Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

CHAPTER VIII: AVICENNA AND THE EAST

Of all Avicenna’s successors three stand far above the rest. Ghazali rose to become the greatest religious thinker in Islam, Suhrawardi the originator of a philosophy of illumination, and Averroes the most competent commentator of Aristotle. The first attacked him damagingly for the incoherence of his system of thought, and his betrayal of the fundamentals of his Faith. The second added to his rational reasoning visions of illuminative knowledge. And the third reproached him for failing to understand the Stagirite and in consequence misrepresenting him. Nevertheless he had a number of followers, and his influence persisted in a continuous tradition down to modern times.

A general reaction against philosophy set in soon after his death. The wave of strict orthodoxy that had already started in Baghdad, spread now all over the Islamic world. The Caliphs tried to retrieve their rapidly waning secular power by reviving the religious spirit and enjoining the necessity of careful adherence to dogma. Nor was the political situation propitious. First came the Seljuk Turks conquering one Emirate after another; then hordes of Mongols poured in, routing and ruining all that stood in their way; until with the sack of Baghdad in 1258 they turned the whole country into desolation. And when the Safavid dynasty restored the old Persian empire, sectarian repression left little room for freedom of thought and speculation.

Avicenna had a number of pupils, though none of them rose to great distinction. We are told that he had one by the name of Kirmani who was in the habit of arguing with the master continually until it led to an exchange of “disrespectful” words. Bahmanyar, a Zoroastrian, was more appreciative and his questions were answered in a book that was called The Discussions. Ibn Zaila was his favorite because of his keen interest in the subject. And Masumi was the most learned. It was for him that Avicenna wrote the Book on Love. When he became involved in a bitter controversy with Beruni, Masumi asked to be allowed to reply in his stead. Some of the writings of Bahmanyar and Ibn Zaila have survived. After them came a host of minor figures who generation after generation occupied themselves with what came to be known as hikmat - a term originally signifying wisdom, but gradually coming to mean medicine, or philosophy or all sorts of occult sciences. It is safe to say that there was not a single hakim after Avicenna who did not come under his influence and incorporate into his own thought a good deal of his ideas. The debt was sometimes acknowledged, but not always. Almost as much may be said of religious thinkers of all shades of opinion. Even when refuting his arguments or denouncing his irreligion, they did not hesitate to retain many of his thoughts and attitudes that had penetrated into all forms of literature including poetry. His philosophical system may have proved most objectionable, yet there was his medical works that everybody appreciated, and his logic which became universally adopted and eventually a subject of careful study in the seminaries. In fact there was always a tendency to separate what they considered useful writings from his disquieting speculations already condemned by religious leaders.

Opposition came constantly from two sides: one the mystic Sufis and the other the theologians. This was in itself a proof of his widespread influence.

The Sufis deprecated his faith in human reason as a means to knowledge. His rationalism, they said, veiled the Face of God instead of leading man to Him. Sufism was spreading far and wide in those days. And the suffering brought by repeated wars and invasions caused many to choose the mystic path and find comfort in its attitude of resignation. Sanai (d. 1150) in his passionate praise of the Almighty, found only pity for Avicenna groping in the darkness of his man-made system. And Jami (d. 1492), writing five centuries after the philosopher, when his influence was still strong, exhorts people not to seek the light of the soul from the barren breast of Avicenna, for only those with open eyes can show the rest how and where to find the light. His Isharat leads to blasphemy; and his conception of the world fills man with forebodings of evil. His book of Healing (Shifa) will surely cause illness; and his book of Deliverance (Najat) betrays a sense of bondage. Even in his Canon of Medicine he has nothing new to say. The same unfavorable attitude was taken by other Sufis who had no use for logical reasoning in man’s lifelong quest after God. Not until Ibn al-Arabi (d. 1240) came to blend philosophy, theology and mysticism together, had there been any attempt to take a more conciliatory view of rational thought. And Jami's poem proves that it had been of no avail. The Sufis still persisted in denouncing all that Avicenna stood for, though they did not hesitate to copy the form of some of his writings.

The opposition of the theologians was just as violent, but some of them chose to reason and argue. Of these the most eminent thinker was Ghazali, a countryman of Avicenna, who started as a rationalist, developed into a religious philosopher, and ended as a mystic. In many ways he may be compared to St. Augustine. Coming less than a hundred years after Avicenna, Ghazali went through the regular form of education in those days, and besides the usual Islamic studies he also delved into the writings of the Falasifa. His early interest in logic is shown by a number of works on the subject. It was not long, however, before he became entirely absorbed by the study of religious law and Muslim jurisprudence, and as a result found himself in total disagreement with the philosophical systems of those days. It was then, while a professor at the Nizamiyya College in Baghdad, that he undertook the treatise which he called The Incoherence of the Philosphers. This book proved of profound and lasting influence in the Islamic world - both in the east and in Andalusia. For many it was the final refutation of all that the Falasifa had taught, and there is no doubt that it was highly valued at the time. In Ghazali the contrast between Falasifa and Mutakallemun is seen very clearly, each group with a special approach and with a style and terminology of its own. Point by point he repeats the arguments of the former only to give the religious explanation based on the fundamental teachings of the Faith. His method was later adopted by many others.

Accepting Farabi and Avicenna as representative figures among the Falasifa he quotes extensively from the latter to show the incoherence of their speculations and the contradictions in their statements with regard to the Science of the Divine. “Logic is not their prerogative”, he declares, “and may be usefully employed by everybody. It is in the field of metaphysics that they have gone astray, denying that religious laws are of divine origin, and assuming that they are traditional conventions established in the course of time. The very basis of their thought is unjustified because they have failed to realize that the realities of those matters that pertain to God cannot be attained through intellectual theorizing”. What they have done is to grope “in darkness upon darkness. There are certain questions on which there need be no quarrel with them, as in the use of their terminology, and their desire to call God an artificer who is a pure substance not existing in any body nor constituted by anything besides itself. Nor should we make objection to their explanations of natural phenomena like eclipses, because they do not run counter to the principles of religion. It is when they deny that the world was created ex nihilo, and refuse to accept the divine attributes, and insist that the belief in the Resurrection is false, that they have to be combated and proved to be in grievous error”. With that purpose in view, he takes up twenty different points on which the philosophers have gone against religious teachings, challenging their arguments and condemning their theories.

The first and the most essential point of conflict is the assertion that the world existed since pre-eternity and will last till post-eternity. This claim cannot possibly be conceded because with Muslims there is nothing eternal except God and his attributes, and all else is created. Avicenna may ask why, if the world be considered as created, the act of creation took place at a specific time and not before or after. The answer to that is that its existence was not desired before that time its existence was accomplished because it came to be desired after being not desired, so that it was Will that came into force. Moreover, when the world and all therein is placed in the category of the possible by the philosopher, it should be remembered that if its existence was possible, so was its non-existence. The world came to be, when it came to be, and in the form in which it came to be, and at the time in which it came to be, through Will. Nor is Time eternal. That too originated in the act of creation. God is prior to the world and to time. He was when there was no world, and He was and with Him a world, existence and non-existence of all things depend on two things, God’s will and His Power. It is in these that all things have their source and origin, and it is by them that all existing beings may be explained. Avicenna has attached undue importance to his division of beings into the possible, the impossible and the necessary. These are mental propositions that do not need an existent being in order to be attributed to it. In other words, they are purely logical considerations that do not necessarily have a corresponding existence in the world. They may be useful distinctions to make in the world of concepts, but their ontological application is a totally different matter. The philosophers are united in the belief that it is impossible to prove knowledge, power and will in the First Principle, and that is why they resort to such ideas. They are prepared to call God the Agent. But an agent is he who commits some sort of act, and if he does so it is because he wishes and he wills, and if there is choice involved then there must be knowledge. And if there is choice and knowledge and will then there must also be the power to consummate the act. Otherwise God would not be an artificer nor an agent except figuratively. Moreover the very meaning of an act is doing something. It denotes bringing something out of non-existence into existence. And that is what is meant when it is said that the world was created. If the philosophers do not think so then say openly that God is not puissant enough to commit an act that it may become clear that your belief is contrary to the religion of the Muslim.

Farabi and Avicenna proceed, in addition, to explain prophecy rationally by attributing to the prophet unusual powers of insight and imagination through which he is enabled to foresee coming events and foretell things that the common man is unable to detect. They have indeed failed to realize that it is by way of inspiration and not by way of reasoning that God grants knowledge to His prophets. They neither guess nor do they imagine, they are informed directly and not through logical reasoning.

As regards natural philosophy, religious teachings neither accept nor deny its claims. It has no quarrel with the shar, which is the religious law, except on certain specific issues over which it is impossible to compromise. It may be thought that the Resurrection of the body is contrary to the principles of natural philosophy. And it may be asked what proof is there of the existence of a Paradise or of eternal fire after death. The answer is that God is omnipotent and therefore capable of providing all and everything that He deems. Thus on three principal points the philosophers have been led into grave error by their speculations. They have claimed that the world is eternal and that the separate substances are so likewise. They have maintained that God has no direct knowledge of particular things and individuals. And they have denied the Resurrection of the body after death. Those who say such things must believe that the prophets have lied and that all that they have asserted so emphatically was meant to make the common people believe in things which they thought was good for them. In other words they were not making a statement of fact but of convenience. “And this is blasphemy”.

Ghazali’s arguments in favor of creation ex nihilo, God’s knowledge of all particulars, and the resurrection of the dead became widely accepted in the Islamic world, and when translated into Latin was adopted by the Christians and employed in many Scholastic treatises. His clear and forceful reasoning could not fail to appeal to those who took the religious viewpoint. But less than a hundred years after him, Averroes (d. 1198) came to champion the cause of Aristotle against both the theologians and those of the Falasifa who had failed to grasp the true import of what the Stagirite had taught. With no less zeal than Ghazali, he embarked on an Incoherence of the Incoherence, a book known in its Latin translation as Destructio Destructionis. This was received in almost complete silence in the Islamic world which tried to ignore it. The Jews of Andalusia and the Latins on the other hand, having a far better opinion of Averroes than the Arabs, gladly took it up and translated it into Hebrew and Latin a number of times. And this made it the subject of innumerable commentaries. The two works taken together epitomize better than any others the essential problems arising from the impact of classical philosophy on religious teachings. Averroes undertakes a restatement of the position of the philosophers. Ghazali had quoted passage after passage from Avicenna, then showed the supposed incoherence of his arguments; now Averroes quotes passage after passage from the book of Ghazali to show the incoherence of the réplique.

The disputation is rarely violent. If he condemns the sophistry of Ghazali, he just as often pays tribute to the justified objections of the theologian for some of whose penetrating remarks he shows appreciation. There is nothing puerile or vindictive in what each has to say, and that makes these two books important in the history of Islamic thought. The arguments centre almost entirely on the writings of Avicenna a proof of his dominating position. There is, however, one bold accusation that is worthy of note. Averroes openly states that Ghazali denounced all that Avicenna had said and all that the Falasifa stood for, not out of conviction, but out of fear lest he be ostracized like all the rest. This is repeated by Ibn Tumlus, his Andalusian pupil; though it is difficult to prove. He also claims that Avicenna modified and sometimes altered the ideas of Aristotle as a concession to the theologians. Again this is not something of which it is easy to find examples, though there was never any doubt of his desire to explore and establish if possible a common ground between the two groups. As a specific case Averroes mentions the state of the human soul after death. Avicenna had taken a middle position between those who thought that the souls of men join with and are reunited into one common soul, and the religious belief that they remain separate and individual, retaining their identity after the death of the body. He said the souls remain distinct, and in consequence are innumerable, but they may not retain the identity of the body which they had occupied. Was this said just “to delude the common people as Averroes thinks; or was Avicenna trying to arrive at a compromise between contrary views?”

With regard to the division of beings into the possible, the impossible and the necessary, he joins Ghazali in protesting that these are mental concepts that need not have an actual concrete existence. According to Averroes, Avicenna was not justified in basing his proof for the existence of God on a distinction that is purely logical. The Asharite theologians had said that all that is by nature possible, is created out of nothing. And Avicenna taking that notion and combining it with the idea of necessity, had produced his well-known argument. Nor should he be considered a faithful representative of the Peripatetics, because he frequently departs from them and takes a wholly independent course. In psychology he went counter to Aristotle by providing an estimative faculty in animals for which there is no special justification.

Averroes then proceeds to take exception to the distinction between essence and existence. Avicenna, he says, considers existence as something super-added to essence as though it were merely an accident; and that would make the existence of God conditional on His essence. This unjustified criticism fails to take into account that in the differentiation between the two, Avicenna had specifically said that in the Necessary Being essence and existence are one. These objections and many similar ones do not lead Averroes to disown the Islamic Falasifa completely. He blames Ghazali bitterly for claiming that they had committed blasphemy, and for making false accusations against them. This, he says, is a wrong done to the very religion that he pretends to uphold.

After Ghazali and before Averroes, Suhrawardi (d. 1191) came to attempt an entirely new orientation to the now established tradition of Avicennian thought. As the originator of the Illuminative philosophy he created a new current that was to run parallel; and though touching the main stream on many points, and on occasions borrowing freely, nevertheless remaining distinct and separate. Subsequent to that we find thinkers in Persia commonly divided into pure Avicennians, who were also sometimes called Peripatetics, and followers of the Illuminative philosophy. Suhrawardi added many new elements that were either indistinct or entirely absent in Avicenna. A strong tendency towards pantheism was one of them. But by far the most important development, for which one scholar has found some justification in the writings of his predecessor, is the urge towards a conception of a mystic Orient, the home of light and the dawning-place of knowledge and illumination, a lode-star that attracts the wayward soul in its life-long journey. A reference to that has already been noted in one of the mystic allegories of Avicenna. Suhrawardi makes it a definite goal; and for that purpose borrows heavily from Persian Pre-Islamic thought, especially the conception offarrah, for which the early Persians had many terms, and which signified a fountain-head of good fortune and glorious light that elevated and ennobled whomsoever it fell upon. It was the prerogative of great crowned heads for whom Suhrawardi now substitutes the righteous souls. This philosophy, for which he paid with his life, was a highly significant movement. His intellectual background had been the same as all the rest. Basically Islamic, he had gained a sufficient knowledge of Greek learning through the many translations and books of his predecessors; he was steeped in Arabic culture; and he had left his original country and was now a resident of Syria. Nevertheless he turns away from what had absorbed the minds of the philosophers and held such a devastating fascination, and from that doctrinal conformity which the theologians considered essential to a religious life. He faces what he believes to be the primordial temples of light, for which the soul in its “estrangement” must constantly yearn, and bereft of which it can never find peace. He reverts to some early Zoroastrian sources, including what was known as Zurvanism; and he transforms the Angels of God so prominent in religion, and whom Avicenna had equated with the separate Intelligences, into harbingers of Light.

Neither Ghazali’s passionate appeal to the fundamentals of religion; nor the reproaches of Averroes for a betrayal of Aristotle; nor indeed the flights of Suhrawardi towards the mystic Orient, put an end to the direct and pervading influence of Avicenna. At the eastern extremity of the Islamic world we find a Persian theologian of distinction, and of the same period as Averroes, rise to ridicule Ghazali’s authority. In spite of some bitter attacks, he comments favorably on a good deal that Avicenna had written. Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 1209), who considered Farabi the greatest of the Islamic philosophers, had also a high regard for Avicenna. He did not fail, either, to take into consideration the doctrines of Razi, the physician who, as the name shows, came from his home town. He goes to Transoxiana to meet the learned men of that region and finds them all deeply engaged in the study of Avicenna; and using his own commentary on the Isharat as an aid. In one place he is asked to repay the hospitality of his host for a rather lengthy stay, by explaining the Canon of Medicine and some of its obscure terms. And in another, he undertakes a commentary on one of the metaphysical works, copies of which have survived. Shahristani (d. 1153) the historian of religions and philosophies, had already paid tribute to Avicenna by the space he had allotted to him in his works, without in any way committing himself. But it should not be supposed that all theologians were so tolerant. Some years later we find a religious revivalist going to the other extreme, and condemning all and everything that any of the philosophers had said or written. As a fundamentalist, Ibn Taimiyya (d. 1328) denies that there is such a thing as Islamic philosophy, and that there could be philosophers calling themselves Muslims. Ghazali had not been averse to logic; and had taken a favorable view of its use as an instrument of thought; he, however, condemns it completely, and incidentally has some very penetrating remarks to make on the subject.

The list of those who were avowed followers, or who in spite of disagreement on some points openly admitted their debt to Avicenna, is long and distinguished. They naturally come mostly from his own country and the neighboring regions. The extent to which Nasir Khosrow (d. 1088) may have been influenced by him has not yet been determined. As a much younger contemporary, he became involved in Ismaili propaganda; and devoted his later years entirely to religious matters. And yet in his philosophical books, when discussing time and space and the faculties of the soul, often along Aristotelian lines, he shows traces of Avicennian terminology in Arabic and Persian. Like the authors of the Epistles, whose writings he must as an Ismaili have studied, he was anxious to combine Greek thought with religious teachings; and he is much concerned with the refutation of Razi, the physician, and his belief in the five eternals. He quotes the Mutazelites on occasion; and seems acquainted with the treatises of John Philoponus.

In Andalusia, at the western extremity of the Islamic world, it might be supposed that the influence of Farabi was on the whole stronger than that of Avicenna. And yet we find Ibn Baja (Avempace, d. 1138) and Ibn Tufail paying tribute to Avicenna and admitting their debt to him. The latter was particularly interested in his mystical works. After them came Ibn Tumlus (d. 1223) with his books on logic in which he draws freely from both Farabi and Avicenna. And Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), the great philosopher of history, is not without admiration for the genius of Bukhara, though he insists that religion and philosophy are two separate domains and have very little in common.

As regards Umar Khayyam (d. 1123), back in a great likelihood that he read Avicenna, whose works must have been fairly well known in his time. And the fact that some of the quatrains in Umar’s collection have been thought to be actually by Avicenna, shows the resemblance in sentiment and outlook between the two. Mathematics and astronomy could not have prevented the inquisitive Umar from delving into some aspects of metaphysics. And Avicenna’s ill-concealed fatalism must have proved a balm to the hurt mind of the poet; and urged him to administer it generously and openly to others.

By far the most competent and sympathetic commentator of Avicenna in Persia was Nasir el-Din Tusi (d. 1273). Though not a creative mind himself, he was an accomplished scholar and one of the most prolific of authors. He gave a fresh impetus to the study of his predecessor by writing the most detailed commentaries on some of his books, and by defending him against his detractors. What he wrote himself was also largely derived from the same source. With philosophy he had combined an interest in mathematics and astronomy rather than medicine; and he spent much time at an observatory recording his observations and preparing astronomical tables. He too had had connections with the Ismaili heterodoxy. In his early youth he was one of their adherents and had written books on their teachings. Then he changed allegiance and accepted the patronage of one of the Mongol chieftains, in whose name he produced the astronomical tables that were to become so widely used. Tusi, like many others in his time, was bilingual and wrote in both Arabic and Persian. In the former language, his commentary on the Isharat has proved invaluable to modern students of Avicenna. Others before and after him had tried to clarify the obscure points of this book, which is not by any means easy reading; and it should not be supposed that his comments elucidate all the subtleties of the original text. And yet they reflect the state of knowledge in his day, and point to the fact that it had not materially changed after the lapse of some three centuries. Creative thought was gradually being replaced by mere erudition; which eventually reached the stage of tiresome repetition interspersed by meaningless verbiage.

In Persian his writings include a commentary on the whole Aristotelian Organontogether with the Eisagoge of Porphyry, in which he follows the pattern and incorporates the substance of the Shifa with very few additions of his own. It is significant that he disregards the attempts of Avicenna and Nasir Khosrow to write in pure Persian, and uses instead the full Arabic terminology established by the early authors. This, however, leaves the value of the book unimpaired, even from the literary point of view, because its clear and concise exposition is superior to anything produced before him. Though still favored by the learned, Arabic was losing ground in certain parts of Persia; and we find him specially commissioned to put into the language of the people a book on Ethics by Miskawaih. He chooses to write one of his own based on what his predecessors had contributed on the subject, and that takes him beyond them to Plato and Aristotle. Beginning with the classification of the sciences, like so many others, he actually follows Avicenna in almost all that he has to say. In his early Ismaili days he had written a book on the soul and its faculties in the same tone and manner as the authors of the Epistles. Now he revokes all that and turns to Aristotle by way of Avicenna. His versatility had become proverbial, and his interests extended to history and belles-lettres. He has an account of the conquest of Baghdad by the Mongol Hulagu Khan, to which was added a translation of one of the literary works of Ibn al-Muqaffa into Persian. But in philosophy as well as in various other matters, his guide is invariably Avicenna.

A nephew of Tusi, commonly known as Baba Afdal, continued the tradition of learning in the family, and left a number of works remarkable for their style and substance. He followed the lead of Avicenna and Nasir Khosrow in the attempt to write in as pure a Persian as was possible in his days; and he borrowed the terms which they had employed. Why he should have chosen to depart from the practice of his uncle in this respect is not clear. The effort is, however, deliberate and successful. Although, he does not coin any new words himself, he arrives at a felicity of expression unusual among authors of philosophical works. There seems to have been some movement in his day to put various books of learning into Persian; and all that he wrote himself was in his mother-tongue; but that initiative suffered a setback not long after him. Some have found traces of Hermetism in his writings; and like Avicenna, with whose works he must have been quite familiar, whether in the original or through the commentaries of his uncle, he lays emphasis on the correspondence between celestial souls and angels. This was to become a popular theme in prose and poetry. His interest in translation made him produce a good rendering of Aristotle’s De Anima from Arabic into Persian, probably for the first time, as well as some pseudo-Aristotelian treatises, like the Book of the Apple, which had become very popular in its Arabic version.

Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi (d. 1311), a contemporary and associate of Tusi, also supposed to have been a nephew of Sadi the poet, was primarily a physician, though his interests extended to philosophy and kindred subjects. He co-operated for some time with Tusi in the preparation of his astronomical tables; and travelled extensively in Turkey and Syria, often dressed as a Sufi. A man of wide knowledge, his occupation with medicine led him to undertake a commentary on the Avicennian Canon; and among numerous works in Arabic he produced a lengthy exposition of the Illuminative philosophy of Suhrawardi; thus showing the two traditions running parallel. In Persian, besides various treatises on astronomy and the natural sciences, he wrote a voluminous book incorporating the form as well as much of the materials of the Shifa. And in a tractate on the principles of physical geography he draws a comparison between the views of Avicenna and Razi, the theologian. He has hardly anything new to say in any of his works, but he writes in a clear and simple style; and his published correspondence makes pleasant reading.

There had been many minor theologians during this period who had discussed the philosophical system of Avicenna at length, thus testifying to its pervasive and widespread influence. More important were the numerous manuals of logic that appeared and were taught in the recognized seminaries throughout the country. They were all substantially Avicennian with practically no additions. Some of these handbooks are free of the unnecessary explanations and therefore serve a useful purpose.

At the opening of the sixteenth century the Safawi dynasty inaugurated an important period in the political history of Persia. Reviving the sense of Persian nationality, it restored the Empire almost to its ancient Sasanian limits after the lapse of more than eight centuries; and made of it a nation once again, self-contained, centripetal, powerful and respected. A distinct feature of this revival was that it was based more on considerations of religion than of language and race. Their enmity with the Turkish people on the west was more sectarianly religious than political; and their appeal to their own countrymen was on the same level. In consequence of this - and it has been noted by many scholars - we find that whereas art and architecture nourished to a remarkable extent and there were some great miniature-painters, literature suffered lamentably. All throughout the two centuries that marked the duration of this dynasty, poetry was at a very low ebb; and such literary men as did exist and had any talent of their own, chose to emigrate to India and seek the patronage of the Great Moguls there. The rulers had no use or sympathy for mystics and philosophers, though the greatest emphasis was laid on religious dogma, and the theologians enjoyed every aid and encouragement. Hence it was that 'under this dynasty learning, culture, poetry and mysticism completely deserted Persia, and in place of great poets and philosophers there arose theologians, great indeed, but harsh, dry, fanatical and formal. It might be added that even of those that turned their eyes and feet towards India none was a thinker or philosopher of any merit, and in fact it was recognized and admitted that this period produced nothing of importance in that field.

And yet within the narrow limits of theology certain developments took place that had their importance in the history of Persian thought. The Shia branch of Islam to which the Safawi kings and their subjects zealously adhered, had been always dominated by the doctrine of the Imam, i.e. the vice-regent or leader of the Faith. The first Imam had been Ali the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet; and he had been followed by eleven others from among his descendants, thus making twelve in all. The doctrine of the Imamate was a fundamental principle and an essential part of religion. And since the founder of the Safawi dynasty proudly claimed descent from the seventh Imam, it was only natural that they should be militant advocates of the doctrine and take every measure for its propagation. Moreover, it was equally natural for the theologians who enjoyed their patronage and benefited from their bounty to devote a great deal of their attention and much of their writing to this subject. Its interest for us here lies in the fact that judging from their works, it has been found that Avicenna exerted a penetrating influence on the religious thinkers of this period; and that many elements of his system were grafted upon the conception of the Imamate as they propounded it. The same is true in a good measure of Suhrawardi and his views of emanations of Illuminative light. The upshot was a fresh impetus to the study of the works of these two men which left a permanent effect on the authors of the period. Thus at the school of Mir Damad (d. 1632) Avicenna and Suhrawardi helped to produce a religious blend in contrast to the many philosophical blends of which they had been the chief ingredients.

The theologians of the Shia branch of Islam may be said to have enjoyed a greater latitude in religious speculation than the others. For them the doors of initiative were wide open; and many were those who taking advantage of that, indulged in a good measure of independent thought. It led them sometimes far astray from strict orthodoxy, but helped to widen their horizon and give them an opportunity to take note of the philosophical movements that had appeared in the country. Under the aegis of the Safawi kings they discarded the usual practice of writing exclusively in Arabic which by the sixteenth century had become a foreign language except to a very few; and began producing works in Persian mostly in the form of popular treatises easily comprehensible to the public. At the same time they became divided into fundamentalists of different denominations, and into what have been called “latitudinarians”. It is among the latter group that we find those who played a part in grafting Avicennian thought on to some of the religious conceptions of the period. Their minds were more open than the rest, and like Suhrawardi, they fell under the influence of some early Zoroastrian beliefs presented in Islamic garb. Metaphysics came to take a new orientation and traditional cosmology became appreciably modified. On the one hand there was Majlisi, the eminent theologian, and his still more learned and celebrated son, laying down the fundamentals of the Shia faith in the most authoritative and uncompromising tone; and on the other various semi-heterodox groupings like the Sufis with, their attachment to pantheism, or the Shaikhis who were now increasing in number.

Those who may be called the philosophers of the period fall into two categories. The majority of them were essentially religious thinkers. Only one or two, as will be seen, allowed themselves to follow their thought wherever it might lead them, and refused to have it conditioned by and subordinated to religious dogma. Of the first perhaps the most famous is commonly known as Mir Damad (d. 1631). He stood in high favor with Shah Abbas the Great, and spent most of his life in the capital at Isfahan, where he had a large circle of pupils and admirers. With a taste for natural history and philosophy, he wrote mostly in Arabic, but he wrote poetry in Persian under the pen-name of Ishraq, meaning illumination. The choice of this word betrayed his inclination towards the Illuminative philosophy of Suhrawardi which he could not openly profess. In a work entitled Qisas al-Ulama (Tales of the Theologians) it is related that Mulla Sadra, his pupil and son-in-law, saw him in a dream and said, “My views do not differ from yours, yet I am denounced as an infidel and you are not. Why is this?”. “Because” replied Mir Damad’s spirit, ·I have written on philosophy in such wise that the theologians are unable to understand my meaning, which only the philosophers can understand; while you write about philosophical questions in such a manner that every dominie and hedge-priest who sees your books understands what you mean and dubs you an unbeliever”. Mir Damad and his pupils were in fact all very much influenced by both Avicenna and Suhrawardi, though he took great pains, as the anecdote shows, to conceal his views carefully under a veil of religious conformity. He had been attracted by Avicenna’s mystic writings and allegories; and letters have survived in which, he refers to them and answers questions about them. The opinion then generally held of Avicenna and Suhrawardi is reflected in another little story in which one man sees the Prophet in his dream and inquires what is his attitude to Avicenna. “He is a man whom God made to lose his way through knowledge” the spirit replies”. “And what of Suhra-wardi?”. “He was just his follower” he is told.

Notwithstanding this evidence of the prevailing disapproval of what the two men were supposed to stand for, we find a son-in-law of Mir Damad by the name of Seyyid Ahmad 'Alawi undertaking a voluminous commentary on the Shifa entitled the Key to the Shifa, in which he amplifies the cosmology of Avicenna by introducing a good measure of Zurvanism from Zoroastrian sources, and frequently invoking the spirit if not the letter of Suhrawardi’s writings. He projects the Zoroastrian dualism on to the field of Avicennian thought. In connection with the way in which the multiple could proceed from the one, a subject that Avicenna had treated in his metaphysics, he quotes Pythagoras to the effect that if one should proceed from the primal cause, so does not-one; then goes on to illustrate his point by bringing forward the case of Zoroaster who, he says, taught that if from the First Being there is produced an angel called Yazdan, there is also produced from the shade of that Being a demon called Ahriman. One stands for the Good and the other for Evil. The metaphor of the shade implies a necessary consequence of the emanation of Light.

Findareski (d. 1640) was another religious thinker of the period who devoted a good deal of attention to philosophy. Highly esteemed at the court of Shah Abbas in Isfahan, he usually went about in the garb of a humble dervish, and fell under the influence of that combination of Avicenna and Suhrawardi which was to incline many towards Zoroastrian ideas. The strict religious conformity that prevailed at the royal court did not suit him, and was one reason for his departure to India were he imbibed a good deal of Zoroastrian as well as Hindu thought. Perhaps for that reason little is known about his later days except that he returned to die in his own country.

The first to occupy himself with serious philosophical thought was Mulla Sadra (d. 1640), unanimously accounted the greatest philosopher of modern times in Persia. Though the only son of an aged father, he left his native Shiraz to study philosophy in Isfahan; and there sat at the feet of Mir Damad and Findareski, among other renowned teachers. Having obtained his authorization to teach, he retired for some time to a little village where he lived an austere life and spent his days in study and meditation. He suffered a good deal at the hand of the orthodox divines, and never relished their company. Many times he made the Pilgrimage to Mecca on foot; and died in Basra on the return from his seventh journey, leaving a son who denounced and controverted his father’s teachings; and boasted that his belief was that of the common people. He had married the daughter of Mir Damad, who had given him his blessing with permission to expound his works. That did not last long, and he soon parted company with the teachings of his father-in-law. In choosing his own path he became surrounded by a constantly growing number of pupils who held him in great esteem and veneration. He lectured in Isfahan and, on his occasional travels, at different centres in the country. It was necessary for him not to be too outspoken in his views, which, needless to say, did not always conform with orthodoxy. A prolific author, his best known works written in Arabic, are his al-Asfar al-Arbaa (The Four Books) and his Shawahid al-Rububiyya (Evidences of Divinity) which have been lithographed in Tehran. He also had a commentary on the Avicennian Shifa, and another on the Hikmat al-Ishraq which is none other than the philosophy of illumination of Suhrawardi. One book is significantly called Kasr al-Asnam al-Jahillyya (The Breaking of the Idols of Ignorance); and the title of another isKitab al-Hidaya (The book of Guidance). Count Gobineau, writing perhaps more from hearsay than personal knowledge, asserts that Mulla Sadra was “pas un inventeur, ni un createur, c’est un restaurateur seulement”. Actually this is not far from the truth, though the philosopher of Shiraz did not restore the pure Avicennian thought as the French diplomat supposed. It was rather a combination of it with the more congenial orientations of Suhrawardi. To his own countrymen he was known as a man who had denounced the Peripatetic and Stoic elements in Avicenna; and who had restated and in a sense reformed the Illuminative philosophy.

If we take Asfar al-Arbaa (The Four Books) as representative of Mulla Sadra’s work, we find that in spite of Gobineau’s disparaging, it has some highly valuable features that distinguish it from many other books of the same kind. First and foremost, it should be noted that unlike his predecessors, he states his authorities for his quotations wherever necessary; and by mentioning their works he not only reveals his sources, but incidentally gives us a very complete picture of the different currents that flowed into the main stream of Islamic philosophical thought. Only from an exposition like this can the variety and complexity of the great synthesis be gauged. He often quotes in order to express disagreement, thereby demonstrating his critical powers; this also furnishes evidence that he had access to some minor Avicennian treatises, including the correspondence with his personal pupils, that modern scholars have not so far been able to trace. In general outline as well as in subject-matter he follows the metaphysics of the Shifa; and for the reader’s benefit gives, side by side with the views of Avicenna, those of many others before and after him, not forgetting Suhrawardi and the views of the illuminati on every problem. To all these he often adds his own, boldly beginning with “and I say”. Moreover, he frequently refers to Pre-Islamic Persian philosophers, and their conceptions of light as the true essence and reality of existence. He sometimes calls them the “Pahlawi thinkers”, and in other passages “the Chosroesians”, obviously meaning followers of Zoroastrian thought which he did not wish to mention specifically. He also throws light on many disputed points in the Avicennian system, the discussion of which has occupied modern scholars. In the course of a long discussion on contingency which he calls imkan, he refutes, with many quotations from Avicenna, the view which has lately been expressed that there is no notion of contingency as distinct from mere possibility in Avicenna. He mentions the subject because he is unable to accept the rigid determinism of his predecessor with regard to the belief that creation takes place necessarily. He is inclined to the religious conception of contingency, which, he complains, is not at all envisaged in the Theology that is “only attributed” to the First Teacher, i.e.Aristotle. While to the distinction between essence and existence and their union in God he gives his full support in stressing at the same time that reality is one and single, and that all else is existent through the illuminations of its light and the effulgence of its essence. Here he quotes an Arabic verse to the effect that “all things in this world are false appearances or idle imaginings, or just reflections in mirrors and in shades”. God for him as for Avicenna was the Necessary Being, but to this conception he adds a thought that he expressed in the form of an axiom, and that his pupils were very fond of elaborating. “The Necessary Being”, he says, “is a simple reality extremely simple he is everything... and yet... not a single thing proceeds from him”. This has been explained in many and sometimes conflicting ways which we need not go into except to say that he was anxious to detach himself from pantheistic ideas often attributed to Suhrawardi. Time and movement, in his view, were not preceded by anything except the Deity and His power and command which some people choose to call His attributes, others angels, and which the Platonists designate as the divine Forms; this is because people have their own ways in the things they are enamoured of. Though he expresses surprise over the heated discussion between theologians and philosophers with regard to the question whether the world was created or is eternal, he very discreetly arrives at the conclusion that matter must be considered eternal. In connection with the theory of knowledge he reveals the fact that Avicenna had been influenced by Stoic thought; and in spite of the outspoken condemnation of that conception by his predecessor, he maintains that knowledge is “the union of the intelligible with the intelligent”.

From problems of metaphysics he turns to questions of psychology, and distinguishes four kinds of perception. They are: (1) sensual perception, (2) imaginative, (3) estimative, and (4) intellectual perception. These are faculties of the simple intellect, the significance of which, he believes, Avicenna failed to realize, because he would not concede that knowledge is the union of the intelligible with the intelligent. As regards the nature of God’s knowledge of the universe, he believes that this takes place because once a knowledge of the cause is attained, then the knowledge of the effects or caused things follows without any difficulty. But there are the varieties of intellect to consider; and here he throws much light on the sources from which the Islamic philosophers obtained their ideas on the subject, and particularly on the disputed fourfold division of the intellect referred to in connection with the treatise of Kindi in the introduction to his book. Besides the writings of Farabi and Avicenna, Mulla Sadra makes mention 01 the Theology attributed to Aristotle, then speaks of a treatise On the Intelligence and the Intelligible by Porphyry; and then adds that he has in his possession a book on the intellect by Alexander of Aphrodisias, whom Avicenna was in the habit of calling the accomplished among the early ones, and according to which Aristotle had divided the intellect into three varieties which he goes on to explain. Hence the division of Alexander, like that of Aristotle, was threefold and not fourfold as some have understood from his writings. Space does not allow further remarks on the Asfar al-Arbaa (The Four Books) the reading of which for a student of the history of Islamic thought and its relation with the Greek sources is highly rewarding. It is full of valuable references, including some to Plotinus whom he calls the Greek Shaikh.

It was probably under Avicennian influence that Mulla Sadra refused to believe in the resurrection of the body after death. His metaphysical ideas found their way into the writings of the semi-orthodox religious school of Shaikhis, though Shaikh Ahmad Ahsai, the founder of that movement, sharply criticized some of the points in his commentaries.

Mulla. Muhsin Faid (d. 1680), who had been the favorite pupil of his master, whose daughter he married, was considered the most faithful commentator of Mulla Sadra, yet he had very little to contribute, and is hardly read nowadays. Mulla Hadi Sabzewari (d. 1878), on the other hand, is sometimes called the greatest philosopher of the nineteenth century in Persia. The son of a religious divine, he studied at Mashhad and Isfahan, and returned to lecture in his native Sabzewar. He wrote some seventeen books, of which the best known isAsrar al-Hikam (Secrets of Philosophy). In the traditional manner he has treatises on logic and metaphysics in verse. But he was essentially a commentator and often used some of the writings of Mulla Sadra as text. It is interesting to note that he also categorically denied bodily resurrection and a material hereafter.

Finally, some mention might be made of the fact that innumerable anecdotes and legends gathered in the course of time around the name of Avicenna, and have since survived in the form of folklore. These represent him as a boon companion ready to drown all worries in a cup of wine; a resourceful spirit, good to invoke in a desperate situation; a man of hidden powers able to appear in the guise of a sorcerer and inflict endless harm; a physician who can cure an illness and extract many a hidden secret by auto-suggestion; an accursed atheist who can undermine men’s faith in the most subtle and unsuspected manner; and an abiding mystic who ridicules life and all that it has to otter. It was clearly his philosophy and the circumstances of his life that gave rise to such notions of him. Many tales have been collected from the countryside by a scholar in Russian Tajikistan who claims to come from the region where Avicenna was born. Thus centuries after his death he remains to fill some with horror, and to guide others to those distant regions of thought so deeply congenial to the Persians.