al-din: a prolegomenon to the study of the history of religions

Originally published in 1952, al-Din, by prominent Egyptian scholar Muhammad Abdullah Draz (1894-1958), has been critically acclaimed as one of the most influential Arab Muslim studies of universal ’religion’ and forms of religiosity in modern times. Written as an introductory textbook for a course in the ＂History of Religions＂ at King Fuad I University in Cairo-the first of its kind offered at an Egyptian institution of higher learning-this book presents a critical overview of classical approaches to the scholarly study of religion. While ultimately adapted to an Islamic paradigm, the book is a novel attempt to construct a grand narrative about the large methodological issues of Religious Studies and the History of Religions and in relation to modernity and secularism.

Translated for the first time in English by Yahya Haidar, this book demonstrates how the scholarly academic study of religion in the West, often described as ’Orientalist’, came to influence and help shape a counter-discourse from one of the leading Arab Muslim scholars of his time.

Dr. Yahya Haidar is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sciences and Liberal Arts at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Dubai, UAE.

M.A. Draz (1894-1958) obtained his doctorate at the Sorbonne in Paris, before returning to Cairo where he became Professor of Islamic Studies at Al Azhar University. At his death in 1958 he had established himself as one of the world’s leading Islamic scholars.