Islamic Philosophy

A Beginner's Guide

Majid Fakhry

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781780740300
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

A comprehensive examination of the struggle to reconcile philosophy and Islam. From the introduction of Greek Philosophy into the Muslim world in the eighth century, right through to modern times, Majid Fakhry charts the evolution and interaction of philosophy, theology, and mysticism in the Islamic context. Highlighting key individuals, movements, concepts and writings, Fakhry also explores the conflicts and controversies between anti- and pro-philosophical parties that have characterised the development of Islamic thought. The book also features coverage of: the translation of ancient texts and their transmission to the Muslim world; the development of a systematic philosophy in Islam; theology, mysticism and the development of Sufism; Islam's interaction with western philosophy and theology; contemporary trends.

1

The transmission of ancient philosophy and science

The Greek and Syriac legacies

With the capture of Alexandria in 641, the Arab conquest of the Middle East was virtually complete. Greek culture had flourished in Egypt, Syria and Iraq since the time of Alexander the Great. The capture of Alexandria, which had become the cultural centre of the ancient world, brought the Arabs into contact with the cultures of Greece and the Middle East; for during the Ptolemaic period Alexandria had become the heiress of Athens in the fields of philosophy and science. In addition, it had become the meeting-ground of Greek speculative thought and oriental religious and mystical traditions, Egyptian, Phoenician, Persian, Jewish and Christian. The chief product of this Greek–Oriental encounter was Neoplatonism, founded by the Egyptian Plotinus (d. 270) and his most famous disciple the Syrian Porphyry of Tyre (d. 303). This brand of late Greek philosophy may best be described as a brilliant attempt to bring together the major currents in classical Greek thought, Platonic, Aristotelian, Pythagorean and Stoic, interpreted or recast in oriental religious or mystical idiom. It is not surprising, in the circumstances, that this should capture the imagination of Arab-Muslim philosophers, as illustrated by the fact that the first major philosophical text to be translated into Arabic, probably from Syriac, was a paraphrase of the last three books (IV, V and VI) of Plotinus’ great work, the Enneads. This work was compiled by Porphyry and divided into six books of nine chapters each (hence its name, which means ‘nine’ in Greek). In Arabic, however, the paraphrase in question was called the Athulugia (Theology) or the Kitab al-Rububiyah (Book of Divinity) and was erroneously attributed to Aristotle by its translator, ‘Abd al-Masih Ibn Na‘imah of Emessa (d. 835). Although its Greek author is unknown, learned opinion today inclines to regard it as the work of Plotinus’ disciple and editor, Porphyry himself.

Apart from Alexandria, centres of Greek linguistic, grammatical and theological studies flourished throughout Northern Syria and Upper Iraq well into the seventh and the eighth centuries. Of these centres, we might mention Antioch, Harran, Edessa, Qinnesrin and Nisibin, where Syriac-speaking scholars concentrated on the translation into Syriac of theological works written in Greek and emanating from Alexandria. As a propaedeutic or introductory text to the study of these works, parts of Aristotelian logic, including the Isagoge of Porphyry, the Categories, the Hermeneutica and the first parts of the Analytica priora, were translated into Syriac, excluding thereby the Analytica posteriora, the Sophistica and the Topica, which were deemed dangerous from a Christian point of view.

Logical and theological studies at these centres continued uninterrupted following the Arab conquest of Syria and Iraq, and produced eminent Jacobite and Nestorian scholars, such as Severus Sebokht (d. 696), Jacob of Edessa (d. 708), Georgius, known as Bishop of the Arabs (d. 774), and others.

However, translation from Syriac or Greek into Arabic appears to have started in the eighth century. The classical sources credit the Umayyad prince Khalid Ibn Yazid (d. 704) with sponsoring the translation of medical, alchemical and astrological works into Arabic. The first accredited philosophical translations, however, are those attributed to the great literary author ‘Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ (d. 757) or his son Muhammad, consisting of the Categories, the Hermeneutica and the Analytica priora of Aristotle, probably from Pahlavi, during the reign of the ‘Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur (754–73).

More important, perhaps, are the translations of Plato’s Timaeus in Galen’s synopsis or summary of that great Dialogue, Aristotle’s De anima, the Book of Animals, Analytica priora and the apocryphal Secrets of Secrets (ascribed to Aristotle), undertaken by Yahia Ibn al-Bitriq (d. 815) during the reign of Harun al-Rashid (786–809). However, it was Harun’s second son, al-Ma’mun (813–33), who placed the translation of Greek and foreign works in philosophy, science and medicine on an official footing. A brilliant and enlightened Caliph, al-Ma’mun founded the House of Wisdom in Baghdad in 830 to serve as a library and institute of translation, headed upon its founding by Yuhanna Ibn Masawayh (d. 857) and shortly after by his disciple, Hunayn Ibn Ishaq (d. 873), the greatest figure in the whole history of philosophical and medical translation.

Among the most important philosophical works which Hunayn, his son Ishaq, his nephew Hubaysh and his disciple ‘Isa Ibn Yahia, working as a team, are credited with translating were Aristotle’s Analytica posteriora, the Synopsis of the Ethics by Galen, as well as the synopses of Plato’s Sophist, Parmenides, Politicus, the Republic and the Laws. Aristotle’s Categories, Hermeneutica, Generation and Corruption, the Nicomachean Ethics and parts of the Physics, together with the spurious De plantis, were translated from Syriac by Ishaq Ibn Hunayn; whereas the Metaphysics was translated by, among others, a little-known translator, Astat (Eustathius) and Yahia Ibn ‘Adi (d. 974). Other parts of the Physics were translated from Greek by Qusta Ibn Luqa (d. 912), who is also credited with the translation of the Generation and Corruption and the pseudo-Plutarch’s Placita philosophorum. Abu Bishr Matta (d. 940) and his disciple, Yahia Ibn ‘Adi, the translator of the Metaphysics, are credited with numerous translations, mostly from Syriac. These included the Rhetoric and the Poetics of Aristotle, which were included in the Aristotelian logical corpus known as the Organon in the Arabic and Syriac traditions. Al-Hasan Ibn Suwar (d. 1017) and Abu‘Uthman al-Dimashqi (d. 910) are two of the better-known late translators of logical and philosophical texts.

As already mentioned, the translator of the paraphrase of Plotinus’ last three Enneads was Ibn Na‘imah of Emessa. This paraphrase, erroneously attributed to Aristotle, laid the foundations of Arab-Islamic Neoplatonism and was commented upon by a number of Islamic philosophers, including al-Kindi, al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, who never questioned its Aristotelian authorship. Other pseudo-Aristotelian works translated into Arabic include the already-mentioned De plantis and the Secret of Secrets, as well as the Book of Minerals and the Liber de causis. Referred to in the Arabic sources as the Pure Good, the last-mentioned book was a compilation of thirty-two propositions selected from the Elements of Theology written by the great Neoplatonist Proclus of Athens (d. 485) and translated anonymously into Arabic prior to the tenth century. It played an important role in the development of the emanationist worldview first elaborated by al-Farabi and his Neoplatonic successor, Ibn Sina.¹

The Persian and Indian legacies

The massive effort to translate the chief monuments of Greek philosophy, science and medicine into Arabic, thanks to the patronage of the early ‘Abbasid Caliphs and a cluster of other patrons, like the Barmakids, the Banu Shakir and the Banu Musa, introduced Muslims to the whole cultural heritage of the Greeks. However, Plato’s Dialogues reached them in an abridged form, of which very few samples or excerpts have survived in Arabic. The Politics was the only major work of Aristotle never to be translated into Arabic. It was replaced instead by a spurious and superficial treatise purporting to have been written by Aristotle for the use of his pupil, Alexander the Great. Known as the Secret of Secrets, this treatise was translated by Yahia Ibn al-Bitriq (d. 815), who claimed to have discovered it in a ‘Greek temple’, during his travels in ‘Bilad al-Rum’, or Byzantium. In addition, a smattering of information about the Pre-Socratics trickled down through secondary sources such as Porphyry’s lost History of Philosophy and pseudo-Plutarch’s Placita philosophorum, and has been preserved in such doxographies as al-Milal wa’l-Nihal of al-Shahrastani (d. 1153) and the Suwan al-Hikmah of al-Sijistani (d. 1000). Of those Pre-Socratics, the names of Pythagoras and Empedocles, whose religious leanings are well known, recur constantly, but the names of Thales, Parmenides and Heraclitus are barely mentioned in the sources.

The interest of Muslim scholars in other cultures, such as the Indian and Persian, did not match their interest in Greek culture, and Roman culture remained virtually a closed book to the Arabs. Interest in Indian culture tended to turn on astronomical and medical subjects, but it is significant that the religious beliefs of the Indians were not totally ignored. Thus, Ibn al-Nadim (d. 995), the great bibliographer, refers in his Fihrist to a tract ‘On the Creeds and Religions of India’ which was in circulation in his day and of which he saw a copy in al-Kindi’s own hand. He also refers to other tracts on which he says he based his account of the religious creeds of the Indians. Our major source of information on the religious and philosophical beliefs of the Indians, however, is contained in the writings of al-Biruni (d. 1048), the great astronomer and historian, who expounded with great perspicacity, in his Tahqiq ma li’l-Hind min Maqulah (The Truth about the Beliefs of the Indians), the fundamental beliefs of the Hindus, for which he finds apt parallels in Greek philosophy. In this book al-Biruni refers, moreover, to a little-known writer of the ninth century, Abu’l-‘Abbas al-Ira nshahri, who was particularly conversant with Indian religious doctrines and who appears to have influenced the great philosopher-physician AbuBakr al-Razi (d. 925), especially in his concepts of space and time and the atomic composition of bodies. Some aspects of Indian atomism appear, in fact, to have been at the basis of the atomism of Kalam, one of the cornerstones of Islamic theology.

If we turn now to the Persian legacy, we find that it consisted primarily of the literary and moral lore of the ancient Persians. The earliest example of the literary lore is Kalilah wa Dimnah, or ‘Fables’ of the Indian sage Bidpai, translated from Pahlavi by Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ (d. 757). Equally important is the compilation known as Jawidan Khirad, or ‘Eternal Wisdom’, written more than two centuries later by a fellow-Persian, Miskawayh (d. 1030), the greatest ethical philosopher of Islam. It consists, according to the author, of all that he was able to glean ‘of the sermons and moral teachings of the four nations; I mean the Persians, the Indians, the Arabs and the Greeks’.²

The first part of this compilation consists of aphorisms and sermons of the prehistoric Persian king Ushahang (Hoshang), Buzurgimhr, Anushirwan, Bahman the King and others. It is noteworthy, however, that the most profound Persian influence stemmed from the religious doctrines of Manicheeism, which had an all-pervasive influence on poets, philosophers and politicians, including some Caliphs. Our sources mention, among those accused of Manicheeism, known in Arabic as zindiqs, or adepts of the Zend Avesta (the sacred scriptures of Zoroastrianism), the poet Bashshar Ibn Burd, Abu‘Isa al-Warraq, members of the Barmakid family, Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ and the Umayyad Caliph Marwan II.

2

Early religious and political conflicts

The political scene in the seventh century

The translations discussed in chapter 1 were a major factor in the development of Muslim philosophical and theological thought. However, their impact was not felt at once and it was not until the eighth and ninth centuries that they begin to play a decisive role in theological controversies. Political conflicts, though, began to play an important role in shaping the theological outlook of rival parties as early as the seventh century.

The first serious issue to split the Muslim community following the death of the Prophet in 632 CE was the question of the legitimate successor to the caliphal office. This came to a head in the wake of the assassination of the third Caliph, ‘Uthman Ibn ‘Affan, in 656. This act pitted against each other the two claimants to the caliphate, ‘Ali Ibn Abi Talib, son-in-law of the Prophet, and Mu‘awiyah, Governor of Damascus and kinsman of the assassinated Caliph.

According to the traditional account, as ‘Ali’s army was about to snatch the fruit of victory from Mu‘awiyah at the Battle of Siffin in 657, Mu‘awiyah resorted to a delaying tactic and called for arbitration. The arbitration which ensued not only confirmed Mu‘awiyah’s right to the succession, but also split ‘Ali’s army into two rival factions, loyalists and mutineers. The mutineers, known as Kharijites or Secessionists, rejected as a grave sin (kabirah) ‘Ali’s original consent to arbitration, in so far as it cast doubt on his rightful claim to the caliphate. From that point on, the Kharijites developed an elaborate theory of legitimacy fraught with moral and theological consequences. The Muslim community, they asserted, had the right to depose or even assassinate a Caliph deemed guilty of a grave sin, political or other. Such sin, they went on to argue, called into question the very status of the sinner as a true Muslim, who should be regarded in the circumstances as an actual infidel (kafir) deserving of death. In implementation of this thesis, ‘Ali was killed in 661 by a Kharijite assassin.

The Kharijites were not content to posit as a political and theological maxim the right of the Muslim community to punish the grave sinner as an apostate; they went one step further and challenged the official view, according to which the caliphal office should be confined to members of Quraysh, the Prophet’s own tribe. They held instead that the members of the Muslim community, in democratic fashion, were at liberty to elect whomsoever they deemed worthy of that office, or as one authority put it, ‘whoever [the Muslim community] elects as they see fit, and who deals with the people in accordance with the precepts of justice and injustice is the rightful Imam [or Caliph]. Should he change his ways and depart from the right path, he should be deposed or killed.’¹ They further allowed that the community could dispense with the caliphal office altogether, ‘but if he is needed, it is lawful, whether he is a slave or a freeman, a Nabataean or a Qurashite’² regardless.

The Shi‘ite or ‘Alid party was quick to reject these claims and to pledge its unconditional allegiance to the ‘Alid branch of Quraysh, asserting as their grand political maxim, in diametrical opposition to the Kharijites, that the caliphal office, or Imamate in Shi‘ite parlance, was divine or necessary, so that ‘the earth can never be without an Imam’, as they put it. This Imam, for the Shi‘ites, was not only the political head of the community, but its infallible teacher as well. Otherwise, the purity of religious truth would be jeopardized and the world would be plunged into anarchy and chaos. In the absence of a ‘visible Imam’, Shi‘ite doctrine has stipulated from the earliest times that he is in ‘temporary concealment’ (qhaybah) and that he will appear at the end of time to fill the earth with justice, as it had been filled with falsehood and injustice.

With respect to orthodoxy or right belief (iman) and the status of the Muslim who commits a grave sin, which the Kharijites had raised in such a dramatic way, the Shi‘ites rejected the Kha rijites’ ambiguous appeal to the Book of God, proclaimed at the Battle of Siffin, as well as the Sunnite or official view that the consensus (ijma‘) of the Muslim community was, next to the Qur’an and the the Traditions of the Prophet (Hadith), the ultimate warrant of religious and moral truth. For the Shi‘ites, this warrant is the teaching of the Imam, the only infallible interpreter of the ‘hidden’ meaning of the sacred texts. Of the three subdivisions of the Shi‘ah, the Imamites or Twelvers, the Zaydites and the Isma‘ilis or Seveners, it is the latter, followers of the Seventh Shi‘ite Imam, Isma‘il, son of Ja‘far al-Sadiq (d. 860)...