Cultures of Tahqiq from the Mughals to the Mediterranean

• Department of History

Developing a common understanding of tahqiq.

In the history of Islamic thought, tahqiq (literally verification ) is understood as an epistemology of rational inquiry, typically contrasted with taqlid (literally imitation ), an opposing epistemology based on deference to established authority. Over the past few years, scholars of both the Islamic Mediterranean and the Indo-Persian world have found tahqiq to be an increasingly productive frame for re-interpreting and re-invigorating the study of intellectual, cultural, scientific and literary life during the early modern (post-Mongol) period. However, the definitional and methodological frame that Mediterraneanists, on the one hand, and Indo-Persianists, on the other, have used to discuss tahqiq are vastly divergent—in some sense, even incommensurate.

This workshop therefore brings together specialists of the Mediterranean and Indo-Persian worlds as a first step to developing a common understanding of tahqiq across our fields, and to explore its relevance for the way early modernity can be re-conceptualized beyond the boundaries of Islamic history as well.