ULUSLAR ARASI İBN SÎNÂ SEMPOZYUMU Bildiriler 22-24 Mayıs 2008 İSTANBUL INTERNATIONAL IBN SINA SYMPOSIUM Papers May 22-24, 2008 İSTANBUL II Mart 2009 !STANBUL BÜYÜK"EH!R BELED!YES! KÜLTÜR A.". YAYINLARI Maltepe Mahallesi Topkapı Kültür Parkı Osmanlı Evleri Topkapı - Zeytinburnu / İstanbul Tel: 0212 467 07 00 Faks: 0212 467 07 99 www.kultursanat.org / [email protected] ULUSLARARASI İBN SÎNÂ SEMPOZYUMU BİLDİRİLER INTERNATIONAL IBN SINA SYMPOSIUM PAPERS Genel Yayın Yönetmeni Nevzat Bayhan Genel Yayın Danışmanı Prof. Dr. İlhan Kutluer Yayın Koordinatörü Müjdat Uluçam Hasan Işık Editörler Mehmet Mazak Nevzat Özkaya Kapak Aydın Süleyman Yapım Mart / 2009 İstanbul Copyright © KÜLTÜR A.Ş. ISBN: Baskı ve Cilt .................. Avicenna’s Almahad in 17th Century England: Sandys, Pococke, Digby, Baron, Cudworth et alii… 17. Yüzyıl İngilteresi’nde İbn Sînâ’nın Almahad’ı: Sandys, Pococke, Digby, Baron, Cudworth ve Diğerleri Prof. Dr. Yahya Michot* Abstract Very little is known about the in# uence that Avicenna’s famous Epistle on the Ma‘âd for the Feast of the Sacri! ce, especially its prophetology and hermeneutics, had in pre-modern Europe after it was translated into Latin by Andrea Alpago of Belluno (c. 1450–1522) and published in Venice by his nephew Paolo under the title Libellus Avicennæ de Almahad (1546). It was most unexpected, but very pleasing, to discover that it is referred to and criticized by the Anglo-American traveller and poet George Sandys in the relation of his journey in Turkey (1610–1612), as well as by various other & gures actively involved in the intellectual, religious and cultural life of 17th century England. The paper explores the ideas and debates that Alma- had then triggered or contributed to develop, with consequences extending into the following centuries, when Avicenna’s views came to be used against a certain George Bush… Keywords: Avicenna’s in# uence, 17th century England, Hermeneutics, Eschatology. Thanks to the great translation movement that took place in Spain during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, major works of Avicenna became available in Latin to Western scholars. His Kitâb al-Shifâ’ was notably able to play a pivotal role in the philosophical renaissance of 1 medieval France. As for Avicenna’s Epistle on the Ma‘âd for the Feast of the Sacri& ce (al- 2 Risâlat al-Adhawiyya fî amr al-ma‘âd), which can be considered his most important, and * Hartford Seminary, USA 1 See S. Van Riet, “The Impact of Avicenna’s Philosophical Works in the West”, in art. “Avicenna”, Encyclo- pædia Iranica, iii, 104–107; see also S. Swiezawski, “Notes sur l’in" uence d’Avicenne sur la pensée philoso- phique latine du XVe siècle”, in R. Arnaldez & S. Van Riet (eds.), Recherches d’Islamologie. Recueil d’articles offert à Georges C. Anawati et Louis Gardet par leurs collègues et amis, Louvain, Peeters – Louvain-la-Neuve, Éditions de l’Institut Supérieur de Philosophie, 1977, 295–305. 2 See F. Lucchetta, Avicenna. Al-Risâlat al-Adhawiyya fî l-ma‘âd – Epistola sulla Vita Futura. I. Testo arabo, 300 ULUSLARARASI İBN SÎNÂ SEMPOZYUMU most daring, work on eschatology, it almost certainly remained unknown in Europe until the beginning of the sixteenth century. Then, in the age of “the second revelation of Arabic philo- sophy and science”3 to the West, it was translated into Latin, by the Venetian Andrea Alpago of Belluno (c. 1450–1522), under the title Libellus Avicennæ de Almahad.4 It was published after Alpago’s death in 1546, by his nephew Paolo Alpago, in Venice, apud Iuntas, with various other Avicennan opera minora. In an earlier publication, I investigated some of the in" uence that the Adhawiyya had on Islamic thought during the ! ve centuries separating Avicenna from Alpago. It was known to Abû Hâmid al-Ghazâlî (d. 505/1111), ‘Ayn al-Qudât al-Hamadhânî (d. 525/1131), Fakhr al-Dîn al-Râzî (d. 606/1210) and Mullâ Sadrâ al-Shîrâzî (d. 1050/1640). It is among the Avicennan texts collected in the philosophico-eschatological majmû‘a copied in the Madrasa Mujâhidiyya of Marâgha in 596–7/1200, which probably preserved the textbooks then taught in that school. Most interestingly, its hermeneutical pages are the object of a long, " owing commentary by the Mamlûk theologian Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328) in his Averting the Con# ict between Reason and [religious] Tradition (Dar’ ta‘ârud al-‘aql wa-l-naql), and are also quoted by his disciple Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 751/1350). The Adhawiyya thus seems to have been read by some of the most important thinkers of medieval Islam.5 What about its in" uence in Europe, after Alpago’s Almahad came out? Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny calls the Venitian’s collection of Avicennan writings a “livre rare” and says that it was read by only a few people.6 As for Simone Van Riet, she states that the Avicennan translations of the Venetian physician-philosopher “did not have any leavening effect on contemporary Western thought”.7 The situation may have been more complex, however. Great digital compilations of Western literature can now be searched with an ease unimaginable less than a decade ago,8 and a simple search of the word Almahad in such literary data-bases suf! ces to show that various Western scholars of the 17th century indeed read Alpago’s version of the Adhawiyya, or became traduzione, introduzione e note, Padova, Antenore, 1969. Presentation and partial English translation in Y. Michot, “A Mamlûk Theologian’s Commentary on Avicenna’s Risâla Adhawiyya : Being a Translation of a Part of the Dar’ al-Ta‘ârud of Ibn Taymiyya, with Introduction, Annotation, and Appendices”, Journal of Islamic Studies, Oxford, Part I, 14:2 (May 2003), 149–203; Part II, 14:3 (Sept. 2003), 309–363; Part I, p. 149–150, 173–177. See also T. Jaffer, “Bodies, Souls and Resurrection in Avicenna’s ar-Risâla al-Adhawîya fî amr al-ma‘âd”, in D. C. Reisman (ed., with the assistance of A. H. al-Rahim), Before and After Avicenna. Proceedings of the First Conference of the Avicenna Study Group, Leiden–Boston, Brill, 2003, 163–174. 3 An expression of C. Burnett; see his “The Second Revelation of Arabic Philosophy and Science: 1492–1562”, in C. Burnett & A. Contadini (eds.), Islam and the Italian Renaissance, London, The Warburg Institute, 1999, 185–198. 4 See A. Alpago, De mahad .i. de dispositione, seu loco, ad quem revertitur homo, vel anima eius post mortem, in Avicennæ philosophi præclarissimi ac medicorum principis Compendium de anima, De mahad […], Aphorismi de anima, De dif& nitionibus & quæsitis, De divisione scientiarum […] ex arabico in latinum versa cum expositioni- bus eiusdem Andreæ collectis ab auctoribus arabicis, omnia nunc primum in lucem edita, Venice, Apud Iuntas, 1546, fo. 40–102. – Offset reprint: Westmead, Farnborough, Gregg International Publishers Ltd, 1969. On Alpago, see the references given in Y. Michot, “A Mamlûk Theologian’s Commentary…”, Part I, p. 150–152. 5 On the Adhawiyya’s in" uence on past Muslim thinkers and Ibn Taymiyya’s commentary, see Y. Michot, “A Mamlûk Theologian’s Commentary…”, Parts I & II. 6 M.-Th. d’Alverny, “Andrea Alpago, interprète et commentateur d’Avicenne”, in Aristotelismo Padovano. Atti del XII Congresso Internazionale di Filoso! a, Florence (1960), 1–6, p. 2: “Ce livre rare n’a eu que peu de lec- teurs.” (Reprinted in her Avicenne en Occident. Recueil d’articles, Paris, Vrin, 1993, XIV). 7 S. Van Riet, “The Impact…”, p. 106. 8 See for example the Project Gutenberg (http://promo.net/pg/), Early English Books Online (http://eebo.chadw- yck.com/home), Google Book Search (http://books.google.com/). INTERNATIONAL IBN SINA SYMPOSIUM 301 acquainted with some of the ideas developed in it by Avicenna and, attracted or shocked by these ideas, like their Muslim predecessors, found it impossible to remain indifferent to them. My aim, in this paper, is to introduce some of these pre-modern Western disciples or opponents of the Shaykh al-Ra’îs, and thereby contribute to a more correct appreciation of the importance and wide-ranging nature of his in" uence beyond the Orient and the medieval period. Andrea Alpago(9) First edition of Almahad That the famous English Orientalist, biblical scholar and manuscript collector, Edward Pococke (1604–1691)10 quotes Avicenna’s Almahad should not come as a surprise. After all, he was holding the chairs of Arabic and Hebrew in Oxford, supposedly one of the best acade- mic institutions of England at that time, mentioned major falâsifa and Kalâm theologians— including “Takiddin”,11 i. e. Ibn Taymiyya—in his Specimen historiæ Arabum (1650)12 and, with his son, Edward Pococke junior (1648–1727), translated Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy Ibn Yaqzân (1671). In miscellaneous learned notes added to his Porta Mosis (1655), a study of Maimo- nides’ commentary on the Mishnah, he discusses the reality of the bodily pleasures promised to Muslims in Paradise and does not hide his disgust at what he calls a “paradisum porco- 13 rum non hominum”, adding in his conclusion: “Quantas igitur gratias Deo misericordiarum 9 Engraving by F. Monaco (18th c.); see F. Lucchetta, Il medico e & losofo bellunese Andrea Alpago (d. 1520), traduttore di Avicenna. Pro& lo biographico, Padova, Antenore, 1964, Table IV. 10 On E. Pococke, see G. J. Toomer, art. “Pococke, Edward”, in H. C. G. Matthew & B. Harrison (eds.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, from the earliest times to the year 2000, 61 vols., Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004, xliv, 662–666; H. Daiber, “The reception of Islamic philosophy at Oxford in the 17th century: the Pococks’ (father and son) contribution to the understanding of Islamic philosophy in Europe”, in C. E. Butter- worth & B.