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    ocusing on the reception and debate o ideas within a larger pub-lic sphere, Huff emphasized social, cultural, and civilizational actors,

    instead o technological or narrowly scientic ones.4

    Reviews o therst edition, while mixed, were generally positive, and the publicationo a second edition ten years afer the rst speaks to the books havingreached a substantial audience.5Perhaps o most interest to studentso the Muslim world was an exchange between Huff and the histo-rian o Islamic science George Saliba, that took place shortly beorethe appearance o the books second edition.6 Saliba took issue withHuff s denition o neutral spaces, and argued orceully that therise o modern science in Modern Europe was best explained with re-

    erence to the economic boost that Europe received rom its conquesto the New World, instead o being due to a decline in astronomi-cal thought in the Muslim world.7 Salibas other criticisms generallycoincide with those in some o the initial reviews o Huff s book: thatasking the question o when modern science arose is tautological as itpresupposes a simplistic conception o modern science being inher-ently Western;8 that Huff lacked a sufficient command o the historyo astronomy;9 and that in his ocus on cultural or civilizational ac-tors which may have hindered or acilitated the production and spreado scientic knowledge, Huff had made statements that bordered onracist.10Despite the criticisms o Huff s work, I have ound the way

    4 Huff, Rise, 219.5 A brie survey o major journals reveals quite disparate responses to the book.

    Crombies review was entirely positive, and the reviews o Elman and Restivo largelyso, while Lindberg was more critical, and Major and Henry discussed the book insolely negative terms.

    6 Te exchange between Saliba and Huff appeared in three installments in the Bul-

    letin o the Royal Institute or Inter-Faith Studies.7 Saliba, Flying Goats and Other Obsessions. In his recent Islamic Science andthe Making o the European Renaissance, 24855, Saliba again stresses the importanceo the European colonization o the New World or the rise o modern science inEurope.

    8 See the reviews by Lindberg and Major, and Saliba, Seeking the Origins o Mod-ern Science.

    9 In addition to the reviews cited in the previous note, see also Saliba, FlyingGoats.

    10 Henry, in his review o Early Modern Science, 102, writes: Surely we are notmeant to conclude that Western civilization is more rational [than Islam or China]because its constituent members are more rational than Arabs or Chinese? Saliba,

    or his part, goes as ar to say (in Flying Goats): At this late date, is it still possibleor a serious scholar to be so enthralled by Oriental racism that he is incapable operceiving even the slightest difference between Muslim circles in the West (what-ever that means) and the various conditions o Muslims in Brunei, Indonesia, India,

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    in which he ramed his central questionwhat types o social andinstitutional actors acilitated the emergence o modern science?a

    productive one or considering the interaction between science andjurisprudence (qh) in the Muslim world in the early modern period.Huff argues that the Scientic Revolution was not as much a series oempirical or technical achievements, as it was the spreading o a newWeltanschauungthrough institutions:

    an institution in a strict sociological sense is not simply an organizationbut rather an institutional complex opatterned behavior that is general-ized throughout a society. At an incipient stage o development a new seto values might be realized in only one organization, but i they do not

    transcend that organization to permeate the other institutions o society,such patterns o behavior are not expressions o the institutional ounda-tions o the society. Tis is largely what happened in the civilizations oIslam and China.11

    Unortunately or Huff, his characterization o the major institutiono the Islamic world that he considersthe madrasaand Islamic lawin generalis deeply awed. Saliba has already questioned the accu-racy o Huff s observation that the natural sciences were not taughtin madrasas is accurate.12Even more pertinent is the act that Huff sportrayal o the nature o Islamic law and its practice in the post-ormative period is dated, based as it is on the now-discredited notionthat independent legal reasoning ceased in roughly the eleventh cen-tury.13Huff uses the notion that Islamic legal scholars ceased to ques-tion the authority o the past at that time to argue, both implicitly andexplicitly, that medieval and early modern European scholars were

    Nigeria, unisia, Morocco, or even urkey? Neither then nor now? Tis is indeedregrettable.11 Huff, Rise, 334.12 Saliba, Flying Goats.13 Huff, Rise, 91ff. None o Huff s critics has drawn attention to this lapse. Admit-

    tedly, recent scholarship, while agreeing that Muslim jurists continued to exert inde-pendent reasoning within the established law schools, differs on whether this reasoningtook place under the rubric o ijtihd or taqld. Compare Jackson, Islamic Law andthe State, 128, 15262, with Hallaq, If and Ijtihd in Sunni Legal Teory, Wie-derhold, Legal Doctrines in Conict (especially the insightul comments at 25968),and Fadel, Te Social Logic o aqldand theMukhtasar. For an introduction (lean-ing towards the views o Hallaq, Wiederhold and Fadel), see Vikor, Between God and

    the Sultan, 15161. For recent discussions o how Muslim scholars continued to makeadvances in philosophy and logic during the early modern period, see Wisnovsky,Te Nature and Scope o Arabic Philosophical Commentary, and El-Rouayheb,Sunni Muslim Scholars on the Status o Logic.

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    distinguished rom their Muslim counterparts by their ability andinclination to view reason and rational inquiry as both desirable and

    necessary.14

    In the ollowing discussion, I argue that such a claim ismisleading and ignores a nuanced acceptance o rational inquiry onthe part o Muslim scholars in the early modern period.

    I have already reerred to the ambition o Huff s book, and it isunderstandable that any single scholar attempting to offer a synthe-sis o the literature on science in medieval and early modern Europe,China and Islamdom, may occasionally miss works o importance.However, the sea-change which has taken place during the last threedecades o scholarship on Islamic law in the post-ormative period

    (roughly the eleventh to eighteenth centuries) has been proound. IHuff had had the opportunity to amiliarize himsel with any o thework o Wael Hallaq, Bernard Weiss, Baber Johansen, Sherman Jack-son, David Powers, Mohammad Fadel, or Haim Gerber, to name onlya ew prominent scholars in this eld, he would have had to reconsidermany o his basic preconceptions regarding Islamic law in the earlymodern period: that it was conservative and static while simultane-ously ignoring legal precedent, that it opposed philosophy, and thatits practitioners ailed to inquire afer higher principles with whichthey could theorize their study o law.15 Yet, however misconceivedHuff s understanding o Islamic law may be, his question o the natureo laws relationship to science in the Muslim world during the earlymodern period is important, and has attracted little attention to date.16

    14 Huff, Rise, 116.15 Huff, Rise, 91, 96, 169, 212, and passim. Te prevalence o the now questionable

    characterization o Islams decline in the early modern period can be seen in Salibas

    attempt (in Seeking the Origins o Modern Science?) to shif this label rom scienceto law and theology: Tis [the golden age o astronomy rom the ourteenth tothe sixteenth centuries] does not mean that there was no age o decline, but it canbe documented that it primarily occurred in legal and religious thought, rather thanastronomical thought, during the period in question, a result almost exactly oppositeto what the Eurocentric model would predict.

    16 Here I am sympathetic to Lindbergs comment at the conclusion o his review oHuff s book: Finally, it is important to make clear that my skepticism about Huff ssuccess in reaching his stated goalexplaining why modern science was a Europeandiscoveryand about a number o his historical arguments does not discredit andshould not be allowed to obscure his considerable achievements: the persuasive appealto social and institutional actors to explain the differential ates o early science in

    Islam, China, and European Christendom. Let me be clear that I do not disagreewith Salibas argument or the importance o economic actors in the rise o modernscience in Europe, but I eel that these represent only one o the aspects, albeit a veryimportant one, relevant to this question.

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    In the ollowing discussion, I will examine the place that natural sci-ence (chiey astronomy and medicine) occupied in three o the most

    important collections o legal opinions (atw, pl. atw) in theMuslim West during the late medieval and early modern periods: thecollections o al-Burzul (d. 841/1438), al-Wanshars (d. 914/1508),and al-Wazzn (d. 1342/1923). Instead o representing editions othe authors ownatw, these collections contain selections rom thelegal decisions o hundreds o jurists over a substantial period o time.In this way, they offer valuable windows into the nature and varietyo legal practice in the Muslim West in the post-ormative and earlymodern periods.17Te ollowing discussion below should be seen as an

    initial attempt at answering the question o how the natural scienceswere perceived in Islamic legal circles in the early modern period.

    Dening Science: the Problem o the Sources

    While acknowledging that science is notoriously difficult to dene, orthe purpose o this paper I have chosen to rame scientic practicesas those that, among other things, constituted an alternative orm o

    authority to that proessed by legal scholars. Science is considered hereas a varied body o specialist knowledge, the nature o which is not pri-marily dened by the same interpretive practices that are the purviewo jurists, which or its part draws on both scriptural sourcesQurn,hadth, legal precedentand legal theory (usl al-qh). I recognizethat this is a broad denition, but have chosen to cast as wide a net aspossible, as I am primarily interested in how legal scholars evaluated,ramed, and controlled an authority dened by criteria qualitativelydifferent rom their ownin this case specically, the authority o sci-

    entists and scientic practices. Reecting the questions posed to mufs(those jurists who hand out atw), the two main bodies o scienticknowledge considered in the collections o legal opinions examinedhere were astronomy/astrology and medicine. In the past decades, asubstantial amount o scholarship has been published on the prac-tice o astronomy and medicine in the Muslim world, as well as onthe potential o writing social history through an investigation o legal

    17 Te ormative period o Sunni law is generally held to have ended with the or-mation o the princpal schools o law by the fh/eleventh century. See Melchert, TeFormation o the Sunni Schools o Law.

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    opinions (atw).18 However, little to date has been written on sci-ence as an alternative discourse o authority within Islamic law, and

    in large part, this is understandable, or Muslim jurists comparativelyseldom addressed the natural sciences.19 Te ollowing discussion isno more than a rst step in the investigation o the place o sciencein the Islamic Law in the early modern period, because o both itspreliminary nature and the scope o the material it surveys.20 It doesnot answer Huff s question regarding the social status o law in theMuslim world during this period, but it seeks to sketch an outline ohow urther research might do so.

    A nal issue should be briey addressed beore we turn to the legal

    decisions themselves. In the popular press as well as in academic sur-veys, the tension between science and religion has ofen been charac-terized as being either between reason and revelation, or else betweenempirical evidence and scriptural authority. Such characterizations areinsufficient and misleading in the present context. Instead, we nd thatwhen Muslim legal scholars challenge scientic authority, they tendwith some notable exceptionsto take oppositional stands regard-ing the ways in which empirical evidence should be interpreted, andwith which particular empirical evidence is relevant to the question athand, but not with the value o empirical evidence itsel. In doing so,

    18 Out o the many recent publications I have ound the ollowing especially useul:or astronomy, the work o D. King in general, and especially his In Synchrony withthe Heavens: Studies in Astronomical imekeeping and Instrumentation; and three arti-cles by A.I. Sabra (Situating Arabic Science: Locality versus Essence; Science andPhilosophy in Medieval Islamic Teology: Te Evidence o the Fourteenth Century;and Te Appropriation and Subsequence Naturalization o Greek Science in Medi-eval Islam.) For medicine, I have been especially inuenced by Perhos Te Prophets

    Medicine, and I have ound Pormann and Savage-Smiths recent synthesis (MedievalIslamic Medicine) quite useul. For notable efforts to write social history through anexamination o atw, see Masud, Messick and Powers, Islamic Legal Interpretation,and Powers, Law, Society, and Culture in the Maghrib.

    19 Te works o al-Burzul, al-Wanshars, and al-Wazzn comprise altogethermore than 8,000 printed pages. In a survey o the indices to these volumes, I ound nomore than a ew dozen reerences to astronomy, alchemy, and medicine. For passingreerences in the writings o al-Qar to the rational sciences remaining outside thepurview o law properly understood, and scientic observation playing an importantrole in establishing proper taqld, see Jackson, Islamic Law and the State, 115, 128.

    20 Tis is especially true when we consider that not only are solely Mlik sourcesbeing discussed here, but that large numbers o Mlik atw collections remain to

    be published: see al-Hlah, Classication o Andalusian and Maghrib Books oNawzil, and al-H arb, Namdhij min juhd uqah al-mlikiyya al-maghriba tadwn al-nawzil al-qhiyya. I am indebted to Jocelyn Hendrickson or both thesereerences.

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    the legal scholars are motivated by what we may call an ethical con-cern or both the spiritual and the physical well-being o the Muslim

    community.

    Astrolabes and Revealed Law

    In general, while Muslim jurists in the early modern period disap-proved o interaction with astrologers and soothsayers, they valued thetechnical abilities o astronomers, whose calculations acilitated bothestablishing prayer times and the beginning o the lunar months, espe-

    cially Ramadan.21

    Te work o David King in particular has shown how,with the creation o the office o timekeeper (muwaqqit) romat thelatestthe seventh/thirteenth century onwards, individual mosques inEgypt, al-Andalus and North Arica generally had religious officialswho possessed sufficient astronomical knowledge to calculate the dailytimes o prayer, which varied according to time and place and couldbe notoriously difficult to establish or the noon and afernoon prayer,as well as on cloudy days.22Based on Kings work, A.I. Sabra has sug-gested that the study o astronomy in general may have declined in the

    early modern period even as it was naturalized and its study becamerestricted to an instrumentalist view to aid with the correct estab-lishment o ritual activities such as prayer and asting.23I will return tosome o the implications o Sabrasadmittedly tentativesuggestionlater on, but the rst case discussed here seems initially to bear outhis argument. Neither King nor Sabra, however, offers an extendedconsideration o the legal status o scientic inquiry in early modernIslamic society.

    21 For an overview o astrology in premodern Islamdom, see Saliba, FlyingGoats. al-Wanshars includes an opinion o the respected Syrian scholar al-Nawaw(d. 676/1278) against visiting astrologers (ityn al-munajjimn, seeMiyr, 12:36667).See also Ibn Khaldns remarks on astrology, as discussed in King, On the History oAstronomy in the Medieval Maghrib. I am grateul to Proessor King or sending mea copy o this article, which will appear in a orthcoming Variorum volume.

    22 See most recently King, On the Role o the Muezzin and Muwaqqit.23 Sabra, Te Appropriation and Subsequent Naturalization o Greek Science in

    Medieval Islam, 240. Huff cited this article o Sabras in support o his own argument,

    and in his critique o Huff, Saliba argued that neither Sabra nor Huff had advancedenough evidence to prove that the naturalization o Greek science led to its decline.See Saliba, Seeking the Origins o Modern Science? and compare with his IslamicScience and the Making o the European Renaissance, 125ff.

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    Around the turn o the twentieth century, al-Wazzn, the Moroc-can author and compiler o the atw collection known as al-Miyr

    al-jadd, was party to a serious disagreement regarding the roleand authority o astronomical instruments in Islamic ritual.24 Hisatw on this topic, taking up twenty-our pages and constitutingthe entire chapter on the call to prayer (nawzil al-adhn), with itscopious citations o Mlik authorities, offers the reader a long andsomewhat convoluted account o the difficulties o ascertaining theproper time or the call to prayer.25As such, it can be protably readagainst Ebrahim Moosas discussion and translation o the treatise byAhmad Muhammad Shkir (13091377/18921958), written in 1939,

    on the permissibility o beginning the month on the basis o scien-tic calculation and not on an actual, visual sighting o the moon.26Both al-Wazzn and Shkir conclude that astronomical calculationsare necessary or the establishment o Islamic ritual and cite a longlist o, respectively, Mlik and Sh authorities to substantiate theirpositions. Both authors also conront and reute contrary opinions inprevious scholarship. Where they differ is that, while Shkir writes ora decidedly Sala audience, al-Wazzn, writing at the other end othe Arab world some decades beore Shkir, situates himsel within apurely Mlik environment.27While Moosa argues that Shkir was, tosome degree, trying to come to terms with the technological challengeo modernity, there is no explicit sign that al-Wazzn was primarilyreacting to anything more than a local disturbance in Morocco, orwhich he wished to nd the appropriate legal response.28

    24 I have not been able to nd any reerences to this episode in the historical sources

    or the period.25 al-Wazzn, al-Miyr al-jadd, 1:21539.26 Moosa, Shaykh Ahmad Shkir and the Adoption o a Scientically-based Lunar

    Calendar. I am grateul to David Powers or this reerence.27 While the term Sala is quite complex in that it carries several distinct meanings,

    in this case i reers generally to those Muslims who in the nineteenth and early twen-tieth centuries believed that Islam needed to be reormed by rejecting the consensuso the our Sunn law schools, and by engaging in a critical reexamination o Islamsscriptural sources. On the shifing relationship o the terms Wahhb and Sala, seeCommins, Te Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia, 10429.

    28 See Moosa, Shaykh Ahmad Shkir, 62: In this instance, the existing social con-text not only impinges on the sel-understanding o Muslims, but also orces jurists

    to re-read the religious texts in order to derive new meanings that are in harmonywith the new context. Surreptitiously, a new juridical logic evolves and transplantsitsel onto existing practice, without hardly any acknowledgment o the occurrenceo such changesin itsel a phenomenon insufficiently documented in the history o

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    al-Wazznsatwis long and, as is common enough or the genre,interspersed with numerous quotations rom the works o jurists o

    previous generations. I ocus here on those sections with implicationsor the legal status o astronomy. It begins as ollows:

    Tere was a debate (mudhkara) among a group o legal scholars regard-ing the Friday Prayer. One o them said: It takes place very late in Fez;it is desirable or its prayer to be at the beginning o the time, even ionly in one mosque, so that the preacher begin the sermon ollowing theadhn o only one muadhdhin [presumably as opposed to waiting orall the calls to end]. He stated that this was the way it had been in theProphets time. Te others in the group did not agree with him.29

    Afer deending the custom o the people o Fez, and citing severalauthorities on the proper manner o sounding the call the prayer,al-Wazzn relates that this argument became widespread among bothscholars (al-khss) and commoners (al-mm), and took on broadersignicance. He describes the party opposed to his own views as hav-ing no knowledge o the science o timekeeping (ilm al-tawqt), andsays that the situation was only growing worse when an unnamedscholar rose up, seeking the approbation o the masses and support-ing their stance:

    He spoke to them with words rom Khalls Mukhtasar, deluded intothinking that there was no knowledge, not even a little, that was greaterthan his own. He said to them: everyone ascertains the passing o dusk(maghb al-shaaq), and only those who are stubborn and in denial couldignore its obvious nature. ime-keeping devices such as the astrolabeand others cannot be depended upon (l yuawwal alayh), nor shouldone turn to them or knowledge o when the time [o prayer] begins.30

    TeMukhtasaro the Egyptian Mlik Khall b. Ishq al-Jund (d. 749/

    1348 or 767/1365) was the standard legal reerence work o the Mlik

    Islamic Law. Ahmad Shkir, in the present instance, and other jurists who wrote onother issues, consciously or unconsciously interpolated Islamic law with the technol-ogy o modernity, creating thereby a desire or regularity and consistency inatworjuridical responsa, a subject that needs to be addressed elsewhere. While I agree withMoosas general observation on the challenge modernity has posed to Muslim schol-ars, I am wary o seeing every reinterpretation o Muslim law in the modern period asonly or even primarily the result o their interaction with modernity. Doing so couldeasily obscure the act that premodern Islamic jurisprudence contained numerous

    opinions that, while o use to Muslims today, are not the product o an engagementwith developments in the twentieth century.29 al-Wazzn, al-Miyr al-jadd, 1:215.30 Ibid., 1:217.

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    school afer the eighth/ourteenth century, and while its importance isclearly reected by the substantial commentaries devoted to it, it was

    primarily important due to its recording o the accepted consensus.31

    As such, it may well have been the rst reerence a Mlik jurist wouldturn to, but or an experienced jurist aced with a thorny problem, itwould rarely be the last. Although Khall ails to mention astrolabes orastronomy, in his chapter on prayer his description o how to ascertainthe prayer timeshe reers only to a staff (al-qma) and its shadow,while in his discussion o asting, he warns against trusting astrolo-gers (al-munajjim).32 al-Wazzn quickly notes that he tried to ndthis individual to set him straight, but being unable to locate him, he

    decided to express his thoughts in writing in the atwat hand.Knowledge o the times o prayer, it is clear, is mandatory or all

    believers, but ollowing the authority o al-H attb (d. 954/1547), theauthor o a commentary on Khalls Mukhtasar, al-Wazzn makes itclear that, due to the difficulty o the matter, establishing these timesis a collective and not an individual obligation.33 Knowledge o howto calculate the time accurately, he argues, belongs to those who havea command o the astrolabe and who are amiliar with the science otimekeeping.34al-Wazzn backs this claim up, appropriately enough,by citing the empirical observations o a renowned muwaqqito Fez,Imm al-Jdar (d. 818/1415 or 839/1435).35 Strikingly, al-Wazzndoes not simply rely upon the authority o specialists such as al-Jdar,but enters himsel into the discussion o specics, explaining to hisreader why the views o Ab Abdallh b. al-H abbk (d. 867/1463)and Muhammad b. Ysu al-Sans (d. 895/1490) on the subject o thechanging length o dusk are to be preerred to those o al-Burzul.36

    31 On mukhtasar Khall, see Fadel, Te Social Logic o aqld, and idem, Adju-dication in the Mlik Madhhab, 26265. Lohlker (Islamisches Vlkerrecht, 124) hasrecently argued that KhallsMukhtasardidnt achieve its widely accepted status untilthe sixteenth century.

    32 See al-Azhar, Jawhir al-ikll al mukhtasar al-imm Khall, 1:32 (prayer), 145(asting). Since, as King has shown, the institution o muwaqqit was widespread inMamlk Egypt, it is curious that Khall did not, at least in passing, reer to a moreexact orm o timekeeping.

    33 al-Wazzn, al-Miyr al-jadd, 1:219.34 Ibid., 1:221.35 Compare Kahhla, Mujam al-muallin,2:106, with 2:11314. Al-Wazzn also

    cites a treatise on the astrolabe by a certain Ab Fad

    l Dniyl al-Sh

    , whom I havenot been able to identiy.36 For Ibn al-H abbk, see Kahhla,Mujam, 3:114. Te reerence here is to his poem

    on the use o the astrolabe, Bughyat al-tullb ilm al-astrlb, on which al-Sanswrote the commentary to which al-Wazzn reers.

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    al-Wazzns sources reect the complexity o the relationshipbetween law, science, and theology (kalm) in the early modern Mus-

    lim world. al-Sanss summation o Ashr theology, al-Muqaddimt,

    was widely read in the Maghrib until the modern period, yet he alsowrote on the legitimacy not only o the astrolabe, but also o medi-cine. Although al-Sans adamantly denied the existence o second-ary causality in his theological writingswhile affirming Gods habit(da) o acting in a regular ashionin his writings on medicine andastronomy, he supported the legitimacy and authority o non-religioussciences.37Te compatibility o these various scientic pursuits, or per-haps more accurately the ability o early modern Muslim scholars to

    engage simultaneously in multiple intellectual discourses, should beemphasized, or it is precisely their incompatibility that scholars suchas Huff have previously implied.38

    al-Wazzn interrupts his list o quoted authorities to note that oneo his opponents wrote to a scholar living in Rabat, Ahmad b. Abdallhal-Ghur, distorting the issue (lam yusih an sharh haqqatihwa-kunhih bal awhama sulihi) in order to receive an answer thatwould condemn the use o the astrolabe.39 al-Wazzn wrote to thisscholar and claried the nature o the argument to him, afer which hereceived an answer which contained the ollowing passage:

    From the time that these instruments, the sine quadrant, the astrolabeand others, appeared in Islam and among its people, they were investi-gated, and it was ound that the one knowledgeable in them, when pro-cient in their use (idh utqinat nasih) beneted rom the certainty[they brought]. It is necessary or someone who has no knowledge othem to ollow someone who does have such knowledge (taqld al-ribih). One should act according to what he says, though it is neces-sary or him to exercise some caution when the sky and the horizon are

    cloudy. In this ashion is the action o the people o both east and west,as al-H attb has related rom al-Qar (d. 684 /1285) and others. No one

    37 On al-Sans, see Stearns, Inectious Ideas, 14149. Historians have struggledwith evaluating the inuence that the general Ashr denial o secondary causationmay have had on evaluations o empirical evidence. For an example, see Stearns,Inectious Ideas,passim.

    38 See Huff, Rise, 6972, but also the cogent question o A. I. Sabra (Situating Ara-bic Science, 664): But there is no end to the questions that have yet to be answered. . . .

    Andthe question o special importance or the historian o sciencewhat was theeffect o the kalmpoint o view on the dissemination and development o scienticdisciplines such as cosmology and astronomy, about which the mutakallimn had alot to say as an integral part o their own worldview?

    39 I have not been able to identiy this scholar.

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    condemns reliance on instruments, save the ignoramus (al-jhil) whoseword has no weight (l ibra bi-qawlihi).40

    al-Wazzn notes that this is similar to what the Imm Sd al-wudb. Sda (d. 1208/1793) had said on the use o the astrolabe having abasis in the revealed law, and in the next ew pages he presents anarray o authorities who similarly support the use o the astrolabe.41Itis clear, then, that there is no scholar o note o the Mlik or any otherschool, who does not support the use o astronomy and the astrolabeor the purpose o bringing certainty to ritual practice.42

    Beore nishing with his opponents, al-Wazzn has one nal objec-tion to deal with: the blanket assertion that the use o the astrolabe hasno basis in law, and that it is suspect due to its association with philos-ophy. o deal conclusively with this accusation, he turns to the worko the prominent Moroccan scholar al-H asan al-Ys (d. 1102/1691),rom whose al-Qnnhe quotes at length:43

    Te answer to this is that there are philosophical sciences that arepracticed in Islam, and it is correct that they be counted among thereligious sciences due to the Laws benet rom them (li-l-inti bihi

    -l-shara). Te Shaykh Sd al-H asan al-Ys, may God have mercy on

    him, has mentioned in his book al-Qnn the science o timekeeping(ilm al-tawqt) as one o the Islamic sciences. Concerning it he said: Itis one o the sciences o the ancients (min ulm al-awil) such as thescience o logic and the like. As or its being an Islamic science ( mankawnih islmiyyatan): it is practiced in the Islamic community, whichbenets rom it in its religious practice ( dn al-islm), either directlyor in a mediated ashion. It is also legally valid (shariyya), and what isestablished (al-mashhr) is to grant the title o legal validity to a matterin both its essence and associated subjects.

    40 al-Wazzn, al-Miyr al-jadd, 1:223.41 A scholar o Fez, Ibn Sda wrote a marginal commentary on al-Zurqns

    (d. 1122/1710) commentary on KhallsMukhtasar. See Kahhla, Mujam, 3:363. Teauthorities cited by al-Wazzn, besides those already mentioned, include Izz al-Dnb. Abd al-Salm (d. 660/1262), al-Ghazzl (d. 505/1111) and al-Mzar (d. 536/1141).Te atw later cites the support o the ollowing scholars: Ibn Araa (d. 803/1401),Muhammad al-Rass (d. 886/1481), and al-Maqqar (d. 1041/1631). All o theseexcept Ibn Abd al-Salm and al-Ghazzl were o the Mlik madhhab.

    42 While I do not doubt that the majority o Mlik authorities shared al-Wazznsview, he may well have omitted inconvenient exceptions. By contrast, Moosa (Shaykh

    Ah

    mad Shkir, 62, 76) notes that while the amed Sh

    scholar aq al-Dn al-Subk(d. 756/1355) accepted the use o calculations, the possibly even more amous IbnH ajar al-Asqaln (d. 852/1448) and Ibn aymiyya (d. 728/1328) rejected them.

    43 I have not been able to locate all o the passages quoted here, but see al-Ys,al-Qnn ahkm al-ilm, 274.

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    He says in another place . . . I count those [sciences] as belonging toIslam whose benet has spread and the utility o which has grown great:along with the aorementioned [sciences] such as logic and account-ing, [I count] and what is needed o astronomy (ilm al-haya) andgeometry . . .

    Te speech o this shaykh, may God be content with him, has indicatedthat what benets Islam is not lessened by having a source other thanIslam (l yaqdah hi kawn asl wadihi bi-ghayr al-islm). It has beensaid: the inventor o the astrolabe was the prophet o God, our LordIdrs, may the prayer and peace [o God] be upon him and our Prophet.So let him who has no knowledge o this take care not to place his tonguein a place where it should not be, as we have related regarding one o the

    ignorant deniers, that he said concerning the rejection (tanr) o thesetime-keeping instruments as being o the science o the Christians, mayGod destroy them, and that mechanical clocks (al-majnt) and theirlike are similar. None o this is to be trusted. Such a one as he is ignoranto the act that reliance upon something is [to be evaluated] according toits benet, not according to its location or its creator.44

    al-Wazzns nal paragraph shows that he is well aware that, byadopting technology in late nineteenth and early twentieth-centuryMorocco, one opens onesel to the accusation o mimicking the colo-

    nialist Europeans.45

    Nonetheless, he clearly rejects such a shallow, notto mention ironic, accusation, and in the last pages o his atw heemphasizes that or testimony concerning the correct prayer time tobe accepted, the observer must be experienced.46

    Te Limits o Beneciary Science

    In the Miyr o al-Wanshars, we nd a atw o the renownedscholar Qd Iyd(d. 544/1149) that can productively be read against

    44 Wazzn, al-Miyr al-jadd, 1:22728. It is striking that afer marshalling theabove arguments, al-Wazzn still nds it necessary to posit a Muslim origin or theastrolabe. For a comprehensive discussion o other origins ascribed or the astrolabein medieval Islamic sources, see King, Te Origin o the Astrolabe, esp. 45 (on thepopular attribution o the invention o the astrolabe to Idris/Enoch). Finally, or adiscussion o the term al-majna, see Garca Gmez, Foco de antigua luz sobre la

    Alhambra, 8285. I am grateul to Merc Comes and David King or this reerence.45 An interesting parallel to al-Wazzns dilemna can be ound in the treatise

    on the plague by the Algerian H amdn b.

    Uthmn Khoja (d. ca. 1258/1842), Ith

    al-munsin wa-l-udab al-ihtirz an al-wab, arguing or the necessity o thequarantine, despite its alleged European provenance. See Stearns, Inectious Ideas,23233.

    46 al-Wazzn, al-Miyr al-jadd, 1:23132.

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    that o al-Wazzn. It differs rom the discussion o astronomy that wehave just mentioned, in that instead o addressing a situation in which

    science is used directly in the service o Islamic Law, it instead exam-ines a case where the authority o astronomers problematizes ritualpractice.

    In Khalls Mukhtasar, compiled some two centuries afer QdIyds death, the author described the necessity o praying during aneclipse, a practice that had a rm basis in the Mlik school as well asin Prophetic tradition.47With this subject in mind, Iyds questionerexpressed a certain amount o anxiety regarding the claims made byastronomers that they could oretell both eclipses and their length:

    He [Qd Iyd] was asked about the eclipses o the sun, regarding theact that the Prophet, may God bless him and grant him peace, hadordered at their occurrence prayer, invocations, the reeing o slaves,giving o alms, ear, and supplication. He [had] said: [Pray] until whatis in you [o ear] is removed (hatt yuksha m bikum). Tere is nodoubt that what he ordered is the truth, and that it [the eclipse] is oneo the signs o God. Tis is what the people o the Sunna ollow. Yetwe see astronomers (ahl al-hisb wa-l-nujm) stating that they per-ceive the eclipse beore it occurs, saying: It occurs by itsel, at such and

    such a time. It is well known that this is knowledge acquired throughcalculation, and that it happens due to an association (iqtirn), whichthey claim is between the stars in their respective spheres ( akihbaduh bi-bad). How can this be reconciled or the astronomers withthe ordained ear and supplication [at the time o the eclipse], with itsbeing an affliction that has descended upon people, and with their beingordered to engage in supplication until they are ree o reprehensibletypes o things? Tere is no right in them at such a time, no ear, orthey say: We know when it will occur. Is there a way to reconcile the twomatters? I we declared their statement void in its entirety, somethingwould remain in the soul due to their accuracy (isbatihim) . . . and i

    what they say is not declared entirely alse, and we support them in thismatter being reachable through calculation, then where is our ear orour saety? Where is the ear that was ordered or us?. . . . Indeed, what issought afer rom this is how can we pray or the occurrence o the endo the eclipse ( injilal-kash ), with their telling us the time when itwill occur and when it will end, and with them possibly being correct

    47 al-Azhar,Jawhir al-ikll, 1045. Tere are numerous traditions in Bukhr andMuslim which link eclipses to visions o the Day o Judgment, while denying that theyare related to the death o individuals.

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    in this. How can this be reconciled? Clariy or us what knowledge youhave regarding this, may you be rewarded, God willing.48

    Te query puts Iyd

    in a difficult position, or not only does thereseem to be tension between the Prophetic tradition and the astrono-mers, with the ormer arguing that eclipses evoke ear, and the latterclaiming to be able to predict their occurrence, but there is also thepotential that the astronomers claims could adversely affect the pietyo the Muslim community.49 At the beginning o his response, Iydseems to dispute the validity o astronomical predictions o eclipses inan absolute ashion, denying that the astronomers proos can reectwhat God alone knows (ilm al-ghayb). Yet this is a discursive move,one that unctions to set his questioner at ease regarding the author-ity o astronomers: it is at best conditional, and not absolute.50 Iydthen goes on to admit cautiously that astronomers can rely upon thehabitual experience o a competent observer (da jarrabah muta-makkin) in their observations, even though their proos do constrictthe common good o the Muslim community (al-maslih). In thiscontext, the latter presumably reers to the effects o prayer and theact o relying upon God. While Iydnotes that leading scholars gener-

    ally dispute the knowledge o astronomers regarding eclipses, he alsocites the exception o the prominent jurist Ab al-Wald Ibn Rushd(d. 520/1126), whose al-Bayn wa-l-tahslwas possibly the single mostcomprehensive reormulation o Mlik qh in the post-ormativeperiod o Islamic jurisprudence.51 Ibn Rushd had no objection to the

    views o the astronomers, argues Iyd, because he saw no contradic-tion between them and the Prophetic tradition. Afer all, notes Iyd,we certainly dont believe that the appointed prayers cause the eclipseto end, even though though the goal o the prayer is to put an end to

    the eclipse. No, the true benet o the prayer is the acknowledgment o

    48 al-Wanshars,Miyr, 11:259.49 It is worth noting that this case is distinctly different rom the eighth/ourteenth-

    century instance when Ibn al-Khatb (d. 776/1374) amously challenged the validity oany Prophetic tradition that would place the Muslim community in peril. See Stearns,Contagion in Teology and Law,passim.

    50 Te parallels with the case o contagion are again striking, or while ew i anyMuslim jurists admitted the existence o contagion, many affirmed the transmission

    o disease. See Stearns, Inectious Ideas, Chapter 5, and Conrad, A Ninth-CenturyMuslim Scholars Discussion o Contagion.51 On the status o al-Bayn wa-l-tahsl, see Fernndez Flix, Cuestiones legales del

    Islam temprano.

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    the eclipse as one o the signs o God, the intensity o ear elt duringthe prayer, and the recognition o Gods omnipotence.52 In the end,Iyd

    nds a balance between assuring his questioner that astronomi-

    cal knowledge doesnt threaten religious practice, and acknowledgingthe ability o astronomers to accurately perceive Gods habit, the exis-tence o such a habit being a central concept in Ashr theology. o besure, the atwis not a ringing endorsement o the need or scienticresearch; yet, strikingly considering the way in which the question wasramed, it does support the compatibility o religious law and astro-nomical knowledge.

    Law and Medicine: o Alchemists, Lepers and obacco

    Te practice o medicine appears in the atw collections in a decid-edly different ashion rom astronomy, relating in part to a concern orthe legitimacy o doctors as qualied witnesses. Not only is the author-ity o medical knowledge addressed, but also the question o whetherthe pursuit o medicine affects the status o the practitioner as a wit-ness, i.e., does an interest in a specic art in and o itsel constitute a

    moral aw which invalidates anything the practitioner might say? Itshould be emphasized here that jurists saw themselves as the guard-ians o Muslim society, and that they were well aware o the activitieso charlatans, astrologers, and tricksters, who would alsely presentthemselves to society as legitimate authorities.53 Still, we should notimagine jurists as invariant killjoys, or while being wary o the prac-tice o magic, on occasion they tolerated illusionists as well as the writ-ing o amulets.54As the boundaries between astrology and astronomy,between magic and medicine, were not always clear, jurists had to be

    52 al-Wanshars, Miyr, 11:26061. Included in this ear is the awareness thatthe eclipse may be a sign o the o end o time. In structuring his argument, Iydcites both Ab Bakr ibn al-Arab (d. 543/1148) and Ab al-Qsim al-Muhallab(d. 436/1044); see Iyd, artb al-madrik, 2:75152).

    53 See Saliba, Te Role o the Astrologer in Medieval Islamic Society, and Por-

    mann, Te Physician and the Other: Images o the Charlatan in Medieval Islam.54 See al-Burzul Fatw, 1:38082, or an example o juridical tolerance o enter-tainment: in this case, a group o players would pretend to cut off an actors head, andthen make the head speak to them.

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    careul not only to protect believers health and wealth, but also toshield them rom all orms o polytheism.55

    In this context, the character o the practitioner and the way inwhich he uses his knowledge were understood to be as important asthe status o the art itsel. In al-Wansharss chapter on giving testi-mony (al-shahdt) the ollowing question addressed to Qd Iyd,illustrates this:

    He [Iyd] was asked about the practice o alchemy (sinat al-kmy),whether it is permitted (hal hiya min bb al-jiz aw min bb al-mustahl),and whether or not the one practicing it (tlibuh) was to be orbidden[rom doing so], and whether or not its practice invalidated (yaqdahu)

    the testimony o its practitioner.56

    Iyd immediately affirms that alchemy is indeed a legitimate science,dealing with the making o glass and the analysis o pearls. His author-ities here are unnamed doctors, and he notes that he has dealt withthis subject at greater length in a separate work.57 urning to whathe perceives to be the root o the question, Iyddenies that alchemycan be linked in its essence to the practice o orging money. Suchexamples o raud do not invalidate the efforts o expert practitioners

    o the science, who in general test the abilities o possible charlatansor hucksters in their proession. al-Wanshars, the editor, juxtaposesthis clear endorsement o alchemys legitimacy with the opinions otwo prominent scholars, Ibn Araa (d. 803/1401) and Ab al-H asanAl b. al-Muntasir (d. 742/1341), the rst o whom had stated thatthe testimony o practitioners o alchemy was similar to that o thosewho sell sets o backgammon, drums, and pipes, and that it was there-ore not valid; al-Muntasir, or his part, had stated that such a per-son wasnt permitted to lead the prayer.58Te reader is lef in the not

    unusual position o having to choose between conicting opinions o

    55 Te central issue here is causality, and the importance o not believing that any-thing other than God could cause anything to occur. How difficult this could be isseen in the example o prayers or spells: i these were written in Arabic they wereconsidered sae, and al-Burzul mentions (Fatw, 1:38082) that his own teacher(possibly Ibn Araa) would write certain names on paper, mix the paper with chickeneggs, cook the mixture and eat it. I, however, the words were written in a oreignlanguage, then the object o invocation was unclear, and the act was disapproved, i

    not orbidden.56 al-Wansharis, al-Miyr al-jadd, 10:155.57 I have not been able to identiy this source.58 al-Wanshars, al-Miyr al-jadd, 10:155.

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    prominent jurists, two o whom had cast doubt on the character o thepractitioner o alchemy, and thus implicitly on the art itsel.

    In the case o medicine, the situation was clearer. In general, juristsacknowledged, though ofen only in passing, the expert testimony oa doctor regarding the nature o a disease or the state o a personshealth. I have shown elsewhere how jurists generally acknowledgedthe transmission o disease in the case o leprosy, while ofen denyingit in the case o the plague.59In the latter case, instead o rejecting the

    value o empirical evidence or the authority o doctors, jurists arguedor alternative explanations o empirical observations that reected thecomplexity o contemporary medical plague etiologies.60Tis was the

    case with the twoatws, also collected by al-Wanshars, o the eighth/ourteenth-century Granadan jurist Ibn Lubb (d. 782/1381) who arguedthat Muslims should not abandon the sick in times o plague, as therewas no conclusive evidence that it was transmitted by contact.61o besure, there were jurists such as j al-Dn al-Subk (d. 771/1369), whoargued that i two doctors testied that a specic plague victim wasa potential cause o harm to others, he should be avoided. In givingdoctors such authority in the case o plague, al-Subk was, however,in the minority.62With leprosy, on the other hand, a disease that waswidely held to be a legitimate cause or divorce, the opinion o doctorswas seldom disputed.

    A particularly striking example o the acknowledgement o medicalauthority is ound in al-Burzuls collection o legal opinions, wherehe includes a atw rom Ibn al-H jj (d. 737/1336) on the value o adoctors opinion on the presence or absence o leprosy:

    O the questions [treated by] Ibn al-H jj is also the ollowing case: Doc-tors testiy regarding leprosy that is present beore the date o the mar-

    riage contract, as [other witnesses] testiy concerning a sale. Tere is no

    59 See Stearns, Inectious Ideas, Chapters 1 and 3,passim. As always, there werenotable exceptions, such as Ibn Rushd (d. 520/1126) denying the contagious nature oleprosy: see Inectious Ideas, 11416.

    60 Tere were notable exceptions, including the renowned and inuential Egyptianjurist Ibn H ajar al-Asqaln, who wrote a long treatise on the virtues o the plaguedeath rom which could lead to martyrdomand how it was caused by jinn. SeeStearns, Inectious Ideas, Chapter 5.

    61 I have discussed theseatwsat length in Contagion,passim.62

    See Stearns, Inectious Ideas, 215ff. al-Subk was also decisively reuted by IbnH ajar in the latters treatise less than a century later. Tis reutation mayI speculatehave resulted in al-Subks treatise on the plague remaining extant only in citationsin other works.

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    oath needed rom the spouse to conrm this, nor is the matter open todispute, as [is the case] when dispute occurs with his oath at the givingo testimony. (Tis is) because the judgment provided by the testiy-ing o doctors has long been a denitive judgment (h

    ukm bi-l-qat bihi

    al-l-qidam).63

    Yet, even while acknowledging the legal authority and value o medi-cal testimony, jurists were concerned with controlling this testimony,either by investigating the qualications o individual practitioners, orby presenting themselves as medical authorities in their own right. obe sure, many jurists had also studied medicinethough ew o themmay have had any actual clinical experiencebut here I am interested

    in the ability o jurists to present medical knowledge as transmissiblewithin legal circles without the presence o an actual doctor.

    In al-Burzuls Fatwwe nd an interesting example o how, whileacknowledging the authority o medicine, a jurist could challenge thato the doctor. Te scholar involved was al-Mzar (d. 536/1141), arespected Mlik.64Te query reads as ollows:

    al-Mzar was asked about someone who had married his virgin daugh-ter [to a man]. Te husband asked i he could have intercourse with her(al-dukhl bih) and the ather claimed that on his [the husbands] bodythere was leprosy (baras). Tey took the case to a judge, and he senttwo doctors, one o them a dhimm [a Christian or a Jew living underMuslim rule] who testied that there was on his body leprosy regardingwhich there could be no doubt (l yashukkna hi)]. Does the wie havea choice [o sleeping with her husband] or not? And is the word o anon-Muslim to be accepted?65

    In his answer, al-Mzar stresses the necessity o the examining doc-tor being competent, and carrying out his investigation o the allegedlepers body in a thorough ashion. I he is incompetent (qasr al-b),

    63 See al-Burzul, Fatw, 2: 287. Compare with the view o Ibn Rushd: Te wordo the doctor is valid in what is asked o him by the judge, concerning what is spe-cic to the knowledge o the doctors even i he is not o moral probity (ghayr adl),or is Christian, i there is no one else to be ound. Te preerence is or two personso moral probity (al-Wanshars, Miyr, 10:17). A similar (anonymous) opinionacknowledging the authority o doctors to ascertain leprosy can be ound at Miyr,7:34142. Wanshars also records the opinion o Ibn Lubba (d. 330/942), who citesthe ability o doctors to ascertain whether a sickness is lie-threatening or not (Miyr,10:294). On the position o lepers in Medieval Islamic society in general, see Dols,

    Te Leper in Medieval Islamic Society.64 al-Mzar also wrote an inuential work on prayer, in which he had deended theuse o the astrolabe. See his Sharh al-talqn, 1:38688.

    65 al-Burzul, Fatw, 2:338.

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    then this will obviously not do. al-Mzar is clear about how one candiagnose leprosy:

    Is this or is this not a case in which there is a smell, which in connec-tion with sitting or lying together has a clearly harmul effect? I theysay: there is no smell, then test his place (o affliction) with the head oa needle. I it changes and its color becomes red, blood appearing in thearea, then it is not leprosy, and the woman has no say in it. Tis is theword o the authorities among the doctors (qudam al-atibb), and Idont know o a stronger (awthaq) position than this.66

    Immediately afer affirming the authority o doctors o previous gen-erations, al-Mzar attacks the practitioners o his own day, claiming

    that there are no longer any doctors o any note. In part, this is cer-tainly representative o a broader anxiety regarding the possibility ocharlatans exploiting believers by posing as doctors. Yet, al-Mzarsconcerns are more specic. For him, it is not so much a question ocharlatans, or a doctors religion, as whether a given doctor acknowl-edges the medical position presented by al-Mzar:67i a doctor ollowsthe criteria laid out by al-Mzar, then it is simply a matter o sensoryperception and deduction (amr hiss darr). I a doctor gives differ-ent criteria, backing it up with citations, then he is permitted to doso, but his trustworthiness must be investigated by a judge. al-Mzarthen proceeds to deny the phenomenon o contagion, while affirm-ing that proximity to lepers is harmul, a differentiation made at leastas early as Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889).68 While affirming the veracityand authority o medical opinion, al-Mzar has managed to appro-priate medicines authority as a discipline to an extent not seen inal-Wazzns discussion o astronomy above.69

    66 Ibid.67 Not all jurists were as generous with regard to religious identity. Ibn al-H jj,

    whose support o the authority o doctors was cited above, was particularly vicious onthe subject o Jewish doctors (Ibn al-H jj,Madkhal, 4:10715, 14050).

    68 Ibid.On Ibn Qutayba, see Conrad, A Ninth-Century Muslim Scholars Discussiono Contagion. For a discussion o why the concept o contagion (as opposed to diseasetransmission) was rejected by many jurists, see Stearns, Inectious Ideas, Chapter 1.

    69 Another example o a legal scholar appropriating the authority o medical knowl-edge can be ound in al-Wanshariss denial o the permissibility o abortion (isqt al-jann), in which, while giving a detailed discussion o the process o gestation, he

    cities only legal authorities (Miyr, 3:370. Tis example should be compared with theopinion o al-Mawwq (d. 897/1492) on both coitus interruptusand abortion (Miyr,4:23536). In both cases, Wanshars appends the views o Ibn al- Arab (d. 543/1148)to the initial opinion, and rerains rom citing the views o doctors. On abortion in

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    A nal intriguing example o the invocation o the authority omedical science is ound in an unortunately anonymous legal opin-

    ion on the permissibility o smoking.70

    While the unnamed scholargrants the opinion o medical experts ull authority, the opinion is oadditional interest due to its explicit admission o the case o tobaccobeing without precedent. Te question itsel is curious: in the case oa sick man who, with the help o God, has managed to stop smoking,is he unconditionally permitted to smoke or medical purposes (halyajz lahu tathu mut laqan) or only when he doesnt eel a needto smoke? Te questioner has addressed two issues here: the medi-cal value o smoking tobacco and the problem o addiction. Beore

    addressing these, the mufreects on the desirability o smoking:

    Smoking [tobacco] did not exist in the time o the Prophet, nor in thetime o the Rightly-Guided Caliphs afer him, nor in the time o theCompanions or the Followers, nor or the our Mujtahid imams or theircompanions. Instead it occurred in the tenth century [o the hijra],the scholars o which differed then and aferwards. O them there washe who gave a atw or it to be orbidden, there was he who gave a

    atwon its being reprehensible, and he who gave a atwon its beingpermitted. Each one o these sought in his atw indications [to sup-

    port his argument]. Tis is one o the issues in which there is doubt(al-mushabbaht), regarding which the Prophet said: Whoever is on hisguard against them, preserves his religion and honor (istabraa li-dnihiwa-irdihi). So it is piety to rerain rom it, and it is recommended torerain rom it, and one should trust in what is recommended (nadhral-mandbyajib al-wa bi-hi). So know that this person should notingest it, due to the Prophets warning that avoiding it is recommended,and considering that (muallaqan) the cure had already taken place. It isnecessary or him to have aith in the Prophets warning.71

    Our jurist is clearly skeptical o the claim that tobacco has medical

    properties, or he warns o the recovering addicts desire or smok-ing, and then notes that the oremost physicians (hudhdhq al-atibb)have decried the possibility o any good coming rom smoking, stating

    Islamic thought, see Katz, Te Problem o Abortion in Classical Sunni Fiqh (with abrie discussion o al-Mawwqsatw), and Musallam, Sex and Society in Islam.

    70 Surprisingly little has been written on the status o smoking in Islamic law. Fora discussion o two treatises rom the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on tobacco,neither o which invokes the authority o medical knowledge, see Klein-Franke, No

    Smoking in Paradise. For an overview o the status o drugs in shara, in which theauthor unortunately does not discuss tobacco, see Opwis, Schariarechtliche Stellung-nahmen zum Drogenverbot.

    71 al-Wazzn, al-Miyr al-jadd, 2:554.

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    that it instead causes sicknesses that could not be acquired otherwise.Smoking, he argues, is the sickness or which there is no medicine

    except giving it up and renouncing it, like the whispering o theaccursed Satan.72Unortunately, without more knowledge about theauthor, it is difficult to know which medical experts he had in mindwhen writing his opinion.

    Conclusion: owards a Denition o a Public Discourse on Science

    Here I will simply assert, but later will argue, that much o our sense othe worlds contents and inductive regularities is built up and protectedby the constitutively moral processes by which we credit others relationsand take their accounts into our stock o knowledge about the world.

    o trust people is to perorm a moral act, proceeding on the basis owhat we know about people, their makeup and probable actions withrespect to our decisions. Insoar as knowledge comes to us via otherpeoples relations, taking in that knowledge, rejecting it, or holding judg-ment in abeyance involves knowledge o who these people are. . . What orelevance to credibility assessment do we know about them as individu-als and as members o the same collectivity?

    Stephen Shapin,A Social History o ruth73

    In the past decades, the work o Stephen Shapin has been inuential inrethinking the nature o the scientic revolution in Western Europe,and in offering a productive sociological perspective on how and whenseventeenth-century scientists chose to believe their colleagues. o besure, Shapin beneted rom being able to build on the tremendousamount o scholarly attention previous generations o scholars haddevoted to this period in European intellectual history. Scholars o the

    early modern Muslim world nd themselves in a decidedly less advan-tageous position, especially regarding the ways in which the naturalsciences were discussed by Muslim intellectuals active in law, mysti-cism, theology, and philosophy during the period rom the feenth tothe nineteenth centuries, a period that includes what European histo-rians ofen call early modern. o reiterate an of-heard lament, manyo our sources, insoar as they exist or have been identied, continue

    72 Ibid.73 Shapin, A Social History o ruth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century

    England, 8, 38.

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    to languish in manuscript or have been published too recently to haveattracted substantive comment.

    In this brie essay, I have argued that, as part o a larger projecto investigating the status and place o science in the Muslim world,it is both productive and valuable to investigate the legal status oscience during the period in question. Tough the legal opinions othe scholars here are ar rom univocal, their discussions o astron-omy, alchemy, and medicine repeatedly show an ability and desire tosupport sciences legitimate authority, while ensuring that it not beunderstood in a ashion that would challenge proper piety. No conclu-sive generalizations can be drawn rom these ew opinions, however

    intriguing they may be. Above all, the substantial chronological rangeo material drawn upon here, comparing atws rom over almost athousand years, suggests that a much larger number o legal opin-ions would need to be included in uture studies in order to ascertaingeneral attitudes which may have characterized given generations oscholars. In addition, the atws discussed here and others like themshould be discussed in connection with works traditionally assignedto other scholarly genres, such as Susm, theology and philosophy.Te example given above o al-Ys is especially instructive. Here, anauthor o works on law, mysticism, theology, and belles lettresarguesin broad terms that the pursuit o all knowledge that benets theMuslim community is legitimate and should be pursued.74 Such anexample suggests that Sabras tentative suggestion that science in theMuslim world may have in part declined as it became naturalizedneeds revision and emendation.

    As mentioned in the introduction, the scholarship o the past ewdecades has demonstrated that Islamic law remained dynamic and

    exible afer the ormation o law schools in the fh/eleventh cen-tury. Tis exibility is well illustrated in the atws examined here,with individual jurists drawing creatively on both legal and scienticprecedents in order to craf authoritative opinions that reect both the

    jurists interpretation o the intention o the scriptural sources, and theexigencies o the Muslim community. Yet, while the old stereotypes oIslamic laws static or arbitrary nature can now be saely discarded, alltoo ofen scholars continue to treat developments in legal discourses

    74 For al-Yss exceptional views on kalm and the problem o contagion, seeStearns, Inectious Ideas, 14950.

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    in isolation, not considering possible relationships o mutual inu-ence with developments in, or example, kalmor Susm. An accurate

    understanding o science during the early modern period will onlybe attained when our understanding o all the acets o the periodsintellectual history are considerably deepened. Only in this mannercan we begin to move towards what Stephen Shapin has reerred toas a moral history o scientic credibility with regard to science inthe early modern Muslim world, and hope to come to a better under-standing o how authoritative knowledge was constructed, not solelyin the written records o the legal or scientic realms, but also in thepublic spheres where both were discussed and debated.75

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