In the contemporary landscape of Islamic education, students often face an overwhelming abundance of resources, courses, and texts without a clear roadmap to guide their intellectual journey. Addressing this enduring challenge, a new educational series launched recently breaks down the foundational principles of how a student ought to arrange their studies, drawing core insights from a comprehensive seminar delivered by scholar Shaykh Talal al-Azem.
Entitled How to Arrange Your Studies of Islamic Sciences, the seminar serves as the basis for an exploratory series that examines why a structured learning journey is not merely helpful, but essential for anyone seeking a deep comprehension of the traditional Islamic disciplines. At the heart of this educational framework lies a historical masterpiece from the eighteenth century: Tartib al-Ulum, or The Ordering of the Sciences, penned by the prolific scholar Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr al-Marʿashi al-Hanafi, widely celebrated as Imam Sajaqlizada.
A Scholar Raised Inside a Family of Knowledge
To understand the weight and precision of Imam Sajaqlizada’s educational philosophy, one must first understand the intellectual milieu from which he emerged. Born into a family deeply embedded in the academic and spiritual traditions of his time, his father served as an esteemed imam and teacher in Maraş, located in southern Turkey. Immersed in this scholarly environment from an early age, the young Sajaqlizada began his formal education locally, studying in the towns of Malatya and Sivas.
Seeking to broaden his horizons and drink from deeper wells of knowledge, he undertook repeated journeys to Damascus, which stood then as one of the great historical capitals of Islamic learning. In Damascus, he immersed himself in the rigorous study of Quranic exegesis, known as tafsir, and the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad, known as hadith. Furthermore, he pursued the delicate and transformative science of the purification of the heart, or tasawwuf, studying directly under the renowned Imam Abdul Ghani al-Nabulsi.
So profound was his dedication and spiritual development under Imam Nabulsi that he was eventually granted formal authorization, or ijazah, to guide others along two of the most prominent spiritual pathways of the Islamic world: the Qadiri and the Naqshbandi spiritual orders. This rare combination of outward scholarly rigor and inward spiritual refinement shaped his unique perspective on education, bridging the gap between rational analysis and spiritual realization.
A Life Spent Teaching and Writing
Despite his extensive formation and elite scholarly authorizations, Imam Sajaqlizada chose a path distinct from many of his contemporaries who sought prestige within the imperial Ottoman religious-education hierarchy. Historical records indicate that he never held an official administrative post within that centralized system, nor is there any evidence that he ever traveled to the capital city of Istanbul to seek court patronage.
Instead, he followed the humble yet impactful footsteps of his father. He dedicated his life to serving as a local community imam, teaching both the traditional transmitted sciences and the rational sciences to eager students, and providing vital spiritual guidance to those under his care. Above all else, Imam Sajaqlizada was remarkably prolific. Despite the demands of community leadership and teaching, he authored at least thirty distinct works spanning a vast array of disciplines. His literary footprint covered exegesis, speculative theology or kalam, logic, the art of scholarly disputation, jurisprudence, the purification of the heart, and general ethics.
Beyond these standard branches of learning, he focused deeply on how knowledge itself is organized, dedicating his intellect to exploring how the various sciences relate to one another and how human beings ought to classify and order them. Historians continue to debate the exact year of his passing, placing his death sometime between 1145 and 1155 in the Hijri calendar, which corresponds to the years 1732 to 1742 CE. Long after his death, later generations of scholars and seekers remembered him by the honorable title of Taj al-Murshidin, meaning the Crown of التيار Spiritual Guides.
A Significant Book That Shaped Educational Reform
The ongoing analytical series centers primarily on Imam Sajaqlizada’s seminal treatise, Tartib al-Ulum (The Ordering of the Sciences), which he completed in 1128 AH, corresponding to the years 1715 or 1716 CE. The text proved to be remarkably influential in the centuries following its composition. It was read widely enough across the Ottoman intellectual sphere that, more than 150 years after its completion, it was translated into Turkish during the Young Turk era. During that period of rapid modernization and institutional transition, the translation was utilized deliberately as a compelling intellectual argument for reforming Ottoman educational curricula.
The title of the book carries a dual significance that remains vital to understanding its overarching purpose. First, the title highlights a structural hierarchy among the disciplines. In this view, certain foundational sciences supply the core first principles upon which other, more advanced sciences must be built. This foundational relationship—where one science depends entirely upon the preliminary principles established by another—is a dynamic known in both the classical Avicennan Islamic philosophical tradition and the Latin scholastic tradition as subalternation.
Second, the title dictates a strict order of study. Given that such a rigid hierarchy exists among the various fields of knowledge, in what exact sequence should a student actually proceed through their curriculum? Imam Sajaqlizada tackles this pressing pedagogical question through a meticulously organized structure of his own, guiding the reader step-by-step through a preface, an introduction, two main substantive parts, a conclusion, and a concise epilogue.
A Direct Word to the Student of Knowledge
From its opening pages, Imam Sajaqlizada establishes an intimate and urgent tone, directly addressing those who find themselves walking the demanding path of seeking knowledge. He reminds his audience that across every era of human history, there has always been a dedicated group set apart specifically for the pursuit and preservation of knowledge, thereby fulfilling the divine injunction in the Quran that a contingent must remain behind in every community to gain a deep understanding of religion.
Yet, with characteristic candor, he laments that this noble class of scholars had already nearly vanished in his own time. In their place, he observes a generation of learners whom he compares critically to rabbits among lions—individuals who are physically present and constantly moving, but who fall drastically short of the intellectual and spiritual stature embodied by the great scholars who came before them.
It is precisely to counter this decline that Imam Sajaqlizada issues a timeless warning to every student of knowledge, whether living in the eighteenth century or the modern day: a mere desire for knowledge amounts to very little if it is not matched by a rigorous, disciplined method for pursuing it. Having established this crucial reminder regarding methodology, the historical text pivots naturally toward exploring the deep, unbreakable bond that must exist between intellectual acquisition and moral character—a vital theme that forms the focus of the subsequent installments in Shaykh Talal al-Azem’s seminar series.