Ibn Sina (Avicenna)

Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (980-1037) is one of the foremost philosophers of the golden age of Islamic tradition that also includes al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd. He is also known as al-Sheikh al-Rais (Leader among the wise men) a title that was given to him by his students. His philosophical works were one of the main targets of al-Ghazali’s attack on philosophical influences in Islam. In the west he is also known as the “Prince of Physicians” for his famous medical text al-Qanun “Canon”. In Latin translations, his works influenced many Christian philosophers, most notably Thomas Aquinas

CORPUS (WORKS):

In Original Language (Arabic/Persian):

Attributed works (Questionably by Ibn Sina):

  • Risala fi al-Huzn (from a rare Persian manuscript) (Arabic PDF, file size: 78kb)
  • Danish Nameh Alali (Book of knowledge dedicated to Alai Dawlah) (In Persian) we are looking for it. If you have it do let me know.

In English & other languages:

Bibliography:

WORKS ON IBN SINA:

In Arabic:

In English & other languages:


Conferences:

Manuscripts:

ARTICLES:

Links and Internet Biographies, just a sample of what is out there!:

Portraits and stamps (Visuals): 

  • (Ibn Sina Gallery… Yes we see Ibn Sina everywhere here is more images from stamps, currency, TV, in stone, bronze, marble, etc. (Now 51 images in total) (LOCAL!)

Video & Audio too:

  • An Anthology of Philosophy in Persia: Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Mehdi Aminrazavi discuss philosophy in Persia a Library of Congress event. (link)
  • Science in a golden age: Al-Razi, Ibn Sina and the Canon of Medicine narrated by Jim al-Khalili – Al-Jazeera production (link)
  • Hidden Science Superstars: Ibn Sina (link)
  • Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr: Great thinkers series: Ibn Sina. (link)
  • Lynn Redgrave narrates: Avicenna & Medieval Muslim Philosophy. (link)
  • Boo Ali Sina the movie (okay its a serial)… (link)

City of his birth and work:

  • Avicenna’s city “Hamadan”. (link)

Tomb, statue, etc.

  • Avicenna mausoleum. (link)
  • Avicenna Museum. (link)
  • The Avicenna Dome. (link)
  • Ibn Sina Academy of Medieval Medicine & Sciences (link)
  • The Avicenna hotel in Istanbul. (link)
  • Avicenna Virtual Campus. (link)
  • Avicenna’s IQ. (link)
  • Avicenna, Schools, Colleges, Clinics, Pharmacies, skin cream, hotels, etc… there is so much named after him.

IJMES Transliteration system

for Arabic, Persian, and Turkish

Consonants

A = Arabic, P = Persian, OT = Ottoman Turkish, MT = Modern Turkish


A P OT MT
A P OT MT
A P OT MT
ء ʾ ʾ ʾ ز z z z z ك k k or g k or ñ k or n
ب b b b b or p ژ zh j j


or y or y
پ p p p س s s s s


or ğ or ğ
ت t t t t ش sh sh ş ş گ g g g
ث th s s s ص s ل l l l l
ج j j c c ض ż ż z م m m m m
چ ch ç ç ط t ن n n n n
ح h ظ z ه h h h1 h1
خ kh kh h h ع ʿ ʿ ʿ و w v or u v v
د d d d d غ gh gh g or ğ g or ğ ي y y y y
ذ dh z z z ف f f f f ة a2


ر r r r r ق q q k لا 3


Vowels

Arabic and Persian Ottoman and Modern Turkish
Long  ا    or ای ā
ā

و ū
ū

ي ī
ī
Doubled ّي-ِ iyy (final form ī)
iy (final form ī)

ّ و-ُ uww (final form ū)
uvv
Diphthongs وَ au or aw
ev

یَ ai or ay
ey
Short a
a or e

u
u or ü / o or ö

i
ı or  i

For Ottoman Turkish, authors may either transliterate or use the modern Turkish orthography.

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    Ibn Rushd (Averroes)

    ABU’L WALID MUHAMMAD IBN RUSHD AL-QURTUBI (Averroes)


    Ibn Rushd (Averroes) is regarded by many as the foremost Islamic philosopher. 

    Abu’l-Walid Ibn Rushd, better known as Averroes (520/1126-595/1198), stands out as a towering figure in the history of Arab/Islamic thought, as well as that of West/European philosophy and theology. In the Islamic world, he played a decisive role in the defense of Greek philosophy against the onslaughts of the Ashʿarī theologians (Mutakallimūn), led by al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111), and the rehabilitation of Aristotle works. 

    A common theme throughout his writings is that there is no incompatibility between religion and philosophy when both are properly understood. His contributions to philosophy took many forms, ranging from his detailed commentaries on Aristotle, his defense of philosophy against the attacks of those who condemned it as contrary to Islam and his construction of a form of Aristotelianism which cleansed it, as far as was possible at the time, of Neoplatonic influences.

    In the Western world, he was recognized, as early as the thirteenth century, as the Commentator of Aristotle, contributing thereby to the rediscovery of the Master, after centuries of near-total oblivion in Western Europe. That discovery was instrumental in launching Latin Scholasticism and, in due course, the European Renaissance of the fifteenth century. Notwithstanding, there has been very little attention to Averroes’ work in English, although greater interest has been shown in French, since the publication of Ernest Renan’s Averroes et l’averroisme in 1852.


    Conference:

    • In the Age of Averroes: Arabic Thought at the End of the Classical Period. An international conference to be held at the Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, London February 14 (Thursday)-16 (Saturday), 2008. Announcement

    Works:

    In Arabic:

    • Tahfut al-Tahafut the complete work Arabic :
      • Volume 1&2 (Arabic pdf) edited by S. Dunya in one file
      • A Critical Edition under the supervision of M.A. al-Jabari, Beirut 1997 (PDF)
      • the definative and critical edition is edited by M. Bouyges, Beirut.
      • Early printed Arabic edition included with Ghazali’s tahafut. (link)
      • In Latin translation (link
    • Commentaries on many of Aristotle’s works. Listing of works in print to come. Note that his commentaries come in three forms: summaries, middle commentaries, and grand commentaries. He also commented on Plato’s republic. Aristotle’s Politics was not available in Arabic. Also some of his works were lost and no longer available in Arabic but are available in Hebrew translation and transliteration.
    • Talkhiṣ Kitāb al-Jadal (Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s Topics) available from GEBO (General Egyptian Book Organization) in Arabic, edited by C. Butterworth. 
    • Faṣl al-Maqal (The decisive treatise or Faith & Reason)  
      • Edited Arabic Version (PDF)
      • Critical Edition under the supervision of M. A. al-Jabari, Beirut 1997 (PDF)
    • al-Kashf ʿan manahij al-ʿadla fi ʿaqaid al-mila (Clarifying the systems of proof in the beliefs of the nation [of Muslims]): Critical Edition under the supervision of M.A. al-Jabari (PDF) Beirut 1998.
    • al-Ḍarurī fī iṣūl al-fiqh (Summary of al-Ghazali’s Mustaṣfa) Arabic (PDF). Also in word file. Courtesy of the Poloz family, Morocco.
    • Bidyat al-Mujtahid (comparative legal book): Arabic e-text (needs proofing) source: muhadith.org  (zip file). There are many editions of this book in print as its considered a primer on comparative fiqh (law). 
      • Arabic editions in pdf facsimile, link, link
        • English Language as the Distinguished Jurist Primer in two volumes, trans. I.A.K. Nyazee and is part of the Center for Muslim Contributions to Civilization series, Qatar, published by Garnet publishing, Reading, UK. volume 1, volume 2. NB: in pdf facsimile missing prefatory material including copyright page.

    In English & other languages:

    Works about him:

    In Arabic:

    In English & other languages:

    Articles:

    1. The Philosophy of Ibn Rushd. J.d. al-ʿAlawī. 
    2. Translation and Philosophy: The Case of Averroes’ Commentaries. C.E. Butterworth. (PDF)
    3. Averroistic Trends in Jewish-Christian Polemics in the Late Middle Ages. D.J. Lasker (PDF)
    4. The Twice-Revealed Averroes. H.A. Wolfson. (PDF)
    5. Infinite and Privative Judgments in Aristotle, Averroes, and Kant. H.A. Wolfson (PDF)
    6. Revised Plan for the Publication of a Corpus Commentariorum Averrios in Aristotelem. H.A. Wolfson (PDF) Also Corrigendum.
    7. Averroes on the Metaphysics of Aristotle. I. Husik (PDF)
    8. Remarks on Averroes’ Decisive Treatise. M. Madhi (PDF)
    9. Averroes’ Doctrine of the Mind. S.C. Tornay (PDF)

    New Research published:

    • The relationship between Averroes and al-Ghazali: As it presents itself in Averroes’ Early writings, especially in his commentary on al-Ghazali’s al-Mustasfa. By F. Griffel, in Medieval Philosophy and the Classical Tradition In Islam, Judaism and Christianity Edited by J. Inglis, Curzon Press Richmond, Surrey UK (ISBN: 0-7007-1469-3) Pp 51-63. http://www.curzonpress.co.uk This paper presents new research based on newly found manuscript (al-Ḍarurī fī iṣūl al-fiqh) by Averroes. An anlysis of which presents quite a different picture then is traditionally thought of (namely the hostility towards al-Ghazali by Ibn Rushd).

    Thesis:

    • B.A. Thesis by M. Aftab. Uses some of Ibn Rushd’s Arguments.
    • IBN RUSHD’S (AVERROES’) DOCTRINE OF THE AGENT INTELLECT. EL-HAR, AHMED M., Ph.D, 8223663. 
    • THE CONFLICT OVER THE WORLD’S PRE-ETERNITY IN THE ‘TAHAFUTS’ OF AL-GHAZALI AND IBN RUSHD. MARMURA, MICHAEL ELIAS, Ph.D, 5904955. 
       

    Links:

    • Ibn Rushd biography by Encyclopedia Britannica… (e-text)
    • Basic web biography… (link)
    • Ibn Rushd, Philosopher and theologian by Yousif F. Raslan. (link)
    • Ibn Rushd and the seeds of European Renaissance. by Heba Salloum. (link)
    • from Pak Center’s website: Ibn Rushd. (link)
    • Dr. A. Zahoor’s biogoraphy of Ibn Rushd. (copied widely on the net) (link)
    • Averroes bio in Greek. (link)
    • Ibn Rushd as a Physician. (link)
    • Tapestry Project-Averroes Page by Litsa E. Williams. (link)
    • Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on Averroes. (link)
    • Ibn Rushd and the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy (link)
    • The Islamic Scholar Who Gave Us Modern Philosophy (link)
    • The Literary Criticism of Ibn Rushd (link)
    • Ibn Rushd (Averroes) (link)
    • Ibn Rushd’s criticisms of the theologians’ arguments for the existence of God (link)

    Portrait:

    City of his birth and work:

    Bibliography:

    • Digital Averroes Research Environment – works
    • A bibliography of works on and by Ibn Rushd. by M. Atiyah (Arabic PDF). Source: Islamiat al-maʿrifa.
    • Chronology of the works of Ibn Rushd by J. Kenny O. P. (link)

    Websites: 

    Video:

    The Movie:

    • Youssef Chahine’s epic drama: Destiny (Story of Ibn Rushd). Chahine’s reinterpretation of Ibn Rushd’s life. Starting Nour el-Cherif as Ibn Rushd with Mohammed Munir and Leyla Elwi. 

    Edge-wise: 

    The Qurʾān and Ḥadīth as source and inspiration of Islamic philosophy

    Seyyed Hossein Nasr

    Viewed from the point of view of the Western intellectual tradition, Islamic philosophy appears as simply Graeco-Alexandrian philosophy in Arabic dress, a philosophy whose sole role was to transmit certain important elements of the heritage of antiquity to the medieval West. If seen, however, from its own perspective and in the light of the whole of the Islamic philosophical tradition which has had a twelve-century-long continuous history and is still alive today, it becomes abundantly clear that Islamic philosophy, like everything else Islamic, is deeply rooted in the Qur’an and Hadith. Islamic philosophy is Islamic not only by virtue of the fact that it was cultivated in the Islamic world and by Muslims but because it derives its principles, inspiration and many of the questions with which it has been concerned from the sources of Islamic revelation despite the claims of its opponents to the contrary.’

    All Islamic philosophers from al-Kindi to those of our own day such as ‘Allamah Tabatabai have lived and breathed in a universe dominated by the reality of the Qur’an and the Sunnah of the Prophet of Islam. Nearly all of them have lived according to Islamic Law or the Shari ah and have prayed in the direction of Makkah every day of their adult life. The most famous among them, such as Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes), were conscious in asserting their active attachment to Islam and reacted strongly to any attacks against their faith without their being simply fideists. Ibn Sina would go to a mosque and pray when confronted with a difficult Problem,’ and Ibn Rushd was the chief qadi or judge of Cordova (Spanish Cordoba) which means that he was himself the embodiment of the authority of Islamic Law even if he were to be seen later by many in Europe as the arch-rationalist and the very symbol of the rebellion of reason against faith. The very presence of the Qur’an and the advent of its revelation was to transform radically the universe in which and about which Islamic philosophers were to philosophize, leading to a specific kind of philosophy which can be justly called “prophetic philosophy”.3

    The very reality of the Qur’an, and the revelation which made it accessible to a human community, had to be central to the concerns of anyone who sought to philosophize in the Islamic world and led to a type of philosophy in which a revealed book is accepted as the supreme source of knowledge not only of religious law but of the very nature of existence and beyond existence of the very source of existence. The prophetic consciousness which is the recipient of revelation (al-wahy) had to remain of the utmost significance for those who sought to know the nature of things. How were the ordinary human means of knowing related to such an extraordinary manner of knowing? How was human reason related to that intellect which is illuminated by the light of revelation? To understand the pertinence of such issues, it is enough to cast even a cursory glance at the works of the Islamic philosophers who almost unanimously accepted revelation as a source of ultimate knowledge.’ Such questions as the hermeneutics of the Sacred Text and theories of the intellect which usually include the reality of prophetic consciousness remain, therefore, central to over a millennium of Islamic philosophical thought.

    One might say that the reality of the Islamic revelation and participation in this reality transformed the very instrument of philosophizing in the Islamic world. The theoretical intellect (al-aql a1-no ari) of the Islamic philosophers is no longer that of Aristotle although his very terminology is translated into Arabic. The theoretical intellect, which is the epistemological instrument of all philosophical activity, is Islamicized in a subtle way that is not always detectable through only the analysis of the technical vocabulary involved. The Islamicized understanding of the intellect, however, becomes evident when one reads the discussion of the meaning of aql or intellect in a major philosopher such as Mulla Sadra when he is commenting upon certain verses of the Qur’an containing this term or upon the section on aql from the collection of Shiite Hadith of al-Kulayni entitled Usul al-kafi. The subtle change that took place from the Greek idea of the “intellect” (noun) to the Islamic view of the intellect (al-aql) can also be seen much earlier in the works of even the Islamic Peripatetics such as Ibn Sina where the Active Intellect (al-aql al fa dl) is equated with the Holy Spirit (al-ruh al-qudus).

    As is well known to students of the Islamic tradition, according to certain hadith and also the oral tradition which has been transmitted over the centuries, the Qur’an and all aspects of the Islamic tradition which are ‘rooted in it have both an outward (*dhir) and an inward (batin) dimension. Moreover, certain verses of the Qur’an themselves allude to the inner and symbolic significance of the revealed Book and its message. As for the Hadith, a body of this collection relates directly to the inner or esoteric dimension of the Islamic revelation and certain sayings of the Prophet refer directly to the esoteric levels of meaning of the Qur’an.

    Islamic philosophy is related to both the external dimension of the Qur’anic revelation or the Shari `ah and the inner truth or Vagigah which is the heart of all that is Islamic. Many of the doctors of the Divine Law or Shariah have stood opposed to Islamic philosophy while others have accepted it. In fact some of the outstanding Islamic philosophers such as Ibn Rushd, Mir Damad and Shah Waliullah of Delhi have also been authorities in the domain of the Sacred Law. The Shari ah has, however, provided mostly the social and human conditions for the philosophical activity of the Islamic philosophers. It is to the Hagigah that one has to turn for the inspiration and source of knowledge for Islamic philosophy.

    The very term al-hagigah is of the greatest significance for the understanding of the relation between Islamic philosophy and the sources of the Islamic revelation.5 Al-baqiqah means both truth and reality. It is related to God Himself, one of whose names is al-Hagq or the Truth, and is that whose discovery is the goal of all Islamic philosophy. At the same time al-baqiqah constitutes the inner reality of the Qur’an and can be reached through a hermeneutic penetration of the meaning of the Sacred Text. Throughout history, many an Islamic philosopher has identified faisafah or hikmah, the two main terms used with somewhat different meaning for Islamic philosophy, with the Haqiqah lying at the heart of the Qur’an. Much of Islamic philosophy is in fact a hermeneutic unveiling of the two grand books of revelation, the Qur’an and the cosmos, and in the Islamic intellectual universe Islamic philosophy belongs, despite some differences, to the same family as that of ma`rifah or gnosis which issues directly from the inner teachings of Islam and which became crystallized in both Sufism and certain dimensions of Shi’ism. Without this affinity there would not have been a Suhrawardi or Mulla Sadra in Persia or an Ibn Sab’in in Andalusia.

    Philosophers living as far apart as Nasir-i Khusraw (fifth/eleventh century) and Mulla Sadra (tenth/sixteenth century) have identified falsafah or hikmah explicitly with the Uagigah lying at the heart of the Qur’an whose comprehension implies the spiritual hermeneutics (ta wil) of the Sacred Text. The thirteenth/nineteenth-century Persian philosopher Jafar Kashifi goes even further and identifies the various methods for the interpretation of the Qur’an with the different schools of philosophy, correlating tafsir (the literal interpretation of the Qur’an) with the Peripatetic (mashshd’,) school, to wit (its symbolic interpretation) with the stoic (riwagi),6 and tajhim (in-depth comprehension of the Sacred Text) with the Illuminationist (ishraqs) For the main tradition of Islamic philosophy, especially as it developed in later centuries, philosophical activity was inseparable from interiorization of oneself and penetration into the inner meaning of the Qur’an and Hadith which those philosophers who were of a Shiite bent considered to be made possible through the power issuing from the cycle of initiation (dairat al-walayah) that follows the closing of the cycle of prophecy (dd’irat al-nubuwwah) with the death of the Prophet of Islam.

    The close nexus between the Qur’an and Hadith, on the one hand, and Islamic philosophy, on the other, is to be seen in the understanding of the history of philosophy. The Muslims identified Hermes, whose personality they elaborated into the “three Hermes”, also well known to the West from Islamic sources, with Idris or Enoch, the ancient prophet who belongs to the chain of prophecy confirmed by the Qur’an and Hadith.’ And they considered Idris as the origin of philosophy, bestowing upon him the title of Abu’I-I;Iukama’ (the father of philosophers). Like. Philo and certain later Greek philosophers before them and also many Renaissance philosophers in Europe, Muslims considered prophecy to be the origin of philosophy, confirming in an Islamic form the dictum of Oriental Neoplatonism that “Plato was Moses in Attic Greek”. The famous Arabic saying “philosophy issues from the niche of prophecy” (yanba`u’l-hikmah min mishkdt al-nubuwwah) has echoed through the annals of Islamic history and indicates clearly how Islamic philosophers themselves envisaged the relation between philosophy and revelation.

    It must be remembered that al-Hakim (the Wise, from the same root as hikmah) is a Name of God and also one of the names of the Qur’an. More specifically many Islamic philosophers consider Chapter 31 of the Qur’an, entitled Lugman, after the Prophet known proverbially as a hakim, to have been revealed to exalt the value of hikmah, which Islamic philosophers identify with true philosophy.

    This chapter begins with the symbolic letters alif, lam, mim followed immediately by the verse, “These are revelations of the wise scripture [al-kitab al-hakim]” (Pickthall translation), mentioning directly the term hakim. Then in verse 12 of the same chapter it is revealed, “And verily We gave Lugman wisdom [al-hikmah], saying: Give thanks unto Allah; and whosoever giveth thanks, he giveth thanks for [the good of] his soul. And whosoever refuseth –Lo! Allah is Absolute, Owner of Praise.” Clearly in this verse the gift of hikmah is considered a blessing for which one should be grateful, and this truth is further confirmed by the famous verse, “He giveth wisdom [hikmah] unto whom He will, and he unto whom wisdom is given, he truly hath received abundant good” (2: 269).

    There are certain Hadith which point to God having offered prophecy and philosophy or hikmab, and Luqman chose hikmah which must not be confused simply with medicine or other branches of traditional hikmah but refers to pure philosophy itself dealing with God and the ultimate causes of things. These traditional authorities also point to such Qur’anic verses as “And He will teach him the Book [al-kitab] and Wisdom [al-hikmah]” (3: 48) and “Behold that which I have given you of the Book and Wisdom” (3: 81): there are several where kitab and hikmah are mentioned together. They believe that this conjunction confirms the fact that what God has revealed through revelation He had also made available through hikmah, which is reached through aql, itself a microcosmic reflection of the macrocosmic reality which is the instrument of revelation.9 On the basis of this doctrine later Islamic philosophers such as Mulla Sadra developed an elaborate doctrine of the intellect in its relation to the prophetic intellect and the descent of the Divine Word, or the Qur’an, basing themselves to some extent on earlier theories going back to Ibn Sina and other Muslim Peripatetics. All of this indicates how closely traditional Islamic philosophy identified itself with revelation in general and the Qur’an in particular.

    Islamic philosophers meditated upon the content of the Qur’an as a whole as well as on particular verses. It was the verses of a polysemic nature or those with “unclear outward meaning” (mutashabihdt) to which they paid special attention. Also certain well-known verses were cited or commented upon more often than others, such as the “Light Verse” (ayat al-nur) (24: 35) commented upon already by Ibn Sina in his Ishardt and also by many later figures. Mulla Sadra was in fact to devote one of the most important philosophical commentaries ever written upon the Qur’an, entitled

    Tafrir ayat al-nur, to this verse.10

    Western studies of Islamic philosophy, which have usually regarded it as simply an extension of Greek philosophy,” have for this very reason neglected for the most part the commentaries cc Islamic philosophers upon the Quran, whereas philosophical commentaries occupy an important category along with the juridical, philological, theological (kalam) and Sufi commentaries. The first major Islamic philosopher to have written Qur’anic commentaries is Ibn Sma, many of whose commentaries have survived.” Later Suhrawardi was to comment upon diverse passages of the Sacred Text, as were a number of later philosophers such as Ibn Turkah al-Isfahani.

    The most important philosophical commentaries upon the Qur’an were, however, written by Mulla Sadra, whose Asrdr al-ayat and Mafatib alghayb13 are among the most imposing edifices of the Islamic intellectual tradition, although hardly studied in the West until now. Mulla Sadra also devoted one of his major works to commenting upon the Usu1 al-kafi of Kulayni, one of the major Shiite texts of Hadith containing the sayings of the Prophet as well as the Imams. These works taken together constitute the most imposing philosophical commentaries upon the Qur’an and Hadith in Islamic history, but such works are far from having terminated with him. The most extensive Qur’anic commentary written during the past decades, al Mizdn, was from the pen of Allamah Tabatabai, who was the reviver of the teaching of Islamic philosophy in Qom in Persia after the Second World War and a leading Islamic philosopher of this century whose philosophical works are now gradually becoming known to the outside world.

    Certain Qur’anic themes have dominated Islamic philosophy throughout its long history and especially during the later period when this philosophy becomes a veritable theosophy in the original and not deviant meaning of the term, theosophia corresponding exactly to the Arabic term al-hikmat al-ildhiyyah (or hikmat-i ilahi in Persian). The first and foremost is of course the unity of the Divine Principle and ultimately Reality as such or al-tawhid which lies at the heart of the Islamic message.The Islamic philosophers were all muwahhid or followers of tawhid and saw authentic philosophy in this light. They called Pythagoras and Plato, who had confirmed the unity of the Ultimate Principle, muwahhid while showing singular lack of interest in later forms of Greek and Roman philosophy which were sceptical or agnostic.

    How Islamic philosophers interpreted the doctrine of Unity lies at the heart of Islamic philosophy. There continued to exist a tension between the Qur’anic description of Unity and what the Muslims had learned from Greek sources, a tension which was turned into a synthesis of the highest intellectual order by such later philosophers as Suhrawardi and Mulla Sadra.’4 But in all treatments of this subject from al-Kindi to Mulla Ali Zunuzi and Haul Mulla Had! Sabziwari during the thirteenth/nineteenth century and even later, the Qur’anic doctrine of Unity, so central to Islam, has remained dominant and in a sense has determined the agenda of the Islamic philosophers.

    Complementing the Qur’anic doctrine of Unity is the explicit assertion in the Qur’an that Allah bestows being and it is this act which instantiates all that exists, as one finds for example in the verse, “But His command, when He intendeth a thing, is only that he saith unto it: Be! and it is [kun fa-yakunl ” (36:81). The concern of Islamic philosophers with ontology is directly related to the Qur’anic doctrine, as is the very terminology of Islamic philosophy in this domain where it understands by wujud more the verb or act of existence (esto) than the noun or state of existence (esse). If Ibn Sina has been called first and foremost a “philosopher of being “,15 and he developed the ontology which came to dominate much of medieval philosophy, this is not because he was simply thinking of Aristotelian theses in Arabic and Persian, but because of the Qur’anic doctrine of the One in relation to the act of existence. It was as a result of meditation upon the Qur’an in conjunction with Greek thought that

    Islamic philosophers developed the doctrine of Pure Being which stands above the chain of being and is discontinuous with it, while certain other philosophers such as a number of Isma`ilis considered God to be beyond Being and identified His act or the Qur’anic kun with Being, which is then considered as the principle of the universe.

    It is also the Qur’anic doctrine of the creating God and creatio ex nihilo, with all the different levels of meaning which nihilo possesses,”‘ that led Islamic philosophers to distinguish sharply between God as Pure Being

    and the existence of the universe, destroying that “block without fissure” which constituted Aristotelian ontology. In Islam the universe is always contingent (mumkin al-wujid) while God is necessary (wajib al-wujud), to use the well-known distinction of Ibn Sina.’? No Islamic philosopher has ever posited an existential continuity between the existence of creatures and the Being of God, and this radical revolution in the understanding of Aristotelian ontology has its source in the Islamic doctrine of God and creation as asserted in the Qur’an and Hadith.’s Moreover, this influence is paramount not only in the case of those who asserted the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo in its ordinary theological sense, but also for those such as al-Faribi and Ibn Sina who were in favour of the theory of emanation but who none the less never negated the fundamental distinction between the wujud (existence) of the world and that of God.

    As for the whole question of “newness” or “eternity” of the world, or huduth and gidam, which has occupied Islamic thinkers for the past twelve centuries and which is related to the question of the contingency of the world vis-k-vis the Divine Principle, it is inconceivable without the teachings of the Qur’an and Hadith. It is of course a fact that before the rise of Islam Christian theologians and philosophers such as John Philoponus had written on this issue and that Muslims had known some of these writings, especially the treatise of Philoponus against the thesis of the eternity of the world. But had it not been for the Qur’anic teachings concerning creation, such Christian writings would have played an altogether different role in Islamic thought. Muslims were interested in the arguments of a Philoponus precisely because of their own concern with the question of huduth and qidam, created by the tension between the teachings of the Qur’an and the Hadith, on the one hand, and the Greek notion of the non-temporal relation between the world and its Divine Origin, on the other.

    Another issue of great concern to Islamic philosophers from al-Kindi to Mulla Sadra, and those who followed him, is God’s knowledge of the world. The major Islamic philosophers, such as al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Suhrawardi, Ibn Rushd and Mulla Sadra, have presented different views on the subject while, as with the question of huduth and qidam, they have been constantly criticized and attacked by the mutakallimun, especially over the question of God’s knowledge of particulars.’ Now, such an issue entered Islamic philosophy directly from the Qur’anic emphasis upon God’s knowledge of all things as asserted in numerous verses such as, “And not an atom’s weight in the earth or the sky escapeth your Lord, nor what is less than that or greater than that, but it is written in a clear Book” (10: 62). It was precisely this Islamic insistence upon Divine Omniscience that placed the issue of God’s knowledge of the world at the centre of the concern of Islamic philosophers and caused Islamic philosophy, like its Jewish and Christian counterparts, to develop extensive philosophical theories totally absent from the philosophical perspective of Graeco-Alexandrian antiquity. In this context the Islamic doctrine of “divine science” (al-ilm al-laduni) is of central significance for both falsafah and theoretical Sufism or alma`rzfah.

    This issue is also closely allied to the philosophical significance of revelation (al-wahy) itself. Earlier Islamic philosophers such as Ibn Sina sought to develop a theory by drawing to some extent, but not exclusively, on Greek theories of the intellect and the faculties of the soul.20 Later Islamic philosophers continued their concern for this issue and sought to explain in a philosophical manner the possibility of the descent of the truth and access to the truth by knowledge based on certitude but derived from sources other than the senses, reason and even the inner intellect. They, however, pointed to the correspondence between the inner intellect and that objective manifestation of the Universal Intellect or Logos which is revelation. While still using certain concepts of Greek origin, the later Islamic philosophers such as Mulla Sadra drew heavily from the Qur’an and Hadith on this issue.

    Turning to the field of cosmology, again one can detect the constant presence of Qur’anic themes and certain Hadith. It is enough to meditate upon the commentaries made upon the “Light Verse” and “Throne Verse” and the use of such explicitly Qur’anic symbols and images as the Throne (al arch), the Pedestal (al-kursi), the light of the heavens and earth (nur al-samdwat wa’l-ard), the niche (mishkat) and so many other Qur’anic terms to realize the significance of the Qur’an and Hadith in the formulation of cosmology as dealt with in the Islamic philosophical tradition .21 Nor must one forget the cosmological significance of the nocturnal ascent of the Prophet (al-mi raj) which so many Islamic philosophers have treated directly, starting with Ibn Sm!. This central episode in the life of the Prophet, with its numerous levels of meaning, was not only of great interest to the Sufis but also drew the attention of numerous philosophers to its description as contained in certain verses of the Qur’an and Hadith. Some philosophers also turned their attention to other episodes with a cosmological significance in the life of the Prophet such as the “cleaving of the moon” (shagq al-qamar) about which the ninth/fifteenth-century Persian philosopher Ibn Turkah Isfahani wrote a separate treatise.22

    In no branch of Islamic philosophy, however, is the influence of the Qur’an and Hadith more evident than in eschatology, the very understanding of which in the Abrahamic universe was alien to the philosophical world of antiquity. Such concepts as divine intervention to mark the end of history, bodily resurrection, the various eschatological events, the Final Judgment, and the posthumous states as understood by Islam or for that matter Christianity were alien to ancient philosophy whereas they are described explicitly in the Qur’an and Hadith as well as of course in the Bible and other Jewish and Christian religious sources.

    The Islamic philosophers were fully aware of these crucial ideas in their philosophizing, but the earlier ones were unable to provide philosophical proofs for Islamic doctrines which many confessed to accept on the basis of faith but could not demonstrate within the context of Peripatetic philosophy. We see such a situation in the case of Ibn Sina who in several works, including the Shifa, confesses that he cannot prove bodily resurrection but accepts it on faith. This question was in fact one of the three main points, along with the acceptance of qidam and the inability of the philosophers to demonstrate God’s knowledge of particulars, for which al-Ghazzali took Ibn Sina to task and accused him of kuft or infidelity. It remained for Mulla Sadra several centuries later to demonstrate the reality of bodily resurrection through the principles of the “transcendent theosophy” (al-hikmat al-muta dliyah) and to take both Ibn Sina and al-Ghazzali to task for the inadequacy of their treatment of the subject 23 The most extensive philosophical treatment of eschatology (al-ma ad) in all its dimensions is in fact to be found in the Asfdr of Mulla Sadra.

    It is sufficient to examine this work or his other treatises on the subject such as his al-Mabda’ wa l ma ad or al-Hikmat al arshiyyah to realize the complete reliance of the author upon the Qur’an and Hadith. His development of the philosophical meaning of ma dd is in reality basically a hermeneutics of Islamic religious sources, primary among them the Qur’an and Hadith. Nor is this fact true only of Mulla Sadra. One can see the same relation between philosophy and the Islamic revelation in the writings of Mulla Muhsin Fayd Kashini, Shah Waliullah of Delhi, Mulla Abd Allah Zunuzi, Hajji Mulla Hath Sabziwari and many later Islamic philosophers writing on various aspects of al-ma ad. Again, although as far as the question of eschatology is concerned, the reliance on the Qur’an and Hadith is greater during the later period, as is to be seen already in Ibn Sina who dealt with it in both his encyclopedic works and in individual treatises dealing directly with the subject, such as his own al-Mabda’ wa’l-maid. It is noteworthy in this context that he entitled one of his most famous treatises on eschatology al-Risalat al-adhawiyyah, drawing from the Islamic religious term for the Day of Judgment.

    In meditating upon the history of Islamic philosophy in its relation to the Islamic revelation, one detects a movement toward ever closer association of philosophy with the Qur’an and Hadith as falsafah became transformed into al-hikmatal-ilahiyyah. Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, although drawing so many themes from Qur’anic sources, hardly ever quoted the Qur’an directly in their philosophical works. By the time we come to Suhrawardi in the sixth/twelfth century, there are present within his purely philosophical works citations of the Qur’an and Hadith. Four centuries later the Safavid philosophers wrote philosophical works in the form of commentaries on the text of the Qur’an or on certain of the Hadith. This trend continued in later centuries not only in Persia but also in India and the Ottoman world including Iraq.

    As far as Persia is concerned, as philosophy became integrated into the Shiite intellectual world from the seventh/thirteenth century onwards, the sayings of the Shiite Imams began to play an ever greater role, complementing the Prophetic Hadith. This is especially true of the sayings of Imams Muhammad al-Bagir, Jafar al-Sadiq and Musa al-Kizim, the fifth, sixth and seventh Imams of Twelve-Imam Shi’ism, whose sayings are at the origin of many of the issues discussed by later Islamic philosophers.24 It is sufficient to study the monumental but uncompleted Sharh Usfd alkafi of Mulla Sadra to realize the philosophical fecundity of many of the sayings of the Imams and their role in later philosophical meditation and deliberation.

    The Qur’an and Hadith, along with the sayings of the Imams, which are in a sense the extension of Hadith in the Shiite world, have provided over the centuries the framework and matrix for Islamic philosophy and created the intellectual and social climate within which Islamic philosophers have philosophized. Moreoever, they have presented a knowledge of the origin, the nature of things, humanity and its final ends and history upon which the Islamic philosophers have meditated and from which they have drawn over the ages. They have also provided a language of discourse which Islamic philosophers have shared with the rest of the Islamic community.25 Without the Qur’anic revelation, there would of course have been no Islamic civilization, but it is important to realize that there would also have been no Islamic philosophy. Philosophical activity in the Islamic world is not simply a regurgitation of GraecoAlexandrian philosophy in Arabic, as claimed by many Western scholars along with some of their Islamic followers, a philosophy which grew despite the presence of the Qur’an and ,Hadith. On the contrary, Islamic philosophy is what it is precisely because’ it flowered in a universe whose contours are determined by the Qur’anic revelation.

    As asserted at the beginning of this chapter, Islamic philosophy is essentially “prophetic philosophy” based on the hermeneutics of a Sacred Text which is the result of a revelation that is inalienably linked to the

    microcosmic intellect and which alone is able to actualize the dormant possibilities of the intellect within us. Islamic philosophy, as understood from within that tradition, is also an unveiling of the inner meaning of the Sacred Text, a means of access to that Hagigah which lies hidden within the inner dimension of the Qur’an. Islamic philosophy deals with the One or Pure Being, and universal existence and all the grades of the universal hierarchy. It deals with man and his entelechy, with the cosmos and the final return of all things to God. This interpretation of existence is none other than penetration into the inner meaning of the Qur’an which “is” existence itself, the Book whose meditation provides the key for the understanding of those objective and subjective orders of existence with which the Islamic philosopher has been concerned over the ages.

    A deeper study of Islamic philosophy over its twelve-hundred-year history will reveal the role of the Qur’an and Hadith in the formulation, exposition and problematics of this major philosophical tradition. In the same way that all of the Islamic philosophers from al-Kindi onwards knew the Qur’an and Hadith and lived with them, Islamic philosophy has manifested over the centuries its inner link with the revealed sources of Islam, a link which has become even more manifest as the centuries have unfolded, for Islamic philosophy is essentially a philosophical hermeneutics of the Sacred Text while making use of the rich philosophical heritage of antiquity. That is why, far from being a transitory and foreign phase in the history of Islamic thought, Islamic philosophy has remained over the centuries and to this day one of the major intellectual perspectives in Islamic civilization with its roots sunk deeply, like everything else Islamic, in the Qur’an and Hadith.

    NOTES

    1 Within the Islamic world itself scholars of kalam and certain others who have opposed Islamic philosophy over the ages have claimed that it was merely Greek philosophy to which they opposed philosophy or wisdom derived from faith (al-bikmat alyunaniyyah versusal-hikmat al-imdniyyah). Some contemporary Muslim scholars, writing in English, oppose Muslim to Islamic, considering Muslim to mean whatever is practised or created by Muslims and Islamic that which is derived directly from the Islamic revelation. Many such scholars, who hail mostly from Pakistan and India, insist on calling Islamic philosophy Muslim philosophy, as can be seen in the title of the well-known work edited by M. M. Sharif, A History of Muslim Philosophy. If one looks more deeply into the nature of Islamic philosophy from the traditional Islamic point of view and takes into consideration its whole history, however, one will see that this philosophy is at once Muslim and Islamic according to the above-given definitions of these terms.

    2 When accused on a certain occasion of infidelity, Ibn Sina responded in a famous Persian quatrain: “It is not so easy and trifling to call me a heretic; 1 No faith in religion is firmer than mine. / I am a unique person in the whole world and if I am a heretic; I Then there is not a single Muslim anywhere in the world.” Trans. by S. H. Barani in his “Ibn Sina and Alberuni”, in Avicenna Commemoration Volume (Calcutta, 1956): 8 (with certain modifications by S. H. Nasr). 

    3. This term was first used by H. Corbin and myself and appears in Corbin, with the collaboration of S. H. Nasr and 0. Yahya, Histoire de la philosophie islamique (Paris, 1964).

    4 We say “almost” because there are one or two figures such as Muhammad ibn Zakariyya’ al-Razi who rejected the necessity of prophecy. Even in his case, however, there is a rejection of the necessity of revelation in order to gain ultimate knowledge and not the negation of the existence of revelation. See Corbin, op. cit.: 26ff.

    5. The term riwagi used by later Islamic philosophers must not, however, be confused with the Roman Stoics, although it means literally stoic (riwaq in Arabic coming from Pahlavi and meaning stoa). Corbin, op. cit.: 24.

    6. On the Islamic figure of Hermes and Hermetic writings in the Islamic world see L. Massignon, “Inventaire de la litterature hermetique arabe”, appendix 3 in A. J. Festugiere and A. D. Nock, La Revelation d’Herm2s Trismegiste, 4 vols (Paris, 1954-60); S. H. Nasr, Islamic Life and Thought (Albany, 1981): 102-19; F. Sezgin, Geschichte der arabischen Schrifttums, 4 (Leiden, 1971).

    9 See for example the introduction by one of the leading contemporary traditional philosophers of Persia, Abul-Hasan Sha’rani, to Sabziwari, Asrdr al-hikam (Tehran, 1960): 3.

    10 Edited with introduction and Persian translation by M. Khwajawi (Tehran, 1983).

    11 The writings of H. Corbin are a notable exception.

    12 See M. Abdul Haq, “Ibn Sima’s Interpretation of the Qur’an”, The Islamic Quarterly, 32(1) (1988): 46-56.

    13 This monumental work has been edited in Arabic and also translated into Persian by M. Khwajawi who has printed all of Mulla Sadra’s Qur’anic commentaries in recent years. It is interesting to note that the Persian translation entitled Tarjuma yi mafanh al-ghayb (Tehran, 1979) includes a long study on the rise of philosophy and its various schools by Ayatullah Abidi Shahrridi, who discusses the rapport between Islamic philosophy and the Qur’an in the context of traditional Islamic thought.

    14 See I. Netton, Allah Transcendent (London, 1989), which deals with this tension but mixes his account with certain categories of modern European philosophy not suitable for the subject.

    15 See E. Gilson, Avicenne et le point de depart de Duns Scot, Extrait des archives d’histoire doctrinale et litteraire du Moyen Age (Paris, 1927); and A. M. Goichon, “L’Unite de la pensEe avicennienne”, Archives Internationale dHsstoire des Sciences, 20-1 (1952): 290ff.

    16 See D. Burrell and B. McGinn (eds), God and Creation (Notre Dame, 1990): 246ff. For the more esoteric meaning of ex nihilo in Islam see L. Schaya, La Creation en Dieu (Paris, 1983), especially chapter 6: 90ff.

    17 This has been treated more amply in Chapter 16 below on Ibn Sina See also Nasr, An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines (Albany, 1993), chapter 12.

    18 See T. Izutsu, The Concept and Reality of Existence (Tokyo, 1971).

    19 The criticisms by al-Ghazzali and Imam Fakhr al-Din al-Razi of this issue, as that of huduth and qidam, are well known and are treated below. Less is known, however, of the criticism of other theologians who kept criticizing the philosophers for their denial of the possibility of God knowing particulars rather than just universals.

    20 See F. Rahman, Prophecy in Islam, Philosophy and Orthodoxy (London, 1958), where some of these theories are described and analysed clearly, but with an over-emphasis on the Greek factor and downplaying of the role of the Islamic view of revelation itself.

    21 On this issue see Nasr, An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines,and Nasr, “Islamic Cosmology”, in Islamic Civilization, 4, ed. A. Y al-Hassan et al (Paris, forthcoming).

    22 See H. Corbin, En Islam iranien, 3 (Paris, 1971): 233ff.

    23 Mulla Sadra dealt with this debate in several of his works especially in his Glosses upon the Theosophy of the Orient of Light (of Suhrawardi) (Hashiyah ‘ala hikmat al-ishrdq). See H. Corbin, “Le theme de la resurrection chez Mulla Sadra Shirazi (1050/1640) commentateur de Sohrawardi (587/1191)”, in Studies in Mysticism and Religion – Presented to Gershom G. Scholem (Jerusalem, 1967): 71-118.

    24 The late Allamah Tabataba’i, one of the leading traditional philosophers of contemporary Persia, once made a study of the number of philosophical problems dealt with by early and later Islamic philosophers. He once told us that, according to his study, there were over two hundred philosophical issues treated by the early Islamic philosophers and over six hundred by Mulla Sadra and his followers. Although he admitted that this approach was somewhat excessively quantitative, it was an indication of the extent of expansion of the fields of interest of Islamic philosophy, an expansion which he attributed almost completely to the influence of the metaphysical and philosophical utterances of the Shi’ite Imams which became of ever greater concern to many Islamic philosophers, both Shi’ite and Sunni, from the time of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi onwards.

    25 The Qur’an and Hadith have also influenced directly and deeply the formation of the Islamic philosophical vocabulary in Arabic, an issue with which we have not been able to deal in this chapter.

    The meaning and concept of philosophy in Islam

    Seyyed Hossein Nasr

    In the light of the Qur’an and Hadith in both of which the term hikmah has been used,1 Muslim authorities belonging to different schools of thought have sought over the ages to define the meaning of hikmah as well as falsafah, a term which entered Arabic through the Greek translations of the second/eighth and third/ninth centuries. On the one hand what is called philosophy in English must be sought in the context of Islamic civilization not only in the various schools of Islamic philosophy but also in schools bearing other names, especially kalam, maʿrifah, uṣūl al-fiqh as well as the awa’il sciences, not to speak of such subjects as grammar and history which developed particular branches of philosophy. On the other hand each school of thought sought to define what is meant by ḥikmah or falsafah according to its own perspective and this question has remained an important concern of various schools of Islamic thought especially as far as the schools of Islamic philosophy are concerned.

    During Islamic history, the terms used for Islamic philosophy as well as the debates between the philosophers, the theologians and sometimes the Sufis as to the meaning of these terms varied to some extent from one period to another but not completely. Ḥikmah and falsafah continued to be used while such terms as al-ḥikmat al-ilahiyyah and al-ḥikmat al-mutaʿaliyah gained new meaning and usage in later centuries of Islamic history, especially in the school of Mulla Sadra. The term over which there was the greatest debate was ḥikmah, which was claimed by the Sufis and mutakallimun as well as the philosophers, all appealing to such Ḥadīth as “The acquisition of ḥikmah is incumbent upon you and the good resides in ḥikmah.2 Some Sufis such as Tirmidhi were called ḥakīm and Ibn ʿArabī refers to the wisdom which has been unveiled through each manifestation of the logos as hikmah as seen in the very title of his masterpiece Fusus al-hikam,3 while many mutakallimun such as Fakhr al-Din al-Razi claimed that kalam and not falsafah was hikmah,4 Ibn Khaldun confirming this view in calling the later kalām (kalām al-mutaʾakhkhirin) philosophy or ḥikmah.5

    Our discussion in this chapter is concerned, however, primarily with the Islamic philosophers’ understanding of the definition and meaning of the concept of philosophy and the terms hikmah and falsafah.6 This understanding includes of course what the Greeks had comprehended by the term philosophia and many of the definitions from Greek sources which were to find their way into Arabic sometimes with only slight modifications. Some of the definitions of Greek origin most common among Islamic philosophers are as follows:7

    1. Philosophy (al-falsafa) is the knowledge of all existing things qua existents (ashyaʾ al-mawjuda bi ma hiya mawjuda).8
    2. Philosophy is knowledge of divine and human matters. 
    3. Philosophy is taking refuge in death, that is, love of death. 
    4. Philosophy is becoming God-like to the extent of human ability. 
    5. It [philosophy] is the art (sināʾa) of arts and the science (ʿilm) of sciences.
    6. Philosophy is predilection for hikmah.

    The Islamic philosophers meditated upon these definitions of falsafah which they inherited from ancient sources and which they identified with the Qur’anic term hikmah believing the origin of hikmah to be divine. The first of the Islamic philosophers, Abu Ya`qub al-Kindi wrote in his On First Philosophy, “Philosophy is the knowledge of the reality of things within people’s possibility, because the philosopher’s end in theoretical knowledge is to gain truth and in practical knowledge to behave in accordance with truth.”9 Al-Farabi, while accepting this definition, added the distinction between philosophy based on certainty (al-yaqiniyyah) hence demonstration and philosophy based on opinion (al-maznunah),10 hence dialectic and sophistry, and insisted that philosophy was the mother of the sciences and dealt with everything that exists.11

    Ibn Sina again accepted these earlier definitions while making certain precisions of his own. In his ʿUyun al-ḥikmah he says “Al-hikmah [which he uses as being the same as philosophy] is the perfection of the human soul through conceptualization [taṣawwur] of things and judgment [tasdiq] of theoretical and practical realities to the measure of human ability.”12 But, he went further in later life to distinguish between Peripatetic philosophy and what he called “Oriental philosophy” (al-ḥikmat al-mashriqiyah) which was not based on ratiocination alone but included realized knowledge and which set the stage for the ḥikmat al-ishraq of Suhrawardi.13 Ibn Sina’s foremost student Bahmanyar meanwhile identified falsafah closely with the study of existents as Ibn Sina had done in his Peripatetic works such as the Shifa’ repeating the Aristotelian dictum that philosophy is the study of existents qua existents. Bahmanyar wrote in the introduction to his Taḥṣīl, “The aim of the philosophical sciences is knowledge of existents.” 14

    Isma’ili and Hermetico-Pythagorean thought, which paralleled in development the better-known Peripatetic philosophy but with a different philosophical perspective, nevertheless gave definitions of philosophy not far removed from those of the Peripatetics, emphasizing perhaps even more the relation between the theoretical aspect of philosophy and its practical dimension, between thinking philosophically and leading a virtuous life. This nexus, which is to be seen in all schools of earlier Islamic philosophy, became even more evident from Suhrawardi onward and the hakim came to be seen throughout Islamic society not as someone who could only discuss mental concepts in a clever manner but as one who also lived according to the wisdom which he knew theoretically. The modern Western idea of the philosopher never developed in the Islamic world and the ideal stated by the Ikhwan al-Safa’ who lived in the fourth/ tenth century and who were contemporary with Ibn Sina was to echo ever more loudly over the ages wherever Islamic philosophy was cultivated. The Ikhwan wrote, “The beginning of philosophy (falsafah) is the love of the sciences, its middle knowledge of the realities of existents to the measure of human ability and its end words and deeds in accordance with knowledge.”15

    With Suhrawardi we enter not only a new period but also another realm of Islamic philosophy. The founder of a new intellectual perspective in Islam, Suhrawardi used the term hikmat al-ishraq rather than falsafat al-ishraq for both the title of his philosophical masterpiece and the school which he inaugurated. The ardent student of Suhrawardi and the translator of Hikmat al-ishraq into French, Henry Corbin, employed the term theosophie rather than philosophy to translate into French the term hikmah as understood by Suhrawardi and later sages such as Mulla Sadra, and we have also rendered al-hikmat al-muta aliyah of Mulla Sadra into English as “transcendent theosophy”t6 and have sympathy for Corbin’s translation of the term. There is of course the partly justified argument that in recent times the term “theosophy” has gained pejorative connotations in European languages, especially English, and has become associated with occultism and pseudo-esoterism. And yet the term

    philosophy also suffers from limitations imposed upon it by those who have practised it during the past few centuries. If Hobbes, Hume and Ayer are philosophers, then those whom Suhrawardi calls hukama’ are not philosophers and vice versa. The narrowing of the meaning of philosophy, the divorce between philosophy and spiritual practice in the West and especially the reduction of philosophy to either rationalism or .empiricism necessitate making a distinction between the meaning given to hikmah by a Suhrawardi or Mulla Sadra and the purely mental activity called philosophy in certain circles in* the West today. The use of the term theosophy to render this later understanding of the term hikmah is based on the older and time-honoured meaning of this term in European intellectual history as associated with such figures as Jakob Bohme and not as the term became used in the late thirteenth/nineteenth century by some British occultists. Be that as it may, it is important to emphasize the understanding that Suhrawardi and all later Islamic philosophers have of hikmah as primarily al-hikmat al-ilāhiyyah (literally divine wisdom or theosophia) which must be realized within one’s whole being and not only mentally. Suhrawardi saw this hikmah as being present also in ancient Greece before the advent of Aristotelian rationalism and identifies hikmah with coming out of one’s body and ascending to the world of lights, as did Plato.17 Similar ideas are to be found throughout his works, and he insisted that the highest level of hikmah requires both the perfection of the theoretical faculty and the purification of the soul.’8

    With Mulla Sadra, one finds not only a synthesis of various earlier schools of Islamic thought but also a synthesis of the earlier views concerning the meaning of the term and concept philosophy. At the beginning of the Asfar he writes, repeating verbatim and summarizing some of the earlier definitions, “falsafah is the perfecting of the human soul to the extent of human ability through the knowledge of the essential reality of things as they are in themselves and through judgment concerning their existence established upon demonstration and not derived from opinion or through imitation”. 19 And in al-Shawdhid al-rububiyyah he adds, “[through bikmah] man becomes an intelligible world resembling the objective world and similar to the order of universal existence” 2°

    In the first book of the Air dealing with being, Mulla Sadra discusses extensively the various definitions of hikmah, emphasizing not only theoretical knowledge and “becoming an intelligible world reflecting the objective intelligible world” but also detachment from passions and purification of the soul from its material defilements or what the Islamic philosophers call tajarrud or catharsis.21 Mull! Sadra accepts the meaning of hikmah as understood by Suhrawardi and then expands the meaning of falsafah to include the dimension of illumination and realization implied by the ishrdgi and also Sufi understanding of the term. For him as for his contemporaries, as well as most of his successors, falsafah or philosophy was seen as the supreme science of ultimately divine origin, derived from “the niche of prophecy” and the hukama’ as the most perfect of human beings standing in rank only below the prophets and Imams.22

    This conception of philosophy as dealing with the discovering of the truth concerning the nature of things and combining mental knowledge with the purification and perfection of one’s being has lasted to this day wherever the tradition of Islamic philosophy has continued and is in fact embodied in the very being of the most eminent representatives of the Islamic philosophical tradition to this day. Such fourteenth/twentieth century masters as Mirth Ahmad Ashtiyani, the author of Ndmayi rahbardn-i dmuzish-i kitdb-i takwin (“Treatise of the Guides to the Teaching of the Book of Creation”); Sayyid Muhammad Kazim `Ansar, author of many treatises including Wahdat al-wujud (“The Transcendent Unity of Being”); Mahdi Ilahi Qumsha’i, author of Hikmat-i ildhi khwdss wa amm (“Philosophy/Theosophy – General and Particular”) and Allamah Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Tabataba’i, author of numerous treatises especially Usul-i falsafa -yi ri dlixm (“Principles of the Philosophy of Realism”) all wrote of the definition of philosophy along lines mentioned above and lived accordingly. Both their works and their lives were testimony not only to over a millennium of concern by Islamic philosophers as to the meaning of the concept and the term philosophy but also to the significance of the Islamic definition of philosophy as that reality which transforms both the mind and the soul and which is ultimately never separated from spiritual purity and ultimately sanctity that the .very term hikmah implies in the Islamic context.

    NOTES

    1 For the use of ḥikmah in the Qur’an and Hadith see S. H. Nasr, “The Qur’an and, Ḥadīth as Source and Inspiration of Islamic Philosophy”, Chapter 2 below.

    2 Alayka bil ḥikmah fa inna’l–khayr fil -ḥikmah.

    3 See Muhyi al-Din Ibn Arabi, The Wisdom of the Prophets, trans. T. Burckhardt, trans. from French A. Culme-Seymour (Salisbury, 1975), pp. 1-3 of Burckhardt’s introduction; and M. Chodkiewicz, Seal of the Saints – Prophethood and Sainthood in the Doctrine of Ibn Arabi, trans. S. L. Sherrard (Cambridge, 1993): 47-8.

    4 See S. H. Nasr, “Fakhr al-Din Razi”, in M. M. Sharif (ed.), A History of Muslim Philosophy, 1 (Wiesbaden, 1963): 645-8.

    5 ‘Abd al-Razzaq Lahiji, the eleventh/seventeenth-century student of Mulla Sadra who was however more of a theologian than a philosopher, writes in his kalami text Gawhar-murād, “Since it has become known that in acquiring the divine sciences and other intellectual matters the intellect has complete independence, and does not need to rely in these matters upon the Shari `ah and the proof of certain principles concerning the essence of beings in such a way as to be in accord with the objective world through intellectual demonstrations and reasoning … the path of the ḥukamā, the science acquired through this means is called in the vocabulary of scholars hikmah. And of necessity it will be in accord with the true Shari `ah for the truth of the Shariʿah is realized objectively through intellectual demonstration” (Gawhar-murad (Tehran, 1377): 17-18). Although speaking as a theologian, Lahiji is admitting in this text that hikmab should be used for the intellectual activity of the philosophers and not the mutakallimun, demonstrating the shift in position in the understanding of this term since the time of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi. There is considerable secondary material on this subject in Arabic as well as in European languages. See Abd al-Halim Maimed, al- Tafkir al fahaft f:l islAm (Cairo, 1964): 163-71; Mustafa Abd al-Raziq, Tamhid li-ta’rikh al falsafat alislamiyyah (Cairo, 1959), chapter 3: 48ff.; G. C. Anawati, “Philosophie medievale en terre d’Islam”, Melanges de l’Institut Dominicain d’Etudes Orientales du Caire, 5 (1958): 175-236; and S. H. Nasr, “The Meaning and Role of ‘Philosophy’ in Islam”, Studia Islamica, 37 (1973): 57-80. 

    7. See Christel Hein, Definition and Einleitung der Philosophie – Von der spdtantiken Einleitungsliteratur zur arabischen Enzyklopddie (Bern and New York, 1985): 86.

    8 This is repeated with only a small alteration by al-Farabi in his al Jamʿ bayn raʾay al-hakimayn. According to Ibn Abi ʿUsaybiah, al-Farabi even wrote a treatise entitled Concerning the Word Philosophy’ (Kalam fr ism al falsafah) although some have doubted that this was an independent work. 

    9. See S. Strouma, Al-Farabi and Maimonides on the Christian Philosophical Tradition”, Der Islam, 68(2) (1991): 264; and Aristoteles – Werk und Wirkung, 2, ed. J. Weisner (Berlin, 1987). Quoted in Ahmed Fouad El-Ehwany, “Al-Kindi”, in M. M. Sharif (ed.), A History of Muslim Philosophy, 1 (1963): 424.

    10 Kitab al-Huruf, ed. M. Mahdi (Beirut, 1969): 153-7.

    11 KitAb jam’ bayn ra ay al-hakimayn (Hyderabad, 1968): 36-7.

    12 Fontes sapientiae (Uyun al-hikmah), ed. Abdurrahman Badawi (Cairo, 1954):16.

    13 On Ibn Sina’s “Oriental philosophy” see Chapter 17 below.

    14 Kitab al-Taʾwil ed. M. Mutahhari (Tehran, 1970): 3.

    15 Rasail 1 (Cairo, 1928): 23.

    16 See S. H. Nasr, The Transcendent Theosophy of Sadr al-Din Shirdzi (Tehran, 1977).

    17 See his Tawihdi, in H. Corbin (ed.) Oeuvres philosophiques et mystiques, 1 (Tehran, 1976): 112-13.

    18 See S. H. Nasr, Three Muslim Sages (Delmar, 1975): 63-4.

    19 Al Asfār al-arbaʿah, ed. Allamah Tabataba i (Tehran, 1967): 20.

    20 Mulla Sadra, al-Shawāhid al-rububiyyah, ed. S. J. Ashtiyani (Mashhad, 1967).

    21 See the Introduction of the Asfar.

    22 Muhammad Khwajawi, Lawamiʿ al-ʿarifrn (Tehran, 1987): 18ff., where many quotations from the different works of Mulla Sadra on the relation between authentic hikmah and revelation and the spiritual power and sanctity of the Imams (walāyah) are cited.

    Ibn Taymiyya

    Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328) is one of the most influential Muslim Theologian 

    Full Name:

    • Laqab ( Nick Name): Shayakh al-Islam
    • Kunya (Prefix): Abū al-ʿAbbās.
    • First Name: Taqī al-Dīn Ahmad b. Abd al-Ḥalīm b. Muḥammad b. Abd al-Salām (Majd al-Dīn).
    • Family Name: Ibn Taymiyya.
    • Widely known as: Sheyakh al-Islam.
    • City Named after: al-Ḥarānī (from Kurdish Ḥarrān in Northern Iraq-Western Syria).

    Biography:

    Original Source Biography:

    • Ibn Taymiyya: Obituary from Ibn Khathir’s history book: al-Bidāyya wal-nihāyya. (link -in searchable Arabic text)- and in pdf facsimile of the print edition (link)

    Additional Source Biography:

    • Ibn-Taymiyya: Biography From Routledge 
    • Ibn Taymiyya: had interesting opinions on philosophy and al-Ghazali too. (English-html)
    • Ibn Taymiyya: by Abul Hasan al-Nadawi. Beirut: Dar al-Qalam, 2002; in pdf facsimile of the print edition (link)

    Standard web Biographies:

    • A better than average web biography. by J. Pavlin. (link in English)
    • A brief biography – Including a list of his works (link -in English)
    • Who was Ibn Taymiyya ? by Aisha bint Muhammad (link -in English)
    • His role in the war against the Mongols. (link -in English)
    • A brief biography -includes hyperlinks. (link -in English)
    • Yet another Bio. (link -in English)

    His Works:Ibn Taymiyya was a very prolific writer even when he was in prison he maintained the pace of his prodigious output. His works can be divided up into two major categories. One Fatāway (rulings) and the other is books. There are many printed books that gathered up from his Fatāwa which can create difficulty for scholars studying his works. 

    Works about his thought:

    New Publications:

    Shameless Plug: Prof. Yahya Michot who has kindly send us many of translations of Ibn Taymiyya’s fatway has just published 2 new volumes of translations. I urge you to buy them without hesitation right now just because they are in French and include excellent introductory essays. The essays cover the effect of the thought of Ibn Taymiyya on the current Islamic Movements through the writings of its major proponents. I do not want to mention any names!

    • Ibn Taymiyya. Fetwa de Mardin (See pdf for Table des matières) Un ouvrage de XII & 176p. (13X19) ISBN: 2841612554 (12€) La Librairie de l’Orient (El-Bouraq éditions) Site web: www.orient-lib.com
    • Ibn Taymiyya. Un Dieu Hésitant? See pdf for Table des matières) Un ouvrage de VI & 37p. (14X21) ISBN: 2841612554 (4€) La Librairie de l’Orient (El-Bouraq éditions) Site web: www.orient-lib.com.
    • Ibn Taymiyya. Le haschich et l’extase. Textes traduits de l’arabe, présentés et annotés, « Fetwas d’Ibn Taymiyya, 3 », Paris, Albouraq, 2001, VIII & 200 p. – ISBN 2-84161-174-4.
    • Ibn Taymiyya. Mécréance, tolérance et pardon. Textes traduits de l’arabe, présentés et annotés, « Écrits spirituels d’Ibn Taymiyya, 2 », Paris, Albouraq. À paraître en 1026/2005.
    • Ibn Sînâ. Lettre au vizir Abû Sa‘d. Editio princeps d’après le manuscrit de Bursa, traduction de l’arabe, introduction, notes et lexique, « Sagesses Musulmanes, 4 », Paris, Albouraq, 1421/2000, XII, 130*, 61, 4 et 186 p. ISBN 2-84161-150-7. Prof. Michot is an Ibn Sina scholar too!

    Related Philosophers & Muslim Scholars:

    • al-Ghazali. enough said. (Web site)
    • Ibn Sina and al-Farabi, the Muslim philosophers that al-Ghazali refuted.
    • Ibn Rushd, one of the Muslim philosophers that tried to refute some of al-Ghazali’s arguments.
    • Fakhr ad-Din ar-Razi. Need I say more. (link) see this as well.
    • Ahmad bin Hanbal. (link -in English)
    • Imam al-Jawazi. A Hanabali and a famous Orator in his own right.
      • Standard web Bio in English. (link)
      • Sayad al-Khahatir  (Capturing what comes to mind) in Arabic. (link) His best and last work.
      • Sifat al-Safawh  (Description of the Elite) in Arabic. (link) Biographies of Eminent people.
    • Imam ibn Qiyam al-Jawaziyah a famous student of Ibn Taymiayah. (Arabic Link – Biography)
      • Standard Bio in English. (link)
      • Another Standard bio in English (link)
      • Madarij al-Salikeen  (Stations of Seekers) in Arabic. (link) Sufi work
      • Tarik al-Hijrateen  (Path of dual Migrations) in Arabic. (link) yet another Sufi work
      • Ighathat al-Lafhan min Masayid al-Shiytan  (Rescuing the Bedazzled from Satan’s Traps) in Arabic. (link) A very unique work on Human psychology!
      • Rawadat al-Muhibeen  (Lover’s Garden) in Arabic. (link) yes! a book on Love!
      • Miftah Dar al-Saadah   (Keys to the abode of Bliss) in Arabic. (link) How to get to paradise.
      • Hadi al-Arwah  (Uniter of Souls) in Arabic. (link) How to get to Paradise
      • Idat al-Sabreen  (Tools for Patience) in Arabic. (link) How to be Patient in times of trouble.
      • al-Fawaid  (What is Beneficial) in Arabic. (link) Unique commentary on Hadith.
      • ahkam ahl-al-thimah  (Laws of Dhimis) in Arabic. (link)
      • Furisyah  (Foresight) in Arabic. (link) insights into foresight -It beats Sherlock Holmes!
      • Taruq al-Hikmyah  (Guidelines for Judges) in Arabic. (link)

    Further Research on the net:

    Research note: Ibn Tayimyah is credited with the start of Salafi revival what is called neo-Hanbalism. Actually this salafi revival was started by two diametrically opposed lines of Islamic thought at the turn of the last century by Ibn Abdel Wahab (hence whabhism) and Muhammad Abdo / Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani. There is a tremendous renewed interest in him in the Muslim world today. (At least countries that surround the Gulf).

    Preface

    About four years ago I received a letter from Mr. S. M. Sharif, Educational Adviser to the Government of Pakistan and now Secretary in the Ministry of Education, drawing my attention to the fact that there was no detailed History of Muslim Philosophy in the English language and inviting me to draw up a scheme for the preparation of such a History. The scheme prepared by me envisaged the collaboration of eighty scholars from all over the world. The blue‑prints of the plan were placed by Mr. S. M. Sharif before the Government of Pakistan for approval and provision of funds. The Cabinet by a special ordinance deputed me to edit the History, and appointed a Committee consisting of the following to steer the scheme through:

    Mr. I. I. Kazi, Vice‑Chancellor, University of Sind (Chairman)

    The Educational Adviser to the Government of Pakistan (Member)

    Mr. Mumtaz Hasan, then Secretary Finance, Government of Pakistan, and now Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission (Member)

    Dr. Khalifah Abdul Hakim, Director, Institute of Islamic Culture, Lahore (Member)

    Dr. Serajul Haque, Head of the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies. University of Dacca (Member)

    Professor M. Abdul Hye, Vice‑Principal, Government College, Rajshahi (Member)

    Myself (Member‑Secretary)

    The Committee was later enlarged by the addition of Dr. M. Ahmed, Vice­Chancellor, Rajshahi University.

    But for the initiative taken by Mr. S. M. Sharif and the constant help and encouragement received from him, a liberal grant from the State, and most willing co‑operation from the Chairman and members of the Committee, it would not have been possible for me to bring this work to completion.

    From the very beginning I have been aware of the sheer impossibility of doing full justice to such a vast canvas of movements, thinkers, and thoughts. I am most grateful to the large number of contributors who have made at least the outlines of the entire picture possible. As this is the first major work on the history of Muslim philosophy it is bound to have many deficiencies, but a beginning had to be made and it has been made with the hope that it will pave the way for future improvements.

    In a collaboration work like this complete uniformity of. language, style, and points of view, and evenness of quality and length, are hard to achieve. How­ever, efforts have been made to keep disparity in these matters as well as in transliteration, capitalization and punctuation as much within bounds as pos­sible. Credit for whatever merits these volumes have must go to those who have joined this venture; responsibility for whatever faults it may have is mine.

    I wish to express the Committee of Directors’ deep gratitude to Asia Founda­tion for its gift of the paper used in this work, and my personal thanks to its Representative in Pakistan, Mr. Curbs Farrar, for the keen interest evinced by him throughout the course of its preparation. I have to acknowledge my great obligation to Mr. R. K. V. Goldstein of Aitchison College, Lahore, and Mr. Hugh Gethin of the University of the Panjab for their helpful guidance in the matter of language. I am equally indebted to Professor M. Saeed Sheikh of Government College, Lahore, who has not only gone over the whole typescript and read proofs but has also suggested many improvements in thought and expression. I must also express my thanks to Mr. Mumtaz Hasan for his valuable suggestions towards the removal of some apologetic passages from the original manuscript, and to him as well as to Professor M. Abdul Hye, Mr. A. H. Kardar, and Dr. Serajul Haque for reading several chapters and drawing my attention to some omissions. My thanks are also due to Mr. Ashraf Darr for preparing the Index and helping me in proof‑reading, to Mr. Ashiq Husain for typing the whole manuscript, Mr. Abdus Salam for putting in the diacritical marks, and Mr. Javid Altaf, a brilliant young scholar, for check­ing capitalization.

    In the end I have to note with great regret that two of the contributors to the work, Dr. Khalifah Abdul Hakim of Pakistan who was also a member of the Committee of Directors and Dr. Mecdut Mansuroglu of Turkey, have passed away. May their souls rest in peace!

    Lahore: August 1, 1961            

    M. M. Sharif

    Greek Philosophy

    The Introduction of Greek Philosophy in the Muslim World

    [1] Greek or to be precise Hellenistic philosophy came into the Muslim world by way of Syriac. At Haran, in northern Iraq, a philosophical school kept versions of the Hellenistic philosophical heritage intact in either the original Greek or in Syriac translations. In the time of the Abbasid rule, that fertile period, in which the Greek heritage was being translated into Arabic. The Caliph at first was interested to see what sciences there were there, then works on civil administration, then to ethical works, if any then it was all works. So it was no surprise that there was a vigorous effort to translate all the works (ca. 754-833).

    [2] At first, some of the translations were not from good original copies but as the demand for the philosophical literature was up more and better copies were found. Interestingly however, some important works never made it into Arabic for example the politics of Aristotle (c.f. Aristu) was never found. Also among the bad copies/translations was Aristotle’s poetics. To make matters even worst, some of Plotinus‘ Enneads (available online c.f. Enneads) would be translated under the title of the “Theology of Aristotle”, so the Muslims had a skewed if not a contradictory view of Aristotle. Some writers questioned its attribution to Aristotle but no one could research this further. One of those who strongly apposed the view that the “Theology” was a work of Aristotle is Averroes (d. 1198). As Greek was not one of the languages that many Arabic speaking Muslims learned. The perceived superiority of the Arabic language deterred many from learning or writing in any other language. 

    [3] The spread of Hellenistic philosophy in the Muslim world would be first expounded on by the first Arabic philosopher al-Kindi (ca.800-865). He wrote many works on Greek science and philosophy. He laid the foundation for others to follow in studying philosophical works. His main contribution was the firm conviction that Greek heritage contained important truths that Muslims could not afford to overlook. As a mathematician he realized the importance of Aristotelian Logic, However, al-Kindi found Aristotelian metaphysics contradictory; that Aristotle did not offer valid logical support to the issue of the eternity of the world. 

    [4] Al-Kindi in his mathematical philosophy presented an argument that actual infinity is self-canceling. Also in his philosophy of nature he showed that matter, motion, and time as closely related concepts (this is an advanced worked comparing it with the knowledge of the middle ages.) Since matter cannot be eternal, and cannot generate its existence (c.f. essence and generation argument) then its motion and time are not eternal too. Al-Kindi was the first Muslim philosopher to note clearly that the metaphysics of the Greek philosophers is first self contradictory, and second it contradict the Islamic belief. He also gave a religious basis for studying these fields. 

    [5] Al-Kindi would prove to be the most difficult Islamic thinker to study which explains the dearth of works on him. This is due to a variety of reasons some of which is that he was a scientist, philosopher of science, a rigorous mathematician and a man of letters with a high command of Arabic. One who is not well versed in all of these topics in addition to a solid grasp of scientific Arabic would not be able to fully appreciate al-Kindi nor his contributions. 

    [6] Then it would be up to al-Farabi (870-950) [who served in the Hamdanid court in Aleppo, northern Syria.] that would formulate philosophy in a manner that would be palatable to Muslim tastes. His efforts would be aimed at expounding philosophy in Islamic terms. It is worthwhile to note that in his lifetime he was not a noted figure in field.  Actually, Avicenna is the one that popularized his writings. He became known as the Second teacher (after Aristotle). He also laid an important groundwork in every major field of philosophy and most importantly political philosophy. He would be the credited with the popularizing neo-Platonism in the Muslim world. 

    [7] Important to Islamic philosophers is the concept of Prophethood, namely God selecting messengers and endowing them through prophecy (communication from God, either directly or through Angels) with enlightenment and truth. This was a concept that would have to be explained philosophically. It would be al-Farabi who would formulate such a concept in Hellenistic terms. To al-Farabi, he would equate two sources of knowledge namely revelation and philosophy as the two roads to enlightenment and truth. 

    [8] Al-Farabi had accomplished much in all the major fields of philosophy including metaphysics, logic, music theory, ethics and politics. Not only did he make a brave attempt to reconcile philosophy with Islamic doctrine, he also attempted to reconcile philosophy with it self, namely a work on the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle (available online c.f. al-Farabi).  He was also an accomplished musician of great renown. 

     [9] Soon thereafter, a hodgepodge work called the epistles of the brethren of purity “Rasil Ikhwan al-Safa”. (ca. 946-1055) This work is a mix of philosophy (Pythagorean speculations), theology (Jewish, Christian, Persian, Hindu, and Islamic elements), mysticism, math, music theory, and astrology.  Prof. Hitti, in his history of the Arabs says of the group “…they evidently aimed to overthrow [Abbasid rule] by undermining the popular intellectual system and religious beliefs.” p. 373. It is important to note they were aligned with the Fatimid rule.

    [10] The third most important figure in philosophy is Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (980-1037) [He lived in Northern Iran/FSSR]. He wrote on a wide variety of sciences, medicine being his most valuable contribution. He also wrote on all branches of philosophy. He is also credited with popularizing philosophy for the elite. There are many legends that surround not only his life but there are many books that are attributed to him that he did not write according to scholarly accounts. Still he wrote extensively on philosophy ranging from short works to encyclopedic length works, namely his famed al-Shifa (lit. healing ) that runs in 12 volumes (2 volumes available online c.f. Avicenna). Outside of philosophy his is famous for his medical encyclopedia, al-qanun fi-al-tibb (Canon of Medicine –available online in original Arabic(1593 ed.), from which the English term ‘canon’ comes from. 

    [11] Al-Ghazali (1058-1111) is an important figure in the history of Islamic thought.  He was a a scholar of Islamic Jurisprudence and theologian by training who delved into philosophy out of necessity.  He was also a gifted writer with keen knack for clarifying terse subjects. He claimed three things with regard to philosophy in the Muslim world at his time. The first claim is that some of the teachings of philosophy run against the teachings of Islam to the point that they cannot be rationally reconciled. Second, these teachings are also contradictory to the teachings of philosophy it self, hence they are incoherent at best and otherwise destructive. These teachings run counter to philosophy and its stated goals of being coherent, logical and consistent. Thirdly, some of the teachings of philosophy are useful to Islam, namely logic, math, astronomy, physics, etc.

    [12] To prove his point al-Ghazali did two things first of all he wrote a summary (titled Maqasid al-falasifah (Aims of the philosophers) of philosophical teachings concentrating on metaphysics and logic. This summary proved useful and with the missing introduction and closing remarks would earn him the title of “the expositor of Avicennain philosophy” in the west. His stated goal is that in order to be able to refute philosophy one had to be competent in it. This he did, much to the dismay of his compatriots who claimed that you have done the philosophers task by simplifying their teachings for the layperson. Ibn Rushd would vent his anger on him years later for doing this as well. How could he bring to the masses the literature of the elite that has been hidden by complex terminology and vague statements that only the ‘select’ were understand after undergoing through ‘training’.

    [13] The other work (titled Tahafut al-falasifah (Incoherence/Destruction of philosophers- available online c.f. al-Ghazali) was a refutation of the metaphysical teachings of philosophy summarized in twenty points. Three of these points not only lead to heresy but outright infidelism.  This work was well accepted by the scholars of his time who heralded it as a victory for Islamic teaching. Philosophy was once and for all defeated in its own battlefield. It no longer held that charm or air of mystery that Avicenna had sought so hard throughout his life to veil it with. This fact should not be construed to denote the end of philosophy in the Muslim world. This was hardly the case as it opened the door for many theologians to study philosophy with relative ease. Actually the case can be made that he popularized the works of Ibn Sina in religious circles which continued to studied till the latter days of the Ottoman Empire.

    Philosophy in the Muslim West:

    [14] The works of al-Ghazali would have an interesting history in Andalusia. Part of the mystery is due in part to the fame that al-Ghazali achieved. Some theological and esoteric not to mention heretical works be written by anonymous authors and attributed to al-Ghazali. Add to the fact that al-Ghazali would change his mind on some issues of legislation and theology. These two elements added together led to a misunderstanding of al-Ghazali

    [15] A major figure in Andalusia who contributed to the misunderstanding of al-Ghazali is a personal physician of Almohad caliph Abu Ya’qub Yusuf (1163-1184).  Ibn Tufyal (1106-1185) dappled in neo-Platonism and followed the esoteric teachings of Avicenna in addition to his flourishing medical career. He is the celebrated author of the fictional philosophical romance entitled “Hayy bin Yaqthan” [Living son of Awake]. It is a philosophical parable set on an island in the Indian Ocean (modern day Sri Lanka?) that tells the story of Hayy a child who grows up on the Island without any human contact, he is raised by a gazelle (fawn/deer). As Hayy grows up he discovers natural religion. Later on when he grows up a sailor is shipwrecked on the Island who teaches him human language and religion and much to surprise they find many points of agreement. 

    [16] The point the author here is trying to make is that religion can be arrived at naturally without the aid of revelation. Interestingly this concept is not so foreign to Islam, which sees itself as the “Natural religion”. Surprisingly, this neo-Platonistwould be the mentor of the most famous Arab Aristotelian, Ibn Rushd. [Historical Note: This last claim of Ibn Rushd’s mentor is really open to question perhaps it is the stuff of legend along with a similar historical claim that Ibn ‘Arabi learned philosophy from Ibn Rushd. Perhaps Ibn ‘Arabi learned (if not emptied) Ibn Rushd of Ibn Tufail’s philosophical (read Sufi) thought.] 

    [17] Ibn Rushd (1126-1198) -known as Averroes in the west and sometimes ‘the commentator’- would fare well in the west then among his own people. The reason for this is the both see him as an expositor of Aristotelian ideas. He is a strict follower of Aristotle to a fault. Ibn Rushd would make a brave attempt to extract Aristotle’s ideas on politics from Plato’s Republic. He would not only comment on all of the existing Aristotle’s work but also would summarize them and write grand commentaries on them. He would also write a point-by-point refutation of al-Ghazali’s criticism of philosophy, the tahafut -the success of of which is widely debated due to the fact that he only defended Aristotle’s doctrines.

    [18] However, in his attempt to defend philosophy he would only defend Aristotle’s ideas only. He believed that the peak of philosophical teachings ended with the master, Aristotle. Many later scholars would see this as an attempt to defend Aristotle and not a complete refutation of al-Ghazali. The philosophical ideas that al-Ghazali was attacking were the ideas of Avicenna and al-Farabi some of which came from Aristotle while the majority came from Plato and Plotinus

    [19] To his credit, Ibn Rushd would have quite an influence on the medieval philosophy of Europe through Latin translation of his works. He would also cast doubt on the authenticity of the attribution of the “theology of Aristotle” to Aristotle. The work, as mentioned above, was a compilation of some of the chapters from Plotinus’ Enneads. 

    Philosophy in the Muslim East a history yet to be completed:

    [20] The history of the philosophical debate that was started by al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd would continue at the hands of authors in the Islamic East in general and in the Ottoman lands after the eclipse of the Muslim rule of Andalusia. In fact the famed sultan Mehmet II (a.k.a. fatih [conqueror] r.(1451-1481) orders two of the empires’ scholars to compile books to summarize the debate between al-Ghazali and Muslim Philosophers. Both of these works have been published one of which in a critical edition. (both of which is available online c.f. ipo) As indicated this part of history needs is yet to be written, any takers?

    Written by Muhammad Hozien

    Questions:

    1. How did the translation of Greek works into Arabic skew the Muslim interpretation of Hellenistic Philosophy?
    2. How did Al-Ghazali present philosophy as useful to Islam?
    3. What was Ibn Rushd’s stubborn fault as a philosopher?