Reproducing Islamic knowledge in Indonesian pesantren: Turāṯ , textual tradition, and epistemic continuity

This study examines how the Islamic scholarly tradition, Turāṯ, operates as a regulative epistemic structure within Indonesian pesantren education and how it is reproduced through textual traditions, pedagogy, and institutional regulation. Rather than treating pesantren as sites for preserving inherited knowledge, the study conceptualises them as epistemic systems that actively govern the validity, authority, and boundaries of legitimate religious reasoning. Using a qualitative comparative epistemic approach, the research investigates Pondok Pesantren Tebuireng and Madrasah Mu’allimin Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta by analysing scholarly texts, curriculum documents, classroom observations, and interviews with educators. The findings show that Turāṯ functions as an operative epistemic grammar that stabilises meaning while managing internal tensions and interpretive plurality, rather than as a static corpus of classical texts. In both institutions, the reproduction of knowledge is dominated by a figurative epistemic orientation that prioritises continuity and normative stabilisation, while operative reasoning remains limited, episodic, and weakly institutionalised. Differences in textual management and pedagogical organisation represent alternative strategies for regulating epistemic tension rather than distinct epistemic paradigms. Epistemic stability thus emerges from ongoing regulatory processes rather than from the absence of conflict or historical negotiation.