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THE
DEVELOPMENT OF METAPHYSICS
IN
PERSIA:
A CONTRIBUTION TO THE HISTORY
OF MUSLIM PHILOSOPHY
BY
SHAIKH MUHAMMAD IQBAL
B. A. (Cantab) M. A. (Pb.) Ph. D. (Munich).
LONDON
LUZAC & Co. 46, Great Russell Street W. C.
1908
Printed by E. J. BRILL. — LEIDEN (Holland).
DEDICATION
TO
Professor T. W. ARNOLD M. A.
My dear MR. ARNOLD,
This little book is the first-fruit of that literary and philosophical
training which I have been receiving from you for the last ten years,
and as an expression of gratitude I beg to dedicate it to your name. You
have always judged me liberally; I hope you will judge these pages in
the same spirit.
Your affectionate pupil
IQBAL.
INTRODUCTION.
The most remarkable feature of the character of the Persian people is
their love of Metaphysical speculation. Yet the inquirer who approaches
the extant literature of Persia expecting to find any comprehensive
systems of thought, like those of Kapila or Kant, will have to turn back
disappointed, though deeply impressed by the wonderful intellectual
subtlety displayed therein. It seems to me that the Persian mind is
rather impatient of detail, and consequently destitute of that
organising faculty which gradually works out a system of ideas, by
interpreting the fundamental principles with reference to the ordinary
facts of observation. The subtle Brahman sees the inner unity of things;
so does the Persian. But while the former endeavours to discover it in
all the aspects of human experience, and illustrates its hidden presence
in the concrete in various ways, the latter appears to be satisfied
with a bare universality, and does not attempt to verify the richness of
its inner content. The butterfly imagination of the Persian flies,
half-inebriated as it were, from flower to flower, and seems to be
incapable of reviewing the garden as a whole. For this reason his
deepest thoughts and emotions find expression mostly in disconnected
verses (G̱ẖazal) which reveal all the subtlety of his artistic soul.
The Hindū, while admitting, like the Persian, the necessity of a higher
source of knowledge, yet calmly moves from experience to experience,
mercilessly dissecting them, and forcing them to yield their underlying
universality. In fact the Persian is only half-conscious of Metaphysics
as a _system_ of thought; his Brahman brother, on the other hand, is
fully alive to the need of presenting his theory in the form of a
thoroughly reasoned out system. And the result of this mental difference
between the two nations is clear. In the one case we have only partially
worked out systems of thought; in the other case, the awful sublimity of
the searching Vedānta. The student of Islamic Mysticism who is anxious
to see an all-embracing exposition of the principle of Unity, must look
up the heavy volumes of the Andalūsian Ibn al-‘Arabī, whose profound
teaching stands in strange contrast with the dry-as-dust Islam of his
countrymen.
The results, however, of the intellectual activity of the different
branches of the great Aryan family are strikingly similar. The outcome
of all Idealistic speculation in India is Buddha, in Persia Bahāullah,
and in the west Schopenhauer whose system, in Hegelian language, is the
marriage of free oriental universality with occidental determinateness.
But the history of Persian thought presents a phenomenon peculiar to
itself. In Persia, due perhaps to semitic influences, philosophical
speculation has indissolubly associated itself with religion, and
thinkers in new lines of thought have almost always been founders of new
religious movements. After the Arab conquest, however, we see pure
Philosophy severed from religion by the Neo-Platonic Aristotelians of
Islam, but the severance was only a transient phenomenon. Greek
philosophy, though an exotic plant in the soil of Persia, eventually
became an integral part of Persian thought; and later thinkers, critics
as well as advocates of Greek wisdom, talked in the philosophical
language of Aristotle and Plato, and were mostly influenced by religious
presuppositions. It is necessary to bear this fact in mind in order to
gain a thorough understanding of post-Islamic Persian thought.
The object of this investigation is, as will appear, to prepare a
ground-work for a future history of Persian Metaphysics. Original
thought cannot be expected in a review, the object of which is purely
historical; yet I venture to claim some consideration for the following
two points:--
(a) I have endeavoured to trace the logical continuity of Persian
thought, which I have tried to interpret in the language of modern
Philosophy. This, as far as I know, has not yet been done.
(b) I have discussed the subject of Ṣūfīism in a more scientific manner,
and have attempted to bring out the intellectual conditions which
necessitated such a phenomenon. In opposition, therefore, to the
generally accepted view I have tried to maintain that Ṣūfīism is a
necessary product of the play of various intellectual and moral forces
which would necessarily awaken the slumbering soul to a higher ideal of
life.
Owing to my ignorance of Zend, my knowledge of Zoroaster is merely
second-hand. As regards the second part of my work, I have been able to
look up the original Persian and Arabic manuscripts as well as many
printed works connected with my investigation. I give below the names of
Arabic and Persian manuscripts from which I have drawn most of the
material utilized here. The method of transliteration adopted is the one
recognised by the Royal Asiatic Society.
1. Tārīḵẖ al-Ḥukamā, by Al-Baihaqī.--Royal Library of Berlin.
2. S̱ẖarḥi Anwāriyya, (with the original text) by Muḥammad
S̱ẖarīf of Herāt. Royal Library of Berlin.
3. Ḥikmat al-‘Ain, by al-Kātibī. Royal Library of Berlin.
4. Commentary on Ḥikmat al-‘Ain, by Muḥammad ibn Mubārak
al-Buḵẖārī. India Office Library.
5. Commentary on Ḥikmat al-‘Ain by Ḥusainī. India Office
Library.
6. ‘Awārif al-Ma‘ārif, by S̱ẖahāb al-Dīn. India Office Library.
7. Mis̱ẖkāt al-Anwār, by Al-G̱ẖazālī. India Office Library.
8. Kas̱ẖf al-Maḥjūb, by ‘Alī Hajverī. India Office Library.
9. Risālahi Nafs translated from Aristotle, by Afḍal Kāshī.
India Office Library.
10. Risālahi Mīr Sayyid S̱ẖarīf. India Office Library.
11. Ḵẖātima, by Sayyid Muḥammad Gisūdarāz. India Office
Library.
12. Manāzilal-sā’rīn, by ‘Abdullah Ismāi’l of Herāt. India
Office Library.
13. Jāwidān Nāma, by Afḍal Kās̱ẖī. India Office Library.
14. Tārīḵẖ al-Ḥukamā, by S̱ẖahrzūrī. British Museum Library.
15. Collected works of Avicenna. British Museum Library.
16. Risalah fi’l-Wujūd, by Mīr Jurjānī. British Museum Library.
17. Jāwidāni Kabīr. Cambridge University Library.
18. Jāmi Jahān Numā. Cambridge University Library.
19. Majmu‘ai Fārsī Risālah No: 1, 2, of Al-Nasafī. Trinity
College Library.
S. M. IQBAL.
CONTENTS.
PART I.
Pre-Islamic Persian Philosophy.
Page
Chapter I. Persian Dualism 1
Sec: I. Zoroaster 1
Sec: II. Mānī and Mazdak 12
Sec: III. Retrospect 20
PART II.
Greek Dualism.
Chapter II. Neo-Platonic Aristotelians of Persia 22
Sec: I. Ibn Maskawaih 26
Sec: II. Avicenna 38