This short biography is published as part of the series Makers of the Muslim World under the general editorship of Patricia Crone. The aim of this series is to provide short, accessible and up-to-date biographies on major historical figures of the Muslim world, from the formative age of Islam to the twentieth century and across its geographical spectrum. The particular emphasis of this series lies on brevity and accessibility. Written for undergraduate students, laypersons or academics with expertise outside of Islamic studies, the biographies avoid academic jargon, do not provide references and do not require any background knowledge of Islam. Figures covered in this series include major scholars and thinkers in the religious field such as Ghazali or Ibn ʿArabi, poets and artists such as al-Mutannabi and Saʿdi and political leaders from Muʿāwiya ibn Abi Sufyan to Nasser. The authors of the series are all well-established academics with research expertise on the figures dealt with in their books. This reviewed book by Mark Sedgwick is the first full biography of Muhammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905) in English since Charles C. Adams, Islam and Modernism in Egypt: A Study of the Modern Reform Movement Inaugurated by Muḥammad ʿAbduh (Oxford, 1933).

Muhammad ʿAbduh is one of the central Muslim reformers of the nineteenth century, combining political activism with his intellectual involvement in the modernist reinterpretation of the Islamic tradition in the early Salafiyya movement. As with all biographies, his life and thought are full of tensions, breaks and contradictions which this book illustrates quite well. Starting from his early years as a student of traditional religious sciences initially at Tanta and later at al-Azhar in Cairo, and his growing dissatisfaction with traditional methods of instruction, the first chapter introduces Jamal al-Din al-Afghani as the pivotal figure in steering ʿAbduh's intellectual development and future political career. His development from a religious scholar to a political intellectual, activist and journalist is illustrated through a discussion of his relationship to ʿUrabi and his revolt. ʿAbduh's subsequent exile, after the failure of the revolt and the British occupation of Egypt in 1892, first in Paris together with Afghani with whom he published the anti-British journal al-ʿUrwa al-Wūthqa (“The Firmest Bond”), and then later in Beirut after his break with Afghani, is also examined. ʿAbduh's return to Egypt and rapport with the British colonial authorities and the Egyptian religious and political establishment, his appointment and activities as the chief mufti of Egypt as well as his continuous efforts to reform al-Azhar and traditional Islamic education in general are discussed in the last chapters of the book.

As well as discussing the diverse scope of ʿAbduh's activities and political involvement, the book includes discussions of lesser-known aspects of his biography. There is, for example, ʿAbduh's early and continuous involvement in Freemasonry, first in Egypt under Afghani's auspices and then also later at the end of his life after he had become chief mufti of Egypt. Likewise, ʿAbduh's interest in interfaith understanding between Muslims, Jews and Christians, and his possible tendencies towards religious universalism, are explored with reference to his friendship with the English clergyman Isaac Taylor. The increasing opposition to ʿAbduh within the religious and political establishment of Egypt is illustrated with the 1902 publication of a photograph in a popular Egyptian journal – part of a media campaign to discredit ʿAbduh – depicting him “conversing happily” (p. 106) with a British lady at a garden party.

Finally, the book provides a very succinct discussion of ʿAbduh's views and approaches to Islam and their formation and development. Initially ʿAbduh's views were shaped by Afghani and his private teaching sessions which included instructions in the Shii School of Isfahan and in Muslim philosophers such as Ibn Sīnā. The nature of Afghani's and ʿAbduh's relationship to Islam and of their actual religious beliefs has been the subject of much controversy in academic scholarship in recent decades. Scholarship on both figures since the 1960s, such as Elie Kedourie, Afghani and ʿAbduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam (New York, 1966), alludes to their agnostic if not atheist views on religion and their use of Islam as a mere political tool of mass agitation against European imperialism. Sedgwick, however, presents both as advocates of a rationalistic view of Islam, open to scientific discoveries and progress and in opposition to the blind imitation of the past; he suggests: “they were liberal, in some sense believing, Muslims” (p. 42).

ʿAbduh's modernist views on Islam find their strongest expression in his Risālat al-Tawḥīd, a collection of lectures he gave in Beirut that has been translated into English by Ishaq Musaʿad and Kenneth Cragg as The Theology of Unity (London, 1966). Like this treatise, his fatwas as mufti in Egypt give evidence of his general approach to the Islamic tradition. Rather than being interested in the technical modalities and methodologies of traditional Muslim scholarship, he intended to find pragmatic solutions to legal problems in order to facilitate the adoption of European practices within Islamic law and to provide a rationalistic and modernist account of Islam that would appeal to a new generation of young Muslims attracted to the nineteenth-century ideas of progress, rationalism and science.

This book provides an accessible and concise introduction to the life and work of Muhammad ʿAbduh. It is useful in teaching on modern Islam at both undergraduate and post-graduate levels. Researchers in the field gain a swift introduction to ʿAbduh that incorporates the breadth of scholarship of the last decades on this eminent nineteenth-century Muslim reformer. The book contains a useful glossary of Islamic terms unfamiliar to non-specialist readers. Instead of references, further reading suggestions are provided for each chapter in addition to a fairly up-to-date bibliography.