AMERICAN UNIVERSITY OF BEIRUT Civilization Sequence Program

CVSP 202 The Intellectual History of the Monotheistic Traditions From Late Antiquity to the 13th Century

LECTURE 3 (25th February 2013) ‘Introduction to Classical Islamic Thought’ [Dr Nader El-Bizri] [email protected]

(I) Transmission of Science and Philosophy from Greek into Arabic ca. 786 – 833 CE), like that of / انخهٍفت انًأيىٌ ) The reign of the ‘Abbasid Caliph al-Māʾmūn ca. 766 – 809 CE), was marked by great / انخهٍفت هاروٌ انزشٍد ) his father Hārūn al-Rashīd scientific, literary, and cultural flourishing. Both were generous patrons of the sciences, of philosophy, the arts and letters. A great prosperity in these domains and in culture was witnessed during their Caliphates. The Caliph al-Māʾmūn contributed to the founding of the famed academy, the ,Besides his sponsorship of the philosophers .( بٍج انحكًت / House of Wisdom’ (Bayt al-Ḥikma‘ ( انًعخشنت ( he displayed sympathies towards the Muslim theologians of the Mu’tazila Al-Māʾmūn’s epoch witnessed an intensification in the grand .( عهى انكالو ) tradition in Kalām transmission and translation movement from Greek into Arabic, which included major antique works, such as: Euclid’s Elements in Geometry; Ptolemy’s Almagest in Astronomy; Nicomachus’ Arithmetic in the science of numbers; in addition to various treatises by Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus in philosophy; manuscripts in medicine by Galen; works in mathematics by Archimedes. The Islamic intellectual context of the had numerous polymaths, such as: ; ) انخىارسيً ( the algebraist al-Khwārizmī ; ) انكُدي ( The philosopher al-Kindī ; ) ثابج ابٍ ل ّزة ( and Thābit ibn Qurra ) بُى يىسى ( mathematicians like the Banū Mūsā physicians-philosophers such as al-Rāzī ;) إس ح ك ابٍ حٍٍُ ( translators like Isḥāq ibn Ḥunayn The biographies and bibliographies of hundreds of notable scholars were indexed in .(انزاسي) .during that epoch ( إبٍ انُّدٌى ( of Ibn al-Nadīm ) فهزسج ( the Fihrist These 9th century traditions in science and philosophy lead to the emergence of the in the ) إخىاٌ انصفاء ( ’and Ikhwān al-Ṣafā ) انفارابً ( legacies of famous figures like: al-Fārābī -and Ibn al ,) انبٍزوًَ ( al-Bīrūnī ,( إبٍ سٍُا ( , and the flourishing of Ibn Sīnā .in the ( إبٍ انهٍثى ) Haytham

(II) Philosophy, Science, and Religion: Harmony or Discord? Given the transmission and translation from Greek into Arabic of the major works in science and philosophy, and their integration in the intellectual traditions of the classical Islamic civilization, Muslim scholars and jurists began to wonder whether these pagan pre- Islamic legacies were compatible with the religious teachings of Islam. To give examples of responses to this question: the Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ (ca. 960s- CE) endorsed the philosophies and the sciences of the wholeheartedly, whilst al-Ghazālī CE) who studied them in depth, ultimately doubted their coherence, by 1111-1058 ; انغشانً ( being especially skeptical about the Aristotelian and Platonist philosophical traditions. [[Similar questions preoccupied Ibn Rushd in the CE]].

1 Five principal strands in thinking were evolving in that intellectual milieu, with overlaps between them and interconnections:

1. Specialist branches in mathematics with various applications in the sciences of astronomy, mechanics, meteorology, and optics. 2. Philosophy as inspired mainly by the Aristotelian and Platonist traditions; and at times also by Galenic medicine. 3. that focuses on spiritual exercises (fasting, prayer, travel), solitary contemplation, visitation of shrines and pilgrimage. 4. Theology as embodied in the schools of Kalām that use logic and discursive reasoning in defending the articles of faith. jurisprudence) and scholarship in the interpretation of the / فمه ) Schools of Fiqh .5 .( انشزع ( and religious law ,( انحدٌث ( Hadith ,( انمزآٌ ( Qu’ran

An early theology favoring the reliance on rational deliberation in the interpretation of branch of Kalām. One ( انًعخشنت ( the articles of faith in Islam was embodied by the Mu’tazila of the examples of their reflections on the fundamentals of religion was centered on the conception of Divinity.

( انصفاث / and Attributes (ṣifāt ( انذاث / III) The Divine Essence (dhāt) The theologians of the Mu’tazila argued that the Divine Attributes are reducible to the Divine Essence, namely that they were one and the same ultimate reality. [[Philosophers in the history of ideas in Islam were generally inspired by ancient Greek conceptions of God, as addressed in Lecture I of the CVSP 202 course]]. Thinking about the Divine Attributes would have been akin to reflecting on God’s 99 .as mentioned in the Qur’an ( أسًاء هللا انحسُى / Beautiful Names’ (Asmā’ Allāh al-ḥusnā‘ [[Similar questions preoccupied Maimonides in the 12th century CE]] The arguments of the Mu’tazila were meant to uphold the transcendence of God (tanzīh) They also aimed at .( حشبٍه / above any potential implied anthropomorphism (tashbīh in the strictest form; since the ( حىحٍد / preserving the idea of absolute Divine Unity (tawḥīd affirmation of the existence and reality of the Divine Attributes as being distinct from the (كثزة/existence and reality of the Divine Essence would imply some form of plurality (kathra in having co-eternal Attributes besides God Himself, rather than having an absolute Unity. .(يخهىق/Based on this view, the Mu’tazila believed that the Qur’an was created (makhlūq They argued that the Qur’an is God’s revealed words, and that this entailed that God is endowed with speech, and given that this Attribute of having speech is reducible to God’s Essence, then God’s words in the Qur’an would be distinct from God Himself, and that they are not co-eternal with Him. In consequence they are created in space and time. The Mu’tazila theologians quarreled with the religious scholars of the Ḥanbalī Fiqh (i.e. the followers of the Imām Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal; 780‒855 CE). Another school of theology in Kalām was developing at that time, which eventually )أشعزي( became more dominant than the Mu’tazila, as embodied in the legacy of the Ash‛arī theologians (i.e. the followers of the Imām Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ash‛arī; 874‒936 CE). The disciples of Ash‛arī theology argued that the Divine Essence is distinct from the Divine Attributes, and that such matters cannot be settled by rational explications, rather by accepting what is stated in the Qur’an in faithfulness: without ‘how?’ or ‘why?’ (bi-lā kayf .( بال كٍف وال ن ًا / wa lā limā

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(IV) Atomist Physics The theologians (exponents of Kalām) rejected the Aristotelian Physics of the philosophers [[The Aristotelian physics, its principle of motion, the four causes, and the conception of substance were explained in Lecture I of the CVSP 202 course]]. The theologians adopted instead a physical and geometric theory that was inspired by was an atom ( جىهز / Greek and Roman atomism. They argued that the substance ( (the Greek ἄτομος [atomos]; namely: the ‘indivisible’), and they referred to it as ‘the part According to .( انجشء ان ّذي ال ٌخج ّشء / ’that cannot be partitioned’ (al-juz’ al-ladhī lā yatajazza their view a void (vacuum) exists between the atoms. Their account of the cosmos was unlike that of the Aristotelian philosophers who rejected the existence of a vacuum in the universe. The theologians believed that the atoms adhere into aggregates, or separate and are dispersed in the void, due to accidents that are external to their essence, which follow God’s will. It is possible that miracles occur as extraordinary events: that Abraham is thrown into the fire and does not burn; that Moses’ staff turns into a serpent; that wakes the dead and walks on water; etc. All these can happen through a rearrangement of atoms following Divine Volition. There is therefore no necessary connection between a cause and its effect. The theologians’ view was explicated with sophisticated arguments in al-Ghazālī’s doubts regarding the causal principle. For example, al-Ghazālī argued that it is possible for cotton to meet fire without burning, since past observations of the occurrence of burning when cotton meets fire only show us that the event of the cotton meeting fire is contiguous to the event of the combustion of cotton (that it happens next to it), and that they are not linked by way of a necessary connection of cause and effect. Rather the ‘connection between what is habitually taken to be a cause and what is habitually taken to be its effect is not necessary’ (consequently, nature follows habitual courses rather than having intrinsic necessary causal laws).

(V) Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ (The Brethren of Purity [flourished ca. 960s-980s CE]) Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ is the pseudonym of the anonymous members of a fraternity of learned urbanites who were based in the Iraqi city of Basra, with an active branch of their clandestine association in the capital of the ‘, . The exact identity of the affiliates of this organization and the precise dating of their legacy are still unclear to date. The Ikhwān were influenced in philosophy by Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus, and by Euclid, Ptolemy, Nicomachus, and Galen in mathematics, the natural sciences, and medicine. They believed that truth is found in every religion, and they appealed to the teachings of the Qur’an and Hadith besides an almost equivalent reliance on the Gospels of and the Torah of Judaism. Their legacy became known through their voluminous encyclopedic compendium, .(The Epistles of the Brethren of Purity / رسائم إخىاٌ انصفاء ) ’entitled: Rasā’il Ikhwān al-Ṣafā This corpus grouped four classificatory divisions that contained 52 epistles dealing with various disciplines, including: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, geography, music, logic, mineralogy, botany, zoology, psychology, theology, metaphysics, and magic. This compendium constituted a paradigmatic legacy in the canonization of philosophy and the sciences in classical Islamic civilization. The Ikhwān believed in a literal analogy between the human condition and the universe, namely by grasping the human being as a microcosm (a miniature cosmos), and the universe as a macrocosm (a giant human [macro-anthropon]).

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‘Epistle 22’ of their compendium (which was partly inspired by the Kalīla wa Dimna famous fabulist narrative) offers a lengthy ecological and zoological fable that casts the exploited and oppressed animals pursuing a legal case against humankind in the court of the King of the Jinn. Through the voices of the animals, humanity is revealed as being arrogant, exploitative, and aggressive, in contrast to the animals’ instinctive piousness in submitting to their respective roles within a harmoniously balanced and hierarchical nature. The Ikhwān’s views on beauty, goodness, truth, and justice were articulated through narrative voices attributed to the animals, to the Jinn and the humans in this fable, and they almost hinted that the animals might be worthier than the human in the scales of nature and in the grand chain of being [[This ‘chain of being’ or ‘Scala naturae’, as a ‘ladder of nature’, was hinted at in connection with Neo-Platonism towards the end of Lecture I of the CVSP 202 course]].

(VI) Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (1058-1111 CE) He was one of the main Muslim jurists, an Ash’arī theologian and an influential mystic in the Muslim world. He was a polymath who wrote on a wide range of topics including jurisprudence, theology, mysticism, and philosophy. He was famous for his devastating attack on the philosophers, especially in terms of his critique of metaphysics as set in his The Incoherence of the Philosophers). He / حهافج انفالسفت ) theoretical treatise: Tahāfut al-falāsifa Revival of the / إحٍاء عهىو اندٌٍ) is also the author of the celebrated book: Iḥyā’ ‛ulūm al-dīn Religious Sciences), which combined mysticism with daily spiritual practices, and contemplated their ramifications in this worldly life and the Hereafter. He criticized philosophers like al-Fārābī, Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’, and Ibn Sīnā on questions like: (a) His rejection of Emanation [[A notion that was explained in connection with Plotinus in Lecture I of the CVSP 202 course]] and its implied ‘eternity of the world’ thesis; (b) his affirmation of bodily resurrection on the Day of Judgment; (c) his doubts regarding the necessary connection between causes and effects (the causal principle), and his associated advocacy of atomism against an Aristotelian physics [[As noted in ‘Section IV’ above]]. His attack on the philosophers was in its turn criticized later by Ibn Rushd in a treatise Tahāfut al-tahāfut [meaning the/ حهافج انخهافج ) entitled: The Incoherence of the Incoherence ‘incoherence’ of al-Ghazālī’s Incoherence of the Philosophers book]). Al-Ghazālī was not convinced eventually by the ways of Kalām theology either. Besides his studies in religious thought, he composed a memoir that carried the title: al- Deliverance from Error), which surveyed his spiritual/ انًُمذ يٍ انضالل) Munqidh min al-ḍalāl quest in a narrative form that gave glimpses of his worldview, his thought and experience. Al-Ghazālī faced a profound personal crisis at the height of his intellectual accomplishment and at an elevated station in his erudition and academic standing. Fallen into a prolonged silence, and weakened by bodily ailments due to his deteriorating emotional state, he leapt in faith on a journey of wanderings that pulled him away from his wife and children, his possessions and material riches, and destined him on the pathways of pilgrimage and ascetic existence in a search for the rightly-guided straight-path to God in the company of spiritual sages and mystics. He eventually returned from his spiritual journeying as a reformist in an epoch marked by deep religious discords. This ultimately earned him a high station as an Imām in the eyes of many of his co-religionist in the Muslim faith, even though he had his critics as well, whether these were within the Ismaili expressions of the Shi’i traditions, or in terms of how he was viewed with suspicion by later scholars like Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad Ibn Taymiyya (died 1328 CE).

[[N.B.: The contents were simplified and adapted to meet the CVSP 202 requirements]]

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