THE PIETY OF THE HADITH FOLK

Extract

One of the most remarkable surveys of Islamic history and civilization remains Marshall G. S. Hodgson's The Venture of Islam, published posthumously in 1974.¹ For an introductory text, it has some bad faults—notably, a very dense style. Moreover, it has inevitably fallen out of date at many points. For example, one may admire Hodgson for coming up with his own critique of modernization theory in volume 3, but modernization theory has fallen so completely before other critiques that we hardly need Hodgson any longer. However, Hodgson has had some permanent effects on the way scholars approach Islamic history. For example, we may not have adopted many of his neologisms, but he certainly has made us self-conscious when we use the traditional terminology. The mere mention of “Jamaעi-Sunni,” “Islamicate,” “Arabist bias,” and other special terms immediately alerts us to the dangers of some customary approaches to Islamic history.