ISLAMIC HISTORY IN A NEW KEY: MARSHALL HODGSON’S CONTRIBUTION
In this essay, I will examine how Marshall Hodgson’s studies of Islamic history overcame many of the limitations of the prevailing Western academic accounts of Islamic societies. Hodgson’s pioneering work was in many ways a decisive break with previous Western writing on Islam. For this reason as well as the continuing relevance of his work today, I have focused on his writings on Islamic history in the context of world history. My hope is that his work will become better known and appreciated at a time when Western understanding of Islam still falls short in many important ways.
Focusing on the American context which I know best, in the case of Islam, stereotypes, gross oversimplifications, and failures to include the context have often characterized American media representations, leading to increased hostility toward Muslims. The association of Muslims with fundamentalism, terrorism, violence, and social backwardness has become automatic for many Americans. But attacks on Muslims only escalate the cycle of misrepresentations and abuse that increases hostility between Muslims and non-Muslims.
As relations worsen, what is needed are accounts of the Islamic world based on academic writing that is fair, of high quality, and does not overgeneralize. Academic scholarship is an important court of appeals because it contains thorough research based on methodologies and theories that are the product of rigorous training. Of course, Orientalist scholars have produced inaccurate and Eurocentric interpretations of Islam in their writings, especially in the 19th and early 20th century. But the cure is better scholarship informed by more inclusive perspectives and then spreading the fruits of such work to the literate public. My purpose is to make such perspectives and research on the Islamic world, and Hodgson’s work in particular, more accessible.
Hodgson’s History of Islam
In The Venture of Islam which Hodgson wrote in the 1960s, he asserted that the human family is one. All traditions have the same basic components but differ according to the weight they give to each element and the way they structure the relations among them. He decisively rejected the idea that Islam societies possessed essential qualities that were socially backward in comparison with those of Western societies. Muslims have not been prisoners of the dead hand of the past, but rather acted according to the interests of leading social groups in response to the conditions of their time. Rather than being asleep for the past thousand years, they have been actively making their own history, just like Western people. The traditional and modern aspects of social life cannot be simply considered opposites and there is no linear transition from a traditional to a modern society. Instead of viewing Islam as a traditional civilization incapable of modernizing, he argues that Islamic civilization is modernity’s key predecessor.
One of Hodgson’s most important claims was that Islamic civilization did not decline after the early Middle Ages and played a central role in world history until the early modern period. In his view, not only is there no incompatibility between Islamic civilization and modernity, but modernity is not a unique Western achievement that is then passed down to other civilizations. It was due to historical circumstances that Islamic and other civilizations did not modernize at the same time as the West, and they would likely have modernized on their own, without Western intervention.
Hodgson honed in on the distinctive qualities of Islam civilization that allowed it to play the central role in Afro-Eurasia until the 17th century and made it the predecessor to a global society. “Until the seventeenth century of our era, the Islamicate society that was associated with the Islamic religion was the most expansive society in the Afro-Eurasian hemisphere and had the most influence on other societies. This was in part because of its central location, but also because in it were expressed effectively certain cultural pressures — cosmopolitan and egalitarian (and anti-traditional) — generated in the older and more central lands of this society. The culture of Islamdom offered a norm of international sophistication to many peoples as they were being integrated into the hemispheric commercial nexus. It also offered a flexible political framework for increasing numbers of long-civilized peoples. In this world role, the Islamicate society and culture demonstrated persistent creativity and growth, though some periods were more creative than others, until quite modern times; then the development was disrupted, not by internal decadence but by unprecedented external events” (1).
There is one quality in Hodgson’s work on Islam that was clearly lacking in much Wesetern scholarship on Islam, that of empathy toward Islam. As Edmund Burke III, his leading interpreter, has pointed out, Hodgson showed respect toward his subject, inviting the reader to experience the spirit of Islam. In this regard, he followed in the footsteps of Louis Massignon, the French scholar of Islam, who took great pains to understand how Muslims saw themselves and viewed Islam compassionately. Hodgson brought his subject alive, using research as the basis for his deep understanding of the world as experienced by Muslims. He also focused on great Muslim thinkers and moral figures rather than on the most prominent military and political leaders. By describing how they lived as Muslims in a particular time and place, Hodgson encourages us to approach Islam through its presence in the lives of exemplary practitioners (2).
Hodgson’s humanistic outlook pointed the way toward a more expansive and relational perspective on world history, while assigning Islam an important part in this great story. His moral and philosophical approach to writing history did not place the West at its center, since he wrote about different civilizational paths to modernity, emphasizing interrelationships rather than independent development. His view of world history, and Islam’s place within it, has been been taken up and extended, most notably by the sociologist Armando Salvatore whose The Sociology of Islam updates Hodgson’s work, shows the relevance of his insights the social sciences as well as the humanities, and is an impressive contribution in its own right.
Cultural Creativity in Islamic Civilization
Although Hodgson was clearly enamored with Islamic civilization and appreciated its cultural legacy of great beauty, spiritual upliftment, and moral excellence, he did not view the driving force of this civilization as solely cultural. His historical analysis gave much prominence to the role of material and social factors as well as cultural and religious ones. For example, he considered the Islamic religion as a development in the history of Irano-Semitic monotheisms closely associated with mercantile groups and saw merchants of cosmopolitan vision as playing an important role not only in the religious domain but in the political and military arenas as well.
The historical background of the Muslim faith which had a large impact on its future development was recognized by Hodgson. He believed that the social order of Islam took shape through the geographical and cultural influences of the area that ranged from the Nile to Oxus Rivers and states that in the first millennium of the Common Era, “the Irano-Semitic peoples between Nile and Oxus were becoming increasingly prominent in the commercial life of the expanding Afro-Eurasian citied complex; and internally their culture was developing a relevant variant on the religious orientation common to all the core areas. They were working out the prophetic impulses of the Axial Age within increasingly communal channels, with an increasingly egalitarian and cosmopolitan bias; and this bias was singularly appropriate to the relatively rootless merchant class, with few ties to nature and its gods, with a distrust of aristocratic excellences and subtleties and a preference for social organization autonomous from the gentry, and with a strong need for an egalitarian market morality” (3).
When Hodgson was writing his three-volume history, The Venture of Islam, during the 1960s, there was considerable agreement among Western scholars of Islamic societies. They tended to study the texts of Islam rather than to situate Islamic societies within prevailing social and political conditions. In their view, Islam was essentially an Arab phenomenon that revolved around the Arabic language. After the Abbasid caliphate centered in Baghdad lost most of its authority in 945, a long decline set in. But Hodgson told a different story about the history of Islamic civilization. He saw it, first of all, as the product of what came before, the Iranian and Semitic culture that dated back to Sumerian times. This heritage nurtured Islam’s vision, and the Arab creation of Islam was possible because it responded to a cultural context that had developed over a long period of time. Islam became the moral foundation of an impressive multilingual and cosmopolitan civilization that flourished through the 17th century.
Islamic civilization reached the height of its territorial expansion in the 16th century, and, at that time, there were three prosperous, well-organized, and culturally creative empires, the Ottoman (Turkish), Safavid (Persian), and Mughal (Indian) empires. From the 10th to the 17th centuries, Hodgson emphasized that the Islamic cultural realm was notable for Persian poetry and miniature painting, the architecture of the Taj Mahal and Ottoman buildings and bridges, Turkish and Persian historical, geographical, and biographical literature, Arab and Persian science, the sociologist, philosopher, and historian Ibn Khaldun, the growth of Sufism, and renewed metaphysical inquiry. Even though the economy had slightly contracted, scientific advance had leveled off, and philosophical achievements had diminished over the centuries, Islamic civilization was the center of Afro-Eurasia from Muhammad’s time until the late 17th century when Western civlization became its prominent rival before overwhelming the Islamic world a century later.
Hodgson recognized that the Chinese economy was the most advanced and its culture quite luminous during premodern times, yet Islamic civilization was the geographical heart of Afro-Eurasia and its cosmopolitan and egalitarian culture spread easily past its borders. The impact of Islamic societies upon the rest of Afro-Eurasia was unequaled by any other civilization until modern times. Hodgson attributes to Islamic civilization a potentially universal dimension that was unique in its time, as the sharia was accepted as the universal moral law. Furthermore, Islamic high culture, expressed in two main languages, Persian and Arabic, was adopted by cultured Muslims from eastern Europe to southeast Asia. The result was a cosmopolitan unity that was separate from the local traditions and began to impact and modify these local cultures to a degree.
In terms of politics, Hodgson saw urban society as mostly self-governing, relying on contract and patronage, even though rural military elites held ultimate power. Due to the key but not dominant role of the merchant class, more room for individual development and greater freedom and social equality existed within Muslim societies than in feudal and hierarchical Europe during medieval times. Despite military rule and the lack of political freedom, Islamic societies were culturally flexible and a high level of cultural creativity was realized. Islamic civilization during the Middle Periods from the fall of the Abbasid caliphate in 945 through the 17th century was vigorous, creative, and expansive.
The Western Transmutation
If Islamic civilization was of central importance in premodern times, it is imperative to explain how its historically significant role was taken over by the West. In Hodgson’s account, internal weakness is part of the story but, more importantly, Europe came to prioritize innovative technical specialization over all other considerations, whether moral, aesthetic, or religious. This way of thinking emerged due to the straining of agrarian economies to achieve a higher level of social power and economic development, which required innovation based on rational calculation. Islamic civilization had utilized rational calculation in its varied activities, particularly within the economic sphere, more than Europe until early modern times, but within a few centuries Europe not only closed this gap but surged past Islamic societies in this area.
Maximization of efficiency became the ultimate goal in northern and western Europe and, as a result, independent and innovative thought superseded authority as the legitimate source of knowledge. From this mentality came the ability to produce machines that gave Europe a great military advantage. Such military superiority was reinforced by a mass participation society that enrolled large numbers of people as contributors to national power. What had once been conditions of relative equality among the civilizations of Afro-Eurasia in terms of wealth and power gave way to Western domination in what Hodgson called “the Western transmutation.” Other civilizations, including that of Islam, were quickly left behind, a situation that lasted until some non-Western societies, notably those of East Asia, successfully modernized.
As Hodgson emphasized, it was not Western intellectual or cultural superiority that made possible the shift from an agrarian to an industrial economy. The West relied on many inventions and discoveries that took place outside Europe; for example, gunpowder, the compass, and printing plus the civil service examination system all came from China. Europe also inherited the efforts in science and philosophy of the Islamic world and was able to take advantage of the extensive commercial network in Afro-Eurasia largely created by Muslim traders. In addition, Europe benefited from distinct conditions, such as mercantile expansion and farming, that promoted economic development. So it was the first civilization to enjoy favorable circumstances for making use of all that Afro-Eurasian history had bequeathed. But it could have been Sung China, if not for the Mongol conquest, or the Muslim empire in India.
Hodgson explains that the entrance of Muslims into a Western world society organized on the basis of modern technology and capitalist economics meant that they were no longer part of a living and spiritually vital civilization that could create its own future. Instead, Muslim nations were forced into economic dependency, and by the late 19th century in the Muslim world, young people were searching for ways to lift themselves out of highly unfavorable economic circumstances. Eventually, it became clear that nothing short of national mobilization and the building of modern nations that could stand up to the Western powers would be sufficient. Mass societies had to be created in which loyalty is ultimately to the nation rather than to family, clan, or region. In addition, modernization required innovative technical specialization which meant extensive changes in the social fabric as well. And finally, those local rulers who had made accommodations with the West and were benefiting from these arrangements had to be driven out.
As Hodgson saw matters, the political and economic situation in Muslim countries had become critical by the postwar period. A few were becoming wealthy while the vast majority were in poverty. Two types of solution seemed plausible for independent Muslim nations. The first was to make the Islamic religious and legal traditions the foundation for adjusting to the modern world and for providing the moral guidance that the modern West was unable to offer. The advocates of this path were the sharia-minded. The other option was to use the social forms of the modern West and relegate Islam to the background, similar to the fate of Christianity in the West. Their aim, though, was not merely to imitate existing models but to create societies that would avoid the worst evils of the modern West. Guided democracy in Indonesia under Sukarno and nationalist socialism in Egypt under Nasser were representative examples.
By the 1970s after Hodgson’s death, the second alternative was discredited due to its economic and political failures, while the first path, that of political Islam, established a theocracy in Iran and in more recent years has gained a considerable following in countries like Pakistan, Turkey, Algeria, Egypt, and Afghanistan. Hodgson anticipated this type of development when he recognized that the modernizers were intensely concerned with political issues and social transformation. If they were going to emphasize Islam, it would have to be a socially oriented Islam, one based on sharia law rather than on Sufism. Hodgson also pointed out that the sharia-minded, especially the religious scholars, had always been concerned with history and the social order. It was this side of Islam which harmonized best with a modern outlook and modern society, since it was rooted in the pragmatism and individualism of the merchant class. In contrast, Sufism was more compatible with an agrarian-based aristocracy, since it focused on the inner life and had become identified with a traditional and politically conservative standpoint.
Philosophical History
A big reason why Hodgson is worth reading today is that he was ahead of his time, and his influence on later scholars and writers on Islamic history and society is apparent. But that is not all. The quality of his theorizing, research, and insights, the scope of his interests and concerns, the focus on context, and his ability to bring so much together in one story are remarkable. And his approach to the writing of history is still relevant. Even his ideas about the role of Islam in the world and possible future directions for Islam continue to stimulate us more than 50 years later.
Hodgson wrote philosophical history based on a moral vision. As a Quaker and conscientious objector during World War II, he was acutely aware of the perils of the contemporary world as it entered the nuclear age with the Holocaust and two world wars of unparalleled destruction in its recent past. This background and experience led him to deeply engage with different cultural traditions in the areas of religion, art, politics, and law. In his view, moral commitment makes possible a more profound level of historical analysis. At the same time, he was vigilant about the potential for biased thinking when vision is not disciplined by extensive research.
Since Hodgson’s time, there has been increasing skepticism about the possibility of writing grand historical narratives. And undoubtedly personal factors do intrude upon scholarship as does the climate of ideas. Yet, he believed there were partially objective standards by which to evaluate the writing of history and ensure its value. The historian disciplines people’s ideas of history through factual research and theoretical insight to reduce the errors in people’s understanding of their own groups and of other groups. Hodgson also recognized that in the postwar world, Muslims, Chinese, Europeans, and Indians had to get along with each other and build a common human identity, a worthy goal to which history could make an important contribution.
There is no one answer, Hodgson believed, to the great historical questions. Historians with different interests will ask different questions, select and arrange their evidence in alignment with their questions, and use categories that fit their overall approach. Each large-scale historical inquiry will have its own structure, so no one interpretation can be total or ultimate. But a balanced historical perspective can arise from many complementary efforts so long as the factual details are accurate and each particular account is recognized as partial. A humanistic scholar, Hodgson wrote a history of Islam whose aim was not merely to describe a civilization that has helped to produce the world we live in today. For him, it was more important to view his subject as “a morally, humanly relevant complex of traditions, unique and irreversible.” His wish was to demonstrate the “quality of its excellence as a vital human response and an irreplaceable human endeavor.”
Hodgson’s inclusive and moral approach to the writing of history is evident from his emphasis on dialogue among civilizations and on the close connection among the different peoples of the world. They are all vital contributors to the human journey whose moral achievements are decisive for human wellbeing. He wrote: “It is not merely as events have altered the natural or the socio-cultural context that they can have exceptional significance. So far as there is moral or spiritual solidarity among human beings, apart from physical confrontations at any given time, the fate of each people is relevant to all human beings whether or not it had permanent external consequences otherwise. It is, then, also, and perhaps above all, as events and acts have altered the moral context of human life that they are of universal significance, for they have set irreplaceable standards and norms, and they have posed distinctive challenges and established moral claims which as human beings we dare not ignore” (4).
The Future of Islam
What makes Hodgson’s speculations on the future of Islam worth our attention today is that the questions he asked are still on the table. In fact, some of the issues he raised have only become more urgent such as the role of religion today. His view was that religion could contribute a moral vision and serve as a source of cultural continuity at a time when traditional institutions are breaking down. He identified some of the major challenges requiring the type of moral vision that religion could provide as the increasing pressure on natural resources, the need for creativity within mass culture, and the danger of doing social planning in arbitrary and manipulative ways. A moral vision which accesses the transpersonal dimension could come from premodern religious heritages and inspire modern people looking for a deeper meaning beyond greater comfort and convenience achieved through increased technical efficiency.
Hodgson thought that religions would have to evolve to meet the needs of a worldwide society. Although he wasn’t sure that they could adapt to this enormous challenge, he believed religion could play a crucial role as an intermediary community between the individual and the global mass. Since the population of the world was increasingly consuming the same products and entertainment, the individual was in danger of becoming an isolated atom in a vast undifferentiated body of consumers. In order for modern people to express their integral selves and have an impact upon the world, it is helpful to be part of a group with a shared creative vision, whether a religion, political party, or small nation with a common heritage. But this community needs to be small enough to allow room for individual expression while large enough to have an impact on the wider world.
To accomplish this goal, however, Hodgson believed that the religious community would have to overcome tendencies toward parochialism and be willing to engage in dialogue with other religious heritages and, more generally, with people who do not accept its premises and its practices. In the Islamic context, the Indian poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal’s efforts to demonstrate the mediating role that Islam might play in the modern world influenced Hodgson’s understanding of Islam’s potential future. Iqbal is often considered Islam’s most important modern thinker, and he was active during the first four decades of the 20th century, setting forth some of the central challenges that Islam must face if it is to regain its vital role within world history. The greatest challenges were the tension between the needs of the individual and that of the community and the related one between the particular and the universal.
Iqbal emphasized the infinite potential of the unique individual. He also saw history as the field of human creativity where cosmic evolution was played out; therefore, human development was the universal moral standard by which actions could be judged. On the other hand, social order and stability required a principle of continuity. Iqbal thought he found in Islam a way of harmonizing these opposite requirements. In his view, Christian Europe overemphasized the principle of development and Hindu India had an unchanging social structure that prevented development. Only Islam maintained the tension between individual and group values, between the principle of development and the principle of continuity.
Concretely, Iqbal saw Sufism as focusing on the inner dimension of Muhammad’s revelation and thought that exceptional individuals could live out this ideal while setting an example for the entire community. And he looked to sharia to provide community and historical continuity and protect Islamic tradition from arbitrary change by individuals or groups. But can this approach bridge the distance between the creative vision of the exceptional individual and the conservative outlook of the religious community?
Hodgson explains how Iqbal handled this challenge. The principle of continuity “would provide inescapable long-term standards by which any individual could always measure himself, and a dependable context in which individuals could unfold. At the same time, Islam embodied the principle of development. Though stable, the Shar’ia was not, in principle, static; built into it were devices which should allow it to respond to new needs as individuals proved creative and society evolved.” In line with this search for balance, Iqbal emphasized that Islamic doctrines and practices must always be open to rational evaluation and argument.
In his critique of Iqbal’s thought, Hodgson faults Iqbal for assuming that Islam, historically, consistently respected the principle of development. He believes that Iqbal misinterpreted medieval Muslim thinkers to support his own position. In addition, Hodgson thinks Iqbal downplayed the dangers that modernity poses to the principle of continuity within Islam. He also has reservations about Iqbal’s claim that Islam must evolve independently of all other religious groups. In India, where Muslims were a minority, Iqbal supported religious and cultural separatism at the expense of the wider Indian nationalism which Gandhi preached. His philosophy placed too much emphasis on the need to defend the Islamic heritage in India and not enough on the need for Islam to join with other religious traditions in the work of mediating with the global present (5).
How did Hodgson try to balance the needs of individual and community, the particular and the universal without falling into the same traps as Iqbal? What was Hodgson’s view of the relation between Sufism and sharia? How did he interpret the attempts within Islamic civilization to balance the needs for individual creativity and social continuity? What were his suggestions concerning the ways that Islam could mediate the global present? Did he think Islam had any advantages as it searched for a suitable role in the modern world?
Hodgson saw the universalism of the Sufi esoteric teachings and the communal discipline embodied in sharia law as potentially complementary. Within Islamic history, though, harmonious coexistence between them was only partially in evidence; in the 19th century when defending the Muslim heritage against the Western intrusion was the foremost concern, Muslims strongly emphasized the communal discipline embodied in sharia law. Since Sufi esotericism did not encourage social and political activism, its social standing suffered in the 19th century. And Sufism’s reduced influence has largely continued until the present.
Like Iqbal, Hodgson believed that a focus on Islam’s inner dimension is necessary in the modern age since modern societies are almost exclusively concerned with the transformation of the outer world. Therefore a balance must be sought through an inner focus, which in Islam can be found in Sufi esoteric teachings. The Quran does not just indicate how to govern social relations; it also gives Muslims a path to inner wisdom based on direct experience. The inner Sufi path also points the way toward a universalism that can help bring the Islamic world into fruitful dialogue with other religious traditions.
The strains of Sufism that reject sectarianism and religious intolerance can guide Muslims so that they renew their traditions without strengthening communal isolation. Hodgson wanted more emphasis on the development of the individual rather than social conformity and on following the inner light rather than externally imposed law. For these reasons, Hodgson advocates greater commitment to Sufi esoteric teachings. The difficulty is that Sufi esoteric teachings are not likely to be attractive so long as there is a perceived need to defend the Islamic heritage. Furthermore, conditions in Muslim societies today are generally not favorable for a more inward focus within Islam.
From Hodgson’s perspective on world history, the West enjoyed certain advantages that could enable it to take the lead in supplying the moral vision which religion must come up with in order to flourish in the modern world. He mentioned that the West had greater moral and intellectual leisure than the rest of the world, implying that its higher level of economic development made it possible to focus on cultural matters as well as economic and material concerns. For Islamic societies, a large population, shortage of resources, and poverty made the satisfaction of material needs pressing and urgent. Unfortunately, a focus away from the development of the individual together with the sharia-minded’s narrow legalism and rigid thinking about Islam’s history and its traditions has made it harder for Islam to adapt to the modern world. Efforts to preserve Islam, the wellspring of identity, group mobilization, and a just social order, increasingly conflict with successful navigation of modernity.
The historian Christopher Bayly comments that the situation of the Islamic world has not radically changed since Hodgson’s time. “Even if parts of the Arab world have dramatically improved their standards of living, the preponderance of poor, uneducated young men in Muslim populations across the world and the continuing presence of Western neoimperialism in the form of drone attacks, bombing, or outright military intervention have not greatly changed the picture which Hodgson painted in the early 1960s” (6). It is not surprising that under such conditions, Sufism’s focus on the inner life has not appealed to the vast majority of Muslims. Religiosity may, in fact, be stronger within Islamic societies than in most other areas of the world, but political Islam has flourished in recent years, not Sufism. However, political Islam comes in many different versions, not all of which are intolerant, anti-democratic, and exclusive.
In any case, the future of Islamic religiosity, according to Hodgson, does not only depend on the revival of esoteric Sufism, even though he welcomes its inner focus. He believes Islam is well placed in important ways to contribute to a new moral vision for the modern world in dialogue with other faiths. Islam flourished over the centuries in relatively cosmopolitan settings, and ts outlook, at least until the Western incursion, was quite broad and far from parochial or provincial. Local cultural forms have not gained great allegiance in the Islamic world, which makes it easier to adjust to the modern age. In addition, Islam’s premodern sophistication facilitated the development of a religious outlook in which the sacred and nature, body and soul, religious and social norms were seen more as unities than as separate and opposed. Hodgson does not claim that these qualities have persisted intact through the modern period but they are ingredients from which Muslims can create a new moral vision.
Hodgson accepts that Muslims face obstacles to using their historical awareness to creatively address present dilemmas. The need to modernize has led Muslims to have less concern for historical fact and to construct ideal images of the Muslim past that reassure them of the transitory nature of Western dominance. Yet Hodgson thinks that Islam’s greatest potential asset is its “frank sense of history” based on the idea that their religious tradition is a product of history. This outlook encourages new interpretations of the sacred traditions on the basis of scholarly advances or spiritual experience. Unfortunately, the sharia-minded have often been captive to a timid literalism. As a result, “Islamic tradition has failed as yet to recognize fully the many ways in which Muhammad’s life and the Quran itself were geared to the mental horizons which bounded the Arabs of Muhammad’s time.”
To summarize, Hodgson has given us some future scenarios that draw upon past patterns and present trends while tentatively putting forward suggestions as to how Islam can survive. But he also wonders whether religion itself will make it through the modern age. If it doesn’t, he thinks that the influence of Islam will still be felt through sublime Persian poetry which reflects Sufism’s highest teachings. Nevertheless, Hodgson saw the continuing need for an understanding of our existential condition and for a moral vision, and, until now, religion has been a major source of such wisdom. For Islam to flourish, he set out some noble aspirations that would enable it to fulfill the potential of its heritage.
Since the world context has not dramatically shifted since the 1960s and Islam is confronted with many of the same issues today that it faced then, Hodgson’s work remains relevant. His insights, grounded in sound historical understanding, merit our attention. In my next essay, I will discuss the ways in which Armando Salvatore, an impressive sociologist of Islam, has made use of and gone beyond Hodgson’s work, and in succeeding essays, I will examine some contemporary issues raised by both Hodgson and Salvatore and discuss their work in relation to that of other leading scholars of Islam. Then I will put forward a framework that I believe can make up for some of the limitations that I find in the perspectives of the available scholarship while acknowledging the great benefits I have gained from them.
ENDNOTES
1 Marshall Hodgson, “The Role of Islam in World History,” Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam,and World History. Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 97.
2 Burke’s illuminating analysis of Hodgson’s work appears in Marshall Hodgson, Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam,and World History. Cambridge University Press, 1993.
3 Marshall Hodgson, “The Role of Islam in World History,” Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam,and World History. Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 112.
4 Marshall Hodgson, “Historical Method in Civilizational Studies,” Rethinking World History: Essays on Europe, Islam,and World History. Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 75.
5 For an excellent discussion of Hodgson’s views on Iqbal and the relevance of Sufism within the context of Islam’s future see Faisal Devji, “The Problem of Muslim Universality,” Edmund Burke III and Robert Mankin (eds.), Islam and World History: The Venture of Marshall Hodgson. University of Chicago Press, 2018.
6 See Christopher Bayly, “Hodgson, Islam, and World History in the Modern Age,” Edmund Burke III and Robert Mankin (eds.), Islam and World History: The Venture of Marshall Hodgson. University of Chicago Press, 2018.
