Doubts on Avicenna Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science texts and studies Edited by Hans Daiber Anna Akasoy Emilie Savage-Smith volume 95 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ipts Doubts on Avicenna A Study and Edition of Sharaf al-Dīn al-Masʿūdī’s Commentary on the Ishārāt By Ayman Shihadeh leiden | boston This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the cc-by-nc 4.0 License, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided no alterations are made and the original author(s) and source are credited. Cover illustration: Al-Mabāḥith wa-l-shukūk (Investigations and Objections) in eastern Kufic, by Mustafa Jafar (2015), following the title page of the Shiraz manuscript, f.2a. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Shihadeh, Ayman, author. Doubts on Avicenna : a study and edition of Sharaf al-Din al-Mas'udi's commentary on the Isharat / by Ayman Shihadeh. pages cm. – (Islamic philosophy, theology and science ; v. 95) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-30252-5 (hardback : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-90-04-30253-2 (e-book) 1. Mas'udi, Muhammad ibn Mas'ud, active 12th century. Mabahith wa-al-shukuk. 2. Avicenna, 980-1037. Isharat wa-al-tanbihat. 3. Islamic philosophy. I. Title. B751.I63M37537 2016 181'.5–dc23 2015026093 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 0169-8729 isbn 978-90-04-30252-5 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-30253-2 (e-book) Copyright 2016 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. 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Contents Preface vii Introduction 1 1 Al-Masʿūdī’s Life and Career, in Context 7 1.1 The Context: Eastern Avicennism in the Twelfth Century 7 1.2 Al-Masʿūdī’s Biography 11 1.3 Al-Masʿūdī’s Oeuvre 20 1.4 Theological Commitments 28 2 The Shukūk: Aporetic Commentary 44 2.1 Two Genres: Aporetic Commentary (Shukūk), Exegetical Commentary (Sharḥ) 44 2.2 The Broad Outline 49 2.3 A Synopsis 59 2.4 Interpretation: Al-Masʿūdī’s Philosophical Theology 78 3 Efficient Causation and Continued Existence: Problem 9 86 3.1 The Classical Kalām Background 86 3.2 Avicenna’s Theory of Efficient Causation 89 3.3 Avicenna’s Criticism of Kalām in the Ishārāt 93 3.4 Al-Ghazālī’s Criticism 95 3.5 Al-Masʿūdī’s Commentary 98 4 The Ontology of Possibility: Problems 10 and 14 109 4.1 Avicenna on Dispositional Possibility and Per Se Possibility 111 4.2 Al-Ghazālī: An Ashʿarī Rejoinder 120 4.3 Al-Masʿūdī on the Ontology of Possibility (Problem 10) 127 4.4 Al-Masʿūdī on the Indestructibility of the Human Soul (Problem 14) 136 4.5 Concluding Remarks: Dispositional Possibility and Per Se Possibility Post-Avicenna 141 5 Avicenna’s Proof of the Existence of God: Problem 7 143 5.1 Avicenna’s Proof from Possibility 143 5.2 Avicenna on Infinite Temporal Series 147 vi contents 5.3 Al-Ghazālī’s Criticism 149 5.4 Al-Masʿūdī’s Commentary 151 6 Matter and Form: Problem 1 156 6.1 Avicenna’s Theory of Matter and Corporeity 156 6.2 Avicenna’s Proof of Prime Matter in the Ishārāt 158 6.3 Abū l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī’s Competing Theory of Matter 160 6.4 Al-Masʿūdī’s Commentary 164 7 The Manuscripts and Critical Edition 169 7.1 The Manuscripts 169 7.2 Introduction to the Critical Edition 173 Bibliography 175 Index of Individuals, Groups and Places 187 Index of Subjects 190 8 Critical Edition: Sharaf al-Dīn al-Masʿūdī, al-Mabāḥith wa-l-Shukūk ʿalā l-Ishārāt 193 Preface 196 1 Establishing the Existence of Matter 197 2 Establishing the Finitude of Bodies 201 3 That the Power that Preserves the Mixture is the Soul 205 4 The Reality of Perceptions, and the External and Internal Senses 209 5 That the Rational Soul is not Imprinted in the Body 239 6 That Some Existents are beyond the Grasp of the Senses 246 7 Establishing the Existence of the Necessary of Existence and the Finitude of Causes 248 8 Establishing the Oneness of the Necessary of Existence 251 9 That the Continued Existence of the Effect Depends on the Continued Existence of Its Cause 262 10 That the Possibility of Coming-to-be is an Attribute that Exists Prior to Coming-to-be 270 11 That from One Only One Effect Can Proceed 275 12 That the Activities of Corporeal Powers are Finite 279 13 That the Human Soul is not Affected by the Loss of the Body through Death 282 14 That the Human Soul Cannot Possibly Pass Away 285 15 The Knowledge that the Necessary of Existence Has of Itself and of Things Other than Itself 287 Index of the Arabic Text 289 Preface My interest in Sharaf al-Dīn al-Masʿūdī began more than a decade ago when I was able to establish a link between a figure who featured prominently in an autobiographical work of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī and a text transmitted in three manuscripts housed at the Süleymaniye Library. Al-Masʿūdī’s philosoph- ical output had previously remained almost completely unknown and unstud- ied, as it fell strictly outside the narrow bounds of what, in those days, was deemed worth a historian’s while. And yet I was immediately struck by the great historical interest of this new source: it revealed a previously unknown dialec- tical milieu and thus effectively opened an entire new chapter in the history of medieval Arabic philosophy and Islamic theology, as I endeavoured to show in the first article I published. Thankfully, the field has now moved on, such that our twelfth-century source no longer belongs to the onset of the ‘later’ ‘dark ages’ of Islamic thought, but occupies a central place in what I term the middle period. The present monograph, consisting of an interpretive study and a critical edition of al-Masʿūdī’s Shukūk, is the most substantial output to date of a wider long-term project on the development of Avicennan philosophy and Ashʿarī theology during this middle period, which culminates by the end of the twelfth century in the systematic philosophical theology of al-Rāzī. The book, as I would like to think, offers much more than ‘an edition with an extended introduction’; for over half of the interpretive part consists of focused case studies that examine not only a selection of al-Masʿūdī’s metaphysical aporias, but also their background starting with Avicenna. There remains much room, of course, for further research: most obviously, several discussions in the Shukūk await study, and so does the later reception of al-Masʿūdī’s criticisms and ideas, especially in al-Rāzī’s thought. The publication of this monograph has been made possible with gener- ous support recently, and gratefully, received from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for my project, ‘The Reception of Avicennan Philosophy in the Twelfth Century’. I would like to express my sincere thanks to the numer- ous colleagues who assisted in various ways with this project, both directly and indirectly, in particular to Taneli Kukkonen who read an entire draft and pro- vided invaluable feedback, and Frank Griffel who read, and commented on, Sections 1.2–3 which cover al-Masʿūdī’s biography and oeuvre, as well as to Roshdi Rashed, Judith Pfeiffer, Himmet Taşkömür, Robert Wisnovsky, Evrim Binbaş, Laura Hassan, Abdurrahman Atçıl, Tuna Tunagöz, Samar Mikati Kaissi and Carla Chalhoub. I am grateful to the editors of the Islamic Philosophy, The- viii preface ology and Science series, Hans Daiber, Emilie Savage-Smith and Anna Akasoy, for accepting to publish this monograph and for offering very helpful com- ments on my first draft. My thanks also go to the editorial and production teams at Brill, particularly Kathy van Vliet-Leigh and Teddi Dols. Finally, I would like to thank the production team of TAT Zetwerk for typesetting the book, espe- cially Laurie Meijers. Introduction This volume sheds vital new light on the middle period of medieval Arabic phi- losophy and Islamic theology.1 Traditional, nineteenth- and twentieth-century accounts of this period have advocated a narrative in which Ashʿarī theolo- gians launched an offensive against philosophy, resulting in its decline in later Islamic culture, or at least in Sunnism.2 The loci classicus of this offensive are considered to be al-Ghazālī’s (d. 505/1111) Tahāfut al-falāsifa (The Incoher- ence of the Philosophers) and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s (d. 606/1210) comprehen- sive commentary on Avicenna’s (d. 428/1037) al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt (Point- ers and Reminders), which are often interpreted as implementing the same basic agenda: to undermine the philosophical tradition of Neoplatonised Aris- totelianism in defence of a theological orthodoxy. It is now becoming increas- ingly evident that this reading is reductive and simplistic, and that to gain a sounder and more critical understanding of intellectual activity in this piv- otal period further empirical investigation is needed.