Introduction: The sensory history of the Islamic world

This special issue seeks to introduce the cultural history of the senses in the Islamic world to a broad audience of scholars in the Humanities and Social Sciences. While there has been a groundswell of historical scholarship on the senses in the west (see Classen 2014), much remains to be done for the “sensual turn” (Howes 2003, 29) to leave more than just a passing mark in the study of Islamic history and culture. Contributors to this special issue examine how the senses have been conceptualized, and calibrated, in a variety of Muslim environments, ca. 600 to 1900 CE. How can we conceive of the Muslim sensorium over the long course of Islamic history and across Islam’s wide geographical compass? In fact, is there such a thing as a Muslim sensorium? If yes, what are its main features, how was it theorized by Muslim thinkers, and what were its salient historical manifestations? These questions are important and timely on several, interrelated counts. In scholarly discourse, the history of the senses is closely entangled with that of Western-style modernity, while Islam’s compatibility (and indeed, the desirability of aligning Islam) with modern Western ideas and institutions is a perennial subject of discussion. Controversially, Marshall McLuhan (1962) and Walter Ong (1982) linked the European enlightenment to the primacy bestowed on the eye over the other sense organs. They also theorized that, by contrast, African and Oriental societies privilege the ear, as well as the other nonvisual senses. From this vantage, Islam’s supposed denigration of vision is seen to undermine the ability of Muslim peoples to modernize. However, this sweeping narrative, influential though it may be, does not stand the test of even a cursory examination of the evidence. The Qurʾān clearly elevates sight above hearing; Plato’s and Aristotle’s notion of a hierarchy of the senses, in which sight is preeminent, was wellknown in classical Islam; and the Iraqi-Egyptian physicist Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen, d. 1040 CE) analyzed the mechanics of vision so successfully that he is counted, to this day, among the fathers of modern optics. In other words, the ratio of the senses in Islamic culture (a contested singular), and the relationship between the two distal senses in particular, is by no means evident; a more nuanced and balanced account is long overdue. A related issue is that disembodied Western rationalism is often contrasted, by both its defenders and its detractors, with an alleged Muslim celebration of the senses – an imaginary dichotomy that recalls stereotyped characterizations of “sensual” Catholics as Protestantism’s Other. This finds expression in enduring stereotypes about an indulgent Orient full of colors, smells, and tactile sensations. While the proximal senses, smell in particular, carry a stigma in modern Western culture, Islamic culture supposedly emphasizes them. Not only do such characterizations facilitate caricatures of Muslims as irrational