A Quest for Authenticity: Science and Religion in the Medieval and Modern Middle East

The prominent place of ancient Greek bodies of knowledge in the making of Islamicate sciences since the ninth century prompted modern historiography to highlight what it saw as a problem of authenticity, whereby such bodies of scientific and technical knowledge were considered foreign in contrast to an authentic Islamic body of knowledge that is largely religious. This authenticity problem was conveniently located, and reproduced, along western/indigenous, modern/non-modern, and secular/religious binaries, which dominated colonial and postcolonial narratives. Here, “authenticity” did not serve as an analytical device for the history of science and religion in the region but rather as a paradigmatic governmentality that arranged this history along colonial and postcolonial lines.

This presentation aims at dissecting the authenticity paradigm as a historiographical narrative governing the study of science and religion in the Islamic world, among other non-western contexts. Through analyzing three case studies from the tenth, thirteenth, and nineteenth centuries, the presentation will attempt to locate narratives of authenticity in local sources and within different social, cultural and political contexts, where questions of science and religion were formulated in evolving contexts and along different lines.