FOREWORD History traces the evolution of the social structure in which the community exists to-day. There are three chief factors at work in this evolution; racial descent, culture drift, and transmission of language: the first of these physiological and not necessarily connected with the other two, whilst those two are not always associated with each other. In the evolution of the social structure the factor of first importance is the transmission of culture, which is not a matter of heredity but due to contact, for culture is learned and reproduced by imitation and not inherited. Culture must be taken in the widest sense to include political, social, and legal institutions, the arts and crafts, religion, and the various forms of intellectual life which show their presence in literature, philosophy, and otherwise, all more or less connected, and all having the common characteristic that they cannot be passed on by physical descent but must be learned in after life. But race, culture, and language resemble one another in so far as it is true that all are multiplex and perpetually interwoven, so that in each the lines of transmission seem rather like a tangled skein than an ordered pattern; results proceed from a conflicting group of causes amongst which it is often difficult to apportion the relative influences. The culture of modern Europe derives from that of the Roman Empire, itself the multiple resultant of many forces, amongst which the intellectual life of Hellenism was most effective, but worked into a coherent system by the wonderful power of organization, which was one of the most salient characteristics of that Empire. The whole cultural life of mediæval Europe shows this Hellenistic-Roman culture passed[Pg vi] on, developed, and modified by circumstances. As the Empire fell to pieces the body of culture became subject to varying conditions in different localities, of which the divergence between the Greek-speaking East and the Latin-speaking West is the most striking example. The introduction of Muslim influence through Spain is the one instance in which we seem to get an alien culture entering into this Roman tradition and exercising a disturbing influence. In fact, this Muslim culture was at bottom essentially a part of the Hellenistic-Roman material, even the theology of Islam being formulated and developed from Hellenistic sources, but Islam had so long lived apart from Christendom and its development had taken place in surroundings so different that it seems a strange and alien thing. Its greatest power lay in the fact that it presented the old material in an entirely fresh form. It is the effort of the following pages to trace the transmission of Hellenistic thought through the medium of Muslim philosophers and Jewish thinkers who lived in Muslim surroundings, to show how this thought, modified as it passed through a period of development in the Muslim community and itself modifying Islamic ideas, was brought to bear upon the culture of mediæval Latin Christendom. So greatly had it altered in external form during the centuries of its life apart, that it seemed a new type of intellectual life and became a disturbing factor which diverted Christian philosophy into new lines and tended to disintegrate the traditional theology of the Church, directly leading up to the Renascence which gave the death-blow to mediæval culture: so little had it altered in real substance that it used the same[Pg vii] text-books and treated very much the same problems already current in the earlier scholasticism which had developed independently in Latin Christendom. It will be our effort so to trace the history of mediæval Muslim thought as to show the elements which it had in common with Christian teaching and to account for the points of divergence. De L. O’L. CHAPTER I The subject proposed in the following pages is the history of the cultural transmission by which Greek philosophy and science were passed from Hellenistic surroundings to the Syriac speaking community, thence to the Arabic speaking world of Islam, and so finally to the Latin Schoolmen of Western Europe. That such a transmission did take place is known even to the beginner in mediæval history, but how it happened, and the influences which promoted it, and the modifications which took place en route, appear to be less generally known, and it does not seem that the details, scattered through works of very diverse types, are easily accessible to the English reader. Many historians seem content to give only a casual reference to its course, sometimes even with strange chronological confusions which show that the sources used are still the mediæval writers who had very imperfect information about the development of intellectual life amongst the Muslims. Following mediæval usage we sometimes find the Arabic writers referred to as “Arabs” or “Moors,” although in fact there was only one philosopher of any importance who was an Arab by race, and com[Pg 2]paratively little is known about his work. These writers belonged to an Arabic speaking community, but very few of them were actually Arabs. After the later Hellenistic development Greek culture spread outward into the oriental fringe of people who used Syriac, Coptic, Aramaic, or Persian as their vernacular speech, and in these alien surroundings it took a somewhat narrower development and even what we may describe as a provincial tone. There is no question of race in this. Culture is not inherited as a part of the physiological heritage transmitted from parent to child; it is learned by contact due to intercourse, imitation, education, and such like things, and such contact between social groups as well as between individuals is much helped by the use of a common language and hindered by difference of language. As soon as Hellenism overflowed into the vernacular speaking communities outside the Greek speaking world it began to suffer some modification. It so happened also that these vernacular speaking communities wanted to be cut off from close contact with the Greek world because very bitter theological divisions had arisen and had produced feelings of great hostility on the part of those who were officially described as heretics against the state church in the Byzantine Empire. In this present chapter we have to consider three points; in the first place the particular stage of development reached by Greek thought at the time when these divisions took place; secondly the cause[Pg 3] of these divisions and their tendencies; and thirdly the particular line of development taken by Hellenistic culture in its oriental atmosphere. First stands the question of the stage of development reached by Hellenism, and we may test this by its intellectual life as represented by science and philosophy, at the time when the oriental off-shoot shows a definite line of separation. English education, largely dominated by the principles learned at the renascence, is inclined to treat philosophy as coming to an end with Aristotle and beginning again with Descartes after a long blank during which there lived and worked some degenerate descendants of the ancients who hardly need serious consideration. But this position violates the primary canon of history which postulates that all life is continuous, the life of the social community as well as the physical life of an organic body: and life must be a perpetual series of causes and results, so that each event can only be explained by the cause which went before, and can only be fully understood in the light of the result which follows after. What we call the “middle ages” had an important place in the evolution of our own cultural condition, and owed much to the transmitted culture which came round from ancient Hellenism through Syriac, Arabic, and Hebrew media. But this culture came as a living thing with an unbroken and continuous development from what we call the “classic” age. As the philosophy of the great classic schools passes down[Pg 4] to these later periods it shows great modifications, but this alteration is itself a proof of life. Philosophy, like religion, in so far as it has a real vitality, must change and adapt itself to altered conditions and new requirements: it can remain pure and true to its past only in so far as its life is artificial and unreal, lived in an academic atmosphere far removed from the life of the community at large. In such an unnatural atmosphere no doubt, it is possible for a religion or a philosophy to live perfectly pure and uncorrupt, but it is certainly not an ideal life: in real life there are bound to be introduced many unworthy elements and some which can only be described as actually corrupt. So it is inevitable that as a religion or a philosophy lives and really fulfils its proper functions it has to pass through many changes. Of course the same holds good for all other forms of culture: it may be true that a country is happy if it has no history, but it is the placid happiness of vegetable life, not the enjoyment of the higher functions of rational being. CHAPTER II THE ARAB PERIOD Islam in its earlier form was entirely an Arab religion. The temporal side of the Prophet Muhammad’s mission shows him engaged in an effort to unite the tribes of the Hijaz in a fraternal union, to limit the custom of the razzia (ghazza) or marauding foray, and to form an orderly community. These temporal aims were due to the influence of Madina on the Prophet and to the conviction that it was only in such a community that his religious teaching could obtain a serious attention. In Mecca he had been faced with constant opposition chiefly due to the tribal jealousies and strife which formed the normal condition of a Bedwin community. Madina was a city in a sense quite different from that in which the term could be applied to Mecca. It had developed a civic life, rudimentary no doubt but very far in advance of the Meccan conditions, and had inherited a constitutional tradition from Aramaean and Jewish colonists. At Madina the Prophet began to perceive the difference produced by the association of men in an ordered communal life as contrasted with the incoherence of the older tribal conditions, and the accompanying difference of attitude towards religion.[Pg 57] This last was not really due to civic life but more directly to Jewish influence, although no doubt the conditions of city life were more favourable to the evolution of speculative theology than those of the wilder tribes. The older Arabs seem to have accepted the idea of one supreme God, but speculated little about him: they did not regard the supreme deity as at all entering into their personal interests, which were concerned only with the minor tribal deities who were expected to attend diligently to tribal affairs and were sharply censured when they appeared to be negligent about the interests of their clients. The desert man had no tendency to the sublime thoughts about God with which he is sometimes credited, nor had he any great reverence towards the minor members of his pantheon. The Prophet found it one of his most difficult tasks to introduce the observance of prayer amongst the Arabs, and they do not appear very much attached to it at the present day. In Madina the Prophet was in contact with men whose attitude towards religion was very different and who were more in sympathy with the principles which he had learned from very much the same sources as themselves. In Madina, therefore, the Prophet added a temporal side to the spiritual work in which he had been previously engaged. It was not consciously a change of attitude, but simply the adoption of a subsidiary task which seemed to provide a most useful accessory to the work which he had already been doing. Its[Pg 58] keynote is given in the Madinian Sura 49.10, “Only the faithful are brethren, wherefore make peace between your brethren.” It was a call to his fellow Arabs of the Hijaz to cease their strife and to unite in the bonds of brotherhood. Such a union on the part of those whose habits and ideals were warlike and who were disinclined to the arts of peace, necessarily produced an attitude of hostility towards persons outside their community. Was this militant attitude any part of Muhammad’s plans? The answer must certainly be in the negative. The military enterprises of early Islam were no part of its original programme. In those enterprises the Prophet and his immediate successors show a hesitating and dubious attitude; obviously their hands were forced and they take the lead reluctantly. As Fr. Lammens says:— Le Qoran travailla à réunir les tribus du Higaz. La prédication de Mahomet réussit à mettre sur pied une armée, la plus nombreuse, la plus disciplinée qu’on êut vue jusque-là dans la Péninsule. Cette force ne pouvait longtemps demeurer sans emploi. Par ailleurs l-islam, en imposant la paix entre les tribus, ralliées à la nouvelle religion ou simplement à l’état médinois en formation,—le ta´līf al-qoloūb poursuivait ce dernier objectif—l’islam allait fermer tout issue à l’inquiète activité des nomades. Il prétendait supprimer à tout le moins limiter, le droit de razzia, placé à la base de cette société patriarcalement anarchique. Il fallait s’at[Pg 59]tendre à voir le torrent; momentanément endigué, déborder sur les régions frontières. “Que Mahomet ait assigné ce but à leurs efforts? Il devient difficile de défendre cette thèse, trop facilement acceptée jusqu’ici.” (Lammens: Le berceau de l’islam. Rome, 1914, i. p. 175.) In the expedition against Mecca a militant attitude was the inevitable result of compelling circumstances. The Meccans were actively hostile and had adopted a persecuting attitude towards those who accepted the new religion. At the time the Quraysh tribe, to which Muhammad belonged, was so far in the ascendant that its adhesion was necessary for the progress of Islam in the Hijaz: the championship of some prominent tribe was essential, and Muhammad himself was deeply attached to the traditional “House of God” at Mecca, to which his own family was bound by many associations; besides he desired the adherence of his own tribe as his mission was to it in the first place. Had the Meccan opposition not been broken down the Muslim religion could have been no more than the local cult of Madina, and even as such would have had to be perpetually on the defensive. No doubt the “holy war” as an institution was based on the traditions of this expedition, but such a war is related to the later enterprises for the conquest of non-Arab nations by a line of development which the Prophet himself could hardly have anticipated. The challenge to Heraclius is on a[Pg 60] similar footing. Although we may not be disposed to accept the traditional account given by Bukhari, there no doubt was some such challenge. But Heraclius had only recently re-conquered Syria for the Byzantine Empire, the land he had acquired included a considerable portion of the Syrian desert which formed a geographical unity with Arabia, and amongst his subjects were Arab tribes closely akin to those of the Hijaz. Islam became a militant religion because it spread amongst the Arabs at a time when they were beginning to enter upon a career of expansion and conquest, and this career had already commenced before Muhammad had got beyond the first—the purely spiritual—stage of his work. The only reason why the earlier Arab efforts were not followed up immediately seems to have been that the Arabs were so surprised at their success that they were unprepared to take advantage of it. For some time previously Arab settlements had been formed in the debateable land where the Persian and Byzantine Empires met, but this encroachment had been more or less veiled by the nominal suzerainty of one or other of the great states. The Quda, a tribe of Himyaritic Arabs, had settled in Syria and become Christian, and was charged by the Byzantine Emperor with the general control of the Arabs of Syria (Masudi: iii., 214-5); that tribe was superseded by the tribe of Salih (id. 216), and that by the Arab kingdom of Ghasan which acknowledged the Emperor of Byzantium as[Pg 61] its overlord, whilst the Arab kingdom of Hira acknowledged the Persian king. Somewhere between A.D. 604 and 610, when the first beginnings of persecution were falling on the Prophet in Mecca, the Arabs led by al-Mondir inflicted a crushing defeat upon the Persian army under King Khusraw Parwiz, who, a few years before, had led a victorious force to the invasion of the Byzantine province of Syria. This victory showed the Arabs that, in spite of its imposing appearance, the Persian Empire, and presumably the Byzantine also, were vulnerable, and a determined effort might easily place the wealth of both at the disposal of the Arabs. The Muslim conquests of the 7th century A.D. form the last of a series of great Semitic outspreads of which the earliest recorded in history resulted in the formation of the empire of Babylon some 2225 years before the Christian era. In all these the motive power lay in the Arabs who represent the parent Semitic stock, the more or less nomadic inhabitants of the barren highlands of Western Asia, who have always tended to prey upon the more cultured and settled dwellers in the river valleys and on the lower slopes of the hills. “The belts between mountain and desert, the banks of the great rivers, the lower hills near the sea, these are the lines of civilization (actual or potential) in Western Asia. The consequence of these conditions is that through all the history of Western Asia there runs the eternal distinction between the civilized[Pg 62] cultivators of the plains and lower hills and the wild peoples of mountain and desert. The great monarchies which have arisen here have rarely been effective beyond the limits of cultivation; mountain and desert are another world in which they can get, at best, only precarious footing. And to the monarchical settled peoples the near neighbourhood of this unsubjugated world has been a continual menace. It is a chaotic region out of which may pour upon them at any weakening of the dam hordes of devastators. At the best of times it hampers the government by offering a refuge and recruiting ground to all the enemies of order.” (Bevan: House of Seleucus, i., p. 22.) Scornful of agriculture and with a strong distaste for settled and especially for urban life, the Bedwin are those who have remained nomads by preference, and like all races at that stage of evolution, find the most congenial outlet for their vigour in tribal warfare and plundering expeditions. From the earliest dawn of history they have always been strongly tempted by the wealth of the settled communities within reach, and appear in the oldest records as robber bands. Sometimes predatory excursions were followed by settlement, and the invading tribes learned the culture of those amongst whom they settled: all the Semitic groups other than the Arabs had formed such settlements before the 7th century A.D., and these groups are distinguished one from another, and all from the parent stock, simply by[Pg 63] the cultural influences due to the earlier inhabitants of the lands they entered; the Arab stock itself remained high and dry, the stranded relic of more primitive conditions, though itself not absolutely free from a reacting influence. The only thing that ever has restrained the incursions of these nomadic tribes into such neighbouring lands as offer hope of plunder is the military power of those who endeavour to place a barrier for the protection of the settled community of the cultivated area, and every Arab outspread has been due, not to the pressure of hunger resulting from the desiccation of Arabia, nor to religious enthusiasm, but simply to the weakness of the power which tried to maintain a dam against them. In the 7th century A.D. the two powers bordering on the Arab area were the Byzantine and Persian empires. Both of these were, to all appearance, flourishing and stable, but both alike were in reality greatly weakened by external and internal causes which were closely parallel in the two. Externally, both had been severely shaken by some centuries of warfare in which they had disputed the supremacy of Western Asia, and both had suffered from rear attacks by more barbarous foes. Internally, both alike had a thoroughly unsatisfactory social structure, though the details differ: in the Byzantine Empire almost the whole burden of a very heavy taxation fell upon the middle classes, the curiales, and the armies were mainly composed of foreign mercenaries, whilst in the Persian Empire a rigid caste system[Pg 64] stifled natural development. In both we see a state church engaged in active persecution and thereby alienating a large section of the subject population. The career of Muslim conquest came with great suddenness. Between the years 14 and 21 A.H. (A.D. 635-641) the Arabs obtained possession of Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Persia. They owed to Islam the united action which made these conquests possible, but the older Muslims who had shared the ideals and labours of the Prophet, though put at the head, were carried forward reluctantly and yet irresistibly by the expanding force behind them. Many of them viewed these large accessions with very real anxiety. When the second Khalif Umar saw the large number of prisoners and captives from Jalûlâ (Persia) flocking into Arabia, he exclaimed, “O, God, I take refuge with thee from the children of these captives of Jalûlâ.” Already the community of Islam contained three distinct strata. (i) The “old believers,” i.e., the sahibs or companions of the Prophet and the early converts who placed the religion of Islam first and desired that religion to produce a real brotherhood of all believers, whether Arab or not. Important by their prestige they were numerically in the minority. (ii) The Arab party, consisting of those who had embraced Islam only when Muhammad had shown his power by the capture of Mecca. They accepted Muslim leadership because Muhammad and the first two Khalifs were at the moment in the ascendancy,[Pg 65] but they had no attachment to the religion of Islam. They were those who would have gone forward to conquest under any efficient leader as soon as it was clear that Persia and the Greek Empire were vulnerable, and to them it was a detriment that union under a leader incidentally involved adherence to a new religion. At the head of these purely secular Arabs was the Umayyad clan of the tribe of Quraysh, and the main thing which gained their continued adherence to Islam was that the Prophet himself had belonged to that tribe and so the prestige of Islam involved that of the Quraysh who thereby became a kind of aristocracy. Although the Umayyads were thus able to gratify their personal pride, always a strong factor in semi-civilised psychology, and even to obtain a considerable measure of control over the other tribes, this only served to perpetuate the pre-Islamic conditions of tribal jealousy, for the primacy of the Quraysh was bitterly resented by many rivals. For the most part the true Arab party was, and still is, indifferent towards religion. “The genuine Arab of the desert is, and remains at heart, a sceptic and a materialist; his hard, clear, keen, but somewhat narrow intelligence, ever alert in its own domain, was neither curious nor credulous in respect to immaterial and supra-sensual things; his egotistical and self-reliant nature found no place and felt no need for a God who, if powerful to protect, was exacting of service and self-denial.” (Browne: Literary Hist. of Persia, i., pp. 189-190.) [Pg 66] The Arab certainly was not disposed to regard the conquered alien, even if he embraced Islam, as a brother. To him the conquest of foreign lands meant only the acquisition of vast estates, of great wealth and unlimited power: to him the conquered were simply serfs to be used as a means of rendering the conquered lands more productive. The conquered were allowed the choice either to embrace Islam or to pay the poll tax, but the `Umayyads discouraged conversion as damaging to the revenue, although the cruel and hated Hajjaj b. Yusuf (d. 95) forced even converts to pay the tax from which they were legally exempt. (iii) The third stratum consisted of the “clients” (mawla, plur. mawâlî), the non-Arab converts, theoretically received as brethren and actually so treated by the “old believers,” but regarded as serfs by Arabs of the Umayyad type. Owing to the wide expansion of Islam these rapidly increased in number until, in the 2nd century of the Hijra, they formed the vast majority of the Muslim world. The two first Khalifs were “old believers” who had been companions of the Prophet in his flight from Mecca. The third, `Uthman, had also been one of the Prophet’s companions, but he was a weak man and moreover, belonged to the `Umayyad clan, which, as the aristocratic element in Mecca, was then in the ascendant and, unable to free himself from the nepotism which is an Arab failing, allowed the rich conquests of Syria, Egypt, `Iraq, and Persia to become the prey of ambitious members of the clan and thus[Pg 67] suffered the complete secularising of the Islamic state. When, in 35 A.H., he fell a victim to the assassin, he was succeeded by `Ali, one of the older Muslims and the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law. But at `Ali’s accession the internal division appears as an accomplished fact. The purely secular Arabs, led by the `Umayyad Mu`awiya, who was governor of Syria, entirely refused to recognise `Ali, affecting to regard him as implicated in the murder of `Uthman, or at least as protecting his murderers. On the other hand, the Kharijite sect, claiming to represent the older Muslim type, but in reality mainly composed of the Arabs of Arabia and of the military colonies, who were envious of the power and wealth of the Umayyad faction, at first supported him, then turned against him, and in 41 were responsible for his assassination. At `Ali’s death Mu`awiya became Khalif and founded the Umayyad dynasty which ruled from 41 to 132 A.H. During the whole of this period the official Khalifate was Arab first and Muslim only in the second place. This forms the second period of the history of Islam when the religion of the Prophet was allowed to sink into the background and the Arab regarded himself as the conqueror ruling over a subject population. There was no forcible conversion of a subject population, indeed, save in the reign of `Umar II (A.H. 99-101) conversions were rather discouraged as detrimental to the poll tax levied on non-Muslims. There was no attempt to force the Arabic language: until the reign of `Abdu l-Mâlik[Pg 68] (65-86), who started an Arabic coinage, the public records were kept and official business transacted in Greek, Persian, or Coptic, as local requirements demanded, and the change to Arabic seems to have been suggested by the non-Muslim clerks. When Arabic became the official medium of public business then, of course, motives of convenience and self-interest caused its general adoption. Hitherto it had been used in prayer by those who had become Muslim, but now it had to be learned more accurately by all who had to do with the collection of the revenue or the administration of justice. Incidentally this became a matter of great importance, as it provided a common medium for the exchange of thought throughout the whole Muslim world. As rulers in Syria, the Arabs were in contact with a fully developed culture which was brought to bear upon them in various ways, in the structure of society and in social order generally, in the arts and crafts, and in intellectual life. The Greek influence was nearest at hand, but there was also a very strong Persian element in close contact with them. The provincial officials of Syria, all trained in the methods of the Byzantine Empire, continued in their employ, and, as Syria was the seat of the `Umayyad government, the state came under Greek influence. Yet, for all this, even in `Umayyad times, the Persian influence seems to have been very strong in political organization. The governments already existing in Egypt and Syria were provincial, dependent upon[Pg 69] and subordinate to, the central government at Byzantium, and constantly recruited by Byzantine officials, at least in their upper grades. The Persian government, on the other hand, was a self-contained one, fully organised throughout and including the supreme and central authority. Until the fall of the `Umayyads, after which Persian influence became supreme, the political structure of the Muslim state was somewhat experimental; apparently the rulers left the details altogether to the subordinate officials who adapted to the needs of the state such elements as they could use from the old provincial administration. In the matter of taxation the early Khalifate continued the system already in vogue and employed existing methods for the collection of the newly imposed poll tax. It was on this side that the `Umayyad rule was most unsatisfactory. Like many who have been bred in poverty and have afterwards suddenly come into great wealth, the Arabs behaved as though their wealth was inexhaustible: each governor bought his appointment from the state and it became a recognised custom for him to exact a cash payment from the outgoing governor, and then he was free to raise what he could from his defenceless subjects to prepare for the day when his opportunities of exaction came to an end. The thoroughly unsatisfactory condition of the `Umayyad financial system was one of the leading causes of their fall. One of the `Umayyad sheikhs, named Minkari, when asked the reason of their fall, replied:— [Pg 70] “We gave to pleasure the time which should have been devoted to business. Our subjects, harshly treated by us and despairing of obtaining justice, longed to be delivered from us: the tax payers, overburdened with exactions, were estranged from us: our lands were neglected, our resources wasted. We left business to our ministers who sacrificed our interests to their own advantage, and transacted our affairs as they pleased and without our knowledge. The army, with its pay always in arrear, ceased to obey us. And so the small number of our supporters left us without defence against our enemies, and the ignorance of how we stood was one of the chief causes of our fall.” (Masudi: vi., 35-36.) It will not be unfair to say, therefore, that during the `Umayyad period the Arabs learned practically nothing of the art of government and of the work of administration. They were in the position of prodigal young heirs who leave all details to their men of business and content themselves with squandering the proceeds. In the case of civil law matters were rather different. The civil law is necessarily based on the social and economic structure of the community, and in the acquired provinces this was so different from that prevailing in Arabia that it was necessarily forced on the attention of the Arabs. Moreover, in primitive Islam, the line was not clearly drawn between the canon law and the civil law. Inheritance, the taking of pledges, and such like matters, were to the Arabs[Pg 71] subject to the direction and sanction of the law of God as revealed by his Prophet. Thus, for example, Sura 4, one of the later Madinian revelations, contains a statement of the law relating to guardianship, inheritance, marriage, and kindred topics, according to the social conditions prevailing at Madina. But in the Greek and Persian dominions the conquering Arab had to deal with more complex conditions for which the revealed law made no provision, although what it did contain so far touched the subject that it could not be treated regardless of revelation. It seemed impossible to disregard the revealed precepts and substitute an alien legislation, although this has been done in the modern Ottoman Empire, but not without many and grave protests; in the first century it would have been intolerable, for every disaffected faction would have used it to break up the Muslim state which was only held together by the prestige of the Prophetical tradition. We may well suppose that the `Umayyads would have had no reluctance to try the experiment, but it was too dangerous. The only alternative was to expand the sacred law so as to include new requirements, and in the `Umayyad period this was done by the addition of a vast number of fictitious traditions professing to relate what the Prophet had said and done in conditions in which he had never been placed. In describing these traditions as “fictitious,” it is not necessarily implied that they were fraudulent, although many were so, showing an obvious motive in increasing the privi[Pg 72]leges and rights of the dominant faction or asserting the tribal pre-eminence of the Quraysh, etc. But more often they are “fictitious” in the sense of legal fictions rightly correcting the actual law in the interests of equity. When entirely new conditions arose, the question would be asked, “How would the Prophet have acted in this case?” The early companions of the Prophet, educated in the same environment as he had been educated, and confident that their outlook was essentially the same as his, had no hesitation in stating what he would have done or said, and their statement was almost certainly correct: but they worded their evidence, or it was afterwards worded for them, as a statement of what the Prophet actually had done or said. And, later again, in a subsequent generation, when new problems arose, no difficulty was felt in accepting the supposition that the Prophet would have admitted the reasonable and just solution which the Roman jurists proposed. Thus it finally came to pass that a considerable portion of the Roman civil law was embodied in the traditions of Islam (cf. Santillana: Code civil et commerciel tunisien. Tunis, 1899, etc.) It is not to be supposed that Arab governors and judges studied the Roman code, they simply accepted its provisions as they found them in force in Syria and Egypt, and thus learned its general principles from the usage of the civil courts already existing. In many places material is found in the traditions which can be traced to Zoroastrian, Jewish, and even Buddhist sources,[Pg 73] though these deal rather with ritual and the description of the unseen world and serve to show how readily Islam absorbed elements with which it was in contact. So far as the actual needs of the civil law are concerned, the chief source was the Roman law, and these needs fill a very large part of the traditions. It was not until the close of the `Umayyad period that the Muslims began to develop a scientific jurisprudence and to make a critical examination and codification of the traditions. In the case of jurisprudence there were at first two schools, a Syrian and a Persian. The Syrian school formulated its system under the leadership of al-Awza`i (d. 157), and for some time it prevailed over all parts of the Muslim world which had been parts of the Byzantine Empire. The Persian school owed its origin to Abu Hanifa (d. 150) and, as the seat of government was removed to `Iraq by the `Abbasids and Abu Hanifa’s system was enforced by his pupil Abu Yusuf (d. 182) who was chief Qadi under the Khalif Harunu r-Rashid, it had a tremendous advantage over the Syrian school. It became the official system of the `Abbasid courts and still holds its own through Central Asia, North India, and wherever the Turkish element prevails, whilst the Syrian system has become extinct. Abu Hanifa’s system represents a serious and moderate revision of the methods which had already come into use as extending the discipline of Islam to the needs of a complex and advanced civilization. Under the `Umayyads the jurists had[Pg 74] supplemented any deficiencies in the law by their own opinion (ra´y) which meant the application of the judgment of a man trained under the Roman law as to what was just and fair. In that early period no derogatory sense was attached to “opinion” which rested on the theory that the intellect could intuitively perceive what is right and just, thus assuming that there is an objective standard of right and wrong capable of apprehension by philosophical enquiry, a theory which shows the influence of Greek ideas embodied in the Civil Code. But the `Abbasid period experienced an orthodox reaction which tended to limit freedom in using speculative opinion, and Abu Hanifa shows this limitation. In his system weight was attached to every positive statement of the Qur´an which could be taken as bearing upon the civil law, only to a slight extent did he avail himself of the evidence of tradition, to a much larger extent he employs qiyas or “analogy,” which means that a new condition is judged by comparison with some older one already treated in the Qur´an, and he also employed what he called istihsan, “the preferable,” that is to say, what seemed to be equitable and right even when it diverged from the logical conclusion which could be deduced from the revealed law. Only in this latter case did he admit what can be described as “opinion,” and this is strictly limited to the adoption of a course necessary to avoid an obvious injustice. As thus stated, Abu Hanifa’s system was broader, milder, and more reasonable than any other[Pg 75] treatment of the Islamic law: but it is a mistake to suppose that it still is mild and reasonable, for in the course of time the decisions pronounced as to “the preferable” have become hardened into precedents and the Hanifite code expresses only those fixed decisions of early mediæval Islam without flexibility. The case is parallel with the English treatment of equity. In older times equity shows us the philosophical principles of justice correcting the defects of common law; but modern practice displays these principles fossilized as precedents and as rigid and formal in their application as the common law itself. As first conceived, “the preferable” shows the influence of Roman law and Greek philosophy, both of which contemplated an objective standard of right and wrong which could be discovered by investigation, the Stoic teaching, predominant in Roman law, tending to treat this discovery as intuitive. Unsupported by other evidence, we might hesitate to suggest that istihsan necessarily had a Hellenistic basis, but when we compare the ideas of Abu Hanifa with the contemporary teaching of Wasil b. `Ata (d. 131) in theology, we are forced to the conclusion that the same influences are at work in both, and in Wasil these are certainly derived from Greek philosophy. We are not justified in supposing that Abu Hanifa ever read the Greek philosophers or the Roman law, but he lived at a period when the general principles deduced from these sources were beginning to permeate Muslim thought, though in fact his teaching[Pg 76] tends to limit and define the application of the general principles according to a system. The older Muslims supposed that good and evil depend simply on the arbitrary will of God, who commands and forbids as he sees fit: it was the influence of the Greek philosophy which brought in the idea that these distinctions are not arbitrary but due to some natural difference existing in nature between good and evil and that God is just in that his decrees conform to this standard. In orthodox Islam there are now four schools of jurisprudence showing allowable differences in the treatment of the canon law. Most absurdly they are sometimes described as “sects”: this they are not as the differences of opinion are fully recognised as all equally orthodox. The followers of Abu Hanifa form the most numerous of these schools, the other three being all more or less reactionary as compared with it. The contemporary Malik b. Anas (d. 179) was openly actuated by dislike of the admission of istihsan and the recognition thereby given to “opinion” for this he substituted what he called istislah or “public expediency,” allowing analogy to be set aside only when its logical conclusion would be detrimental to the community. The difference seems to be more a verbal correction than a material change, but the underlying motive is clear and indicates an orthodox reaction. At the same time he attached much greater weight to the evidence of tradition, adding to it also the principle of ijma or “consensus,”[Pg 77] which in his system meant the common usage of Madina. Undoubtedly Ibn Malik’s position was theoretically sound: the Islamic state had taken form at Madina and nothing could give so clear light on the policy of the Prophet and his companions as the local customary law of the mother city. At the same time Ibn Malik took tradition quite seriously, indeed, the critical and scientific treatment of tradition begins with his manual known as the Muwatta. To-day Ibn Malik’s school prevails in Upper Egypt and North Africa west of Egypt. The third authority ash-Shafi`i (d. 204) takes an intermediate position between Abu Hanifa and Ibn Malik, interpreting ijma as the general usage of Islam, and not of the city of Madina alone. The fourth authority, Ahmad b. Hanbal (d. 241), shows an entirely reactionary position which reverted to a close adherence to Qur´an and tradition; it carried great weight amongst the orthodox, especially in Baghdad, but now survives only in remote parts of Arabia. In the sphere of the arts and crafts, our best evidence lies in architecture and engineering. In these the Arabs had no skill and were conscious of their incapacity. The earliest mosques were simply enclosures surrounded by a plain wall, but a new type was developed under the first `Umayyad Khalif Mu`awiya, who employed Persian non-Muslim builders in the construction of the mosque at Kufa, and they worked on the lines of the architecture already used by the Sasanid kings. In this mosque the traditional square[Pg 78] enclosure was retained, but the quadrangle was surrounded by a cloister in the form of a collonade with pillars 30 cubits high of stone drums held together by iron clamps and lead beddings. From this the cloistered quadrangle became the general type of the congregational mosque and remained so until late Turkish times, when it was partly superseded by the Byzantine domed church. The dome had been used in earlier times only as the covering of a tomb, standing alone or attached to a mosque. The same Khalif Mu`awiya employed bricks and mortar in restorations which he made at Mecca, and introduced Persian workmen to execute the repairs. In 124 A.H. (A.D. 700) the fifth `Umayyad Khalif found it necessary to repair the damage caused at Mecca by flood, and for this purpose employed a Christian architect from Syria. In the time of the next Khalif al-Walid, the “Old Mosque” of Fustat (Cairo), that is now known as the “Mosque of `Amr,” was rebuilt by the architect Yahya b. Hanzala, who probably was a Persian. The earlier mosque had been a simple enclosure. The next oldest mosque of Cairo, that of Ibn Tulun (A.H. 283) also had a non-Muslim architect, the Christian Ibn Katib al-Fargani. Not only in the earlier period, but also in the days of the Abbasids, the Muslims relied exclusively upon Greek and Persian, to a less degree on Coptic, architects, engineers, and craftsmen for building and decoration. In Spain of the 2nd century (8th cen[Pg 79]tury A.D.) we find the Byzantine Emperor sending a mosaic worker and 320 quintals of tessarae for the adorning of the great mosque at Cordova. In origin all Muslim art had a Byzantine beginning, but the traditions of Byzantine art received a peculiar direction by passing through a Persian medium, and this medium colours all work done after the close of the `Umayyad period. Only in the west, in Spain, and to a less degree in North Africa, do we find traces of direct Byzantine influence in later times. But Persian art, as developed under the later Sasanids, was itself derived from Byzantine models, and mainly from models and by craftsmen introduced by Khusraw I. (circ. A.D. 528); but even at that early stage there were also some Indian influences apparent in Persian and East-Byzantine work, as, for example, in the use of the horse shoe arch which first appears in Western Asia in the church of Dana on the Euphrates, circ. A.D. 540. But the horse shoe arch in pre-Muslim times, as in India, is purely decorative and is not employed in construction. Thus it appears that the real work of Islam in art and architecture lay in connecting the various portions of the Muslim world in one common life, so that Syria, Persia, `Iraq, North Africa, and Spain shared the same influences, which were ultimately Greek or Graeco-Persian, the Indian element, of quite secondary importance, entering directly through Persia. Already before the outspread of Islam, Byzantine art had entirely replaced native models in Egypt, and[Pg 80] this was largely the case in Persia as well. At most we can say that Islam evolved a quasi-Byzantine style which owed its distinctive features to the limitations of the Persian artists, but which occasionally attained a better level by the importation of Byzantine craftsmen. Exactly the same general conclusions hold good in the history of the ceramic arts and in the illumination of manuscripts, though here the observance of the Qur´anic prohibition of the portrayal of animal figures, strictly observed only in some quarters and least regarded in Persia and Spain, caused a greater emphasis to be laid on vegetable forms in decoration, and on geometrical patterns. In the field of science and philosophy, where we get such abundant evidence in the `Abbasid period, we are left with very little material under the `Umayyads. We know that the medical school at Alexandria continued to flourish, and we read of one Adfar, a Christian, who was distinguished as a student of the books of Hermes, the occult authority which did most to divert Egyptian science into a magical direction, and we are informed that he was sought out by a young Roman named Morienus (Marianos) who became his pupil and at his master’s death retired to a hermitage near Jerusalem. Later on the prince Khalid b. Yazid, of the `Umayyad family (d. 85 A.H.—704 A.D.) is said to have become the pupil of Marianos and to have studied with him chemistry, medicine, and astronomy. He was the author of three epistles, in one of which he narrated his conversations with[Pg 81] Marianos, another relates the manner in which he studied chemistry, and a third explains the enigmatical allusions employed by his teachers. Long before this medical and scientific studies had passed over to Persia, but Alexandria retained its reputation as the chief centre of such work throughout the `Umayyad period. Towards the end of the `Umayyad age the influence of Hellenistic thought begins to appear in the nature of criticism upon accepted views of Muslim theology. As in jurisprudence, we have no ground for supposing that Muslims at this stage were directly acquainted with Greek material, but general ideas were obtained by intercourse with those who had been long under Hellenistic influences, and especially by intercourse with Christians amongst whom the premises of psychology, metaphysics, and logic had encroached very largely upon the field of theology by the nature of the subjects debated in the Arian, Nestorian, and Monophysite controversies which turned mainly upon psychological and metaphysical problems. The ideas with which the Muslims were brought into contact suggested difficulties in their own theology, as yet only partially formulated, and in religious theories which had taken form in a community entirely ignorant of philosophy. Some of the older fashioned believers met these questions with a plain negative, simply refusing to admit that there was a difficulty or any question for consideration: reason (`aql), they said, could not be applied to the revela[Pg 82]tion of God, and it was alike an innovation to dispute that revelation or to defend it. But others felt the pressure of the questions proposed and, whilst strictly faithful to the statements of the Qur´an, endeavoured to bring their expression into conformity with the principles of philosophy. The questions first proposed were concerned with (a) the revelation of the Word of God, and (b) the problem of free will. (a) The Prophet speaks of revelation as “coming down” (nazala) from God and refers to the “mother of the book” which seems to designate the unrevealed source from which the revealed words are derived. It may be that this refers to the idea of which the word is the expression, and that in this the Prophet was influenced by Christian or Jewish theories which had originally a Platonic colouring, but it seems probable that he had no very clear theory as to the “mother of the book.” At an early date the view arose that the Qur´an had existed, though not expressed in words, that the substance and meaning were eternal as part of the wisdom of God, though it had been put into words in time and then communicated to the Prophet, which is now the orthodox teaching on the basis of Qur. 80. 15. that it was written “by the hands of scribes honoured and righteous,” this being taken to mean that it was written at God’s dictation by supernatural beings in paradise and afterwards sent down to the Prophet. That is not the necessary meaning of the verse,[Pg 83] which may refer to the previous revelations made to the Jews and Christians which the Prophet regarded as true but afterwards corrupted, so that the Qur´an is simply the pure transcription of Divine Truth imperfectly represented by those earlier revelations. Under the `Umayyads, when a rigid orthodoxy was taking form in quarters not sympathetic towards the official Khalif, a view arose that the actual words expressed in the Qur´an were co-eternal with God, and it was only the writing down of these words which had taken place in time. It seems probable that this theory of an eternal “word” was suggested by the Christian doctrine of the “Logos.” It can be traced primarily to the teaching of St. John Damascene (d. circ. 160 A.H. = A.D. 776) who served as secretary of state under one of the `Umayyads, either Yazid II. or Hijam, and his pupil Theodore Abucara (d. 217 = 832), who express the relation of the Christian Logos to the Eternal Father in terms very closely resembling those employed in Muslim theology to denote the relation between the Qur´an or revealed word and God. (cf. Von Kremer: Streifzuege. pp. 7-9). We know from the extant works of these two Christian writers that theological discussions between Muslims and Christians were by no means uncommon at the time. The Mu`tazilites of whom Wasil b. `Ata (d. 131) is generally regarded as the founder, were a sect of rationalistic tendencies, and they were opposed to the doctrine of the eternity of the Qur´an and the[Pg 84] claim that it was uncreated because the conclusions to be drawn seemed to them to introduce distinct personalities corresponding to the persons of the Christian Trinity, and in these views they were undoubtedly influenced by the form in which St. John Damascene presented the doctrine of the Trinity. As it was implied that there was an attribute of wisdom possessed by God which was not a thing created by God but eternally with him, and this wisdom may be conceived as not absolutely identical with God but possessed by him, the Mu`tazilites argued that it was something co-eternal with God but other than God, and so an eternal Qur´an was a second person of the Godhead and God was not absolutely one. Al-Muzdar, a Mu`tazilite greatly revered as an ascetic, expressly denounces those who believe in an eternal Qur´an as ditheists. The Mu`tazilites called themselves Ahlu t-Tawhid wa-l-`Adl “the people of unity and justice,” the first part of this title implying that they alone were consistent defenders of the doctrine of the Divine Unity. (b) As to the freedom or otherwise of the human will, the Qur´an is perfectly definite in its assertion of God’s omnipotence and omniscience: all things are known to him and ruled by him, and so human acts and the rewards and punishments due to men must be included: “no misfortune happens either on earth or in yourselves but we made it,—it was in the book” (Qur. 57. 22); “everything have We set down in the clear book of our decrees” (Qur. 36);[Pg 85] “had We pleased We had certainly given to every soul its guidance, but true is the word which hath gone forth from me,—I shall surely fill hell with jinn and men together.” (Qur. 32. 13). Yet the appeal for moral conduct implies a certain responsibility, and consequently freedom, on man’s part. In the mind of the Prophet, no doubt, the inconsistency between moral obligations and responsibility on the one hand, and the unlimited power of God on the other, had not been perceived, but towards the end of the `Umayyad period these were pressed to their logical conclusions. On the one side were the Qadarites (qadr “power”), the advocates of free will. This doctrine first appears in the teaching of Ma´bad al-Yuhani (d. 80 A.H.) who is said to have been the pupil of the Persian Sinbuya and taught in Damascus. Very little is known of the early Qadarites, but it is stated that Sinbuya was put to death by the Khalif `Abdu l-Malik, and that the Khalif Yazid II. (102-106 A.H.) favoured their views. On the other side were the Jabarites (jabr, “compulsion”) who preached strict determinism and were founded by the Persian Jahm b. Safwan (d. circ. 130). It is baseless to argue that either free will or determinism were necessarily due to Persian pre-Islamic beliefs, it is evident that the logical deduction of doctrinal theology in either direction was done by Persians; they were, indeed, the theologians of early Islam. It must be noted that the full development of fatalism was not reached until a full century after the foundation of Islam and that[Pg 86] its first exponent was put to death as a heretic. The earlier Qadarites had a Persian origin, but the reaction against the Jabarites was led by Wasil b. `Ata whose teaching clearly shows the solvent force of Hellenistic philosophy acting on Muslim theology. Wasil was the pupil of the Qadarite Hasan ibn Abi l-Hasan (d. 110) but he “seceded” from his teacher and this is given as the traditional reason for calling him and his followers the Mu´tazila or “secession,” and did so on the ground of the apparent injustice imputed to God in his apportionment of rewards and penalties. The details of the controversy are quite secondary, the important point is that the Mu`tazilites claimed to be “the people of Unity and Justice,” this latter meaning that God conformed to an objective standard of just and right action so that he could not be conceived as acting arbitrarily and in disregard of justice, an idea borrowed from Hellenistic philosophy for the older Muslim conception regarded God as acting as he willed and the standard of right and wrong merely a dependent on his will. Throughout the whole `Umayyad period we see the conquering Arabs, so far the rulers of the Muslim world, in contact with those who, though treated with arrogant contempt as serfs, were really in possession of a much fuller culture than their rulers. In spite of the haughty attitude of the Arab there was a considerable exchange of thought, and the community of Islam began to absorb Hellenistic influences in several directions, and so the canon law and theology[Pg 87] of the Muslims was beginning, at the end of the `Umayyad period, to be leavened by Greek thought. It was, however, a period of indirect influence; there is no indication, save in a few instances in the study of natural science and medicine, of Muslim teachers or students availing themselves directly of Greek material, but only that they were in contact with those who were familiar with the work of Greek philosophers and jurists. It was a period of suspended animation, to some extent, during which a new language and a new religion were being assimilated by the very diverse elements now comprised in the Khalifate, and those elements were being welded together in a common life. However great were the sectarian and political differences of later times, the church of Islam long remained, and to a great extent still remains, possessed with a common life in the sense that there is a mutual understanding between the several parts and that thus an intellectual or religious influence has been able to pass rapidly from one extreme to the other, and the religious duty of pilgrimage to Mecca has done much to foster this community of life and to promote intercourse between the several parts. Such an understanding has by no means always produced sympathy or friendliness, and the various movements as they have passed from one part to the other have often been considerably modified in the passage; but the motive power behind a movement in Persia has been intelligible in Muslim Spain—though perhaps intensely disliked[Pg 88] there—and most often a movement beginning in any one district has sooner or later had some contact with every other district. There is no such division in Islam as that which prevents the average English churchman from knowing about and appreciating a religious movement at work in the Coptic or Serbian church. The common life of Islam is largely based on the use of the Arabic language as the medium of daily life, or at least of prayer and the medium of scholarship, and this was extremely effective before the inclusion of large Turkish and Indian elements which have never really become Arabic speaking. It was this which made the Arabic speaking community of Islam so favourable a medium of cultural transmission. The `Umayyad period was a marking time during which this common life was being evolved, and with it was evolved necessarily the bitterness of sectarian and faction divisions which always result when divergent types are in too close contact with one another. CHAPTER III THE COMING OF THE `ABBASIDS The rule of the `Umayyads had been a period of tyrannical oppression on the part of the Arab rulers upon their non-Arab subjects and especially upon the mawali or converts drawn from the native population of the conquered provinces who not only were not admitted to equality, as was the professed principle of the religion of Islam, but were treated simply as serfs. This was in no sense due to religious persecution, for it was the converts who were the most aggrieved, nor was it due to a racial antipathy as between a Semitic and an Aryan people, nor yet to anything that could be described as a “national” feeling on the part of the Persians and other conquered races, but simply a species of “class” feeling due to the contempt felt by the Arabs for those whom they had conquered and hatred on the part of the conquered towards their arrogant masters, a hatred intensified by disgust at their misgovernment and ignorance of the traditions of civilization. There were other causes also which helped to intensify this feeling of hatred especially in the case of the Persians. Amongst these was a semi-religious feeling, even amongst those who had become converts to Islam. It had been the[Pg 90] old usage of the Persians to regard the Sasanid kings, the descendants of the legendary kayani dynasty of heroes who had first established a settled community in Persia, as bagh not quite perhaps what we should understand as “gods,” but rather as incarnations of deity, the divine spirit passing on by transmigration from one ruler to another, and so they ascribed to the king miraculous powers and worshipped him as the shrine of a divine presence. At the Muslim conquest the Sasanid kings had not only ceased to rule, but the dynasty had become extinct. Many of the Persians who, in spite of adopting Islam, still clung to their old ideas, were quite ready to treat the Khalif with the same adoration as their kings, but felt a distinct distaste for the theory of the Khalifate according to which the Khalif was no more than a chieftain elected in the democratic fashion of the desert tribes, a thing which seemed to them like reversion to primitive barbarism. Our own experience in dealing with oriental races has shown us that there is a great deal which must be taken seriously in ideas of this kind. Of course those who had been subjects of the Roman Empire had no inclination towards deifying their rulers, unless perhaps some who had been only recently incorporated from more oriental elements: but those who had been under Persian rule craved a deified prince. In A.H. 141-142 this took the form of an attempt to deify the Khalif by a fanatical sect of Persian origin known as the Rawandiyya which broke out into open revolt when the[Pg 91] Khalif refused to be treated as a god and cast their leaders into prison: the members of the sect, and many other of their fellow-countrymen, considered that a Khalif was no valid sovereign who refused to be recognised as a deity. From the second century of the Hijra down to modern times there has been a continuous stream of pseudo-prophets who have claimed to be gods, or successful leaders who have been deified by their followers. The latest of these appears in the earlier phases of the Babi movement, A.D. 1844-1852, though the doctrines of re-incarnation and of the presence of the divine spirit in the leader seem to be less emphasized in present day Babism, at least in this country and America. The most prevalent form of these ideas occurs in the essentially Persian movement known as the Shi`a or “schismatics.” These are divided into two types, both alike holding that the succession of the Prophet is confined to the hereditary descendants of `Ali the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet to whom alone was given the divine right of the Imamate or leadership. The two types differ in the meaning of this Imamate, the one group contenting itself with maintaining that `Ali and his descendants have a divine authority whereby the Imams are the only legitimate rulers of Islam and its infallible guides; of this moderate type of Shi`a is the religion of Morocco and the form prevalent about San´a in South Arabia. The other group presses the claim that the Imam is the incarnation of a divine spirit,[Pg 92] sometimes asserting that it was only by fraud that the prophet Muhammad interposed and acted as spokesman for the divine Imam `Ali. Of this type is the Shi`a which forms the state religion of modern Persia, spreading westwards into Mesopotamia and eastwards into India. The commonest belief, prevalent in the modern Shi`a, is that there were twelve Imams of whom `Ali was the first, and Muhammad al-Muntazar, who succeeded at the death of his father the eleventh Imam al-Hasan al-Askari in 260 A.H. (= A.D. 873) was the last. Soon after his accession Muhammad Al-Muntazar “vanished” at Samárrá, the town which served as the `Abbasid capital from A.H. 222 to 279. The mosque at Samárrá is said to cover an underground vault into which he disappeared and from which he will emerge again to resume his office when the propitious time has arrived, and the place whence he is to issue forth is one of the sacred spots visited by Shi`ite pilgrims. Meanwhile the Shahs and princes are ruling the faithful only as deputies of the concealed Imam. The disappearance of Muhammad al-Muntazar took place more than a century after the fall of the `Umayyads but we have anticipated in order to show the general tendency of the Shi`ite ideas which were prevalent even in `Umayyad times, especially in Northern Persia, and did much to promote the revolt against the secularised `Umayyad rule. A curious importance also is attached to the date. The disaffection of the mawali came to a head towards[Pg 93] the end of the first century of the Muslim era. There was a general belief that the completion of the century would see the end of existing conditions, just as in Western Europe the year 1000 A.D. was expected to mark the dawn of a new world. Dissatisfaction was at its height, especially in Khurasan, and the disaffected for the most part rallied round the `Alids. The `Alid claims which did so much to overthrow the `Umayyad dynasty and indirectly led to the bringing forward of the Persian element by which the transmission of Hellenistic culture was most furthered, are best understood by the help of a genealogical table. al-Hanafiya + (1) `Ali + Fatima Muhammad (2) Hasan (3) Husayn Abu Hashim (4) `Ali Zayn Zayd (5) Muhammad al-Bakir (6) Ja`far as-Sadiq Isma`il (7) Musa al-Qazam Muhammad (8) `Ali ar-Rida (9) Muham. al-Jawad (10) `Ali al-Hadi (11) Hasan al-Askari (12) Muham. al-Muntazar [Pg 94] `Ali had two wives, (i) al-Hanafiya, by whom he had a son Muhammad, and (ii) Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, by whom he had two sons, Hasan and Husayn. All the `Alid party believed that `Ali should have succeeded the Prophet by divine right and regarded the first three Khalifs as usurpers. Already under the third Khalif Uthman the dissatisfied mawla element had begun to look to `Ali as their champion, and he in the true spirit of early Islam supported their claim to the rights of brotherhood as fellow Muslims. This partisanship received its extreme expression in the preaching of the Jewish convert `Abdu b. Saba, who declared the divine right of `Ali to the Khalifate as early as A.H. 32. `Ali himself apparently did not take so pronounced a view, but certainly regarded himself as in some degree injured by his exclusion. In 35 `Ali was appointed Khalif and Ibn Saba then declared that he was not only Khalif by divine right, but that a divine spirit had passed from the Prophet to him, so that he was raised to a supernatural level. This theory `Ali himself repudiated. When he was assassinated in 40 `Abdu declared that his martyred soul had passed to heaven and would in due course descend to earth again: his spirit was in the clouds, his voice was heard in the thunder, the lightning was his rod. The Umayyad party led by Mu`awiya never submitted to `Ali, although they did not question the legitimacy of his appointment. At his death Mu`awiya became the fifth Khalif, but had to face the[Pg 95] claims of al-Hasan, `Ali’s son. Al-Hasan made terms with Mu`awiya and died in 49, poisoned, it was commonly stated. The other son, al-Husayn, tried to enforce his claim, but met a tragic death at Kerbela. After al-Husayn’s death some of the `Alid partisans recognised Muhammad the son of `Ali and al-Hanafiya as the fourth Imam; he, it is true, disowned these supporters, but that was a detail to which they paid no attention. His supporters were known as Kaysanites, and owed their origin to Kaysan, a freedman of `Ali, who formed a society for the purpose of avenging the deaths of al-Hasan and al-Husayn. When this Muhammad died in 81 his followers divided into two sections, some accepting the fact of his death, others supposing that he had simply passed into concealment to appear again in due course. This idea of a “concealed” Imam was a heritage from the older religious theories of Persia and recurs again and again in Shi`a history. The important point is that both sections of this party continued to exist all through the `Umayyad period, steadily refusing to recognise the official Khalifa as more than usurpers, and looking forward to the day when they could avenge the martyrdom of `Ali and his sons. We need not linger over the family of al-Hasan and his descendants. They were involved in `Alid risings at Madina, and after the suppression of one of these in 169, long after the fall of the `Umayyads, Idris the great-grandson of al-Hasan escaped to the far West and established a “moderate” Shi`ite[Pg 96] Dynasty in what is now Morocco, so that the subsequent history of that house concerns the history of the West. Most of the Shi`ites regard the third Imam, al-Husayn as being succeeded by his son `Ali Zayn. Al-Husayn, like al-Hasan, was not only the son of `Ali, but also of the Prophet’s daughter, Fatima. In al-Husayn’s case moreover there was another heritage which ultimately proved more important than descent from either `Ali or Fatima: he was generally supposed to have married the daughter of the last of the Persian kings, the “mother of the Imams,” and this traditional marriage with the Persian princess,—its historical evidence is very dubious—has been regarded by the Persian Shi`ites as the most important factor in the Imamate, although this, of course, has nothing whatever to do with the religion of Islam. That so great weight could be attached to such a consideration serves to show how really foreign and non-Muslim a thing the Shi`a is. `Ali Zayn had two sons, Zayd and Muhammad al-Bakir. Of these Zayd was a pupil of Wasil b. `Ata and associated with the Mu`tazilite movement: he is generally regarded as a rationalist. Indeed, as we shall now see frequently, the heretical Shi`ite party was very generally mixed up with free thought and frequently shows adherence to Greek philosophy: it seems as though its inspiring spirit was hostility towards orthodox Islam, and a readiness to ally itself with anything which tended to criticize unfavourably the orthodox doctrines.[Pg 97] Zayd had a body of followers who established themselves in North Persia where they held their own for some time, and a branch of their party still exists in South Arabia, still suspected of rationalist proclivities. Most of the Shi`ites, however, recognised Muhammad al-Bakir as the fifth Imam, and Ja`far as-Sadiq as the sixth. This latter also was a devoted follower of the “new learning,” that is to say, of Hellenistic philosophy, and is generally regarded as the founder, or at least the chief exponent, of what are known as batinite views, that is to say the allegorical interpretation of the Qur´an, so that revelation is made to mean, not the literal statement, but an inner meaning, and this inner meaning generally shows a strong influence of Hellenistic philosophy. It is only the divinely directed Imam who can expound the true meaning of the Qur´an which remains a sealed book to the uninitiated. Ja`far was, it would appear, the first of the `Alids who openly asserted that he was a divine incarnation as well as an inspired teacher: his predecessors had done no more than acquiesce in such claims when made by their followers, and very often had repudiated them. Abu Hashim, the son of Muhammad b. al-Hanafiya, died in 98 A.H. poisoned, it was generally believed, by the Khalif Sulayman, and bequeathed his rights to Muhammad b. `Ali b. `Abdullah, a descendant of the house of Hashim, to which the Prophet and `Ali had belonged, the rival clan of the Quraysh tribe opposed to the clan of the `Umayyads. Abu Hashim assumed[Pg 98] that the Imamate was his to be passed on to whom he saw fit, a view of the Imamate which was not accepted by the stricter Shi`ites who were legitimists, but the partisans of Abu Hashim do not seem to have been extremists in spite of their Kaysanite origin. In 99 the Khalifate passed to Umar II. the one `Umayyad who showed `Alid sympathies, putting an end to the public cursing of `Ali which had formed part of the public ritual in the mosques of Damascus since the days of Mu`awiya and who represented a type of personal piety to which the `Umayyad Khalifs had hitherto been strangers. His brief reign of less than three years did not, however, remove the evils of tyranny and misgovernment, and he was followed by other rulers more in conformity with the old bad type. About the time of Umar’s death a deputation of Shi`ites waited upon Muhammad b. `Ali the Hashimite, a man of noted piety and the one who had now become, as legatee of Abu Hashim the son of Muhammad b. al-Hanafiya, the recognised head of an important wing of the Shi`ites, and swore to support him in an endeavour to obtain the Khalifate “that God may quicken justice and destroy oppression” (Dinwari: Akhbaru t-Tiwal. ed. Guirgass, Leiden. p. 334): and Muhammad had answered that “this is the season of what we hope and desire, because one hundred years of the calendar are completed.” (id.) The supporters of the family of Muhammad b. al-Hanafiya, who had now transferred their allegiance to[Pg 99] Muhammad b. `Ali, were extremely important, not so much by reason of their numbers as by their excellent organisation. They had developed a regular system of missionaries (da`i, plur. du`at) who travelled under the guise of merchants and confined their teaching to private instructions and informal intercourse, a method which has become the standard type of Muslim missionary propaganda. By Abu Hashim’s death and legacy Muhammad b. `Ali found this very fully organised missionary work at his service, and its emissaries were fully confident that his acceptance of the overtures of the Shi`ite deputation meant that he stood as the champion of Shi`ite claims. The stricter Shi`ites who followed the house of al-Husayn did not admit the claims of Muhammad b. al-Hanafiya or his descendants, but they supported Muhammad b. `Ali’s efforts under the impression that he was a Shi`ite champion. The propaganda in favour of Muhammad b. `Ali is sometimes referred to as `Abbasid because he was descended from al-`Abbas, one of the three sons of `Abdu l-Muttalib, and so brother of Abu Talib the father of the Imam `Ali and of `Abdullah who was grandfather of the Prophet Muhammad. At the time, however, the missionaries claimed rather to be the supporters of the Hashimites, a term which was ambiguous, perhaps intentionally so. It was afterwards explained as referring to the house of Hashim which was the rival clan of the Quraysh opposed to the `Umayyads and that to which the Prophet, and `Ali,[Pg 100] and al-`Abbas belonged: but in the minds of many of the Shi`ites it was taken to mean the followers of Abu Hashim, the grandson of Al-Hanafiya. Muhammad b. `Ali died in 126 A.H. leaving three sons, Ibrahim, Abu l-Abbas, and Abu Ja`far, the first of these being recognised as his successor. About the same time Abu Muslim, who became governor of Khurasan in 129 comes into prominence. It is dubious whether he was an Arab or a native of `Iraq (cf. Masudi. vi. 59), indeed, the claim was made that he was a descendant of Gandarz, one of the ancient kings of Persia (id.) Now Khurasan was the area most disaffected towards the `Umayyads, and there the Hashimite missionaries had been most active and successful. Abu Muslim threw himself into this work heartily and began gathering together an armed body of men who before long numbered 200,000. Information and warning was sent to the Khalif Marwan II. but was ignored: indeed the court at Damascus took no notice until 130. Abu Muslim at length openly raised the black standard as the signal of revolt against the `Umayyads whose official colour was white. Then all the Khalif did was to seize Muhammad b. `Ali’s son Ibrahim and put him to death. The other two sons escaped and fled to Kufa where they were sheltered and concealed by some Shi`ites, the second son Abu l-`Abbas, known to history as as-Saffah “the butcher” being recognised as the Hashimite leader. Abu Muslim’s success was rapid and complete, and in 132 the `Umayyad dynasty was overthrown and[Pg 101] partly exterminated, and so “the butcher” became the first of the `Abbasid Khalifs, so called as being of the family of al-`Abbas the son of `Abdu l-Muttalib. As soon as the Khalif Abu l-`Abbas was seated on the throne his chief aim was to secure the establishment of his dynasty by getting rid of all possible rivals, and it was the vigour he showed in doing this which earned for him the title of “the Butcher.” First of all he hunted down and slew all the representatives he could find of the `Umayyad family. One of these escaped, `Abdu r-Rahman, and went to Africa where he endeavoured to form a body of supporters without success, and then crossed over to Spain where in 138 he established himself at Cordova, and there he and his descendants ruled until 422 A.H. These Spanish `Umayyads claimed to be legitimist rulers, but never assumed the divine claims of the `Alid section. Abu Muslim, who had done most to establish the `Umayyad dynasty, next provoked the Khalif’s jealousy, probably with good cause for he was indignant to find that “the Butcher” was no sooner on the throne than he entirely discarded the Shi`ites who had helped to place him there, and so within the first year of the `Abbasid rule Abu Muslim was put to death. The fall of the `Umayyads brought an end to the tyranny of the Arab minority, as it now was, and placed the preponderance for a clear century (A.H. 132-232) in Persian hands. The government was[Pg 102] remodelled on Persian lines, and to Persian influence was due the institution of the wazir or responsible minister at the head of the executive. The title is probably identical with the Old Persian vi-chir or “overseer” (thus Darmesteter: Etudes Iraniennes i. p. 58. note 3.); before this the chief minister was simply clerk (kàtib) or adviser (mushir) and was simply one of the Khalif’s attendants who was employed to conduct correspondence, or to give advice when occasion required. In 135 the noble Persian family of Barmecides began to supply wazirs, and these controlled the policy of the Khalifate until 189. From the time of al-Mansur (A.H. 136-158) onwards the Persians began to assert their pre-eminence and a party was formed known as the Shu`ubiyya or “anti-Arab party” of those who held, not only that the alien converts were equal to the Arabs, but that the Arabs were a half savage and inferior race in all respects, contrasting unfavourably with the Persians, Syrians, and Copts. This party produced considerable mass of controversial literature in which free course was given to the general dislike felt towards the Arabs and which reveals the intensity of the contempt and hatred felt towards these parvenus. The Arabs had boasted of their racial descent and had devoted much attention to the keeping of their genealogies, at least in the century immediately preceding the rise of Islam; as they had then only just commenced to count descent in the father’s line these genealogies were purely fictitious in so far as they dealt with pre[Pg 103]-Islamic ancestors. The Arabs were in fact a parvenu people only just emerging out of barbarism (cf. Lammens: Le berceau de l’islam. p. 117). But the Persians, no less careful about genealogical records, to which their caste system had caused them to pay considerable attention, boasted authentic genealogies of much greater antiquity. In literature, in science, in Muslim canon law, in theology, and even in the scientific treatment of Arabic grammar, the Persians very rapidly surpassed the Arabs, so that we must be careful always to refer to Arabic philosophy, Arabic science, etc., in the history of Muslim culture, rather than to Arab philosophy, etc., remembering that, though expressed in the Arabic language, the common medium of all the Muslim world, only in a very few cases was it the work of Arabs: for the most part the Arabic philosophers and scientists, historians, grammarians, theologians, and jurists were Persians, Turks, or Berbers by birth, though using the Arabic language. The fall of the `Umayyads and the replacing of the Arabs by the Persians commences the golden age of Arabic literature and scholarship. The older Arabic literature, that namely which was written by Arabs as yet untouched by external influences, consists entirely of poetry, the work of professional bards who sing of desert life and warfare, lament over the deserted camping grounds, boast of their tribe, and abuse their enemies. It forms a distinct class of poetic composition, which has developed its own literary standards, and attained a high standard of[Pg 104] excellence in its way. In many respects this older Arab poetry makes a special appeal to us, it shows an observation of nature which is very striking, it has an undercurrent of melancholy which seems an echo of the desert, and an emotional side which seems convincing in its reality. At the same time it has very distinct limitations in its range of interest and subject matter. Undoubtedly a careful study of this early Arab poetry is a necessary preparation for a proper appreciation of the literary forms of Arabic and of its oldest vocabulary and syntax, and of recent years much attention has been given to it. But this older Arabic poetry, apparently a native production, but possibly influenced in pre-Islamic times by some external contacts as yet undefined, comes to an end soon after the fall of the `Umayyads, save in Spain, where, under the exiled and fugitive remnant of the `Umayyad dynasty, the production of such poetry survived. But this type of poetry is really outside our present enquiry, save to note that it was a Persian scholar, Hammad b. Sabur ar-Rawiya (d. circ. 156-159) who collected and edited the seven ancient Arabic poems known as the Mu`allaqat or “suspended,” i.e., the catena or series, and thus set what may be called the classical standard of the ancient poetry and vocabulary. At the accession of the Abbasids the old Arab type passes away and the intellectual guidance of the Muslim community passes into the hands of the Persians. CHAPTER IV THE TRANSLATORS One of the first and most significant indications of the new orientation of Muslim thought was the extensive production of Arabic translations of works dealing with philosophical and scientific subjects, with the result that eighty years after the fall of the `Umayyads the Arabic speaking world possessed Arabic translations of the greater part of the works of Aristotle, of the leading neo-Platonic commentators, of some of the works of Plato, of the greater part of the works of Galen, and portions of other medical writers and their commentators, as well as of other Greek scientific works and of various Indian and Persian writings. This period of activity in translating falls into two stages, the first from the accession of the Abbasids to the accession of al-Ma´mun (A.H. 132-198), when a large amount of work was done by various independent translators, largely Christians, Jews, and recent converts from non-Islamic religions; the second under al-Ma´mun and his immediate successors, when the work of translation mainly centered in the academy newly founded at Baghdad, and a consistent effort was made to render the material necessary for philosophical and scientific research available for the Arabic speaking student. [Pg 106] The earlier translation work is especially associated with `Abdullah b. al-Muqaffa`, a native of Fars and originally a Zoroastrian, who made his profession of faith before a brother of Muhammad b. `Ali, the father of as-Saffah, and became his secretary. Presuming on his employer’s protection he ventured to make derisive and impertinent remarks to Arab dignitaries and especially to Sufyan, the governor of Basra, whom he used to salute with a lewd jest against his mother’s chastity. It seems that men of Arab birth who held political office under the early `Abbasids often had to put up with such insults from the ex-serfs. After an unsuccessful attempt at revolt by another of the Khalif’s uncles Ibn al-Muqaffa` was directed to prepare a draft letter of pardon to be presented to the Khalif al-Mansur, who succeeded his brother as-Saffah, for his official seal, but he drew up the letter in such terms as to arouse the Khalif’s indignation; amongst other things the letter said, “if at any time the Commander of the Faithful act perfidiously towards his uncle `Abdullah b. `Ali, his wives shall be divorced from him, his horses shall be confiscated for the service of God (in war), his slaves shall become free, and the Muslims loosed from their allegiance to him.” The Khalif enquired who had prepared this letter and on being informed directed Sufyan to put him to death. Pleased thus to gratify his personal rancour the governor of Basra executed Ibn al-Muqaffa` with great cruelty, though the details differ in different accounts, in A.H. 142 or 143. [Pg 107] Although conforming to Islam, Ibn al-Muqaffa` was generally regarded as a Zindiq, a term properly signifying a Manichæan but used loosely by the Arabic writers to denote a member of one of the Persian religions who professed outward conformity to Islam, but secretly adhered to his own creed, or as a term of abuse to denote a heretic of any sort. The word itself is a Persian rendering of siddiq or “initiate,” a title assumed by full members of the Manichæan sect. It implies the possession of esoteric knowledge and from this idea rose the practice common amongst the Shi`ite sects of concealing their real beliefs from general profession and assuming the external appearance of orthodoxy. Masudi (viii. 293) states that “many heresies arose after the publication of the works of Mani, Ibn Daysan, and Marcion translated from Persian and Pahlawi into Arabic by `Abdullah b. al-Muqaffa` and others.” Under al-Mansur and by his orders, translations were made from Greek, Syriac, and Persian, the Syriac and Persian books being themselves translations from Greek or Sanskrit. The best known work of Ibn Muqaffa, was the translation of the Kalila wa-Dimna or “Fables of Bidpai” from the Old Persian which was itself a translation from the Sanskrit. Ibn al-Muqaffa’s translation into Arabic is generally regarded as a standard model of Arabic prose. The Persian original is lost, but a version in Syriac made from it by the Nestorian missionary Budh, about A.D. 570, is extant and has been published (ed. Bickell and Benfey.[Pg 108] 1876); the Sanskrit original also is lost in what was presumably its earlier form, but we find its material in a much expanded form in two Sanskrit books, (i) in the Panchatantra, which contains the stories which appear as 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 17, of de Sacy’s Arabic text, and (ii) the Mahabharata, which contains chapters 11, 12, 13. Evidently the old Syriac of Budh, a translation of the Persian translation of the original, is the best representative of the older form of the text. The Arabic version of Ibn al-Muqaffa` shows a number of interpolations and additions which all, of course, appear in the derived versions, in the later Syriac, the several mediæval Persian translations which are made from the Arabic and not from the old Persian, and in the numerous Latin, Hebrew, Spanish, Persian, and Greek versions. It was this Arabic translation which gave to the book a wider circulation than possessed before or than it could ever have had, and introduced it to the western world. The case was exactly parallel with Aristotle and similar material: Arabic became a medium of extremely wide transmission and the additions made as material passed through Arabic received a wide circulation also. Ibn Muqaffa` lived in the reign of al-Mansur and during that same period we are told (Masudi. viii. 291-2) that Arabic versions were made of several treatises of Aristotle, of the Almagesta of Ptolemy, of the book of Euclid, and other material from the Greek. About 156 A.H. an Indian traveller brought to Baghdad a treatise on arithmetic and another on[Pg 109] astronomy: the astronomical treatise was the Siddhanta which came to be known to the Arabic writers as the Sindhind, it was translated by Ibrahim al-Fazari and opened up a new interest in astronomical studies: some little time afterwards Muhammad b. Musa al-Kharizmi combined the Greek and Indian systems of astronomy, and from this time forth the subject takes a prominent place in Arabic studies. The great Arabic astronomers belong to a later generation, such as Abu Ma`shar of Baghdad, the pupil of al-Kindi, who died in A.H. 272 (= A.D. 885), known to the Latin mediæval writers as “Abumazar,” and Muhammad b. Jabir b. Sinan al-Battani (d. 317 A.H. = A.D. 929) who was known as “Albategnius.” The Indian work on arithmetic was even more important as by its means the Indian numerals were introduced, to be passed on in due course as “Arabic” numerals, and this decimal system of numbering has made possible an extension of arithmetical processes and indeed of mathematics generally which would have been difficult with any of the older and more cumbersome systems. Al-Mansur, after founding Baghdad in A.H. 148 (= A.D. 765) summoned a Nestorian physician, George Boktishu`, from the school at Junde-Shapur and established him a court physician, and from this time there was a series of Nestorian physicians connected with the court and forming a medical school at Baghdad. George fell ill in Baghdad and was allowed to retire to Junde-Shapur, his place being[Pg 110] taken by his pupil Issa b. Thakerbokht, who was the author of a book on therapeutics. Later came Bokhtishu` son of George who was physician to Harunu r-Rashid in 171 (= A.D. 787), and then Gabriel, another son of George, who was sent to attend Ja`far the Barmecide in 175 and stood high in Harun’s favour: he wrote an introduction to logic, a letter to al-Ma´mun on foods and drinks, a manual of medicine based on Dioscorus, Galen, and Paul of Aegina, medical pandects, a treatise on perfumes, and other works. In medicine, as will be remembered, the Indian system had been introduced at Junde-Shapur and combined with the Greek, but the latter clearly predominated. Another important settler in Baghdad was the Jewish Syrian physician John bar Maserjoye, who translated the Syntagma of Aaron into Syriac and presided over the medical school gathered in the Muslim capital. For a long time the Arabic work in medicine was limited to translation of the great Greek authorities and practice on the lines learned in Alexandria. We have already referred to the unfortunate influence derived from the Egyptian school which diverted both medicine and chemistry into semi-magical lines, an evil tendency from which the Arabic school never quite freed itself. A considerable time elapsed before the Arabic speaking community produced any original writers on medicine. About the end of the third century we find Abu l-Abbas Ahmad b. Thayib as-Sarakhsi, a pupil of al-Kindi, who is stated to have written a treatise on the[Pg 111] soul, an abridgment of Porphyry’s Isagoge, and an introductory manual of medicine (Masudi. ii. 72). At that time medical studies were still very largely in Christian and Jewish hands, and we find the Syriac physician John ben Serapion (end of 9th cent. A.D.) writing in Syriac medical pandects which were circulated in two editions, the latter of which was translated into Arabic by several writers independently and long afterwards into Latin by Gerard of Cremona. The father of Arabic medicine proper was Abu Bakr Muhammad b. Zakariyya ar-Razi (d. A.H. 311-320 = A.D. 923-932) who was known to Latin mediæval writers as “Razes,” a student of music, philosophy, literature, and finally medicine. In his medical pandects he uses both Greek and Indian authorities, and the introduction of these latter in subordination to the classic authorities used at Alexandria was the really important contribution made by the Arabic students to the progress of science. Unfortunately ar-Razi’s work suffered from the defect that it greatly lacks order and arrangement, it is a collection of more or less separate treatises, and so not at all convenient to use. For this reason more perhaps than any other he was replaced by Ibn Sina (Avicenna) whose work, if anything, errs in the opposite direction and suffers from an extremely elaborate arrangement and systematization. It will be noticed that with the Arabic writers, as with their Syriac predecessors, the leading medical[Pg 112] writers were usually also exponents of logic and commentators on Aristotle as well as Galen. The Khalif al-Mansur was the patron who did most to attract the Nestorian physicians to the city of Baghdad which he had founded, and he was also a prince who did much to encourage those who set themselves to prepare Arabic translations of Greek, Syriac, and Persian works. Still more important was the patronage given by the Khalif al-Ma´mun who in A.H. 217 (= A.D. 832) founded a school at Baghdad, suggested no doubt by the Nestorians and Zoroastrian schools already existing, and this he called the Bayt al-Hikma or “House of Wisdom,” and this he placed under the guidance of Yahya b. Masawaih (d. A.H. 243 = A.D. 857), who was an author both in Syriac and Arabic, and learned also in the use of Greek. His medical treatise on “Fevers” was long in repute and was afterwards translated into Latin and into Hebrew. The most important work of the academy however was done by Yahya’s pupils and successors, especially Abu Zayd Hunayn b. Ishaq al-Ibadi (d. 263 A.H. = A.D. 876), the Nestorian physician to whom we have already referred as translating into Syriac the chief medical authorities as well as parts of Aristotle’s Organon. After studying at Baghdad under Yahya he visited Alexandria and returned, not only with the training given at what was then the first medical school, but with a good knowledge of Greek which he employed in making translations in Syriac and Arabic.[Pg 113] With him were associated his son Ishaq and his nephew Hubaysh. Hunayn prepared Arabic translations of Euclid; of various portions of Galen, Hippocrates, Archimedes, Apollonius, and others, as well as of the Republic, Laws, and Timæus of Plato, the Categories, Physics, and Magna Moralia of Aristotle, and the commentary of Themistius on book 30 of the Metaphysics, as well as an Arabic translation of the Bible. He also translated the spurious Mineralogy of Aristotle, which long served as one of the leading authorities on chemistry, and the medical pandects of Paul of Aegina. His son, besides original works on medicine, produced Arabic versions of the Sophist of Plato, the Metaphysics, de anima, de generatione et de corruptione, and the Hermeneutica of Aristotle which Hunayn had translated into Syriac, as well as some of the commentaries of Porphyry, Alexander of Aphrodisias, and Ammonius. A little later we find the Syrian Christian Questa b. Luqa, a native of Ba`albek, who had studied in Greece, prominent as a translator. The fourth century A.H. was the golden period of the Arabic translators, and it is worth noting that, although the work was done chiefly by Syriac speaking Christians, and inspired by Syriac tradition a very large number of the translations were made directly from the Greek, by men who had studied the language in Alexandria or Greece; very often the same scholar made Syriac and Arabic translations from the Greek text. There were also translators from the Syriac, but[Pg 114] these usually come after the translators from the Greek. Amongst the Nestorian translators from Syriac was Abu Bishr Matta b. Yunus (d. 328 A.H. = A.D. 939), who rendered into Arabic the Analytica Posteriora and the poetics of Aristotle, Alexander of Aphrodisias’ commentary on the de generatione et de corruptione, and Themistius’ commentary on book 30 of the Metaphysics, all from the existing Syriac versions. He was also the author of original commentaries on Aristotle’s Categories and the Isagoge of Porphyry. The Jacobite translators come on the scene after the Nestorians. Amongst the Jacobites translating from Syriac to Arabic we find Yahya b. Adi of Takrit (d. 364), a pupil of Hunayn, who revised many of the existing versions and prepared translations of Aristotle’s Categories, Sophist. Elench., Poetics, and Metaphysics, Plato’s Laws and Timæus, as well as Alexander of Aphrodisias’ commentary on the Categories and Theophrastus on the Moralia. The Jacobite Abu `Ali Isa b. Zaraah (d. 398) translated the Categories, the Natural History, and the de partibus animalium, with the commentary of John Philoponus. This is a convenient place to summarize briefly the range of Aristotelian material available to Arabic students of philosophy. The whole of the logical Organon was accessible in Arabic, and in this were included the Rhetoric and Poetics, as well as Porphyry’s Isagoge. Of the works on natural science they had the Physica, de coelo, de generatione[Pg 115] et corruptione, de sensu, the Historia animalium, the spurious Meteorologia, and the de anima. On mental and moral science they had the Metaphysics, the Nicomachæan Ethics and the Magna Moralia. Strangely enough the Politics was not included in the Aristotelian canon, its place being taken by Plato’s Laws or Republic. Besides these the Arabic students accepted as Aristotelian a Mineralogy, of which we have no knowledge, and a Mechanics. Of these the logical Organon always remained the basis of a humane education, side by side with the indigenous study of grammar, and this essentially logical basis of education seems to have been influenced by the example of the existing system developed amongst the Syrians, although it must be remembered a similar system was developed quite independently in Latin scholasticism prior to the earliest contact with the Arabic writers. The Aristotelian logic has always remained an orthodox and generally accepted science. The philosophical and theological controversies and the developments produced by the Arabic philosophers centred mainly in questions of metaphysics and psychology, and so were particularly concerned with the 12th book of Metaphysics and the treatise de anima, more especially the 3rd book. As we have already noted the psychology of Aristotle was interpreted in the light of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ commentary, and thus received a theistic and supernatural colouring which receives its fuller development in neo-Platonic teaching. [Pg 116] Most important in the fuller development of this neo-Platonic doctrine was the so-called Theology of Aristotle which appeared in Arabic about 226 A.H. It was in fact an abridged paraphrase of the last three books (iv-vi) of the Enneads of Plotinus made by Naymah of Emessa, boldly circulated and generally received as a genuine work of Aristotle. It might be regarded as a literary fraud, but it is quite possible that Plotinus was confused with Plato whose name appears in Arabic as `Aflatun, it seems indeed that this particular confusion was made by some other writers, and the translators accepted the current belief, maintained by all the neo-Platonic commentators, that the teaching of Aristotle and that of Plato were substantially the same, the superficial appearances of difference being such as could be easily explained away. By means of this Theology the fully developed doctrine of the neo-Platonists was put into general circulation and combined with the teaching of Alexander of Aphrodisias and thus exercised an enormous influence on the philosophy of Islam in several directions. In the hands of the philosophers properly so called it developed an Islamic neo-Platonism which received its final form at the hands of Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes), and in this form exercised a powerful influence over Latin scholasticism. Transmitted in another atmosphere it affected Sufism or Muslim mysticism, and was mainly responsible for the speculative theology which that mysticism developed.[Pg 117] In a modified form some of the resultant principles gathered from these two sources finally entered into orthodox Muslim scholastic theology. The main points of this neo-Platonic doctrine as it figures in Muslim theology present the teaching of the active intellect of `aql fa``al, the Agent Intellect of Alexander Aph. as an emanation from God, and the `aql hayyulani or passive intellect in man only aroused to activity by the operation of this Agent Intellect, which is substantially the doctrine of Alexander Aph.: the aim of man is to attain a union or ittisal in which his intellect becomes one with the Agent Intellect, although the means of attaining this union and the nature of the union differ in the doctrines of the philosophers and the mystics, as we shall see in due course. Next to philosophy proper medical science is the most important heritage received by the Arabic world from Hellenism. But this science derived through an Alexandrian medium had a serious defect in the accretions which the later Egyptian school had added to the pure teaching of Galen and Hippocrates. As we have already noted this accretion is of a quasi magical character and shows itself in talismans, etc., and theories which are based on ideas which are now classed as “sympathetic magic.” The real impetus came ultimately from transmitted Hellenism, but this influence was derived immediately from the Nestorians in philosophy proper, and from the Nestorians and the Zoroastrian school at Junde-[Pg 118]Shapur in medicine. A good deal later comes the influence of the pagan school at Harran, which also had a neo-Platonic tendency. When the second Abbasid Khalif al-Mansur passed by Harran on his way to fight against the Byzantine Emperor he was astonished to observe the strange appearance of some of the citizens who came out to meet him, wearing their hair long and having close fitting tunics. When the Khalif asked whether they were Christians, Jews, or Zoroastrians, they replied that they were neither. He then enquired if they were “people of a book,” for it was only those who possessed written scriptures who could be tolerated in Muslim dominions; but to this they returned such hesitating and ambiguous replies that the Khalif at length felt convinced that he had discovered a colony of pagans, as was the case, and he ordered them to adopt some one or other of the “religions of the book” before his return from the war, or to suffer the penalty of death. At this they were greatly alarmed: some of them became Muslims, others Christians or Zoroastrians, but some declined to desert their traditional beliefs. These latter naturally had the most anxious time, wondering how they could contrive to evade the Khalif’s demands. At length a Muslim lawyer offered to show them a way out of the difficulty if they paid him a substantial fee for doing so. The fee was paid and he advised them to claim to be Sabians, because Sabians are mentioned in the Qur´an as belonging to a religion “of the book,” but no one knew who the Sabians were. There is a[Pg 119] sect known as Sabiyun or Sabaean, whose religion is a strange mixture of ancient Babylonian state worship, Christian Gnosticism, and Zoroastrianism, living in the mashe lands near Basra, but they had always been careful to keep their religious beliefs secret from all outsiders, and although they were no doubt the sect mentioned in the Qur´an under the name of Sabiyun or Sabians, none could prove that the pagans of Harran were not also comprised under this term. The Khalif never did pass back by Harran, the pagans who had assumed the name of Sabian continued to use it, those who had become Christians or Zoroastrians reverted to their old faith and submitted to its new name; those who had become Muslims were obliged to remain so as the penalty of death lay upon any who became renegades from that religion. The most distinguished of the alumni of Harran was Thabit b. Qurra (d. 289 A.H.), a scholar familiar with Greek, Syriac, and Arabic, who produced many works on logic, mathematics, astrology, and medicine, as well as on the ritual and beliefs of the paganism to which he remained faithful. Following in his footsteps were his son Abu Sa`id Sinan, his grandsons Ibrahim and Abu l-Hasan Thabit, and his great grandsons Ishaq and Abu l-Faraj. All these specialized in mathematics and astronomy. It seems that we ought to associate with Harran Jabir b. Hayyan a perfectly historical character but of somewhat uncertain date, but believed to have been a pupil of the `Umayyad prince Khalid, who dis[Pg 120]tinguished himself by his researches in chemistry. Many chemical treatises bear the name of Jabir and a great proportion of these are probably quite authentic. M. Berthelot in the 3rd volume of his La chimie au moyen age (Paris, 1893) has made a careful analysis of the Arabic chemists and regards the whole material capable of division into two classes, the one a reproduction of the investigations of the Greek chemists of Alexandria, the other as representing original investigations, though based upon the Alexandrian studies in the first place, and all this original material he regards as due to the initiative of Jabir who thus becomes in chemistry very much what Aristotle was in logic. Berthelot publishes in this book six treatises claiming to be by Jabir, and these he regards as representative of all Arabic chemical material, the later investigators continuing in the lines laid down by this first investigator. For a long time the main object in view was the transmutation of metals, but at a later period chemistry enters into closer connection with medical work though never losing the metallurgical character which we imply when we speak of “alchemy.” The object in view of the Arabic students of alchemy does not appeal to the modern scientist, although the possibility of transmuting elements is no longer regarded as the impossible dream which it appeared to the chemists of the nineteenth century: and, at the same time, it is perfectly clear that with admitted limitations, the Arabic chemists were bona fide investigators, though[Pg 121] not understanding correctly the results of the experiments they made. All the texts published by M. Berthelot begin with the warning that the contents are to be kept strictly secret, and often contain a statement that some essential process is omitted in order that the unenlightened student may not be able to perform the experiments successfully, lest the wholesale production of gold should be a means of corrupting the whole human race. Undoubtedly the Arabic chemists did claim to have attained a knowledge of the means of transmuting the baser metals into gold but the histories contain various references which show that these claims were adversely criticised by many contemporary thinkers, and that a great many of the Arabic writers regarded chemistry, as it was then understood, as a mere imposture. More than once it was noted that the philosopher al-Farabi, who fully believed that it was possible to change other metals into gold and wrote a treatise on how it might be done, himself lived and died in great poverty, whilst Ibn Sina, who did not believe in alchemy, enjoyed modest comfort and could have commanded wealth had he been willing to accept it. In the course of the middle ages various treatises by Jabir were translated into Latin, where his name appears as Geber, and exercised a considerable influence in producing a western school of alchemy. Before long many original alchemical works were produced in Western Europe and a considerable[Pg 122] proportion of these were published under the name of Geber but are pure forgeries. As a result the personality of Geber took a semi mythical character and attempts have been made to account for the diverse and contradictory statements about his life and death, and about the country and century in which he lived by supposing that there were several persons who bore the name; but the fact seems to be that he early attained a position of great prominence as a chemical writer, and that later ages fathered on him a number of apocryphal productions. Berthelot considers that the best evidence associates him with Harran in the early part of the second century of the Hijra. CHAPTER V THE MU`TAZILITES When the Aristotelian philosophy was first made known to the Muslim world it was received almost as a revelation supplementing the Qur´an. At that time it was very imperfectly understood and the discrepancies between it and orthodox theology were not perceived. Thus the Qur´an and Aristotle were read together and regarded as supplementing one another in perfect good faith, but inevitably the conclusions, and still more perhaps the methods, of Greek philosophy began to act as a powerful solvent on the traditional beliefs. Maqrizi refers to the Mu`tazilites as seizing with avidity on the books of the philosophers, and certainly now new difficulties begin to appear as well as the two great problems which had been prominent at the beginning of the second century—the eternity of the Qur´an and the question of free will. The new difficulties were especially concerned with the qualities of God and, later, with the Qur´anic promise of the beatific vision. The problem of the qualities of God is very closely parallel to the earlier difficulty as to the eternity of the Qur´an, indeed it appears as an enlargement of it. Christian theologians educated in[Pg 124] the methods of Greek philosophy had already debated this matter, and in their hands it had taken the form of the question, “how many, and what, attributes are compatible with the unity of God?” If God’s wisdom, whether expressed in the Qur´an or not expressed, were eternal there was something which God possessed, and consequently something other than God which was equal to him in eternity and was not created by him, so that it could not be said that God was alone and that all other things proceeded from him as their cause as the eternal quality always was side by side with God, and so Wasil b. `Ata declared “he who affirms an eternal quality beside God, affirms two gods.” But this applies equally to all qualities, justice, mercy, etc., and, as was suggested by the study of Aristotle, all the categories, all that could be predicated of God as subject, were either created by God and so were not essential and eternal attributes, or else were external things equal with God. The second generation of Mu`tazilites, of those who begin to show direct acquaintance with Greek philosophy, begins with Abu l-Hudayl al-Allaf of Basra (d. 226 A.H.), who lived at the time when Greek philosophy was beginning to be studied with great ardour and was received without question. He admits the attributes of God and regards them as eternal, but treats them on lines very similar to those employed by the Christians in dealing with the divine hypostases, that is to say, they are not external things[Pg 125] possessed by God but modes or phases of the divine essence. The will of God for example, he treats as a mode of knowledge, that is to say that God wills what is good is equivalent to saying that God knows it to be good. But in dealing with the will we must distinguish between (a) that which exists in place, as the moral rules in God’s commandments to men, for there could be no will against theft until the creation of things which could be stolen; in such case the will exists in time and is created, for it depends upon a created thing: and (b) that which exists not in place and without an object to which the will refers, as when God willed to create before the thing to be created existed. In man the inner volition is free, but the outer acts are not free; sometimes they are controlled by external forces in the body, or even outside the body, and sometimes they are controlled by the inner volition. Aristotle speaks of the universe as existing from eternity, but the Qur´an refers to its creation, yet these are not inconsistent: we must suppose that it existed eternally, but in perfect quiescence and stillness, as it were latent and potential rather than actual, and without those qualities which appear in the categories of logic and are to us the only known terms of existence. Creation meant that God brought in movement so that things began to exist in time and space, and the universe comes to an end when it returns again to the state of absolute rest in which it was at the beginning. Men can distinguish between good and evil by the light of reason, for good[Pg 126] and evil have objective characters which can be recognised so that our knowledge of this difference does not depend only on God’s revelation: but no man can know anything about God but by the medium of revelation which is given principally for this purpose. Ibrahim b. Sayar an-Nazzam (d. 231), the next great Mu`tazilite leader was a devoted student of the Greek philosophers and an encyclopædic writer. In this he was typical of the earlier Arabic philosophers whose endeavour was to apply Greek science to the interpretation of life and nature generally, an aim which necessarily tended to produce encyclopædic compilations rather than original studies in any one field of knowledge. Already the Mu`tazilites had reached the position that good and evil represent objective realities and that God, knowing the good, does not will that which is contrary to it; but an-Nazzam presses this further and asserts that God can do nothing in the creature save what is for its good and is in itself just. To this the objection was raised that in such case God’s own acts are determined and are not free. An-Nazzam replied that he admitted this determination, not in action but in potentiality as God is restricted by his own nature. He attempted to reproduce the ancient doctrine that the soul is the form of the body, as had already been asserted by Aristotle, but he misunderstood the terminology employed and represents the soul as of the same shape as the body. This implies that the soul is a very[Pg 127] subtile kind of substance permeating the whole body in the same way as butter permeates milk, or as oil permeates the sesame: both soul and body are equal in size and alike in shape. Freedom of the will is peculiar to God and man, all other created things are subject to necessity. God created all things at once in remote eternity, but reserved them in a state of quiescence so that they may be described as “concealed,” and then projected them into active existence at successive intervals. The next great Mu`tazilite leader was Bishr b. Mu`tamir (d. 226 circ.) in whose work we find a more definite attempt to apply philosophical speculation to the practical needs of Islam. In the case of free will he enters directly into the question of how far external influences limit freedom of the will and so diminish responsibility. Infants cannot be condemned to eternal punishment because they have no responsibility, having never exercised free will. Unbelievers, however, are condemned to punishment because, although they have not the help of revelation, it is possible for them to know that there must be a God, and only one God, by the light of reason. In dealing with actions and their moral values we have to consider not only one agent and one object, but often a series, the act being transmitted from one to the other so that each of the intervening objects becomes the agent to the next object. This serial connection he termed “begetting” (tawullud). Ma`mar b. Abbad as-Sulami (d. 220) describes God[Pg 128] as creating substances but not accidents, so that he produced a kind of universal matter common to all existing things and to this matter or essence the accidents are added, some produced by a force inherent in the essence created, others by free will on the part of the creature. Following the neo-Platonic commentators on Aristotle he treats the attributes of God as purely negative, so that God is unknowable by man. In the case of wisdom or knowledge, that which is known must either be identical with God, or external to him: if God is the agent who knows and that which is known as object is also himself, there is a distinction between God the agent and God the object which implies two persons, and this is subversive of the divine unity: but if God is the agent and knows something external to himself, that knowledge depends on the external object, and God therefore is not absolute but in some sense dependent on something other than himself. Hence the attributes of God cannot be such as the positive qualities which exist in man, but only the negation of those which are distinctively human and dependent: we can only say that he is infinite, meaning unlimited in space, or eternal as unlimited in time, or other like terms negative of the known things which can be predicated of man. The general tendency of Ma`mar’s teaching is distinctly pantheistic: partly this is due to the logical development of a tendency already inherent in the neo-Platonic doctrine with which all Arabic thought was now becoming saturated, and partly it[Pg 129] was due to oriental influences which were now beginning to appear in Islam. Ma´mar’s pantheism was more fully developed by Tumameh b. al-Ashras (d. 213) who treats the world as indeed created by God, but created according to a law of nature so that it is the expression of a force latent in God and not due to an act of volition. Tumameh entirely deserts al-Allaf’s attempt to reconcile the Aristotelian doctrine of the eternity of matter with the teaching of the Qur´an, and quite frankly states that the universe is eternal like God. This is by no means the last word in Islamic pantheism, but its subsequent development rather belongs to the doctrines of the extremer Shi`ite sects and to Sufism. Reverting to an-Nazzam, the great leader of the middle age of the Mu`tazilites, we find his teaching continued by his pupils Ahmad b. Habit, Fadl al-Hudabi, and `Amr b. Bahr al-Jahiz. On the theological side all the Mu`tazilites admitted the eternal salvation of good Muslims, and most agreed that unbelievers would receive eternal punishment: but there were differences of view as to those who were believers but died unrepentant in sin. For the most part the Mu`tazilites took the lax view that these would be favourably treated as against the rigorist opinion which reserved eternal salvation to good Muslims, an opinion which appeared amongst the stricter believers during the `Umayyad period. The two first named of an-Nazzam’s pupils, however, introduced a new theory entirely repugnant to ortho[Pg 130]dox Islam, though familiar to the extremer Shi`ite sects, that those neither decisively good nor absolutely bad, pass by transmigration into other bodies until they finally deserve either salvation or damnation. With these two thinkers also we are brought into contact with another problem which now began to present itself to Islam, the doctrine of the “beatific vision.” Islam generally had expected the vision of God to be the chief of the rewards enjoyed in paradise, but the treatment of the attributes of God had been so definitely against the anthropomorphic ideas expressed in the Qur´an that it became difficult to explain what could be meant by “seeing God.” Ahmad and Fadl dealing with this subject deny that men ever will or can see God; the beatific vision can at most mean that they are brought face to face with the “Agent Intellect” which is an emanation from the First Cause, and “seeing” in such a connection must of course mean something quite different from what we understand as vision. `Amr b. Bahr al-Jahiz (d. 255), the third of an-Nazzam’s pupils mentioned above, may be regarded as the last of the middle period of the Mu`tazilites. He was an encyclopædic writer according to the fashion of the time and wrote on literature, theology, logic, philosophy, geography, natural history, and other subjects (cf. Masudi viii. 33, etc.) To free will he gives rather a new bearing. The will he regards as simply a manner of knowing and so as an accident of knowledge; a voluntary act he defines as one known[Pg 131] to its agent. Those who are condemned to the fire of hell do not suffer eternally by it, but are changed by its purification. The term “Muslim” must be taken to include all who believe that God has neither form or body, since the attribution of a human form to God is the essential mark of the idolater, that he is just and wills no evil, and that Muhammad is his prophet. Substance he treats as eternal, accidents are created and variable. We have now reached the third stage of the history of the Mu`tazilites, that which marks their decline. During this latter period they divide into two schools, that of Basra giving its attention mainly to the attributes of God, that of Baghdad being chiefly occupied with the more purely philosophical discussion of what is meant by an existing thing. The Basrite discussions received their final form in the dispute between al-Jubbay (d. 303) and his son Abu Hashim (d. 321). The latter held that the attributes of God are distinct modes of being, we know the essence under such varying modes or conditions, but they are not states, nor are they thinkable apart from the essence, though they are distinct from it but do not exist apart from it. Against this his father objected that these subjective attributes are only names and convey no concept. The attributes are thus asserted to be neither qualities nor states so as to imply subject or agent, but they are inseparably united with the essence. Against all views of this sort the orthodox adhered,[Pg 132] and still adhere to the opinion that God has real qualities. Those who laid emphasis on this in opposition to the Mu`tazilite speculations are commonly known as Sifatites (sifat, qualities), but they admit that, as God is not like a man, the qualities attributed to him in the Qur´an are not the same as those qualities bearing the same names which are referred to men, and it is not possible for us to know the real import of the qualities attributed to God. A more pronounced recoil against the Mu`tazilite speculations appears in Abu `Abdullah b. Karram (d. 256) and his followers who were known as Karramites. These returned to a crude anthropomorphism and held that God not only has qualities of precisely the same kind as a man may have, but that he actually sits on a throne, etc., taking in plain literal sense all the statements made in the Qur´an. The Mu`tazilite school of Baghdad concerned itself mainly with the metaphysical question—“what is a thing?” It was admitted that “thing” denotes a concept which could be known and could serve as subject to a predicate. It does not necessarily exist, for existence is a quality added to the essence: with this addition the essence becomes an entity (mawjud), without this addition it is a non-entity (ma`dum) but still has substance and accident, so that God creates by adding the single attribute of existence. The whole course of Mu`tazilite speculation shows the influence of Greek philosophy as applied to Muslim theology, but the influence is for the most[Pg 133] part indirect. The ideas of Aristotle, as the course of speculation projected to the forefront the problems with which he had dealt in times past, were received through a Syriac Christian medium, for the most part imperfectly understood and somewhat modified by the emphasis which Christian controversy had given to certain particular aspects. More or less directly prompted by the Mu`tazilite controversy we have three other lines of development: in the first place we have the “philosophers” as the name is used by the Arabic writers, meaning those students and commentators who based their work directly on the Greek text or at least on the later and better versions. In their hands philosophical enquiry took a somewhat changed direction as they began to understand better the real meaning of what Aristotle had taught. In the second place we have the orthodox theology of al-Ash`ari, al-Ghazali, and others, which represents Muslim theological science as modified and partly directed by Aristotelian philosophy, consciously endeavouring to make a working compromise between that philosophy and Muslim theology. The older Mu`tazilite tradition came to an end in the time of al-Ash`ari: men who felt the force of philosophical questions either adopted the orthodox scholasticism of al-Ash`ari and those who came after him, or followed the course of the philosophers and drift[Pg 134] away from the traditional beliefs of Islam altogether. In the third place we have the Sufi movement, in which we find neo-Platonic elements mingled with others from the east, from India and Persia. The Mu`tazilites proper come to an end with the fourth century A.H. CHAPTER VI THE EASTERN PHILOSOPHERS The Aristotelian philosophy was first made known to the Muslim world through the medium of Syriac translations and commentaries, and the particular commentaries used amongst the Syrians never ceased to control the direction of Arabic thought. From the time of al-Ma´mun the text of Aristotle began to be better known, as translations were made directly from the Greek, and this resulted in a more accurate appreciation of his teaching, although still largely controlled by the suggestions of the commentaries circulated amongst the Syrians. The Arabic writers give the name of failasuf (plur. falasifa), a transliteration of the Greek [Greek: philosophos φιλόσοφος], to those who based their study directly on the Greek text, either as translators or as students of philosophy, or as the pupils of those who used the Greek text. The word is used to denote a particular series of Arabic scholars who arose in the third century A.H. and came to an end in the seventh century, and who had their origin in the more accurate study of Aristotle based on an examination of the Greek text and the Greek commentators whose work was circulated in Syria, and is employed as though these falasifa formed a par[Pg 136]ticular sect or school of thought. Other philosophical students were termed hakim or nazir. The line of these falasifa forms the most important group in the history of Islamic culture. It was they who were largely responsible for awakening Aristotelian studies in Latin Christendom, and it was they who developed the Aristotelian tradition which Islam had received from the Syriac community, correcting and revising its contents by a direct study of the Greek text and working out their conclusions on lines indicated by the neo-Platonic commentators. The first of the series is Yaqub b. Ishaq al-Kindi (d. circ. 260 A.H. = 873 A.D.), who began very much as a Mu`tazilite interested in the theological problems discussed by the members of that school of thought, but desirous of testing and examining these more accurately, made use of the translations taken directly from the Greek and then only recently published. By this means he brought a much stricter method to bear, and thus opened the way to an Aristotelian scholarship much in advance of anything which had been contemplated so far. As a result his pupils and those who came after them raised new questions and ceased to confine themselves to Mu`tazilite problems, and al-Kindi was their intellectual ancestor in those new enquiries which his methods and his use of the Greek text alone made possible. It is a strange fact that al-Kindi, the parent of Arabic philosophy, was himself one of the very few leaders of Arabic thought who was a true[Pg 137] Arab by race. For the most part the scientists and philosophers of the Muslim world were of Persian, Turkish, or Berber blood, but al-Kindi was descended from the Yemenite kings of Kinda (cf. genealogy quoted from the Tarikh al-Hakama cited in note (22) of De Slane’s trans. of Ibn Khallikan, vol. i. p. 355). Very little is known about his life, save that his father was governor of Kufa, that he himself studied at Baghdad, under what teachers is not known, and stood high in favour with the Khalif Mu`tasim (A.H. 218-227). His real training and equipment lay in a knowledge of Greek, which he used in preparing translations of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Ptolemy’s Geography, and a revised edition of the Arabic version of Euclid. Besides this he made Arabic abridgments of Aristotle’s Poetica and Hermeneutica, and Porphyry’s Isagoge, and wrote commentaries on Aristotle’s Analytica Posteriora, Sophistica Elenchi, the Categories, the apocryphal Apology; on Ptolemy’s Almagesta and Euclid’s Elements, and original treatises, of which the essay “On the Intellect” and another “On the five essences” are the most noteworthy (Latin tr. by A. Nagy in Baeumker and Hertling’s Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des MA. II. 5. Münster, 1897). CHAPTER VII SUFISM Sufism or Islamic mysticism, which becomes prominent in the course of the 3rd cent. A.H., was partly a product of Hellenistic influences, and exercised a considerable influence on the philosophers of the time of Ibn Sina and afterwards. The name Sufi is derived from suf “wool,” and so means “wool-clad,” thus denoting a person who from choice used clothing of the simplest kind and avoided every form of luxury or ostentation. That this is the true meaning is proved by the fact that Persian employs as its equivalent the term pashmina-push, which also means “wool-clad.” By a popular error the Arabic writers on Sufism often treat the word as derived from safa, “purity,” and so make it something akin to “puritan”; and still more incorrectly certain Western writers have supposed that it is a transliteration of the Greek [Greek: sophos σοφός]. The emphasis is laid upon the ascetic avoidance of luxury and the voluntary adoption of simplicity in clothing on the part of those to whom the term is applied. If we regard this as a form of asceticism it will be at once objected that asceticism has no place in the teaching of the Qur´an and is alien to the character of early[Pg 182] Islam. In a sense this is true, and in a sense untrue according to the meaning we attach to the term “asceticism.” As it is used in the history of Christian monasticism, or of the devotees of several Indian religions, or even of the latter Sufis, it implies a deliberate avoidance of the normal pleasures and indulgences of human life, and especially of marriage, as things which entangle the soul and prevent its spiritual progress. In this sense asceticism is alien to the spirit of Islam, and appears amongst Muslims only as an exotic. But the term may be used, not very accurately perhaps, of the puritanical restraint and simplicity which avoids all luxury and display, and deliberately tries to retain a primitively simple and self-denying manner of life. In this latter sense asceticism or puritanism was a distinguishing mark of the “old believer” as contrasted with the secularised Arab of the Umayyad type, and this attitude always had its admirers. The historians constantly refer with commendation to the abstemious lives of the early Khalifs and the “Companions” of the Prophet, and describe how they were abstinent not from poverty but in order to put themselves on an equality with their subjects, and to preserve the traditional mode of life of the Prophet and his first followers, and very often in the recognised Traditions we find mention of the bare and simple mode of life of the first Muslims. Quite early this simplicity appears as the distinctive mark of the strict Muslim, and emphasizes the difference between him and the[Pg 183] worldly followers of the Umayyads, and similar instances appear amongst the devout Muslims of the present day. Such were not Sufis, but they may be regarded as the precursors of the Sufis. The historian al-Fakhri, describing the abstemious life of the first Khalifs, says that they endeavoured by this self-restraint to wean themselves from the lusts of the flesh. This is reading a later idea into a much earlier practice, which was originally designed simply as a more accurate following of the Prophet, who was unable to enjoy any luxury or splendour; but it shows that later generations were inclined to ascribe a more definitely ascetic motive to the affectedly simple life of the earlier Muslims, and no doubt that early puritanism, misunderstood by later ages, contributed to spread asceticism. Al-Qushayri (cited Browne: Lit. Hist. of Persia, i. pp. 297-8), after referring to the “Companions” and “Followers” of the first age of Islam, then mentions the “ascetes” or “devotees” as the elect of a later age, those who were most deeply concerned with matters of religion, and finally the Sufis as those elect of still later times, “whose souls were set on God, and who guarded their hearts from the disasters of heedlessness.” Historically this is an error, for the saints of early Islam were inspired by a spirit of strict adherence to the traditional life of their desert ancestors and rejected luxury as an “innovation,” very much the same spirit as that observed in the ancient Hebrew prophets; whilst the Sufis were no[Pg 184] enthusiasts for tradition, but eschewed bodily indulgence as an entanglement of the flesh which hindered the progress of the spirit, so that they were in no sense the successors of the “Companions,” but were influenced by new ideas unknown to early Islam. Yet superficially the results were very much alike, and this caused the two to be connected, and helped the later custom of connecting the early puritans with the ascetics of a subsequent age. In its earliest form, also, Islam made a strong appeal to the motive of fear, an appeal not based on divine severity so much as on divine justice and on man’s consciousness of his own sinfulness and unworthiness, and on the fleeting passage of the life lived in this present world. There was an intense concentration on the Day of Judgment and on the perils of the sinner, a teaching which is perceived in the Qur´an even by the most casual reader: but all this was not altogether congenial to the Arab, although he in poetry certainly inclined towards a tone of sadness. The inevitable result of this teaching was asceticism in the puritanical sense, or, perhaps we should say, a tone of severity in religion. Jami, one of the greatest Persian authorities on Sufism, tells us that the name “Sufi” was first applied to Abu Hashim (d. 162), an Arab of Kufa who spent the greater part of his life in Syria, and is typical of the early Islamic devotee who followed the simplicity of the Prophet’s life and was deeply influenced by the Qur´anic teaching about sin,[Pg 185] judgment, and the brief passage of earthly life. Similar devotees, claimed as Sufis by later Sufi writers, but more properly devotees who were their precursors, appear in the course of the 2nd century, such as Ibrahim b. Adham (d. 162), Da´ud of Tayy (d. 165), Fadayl of `Iyad (d. 188), Ma´ruf of Karkh (d. 200), and others, both men and women. Amongst these there was gradually evolved the beginnings of an ascetic theology in traditional sayings and narratives of their lives and conduct, a hagiology which lays great emphasis upon their penances and self mortification. Of this material the most important is the recorded teaching of Ma´ruf of Karkh, from which we may quote the definition of Sufism as “the apprehension of divine realities,” which, in a slightly altered sense perhaps, becomes the keynote of later Sufism. Can we trace the origin of these early recluses? Von Kremer (Herrsch, p. 67) considers this type as a native Arab growth developed from pre-Islamic Christian influences. Christian monasticism we know was familiar to the Arabs in the country fringing the Syrian desert and in the desert of Sinai: of this we have evidence both in Christian writers like Nilus and in the pre-Islamic poets, as in the words of Imru l-Qays:— “Friend, see the lightning—it flashed and is gone, like the flashing of two hands on a crowned pillar: Did its blaze flash forth? or was it the lamp of a monk who poured oil on the twisted wick?” [Pg 186] The hermit’s life was known even in Arabia itself, and tradition relates that Muhammad received his first call when he had retired to the cave of Hira and was living as a recluse there, returning periodically to his home and taking back food with him to the cave (cf. Bukhari: Sahih, i.). It seems likely, indeed, that the early recluses of Islam were inspired by the example of Christian monasticism, either directly or through the medium of Muhammad’s traditional retirement. But these recluses were not numerous, and admittedly neglect the Qur´anic command to marry (Qur. 24, 32). Thus the earlier asceticism shows the character of devout quietism, of a puritanical abstinence from display of wealth and from self-indulgence, of a strict simplicity of life rather than of a voluntary poverty and mortification, of occasional retirement from the world, and only in rare instances of the permanent adoption of the hermit life. An instance of this type occurs in Abu l-`Abbas as-Sabti (d. 184), son of the Khalif Harunu r-Rashid, who renounced rank and fortune for a life of meditation and retirement. In the latter part of the 3rd cent. we begin to find evidences of a “new Sufism,” which was inspired by religious ideals other than those which had been dominant in early Islam, and which developed from those ideals a theology of its own, which for a long time was not admitted as orthodox. Asceticism still occurs, but whilst, on the one hand, it begins to[Pg 187] take a more definite character in the deliberate seeking of poverty and mortification, it is, on the other hand, relegated to a subordinate place as a merely preparatory stage in the Sufi life, which is technically described as a “journey.” Poverty, which amongst the early Muslims was esteemed simply in so far as it reproduced the modest life of the Prophet and his companions, and was a standing protest against the secularisation of the Umayyads, now assumed greater prominence as a devotional exercise, a change which appears definitely in Da´ud at-Ta´i (d. 165), who limited his possessions to a rush mat, a brick which he used as a pillow, and a leather water bottle. In later Sufism poverty takes a position of great prominence: the terms faqir, “poor man,” and darwish, “mendicant,” become synonyms for “Sufi.” But in Sufi teaching religious poverty does not mean absence of possessions only: it implies the absence of all interest in earthly things, the giving up of all participation in earthly possessions, and desiring God as the only aim of desire. So mortification is the subjugation of the evil part of the animal soul, the nafs which is the seat of the lust and passions, and so the weaning of the soul from material interests, a “dying to self and to the world” as a beginning of a living to God. What was the source of the theology developed in the newer Sufism? Undoubtedly this was neo-Platonic, as has been proved by Dr. Nicholson (Selected Poems from the Diwan of Shams-i-Tabriz,[Pg 188] Camb., 1898, and The Mystics of Islam, Lond. 1914), and by Prof. Browne (Literary Hist. of Persia, Lond., 1902, chap. xiii.), and forms part of the influence which came into Islam at the introduction of Greek philosophy under the `Abbasids. But as in philosophy and other cultural transmissions direct Greek influence was preceded by an indirect influence brought to bear through Syriac and Persian, so it was also in neo-platonic theology, for neo-Platonic influences had already been brought to bear upon the Syrians and Persians in the pre-Islamic period. In the forefront of the later direct influence must be placed the so-called Theology of Aristotle, which it is no exaggeration to describe as the most prominent and the widest circulated manual of neo-Platonism which has ever appeared. It is, as we have already stated, an abridged translation of the last three books of Plotinus’ Enneads. Now the mysticism of Plotinus is philosophical and not religious, but it lends itself to a theological interpretation very easily, just as neo-Platonism as a whole very readily became a theological system in the hands of Jamblichus, of the pagans of Harran, and such like; and the Sufis were inclined to make this application, whilst the falasifa confined themselves to its philosophical side. It seems probable that the influence of the Pseudo-Dionysius was brought to bear upon Islam about the same time. The Pseudo-Dionysian writings consist of four treatises, of which two, a treatise “On Mystical Theology” in five chapters,[Pg 189] and a treatise “On the Names of God” in thirteen chapters, have been the chief source of Christian mystical theology. The first reference to these writings occurs in A.D. 532, when the claim was made that they were the work of Dionysius, the Areopagite, a pupil of St. Paul, or at least represent his teaching. In several places the writer cites Hierotheus as his teacher, and this enables us to identify the source as a Syrian monk named Stephen Bar Sudaili, who wrote under the name of Hierotheus (cf. Asseman, Bibl. Orient. ii. 290-291). This Bar Sudaili was abbot of a convent at Edessa, and was involved in controversy with James of Sarugh, so that we may refer the writings to the latter part of the 5th century A.D. They were translated into Syriac very soon after their first appearance in Greek, and, as familiar to Syriac Christians, must have become indirectly known to the Muslims. We have no direct evidence as to their translation into Arabic, but Mai gives fragments of other works of Bar Sudaili which appear in Arabic MSS. in his Spicilegium Romanum (iii. 707). The traditional view of the relations between Sufism and philosophy is described in the anecdote cited by Prof. Browne (Lit. Hist. of Persia, ii. 261, from Akhlag-i-Jalali) of the Sufi Abu Sa`id b. Abi l-Khayr (d. 441 A.H. = 1049 A.D.), who is said to have met and conversed with Ibn Sina; when they parted Abu Sa`id said of Ibn Sina, “What I see, he knows,” whilst Ibn Sina said, “What I know, he sees.” [Pg 190] But there were other influences of a secondary character at work in `Iraq and Persia which become important when we remember that it was the subject population of those parts which had, to a large extent, replaced the Arabs as the leaders of Islam during the `Abbasid period. In connection with the Sufis probably we cannot refer any influence to the Zoroastrian religion proper, which had a non-ascetic and national character; but the Manichæan and Masdekite religions, the two “free churches” of Persia, show a definitely ascetic tone, and when we find, as is the case, that many of the early Sufis were converts from Zoroastrianism, or the sons of such converts, we are inclined to suspect that, though professing that recognised religion, they were in all probability actually Zindiqs, that is to say secretly heretics and initiates of the Manichæan or Masdekite sect making external profession of the more recognised cult, as was the common practice of these Zindiqs. Note must also be made of the Gnostic influences transmitted through the Saniya of the fen country between Wasit and Basra, the Mandæans, as they are called to distinguish them from the so-called Sabians of Harran. The Sufi Ma´ruf of Karkh was himself the son of Sabian parents. And again we must not ignore the probability of Buddhist influences, for Buddhist propaganda had been active in pre-Islamic times in Eastern Persia and Transoxiana. Buddhist monasteries existed in Balkh, and it is noteworthy that the ascete Ibrahim b. Adham (d. 162—cf. supra) is[Pg 191] traditionally described as a prince of Balkh who left his throne to become a darwish. On closer examination, however, it does not appear that Buddhist influence can have been very strong, as there are essential differences between Sufi and Buddhist theories. A superficial resemblance exists between the Buddhist nirvana and the fana or reabsorption of the soul in the Divine Spirit of Sufism. But the Buddhist doctrine represents the soul as losing its individuality in the passionless placidity of absolute quiescence, whilst the Sufi doctrine, though also teaching a loss of individuality, regards everlasting life as consisting in the ecstatic contemplation of the Divine Beauty. There is an Indian parallel to fana, but it is not in Buddhism, but in the Vedantic pantheism. It is generally accepted that the first exponent of Sufi doctrine was the Egyptian, or Nubian, Dhu n-Nun (d. 245-246), a pupil of the jurist Malik b. ´Anas, who lived at the time when there was much percolation of Hellenistic influence into the Islamic world. He was indeed nearly contemporary with `Abdullah, the son of Maymum, whose work we have already noticed. Dhu n-Nun’s teaching was recorded and systematized by al-Junayd of Baghdad (d. 297), and in it appears essential doctrine of Sufism, as of all mysticism, in the teaching of tawhid, the final union of the soul with God, a doctrine which is expressed in a way closely resembling the neo-Platonic teaching, save that in Sufism the means[Pg 192] whereby this union is to be attained is not by the exercise of the intuitive faculty of reason but by piety and devotion. Still the two come very close when we find in the teachings of the later philosophers that the highest exercise of reason consists in the intuitive apprehension of the eternal verities rather than in any other activity of the intellect. Al-Junayd is stated by Jami to have been a Persian, and it is chiefly in Persian hands that the doctrines of Sufism develop and turn towards pantheism. Both agnosticism and pantheism are present practically in the later neo-Platonism; agnosticism as regards the unknowable First Cause, the God from the Agent Intellect is an emanation, a doctrine which develops in the teaching of the philosophers and of the Isma`ilians and kindred sects; but Sufi teaching centres its attention upon the knowable God, which the philosopher would describe as the Agent Intellect or Logos, and this develops more usually in a pantheistic direction. The doctrines thus developed and expressed by al-Junayd were boldly preached by his pupil, ash-Shibli of Kurasan (d. 335). Al-Husayn b. Mansur al-Hallaj (d. 309) was a fellow-student of ash-Shibli, and shows Sufism as allied with extremely unorthodox elements. He was of Zoroastrian descent and closely in touch with the Qarmatians, and seems to have held those doctrines which are usually associated with the ghulat or extreme Shi`ites, such as transmigration, incarnation, etc. He was put to death as a heretic for[Pg 193] declaring “I am the truth”, thus identifying himself with God. The accounts given of him show great differences of opinion: for the most part the earlier historians, approaching the subject from an orthodox stand-point, represent him as a wily conjurer who by pretended miracles gained a number of adherents, but later Sufi writers regard him as a saint and martyr who suffered because he disclosed the great secret of the union between the soul and God. The doctrine of hulul, or the incarnation of God in the human body, was one of the cardinal tenets of the ghulat. According to al-Hallaj, man is essentially divine because he was created by God in his own image, and that is why, in Qur. 2, 32, God bids the angels worship Adam. In hulul, which is treated as tawhid taking place in this present life, the deity of God enters the human soul in the same way that the soul at birth enters the body. This teaching is a fusion of the old pre-Islamic Persian beliefs as to incarnation and the philosophical theories of neo-Platonism, of the Intellect or rational soul or spirit, as it is more commonly called by English writers, the part added to the animal soul is an emanation from the Agent Intellect, to which it will ultimately return and with which it will be united (cf. Massignon: Kitab al-Tawasin, Paris, 1913). This is an extremely interesting illustration of the fusion of oriental and Hellenistic elements in Sufism, and shows that the theoretical doctrines of Sufism, whatever they may have borrowed from Persia and India, receive their interpretative hypotheses from[Pg 194] neo-Platonism. It is interesting also as shewing in the person of al-Hallaj a meeting-point between the Sufi and the philosopher of the Isma`ilian school. Very similar was the teaching of Abu Yazid or Bayazid of Bistam (d. 260), who was also of Zoroastrian descent. The pantheistic element is very clearly defined: “God,” he said, “is an unfathomable ocean”; he himself was the throne of God, the preserved Tablet, the Pen, the Word—all images taken from the Qur´an—Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Gabriel, for all who obtain true being are absorbed into God and become one with God. Pantheistic views and the doctrine of hulul occur frequently in Sufi teaching, but they are by no means universal. Indeed, we cannot make any accurate statement of Sufi doctrine in detail, but only of general principles and tendencies. The Sufis do not form a sect, but are simply devotees of mystical tendencies spread through all the branches of the Muslim community. In the 3rd cent. they are most prominent amongst the Shi`ites, and so Shi`ite views seem to be incorporated in Sufism, but they form no integral part of it. Precisely similar conditions occur in Christianity where mysticism has flourished in the extremer Protestant sects as well as in the contemplative orders of the Catholic Church, and, in spite of theological differences, has a very considerable amount of common material. Only it must be noted that no basis of mysticism exists unless some such relations between the human soul and God are[Pg 195] pre-supposed, as are suggested by neo-Platonism. Christian mysticism, in the true sense, does not begin in the West until the works of the Pseudo-Dionysius were translated into Latin in the 9th cent. A.D., and Muslim mysticism dates from the translation of the Theology of Aristotle. On the other hand, it must also be noted that mysticism exercises a strong modifying influence on theology generally. The tendency of mysticism is towards a latitudinarian type: it is consequently opposed, consciously or unconsciously, to definite dogmatic teaching and so to speculative theology and philosophy. Superficially Muslim mysticism seems to be organised like a sect. Reference is often made to the various “grades” of Sufis. But these are not official grades like those of the Isma`ilians and similar bodies, but denote successive stages on the path of personal holiness: it is no more than a fanciful terminology, perhaps borrowed from some of the sects because it seems that Sufism flourished earliest and most freely in some of the extremer Shi`ite groups. It was, and is, most usual for the beginner in the path of holiness to put himself under the direction of some experienced spiritual guide, who acts as his teacher, and is known as sheikh, murshid, or pir. In many cases this pupilage involves absolute and blind obedience to the teacher, because the renunciation of personal wishes and inclinations and all that can be described as self-will is one of the forms of abnegation required of those who seek to[Pg 196] be weaned from earthly interests. From the grouping of devotees around some prominent teacher has arisen the foundation of darwish confraternities, sometimes as sodalities of laymen, who pursue their secular occupations and meet from time to time for religious exercises and instruction, and sometimes as permanent communities living in strict obedience under a sheikh. Traces of such monastic institutions appear in Damascus about 150 A.H., and in Khurasan some fifty years later. None of the existing orders of Islam, however, seem to be of so early a date. We hear of a sheikh Alwan (circ. 149), whose shrine is at Jedda, and who is the reputed founder of the Alwaniya community, a body now existing only as a subdivision of the Rifa`ite order. There are also orders known as the Adhamiya, Bastamiya, and Saqatiya, which trace their origin to Ibrahim b. Adham (cf. above), to Bayazid Bastami, and to Sari as-Saqati respectively, but whose real origin is uncertain. In the 6th century we are on surer ground. There is no reason to question the claim of the Rifa`ite order to trace its foundation to Abu l-`Abbas Ahmad b. `Ali l-Hasan `Ali ibn Abi l-`Abbas Ahmad Rifa`i (d. 578), a native of the village of Umm Abida, near the junction of the Tigris and Euphrates. In his lifetime he gathered a large body of disciples, whom he incorporated in an order in 576, the members living in community under a sheikh, to whom they owed unquestioning obedience, but having also, like other orders, a number of lay adherents. Dying without issue the headship of[Pg 197] his order passed to his brother’s family. It exists to-day in two main branches (i.) the Alwaniya, already mentioned, and (ii.) the Gibawi, who are best known from their association with the ceremony of the dawsa, at which the sheikh used to ride over the prostrate bodies of his followers. Of all the orders now flourishing in Egypt it is the one most inclined to fanatical observances at its zikr or prayer-meeting, the members cutting themselves, driving sharp skewers and knives into their bodies, swallowing snakes, etc., and in prayer allowing the name of God oft-repeated to become at last no more than a half articulate groan. They are usually distinguished by black-turbans. The Qadariya claim `Abdu l-Qadir Jilani (d. 561) as their founder. At their zikr there is none of the fire-eating, serpent-swallowing, or self-mutilation of the Rifa`ites, but only the name of God is repeated, always clearly enunciated and followed by a pause. The Badawiya were founded by Abu l-Fita Ahmad (d. 675), whose shrine is at Tanta, in Lower Egypt. The zikr is of a sober kind, the Divine name being repeated in a loud voice without cutting, fire-eating, etc. The Mawlawiya or dancing darwishes were founded by the Persian mystical poet Jalalu d-Din Rumi, the author of the poem known as the Masnawi. The Suhrwardiya trace their origin to Shihabu d-Din, a pantheistic Sufi of Baghdad, who was put to death by Saladin in 587. In each of these orders a special course of instruction has taken a more or less conventional form, and[Pg 198] there have been certain great teachers whose writings have come into use as manuals, and so have impressed their views upon Sufism generally. Yet the fact remains that Sufi teaching is essentially eclectic, and can be formulated only in broad principles and tendencies. Of these the following seem to be of most general application:— (i.) God alone exists; God is the only reality, all else is illusive. This is the Sufi rendering of the doctrine of the unity of God. Strictly speaking “God” here signifies the Agent Intellect, that is to say, the revelation of God who in Himself is unknowable, but the Sufi does not make this philosophical distinction clear, or else deliberately regards the revelation of God as God. But in man there is a rational soul, which is to God as a mirrored image is to the object which it reflects, and is capable of approaching the Divine reality. As other than God is merely illusive it is obvious that a knowledge of God the Reality cannot be attained by the medium of created things, and thus the Sufis were led, like the neo-Platonists, to attach greater value to immediate intuition by the rational soul than to the use of arguments, and so to place direct revelation above what is ordinarily described as reason. This is a line of development common to all forms of mysticism, and results in a preference for ecstasy or similar spiritual experience above the record of past revelation as given in the Qur´an. The doctrine of ecstasy (hal or maqama) was first formulated by Dhu[Pg 199] n-Nun, and implies fana or “passing away,” i.e., insensibility to the things of this world, and finally baqa or “continuance” in God. Usually this experience is accompanied by loss of sensation, though this is not always the case, and there are many legends of Sufi saints which represent them as totally unconscious of violence of wounds; and this is not confined to legend, for most extraordinary sufferings are endured, apparently with perfect placidity, by darwishes at the present day, perhaps in accordance with psychological laws which are imperfectly understood, and this is the underlying idea in the exercises undergone by the Rifa`i darwishes and others. The exercise known as zikr (dhikr) or “remembering,” in accordance with the command in Qur. 33, 41, “remember God often,” is an attempt to make an advance towards the ecstatic state. It was perhaps under Sufi influence that we find philosophy inclining to prefer knowledge obtained by immediate intuition; it was certainly under such influence that ecstasy is treated as a means of obtaining such direct apprehension of truth in the later philosophers. (ii.) The Sufi doctrine of God as the only reality has a direct bearing not only on creation but also on the problem of good and evil. As a thing can only be known by its opposite, light by darkness, health by sickness, being by non-being, so God could only be made known to man as reality contrasted with non-reality, and the mingling of these two opposites produces the world of phenomena in which light is made[Pg 200] known by a background of darkness, which darkness is itself only the absence of light: or, as being proceeds by successive emanations from the First Cause, and becomes weaker or less real in each emanation as it recedes further from the great Reality, it incidentally becomes more perceptible as it becomes less real. Thus evil, which is merely the negation of the moral beauty of the Reality, appears in the latest emanation as the unreal background which is the inevitable result of a projection of the emanation from the First Cause, who is entirely good, into a world of phenomena. Evil is therefore not real, it is merely the result, the inevitable result, of the mingling of reality with unreality. In fact, this is implied in the doctrine that all other than God is unreal. (iii.) The aim of the soul is union with God. This doctrine of tawhid, as we have seen, received early expression in Muslim mystic theology. Dr. Nicholson is of opinion that “the Sufi conception of the passing away (fana) of individual self in universal being is certainly of Indian origin. Its first great exponent was the Persian mystic Bāyazīd of Bistām, who may have received it of his teacher, Abū `Alī of Sind (Scinde.)” (Nicholson: Mystics of Islam, p. 17.) But this is only one particular way of presenting a doctrine which has a much wider range and is present in all mystical teaching, including that of the neo-Platonists. In the highest sense it is the basis of Sufi ethics, for the summum bonum is defined as the[Pg 201] union of the individual soul with God, and all is good which helps towards this, all is evil which retards it, and this is true of Christian and all other forms of mysticism equally. We cannot say definitely that the doctrine of the unitive state is borrowed from neo-Platonism, from Buddhism, or from Gnosticism; it is the common property of all, and is the natural conclusion from the mystics premises as to the nature of God and of the human soul. It may well be that certain presentations of this doctrine show Indian details, but in this as in all other parts of Sufi speculation it seems that the constructive theory employed in forming a theological system was neo-Platonic: even in mysticism the Greek mind exercised its influence in analysing and constructing hypotheses. At quite an early age the soul’s desire for union with its Divine source began to be clothed in terms borrowed from the expression of human love. With some hesitation we may say, perhaps, that this is distinctly oriental, although it was so only as a means of expressing a desire which is characteristic of all mysticism. We find the same, at a later period, though in a much more restrained fashion, in Christian mysticism, and it is not easy to see the actual line of contact, if any. Perhaps we must be content to regard it as independently developed as a means of expressing the soul’s longing. The rise of Sufi teaching was not without opposition, and this was mainly on three grounds (i.) the Sufis advocated constant prayer in the form of unceasing[Pg 202] silent intercourse with God, and by this tended to discard the fixed salawat or five obligatory prayers at appointed hours, one of the compulsory duties of Islam and one of its distinctive marks. Ultimately the Sufi position was that these fixed ritual observances were for the people at large who had not made any advance in the deeper spiritual knowledge, but might be disregarded by those who were more mature in grace, a position which is closely parallel to that attained by the philosophers. (ii.) They introduced zikirs or religious exercises, consisting in a continuous repetition of the name of God, a form of devotion unknown to older Islam, and consequently an innovation. And (iii.) many of them adopted the practice of tawakkul, or complete dependence on God, neglecting all kinds of labour or trade, refusing medical aid in sickness, and living on alms begged from the faithful. All these were “innovations,” and as such met with very definite opposition, mostly, no doubt, because they were repugnant to the sober tone of traditional Islam, which has always been suspicious of oriental fanaticism. The more serious objection, that it really dispensed with the religion of the Qur´an is implied if not expressed; it introduced an entirely new concept of God and a new standard of religious values; if Sufi ideas prevailed the practices of the Muslim religion would be at best the tolerable and harmless usages of those who were not initiated into vital religion. In fact, however, the philo[Pg 203]sophical principles brought forward by the neo-Platonic Aristotelian works in general circulation were so far influential and regarded as reconcileable with the Qur´an that Sufism, in so far as it was neo-Platonic, did not appear to be destructive of Islam, but only at variance with customary usage. Nevertheless, Sufism was generally looked upon as heretical, not only from the “innovations” we have mentioned, but because of the close alliance between the doctrines of its extremer advocates and those of the more advanced Shi`ites. It is indeed most significant that it developed chiefly amongst the same elements which gave the readiest hearing to philosophy and still adhered to Zoroastrian and Masdekite ideas. No doubt the ill repute of Sufism was largely due to the bad company it kept. It was not until the time of al-Ghazali (d. 505) that Sufism began to take its place in orthodox Islam. Al-Ghazali, left an orphan at an early age, had been educated by a Sufi friend, and, after becoming an Ash`arite and as such acting as president of the Nazimite academy at Baghdad, found himself in spiritual difficulties, and spent eleven years in retirement and in the practices of devotion, with the result that when he returned to work as a teacher in 449 his instruction was strongly leavened by mysticism, practically a return to the principles he had been taught in his early years. As al-Ghazali became in course of time the dominant influence in Muslim scholasticism, a modified and orthodox Sufism was[Pg 204] introduced into Sunni theology and has since held its own. At the same time he reduced Sufism to a scientific form, and gave, or rather supported, a terminology derived from Plotinus. Such a Sufism may be described as Muslim mystic theology purged of its Shi`ite accretions. This admission of a modified Sufism into the orthodox church of Islam took place in the sixth century A.H. In the following century Sufism appeared in Spain, but there it arrived as transmitted through an orthodox medium, and hence differs from Asiatic mysticism. The first Spanish Sufi seems to have been Muhyi d-Din ibn `Arabi (d. 638), who travelled in Asia and died at Damascus. He was a follower of Ibn Hazm, who, as we shall see later, represents a system of jurisprudence of a type more reactionary even than that of Ibn Hanbal. In Spain itself the leading Sufi was `Abdu l-Haqq ibn Sab`in (d. 667), who shows the more characteristic Spanish attitude of a Sufi who was also a philosopher, for Spanish Sufism was essentially speculative. Like many other philosophers of the Muwahhid period he adhered outwardly to the Zahirites, the most reactionary party of the narrowest orthodoxy. In the 7th century, also, we have Jalalu d-Din Rumi (d. 672), who practically completes the golden age of Sufism. Although a Persian he was an orthodox Sunni. He was a native of Balkh, but his father was compelled to leave that city and migrate westward, and finally settled at Qonya (Iconium),[Pg 205] where he died. Jalalu d-Din had been educated by his father, and after his death he sought further instruction at Aleppo and Damascus, where he came under the influence of Burhanu d-Din of Tirmidh, who had been one of his father’s pupils, and continued his training in Sufi doctrines. After this teacher’s death he came in touch with the eccentric but saintly Shams-i-Tabriz, a man of great spiritual power but illiterate, who left a great impress on his age by his tremendous spiritual enthusiasm and the strange crudity of his conduct and character. It was after the death of Shams-i-Tabriz that Jalalu d-Din commenced his great mystical poem, the Masnawi, a work which has attained an extraordinary eminence and reverence throughout the whole of Turkish Islam. As already mentioned, Jalalu d-Din founded an order of Darwishes known as the Mawlawi order, or “dancing darwishes,” as they are called by Europeans. The whole course of doctrinal Sufism begins with Dhu n-Nun and ends with Jalalu d-Din; later writers do little more than repeat their teaching in new literary form, and it will be sufficient to select a few typical examples. In the 8th cent. we have `Abdu r-Razzaq (d. 730), a pantheistic Sufi who wrote a commentary on and defended the teaching of Muhiyyu d-Din ibnu l-`Arabi. He advocated the doctrine of free will on the ground that the human soul is an emanation from God, and so shares the Divine character. This world, he holds, is the best possible world: differences in condition exist and justice[Pg 206] consists in accepting these and adapting things to their situation; ultimately all things will cease to exist as they are reabsorbed in God, the only reality. Men are divided into three classes: the first contains the men of the world, whose life centres in self and who are indifferent towards religion; a second class contains the men of the reason, who discern God intellectually by his external attributes and manifestations; and as a third class are the men of the spirit, who perceive God intuitively. Although Sufism has now taken a recognised place in the life of Islam, it was not allowed to pass without occasional challenge. The leading opponent was the Hanbalite reformer, Ibn Taymiya (d. 728), who represented the reactionary but popular theology. He rejected formal adherence to any school, dismissed all importance attached to Ijma or “consensus” save that based on the agreement of the Prophet’s Companions; he denounced the scholastic theology of al-Ash`ari and al-Ghazali, and defined the Divine attributes on the lines laid down by Ibn Hazm. At that time the Sufi an-Nasr al-Manbiji was prominent in Cairo, and to him Ibn Taymiya wrote a letter denouncing the Sufi doctrine of ittihad as heresy. From this arose a quarrel between the two rival forces of Islam, traditional orthodoxy and mysticism, in the course of which Ibn Taymiya suffered persecution and imprisonment. Towards the end of his life, in 726, he issued a fatwa or declaration of opinion against the lawfulness of[Pg 207] the reverence paid to the tombs of saints and of the invocation of saints, the Prophet himself included. In this he was the precursor of the Wahibi reformation of the 18th cent. A.D. MSS. exist in which the works of Ibn Taymiya are copied out by the hand of `Abdu l-Wahhab, who was evidently a close student of that reformer, all of whose theories he reproduces. Ash-Sha´rani of Cairo (d. 973) is typical of the later orthodox Sufi. He was a follower of Ibn `Arabi on general lines but without his pantheism. His writings are a strange mixture of lofty speculation and lowly superstition, his life was full of intercourse with jinns and other supernatural beings. The truth, he states, is not to be reached by the aid of reason, but only by ecstatic vision. The wali is the man who possesses the gift of illumination (ilham), or direct apprehension of the spiritual, but that grace differs from the inspiration (wahy) bestowed upon the prophets, and the wali must submit to the guidance of prophetic revelations. All walis are essentially under the qutb, but the qutb is inferior to the companions of Muhammad. Whatever rule (tariqa) a darwish follows he is guided by God, but ash-Sha´rani himself preferred the rule of al-Junayd. The varying opinions of the canonists are adapted to the different needs of men. Ash-Sha´rani was the founder of a darwish order which forms a subdivision of the Badawiya (cf. above). His writings have considerable influence in modern Islam, and form the programme of those who advocate a neo-Sufi reformation. CHAPTER VIII ORTHODOX SCHOLASTICISM The formation of an orthodox scholasticism within the Muslim church appears as a development spread over the 4th-5th centuries of the Hijra (10-11 cent. A.D.), and is in three strata associated with the three leaders, al-Ash`ari, al-Baqilani, and al-Ghazali. Such a development, of course, is principally of interest for the internal history of Islam and the evolution of Muslim theology, but it had its influence also on the transmission of Arabic thought to Latin Christendom in two ways: (i.) directly, in that al-Ghazali was established as one of the great Arabic authorities when the Latins began to study the interpreters of Aristotle, and his teaching is quoted by St. Thomas Aquinas and other scholastic writers; and (ii.) indirectly, because a considerable part of the work of Ibn Rushd (Averroes) takes the form of controversy against the followers of al-Ghazali; his Destruction of the Destruction, for example, is a refutation of al-Ghazali’s Destruction of the Philosophers. It thus becomes imperative to know something about the position and teaching of al-Ghazali and the influences which prepared the way for his work. [Pg 209] Such a movement as orthodox scholasticism was inevitable. The position at the end of the third century was quite impossible. The orthodox Muslim adhered strictly to tradition, and entirely refused to admit “innovation” (bid`a): he had been forced into this position as a reaction against his earlier ready acceptance of Plato and Aristotle as inspired teachers, for the later errors of the Mu`tazilites showed what extremely dangerous conclusions could be drawn by those who came under Hellenistic influence, and the more accurately the Greek philosophers were studied the worse the heresies gathered from them. Orthodox thought held itself carefully aloof from the Mu`tazilites and philosophers on the one side, and from the Shi`ites and Sufis on the other, confining itself to the safe studies of Qur´an exegesis, tradition, and the canon law in which at Baghdad the reactionary influence of Ibn Hanbal was predominant. The whole of the third century had been a time of reaction on the part of the orthodox, very largely due to the unfortunate attempt of al-Ma´mun to force rationalism on his subjects. Al-Ghazali tells us in his “Confessions” that some sincere Muslims felt themselves bound to reject all the exact sciences as of dangerous tendency, and so repudiated scientific theories as to eclipses of the sun and moon. All speculation lay under a ban, because it led to “innovation” in belief or in practice; it was contrary to orthodoxy to use the methods of Greek philosophy to prove revealed doctrine as much as it was to impugn it, for both alike were innovations[Pg 210] on the traditional usage; nothing was known of spiritual matters save what is actually stated in the Qur´an and tradition, and from this nothing could be deduced by the use of argument, for logic itself was a Greek innovation, at least as applied to theology: only that was known which was actually stated, and no explanation of the statement was lawful. Thus, when Ahmad ibn Hanbal was examined by the inquisitors of al-Ma´mun he replied only by quoting the words of the Qur´an or tradition, refusing to draw any conclusions from these statements and admitting no conclusions drawn, keeping silence when arguments were proposed to him, and protesting that such examination as to religious belief was itself an innovation. This position was hardly satisfactory to those who had inherited any part of the Hellenic tradition, and it ultimately became impossible. An organic body which cannot adapt itself to its surroundings is doomed to decay. The Islamic state had sufficient vitality to meet the new conditions introduced by its expansion to Syria and Persia, and now the time had come for Islamic theology to adapt itself to the new thought that was invading it. As we have seen, the philosophers al-Kindi and al-Farabi were loyal Muslims, and had no suspicion that their investigations were leading to heretical conclusions, and such was undoubtedly the case with the earlier Mu`tazilites also, but results had justified the orthodox in a suspicious attitude towards “argument” (kalam). Now, towards the close of the third century the attempt to find an[Pg 211] orthodox kalam appears as a movement which originates with the Mu`tazilites, of whom a section of the more conservative sought to return to an orthodox stand-point, and to use kalam in theology in defence of the traditional beliefs as against the heretical conclusions which were in circulation. Following a somewhat later usage we may employ this term kalam to denote an orthodox philosophical theology, that is to say, one in which the methods of philosophy were used, but the primary material was obtained from revelation, and thus one which was closely parallel with the scholastic theology of Latin Christendom. We have cited the name of al-Ash`ari as representative of the first stage of this movement, but it is equally represented by the contemporary al-Mataradi in Samarqand and by at-Tahawi in Egypt. Of these, however, at-Tahawi has quite passed into oblivion. For long the Ash`arites and the Mataridites formed rival orthodox schools of kalam, and al-Mataridi’s system still has a certain vogue amongst Turkish Muslims, but the Ash`arite system is that which commands the widest assent. Theologians reckon thirteen points of difference between the two schools, all of purely theoretical importance. Al-Ash`ari was born at Basra in 260 or 270, and died at Baghdad about 330 or 340. At first he was an adherent of the Mu`tazilites, but one Friday in A.H. 300 he made a public renunciation of the views of that party, and took up a definitely orthodox position; in the pulpit of the great mosque at Basra[Pg 212] he said, “They who know me know who I am; as for those who do not know me, I am `Ali b. Isma`il al-Ash`ari, and I used to hold that the Qur´an was created, that the eyes of men shall not see God, and that we ourselves are the authors of our evil deeds; now I have returned to the truth; I renounce these opinions, and I take the engagement to refute the Mu`tazilites and expose their infamy and turpitude” (Ibn Khallikan, ii. 228). From this it will be perceived that the doctrines then regarded as characteristic of the Mu`tazilites were (i.) that the Qur´an was created, (ii.) the denial of the possibility of the beatific vision, and (iii.) the freedom of the will. In the period after this change al-Ash`ari wrote a controversial work against the Mu`tazilites, which bears the name Kitab ash-Sharh wa-t-Tafsil, “the book of explanation and exposition”; he was the author also of religious treatises called Luma “flashes,” Mujaz “abridgment,” Idah al-Burhan “elucidation of the Burhan,” and Tabiyin “illustrations.” His real importance, however, lay in founding a school of orthodox scholasticism, afterwards more fully developed by al-Baqilani, and gradually spreading through the Muslim world, although strongly opposed on the one side by the falasifah, who saw in its teaching the introduction of traditional beliefs limiting and restricting the Aristotelian doctrine, and on the other side by the more reactionary orthodox, who disapproved the use of philosophical methods as applied to theological subjects. This use of philoso[Pg 213]phy in the explanation and defence of religion came to be known as kalam, and those who employed it were called mutakallamin. In dealing with the old problems of Muslim theology, such as the eternity of the Qur´an, the freedom of the will, etc., the Ash`arites do seem to have produced a reasonable statement of doctrine, which yet safeguarded the main demands of orthodoxy. (a) As to the Qur´an they held that it was eternal in God, but its expression in words and syllables was created in time. This does not of course mean that the expression was due to the Prophet to whom it was revealed, but to God, so that the doctrine of literal inspiration was asserted in the strictest form. Nor was it thus created when it was revealed, but long before in remote ages when it was first uttered to the angels and “august beings,” and was afterwards disclosed by the angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad. This, which is now the orthodox belief, has furnished an opportunity for controversy to Christians and modern rationalists, who have fixed upon the use of particular words, introduced into Arabic as loan words from Syriac, Persian, and Greek, and appear in the Qur´an: how, they ask, can it be explained that words revealed at a remote period of past eternity, long before the creation of the world, as it is commonly asserted, show the influence of foreign languages which were brought to bear upon Arabic in the 7th cent. A.D.? and Muslim apologists, who have always maintained the absolute[Pg 214] purity of Qur´anic Arabic as one of the evidences of Divine origin, seem to regard this as a serious difficulty. The view that the Qur´an is eternal in substance, and thus in substance revealed to the Prophet, who was left to express it in his own words, which would thereby show the limitations of his time, is not admitted by the orthodox. It will be noted also that the Ash`arite teaching evades and does not answer an old difficulty: if the substance of the Qur´an is the wisdom of God and is co-eternal with Him, even though emanating from Him, we have something other than God, namely, His wisdom, eternally existing with Him, and this can be represented as parallel with the persons of the Christian Trinity, so as to be inconsistent with the absolute unity of God. (b) This brings us to the attributes of God generally. The Ash`arites in this controversy side with the traditional school against the philosophers. Of the ten Aristotelian categories they regard only two—existence, i.e., ens, and quality as objectively real; the other eight are merely relative characteristics (i´tibar) subjective in the mind of the knower, and having no objective reality. God has qualities—indeed, no less than twenty are enumerated, but amongst these is mukhalafa, which is the quality of uniqueness in qualification, so that the qualities and attributes ascribed to God must either be such as cannot be applied to men, or else, if the terms can be used of created beings, they must have quite[Pg 215] different meanings when applied to God, and these qualities thus signified must be such as could not be predicated of men or of any other created being. Thus, that God has power and wisdom means that He is almighty and omniscient in a way which could not possibly be stated of any men. In practice this works so that no attribute can be applied to God unless it is expressly so applied in the text of the Qur´an; if it occurs there it may be used, but must be understood as having a meaning other than such a term would have when used in the normal way of men. It cannot be that God’s attributes differ from those of men only in degree, as that He is wiser and more powerful than man, but they differ in their whole nature. It is noted also that God is qiyam bi-n-nafs, or “subsisting in Himself,” that is to say, independent of any other than Himself, and so God’s knowledge does not depend on the existence or nature of the thing known. (c) As to freedom of the will. God creates power in the man and creates also the choice, and He then creates the act corresponding to this power and choice. Thus the action is “acquired” by the creature. Of the categories existence is the first substratum, and to this the other predicables are added: none of these others are separable or per se, they can only exist in the essence. It is admitted that such qualities exist in the ens, but they are only adjuncts which come into being with the ens and go out of existence[Pg 216] with it. Therefore the world consists of entia or substances on which the mind reflects the qualities which are not in the thing itself but only in the mind. Against the Aristotelian theory that matter suffers the impress of form, he argues that all impress is subjective in the mind: if all qualities fall out substance itself ceases to exist, and so substance is not permanent but transitory, which opposes the Aristotelian doctrine of the eternity of matter. The substances perceived by us are atoms which come into existence from vacuity and drop out of existence again. Thus, when a body moves from one position to another the atoms in the first position cease to be, and a group of new similar atoms come into existence in the second position, so that movement involves a series of annihilations and creations. The cause of these changes is God, the only permanent and absolute reality. There is no secondary cause, as there are no laws of nature; in every case God acts directly upon each atom. Thus, fire does not cause burning, but God creates a being burned when fire touches a body, and the burning is directly His work. So in the freedom of the will, as, for example, when a man writes, God gives the will to write and causes the apparent motion of the pen and of the hand, and also directly creates the writing which seems to proceed from the pen. Existence is the very self of the thing. This is peculiar to al-Ash`ari and his followers: all others hold existence to be the state (hāl) necessary to the[Pg 217] essence, but in al-Ash`ari it is the essence. So God exists, and His existence is the self (`ayn) of His essence. Such a system involves ethical difficulties; it appears that there can be no responsibility if there is no connection between action and the act done. Al-Ash`ari replied that there is a unity in the will of God, so that cause and effect are not isolated as though independent atoms, but all is disposed according to a Divine plan. This answer, however, can hardly be regarded as adequate. This system is an attempt to deal with the difficulties raised by philosophy, but al-Ash`ari considers it preferable that the difficulties should never be raised, and so strongly urges that the mysteries of philosophy should never be discussed with the multitude. We shall see the same conclusion set forth by the later philosopher of the West, but on a somewhat different ground; they regarded the mysteries of philosophy as containing the supreme truth, for which the multitude was not ripe, and so they should not be discussed publicly, as the people were not able to understand; but al-Ash`ari seems rather to regard these mysteries as likely to be not edifying, as introducing questions which are of small importance compared with the great truths of revelation. The Ash`arite system thus described was completed by al-Baqilani (d. 403), but it did not become general until it was popularised by al-Ghazali in the East and by Ibn Tumart in the West. [Pg 218] Al-Mataridi, of Samarqand was a contemporary of al-Ash`ari, and reached very similar results. Amongst the points peculiar to al-Mataridi we may note (a) the attribute of creating has been an attribute of God from all eternity, but this attribute is distinct from the thing created; (b) Creatures have certain choice of action, and for the things done by this choice they are rewarded or punished; good actions are only done by the pleasure (rida) of God, but bad actions are not always by His pleasure; (c) Ability to do the action goes with the will and the act, so that the creature cannot have an action imposed on him as a task which is not in his power. He agrees with al-Ash`ari in holding that the world and all it contains have been created by God from nothing: it consists of substances and attributes. The substances exist in themselves, either as compounds, such as bodies, or as non-compounds, as essences which are indivisible. Attributes have no separate existence, but depend for their existence on bodies or essences. God is not essence, nor attribute, nor body, nor anything formed, bounded, numbered, limited, nor compounded. He cannot be described by mahiya (quiddity), nor kayfiya (modality); He does not exist in time or place, and nothing resembles Him or is outside His knowledge or power. He has qualities from all eternity existing in His essence; they are not He nor is He other than they. For some time the Ash`arites had to meet keen opposition and even persecution, and it was not until[Pg 219] the middle of the 5th cent. that they came to be admitted generally as orthodox Muslims. Their triumph was assured in 459 A.H., when Nizam al-Mulk, the wazir of Alp Arslan, founded at Baghdad the Nizamite academy as a theological college of Ash`arite teaching. Still the Hanbalites raised occasional riots, and demonstrated against those whom they regarded as free thinkers; but these were put down by authority, and in 516 the Khalif himself attended the Ash`arite lectures. The Mu`tazilites were now merely a survival; as broad church theologians they had fallen into general disrepute in the eyes of the orthodox, and they were equally disliked by the philosophers as defective in their adherence to the Aristotelian system. The educated fell now into three broad groups: on the one hand were the orthodox, who came under the influence of al-Ash`ari or al-Mataridi; on the other were those who accepted the doctrines of the philosophers, and in the third place were those who rejected all philosophy, and confined their attention solely to Qur´an tradition and the canon law, and who should not be excluded from the ranks of the educated, although their studies ran in somewhat narrow lines. The final triumph of the Ash`arite theology was the work of al-Ghazali (d. 505). He was born at Tus in 450 (= 1058 A.D.); early left an orphan he was educated by a Sufi friend, and then attended the school at Naisabur. As his education progressed he cut loose from Sufi influence and became an Ash`arite,[Pg 220] and in 484 he was appointed president of the Nazimite Academy at Baghdad. Gradually, however, he became a prey to spiritual unrest, and in 488 resigned his post and retired to Syria, where he spent some years in study and the practices of devotion. In 499 he returned to active work as a teacher in the Nazimite Academy at Naisabur, where he became the leader of a modified Ash`arite system strongly leavened by mysticism, which we may regard as the final evolution of orthodox Muslim theology. Al-Ghazali, following al-Ash`ari, taught that philosophical theory cannot form the basis of religious thought, thus opposing the position of the philosophers. By revelation only can the primary essentials of truth be attained. Philosophy itself is no equal or rival of revelation: it is no more than common sense and regulated thinking, which may be employed by men about religion or any other subject; at best it acts as a preservative against error in deduction and argument, the primary material for which, so far as religion is concerned, can be furnished only by revelation. But against this he appears also as the transmitter of the teaching already given, by al-Qushayri, which introduced the mysticism of the Sufis into orthodox Islam. Revelation indeed is given by means of the Qur´an and tradition, and it is sufficient to accept what is thus revealed, but the ultimate truth of revelation can be tested and proved only by the experience of the individual. So far as men are concerned this is possible by means[Pg 221] of ecstasy whereby one becomes a knower (`arif), and receives assurance and enlightenment by direct communication from God. The soul of man differs from all other created things; it is essentially spiritual, and so outside the categories which are applicable only to material things. The soul has been breathed into man by God (Qur. 15, 29; 38, 72), and this is comparable to the way in which the sun sends out its rays and gives warmth to those things on which its rays rest. The soul, which has no dimension, shape, or locus, rules the body in the same way as God rules the world, so that the body is a microcosm reproducing the conditions of the world. The essential element of this soul is not the intelligence which is concerned with the bodily frame, but the will: just as God is primarily known not as thought or intelligence, but as the volition which is the cause of creation. Thus God cannot be considered as the spirit animating the world, which is the pantheistic position, but as volition outside the world which has willed it to be. The aim of scholastic theology is to preserve the purity of orthodox belief from heretical innovation: “God raised up a school of theologians and inspired them with the desire to defend orthodoxy by means of a system of proofs adapted to unveil the devices of the heretics and to foil the attacks which they made on the doctrines established by tradition” (Al-Ghazali: Confessions). Aristotle himself was an unbeliever using arguments he should not, but, in[Pg 222] spite of his errors, his teaching as expounded by al-Farabi and Ibn Sina is the system of thought which comes nearest to Islam (id.). Because of its unavoidable difficulties and the grave errors contained in Aristotle and his Arabic commentators men are not to be encouraged to read philosophy (id.). There are three different worlds or planes of existence (i.) the `alam al-mulk is that in which existence is apparent to the senses, the world made known by perception, and this is in a state of constant change; (ii.) the `alam al-malakut, the changeless and eternal world of reality established by God’s decree, of which the world of perception is but the reflexion; (iii.) and the `alam al-jarabut or intermediate state, which properly belongs to the world of reality, but seems to be in the plane of perception. In this intermediate state is the human soul, which belongs to the plane of reality, though apparently projected into the perceptible plane to which it does not belong, and then returns to reality. The pen, tablet, etc., mentioned in the Qur´an are not mere allegories; they belong to the world of reality, and so are something other than what we see in this world of perception. These three worlds or planes are not separate in time or space, they are rather to be considered as modes of existence. The theories of the astronomers as to movements of the heavenly bodies are to be accepted—al-Ghazali adhered, of course, to the Ptolemaic system—but these deal only with the lowest plane, the world of sense.[Pg 223] Behind all nature is God, who is on the plane of reality. This higher plane cannot be reached by reason or intellect, whose operations must rely on the evidence of sense perception. To reach the plane of reality man must be raised by a spiritual faculty, “by which he perceives invisible things, the secrets of the future and other concepts as inaccessible to reason as the concepts of reason are inaccessible to mere discrimination and what is perceived by discrimination of the senses” (op. cit.). Inspiration means the disclosing of realities to the prophets or saints, and these realities can only be known by such revelation or by the personal experience of ecstasy by which the soul is raised to the plane of reality. Not only are the religious truths in the Qur´an revealed, but all ideas of good and evil are similarly revealed, and could not be attained by the unaided use of reason, a view which is obviously intended to refute the Mu`tazilite claim that moral differences can be perceived by reason. The philosophers also have attained truths by revelation, and the main substance of medicine and astronomy is based on such revelation (op. cit.). Unlike Ibn Rushd, al-Ghazali thus emphasizes supra-rational intuition attained in a state of ecstasy, whereby the soul is raised above the world of shadow and reflection to the plane of reality. This was pure mysticism, and thus al-Ghazali introduces a Sufi element into orthodox Islam. At the same time he reduced Sufism to a scientific form, and endorsed[Pg 224] the Plotinian terminology. Macdonald summarises his work under four heads: (i.) he established an orthodox mysticism; (ii.) he popularised the use of philosophy; (iii.) he rendered philosophy subordinate to theology, and (iv.) he restored the fear of God when the element of fear was tending to be thrust into the background, at least by the educated. From this time on the term kalam was usually applied to philosophy adapted to the use of theologians. The chief works left by al-Ghazali are the Ihya `Ulum ad-Din, of which it is understood that a translation by H. Bauer is in preparation, and the Mi´yar al-`Ilm, a treatise on logic. To posterity, however, he is best known by his Confessions, an autobiographical account of his spiritual life and development, which may not unfitly be placed beside the Confessions of St. Augustine. Al-Ghazali completes the development of orthodox Muslim theology. From this time forth it ceased to have any originality, and for the most part showed signs of decadence. Here and there we find Sufi revivals; indeed, Sufism is the only phase of Islam which kept free from the rigid conservatism which has laid its iron hand of repression upon Muslim life and thought generally. In Yemen the system of al-Ghazali was kept alive by generations of Sufis, but for the most part Sufism preferred less orthodox paths. Against these Sufi movements we see from time to time others of a distinctly reactionary character, such as that of the Wahabis, who opposed[Pg 225] the theology of al-Ghazali when it was generally recognised as the orthodox teaching at Mecca, and in this they were followed by the Sanusi. Sayyid Murtada (d. 1205 A.H. = 1788 A.D.), a native of Zabid in Yihama, wrote a commentary on al-Ghazali’s Ihya `Ulum ad-Din, and thus revived the study of the great scholastic theologian. From that time the Islamic community has not lacked neo-Ghazalian students, and many consider that that school contains the best promise for modern Islam. CHAPTER IX WESTERN PHILOSOPHY Muslim rule in North Africa west of the Nile valley was commenced under conditions very different from those prevailing in Egypt and Syria. The Arabs found this land occupied by the Berbers or Libyans, the same race which from the time of the earliest Pharaohs had been a perpetual menace to Egypt, and which, on the Mediterranean seaboard, had offered a serious problem to Phœnician, Greek, Roman and Gothic colonists. For some thousands of years these Berbers had remained very much the same as when they had emerged from the neolithic stage, and were hardy desert men like the Arabs in pre-Islamic times. Their language was not Semitic, but shows very marked Semitic affinities, and, although language transmission is often quite distinct from racial descent, it seems probable that in this case there was a parallel, and this is best explained by supposing that both were derived from the neolithic race which at one time spread along the whole of the south coast of the Mediterranean and across into Arabia, but that some cause, perhaps the early development of civilization in the Nile valley, had cut off the eastern wing from the rest, and this segregated portion[Pg 227] developed the peculiar characteristics which we describe as Semitic. The series of Greek, Punic, Roman, and Gothic settlements had left no permanent mark on the Berber population, on their language, or on their culture. At the time of the Arab invasion the country was theoretically under the Byzantine Empire, and the invading Arabs had to meet the resistance of a Greek army; but this was not a very serious obstacle, and the invaders were soon left face to face with the Berber tribes. The Muslim invasion of North Africa followed immediately after the invasion of Egypt, but the internal disputes of the Muslim community prevented a regular conquest. It was not until a second invasion took place in A.H. 45 (= A.D. 665) that we can regard the Arabs as commencing the regular conquest and settlement of the country. For centuries afterwards the Arab control was precarious in the extreme, revolts were constantly taking place, and many Berber states were founded, some of which had an existence of considerable duration. As a rule there was a pronounced racial feeling between Berbers and Arabs, but there were also tribal feuds, and Arab policy generally aimed at playing off one powerful tribe against another. Gradually the Arabs spread all along North Africa and down to the desert edge, their tribes as a rule occupying the lower ground, whilst the older population had its chief centres in the mountainous districts. During the invasion of 45 the city of Kairawan was founded[Pg 228] some distance south of Tunis. The site was badly chosen, and is now marked only by ruins and a scanty village, but for some centuries it served as the capital city of Ifrikiya, which was the name given to the province lying next to Egypt, embracing the modern states of Tripoli, Tunis, and the eastern part of Algeria up to the meridian of Bougie. West of this lay Maghrab, or the “western land,” which was divided into two districts, Central Maghrab extending from the borders of Ifrikiya across the greater part of Algeria and the eastern third of Morocco, and Further Maghrab, which spread beyond to the Atlantic coast. In these provinces Arabs and Berbers lived side by side, but in distinct tribes, the intercourse between the two varying in different localities and at different times. For the most part each race preserved its own language, the several Arabic dialects being distinguished by archaic forms and a phonology somewhat modified by Berber influences; but there are instances of Berber tribes which have adopted Arabic, and some of the Arab and mixed groups have preferred the Berber language. The religion of Islam spread rapidly amongst the Berbers, but it took a particular development, which shows a survival of many pre-Islamic religious ideas. The worship of saints and the devotion paid at their tombs is a corruption which appears elsewhere, on lines quite distinct from the Asiatic beliefs as to incarnation or transmigration, and in the west this saint worship takes an extreme form, although[Pg 229] here and there are tribes which reject it altogether, as is the case with the B. Messara, the Ida of South Morocco, etc. Pilgrimages (ziara) are made to saints’ tombs, commemorative banquets are held there (wa´da or ta´an), and acts of worship, often taking a revolting form, are paid to living saints, who are known as murabits or marabouts, a word which literally means “those who serve in frontier forts (ribat),” where the soldiers were accustomed to devote themselves to practices of piety. These saints are also known as sidi (lords), or mulaye (teachers), and in the Berber language of the Twaregs as aneslem, or “Islamic.” Very often they are insane persons, and are allowed to indulge every passion and to disregard the ordinary laws of morality. Even those living at the present day are credited with miraculous powers, not only with gifts of healing, but with exemption from the limitations of space and from the laws of gravity (cf. Trumelet: Les saints de l’islam, Paris, 1881); in many cases the same saint has two or more tombs, and is believed to be buried in each, for it is argued that, as he was able to be in two or more places at once during life, so his body can be in several tombs after death. All this, of course, is no normal development of Islam, to which it is plainly repugnant. How thin a veneer of Muslim usages covers over a mass of primitive animism may be seen from Dr. Westermarck’s essay on “Belief in spirits in Morocco,” the firstfruits of the newly established Academy at Abo in Finland (Humaniora.[Pg 230] I. i. Abo, Finland, 1920), and from Dr. Montet’s Le culte des saints musulmans dans l’Afrique du nord (Geneva, 1905). Amongst the Berber tribes in perpetual conflict with the Arab garrisons there was always a refuge and a welcome for the lost causes of Islam, and so almost every heretical sect and every defeated dynasty made its last stand there, so that even now those parts show the strangest survivals of otherwise forgotten movements. No doubt this was mainly due to a perennial tone of disaffection towards the Arab rulers, and anyone in revolt against the Khalif was welcomed for that very fact. The conquest of Spain towards the end of the 1st cent. A.H. (early 8th cent. A.D.) was jointly an Arab and Berber undertaking, the Berbers being in the great majority in the invading army, and most of the leaders being Berber. Thus in Andalusia the old rivalries between Arab and Berber figure largely in the next few centuries. At first Andalusia was regarded merely as a district attached to the province of North Africa, and was ruled from Ifrikiya. In A.H. 138, after the fall of the Umayyads in Asia, a fugitive member of the fallen dynasty, `Abdu r-Rahman, failing in an attempt to restore his family in Africa, crossed over to Spain, and there established a new and independent power, with its seat of government at Cordova, and in A.H. 317 one of his descendants formally assumed the title of “Commander of the Faithful.” The Umayyads of[Pg 231] Spain very closely reproduced the general characteristics of their rule in Syria. They were tolerant, and made free use of Christian and Jewish officials; they encouraged the older literary arts, and especially poetry, and employed Greek artists and architects; but though doing much for the more material elements of culture, there is no evidence under their rule of any interest in Greek learning or philosophy. Yet, though in a sense old-fashioned, the country was by no means isolated, and we find frequent intercourse between Spain and the east. The religious duty of the pilgrimage has always been an important factor in promoting the common life of Islam, and there is abundant evidence that the Spanish Muslims looked steadily eastwards for religious guidance, accepting the hadith, the canon law, and the development of a scientific jurisprudence as it took shape in the east. Both Muslims and Jews travelled to Mesopotamia in order to complete their education, and thus kept in contact with the more cultured life of Asia. But Spanish Islam had no feeling of sympathy with the philosophical speculation popular in the east, and certainly disapproved the latitudinarian developments which were taking place under the `Abbasids of the third century: its tendency was to a rigid orthodoxy and strict conservatism, its interests were confined to the canon law, Qur´anic exegesis, and the study of tradition. The reactionary character of Spanish Islam is well illustrated by Ibn Hazm (d. 456 A.H.), the first[Pg 232] important theologian which it produced. Rejecting the four recognised and orthodox schools of canon law, and discarding even the rigid system of Ibn Hanbal as not strict enough, he became an adherent of the school founded by Da´ud az-Zahiri (d. 270), which has never been admitted as on the same footing as the other four, and now is totally extinct. In the teaching of that school Qur´an and tradition were taken in their strictest and most literal sense; any sort of deduction by analogy was forbidden; “it is evident that here we have to do with an impossible man and school, and so the Muslim world found. Most said roundly that it was illegal to appoint a Zahirite to act as judge, on much the same grounds that objection to circumstantial evidence will throw out a man now as juror. If they had been using modern language, they would have said that it was because he was a hopeless crank.” (Macdonald: Muslim Theology, p. 110). This was the system which Ibn Hazm now introduced into Spain, and it was one calculated to appeal to the stern puritan strain which undoubtedly exists in the Iberian character. The novel point was that Ibn Hazm applied the principles and methods of jurisprudence to theology proper. Like Da´ud he entirely rejected the principles of analogy and taqlid, that is, the following of authority in the sense of accepting the dictum of a known teacher. As this undermined all existing systems, and required every man to study Qur´an and tradition for himself, it did not receive the approval[Pg 233] of the canonists, who, in Spain as elsewhere, were the followers of recognised schools, such as that of Abu Hanifa and the other orthodox systems, and it was not until a full century afterwards that he gained any number of adherents. In theology he admitted the Ash`arite doctrine of mukhalafa, the difference of God from all created beings, so that human attributes could not be applied to him in the same sense as they were used of men; but he carried this a stage further, and opposed the Ash`arites, who, though admitting the difference, had then argued about the attributes of God as though they described God’s nature, when the very fact of difference deprives them of any meaning intelligible to us. As in the Qur´an ninety-nine descriptive titles are applied to God we may lawfully employ them, but we neither know what they imply nor can we argue anything from them. The same method is applied to the treatment of the anthropomorphical expressions which are applied to God in the Qur´an; we may use those expressions, but we have not the slightest idea of what they may indicate, save that we know they do not mean what they would mean as used of men. In ethics the only distinction between good and evil is based on God’s will, and our only knowledge of that distinction is obtained from revelation. If God forbids theft it is wrong only because God forbids it; there is no standard other than the arbitrary approval or disapproval of God. Although it took a century for these views to[Pg 234] obtain any number of adherents, Ibn Hazm was no obscure figure during his lifetime. He became prominent as a violent and abusive controversialist, an opponent of the Ash`arite party and of the Mu`tazilites, curiously enough treating the latter more gently as having limited God’s qualities. Ibn Hazm lived at a time when the Umayyads of Cordova were already in their decay, and in 422 the dynasty fell. Very soon the whole of Andalusia was split into a number of independent principalities, and this was followed by a period of anarchy, during which the country was exposed more and more to Christian attacks, until at length Mu`tamid, King of Seville, fearing that the Muslim states would disappear altogether under the tide of Christian conquest, advised his co-religionists to appeal for help to the Murabit power in Morocco, which, with much misgiving, they did. The Murabits, the name is that commonly applied to saints in Morocco, were the product of a religious revival led by Yahya b. Ibrahim of the clan of the Jidala, a branch of the great Berber tribe of Latuna, one of those light-complexioned Berber races such as can still be seen in Algeria, and are apparently nearest akin to the Lebu as they are represented in ancient Egyptian paintings. In 428 (= 1036 A.D.) Yahya performed the pilgrimage to Mecca, and was astonished and delighted at the evidences of culture and prosperity which he saw in the lands through which he travelled, so far exceeding anything which had[Pg 235] previously entered his experience. On his return journey he stopped at Kairawan and became a hearer at the lectures given there by Abu Amran. The lecturer was greatly struck by the diligence and attention of his pupil, and greatly surprised when he discovered that he was a product of one of the wild and barbarous tribes of the far west. But when Yahya asked that one of the alumni of Kairawan might be sent home with him to teach his fellow-tribesmen no one was found willing to venture amongst a people who were generally regarded as fierce and savage, until at last the task was undertaken by Abdullah ibn Jahsim. Helped by his companion Yahya commenced a religious revival amongst the Berbers of the West, and seems to have modelled his work on the example of the Prophet, by force of arms urging his reforms upon the neighbouring tribes and laying the foundation of a united kingdom, a work which was continued by his successor, Yusuf b. Tashfin, and so at length a powerful kingdom was established, which extended from the Mediterranean to the Senegal. Many such Berber states were established at various times, but, as a rule, they fell into decay after a couple of generations. Yusuf b. Tashfin was the champion now invited by the Muslims of Spain, not without misgivings in many quarters, but the choice seemed to lie only between Christian or Berber, and the Berbers were at least of their own religion and of the same race as the majority of the Spanish Muslims. Yusuf came[Pg 236] as a helper, but a second time invited he stayed on and established his authority over the country, and thus Spain became a province under the rule of the Murabit princes of Morocco. Yusuf was succeeded by `Ali, who was successful in restraining the Christians, and at one time even formed plans to drive them out of Spain altogether. Murabit rule, which lasted 35 years, brought many changes and itself experienced many changes. The rulers were rough men of uncouth manners and fanatical outlook. Not many years before, it will be remembered, the Arabs of Kairawan were reluctant to venture into their land, such was their ill repute. They were partially humanised by a religious movement, and thus naturally show a religious character which bordered on fanaticism. `Ali himself was entirely in the hands of the faqirs or mendicant devotees and qadis, and the government was liable to interference from these irresponsible fanatics at every turn. It was a state of affairs which awakened the impatience of the cultured Muslims of Spain, who expressed their feelings in many caustic epigrams and satirical poems. But very soon a change began to work. The Murabits and their followers did not become less attached to the devotees, who swarmed unchecked on every side and received idolatrous attentions from the multitude, but they learned the luxuries and refinements of the cultured life then prevailing in Spain and showed themselves apt pupils. Indeed, their downfall may be explained either as due to effete luxury or to[Pg 237] faqir-ridden superstition, as we shall see later on. The intellectual life of Muslim Spain up to the Murabit period was conservative rather than backward. Its literary men were nearer the old traditional Arab type than was the case in the eastern Khalifate, where Persian influences had pushed the Arab so much into the background; its scholars were still occupied exclusively with the traditional sciences, exegesis, canon law, and traditions. The Murabit invasion offered a stimulus to satirical verse, but otherwise did nothing to promote either literature or science. Yet it is under Murabit rule that we find the first beginnings of western philosophy, and the line of transmission is from the Mu`tazilites of Baghdad through the Jews and thence to the Muslims of Spain. The Jews act as intermediaries who bring the Muslim philosophy of Asia into contact with the Muslims of Spain. For a long time the Jews had taken no part in the development of Hellenistic philosophy, although in the latter Syriac period they had participated in medical studies and in natural science, of which we have seen evidence in the important work of Jewish physicians and scientists at Baghdad under al-Ma´mun and the early `Abbasids. Outside medicine and natural science Jewish interest seems to have been mainly confined to Biblical exegesis, tradition, and canon law. One of the few exceptions to this restriction of interests was Sa`id al-Fayyumi or Saadya ben Joseph[Pg 238] (d. 331 A.H. = 942 A.D.), a native of Upper Egypt, who became one of the Geonim of the academy at Sora on the Euphrates, and is best known as the translator of the Old Testament into Arabic, which had now replaced Aramaic as the speech of the Jews both in Asia and in Spain. As an author his most important work was the Kitab al-Amanat wa-l-´Itiqadat, or “Book of the articles of faith and dogmatics,” which was finished in 321-2 (= A.D. 933), and was afterwards translated into Hebrew as Sefer Emunot we-De´ot by Judah b. Tibbon. He was the author also of a commentary on the Pentateuch, of which only a portion (on Exod. 30, 11-16) survives, as well as other works; but it is in the first-named and in the commentary that his views appear most clearly. For the first time a Jewish writer shows familiarity with the problems raised by the Mu`tazilites, and gives these a serious attention from the Jewish stand-point. It does not seem, however, that we should class Sa`id as a Mu`tazilite; he more properly represents the movement which produced his Muslim contemporaries, al-Ash`ari and al-Mataridi, that is to say, he is one of those who use orthodox kalam and adapt philosophy to apologetic purposes. His position is shown most clearly in the “Book of the articles of faith and dogmatics” in dealing with the three problems of (a) creation, (b) the Divine Unity, and (c) free will. In the first of these he defends the doctrine of a creation ex nihilo, but in giving proofs of the necessity of a creator he shows in three out of[Pg 239] the four arguments employed distinct traces of Aristotelian influences. In treating the doctrine of the Divine Unity he is chiefly concerned with opposing the Christian teaching of the Trinity, but incidentally is compelled to deal with the idea of God and the Divine attributes, and in doing so maintains that none of the Aristotelian categories can be applied to God. As to the human will he defends its freedom, and his task is mainly an effort to reconcile this with the omnipotence and omniscience of God. In the fragment on Exodus he refers to the commands of revelation and the commands of reason, these latter, he asserts, being based on philosophical speculation. Evidently the Mutakallamin movement, professedly an orthodox reaction from the Mu`tazilites, represents a great widening of philosophical influences. Philosophy was no longer a subject confined to one group of scholars who were interested in Greek writings, but had spread out until it reached the mosques, and could no longer be thrust aside as an heretical aberration, and in its outspread it had penetrated the Jewish schools as well. But Sa`id produced no immediate disciples, and those who followed him in the Jewish academies of Mesopotamia showed no interest in his methods. Yet his work, apparently barren, was destined to have results of the widest importance after a century’s interval. In spite of distance and the difficulties of travel there was a very close and frequent intercourse maintained between all the Jews of the Sefardi group, those,[Pg 240] namely, who had adopted Arabic as their ordinary speech and who were living under Muslim rule. The Ashkenazi Jews in the north and centre of Europe who lived in Christian lands and did not use Arabic were definitely separated from these others by the barrier of language, and thus in different surroundings the two groups developed marked differences in their use of Hebrew, in their liturgical formularies, and in their popular beliefs and folk-lore. Thus we must bear in mind that a synagogue in Spain would naturally be in close touch with synagogues in Mesopotamia, but it was not likely to have any contact with one in the Rhine valley. Although the earlier Jewish settlers in Spain and Provence had enjoyed considerable freedom, restrictions had been imposed by the council of Elvira (A.D. 303-4), and they had to suffer considerable severity under the later West Goths. The coming of the Muslims had greatly eased their position, chiefly because the Jews had taken a leading part in assisting and probably in inviting the invaders; they often furnished garrisons to occupy towns which the Muslims had conquered, and were the means of supplying them with information as to the enemy’s movements. It seems probable that they had been in correspondence with the Muslims beforehand, so that they shared with Witiza’s partisans the responsibility of inviting the invasion. Under Umayyad rule their prosperity continued and increased. Very often we find Jews occupying high[Pg 241] positions at court and in the civil service, and these favorable conditions seem to have prevailed until the time of the Muwahhids, for it does not appear that the Murabits, for all their fanaticism, took any measures against Christians or Jews. Important amongst the Jews of the Umayyad period was Hasdai ben Shabrut (d. 360 or 380 A.H.), a physician under `Abdu r-Rahman, who sent presents to Sora and Pumbaditha, and carried on a correspondence with Dosa, son of the Gaon Sa`id al-Fayyumi. Hitherto it had been the custom for the western Jews to refer all difficult problems of the canon law to the learned of the academies in Mesopotamia, just as their Muslim neighbours referred to the East for guidance in jurisprudence and theology. But Hasdai took advantage of the accidental presence of Moses Ben Enoch in Cordova to found a native Spanish academy for rabbinical studies there, and appointed Moses its president, a step which received the warm approval of the Umayyad prince. This turned out to be more important than its founder had anticipated; it was not merely a provincial school reproducing the work of the eastern academies, but resulted in the transference of Jewish scholarship to Spain. At that time Asiatic Islam was beginning to feel the restricting power of the orthodox reaction, whilst Spain, on the other hand, saw the opening of a golden age. Shortly before this date the Umayyad Hakim II. had been working to encourage Muslim scholarship in the west, and had sent his agents to purchase books[Pg 242] in Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, and Alexandria. In the reactionary age of Mahmud of Ghazna (388-421) Muslim b. Muhammad al-Andalusi had been instrumental in introducing the teachings of the “Brethren of Purity” to the Muslims of Spain. We cannot say that the Jews anticipated the Muslims of Spain in their study of philosophy, but it is clear that the Jews were associated with the first dawn of the new learning in Spain, and thus as the sun was setting in the East a new day was beginning to break in the West. The first leader of Spanish philosophy was the Jew Abu Ayyub Sulayman b. Yahya b. Jabirul (d. 450 A.H. = 1058 A.D.), commonly known as Ibn Gabirol (Jabirul), and hence “Avencebrol” in the Latin scholastic writers. He is chiefly known as the author of Maqor Chayim, “The Fountain of Life,” a title based on the words of Psalm 36, 10, which was one of the works translated into Latin at the college of Toledo and so well known to the scholastic writers as the Fons Vitae (ed. Baumer: Avencebrolis Fons Vitae, Münster, 1895). It was this work which really introduced neo-Platonism to the West. Ibn Jabirul teaches that God alone is pure reality, and He is the only actual substance; He has no attributes, but in Him are will and wisdom, not as possessed attributes but as aspects of His nature. The world is produced by the impress of form upon pre-existing universal matter. “Separate substances” in the sense of ideas abstracted from the things in which they exist (cf. Aristot. de anima. iii. 7, 8, “and so the mind when[Pg 243] it thinks of mathematical forms thinks of them as separated, though they are not separated”) do not exist apart in reality; the abstracting is only a mental process, so the general idea exists only as a concept, not as a reality. But between the purely spiritual being of God and the crudely material observed in the bodies existing in this world are intermediate forms of existence, such as angels, souls, etc., wherein the form is not impressed upon matter. Besides this “Fountain of Life” Ibn Gabirol was the author of two ethical treatises, the Tikkun Midwoth han-Nefesh, “the correction of the manners of the soul,” in which man is treated as a microcosm after the kabbalistic fashion; and Mibchar hap-Peninim, a collection of ethical maxims collected from the Greek and Arabic philosophers. The former has been published at Luneville in 1804, the latter at Hamburg in 1844. At the beginning of the sixth century A.H., a younger contemporary of al-Ghazali, we have Abu Bakr ibn Bajja (d. 533 A.H. = 1138 A.D.), the first of the Muslim philosophers of Spain. By this time, some three-quarters of a century after the death of Ibn Sina, Arabic philosophy was almost extinct in Asia and was treated as a dangerous heresy. In Egypt, it is true, there was a greater degree of toleration, though less than in the golden age of the Fatimids, but Egypt was regarded with suspicion as the home of heresy and of forms of superstition which were uncongenial to the philosopher. Spain thus becomes the place[Pg 244] of refuge for Muslim philosophy as it had already become the nursery of Jewish speculation. Ibn Bajja, known to the Latin schoolmen as “Avempace,” found in Murabit Spain the freedom and toleration which Asia no longer afforded. He continues the work of al-Farabi, not, it will be noted, of Ibn Sina, and develops the neo-Platonic interpretation of Aristotle on sober and conservative lines. He wrote commentaries on Aristotle’s Physics, de generatione et corruptione, and the Meteora; he produced original works on mathematics, on “the soul,” and a treatise which he called “The Hermit’s Guide,” which was used by Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and by the Jewish writer Moses of Narbonne in the 14th cent. A.D. In this last work he makes a distinction between “animal activity,” in which action is due to the prompting of the emotions, passions, etc., and “human activity,” which is suggested and directed by abstract reason, and from this distinction draws a rule of life and conduct. He is chiefly cited by the Latin schoolmen with reference to the doctrine of “separate substances.” “Avempace held that, by the study of the speculative sciences, we are able by means of the images which we know from these ideas to attain to the knowledge of separate substances” (St. Thomas Aq. c. Gentiles, 3, 41). This question as to the possibility of knowing substances separated, i.e. abstracted, from the concrete bodies in which they exist in combination—and the “separate substances” were regarded as spiritual things—was prominent in[Pg 245] mediæval scholasticism, which inherited it from the Arabic philosophers, and from it came the further question whether the contemplation of such abstract ideas gives us a better knowledge of realities than observation of the concrete bodies. Both Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas associate Avempace especially with this question and with the doctrine of the “acquired intellect,” to which we have already referred in our notes on Ibn Sina, and which completes the theory of “separate substances” by supposing that intelligible forms stream into our souls from an outside Agent Intellect by way of emanation as substantial forms descend on corporeal matter. St. Thomas Aquinas shows direct knowledge of Avempace’s treatment of these subjects, but this is not so evident in Albertus. Avempace, like all other Arabic philosophers, describes ittisal or union of the human intellect with the Agent Intellect, of which it is an emanation, as the supreme beatitude and final end of human life. By the operation of the Agent Intellect on the latent intellect in man this is awakened to life, but eternal life consists in the complete union of the intellect with the Agent Intellect. In Avempace the Sufi strain is much weaker than in al-Farabi; the means of attaining this union is not by ecstasy, but by a steady disentangling of the soul of those material things which hinder its pure intellectual life and consequent union. This leads us to the teaching of asceticism as the discipline of the soul for its spiritual progress, and the ascetic and solitary life[Pg 246] is the ideal proposed by Avempace. This ascetic and contemplative hermit life is not, however, in any sense a religious life, for in this respect Avempace has advanced far beyond al-Farabi; he is fully conscious that pure philosophy cannot be reconciled with the teachings of revelation, a conviction which now marks the definite separation of the “philosophers” from the orthodox scholastics of Islam, such as al-Ghazali and his school; he regards the teachings of revelation as an imperfect presentation of the truths which are more completely and correctly learned from Aristotle, and only admits the Qur´an and its religion as a discipline for the multitude whose intelligence neither desires nor is capable of philosophical reasoning. Strangely enough he lived in security, protected from the attacks of hostile theologians, under the protection of the Murabit princes. Within a few years after the death of Avempace the Murabit dynasty came to an end. The succeeding dynasty, the Muwahhids, were of Berber origin like the Murabits, and, like them, had their origin in a religious revival. The foundation of the Muwahhids is associated with Ibn Tumart (d. 524 A.H. = 1129 A.D.). He was a native of Morocco, and a strange combination of fanatic and scholastic. He claimed to be a descendant of `Ali, and posed as the “Mahdi” possessing the supernatural grace of isma or “security from error,” and thus introduced Shi`ite ideas into Morocco;[Pg 247] and at the same time it was he who introduced to the West the orthodox scholasticism of al-Ghazali, although at the same time he professed to be a follower of Ibn Hazm. He travelled in Asia, where, no doubt, he learned of al-Ghazali and his doctrines. Roughly treated at Mecca he removed to Egypt, where he rendered himself prominent and objectionable by his puritanical criticisms on the manners of the people. Setting out from Alexandria in a ship travelling westwards he occupied himself with a reformation of the morals of the crew, compelling them to observe the correct hours of prayer and the other duties of religion. In 505 he appeared at Mahdiya, where he took up his abode in a wayside mosque. There he used to sit at the window watching the passers-by, and, whenever he saw any of them carrying a jar of wine or a musical instrument, he used to sally out and seize the offensive article and break it. The common people reverenced him as a saint, but many of the wealthier citizens resented his activities, and at length brought a complaint against him before the Emir Yahya. The Emir heard their complaints and observed Ibn Tumart and took note of the impression he had made upon the populace. With characteristic craft the Emir treated the reformer with all possible respect, but advised, nay rather urged, him to bestow the favour of his presence upon some other town as soon as convenient to him, and so he removed to Bijaiya (Bougie in Algeria). Here his ways were extremely unpopular, and he was driven away. He[Pg 248] next settled at Mellala, where he met a boy named `Abdu l-Mumin al-Kumi (d. 558), a potter’s son, whom he made his disciple and declared to be his successor. At this time the Murabit dynasty had fallen from its original puritanism and was distinguished for the wealth and luxury which had been made possible by the conquest of Spain, and the splendour and ostentation of the royal family at Morocco laid it open to criticism. One Friday a faqir entered the public square where a throne was made ready for the Emir, and, pushing his way through the guards who stood round, boldly took his seat upon the throne and refused to leave. It was the Mahdi Ibn Tumart, and, so great was the superstitious reverence accorded to all faqirs, and to him above all, that none of the guards standing round ventured to remove him by force. At length the Emir himself appeared and, finding who had occupied his official seat, declined to interfere with the redoubtable faqir’s will, but it was privately made plain to Ibn Tumart that it would be wise for him to leave the city for a while. The Mahdi therefore retired to Fez, but soon afterwards returned to Morocco. One day he met in the streets the Emir’s sister, who had adopted the shameless foreign custom of riding in public without a veil. The Mahdi stopped her and poured out a stream of abuse at her for this neglect of established custom, then, overcome by his indignation, he pulled her off the beast she was riding. He seems, however, to have felt some alarm at his own temerity[Pg 249] and fled forthwith to Tinamel, where he openly raised the standard of revolt against a corrupt and unfaithful dynasty. At first this rebellion did not meet with much success, but, after the Mahdi’s death, the leadership fell to his pupil, `Abdu l-Mumin, who took Oran, Tlemsen, Fez, Sale, Ceuta, and in 542 became master of Morocco, and in due course seized all the empire of the Murabits. The new dynasty established by `Abdu l-Mumin is known by the name of the Muwahhids or “Unitarians,” a title which the Spanish historians render by “Almohades,” and their rule endured until 667 A.H. (= 1268 A.D.). Ibn Tumart professed to be a follower of al-Ghazali, and introduced his system of orthodox scholasticism to the West. In canon law he followed the reactionary school of Da´ud az-Zahiri and Ibn Hazm, like the Murabits who preceded him. To the multitude he was the champion of Berber nationality; he translated the Qur´an into the Berber language, and caused the call to prayer to be made in Berber instead of Arabic. Muwahhid rule introduced a period of bigotry and of religious persecution. It was under the rule of this dynasty that we find the Jews leaving the country in large numbers and migrating to Africa or to Provence, and many Christians also fled to join the Castilian forces in the north. Modern historians tend to condemn the later severities of Christian rulers towards their Muslim subjects, and often seem to speak of those subjects as the peaceable and cultured[Pg 250] population which had lived under the Umayyads and the Murabits. But Spain’s last experience of the Muslims was of the fierce, bigoted, and persecuting Muwahhids, whose tone was very different. Strangely, however, it was under these intolerant rulers that Spanish Islam passed through its golden age of philosophical speculation, and not only so, but the philosophers were protected and favoured by the Muwahhid court. Quite early in this period the position seems to have been tacitly arranged that the philosophers were absolutely free in their work and teaching, provided that teaching was not spread abroad amongst the populace: it was to be regarded as a species of esoteric truth reserved for the enlightened. It seems almost certain that this attitude was deliberately arranged by the philosophers themselves; it had already been sketched out by some of the Asiatic writers, and definitely laid down by al-Ash`ari and al-Ghazali, and the Muwahhids, it must be remembered, professed to be Ghazalians. But whilst the philosophers enjoyed this exceptional freedom of speculation, so different from the repressive orthodoxy of the Turkish dynasties in Asia, and defended the system in their writings, the rulers officially were enforcing amongst the multitude of their subjects the severest orthodoxy and the most reactionary system of jurisprudence, so reactionary that it was never admitted by the Asiatic sultans. The first great leader of philosophical thought in Muwahhid Spain was Ibn Tufayl (d. 581 = 1185),[Pg 251] who was wazir and court physician under the Muwahhid Abu Yaqub (A.H. 558-580). His teaching was in general conformity with that of Ibn Bajja (Avempace), but the mystic element is much more strongly marked. He admits ecstasy as a means of attaining the highest knowledge and of approaching God. But in Ibn Tufayl’s teaching this knowledge differs very much from that aimed at by the Sufis: it is mystic philosophy rather than mystic theology. The beatific vision reveals the Agent Intellect and the chain of causation reaching down to man and then back again to itself. In his views as to the need of removing the doctrines of philosophy from the multitude he shows the same principles as Ibn Bajja, which are those which came to be recognised as the proper official attitude under the Muwahhids, and defends them in a romance called Hayy b. Yaqzan, “the Living One son of the Wakeful,” the work by which his name is best remembered. In this story we have the picture of two islands, one inhabited by a solitary recluse who spends his time in contemplation and thereby raises his intellect until he finds that he is able to apprehend the eternal verities which are in the One Active intellect. The other island is inhabited by ordinary people who are occupied in the commonplace incidents of life and follow the practices of religion in the form known to them. In this way they are content and happy, but fall far short of the complete and perfect happiness of the recluse on the other[Pg 252] island. In course of time the recluse, who is perfectly well aware of the neighbouring island and its inhabitants, begins to feel great pity for them in that they are excluded from the more perfect felicity which he enjoys, and in an honest desire for their welfare, goes over to them and preaches the truth as he has found it. For the most part he is quite unintelligible to them, and the only result is that he produces confusion, doubt, and controversial strife amongst those whom he desired to benefit, but who are incapable of the intellectual life which he has led. In the end he returns to his island convinced that it is a mistake to interfere with the conventional religion of the multitude. Ibn Rushd (A.H. 520-595), known to the West as Averroes, was the greatest of the Arabic philosophers, and was practically their last. He was a native of Cordova and the friend and protégé of Ibn Tufayl, by whom he was introduced to Abu Ya´qub in 548. He was, however, more outspoken than Ibn Tufayl, and wrote several controversial works against al-Ghazali and his followers. The family to which he belonged was one whose members usually became jurists, and Ibn Rushd acted as Qadi in various Spanish towns; like most of the Arabic philosophers he studied medicine, and in 578 was appointed court physician to Abu Ya´qub. By this time he had finished his career as an author. Under the Muwahhid Abu Yusuf al-Mansur he was censured as a heretic and banished from Cordova. It must be remembered[Pg 253] that the Muwahhids, like the Murabits, were really Moroccan rulers, to whom Spain was a foreign province. It was whilst the Emir was in Spain and at Cordova, making ready for an attack upon the Christians, that Ibn Rushd was disgraced, and it seems probable that this was mainly a matter of policy, as the Emir, on the eve of a religious war, was desirous of proving his own strict orthodoxy by the public disapproval of one who had been rather too outspoken in his speculative theories. As soon as the Emir returned to Morocco the order of exile was revoked, and later on Ibn Rushd appears at the court of Morocco, where he died in 595. Amongst the Muslims Ibn Rushd has not exercised great influence; it was the Jews who supplied the bulk of his admirers, and they, scattered in Provence and Sicily by Muwahhid persecution, seem to have been chiefly instrumental in introducing him to Latin Christendom. His chief medical work was known as the Kulliyat, “the universal,” which, under the Latinized name of “colliget,” became popular as a manual in the mediæval universities where the Arabic system of medicine was in use. He wrote also on jurisprudence a text-book of the law of inheritance, which is still extant in MS., and also produced works on astronomy and grammar. He maintained that the task of philosophy was one approved and commended by religion, for the Qur´an shows that God commands men to search for the truth. It is only the prejudice of the[Pg 254] unenlightened which fears freedom of thought, because for those whose knowledge is imperfect the truths of philosophy seem to be contrary to religion. On this topic he composed two theological treatises—“On the Agreement of Religion with Philosophy” and “On the Demonstration of Religious Dogmas,” both of which have been edited by M. J. Mueller. The popular beliefs he does not accept, but he regards them as wisely designed to teach morality and to develop piety amongst the people at large; the true philosopher allows no word to be uttered against established religion, which is a thing necessary for the welfare of the people. Aristotle he regards as the supreme revelation of God to man: with it religion is in total agreement, but as religion is known to the multitude it only partially discloses Divine truth and adapts it to the practical needs of the many; in religion there is a literal meaning, which is all the uneducated are able to attain, and there is an “interpretation,” which is the disclosing of deeper truths beneath the surface which it is not expedient to communicate to the multitude. He opposes the position of Ibn Bajja, who inclined to solitary meditation and avoided the discussion of philosophical problems; he admits and desires such discussion provided it is confined to the educated who are able to understand its bearing, and not brought before the multitude who are thereby in danger of having their simple faith undermined. He agrees with Ibn Bajja, however, as against Ibn Tufayl in disapproval of[Pg 255] ecstasy; such a thing may be, but it is too rare to need serious consideration. There are different classes of men who fall roughly into three groups. The highest of these are those whose religious belief is based on demonstration (burhan), the result of reasoning from syllogisms which are à priori certain; these are the men to whom the philosopher makes his appeal. The lowest stratum contains those whose faith is based on the authority of a teacher or on presumptions which cannot be argued out and are not due to the exercise of pure reason; it is mischievous to put “demonstration” or reason or controversy before people of this type, for it can only cause them doubt and difficulty. Intermediate between these two strata are those who have not attained the use of pure reason—which, with Ibn Rushd, seems to be simply intuition—but are capable of argument and controversy by means of which their faith can be defended and proved; “demonstration” proper is not to be laid before these, but it is right to enter into argument with them and to assist them to rise above the level of those whose belief is based only upon authority. Most of all, Ibn Rushd opposed the teaching of the mutakallimin or orthodox scholastic theologians, whom he regarded as subverting the pure principles of the Aristotelian philosophy, and of these he considered the worst to be al-Ghazali, “that renegade of philosophy.” His leading controversial work is the Destruction of the Destruction (Tahafat at-Tahafat),[Pg 256] which he designed as a refutation of al-Ghazali’s Destruction of the Philosophers. But it was as a commentator on the text of Aristotle that he became best known to subsequent generations amongst the Jews and the later Latin scholastics; he was the great and final commentator. Strangely, however, Ibn Rushd never perceived the importance of reading Aristotle in the original; he had no knowledge of Greek, and gives no sign of supposing that a study of the Greek text would at all assist a student of the philosopher. The method of his commentaries is the time-honoured form derived from the Syriac commentators: a sentence of the text is given and the explanatory comments follow. In main substance Ibn Rushd reproduces the psychology of Aristotle as interpreted by al-Farabi and Ibn Sina, but with some important modifications. In man is a passive and an active intellect: the active intellect is roused to action by the operation of the Agent Intellect, and thus becomes an acquired intellect; the individual intellects are many, but the Agent Intellect is but one, though present in each, just as the sun is one, but there are in action as many suns as there are bodies which it illuminates. This is the form of the Aristotelian doctrine as it had been transmitted through Ibn Sina; the Agent Intellect is one, but it is as by emanation present in each, so that the quickening power in each one is part of the universal Agent Intellect. But Ibn Rushd differs from his predecessors in his treatment of the passive[Pg 257] intellect, the `aql hayyulani, which is the seat of latent and potential faculties upon which the Agent operates. In all the earlier systems this passive intellect was regarded as purely individual and as operated on by the emanation of the universal Agent, but Ibn Rushd regarded the passive intellect also as but a portion of a universal soul and as individual only in so far as temporarily occupying an individual body. Even the passive powers are part of a universal force animating the whole of nature. This is the doctrine of pampsychism, which exercised so strong an attraction for many of the mediæval scholastics, and has its adherents at the present day; thus James (Principles of Psychology, p. 346) says: “I confess that the moment I become metaphysical and try to define the more, I find the notion of some sort of an anima mundi thinking in all of us to be a more promising hypothesis, in spite of all its difficulties, than that of a lot of absolutely individual souls.” Ibn Rushd regards Alexander of Aphrodisias as mistaken in supposing that the passive intellect is a mere disposition; it is in us, but belongs to something outside; it is not engendered, it is incorruptible, and so in a sense resembles the Agent Intellect. This doctrine is the very opposite to what is commonly described as materialism, which represents the mind as merely a form of energy produced by the activity of the neural functions. The activity of brain and nerves, according to Ibn Rushd, are due to the presence of an external force; not only, as Aristotle teaches,[Pg 258] at least according to Alexander Aph.’s interpretation, is the highest faculty of the reason due to the operation of the external one Agent Intellect, but the passive intellect on which this agent acts is itself part of a great universal soul, which is the one source of all life and the reservoir to which the soul returns when the transitory experience of what we call life is finished. Ibn Rushd’s views do not receive much attention or criticism from Muslim scholars, but the Christian scholastics brought two main arguments against this theory, one psychological, the other theological. The psychological objection is that it is entirely subversive of individuality: if the conscious life of each is only part of the conscious life of a universal soul there can be no real ego in any one of us; but there is no fact to which consciousness bears clearer witness than the reality and individuality of the ego. This did not touch the possibility that the individual soul might be drawn from a universal soul as its source, nor did it disprove that the individual soul might be reabsorbed again in the universal soul, but in so far as Ibn Rushd’s view represented the soul as throughout a part of the universal soul it was argued that this is contrary to experience, which makes it clear that in this present life the ego is very distinctly individual. The theological argument was that Ibn Rushd’s view denied the immortality of the soul, and so was contrary to the Christian faith. This objection deals more specifically with the reabsorption of the[Pg 259] soul of the individual in the universal soul; such cessation of separate and individual existence, it was argued, meant that the soul as such no longer existed. As we have already noted, Aristotle gives a rather narrow range to the highest faculty of reason, confining its activity to the perception of abstract ideas; “as to the things spoken of as abstract (the mind) thinks of them as it would of the being snub-nosed, if by an effort of thought it thinks of it qua snub-nosed, not separately, but qua hollow, without the flesh in which the hollowness is adherent: so when it thinks of mathematical forms, it thinks of them as separated, though they are not separated” (Aristot. de anima. iii. 7, 7-8). Those who followed Alexander Aph. and the neo-Platonists took this “abstract” in a very narrow sense, and in the Arabic commentators these abstractions even become non-substantial beings, as it were disembodied, or rather bodiless, spirits: “in quibusdam libris de Arabico translatis substantiae separatae, quae nos angelos dicimus, intelligentiae vocantur” (S. Thos. Aquin. Quaest. Disp. de anima. 16). Can man know these substantiae separatae by his natural faculties? Ibn Rushd says he can: if otherwise nature has acted in vain, for there would be an intelligibile without an intelligens to understand it; but Aristotle has shewn (Polit. 1, 8, 12) that nature does nothing in vain, so that if there be an intelligibile there must be an intelligens capable of perceiving it. “The commentator (i.e. Ibn Rushd) says in 2 Met. comm. i. (in fine) that if abstract sub[Pg 260]stances cannot be understood by us then nature has acted in vain, because it made that which is by nature understandable in itself to be not understood by anyone. But nothing is superfluous or in vain in nature. Therefore immaterial substances can be understood by us.” (S. Thos. Aquin. Summa. 1, 88.) As the Agent Intellect enters into communication with relative being it has to suffer the conditions of relativity, and so is not equally efficient in all; it acts on sensible images as form acts on matter, yet the Agent Intellect never becomes corruptible as that on which it acts. These are in outline the points in the teaching of Ibn Rushd, which show the most marked differences from that of his predecessors, and which afterwards provoked most controversy amongst the Latin scholastics. Ibn Rushd really ends the illustrious line of Arabic Aristotelians. A few Aristotelian scholars followed in Spain, but with the decay of the Muwahhid power these came to an end. Of those later scholars we may mention Muhyi ad-Din b. `Arabi (d. 638) and `Abdu l-Haqq b. Sab`in (d. 667). The former of these was primarily a Sufi, and shows a strong inclination towards pantheism. `Abdu l-Haqq, the last of the Muwahhid circle, was also a Sufi, but at the same time an accurate student of Aristotle. In modern Islam there is no Aristotelian scholarship, save only in logic, where Aristotle has always held his own. CHAPTER X THE JEWISH TRANSMITTORS We have already seen that the Jews took a prominent part in bringing a knowledge of philosophical research from Asia to Spain, and Ibn Jabirul (Avencebrol) takes his place in the line of transmission by which Spanish Islam was brought into contact with these studies. This did not end the participation of the Jews in philosophical work, but their subsequent writers do not form part of the regular series of Aristotelian students influencing the Muslim world, but are rather confined to Jewish circles. Yet they are of an importance wider than merely sectarian interests, for it was by means of Jewish disciples of Ibn Rushd that he was raised to a position of much greater importance than he has ever enjoyed in the Muslim world. Amongst the Jews, indeed, there arose a strong Averroist school, which later on was the chief means of introducing Ibn Rushd’s theories to Latin scholasticism. As we shall see later the transmission of philosophy from Arabic to Latin surroundings falls into two stages: in the earlier the Arabic material passes directly, and the works used are those which had attained a leading importance in Islam, but in the later stage the Jews were the[Pg 262] intermediaries, and thus the choice of text-books and authorities was largely influenced by an existing Jewish scholasticism. Ibn Jabirul shows the Aristotelian philosophy introduced to Jewish surroundings, just as Sa`id al-Fayyumi in Mesopotamia shows the entrance of Mu`tazilite discussions amongst the Jews. In fact, all the intellectual experiences of the Muslim community were repeated amongst the Jews. In Islam the Mu`tazilites and the philosophers were followed by the scholastics, who took their final form under al-Ghazali, and so in Judaism also al-Ghazali has his parallel. The founder of an orthodox Jewish scholasticism was the Spanish Jew, Jehuda hal-Levi (d. 540 A.H. = 1145 A.D.), who lived during the Murabit rule and the coming of the Muwahhids. His teaching is known by a work entitled Sefer ha-Kuzari, which consists of five essays, supposed to be dialogues between the King of the Chazars and a Jewish visitor to his court. These dialogues discuss various topics of a philosophical and political character. The study of philosophy is commended, but it is pointed out that good conduct is not attained by philosophy, which is occupied with scientific investigations, and many of these have no direct bearing upon the duties of practical life; the best means of promoting right conduct is religion, which is the established tradition of wisdom revealed to men of ancient times. Even in speculative matters a surer guidance is often[Pg 263] furnished by religious tradition than by the speculations of philosophers. God created all things from nothing; the attempt to explain the presence of imperfection and evil in the world by the theory of the eternity of matter, or by the operation of laws of nature is futile; those laws themselves must refer back to God. The difficulty arising from the mingling of evil with good in creation is admitted; the real solution is unknown, but it must be maintained that creation was the work of God in spite of the difficulties which this presents. As to the nature and attributes of God, the distinction which Sa`id al-Fayyumi tried to make between the essential and other attributes is untenable. The attributes stated in the Old Testament may be applied to God because they are revealed, which is exactly the same teaching as that of al-Ash`ari and al-Ghazali. These attributes are either referring to active qualities, or to relative, or to negative. Those which are active and those which are relative are used metaphorically; we do not know their real significance. The fifth essay is more especially directed against the philosophers as teaching doctrines subversive of revelation. In the first place he disapproves the theory of emanations; the work of creation was directly performed by God without any intermediary; if there were emanations, why did they stop short at the lunar sphere? This refers to the descriptions given by the Arabic writers who endeavour to explain[Pg 264] the successive emanations from the First Cause as reaching down to different spheres. He opposes also the attempt of the Mutakallimin to reconcile philosophy and theology as tending to undermine the truths of revealed religion, so that he takes a more reactionary position than al-Ghazali. This was inevitable, for Jewish thought had as yet been much less influenced by philosophy than was the case with the Muslims. He objects also to the description of the soul as intellect, more it would appear because common usage confined “intellectual activity” too much to philosophical speculation, and especially he protested against the implication that only souls of philosophers were finally united to the Agent Intellect. The soul of man is a spiritual substance and imperishable; it does not win immortality by intellectual activity but is necessarily immortal by its own nature. He admits, however, that the passive soul in man is influenced by the Agent Intellect, which he seems to regard as the wisdom of God personified. Generally, therefore, Hal-Levi defined Jewish orthodoxy as against the teachings of the philosophers: he recognises the force of philosophical speculation, but is himself distinctly conservative. God was literally the creator, and no philosophical definition of creation which tended to explain it otherwise than according to traditional belief was permissible. But Hal-Levi does not seem to have had any great influence outside Judaism, and his work rather tends to show how far Jewish thought of the 6th cent. of[Pg 265] the Hijra was out of sympathy with current philosophical speculation, though no longer ignorant of it. It was in Spain that the Jews especially distinguished themselves as physicians, reproducing and extending the investigations of the Arabic authorities, who were pupils of the Nestorians and Jews in the first place. The most distinguished of these Spanish Jews who became leaders in medical science was Ibn Zuhr (d. 595 A.H. = 1199 A.D.), commonly known to the mediæval West as “Avenzoar.” He was a native of Seville and member of a family of physicians. Jewish philosophy does not take a leading place until the appearance of Abu Imran Moses b. Maymun b. `Abdullah (d. 601 A.H. = 1204 A.D.), a contemporary and follower of Ibn Rushd and the one who did most to establish an Averroist school, and so passed on his work and influence to Latin Christendom. He was the son of a pupil of Hal-Levi, and, it is said, a pupil of one of Ibn Bajja’s pupils. His family retired to Africa to avoid the persecution of the Muwahhids and settled for a time in Fez, then removed to Egypt. It was whilst he was at Cairo that Ibn Maymun, or Maimonides as he is more commonly called by European writers, first heard of Ibn Rushd. His chief work is known as Dalalat al-Ha´irin, “the Guide of the Perplexed,” which, like all his other books, was produced in Arabic; about the time of his death this work was translated into Hebrew by[Pg 266] Samuel b. Tibbon as Moreh Nebukin. The Arabic text, edited by Munk, was published at Paris (3 vols.) in 1856-66, and in 1884 an English translation by Friedländer was published in London. Next to this in importance is the treatise Maqalah fi-t-Tawhid, a treatise on the unity of God, of which a Hebrew translation was made in the 14th cent. A.D. His other works were mainly medical, and include treatises “on poisons and their antidotes,” “on hæmorrhoids,” “on asthma,” and a commentary on Hippocrates. Maimonides’ teaching reproduces the substance of that already associated with al-Farabi and Ibn Sina put into a Jewish form. God is the Intellect, the ens intelligens, and the intelligibile: He is the necessary First Cause and the permanent source. He is essentially and necessarily one, and attributes cannot be so used as to imply plurality: only those attributes which describe activity are admissible, not those which imply relations between God and the creature. Like Ibn Rushd he disapproves of the Mutakallimin, whom he regards as mere opportunists in their philosophy and without any staple principles, besides which their method of compromise does not face fairly the law of causality. The Aristotelian doctrine of the eternity of matter cannot, however, be admitted; creation must have been from nothing, as follows from the law of causality; that such was the case cannot be proved, but every contrary supposition is untenable. All the properties of[Pg 267] matter, the laws of nature, etc., had their beginning at creation. On the first day God created the beginnings (reshit), that is to say the intelligences, from which proceeded the several spheres, and introduced movement, so that on this day the whole universe and all its contents came into existence. On the succeeding days these contents were disposed in order and developed; then on the seventh day God rested, which means that He ceased from active operation and laid the universe under the control of natural laws, which guided it henceforth. The teaching of Maimonides shows a somewhat modified form of the system already developed by al-Farabi and Ibn Sina adapted to Jewish beliefs. It had a rapid and wide success, spreading through the greater part of the Jewish community in his own lifetime. But this success was not without some opposition—the synagogues of Aragon, Catalonga, and of Provence, where a very large number of Jews had sought refuge from the Muwahhids; the synagogue at Narbonne, on the other hand, defended him. It was not until the following century, and chiefly by the efforts of David Kimchi, that Maimonides was at length generally accepted as the leading doctor of the Jewish church. Although Maimonides was known to the Latin scholastics, it was not his work nor that of any other Jewish teacher which really made the Jews important to mediæval western thought so much as the work they did in popularising Ibn Rushd, whom they[Pg 268] called “the soul and intelligence of Aristotle.” Jewish MSS. of Aristotle are rarely found without Ibn Rushd’s commentary, and his paraphrases very commonly bear the name of Aristotle at their head. It was as the commentator that he held so high a position in Jewish thought, and it was as the final and authoritative commentator that he finally took his place in Latin scholasticism introduced by Jewish teachers. The Muwahhid persecution scattered many of the Spanish Jews to Africa and to Provence and Languedoc. Those who took refuge in Africa, like Maimonides, retained the use of the Arabic language, but Arabic quickly became obsolete amongst those who had fled north. No doubt the refugees in Provence found it necessary to use the Provencal dialect for communication with their Christian neighbours, but that dialect had never yet been used for scientific or philosophical purposes; in Western Christendom Latin was invariably used for all educational and scholarly purposes, but the refugee Jews did not feel disposed to adopt a language which had no traditional associations for them and was altogether a foreign tongue never as yet employed for Jewish purposes. Under these circumstances the Jewish leaders deliberately copied the actual condition prevailing amongst their Jewish neighbours where the ancient Latin was in use as a learned language, whilst its derived dialects were the speech in everyday use, and so they revived the use of Hebrew as[Pg 269] the medium of teaching and literature. Throughout Hebrew had retained its place as a liturgical language; there had been synagogue liturgies in Greek, but those belonged to a much earlier period. The revival of Hebrew produced a neo-Hebrew which does not preserve a line of historical continuity with the ancient Hebrew. For some time Hebrew had been a dead language in the East, and it had never spread as a living speech to the West. But this artificial revival, which has more than one parallel in history, was not so difficult a feat as it sounds at first. The vernacular speech of the Spanish Jew was Arabic, and philologically Arabic is very nearly a dialect if not of Arabic, yet at least of a proto-Arabic, which shows many close parallels with Hebrew. Of course at that time the true philological relations were not understood: influenced by theological prepossessions the Jew rather tended to regard Arabic as a derivative of Hebrew; yet the kinship was obvious, and in the early translations made from Arabic to Hebrew it is not uncommon to find that most of the words are translated in such a way that the same root-form is used as in the original. Secondly, it was not only the case that Hebrew “came easily” to those who knew Arabic, but there had been serious philological studies by Jehudh Chayyug, David Kimchi, and others which had emphasized this close kinship, and had indeed adapted all the rules of Arabic grammar to the use of Hebrew; it was therefore possible to compose and even to speak a tolerable Hebrew by the con[Pg 270]scious rendering of the Arabic vocabulary into Hebrew. It is not suggested that the inaugurators of neo-Hebrew ignored the characteristics of the classical speech; in fact they did not do so, but they were in a position to use Hebrew as though a dialect differing from Arabic only in detail, and in this attitude they were more strictly correct than they supposed. Before long Arabic began to be entirely discarded, and Hebrew, whose revival flattered Jewish susceptibilities, was taken up with vigour as a language of the schools; how far it came into use in the home we do not know. This change necessitated the translation of the later theological and philosophical writers from Arabic into Hebrew. Tradition puts the beginning of this work of translation in the 12th century, but this is not possibly true. It was not until well into the 13th century that Hebrew translations begin to appear. The most famous translators were of the family of Jehuda ben Tibbon, who cannot himself be accepted as a translator. The first work was done by Samuel ben Tibbon, who compiled a Hebrew “Opinions of the Philosophers,” which is a catena of passages from Ibn Rushd and other Muslim falasifah. This production was in general use as a popular manual until it was replaced by complete translations of the actual texts, when, of course, such compilations went out of use. The principal part of the work was done by Moses ben Tibbon (circ. 1260 A.D.), who translated most of the commentaries of Ibn Rushd, some portions[Pg 271] of his medical works, and Maimonides’ “Guide of the Perplexed.” About this time Frederick II. was strongly desirous of introducing the Arabic writers to the knowledge of the West, a matter to which we shall refer again when we come to consider the translation of the Arabic philosophical works into Latin, and so we find him protecting and pensioning Yaqub ben Abba Mari, a son-in-law of Samuel ben Tibbon, at Naples, and this Yaqub employed in preparing a Hebrew translation of Ibn Rushd’s commentaries on the Aristotelian Organon. The thirteenth century A.D. shows us a continuous series of Hebrew scholars either preparing compilations and abridgments or actually translating the full text of the leading Arabic philosophers, and especially of Ibn Rushd. About 1247 Jehuda ben Salomo Cohen, of Toledo, published his Hebrew “Search for Wisdom,” an encyclopædia of Aristotelian doctrines mainly based upon the teachings of Ibn Rushd. A little later Shem-Tov b. Yusuf b. Falaquera also reproduced the doctrines of Ibn Rushd in his essays, and later again in the 13th century Gerson b. Salomo compiled “The Door of Heaven,” which shows the same influence. About 1257 Solomon b. Yusuf b. Aiyub, a refugee who had come from Granada to Bèziers, translated the text of Ibn Rushd’s commentary on the de coelo and de mundo, and in the latter part of this century complete translations begin to take the place of abridgments and collections of extracts. About[Pg 272] 1284 Zerachia ben Isaac from Barcelona translated Ibn Rushd’s commentaries on the Physics, the Metaphysics, and the treatises de coelo and de mundo. Rènan has drawn attention to the fact that the same works are translated again and again, sometimes by translators who were very nearly contemporary and lived in the same neighbourhood. Evidently these translations did not quickly enter into wide circulation, and it does not seem that the task of the translator was held in any great esteem; it was regarded as a purely mechanical work, and not credited with any literary possibilities. Early in the 14th century Kalonymos b. Kalonymos b. Meir translated Ibn Rushd’s commentaries on the Topica, Sophistica, and Analytica Posteriora (completed 1314); then his commentaries on the Physica, Metaphysics, de coelo and de mundo, de generatione and de corruptione, and the Meteora (completed 1317), and followed these by a translation of the Destruction of the Destruction. An independent Hebrew translation of this latter work was made about the same time by Kalonymos b. David b. Todros. About 1321 Rabbi Samuel ben Jehuda ben Meshullam at Marseilles prepared Hebrew versions of Ibn Rushd’s commentaries on the Nicomachæan Ethics and his paraphrase of the Republic of Plato, which was regarded by the Arabic writers as part of the Aristotelian canon. It is rather interesting to note that somewhere about the same time Juda ben Moses ben Daniel of Rome prepared a Hebrew translation of de substantia[Pg 273] orbis from the Latin translation which was itself derived from the Arabic. To a great extent the Hebrew and Latin translations were being made contemporaneously but quite independently; it was not until well into the 14th century that they begin to influence one another. It was during this later stage that so many of the Arabic philosophical works were translated into Latin via Hebrew, and this gave a marked preponderance to Ibn Rushd, the result of the Jewish vogue of his writings; the earlier translations into Latin from the Arabic rather tend to lay weight on Ibn Sina. In the course of the 14th century A.D. the Hebrew commentators on Ibn Rushd begin. Chief amongst these was Lavi ben Gerson, of Bagnols, who wrote a commentary on Ibn Rushd’s Ittisal on the doctrine of the union of the soul with the Agent Intelligence, and on Ibn Rushd’s treatise “on the substance of the world.” Levi’s teaching reproduces the Arabic Aristotelianism much more freely and frankly than was ventured by Maimonides; he admits the eternity of the world, the primal matter he describes as substance without form, and creation meant only the impress of form on this formless substance. Contemporary with Levi was Moses of Narbonne, who, between 1340 and 1350, produced commentaries on the same works of Ibn Rushd as had already been treated by Levi, as well as other of the treatises on physical science. The fourteenth century was the golden age of[Pg 274] Jewish scholasticism and the following century sees it in its decay. Ibn Rushd was still studied and commentaries were still compiled. About 1455 Joseph ben Shem-Tob of Segovia produced a commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics which he intended to supplement Ibn Rushd, who had not written a commentary on this portion of Aristotle. Elias del Medigo, who taught at Padua towards the end of the 15th century, is regarded by Rènan as the last great Jewish Averroist. He wrote a commentary on the de substantia orbis in 1485, and also published annotations on Averroes. The 16th century shows the final decay of Jewish Averroism. In 1560 an abridgment of the logic of Averroes was published at Riva di Trento, and this has remained a standard work amongst Jews, but outside logic Averroes was beginning to fall into disrepute. Rabbi Moses Almosnino (circ. 1538) uses al-Ghazali’s work against the philosophers to oppose Ibn Rushd, and evidences occur of an interest in Plato by those who despised Aristotle as a relic of the dark ages. The later Jewish philosophers such as Spinoza are not in touch with the mediæval tradition, whose continuity is severed towards the end of the 16th century; later work shows the influence of post-renascence non-Jewish thought. CHAPTER XI INFLUENCE OF THE ARABIC PHILOSOPHERS ON LATIN SCHOLASTICISM We have now followed the way in which Hellenistic philosophy was passed from the Greeks to the Syrians, from the Syrians to the Arabic-speaking Muslims, and was by the Muslims carried from Asia to the far West. We have now to consider the way in which it was handed on from these Arabic-speaking people to the Latins. The first contact of the Latins with the philosophy of the Muslims was in Spain, as might be expected. At that time, that is to say during the Middle Ages, we can rightly describe the Western parts of Europe as “Latin,” since Latin was used not only in the services of the church but as a means of teaching and as a means of intercourse between the educated; it does not imply that the vernacular speech in all the western lands was of Latin origin, and of course makes no suggestion of a “Latin race”; it refers only to a cultural group, and we are employing the term “Latin” only to denote those who shared a civilization which may fairly be described as of Latin origin. In Spain this Latin culture was in contact with the Arabic culture of the Muslims. The transmission of Arabic material to Latin is[Pg 276] especially associated with Raymund, who was Archbishop of Toledo from 1130 to 1150 A.D. Toledo had become part of the kingdom of Castile in 1085, during the disordered period just before the Murabit invasion. It had been captured by Alfonso VI., and he had made it the capital city of his kingdom, and the Archbishop of Toledo became the Primate of Spain. When the town was taken it was agreed that the citizens should have freedom to follow their own religion, but the year after its capture the Christians forcibly seized the great church, which had been converted into a congregational mosque about 370 years before, and restored it to Christian use. For the most part, however, the Muslims lived side by side with the Christians in Toledo, and their presence in the same city as the king, the royal court, and the Primate made a considerable impression on their neighbours, who began to take some interest in the intellectual life of Islam during the following years. The Archbishop Raymund desired to make the Arabic philosophy available for Christian use. At the moment, it will be remembered, the Muwahhids were established in Spain, and their bigotry caused a number of the Jews and Christians to take refuge in the surrounding countries. Raymund founded a college of translators at Toledo, which he put in the charge of the archdeacon Dominic Gondisalvi, and entrusted it with the duty of preparing Latin translations of the most important Arabic works on philosophy and science, and thus[Pg 277] many translations of the Arabic versions of Aristotle and of the commentaries as well as of the abridgments of al-Farabi and Ibn Sina were produced. The method employed in this college and the method commonly followed in the Middle Ages was to use the services of an interpreter, who simply placed the Latin word over the Arabic words of the original, and finally the Latinity was revised by the presiding clerk, the finished translation usually bearing the name of the revisor. It was an extremely mechanical method; and the interpreter was treated as of minor importance. It seems that the preparation of a translation was done to order in very much the same way as the copying of a text, and was not regarded as more intellectual than the work of transcription. The revisor did no more than see that the sentences were grammatical in form: the structure and syntax was still Arabic, and was often extremely difficult for the Latin reader to understand, the more so as the more troublesome words were simply transliterated from the Arabic. The interpreters employed in this college certainly included some Jews; it is known that one of them bore the name of John of Seville. We have very little information as to the circulation of the translations made at Toledo, but it is certain that about thirty years afterwards the whole text of Aristotle’s logical Organon was in use in Paris, and this was not possible so long as the Latin translations were limited to those which had been transmitted by Boethius, John Scotus, and the fragments[Pg 278] of Plato derived through St. Augustine. But this material already in the possession of the West was the foundation of scholasticism, and was developed as far as it would go. Boethius transmitted a Latin version of Porphyry’s Isagoge and of the Categories and Hermeneutics of Aristotle, whilst John Scotus translated the Pseudo-Dionysius. The further development of Latin scholasticism came in three stages: first, the introduction of the rest of the text of Aristotle, as well as the scientific works of the whole logical canon, by translation from the Arabic; then came translations from the Greek following the capture of Constantinople in 1204; and thirdly, the introduction of the Arabic commentators. The first Latin scholastic writer who shows a knowledge of the complete logical Organon was John of Salisbury (d. 1182 A.D.), who was a lecturer at Paris, but it does not appear that the metaphysical and psychological works of Aristotle were in circulation as yet. By this time Paris had become the centre of scholastic philosophy, which was now beginning to predominate theology. This takes its form, as yet untouched by Arabic methods, in the work of Peter Lombard (d. 1160 A.D.), whose “Sentences,” an encyclopædia of the controversies of the time but a mere compilation, remained a popular book down to the 17th century. The methods and form used in the “Sentences” shows the influence of Abelard, and still more of the Decretals of Gratian. It is interest[Pg 279]ing to note that Peter Lombard possessed and used a newly finished translation of St. John Damascene. Early in the 13th century we find various controversies at Paris on subjects very like those debated by the Arabic philosophers, but in reality derived from quite independent sources. Nothing would seem more suggestive of Arabic influence than discussion of the essential unity of souls, which seems as though it were an echo of Ibn Rushd; but this doctrine had been developed independently from neo-Platonic material in the Celtic church, and, in its main features not at all unlike the teaching of Ibn Rushd, was fairly common in Ireland (cf. Rènan: Averroes, 132-133). So we find Ratramnus of Corbey in the 9th century writing against one Macarius in refutation of similar views. Here Arabic influence is out of the question; at the time, indeed, Ibn Rushd was not yet born. So of Simon of Tournay, who was a teacher of theology at Paris about 1200 A.D., we read that “whilst he follows Aristotle too closely, he is by some recent writers accused of heresy” (Henry of Gand: Lib. de script. eccles. c. 24 in Fabrisius Bibliotheca, 2, p. 121), but this simply means that he carried to an extreme the application of the dialectical method to theology. More interest attaches to the decrees passed at a synod held at Paris in 1209 and endorsed by the decisions of the Papal Legate in 1215. These measures were provoked by the pantheistic teaching of David of Dinant and Amalric of Bena, who revived the semi[Pg 280]pantheistic doctrines of John Scotus’ Periphysis, and the prohibitions dealing with them cite passages from Scotus verbatim. The Periphysis itself was condemned by Honorius III. in 1225. But the decrees of 1209 also forbade the use of Aristotle’s Natural Philosophy and the “commenta,” whilst the Legate’s orders of 1215 allowed the logical works of the old and new translations where perhaps the “new translations” refers to the “new” translations made from the Arabic as contrasted with the “old” versions of Boethius, though it is just possible that some version direct from the Greek was in circulation and known as the “new translations,” and also forbade the reading of the Metaphysics, Natural Philosophy, etc., all material which had become accessible through the Arabic. In 1215 Frederick II. became Emperor, and in 1231 he began to reorganize the kingdom of Sicily. Both in Sicily and in the course of his crusading expeditions in the East Frederick had been brought into close contact with the Muslims and was greatly attracted to them. He adopted oriental costume and many Arabic customs and manners, but, most important of all, he was a great admirer of the Arabic philosophers, whose works he was able to read in the original, as he was familiar with German, French, Italian, Latin, Greek, and Arabic. Contemporary historians represent him as a free-thinker, who regarded all religions as equally worthless, and attributed to him the statement that the world had suffered from[Pg 281] three great imposters, Moses, Christ, and Muhammad. This opinion of Frederick is expressed in passionate words by Gregory IX. in the encyclical letter “ad omnes principes et prelatos terrae” (in Mansi. xxiii. 79), where he compares the Emperor to the blaspheming beast of Apocalypse xiii., but Frederick in reply likened the Pope to the beast described in Apoc. vi., “the great dragon which reduced the whole world,” and professed a perfectly orthodox attitude towards Moses, Christ, and Muhammad. It is quite probable, as Rènan (Averroes, p. 293) supposes, that the views ascribed to Frederick really are based on a professed sympathy towards the Arabic philosophers, who regarded all religions as equally tolerable for the uninstructed multitude, and commonly illustrated their remarks by citing the “three laws” which were best known to them. In 1224 Frederick founded a university at Naples, and made it an academy for the purpose of introducing Arabic science to the western world, and there various translations were made from Arabic into Latin and into Hebrew. By his encouragement Michael Scot visited Toledo about 1217 and translated Ibn Rushd’s commentaries on Aristotle’s de coelo et de mundo, as well as the first part of the de anima. It seems probable also that he was the translator of commentaries on the Meteora, Parva Naturalia, de substantia orbis, Physics, and de generatione et de corruptione. Ibn Sina’s commentaries were in general circulation before this, so that they were very probably the “commentaries” referred[Pg 282] to in the Paris decree of 1209, but we do not know who was responsible for their rendering into Latin, save that they almost certainly proceeded from the college at Toledo. The introduction of Ibn Rushd, not of great repute amongst the Muslims, bears evidence to the weight of Jewish influence in Sicily and in the new academy at Naples. We know that Michael Scot was assisted by a Jew named Andrew. Another translator of this period was a German Hermann who was in Toledo about 1256, after Frederick’s death. He translated the abridgment of the Rhetoric made by al-Farabi, Ibn Rushd’s abridgment of the Poetics, and other less known works of Aristotle. Hermann’s translations were described by Roger Bacon as barbarous and hardly intelligible; he transliterated the names so as to show even the tanwin in Ibn Rosdin, abi Nasrin, etc. By the middle of the 13th century nearly all the philosophical works of Ibn Rushd were translated into Latin, except the commentary on the Organon, which came a little later, and the Destruction of the Destruction, which was not rendered into Latin until the Jew Kalonymos did so in 1328. Some of his medical works also were translated in the 13th century, namely, the Colliget, as it was called, and the treatise de formatione; others were translated from the Hebrew into Latin early in the following century. The first evidence of the general circulation of ideas taken from Averroes (Ibn Rushd) is associated with William of Auvergne, who was Bishop of Paris,[Pg 283] and these show a considerable amount of inaccuracy in detail. In 1240 William published censures against certain opinions, which he states to be derived from the Arabic philosophers; amongst these he expresses his disapproval of the doctrine of the First Intelligence, an emanation from God, as being the agent of creation, a doctrine common to all the philosophers, but which he attributes specifically to al-Ghazali; he objects also to the teaching that the world is eternal, which he attributes correctly to Aristotle and Ibn Sina, but mentions Averroes as an orthodox defender of the truth; he further condemns the doctrine of the unity of intellects, which most incorrectly he attributes to Aristotle, and also refers to al-Farabi as maintaining this heresy; throughout he cites Averroes as a sounder teacher who tends to correct these ideas, but his description of the doctrine of the unity of intellects reproduces the features which are distinctive of Averroes. The arguments he uses against this latter doctrine are, on the whole, very much the same as those employed a little later by Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas, viz., that the doctrine undermines the reality of the individual personality, and is inconsistent with the observed facts of diversity of intelligence in different persons. He cites Abubacer (Ibn Bajja) as a commentator on Aristotle’s Physics, but in fact this was a book on which Ibn Bajja did not write a commentary, and the substance of the citation agrees with the teaching of Averroes. At that time evidently the position was[Pg 284] that Aristotle and the Arabic commentators generally were regarded with suspicion save in the treatment of logic, the one exception being Averroes, who was considered to be perfectly orthodox. So strange a perversion of the facts could only be due to Jewish influence, for the Jews at that time were devoted adherents of Averroes. When the friars began to take their place in the work of the universities we note two striking changes: (i.) the friars cut loose entirely from the timid policy of conservatism and begin to make free use of all the works of Aristotle and of the Arabic commentators, and also make efforts to procure newer and more correct translations of the Aristotelian text from the original Greek; under this leadership the universities gradually became more modern and enterprising in their scientific work, though not without evidence of strong opposition in certain quarters. (ii.) As a natural corollary a more correct appreciation was made of the tendencies of the several commentators. The leader in these newer studies was the Franciscan Alexander Hales (d. 1245), who was the first to make free use of Aristotle outside the logical Organon. His Summa, which was left unfinished and continued by the Franciscan William of Melitona, was based on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, and serves as a commentary to it. Peter Lombard, however, had not quoted Aristotle at all, whilst Alexander uses the metaphysical and scientific works as well as the logic.[Pg 285] From this time forth the Franciscans begin to use the Arabic commentators. The more accurate study of Aristotle in mediæval scholasticism begins with Albertus Magnus (1206-1280), the Dominican friar who first really perceived the importance of careful and critical versions of the text, and thus introduced a strictly scientific standard of method. He studied at Padua, a daughter university of Bologna, but became a Dominican in 1223. His methods were followed and developed by his pupil, St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), who arranged his work on the lines already indicated in Albertus’ commentary on Aristotle’s Politics, lines which became the regulation method in Latin scholastic writers, and he was at pains to get new translations made directly from the Greek, which was now freely accessible; a new translation direct from the Greek was made by William de Moerbeka at the request of St. Thomas. But there is a significant change from the time when Albertus delivered his lectures: in the work of Albertus the commentator chiefly used was Ibn Sina, but in that of St. Thomas there is a free use of Averroes (Ibn Rushd), although St. Thomas shows that he is perfectly well aware of the peculiar doctrines held by this latter philosopher, and guards himself carefully from them. St. Thomas frequently enters into controversy with the Arabic commentators, and especially attacks the doctrines (i.) that there was a primal indefinite matter to which form was given at creation (cf.[Pg 286] Summa. lae quaes. 66, art. 2); (ii.) that there were successive series of emanations, a doctrine which had now assumed an astrological character; (iii.) that the Agent Intellect was the intermediary in creation (cf. Summa. 1, 45, 5; 47, 1; 90, 1); (iv.) that creation ex nihilo is impossible; (v.) that there is not a special providence ruling and directing the world; and (vi.) most of all, the doctrine of the unity of intellects, a doctrine which, as he shows, is not to be found in Aristotle, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Avicenna, or Ghazali, but is a speculative theory of Averroes alone, at least in the form then becoming popular as pampsychism. All these objections were essentially the same as had been already brought forward by the orthodox scholastics of Islam, and undoubtedly al-Ghazali is used in refuting them. According to St. Thomas, the doctrine of pampsychism is entirely subversive of human personality and of the separate individuality of the ego, to which our own consciousness bears witness. God creates the soul for each child as it is born; it is no emanation, but has a separate and distinct personality. As a corollary he denies the ittisal or final “union,” which involves the reabsorption of the soul in its source. It is worth noting that St. Thomas received his education before joining the Dominican order in the university of Naples, which had been founded by Frederick II. and was a centre of interest in the Arabic philosophers, and this probably goes far to[Pg 287] account for his more accurate appreciation of their teaching. Unquestionably St. Thomas Aquinas must be regarded as the prince of the Latin scholastics, for it is he who first draws freely upon metaphysics and psychology and co-ordinates them with theology—the psychological analysis given in the Secunda secundae of the Summa is one of the best products of the Latin scholastics—and also he was the first to appreciate correctly the difficulties of translation and insist on an accurate rendering as essential to an understanding of Aristotle. For the most part, as we have noted, the mediæval scholars undervalued the translator’s task and were content with a hack interpreter, and saw no reason for applying themselves to the study of the original text, a view in which the Arabic philosophers shared. Incidentally St. Thomas was the first who makes free use of all the Arabic commentators and shows that he is fully aware of their defects. Undoubtedly he regarded Averroes as the best exponent of the Aristotelian text, and the supreme master in logic, but heretical in his metaphysics and psychology. About 1256 Averroes’ teaching about the unity of intelligences was sufficiently widespread at Paris to induce Albertus to write his treatise “On the unity of the intellect against the Averroists,” a treatise which he afterwards inserted in his Summa. In 1269 certain propositions from Averroes were formally condemned. At this time his works were well known, and there was a distinct party at Paris which[Pg 288] had adopted his views and which we may describe as a semi-Judaistic party. This time both Albertus and St. Thomas published treatises against the doctrine of the unity of intelligences. Again in 1277 various Averroist theses were condemned at Paris, for the most part emanating from the Franciscans, who, as Bacon notes (opus Tert. 23), were strongly inclined towards Averroes both at Paris and in England, a condition which prevailed until the great Franciscan doctor Duns Scotus (d. 1308) took a definitely anti-Averroist line. Still, even in the 14th century, when Averroism was practically dead at Paris, it still retained its hold amongst the Franciscans in the English “nation.” The Dominicans were less favourably disposed towards the Arabic writers, at least after the time of Albertus, and show a much more careful estimate of their work. This was no doubt due to the fact that they had a house of Arabic studies in Spain, and were actually engaged in controversy with the Muslims. As a rule a careful distinction is drawn between Averroes the commentator, who is treated with great respect as an exponent of the text of Aristotle, and Averroes the philosopher, who is regarded as heretical. It seems as though there was a deliberate policy to secure Aristotle by sacrificing the Arabic commentators. Very characteristic of the work of the Dominicans was the Pugio Fidei adversum Mauros et Judaeos of Raymund Martini, who lived in Aragon and Provence; he was familiar with Hebrew, and freely uses[Pg 289] the Hebrew translations of the Arabic philosophers. His arguments are largely borrowed from al-Ghazali’s Destruction of the Philosophers. It is curious to note that, in his anxiety to defend Aristotle, he accuses Averroes of borrowing the doctrine of the unity of intelligences from Plato, and in a sense there was an element of truth in this, for the Averroist doctrine was ultimately derived from neo-Platonic sources. Raymund also cites the medical teaching of Averroes at a date earlier than any Latin version, and here again shows familiarity with the Hebrew translations. John Baconthorp (d. 1346), the provincial of the English Carmelites and “doctor” of the Carmelite order, tends to palliate the heretical tendencies of Averroes’ teaching, and was called by his contemporaries “the prince of Averroists,” a title which was apparently regarded as a compliment. Amongst the Augustinian friars Giles of Rome in his de Erroribus Philosophorum was an opponent of the teaching of Averroes, especially attacking the doctrine of the unity of souls and the union or ittisal, but Paul of Venice (d. 1429), of the same order, shows a tendency favourable to Averroism in his Summa. The 13th century had generally used Ibn Sina (Avicenna) as a commentator on Aristotle, but in the 14th century the general tendency was to prefer Averroes, who was regarded as the leading exponent of the Aristotelian text even by those who disapproved his teaching. [Pg 290] The University of Montpelier as a centre of medical studies might be expected to use the Arabic authorities, but this university, though traditionally founded by Arabic physicians driven out of Spain, was re-founded as a distinctly ecclesiastical institution in the 13th century, and became the home of Greek medical studies based on Galen and Hippocrates, though probably the earlier texts in use were translated from the Arabic versions. To this more wholesome Greek character the university remained faithful, and there was always a tendency at Montpelier to regard the Arabic use of talismans and astrology in medicine as heretical. It was not until the beginning of the 14th century that the Arabic medical writers began to be used there at all, and they remained in quite a secondary rank. In 1304 Averroes’ Canones de medicinis laxativis was translated from the Hebrew, and in 1340 we find that i. and iv. of the Canons of Avicenna are included in the official syllabus set for candidates for medical degrees, and from this time forward the lectures include courses on the Arabic physicians. In 1567 the Arabic medical works were definitely struck off the list of books required for examination in the schools at the petition of the students, but occasional lectures on the Canons of Avicenna were given down to 1607. The real home of Averroism was the University of Bologna, with its sister University of Padua, and from these two centres an Averroist influence spread over all N.E. Italy, including Venice and Ferrara,[Pg 291] and so continued until the 17th century. It was a precursor of the rationalism and anti-church feeling of the renascence, perhaps assisted by Venetian contact with the East. At Bologna Arabic influence was predominant in medicine; already in the later 13th century the medical course centres in the Canon of Avicenna and the medical treatises of Averroes, with the result that astrology became a regular subject of study, and degrees were granted in it. Most of the physicians of Bologna and Padua were astrologers, and were generally regarded as free-thinkers and heretics. Bologna had at one time enjoyed the favour of Frederick II., and he had presented the University with copies of the Latin translations prepared by his order from Arabic and Greek. The “Great Commentary” was firmly established at Padua, and in 1334 the Servite friar Urbano de Bologna published a commentary on the commentary of Averroes, which was printed in 1492 by order of the general of the Servites. But it is Gaetano of Tiena (d. 1465), a canon of the cathedral at Padua, who is generally regarded as the founder of Paduan Averroism. He was less bold in his statements than the Augustinian Paul of Venice, but still quite definitely an Averroist in his teaching as to the Agent Intellect and the unity of souls, etc. He seems to have had a great popularity, as many copies of his lectures survive. This Averroist cult in Padua held good through the greater part of the 15th century. [Pg 292] Towards the end of the century, however, the reaction begins, and comes from two distinct sources. On one side Pomponat lectured at Padua on the de anima, but interprets it by the aid of Alexander of Aphrodisias and discards Averroes, setting forth his doctrines in the form of essays instead of the time-honoured commentary on the Aristotelian text. From this time (circ. 1495) the university of Padua was divided into two factions, the Averroists and the Alexandrians. Pomponat was at the same time a representative of more distinctly rationalist theories, towards which the Italian mind was then tending. It was not that Alexander was more difficult to reconcile with the Christian faith than Averroes, but that those whose scepticism was inclined to be more freely expressed took advantage of these new methods of interpretation to give free vent to their own opinions. Quite independent of these Alexandrians were the humanists proper, who objected most to the barbarous Latinity of the text-books in general use, and especially to the terminology employed in the translations made from the Arabic commentators. Representative of these was Thomæus, who about 1497 began to lecture at Padua on the Greek text of Aristotle, and to treat it very largely as a study of the Greek language and literature. Philosophical controversy at this time was centred chiefly in the psychological problems connected with the nature of the soul, and especially with its separate existence and the prospects of immortality. This[Pg 293] indeed was perceived to be a crucial problem of religion and was very keenly debated. In the early years of the 16th century the controversy became even more prominent, until the Lateran Council of 1512 tried to check such discussions and passed a a formal condemnation, which, however, was powerless to restrain the debates. It is to be noticed that these discussions did not arise from any philo-pagan attitude of the renascence, although they favoured that attitude, but from the topics suggested by the study of the Arabic philosophers in N.E. Italy, and had their beginning in the problem as to whether the soul at death could continue an individual existence or was reabsorbed in the source, the reservoir of life, whether Agent Intellect or universal soul. Officially the University of Padua continued to maintain a moderate Averroism. In 1472 the editio princeps of Averroes’ commentaries was published at Padua. Then in 1495-7 Niphus produced a fuller and more complete edition. Through the next half-century a series of essays, discussions, and analyses of Averroes were produced almost continuously, and in 1552-3 appeared the great edition of Averroes’ commentaries, with marginal notes by Zimara. In the course of the 16th century, also, Padua produced a new translation of Averroes from the Hebrew. The last of the Averroist succession was Cæsar Cremonini (d. 1631), who, however, shows strong leanings towards Alexandrianism. By this time the study of the Arabic philosophers in Europe was confined to the[Pg 294] medical writers and to the commentaries of Averroes. Outside Padua and Bologna Averroes retained his position as the principal exponent of Aristotle to the end of the 15th century. In the ordinances of Louis XI. (1473) it is laid down that the masters at Paris are to teach Aristotle, and to use as commentaries Averroes, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and similar writers instead of William of Ockham and others of his school, which is no more than saying that the official attitude is to be realist and not nominalist. With the 16th century the study of the Arabic commentators on Aristotle fell into disrepute outside Padua and its circle, but for a century more the Arabic medical writers had a limited range of influence in the European universities. The actual line of transmission in and after the 15th century lay in the passage of the anti-ecclesiastical spirit developed in North East Italy under the influence of the Arabic philosophers to the Italian renascence. The arrival of Greek scholars after the fall of Constantinople and the resultant interest developed in archæological research diverted attention into a new direction, but this should not disguise the fact that the pro-Arabic element in scholastic days was the direct parent of the philo-pagan element in the renascence, at least in Southern Europe. In northern lands it was the archæological side which assumed greater importance and was brought to bear upon theological subjects. The End