Did Adonis Discover the Heritage, or Invent a New One?

One of the gravest mistakes a scholar can make when approaching history is not to read it as it actually happened, but as he wishes it had happened. History is neither a mirror reflecting our desires nor a blank page upon which we inscribe our deferred dreams. Rather, it is an autonomous world with its own logic, internal laws, and contexts that seek permission from no one. Hence, the scholarly value of any intellectual project depends on its ability to listen to the past before speaking on its behalf.

Yet anyone who reads Adonis’s The Static and the Dynamic (Al-Thābit wa al-Mutaḥawwil) soon senses that they are confronting a different phenomenon altogether. This is not merely a study of Arab heritage; it is an attempt to reinterpret that heritage through a compelling yet stark binary: permanence on one side and transformation on the other, stagnation here and revolution there, authority here and freedom there.

At first glance, the idea appears captivating, even offering what seems like a magical key to understanding a thousand years of Arab culture. The fundamental problem, however, lies not in the simplicity of the idea itself, but in the price history must pay to appear so simple. Did Adonis truly uncover a hidden law governing Arab culture? Or did he construct a preconceived theoretical model and then rearrange the entirety of the heritage to fit within it? This is the question that should serve as the starting point for any critical reading of his project.

A genuine scholar enters history as one enters an unfamiliar city: examining its streets, exploring its terrain, and striving to understand its inhabitants. The advocate of a preconceived idea, by contrast, enters history not as a researcher but as a judge. He is not searching for truth; he is searching for evidence to support a verdict he has already delivered. Here lies the central dilemma of The Static and the Dynamic. Adonis does not begin with an open-ended inquiry into the nature of Arab culture. Rather, he begins with an almost ready-made answer: there exists a conservative current representing the “static,” and a revolutionary current representing the “dynamic.” He then embarks on a lengthy journey to gather evidence supporting this division.

But did Arab heritage itself think in these terms? Did Abu Tammam regard himself as an embodiment of the “dynamic”? Did Al-Shafi‘i, Al-Tabari, or Al-Bukhari see themselves as guardians of the “static”? The truth is that this binary did not exist in the consciousness of these historical figures. It is a modern interpretive framework projected backward onto the past after many centuries. Once imposed, everything came to be read through its lens, until it appeared to be the only possible truth.

It is easy to divide the world into black and white. The real challenge lies in acknowledging the existence of gray areas. Arab heritage, in particular, is among the most complex and multifaceted human phenomena. The scholars whom Adonis places in the camp of the “static” were often great innovators, while many of the figures he elevates as champions of the “dynamic” were themselves deeply rooted in inherited traditions and operated within them rather than outside them.

Al-Shafi‘i represented an intellectual revolution in the principles of jurisprudence. Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad revolutionized the study of language. Sibawayh transformed Arabic grammar. Al-Bukhari introduced a groundbreaking methodology for the critical evaluation of historical reports. The theologians revolutionized rational debate, while the legal theorists transformed methods of reasoning and inference. Where, then, should these figures be placed? Are they part of the static or the dynamic? Merely posing the question exposes the fragility of the classification itself, for historical reality is far too rich to be reduced to two opposing camps.

Every intellectual project has the right to select its preferred models, but it does not have the right to claim that those models represent the whole picture. Here we encounter one of the most serious methodological shortcomings in Adonis’s work. The attentive reader notices a clear tendency to highlight confrontational, marginal, and exceptional figures as the truest expression of Arab creativity. By contrast, the mainstream current of Arab-Islamic civilization is often portrayed as a conservative, oppressive force hostile to freedom.

Yet the book never adequately answers a crucial question: if this central current was merely a force of repression, exclusion, and intellectual suffocation, how did it produce one of the greatest civilizations in human history?

How did the sciences of jurisprudence, linguistics, hadith, Qur’anic exegesis, philosophy, medicine, astronomy, mathematics, and chemistry flourish?

How did Baghdad, Damascus, Córdoba, and Cairo become global centers of learning?

How were thousands of scholarly works produced, many of which continue to be studied today?

Civilizations are not built through repression, nor do they endure for centuries through stagnation. They cannot thrive if they are fundamentally hostile to reason and creativity, as some aspects of Adonis’s discourse appear to suggest.

Perhaps the most important question is not: What did Adonis say about heritage? Rather, it is: What was he looking for within it?

A careful reading reveals that the book does more than describe the past. It seeks intellectual roots for a contemporary modernist project. It is as though the author wanders through the entirety of Arab history searching for predecessors who can legitimize his own modern cultural position. This explains why certain figures assume such extraordinary prominence in the book—not because they were necessarily the most historically influential, but because they most closely resemble the intellectual model he seeks.

In this sense, we are not reading heritage as it evolved through the centuries. We are reading it as required by a contemporary cultural project. The past becomes raw material for the production of a modern discourse rather than an independent subject of inquiry and understanding.

Not every interpretation constitutes an invention. Yet interpretation becomes invention when the text becomes subordinate to theory rather than theory serving the text. This tendency appears throughout large portions of The Static and the Dynamic. Adonis does not so much uncover a hidden current within Arab culture as reconstruct history according to a conceptual map he has already drawn.

He does not read the past from within its own historical context; he reads it from outside its time. He does not allow texts to speak for themselves so much as direct them toward a conclusion he has already chosen.

For this reason, the question that should accompany the reader throughout the journey of reading this work is not: Has Adonis convinced us of the existence of the static and the dynamic? Rather, it is: Were the static and the dynamic truly latent realities within Arab heritage? Or were they modern lenses through which Adonis viewed the past and ultimately saw a reflection of his own intellectual image?

Perhaps the greatest tribute a reader can pay to Adonis is to subject his own project to the same critical rebellion that he urged against tradition. If Adonis rebelled against heritage, then we have every right to rebel against Adonis’s reading of heritage. Indeed, this is the true test of any project that claims to champion freedom and reason.

And when we do so, we may discover that the real issue is not the existence of a “static” and a “dynamic” within Arab heritage, but rather the existence of a “static” and a “dynamic” within Adonis’s own interpretation: the static being the underlying hypothesis that never changed, and the dynamic being history itself, repeatedly reshaped to conform to it.