scholarly journals Ibn Taymiyyah’s Ethics

1986 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-163
Author(s):  
Ismail K. Poonawala
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Positive Attitude ◽  
Popular Religion ◽  
Substantial Part ◽  
Political Movement ◽  
The West ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The Hague ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Cult Of Saints

Except for the works of the French scholar Henri Laoust and a recent studyby Muhammad Umar Memon, Ibn Taimiya's Struggle against Popular Religion(The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1976), very few studies of the thought of IbnTaimiya have appeared in English. Makari’s work is therefore a welcome additionto this meager list. Its main contribution lies in dispelling some of themisunderstanding that has all along bedevilled a true appraisal of the thoughtof the Hanbalite doctor.It is unfortunate that some bright and bold spirits of Islam, such as thecelebrated Hanbali doctor and theologian Ibn Taimiya, have remainedmisunderstood not only in the West but also among the Muslims themselves.A good part of the musunderstanding stems no doubt from the fact that formost of his life Ibn Taimiya managed to remain a quite controversial figure.A substantial part of the misunderstanding results from the close associationof his name with the Wahhabi movement which erupted violently towardthe end of the eighteenth century. Muhammad b. Abd al-Wahhab, the founderof the Wahhabi movement, was certainly influenced by Ibn Taimiya and hiswritings, especially in his bitter denunciation of the Sufi rituals, tomb worship,and the cult of saints, and no less in his moral and puritanical activism.In their scrupulous observance of the word of the Qur’an and the sunnu, indeedboth Ibn Taimiya and the Wahhabis resemble each other closely. Justas Ibn Taimiya had led bands of people in raids against the local taverns andshrines, the Wahhabis in their time, too, razed tombs and sacked the holy cities.A distinction must be made, however, between the two. While the Wahhabisrepresent a religio-political movement, Ibn Taimiya was concerned, mainly,with reforming Islam and with reinculcating a positive attitude toward thisworld. He never condemned Sufism per se; rather, his criticism was directedagainst what he defined as inadmissible deviations in doctrine, ritual, andmorals. He has, moreover, left behind a vast legacy of writing. A close scrutinyof his works reveals him as a man of unrelenting intellectual conviction. Heused his uncommon erudition to criticize and reject most of the commonly ...

Further Additions to Materials for West African History in the Archives of Belgium and Holland by Patricia Carson

1969 ◽  
Vol 12 (01) ◽  
pp. 81-89
Author(s):  
H. M. Feinberg
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
West African ◽  
African History ◽  
Guinea Coast ◽  
The West ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
The Hague ◽  
State Archives

This article is a supplement to a previous article on the same subject published in the African Studies Bulletin. Before I list further citations omitted from Materials for West African History in the Archives of Belgium and Holland, I will discuss, in some detail, the nature of the archival material deposited in the Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague. I will attempt to enhance the brief discussions of Miss Carson while avoiding repetition of statements which seem clear and/or are adequately discussed in her book. The General State Archives, The Hague, includes two major collections of interest to the West African historian: the Archives of the West India Companies and the Archives of the Netherlands Settlements on the Guinea Coast. Initially, one must realize that most of the seventeenth-century papers of both collections have been lost or destroyed, and that as a consequence there are many gaps among the existing manuscripts. For example, volume 81 (1658-1709) of the Archives of the Netherlands Settlements on the Guinea Coast includes only manuscripts for the following times: December 25, 1658-June 12, 1660; August, 1693; and October 12-December 31, 1709. Also, most of the seventeenth-century material is written in script, whereas the eighteenth-century manuscripts, with some exceptions, are in more conventional hand-writings.

Connacht in the eighteenth century

1958 ◽  
Vol 11 (42) ◽  
pp. 116-133
Author(s):  
J.G. Simms
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Substantial Part ◽  
The West ◽  
Individual Character ◽  
The Government ◽  
Constant Source

Connacht in the eighteenth century was regarded as the most remote and the most catholic part of Ireland. These two qualities gave the region a very individual character, and the few travellers who ventured to cross the Shannon had the sensation of entering another world. This did not apply to two of the five counties—Leitrim and Sligo, which had been allotted tothe soldiers of the parliamentary army in the Cromwellian settlement and for this reason were not typical of the province. The essential Connacht lay beyond the Shannon in the counties of Galway, Mayo and Roscommon, the greater part of which had been reserved for catholic landowners in the Cromwellian settlement. The result of this arrangement was to leave the catholic gentry in a much stronger position in Connacht than in the rest of Ireland. This position remained largely unshaken by the Jacobite war, as the treaty of Limerick, the terms of the surrender of Galway, and their own solidarity protected most of the Connacht landholders from confiscation at the end of the war.When the eighteenth century began, several hundred catholic landholders were in occupation of a substantial part of Galway and Mayo and, to a lesser degree, of Roscommon. This situation was a constant source of anxiety to the authorities, who from time to time were alarmed about the prospect of a French landing in the west supported by catholic landlords and catholic peasants. It was said that catholics in Connacht outnumbered protestants by fifty to one and that in some counties there were so few protestant freeholders to serve on juries that the region could scarcely be held to acknowledge the authority of the government.

Shipped but Not Sold

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Um
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Arabian Peninsula ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
The West ◽  
Commercial Society ◽  
The Indian Ocean

In the early decades of the eighteenth century, Yemen hosted a lively community of merchants that came to the southern Arabian Peninsula from the east and the west, seeking, among other products, coffee, at a time when this new social habit was on the rise. Shipped but not Sold argues that many of the diverse goods that these merchants carried, bought, and sold at the port, also played ceremonial, social, and utilitarian roles in this intensely commercial society that was oriented toward the Indian Ocean. Including sumptuous foreign textiles and robes, Arabian horses, porcelain vessels, spices, aromatics, and Yemeni coffee, these items were offered, displayed, exchanged, consumed, or utilized by major merchants in a number of socially exclusive practices that affirmed their identity and status, but also sustained the livelihood of their business ventures. These traders invested these objects with layers of social meaning through a number of repetitive ceremonial exercises and observances, in addition to their everyday protocols of the trade. This study looks at what happened to these local and imported commodities that were diverted from the marketplace to be used for a set of directives that were seemingly quite non-transactional.

Caribbean French-African Creole and African Metaphysics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanétha Vété-Congolo
Keyword(s):  
African Language ◽  
The West ◽  
French Empire ◽  
African Languages ◽  
The World ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Per Se

The Euro-enslavement enterprise in America expanded the European geography temporarily, and, more lastingly, its culturo-linguistic and philosophical influence. The deportation of millions of Africans within that enterprise similarly extended the African presence in this part of the world, especially in the Caribbean. Africans deported by the French Empire spoke languages of the West Atlantic Mande, Kwa, or Voltaic groups. They arrived in their new and final location with their languages. However, no African language wholly survived the ordeal of enslavement in the Caribbean. This signals language as perhaps the most important political and philosophical instrument of colonization. I am therefore interested in “Pawòl,” that is, the ethical, human, and humanist responses Africans brought to their situation through language per se and African languages principally. I am also interested in the metaphysical value of “Pawòl.”

‘A Welsh Lancashire’? Monmouthshire Catholics in the Eighteenth Century

1979 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 176-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
The West ◽  
The North ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Jesuit Mission ◽  
Charles Ii ◽  
Popish Plot

In the seventeenth century, one of the Catholic strongholds of Britain had lain on the southern Welsh borders, in those areas of north Monmouthshire and southern Herefordshire dependant on the Marquis of Worcester at Raglan, and looking to the Jesuit mission at Cwm. Abergavenny and Monmouth had been largely Catholic towns, while the north Monmouthshire countryside still merited the attention of fifteen priests in the 1670s—after the Civil Wars, and the damaging conversion to Protestantism of the heir of Raglan in 1667. Conspicuous Catholic strength caused fear, and the ‘Popish Plot’ was the excuse for a uniquely violent reaction, in which the Jesuit mission was all but destroyed. What happened after that is less clear. In 1780, Berington wrote that ‘In many [counties], particularly in the west, in south Wales, and some of the Midland counties, there is scarcely a Catholic to be found’. Modern histories tend to reflect this, perhaps because of available evidence. The archives of the Western Vicariate were destroyed in a riot in Bath in 1780, and a recent work like J. H. Aveling's The Handle and the Axe relies heavily on sources and examples from the north of England. This attitude is epitomised by Bossy's remark on the distribution of priests in 1773: ‘In Wales, the mission had collapsed’. However, the question of Catholic survival in eighteenth-century Wales is important. In earlier assessments of Catholic strength (by landholding, or number of recusants gaoled as a proportion of population) Monmouthshire had achieved the rare feat of exceeding the zeal of Lancashire, and Herefordshire was not far behind. If this simply ceased to exist, there was an almost incredible success for the ‘short, sharp’ persecution under Charles II. If, however, the area remained a Catholic fortress, then recent historians of recusancy have unjustifiably neglected it.

‘Strangers’ and ‘stranger-kings’: The sayyid in eighteenth-century maritime Southeast Asia

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 567-591 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeyamalar Kathirithamby-Wells
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Charismatic Leadership ◽  
Southeast Asian ◽  
The West ◽  
New Era ◽  
Asian State ◽  
Political Challenge ◽  
Western Expansion

Sayyidi ‘strangers’ and ‘stranger-kings’, borne on the eighteenth-century wave of Hadhrami migration to the Malay-Indonesian region, boosted indigenous traditions of charismatic leadership at a time of intense political challenge posed by Western expansion. The extemporary credentials and personal talents which made for sāda exceptionalism and lent continuity to Southeast Asian state-making traditions are discussed with particular reference to Perak, Siak and Pontianak. These case studies, representative of discrete sāda responses to specific circumstances, mark them out as lead actors in guiding the transition from ‘the last stand of autonomies’ to a new era of pragmatic collaboration with the West.

INFANTICIDE

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1978 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-90
Author(s):  
Martin Harris
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Population Control ◽  
Effective Means ◽  
Adult Males ◽  
American Museum ◽  
Relative Value ◽  
Demographic Survey ◽  
Female Children ◽  
Males And Females ◽  
Per Se

According to a demographic survey of over 600 primitive populations carried out by William T. Divale of the American Museum of Natural History, there is an extraordinary consistent imbalance of boys over girls in the junior and infant age ranks (up to about 15 years old). [Divale says] that many primitive groups follow a practice of overt female infanticide. Female children are suffocated or simply left unattended in the bush. But more often infanticide is covert, and people usually deny that they practice it.... Warfare inverts the relative value of the contribution made by males and females to a group's prospects for survival. By placing a premium upon maximizing the number of combat-ready adult males, warfare obliges primitive societies to limit their nurturance of females. It is this, and not combat per se, that makes warfare an effective means of controlling population growth.... Lacking any safe and effective means of contraception or abortion, primitive peoples must focus their institutionalized means of population control on individuals who are already alive. Children are the logical victims of these efforts—the younger the better—since number one, they can't resist; number two, there is less of a social and material investment in them; and number three, the emotional ties to infants are easier to cut than those between adults. Anyone who finds my reasoning depraved or "uncivilized" should read about eighteenth-century England. Gin-soaked mothers by the tens of thousands regularly dropped their babies into the Thames or wrapped them in the clothing of smallpox victims, left them in trash barrels, rolled over on top of them during drunken stupors, and otherwise contrived to shorten their babies' lives by direct or indirect means.

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