Early religious sciences as an introduction to islamic science

Abstract

A great deal of scholarship from the past and the present has dealt with the history of early religious sciences of Islam. The classical Islamic literature is abundant with reference consisting of both, religious and intellectual sciences. In recent attempts to reexamine the history of Islamic science, a number of significant works has appeared in European languages analyzing the historicity and authenticity of early Muslim intellectual movement. The result of the main findings from the above studies is that considerable amount of intellectual and academic activities in the first centuries of Islam were indeed taking place. Works in Qur'anic and Hadithic studies in particular received a special attention from historians and other specialists from both the East and the West. However, in relation to the general understanding of the notion of Islamic science, the views were somehow mixed. While some have argued that religious sciences of Islam were the product of much later development of Islamic civilization when considerable elements of foreign thought, particularly Greek sciences, has been translated into Arabic, the majority of the scholars and historians involved in the foregoing discussion claimed the influence of the Qur'an and Hadith upon Islamic science, or rather portraying the two as the essential source for Islamic science in its religious and intellectual domains. However, no systematic study has yet been undertaken to demonstrate the degree of such influence and to portray the means by which it has been actually materialized. The present thesis fills that gap. The sciences chosen for this study, namely 'Ulum al-Qur'an and 'Ulum al-Hadith are directly related to the Qur'an and the Sunnah of the Prophet. By analytical examination of the early development of said sciences and methodology employed therein, this thesis has shown that the Qur'anic and Sunnatic influence on the philosophy and methodology of Islamic science has derived precisely through early religious scholarship of Islam, especially through the sciences of the Qur'an and Hadith. Intellectually speaking, the Qur'anic sciences were responsible for protecting the original ideas and doctrines such as the unity of God, the concept of knowledge, the purpose of creation and others contained in the Qur'an as the source of all that is Islamic. Hadith sciences on the other hand have helped to secure the main part of the Sunnah which served as the principle commentary of the Qur'an, the model to be emulated by all Muslims and the way by which the above ideas and doctrines are to be understood and implemented. Finally, the sciences of the Qur'an and Hadith by developing a methodology which comprised of all possible modes on knowing from rational to spiritual, empirical to intellectual, have contributed on the epistemological level of Islamic science whereby religious sources of knowledge have been equally emphasized with other modes by which knowledge can be derived.