The Last Muslim Intellectual: The Life and Legacy of Jalal Al-e Ahmad

Hamid Dabashi

Published by Edinburgh University Press 2021

The Last Muslim Intellectual

The Life and Legacy of Jalal Al-e Ahmad

Hamid Dabashi

In the series Edinburgh Historical Studies of Iran and the Persian World

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474479301

Overview
Contents

About this book

Explores the life and legacy of Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923–69) – arguably the most prominent Iranian public intellectual of his time

A social and intellectual biography of Jalal Al-e Ahmad, a seminal Muslim public intellectual of the mid-20th century
Places Al-e Ahmad’s writing and activities alongside other influential anticolonial thinkers of his time, including Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire and Edward Said
Chapters cover Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s intellectual and political life; his relationship with his wife, the novelist Simin Daneshvar; his essays; his fiction; his travel writing; his translations; and his legacy

In this social and intellectual biography, Hamid Dabashi contends that Jalal Al-e Ahmad was the last Muslim intellectual to have articulated a vision of Muslim worldly cosmopolitanism, before the militant Islamism of the last half a century degenerated into sectarian politics and intellectual alienation from the world at large.

Dabashi places Al-e Ahmad beside other towering critical thinkers of his time, showing how he personified a state of Muslim anticolonial modernity that has now disappeared behind the smokescreen of sectarian politics. This unprecedented engagement with Al-e Ahmad’s life and legacy is a prelude to what Dabashi calls a ‘post-Islamist Liberation Theology’.

The Last Muslim Intellectual expands the wide spectrum of anticolonial thinking beyond its established canonicity by adding a critical Muslim thinker to it – an urgent task, if the future of Muslim critical thinking is to be considered in liberated terms beyond the dead-end of its current sectarian predicament.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
List of Figures Publicly Available Download PDF	vi
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction: ‘The Last Muslim Intellectual’ Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1 Remembrance of Things Past Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	9
2 ‘Something of an Autobiography’ Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	37
3 Her Husband Jalal Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	65
4 The Master Essayist Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	116
5 Gharbzadegi: The Condition of Coloniality Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	140
6 Literary Interludes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	178
7 Travelling In and Out of a Homeland Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	208
8 Translating the World Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	258
9 From a Short Life to a Lasting Legacy: Towards a Post-Islamist Liberation Theology Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	280
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	328

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 344
Illustrations
- Other: 14 B/W illustrations
Keywords: Islamic Studies

eBook

Published: March 24, 2022
ISBN: 9781474479301