Learning Etiquette History in an Age of Confessional Ambiguity: Two Islamic Learning Treatises?

The evident similarity between the learning etiquette treatises ʾĀdāb al-mutaʿallimīn by (pseudo) Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (597-672 /1201-1274) and Taʿlīm al-mutaʿallim by Burhān al-Islām al-Zarnūjī (fl. between 576/1180 and ca 640/1242) raises the questions of what distinguishes the two treatises and how divergences between them function. Close reading of the notable interventions that (Ps.) al-Ṭūsī's ʾĀdāb al-mutaʿallimīn represents allows for modeling them as serving the formation of a Muslim learner who is not specifically Sunnī, even if not particularly Shīʿī either. The analysis sheds light on the role of intellectual borrowing and its place in the midst of confessional ambiguity. [Contextualizing the article's contribution: Previous academic studies have shown that the distance and separation we often assume between civilizations (e.g. Eastern and Western, Christian and Islamic) are actually not so distant and separate after all. Key advancements in ideas, inventions, and the like, that appear in one part of the world may have influences (acknowledged or not) traceable to a very different cultural context. George Saliba’s work on the Islamic scientific tradition had highlighted problems to resolve, “not only in order to understand the extent to which Islamic science was integral to the science of the Renaissance, but also in order to understand the very nature of the Renaissance science itself.” In the world of differences between schools of thought or religious communities (e.g. between Sunnī Muslims and Shīʿī Muslims), there is also a tendency of each side to focus on its own ideas, narratives, and books, without considering how the intellectual production of “the other side” sheds light on its own history, tradition, and narrative. Devin Stewart had investigated the sources of Munyat al-Murīd fī ʾĀdāb al-Mufīd wa-l-Mustafīd by the Twelver Shīʿī Zayn al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī [al-Shahīd al-Thānī] (d. 965/1558) as one example of a larger phenomenon, “of intellectual borrowing and adaptation across what were often viewed and continue to be viewed, as rigid sectarian boundaries.” Haider’s historiographical research had characterized some details of early Islamic historical writing as challenging the fact/fiction dichotomy. With a slightly different analytical purpose, the present study examines the function of interventions in another set of learning etiquette manuals ––the treatise ʾĀdāb al-mutaʿallimīn relative to the work Taʿlīm al-mutaʿallim. I highlight the subtle interventions that ʾĀdāb al-mutaʿallimīn represents and interpret them as serving the formation of a distinct type of learner (that is, different than the one likely envisioned by the author of Taʿlīm al-mutaʿallim). The most direct contribution it made was to draw attention to two different learning etiquette manuals, associated with seemingly different communities and traditions, and to show how the differences between the two go beyond what meets the eye. This was not merely another example of showing evident similarity and potential borrowing between two treatises. Rather, this was mainly to focus on the function of these similarities and differences, of these inclusions and omissions ––the role that they play in forming the individual being trained, specifically. In this way, the study makes a contribution not only on the textually “empirical” side, and not only in supporting/complementing previous theorizations, but also in distinctly theorizing for the function of such divergences. At the level of theorization, academics familiar with my other work would rightly read this article as a new case study gesturing toward my discussion of subject-formation (an enhanced book version of which is “in the pipeline,” so to speak). Besides these overarching findings, there are “micro-contributions” throughout the article.]