Fear of them. In the days of Al-Jabarti there are many examples. Most of them were a picture of deviation and deviation, due to the shallowness of the knowledge they studied.

The state of knowledge

Knowledge had reached a great degree of decline in the early part of the aforementioned century, and it was in that political decline. It took three centuries to reach that degree, and then it became stagnant. The scholars remained rigid, seeing nothing else as knowledge, until their books were limited to being a rehashing of old information and explanations of explanations of texts written two centuries or more ago, all within a limited scope confined to jurisprudence and the rest of the religious sciences. The people of Al-Azhar used to praise their knowledge and their Azhari scholars, and they strongly rejected opening the door of ijtihad and any attempt at renewal and reform. There were a few individual attempts to open the door of ijtihad and free minds from imitation, and they were met with severe opposition from those scholars, reaching the point of excommunication and attempted murder. This happened to Ibn al-Sunumi himself. We have mentioned his stance, and we will see how many scholars of Istanbul, along with the Janissaries, stood against Sultan Selim and deposed him, deeming his reforms heretical. What is narrated about Ismail, Khedive of Egypt, is that he feared for the reform of the government system and wanted to assign Al-Azhar the task of doing so. He turned to Rifa'a Al-Tahtawi and asked him to persuade the Sheikh of Al-Azhar and his scholars, as he was more capable of persuading them. Rifa'a said to him: "My lord, I have grown old, and no one has questioned my religion, so do not expose me to the excommunication of the Azhar scholars in my last days, and relieve me of this matter." This effort was made at a time when Europe had achieved many military victories. Some news of these victories reached the ears of some scholars and the public.

Abd al-Aziz al-Samadi, "The Reformers in Islam," p. 4.