Document Type : Research Paper
Author
assistant professor/ Faculty of fine arts/ University of Tehran
Abstract
In Islamic texts, there is evidence of a non-philosophical discourse regarding technology that has largely been overlooked. A significant part of the discourse is primarily reflected in the sectarian treatises of Futuwwa, which belong to mystical literature. In some of these treatises, aspects of technology are addressed within a mythological framework, and examining them can shed light on the concept of technology as perceived by a significant segment of the medieval Islamic community, particularly the artisan class. This paper focuses on one of the myths mentioned in these treatises, the anthropogenic myth, and through a comparative assessment of the Futuwwa’s version of this myth with the other versions in Islamic literature, it demonstrates that the Futuwwa’s version exhibits significant syntactical and semantic differences from others. In this version, the anthropogenic myth is reduced to several origin mythems whose main theme, unlike other versions, is not the emergence of humanity but rather the emergence of technology. Although some of these mythems concerning the origin of technology also appear in the histories and their structural patterns are derived from narratives related to the emergence of rituals in Sufi treatises, the Futuwwa’s version transcends mere modification of these older narratives.
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