Rodrigo Adem Alvarez, PhD
Research/Publications
Current Projects:
I am currently writing my first monograph, an expansive exposition of an idea known as "the obligation to investigate" (wujūb al-naẓar), a premodern idea expressed in Classical Arabic, which motivated theological and philosophical activity in the medieval Middle East.
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Interests:
The Arabic "Archive" : Past and Present
Middle Eastern Urban History: Premodern Syria
Epistemology and Intellectual History
Religious Thought and Social Networks
Book Publications:
Translation of Ulrich Rudolph, Māturīdī and the Development of Sunnī Theology in Samarqand
This translation, published by Brill (2014) is a quintessential monograph on early Islam by Ulrich Rudolph which emphasizes an alternative starting point to Sunnī theological tradition - the teachings of Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 767) - particularly as developed in early Muslim Samarqand. Making this text accessible to readers in English from the original German is intended to highlight the special origins and significance of an early Muslim theological tradition which separated between deeds and faith, and eventually witnessed the development of an influential form of philosophical theology in the Ottoman empire, the school of Māturīdī.
Reason, Esotericism and Authority in Shi'ite Islam, with Edmund Hayes (Leiden University)
This volume, published by Brill (2021) presents essays from academic scholars of Islamic studies related to the critical study of exegetical, doctrinal, and political authority in Shiʿi Islam. Naive dichotomies of “rationality” and “esotericism” in Islamic Studies have often marginalized Shiʿi thought or impeded its understanding. The studies presented here aim to foster more exacting frameworks for interpreting the diverse modes of rationality and insider knowledge in Twelver and Ismaili Shiʿism and the socio-epistemic values they represent within Muslim discourse.
The Last Taymiyyan: Ibn Qāḍī al-Jabal's Defense of Ibn Taymiyya on the Eternity of the World
Just a few decades after his death, controversialist Hanbali scholar Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328) was criticized by detractors for affirming an eternal universe in agreement with Aristotelian philosopher Avicenna. This publication in De Gruyters' Kalām series on premodern Muslim theological works makes available to the scholarly community a previously unpublished response on this topic by Ibn Qāḍī al-Jabal (d. 1370), Ibn Taymiyya's last theological disciple in medieval Damascus, referred to in this title as "The Last Taymiyyan".
Necessary for a complete picture of Ibn Taymiyya's historical reception in 14th century Mamluk Damascus, as well as the social and intellectual history of that time, this text should also be of interest to intellectual historians who work on the intersection between speculative theology and cosmology in the late Middle Ages, as the translation provides a useful point of entry into the conceptual vocabulary of the subject matter in the Arabic philosophical tradition - and to what extent premodern religious thinkers were able to contemplate a universe beyond finite "creation ex nihilo".
Modern scholarship of medieval Islam, particularly by Jon Hoover, has separated between Ibn Taymiyya's medieval political career colored by terrible sectarian strife, and his activity as an intellectual in a period of emergent Muslim scholasticism. While commonly restricted in popular associations with purist Salafist fideism (see Lauziere, 2016; cf. in contrast Weismann, 2000), and used since his 19th-20th century reception to legitimize a combative attitude towards diverse Muslim intellectualisms, this document by one of Ibn Taymiyya's earliest interpreters demonstrates a more salutary form of participation in philosophical discourse characteristic of post-classical Muslim thought.
The availability of this text can be used as a corrective for how religious figures from the past are used to justify contemporary anti-intellectualism, as well as an example of the need to write more comprehensive historical narratives which question our representations of religious "traditionalism" and its purist claims, past or present.