The Natural Sciences in Early Modern Morocco

with Justin Stearns

hosted by Shireen Hamza and Taylor Moore

| When you think of the history of science, what people and places come to mind? Scientific knowledge production flourished in early modern Morocco, and not in the places you might expect. This episode transports us into the intellectual and social worlds of Sufi lodges (zawāya) in seventeenth-century Morocco. Our guest, Justin Stearns, guides us through scholarly and educational landscapes far removed from the imperial urban centers of Fez and Marrakech. We discuss his new book, Revealed Sciences, which examines the development of the natural sciences through close study of works produced by rural Sufi scholars. Challenging the idea that the early modern period was one of intellectual decline, Stearns reveals the vibrant multi-ethnic, intellectual networks of the early modern Maghreb and the implications of their story for the history of science and the writing of history. We speak about paper mâché astrolabes, Borgesian fantasies, resisting the lure of triumphant narratives, and the importance of failure for creativity and innovation.

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When you think of the history of science, what people and places come to mind? Scientific knowledge production flourished in early modern Morocco, and not in the places you might expect. This episode transports us into the intellectual and social worlds of Sufi lodges (zawāya) in seventeenth-century Morocco. Our guest, Justin Stearns, guides us through scholarly and educational landscapes far removed from the imperial urban centers of Fez and Marrakech. We discuss his new book, Revealed Sciences, which examines the development of the natural sciences through close study of works produced by rural Sufi scholars. Challenging the idea that the early modern period was one of intellectual decline, Stearns reveals the vibrant multi-ethnic, intellectual networks of the early modern Maghreb and the implications of their story for the history of science and the writing of history. We speak about paper mâché astrolabes, Borgesian fantasies, resisting the lure of triumphant narratives, and the importance of failure for creativity and innovation.

Contributor Bios

	Justin Stearns is Professor of Arab Crossroads Studies at New York University Abu Dhabi where he teaches classes on the pre-modern Islamicate world and the relationship between science and religion. His research focuses on the premodern intellectual history of the Islamic West (Maghrib).
	Shireen Hamza is a doctoral candidate in the History of Science department at Harvard University. Her research focuses on the history of medical exchange in the medieval Indian Ocean world.
	Taylor M. Moore is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Credits

Episode No. 535
Release Date: 14 December 2022
Sound production by Shireen Hamza
Music: "Touicha & Jabir," Moroccan Folk Music, Lyrichord
Bibliography and images courtesy of Justin Stearns

Further Listening

	Mayte Green-Mercado	525 4/11/22	Moriscos and the Early Modern Mediterranean
	Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim	336 11/4/17	Medicine Along the Musk Route
	Harun Küçük	456 3/25/20	Science in Early Modern Istanbul
	Mohamad Ballan, Joshua White, Zoe Griffith, Aslıhan Gürbüzel, Neelam Khoja, Fahad Bishara, Maryam Patton, Jeannie Miller	489 1/16/21	The Early Modern Islamic World The Making of the Islamic World
	Yelins Mahtat	209 11/13/15	Folktales of the Middle Atlas
	Claire Gilbert	162 7/5/14	Between Sultans and Kings

Images

The spherical astrolabe of scholar al-Rūdānī (d. 1627-83 CE); Photo and description by Christie's

Select Bibliography

Book cover of Revealed Sciences featuring The Madrasa at Sale, Morocco. Photo by Wener Forman/Universal Images Group/Getty Image

Brentjes, Sonja. Teaching and Learning the Sciences in Islamicate Societies (800–1700). (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018).

El-Rouayheb, Khaled. Islamic Intellectual History in the Seventeenth Century. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

Elshakry, Marwa. Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860–1950. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014).

Ḥajjī, Muḥammad. al-Zāwiyah al-dilā’iyyah wa dawru-hā al-dīnī wa l-ʿilmī wa l-siyāsī. (Rabat: Kulliyāt al-Adab, 1988), 2nd ed.

———. al-Ḥaraka al-fikriyya bi-l-maghrib fī l-ʿahd al-saʿadiyyīn. (Rabat: Dār al-Maghrib li l-ta’lif wa l-tarjamah wa l-nashr, 1977), 2 vols.

Hendrickson, Jocelyn. “A Guide to Arabic Manuscript Libraries in Morocco, with Notes on Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, and Spain,” MELA Notes 81 (2008), 15–88.

Hendrickson, Jocelyn and Sabahat Adil, “A Guide to Arabic Manuscript Libraries in Morocco: Further Developments,” MELA Notes 86 (2013), 1–19.

King, David. In Synchrony with the Heavens: Studies in Astronomical Timekeeping and Instrumentation in Medieval Islamic Civilization. (Leiden: Brill, 2004).

——. “On the History of Astronomy in the Medieval Maghrib.” In Etudes philosophiques et sociologiques dédiés à Jamal ed-Dine Alaoui (Fez: Université Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdallah, Publications de la Faculté des Lettres et des Sciences Humaines Dhar El Mahraz (Numéro Spécial 14, 1999), 27–61.

Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. (50th anniversary ed.) (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2012).

———. “The Trouble with the Historical Philosophy of Science.” In James Conant and John Haugeland (eds.) The Road Since Structure. (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), 105–20.

Mannūnī, Muḥammad. al-Ḥaḍarat wādī Daraʿ min khilāl al-nuṣūṣ wa-l-athār (Rabat: Manshurat Wizarat Al-Awkaf Wa Al-Shu’un Al-Islamiyah, 1973).

———. “Faṣla taṣif al-dirāsah bi-l-qarawiyyīn ayyām al-manṣūr al-saʿdī.” In Qabs min ʿaṭā’ al-makhṭūṭ al-maghribī (Beirut: Dār al-Gharb al-Islāmī, 1999), 4 vols., vol. 3, 1125–55 [originally published in al-Baḥth al-ʿilmī, vol. 7 (1966)].

———. “Ẓāhira taʿribiyya fī l-maghrib ayyām al-saʿdiyyin,” Revista del Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islámicos 9 (1963), 329–58.

Melvin-Koushki, Matthew. “Taḥqīq vs. Taqlīd in the Renaissances of Western Early Modernity,” Philological Encounters 3 (2018), 1–44.

———. “In Defense of Geomancy: Sharaf al-Dīn Yazdī Rebuts Ibn Khaldūn’s Critique of the Occult Sciences,” Arabica 64 (2017), 346–403.

———. “(De)colonizing Early Modern Occult Philosophy,” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 12 (2017), 98–112.

Pingree, David. “Hellenophilia versus the History of Science.” In Isabelle Pingree and John M. Steele (eds.) Pathways into the Studies of Ancient Sciences (Philadelphia, PA: The American Philosophical Society Press, 2014), 3–12.

Qaddūrī, ʿAbd al-Majīd al-. Ibn Abī Mahallī al-faqīh al-thā’ir wa riḥlatu-hu al-iṣlīt al-khirrīt. (Rabat: Manshurat ‘Ukāẓ, 1991).

Saif, Liana. “What is Islamic Esotericism?,” Correspondences 7 1 (2019), 1–61.

Semlali, Kacem Aït Salah. Histoire de l’alchemie et des alchemists au Maroc. (Rabat: Self-published, 2015).

Justin Stearns, Revealed Sciences: The Natural Sciences in Islam in Seventeenth Century Morocco (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021).

------- “The Place of Sorcery in the Thought of a Seventeenth Century Moroccan Astronomer and Alchemist,” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, v. 16. 2 (2021), 139-72.

-------- “Writing the History of the Natural Sciences in the pre-modern Muslim world: Historiography, Religion, and the Importance of the Early Modern Period,” History Compass, v. 9 (2011), 923-51.