In this talk, I will argue for the vibrancy of an early modern Muslim society through a study of the natural sciences in seventeenth-century Morocco and will discuss the relationship between religious thought and these sciences in early modern Morocco in the light of the narratives of decline of post-formative Islamic thought established by nineteenth and twentieth-century European and Middle Eastern scholars. By using close readings of medical, astronomical, and alchemical works and a detailed overview of the place of the natural sciences in scholarly and educational landscapes of the early modern Maghreb, we can consider non-teleological possibilities for understanding early modern Moroccan scholars' persistent engagement with these sciences.

Justin Stearns is associate professor of Arab Crossroads Studies at New York University Abu Dhabi. His research interests focus on the intersection of law, science, and theology in the pre-modern Muslim Middle East. His first book was Infectious Ideas: Contagion in Pre-Modern Islamic and Christian Thought in the Western Mediterranean (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011). His book on the social status of the natural sciences in early modern Morocco, Revealed Sciences: The Natural Sciences in Islam in Early Modern Morocco (Cambridge University Press) was published in 2021, and the first volume of his edition and translation of al-Yusi’s (d. 1102/1691) Discourses appeared with the Library of Arabic Literature in 2020.