al-Qadaya al-Kubra
- Author died
- 1393 AH
- Editions
- Dar al-Fikr al-Mu'asir
al-Qadaya al-Kubra (The Major Issues) is a collection of lectures and essays on civilizational, cultural, and ideological problems in the Muslim world by the Algerian thinker Malik Bennabi (d. 1393 AH / 1973 CE) .
Background and Compilation
The title was not originally chosen by Bennabi himself . It was adopted from a French compilation titled Les grands thèmes, published in Algeria in 1976 by several of his students, featuring an introduction and annotations by Noureddine Boukrouh commissioned by Omar Ben Aissa . Bennabi's literary executor, Omar Meskawi—whom Bennabi had designated in a legal testament registered at the Sharīʿah court of Tripoli, Lebanon, in 1391 AH / 1971 CE to oversee the publishing rights and heritage of his works—subsequently prepared the unified Arabic edition under this title . Meskawi preferred al-Qadaya al-Kubra over earlier localized titles because the text addresses the broader civilizational questions confronting the Third World and the Muslim world rather than issues specific only to Algeria .
Contents and Structure
The book gathers five lectures linked by Bennabi's methodological focus on the overarching "problem of civilization" :
- Chapters 1–3: Originally delivered as lectures in Algeria in 1964 following independence and published in French before being translated into Arabic by al-Tayyib al-Sharif under the title Āfāq Jazāʾiriyyah: lil-Ḥaḍārah, lil-Thaqāfah, lil-Mafhūmiyyah (Algerian Horizons: On Civilization, Culture, and Ideology) . These chapters analyze the conceptual definitions of civilization, culture, and ideology .
- Chapter 4: Titled al-Dīmuqrāṭiyyah fī al-Islām (Democracy in Islam), exploring the social foundations and civilizational origins of Islamic governance, which had earlier been published within the lecture collection Taʾammulāt (Reflections) .
- Chapter 5: Titled Intāj al-Mustashriqīn (The Output of the Orientalists), previously published as an independent booklet, examining the influence of Western Orientalism on the modern Muslim intellectual elite within the framework of ideological and cultural struggle .
Publication and Apparatus
The Arabic edition was published in a single volume as part of Bennabi's Mushkilāt al-Ḥaḍārah (Problems of Civilization) series by Dar al-Fikr in Damascus and Dar al-Fikr al-Mu'asir in Beirut, with a first edition in 1991 and a reprinting in 1420 AH / 2000 CE under the supervision of Nadwat Malik Bennabi . The text incorporates the original Arabic translation and notes of al-Tayyib al-Sharif alongside translations of the French edition's preface and annotations prepared by Dr. Bassam Baraka and Omar Meskawi, as well as hadith referencing by Shaykh Mahmud al-Arna'ut .
Answer updated