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Turāthī Time: The Concept of Tradition at Egypt’s Al-Azhar
The Arabic concept turāth, often rendered “heritage,” “tradition,” or “legacy,” is a central concept for contemporary Muslim religious scholars associated with al-Azhar, the preeminent institution of Sunni learning located in Cairo. These scholars describe themselves as taking a turāthī approach to knowledge and education, which they argue is the antidote to many of contemporary society’s ills, including secularism and religious extremism. Yet despite its centrality to their epistemological and educational paradigms, these scholars express ambivalence about turāth as a concept, evident in their spoken and written statements. Based on a section of my book manuscript, Above Time: Reviving Tradition in Modern Egypt, this presentation situates these scholars' ambivalence about turāth within the complex temporality of the concept as it is articulated and practiced at al-Azhar.
Mary Elston is Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oslo. Her scholarship combines historical, textual, and ethnographic methods to explore Islamic education, religion and politics, and conceptual change in the modern Arab world. Her book manuscript, Above Time: Reviving Tradition in the Modern Muslim World, analyzes a traditionalist education movement at al-Azhar, the preeminent institution of Sunni Islamic learning situated in Cairo. She received her PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University in 2020, and her dissertation won the Alwaleed Bin Talal prize for best dissertation in Islamic studies.
This seminar series is organized by the Lifetimes project. Read more about the Lifetimes project here.