On the dramaturgical map of western Asia, the huge section long held by Czarist and Soviet Russia deserves attentive scrutiny. Theatrical life has been especially rich in the multi-ethnic Transcaucasus and, to a lesser degree, in the Tatar homelands and Central Asia, at least since medieval times. In certain respects the area leads the entire Middle East in this field. Theater in the region is abundant as well as versatile in form. It has given to both players and audiences literary religious performances, a secular neoclassical drama, folk comedy, modern European-style stage works, and ideologically-committed theater, as well as numerous plays translated or adapted from West and East. But how far the modern dramas may be identified either as local Asian or international Western remains a serious question for every specialist.

In recent years, scholarship concerning Abū Hāmid al-Ghazālī (450/1058–505/1111) has been directed more to the exploration of his thought than to editing or translating his vast corpus. This is not to say that there have been no editions or translations. Sulaymān Dunyā continues to publish versions of various treatises in which he replaces a critical apparatus with the explanation that he has already consulted the relevant manuscripts and selected the readings he deems sound or in which his critical apparatus consists of notes indicating that a particular word is differently rendered in some of the “sources” (uṣūl). However, other equally non-academic mass-market printings of al-Ghazali’s works apart, only a few critically edited texts have been published in the last two decades. Three years after the appearance of his al-Ghazālī bibliography, a volume that appeared as part of the millenary celebration of Abū Ḥāmid’s birth, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī published a critical edition of Faḍā’iḥ al-Bāṭinīyah. In the same year, Abū al-ʿAlā ʿAfīfī’s edition of Mishkāt al-Anwār appeared, and a year later A. L. Tibawi published his edition and translation of the small “Jerusalem Treatise” (al-Risālah al-Qudsīyah). In 1971, Fadlou A. Shehadi’s edition of The Supreme Purpose (al-Maqṣad al-Asnā) was published.

It is a good omen that an essay on the current study of Arabic philosophy is appropriate. In the first place, it is a sign that the field is flourishing. Indeed, there are now so many who pursue this kind of inquiry, and those hail from such far-flung locales, that hardly any single scholar is acquainted with all of his fellows or even with all of their research. Names of new scholars, announcements of long forgotten manuscripts, and novel interpretations of well-known works spring forth at each learned conference as well as in each issue of scholarly journals. What is more, it is a sign of the extent to which the field of Arabic studies in general has now become populous and diversified. No longer can an individual scholar aspire to keep up with all of the research being pursued in all of the various sub-disciplines of the field. Finally, it is a sign that even in the midst of such burgeoning activity and specialization there is an abiding interest in the field as a whole. It is the latter, above all, that warrants this general account of what is happening with respect to the study of Arabic philosophy.