Why did the Arabs Ignore the Florescence in the Persianate Zone? Light notes on Hodgson's seminal work, Venture of Islam
In my last response I talked about the symbolic meanings of the
difference between the choices of the ideal hero adopted by--on the one hand, the Arabic culture and Persian culture, on the other. I also spoke of the cultural and historical implications of
these choices. The relationship between these two cultural poles within the
Islamicate civilization is crucial to understanding not only the historical
processes that shaped the past of Islam, but also the current state of
polarization between an Iranian-led vision (to which some of the Arabs ascribe)
and a distinct but less coherent Arabic one. Today's reading on the Bloom of
Persian Literary Culture and Its time, presents an opportunity to revisit
this topic again. So in today’s response, I look at this
relationship from a slightly different angle.
Hodgson made a distinction between ‘an Arabic zone’ and a
‘Persianate zone’. According to Hodgson “the Arabic zone is
distinguishable less by a common positive tradition not shared by others, than
by a common ignorance of the Persianate tradition.”[1] Hodgson went further to
say that “this ignorance only helped cut off that portion of Islamdom from the
most creative currents that were inspiring the majority of Muslim people.” [2] Regardless of whether
Hodgson’s statement about the implication of this separation on the Arab zone
is true (I think it is), there is substantive evidence to support his
conclusion that the main distinction between the two zones lies in the Arabs’
ignorance of the intellectual and historical changes taking place during this
period. While Arabic literature in the early centuries of is abound with
references to Persian cultural symbols and history, the Arabic literature of
this period is almost devoid of such references. This is interesting
development knowing that this period witnessed a blooming of Persian letters
and culture. Why? Given the shared history, overlapping geography and the bond
of common religion, this lacuna is indeed a curious development, one that
Hodgson stated but left without explanation.
To address this question I invoke here two elements. The first
element is the feelings of discontent and, at times, of dispossession that the
Arabs seem to have felt in the post High Caliphate Period, and which I have
expounded on in my last response in the treatment of the Image of the Ideal
Human. I have argued then that the choice of ‘Antarah reveals not only the
displeasure of the Arabs with l'ordre du jour, but also a tendency of
reclusiveness on their part. This point is not going to receive much treatment
here, but should serve as a background. In fact, it should suffice to mention
that this isolationist tendency is congruent with the quote above from Hodgson
and the remarks that I shall document below. The second element is a concept
that has been examined thoroughly: that is, the correlation between ‘power’ and
‘knowledge’. However, it should be noted that in treating this aspect the focus
here will be on a different angle, one that reverses the common conception of
this relation in modern historical processes.
The correlation between ‘knowledge’ and power has been
extensively studied in the context of colonial and post-colonial discourses.
The French philosopher, Foucault, has been credited for pointing out the
inextricable link between knowledge and power—a link whereby any form of power
is liable to produce the king of knowledge needed to demonstrate or justify its
existence, and where any form of knowledge is inherently an expression of one
form of power or another. This correlation has been invoked to demonstrate how colonial powers invented categories of knowledge about current or
prospective subjects of their colonial endeavor. This kind of knowledge-- although meant to distract and deceive by providing a convenient reading of a
set of cultural or historical developments to further a particular political
platform-- does not stem from a total ignorance of the subject. As a matter of
fact, it usually originates from an intimate familiarity with the subject—the kind
of familiarity that requires the assembly of hundreds of researchers and years
of copious work. This conclusion is true of classical forms of colonial
initiatives as well as of the most current trends.
However, this relationship between power and knowledge has been
seen as one dimensional. That is, both the power and knowledge are seen as
tools in the hands of the colonizers. The possibility of the deployment of
forms of knowledge as a means to resist, acquire or project a brand of power on
the part of the colonized is often over looked. Yet, the experiences of many
national movements and their journey of ascendancy from simple resistance
movements to the corridors of power provide ample evidence of how this counter
trend of using adapted forms of knowledge works. Still, the interplay of power
and knowledge could be seen in other contexts—contexts that do not fit the
classical definition of colonial relationships. Both the acquisition of certain
types of knowledge and the refusal to acquire them are expressions of personal
or communal will in favor of, or in opposition to an existing power structure.
As it is often the case, whenever a form of knowledge prevails in a given
context, a counter form of knowledge emerges in response. The emerging counter
knowledge could be either confrontational or rather adaptive, at least in the
most apparent level.
By extrapolating this concept to account for the patterns of
interaction between the Arabic and the Persianate zones, we can clearly make
the following observations. First, when Islam conquered and ultimately absorbed
the lands, subjects and cultural products of the Persian culture, these
subjects (that is, the Persianates) were quick to give up the open form of
resistance and to adapt the Arabic culture and language—without of course
compromising entirely their own. Doing so allowed the Persianates to acquire
and internalize the prevailing mode of knowledge (mostly Arabic) and use them
to climb the social ladders. Later as the Persianates became both strong
and confident, they started to infuse these modes of knowledge with Persian
themes and cultural symbols. This ultimately gave way to almost complete
Persianization of these modes of knowledge—religious knowledge is the exception
in this case. This form of response to a dominate form of knowledge and
power is not unheard of in the modern context. As social scientists and
historians know, most of the leadership of national movements in the former
colonies of European powers, and who championed the fight for independence,
began their journey toward resistance from the schools of their colonizers—the
same schools that were built to instill in them the love of their colonizers.
One is justified to assume that in some sense the Persianates deployed an
adaptive form of knowledge, one in which they initially absorbed but ultimately
remodeled the dominant Arabized form of knowledge—a response comparable to that
of modern national movements.
Second, against this rising influence of Persianate culture and
receding importance of Arabized forms of knowledge, at least in certain
cultural and scholarly fields of inquiry—which happened in parallel with a
decline on the political sphere as well—the Arabs took a different approach.
Instead of engaging the new form of knowledge by way of accommodation, the
Arabs hoped to openly resist it. To do so, they had to choose between two
alternatives: a confrontational form of resistance, where the dominant form of
knowledge is learnt, understood and then discredited; or a passive path where
the contact with this knowledge is avoided at all cost. The Arabs choose the
later. Their ignorance of the Persionate was therefore a product of deliberate
neglect not of a lack of awareness. The latter is improbable given the geographical
and cultural proximity. Third, by choosing to ignore the developments in the
Persianate zone, the inhabitants of the Arabic zone, lost the chance not only
to partake in this florescence but, importantly, the possibility of the
ascension to positions of power--- this decision left the door ajar for Turks
to assume the position of a subordinate culture within this Persianate
florescence and vie for leadership from within its contours.
Beyond the feeling of discontent with the political situation in
the central area of the Muslim world at the time which would have led many
Arabs to boycott the establishment, there were other reasons that explain why
the population of the Arabic zone chose to ignore the Persianate cultural
florescence. After the fall of the Umayyad dynasty, ordinary Arabic men
seem to have chosen one of three professions; merchants, scholars (mostly
religious), and semi-nomadic herdsmen. The specialization of these three groups
explains two things: why the Arabs boycotted the system, and why they never
attempted to challenge it. Merchants and scholars lived in urban centers in the
shadow of whoever was in power. The fact that their professions weren’t
directly affected by the changes in political structures as much as they were
by the changes in economics, made it less likely for them to come into direct
confrontation with the dominant culture, unless they deliberated chose to
challenge its mores. This situation allowed these two groups to live with, but
independent from, the ruling class and the society in general except for the
limited encounters with like-minded men in the market place of goods or ideas.
Merchants’ interaction with other merchants would have been limited to matters
of commerce. Likewise, scholars communicated mostly with scholars, and when
they did they did so in Arabic—a language that any scholar of the time would
have had to speak. Moreover, the Arabs who chose to retreat to semi-nomadic
lifestyle were far removed from what transpired in urban centers and were only
mildly affected by it—if at all.
But this independence came at a price. At this point in
history, only soldiers and military leaders were in position to take a share in
power, or to seize it all together. Even though religious scholars always
earned appointments in judicial positions, the nature of their craft left them
outside the competition for the power. This is also true of merchants who had
more to lose by entering into such competition and more to gain by staying off
of it. Nomads were the only of Arabs group that had a semi-military lifestyle
and which could have potentially provided the force necessary to mount a
serious challenge to the existing dynasties. But the nomads lacked both
organization and motivations to do so— anyway.
The situation on the political front impacted cultural life. The
Arabic literature had two main sources: written (mostly religious, but also
philological) and oral (poetry). As heirs of the prophet, the religious
scholars believed that on their shoulders rested the responsibility of
preserving the religion and perfecting its sciences. This meant that they
weren’t directly concerned with what transpired in other areas of literature,
at least, as long as they did not come to direct confrontation with their job.
As a result, the florescence in Persionate literature would have had little
appeal to these scholars. The other source, or channel of Arabic literature,
poetry, has long concerned itself with the core of Arabic life and culture—a
core that was defined primarily as nomadic, and to some extent anti-urban. So
for poets writing in Arabic the new Persian florescence was Persian and urban
and therefore irrelevant!
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