CHAPTER VII.

Conclusion.

1. Ibn Khaldun 200–208

1. The Conditions of his Time 200

2. Ibn Khaldun’s Life 201

3. Philosophy and Worldly Experience 202

4. Philosophy of History. Historical Method 204

5. The Subject of History 205

6. Characterization 206

2. The Arabs and Scholasticism 208–213

1. Political Situation. The Jews 208

2. Palermo and Toledo 209

3. Parisian Averroism in the Thirteenth Century 211

I. INTRODUCTION.

1. The Theatre.

1. In olden time the Arabian desert was, as it is at this day, the

roaming-ground of independent Bedouin tribes. With free and healthy

minds they contemplated their monotonous world, whose highest charm was

the raid, and whose intellectual treasure was the tribal tradition.

Neither the achievements of social labour, nor the accomplishments of

elegant leisure were known to them. Only on the borders of the desert,

in regularly constituted communities, which often had to suffer from

the incursions of those Bedouins, a higher degree of civilization had

been attained. This was the case in the South, where the ancient

kingdom of the Queen of Sheba continued its existence in Christian

times under Abyssinian or Persian overlordship. On the West lay Mecca

and Medina (Yathrib), by an old caravan route; and Mecca in particular,

with its market safe-guarded by a temple, was the centre of a brisk

traffic. Lastly on the North, two semi-sovereign States had been formed

under Arab princes: towards Persia, the kingdom of the Lakhmids in

Hira; and towards Byzantium the dominion of the Gassanids in Syria. In

speech and poetry, however, the unity of the Arab nation was set forth

to some extent even before Mohammed’s time. The poets were the ‘men of

knowledge’ for their people. Their incantations held good as oracles,

first of all for their several tribes, but no doubt extending their

influence often beyond their own particular septs.

2. Mohammed and his immediate successors, Abu Bekr, Omar, Othman and

Ali (622–661) succeeded in inspiring the free sons of the desert,

together with the more civilized inhabitants of the coast-lands, with

enthusiasm for a joint enterprise. To this circumstance Islam owes its

world-position: for Allah showed himself great, and the world was quite

small for those who surrendered themselves to him (Muslims). In a short

time the whole of Persia was conquered, and the East-Roman empire lost

its fairest provinces,—Syria and Egypt.

Medina was the seat of the first Caliphs or representatives of the

prophet. Then Mohammed’s brave son-in-law Ali, and Ali’s sons, fell

before Moawiya, the able governor of Syria. From that time dates the

existence of the party of Ali (Shiʻites), which in the course of

diverse vicissitudes,—now reduced to subjection, now in detached places

attaining power,—lives on in history, until it finally incorporates

itself with the Persian kingdom in definite opposition to Sunnite

Islam.

In their struggle against the secular power the Shiʻites availed

themselves of every possible weapon,—even of science. Very early there

appears among them the sect of the Kaisanites, which ascribes to Ali

and his heirs a superhuman secret lore, by the help of which the inner

meaning of the Divine revelation first becomes clear, but which demands

from its devotees not less faith in, and absolute obedience to, the

possessor of such knowledge, than does the letter of the Koran. (Cf.

III, 2 § 1).

3. After the victory of Moawiya, who made Damascus the capital of the

Muslim empire, the importance of Medina lay mainly in the spiritual

province. It had to content itself with fostering, partly under Jewish

and Christian influences, a knowledge of the Law and Tradition. In

Damascus, on the other hand, the Omayyads (661–750) conducted the

secular government. Under their rule the empire spread from the

Atlantic to districts beyond the frontiers of India and Turkestan, and

from the Indian Ocean to the Caucasus and the very walls of

Constantinople. With this development, however, it had reached its

farthest extension.

Arabs now assumed everywhere the leading position. They formed a

military aristocracy; and the most striking proof of their influence is

the fact, that conquered nations with an old and superior civilization

accepted the language of their conquerors. Arabic became the language

of Church and State, of Poetry and Science. But while the higher

offices in the State and the Army were administered by Arabs in

preference, the care of the Arts and Sciences fell, first of all, to

Non-Arabs and men of mixed blood. In Syria school-instruction was

received from Christians. The chief seats of intellectual culture,

however, were Basra and Kufa, in which Arabs and Persians, Muslims,

Christians, Jews and Magians rubbed shoulders together. There, where

trade and industry were thriving, the beginnings of secular science in

Islam must be sought for,—beginnings themselves due to

Hellenistic-Christian and Persian influences.

4. The Omayyads were succeeded by the Abbasids (750–1258). To obtain

the sovereignty, the latter had granted concessions to the Persians,

and had utilized religio-political movements. During the first century

of their rule (i.e. up to about 860), though only during that period,

the greatness of the empire continued to increase, or at least it held

its own. In the year 762, Mansur, the second ruler of this house,

founded Bagdad as the new capital,—a city which soon outshone Damascus

in worldly splendour, and Basra and Kufa in intellectual illumination.

Constantinople alone could be compared to it. Poets and scholars,

particularly from the North-Eastern provinces, met together in Bagdad

at the court of Mansur (754–775), of Harun (786–809), of Mamun

(813–833), and others. Several of the Abbasids had a liking for secular

culture, whether for its own sake or to adorn their court, and although

they may often have failed to recognize the value of artists and

learned men, these at any rate could appreciate the material benefits

conferred upon them by their patrons.

From the time of Harun at least, there existed in Bagdad a library and

a learned institute. Even under Mansur, but especially under Mamun and

his successors, translation of the scientific literature of the Greeks

into the Arabic tongue went forward, largely through the agency of

Syrians; and Abstracts and Commentaries bearing upon these works were

also composed.

Just when this learned activity was at its highest, the glory of the

empire began to decline. The old tribal feuds, which had never been at

rest under the Omayyads, had seemingly given place to a firmly-knit

political unity; but other controversies,—theological and metaphysical

wranglings, such as in like manner accompanied the decay of the

East-Roman empire,—were prosecuted with ever-increasing bitterness. The

service of the State, under an Eastern despotism, did not require men

of brilliant parts. Promising abilities accordingly were often ruined

in luxurious indulgence, or flung away upon sophistry and the show of

learning. On the other hand, for the defence of the empire the Caliphs

enlisted the sound and healthy vigour of nations who had not been so

much softened by over-civilization,—first the Iranian or Iranianized

people of Khorasan, and then the Turks.

5. The decline of the empire became more and more evident. The power of

the Turkish soldiery, uprisings of city mobs and of peasant labourers,

Shiʻite and Ismaelite intrigues on all sides, and in addition the

desire for independence shown by the distant provinces,—were either the

causes or the symptoms of the downfall. Alongside of the Caliphs, who

were reduced to the position of spiritual dignitaries, the Turks ruled

as Mayors of the Palace; and all round, in the outlying regions of the

empire, independent States were gradually formed, until an utterly

astounding body of minor States appeared. The most influential ruling

houses, more or less independent, were the following: in the West, to

say nothing of the Spanish Omayyads (cf. VI, 1), the Aglabids of

North-Africa, the Tulunids and Fatimids of Egypt, and the Hamdanids of

Syria and Mesopotamia; in the East, the Tahirids and Samanids, who were

by slow degrees supplanted by the Turks. It is at the courts of these

petty dynasties that the poets and scholars of the next period (the

10th and 11th centuries) are to be found. For a short time Haleb

(Aleppo), the seat of the Hamdanids, and for a longer time Cairo, built

by the Fatimids in the year 969,—have a better claim to be regarded as

the home of intellectual endeavour than Bagdad itself. For another

brief space lustre is shed on the East by the court of the Turk, Mahmud

of Ghazna, who had become master of Khorasan in the year 999.

The founding of the Muslim Universities also falls within this period

of petty States and Turkish administration. The first one was erected

in Bagdad in the year 1065; and from that date the East has been in

possession of Science, but only in the form of stereotyped

republications. The teacher conveys the teaching which has been handed

down to him by his teachers; and in any new book hardly a sentence will

be found which does not appear in older books. Science was rescued from

danger; but the learned men of Transoxiana, who, upon hearing of the

establishment of the first Madrasah, appointed a solemn memorial

service, as tradition tells, to be held in honour of departed science,

have been shewn to be correct in their estimate. [4]

Then,—in the 13th century,—there came storming over the Eastern regions

of Islam the resounding invasion of the Mongols, who swept away

whatever the Turks had spared. No culture ever flourished there again,

to develope from its own resources a new Art or to stimulate a revival

of Science.

2. Oriental Wisdom.

1. Prior to its contact with Hellenism, the Semitic mind had proceeded

no farther in the path of Philosophy than the propounding of enigmas,

and the utterance of aphoristic wisdom. Detached observations of

Nature, but especially of the life and fate of Man, form the basis of

such thinking; and where comprehension ceases, resignation to the

almighty and inscrutable will of God comes in without difficulty. We

have become familiar with this kind of wisdom from the Old Testament;

and that it was developed in like manner among the Arabs, is shewn to

us by the Bible story of the Queen of Sheba, and by the figure of the

wise Loqman in the Arab tradition.

By the side of this wisdom there was found everywhere the Magic of the

sorcerer,—a knowledge which was authenticated by command over outward

things. But it was only in the priestly circles of ancient

Babylonia,—under what influences and to what extent we do not precisely

know,—that men rose to a more scientific consideration of the world.

Their eyes were turned from the confusion of earthly existence to the

order of the heavens. They were not like the Hebrews, who never got

beyond the wondering stage [5], or who saw merely an emblem of their

own posterity in the countless stars [6]; they resembled rather the

Greeks who came to understand the Many and the Manifold in their

sublunary forms, only after they had discovered the harmony of the All

in the unity and steadiness of the movement of the heavens. The only

drawback was that much mythological by-play and astrological pretence

was interwoven with what was good, as in fact was the case also in

Hellenism. This Chaldaean wisdom, from the time of Alexander the Great,

became pervaded, in Babylonia and Syria, with Hellenistic and later

with Hellenistic-Christian ideas, or else was supplanted by them. In

the Syrian city of Harran only, up to the time of Islam, the old

heathenism held its ground, little affected by Christian influences.

(Cf. I, 3, § 4).

2. Of more importance than any Semitic tradition, was the contribution

made to Islam by Persian and Indian wisdom. We do not need to enter

here upon the question as to whether Oriental wisdom was originally

influenced by Greek philosophy, or Greek philosophy by Oriental wisdom.

What Islam carried away directly from Persians and Indians may be

learned with tolerable certainty from Arabic sources, and to this we

may confine ourselves.

Persia is the land of Dualism, and it is not improbable that its

dualistic religious teaching exercised an influence upon theological

controversy in Islam, either directly or through the Manichaeans and

other Gnostic sects. But much greater, in worldly circles, was the

influence wielded by that system which, according to tradition, came to

be even publicly recognized, under the Sasanid Yezdegerd II

(438/9–457), viz. Zrwanism (Cf. III, 1, § 6). In this system the

dualistic view of the world was superseded by setting up endless Time,

(zrwan, Arab. dahr) as the paramount principle, and identifying it with

Fate, the outermost heavenly sphere or the movement of the heavens.

This doctrine, pleasing to philosophic intellects, has secured, with or

without the guise of Islam, a prominent place for itself in Persian

literature and in the views of the people, up to our own day. By

theologians, however, and no less by philosophers of the Idealistic

schools, it was disavowed as Materialism, Atheism and so forth.

3. India was regarded as the true land of wisdom. In Arab writers we

often come upon the view that there the birthplace of philosophy is to

be found. By peaceful trading, in which the agents between India and

the West were principally Persians, and next as a result of the Muslim

conquest, acquaintance with Indian wisdom spread far and wide. Much of

it was translated under Mansur (754–775) and Harun (786–809), partly by

means of the intervening step of Persian (Pahlawi) versions, and partly

from the Sanskrit direct. Many a deliverance of ethical and political

wisdom, in the dress of proverbs, was taken over from the fables and

tales of India, such as the Tales of the Panchatantra, translated from

the Pahlawi by Ibn al-Moqaffa in Mansur’s time, and others. It was,

however, Indian Mathematics and Astrology,—the latter in combination

with practical Medicine and Magic,—that mainly influenced the

beginnings of secular wisdom in Islam. The Astrology of the Siddhanta

of Brahmagupta, which was translated from the Sanskrit, under Mansur,

by Fazari assisted by Indian scholars, was known even before Ptolemy’s

Almagest. A wide world, past and future, was thereby opened up. The

high figures with which the Indians worked produced a powerful,

perplexing impression upon the sober Muslim annalists, just as, on the

other hand, Arab merchants, who in India and China put the age of our

created world at a few thousand years, exposed themselves to the utmost

ridicule.

Nor did the logical and metaphysical speculations of the Indians remain

unknown to the Muslims. These produced, however, much less effect on

scientific development than did their Mathematics and Astrology. The

investigations of the Indians, associated with their sacred books and

wholly determined by a religious purpose, have certainly had a lasting

influence upon Persian Sufism and Islamic Mysticism. But,—once for

all,—Philosophy is a Greek conception, and we have no right, in

deference to the taste of the day, to allot an undue amount of space in

our description to the childish thoughts of pious Hindoos. What has

been advanced by these meditative penitents about the deceptive show of

everything sensuous, may often possess a poetic charm, just as it

agrees perhaps with those observations on the evanescence of all that

is earthly, which the East had access to in Neo-Pythagorean and

Neo-Platonic sources; but it has contributed just as little of

importance as these did, towards the explanation of phenomena or the

awakening of the scientific spirit. Not the Indian imagination, but the

Greek mind was needed to direct the reflective process to the knowledge

of the Real. The best example of this is furnished by Arabic

Mathematics. In the opinion of those who know the subject best, almost

the only thing Indian in it is the Arithmetic, while the Algebra and

the Geometry are Greek, preponderatingly, if not exclusively. Hardly a

single Indian penetrated to the notion of pure mathematics. Number,

even in its highest form, remained always something concrete; and in

Indian Philosophy knowledge in the main continued to be only a means.

Deliverance from the evil of existence was the aim, and Philosophy a

pathway to the life of blessedness. Hence the monotony of this

wisdom,—concentrated, as it was, upon the essence of all things in its

One-ness,—as contrasted with the many-branched science of the Hellenes,

which strove to comprehend the operations of Nature and Mind on all

sides.

Oriental wisdom, Astrology and Cosmology delivered over to Muslim

thinkers material of many kinds, but the Form,—the formative

principle,—came to them from the Greeks. In every case where it is not

mere enumeration or chance concatenation that is taken in hand, but

where an attempt is made to arrange the Manifold according to positive

or logical points of view, we may conclude with all probability that

Greek influences have been at work.

3. Greek Science.

1. Just as the commercial intercourse between India and China and

Byzantium was conducted principally by the Persians, so in the remote

West, as far even as France, the Syrians came forward as the agents of

civilization. It was Syrians who brought wine, silk &c. to the West.

But it was Syrians also who took Greek culture from Alexandria and

Antioch, spreading it eastward and propagating it in the schools of

Edessa and Nisibis, Harran and Gondeshapur. Syria was the true neutral

ground, where for centuries the two world-powers, the Roman and the

Persian, came in contact with one another, either as friends or as

foes. In such circumstances, the Christian Syrians played a part

similar to the one which in later days fell to the share of the Jews.

2. The Muslim conquerors found the Christian church split up into three

main divisions,—to say nothing of many sects. The Monophysite church,

alongside of the Orthodox State-church, preponderated in Syria proper,

and the Nestorian church in Persia. The difference between the

doctrinal systems of these churches was perhaps not without importance

for the development of Muslim Dogmatics. According to the teaching of

the Monophysites, God and Man were united in one nature in Christ,

whereas the Orthodox, and in a still more pronounced manner the

Nestorians, discriminated between a Divine nature and a human nature in

him. Now nature means, above everything, energy or operative principle.

The question, accordingly, which is at issue, is whether the Divine,

and the human Willing and Acting are one and the same in Christ or

different. The Monophysites, from speculative and religious motives,

gave prominence to the Unity in Christ their God, at the expense of the

human element: The Nestorians, on the other hand, emphasized, in

contrast with the Divine element, all that is specially characteristic

of human Being, Willing and Acting. The latter view, however, favoured

by political circumstances and conditions of culture, offers freer play

to philosophical speculations on the world and on life. In point of

fact the Nestorians did most for the cultivation of Greek Science.

3. Syriac was the language both of the Western and of the Eastern or

Persian Church; but Greek was also taught along with it in the Cloister

schools. Rasain and Kinnesrin must be mentioned as being centres of

culture in the Western or Monophysite Church. Of more importance, at

the outset at least, was the school of Edessa, inasmuch as the dialect

of Edessa had risen to the position of the literary language; but in

the year 489 the school there was closed because of the Nestorian views

held by its teachers. It was then re-opened in Nisibis, and, being

patronized by the Sasanids on political grounds, it disseminated

Nestorian belief and Greek knowledge throughout Persia.

Instruction in these schools had a pre-eminently Biblical and

ecclesiastical character, and was arranged to meet the needs of the

Church. However, physicians or coming students of medicine also took

part in it. The circumstance that they frequently belonged to the

ecclesiastical order does not do away with the distinction between

theological study and the pursuit of secular knowledge. It is true that

according to the Syro-Roman code, Teachers (learned Priests) and

Physicians were entitled in common to exemption from taxation and to

other privileges; but the very fact that priests were regarded as

healers of the soul, while physicians had merely to patch up the body,

seemed to justify the precedence accorded to the former. Medicine

always remained a secular matter; and, by the regulations of the School

of Nisibis (from the year 590), the Holy Scriptures were not to be read

in the same room with books that dealt with worldly callings.

In medical circles the works of Hippocrates, Galen and Aristotle were

highly prized; but in the cloisters Philosophy was understood to be

first of all the contemplative life of the ascetic, and “the one thing

needful” was the only thing cared for.

4. The Mesopotamian city of Harran, in the neighbourhood of Edessa,

takes a place of its own. In this city, especially when it began to

flourish again after the Arab conquest, ancient Semitic paganism comes

into association with mathematical and astronomical studies and

Neo-Pythagorean and Neo-Platonic speculation. The Harranaeans or

Sabaeans, as they were called in the 9th and 10th centuries, traced

their mystic lore back to Hermes Trismegistus, Agathodaemon, Uranius

and others. Numerous pseudepigraphs of the later Hellenism were adopted

by them in good faith, and some perhaps were forged in their own

circle. A few of them became active as translators and learned authors,

and many kept up a brisk scientific intercourse with Persian and Arab

scholars from the 8th to the 10th century.

5. In Persia, at Gondeshapur, we find an Institution for philosophical

and medical studies established by Khosrau Anosharwan (521–579). Its

teachers were principally Nestorian Christians; but Khosrau, who had an

inclination for secular culture, extended his toleration to

Monophysites as well as to Nestorians. At that time, just as was the

case later at the court of the Caliphs, Christian Syrians were held in

special honour as medical men.

Farther, in the year 529, seven philosophers of the Neo-Platonic

school, who had been driven away from Athens, found a place of refuge

at the court of Khosrau. Their experiences there, however, may have

resembled those of the French free-thinkers of the 18th century at the

Russian court. At all events they longed to get home again; and the

king was sufficiently liberal-minded and magnanimous to allow them to

go, and in his treaty of peace with Byzantium of the year 549 to

stipulate in their case for freedom of religious opinion. Their stay in

the Persian kingdom was doubtless not wholly devoid of influence.

6. The period of Syriac translations of profane literature from the

Greek extends perhaps from the 4th to the 8th century. In the 4th

century collections of aphorisms were translated. The first translator,

however, who makes his appearance avowing his name, is Probus, “Priest

and physician in Antioch” (1st half of the 5th century?). Possibly he

was merely an expounder of the logical writings of Aristotle, and of

the Isagoge of Porphyry. Better known is Sergius of Rasain,—who died at

the age of 70 or so, probably in Constantinople, about 536,—a

Mesopotamian monk and physician, whose studies, which were probably

pursued in Alexandria itself, took in the whole range of Alexandrian

science, and whose translations not only embraced Theology, Morals and

Mysticism, but even Physics, Medicine and Philosophy. Even after the

Muslim conquest the learned activity of the Syrians continued. Jacob of

Edessa (circa 640–708) translated Greek theological writings; but he

occupied himself besides with Philosophy, and in answer to a question

relative thereto he pronounced that it was lawful for Christian

ecclesiastics to impart the higher instruction to children of Muslim

parents. There was thus a felt need of culture among the latter.

The translations of the Syrians, particularly of Sergius of Rasain, are

generally faithful; but a more exact correspondence with the original

is shewn in the case of Logic and Natural Science than in Ethical and

Metaphysical works. Much that is obscure in these last has been

misunderstood or simply omitted, and much that is pagan has been

replaced by Christian material. For instance, Peter, Paul and John

would come upon the scene in room of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

Destiny and the Gods were obliged to give place to the one God; and

ideas like World, Eternity, Sin and the like were recast in a Christian

mould. The Arabs, however, in subsequent times went to a much greater

length with the process of adaptation to their language, culture and

religion than the Syrians. This may perhaps be partly explained by the

Muslim horror of everything heathen, but partly too by their greater

faculty of adaptation.

7. Apart from a few mathematical, physical and medical writings, the

Syrians interested themselves in two subjects,—the first consisting of

moralizing collections of aphorisms, put together into a kind of

history of Philosophy, and, generally, of mystical Pythagorean-Platonic

wisdom. This is found principally in pseudepigraphs, which bear the

names of Pythagoras, Socrates, Plutarch, Dionysius and others. The

centre of interest is a Platonic doctrine of the Soul, subjected to a

later Pythagorean, Neo-Platonic, or Christian form of treatment. In the

Syrian cloisters Plato is even turned into an oriental monk, who built

a cell for himself in the heart of the wilderness, far away from the

dwellings of men, and after three years’ silent brooding over a verse

of the Bible was led to a recognition of the Tri-Unity of God.

A second subject of interest was added, in Aristotle’s Logic. Among the

Syrians, and for a longer period among the Arabs also, Aristotle was

commonly known almost solely as a logician. This knowledge, just as in

the early scholasticism of the West, extended to the Categories, the

Hermeneutics, and the first Analytics as far as the Categorical

Figures. They stood in need of the Logic in order to comprehend the

writings of Greek ecclesiastical teachers, since these, at least in

form, were influenced thereby. But as they did not possess it complete,

as little did they possess it pure. They had it before them only in a

Neo-Platonic redaction, as may be seen, for example, from the work of

Paulus Persa, which was written in Syriac for Khosrau Anosharwan. In

that work knowledge is placed above faith, and philosophy is defined as

the process by which the soul becomes conscious of its own inner

essence, in which, like a God as it were, it sees all things.

8. What the Arabs owe to the Syrians is expressed by this circumstance

amongst others,—that Arab scholars held Syriac to be the oldest, or the

real (natural) language. The Syrians, it is true, produced nothing

original; but their activity as translators was of advantage to

Arab-Persian science. It was Syrians almost without exception, who,

from the 8th century to the 10th, rendered Greek works into Arabic,

either from the older Syriac versions or from those which had been in

part improved by them, and in part re-arranged. Even the Omayyad

prince, Khalid ibn Yezid (died 704), who occupied himself with Alchemy

under the guidance of a Christian monk, is said to have provided for

translations of works on Alchemy from Greek into Arabic. Proverbs,

maxims, letters, wills, and in short whatever bore on the history of

philosophy, were at a very early time collected and translated. But it

was not till the reign of Mansur that a commencement was made with the

translation into Arabic—partly from Pahlawi versions—of those writings

of the Greeks which deal with Natural Science, Medicine and Logic. Ibn

al-Moqaffa, an adherent of Persian Dualism, took a leading part in this

task, from whom later workers must have marked themselves off by their

terminology. None of his philosophical translations have come down to

us. Other material too, belonging to the 8th century has gone amissing.

The earliest specimen of this work of translation which we possess

dates from the 9th century, the time of Mamun and his successors.

The translators of the 9th century were, for the most part, medical

men; and Hippocrates and Galen were among the first to be translated

after Ptolemy and Euclid. But let us confine ourselves to Philosophy,

in the narrower sense. A translation of the Timäus of Plato is said to

have come from Yuhanna or Yakhya ibn Bitriq (in the beginning of the

9th century), as well as Aristotle’s ‘Meteorology’, the ‘Book of

Animals’, an epitome of the ‘Psychology’, and the tract ‘On the World’.

To Abdalmasikh ibn Abdallah Naima al-Himsi (circa 835) is to be

ascribed a rendering of the ‘Sophistics’ of Aristotle, in addition to

the Commentary of John Philoponus upon the ‘Physics’, as well as the

so-called ‘Theology of Aristotle’,—a paraphrased epitome of the Enneads

of Plotinus. Qosta ibn Luqa al-Balabakki (circa 835) is said to have

translated the Commentaries of Alexander of Aphrodisias and John

Philoponus upon the ‘Physics’ of Aristotle, and in part, Alexander’s

Commentary on the ‘De generatione et corruptione’, as well as the

‘Placita Philosophorum’ of the Pseudo-Plutarch, and other works.

The most productive translators were Abu Zaid Honain ibn Ishaq

(809?-873), his son, Ishaq ibn Honain († 910 or 911), and nephew

Hobaish ibn al-Hasan. Seeing that they worked together, there is a good

deal which is ascribed, now to the one and now to the other. Not a

little material must have been prepared, under their oversight, by

disciples and subordinates. Their activity extended over the whole

range of the science of that day. Existing translations were improved,

and new ones added. The father preferred to work at versions of medical

authors, but the son turned more to the rendering of philosophical

material.

The work of the translators was still proceeding in the 10th century.

Among those who especially distinguished themselves were Abu Bishr

Matta ibn Yunus al-Qannai († 940), Abu Zakarya Yakhya ibn Adi

al-Mantiqi († 974), Abu Ali Isa ibn Ishaq ibn Zura († 1008), and

finally, Abu-l-Khair al-Hasan ibn al-Khammar (born 942), a pupil of

Yakhya ibn Adi’s, of whose writings, besides translations,

commentaries, and so forth, a tract is mentioned, on the Harmony

between Philosophy and Christianity.

From the time of Honain ibn Ishaq the activity of the translators was

almost wholly confined to Aristotelian and Pseudo-Aristotelian

writings, and to epitomes of them, to paraphrases of their contents and

to commentaries upon them.

9. These translators are not to be regarded as specially great

philosophers. Their work was seldom entered upon spontaneously, but

almost always at the command of some Caliph or Vizir or other person of

note. Outside of their own department of study, usually Medicine, they

were chiefly interested in Wisdom,—that is, in pretty stories with a

moral, in anecdotes, and in oracular sayings. The expressions which we

merely bear with in intercourse, in narrative or on the stage, as being

characteristic utterances with certain persons, were admired and

collected by these worthy people for the sake of the wisdom contained

in them, or perhaps even for no more than the rhetorical elegance of

their form. As a rule, those men continued true to the Christian faith

of their fathers. The traditional story of Ibn Djebril gives a good

idea both of their way of thinking and of the liberal-mindedness of the

Caliphs. When Mansur wanted to convert him to Islam, he is said to have

replied: “In the faith of my fathers I will die: where they are, I wish

also to be, whether in heaven or in hell”. Whereupon the Caliph

laughed, and dismissed him with a rich present.

Only a small portion has been saved of the original writings of these

men. A short dissertation by Qosta ibn Luqa on the distinction between

Soul and Spirit (πνεῦμα, ruh), preserved in a Latin translation, has

been frequently mentioned and made use of. According to it, the Spirit

is a subtle material, which from its seat in the left ventricle of the

heart animates the human frame and brings about its movements and

perceptions. The finer and clearer this Spirit is, the more rationally

the man thinks and acts: there is but one opinion upon this point. It

is more difficult, however, to predicate anything sure, and universally

valid, of the Soul. The deliverances of the greatest philosophers

occasionally differ, and occasionally contradict each other. In any

case the Soul is incorporeal, for it adopts qualities, and, in fact,

qualities of the most opposite nature at one and the same time. It is

uncompounded and unchangeable, and it does not, like the Spirit, perish

with the body. The Spirit only acts as an intermediary between the Soul

and the Body, and it is in this way that it becomes a secondary cause

of movement and perception.

The statement which has just been given regarding the Soul is found in

many of the later writers. But by slow degrees, as the Aristotelian

philosophy thrusts Platonic opinions more and more into the background,

another pair of opposites come into full view. Physicians alone

continue to speak of the importance of the ‘ruh’ or Spirit of Life.

Philosophers institute a comparison between Soul and Spirit or Reason

(νοῦς, ʻaql). The Soul is now reduced to the domain of the perishable,

and sometimes, in Gnostic fashion, even to the lower and evil realm of

the desires. The rational Spirit,—as that which is highest, that which

is imperishable in man—is exalted above the Soul.

In this notice, however, we are anticipating history: let us return to

our translators.

10. The most valuable portion of the legacy which the Greek mind

bequeathed to us in art, poetry, and historical composition, was never

accessible to the Orientals. It would even have been difficult for them

to understand it, seeing that they lacked the due acquaintance with

Greek life, and the relish for it. For them the history of Greece began

with Alexander the Great, surrounded with the halo of legend; and the

position which Aristotle held beside the greatest prince of ancient

times must have assuredly conduced to the acceptance of the

Aristotelian philosophy at the Muslim court. Arab historians counted up

the Greek princes, on to Cleopatra, and then the Roman Emperors; but a

Thucydides, for example, was not known to them, even by name. Of Homer

they had not picked up much more than the sentence, that “one only

should be the ruler”. They had not the least idea of the great Greek

dramatists and lyric poets. It was only through its Mathematics,

Natural Science and Philosophy, that Greek antiquity could bring its

influence to bear upon them. They had come to know something of the

development of Greek Philosophy, from Plutarch, Porphyry and others, as

well as from the writings of Aristotle and Galen. A good deal of

legendary matter, however, was mingled with their information; and the

account which passed in the East, of the doctrines of the Pre-Socratic

philosophers can only be referred by us to the pseudepigraphs which

they consulted, or perhaps even to the opinions which had been

developed in the East itself, and which they endeavoured to support

with the authority of old Greek sages. But still, in every case, our

thoughts must turn first of all to some Greek original.

11. It may be affirmed generally that the Syro-Arabs took up the thread

of philosophy, precisely where the last of the Greeks had let it fall,

that is, with the Neo-Platonic explanation of Aristotle, along with

whose philosophy the works of Plato were also read and expounded. Among

the Harranaeans, and for a long time in several Muslim sects, it was

Platonic or Pythagorean-Platonic studies which were prosecuted with

most ardour,—with which much that was Stoic or Neo-Platonic was

associated. Extraordinary interest was taken in the fate of Socrates,

who had suffered a martyr’s death in heathen Athens for his rational

belief. The Platonic teaching regarding the Soul and Nature exercised

great influence. The Pythian utterance: “Know thyself”,—handed down as

the motto of the Socratic wisdom, and interpreted in a Neo-Platonic

sense,—was ascribed by the Muslims to Ali, Mohammed’s son-in-law, or

even put into the mouth of the Prophet himself. “He who knows himself,

knows God his Lord thereby”: this was the text for Mystic speculations

of all kinds.

In medical circles and at the worldly court, the works of Aristotle

came more and more into favour, first of all of course the Logic and a

few things from the Physical writings. The Logic—so they thought—was

the only new thing the Stagyrite had discovered: in all the other

sciences he agreed throughout with Pythagoras, Empedocles, Anaxagoras,

Socrates and Plato. Accordingly Christian and Sabaean translators, and

the circle influenced by them, drew their psychologico-ethical,

political and metaphysical instruction without hesitation from the

Pre-Aristotelian sages.

What bore the names of Empedocles, Pythagoras &c., was, naturally,

spurious. Their wisdom is traced either to Hermes or to other wise men

of the East. Thus Empedocles must have been a disciple of King David’s,

and afterwards of Loqman the Wise: Pythagoras must have sprung from the

school of Solomon,—and so on. Writings which are cited in Arabic works

as Socratic are, in so far as they are genuine, Platonic dialogues in

which Socrates appears. Their quotations from Plato—not to speak of

spurious writings—have a more or less comprehensive range: they are

taken from the Apology, Krito, the Sophistes, Phaedrus, the Republic,

Phaedo, Timäus and the Laws. That does not mean, however, that they

possessed complete translations of all these works.

This much is certain,—that Aristotle did not reign as sole lord from

the very outset. Plato, as they understood him, taught the Creation of

the world, the Substantiality of the Spiritual, and the Immortality of

the Soul. That teaching did no harm to the Faith. But Aristotle, with

his doctrine of the Eternity of the World, and his less spiritualistic

Psychology and Ethics, was regarded as dangerous. Muslim theologians of

the 9th and 10th centuries, from various camps, wrote therefore against

Aristotle. But circumstances altered. Philosophers arose by-and-by who

rejected the Platonic doctrine of the One World-Soul, of which the

souls of men are only transient parts, and sought grounds for their

hope of immortality from Aristotle who attributed so great a

significance to the Individual Substance.

12. The conception which was entertained of Aristotle in the period

most remote, is best shown by the writings which were foisted upon him.

Not only did they get his genuine works with Neo-Platonic

interpretations attached to them,—not only was the treatise: “On the

world” unhesitatingly acknowledged as Aristotelian, but he was also

regarded as the author of many late-Greek productions, in which a

Pythagorising Platonism or Neo-Platonism, or even a barren Syncretism

was quite frankly taught.

Let us take here as our first example “the Book of the Apple” [7],

wherein Aristotle plays the same part as Socrates in the Phaedo of

Plato. As his end draws near, the Philosopher is visited by some of his

disciples who find him in a cheerful frame of mind. This leads them to

request their departing Master to give them some instruction about the

Essence and Immortality of the Soul. Thereupon he discourses somewhat

as follows:—“The Essence of the Soul consists in knowing,—in fact, in

Philosophy, which is the highest form of knowing. A perfect knowledge

of the truth constitutes therefore the blessedness which after death

awaits the soul which is devoted to knowing. And just as knowing is

rewarded with a higher knowledge,—so the punishment for not-knowing

consists in a deeper ignorance. And really, there is nothing in Heaven

or Earth, after all, except knowing and not-knowing, and the recompence

which these two severally bring with them. Farther,—virtue is not

essentially different from knowing; nor does vice differ essentially

from not-knowing. The relation of virtue to knowing, or of vice to

not-knowing, is like that of water to ice: i.e. it is the same thing

in a different form.

In knowing,—which is the divine essence of the Soul,—the Soul finds

naturally its only true joy, and not in eating and drinking and sensual

pleasure. For, sensual pleasure is a flame which merely warms for a

short time; but the thinking Soul,—which longs for its deliverance from

the murky world of the senses,—is a pure light that sheds a radiance

far and wide. The Philosopher therefore is not afraid of death, but

meets it gladly, when the Deity summons him. The enjoyment, which his

limited knowledge affords him here is a guarantee to him of the rapture

which the unveiling of the great world of the Unknown will procure him.

Even already he knows something of this, for it is only through

knowledge of the invisible, that the proper estimate of the sensible,

on which he prides himself, is at all possible. He who comes to know

his own self in this life, possesses in that very knowledge of himself

the assurance of comprehending all things with an eternal knowledge,—i.

e. of being immortal.”

13. In the second place the so-called “Theology of Aristotle” may be

referred to. In it Plato is represented as the Ideal-Man, who gains a

knowledge of all things by means of an intuitive thinking, and thus has

no need of the logical resources of Aristotle. Indeed, the highest

reality—Absolute Being—is not apprehended by thinking, but only in an

ecstatic Vision. “Often was I alone with my soul”, says

Aristotle-Plotinus, on this point. “Divested of the body, I entered as

pure substance into my proper self, turning back from all that is

external to what is within. I was pure knowing there, at once the

knowing and the known. How astonished I was to behold beauty and

splendour in my proper self, and to recognize that I was a part of the

sublime Divine world, endowed even with creative life! In this

assurance of self, I was lifted above the world of the senses, ay, even

above the world of spirits, up to the Divine state, where I beheld a

light so fair that no tongue can tell it, nor ear understand”.

The soul forms the centre of the discussions in the ‘Theology’ also.

All true human science is science of the soul or knowledge of

self,—knowledge of its essence, it is true, coming first, and next in

order, though less complete, knowledge of the operations of that

essence. In such knowledge, to which exceedingly few attain, the

highest wisdom consists, which does not admit of being fully understood

in the form of ideas, and which therefore the philosopher like a

skilful artist and wise lawgiver represents, for us men, in ever

beautiful figures in religious service. In this function precisely, the

wise man comes forward as the potent, self-sufficing magician, whose

knowledge lords it over the multitude, seeing that they remain always

bound in the fetters of outward things, of presentations and desires.

The soul stands in the centre of the All. Above it are God and

Intelligence, beneath it—Matter and Nature. Its coming from God through

Intelligence into Matter, its presence in the body, its return on

high—these are the three stadia in which its life and that of the world

run their course. Matter and Nature, Sense-perception and Presentation

here lose their significance almost entirely. All things exist by

Intelligence (νοῦς, ʻaql). Intelligence constitutes all things, and in

Intelligence all things are One. The Soul too is Intelligence, but, so

long as it stays in the body, it is Intelligence in hope, Intelligence

in the form of longing. It longs for what is above, for the good and

blessed stars, which spend their contemplative existence as sources of

light, exalted above presentation and effort.

That then is the oriental Aristotle, as he was acknowledged by the

earliest Peripatetics in Islam [8].

14. We need not wonder that the Easterns did not succeed in reaching an

unadulterated conception of the Aristotelian philosophy. Our critical

apparatus for discriminating between the genuine and the spurious was

not in their possession. It must have proved even more difficult for

them, to familiarize themselves with the world of Greek civilization,

than for the Christian scholars of the Middle Ages, which had never

entirely lost living touch with antiquity. In the East men remained

dependent on Neo-Platonic redactions and interpretations. A part of the

scientific system, to wit, the Politics of Aristotle, was a-wanting;

and so, as a matter of course, the Laws or the Republic of Plato took

its place. Only a few were aware of the difference between the two.

Another determining motive deserves notice. In their Neo-Platonic

sources even, the Muslims came upon a harmonizing exposition of the

Greek philosophers, and they felt constrained to adopt it. The first

adherents of Aristotle were bound to assume a polemical and apologetic

attitude. In opposition to, or in conformity with, the voice of the

Muslim community, they required a coherent philosophy, in which the One

Truth must be found. The same reverence, which Mohammed in his day had

paid to the sacred writings of the Jews and of the Christians, was

shewn afterwards by Muslim scholars towards the works of Greek

philosophers; but these learned men exhibited greater familiarity with

their models, and less originality. In their eyes the old philosophers

were invested with an authority, to which it was their duty to submit.

The earliest Muslim thinkers were so fully convinced of the superiority

of Greek knowledge that they did not doubt that it had attained to the

highest degree of certainty. The thought of making farther and

independent investigations did not readily occur to an Oriental, who

cannot imagine a man without a teacher as being anything else than a

disciple of Satan. In accordance, therefore, with the precedent set by

Hellenistic philosophers, an attempt had to be made to demonstrate the

existence of the harmony between Plato and Aristotle,—and, in

particular, to shelve tacitly those doctrines which gave offence, or to

exhibit them in a sense which was not too decidedly contrary to Muslim

Dogmatics. In order to humour the opponents of Aristotle or of

Philosophy in general, prominence was given to wise and edifying

sayings out of the philosopher’s works,—both the genuine and the

spurious,—that so the way might be prepared for the reception of his

scientific thoughts. To the initiated, however, the teaching of

Aristotle, like that of other schools and sects, was set forth as a

higher truth, to which the positive faith of the multitude and the more

or less firmly established system of the theologians were merely

preliminary steps.

15. Muslim Philosophy has always continued to be an Eclecticism which

depended on their stock of works translated from the Greek. The course

of its history has been a process of assimilation rather than of

generation. It has not distinguished itself, either by propounding new

problems or by any peculiarity in its endeavours to solve the old ones.

It has therefore no important advances in thought to register. And yet,

from a historical point of view, its significance is far greater than

that of a mere intermediary between classical antiquity and Christian

Scholasticism. To follow up the reception of Greek ideas into the mixed

civilization of the East is a subject of historical interest possessing

a charm entirely its own, especially if one can forget at the same time

that once there were Greeks. But the consideration of this occurrence

becomes important also by its presenting an opportunity for comparison

with other civilizations. Philosophy is a phenomenon so unique—so

thoroughly indigenous and independent a growth of Grecian soil—that one

might regard it as being exempt from the conditions of general

civilized life, and as being explicable only per se. Now the History of

Philosophy in Islam is valuable, just because it sets forth the first

attempt to appropriate the results of Greek thinking, with greater

comprehensiveness and freedom than in the early Christian dogmatics.

Acquaintance with the conditions which made such an attempt possible,

will permit us to reach conclusions, by way of analogical

reasonings—though with precaution, and for the present at least, to a

very limited extent—as to the reception of Graeco-Arab science in the

Christian Middle Ages, and will perhaps teach us a little about the

conditions under which Philosophy arises in general.

We can hardly speak of a Muslim philosophy in the proper sense of the

term. But there were many men in Islam who could not keep from

philosophizing; and even through the folds of the Greek drapery, the

form of their own limbs is indicated. It is easy to look down on these

men, from the high watch-tower of some School-Philosophy, but it will

be better for us to get to know them and to comprehend them in their

historical environment. We must leave to special research the tracing

of each thought up to its origin. Our aim in what follows can be

nothing more than to point out what the Muslims constructed out of the

materials which were before them.

II. PHILOSOPHY AND ARAB KNOWLEDGE.

1. Grammatical Science.

1. By Muslim scholars of the 10th century the sciences were divided

into ‘Arab Sciences’ and ‘Old’- or ‘Non-Arab Sciences’. To the former

belonged Grammar, Ethics and Dogmatics, History and Knowledge of

Literature; to the latter Philosophy, Natural Science and Medicine. In

the main the division is a proper one. The last-named branches are not

only those which were determined the most by foreign influences, but

those too which never became really popular. And yet the so called

‘Arab Sciences’ are not altogether pure native products. They too arose

or were developed in places in the Muslim empire where Arabs and

Non-Arabs met together, and where the need was awakened of reflecting

on those subjects which concern mankind the most,—Speech and Poetry,

Law and Religion,—in so far as differences or inadequacies appeared

therein. In the mode in which this came about, it is easy to trace the

influence of Non-Arabs, particularly of Persians; and the part taken by

Greek Philosophy in the process asserts itself in ever-growing

importance.

2. The Arabic language,—in which the Arabs themselves took particular

delight, for its copious vocabulary, its wealth of forms and its

inherent capability of cultivation,—was peculiarly fitted to take a

leading position in the world. If it is compared, for example, with the

unwieldy Latin, or even with the turgid Persian, it is found to be

specially distinguished by the possession of short Abstract-forms,—a

property of great service in scientific expression. It is capable of

indicating the finest shades of meaning; but just because of its richly

developed stock of synonyms, it offers temptations to deviate from the

Aristotelian rule,—that the use of synonyms is not permissible in exact

science. A language so elegant, expressive, and difficult withal, as

Arabic was, necessarily invited much examination, when it had become

the polite language of the Syrians and the Persians. Above all, the

study of the Koran, and the recital and interpretation of it demanded

profound attention to be devoted to the language. Unbelievers, also,

may have thought that they could point out grammatical errors in the

sacred Book; and therefore examples were gathered out of ancient poems

and out of the living speech of the Bedouins, to support the

expressions of the Koran. To these examples remarks were, no doubt,

added upon grammatical accuracy in general. On the whole, the living

usage formed the standard, but in order to save the authority of the

Koran, it was certainly not applied without artifice. This proceeding

was regarded, all the same, by simple believers, with a measure of

suspicion. Masudi tells us even of some grammarians from Basra, who,

when on a pleasure trip, took to going through a Koran Imperative, and

for that reason(?) were soundly cudgelled by country folk engaged in

date-gathering.

3. The Arabs trace their grammatical science, like so many other

things, to Ali, to whom is ascribed even Aristotle’s tripartite

division of speech. In reality the study began to be cultivated in

Basra and Kufa. Its earliest development is involved in obscurity, for

in the Grammar of Sibawaih († 786) we have a finished system,—a

colossal work—, which, like Ibn Sina’s Canon of Medicine in after

times, could only be explained by later generations as the production

of many scholars working in collaboration. We are but ill-informed even

on the points of difference between the schools of Basra and Kufa. The

Basra grammarians, like the school of Bagdad in subsequent times, must

have conceded a great influence to Qiyas (Analogy) in the determination

of grammatical phenomena, while those of Kufa allowed many idiomatic

forms which diverged from Qiyas. On this ground, to mark the contrast

between the Basra grammarians and those of Kufa, the former were called

‘the Logic people’. Their terminology differed in detail from that of

the Kufa school. Many, whose heads had been turned by logic, in the

opinion of the genuine Arabs, must have gone decidedly too far in their

captious criticism of the language; but on the other side caprice was

raised to the position of rule.

It was from no mere accident that the school of Basra was the first to

avail itself of logical resources. Generally speaking, it was at Basra

that the influence of philosophic doctrines first appeared, and among

its grammarians were to be found many Shiʻites and Mutazilites, who

readily permitted foreign wisdom to influence their doctrinal teaching.

4. Grammatical science, in so far as it was not confined, to the

collecting of Examples, Synonyms &c., when so determined by the

subjects specially treated, was affected by the Aristotelian Logic.

Even before the Muslim era, Syrians and Persians had studied the

treatise περὶ ἑρμηνείας, with Stoic and Neo-Platonic additions. Ibn

al-Moqaffa, who at first was intimate with the grammarian Khalil (v.

infra), then made accessible to the Arabs all that existed in Pahlawi

of a grammatical or logical nature. In conformity therewith the various

kinds of Sentences were enumerated,—at one time five, at another eight

or nine, as well as the three parts of speech,—Noun, Verb and Particle.

Afterwards some scholars, like Djahiz, included syllogistic figures

among the Rhetorical figures; and in later representations there was

much disputation about Sound and Idea. The question was discussed

whether language is the result of ordinance or a product of nature; but

gradually the philosophic view preponderated, that it came by

ordinance.

Next to Logic the influence of the preparatory or mathematical sciences

falls to be noticed here. Like the prose of ordinary intercourse and

the rhymes of the Koran, the verses of the poets were not only

collected but also arranged according to special principles of

classification,—for example, according to metre. After Grammar Prosody

arose. Khalil († 791), the teacher of Sibawaih, to whom the first

application of Qiyas to grammatical science was attributed, is said

even to have created metrical science. While language came to be

regarded as the national, conventional element in poetry, the notion

was entertained that what was natural, and common to all populations,

would be found in their metre. Thabit ibn Qorra (836–901) therefore

maintained, in his classification of the sciences, that metre was

something essential, and the study of metre a natural science, and

therefore a branch of philosophy.

5. Grammatical science, nevertheless, limited as it was to the Arabic

language, retained its peculiarities, upon which this is not the place

to enter. At all events, it is an imposing production of the

keenly-observing and diligently-collecting Arab intelligence,—a

production of which the Arabs might well be proud. An apologist of the

10th century, who was engaged in combating Greek philosophy, said: “He

who is acquainted with the subtleties and profundities of Arab poetry

and versification, knows well that they surpass all such things as

numbers, lines and points, which are wont to be advanced in proof of

their opinions, by people who idly dream that they are capable of

understanding the essence of things. I cannot see the substantial

advantage of things like numbers, lines and points, if, in spite of the

trifling profit which may attend them, they do harm to the Faith and

are followed by consequences, against which we have to invoke the help

of God.” Men would not have their delight in the minutiae of their

language disturbed by general philosophic speculations. Many a

word-form, originating with the translators of foreign works, was held

in detestation by purist Grammarians. The beautiful art of calligraphy,

more decorative in its nature than constructive, like Arabic art in

general, became developed in noble, delicate forms, and met with a

wider expansion than scientific research into the language. In the very

characters of the Arabic speech, we may still see the subtlety of the

intelligence which formed them, although at the same time we may see a

lack of energy, which is observable in the entire development of Arab

culture.

2. Ethical Teaching.

1. The believing Muslim, in so far as custom did not maintain its

dominion over him, had at first the Word of God and the example of His

Prophet as his rule of conduct and opinion. After the Prophet’s death,

the Sunna of Mohammed was followed, in cases where the Koran gave no

information,—that is to say, men acted and decided, as Mohammed had

decided or acted, according to the Tradition of his Companions. But

from the time of the conquest of countries in possession of an old

civilization, demands which were altogether new were made of Islam.

Instead of the simple conditions of Arab life, usages and institutions

were met with there, in regard to which the Sacred Law gave no precise

direction, and to meet which no tradition or interpretation of

tradition presented itself. Every day added thus to the number of

individual cases which had not been provided for, and yet about which

one had to come to a decision, whether according to custom, or his own

sense of right. In the old-Roman provinces, Syria and Mesopotamia,

Roman law must have long continued to exercise an important influence.

Those jurists who attributed to their own opinion (Raʼy, opinio)

alongside of the Koran and Sunna, a subsidiary authority to determine

the law, were called ‘Adherents of the Raʼy’. One of them, Abu Hanifa

of Kufa († 767), the founder of the Hanifite School, became specially

famous. But even in Medina, before the appearance of the school of

Malik (715–795), as well as in that school, a harmless though

restricted deference was at first paid to the Raʼy. By slow degrees,

however, and in the course of opposing a Raʼy which was becoming a

pretext for much arbitrariness, the view gained ground, that in

everything the Tradition (hadith) respecting the Sunna of the Prophet

was to be followed. Thereupon traditions were collected from all

quarters, and explained—and in large numbers even forged—; and a system

of criteria to determine their genuineness was formed, which, however,

laid more stress upon the external evidence and the appropriateness of

the traditionary material than upon consistency and historic truth. As

a consequence of this development, the ‘people of the Raʼy’, who were

chiefly located in Iraq (Babylonia), were now confronted by the

‘Adherents of the Tradition’, or the Medina school. Even Shafii

(767–820), the founder of the third school of Law, who in general held

to the Sunna, was numbered with the partisans of Tradition, in

contradistinction no doubt to Abu Hanifa.

2. Logic introduced a new element into this controversy,—viz. Qiyas or

Analogy. There had been, of course, stray applications of Qiyas, even

in earlier times; but, to lay down Qiyas as a principle, a foundation

or a source of law,—presupposed the influence of scientific reflection.

Although the terms Raʼy and Qiyas may be used as synonyms, yet there is

in the latter term, less suggestion of the presence and operation of

individual predilection than there is in Raʼy. The more one grew

accustomed to employ Qiyas in grammatical and logical researches, the

more readily could he include this principle in the institutes of

jurisprudence, whether by way of reasoning from one instance to

another, or from the majority of instances to the remainder (i.e.

analogically), or by way of seeking rather for some common ground

governing various cases, from which the conduct proper in a particular

case might be deduced (i.e. syllogistically) [9].

The application of Qiyas appears to have come into use, first and most

extensively, in the Hanifite school, but afterwards also in the school

of Shafii,—though with a more limited range. In connection therewith,

the question—whether language was capable of expressing the Universal,

or could merely denote the Particular—became important for ethical

doctrine.

The logical principle of Qiyas never attained to great repute. Much

more emphasis was laid,—next to the Koran and the Sunna, the historic

foundations of the Law—, upon the Idjma, that is, the Consensus of the

Congregation of the faithful. The Consensus of the Congregation or,

practically, of the most influential learned men in it,—who may be

compared to the fathers and teachers of the Catholic Church,—is the

Dogmatical principle, which, contested only by a few, has proved the

most important instrument in establishing the Muslim Ethical System.

Theory, however, continues to assign a certain subordinate place to

Qiyas, as a fourth source of moral guidance, after Koran, Sunna and

Idjma.

3. The Muslim Ethical System (al-fiqh = ‘the knowledge’) take into

account the entire life of the believer, for whom the Faith itself is

the first of all duties. Like every innovation the system at first

encountered violent opposition:—commandment was now turned into

doctrinal theory, and believing obedience into abstruse pursuit of

knowledge: that called for protestation alike from plain pious people

and from wise statesmen. But gradually the ‘knowing’ men or men learned

in the Law (ulamā, or in the West, faqihs) were recognized as the true

heirs of the prophets. The Ethical system was developed before the

Doctrinal, and it has been able to hold the leading position up to the

present day. Nearly every Muslim knows something of it, seeing it is

part of a good religious upbringing. According to the great

Church-father Gazali, ‘the Fiqh’ is the daily bread of believing souls,

while the Doctrine is only valuable as a Medicine for the sick.

We are not called upon here to enter into the minutiae of the fine-spun

casuistic of the Fiqh. The main subject handled in it is an ideal

righteousness, which can never be illustrated in all its purity in our

imperfect world. We are acquainted now with its principles, and with

the position which it holds in Islam. Let us merely add a brief notice

of the division of moral acts which was formulated by ethical teachers.

According to this classification there are:

1. Acts, the practice of which is an absolute duty and is therefore

rewarded, and the omission of which is punished:

2. Acts which are recommended by the Law, and are the subject of

reward, but the neglect of which does not call for punishment:

3. Acts which are permitted, but which in the eyes of the Law are a

matter of indifference:

4. Acts which the Law disapproves of, but does not hold as

punishable:

5. Acts which are forbidden by the Law and which demand

unconditional punishment [10].

4. Greek philosophic enquiries have had a two-fold influence upon the

Ethics of Islam. With many of the sectaries and mystics, both orthodox

and heretic, an ascetic system of Ethics is found, coloured by

Pythagorean-Platonic views. The same thing appears with philosophers,

whom we shall afterwards meet again. But in orthodox circles the

Aristotelian deliverance,—that virtue consists in the just mean—, found

much acceptance, because something similar stood in the Koran, and

because, generally, the tendency of Islam was a catholic one,—one

conciliatory of opposites.

More attention indeed was given to Politics than to Ethics, in the

Muslim empire, and the struggles of political parties were the first

thing to occasion difference of opinion. Disputes about the Imâmat,

i.e. the headship in the Muslim Church, pervade the entire history of

Islam; but the questions discussed have commonly more of a personal and

practical than a theoretical importance, and therefore a history of

philosophy does not need to consider them very fully. Hardly anything

of philosophic value emerges in them. Even in the course of the first

centuries there was developed a firm body of constitutional law

canonically expressed; but this, like the ideal system of duty, was not

particularly heeded by strong rulers,—who viewed it as mere theological

brooding,—while, on the other hand, by weak princes it could not be

applied at all.

Just as little is it worth our while to examine minutely the numerous

‘mirrors of Princes’, which were such favourites, in Persia especially,

and in whose wise moral saws, and maxims of political sagacity, the

courtly circles found edification.

The weight of philosophic endeavour in Islam lies on the theoretical

and intellectual side. With the actual proceedings of social and

political life they are able to make but a scanty compromise. Even the

Art of the Muslims, although it exhibits more originality than their

Science, does not know how to animate the crude material, but merely

sports with ornamental forms. Their Poetry creates no Drama, and their

Philosophy is unpractical.

3. Doctrinal Systems.

1. In the Koran there had been given to Muslims a religion, but no

system,—precepts but no doctrines. What is contrary to logic

therein,—what we account for by the shifting circumstances of the

Prophet’s life, and his varying moods,—was simply accepted by the first

believers, without asking questions about the How and Why. But in the

conquered countries they were faced by a fully-formed Christian

Dogmatic as well as by Zoroastrian and Brahmanic theories. We have laid

frequent stress already upon the great debt which the Muslims owe to

the Christians; and the doctrinal system has certainly been determined

the most by Christian influences. In Damascus the formation of Muslim

Dogmas was affected by Orthodox and Monophysite teaching, and in Basra

and Bagdad rather perhaps by Nestorian and Gnostic theories. Little of

the literature belonging to the earliest period of this movement has

come down to us, but we cannot be wrong in assigning a considerable

influence to personal intercourse and regular school-instruction. Not

much was learned in the East at that time out of books, any more than

it is to-day: more was learned from the lips of the teacher. The

similarity between the oldest doctrinal teachings in Islam and the

dogmas of Christianity is too great to permit any one to deny that they

are directly connected. In particular, the first question about which

there was much dispute, among Muslim Scholars, was that of the Freedom

of the Will. Now the freedom of the will was almost universally

accepted by Oriental Christians. At no time and in no place perhaps was

the Will-problem—first in the Christology, but afterward in the

Anthropology—so much discussed from every point as in the Christian

circles of the East at the time of the Muslim conquest.

Besides these considerations which are partly of an a priori character,

there are also detached notices which indicate that some of the

earliest Muslims, who taught the Freedom of the Will, had Christian

teachers.

A number of purely philosophic elements from the Gnostic systems, and

afterwards from the translation-literature, associated themselves with

the Hellenistic-Christian influences.

2. An assertion, expressed in logical or dialectic fashion, whether

verbal or written, was called by the Arabs,—generally, but more

particularly in religious teaching—a Kalam (λόγος), and those who

advanced such assertions were called Mutakallimun. The name was

transferred from the individual assertion to the entire system, and it

covered also the introductory, elementary observations on Method,—and

so on. Our best designation for the science of the Kalam is

‘Theological Dialectics’ or simply ‘Dialectics’; and in what follows we

may translate Mutakallimun by ‘Dialecticians’.

The name Mutakallimun, which was at first common to all the

Dialecticians, was in later times applied specially to the

Antimutazilite and Orthodox theologians. In the latter case it might be

well, following the sense, to render the term by Dogmatists or

Schoolmen. In fact while the first dialecticians had the Dogma still to

form, those who came later had only to expound and establish it.

The introduction of Dialectics into Islam was a violent innovation, and

it was vehemently denounced by the party of the Tradition. Whatever

went beyond the regular ethical teaching was heresy to them, for faith

should be obedience, and not,—as was maintained by the Murdjites and

Mutazilites—, knowledge. By the latter it was laid down without reserve

that speculation was one of the duties of believers. Even to this

demand the times became reconciled, for according to tradition the

Prophet had said already: ‘The first thing which God created was

Knowledge or Reason’.

3. Very numerous are the various opinions which found utterance in the

days even of the Omayyads, but especially in those of the early

Abbasids. The farther they diverged from one another, the more

difficult it was for the men of the Tradition to come to an

understanding with them; but gradually certain compact doctrinal

collections stood out distinctly, of which the rationalist system of

the Mutazilites, the successors of the Qadarites, was most widely

extended, particularly among Shiʻites. From Caliph Mamun’s time down to

Mutawakkil’s, it even received State recognition; and the Mutazilites,

who had been in earlier days oppressed and persecuted by the temporal

power, now became Inquisitors of the Faith themselves, with whom the

sword supplied the place of argument. About the same time, however,

their opponents the Traditionalists commenced to build up a system of

belief. Upon the whole there was no lack of intermediary forms between

the naive Faith of the multitude and the Gnosis of the dialecticians.

In contrast to the spiritualistic stamp of Mutazilitism these

intermediary forms took an anthropomorphic character with regard to the

doctrine of the Deity, and a materialistic character with regard to the

theory of man and the universe (Anthropology and Cosmology). The soul,

for example, was conceived of by them as corporeal, or as an accident

of the body, and the Divine Essence was imagined as a human body. The

religious teaching and art of the Muslims were greatly averse to the

symbolical God-Father of the Christians, but there was an abundance of

absurd speculations about the form of Allah. Some went so far as to

ascribe to him all the bodily members together, with the exception of

the beard and other privileges of oriental manhood.

It is impossible to discuss in detail all the Dialectic sects, which

often made their first appearance in the form of political parties.

From the standpoint of the history of Philosophy it is enough to give

here the chief doctrines of the Mutazilites, in so far as they can lay

claim to general interest.

4. The first question, then, concerned man’s conduct and destiny. The

forerunners of the Mutazilites, who were called Qadarites, taught the

Freedom of the human Will; and the Mutazilites, even in later times,

when their speculations were directed more to theologico-metaphysical

problems, were first and foremost pointed to as the supporters of the

doctrine of Divine Righteousness,—which gives rise to no evil, and

rewards or punishes man according to his deserts—, and, in the second

place, as the confessors, or avowed supporters of the Unity of God,

i.e. the absence of properties from his Essence considered per se [or

the predicateless character of the essential nature of God]. The

systematic statement of their doctrines must have been influenced by

the Logicians (v. IV, 2 § 1); for even in the first half of the 10th

century, the Mutazilite system began with the confession of the Unity

of God, while the doctrine of God’s Righteousness, announced as it is

in all his works, is relegated to the second place.

The responsibility of man, as well as the holiness of God, who is

incapable of directly causing man’s sinful actions, had to be saved by

asserting the freedom of the Will. Man must therefore be lord of his

actions; but he is lord of these only, for few entertained any doubt

that the energy which confers ability to act at all, and the power of

doing either a good or a bad action come to man from God. Hence the

numerous subtle discussions,—amalgamated with a criticism of the

philosophic conception of Time—on the question whether the power, which

God creates in man, is bestowed previous to the action, or

coincidentally and simultaneously therewith: For, did the power precede

the act, then it would either have to last up to the time of the act,

which would belie its accidental character (cf. II, 3 § 12), or have

ceased to exist before the act,—in which case it might have been

dispensed with altogether.

From human conduct speculation passed on to consider the operations of

nature. Instead of God and man, the antithesis in this case is God and

nature. The productive and generative powers of nature were recognized

as means or proximate causes; and some endeavoured to investigate them.

In their opinion, however, nature herself, like all the world, was a

work of God, a creature of his wisdom: And just as the omnipotence of

God was limited in the moral kingdom by his holiness or

righteousness,—so in the natural world it was limited by his wisdom.

Even the presence of evil and mischief in the world was accounted for

by the wisdom of God, who sends everything for the best. A production

or object of Divine activity, evil is not. “God may be able,

indeed,”—so an earlier generation had maintained—“to act wickedly and

unreasonably, but he would not do it.” The later Mutazilites taught, on

the other hand, that God has no power at all to do anything which is in

this way repugnant to his nature. Their opponents, who regarded God’s

unlimited might and unfathomable will as directly operative in all

doing and effecting were indignant at this teaching, and compared its

propounders to the dualistic Magians. Consistent Monism was on the side

of these opponents, who did not care to turn man and nature into

creators—next to and under God—of their acts or operations.

5. The Mutazilites, it is clear from the foregoing, had a different

idea of God from that which was entertained by the multitude and by the

Traditionalists. This became specially evident, as speculation

advanced, in the doctrine of the Divine attributes. From the very

beginning the Unity of God was strongly emphasized in Islam; but that

did not prevent men from bestowing upon him many beautiful names

following human analogy, and ascribing to him several attributes. Of

these the following came gradually into greatest prominence, under the

influence assuredly of Christian dogmatics:—viz.: Wisdom, Power, Life,

Will, Speech or Word, Sight and Hearing. The last two of these—Sight

and Hearing—were the first to be explained in a spiritual sense, or

entirely set aside. But the absolute Unity of the Godhead did not

appear to be compatible with any plurality of co-eternal attributes.

Would not that be the Trinity of the Christians, who before now had

explained the three Persons of the One Divine Being as attributes? In

order to avoid this inconvenience they sought sometimes to derive

several attributes out of others by a process of abstraction, and to

refer them to a single one—for instance to Knowledge or Power—and

sometimes to apprehend them each and all as being states of the Divine

essence, or to identify them with the essence itself, in which case of

course their significance nearly disappeared. Occasionally an attempt

was made through refinements of phraseology to save something of that

significance. While, for example, a philosopher, denying the

attributes, maintained that God is by his essence a Being who knows, a

Mutazilite dialectian expressed it thus: God is a Being who knows, but

by means of a knowledge, which He himself is.

In the opinion of the Traditionalists the conception of God was in this

way being robbed of all its contents. The Mutazilites hardly got beyond

negative determinations,—that God is not like the things of this

world,—that he is exalted above Space, Time, Movement, and so on; but

they held fast to the doctrine that he is the Creator of the world.

Although little could be asserted regarding the Being of God, it was

thought he could be known from his works.

For the Mutazilites as well as for their opponents, the Creation was an

absolute act of God, and the existence of the world an existence in

time. They energetically combated the doctrine of the eternity of the

world,—a doctrine supported by the Aristotelian philosophy, and which

had been widely spread throughout the East.

6. We have already found ‘Speech’ or ‘the Word’, given as one of the

eternal attributes of God; and, probably by way of conformity with the

Christian doctrine of the Logos, there was taught in particular the

eternity of the Koran which had been revealed to the Prophet. This

belief in an eternal Koran by the side of Allah, was downright

idolatry, according to the Mutazilites; and in opposition thereto the

Mutazilite Caliphs proclaimed it as a doctrine accepted by the

State,—that the Koran had been created: Whoever denied this doctrine

was publicly punished. Now although the Mutazilites in maintaining this

dogma were more in harmony with the original Islam than their

opponents, yet history has justified the latter, for pious needs proved

stronger than logical conclusions. Many of the Mutazilites, in the

opinion of their brethren in the faith, were far too ready to make

light of the Koran, the Word of God. If it did not agree with their

theories, it received ever new interpretations. In actual fact reason

had more weight with many than the revealed Book. By comparing not only

the three revealed religions together, but these also with Persian and

Indian religious teaching and with philosophic speculation, they

reached a natural religion, which reconciled opposites. This was built

up on the basis of an inborn knowledge, universally necessary,—that

there is one God, who, as a wise Creator, has produced the world, and

also endowed Man with reason that he may know his Creator and

distinguish between Good and Evil. Contrasted with this Natural or

Rational Religion, acquaintance with the teaching of revelation is then

something adventitious,—an acquired knowledge.

By this contention the most consistent of the Mutazilites had broken

away from the consensus of the Muslim religious community, and had thus

actually put themselves outside the general faith. At first they still

appealed to that consensus,—which they were able to do as long as the

secular power was favourably disposed to them. That condition, however,

did not last long, and they soon learned by experience what has often

been taught since,—that the communities of men are more ready to accept

a religion sent down to them from on high, than an enlightened

explanation of it.

7. Following up this survey let us take a closer view of one or two of

the most considerable of the Mutazilites, that the general picture may

not be wanting in individual features.

Let us first glance at Abu-l-Hudhail al-Allaf, who died about the

middle of the 9th century. He was a famous dialectician, and one of the

first who allowed philosophy to exercise an influence on their

theological doctrines.

That an attribute should be capable of inhering in a Being in any way

is not conceivable, in the opinion of Abu-l-Hudhail: It must either be

identical with the Being or different from it. But yet he looks about

for some way of adjustment. God is, according to him, knowing, mighty,

living, through knowledge, might and life, which are his very essence;

and just as men had done even before this, on the Christian side, he

terms these three predicates the Modi (wudjuh) of the Divine Being. He

agrees also that hearing, seeing and other attributes are eternal in

God, but only with regard to the world which was afterwards to be

created. Besides, it would be easy enough for him and for others, who

were affected by the philosophy of the day, to interpret these and

similar expressions—such as God’s ‘beholding’ on the last day, [11]—in

a spiritual sense, since generally they regarded seeing and hearing as

spiritual acts. For example, Abu-l-Hudhail maintained that motion was

visible, but not palpable, because it was not a body.

The Will of God, however, is not to be regarded as eternal. On the

contrary, Abu-l-Hudhail assumes absolute declarations of Will as being

different both from the Being who wills and the object which is willed.

Thus the absolute Word of Creation takes an intermediate position

between the eternal Creator and the transient created world. These

declarations of God’s Will form a kind of intermediate essence, to be

compared with the Platonic Ideas or the Sphere-spirits, but perhaps

regarded rather as immaterial powers than as personal spirits.

Abu-l-Hudhail distinguishes between the absolute Word of Creation and

the accidental Word of Revelation, which is announced to men in the

form of command and prohibition, appearing as matter and in space, and

which is thus significant only for this transient world. The

possibility of living in accordance with the Divine word of revelation,

or of resisting it, exists therefore in this life alone. Binding

injunction and prohibition presuppose Freedom of Will and capability of

acting in accordance therewith. On the other hand in the future life

there are no obligations in the form of laws, and, accordingly, no

longer any freedom: everything there depends on the absolute

determination of God. Nor will there be any motion in the world beyond,

for as motion has once had a beginning, it must, at the end of the

world, come to a close in everlasting rest. Abu-l-Hudhail, therefore,

could not have believed in a resurrection of the body.

Human actions he divides into Natural and Moral, or Actions of the

members, and Actions of the heart. An action is moral, only when we

perform it without constraint. The moral act is Man’s own property,

acquired by his own exertions, but his knowledge comes to him from God,

partly through Revelation, and partly through the light of Nature.

Anterior even to any revelation man is instructed in duty by Nature,

and thus is fully enabled to know God, to discern Good from Evil, and

to live a virtuous, honest and upright life.

8. Noteworthy as a man and a thinker is a younger contemporary of

Abu-l-Hudhail’s, and apparently a disciple of his, commonly called

Al-Nazzam, who died in the year 845. A fanciful, restless, ambitious

man, not a consistent thinker, but yet a bold and honest one,—such is

the representation of him given us by Djahiz, one of his pupils. The

people considered him a madman or a heretic. A good deal in his

teaching is in touch with what passed among the Orientals as the

Philosophy of Empedocles and Anaxagoras (Cf. also Abu-l-Hudhail).

In the opinion of Nazzam God can do absolutely no evil thing; in fact

he can only do that which he knows to be the best thing for his

servants. His omnipotence reaches no farther than what he actually

does. Who could hinder him from giving effect to the splendid

exuberance of his Being? A Will, in the proper sense of the term,—which

invariably implies a need,—is by no means to be attributed to God. The

Will of God, on the contrary, is only a designation of the Divine

agency itself, or of the commands which have been conveyed to men.

Creation is an act performed once for all, in which all things were

made at one and the same time, so that one thing is contained in

another, and so that in process of time the various specimens of

minerals, plants and animals, as well as the numerous children of Adam,

gradually emerge from their latent condition and come to the light.

Nazzam, like the philosophers, rejects the theory of atoms (v. II, 3 §

12), but then he can only account for the traversing of a definite

distance, by reason of the infinite divisibility of space, by

postulating leaps. He holds bodily substances to be composed of

‘accidents’ instead of atoms. And just as Abu-l-Hudhail could not

conceive of the inherence of attributes in an essence, so Nazzam can

only imagine the accident as the substance itself or as a part of the

substance. Thus ‘Fire’ or ‘the Warm’, for instance, exists in a latent

condition in wood, but it becomes free when, by means of friction, its

antagonist ‘the Cold’ disappears. In the process there occurs a motion

or transposition, but no qualitative change. Sensible qualities, such

as colours, savours and odours, are, in Nazzam’s view, bodies.

Even the soul or the intellect of Man he conceives to be a finer kind

of body. The soul, of course, is the most excellent part of man: it

completely pervades the body, which is its organ, and it must be termed

the real and true Man. Thoughts and aspirations are defined as

Movements of the Soul.

In matters of Faith and in questions of Law Nazzam rejects both the

consensus of the congregation and the analogical interpretation of the

Law, and appeals in Shiʻite fashion to the infallible Imam. He thinks

it possible for the whole body of Muslims to concur in admitting an

erroneous doctrine, as, for instance, the doctrine that Mohammed has a

mission for all mankind in contradistinction to other prophets. Whereas

God sends every prophet to all mankind.

Nazzam, besides, shares the view of Abu-l-Hudhail as to the knowledge

of God and of moral duties by means of the reason. He is not

particularly convinced of the inimitable excellence of the Koran. The

abiding marvel of the Koran is made to consist only in the fact that

Mohammed’s contemporaries were kept from producing something like to

the Koran.

He has certainly not retained much of the Muslim Eschatology. At least

the torments of hell are in his view resolved into a process of

consuming by fire.

9. Many syncretistic doctrines, but all devoid of originality, have

come down to us from the school of Nazzam. The most famous man, whom it

produced was the elegant writer and Natural-Philosopher Djahiz († 869),

who demanded of the genuine scholar that he should combine the study of

Theology with that of Natural Science. He traces in all things the

operations of Nature, but also a reference in these operations to the

Creator of the world. Man’s reason is capable of knowing the Creator,

and in like manner of comprehending the need of a prophetic revelation.

Man’s only merit is in his will, for on the one hand all his actions

are interwoven with the events of Nature, and on the other his entire

knowledge is necessarily determined from above. And yet no great

significance appears to accrue to the Will, which is derived from

‘knowing’. At least Will in the Divine Being is quite negatively

conceived of, that is, God never operates unconsciously, or with

dislike to his work.

In all this there is little that is original. His ethical ideal is ‘the

mean’, and the style of his genius is also mediocre. It is only in

compiling his numerous writings that Djahiz has shown any excess.

10. With the earlier Mutazilites reflections on Ethics and Natural

Philosophy predominate; with those who come later Logico-metaphysical

meditations prevail. In particular Neo-Platonic influences are to be

traced here.

Muammar, whose date cannot be accurately determined, although it may be

set down as about the year 900, has much in common with those who have

just been named. But he is far more emphatic in his denial of the

existence of Divine attributes, which he regards as being contradictory

of the absolute unity of the Divine essence. God is high above every

form of plurality. He knows neither himself nor any other being, for

‘knowing’ would presuppose a plurality in him. He is even to be called

Hyper-eternal. Nevertheless he is to be recognized as Creator of the

world. He has only created bodies, it is true; and these of themselves

create their Accidents, whether through operation of Nature or by Will.

The number of these accidents is infinite, for in their essence they

are nothing more than the intellectual relations of thought. Muammar is

a Conceptualist. Motion and Rest, Likeness and Unlikeness, and so on,

are nothing in themselves, and have merely an intellectual or ideal

existence. The soul, which is held to be the true essence of Man, is

conceived of as an Idea or an immaterial substance, though it is not

clearly stated how it is related to the body or to the Divine essence.

The account handed down is confused.

Man’s will is free, and,—properly speaking,—Willing is his only act,

for the outward action belongs to the body (Cf. Djahiz).

The school of Bagdad, to which Muammar seems to belong, was

conceptualist. With the exception of the most general predicates,—those

of Being and Becoming, it made Universals subsist only as notions or

concepts. Abu Hashim of Basra († 933) stood nearer to Realism. The

attributes of God, as well as Accidents and Genus-notions in general,

were regarded by him as something in a middle position between Being

and Not-Being: he called them Conditions or Modes. He designated Doubt

as a requisite in all knowing. A simple Realist he was not.

Mutazilite thinkers indulged in dialectic quibbling even about

‘Not-Being’. They argued that Not-Being, as well as Being, must come to

possess a kind of reality, seeing that it may become the subject of

thought: at least man tries to think of ‘Nothing’ rather than not think

at all.

11. In the 9th century several dialectic systems had been formed in the

contest against the Mutazilites, one of which, viz. the Karramite

system, held its ground till long after the 10th century. There arose,

however, from the ranks of the Mutazilites a man whose mission it was

to reconcile antagonistic views, and who set up that doctrinal system

which was acknowledged as orthodox first in the East, and, later,

throughout the whole of Islam. This was Al-Ashari (873–935), who

understood how to render to God the things that are God’s, and to man

the things that are man’s. He rejected the rude anthropomorphism of the

Antimutazilite dialecticians, and set God high above all that is bodily

and human, while he left to the Deity his omnipotence, and his

universal agency. With him Nature lost all her efficaciousness; but for

man a certain distinction was reserved, consisting in his being able to

give assent to the works which were accomplished in him by God, and to

claim these as his own. Nor was Man’s sensuous-spiritual being

interfered with: He was permitted to hope for the resurrection of the

body and the beholding of God. As regards the Koranic revelation,

Ashari distinguished between an eternal Word in God, and the Book as we

possess it, which latter was revealed in Time.

In the detailed statement of his doctrines Ashari showed no originality

in any way, but merely arranged and condensed the material given him,—a

proceeding which could not be carried out without discrepancies. The

main thing, however, was that his Cosmology, Anthropology and

Eschatology did not depart too far from the text of the Tradition for

the edification of pious souls, and that his theology, in consequence

of a somewhat spiritualized conception of God was not altogether

unsatisfactory even to men of higher culture.

Ashari relies upon the revelation contained in the Koran. He does not

recognize any rational knowledge with regard to Divine things that is

independent of the Koran. The senses are not in general likely to

deceive us, but on the other hand our judgment may easily do so. We

know God, it is true, by our reason, but only from Revelation, which is

the one source of such knowledge.

According to Ashari, then, God is first of all the omnipotent Creator.

Farther he is omniscient: he knows what men do and what they wish to

do: he knows also what happens, and how that which does not happen

would have happened, if it had happened. Moreover all predicates which

express any perfection are applicable to God, with the proviso that

they apply to him in another and higher sense than to his creatures. In

creating and sustaining the world God is the sole cause: all worldly

events proceed continually and directly from him. Man, however, is

quite conscious of the difference between his involuntary movements,

such as shivering and shaking, and those which are carried out in the

exercise of his will and choice.

12. The most characteristic theory which the dialectic of the Muslims

has fashioned, is their doctrine of Atoms. The development of this

doctrine is still wrapped in great obscurity. It was advocated by the

Mutazilites but particularly by their opponents before the time of

Ashari. Our sketch shows how it was held in the Asharite school, where

partly perhaps it was first developed.

The Atomic doctrine of the Muslim dialecticians had its source, of

course, in Greek Natural Philosophy; but its reception and farther

development were determined by the requirements of theological Polemic

and Apologetic. The like phenomenon may be observed in the case of

individual Jews and among believing Catholics. It is impossible to

suppose that Atomism was taken up in Islam, merely because Aristotle

had fought against it. Here we have to register a desperate struggle

for a religious advantage, and one in which weapons are not chosen at

will: It is the end that decides. Nature has to be explained, not from

herself but from some divine creative act; and this world must be

regarded not as an eternal and divine order of things, but as a

creature of transient existence. God must be thought of and spoken of

as a freely-working and almighty Creator, not as an impersonal cause or

inactive primeval source. Accordingly, from the earliest times the

doctrine of the creation is placed at the apex of Muslim dogmatics, as

a testimony against the pagan-philosophical view of the eternity of the

world and the efficient operations of Nature. What we perceive of the

sensible world,—say these Atomists,—is made up of passing ‘accidents’

which every moment come and go. The substratum of this ‘change’ is

constituted by the (bodily) substances; and because of changes

occurring in or on these substances, they cannot be thought of as

themselves unchangeable. If then they are changeable, they cannot be

permanent, for that which is eternal does not change. Consequently

everything in the world, since everything changes, has come into being,

or has been created by God.

That is the starting-point. The changeableness of all that exists

argues an eternal, unchangeable Creator. But later writers, under the

influence of Muslim philosophers, infer from the possible or contingent

character of everything finite, the necessary existence of God.

But let us come back to the world. It consists of Accidents and their

substrata,—Substances. Substance and Accident or Quality are the two

categories by means of which reality is conceived. The remaining

categories either come under the category of Quality, or else are

resolved into relations, and modifications of thought, to which,

objectively, nothing corresponds. Matter, as possibility, exists only

in thought: Time is nothing other than the coexistence of different

objects, or simultaneity in presentation; and Space and Size may be

attributed to bodies indeed, but not to the individual parts (Atoms),

of which bodies are composed.

But, generally speaking, it is Accidents which form the proper

predicates of substances. Their number in every individual substance is

very great, or even infinite as some maintain, since of any pair

whatever of opposite determinations,—and these include negatives

also,—the one or the other is attributable to every substance. The

negative ‘accident’ is just as real as the positive. God creates also

Privation and Annihilation, though certainly it is not easy to discover

a substratum for these. And seeing that no Accident can ever have its

place elsewhere than in some substance, and cannot have it in another

Accident, there is really nothing general or common in any number of

substances. Universals in no wise exist in individual things: They are

Concepts.

Thus there is no connection between substances: they stand apart, in

their capacity of atoms equal to one another. In fact they have a

greater resemblance to the Homoeomeries of Anaxagoras than to the

extremely small particles of matter of the Atomists. In themselves they

are non-spatial (without makan), but they have their position (hayyiz),

and by means of this position of theirs they fill space. It is thus

unities not possessing extension, but conceived of as points,—out of

which the spatial world of body is constructed. Between these unities

there must be a void, for were it otherwise any motion would be

impossible, since the atoms do not press upon one another. All change,

however, is referred to Union and Separation, Movement and Rest.

Farther operative relations between the Atom-substances, there are

none. The Atoms exist then, and enjoy their existence, but have nothing

at all to do with one another. The world is a discontinuous mass,

without any living reciprocal action between its parts.

The ancients had prepared the way for this conception by their theory,

amongst other things, of the discontinuous character of Number. Was not

Time defined as the tale or numbering of Motion? Why should we not

apply that doctrine to Space, Time and Motion? The Dialecticians did

this; and the ‘skepsis’ of the older philosophy may have contributed

its influence in the process. Like the substantial, corporeal

world,—Space, Time and Motion were decomposed into atoms devoid of

extension, and into moments without duration. Time becomes a succession

of many individual ‘Nows’, and between every two moments of time there

is a void. The same is the case with Motion: between every two

movements there is a Rest. A quick motion and a slow motion possess the

same speed, but the latter has more points of Rest. Then, in order to

get over the difficulty of the empty space, the unoccupied moment of

time, and the pause for rest between two movements, the theory of a

Leap is made use of. Motion is to be regarded as a leaping onward from

one point in space to another, and Time as an advance effected in the

same manner from one moment to another.

In reality they had no use at all for this fantastic theory of a Leap:

it was a mere reply to unsophisticated questioning. With perfect

consistency they had cut up the entire material world, as it moves in

space and time, into Atoms with their Accidents. Some no doubt

maintained, that although accidents every moment disappear, yet

substances endure, but others made no difference in this respect. They

taught that substances, which are in fact points in space, exist only

for a point of time, just like Accidents. Every moment God creates the

world anew, so that its condition at the present moment has no

essential connection with that which has immediately preceded it or

that which follows next. In this way there is a series of worlds

following one another, which merely present the appearance of one

world. That for us there is anything like connection or Causality in

phenomena proceeds from the fact that Allah in his inscrutable will

does not choose either to-day or to-morrow to interrupt the usual

course of events by a miracle,—which however he is able at any moment

to do. The disappearance of all causal connection according to the

Atomistic Kalam is vividly illustrated by the classical instance of

‘the writing man.’ God creates in him,—and that too by an act of

creation which is every moment renewed—first the will, then the faculty

of writing, next the movement of the hand, and lastly the motion of the

pen. Here one thing is completely independent of the other.

Now if against this view the objection is urged, that along with

Causality or the regular succession of worldly events, the possibility

of any knowledge is taken away, the believing thinker replies, that

Allah verily foreknows everything, and creates not only the things of

the world and what they appear to effect, but also the knowledge about

them in the human soul, and we do not need to be wiser than He. He

knows best.

Allah and the World, God and Man,—beyond these antitheses Muslim

dialectic could not reach. Besides God, there is room only for

corporeal substances and their accidents. The existence of human souls

as incorporeal substances, as well as generally the existence of pure

Spirits,—both of which doctrines were maintained by philosophers, and,

though less definitely, by several Mutazilites,—would not harmonize

properly with the Muslim doctrine of the transcendent nature of God,

who has no associate. The soul belongs to the world of body. Life,

Sensation, Rational endowment, are accidents, just as much as Colour,

Taste, Smell, Motion and Rest. Some assume only one soul-atom:

According to others several finer soul-atoms are mingled with the

bodily atoms. At all events thinking is attached to one single Atom.

13. It was not every good Muslim that could find mental repose in

dialectic. The pious servant of God might yet, in another way, draw

somewhat nearer to his Lord. This need,—existing in Islam at the very

outset, strengthened too by Christian and Indo-Persian influences, and

intensified under more highly developed conditions of

civilization,—evoked in Islam a series of phenomena, which are usually

designated as Mysticism or Sufism. [12] In this development of a Muslim

order of Holy men, or of a Muslim Monkish system, the history of

Christian monks and cloisters in Syria and Egypt, as well as that of

Indian devotees, is repeated. In this matter then we have at bottom to

deal with religious or spiritual practice; but practice always mirrors

itself in thought, and receives its theory. In order to bring about a

more intimate relationship with the Godhead, many symbolical acts and

mediating persons were required. Such persons then endeavoured to

discover the mysteries of the symbols for themselves and to disclose

them to the initiated, and to establish, besides, their own mediatory

position in the scale of universal being. In particular, Neo-Platonic

doctrines,—partly drawn from the turbid source of the Pseudo-Dionysius

the Areopagite and the holy Hierotheos (Stephen bar Sudaili?)—had to

lend their aid in this work. The Indian Yoga too, at least in Persia,

seems to have exercised considerable influence. For the most part

Mysticism kept within the pale of Orthodoxy, which was always sensible

enough to allow a certain latitude to poets and enthusiasts. As regards

the doctrine that God works all in all, Dialecticians and Mystics were

agreed; but extreme Mysticism propounded the farther doctrine that God

is all in all. From this a heterodox Pantheism was developed, which

made the world an empty show, and deified the human Ego. Thus the Unity

of God becomes Universal Unity; his universal activity Universal

Existence. Besides God, there exist at the most only the attributes and

conditions of the Sufi souls that are tending towards him. A psychology

of feeling is developed by the Sufi teachers. In their view, while our

conceptions come to the soul from without, and our exertions amount to

the externalizing of what is within, the true essence of our soul

consists in certain states or feelings of inclination and

disinclination. The most essential of all these is Love. It is neither

fear nor hope, but Love that lifts us up to God. Blessedness is not a

matter of ‘knowing’ or of ‘willing’: it is Union with the loved one.

These Mystics did away with the world (as ultimately they did with the

human soul) in a far more thorough-going fashion than the Dialecticians

had done. By the latter the world was sacrificed to the arbitrary

character of God in Creation; by the former to the illuminating, loving

nature of the Divine Being. The confusing multiplicity of things, as

that appears to sense and conception, is removed in a yearning after

the One and Beloved being. Everything, both in Being and Thinking, is

brought to one central point. Contrast with this the genuine Greek

spirit. In it a wish was cherished for a still greater number of

senses, to enable men to get a somewhat better acquaintance with this

fair world. But these Mystics blame the senses for being too many,

because their number brings disorder into their felicity.

Human nature, however, always asserts herself. Those men who renounce

the world and the senses, frequently run riot in the most sensual

fantasies, till far advanced in life. We need not wonder after all,

that many troubled themselves very little indeed about religious

doctrine, or that the ascetic morality of the Sufis often went to the

other extreme.

The task of following out in detail the development of Sufism, however,

belongs to the history of Religion rather than to the history of

Philosophy. Besides, we find the philosophical elements which it took

up, in the Muslim philosophers whom we shall meet with farther on.

4. Literature and History.

1. Arabic Poetry and Annalistic were developed independently of the

learning of the schools. But as time went on, Literature and Historical

Composition could not remain untouched by foreign influences. A few

notices, confirmatory of this statement, must suffice us here.

The introduction of Islam involved no break with the poetical tradition

of the Arab race, such as had been occasioned by Christianity in the

Teutonic world. The secular literature of the times even of the

Omayyads handed down many wise sayings, partly taken from ancient

Arabic poetry, which rivalled the preachings of the Koran. Abbasid

Caliphs, like Mansur, Harun and Mamun, had more literary culture than

Charlemagne. The education of their sons was not confined to the

reading of the Koran: it embraced acquaintance also with the ancient

poets and with the history of the nation. Poets and literary men were

drawn to the courts and rewarded in princely fashion. In these

circumstances, Literature underwent the influence of scholarly culture

and philosophical speculation, although, in most cases, in a very

superficial manner. The result is specially exhibited in sceptical

utterances, frivolous mockery of what is most sacred, and glorification

of sensual pleasure. At the same time, however, wise sayings, serious

reflections and mystic speculations made their way into the originally

sober and realistic poetry of the Arabs. The place of the first natural

freshness of representation was now taken by a wearisome play on

thoughts and sentiments, and even on mere words, metres and rhymes.

2. The unpleasant Abu-l-Atahia (748–828), in his effeminate poetry, is

nearly always talking about unhappy love and a longing for death. He

gives expression to his wisdom in the following couplet:

“The mind guide thou with cautious hesitation:

’Gainst sin use the best shield, Renunciation”.

Whoever possesses any faculty for appreciating life and the poetry of

Nature will find little to enjoy in his world-renouncing songs; and

just as little satisfaction will be afforded him in the verses of

Mutanabbi (905–965), frightfully tedious in their contents, although

epigrammatic in their form. And yet Mutanabbi has been praised as the

greatest Arabic poet.

In like manner people have unduly extolled Abu-l-Ala al-Maarri

(973–1058) as a philosophic poet. His occasionally quite respectable

sentiments and sensible views are not philosophy, nor does the affected

though often hackneyed expression of these amount to poetry. Under more

favourable conditions,—for he was blind and not surpassingly rich,—this

man might perhaps have rendered some service in the subordinate walks

of criticism as a philologist or a historical writer. But, in place of

an enthusiastic acceptance of life’s duties, he is led to preach the

joyless abandonment of them, and to grumble generally at political

conditions, the opinions of the orthodox multitude, and the scientific

assertions of the learned, without being able himself to advance

anything positive. He is almost entirely wanting in the gift of

combination. He can analyse, but he does not hit upon any synthesis,

and his learning bears no fruit. The tree of his knowledge has its

roots in the air, as he himself confesses in one of his letters, though

in a different sense. He leads a life of strict celibacy and

vegetarianism, as becomes a pessimist. As he puts it in his poems “all

is but an idle toy: Fate is blind; and Time spares neither the king who

partakes of the joys of life, nor the devout man who spends his nights

in watching and prayer. Nor does irrational belief solve for us the

enigma of existence. Whatever is behind those moving heavens remains

hidden from us for ever: Religions, which open up a prospect there,

have been fabricated from motives of self-interest. Sects and factions

of all kinds are utilized by the powerful to make their dominion

secure, though the truth about these matters can only be whispered. The

wisest thing then is to keep aloof from the world, and to do good

disinterestedly, and because it is virtuous and noble to do so, without

any outlook for reward”.

Other literary men had a more practical philosophy, and could make

their weight more felt in the world. They subscribed to the wise

doctrine of the Theatre-Manager in Goethe’s Faust: “He who brings much,

will something bring to many”. The most perfect type of this species is

Hariri (1054–1122), whose hero, the beggar and stroller, Abu Zaid of

Serug, teaches as the highest wisdom:

“Hunt, instead of being hunted;

All the world’s a wood for hunting.

If the falcon should escape you,

Take, content, the humble bunting:

If you finger not the dinars,

Coppers still are worth the counting” [13].

3. The Annalistic of the ancient Arabs, like their Poetry, was

distinguished by a clear perception of particulars, but was incapable

of taking a general grasp of events. With the vast extension of the

empire their view was necessarily widened. First a great mass of

material was gathered together. Their historical and geographical

knowledge was advanced by means of journeys undertaken to collect

traditions, or for purposes of administration and trade, or simply to

satisfy curiosity, more than it could have been by mere religious

pilgrimages. Characteristic methods of research, brought to bear upon

the value of tradition as a source of our knowledge, were elaborated.

With the same subtlety which they displayed in Grammar, they portioned

out, in endless division and subdivision, the extended field of their

observation, in a fashion more truly ‘arabesque’ than lucid; and in

this way they formed a logic of history which must have appeared to an

oriental eye much finer than the Aristotelian Organon with its austere

structure. Their tradition,—in authenticating which they were, as a

rule, less particular in practice than in theory,—was by many made

equal in value to the evidence of the senses, and preferred to the

judgment of the reason, which so easily admitted fallacious inferences.

There were always people, however, who impartially handed down

contradictory reports, alongside of one another. Others, although

exhibiting consideration for the feelings and requirements of the

present, did not withhold their more or less well-founded judgment on

the past, for it is often easier to be discerning in matters of history

than in the affairs of the living world.

New subjects of enquiry came up, together with new modes of treatment.

Geography included somewhat of Natural Philosophy, for example in the

geography of climate; while historical composition brought within the

range of its description intellectual life, belief, morals, literature

and science. Acquaintance also with other lands and nations invited

comparison on many points; and thus an international, humanistic or

cosmopolitan element was introduced.

4. A representative of the humanistic attitude of mind is met with in

Masudi, who died about the year 956. He appreciates, and is interested

in, everything that concerns humanity. Everywhere he is learning

something from the men he meets with: and in consequence the reading of

books, which occupies his privacy, is not without fruit. But it is

neither the narrow, everyday practices of life and religion, nor the

airy speculations of Philosophy, that specially appeal to him. He knows

where his strength lies; and up to the last, when he is spending his

old age in Egypt, far from his native home, he finds his

consolation,—the medicine of his soul,—in the study of History. History

for him is the all-embracing science: it is his philosophy; and its

task is to set forth the truth of that which was and is. Even the

wisdom of the world, together with its development, becomes the subject

of History; and without it all knowledge would long since have

disappeared. For learned men come and go; but History records their

intellectual achievements, and thereby restores the connection between

the past and the present. It gives us unprejudiced information about

events and about the views of men. Of course Masudi leaves it often to

the intelligent reader to find out for himself the due synthesis of the

facts and the individual opinion of the author.

A successor of his, the geographer Maqdasi, or Muqaddasi, who wrote in

the year 985, deserves to be mentioned with high commendation. He

journeyed through many countries, and exercised the most varied

callings, in order to acquaint himself with the life of his time. He is

a true Abu Zaid of Serug (cf. II, 4 § 2), but one with an object before

him.

He sets to work in critical fashion, and holds to the knowledge which

is gained by research and enquiry, not by faith in tradition or by mere

deductions of the reason. The geographical statements in the Koran he

explains by the limited intellectual horizon of the ancient Arabs, to

which Allah must have seen fit to adapt himself.

He describes then, sine ira et studio, the countries and races he has

seen with own eyes. His plan is to set down, in the first place,

results gathered from his own experience and observation; next, what he

has heard from trustworthy people; and last of all what he has met with

in books. The following sentences are extracted from his

characterization of himself.

“I have given instruction in the common subjects of education and

morals: I have come forward as a preacher, and I have made the minaret

of the mosque resound with the call to prayer. I have been present at

the meetings of the learned and the devotions of the pious. I have

partaken of broth with Sufis, gruel with monks, and ship’s-fare with

sailors. Many a time I have been seclusion itself, and then again I

have eaten forbidden fruit against my better judgment. I associated

with the hermits of Lebanon, and in turn I lived at the court of the

Prince. In wars I have participated: I have been detained as a captive

and thrown into prison as a spy. Powerful princes and ministers have

lent me their ear, and anon I have joined a band of robbers, or sat as

a retail-dealer in the bazaar. I have enjoyed much honour and

consideration, but I have likewise been fated to listen to many curses

and to be reduced to the ordeal of the oath, when I was suspected of

heresy or evil deeds”.

We are accustomed at the present day to picture to ourselves the

Oriental as a being who, in contemplative repose, is completely bound

to his ancestral faith and usages. This representation is not quite

correct, but still it agrees better with the situation which now exists

than it does with the disposition of Islam in the first four centuries,

for during that period it was inclined to take into its possession not

only the outward advantages of the world, but also the intellectual

acquisitions of Mankind.

III. THE PYTHAGOREAN PHILOSOPHY.

1. Natural Philosophy.