THE CAMBRIDGE COMPANION TO
ARABIC PHILOSOPHY

Philosophy written in Arabic and in the Islamic world represents one of the great traditions of Western philosophy. Inspired by Greek philosophical works and the indigenous ideas of Islamic theology, Arabic philosophers from the ninth century onwards put forward ideas of great philosophical and historical importance. This collection of essays, by some of the leading scholars in Arabic philosophy, provides an introduction to the field by way of chapters devoted to individual thinkers (such as al-Fārābī, Avicenna, and Averroes) or groups, especially during the ‘classical’ period from the ninth to the twelfth centuries. It also includes chapters on areas of philosophical inquiry across the tradition, such as ethics and metaphysics. Finally, it includes chapters on later Islamic thought, and on the connections between Arabic philosophy and Greek, Jewish, and Latin philosophy. The volume also includes a useful bibliography and a chronology of the most important Arabic thinkers.

OTHER VOLUMES IN THE SERIES OF CAMBRIDGE COMPANIONS

ABELARD Edited by JEFFREY E. BROWER and KEVIN GUILFOY
ADORNO Edited by THOMAS HUHN
AQUINAS Edited by NORMAN KRETZMANN and ELEONORE STUMP
HANNAH ARENDT Edited by DANA VILLA
ARISTOTLE Edited by JONATHAN BARNES
AUGUSTINE Edited by ELEONORE STUMP and NORMAN KRETZMANN
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SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR Edited by CLAUDIA CARD
BRENTANO Edited by DALE JACQUETTE
CRITICAL THEORY Edited by FRED RUSH
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DESCARTES Edited by JOHN COTTINGHAM
DUNS SCOTUS Edited by THOMAS WILLIAMS
EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHY Edited by A. A. LONG
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MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY Edited by A. S. MCGRADE
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WITTGENSTEIN Edited by HANS SLUGA and DAVID STERN

The Cambridge Companion to
ARABIC PHILOSOPHY

Edited by

Peter Adamson
King’s College London

Richard C. Taylor
Marquette University

PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
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First published 2005

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The Cambridge companion to Arabic philosophy / edited by Peter Adamson and Richard C. Taylor.
p. cm. -- (Cambridge companions to philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0 521 81743 9 -- ISBN 0 521 52069 X (pb.)
1. Philosophy, Arab. I. Adamson, Peter, 1972-- II. Taylor, Richard C., 1950-- III. Series.
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ISBN 0 521 52069 X paperback

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Contents

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

PETER ADAMSON is a Lecturer in Philosophy at King’s College London. He has published several articles on the circle of al-Kindī and is the author of The Arabic Plotinus: A Philosophical Study of the “Theology of Aristotle” (2002).

DEBORAH L. BLACK is Professor of Philosophy and Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Logic and Aristotle’s “Rhetoric” and “Poetics” in Medieval Arabic Philosophy (1990), and of several articles on medieval Arabic and Latin philosophy, focusing on issues in epistemology, cognitive psychology, and metaphysics.

CHARLES BURNETT is Professor in the History of Arabic/Islamic Influence in Europe at the Warburg Institute, University of London. He has written extensively on the transmission of Arabic learning to the West and has edited several Latin translations of Arabic texts.

CHARLES E. BUTTERWORTH is Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland, College Park. His publications include critical editions of most of the Middle Commentaries written by Averroes on Aristotle’s logic; translations of books and treatises by Averroes, al-Fārābī, and al-Rāzī, as well as Maimonides; and studies of different aspects of the political teaching of these and other thinkers in the ancient, medieval, and modern tradition of philosophy. In addition, he has written monograph analyses of the political thought of Frantz Fanon and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and has also written extensively on contemporary Islamic political thought. He is a member of several learned organizations.

CRISTINA D’ANCONA is research assistant in the Department of Philosophy of the Università degli Studi di Pisa. Her research focuses on Greek and Arabic Neoplatonism. The author of Recherches sur le “Liber de Causis” (1995) and numerous articles about the transmission of Greek thought into Arabic, she is currently writing a commentary on and translation of the Graeco-Arabic Plotinus.

THÈRÉSE-ANNE DRUART is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Medieval and Byzantine Studies at The Catholic University of America. Her recent publications include “Philosophy in Islam” for The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy. She publishes regular bibliographies in Islamic philosophy and theology and is preparing a book on al-Fārābī’s metaphysics.

STEVEN HARVEY, Professor of Philosophy at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, is the author of Falaquera’s Epistle of the Debate: An Introduction to Jewish Philosophy (1987) and the editor of The Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias of Science and Philosophy (2000). He has written numerous articles on the medieval Jewish and Islamic philosophers, with special focus on Averroes’ commentaries on Aristotle and on the influence of the Islamic philosophers on Jewish thought.

MICHAEL E. MARMURA is Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His area of research is Islamic thought, and his publications in this area have included numerous articles on Avicenna and al-Ghazālī. They also include editions and translations, including a facing-page translation of al-Ghazālī’s Incoherence of the Philosophers (1997) and Avicenna’s Metaphysics from al-Shifā’ (forthcoming).

JOSEF PUIG MONTADA is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Universidad Complutense of Madrid. He has edited and translated texts of Avempace and Averroes, on whom he has published an introductory monograph, Averroes: juez, médico y filósofo andalusí (1998). He has also published articles on a number of Arab thinkers and on various subjects of Islamic philosophy and theology.

MARWAN RASHED is research fellow at the CNRS in Paris. His area of research includes ancient and medieval philosophy. He has published Die Überlieferungsgeschichte der aristotelischen Schrift “De Generatione et Corruptione” (2001), and his edition of the De Generatione et Corruptione will appear in the Budé series in 2004. He is currently working on the edition of the fragments of Alexander of Aphrodisias’ commentary on Aristotle’s Physics.

DAVID C. REISMAN is Assistant Professor of Arabic-Islamic Thought at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He is author of The Making of the Avicennan Tradition (2002) and editor of Before and After Avicenna (2003).

SAJJAD H. RIZVI is Research Associate in Islamic Philosophy at the University of Bristol. A specialist on later Islamic philosophy and hermeneutics, he is the author of the forthcoming Understanding the Word of God and Mulla Sadra: A Philosopher for Mystics?

TONY STREET is the Hartwell Assistant Director of Research in Islamic Studies at the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. He has published a number of articles on Arabic logic.

RICHARD C. TAYLOR , of the Philosophy Department at Marquette University, works in Arabic philosophy, its Greek sources, and its Latin influences. He has written on the Liber de Causis, Averroes, and other related topics. He has a complete English translation of Averroes’ Long Commentary on the “De Anima” of Aristotle forthcoming.

JOHN WALBRIDGE is Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Adjunct Professor of Philosophy and of History and Philosophy of Science at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author or co-author of four books on Suhrawardī and his school. He is currently working on two books on the role of rationalism in Islamic civilization.

PAUL E. WALKER is a research associate in Near Eastern Languages at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Early Philosophical Shiism (1993), Hāmīd al-Dīn al-Kirmānī (1999), and Exploring an Islamic Empire: Fatimid History and Its Sources (2002), along with several editions and translations of important Islamic texts including A Guide to Conclusive Proofs for the Principles of Belief: Kitāb al-irshād ilā qawāṭi‘ al-adilla fī uṣūl al-i‘tiqād by al-Juwaynī (2000) and numerous articles on aspects of Ismā‘īlī history and thought.

ROBERT WISNOVSKY is Associate Professor in the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University. He is the editor of Aspects of Avicenna (2001) and the author of Avicenna’s Metaphysics in Context (2003) as well as of a number of articles on Arabic and Islamic philosophy and theology.

HOSSEIN ZIAI is Professor of Islamic and Iranian Studies at UCLA. He has published many articles and several books on the Arabic and Persian Illuminationist system of philosophy. He has published several text-editions and translations of Arabic and Persian Illuminationist texts including Suhrawardī’s Philosophy of Illumination, Shahrazūrī’s Commentary on the Philosophy of Illumination, and Ibn Kammūna’s Commentary on Suhrawardī’s Intimations.

NOTE ON THE TEXT

Please note that all names in this volume are given in full transliteration (e.g., al-Fārābī, not Alfarabi or al-Farabi), except for Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Rushd, where we defer to tradition and use the familiar Latinized names Avicenna and Averroes. The same goes for all Arabic terms; thus we write Ismā‘īlī rather than Ismaili, Qur’ān rather than Koran, etc. We have generally followed the transliteration system used in the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, but used the simplest transliteration conventions possible: the feminine ending tā’ marbūṭa is always written –a, and the definite article is always written al-.

   There is a numbered bibliography at the end of this book. Chapter authors refer both to items in this bibliography and to unnumbered works specific to their chapters.

CHRONOLOGY OF MAJOR PHILOSOPHERS IN THE ARABIC TRADITION

The following is a list of the dates of the major philosophers and other authors in the Arabic tradition who are mentioned in this volume, in approximate chronological order according to the date of their death. The main sources used in compiling this set of dates are The Encyclopaedia of Islam [16], Nasr and Leaman [34], and C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Literatur, 5 vols. (Leiden: 1937–49). (Note that the dating of the Epistles of Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ is disputed. For a discussion see Encyclopaedia of Islam [16], vol. II, 1072–3). Dates are given in A.H. (the Muslim calendar) followed by C.E. Jewish authors’ dates are given in C.E. only. Dates elsewhere in this volume are generally given in C.E. only. For conversion tables between the two calendars, see G. S. P. Freeman-Grenville, The Muslim and Christian Calendars, 2nd edn. (London: 1977). Figures from the twentieth century are not included here; for these thinkers see chapter 19. The editors thank David Reisman for corrections and suggestions.

Sergius of Resh‘aynā (d. 536 C.E.)

Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ (d. 139/757)

Al-Muqammaṣ, Dāwūd (early 9th c.)

Māshā’allāh (d. ca. 200/815)

Ibn al-Biṭrīq (fl. ca. 200/815)

Abū al-Hudhayl (d. ca. 226/840)

Al-Naẓẓām (d. between 220/835 and 230/845)

Al-Ḥimṣī, Ibn Nā‘ima (fl. ca. 215/830)

Al-Kindī (d. after 256/870)

Ibn Isḥāq, Ḥunayn (d. ca. 260/873)

Al-Balkhī, Abū Ma‘shar (d. 272/886)

Ibn Qurra, Thābit (d. 288/901)

Ibn Ḥaylān, Yuḥannā (d. 297/910)

Ibn Ḥunayn, Isḥāq (d. 298/910–11)

Ibn Lūqā, Qusṭā (ca. 205/820–300/912)

Al-Jubbā’ī, Abū ‘Alī (d. 303/915–16)

Al-Dimashqī, Abū ‘Uthmān (d. early 4th/10th c.)

Al-Rāzī, Abū Bakr (d. 313/925)

Abū Tammām (4th/10th c.)

Al-Balkhī, Abū al-Qāsim (d. 319/931)

Al-Jubbā‘ī, Abū Hāshim (d. 321/933)

Al-Rāzī, Abū Ḥātim (d. 322/934)

Al-Balkhī, Abū Zayd (d. 322/934)

Al-Ash‘arī, Abū al-Ḥasan (d. 324/935–6)

Ibn Yūnus, Abū Bishr Mattā (d. 328/940)

Gaon, Saadia (882–942)

Al-Nasafī, Muḥammad (d. 332/943)

Al-Fārābī (d. 339/950–1)

Israeli, Isaac (d. 955)

Ikhwān al-Ṣafā’ (The Brethren of Purity) (4th/10th c.)

Al-Sijistānī, Abū Ya‘qūb (d. ca. 361/971)

Ibn ‘Adī, Yaḥyā (d. 363/974)

Al-Sīrāfī, Abū Sa‘īd (d. 369/979)

Al-Sijistānī (al-Manṭiqī), Abū Sulaymān (d. ca. 375/985)

Al-Andalūsī, Ibn Juljul (d. after 377/987)

Al-‘Āmirī (d. 381/991)

Ibn al-Nadīm (d. either 385/995 or 388/998)

Ibn Zur‘ā, Abū ‘Alī ‘Īsā (d. 398/1008)

Al-Kirmānī, Ḥamīd al-Dīn (d. ca. 412/1021)

‘Abd al-Jabbār (d. 415/1024–5)

Ibn Miskawayh (d. 421/1030)

Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā) (370/980–428/1037)

Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) (d. ca. 432/1040)

Ibn al-Ṭayyib, Abū al-Faraj (d. 434/1043)

Al-Bīrūnī (d. 440/1048)

Ibn Gabirol, Solomon (Avicebron) (1021–58 or 1070)

Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456/1064)

Ibn Marzubān, Bahmanyār (d. 459/1066)

Ibn Ṣā‘id al-Andalūsī, Abū al-Qāsim Ṣā‘id (d. 462/1070)

Ibn Mattawayh (d. 469/1076–7)

Nāṣir-i Khusraw (d. ca. 470/1077)

Al-Shīrāzī, al-Mu’ayyad fī al-Dīn (d. 470/1077)

Al-Juwaynī, Imām al-Ḥaramayn (d. 478/1085)

Al-Lawkarī, Abū al-Abbās (fl. 503/1109–10)

Al-Ghazālī, Abū Ḥāmid (450/1058–505/1111)

Al-Nasafī, Abū al-Mu‘īn (d. 508/1114–15)

Ibn Bājja (Avempace) (d. 533/1139)

Halevi, Judah (d. 1141)

Al-Baghdādī, Abū al-Barakāt (d. after 560/1164–5)

Ibn Da’ud, Abraham (ca. 1110–80)

Ibn Ṭufayl (d. 581/1185–6)

Suhrawardī (549/1154–587/1191)

Averroes (ibn Rushd) (520/1126–595/1198)

Al-Biṭrūjī (fl. ca. 600/1204)

Maimonides (1135 or 1138–1204)

Al-Rāzī, Fakhr al-Dīn (d. 606/1210)

Al-Baghdādī, ‘Abd al-Laṭīf (d. 628/1231)

Ibn ‘Arabī (560/1165–638/1240)

Ibn Yūnus, Kamāl al-Dīn (d. 639/1242)

Ibn al-Qifṭī (d. 646/1248)

Falaquera, Shem-Tov (d. ca. 1295)

Al-Abharī, Athīr al-Dīn (d. 663/1264)

Ibn Abī Uṣaybi‘a (d. 668/1270)

Al-Ṭūsī, Naṣīr al-Dīn (d. 672/1274)

Al-Kātibī, Najm al-Dīn al-Qazwīnī (d. 675/1276)

Ibn Kammūna, Sa‘d al-Dīn (d. 1277)

Al-Bayḍāwī (d. 685/1286 or 691/1292)

Al-Shahrazūrī, Shams al-Dīn (d. after 688/1289)

Albalag, Isaac (late 13th c.)

Al-Shīrāzī, Quṭb al-Dīn (d. 710/1311)

Al-Ḥillī, al-‘Allāma (d. 726/1325)

Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728–9/1328)

Gersonides (Levi ben Gerson) (1288–1344)

Al-Iṣfahānī, Maḥmūd (d. 749/1348)

Al-Ījī (d. 756/1355)

Ibn al-Khaṭīb (d. 776/1375)

Al-Taftāzānī, Sa‘d al-Dīn (d. 792/1390)

Ibn Khaldūn (732/1332–808/1406)

Crescas, Ḥasdai (d. ca. 1411)

Iṣfahānī, Ibn Torkeh (Ṣā’in al-Dīn) (d. ca. 836–7/1432)

Dashtakī, Ṣadr al-Dīn (d. 903/1497)

Dawwānī, Jalāl al-Dīn (d. 907/1501)

Al-Dimashqī, Muḥammad b. Makkī Shams al-Dīn (d. 937/1531)

Dashtakī, Ghiyāth al-Dīn Manṣūr (d. 949/1542)

Mīr Dāmād (d. 1041/1631)

Mulla Ṣadrā (Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī) (979/1571–1050/1640)

Al-Lāhījī (d. 1072/1661)

Sabziwārī (d. 1289/1872)