Muhammad’s Heirs: The Rise of Muslim Scholarly Communities, 622-950 By Jonathan E. Brockopp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. 248 pages.)

Abstract

Muhammad’s Heirs: The Rise of Muslim Scholarly Communities, by Jonathan
E. Brockopp of Penn State University, begins anecdotally with an encounter
with Moroccan students at the “University of Fez-Sais” (apparently the College
of Literature, Kulliyat al-Adab). In this encounter the author challenges
students’ presumptive trust in the scholastic honesty of classical Muslim
scholars, like Qadi Iyad b. Musa (d. 544/1149). Brockopp claims that Qadi
Iyad “subtly manipulated” the stories of scholars in order to “fulfill his notion
of what a great legal scholar should be” (1). Building on this contention,
Brockopp endeavors in Muhammad’s Heirs to “reconstruct the history
of Muslim scholars based primarily on documentary sources” (2) and “to imagine Islam without the scholarly institutions that arose only centuries
after Muhammad’s death” (3).
Biographical works on Muslim scholars give the general impression
that religious and scholarly “classes” were immediately known to the pioneer
generations and have always been christened as Islam’s indispensable
and sole charismatic leadership. Brockopp argues the contrary, namely
that for approximately the first two centuries of Islamic history there was
no established class or community of scholars with an authoritative voice.
Despite being subversive of Muslim scholarly authority, Brockopp’s true
goal appears to be an effort to offer a more accurate picture of early Islamic
history and the way that the early community organically evolved to see
religious scholars as a special class whose authority is to be appealed to by
both the governed and governors ...