[1] For the general history of the succeeding period see CALIPHATE;
EGYPT: _History_, S "Mahommedan."
[2] For further details of this period, see Egypt: _History_,
"Mahommedan Period," S 8.
[3] On the subject of transmission cf. Th. Noldeke's _Beitrage zur
Kenntniss der Poesie der alten Araber_ (Hanover, 1804); and W.
Ahlwardt's _Bemerkungen uber die Aechtheit der alten arabischen
Gedickte_ (Greifswald, 1872).
[4] For details see the introduction to Noldeke's translation of
Tabari's _Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden_
(Leiden, 1879).
[5] Published in excerpt by Wustenfeld along with Azraqi (Leipzig,
1857-1859).
[6] Of this work the Gotha Library has a portion containing 290-320
A.H., of which the part about the West has been printed by Dozy in
the Bayan, and the rest was published at Leiden in 1897.
[7] A fragment (198-251 A.H.) is printed in de Goeje, _Fragm. Hist.
Ar._ (vol. ii., Leiden, 1871).
[8] The first part was rendered into French by Dubeux in 1836. There
is an excellent French translation by Zotenberg (1874).
[9] The chief Arabian geographical works have been edited by M.J. de
Goeje in his _Bibliotheca Geographorum arabicorum_ (Leiden, 1874
ff.).
ARABIAN PHILOSOPHY. What is known as "Arabian" philosophy owed to Arabia
little more than its name and its language. It was a system of Greek
thought, expressed in a Semitic tongue, and modified by Oriental
influences, called into existence amongst the Moslem people by the
patronage of their more liberal princes, and kept alive by the
intrepidity and zeal of a small band of thinkers, who stood suspected
and disliked in the eyes of their nation. Their chief claim to the
notice of the historian of speculation comes from their warm reception
of Greek philosophy when it had been banished from its original soil,
and whilst western Europe was still too rude and ignorant to be its home
(9th to 12th century).
Origin.
In the course of that exile the traces of Semitic or Mahommedan
influence gradually faded away, and the last of the line of Saracenic
thinkers was a truer exponent of the one philosophy which they all
professed to teach than the first. The whole movement is little else
than a chapter in the history of Aristotelianism. That system of
thought, after passing through the minds of those who saw it in the hazy
light of an orientalized Platonism, and finding many laborious but
narrow-purposed cultivators in the monastic schools of heretical Syria,
was then brought into contact with the ideas and mental habits of Islam.
But those in whom the two currents converged did not belong to the pure
Arab race. Of the so-called Arabian philosophers of the East, al-Farabi,
Ibn-Sina and al-Ghazali were natives of Khorasan, Bokhara and the
outlying provinces of north-eastern Persia; whilst al-Kindi, the
earliest of them, sprang from Basra, on the Persian Gulf, on the
debatable ground between the Semite and the Aryan. In Spain, again,
where Ibn-Bajja, Ibn-Tufail and Ibn Rushd rivalled or exceeded the fame
of the Eastern schools, the Arabians of pure blood were few, and the
Moorish ruling class was deeply intersected by Jewish colonies, and even
by the natives of Christian Spain. Thus, alike at Bagdad and at Cordova,
Arabian philosophy represents the temporary victory of exotic ideas and
of subject races over the theological one-sidedness of Islam, and the
illiterate simplicity of the early Saracens.
Islam had, it is true, a philosophy of its own among its theologians
(see MAHOMMEDAN RELIGION). It was with them that the Moslem
theology--the science of the word (_Kalam_)--first came into existence.
Its professors, the _Mutakallimun_ (known in Hebrew as _Medabberim_, and
as _Loquentes_ in the Latin versions), may be compared with the
scholastic doctors of the Catholic Church. Driven in the first instance
to speculation in theology by the needs of their natural reason, they
came, in after days, when Greek philosophy had been naturalized in the
Caliphate, to adapt its methods and doctrines to the support of their
views. They employed a quasi-philosophical method, by which, according
to Maimonides, they first reflected how things ought to be in order to
support, or at least not contradict, their opinions, and then, when
their minds were made up with regard to this imaginary system, declared
that the world was no otherwise constituted. The dogmas of creation and
providence, of divine omnipotence, chiefly exercised them; and they
sought to assert for God an immediate action in the making and the
keeping of the world. Space they looked upon as pervaded by atoms
possessing no quality or extension, and time was similarly divided into
innumerable instants. Each change in the constitution of the atoms is a
direct act of the Almighty. When the fire burns, or the water moistens,
these terms merely express the habitual connexion which our senses
perceive between one thing and another. It is not the man that throws a
stone who is its real mover: the supreme agent has for the moment
created motion. If a living being die, it is because God has created the
attribute of death; and the body remains dead, only because that
attribute is unceasingly created. Thus, on the one hand, the object
called the cause is denied to have any efficient power to produce the
so-called effect; and, on the other hand, the regularities or laws of
nature are explained to be direct interferences by the Deity. The
supposed uniformity and necessity of causation is only an effect of
custom, and may be at any moment rescinded. In this way, by a theory
which, according to Averroes, involves the negation of science, the
Moslem theologians believed that they had exalted God beyond the limits
of the metaphysical and scientific conceptions of law, form and matter;
whilst they at the same time stood aloof from the vulgar doctrines,
attributing a causality to things. Thus they deemed they had left a
clear ground for the possibility of miracles.
But at least one point was common to the theological and the
philosophical doctrine. Carrying out, it may be, the principles of the
Neo-Platonists, they kept the sanctuary of the Deity securely guarded,
and interposed between him and his creatures a spiritual order of potent
principles, from the Intelligence, which is the first-born image of the
great unity, to the Soul and Nature, which come later in the spiritual
rank. Of God the philosophers said we could not tell what He is, but
only what He is not. The highest point, beyond which strictly
philosophical inquirers did not penetrate, was the active intellect,--a
sort of soul of the world in Aristotelian garb--the principle which
inspires and regulates the development of humanity, and in which lies
the goal of perfection for the human spirit. In theological language the
active intellect is described as an angel. The inspirations which the
prophet receives by angelic messengers are compared with the irradiation
of intellectual light, which the philosopher wins by contemplation of
truth and increasing purity of life. But while the theologian
incessantly postulated the agency of that God whose nature he deemed
beyond the pale of science, the philosopher, following a purely human
and natural aim, directed his efforts to the gradual elevation of his
part of reason from its unformed state, and to its final union with the
controlling intellect which moves and draws to itself the spirits of
those who prepare themselves for its influences. The philosophers in
their way, like the mystics of Persia (the Sufites) in another, tended
towards a theory of the communion of man with the spiritual world, which
may be considered a protest against the practical and almost prosaic
definiteness of the creed of Mahomet.
Arabian philosophy, at the outset of its career in the 9th century, was
able without difficulty to take possession of those resources for
speculative thought which the Latins had barely achieved at the close of
the 12th century by the slow process of rediscovering the Aristotelian
logic from the commentaries and verses of Boetius. What the Latins
painfully accomplished, owing to their fragmentary and unintelligent
acquaintance with ancient philosophy, was already done for the Arabians
by the scholars of Syria. In the early centuries of the Christian era,
both within and without the ranks of the church, the Platonic tone and
method were paramount throughout the East. Their influence was felt in
the creeds which formulated the orthodox dogmas in regard to the Trinity
and the Incarnation. But in its later days the Neo-Platonist school came
more and more to find in Aristotle the best exponent and interpreter of
the philosopher whom they thought divine. It was in this spirit that
Porphyry, Themistius and Joannes Philoponus composed their commentaries
on the treatises of the Peripatetic system which, modified often
unconsciously by the dominant ideas of its expositors, became in the 6th
and 7th centuries the philosophy of the Eastern Church. But the
instrument which, in the hands of John of Damascus (Damascenus), was
made subservient to theological interests, became in the hands of others
a dissolvent of the doctrines which had been reduced to shape under the
prevalence of the elder Platonism. Peripatetic studies became the source
of heresies; and conversely, the heretical sects prosecuted the study of
Aristotle with peculiar zeal. The church of the Nestorians, and that of
the Monophysites, in their several schools and monasteries, carried on
from the 5th to the 8th century the study of the earlier part of the
Organon, with almost the same means, purposes and results as were found
among the Latin schoolmen of the earlier centuries. Up to the time when
the religious zeal of the emperor Zeno put a stop to the Nestorian
school at Edessa, this "Athens of Syria" was active in translating and
popularizing the Aristotelian logic. Their banishment from Edessa in 489
drove the Nestorian scholars to Persia, where the Sassanid rulers gave
them a welcome; and there they continued their labours on the Organon. A
new seminary of logic and theology sprang up at Nisibis, not far from
the old locality; and at Gandisapora (or Nishapur), in the east of
Persia, there arose a medical school, whence Greek medicine, and in its
company Greek science and philosophy, ere long spread over the lands of
Iran. Meanwhile the Monophysites had followed in the steps of the
Nestorians, multiplying Syriac versions of the logical and medical
science of the Greeks. Their school at Resaina is known from the name of
Sergius, one of the first of these translators, in the days of
Justinian; and from their monasteries at Kinnesrin (Chalcis) issued
numerous versions of the introductory treatises of the Aristotelian
logic. To the Isagoge of Porphyry, the Categories and the Hermeneutica
of Aristotle, the labours of these Syrian schoolmen were confined. These
they expounded, translated, epitomized and made the basis of their
compilations, and the few who were bold enough to attempt the Analytics
seem to have left their task unaccomplished.
The energy of the Monophysites, however, began to sink with the rise of
the Moslem empire; and when philosophy revived amongst them in the 13th
century, in the person of Gregorius Bat-Hebraeus (Abulfaragius)
(1226-1286), the revival was due to the example and influence of the
Arabian thinkers. It was otherwise with the Nestorians. Gaining by means
of their professional skill as physicians a high rank in the society of
the Moslem world, the Nestorian scholars soon made Bagdad familiar with
the knowledge of Greek philosophy and science which they possessed. But
the narrow limits of the Syrian studies, which added to a scanty
knowledge of Aristotle some acquaintance with his Syrian commentators,
were soon passed by the curiosity and zeal of the students in the
Caliphate. During the 8th and 9th centuries, rough but generally
faithful versions of Aristotle's principal works were made into Syriac,
and then from the Syriac into Arabic. The names of some of these
translators, such as Johannitius (Hunain ibn-Ishaq), were heard even in
the Latin schools. By the labours of Hunain and his family the great
body of Greek science, medical, astronomical and mathematical, became
accessible to the Arab-speaking races. But for the next three centuries
fresh versions, both of the philosopher and of his commentators,
continued to succeed each other.
To the Arabians Aristotle represented and summed up Greek philosophy,
even as Galen became to them the code of Greek medicine. They adopted
the doctrine and system which the progress of human affairs had made the
intellectual aliment of their Syrian guides. From first to last Arabian
philosophers made no claim to originality; their aim was merely to
propagate the truth of Peripateticism as it had been delivered to them.
It was with them that the deification of Aristotle began; and from them
the belief that in him human intelligence had reached its limit passed
to the later schoolmen (see SCHOLASTICISM). The progress amongst the
Arabians on this side lies in a closer adherence to their text, a nearer
approach to the bare exegesis of their author, and an increasing
emancipation from control by the tenets of the popular religion.
Under the Caliphate.
Secular philosophy found its first entrance amongst the Saracens in the
days of the early caliphs of the Abbasid dynasty, whose ways and
thoughts had been moulded by their residence in Persia amid the
influences of an older creed, and of ideas which had in the last resort
sprung from the Greeks. The seat of empire had been transferred to
Bagdad, on the highway of Oriental commerce; and the distant Khorasan
became the favourite province of the caliph. Then was inaugurated the
period of Persian supremacy, during which Islam was laid open to the
full current of alien ideas and culture. The incitement came, however,
not from the people, but from the prince: it was in the light of court
favour that the colleges of Bagdad and Nishapur first came to attract
students from every quarter, from the valleys of Andalusia as well as
the upland plains of Transoxiana. Mansur, the second of the Abbasids,
encouraged the appropriation of Greek science; but it was al-Ma'mun, the
son of Harun al-Rashid, who deserves in the Mahommedan empire the same
position of royal founder and benefactor which is held by Charlemagne in
the history of the Latin schools. In his reign (813-833) Aristotle was
first translated into Arabic. Orthodox Moslems, however, distrusted the
course on which their chief had entered, and his philosophical
proclivities became one ground for doubting as to his final salvation.
In the eastern provinces the chief names of Arabian philosophy are those
known to the Latin schoolmen as Alkindius, Aliarabius, Avicenna and
Algazel, or under forms resembling these. The first of these, Alkindius
(_see_ KINDI), flourished at the court of Bagdad in the first half of
the 9th century. His claims to notice at the present day rest upon a few
works on medicine, theology, music and natural science. With him begins
that encyclopaedic character--the simultaneous cultivation of the whole
field of investigation which is reflected from Aristotle on the Arabian
school. In him too is found the union of Platonism and Aristotelianism
expressed in Neo-Platonic terms. Towards the close of the 10th century
the presentation of an entire scheme of knowledge, beginning with logic
and mathematics, and ascending through the various departments of
physical inquiry to the region of religious doctrine, was accomplished
by a society which had its chief seat at Basra, the native town of
al-Kindi. This society--the Brothers of Purity or Sincerity (Ikhwan us
Safa'i)--divided into four orders, wrought in the interests of religion
no less than of science; and though its attempt to compile an
encyclopaedia of existing knowledge may have been premature, it yet
contributed to spread abroad a desire for further information. The
proposed reconciliation between science and faith was not accomplished,
because the compromise could please neither party. The fifty-one
treatises of which this encyclopaedia consists are interspersed with
apologues in true Oriental style, and the idea of goodness, of moral
perfection, is as prominent an end in every discourse as it was in the
alleged dream of al-Ma'mun. The materials of the work come chiefly from
Aristotle, but they are conceived in a Platonizing spirit, which places
as the bond of all things a universal soul of the world with its partial
or fragmentary souls. Contemporary with this semi-religious and
semi-philosophical society lived Alfarabius (see FARABI), who died in
950. His paraphrases of Aristotle formed the basis on which Avicenna
constructed his system, and his logical treatises produced a permanent
effect on the logic of the Latin scholars. He gave the tone and
direction to nearly all subsequent speculations among the Arabians. His
order and enumeration of the principles of being, his doctrine of the
double aspect of intellect, and of the perfect beatitude which consists
in the aggregation of noble minds when they are delivered from the
separating barriers of individual bodies, present at least in germ the
characteristic theory of Averroes. But al-Farabi was not always
consistent in his views; a certain sobriety checked his speculative
flights, and although holding that the true perfection of man is reached
in this life by the elevation of the intellectual nature, he came
towards the close to think the separate existence of intellect no better
than a delusion.
Avicenna.
Unquestionably the most illustrious name amongst the Oriental Moslems
was Avicenna (980-1037). His rank in the medieval world as a philosopher
was far beneath his fame as a physician. Still, the logic of Albertus
Magnus and succeeding doctors was largely indebted to him for its
formulae. In logic Avicenna starts from distinguishing between the
isolated concept and the judgment or assertion; from which two primitive
elements of knowledge there is artificially generated a complete and
scientific knowledge by the two processes of definition and syllogism.
But the chief interest for the history of logic belongs to his doctrine
in so far as it bears upon the nature and function of abstract ideas.
The question had been suggested alike to East and West by Porphyry, and
the Arabians were the first to approach the full statement of the
problem. Farabi had pointed out that the universal and individual are
not distinguished from each other as understanding from the senses, but
that both universal and individual are in one respect intellectual, just
as in another connexion they play a part in perception. He had
distinguished the universal essence in its abstract nature, from the
universal considered in relation to a number of singulars. These
suggestions formed the basis of Avicenna's doctrine. The essences or
forms--the _intelligibilia_ which constitute the world of real
knowledge--may be looked at in themselves (metaphysically), or as
embodied in the things of sense (physically), or as expressing the
processes of thought (logically). The first of these three points of
view deals with the form or idea as self-contained in the principles of
its own being, apart from those connexions and distinctions which it
receives in real (sensuous) science, and through the act of intellect.
Secondly, the form may be looked at as the similarity evolved by a
process of comparison, as the work of mental reflection, and in that way
as essentially expressing a relation. When thus considered as the common
features derived by examination from singular instances, it becomes a
universal or common term strictly so called. It is intellect which first
makes the abstract idea a true universal. _Intellectus in formis agit
universalitatem._ In the third place, the form or essence may be looked
upon as embodied in outward things (_in singularibus propriis_), and
thus it is the type more or less represented by the members of a natural
kind. It is the designation of these outward things which forms the
"first intention" of names; and it is only at a later stage, when
thought comes to observe its own modes, that names, looked upon as
predicables and universals, are taken in their "second intention." Logic
deals with such second intentions. It does not consider the forms _ante
multiplicitatem_, i.e. as eternal ideas--nor in _multiplicitate_, i.e.
as immersed in the matter of the phenomenal world--but _post
multiplicitatem_, _i. e._ as they exist in and for the intellect which
has examined and compared. Logic does not come in contact with things,
except as they are subject to modification by intellectual forms. In
other words, universality, individuality and speciality are all equally
modes of our comprehension or notion; their meaning consists in their
setting forth the relations attaching to any object of our conception.
In the mind, e.g., one form may be placed in reference to a multitude of
things, and as thus related will be universal. The form animal, e.g., is
an abstract intelligible or metaphysical idea. When an act of thought
employs it as a schema to unify several species, it acquires its logical
aspect (_respectus_) of generality; and the various living beings
qualified to have the name animal applied to them constitute the natural
class or kind. Avicenna's view of the universal may be compared with
that of Abelard, which calls it "that whose nature it is to be
predicated of several," as if the generality became explicit only in the
act of predication, in the _sermo_ or proposition, and not in the
abstract, unrelated form or essence. The three modes of the universal
before things, in things, and after things, spring from Arabian
influence, but depart somewhat from his standpoint.
The place of Avicenna amongst Moslem philosophers is seen in the fact
that Shahrastani takes him as the type of all, and that Ghazali's attack
against philosophy is in reality almost entirely directed against
Avicenna. His system is in the main a codification of Aristotle modified
by fundamental views of Neo-Platonist origin, and it tends to be a
compromise with theology. In order, for example, to maintain the
necessity of creation, he taught that all things except God were
admissible or possible in their own nature, but that certain of them
were rendered necessary by the act of the creative first agent,--in
other words, that the possible could be transformed into the necessary.
Avicenna's theory of the process of knowledge is an interesting part of
his doctrine. Man has a rational soul, one face of which is turned
towards the body, and, by the help of the higher aspect, acts as
practical understanding; the other face lies open to the reception and
acquisition of the intelligible forms, and its aim is to become a
reasonable world, reproducing the forms of the universe and their
intelligible order. In man there is only the susceptibility to reason,
which is sustained and helped by the light of the active intellect. Man
may prepare himself for this influx by removing the obstacles which
prevent the union of the intellect with the human vessel destined for
its reception. The stages of this process to the acquisition of mind are
generally enumerated by Avicenna as four; in this part he follows not
Aristotle, but the Greek commentator. The first stage is that of the
hylic or material intellect, a state of mere potentiality, like that of
a child for writing, before he has ever put pen to paper. The second
stage is called _in habitu_; it is compared to the case of a child that
has learned the elements of writing, when the bare possibility is on the
way to be developed, and is seen to be real. In this period of
half-trained reason, it appears as happy conjecture, not yet transformed
into art or science proper. When the power of writing has been
actualized, we have a parallel to the _intellectus in actu_--the way of
science and demonstration is entered. And when writing has been made a
permanent accomplishment, or lasting property of the subject, to be
taken up at will, it corresponds to the _intellectus adeptus_--the
complete mastery of science. The whole process may be compared to the
gradual illumination of a body naturally capable of receiving light.
There are, however, grades of susceptibility to the active intellect,
i.e. in theological language, to communication with God and his angels.
Sometimes the receptivity is so vigorous in its affinity, that without
teaching it rises at one step to the vision of truth, by a certain "holy
force" above ordinary measure. (In this way philosophy tried to account
for the phenomenon of prophecy, one of the ruling ideas of Islam.) But
the active intellect is not merely influential on human souls. It is the
universal giver of forms in the world.
In several points Avicenna endeavoured to give a _rationale_ of
theological dogmas, particularly of prophetic rule, of miracles, divine
providence and immortality. The permanence of individual souls he
supports by arguments borrowed from those of Plato. The existence of a
prophet is shown to be a corollary from a belief in God as a moral
governor, and the phenomena of miracles are required to evidence the
genuineness of the prophetic mission. Thus Avicenna, like his
predecessors, tried to harmonize the abstract forms of philosphy with
the religious faith of his nation. But his arguments are generally
vitiated by the fallacy of assuming what they profess to prove. His
failure is made obvious by the attack of Ghazali on the tendencies and
results of speculation.
Ghazali.
To Ghazali (q.v.) it seemed that the study of secular philosophy had
resulted in a general indifference to religion, and that the scepticism
which concealed itself under a pretence of piety was destroying the life
and purity of the nation. With these views he carried into the fields of
philosophy the aims and spirit of the Moslem theologian. His restless
life was the reflex of a mental history disturbed by prolonged
agitation. Revolting, in the height of his success, against the current
creed, he began to examine the foundations of knowledge. The senses are
contradicted by one another, and disproved by reason. Reason, indeed,
professes to furnish us with necessary truths; but what assurance have
we that the verdicts of reason may not be reversed by some higher
authority? Ghazali then interrogated all the sects in succession to
learn their criterion of truth. He first applied to the theological
schoolmen, who grounded their religion on reason; but their aim was only
to preserve the faith from heresy. He turned to the philosophers, and
examined the accepted Aristotelianism in a treatise which has come down
to us--_The Destruction of the Philosophers_. He assails them on twenty
points of their mixed physical and metaphysical peripateticism, from the
statement of which, in spite of his pretended scepticism, we can deduce
some very positive metaphysical opinions of his own. He claims to have
shown that the dogmas of the eternity of matter and the permanence of
the world are false; that their description of the Deity as the
demiurgos is unspiritual; that they fail to prove the existence, the
unity, the simplicity, the incorporeality or the knowledge (both of
species and accidents) of God; that their ascription of souls to the
celestial spheres is unproved; that their theory of causation, which
attributes effects to the very natures of the causes, is false, for that
all actions and events are to be ascribed to the Deity; and, finally,
that they cannot establish the spirituality of the soul, nor prove its
mortality. These criticisms disclose nothing like a sceptical state of
mind, but rather a reversion from the metaphysical to the theological
stage of thought. He denies the intrinsic tendencies, or souls, by which
the Aristotelians explained the motion of the spheres, because he
ascribes their motion to God. The sceptic would have denied both. G.H.
Lewes censures Renan for asserting of Ghazali's theory of
causation--"_Hume n'a rien dit plus_." It is true that Ghazali maintains
that the natural law according to which effects proceed inevitably from
their causes is only custom, and that there is no _necessary_ connexion
between them. But while Hume absolutely denies the necessity, Ghazali
merely removes it one stage farther back, and plants it in the mind of
the Deity. This, of course, is not metaphysics, but theology. Having, as
he believed, refuted the opinions of the philosophers, he next
investigated the pretensions of the Allegorists, who derived their
doctrines from an imam. These Arabian ultramontanes had no word for the
doubter. They could not, he says, even understand the problems they
sought to resolve by the assumption of infallibility, and he turned
again, in his despair, to the instructors of his youth--the Sufis. In
their mystical intuition of the laws of life, and absorption in the
immanent Deity, he at last found peace. This shows the true character of
the treatise which, alike in medieval and modern times, has been quoted
as containing an exposition of his opinions. The work called _The
Tendencies of the Philosophers_, translated in 1506, with the title
_Logica et Philosophia Algazelis Arabis_, contains neither the logic nor
the philosophy of Ghazali. It is a mere abstract or statement of the
Peripatetic systems, and was made preliminary to that _Destruction_ of
which we have already spoken.
This indictment against liberal thought from the standpoint of the
theological school was afterwards answered in Spain by Averroes; but in
Bagdad it heralded the extinction of the light of philosophy. Moderate
and compliant with the popular religion as Alfarabius and Avicenna had
always been, as compared with their Spanish successor, they had equally
failed to conciliate the popular spirit, and were classed in the same
category with the heretic or the member of an immoral sect. The 12th
century exhibits the decay of liberal intellectual activity in the
Caliphate, and the gradual ascendancy of Turkish races animated with all
the intolerance of semi-barbarian proselytes to the Mahommedan faith.
Philosophy, which had only sprung up when the purely Arabian influences
ceased to predominate, came to an end when the sceptre of the Moslem
world passed away from the dynasty of Persia. Even in 1150 Bagdad had
seen a library of philosophical books burned by command of the caliph
Mostanjid; and in 1192 the same place might have witnessed a strange
scene, in which the books of a physician were first publicly cursed, and
then committed to the flames, while their owner was incarcerated. Thus,
while the Latin church showed a marvellous receptivity for ethnic
philosophy, and assimilated doctrines which it had at an earlier date
declared impious, in Islam the theological system entrenched itself
towards the end of the 12th century in the narrow orthodoxy of the
Asharites, and reduced the votaries of Greek philosophy to silence.
In Spain.
The same phenomena were repeated in Spain under the Mahommedan rulers of
Andalusia and Morocco, with this difference, that the time of
philosophical development was shorter, and the heights to which Spanish
thinkers soared were greater. The reign of al-Hakam the Second (961-976)
inaugurated in Andalusia those scientific and philosophical studies
which were simultaneously prosecuted by the Society of Basra. From
Cairo, Bagdad, Damascus and Alexandria, books both old and new were
procured at any price for the library of the prince; twenty-seven free
schools were opened in Cordova for the education of the poor; and
intelligent knowledge was perhaps more widely diffused in Mahommedan
Spain than in any other part of Europe at that day. The mosques of the
city were filled with crowds who listened to lectures on science and
literature, law and religion. But the future glory thus promised was
long postponed. The usurping successor of Hakam found it a politic step
to request the most notable doctors of the sacred law to examine the
royal library; and every book treating of philosophy, astronomy and
other forbidden topics was condemned to the flames. But the spirit of
research, fostered by the fusion of races and the social and
intellectual competition thus engendered, was not crushed by these
proceedings; and for the next century and more the higher minds of Spain
found in Damascus and Bagdad the intellectual aliment which they
desired. At last, towards the close of the 11th century, the long-pent
spiritual energies of Mahommedan Spain burst forth in a brief series of
illustrious men. Whilst the native Spaniards were narrowing the limits
of the Moorish kingdoms, and whilst the generally fanatical dynasty of
the Almohades might have been expected to repress speculation, the
century preceding the close of Mahommedan sway saw philosophy cultivated
by Avempace, Abubacer and Averroes. Even amongst the Almohades there
were princes, such as Yusuf (who began his reign in 1163) and Yaqub
Almansur (who succeeded in 1184), who welcomed the philosopher at their
courts and treated him as an intellectual compeer. But about 1195 the
old distrust of philosophy revived; the philosophers were banished in
disgrace; works on philosophical topics were ordered to be confiscated
and burned; and the son of Almansur condemned a certain Ibn-Habib to
death for the crime of philosophizing.
Avempace.
Arabian speculation in Spain was heralded by Avicebron or Ibn Gabirol
(q.v.), a Jewish philosopher (1021-1058). About a generation later the
rank of Moslem thinkers was introduced by Abu-Bakr Muhammad ibn Yahya,
surnamed Ibn-Bajja, and known to the Latin world as Avempace. He was
born at Saragossa, and died comparatively young at Fez in 1138. Besides
commenting on various physical treatises of Aristotle's, he wrote some
philosophical essays, notably one on the _Republic or Regime of the
Solitary_, understanding by that the organized system of rules, by
obedience to which the individual may rise from the mere life of the
senses to the perception of pure intelligible principles and may
participate in the divine thought which sustains the world. These rules
for the individual are but the image or reflex of the political
organization of the perfect or ideal state; and the man who strives to
lead this life is called the _solitary_, not because he withdraws from
society, but because, while in it, he guides himself by reference to a
higher state, an ideal society. Avempace does not develop at any length
this curious Platonic idea of the perfect state. His object is to
discover the highest end of human life, and with this view he classifies
the various activities of the human soul, rejects such as are material
or animal, and then analyses the various spiritual forms to which the
activities may be directed. He points out the graduated scale of such
forms, through which the soul may rise, and shows that none are final or
complete in themselves, except the pure intelligible forms, the ideas of
ideas. These the intellect can grasp, and in so doing it becomes what he
calls _intellectus acquisitus_, and is in a measure divine. This
self-consciousness of pure reason is the highest object of human
activity, and is to be attained by the speculative method. The intellect
has in itself power to know ultimate truth and intelligence, and does
not require a mystical illumination as Ghazali taught. Avempace's
principles, it is clear, lead directly to the Averroistic doctrine of
the unity of intellect, but the obscurity and incompleteness of the
Regime do not permit us to judge how far he anticipated the later
thinker. (See Munk, _Melanges de phil. juive et arabe_, pp. 383-410.)
The same theme was developed by Ibn.-Tufail (q.v.) in his philosophical
romance, called _Hayy ibn-Yakdhan_ (the Living, Son of the Waking One),
best known by Pococke's Latin version, as the _Philosophus
Autodidactus_. It describes the process by which an isolated
truth-seeker detaches himself from his lower passions, and raises
himself above the material earth and the orbs of heaven to the forms
which are the source of their movement, until he arrives at a union with
the supreme intellect. The experiences of the religious mystic are
paralleled with the ecstatic vision in which the philosophical hermit
sees a world of pure intelligences, where birth and decease are unknown.
It was this theory which Averroes (1126-1198), the last and most famous
of the thinkers of Moslem Spain, carried out to his doctrine of the
unity of intellect.
Averroes.
For Aristotle the reverence of Averroes was unbounded, and to expound
him was his chosen task. The uncritical receptivity of his age, the
defects of the Arabic versions, the emphatic theism of his creed, and
the rationalizing mysticism of some Oriental thought, may have sometimes
led him astray, and given prominence to the less obvious features of
Aristotelianism. But in his conception of the relation between
philosophy and religion, Averroes had a light which the Latins were
without. The science, falsely so called, of the several theological
schools, their groundless distinctions and sophistical demonstrations,
he regarded as the great source of heresy and scepticism. The
allegorical interpretations and metaphysics which had been imported into
religion had taken men's minds away from the plain sense of the Koran.
God had declared a truth meet for all men, which needed no intellectual
superiority to understand, in a tongue which each human soul could
apprehend. Accordingly, the expositors of religious metaphysics, Ghazali
included, are the enemies of true religion, because they make it a mere
matter of syllogism. Averroes maintains that a return must be made to
the words and teaching of the prophet; that science must not expend
itself in dogmatizing on the metaphysical consequences of fragments of
doctrine for popular acceptance, but must proceed to reflect upon and
examine the existing things of the world. Averroes, at the same time,
condemns the attempts of those who tried to give demonstrative science
where the mind was not capable of more than rhetoric: they harm religion
by their mere negations, destroying an old sensuous creed, but cannot
build up a higher and intellectual faith.
In this spirit Averroes does not allow the fancied needs of theological
reasoning to interfere with his study of Aristotle, whom he simply
interprets as a truth-seeker. The points by which he told on Europe were
all implicit in Aristotle, but Averroes set in relief what the original
had left obscure, and emphasized things which the Christian theologian
passed by or misconceived. Thus Averroes had a double effect. He was the
great interpreter of Aristotle to the later Schoolmen. On the other
hand, he came to represent those aspects of Peripateticism most alien to
the spirit of Christendom; and the deeply religious Moslem gave his name
to the anti-sacerdotal party, to the materialists, sceptics and
atheists, who defied or undermined the dominant beliefs of the church.
On three points Averroes, like other Moslem thinkers, came specially
into relation, real or supposed, with the religious creed, viz. the
creation of the world, the divine knowledge of particular things, and
the future of the human soul.
The real grandeur of Averroes is seen in his resolute prosecution of the
standpoint of science in matters of this world, and in his recognition
that religion is not a branch of knowledge to be reduced to propositions
and systems of dogma, but a personal and inward power, an individual
truth which stands distinct from, but not contradictory to, the
universalities of scientific law. In his science he followed the Greeks,
and to the Schoolmen he and his compatriots rightly seemed philosophers
of the ancient world. He maintained alike the claim of demonstrative
science with its generalities for the few who could live in that
ethereal world, and the claim of religion for all--the common life of
each soul as an individual and personal consciousness. But theology, or
the mixture of the two, he regarded as a source of evil to
both--fostering the vain belief in a hostility of philosophers to
religion, and meanwhile corrupting religion by a pseudo-science.
The latent nominalism of Aristotle only came gradually to be emphasized
through the prominence which Christianity gave to the individual life,
and, apart from passing notices as in Abelard, first found clear
enunciation in the school of Duns Scotus. The Arabians, on the contrary,
emphasized the idealist aspect which had been adopted and promoted by
the Neo-Platonist commentators. Hence, to Averroes the eternity of the
world finds its true expression in the eternity of God. The ceaseless
movement of growth and change, which presents matter in form after form
as a continual search after a finality which in time and movement is not
and cannot be reached, represents only the aspect the world shows to the
physicist and to the senses. In the eye of reason the full fruition of
this desired finality is already and always attained; the actualization,
invisible to the senses, is achieved now and ever, and is thus beyond
the element of time. This transcendent or abstract being is that which
the world of nature is always seeking. He is thought or intellect, the
actuality, of which movement is but the fragmentary attainment in
successive instants of time. Such a mind is not in the theological sense
a creator, yet the onward movement is not the same as what some modern
thinkers seem to mean by development. For the perfect and absolute, the
consummation of movement is not generated at any point in the process;
it is an ideal end, which guides the operations of nature, and does not
wait upon them for its achievement. God is the unchanging essence of the
movement, and therefore its eternal cause.
A special application of this relation between the prior perfect, and
the imperfect, which it influences, is found in the doctrine of the
connexion of the abstract (transcendent) intellect with man. This
transcendent mind is sometimes connected with the moon, according to the
theory of Aristotle, who assigned an imperishable matter to the sphere
beyond the sublunary, and in general looked upon the celestial orbs as
living and intelligent. Such an intellect, named active or productive,
as being the author of the development of reason in man, is the
permanent, eternal thought, which is the truth of the cosmic and
physical movement. It is in man that the physical or sensible passes
most evidently into the metaphysical and rational. Humanity is the
chosen vessel in which the light of the intellect is revealed; and so
long as mankind lasts there must always be some individuals destined to
receive this light. What seems from the material point of view to be the
acquisition of learning, study and a moral life, is from the higher
point of view the manifestation of the transcendent intellect in the
individual. The preparation of the heart and faculties gives rise to a
series of grades between the original predisposition and the full
acquisition of actual intellect. These grades in the main resemble those
given by Avicenna. But beyond these, Averroes claims as the highest
bliss of the soul a union in this life with the actual intellect. The
intellect, therefore, is one and continuous in all individuals, who
differ only in the degree which their illumination has attained. Such
was the Averroist doctrine of the unity of intellect--the eternal and
universal nature of true intellectual life. By his interpreters it was
transformed into a theory of one soul common to all mankind, and when
thus corrupted conflicted not unreasonably with the doctrines of a
future life, common to Islam and Christendom.
Opponents of Averoism.
Averroes, rejected by his Moslem countrymen, found a hearing among the
Jews, to whom Maimonides had shown the free paths of Greek speculation.
In the cities of Languedoc and of Provence to which they had been driven
by Spanish fanaticism, the Jews no longer used the learned Arabic, and
translations of the works of Averroes became necessary. His writings
became the text-book of Levi ben Gerson at Perpignan, and of Moses of
Narbonne. Meanwhile, before 1250, Averroes became accessible to the
Latin Schoolmen by means of versions, accredited by the names of Michael
Scot and others. William of Auvergne is the first Schoolman who
criticizes the doctrines of Averroes, not, however, by name. Albertus
Magnus and St Thomas devote special treatises to an examination of the
Averroist theory of the unity of intellect, which they labour to confute
in order to establish the orthodoxy of Aristotle. But as early as
Aegidius Romanus (1247-1316). Averroes had been stamped as the patron of
indifference to theological dogmas, and credited with the emancipation
which was equally due to wider experience and the lessons of the
Crusades. There had never been an absence of protest against the
hierarchical doctrine. Berengar of Tours (11th century) had struggled in
that interest, and with Abelard, in the 12th century, the revolt against
authority in belief grew loud. The dialogue between a Christian, a Jew
and a philosopher suggested a comparative estimate of religions, and
placed the natural religion of the moral law above all positive
revelations. Nihilists and naturalists, who deified logic and science at
the expense of faith, were not unknown at Paris in the days of John of
Salisbury. In such a critical generation the words of Averroism found
willing ears, and pupils who outran their teacher. Paris became the
centre of a sceptical society, which the decrees of bishops and
councils, and the enthusiasm of the orthodox doctors and knights-errant
of Catholicism, were powerless to extinguish. At Oxford Averroes told
more as the great commentator. In the days of Roger Bacon he had become
an authority. Bacon, placing him beside Aristotle and Avicenna,
recommends the study of Arabic as the only way of getting the knowledge
which bad versions made almost hopeless. In Duns Scotus, Averroes and
Aristotle are the unequalled masters of the science of proof; and he
pronounces distinctly the separation between Catholic and philosophical
truth, which became the watchword of Averroism. By the 14th century
Averroism was the common leaven of philosophy; John Baconthorpe is the
chief of Averroists, and Walter Burley has similar tendencies.
Meanwhile Averrcism had come to be regarded by the great Dominican
school as the arch-enemy of the truth. When the emperor Frederick II.
consulted a Moslem free-thinker on the mysteries of the faith, when the
phrase or legend of the "Three Impostors" presented in its most
offensive form the scientific survey of the three laws of Moses, Christ
and Mahomet, and when the characteristic doctrines of Averroes were
misunderstood, it soon followed that his name became the badge of the
scoffer and the sceptic. What had begun with the subtle disputes of the
universities of Paris, went on to the materialist teachers in the
medical schools and the sceptical men of the world in the cities of
northern Italy. The patricians of Venice and the lecturers of Padua made
Averroism synonymous with doubt and criticism in theology, and with
sarcasm against the hierarchy. Petrarch refuses to believe that any good
thing can come out of Arabia, and speaks of Averroes as a mad dog
barking against the church. In works of contemporary art Averroes is at
one time the comrade of Mahomet and Antichrist; at another he lies with
Arius and Sabellius, vanquished by the lance of St Thomas.
The school of Padua.
It was in the universities of north Italy that Averroism finally
settled, and there for three centuries it continued as a stronghold of
Scholasticism to resist the efforts of revived antiquity and of
advancing science. Padua became the seat of Averroist Aristotelianism;
and, when Padua was conquered by Venice in 1405, the printers of the
republic spread abroad the teaching of the professors in the university.
As early as 1300, at Padua, Petrus Aponensis, a notable expositor of
medical theories, had betrayed a heterodoxy in faith; and John of
Jandun, one of the pamphleteers on the side of Louis of Bavaria, was a
keen follower of Averroes, whom he styles a "perfect and most glorious
physicist." Urbanus of Bologna, Paul of Venice (d. 1428), and Cajetanus
de Thienis (1387-1465), established by their lectures and their
discussions the authority of Averroes; and a long list of manuscripts
rests in the libraries of Lombardy to witness the diligence of these
writers and their successors. Even a lady of Venice, Cassandra Fedele,
in 1480, gained her laurels in defence of Averroist theses.
With Pietro Pomponazzi (q.v.) in 1495, a brilliant epoch began for the
school of Padua. Questions of permanent and present interest took the
place of outworn scholastic problems. The disputants ranged themselves
under the rival commentators, Alexander and Averroes; and the
immortality of the soul became the battle-ground of the two parties.
Pomponazzi defended the Alexandrist doctrine of the utter mortality of
the soul, whilst Agostino Nifo (q.v.), the Averroist, was entrusted by
Leo X. with the task of defending the Catholic doctrine. The parties
seemed to have changed when Averroism thus took the side of the church;
but the change was probably due to compulsion. Nifo had edited the works
of Averroes (1495-1497); but his expressions gave offence to the
dominant theologians, and he had to save himself by distinguishing his
personal faith from his editorial capacity. Alessandro Achillini, the
persistent philosophical adversary of Pomponazzi, both at Padua and
subsequently at Bologna, attempted, along with other moderate but not
brilliant Averroists, to accommodate their philosophical theory with the
requirements of Catholicism. It was this comparatively mild Averroism,
reduced to the merely explanatory activity of a commentator, which
continued to be the official dogma at Padua during the 16th century. Its
typical representative is Marc-Antonio Zimara (d. 1552), the author of a
reconciliation between the tenets of Averroes and those of Aristotle.
Summary.
Meanwhile, in 1497, Aristotle was for the first time expounded in Greek
at Padua. Plato had long been the favourite study at Florence; and
Humanists, like Erasmus, Ludovicus Vives and Nizolius, enamoured of the
popular philosophy of Cicero and Quintilian, poured out the vials of
their contempt on scholastic barbarism with its "impious and
thrice-accursed Averroes." The editors of Averroes complain that the
popular taste had forsaken them for the Greek. Nevertheless, while
Fallopius, Vesalius and Galileo were claiming attention to their
discoveries, G. Zabarella, Francesco Piccolomini (1520-1604) and Cesare
Cremonini (1550-1631) continued the traditions of Averroism, not without
changes and additions. Cremonini, the last of them, died in 1631, after
lecturing twelve years at Ferrara, and forty at Padua. The great
educational value of Arabian philosophy for the later schoolmen
consisted in its making them acquainted with an entire Aristotle. At the
moment when it seemed as if everything had been made that could be made
out of the fragments of Aristotle, and the compilations of Capella,
Cassiodorus and others, and when mysticism and scepticism seemed the
only resources left for the mind, the horizon of knowledge was suddenly
widened by the acquisition of a complete Aristotle. Thus the mistakes
inevitable in the isolated study of an imperfect _Organon_ could not
henceforth be made. The real bearing of old questions, and the
meaninglessness of many disputes, were seen in the new conception of
Aristotelianism given by the _Metaphysics_ and other treatises. The
former Realism and Nominalism were lifted into a higher phase by the
principle of the universalizing action of intellect--_Intellectus in
formis agit universalitatem_. The commentaries of the Arabians in this
respect supplied nutriment more readily assimilated by the pupils than
the pure text would have been.
Arabian philosophy, whilst it promoted the exegesis of Aristotle and
increased his authority, was not less notable as the source of the
separation between theology and philosophy. Speculation fell on
irreligious paths. In many cases the heretical movement was due less to
foreign example than to the indwelling tendencies of the dominant school
of realism. But it is not less certain that the very considerable
freedom of the Arabians from theological bias prepared the time when
philosophy shook off its ecclesiastical vestments. In the hurry of first
terror, the church struck Aristotle with the anathema launched against
innovations in philosophy. The provincial council of Paris in 1209,
which condemned Amalricus and his followers, as well as David of
Dinant's works, forbade the study of Aristotle's _Natural Philosophy_
and the _Commentaries_. In 1215 the same prohibition was repeated,
specifying the _Metaphysics_ and _Physics_, and the _Commentaries_ by
the Spaniard Mauritius (i.e. probably Averroes). Meanwhile Albertus
Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, accepting the exegetical services of the
Arabians, did their best to controvert the obnoxious doctrine of the
Intellect, and to defend the orthodoxy of Aristotle against the unholy
glosses of infidels. But it is doubtful whether even they kept as pure
from the infection of illegitimate doctrine as they supposed. The tide
meanwhile flowed in stronger and stronger. In 1270 Etienne Tempier,
bishop of Paris, supported by an assembly of theologians, anathematized
thirteen propositions bearing the stamp of Arabian authorship; but in
1277 the same views and others more directly offensive to Christians and
theologians had to be censured again. Raymond Lully, in a dialogue with
an infidel thinker, broke a lance in support of the orthodox doctrine,
and carried on a crusade against the Arabians in every university; and a
disciple of Thomas Aquinas drew up a list (_De erroribus philosophorum_)
of the several delusions and errors of each of the thinkers from Kindi
to Averroes. Strong in their conviction of the truth of Aristotelianism,
the Arabians carried out their logical results in the theological field,
and made the distinction of necessary and possible, of form and matter,
the basis of conclusions in the most momentous questions. They refused
to accept the doctrine of creation because it conflicted with the
explanation of forms as the necessary evolution of matter. They denied
the particular providence of God, because knowledge in the divine sphere
did not descend to singulars. They excluded the Deity from all direct
action upon the world, and substituted for a cosmic principle the active
intellect,--thus holding a form of Pantheism. But all did not go the
same length in their divergence from the popular creed.
The half-legendary accounts which attribute the introduction of Arabian
science to Gerbert, afterwards Pope Sylvester II., to Constantinus
Africanus and to Adelard of Bath, if they have any value, refer mainly
to medical science and mathematics. It was not till about the middle of
the 12th century that under the patronage of Raymond, archbishop of
Toledo, a society of translators, with the archdeacon Dominicus
Gundisalvi at their head, produced Latin versions of the _Commentaries_
of Avicenna, and Ghazali, of the _Fons Vitae_ of Avicebron, and of
several Aristotelian treatises. The working translators were converted
Jews, the best-known among them being Joannes Avendeath. With this
effort began the chief translating epoch for Arabic works. Avicenna's
_Canon of Medicine_ was first translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona
(d. 1187), to whom versions of other medical and astronomical works are
due. The movement towards introducing Arabian science and philosophy
into Europe, however, culminated under the patronage of the emperor
Frederick II. (1212-1250). Partly from superiority to the narrowness of
his age, and partly in the interest of his struggle with the Papacy,
this _Malleus ecclesiae Romanae_ drew to his court those savants whose
pursuits were discouraged by the church, and especially students in the
forbidden lore of the Arabians. He is said to have pensioned Jews for
purposes of translation. One of the scholars to whom Frederick gave a
welcome was Michael Scot, the first translator of Averroes. Scot had
sojourned at Toledo about 1217, and had accomplished the versions of
several astronomical and physical treatises, mainly, if we believe Roger
Bacon, by the labours of a Jew named Andrew. But Bacon is apparently
hypercritical in his estimate of the translators from the Arabic.
Another protege of Frederick's was Hermann the German (Alemannus), who,
between the years 1243 and 1256, translated amongst other things a
paraphrase of al-Farabi on the _Rhetoric_, and of Averroes on the
_Poetics_ and _Ethics_ of Aristotle. Jewish scholars held an honourable
place in transmitting the Arabian commentators to the schoolmen. It was
amongst them, especially in Maimonides, that Aristotelianism found
refuge after the light of philosophy was extinguished in Islam; and the
Jewish family of the Ben-Tibbon were mainly instrumental in making
Averroes known to southern France.
See S. Munk, _Melanges de philosophie juive et arabe_ (Paris, 1859);
E. Renan, _De Philosophia Peripatetica apud Syros_ (1852), and
_Averroes et l'Averroisme_ (Paris, 3rd ed., 1867); Am. Jourdain,
_Recherches critiques sur l'age et l'origine des traductions latines
d'Aristote_ (Paris, 2^me ed., 1843); B. Haureau, _Philosophie
scolastique_ (Paris, 1850), tome i. p. 359; E. Vacherot, _Ecole
d'Alexandrie_ (1846-1851), tome iii. p. 85; Schmolders, _Documenta
philosophiae Arabum_ (Bonn, 1836), and _Essai sur les ecoles
philosophiques chez les Arabes_ (Paris, 1842); Shahrastani, _History
of Religious and Philosophical Sects_, in German translation by
Haarbrucker (Halle, 1850-1851); Dieterici, _Streit zwischen Mensch und
Thier_ (Berlin, 1858), and his other translations of the
_Encyclopaedia of the Brothers of Sincerity_ (1861 to 1872); T.J. de
Boer, _The History of Philosophy in Islam_ (London, 1903); K. Prantl,
_Geschichte der Logik_ (Leipzig, 1861); and the Histories of
Philosophy; also the literature under the biographies of philosophers
mentioned. (W. W.; G. W. T.)
ARABIAN SEA (anc. _Mare Erythraeum_), the name applied to the portion of
the Indian Ocean bounded E. by India, N. by Baluchistan and part of the
southern Persian littoral, W. by Arabia, and S., approximately, by a
line between Cape Guardafui, the north-east point of Somaliland, and
Cape Comorin in India. It has two important branches--at the south-west
the Gulf of Aden, connecting with the Red Sea through the strait of
Bab-el-Mandeb; and at the north-west the Gulf of Oman, connecting with
the Persian Gulf. Besides these larger ramifications, there are the
Gulfs of Cambay and Kach on the Indian coast. An interest and importance
belong to this sea as forming part of the chief highway between Europe
and India. Its islands are few and insignificant, the chief being
Sokotra, off the African, and the Laccadives, off the Indian coast.
ARABICI, a religious sect originating about the beginning of the 3rd
century, which is mentioned by Augustine (_De Haeres_. c. lxxxiii.), and
called also [Greek: thnetopseuchitai] ("mortal-souled") by John of
Damascus (_De Haeres_. c. xc.) The name is given to the Arabians
mentioned by Eusebius (_Hist. Eccl_. vi. 37), whose distinctive doctrine
was a form of Christian materialism, showing itself in the belief that
the soul perished and was restored to life along with the body. We may
compare Tatian's view of the soul as a subtler variety of matter.
According to Eusebius, they were convinced of their error by Origen, and
renounced it at a council held about A.D. 246.
ARABI PASHA (c. 1839- ), more correctly AHMAD 'ARABI, to which in
later years he added the epithet _al-Misri_, "the Egyptian," Egyptian
soldier and revolutionary leader, was born in Lower Egypt in 1839 or
1840 of a fellah family. Having entered the army as a conscript he was
made an officer by Said Pasha in 1862, and was employed in the transport
department in the Abyssinian campaign of 1875 under Ismail Pasha. A
charge of peculation, unproved, was made against him in connexion with
this expedition and he was placed on half-pay. During this time he
joined a secret society formed by Ali Rubi with the object of getting
rid of Turkish officers from the Egyptian army. Arabi also attended
lectures at the mosque El Azhar and acquired a reputation as an orator.
In 1878 he was employed by Ismail in fomenting a disturbance against the
ministry of Nubar, Rivers Wilson and de Blignieres, and received in
payment a wife from Ismail's harem and the command of a regiment. This
increased his influence with the secret society, which, under the feeble
government of Tewfik Pasha and the Dual Control, began to agitate
against Europeans. In all that followed Arabi was put forward as the
leader of the discontented Egyptians; he was in reality little more than
the mouthpiece and puppet of abler men such as Ali Rubi and Mahmud Sami.
On the 1st of February 1881 Arabi and two other Egyptian colonels,
summoned before a court-martial for acts of disobedience, were rescued
by their soldiers, and the khedive was forced to dismiss his then
minister of war in favour of Mahmud Sami. A military demonstration on
the 8th of September 1881, led by Arabi, forced the khedive to increase
the numbers and pay of the army, to substitute Sherif Pasha for Riaz
Pasha as prime minister, and to convene an assembly of notables. Arabi
became under-secretary for war at the beginning of 1882, but continued
his intrigues. The assembly of notables claimed the right of voting the
budget, and thus came into conflict with the foreign controllers who had
been appointed to guard the interests of the bondholders in the
management of the Egyptian finances. Sherif fell in February, Mahmud
Sami became prime minister, and Arabi (created a pasha) minister of war.
Arabi, after a brief fall from office, acquired a dictatorial power that
alarmed the British government. British and French warships went to
Alexandria at the beginning of June; on the 11th of that month rioting
in that city led to the sacrifice of many European lives. Order could
only be restored through the intervention of Arabi, who now adopted a
more distinctly anti-European attitude. His arming of the forts at
Alexandria was held to constitute a menace to the British fleet. On the
refusal of France to co-operate, the British fleet bombarded the forts
(11th July), and a British force, under Sir Garnet Wolseley, defeated
Arabi on the 13th of September at Tel-el-Kebir. Arabi fled to Cairo
where he surrendered, and was tried (3rd of December) for rebellion. In
accordance with an understanding made with the British representative,
Lord Dufferin, Arabi pleaded guilty, and sentence of death was
immediately commuted to one of banishment for life to Ceylon. The same
sentence was passed on Mahmud Sami and others. After Arabi's exile had
lasted for nearly twenty years, however, the khedive Abbas II. exercised
his prerogative of mercy, and in May 1901 Arabi was permitted to return
to Egypt. Arabi, as has been said, was rather the figurehead than the
inspirer of the movement of 1881-1882; and was probably more honest, as
he was certainly less intelligent, than those whose tool, in a large
measure, he was. The movement which he represented in the eye of Europe,
whatever the motives of its leaders, "was in its essence a genuine
revolt against misgovernment,"[1] and it was a dim recognition of this
fact which led Arabi to style himself "the Egyptian."
See EGYPT: _History_; also the accounts of Arabi in _Khedives and
Pashas_, by C.F. Moberly Bell (1884); and in Lord Cromer's _Modern
Egypt_ (1908).