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Islamic philosophy and the globalization of science: Ahmed Cevdet's translation of the sixth chapter of Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2022

Kenan Tekin
Kenan Tekin*
Affiliation:
Department of Islamic Studies, Yalova University, Turkey
*
*Corresponding author: Kenan Tekin, Email: kenan.tekin@yalova.edu.tr
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Abstract

This article contributes to the study of the globalization of science through an analysis of Ahmed Cevdet's nineteenth-century translation of the sixth chapter of Ibn Khaldun's (d. 1406) Muqaddimah, which deals with the nature and history of science. Cevdet's translation and Ottomanization of that text demonstrate that science did not simply originate in Europe to be subsequently distributed to the rest of the world. Instead, knowledge transmitted from Europe was actively engaged with and appropriated by scholars, who sought to put that material within their own cultural context in a manner that could serve their own intellectual and practical needs. Cevdet's case is particularly interesting because it demonstrates that (1) Islamic conceptions of human nature, the soul and the nature of knowledge provided particularly fertile soil in which empiricist and positivist traditions could take root, and (2) aspects of modern science – specifically its ostensive separation from metaphysical debates – made it more attractive to Islamic theologians than was, for example, the work of Aristotelian philosophers. Through an exploration of Cevdet's career and a close analysis of his historiographical treatment of Ibn Khaldun's account of sciences, this article foregrounds the agency of non-Europeans in the late nineteenth-century circulation of scientific knowledge.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 55 , Special Issue 4: Negotiating Science, Islam, and the State in a Globalising Middle East , December 2022 , pp. 459 - 475
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of British Society for the History of Science

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References

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4 The Muqaddimah has been subject to numerous studies in the modern period. Some recent studies on Ibn Khaldun and his Prolegomena are the following: Syed Farid Alatas, Ibn Khaldun, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013; Dale, Stephen Frederic, The Orange Trees of Marrakesh: Ibn Khaldun and the Science of Man, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fromherz, Allen, Ibn Khaldun: Life and Times, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Irwin, Robert, Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018Google Scholar. In this article I consulted the following edition of the Muqaddimah: Ibn Khaldun, al-Muqaddima, (ed. Abdesselam Cheddadi), 5 vols., al-Dar al-Bayda: Khizānat Ibn Khaldūn, Bayt al-Funūn wa l-ʿUlūm wa l-Ādāb, 2005.

5 For a study of the French interest in Ibn Khaldun and a translation of his volume on the history of the Berbers see Hannoum, Abdelmajid, ‘Translation and the colonial imaginary: Ibn Khaldûn orientalist’, History and Theory (2003) 42(1), pp. 61–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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7 Secondary scholarship on Ottoman interest in Ibn Khaldun includes Ziyaeddin Fahri Fındıkoğlu, ‘Türkiye'de İbn Haldunizm’, in 60. Doğum Yılı Münasebetiyle Fuad Köprülü Armağanı/Mélanges Fuad Köprülü, Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 2010, pp. 153–63 (first published 1953); Bernard Lewis, ‘Ibn Khaldun in Turkey’, in Lewis, Islam in History: Ideas, People, and Events in the Middle East, Chicago: Open Court, 1993, pp. 233–38; Fleischer, Cornell, ‘Royal authority, dynastic cyclism, and “Ibn Khaldunism” in sixteenth-century Ottoman letters’, in Lawrence, Bruce B. (ed.), Ibn Khaldun and Islamic Ideology, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1984, pp. 46–68Google Scholar; and Yıldırım, Yavuz, ‘Mukaddime’nin Osmanlı dönemi Türkçe tercümesi’, DÎVÂN İlmî Araştırmalar (2006) 21(2), pp. 17–33Google Scholar.

8 According to Fleischer, op. cit. (7), p. 47, the earliest year an Ottoman scholar acquired a copy of the Muqaddimah was 1598, when Veysî (also a poet) acquired his from Cairo. Marinos Sariyannis suggests that Ibn Khaldun's work had an earlier influence on an Ottoman ethical–political treatise based on similarity. See Marinos Sariyannis, ‘Ottoman Ibn Khaldunism revisited: the pre-Tanzimat reception of the Muqaddima, from Kınalızade to Şanizade’, in Marinos Sariyannis (ed.), Political Thought and Practice in the Ottoman Empire (Halcyon Days in Crete IX: A Symposium Held in Rethymno, 9–11 January 2015), Rethymno: Crete University Press, 2019, pp. 251–8.

9 See Çelebi, Katib, Kashf al-Ẓunūn, Lebanon: Dar al-Kutub al-Ilmiya, 2008, vol. 1, p. 327Google Scholar.

10 In fact, a translation of the initial sections of the sixth chapter does exist as well, but it is not clear whether Pîrîzâde produced it. A note on the Bulaq edition indicates that Pîrîzâde attempted it but ultimately left the sixth chapter untranslated. Ahmed Cevdet, however, asserted that this section was translated later by somebody else, based on stylistic differences as well as the fact that Pîrîzâde's drafts do not include it. Some reports, Cevdet noted, identified the translator of the initial sections of the sixth chapter as İsmail Ferruh (d. 1840), who was the Ottoman ambassador to London during Selim III's reign, and established an informal scientific society in Istanbul after his return. Apparently, the said section was appended to copies of Pîrîzâde's translation that belonged to İsmail Ferruh. This, Cevdet believed, corroborated the reports. See Cevdet, Ahmed, Mukaddime-i İbn Haldunun Fasl-ı Sâdisinin Tercümesi, Istanbul: Takvimhane-i Amire, 1860, p. 3Google Scholar.

11 For bibliographic information on these editions of the Muqaddimah see ʻAzīz ʻAẓmah, Ibn Khaldūn in Modern Scholarship: A Study in Orientalism, London: Third World Centre for Research and Publishing, 1981, p. 243. ʻAẓmah provides further information on partial editions and translations into other languages. He also includes an annotated bibliography of secondary scholarship. For more information on the 1857 Bulaq edition of the Muqaddimah see Shamsy, Ahmed El, Rediscovering the Islamic Classics, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020, pp. 83–7Google Scholar.

12 Pîrîzâde's translation of the Muqaddimah was published by Bulaq Press in the beginning of Şaban 1274 AH (p. 626); Mustafa Vehbi Efendi was the editor (pp. 261–74). A year later, in 1859, an apparently lithograph edition was published. Pîrîzâde, Terceme-i Mukaddime-i İbn Haldûn, Cairo: Topoğrafya Destgâhı, 1859. For more information on translation in Egypt and these editions of Pîrîzâde's translation see Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, Mısırda Türkler ve Mirasları, Istanbul: IRCICA, 2006, pp. 147–9.

13 The first volume of the Istanbul edition came out in early March 1859. Pîrîzâde, Terceme-i Mukaddime-i İbn Haldûn, Istanbul: Takvimhâne-i Âmire, 1859, vol. 1, p. 352. This edition includes a purported depiction of Ibn Khaldun. The second volume of the translation was published in July 1859. For more information on the Istanbul edition, cf. Yavuz Yıldırım's introduction in İbn Haldun, Mukaddime: Osmanlı Tercümesi (tr. Pîrîzâde Mehmed Sâhib, ed. Yavuz Yıldırım, Sami Erdem, Halit Özkan, M. Cüneyt Kaya), Istanbul: Klasik Yayınları, vol. 1, p. xxviii.

14 Some sources on Cevdet's biography include Chambers, Richard Leon, ‘The education of a nineteenth-century Ottoman alim, Ahmed Cevdet Paşa’, International Journal of Middle East Studies (1973) 4(4), pp. 440–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Chambers, ‘Ahmed Cevdet Paşa: the formative years of an Ottoman transitional’, PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 1968; Aliye, Fatma, Ahmed Cevdet Paşa ve Zamanı, Dersaadet: Kanaat Matbaası, 1913Google Scholar. For his autobiography see Ahmed Cevdet, Tezâkir, 4 vols., Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1991, vol. 4.

15 Cevdet, op. cit. (14), pp. 6–14.

16 Figures such as Cevdet and Ibn Khaldun are seen as exceptional. However, throughout Islamic history and lands we find numerous scholars whose training is wide-ranging. For some examples in Egypt see Gran, Peter, Islamic Roots of Capitalism: Egypt, 1760–1840, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2014Google Scholar. Gran discusses works of ‘Attār, al-Jābartī, Tahtāwī and others whose scholarship follows a trajectory similar to Cevdet's. Elshakry, op. cit. (3), mentions many more scholars from later nineteenth-century Arabic-speaking areas of the Ottoman Empire.

17 Cevdet, op. cit. (14), p. 7.

18 Cevdet, op. cit. (14), p. 7.

19 Cevdet, op. cit. (14), p. 24

20 Cevdet, op. cit. (14), p. 39.

21 Cevdet, op. cit. (14), p. 57. For a recent study of Kavâid-i Osmâniyye as reflecting internal dynamics rather than Western influence see Leezenberg, Michiel, ‘Internalized orientalism or world philology? The case of modern Turkish studies’, History of Humanities (2021) 6(1), pp. 209–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Cevdet, op. cit. (14), p. 79; cf. Cevdet, op. cit. (14), vol. 2, pp. 126–7.

23 Cevdet, op. cit. (14), pp. 3–4.

24 For more information on the concept of maârif see Yıldız, Aytaç and Gündüz, Mustafa, ‘Maarif: transformation of a concept in the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the nineteenth century’, History of Education (2019) 48(3), pp. 275–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 For more information on larger transformations that happened immediately before and during Cevdet's life see Berkes, Niyazi, The Development of Secularism in Turkey, Montreal: McGill University Press, 1964Google Scholar; Philliou, Christine, Biography of an Empire: Governing Ottomans in an Age of Revolution, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011Google Scholar; Findley, Carter Vaughn, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 1789–1922, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012Google Scholar; Hanioğlu, Şükrü, A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010Google Scholar.

26 For a discussion of the Edict of Gülhane see Abu-Manneh, Butrus, ‘The Islamic roots of the Gülhane Rescript’, Die Welt des Islams (1994) 34(2), pp. 173–203Google Scholar.

27 Prime ministry Ottoman Archives (BOA), İ. DH. 282/17685.

28 Abdullatif Subhi, Miftâhu'l-İber, Dersaadet: Matbaa-i Âmire, 1860, p. 3.

29 For a study showing that Cevdet's political views were evident in his historiography as well see Christoph K. Neumann, Araç Tarih Amaç Tanzimat: Tarih-i Cevdet'in Siyasi Anlamı (tr. Meltem Arun), Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları, 2000.

30 Cevdet's efforts to reform his source text seem to reflect common practice at the time. Subhi, for instance, in his above-mentioned translation of the history sections of Ibn Khaldun's ʿIbar, acknowledges that he revised and updated the text by correcting misspellings, tracing reports of other nations back to their original sources, and critiquing certain accounts. Subhi, op. cit. (28), pp. 3–4.

31 Ibn Khaldun, op. cit. (4), vol. 2, pp. 337–8; cf. Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, 2nd edn, 3 vols. (tr. Franz Rosenthal), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967, vol. 2, pp. 411–13.

32 Ibn Khaldun, op. cit. (4), vol. 2, p. 338.

33 In the section on the correct manner of teaching, Ibn Khaldun discusses how to use thinking to arrive at middle terms in an argument, which shows that he had syllogisms and analogies in mind. Ibn Khaldun, op. cit. (4), vol. 3, pp. 215–17.

34 Ibn Khaldun, op. cit. (4), vol. 2, p. 338.

35 Cevdet, op. cit. (10), pp. 7–8. I believe Cevdet's account of psychology here is based on commentaries and glosses on an Avicennan handbook of philosophy, Athīr al-Dīn al-Abharī's Hidāyat al-Hikma, which was taught in Ottoman madrasas together with Qādī Mīr Maybūdī's commentary on it. Cevdet's autobiography indicates that he not only studied but also taught this text. Cevdet, op. cit. (14), vol. 4, pp. 7, 12.

36 Cevdet, op. cit. (10), p. 68.

37 Cevdet, op. cit. (10), p. 205.

38 Ibn Khaldun, op. cit. (4), vol. 2, p. 343; cf. Cevdet, op. cit. (10), p. 13. The ontology of human and angelic intellects is addressed in a few other places in the Muqaddimah, such as in the last introductory discussion on various types of human beings that have supernatural perception, and in the section on the science of dream interpretation in the sixth chapter.

39 Ibn Khaldun, op. cit. (4), vol. 2, pp. 343–4. Ibn Khaldun explains his view on the limits of philosophy in another section devoted to its rejection and the corruption of its impersonator. Ibn Khaldun, op. cit. (4), vol. 3, pp. 178–86. For a study of his criticism of philosophy see Ahmad, Zaid, ‘A 14th century critique of Greek philosophy: the case of Ibn Khaldun’, Journal of Historical Sociology (2017) 30(1), pp. 57–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 For a special issue of Muslim World on the soul in the medieval Islamic thought see Ayman Shihadeh (ed.), The Ontology of the Soul in Medieval Arabic Thought, Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012.

41 Cevdet, op. cit. (10), pp. 15–16.

42 Cevdet, op. cit. (10), pp. 17–18.

43 Cevdet, op. cit. (10), p. 18.

44 Cevdet, op. cit. (10), p. 18.

45 See al-Ghazālī, The Incoherence of the Philosophers/Tahāfut Al-falāsifah: A Parallel English–Arabic Text (tr. Michael Marmura), Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1997; al-Shahristani, Struggling with the Philosopher (ed. and tr. Wilfred Madelung and Toby Mayer), London: I.B. Tauris & Company, 2001; Ibn Khaldun, op. cit. (4).

46 Cevdet, op. cit. (10), pp. 23–37.

47 Cevdet, op. cit. (10), p. 205. For Cevdet's succinct account of the connection and difference between alchemy and chemistry see Cevdet, op. cit. (10), p. 221.

48 For two wonderful texts on the early history of rational–philosophical sciences in Islamic history see Saliba, op. cit. (2); Gutas, Dimitri, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture, New York: Routledge, 1998CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Cevdet differentiates between ulûm and maârif. He uses the former to refer to theoretical knowledge and higher knowledge, and the latter to refer to general information. For a discussion of these concepts cf. Yalçınkaya, op. cit. (3).

50 Cevdet, op. cit. (10), p. 114.

51 Cevdet, op. cit. (10), p. 114.

52 Cevdet, op. cit. (14), pp. 46–56, presents a report, a public statement and an official speech from the opening ceremony of the Academy of Sciences, all of which he states he had penned down. For more information on the Academy see Kenan Akyüz, Encümen-i Dâniş, Ankara: Ankara Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Yayınları, 1975. For some primary documents on Encümen-i Dâniş see BOA, İ. MVL. 208/6740. For further research on the Ottoman Scientific Society and other intellectual movements see Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, Osmanlı İlmî ve Meslekî Cemiyetleri: 1, Istanbul: Edebiyat Fakültesi Basimevi, 1987; Mardin, Şerif, Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000Google Scholar.

53 Cevdet, op. cit. (14), vol. 4, p. 110.

54 Cevdet, op. cit. (10), p. 56.

55 Cevdet, op. cit. (10), pp. 68–70.

56 Ibn Khaldun, op. cit. (4), vol. 3, pp. 227–8.

57 Cevdet, op. cit. (10), p. 236. Apparently, there was anxiety about statesmen teaching the sciences as well. See Yalçınkaya, op. cit. (3), pp. 74–6.