Classical Islamic learning was structurally interdisciplinary before disciplines existed

Evidence

Unlike modern education, where “expertise” tends to segregate fields of specialization (resulting, in late modernity, in the pervasive call for interdisciplinarity), Islamic learning was generally constituted by cross-fertilization through what may be called dialectical traditions. Whereas a modern historian typically studies and writes about history, and may perform a scholarly incursion into another subject when her field intersects with that subject, a typical Muslim historian normally undertook his basic and main training in other fields, nowadays considered outside of history. Thus, a Muslim historian was usually at once an expert, or at least proficiently educated, in Quran, hadith, history, adab, “law,” biographical sciences, and, not unusually, theology, Sufism, and mathematics. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 146 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Pre-modern Islamic scholars trained across fields rather than within single disciplines — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 146; In classical Islamic learning, texts were formal records of prior oral master-student encounters — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 149; Islamic legal learning was integrated into daily legal practice rather than segregated as schooling — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 292

Broader Connections

• Pre-modern Islamic scholars trained across fields rather than within single disciplines #corroborates (0.95) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 146