Hamid Algar: A Global Itinerary
Hamid Algar’s scholarly engagements span the fields of Persianate history, Sufism, Shiʿi Islam, and Islamic political thought, with significant contributions in additional areas such as Quranic studies. His forty-five-year teaching career in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, earned him a reputation for academic rigor and razor-sharp eloquence. Beyond the university, his reception in the Muslim world as a dignitary is a testament not only to his scholarship but to political commitments such as unwavering solidarity with Palestinian self-determination, the Islamic Revolution of Iran, and Bosnian Muslim resistance to genocide. His first monograph, Religion and State in Iran, 1785–1906: The Role of the Ulama in the Qajar Period, based on his Cambridge dissertation, exceeds citations of his oft-quoted translations of the works of Ayatullah Khomeini, ʿAlī Sharīʿatī, and Sayyid Quṭb.35 His last monograph, an eponymous biography of the polymath Jāmī (Oxford, 2013), is also a precis of his range, conveyed in typically elegant style. Notwithstanding vitriolic attacks from all quarters of the establishment, he has remained composed in his defense of Muslims without capitulating to empire and its various organs. He remains a unique figure in academia, having taken principled stands that set him apart from his colleagues in any generation. What follows is a global itinerary of his life, travels, and interests.36
Algar has not heretofore shared an account of his conversion to Islam and his family’s reception of the news. He relates that his father was “particularly upset and hostile” and regarded this surprising development as:
an act of treason. Not that he was a devout Anglican Christian, but he and the rest of the family followed the traditional, tripartite practice of Christianity: baptism, marriage, and burial. And having a Christmas tree, things like that. So, he was not too happy. My mother was somewhat more tolerant. And when I changed my name officially after coming here to America, he was particularly upset, which I understand.
Algar concedes that he could have taken a gentler approach at the time, but ultimately his father “came around and abandoned the polemics.”
His conversion occurred during his early studies as an undergraduate:
At Cambridge a certain number of texts in Arabic and Persian were prescribed for us each year and among them was the opening book of the Masnawī, the Dīwān of Ḥāfiẓ, which contain religious content even though particularly in the case of Ḥāfiẓ it’s not immediately apparent. But more important than texts, apart from the Quran, at that point in my life were a few friends with whom I became acquainted in Cambridge. They were two sharply contrasting groups: hedonistic Iranians, who were happy to hang around with me and let me practice my Persian on them, and then by contrast some observant and devout Pakistanis who had a considerable influence on me. They used to talk to me at great length and I remained in touch, with one of them at least, for many, many years. Friday prayers was held in the upstairs of a Pakistani restaurant, so two reasons to go. Lunch before or after and namāz-i jumʿih.
Later, as a professor at Berkeley, he delivered erudite sermons at Friday prayers and would dine with students and friends afterward at a ḥalāl Thai restaurant across from the campus.
Algar’s own studies took him far afield, and an undergraduate stint in Germany whetted his appetite for further overseas studies and extracurricular travel:
I was awarded a fellowship to do an MA at University of Tehran after I graduated in ’61, but the lecturers very seldom showed up. So, I thought no, enough of this, let’s go back to England. I chose a circuitous route via Azerbaijan, Russia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria.
He sailed across the Caspian from Iran to Baku, where he was offered the services of an interpreter, but declined as he could speak Azeri Turkish. From there he “took a train to Moscow and was able to find a ḥalāl restaurant even at that time of the Soviets, then another short trip to what was then Leningrad, which is now Saint Petersburg again.”
On pursuing Islamic studies, Algar’s advice to students, young or old, is to:
learn the language and necessary historical background, and then if you’re still alive go through the original text. Take courses with competent instructors and then travel, keep on traveling, and stay in modest accommodations, talk to people, sit in tea houses, and that way you get to learn the language and something firsthand about the culture, how it actually exists.
He cautions, however, against travel to places such as Afghanistan under present conditions:
I have very pleasant memories of Afghanistan. I went on two occasions, but I traveled from Iran to Herat with another Cambridge graduate who was also in Tehran at the time, and his wife, and we went to have breakfast at a teahouse and not only they served us a lavish breakfast but kept us for the rest of the day entertaining us with the oud and singing, very pleasant indeed. I traveled through Afghanistan by bus without any problems at all. Once I hitchhiked a ride into Afghanistan from Iran with a truck driver who in common with many others of his profession was an Assyrian Christian. So, he started cursing Islam and I said, “Well for your information you have a Muslim passenger sitting next to you,” and he was outraged and threatened to dump me right there in the desert, but he relented.
The scholarly study of Sufism, in particular the Naqshbandī order, stands out as one of Algar’s key contributions to Islamic studies. His command of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Bosnian has enabled his careful reading of source materials and secondary literature. Less is known, however, about his personal connection to, or formal initiation into, Sufi orders. He clarifies this matter:
When I embarked on my research on the Naqshbandiyya, I did benefit spiritually and academically from a number of Naqshbandī shaykhs in Bosnia, in Turkey, in Iran, and in Kurdistan. And I still have material from all those years ago in note form, whether I will have the energy or opportunity to turn them into another article, I don’t know. Apart from the Naqshbandiyya, with whom I never formerly affiliated myself, influential in my life were Yemeni Shādhilī in Birmingham. I had a friend in Cambridge who was an anthropologist or sociologist and was writing his dissertation on the Yemeni community in Birmingham. And even before I became Muslim, he invited me to join him on one of these trips, and I sat there and listened and observed the Shādhilīs and found them to be very impressive. In a completely alien and even hostile environment they were rigorously practicing Islam and observing also the requirements of the Shādhilī ṭarīqa. One thing I feel guilty about [is not having] revisited the Yemeni Shādhilī ṭarīqa, because they practically introduced me to Islam.
Later I didn’t have much contact with Shādhilīs, but primarily Naqshbandīs. And some Qādirīs. There’s an overlap between Naqshbandīs and Qādirīs. And, of course, there is some contrast, not to say contradiction, between the two areas of my research. Naqshbandiyya is a fervently Sunni ṭarīqa, and obviously that contradicts Shiʿism, which was my main area of research and also spiritual [orientation]. I’m not quite sure how I can combine these two poles, two opposites. Despite the polemics, they had a great deal in common.
As his eclectic interests attest, Algar has not harbored sectarian prejudices and enjoys close relationships with Sunni and Shiʿi Muslims alike. Indeed, he has challenged adherents of both groups for reductive accounts of theology and history:
The whole history of Sunni-Shiʿi relations is really disturbing and continues to be so. And apart from anything else, the polemics are often based on the assumption that Sunni Islam and Shiʿi Islam are static and have remained what they were even centuries ago, whereas that’s not the case. What one counts as Shiʿism today is quite different from Shiʿism of the early Safavid period or for that matter Shiʿism in the Subcontinent. And of course, “Sunni Islam” is still an extremely vague generalization and does not, as I remarked in the book I wrote on Wahhabism, these days mean much more than “non-Shiʿi.”37 I’ve had my feet on both sides of the aisle, so to speak, which annoys some people.
When pressed, Algar reluctantly describes his transition from Sunni to Shiʿi Islam as “gradual and incomplete.” He reflects that his:
experience of a predominantly Sunni country, Turkey, and a predominantly Shiʿa country, Iran, led me to have sympathy with both sides, [in addition to] a study of the literature and understanding how neither Sunni nor Shiʿa Islam have been uniform and unchanging over the ages. I think [that] still is the case today. In other words, the Shiʿism of fifty years from now is going to be different from the Shiʿism of today. Not that there will be any profound doctrinal changes, but simply as a matter of practiced reality it would be rather different.
Needless to say, Algar feels no pressure to conform to the dictates of either group and has maintained a critical distance from the subject without sacrificing a commitment to the faith. “After all these years of involvement I more or less find the Shiʿi interpretation of history convincing, but on the other hand, the wholesale rejection of the doctrines and history of Sunni Islam I would not share in at all.” Circumspect about the vagaries of personal belief, he adds “I’m not promoting myself as an ecumenical guide to the future, but that’s the way things stand right now.”
Arriving in Berkeley in 1965, Algar joined the Near Eastern Studies department during the Free Speech Movement:
I remember standing on the balcony of the student union seeing the demonstrators surge through in the direction of Sather Gate and the [campus police] came in to disperse them. Then of course came the famous showdown at People’s Park where one demonstrator was shot dead.
During this tumultuous era the Muslim Student Association was active on campus:
although only a modest number of people participated. That actually is where I first met Mostafa Chamran. Later he invited me to his home in Walnut Creek, so I got to know him fairly well.
Algar performed the hajj in 1970 and enjoyed the hospitality of one of his Pakistani friends from Cambridge who was living in Mecca. At the time, “the destruction of traditional buildings was not yet advanced. The towers functioning as hotels overlooking the Ka’aba had not yet come into being.” His concern for the architectural heritage is found in Wahhabism: A Critical Essay (2002), in which he holds the Saudi rulers accountable for having “destroyed a significant part of the cultural patrimony of all Muslims, first in the Hijaz …” (69). On hajj, however, he was:
impressed with the ethnic diversity of the ḥujjāj, which was not really contradicted by the fact that in ṭawāf they would go around in separate groups, even carrying the national flag, simply not to get lost. In the time of Abdul Hamid a rail line was built all the way to Medina, which then that genius T.E. Lawrence had destroyed by a band of Bedouins. But I remember in Medina the old train is at the station.
Visiting archives, libraries, and bookshops, Algar has amassed a personal collection of valuable materials:
My first sabbatical I spent largely in Turkey working in libraries. At that point microfilm had not yet come into being so I sat there transcribing the texts, which I enjoyed doing. Very active transcribing makes you better aware of the texts than simply looking at a film flashing in front of you. I had six volumes of texts that I had transcribed. Unfortunately, in 1984 my house here in Berkeley burned down, and together with it a large number of those transcribed texts, in addition of course to a large number of books as well. To some degree I was able to rebuild my collection. It gave me an excuse to go on book buying sprees.
New technologies have enabled the digitization of texts, about which Algar expresses ambivalence:
Having worked in a different way, I have to say I don’t regard it a positive thing. On the one hand the text is made more widely available. But on the other hand, precisely reading the printed text is more of a learning experience. You can easily go back from one page to the other and note down the different pages. But not everything is just on the screen in front of you. You don’t pay, I think, the same amount of careful attention that you should.
Algar admits online texts are useful “as a backup,” but retains “a prejudice in favor of the printed book or the handwritten book.”
Algar’s engagement with Bosnia predates the civil war (1992–1995), during which he was an outspoken critic of the genocide. He had previously traveled to all the republics of former Yugoslavia:
When I first visited, the Communist regime was still in power [and] was more liberal in its attitude to religions in general, including Islam, than governments in the Eastern, Soviet-influenced bloc. There wasn’t an officially recognized rūḥāniyyat (not that they used that term) and there was also an unrecognized organization of the Sufi ṭarīqas, of which the Naqshbandiyya was and remains the most important and widespread. Of course, I went back to Bosnia several times, including soon after the genocide launched by the Serbs with the applause or silence of everyone else, and acquired some useful information. One shaykh in the ṭarīqa was kind enough to give me a unique manuscript from two generations ago. If I can muster the energy, I would like to write something additional on the subject. In my visits to Bosnia, I also collected a lot of material and interviewed many people and picked up some manuscripts.
He also began work on the history of Islam in Northwest Siberia “and accomplished a fair amount of progress on that. I would like to finish that off and then write up some of the additional material that I’ve collected on Bosnia. Those two are on the horizon.”
Algar sat with shaykhs and spiritual teachers, and:
benefited from them, but never entered into a formal relationship with anyone. I was never anyone’s murīd. I attended durūs and majālis al-dhikr pretty much everywhere: Turkey, Bosnia, Syria, in Aleppo and Damascus. These assemblies were mostly Naqshbandī of the Khālidī branch with the exception of the Bosnians that descended from the Mujaddidiyya lineage. In Turkey the prominent shaykhs that were active when I was there have all passed away now. I’m not sure whether they have had important successors.
Sufism is a complex, variegated field that has been diminished by its popularity:
There’s some question of Sufism becoming banalized as simply “the inward dimension of Islam.” Well, not that simple. In the same way that one cannot speak of a uniform Shiʿism, one cannot speak of a uniform Sufism. And there’s a great deal of inner diversity and even hostility, mutual hostility. And in addition to that of course one now has these pseudo-Sufis running around. They attain prominence in the West, and everyone imagines this is the real thing—it’s not. Knowledge of texts and understanding of the interrelation between ṭarīqa and sharīʿa and knowledge of Quran, all of these are necessary.
With characteristic humility, Algar shows no inclination to impose himself as a spiritual guide, unlike a number of American and European converts to Islam who have opened shop in Western countries and attracted large followings. He remains skeptical of them, maintains minimal contact, and in fact does not remain in touch with any shaykhs or ʿulamāʾ.
Algar is as renowned for the elegance and precision of his translations as much as original authorship, and beyond his oft-cited collections of political thought outstanding is his rendering of Najm al-Dīn Rāzī’s The Path of God’s Bondsmen.38 Translation, however, remains undervalued in the hierarchy of scholarly activities:
Of course, it depends on what’s being translated, if it’s worth translating, which is sometimes a matter of individual choice and taste. What one might call (I don’t like this term) “premodern” works, their translation represents a real challenge to the translator and a gift to the reader who does not know the original language. But nonstop translations of Mawdudi and Muhammad Abduh and the rest of them I don’t think are worth it. On the other hand, of course, I myself have translated contemporary or near contemporary works of Imām Khomeini, which I do not regret in any way, considering the fact that he and the revolution were massively distorted at the time of its occurrence.
He describes the unfolding of the Islamic Revolution in Iran as “exhilarating”:
In other words, the term “revolution” is very frequently used, but an actual revolution is rare. And I think that the Islamic revolution in Iran was precisely that, a revolution. And to be there to witness it, to talk to some of its prominent participants, was a very valuable experience, which to some degree I hope is reflected in some of my writings on Islam in twentieth-century Iran.39
I first met with [Khomeini] actually in Paris shortly before he returned, and then two or maybe three times in Qom after the revolution. I went once as part of a group from Tehran of overseas visitors and Mostafa Chamran, who I knew from here, said, “You deserve to have a separate meeting with Imām Khomeini,” which I did. I translated the text in the book Islam and Revolution. And then after his move to Jamaran, not too long before his death, I met with him once more. Rafsanjani didn’t want me to take up too much of his time, so [Khomeini] said that I should convey to people that “millat-i Irān, millat-i maẓlūmīst”—“the people of Iran are an oppressed people.” Which of course was true not only of attempts to suppress the revolution, but support for Iraq, and almost direct intervention by the United States like the downing of a passenger plane by the American ship, the Vincennes. One might say that’s continued down to the present.
At Berkeley, Algar had gotten to know Iran’s future Minister of Defense Mostafa Chamran:
through the MSA before the anti-Shiʿi prejudices of a large number of “Sunni” students came into play, and he would, I think, give the khuṭba once a month. Then there were separate meetings of the MSA (Persian Speaking Group). He introduced me to the writings of Sharīʿatī, whom I think he was in touch with personally. Then when I went to Iran after the revolution, Chamran was Minister of Defense at the time. That was the last time I saw him. He was martyred at the front fighting the Iraqi invaders. I did visit his grave at Bihisht-i Zahrāʾ.
Algar himself visited the conflict zone during the Iran-Iraq War, in which the United States and other Western allies backed Saddam’s Iraq against revolutionary Iran:
I did go fairly close to the front line in Khuzestan to the degree that I could hear cannons firing in the distance and I shared accommodation with a group of basījīs, young volunteers, who went to the front lines essentially unarmed, who would draw the fire of the Iraqis and then be followed by the Pāsdārān. I visited Kermanshah and saw the whole city reduced to ruins, with the exception of one mosque which had been used by the Iraqis as their administrative headquarters during the occupation. It was indeed a very sad experience. In a way Iran came out ahead, not having submitted, but at a very heavy cost. Obviously, hostility and attempted subversion have not ceased ever since. I visited Iran not long after the election of Obama and when the immigration agent saw my passport, he was very optimistic. He interpreted Obama as “ū bā mā,” “he is with us.” He’s together with us. I said, “Nakhayr, bā mā nīst; bā Isrāʾīl ast.”
Aside from his meetings with key figures in Iran, Algar met a variety of personalities throughout the Muslim world:
Mawdudi was in London for medical treatment and some friends from the Jamaat-i Islami took me to go meet him. Then, while in India, I met with Abu’l Hasan Nadwi in Lucknow, which was an interesting experience. That was around the time of the Revolution and he was convinced that the Shah ought to stay in power, that the people against him were communists. Another person I met, although not on an individual basis, is Qaddafi. I was invited to a conference in Libya on Christian-Muslim dialogue. Qaddafi was not in the hall to begin with, but then he came in and of course everyone turned around and applauded him and he said, “No, no, sit down, I’m just one among you people.” That was curious.
Algar welcomed the opportunity to travel to Uzbekistan in 2009 at the invitation of the French Institute of Central Asian Studies in Tashkent:
Bukhara and Samarqand are among the main centers of traditional Islamic civilization, and I’d never had the chance to visit before and getting a visa to Uzbekistan would have been difficult without the sponsorship of this French institute and traveling around there would have been even more difficult. I remember whenever we entered a city all cars will be stopped essentially for a bribe. When they saw the diplomatic plates on the French car we were waved on through. In both Bukhara and Samarqand, I was able to attend congregational prayers. I don’t know if people were being photographed on their way out. I remember when having finished jumuʿah prayer I went to sit down in a cafe and was generously proffered a big bottle of beer.
Islamic law remains the preeminent sub-discipline in Islamic studies, but Algar never pursued the subject extensively, asserting, “It didn’t attract me a great deal. I don’t have a legalistic mind.” (He did, however, write a conference paper on the jurisprudence of armed combat as it related to the Iran-Iraq War) He considers developments in Islamic studies:
on the whole negative, in that there is an excessive concentration on contemporary developments, most of which are superficially viewed, and not enough attention is given to continuities with the past. In other words, there’s something called “contemporary Islam” which is all the rage and then there is “traditional Islam” which is defunct and of no real interest. I mean if one looks at the announcements of university and college positions in Islamic studies one sees that always almost always specify an interest in or preoccupation with the modern and contemporary and one cannot really write on anything useful concerning contemporary developments without at least a firm understanding of the past and what’s led up to them, in other words there’s no sudden cut off, but a certain kind of continuity.
When questioned whether periodization schemes are inherently orientalist for organizing chronology based on western categories, Algar does not disagree, but considers attempts to create an alternative “off the top of my head, both ambitious and reckless.”
Throughout his career Professor Algar tirelessly supported Palestinian sovereignty and resistance to Israeli colonization. His solidarity with Palestine and vocal opposition to “the Zionist entity” in class lectures and public talks long preceded its acceptability. For this stance, which he expressed as a matter of principle, he drew severe and unabated criticism. Yet, like the handful of his colleagues who have stood firm over the decades, he has no misgivings:
Attempts to quash any expression of solidarity with the Palestinians on campuses continue. Here in Berkeley one student group in the law school simply said “we will not invite Zionist speakers,” and steps were taken to have the group banned or to be at least deprived of university funding. But, bit by bit, gradually space is being opened for critical discussion of Zionism.
There should be no doubt that the groundwork he and other academics laid by exposing Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity has emboldened students in North America and the UK.
Algar has enjoyed close relations with Islamic scholars in Southeast Asia, including Mohamad Nasrin Nasir and Haji-Mohamad Bohari Haji-Ahmad, whom he trained as a doctoral student at Berkeley. He was also friends with Cesar Adib Majul (1923–2003), professor at California State University, San Jose, doyen of Filipino Muslim studies, who played a critical role in the Bangsamoro movement in the southern Philippines and Sulu Archipelago as mentor to Nur Misuari.40 When one of his students was taken captive by Bangsamoro rebels in 2000, Algar intervened, imploring for his release over the radio in Zamboanga City, and once safely home helped him to secure an administrative position in the Near Eastern Studies department. Algar also visited Malaysia on several occasions to present papers and was invited for a sabbatical (although he ultimately declined). On his stints in Malaysia, he interacted with initiates of the Naqshbandī order and collected literature. However, he admits that his command of Malay “leaves much to be desired.” He still has a Malay-English phrasebook that once belonged to his father who had been a prisoner of war in Germany:
I can see that the purpose was to enable English civil servants in Malaysia to give orders to their Malay subordinates. The history of the British Empire is of course extremely ugly, like all the transoceanic empires, which is still not recognized in England. Some have this idealization of Churchill and despite some positive moves the statue of him in front of the houses of Parliament is still there, despite attempts to have it knocked down, but it will be regarded as treason if that were to happen.
Over the course of a career spent in scholarly pursuits, Algar toppled idols of imperialism, orientalism, racism, colonialism, nationalism, secularism, postmodernism, Zionism, Wahhabism, and pseudo-Sufism, among others. He went against the grain of the status quo, not as a contrarian but a scholar with a conscience, calling openly for justice and dignity, the echoes of which are heard around the world today.
University of California Press, 1969; reissued 2020.
Harun Rasiah conducted, transcribed, and edited the following interview, which took place on three occasions at Hamid Algar’s home in Berkeley in November 2022.
Algar, Hamid, Wahhabism: A Critical Essay, Oneonta, NY: Islamic Publications International, 2002.
Algar, Hamid, The Path of God’s Bondsmen from Origin to Return: A Sufi Compendium, New York: Caravan Books, 1982.
See “The Oppositional Role of the ‘Ulama in Twentieth Century Iran,” in N.R. Keddie (ed.), Scholars, Saints and Sufis, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972, 231–255.
Majul, Cesar Adib, The Contemporary Muslim Movement in the Philippines, Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1985.
Bibliography
Algar, Hamid, Wahhabism: A Critical Essay, Oneonta, NY: Islamic Publications International, 2002.
Algar, Hamid, The Path of God’s Bondsmen from Origin to Return: A Sufi Compendium, New York: Caravan Books, 1982.
Algar, Hamid, “The Oppositional Role of the ‘Ulama in Twentieth Century Iran,” in N.R. Keddie (ed.), Scholars, Saints and Sufis, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972, 231–255.
Majul, Cesar Adib, The Contemporary Muslim Movement in the Philippines, Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1985.