# Islam in the History of Religions

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Alessandro Bausani, Islam in the History of Religions, bahai-library.com.
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> 
> ALESSANDRO BAUSANI
> Naples
> 
> ISLAM IN THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
> 
> 1. With this paper I do not so much intend to make a "scientific
> communication"; I rather wish it to be a methodological reflexion in
> answer to the question: how and how much do I, as an islamist, give
> my contribution to "history of religions" in studying Islam? In other
> words, in how much does the study of socalled "superior" religions
> fit into History of Religions as a unitary discipline? I shall not base
> the development of this paper on mere theoretical considerations; but
> rather on some concrete examples of research method within the
> Islamic field. It is my opinion, though, that similar concrete examples
> might be found in a parallel way, in other fields of research (such as
> History of Christianity, Buddhism etc.). As we are here assembled to
> commemorate our late regretted and common master Raffaele Pettaz­
> zoni, this talk of mine could perhaps be considered as a sort of con­
> tinuation of the seminaries that he used to keep, a few years before
> he died. These seminaries usually dealt with specific arguments (for
> instance, "God's omniscience", or "the meaning of culture" etc.) and
> Pettazzoni used to invite to them several specialists of various cultural
> areas that would be interested in History of Religions.
> 
> 2. First we must see if we may (and if we may, in how far) talk
> about "superior religions" the way I did before. Even if we-obviously
> enough-do not imply by the word "superior" any intrinsic evaluation,
> it still remains ambiguous and vague. The word "superior" could make
> sense in a purely exterior typology, where distinction could be made
> between religions whose documents are not written hence they may
> be studied using ethnological methods, and religions which possess a
> rich written documentation and are thus liable to a philological study.
> If this were to be true, those who refuse any unitary value to the
> History of Religions would have a right to say that such a discipline
> dissolves into single sections of various religious philologies and into
> ethnology.
> A distinction between "natural" religions and "founded" religions
> might sound different and perhaps more historical. But this too is
> 56                             ALESSANDRO BAUSANI
> 
> acceptable only by half; the role of personaLities, that are perhaps
> nowadays hidden behind legend, in the creation of religions that might
> seem "natural" at first sight, should be checked thoroughly and studied
> well. We would be faced then with a major or minor importance of
> their "founders": Buddha would be different from Kṛṣṇa (presumed
> founder of Hinduism according to certain Indian tendencies) only
> because study could be based on historical documents, for the former,
> and perhaps also because his personal foundation-work would have
> been more intense or effective. The same could be said about other
> cultural areas.
> I believe that it would be a better typology to distinguish between
> two fundamental types of religion (each with its various subdivisions,
> of course): the archaic religions and the monotheistic ones. This is also
> Pettazzoni's opinion, expressed in his studies about monotheism, which
> are too well known here for me to resume them 1 ) . I only want to
> stress the point that, according to the regretted Master, a clear typolo­
> gical distinction should be made between the concept of a "Great God"
> or Supreme Being, present in various archaic religions, and that of a
> One and Only God, to be found in monotheism. The former comes
> from a mythical perception of the sky, the latter is the outcome of
> the polemic, revolutionary, anti-polytheistic labour of a prophetic-his­
> torical founder, who might even use any god of the archaic pantheon
> (in Islam, for instance, Allah-Hubal) after having changed its func­
> tional value completely. In this specific sense, according to Pettazzoni,
> monotheism is a very rare phenomenon in History of Religions; during
> a certain period of his studies he even used to think that this pheno­
> menon was unique (Israelitic monotheism, that would have influenced
> even Zoroastrianism) 2 ) .
> M. Eliade makes a quite similar typological distinction, although
> from a different point of view, especially in his Mythe de l' hernel
> Retour where the distinction between archaic religions and monotheistic
> religions is based on their different conceptions about the religious
> meaning of "Time" 3 ) . In fact, the distinction between the two types
> does not only invest the idea of God, but the entire religious pheno-
> 
> 1) See his essay Dio: Formazione e sviluppo del monoteismo, Bologna, 1922; see
> further various articles in Saggi di storia delle religioni   e   milologia, Roma, 1946,
> and Onniscie.>wl di Dio, Torino, 1955.
> 2)   Cfr. La religione di Zarathustrct, Bologna, 1920, p. 79 ff. Obviously the idea is
> now obsolete, but it is interesting to show Pettazzoni's approach to the definition of
> monotheism.
> 3) M. Eliade, Le Mythe de l'P.temel Retom, Paris, 1949, p. 152 ff. and passim.
> ISLAM IN THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS                             57
> 
> menology as well. Even if the external features of single phenomena
> in archaic and monotheistic religions might at times seem similar, their
> way of functioning is really different. One very plain example: Incar­
> nation has similar phenomenological aspects but "works" in a very
> distinct way there where we have an incarnation of a Unique God
> into a man-god, from there where it is meant that one or more men
> incarnate a "neutral" divine principle (to theion) or a single aspect of
> divineness. Although phenomenologically they might seem similar,
> there is a deep functional difference between Christ and one of Vi�l).u's
> avatars. Thus I believe that in this sense a wisely built typology might
> help to reinforce the historical method. And to this purpose, the concept
> of "functioning" in a given typological context is of main importance.
> And here I repeat a definition of G. Widengren, whom we could
> not suspect of absolute historicism. This author used very aptly the
> following words in a note on his study on Mu]:Iammad 4 ) (and better
> credit should be given to these words, if we consider that not always
> does the Author himself keep his own suggestion in mind): " . . . Any
> conception whatsoever must not be isolated, but treated in its natural
> environment of related ideas, with which it is intimately bound up.
> Only in this manner are we able to trace the real origin of a religious
> idea. The atomistic method here leads us quite astray".
> In the ambit of monotheistic religions we may-the way I have tried
> to do it in two articles of mine that I am not to repeat here 5)-make
> a further typological distinction between primary monotheisms (He­
> braism, Islam) and secondary (Christianity, new religions that had their
> origin in Islam, especially Baha' ism) whose characteristics have rather
> different structures and functions.
> Here too I will avail myself of the example of "Incarnation" which
> some phenomenologists keep considering in too superficial a manner.
> Talking about a phenomenon that is frequent in various so-called
> "extreme" sects of Islam, even authoritative islamists (which in this
> case prove to be bad historians of religion as well as bad philologists),
> uphold that to some extreme Shicites cAll is an incarnation of God,
> or prophet X or Y are incarnations of God. But the term used for
> 
> 4) G. Widengren, N.u � ammad the Apostle of God, and His Ascension, Uppsala/
> Wiesbaden, 1955, p. 56·57, n. 4.
> 5) A. Bausani, "Note per una tipologia del monotcismo", in SMSR, XXVIII, 1957,
> pp. 67-88. A. Bausani, "Can Monotheism be taught? (further considerations on the
> typology of Monotheism)", in Numen X, 3, 1963, pp. 167-201. Naturally another
> subdivision, by types, may be made for "archaic" religions, but this is of no interest
> here.
> 58                         ALESSANDRO BAUSANI
> 
> "incarnation" in Islamic texts, where they polemically want to define
> the typical incarnation of secondary monotheisms, and especially the
> one accepted in Christianism, is (;ttlul, which is always kept very mar­
> kedly distinct from any other form of manifestation of the divinity
> in man, and especially from the typologically and functionally very
> different form of    mcr:;har, which means "manifestation".      Nowhere,
> absolutely nowhere in the most extremistic sects of Islam, can we find
> (;rtliil. Even when a person is said to be God, this be is always explained,
> not as an incarnation, but rather as a ma::;har i.e. a manifestation, with
> terms that have been borrowed from the Near-Eastern and Gnostic
> metaphysics of light.
> The unique God and his inaccessible essence remain up high; the
> man-god is nothing but a very pure mirror in which            God reflects
> himself.   Whoever passes in front of a mirror wherein the sun is
> reflected (these are words which I heard personally from authoritative
> representatives of some "extreme Islamic sects") may justly say: "this
> is the sun", even though the sun remains in its inaccessible position in
> the sky, and the mirror is still nothing but a mirror in itself. So the
> Christian who says: "Christ is God", and the Khurramdini who says:
> "cAll is God", both give to the word is a very different meaning, which
> is something the historians of religions should keep in mind. At page
> 45 of his already mentioned book Widengren says instead: .. . "Of a
> still higher degree is of course the Imam according to the dogma that
> he is not only a god but God, Allah who is incarnate in the successive
> chain of the Imams who are the Apostles . .. ". But we can see from
> the quotation of al-Dailami, mentioned by the very Author himself to
> support his theory, that    incarnate is nothing but an extrapolation.
> "And the people say of Ali: He was God who appeared in Adam and
> the Apostles and Imams . . . ". In our colleague's sentence there is the
> word 'dogma' which should also be further discussed; it throws a
> better light on the typology of monotheism. In some way acceptable,
> at times even fundamental where secondary monotheism are concerned,
> this term surely may not be accepted for primary monotheisms. In the
> case of Islam and the Islamic-Christian polemics,  dogma is usually
> translated with ?ann (opinion) or even with the word xmafat (super­
> stitions, imaginary ideas, fantasies). Thus there could not be any typo­
> logical justification for using "dogma" in Islam.
> Thus we have seen that a first important range of historical-religious
> studies on Islam is a general one about the typology of Islam and of its
> sects. To achieve this, p hilolo gy might be of precious help (and
> ISLAM IN THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS                            59
> 
> examples of this have been given above) to help us to correct errors to
> which pure phenomenology could lead; however, philology is nothing
> but a, quite indispensable, help and this is why Islam could not be
> studied by a specialist in Arabic or Persian philology only; it needs a
> historian of reiigions specialised in Islamic philology.
> 
> 3. The monotheistic religions, whereof Islam is perhaps the most
> radical "incarnation" possible, present other very interesting and typi­
> cally historical-religious problems. One of them, and a fundamental
> one, is the problem of the very origin of monotheism, that has not been
> satisfactorily solved yet, in my opinion. A historical-religious study
> about the origins of Islam in its Arabic milieu seems very useful to me.
> A passage or transformation of the concept of a "God of the race", to
> that of a "Unique God"? Psychological projection of the Founder?
> Derivation from a "primitive" pseudo-monotheism of the Great Sky­
> God? etc.
> Personally I take the first solution for more valid and in an article
> in "Numen" I have tried to construct its successive psychological stages
> perhaps in a somewhat imaginative way: more or less in accordance
> with the psychology of a primary monotheistic type, with its typically
> voluntaristic and anti-ontologie theology. But the archaic religion-type,
> which is much more "natural" than monotheism (and Pettazzoni' s
> opinion about the rarity, the uniqueness of the "monotheistic" pheno­
> menon confirms it) still remains and influences monotheism. No con­
> crete, historical example gives evidence of an absolute theoretical type
> of monotheism.
> And here we get to the most fascinating problems that we may call
> -to use a term which in my opinion is erroneous, but is also very
> popular, and mentioned in the title of a famous book on Islam 6)                 ­
> 
> "pagan survivals" in monotheism, here more specifically in Islam.
> In the title of the mentioned book both terms, 'pagan', generic and
> worn out, and "survivals" are wrongly used. The title should be
> changed, as I have proved in an article of mine 7) into a more exact
> one, i.e. "Integration of archaic elements in the Islamic religion" (or
> more generically, in monotheistic religions).
> 
> G) E. Westermarck, Pagau Sttrvivals i;� Mohammedan CiL·ilize�lion, london 1933.
> 7) A. Bausani, "Sopravvivenze pagane nell' Islam o integrazione islamica ?" in
> SMSR, 37 2, 1966, pp. 189-209. It could be said that the very fact that Westermarck
> talks about survivals in the "Mohammedan civilization" and not (in the title) in the
> "Islamic religion'' diminishes the weigh of my assertion, but in fact "Islam" and
> "Mohammedan civilization" seem identical to him (and to others).
> 60                          ALESSANDRO BAUSANI
> 
> Several studies have been written on this behalf, as far as Christianity
> and Hebraism are concerned, as well as for Islam. Starting with the
> above-mentioned typology, the problem of integrations or survivals
> develops somewhat differently in the two different subtypes. In secon­
> dary monotheisms (the ones that take their origin from another mono­
> theism) the problem is perhaps more complicated. That phenomenon
> which I called "fermentation of the divine" in one of my papers,
> and which causes a prolification of angels and angel-like bodies within
> the frame of a too monolithic primary monotheism, creates the im­
> pression of substratum influences; but more often these pretended sub­
> stratum influences are purely theological creations. To stay within
> the limits of new religions born from Islam, and to avoid entering the
> too burning ambit of Christianity, let us consider those intellectualistic
> and theologizing items of pleromctJ, intellec!ttal agentJ, logoi, forceJ;
> at times they were believed to be influenced by archaic substratum
> remainders of genii and divine polytheistic divinities, whereas they are
> nothing but speculations 'coming from above', that create a sort of
> theological mythology that derives from an Iranian tendency to theo­
> logize, as I have tried to explain elsewhere S ) . These phenomena
> should be kept distinct from the real substratum influences that are
> integrated in the monotheistic religion. In other words, although these
> items might go under a same paragraph in a phenomenological treatise,
> the "Thrones and Dominations" and the "Guardian Angel" should be
> kept typologically separate and should be studied historically in a
> different way.
> But even in the less complex primary monotheisms (such as Islam)
> integration of archaic elements should be studied with great care. In a
> study of mine, about the "Sacred Madman" in Islam 9 ) , I stressed the
> point that, although the Islam as a type of religion might seem less
> fruitful as far as comparative historical-religious studies are concerned,
> it offers a very interesting "laboratory" for the study of the historici­
> zation of myths. For instance, the Sacred Madman or Trickster, who
> had a specific mythical or semi-mythical aspect in archaic cultures, has
> here become a historical personality: adventures that are to be found
> in very ancient mythical cycles are here ascribed by "eye-witnesses"
> and annalists to this or that personality that has really lived. These,
> I added in my article, are Islam's real "myths" (integrations of archaic
> elements in Islamic monotheism) while other myths are typical of
> 
> S) A. Bausani, Persia Religiosa, Milano, 1958, p. 73 ff. and passim.
> 9) A. Bausani, "Note sui 'Pazzo Sacro' nell' Islam", in SMSR, XXIX, 58, pp. 93·107.
> ISLAM IN THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS                               61
> 
> nascent secondary monotheisms more or less kept in embryonal stage
> (imamite angelism of ghul11ww) and are rather an intellectual refor­
> mulation of theological concepts. In the mentioned article I tried to
> prove how the two types of "sacred madmen" of the Islamic culture
> were an integration in it of a reflection of the two types of the image
> of the "Devil" existing in archaic religiosity. That study was intended
> to give a start to an examination of other aspects of Islamic culture,
> which, until now, Islamists have studied whether philologically or
> ideologically, or juridically, but not specifically as far as history of
> religions is concerned. Unfortunately other activities and interests
> have made it impossible to me to go ahead with this study.
> Numerous further examples prove the possibility of historical­
> religious approach to the various phenomena of the islamic culture.
> Here are a few of them.
> 
> 4.   Prayer, for instance. Prayer has been studied under various aspects:
> juridically (due to Islam's particular structure, the Jalat, "canonical
> prayer", is included in the Muslim lawbooks) , theologically, historically
> within the Islamic mystics, all but for its historical-religious aspect.
> Even the studies done on the religious history of Islamic prayer, for
> instance Mittwoch's 10 ) , remain a rather extrinsic history. The Author
> does ascribe the single "pieces" of the functioning mechanism to
> Christian, Hebraic and other influences, but he fails to locate their
> functioning within the frame of Islam's concrete typology. How does,
> for instance, Jalat al-istisqcP, "ad impetrandam pluviam", integrate with
> the Islamic religious type, it being an almost universal historical­
> religious phenomenon? It is obvious that, if the various pieces and
> aspects of Islamic prayer are "preislamic survivals", this must be true
> for all religions, because nil sttb sole novi; but in this case, history,
> deprived of the help of an intelligent functional typology, remains
> nothing but pure destructive analysis. I would like to mention here
> the name of Michelangelo Guidi, whom I consider my master in this
> field: his way of locating the problems in his studies on Mul)ammad
> and early Islam 11 ) is particulary well grounded from the historical­
> religious viewpoint.
> 
> 10 ) E. Mittwoch, Zur Enwehrmgsgeschichte de.r islamischen Gebet.r tmd Kultu.r in
> "Abhandl. d. Preuss. Ak. der Wiss.'', 1913, n. 2, pp. 10 ff.
> 11) Here I wish to refer to his Religior.e dell' islam, in the 5nd volume of Tacchi
> Venturi's "Storia delle Religioni" (Torino, U.T.E.T., 6th edition, 1971), and to the
> posthumous Storia e cult11rct degli Arabi ji110 alia moue di !l·faometto, Firenze, 1951.
> 62                            ALESSANDRO BAUSANI
> 
> Another example could be the Islamic concept of Satan. Again I
> refer to a paper of mine, on Satan, and the way he is understood by
> a modern Muslim poet 12 ) . Historical influences helped me to go
> back from Mul1_ ammad Iqbal to orthodox and mystical concepts in
> Islam; and further I tried to reconstruct how Islam could integrate an
> archaic Satan with its positive and negative values, in a monotheistic
> typology, and how such an archaic Satan had suffered a transformation
> of values. Historically and typologically I consider Zwi Werblowski's
> thesis, Lucifer and Prometheus, on Milton's Satan as most illumina­
> ting 13 ) . The very fact that my study on the Islamic Satan has been
> effected only by 1955, shows how little has been done to study Islam
> on a historical-religious level.
> Another field that has been studied thoroughly, but only rarely
> from a historical-religious point of view, is Muslim Mysticism. Even
> in scientific texts, but more still in Encyclopaedias and popularizing
> treatises, we can find affirmations such as the one of our learned
> colleague J. Duchesne-Guillemin, who, in the Symposium at Spa on
> "Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization", simply declared: "Sufi
> mysticism ... is perhaps Christian and Gnostic in origin ... but certainly
> not Muslim". And further he speaks of "the Dervish orders ... the
> origin of which was perhaps Buddhist, Manichean or Shamanist, but
> certainly not Muslim" 14 ) . In various articles of mine I have reacted
> against this apparently historical position which means instead, -in
> my opinion-to vanify history.
> One can study Muslim mysticism from a concretely historical point
> of view, only if one keeps the functional typology in mind. That is to
> say, the single "pieces" of Muslim mysticism may be taken from this
> or that source (the way it happens with any other phenomenon in any
> other recent religion) but they have their proper function inside a
> typically and typologically Islamic context. In ignoring this historical­
> typological method one will get lost in useless and endless discussions
> about pantheism or non pantheism in Muslim mystics (especially for
> some of them). When typology is ignored, terms are twisted into an
> artificial conceptual translation (f.i. wabdat-i v11jiid           =   pantheism);
> no distinction is made between theopanism and pantheism, the Islamic
> 
> 12) A. Bausaoi, "Satana nell' opera filosofico-poetica di .Mul:ammad Iqbal ( 1873-
> 1938)" in RSO XX, 1955, pp. 'i5-l02.
> 13) Z. Werblowsk)', Lucifer and Promctbet!S. A st11dy of Milton's Sa/an, London,
> 1952.
> 14)   Unity and Variety in Muslim Civilization, Chicago, 1955.
> ISLAM IN THE HISTORY Of RELIGIONS                                 63
> 
> and monotheistic Unity of God gets confused with the archaic "unity
> of the being "; nirviuya is identified with fancP, and so on. Here again
> I would like to mention the name of a late regretted Italian orientalist,
> Martino Mario Moreno. Although he was not officially considered
> as a historian of religions, his work on the presumed similarities
> between Indian and Muslim mystics 15 ) proved him to be it more than
> are many other islamists.
> Methodical errors such as these mentioned for mysticism are fre­
> quent in another, somewhat analogous, field: "Sects" , or Heterodox
> Muslim Communities. The problems involved with this specific argu­
> ment are too many to be examined here. Presently H. Corbin's meta­
> physical-iranophile school seems to take up again, in an undoubtedly
> fascinating way, an already old tendency that had appeared to be out
> of date: to interpret Muslim heresy as an Aryan reaction (Persian, in
> particular) to a "semitic Islamism", and thus to level, in an antihistorical
> way, the most different phenomena under a metaphysical common
> denominator. In a recent book K. E. Muller 1 6 ) tries to demonstrate
> (and this is easy if again one takes single isolated pieces away from
> their functioning in a whole) the total non-islamicity of certain extreme
> sects, of the yazldi and Nttfairl type. According to Muller, these would
> have put on only a superficial Islamic aspect, but would really be
> remainders of real preislamic religious communities, or even ethnic
> groups with "agricultural old-mediterranean" beliefs. At the same time
> quite a few islamists consider the Baha'i religion,-a secondary mono­
> theistic religion that has its origin in Islam, the way Christianity has
> its origin in Hebraism,-as a "Muslim sect", thus completely showing
> to ignore any typology whatsoever 17 ) . Even as far as the very origin
> of Sh:icism is concerned, only few seem to have followed the direction,
> brilliantly started by Sabatino Moscati in his 195 5 article in Rivista
> degli St11di Orientali 18 ) . Here the author puts the problem historically
> and finally distinguishes clearly the double aspect of the first Sh:ica,
> the political one and the more definite religious one.
> 
> 10) M. l"VL Moreno, "Mistica musulmana e mistica i ndia n a " . in Annali Latera ne nsi,
> X, 19-16, pp. 103-219, a subject which he took up a gai n in "Mistica musulmana e
> mistica indiana nel MagmaCu'l-Bal)rayn di Diira Sikoh" in RSO, 1949. pp. 59-66.
> lG) His thesis shows already :n his title (K. E. Miiller, Kultttrhistorische Studien
> 2111 G"ene.re PJe11do-islamischer Sektengebilde in Vorderasien, Wiesbaden, 1967). The
> sects studied include YaziJi, Ahl-i I:J:aqq, Nu�airi, Druzes, with hin ts at ot he r groups.
> 17) In H. laoust's excellent work, Les Schismes darJS /'Islam, Paris. 1965, pp. 363
> to 370, deYoted to the study of Babism-Bahii'ism, though well informed, end              br
> considering the new religion as a "Muslim sect".
> lS) S. Moscati, "Per una storia dell'antica siCa", in RSO XXX, 1955, pp. 251 ff.
> 64                              ALESSANDRO BAUSANI
> 
> Penetration and integration in Islam (I am here stressing the term
> "integration" that should correct and further explain the term "pene­
> tration" of single fragments) of legends and ideological cycles, whether
> Near-Eastern, Iranic and Indian, in the ocean of Muslim folk-tales,
> is another very interesting working field for the historian of Islamic
> religion. The taczie, for instance (Persian religious folk-dramas) have
> started to be explored only lately, and offer fascinating possibilities
> for research on monotheistic-islamic transformations (demythologiza­
> tion, pseudo-historical integration etc.) of cycles of mythological or
> semi-mythological motives, even extremely old. As a matter of fact, the
> numerous studies made on the taczie used to be either mostly philolo­
> gical, or, whenever they showed historical-religious attempts 19 ) , they
> were conditioned by the fact that only a limited number of taczie was
> on hand, and usually only taczie directly connected with the Karbala
> drama. Nowadays the wealthy material which the Ambassador E.
> Cerulli offered as a gift to the Vatican Library (more than 1000 book­
> lets of such dramas! 20 ) allows to study various aspects of one and
> the same motive and shows how the Karbala drama was used as a
> pretext for treating the most different historical-religious materials 21 ) .
> In studying tczCzies, one should avoid a double methodological
> danger. First to fall into pure philology; second to bend to an "easy
> comparativism", exemplified by Ch. Virolleaud's study, who ignores
> the peculiar monotheistic typology of Islam, and of Sh!ca Islam in
> particular.
> 
> 5. To conclude with: Islam is still waiting for a thorough historical­
> religious study. This pessimistic affirmation does not want to deny the
> validity of some historical-religious studies about Islam already existing.
> What I mean is that such studies are still rather exceptional and even
> 
> 19)    Ch. Virolleaud, for instance, in his L� theatre pers(IJl ou le drame de Kerbela,
> Paris,   1950. Virolleaud's method in this work of his is      a   rather superficial com·
> paratism.
> 20) The catalogue of this material        (precious b ecause it is divided according to
> subjects):  E. Rossi - A. Bombaci, Elenco di dmmmi religiosi persiani (fo11do mss.
> t·aticani Cemlli), Citta del V a ti cano, 1961.
> 21) I h ave started such a kind of work with a commented edition of a few taCzie
> containing biblical materials: A. Ba usani , Drammi popolari inediti persi ani sulla leg­
> genda di Salomone e della regina di Saba, in "Atti del Com•. lnternaz. di Studi
> Et iopici , Roma, 1960, pp. 167-209. A. Bausani, San Giot·alllli Batti;la e Za c caria in
> "
> 
> Ire drammi popolari persia11i i11cdi1i della collezione Cer11lli, in "Atti del Conv.
> Internaz. sul tema: !"Oriente Cristiano nella storia della Civiltil", Roma, 1964,
> pp. 153-237.
> ISLAM IN THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS                         65
> 
> these studies have remainders            of old-fashioned philological com­
> paratism. In my opinion the most valuable study of the kind is my
> friend and colleague G. Widengren's, whose credit it is, among others,
> to have taken up the problem again of the Manichean influences on
> early Islam, in a more precise and richer way. If I may allow myself
> to find some defects in this work, I would locate them especially in
> the very fact that the author bases himself too much on "lexical ele­
> ments", at times isolated from their context, using an "atomistic
> method" very much in contrast with the aurea maxima that Widengren
> himself mentions in his work and which I have quoted before. To
> give but two examples of this: the purely lexical parallelism between
> ar-rit/p al-amln and ar-rasiil al-amln does not seem enough to me to
> justify the important historical-religious conclusions (over and above
> their being true) he is making. And further, the mere fact that Ka'b ben
> Zuhair's panegyric to the Prophet (wherein the author follows the
> literary conventions of the preislamic epoch) says as follows: ". . . the
> Apostle is a light by which we are enlightened" is but a very feeble
> pretext to a possible identification of the Prophet with the qur'anic
> "light of God".
> In spite of this, G. Widengren's book is a very important milestone
> in the way to a historical-religious study of Islam 22 ) . A study which,
> and I repeat this as a conclusion, should be based on a h i s t o r i c a 1
> f u n c t i o n a 1 t y p o 1 o g y. If we ignore one of the aspects indicated
> by one of these three words; that is, if we fall into a typology that
> ignores the function of the single elements in a whole, or if we make
> a history that ignores the typological structure, we shall continue pro­
> ducing islamological works, perhaps of high value, but which will not
> fit, stricto sensu, into the History of Religions. And this would justify
> the suspicion of our colleagues "historians of religion" towards the
> specialists of the single "superior religions", whom they, at times duly,
> accuse of wanting to let their quite interesting philological or historical
> studies go for historical-religious works, when they are not.
> 
> DISCUSSION
> BORRMANS       (Rome). - Professeur, j'ai ete td:s interesse par votre
> conference. Dans la perspective de ce que disait le Pr Bianchi et de
> son souhait de voir etablir une typologie, j' aimerais que !'on se pose,
> '
> 22) Also in other works G. Wideng r en rightly empasizes the importance of Islam
> for a phenomenological approach to the Histoqr of Religions. See for in s tance G.
> Wi d en gren , Some Remarks on the Afethods of the Phenomenology of Religion, in
> "Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis", 17, pp. 250-260; see especially p. 260.
> 
> NUMEN, Suppl. XIX
> 66                        ALESSANDRO BAUSANI
> 
> toujours dans le cadre de ces recherches de typologie, le probleme des
> relations structurales entre nne religion et une langue. Dans le cas de
> l'Islam et de la langue arabe, il y a, en effet, une relation presque intrin­
> seque, relation qui, dans le developpement theologiqne meme de la
> pensee musulmane, a produit parfois un retrecissement de la reflexion,
> dans la voie dite orthodoxe, alors que peut-etre, dans les antres voies,
> il n'en a pas ete de meme. Une autre typologie devrait d'ailleurs
> s'interesser ace classement en orthodoxie et heterodoxie, entre membres
> d'une meme religion. Pour en revenir a la relation etroite qu'il y a
> entre la langue arabe et la pensee religieuse musulmane, il convient de
> souligner combien le vocabulaire "religieux" (musulman en !'occur­
> rence) de certaines nations africaines, du Maghreb par exemple ou
> le berbere est demeure la langue de certaines regions montagnardes,
> est typiquement arabe, au point que l'on recherche difficilement le
> vocabulaire religieux "de base" que possedait cette langue (le berbere)
> avant son islamisation. II convient done de prevoir un "type" special
> pour ces religions ou langue cleterminee et foi ont en quelque sorte
> partie liee.
> 
> BAUSANI.     -   Apres avoir rappele son interet pour ces questions
> linguistiques, le Prof. Bausani se dit parfaitement d'accord sur le
> lien tres fort qui existe entre l a religion et la langue de l'Islam, ce
> qui est vrai aussi pour ces territoires islamiques qui sont encore plus
> marginaux que ceux qn' il avait mentionnes (p. ex. l'Indonesie). II y a
> eu en Indonesie une renaissance des etudes arabes, tandis qu' autour des
> siecles XVIe et XVIIe la predominance etait plutOt du Persan. Depuis
> le XVIIIe siecle le pelerinage et les contacts avec le monde arabe
> ont ete un element unitaire important, comme on voit pour ce qui est
> de 1' etude de 1' arabe dans un monde si eloigne comme celui de la
> Malesie et de l'Indonesie. Mais on aurait aajouter beaucoup pour ce qui
> est des rapports intrinseques entre Islam et langue.
>
> — *Islam in the History of Religions (Used by permission of the curator)*