Christoph Marcinkowski: Encyclopedia II - Christoph Marcinkowski - Major Works Books

Christoph Marcinkowski - Major Works Books

Marcinkowski´s first book publications (published by ISTAC) had been two German translations of key texts of Professor Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, the most important contemporary Islamic philosopher (his translations contain glossaries and detailed introductions on Al-Attas and his life and work):

• In 1998 appeared Die Bedeutung und das Erleben von Glückseligkeit im Islam (ISBN 9839379089, original title: The Meaning and Experience of Happiness in Islam, originally published by ISTAC in 1993). In this work, Al-Attas aimed to clarify the term sa‘adah, which expresses the Islamic perspective of happiness. In order to realize this purpose, he provides an account of the meaning of religion in Islam as well as an overview of human nature. Al-Attas explains the relation between happiness and true faith (iman), righteous deeds, remembrance of God (dhikr), stability and calmness of the heart (tuma’ninah), and certainty of truth (yaqin). In such an approach, man’s various faculties and their relation to virtue and vice are clarified. It is in this context that the author presents his original thesis on the concept of tragedy (which he conceives of as being rooted in the religious tradition of the West and goes beyond the concept’s literary ramnifications), and its relation to that of happiness in the Western tradition. This the author explains by elucidating the exact opposite of happiness, namely the condition described in the Qur’an as shaqawah which, as he explains, is, in its generic sense, that which is understood in the West as tragedy.
  Professor Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, the Founder Director of the International Institute of Islamic Thought and Civilization (ISTAC), is one of the most important contemporary Islamic philosophers

• The other translation is Islam und die geistigen Grundlagen von Wissenschaft (ISTAC, 2001, ISBN 9839379135). The title of the English original is Islam and the Philosophy of Science (ISTAC, 1989). In this work, originally a keynote address delivered by Al-Attas to the International Seminar on Islamic Philosophy and Science held in Malaysia in 1989, the author gives a concise and penetrating analysis of Western conceptions of knowledge, science, truth, and reality, and then compares and contrasts it with the conception of Islam. In his attempt to provide a reasonable solution, he deals with the sources and methods of knowledge by giving a brief account of human nature and human faculties, the meaning of Truth-Reality as denoted by the term haqq/haqiqah and its relation to Justice and Wisdom, the concept of the reality of existence (wujud), the laws of nature as God’s customary way of acting, the signs of God in nature to be approached within the framework of muhkamat/mutashabihat and tafsir-ta’wil, the issue of change and permanence, etc. The ideas contained in this monograph constitute the fundamental basis of the Islamic worldview, and it is within this framework that, according to Al-Attas, the Islamic philosophy of science should be formulated.

• The magnum opus of Marcinkowski is his award-winning dissertation Mirza Rafi‘a's Dastur al-Muluk: A Manual of Later Safavid Administration. Annotated English Translation, Comments on the Offices and Services, and Facsimile of the Unique Persian Manuscript, a work of more than 700 pages, published by ISTAC in 2002 (ISBN 9839379267). Dastur al-Muluk (Regulations of the Kings) provides invaluable information on political and religious administration, biographies of eminent personalities, economics, as well as culture and geography, during the early 1720s. This work takes the reader to the world of the imperial palace of Iran's splendid Safavid capital of Isfahan, describing the responsibilities of the offices and services, from the Grand Vizier down to the kitchen staff. This often-quoted seminal work constitutes now one of the key studies of Iranian studies.

• In 2003 followed his Persian Historiography and Geography: Bertold Spuler on Major Works Produced in Iran, the Caucasus, Central Asia, India and Early Ottoman Turkey, published by Pustaka Nasional in Singapore (ISBN 9971774887), with a foreword by Professor Clifford Edmund Bosworth, a leading contemporary scholar in Islamic and Iranian studies and member of the British Academy. This is a translation of an acclaimed work by the Professor Bertold Spuler, a leading 20th-century German orientalist (German original: “Die historische und geographische Literatur in persischer Sprache," Handbuch der Orientalistik, 1. Abteilung, Band IV, 2. Abschnitt, Lieferung 1, Leiden and Cologne: E. J. Brill, 1982, pp. 101-67).

• Also in 2003, ISTAC published his Measures and Weights in the Islamic World. An English Translation of Professor Walther Hinz's Handbook “Islamische Maße und Gewichte“ (ISBN 9839379275), also with a foreword by Professor Bosworth, F.B.A. This work is an annotated translation of a work in German by the late German orientalist Walther Hinz, published in the Handbuch der Orientalistik, erste Abteilung, Ergänzungsband I, Heft 1, Leiden, The Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1970. It constitutes an important research tool.

• In 2004, Pustaka Nasional of Singapore published his Religion and Politics in Iraq. Shiite Clerics between Quietism and Resistance (ISBN 9971775131), with a foreword by Professor Hamid Algar of the University of California at Berkeley, who ranks among the world's leading historians of Islam. This book contains a critique and stern condemnation of terror and dictatorship under the Saddam Hussein regime. In the author's view, it is the Iraqi people themselves who are to build a democratic and prosperous future for their country. The book recounts the major political developments faced by Iraq's Shiite clerics from the end of the 19th century, under the ailing Ottoman empire, to the 1980s. This crucial period saw fierce internal struggles, foreign intervention and bloody persecution of the political opposition, as well as the emergence of a totalitarian one-party system with absolute control over all sectors of social and religious life. During this period, Baathist Iraq attacked its Muslim neighbours Kuwait and Iran and used poison gas in its "ethnic cleansing" campaign against the Kurds. This book focusses on the dilemma of Iraq's clerics within this setting, caught between political activism and quietism. It addresses also major developments in neighbouring Iran insofar as they had a bearing on Iraq.

• Dr. Marcinkowski´s latest book is From Isfahan to Ayutthaya: Contacts between Iran and Siam in the 17th Century (ISBN 9971774917), with a foreword by Professor Ehsan Yarshater of Columbia University, published in Singapore by Pustaka Nasional in 2005. Utilizing parts of the Ship of Sulayman, a travel account by Ibn Muhammad Ibrahim, a member of an Iranian 17th-century mission to Siam, and other works by European explorers, Dr. Marcinkowski unfolds the influences and impact resulting from contacts between Iran and the Siamese kingdom and the visual effects in present-day Thailand. He discusses the community of Iranian merchants in Siam, the mysterious Shaykh Ahmad and the creation of the office of Shaykh al-Islam. He also touches briefly the spread of Islam in the region.

From among his about 50 published articles, there are also several dealing with Islamic theology, such as “Some Reflections on Alleged Twelver Shiite Attitudes Towards the Integrity of the Qur’an,” The Muslim World (Hartford, Connecticut, United States), vol. 91, no. 1-2 (Spring 2001), pp. 137-53, which aims at clarifying the Twelver Shiite view on the “physical” extend of the qur’anic text, an issue which in the past had led to misunderstandings, particularly among Sunnites.

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