Islamic Sciences Catalogued: Theology and Philosophy

The theological literature catalogued in Kashf al-Zunun encompasses the full range of Sunni kalam: the Ash'ari tradition dominant in the Arab lands and Anatolia, the Maturidi tradition dominant in Transoxiana and among Turkish-speaking scholars, and the Athari or text-based tradition associated with the Hanbali school. Hajji Khalifa approaches this sensitive intellectual territory with considerable care. He was himself a Hanafi and sympathetic to the Maturidi tradition, but he documents Ash'ari works without polemical coloring and includes Hanbali theological texts without the dismissal that some rationalist theologians directed toward them. His entries for the major kalam texts, from the foundational works of Abu al-Hasan al-Ashari and Abu Mansur al-Maturidi through the sophisticated later syntheses of al-Taftazani and al-Jurjani, provide essential orientation for scholars navigating this vast and technically demanding literature.

The philosophical literature presents a more delicate cataloguing challenge. Islamic philosophy (falsafa) had a complex relationship with the mainstream of Sunni scholarship: al-Ghazali's Tahafut al-Falasifa had declared certain positions of the philosophers to be heretical, and many traditionally trained scholars maintained reservations about the philosophical sciences. Yet the Islamic philosophical tradition had also profoundly shaped kalam theology, and many of its works circulated widely in madrasa contexts. Hajji Khalifa catalogs the major works of Islamic philosophy, including those of al-Kindi, al-Farabi, and Ibn Sina, as well as the critical responses to philosophy from within the kalam tradition. He also documents the logical works (mantiq) that were widely taught even in traditionalist madrasas as instruments of clear thinking, noting the distinction between logic as a neutral instrument and the metaphysical commitments of the philosophical tradition proper.

The Sufi theoretical literature receives substantial coverage. Hajji Khalifa catalogs works of theoretical Sufism (tasawwuf al-nazari) including the Ihya 'Ulum al-Din of al-Ghazali, the Risala al-Qushayriyya of al-Qushayri, the Hikam of Ibn 'Ata' Allah al-Iskandari, and the more speculative works of the school of Ibn 'Arabi. His treatment is factual and descriptive rather than evaluative: he notes the contents, authorship, and reception of each work without entering into the theological debates about the validity of particular Sufi concepts. This restraint reflects the complex position of Sufism in Ottoman society, where it was a major social and institutional force whose more speculative expressions were periodically contested by critics. The Kashf al-Zunun documents the literature of the major Sufi orders and their founding figures alongside the theoretical works, creating a comprehensive picture of the Sufi intellectual tradition.

Among the most valuable sections of the Kashf al-Zunun for intellectual historians is Hajji Khalifa's coverage of the polemical literature between different theological schools. He catalogs the refutations (rudud) that Ash'ari scholars wrote against Maturidi positions, that Hanbali scholars wrote against both rationalist schools, and that various schools wrote against the Mu'tazila and other groups who had fallen outside the mainstream of Sunni orthodoxy. This polemical literature illuminates the internal debates of the Sunni tradition and the criteria by which boundaries were drawn between acceptable diversity and unacceptable heterodoxy. Hajji Khalifa's even-handed cataloguing of both the positions attacked and the attacks themselves, without editorially favoring one side, is characteristic of his approach as a bibliographer rather than a polemicist, and it makes the Kashf al-Zunun a more useful reference precisely because of this restraint.