arrogantbelief in his abilities andscholarly qualifications, contrasted with the abrupt manner of his dismissal, engen-dered in him a strong feeling of resentment. Al-Alusis resentment was first directedat his own opponents and enemies in the religious circles of Baghdad, together withthe wali. Later, as he was forced to make the arduous journey to Istanbul, the objectsof his resentment multiplied. In the pre-Tanzimat world, his problem would have beenresolved in Baghdad, where the power of the word and personal relations still mat-

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tered. The centralized regime of the Tanzimat, which reasserted the position of Istan-bul, made the quest for justice a difficult task for a provincial alim and underlined theremoteness of the ruler from the ruled.76 From the perspective of the Baghdadi alim,Istanbul of the mid-19th century appeared both physically and culturally remote. Re-flecting his belief in the power of the word, which verged on the point of obsession,77he took with him a copy of his recently completed exegesis of the Quran, the ultimateword that any alim could achieve, to pave his way into the higher circles of thestate. But the new men in Istanbul belonged to a world that was not his, and the newcodes of law, according to which his case was decided, were abstract and devoid ofpersonal values and appreciation of the word.

Resentment and marginalization, reinforced by a heightened belief in his own self,gave rise to a sense of difference, alienation, and rediscovered identity. If the Ottomansultanate was about Islam and the guarding of the faith, it was the Arab ulama (andhimself in the first place), not their privileged Turkish counterparts, who understoodthe original text and who were better equipped to dive into the oceans of its intricacy.Throughout the account of his travel to Istanbul, al-Alusi would highlight the igno-rance of the Turkish ulama he encountered and the worthlessness of their ijazas andchains of authority as compared with the ijazas of the Arab ulama, placing elements oflanguage and ethnicity at the heart of his assessment.78 Even the deservedly admirableerudition of the shaykh al-Islam was attributed to his long association with Arabulama. Although al-Alusi gradually warmed to the shaykh al-Islam and came to writea flattering biography of him, he could never portray him in terms as affectionate andprecious as those he used to describe his own students and disciples in Baghdad. InIstanbul, though still identifying himself as a Naqshbandi, al-Alusi mocked shaykhsof the popular taawwuf who enjoyed the comfort of the capitals madrasas and khani-qahs and occupied the center of its religious life, while implicitly and explicitly under-scoring the pervasive corruption of the state and the divisive nature of its mens inter-relationships. When he was invited, with genuine insistence, to stay in Istanbul, hecould hardly hide the feeling that it was to Baghdad that he belonged. It is here, inthe last few years of al-Alusis life and in the last of his writings, that Arabist expres-sions would become visibleand here, too, that one may find some answers to thereality of his theological convictions.

E X E G E T I S T O F T H E Q U R A N

In the introduction to his exegesis of the Quran, Ruh al-Maani fi Tafsir al-Quran al-Azim wal-Sab al-Mathani,79 al-Alusi outlined the methodology he intended to followin projecting his understanding of the Quranic text. He first mentioned the basic toolsnecessary for the interpreter of the Quran, including knowledge of the Arabic lan-guage, the occasions on which various verses were revealed, the correctly transmittedsayings of the Prophet and his companions related to the meaning of Quranic verses,and the science of Quranic readingstools beyond which a Salafi interpreter wouldrarely venture. Al-Alusi then moved to uphold the traditionalist method of interpreta-tion by rai (the interpreters independent, informed opinion) and accept the validityof Sufi interpretation. When he delved into the old debate about the nature of theQuranic text, he rejected the Mutazili doctrine of the Quran as the creation of God

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and advocated the HanbaliAshari view of the Quran as the word of God, supportinghis position, nevertheless, with arguments derived mainly from Ashari sources.80 Thedifference here is critical, for only the Hanbali argument is deemed valid by propo-nents of the Salafi theology, despite the HanbaliAshari agreement on the principle.In fact, al-Alusis complex and broadly scoped introduction to his magnum opus sendssignals that are as mixed and intricate as his own life. Later Arab students of modernsalafiyya saw in Ruh al-Maani a tafsir that upheld the principles of salafiyya,81 whileMuhammad Husayn al-Dhahabi, the late shaykh al-Azhar, in his comprehensive studyof the history and schools of tafsir, placed al-Alusis work under the category of tafsrby rai.82 And although Muhammad Bahjat al-Athari, the Iraqi Salafi scholar, acceptedthat Ruh al-Maani was a tafsir based on three approachesthe Salafi, the Sufi, andthe theologians raihe raised some doubts about the clarity of its Salafi content.83

The rai, Salafi, and Sufi interpretative approaches constituted the three majorschools of Quranic tafsr until the mid-19th century.84 Tafsr by rai, which flourishedin Ashari and other Muslim theological circles, implies a greater role for reason inunderstanding the Quranic text. In reality, yielding to the conservative currents thatdominated Sunni Islam during the middle Islamic period, tafsr by rai turned into animitative exercise in which theological opinions of the Ashari school were reproducedin a more dogmatic and largely convoluted manner. One of the main pursuits of tradi-tionalist Islamic circles, rai (or theological dogma) gradually became an aim in itself,eclipsing the Quranic text in relation to which the whole tafsr discourse is legiti-mated. Indeed, in most of tafsr-by-rai works, the Quranic text was employed as avehicle to advocate previously conceived theological opinions. It was against thisdevelopment that Ibn Taymiyya and his students, such as Ibn Kathir, reacted by re-establishing tafsr on the primacy of the text, avoiding the distractive theological treat-ment of the Quran and adhering to the lucid and directly formulated Salafi conceptsof the nature of the Quran, the attributes of God, and mans responsibility for hisacts. Al-Alusis ambition, it seems, was to achieve the unprecedented not only bycombining Salafi and Ashari theological methodologies but also by incorporating theSufi approach of searching for the hidden, intrinsic meaning.

Ruh al-Maani is a massive project that took al-Alusi more than fifteen years tocomplete, concluding in February 1851, only one month before he embarked on hisdesperate journey to Istanbul.85 The writing of a substantial part of al-Alusis work,therefore, was the product of his heyday in office as the official Hanafi mufti ofBaghdad, a period during which al-Alusi was enjoying a close relationship with thewali and was keen to display a firm commitment to the sultanates political and ideo-logical goals. Of the thirty-volume work, the last third was most likely written afterhis dismissal in 1847. This assumption is validated by the gradual but fundamentalchange in the discursive underpinnings of Ruh al-Maani. Overall, al-Alusis work isundoubtedly an unsuccessful undertaking to compile a comprehensive Quranic tafsrthat integrates the Sufi, rai, and Salafi approaches to the text. However, the spirit andemphasis in which the last few volumes were written are different from those of theearlier parts of the work. In the first parts of his tafsr, al-Alusi was rather a closetSalafi walking a tight path between his own convictions and the demands of hisofficial position; toward the final volumes the Salafi alim in him would become freerand more visible. Al-Alusi opened his work by declaring himself a re-born Hanafi,

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renouncing his Shafii background and defending Ashari theology and the validity ofthe Sufi interpretation.86 Arguing in support of tafsr by rai, he wrote:Those who believe that tafsr by rai is not permissible refer to a Prophetic hadith, relayed byAbu Dawud, al-Tirmidhi, and al-Nisai, which says, He who spoke of the Quran with his ownopinion, even if he was correct, is mistaken. Another hadith, relayed by Abu Dawud, states,He who spoke of the Quran without knowledge, is to be seated in the hellfire. Both [hadiths]furnish no evidence [to uphold the case of opponents of rai]. Firstly for the doubts about theauthenticity of the first hadith . . . as for the second hadith, it carries two meanings: first, hewho attempts to interpret the problematic [ambiguous] verses of the Quran without [proper]knowledge is to be subjected to the wrath of God; the second meaning is that he who expressedan opinion about the Quran while he knew that the right view lays elsewhere is to anticipatethe punishment of God. Secondly, for the evidence supporting the permissibility of rai andijtihad in the Quran are numerous.87

Neither rai nor ijtihad is used casually or in general terms here, because al-Alusisspecific projection of rai is illustrated by numerous other instances, including hispraise of al-Razi, the last of the great Asharis, whose Quranic tafsr was the embodi-ment of theological rai and philosophy,88 and his approving incorporation of IbnArabis mystical venture into the employment of numbers and letters in understandingthe text and the universe and his unorthodox re-interpretation of the Quranic story ofMoses and Pharaoh as the story of mans struggle against his own evil self and theseductions of this world. Further, in an unjustified contextual diversion, al-Alusilaunched a rhetorical attack on Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn al-Qayim, and other eminent Han-bali scholars of the middle Islamic period.89 In other words, the early parts of Ruh al-Maani reflect a defined position, intent, on the part of al-Alusi to identify with tradi-tionalist Islamic circles of the Ottoman religious hierarchy where the Hanafi schoolof fiqh and Ashari theology were the norm. Yet even here, al-Alusis discourse couldnot conceal his inner struggle and tension. For instance, he made sure that his accep-tance of Sufi methodology should not be understood as an acceptance of extremetaawwuf (batw iniyya), where symbolic interpretation of Islamic tenets led to the denialof sharia and its obligations.90 And once he established his Ashari credentials, he thenreturned to affirm his commitment to the late doctrine of Abu al-Hasan al-Ashari asexpressed in his book al-Ibana,91 in which al-Ashari reconciled himself with Hanbaliand Salafi theology. Realizing how far he had gone in diluting his Salafi orientation,al-Alusi carefully and elusively sought to qualify the Ashari and Sufi dimensions ofhis work. He would thus write:

You should also be informed that many people regarded the attributes [of God], such as Hisascendance [to the throne], hand, foot, descent to the lower heaven, laugh, wonder and the likes,as unexplainable issues. The Salafis doctrine, and al-Ashari, God bless his soul, is among theirnotables, states in his al-Ibana that although they are all affirmed attributes they lay beyond[the capacity of] reason; we are required to believe in them but not to conceive of God in termsof mans attribute, in order not to put reason in opposition to reason.92

Gradually, however, al-Alusis Salafi commitments would become more forceful,and he seemed to begin giving up on his ambition, or his expedient pursuit, to recon-cile the irreconcilable. While in the first parts of his work al-Alusi incorporated Sufiopinions into the mainstream of his tafsr, in later parts he placed them in a separate

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section at the end of each chapter,93 implying their unrelatedness and foreignness. Inthe last two volumes of Ruh al-Maani, his discourse became almost completely freeof Sufi references. After launching an apologetic attempt to disociate the two greatSufis, Ibn Arabi and Abd al-Qadir al-Gaylani, from the widely circulated anti-ortho-dox Sufi notion of elevating saints to a status higher than that of the Prophets,94 hewould become unequivocally assertive in his rejection of Ibn Arabis and other Sufiopinions that rested on the belief in wahdat al-wujud and dismiss hadiths of Sufiorigins in favor of the orthodox views of the scholars of hadith.95 Free of the politicaland ideological constraints of office, al-Alusi would no longer fear identifying withthe major figures of the Salafi school of thought. Ibn al-Qayims concept of thesoul, as suggested in his book on the subject, was upheld against the views of eventhe grandest of all Asharis, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali,96 while the usual Salafi descriptionof Ibn Taymiyya as Shaykh al-Islam would first be mentioned with a degree ofreservation, then used freely and unreservedly.97 Added to the fundamental differences,in form as well as in substance, between Ruh al-Maani and al-Razis Mafatih al-Ghayb, al-Alusis specific responses to many of al-Razis views make the case ofthose who identified al-Alusis work with that of al-Razi unsustainable.98 But nothingcould illustrate al-Alusis profound commitment to the Salafi perspective of Islambetter than his discussion of the principal theological issues, which defined the con-tours of salafiyya in the first place.

Beyond the displays of linguistic dexterity, beyond the distractive insertions of Suficommentary, and beyond the not always vitally required references to wide-rangingsources and opinions of Islamic heritage, al-Alusis Ruh al-Maani is a powerful de-fense of Salafi theological doctrine at a time that traditionalist Ashari theology wasstill dominant. For al-Alusi, attributes of God are His and should neither be allegori-cally re-interpreted nor understood in this-worldly terms, for His transcendence defiesthe wildest imagination of man. Gods power is infinite; His will is absolute, and Heis the creator of all things. But God also created in man the faculty of choice thatmakes his responsibility for his acts undisputable.99 It was here in the irrepressibleSalafi determination to delineate mans position and limits that one of the main ele-ments of salafiyyas inevitable confrontation with traditional Islam and tasawwuf lay.Al-Alusi (as any Sunni alim was expected to do) spared no occasion to attack theMutazilis and ridicule their views; yet his concept of man and free will, like that ofIbn Taymiyya before him, was closer to the Mutazili doctrine than to that of theAsharis. In fact, one of the sharpest arguments that al-Alusi formulated was his refuta-tion of the Ashari notion of kasb (acquisition) and its dogmatic denial of causation innatural phenomena.100 His disociation from Ashari theological doctrine culminated inhis recognition of the Salafi position that Gods acts and injunctions can be rational-ized (talil). In this he not only declared his disagreement with one of the fundamentalsof Ashari theology; he also advanced his view as an extension of the view of Ibn al-Qayim, the most eminent of all of Ibn Taymiyyas students. The Ashari doctrine, al-Alusi pointed out,states that Gods acts are not to be linked to the purposes [of God] . . . the Salafis, like Ibn al-Qayim and others, stressed that acts of God could be rationally explained. . . . [In fact], rational-ization [of Gods acts] exists in more than ten thousand Quranic references and hadiths, anyattempt to re-interpret them all in a different light is a deviation from fairness.101

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Al-Alusis rupture with the Ashari schoolas well as with its vehicle, traditionalistIslamwas further expressed by his assertion that the four fiqhi madhhabs of SunniIslam reflected neither an eternal nor an obligatory order, and that the fulfillment offaith can be achieved from within as well as from without the madhhabi system.102 Inthis he was no longer a Hanafi, or even a Shafii, in the literal sense; he was becominga Salafi.

The ideal that is invoked by al-Alusi is that of the early centuries of the Islamicventure, the ideal that was embodied (or believed by Ibn Taymiyya and his followersto have been embodied) in companions of the Prophet, their followers, and disciplesof the followers. By fusing their ideas with the glorious period of Islam, later Salafisin the Arab-speaking regions of the Ottoman Empire equipped their intellectual enter-prise with a political dimension and laid the foundations for turning salafiyya into anoppositional force to the Ottoman status quo. Only the Saudi state, which was seenas the guardian of salafiyya, received their approval. There is no evidence to suggestthat al-Alusis embrace of this powerful rationalist and austere worldview was a re-sponse to the impact of modernization and the Western challenge, for al-Alusis worldwas still a world on the eve of modernity, to use Abraham Marcuss term.103 In thepre-modern mode, demarcations between the conventional and the subversive weredistinctively marked; after struggling for a long time to blur these demarcations, al-Alusi stepped to the side of the subversive. The implications of Salafi theology forthe next generation of Arab ulama were certainly evident. Salafiyya, as Commins hasproposed, offered the only Islamic route for the ulama class to free themselves fromthe shackles of the past and construct an Islamic discourse that was both relevant tomodern times and able to withstand the blowing winds of change.

C O N C L U S I O N

The emergence of the WahhabiSaudi movement, carrying the banners of the Salafidoctrine, as a violent and secessionist insurrection in the late 18th and early 19thcenturies created a historical anomaly that has complicated our understanding of themodern history of the Salafi school of thought. Violence and secession related moreto the tribal and political ambitions of the WahhabiSaudi alliance than to inherentcharacteristics of salafiyya or the dynamics of its recovery from the dominance oftasawwuf and Ashari theology that occasioned the long period of decline. In otherwords, the development of modern salafiyya in the late 19th century, as representedby Muhammad Abduh, Numan Khayr al-Din al-Alusi, Rashid Rida, and many others,was in fact the outcome of a slow, long, and convoluted process. Al-Alusi was one ofa series of transitional figures in this process. He was transitional in the sense that hecould never formulate his Salafi views in a full-fledged and exclusive manner, orpresent a coherent case for his choice. His Salafi discourse was largely embedded inand intertwined with other discourses. It is true that, as he grew older, he becamemore explicit in expressing a Salafi viewpoint, but one has the impression that he wasno longer prepared to make a stand, and his writings were instead meant to be atestimony to posterity and to fulfill his search for self-emancipation. Yet one shouldin no way doubt the strength of his Salafi convictions, not only because they repre-sented his last words, but also because he was an alim with versatile erudition, an

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alim who knew Islamic traditions and the mannerism of these traditions. His choicewas, therefore, an informed and deliberate choice, though he was not always able tomake it appear as such.

Al-Alusi was also the product of a deeply established Sunni belief in the ultimateprecedence of communal unity and stability over inner dissent and conflict, regardlessof the side on which righteousness might lie. A main reason behind al-Alusis earliersuppression of his Salafi attitudes was certainly the hostile reaction elicited by theviolent expansion of the WahhabiSaudi movement in the Arabian Peninsula. But hewas also a believer in the Ottoman sultanate and its well-being. Only the experienceof his fall from the muftiship, his deep sense of injustice, and the suddenness withwhich the Ottoman centralization confronted him and deepened his grievances wouldshake this belief and arouse his Arabist feelings. His career, nevertheless, equallyreflected the tense game of power that shaped the relationship between the ulamaclass and the Ottoman rulers, even before the impact of the modernization programbegan to be felt. One of the main features of the readjustment of local ulama in theArab urban centers to Ottoman rule was their attainment of the post of mufti in the18th century and their success in preserving it within their domain.104 Though a testi-mony to the resilience of the ulama class, this major achievement conversely exposeda significant section of the local ulama to the bearings of power and its constantlychanging climate. A career in the Ottoman religious hierarchy therefore would hingenot only on piety and erudition but also on influence and access to men of power.

Al-Alusi had a blueprint neither for his career nor for his exegesis of the Quranwhen he set out to write it. A monumental project by any standard, Ruh al-Maani,like its author, was also subject to the unpredictability of the ulamastate relationshipand should thus raise some vital questions about the validity of reading the genre oftafsir without considering its socio-political context. It is evident that al-Alusi wasinfluenced by Salafi ideas much earlier in his life, but it was not until his politicaland social outlook was disrupted that his Salafi attitudes would be clearly expressed.In this sense, salafiyya provided a vehicle for the ulamatic oppositional discourse inthe late Ottoman period. The object of this opposition was both the circles of powerand the ruling forces and the locally entrenched Sufi twarqas and popular taawwuf.Al-Alusis disenchantment with taawwuf was grounded, perhaps, not only in Salafitheological beliefs but also in the competition for social and political interests. In arevealing outburst in a later part of Ruh al-Maani, al-Alusi launches a ferocious attackon the Sufis who give their loyalty to the oppressors, and even to those who have norelationship to religion, and support them by falsehood and injustice.105 Although thisoutburst alludes to the role played by some Baghdadi Sufi shaykhs in al-Alusis down-fall, it also signifies the beginning of the Salafi ulamas confrontation with the Sufistate alliance. The connivance of Sufi tariqas with the state, and the rising power ofthe state in determining who among the ulama would be granted position and influ-ence and who would be deprived, would set the scene for the emergence of modernsalafiyya and its oppositional discourse.

It is much easier perhaps to pinpoint the fundamental theological differences thatseparate salafiyya from taawwuf; in reality, al-Alusi, like many other reformist ulamain the 18th and 19th centuries, was equally an alim whose education was imbued withSufi culture. Except in the case of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, who, as Albert Hourani has

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pointed out,106 took Ibn Taymiyyas teachings to extreme, reformists of the 18th and19th centuries had to negotiate their way in a Sufi-dominated environment to whichthey belonged and of which they were critical at the same time. In this respect, al-Alusi was no different from Shah Wali-Allah, whose belief in wahdat al-wujud didnot stop him from writing a treatise on the virtues of Ibn Taymiyya and embracing arange of his ideas. Assuming that Sufi and Salafi attitudes were always mutuallyexclusive is to assume that cultural artifacts can be frozen in history. Al-Alusi was noIbn Abd al-Wahhab, of course, but neither could he be regarded as a traditional Sufiand Ashari alim. Nor was his case of overlapping attitudes the end of the evolutionof Salafi theology, for Salafi themes and ideas would continue to be appropriated,negotiated, and developed. By the end of the 19th century, the salafiyya of MuhammadAbduh and Rashid Rida, as well as other reformist ulama in Damascus, Baghdad, andelsewhere in the Muslim world, would acquire a new dimension by responding toWestern cultural challenges.

N O T E S

Authors note: I am deeply grateful to Y. Michot, I. Abu Rabi, S. Taji-Farouki, M. Badawi, the editorof IJMES, and the anonymous IJMES reviewers for reading and commenting on an earlier version of thisarticle.

1Muhammad Rashid Rida, al-Wahhabiyyun wal-Hijaz (Cairo: Matbaat al-Manar, 192526); idem, al-Manar wal-Azhar (Cairo: Matbaat al-Manar, A.H. 1353); Numan Khayr al-Din al-Alusi, Jala al-Aynayinfi-Muhakamat al-Ahmadayn (Cairo: Matbaat al-Madani, 1981); Husayn ibn Ghannam, Tarikh Najd, ed.Nasir al-Din al-Asad (Beirut: Dar al-Shuruq, 1985), esp. 36382.

2David D. Commins, Islamic Reform: Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria (New York:Oxford University Press, 1990), 25. See also H. A. R. Gibb, Modern Trends in Islam (Chicago: ChicagoUniversity Press, 1947), 3435; Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age: 17981939 (London:Oxford University Press, 1962), 37, 92, 148, 222, 22526, 231, 233, 344. Cf. John L. Esposito, ed., TheOxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), s.v. Salafi-yah (Emad Eldin Shahin), 3:46369.

3For elaborate discussion of the life and works of Ibn Taymiyya, see Henri Laoust, Essai sur le doctrinessociales et politiques de Taki-d-Din ibn Taimiya (Cairo: Institut Francais dArcheologie, 1939); MuhammadAbu Zahra, Ibn Taymiyya: Haiyatuh wa Asruh, Arauh wa Fiqhuh (Cairo: Dar al-Fikr al-Arabi, 1991).

4Abu Zahra, Ibn Taymiyya, 18485.5On Ibn Taymiyyas students perceptions of him and his vision of Islam, see Muhammad ibn Abd al-

Hadi, al-Uqud al-Durriyya min Manaqib Shaykh al-Islam Ahmad ibn Taymiyya, ed. M. A. al-Fiqi (Cairo:Matbaat Hijazi, 1938), 7172, 8788, 117; Mari ibn Yusuf al-Karmi, al-Kawakib al-Durriyya fi Manaqibal-Mujtahid Ibn Taymiyya, ed. N. Khalaf (Beirut: Dar al-Gharb al-Islami, 1986), 63, 102103, 11720,125; Abu al-Fida ibn Kathir, al-Bidaya wal-Nihaya (Beirut: Maktabat al-Maarif, 1967), 13:225, 241, 303,333, 341, 344, 14:13540; Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Dhahabi, Tadhkirat al-Huffaz (Beirut: Dar Ihiya al-Turath, n. d.), 4:1469; Muhammad ibn Qayim al-Jawziyya, Alam al-Mwaqiin an Rab al-Alamin (Cairo:Dar al-Hadith, n. d.), 1:328; Ahmad ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, al-Durar al-Kamina fi Ayan al-Maa al-Thamina, ed. M. Jad al-Haq (Cairo: Umm al-Qura lil-Tibaa, n. d.), 1:15470; Muhammad ibn Nasir al-Din al-Dimashqi, al-Rad al-Wafir ala man Zaam bi-An man Samma Ibn Taymiyya Shaykh al-Islam Kafir,ed. Zuhayr al-Shawish (Beirut: al-Maktab al-Islami, 1991).

6On Ibrahim al-Kuranis defense of Ibn Taymiyya, see al-Alusi (Numan), Jala al-Aynayin, 29, 55. OnMuhammad Murtada al-Zabidis view of Taymiyya, see his Ithaf al-Sada al-Muttaqin bi-Sharh Asrar IhiyaUlum al-Din, ed. R. Abd al-Hadi (Beirut: Dar Ihiya al-Turath al-Arabi, 1995), 1:28, 40, 170, 176, 180,183, 400, 449, 455; ibid., 2:106, 177; ibid., 3:90, 99, 131, 48182; ibid., 4:416, 531, 53739; ibid., 5:322,379, 369, 420. On Shah Wali-Allah al-Dihlawis views, see J. M. S. Baljon, Religion and Thought of ShahWali Allah Dehlawi (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986), 148, 200201. On Muhammad ibn Ali al-Shawkanis view,

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see his al-Badr al-Tali bi-Mahasin man Bad al-Qarn al-Sabi (Cairo: Matbaat al-Saada, A.H. 1348), 1:6372.

7I am indebted to John O. Voll for suggesting the overlapping of Sufi and Salafi attitudes within Islamicreformist circles of the 18th century. See, for example, John O. Voll, Hadith Scholars and Tariqas: AnUlama Group in the 18th Century Haramayn and Their Impact in the Islamic World, Journal of Asianand African Studies 15 (1980): 26473; idem, Muhammad Hayya al-Sindi and Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab: An Analysis of an Intellectual Group in Eighteenth Century Madina, Bulletin of the School ofOriental and African Studies 38 (1974): 3239; idem, Linking Groups in the Networks of Eighteenth-Century Revivalist Scholars: The Mizjaji Family in Yemen, in Eighteenth-Century Renewal and Reformin Islam, ed. N. Levtzion and J. Voll (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1987), 6992. The counter-argument has been made by Ahmad Dallal, The Origins and Objectives