Islam in the West; Ibn Tumart and the Muwahhids; philosophy in
the West under Muwahhid protection; Ibn Bajja; Ibn Tufayl; Ibn
Rushd; Ibn Arabi; Ibn Sab‘in.
We have now anticipated one of the strangest and most characteristic
figures and movements in the history of Islam. The preceding account,
except as relates to Ibn Khaldun, has told of the triumphs of the
Ash‘arites in the East only. In the West the movement was slower, and to
it we must now turn. The Maghrib—the Occident, as the Arabs called all
North Africa beyond Egypt—had been slow from the first to take on the
Muslim impress. The invading army had fought its way painfully through,
but the Berber tribes remained only half subdued and one-tenth Islamized.
Egypt was conquered in A.H. 20, and Samarqand had been reached in 56;
but it was not till 74 that the Muslims were at Carthage. And even then
and for long after there arose insurrection after insurrection, and the
national spirit of the Berbers remained unbroken. Broadly, but correctly,
Islam in North Africa for more than three centuries was a failure. The
tribal constitutions of the Berbers were unaffected by the conception
of the Khalifate and their primitive religious aspirations by the Faith
of Muhammad. Not till the possibility came to them to construct Muslim
states out of their own tribes did their opposition begin to weaken.
And then it was rather political Islam that had weakened. When the
Fatimids conquered Egypt in 356 and moved the seat of their empire from
al-Mahdiya to the newly founded Cairo, Islam assumed a new meaning for
North Africa. The Fatimid empire there quickly melted away, and in its
place arose several independent states, Berber in blood though claiming
Arab descent and bearing Arab names. Islam no longer meant foreign
oppression, and it began at last to make its way. Again, in the preceding
period of insurrection the Berber leaders had frequently appeared in the
guise and with the claim of prophets, men miraculously gifted and with
a message from God. These wild tribesmen, with all their fanaticism for
their own tribal liberties, have always been peculiarly accessible to the
genius which claims its mission from heaven. So they had taken up the
Fatimid cause and worshipped Ubayd Allah the Mahdi. And so they continued
thereafter, and still continue to be swayed by saints, darwishes, and
prophets of all degrees of insanity and cunning. The latest case in
point is that of the Shaykh as-Sanusi, with whom we have already dealt.
As time went on, there came a change in these prophet-led risings and
saint-founded states. They gradually slipped over from being frankly
anti-Muhammadan, if also close imitations of Muhammad’s life and methods,
to being equally frankly Muslim. The theology of Islam easily afforded
them the necessary point of connection. All that the prophet of the day
need do was to claim the position of the Mahdi, that Guided One, who
according to the traditions of Muhammad was to come before the last day,
when the earth shall be filled with violence, and to fill it again with
righteousness. It was easy for each new Mahdi to select from the vast and
contradictory mass of traditions in Muslim eschatology those which best
fitted his person and his time. To the story and the doctrine of one of
these we now come.
[Sidenote: IBN TUMART]
At the beginning of the sixth century a certain Berber student of
theology, Ibn Tumart by name, travelled in the East in search of
knowledge. An early and persistent western tradition asserts that he
was a favorite pupil of al-Ghazzali’s, and was marked out by him as
showing the signs of a future founder of empire. This may be taken for
what it is worth. What is certain is that Ibn Tumart went back to the
Maghrib and there brought about the triumph of a doctrine which was
derived, if modified, from that of the Ash‘arites. Previously all kalam
had been under a cloud in the West. Theological studies had been closely
limited to _fiqh_, or canon law, and that of the narrowed school of
Malik ibn Anas. Even the Qur’an and the collections of traditions had
come to be neglected in favor of systematized law-books. The revolt of
Ibn Hazm against this had apparently accomplished little. It had been
too one-sided and negative, and had lacked the weight of personality
behind it. Ibn Hazm had assailed the views of others with a wealth of
vituperative language. But he had been a controversialist only. There
is a story, tolerably well authenticated, that the books of al-Ghazzali
were solemnly condemned by the Qadis of Cordova, and burnt in public.
Yet, against that is to be set that all the Spanish theologians did not
approve of this violence.
[Sidenote: A ZAHIRITE IMAMITE]
Ibn Tumart started in life as a reformer of the corruptions of his
day, and seems to have slipped from that into the belief that he had
been appointed by God as the great reformer for all time. As happens
with reformers, from exhortation it came to force; from preaching at
the abuses of the government to rebellion against the government. That
government, the Murabit, went down before Ibn Tumart and his successors,
and the pontifical rule of the Muwahhids, the asserters of God’s
_tawhid_ or unity, rose in its place. The doctrine which he preached
bears evident marks of the influence of al-Ghazzali and of Ibn Hazm.
_Tawhid_, for him, meant a complete spiritualizing of the conception of
God. Opposed to _tawhid_, he set _tajsim_, the assigning to God of a
_jism_ or body having bulk. Thus, when the theologians of the West took
the anthropomorphic passages of the Qur’an literally, he applied to them
the method of _ta’wil_, or interpretation, which he had learned in the
East, and explained away these stumbling-blocks. Ibn Hazm, it will be
remembered, resorted to grammatical and lexicographical devices to attain
the same end, and had regarded _ta’wil_ with abhorrence. To Ibn Tumart,
then, this _tajsim_ was flat unbelief and, as Mahdi, it was his duty to
oppose it by force of arms, to lead a _jihad_ against its maintainers.
Further, with Ibn Hazm, he agreed in rejecting _taqlid_. There was only
one truth, and it was man’s duty to find it for himself by going to the
original sources. This is the genuine Zahirite doctrine which utterly
rejects all comity with the four other legal rites; but Ibn Tumart,
as Mahdi, added another element. It is based on a very simple Imamite
philosophy of history. There has always been an Imam in the world, a
divinely appointed leader, guarded by _isma_, protection against error.
The first four Khalifas were of such divine appointment; thereafter came
usurpers and oppressors. Theirs was the reign of wickedness and lies in
the earth. Now he, the Mahdi, was come of the blood of the Prophet and
bearing plainly all the necessary, accrediting signs to overcome these
tyrants and anti-Christs. He thus was an Imamite, but stood quite apart
from the welter of conflicting Shi‘ite sects—the Seveners, Twelvers,
Zaydites and the rest—as far as do the present Sharifs of Morocco with
their Alid-Sunnite position. The Mahdi, it is to be remembered, is
awaited by Sunnites as by Shi‘ites, and is guarded against error as much
as an Imam, since he partakes of the general _isma_ which in divine
things belongs to prophets. Such a leader, then, could claim from the
people absolute obedience and credence. His word must be for them the
source of truth. There was, therefore, no longer any need of analogy
(_qiyas_) as a source, and we accordingly find that Ibn Tumart rejected
it in all but legal matters and there surrounded it with restrictions.
Analogical argument in things theological was forbidden.
But where he absolutely parted company from the Ash‘arites was with
regard to the qualities of God. In that, too, he followed the view
of Ibn Hazm sketched above. We must take the Qur’anic expressions
as names and not as indicating attributes to us. It is true that his
creed shows signs of a philosophical width lacking in Ibn Hazm. Like
the Mu‘tazilites, _e.g._ Abu Hudhayl, he defines largely by negations.
God is not this; is not affected by that. It is even phrased so as to
be capable of a pantheistic explanation, and we find that Ibn Rushd
wrote a commentary on it. But it may be doubted whether Ibn Tumart was
himself a pantheist. All phases of Islam, as we have seen, ran toward
that; and here there is only a little indiscretion in the wording. But
it may easily have been that he had besides, like the Fatimids, a secret
teaching or exposition of those simpler declarations which were intended
for the mass of the people. Among his successors distinct traces of
such a thing appear; both Aristotelian philosophers and advanced Sufis
are connected with the Muwahhid movement. That, however, belongs to the
sequel.
The success of Ibn Tumart, if halting at first, was eventually complete.
As a simple lawyer who felt called upon to protest—as, indeed, are all
good Muslims in virtue of a tradition from Muhammad—against the abuses
of the time, he accomplished comparatively little. As Mahdi, he and
his supporter and successor, Abd al-Mu’min, swept the country. For his
movement was not merely Imamite and Muslim, but an expression as well of
Berber nationalism. Here was a man, sprung from their midst, of their
own stock and tongue, who, as Prophet of God, called them to arms. They
obeyed his call, worshipped him and fought for him. He translated the
Qur’an for them into Berber; the call to prayers was given in Berber;
functionaries of the church had to know Berber; his own theological
writings circulated in Berber as well as in Arabic. As Persia took Islam
and moulded it to suit herself, so now did the Berber tribes. And a
strange jumble they made of it. With them, the Zahirite system of canon
law, rejected by all other Muslim peoples, enjoyed its one brief period
of power and glory. Shi‘ite legends and superstitions mingled with
philosophical free thought. The book of mystery, _al-Jafr_, written by
Ali, and containing the history of the world to the end of time, was said
to have passed from the custody of al-Ghazzali at his death to the hands
of the Mahdi and was by him committed to his successors. If only in view
of the syncretism practised by both, it was fitting that al-Ghazzali and
Ibn Tumart should be brought closely together. Yet it is hard to explain
the persistence with which the great Ash‘arite is made the teacher and
guide of the semi-Zahirite. There must have been something, now obscure
to us, in their respective systems which suggested to contemporaries such
intimate connection.
The rule of the Muwahhids lasted until 667, nearly one hundred years, and
involved in its circle of influence many weighty personalities. With some
of these we will now deal shortly.
It has been told above how narrow in general were the intellectual
interests of the West. Canon law, poetry, history, geography were eagerly
pursued, but little of original value was produced. Originality and the
breaking of ground in new fields were under a ban. Subtilty of thought
and luxury of life took their place. Above all, and naturally, this
applied to philosophy. And so it comes that the first philosophic name
in the Muslim West is that of Abu Bakr ibn Bajja, for mediæval Europe
Avenpace, who died comparatively young in 533. For him, as for all, and
still more in the West than in the East, the problem of the philosopher
was how to gain and maintain a tenable position in a world composed
mostly of the philosophically ignorant and the religiously fanatical.
This problem had two sides, internal and external. The inner and the
nobler one was how such a mind could in its loneliness rise to its
highest level and purify itself to the point of knowing things as they
really are and so reach that eternal life in which the individual spirit
loses itself in the Active Intellect (νοῦς ποιητικός, _al-aql al-fa‘‘al_)
which is above all and behind all. The other, and baser, was how to so
present his views and adapt his life that the life and the views might be
possible in a Muslim community.
[Sidenote: IBN BAJJA]
Ibn Bajja was a close disciple of al-Farabi, who is to be regarded as the
spiritual father of the later Arabic philosophy; Ibn Sina practically
falls out. In logic, physics, and metaphysics he followed al-Farabi
closely. But we can see how the times have moved and the philosophies
with them. The essential differences have appeared and Ibn Bajja can no
longer, with a good conscience, appear as a pious Muslim. The Sufi strain
also is much weaker. The greatest joy and the closest truth are to be
found in thought, and not in the sensuous ecstasies of the mystic. The
intellect is the highest element in man’s being, but is only immortal as
it joins itself to the one Active Intellect, which is all that is left of
God. Here we have the beginning of the doctrine which, later, under the
name of Averroism and pampsychism ran like wild-fire through the schools
of Europe. Further, only by the constant exercise of its own functions
can the intellect of man be thus raised. He must live rationally at all
points; be able to give a reason for every action. This may compel him
to live in solitude; the world is so irrational and will not suffer
reason. Or some of the disciples of reason may draw together and form a
community where they may live the calm life of nature and of the pursuit
of knowledge and self-development. So they will be at one with nature and
the eternal, and far removed from the frenzied life of the multitude with
its lower aims and conceptions. It is easy to see how the iron of a fight
against overwhelming odds had entered this soul. Only the friendship of
some of the Murabit princes saved him; but he died in the end, says a
story, by poison.
With the next names we find ourselves at a Muwahhid court, and there the
atmosphere has changed. It is evident that, whatever might be the temper
of the people, the chiefs of the Muwahhids viewed philosophy with no
disfavor. Their problem, as in the case of the Fatimids, seems rather
to have been how much the people might be taught with safety. Their
solution of the problem—here we proceed on conjecture, but the basis is
tolerably sound—was that the bulk of the people should be taught nothing
but the literal sense of the Qur’an, metaphors, anthropomorphisms and
all; that the educated lay public, which had already some inkling of the
facts, should be assured that there was really no difference between
philosophy and theology—that they were two phases of one truth; and that
the philosophers should have a free hand to go on their own way, always
provided that their speculations did not spread beyond their own circle
and agitate the minds of the commonalty. It was a beautiful scheme, but
like all systems of obscurantism it did not work. On the one hand, the
people refused to be blindfolded, and, on the other, philosophy died out
of inanition.
In accordance with this, we find the Muwahhid chiefs installing the
Zahirite _fiqh_ as the official system and sternly stopping all
speculative discussing either of canon law or of theology. “The Word so
stands written; take it or the sword,” is the significant utterance which
has come to us from Abu Ya‘qub (reg. 558-580), son of Abd al-Mu’min. The
same continued under his son Abu Yusuf al-Mansur (reg. 580-595), who
added a not very carefully concealed contempt for the Mahdiship of Ibn
Tumart. All such things were ridiculous in his philosophic eyes.
[Sidenote: IBN TUFAYL; IBN RUSHD]
Under these men and in adjustment with their system lived and worked Ibn
Tufayl and Ibn Rushd, the last of the great Aristotelians. Ibn Tufayl
was wazir and physician to Abu Ya‘qub and died a year after him, in 531.
His was a calm, contemplative life, secluded in princely libraries. But
his objects were the same as those of Ibn Bajja. He has evidently no
hope that the great body of the people can ever be brought to the truth.
A religion, sensuous and sensual alike, is needed to restrain the wild
beast in man, and the masses should be left to the guidance of that
religion. For a philosopher to seek to teach them better is to expose
himself to peril and them to the loss of that little which they have. But
in his methods, on the other hand, Ibn Tufayl is essentially at one with
al-Ghazzali. He is a mystic who seeks in Sufi exercises, in the constant
purifying of mind and body and in the unwearying search for the one unity
in the individual multiplicity around him, to find a way to lose his self
in that eternal and one spirit which for him is the divine. So at last
he comes to ecstasy and reaches those things which eye hath not seen
nor ear heard. The only difference between him and al-Ghazzali is that
al-Ghazzali was a theologian and saw in his ecstasy Allah upon His throne
and around Him the things of the heavens, as set forth in the Qur’an,
while Ibn Tufayl was a philosopher, of neo-Platonic + Aristotelian stamp,
and saw in his ecstasy the Active Intellect and Its chain of causes
reaching down to man and back to Itself.
The book by which his name has lived, and which has had strange haps,
is the romance of _Hayy ibn Yaqzan_, “The Living One, Son of the
Waking One.” In it he conceives two islands, the one inhabited and the
other not. On the inhabited island we have conventional people living
conventional lives, and restrained by a conventional religion of rewards
and punishments. Two men there, Salaman and Asal, have raised themselves
to a higher level of self-rule. Salaman adapts himself externally to the
popular religion and rules the people; Asal, seeking to perfect himself
still further in solitude, goes to the other island. But there he finds a
man, Hayy ibn Yaqzan, who has lived alone from infancy and has gradually,
by the innate and uncorrupted powers of the mind, developed himself to
the highest philosophic level and reached the Vision of the Divine. He
has passed through all the stages of knowledge until the universe lies
clear before him, and now he finds that his philosophy thus reached,
without prophet or revelation, and the purified religion of Asal are
one and the same. The story told by Asal of the people of the other
island sitting in darkness stirs his soul and he goes forth to them as a
missionary. But he soon learns that the method of Muhammad was the true
one for the great masses, and that only by sensuous allegory and concrete
things could they be reached and held. He retires to his island again to
live the solitary life.
The bearing of this on the system of the Muwahhids cannot be mistaken.
If it is a criticism of the finality of historical revelation, it is
also a defence of the attitude of the Muwahhids toward both people and
philosophers. By the favor of Abu Ya‘qub, Ibn Tufayl had practically been
able to live on an island and develop himself by study. So, too, Abu
Ya‘qub might stand for the enlightened but practical Salaman. Yet the
meaning evidently is that between them they failed and must fail. There
could only be a solitary philosopher here and there, and happy for him
if he found a princely patron. The people which knew not the truth were
accursed. Perhaps, rather, they were children and had to be humored and
guided as such in an endless childhood.
It is evident that such a solitary possessor of truth had two courses
open to him. He could either busy himself in his studies and exercises,
as had done Ibn Bajja and Ibn Tufayl, or he could boldly enter public
life and trust to his dialectic ingenuity and resource—perhaps, also, to
his plasticity of conscience—to carry him past all whispers of heresy
and unbelief. The latter course was chosen by Ibn Rushd. He was born
at Cordova, in 520, of a family of jurists and there studied law. From
his legal studies only a book on the law of inheritance has reached
us, and it, though frequently commented on, has never been printed. In
548 he was presented to Abu Ya‘qub by Ibn Tufayl and encouraged by him
in the study of philosophy. In it his greatest work was done. In spite
of the shreds and patches of neo-Platonism which clung to him, he was
the greatest mediæval commentator on Aristotle. It is only part of the
eternal puzzle of the Muslim mind that the utility of Greek for a student
of Aristotle seems never to have struck him. Thereafter he acted as judge
in different places in Spain and was court physician for a short time
in 578 to Abu Ya‘qub. In 575 he had written his tractates, to which we
shall come immediately, mediating between philosophy and theology. Toward
the end of his life he was condemned by Abu Yusuf al-Mansur for heresy
and banished from Cordova. This was in all likelihood a truckling on the
part of al-Mansur to the religious prejudices of the people of Spain,
who were probably of stiffer orthodoxy than the Berbers. He was in Spain,
at Cordova, at the time, and was engaged in carrying on a religious war
with the Christians. On his return to Morocco the decree of exile was
recalled and Ibn Rushd restored to favor. We find him again at the court
in Morocco, and he died there in 595.
This is not the place to enter upon Ibn Rushd’s philosophical system.
He was a thorough-going Aristotelian, as he knew Aristotle. That was
probably much better than any of his predecessors; but even he had
not got clear from the fatal influence of Plotinus. Above all, he is
essentially a theologian just as much as they. In Aristotle there had
been given what was to all intents a philosophical revelation. Only in
the knowledge and acceptance of it could truth and life be found. And
some must reach it; one at least there must always be. If a thing is
not seen by someone it has existed in vain; which is impossible. If
someone at least does not know the truth, it also has existed in vain,
which is still more impossible. That is Ibn Rushd’s way of saying that
the _esse_ is the _percipi_ and that there must be a perceiver. And he
has unlimited faith in his means of reaching that Truth—only by such
capitalization can we express his theologic attitude. The logic of
Aristotle is infallible and can break through to the supreme good itself.
Ecstasy and contemplation play no part with him; there he separates from
Ibn Tufayl. Such intercourse with the Active Intellect may exist; but it
is too rare to be taken into account. Obviously, Ibn Rushd himself, who
to himself was the percipient of truth for his age, had never reached
that perception. Solitary meditation he cannot away with; for him the
market-place and contact with men; there he parts with Ibn Bajja. In
truth, he is nearer to the life in life of Ibn Sina, and that, perhaps,
explains his constant attacks on the Persian _bon vivant_.
[Sidenote: ATTACK ON AL-GHAZZALI]
All his predecessors he joys in correcting, but his especial _bête
noire_ is al-Ghazzali. With him it is war on life or death. He has two
good causes. One is al-Ghazzali’s “Destruction of the Philosophers;”
of it, Ibn Rushd, in his turn, writes a “Destruction.” This is a
clever, incisive criticism, luminous with logical exactitude, yet
missing al-Ghazzali’s vital earnestness and incapable of reaching his
originality. But al-Ghazzali had not only attacked the philosophers; he
had also spread the knowledge of their teachings and reasonings, and had
said that there was nothing esoteric and impossible of grasp in them for
the ordinary mind. He had thus assailed the fundamental principles of the
Muwahhid system. Against this, Ibn Rushd wrote the tractates spoken of
above. They were evidently addressed to the educated laity; not to the
ignorant multitude, but to those who had already read such books as those
of al-Ghazzali and been affected by them, yet had not studied philosophy
at first hand. That they were not intended for such special students is
evident from the elaborate care that is taken in them to conceal, or,
if that were not possible, to put a good face upon obnoxious doctrines.
Thus, his philosophy left no place in reality for a system of rewards
and punishments or even for any individual existence of the soul after
death, for a creation of the material world, or for a providence in the
direct working of the supreme being on earth. But all these points are
involved or glossed over in these tractates.
Further, it is plain that their object was to bring about a reform
of religion in itself, and also of the attitude of theologians to
students of philosophy. In them he sums up his own position under four
heads: _First_, that philosophy agrees with religion and that religion
recommends philosophy. Here, he is fighting for his life. Religion is
true, a revelation from God; and philosophy is true, the results reached
by the human mind; these two truths cannot contradict each other. Again,
men are frequently exhorted in the Qur’an to reflect, to consider, to
speculate about things; that means the use of the intelligence, which
follows certain laws, long ago traced and worked out by the ancients. We
must, therefore, study their works and proceed further on the same course
ourselves, _i.e._, we must study philosophy.
_Second_, there are two things in religion, literal meaning and
interpretation. If we find anything in the Qur’an which seems externally
to contradict the results of philosophy, we may be quite sure that
there is something under the surface. We must look for some possible
interpretation of the passage, some inner meaning; and we shall certainly
find it.
[Sidenote: THE MULTIFORM TRUTH]
_Third_, the literal meaning is the duty of the multitude, and
interpretation the duty of scholars. Those who are not capable of
philosophical reasoning must hold the literal truth of the different
statements in the Qur’an. The imagery must be believed by them exactly
as it stands, except where it is absolutely evident that we have only
an image. On the other hand, philosophers must be given the liberty
of interpreting as they choose. If they find it necessary, from some
philosophical necessity, to adopt an allegorical interpretation of any
passage or to find in it a metaphor, that liberty must be open to them.
There must be no laying down of dogmas by the church as to what may
be interpreted and what may not. In Ibn Rushd’s opinion, the orthodox
theologians sometimes interpreted when they should have kept by the
letter, and sometimes took literally passages in which they should have
found imagery. He did not accuse them of heresy for this, and they should
grant him the same liberty.
_Fourth_, those who know are not to be allowed to communicate
interpretations to the multitude. So Ali said, “Speak to the people of
that which they understand; would ye that they give the lie to God and
His messenger?” Ibn Rushd considered that belief was reached by three
different classes of people in three different ways. The many believe
because of rhetorical syllogisms (_khitabiya_), _i.e._, those whose
premises consist of the statements of a religious teacher (_maqbulat_),
or are presumptions (_maznunat_). Others believe because of controversial
syllogisms (_jadliya_), which are based on principles (_mashhurat_) or
admissions (_musallamat_). All these premises belong to the class of
propositions which are not absolutely certain. The third class, and by
far the smaller, consists of the people of demonstration (_burhan_).
Their belief is based upon syllogisms composed of propositions which are
certain. These consist of axioms (_awwaliyat_) and five other classes of
certainties. Each of these three classes of people has to be treated in
the way that suits its mental character. It is wrong to put demonstration
or controversy before those who can understand only rhetorical reasoning.
It destroys their faith and gives them nothing to take its place. The
case is similar with those who can only reach controversial reasoning
but cannot attain unto demonstration. Thus Ibn Rushd would have the
faith of the multitude carefully screened from all contact with the
teachings of philosophers. Such books should not be allowed to go into
general circulation, and if necessary, the civil authorities should step
in to prevent it. If these principles were accepted and followed, a
return might be looked for of the golden age of Islam, when there was no
theological controversy and men believed sincerely and earnestly.
On this last paragraph it is worth noticing that its threefold
distinction is “conveyed” by Ibn Rushd from a little book belonging to
al-Ghazzali’s later life, after he had turned to the study of tradition,
_Iljam al-Awamm an ilm al-kalam_, “The reining in of the commonalty from
the science of kalam.”
Such was, practically, the end of the Muslim Aristotelians. Some
flickers of philosophic study doubtless remained. So we find a certain
Abu-l-Hajjaj ibn Tumlus (d. 620) writing on Aristotle’s “Analytics,”
and the tractates of Ibn Rushd described above were copied at Almeria
in 724. But the fate of all Muslim speculation fell, and this school
went out in Sufiism. It was not Ibn Rushd that triumphed but Ibn Tufayl,
and that side of Ibn Tufayl which was akin to al-Ghazzali. From this
point on, the thinkers and writers of Islam become mystics more and
more overwhelmingly. Dogmatic theology itself falls behind, and of
philosophical disciplines only formal logic and a metaphysics of the
straitest scholastic type are left. Philosophy becomes the handmaid of
theology, and a very mechanical handmaid at that. It is only in the
schools of the Sufis that we find real development and promise of life.
The future lay with them, however dubious it may seem to us that a future
in such charge must be.
[Sidenote: IBN ARABI]
The greatest Sufi in the Arabic-speaking world was undoubtedly Muhyi
ad-Din ibn Arabi. He was born in Murcia in 560, studied _hadith_ and
_fiqh_ at Seville, and in 598 set out to travel in the East. He wandered
through the Hijaz, Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, and died at Damascus in
638, leaving behind him an enormous mass of writings, at least 150 of
which have come down to us. Why he left Spain is unknown; it is plain
that he was under the influence of the Muwahhid movement. He was a
Zahirite in law; rejected analogy, opinion, and _taqlid_, but admitted
agreement. His attachment to the opinions of Ibn Hazm especially was very
strong. He edited some of that scholar’s works, and was only prevented by
his objections to _taqlid_ from being a formal Hazmite. But with all that
literalness in _fiqh_, his mysticism in theology was of the most rampant
and luxurious description. Between the two sides, it is true, there
existed a connection of a kind. He had no need for analogy or opinion or
for any of the workings of the vain human intelligence so long as the
divine light was flooding his soul and he saw the things of the heavens
with plain vision. So his books are a strange jumble of theosophy and
metaphysical paradoxes, all much like the theosophy of our own day. He
evidently took the system of the mutakallims and played with it by means
of formal logic and a lively imagination. To what extent he was sincere
in his claim of heavenly illuminings and mysterious powers it would be
hard to say. The oriental mystic has little difficulty in deceiving
himself. His opinions—so far as we can know them—may be briefly sketched
as follows: The being of all things is God: there is nothing except Him.
All things are an essential unity; every part of the world is the whole
world. So man is a unity in essence but a multiplicity in individuals.
His anthropology was an advance upon that of al-Ghazzali toward a more
unflinching pantheism. He has the same view that the soul of man is a
spiritual substance different from everything else and proceeding from
God. But he obliterates the difference of God and makes souls practically
emanations. At death these return into God who sent them forth. All
religions to Ibn Arabi were practically indifferent; in them all the
divine was working and was worshipped. Yet Islam is the more advantageous
and Sufiism is its true philosophy. Further, man has no free-will; he is
constrained by the will of God, which is really all that exists. Nor is
there any real difference between good and evil; the essential unity of
all things makes such a division impossible.
[Sidenote: IBN SAB‘IN]
The last of the Muwahhid circle with whom we need deal—and, perhaps,
absolutely the last—is Abd al-Haqq ibn Sab‘in. He was as much a mystic as
Ibn Arabi, but was apparently more deeply read in philosophy and did not
cast his conceptions in so theological and Qur’anic a mould. He, too, was
born in Murcia about 613, and must very early have founded a school of
his own, gathered disciples round him and established a wide reputation.
High skill in alchemy, astrology, and magic is ascribed to him, which
probably means that he claimed to be a _wali_, a friend of God, gifted
with miraculous powers. He is accused of posing as a prophet, although
in orthodox Islam Muhammad is the last and the seal of the prophets. But
against this, it may be said that he had no need of the actual title,
“prophet”; many mystics held—heretically, it is true—that the _wali_
stood higher than the prophet, _nabi_ or _rasul_. He had evidently
besides this a more solid reputation in philosophy, as is shown by his
correspondence with Frederick II, the great Hohenstaufen (d. 1250 A.D.).
The story is told on the Muslim side only, but has _vraisemblance_ and
seems to be tolerably authentic. According to it, Frederick addressed
certain questions in philosophy—on the eternity of the world, the nature
of the soul, the number and nature of the categories, etc.—to different
Muslim princes, begging that they would submit them to their learned
men. So the questions came to ar-Rashid, the Muwahhid (reg. 630-640),
addressed to Ibn Sab‘in as a scholar whose reputation had reached even
the Sicilian court. Ar-Rashid passed them on; Ibn Sab‘in accepted the
commission with a smile—this is the Muslim account—and triumphantly and
contemptuously expounded the difficulties of the Christian monarch and
student. In his replies he certainly displays a very complete and exact
knowledge of the Aristotelian and neo-Platonic systems, and is far less
a blind follower of Aristotle than is Ibn Rushd. But his schoolmasterly
tone is most unpleasant, and we discover in the end that all this is
a mere preliminary discipline, leading in itself to agnosticism and a
recognition that there is nothing but vanity in this world, and that only
in the Vision of the Sufi can certainty and peace be found. So we have
again the circle through which al-Ghazzali went. As distinguished from
Ibn Rushd, the prophet, with Ibn Sab‘in, takes higher rank than the sage.
Beyond the current division of the soul into the vegetative, the animal
and the reasonable, he adds two others, derived from the reasonable, the
soul of wisdom and the soul of prophecy. The first of these is the soul
of the philosopher, and the other of the prophet; and the last is the
highest. Of the reasonable soul upward, he predicates immortality.
His position otherwise must have been practically the same as that of Ibn
Arabi. Like him he was a Zahirite in law and a mystic in theology. “God
is the reality of existing things,” he taught, and it is evident that he
belonged to the school of pantheism in which God is all, and separate
things are emanations from him. In life we have flashes of recognition
of the heavenly realities, but only at death—which is our true birth—do
we reach union with the eternal, or, to speak technically, with the
Active Intellect.
[Sidenote: END OF THE MUWAHHIDS]
Apparently it was quite possible for him to hold these views in public
so long as the Muwahhids were strong enough to protect him. But their
empire was rapidly falling to pieces and the time of freedom had passed.
An attack on him at Tunis, where the Hafsids now ruled, drove him to the
East about 643, and there he took refuge at—of all places—Mecca. The
refuge seems to have been secure. He lived there more than twenty years
amid a circle of disciples, among whom was the Sharif himself, and died
about 667. There is a poorly authenticated story that he died by suicide.
The man himself, with so many of his time and kind, must remain a puzzle
to us. For all his haughty pride of learning, it is noted of him that his
first disciples were from among the poor. His contemporaries described
him as “a Sufi after the manner of the philosophers.” The last vestige of
the Muwahhid empire passed away in the year of his death.