Shiblī

Indian scholar, historian and educationist, the main architect of the Nadwat al-ʿUlamāʾ curriculum, who argued that logic was only an aid and took too large a place in the madrasa course.

Life

Shiblī Nuʿmānī (1857–1914) was a historian, theologian, poet and educational thinker. He taught at Aligarh, where, according to Nusba Parveen, his lessons showed how the Qurʾān could be used as an interesting basic text, and he became the main architect, though not the main founder, of the Nadwat al-ʿUlamāʾ in Lucknow: he designed its madrasa and drafted its constitution. He later founded the Dār al-Muṣannifīn, a library and research centre, and its journal Maʿārif. His books include ʿIlm al-kalām, a call for a new theology, biographies of ʿUmar (al-Fārūq) and al-Maʾmūn, the history of Persian poetry Shiʿr al-ʿAjam, and the life of the Prophet (Sīrat al-Nabī).

On logic his view was moderate rather than hostile. He held that logic is a means to philosophy and deserves only the time that purpose needs, and he objected that in the Dars-i Niẓāmī the books on logic were twice as many as those on philosophy, while students trained in them often could not apply logical principles to explain a verse of the Qurʾān. He also argued that ‘Greek sciences are not our religious sciences’: al-Ghazālī had taken them up to answer the unbelief of his time, but now modern science and philosophy had to be learned instead. The Nadwa curriculum accordingly gave logic and philosophy less weight than the Dars, taught philosophy from newer books and added modern Arabic, history, geography, science and mathematics, although Parveen notes that Shiblī’s plans were only partly realised.

Works

• ʿIlm al-kalāmOn theology; in it he called for a new kalām (Parveen).عَمَل
• Sīrat al-NabīLife of the Prophet (Parveen).عَمَل

Reception

His criticism of the place of logic is one of the standard examples of the late nineteenth-century debate on the Dars-i Niẓāmī; see ‘The Dars-i Niẓāmī’.