book reviews 197

is the people trained as orientalists under the past regime who now function
as cultural transmitters by rewriting Uzbek history in the light of the
Khojagan tradition and the indigenous mediaeval Chaghatai literature, such
as NavaÅõÅ's LisaÅn al-fayr. As Schubel concludes, these works try to sponsor a
Su®sm `stripped of its organic wholeness', as a complex of ideas and practices
divorced from institutional Islam with its potential fundamentalist challenge
perceived as threat by the current local government.
Apart from an interesting and useful survey carried out in 1977±78 by a
Swedish scholar on the situation of the Naqshbandi khaÅnaqaÅhs in Afghanistan
prior to the Soviet invasion (117±28), the remaining contributions to this
volume consist of studies dealing with the role of the Naqshbandi Su®s in the
Arab world, the Ottoman heartlands and in contemporary Turkey. One is
concerned with the role of the KhaÅlidiyya sub-branch of the Mujaddidiyya in
Kurdistan, while another Swedish scholar (Leif Stenberg) discusses the ways
the contemporary Naqshbandi shaykh in Damascus, Ahmad Kuftaro,
confronts social change in late twentieth-century Syria through Ç his state-
supported role as Grand Mufti of Syria and Lebanon and head of the Abu
an-Nur foundation. Among the articles concerned with Turkey proper, Ilber
Ortayli's account of the shift in policy adopted by the Ottoman govern-
ment towards the Naqshbandiyya while vehemently combatting the in¯u-
ence of other Su® orders (in particular the Bektashis, regarded as heterodox
and hostile) during the so-called Tanzimat period in the mid-nineteenth
century, and Hakan Yavuz's study on the Naqshbandi in¯uence on Islamic
movements in modern Turkey (129±46) are worth mentioning for their
original contribution towards the understanding of how diversely this
particular Su® tarõÅqa adapted itself to the change from a feudal to a modern
society in orderÇ to exercise its traditional role of correcting and safeguarding
Islam and Islamic societies all over the daÅr al-IslaÅm. To bring home the point,
the volume ends with a contribution by Kurkut Ozal, former MP and
government minister in the 1970s, who, through his account of his personal
experience as a disciple of the contemporary Naqshbandi shaykh Mehmed
Zahid Kotku (d. 1980), shows how closely spiritual education, political
expediency and economic interest could intertwine in the perception of the
world and of the role of this ancient Su® order, during the life of KhwaÅja
AhraÅr ®ve centuries ago as well as in the present time.
Ç
Thomas DaÈhnhardt
Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies

Oeuvres Philosophiques et Scienti®ques d'al-KindõÅ. Vol. 2: MeÂtaphysi-

que et Cosmologie
By Roshdi Rashed and Jean Jolivet. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998.
Pp. 250. Price HB NGL 134. 90±04±11073±9.

This is the second of two volumes embodying some of al-KindõÅ's

philosophical and scienti®c writings, in a ®ne Arabic±French edition. The
198 book reviews
®rst volume dealt with optics and `catoptric' or mirror effects and was
published by Roshdi Rashed in 1997 and consisted of al-KindõÅ's treatise on
the Recti®cation of the Error and Dif®culties of Euclid in his Book on Optics,
his treatise on solar rays, a fragment on Concave Mirrors, a Latin version of
his Causes of the Diversities of Perspective, followed by optical tracts by
QustaÅ ibn LuÅqaÅ and Ahmad ibn [IÅsaÅ, with parallel French translations.
Ç second volumeÇ opens with al-KindõÅ's best-known philosophical
The
treatise, On First Philosophy, followed by fragments of his Refutation of the
Trinity, as reported by YahyaÅ ibn [A Å dõÅ in his rebuttal of that lost treatise, as
well as his treatises On theÇ Unity of God and the Finitude of the Body of the
World, The Nature of what cannot be In®nite, Exposition of the Finitude of
the Universe. These are followed by two treatises entitled The True First and
Perfect Agent and Exposition of the Prostration of the Outermost Body and
its Submission to God.
Despite the scienti®c tenor of some of those treatises, a careful reading of
most of them would reveal that al-KindõÅ's intent in writing them was
primarily philosophical. They all highlight his philosophical desire to give
scienti®c and metaphysical support to the Islamic themes of creation ex nihilo
and in time, the unquali®ed unity of God and the subordination of all things,
including the heavenly bodies, to Him. In the ®rst and longest treatise of
al-KindõÅ to reach us, entitled On First Philosophy, or metaphysics, he begins
with an apology for the study of philosophy or `the acquisition of truth from
whatever source it may emanate, even if it should emanate from distant races
and different nations', as he has put it. This apology appears to echo
Aristotle's lost Protrepticus, as well as al-KindõÅ's own Exhortation To Study
Philosophy (al-Hathth [alaÅ ta[allum al-falsafa), which is equally lost.
Ç
Thus the present edition and French translation, which meet the most
stringent criteria of scholarship, should be highly commended as contributing
signi®cantly to the study of al-KindõÅ, the ®rst encyclopedic writer in Islam
and the ®rst champion of the cause of the nascent philosophical and
rationalist (Mu[tazili) movement, which was met with the staunchest
opposition by the Hanbalis and others in the ®rst half of the ninth century.
Moreover, as the ®rstÇ systematic philosopher in Islam, al-KindõÅ was not only
out to defend philosophy and `foreign learning' against the rampant
xenophobia of the age, but also to demonstrate their total compatibility
with the teachings of Islam as embodied in the Qur]aÅn.
Majid Fakhry
Georgetown University

Inevitable Doubt: Two Theories of ShõÅ[õÅ Jurisprudence

By Robert Gleave. Leiden: E. J. Brill. 2000. Pp. viii, 264. Price HB
$85.00. 90±04±11595±1.

The two theories of jurisprudence are those of the well-known YuÅsuf

ibn Ahmad al-BahraÅnõÅ (d. 1186/1772), generally regarded as a moderate,
Ç Ç