A01=Marwa Elshakry
al-azhar
arabic
Author_Marwa Elshakry
belief
biology
Category=PDX
Category=QRAM3
Category=QRP
Category=QRVG
civilization
colonialism
conversion
cosmology
darwin
decline
education
empire
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
evolution
evolutionary socialism
faith
globalization
history
islam
materialism
middle east
missions
mufti
nationalism
natural selection
nature
nonfiction
pharaonism
publication
reception
reform
religion
science
scriptural exegesis
secularism
sufi al-ghazali
theology
tradition
translation
Product details
- ISBN 9780226001302
- Weight: 822g
- Dimensions: 16 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 06 Jan 2014
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In Reading Darwin in Arabic, Marwa Elshakry questions current ideas about Islam, science, and secularism by exploring the ways in which Darwin was read in Arabic from the late 1860s to the mid-twentieth century. Borrowing from translation and reading studies and weaving together the history of science with intellectual history, she explores Darwin's global appeal from the perspective of several generations of Arabic readers and shows how Darwin's writings helped alter the social and epistemological landscape of the Arab learned classes. Elshakry shows how, in an age of massive regional and international political upheaval, these readings were suffused with the anxieties of empire and civilizational decline. The politics of evolution infiltrated Arabic discussions of pedagogy, progress, and the very sense of history. They also led to a literary and conceptual transformation of notions of science and religion themselves. Darwin thus became a vehicle for discussing scriptural exegesis, the conditions of belief, and cosmological views more broadly.
The book also acquaints readers with Muslim and Christian intellectuals, bureaucrats, and theologians, and concludes by exploring Darwin's waning influence on public and intellectual life in the Arab world after World War I.
Marwa Elshakry is associate professor in the Department of History at Columbia University, where she specializes in the history of science, technology, and medicine in the modern Middle East. She lives in New York.
