THE THREE WORLDS
Further, there is another side of al-Ghazzali’s attitude toward the physical universe that deserves attention, but which is very difficult to grasp or express. Perhaps it may be stated thus: Existence has three modes; there is existence in thealam al-mulk, in thealam al-jabarut, and in thealam al-malakut. The first is this world of ours which is apparent to the senses; it exists by the power (qudra) of God, one part proceeding from another in constant change. Thealam al-malakutexists by God’s eternal decree, without development, remaining in one state without addition or diminution. Thealam al-jabarutcomes between these two; it seems externally to belong to the first, but in respect of the power of God which is from all eternity (al-qudra al-azaliya) it is included in the second. The soul (nafs) belongs to thealam al-malakut, is taken from it and returns to it. In sleep and in ecstasy, even in this world, it can come into contact with the world from which it is derived. This is what happens in dreams—“sleep is the brother of death,” says al-Ghazzali; and thus, too, the saints and the prophets attain divine knowledge. Some angels belong to the world ofmalakut; some to that ofjabarut, apparently those who have shown themselveshere as messengers of God. The things in the heavens, the preserved tablet, the pen, the balance, etc., belong to the world ofmalakut. On the one hand, these are not sensible, corporeal things, and, on the other, these terms for them are not metaphors. Thus al-Ghazzali avoids the difficulty of Muslim eschatology with its bizarre concreteness. He rejects the right to allegorize—these things are real, actual; but he relegates them to this world ofmalakut. Again, the Qur’an, Islam, and Friday (the day of public worship) are personalities in the world ofmalakutandjabarut. So, too, the world ofmulkmust appear as a personality at the bar of these other worlds at the last day. It will come as an ugly old woman, but Friday as a beautiful young bride. This personal Qur’an belongs to the world ofjabarut, but Islam to that ofmalakut.
But just as those three worlds are not thought of as separate in time, so they are not separate in space. They are not like the seven heavens and seven earths of Muslim literalists, which stand, story-fashion, one above the other. Rather they are, as expressed above, modes of existence, and might be compared to the speculations on another life in space of n dimensions, framed, from a very different starting-point and on a basis of pure physics, by Balfour Stewart and Tait in their “Unseen Universe.” On another side they stand in close kinship to the Platonic world of ideas, whether through neo-Platonism or more immediately. Sufiism at its best, and when stripped of the trappings of Muslim tradition and Qur’anic exegesis, has no reason to shrink from the investigation either ofthe physicist or of the metaphysician. And so it is not strange to find that all Muslim thinkers have been tinged with mysticism to a greater or less degree, though they may not all have embraced formal Sufiism and accepted its vocabulary and system. This is true of al-Farabi, who was avowedly a Sufi; true also of Ibn Sina, who, though nominally an Aristotelian, was essentially a neo-Platonist, and admitted the possibility of intercourse with superior beings and with the Active Intellect, of miracles and revelations; true even of Ibn Rushd, who does not venture to deny the immediate knowledge of the Sufi saints, but only argues that experience of it is not sufficiently general to be made a basis for theological science.
In ethics, as we have already seen, the position of al-Ghazzali is a simple one. All our laws and theories upon the subject, the analysis of the qualities of the mind, good and bad, the tracing of hidden defects to their causes—all these things we owe to the saints of God to whom God Himself has revealed them. Of these there have been many at all times and in all countries, and without them and their labors and the light which God has vouchsafed to them, we could never know ourselves. Here, as everywhere, comes out al-Ghazzali’s fundamental position that the ultimate source of all knowledge is revelation from God. It may be major revelation, through accredited prophets who come forward as teachers, divinely sent and supported by miracles and by the evident truth of their message appealing to the human heart, or it may be minor revelation—subsidiary and explanatory—throughthe vast body of saints of different grades, to whom God has granted immediate knowledge of Himself. Where the saints leave off, the prophets begin; and, apart from such teaching, man, even in physical science, would be groping in the dark.
AGNOSTIC ATTITUDE
This position becomes still more prominent in his philosophical system. His agnostic attitude toward the results of pure thought has been already sketched. It is essentially the same as that taken up by Mansel in his Bampton lectures on “The Limits of Religious Thought.” Mansel, a pupil and continuator of Hamilton, developed and emphasized Hamilton’s doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, and applied it to theology, maintaining that we cannot know or think of the absolute and infinite, but only of the relative and finite. Hence, he went on to argue, we can have no positive knowledge of the attributes of God. This, though disguised by the methods and language of scholastic philosophy, is al-Ghazzali’s attitude in theTahafut. Mansel’s opponents said that he was like a man sitting on the branch of a tree and sawing off his seat. Al-Ghazzali, for the support of his seat, went back to revelation, either major, in the books sent down to the prophets, or minor, in the personal revelations of God’s saints. Further, it was not only in the Muslim schools that this attitude toward philosophy prevailed. Yehuda Halevi (d.A.D.1145; al-Ghazzali, d. 1111) also maintains in hisKusarithe insufficiency of philosophy in the highest questions of life, and bases religious truth on the incontrovertible historical facts of revelation. And Maimonides(d.A.D.1204) in hisMoreh Nebuchimtakes essentially the same position.
Of his views on dogmatic theology little need be said. Among modern theologians he stands nearest to Ritschl. Like Ritschl, he rejects metaphysics and opposes the influence of any philosophical system on his theology. The basis must be religious phenomena, simply accepted and correlated. Like Ritschl, too, he was emphatically ethical in his attitude; he lays stress on thevalue for usof a doctrine or a piece of knowledge. Our source of religious knowledge is revelation, and beyond a certain point we must not inquire as to the how and why of that knowledge. To do so would be to enter metaphysics and the danger-zone where we lose touch with vital realities and begin to use mere words. On one point he goes beyond Ritschl, and, on another, Ritschl goes beyond him. In his devotion to the facts of the religious consciousness Ritschl did not go so far as to become a mystic, indeed rejected mysticism with a conscious indignation; al-Ghazzali did become a mystic. But, on the other hand, Ritschl refused absolutely to enter upon the nature of God or upon the divine attributes—all that was mere metaphysics and heathenism; al-Ghazzali did not so far emancipate himself, and his only advance was to keep the doctrine on a strictly Qur’anic basis. So it stands written; not, so man is compelled by the nature of things to think.
WORK AND INFLUENCE
His work and influence in Islam may be summed up briefly as follows:First, he led men back from scholastic labors upon theological dogmas to living contact with, study and exegesis of, the Word and thetraditions. What happened in Europe when the yoke of mediæval scholasticism was broken, what is happening with us now, happened in Islam under his leadership. He could be a scholastic with scholastics, but to state and develop theological doctrine on a Scriptural basis was emphatically his method. We should now call him a Biblical theologian.
Second, in his teaching and moral exhortations he reintroduced the element of fear. In theMunqidhand elsewhere he lays stress on the need of such a striking of terror into the minds of the people. His was no time, he held, for smooth, hopeful preaching; no time for optimism either as to this world or the next. The horrors of hell must be kept before men; he had felt them himself. We have seen how other-worldly was his own attitude, and how the fear of the Fire had been the supreme motive in his conversion; and so he treated others.
Third, it was by his influence that Sufiism attained a firm and assured position in the Church of Islam.
Fourth, he brought philosophy and philosophical theology within the range of the ordinary mind. Before his time they had been surrounded, more or less, with mystery. The language used was strange; its vocabulary and terms of art had to be specially learned. No mere reader of the Arabic of the street or the mosque or the school could understand at once a philosophical tractate. Greek ideas and expressions, passing through a Syriac version into Arabic, had strained to the uttermost the resources of even that most flexible tongue. A long training hadbeen thought necessary before the elaborate and formal method of argumentation could be followed. All this al-Ghazzali changed, or at least tried to change. HisTahafutis not addressed to scholars only; he seeks with it a wider circle of readers, and contends that the views, the arguments, and the fallacies of the philosophers should be perfectly intelligible to the general public.
Of these four phases of al-Ghazzali’s work, the first and the third are undoubtedly the most important. He made his mark by leading Islam back to its fundamental and historical facts, and by giving a place in its system to the emotional religious life. But it will have been noticed that in none of the four phases was he a pioneer. He was not a scholar who struck out a new path, but a man of intense personality who entered on a path already blazed and made it the common highway. We have here his character. Other men may have been keener logicians, more learned theologians, more gifted saints; but he, through his personal experiences, had attained so overpowering a sense of the divine realities that the force of his character—once combative and restless, now narrowed and intense—swept all before it, and the Church of Islam entered on a new era of its existence.
So much space it has been necessary to give to this great man. Islam has never outgrown him, has never fully understood him. In the renaissance of Islam which is now rising to view his time will come and the new life will proceed from a renewed study of his works.
LATER ASH‘ARITES
From this time on, the Ash‘arites may be fairly regarded as the dominant school so far as the East is concerned. Saladin (d. 589) did much to aid in the establishment of this hegemony. He was a devout Muslim with the taste of an amateur for theological literature. Anecdotes tell how he had a special little catechism composed, and used himself to instruct his children in it. He founded theological academies in Egypt at Alexandria and Cairo, the first there except the Fatimid Hall of Science. One of the few blots on his name is the execution of the pantheistic Sufi, Shihab ad-Din as-Suhrawardi, at Aleppo in 587. Meanwhile, in the farther East, Fakhr ad-Din ar-Razi (d. 606) was writing his great commentary on the Qur’an, theMafatih al-Ghayb, “The Keys of the Unseen,” and carrying on the work of al-Ghazzali. The title of his commentary itself shows the dash of mysticism in his teaching, and he was in correspondence with Ibn Arabi, the arch-Sufi of the time. He studied philosophy, too, commented on works of Ibn Sina, and fought the philosophers on their own ground as al-Ghazzali had done. Kalam and philosophy are now, in the eyes of the theologians, a true philosophy and a false. Philosophy has taken the place of Mu‘tazilism and the other heresies. The enemies of the faith are outside its pale, and the scholasticizing of philosophy goes on steadily. According to some, a new stage was marked by al-Baydawi (d. 685), who confused inextricably philosophy and kalam, but the newness can have been comparative only. A century later al-Iji (d. 756) writes a book,al-Mawaqif, on kalam, half of which isgiven to metaphysics and the other half to dogmatics. At-Taftazani is another name worthy of mention. He died in 791, after a laborious life as a controversialist and commentator. When we reach Ibn Khaldun (d. 808), the first philosophical historian and the greatest until the nineteenth century of our era, we find that kalam has fallen again from its high estate. It has become a scholastic discipline, useful only to repel the attacks of heretics and unbelievers; and of heretics, says Ibn Khaldun, there are now none left. Reason, he goes on, cannot grasp the nature of God; cannot weigh His unity nor measure His qualities. God is unknowable and we must accept what we are told about Him by His prophets. Such was the result of the destruction of philosophy in Islam.
Islam in the West; Ibn Tumart and the Muwahhids; philosophy in the West under Muwahhid protection; Ibn Bajja; Ibn Tufayl; Ibn Rushd; Ibn Arabi; Ibn Sab‘in.
Islam in the West; Ibn Tumart and the Muwahhids; philosophy in the West under Muwahhid protection; Ibn Bajja; Ibn Tufayl; Ibn Rushd; Ibn Arabi; Ibn Sab‘in.
We have now anticipated one of the strangest and most characteristic figures and movements in the history of Islam. The preceding account, except as relates to Ibn Khaldun, has told of the triumphs of the Ash‘arites in the East only. In the West the movement was slower, and to it we must now turn. The Maghrib—the Occident, as the Arabs called all North Africa beyond Egypt—had been slow from the first to take on the Muslim impress. The invading army had fought its way painfully through, but the Berber tribes remained only half subdued and one-tenth Islamized. Egypt was conquered inA.H.20, and Samarqand had been reached in 56; but it was not till 74 that the Muslims were at Carthage. And even then and for long after there arose insurrection after insurrection, and the national spirit of the Berbers remained unbroken. Broadly, but correctly, Islam in North Africa for more than three centuries was a failure. The tribal constitutions of the Berbers were unaffected by the conception of the Khalifate and their primitive religious aspirations by the Faith of Muhammad. Not till the possibility came to them to construct Muslim states out of their own tribesdid their opposition begin to weaken. And then it was rather political Islam that had weakened. When the Fatimids conquered Egypt in 356 and moved the seat of their empire from al-Mahdiya to the newly founded Cairo, Islam assumed a new meaning for North Africa. The Fatimid empire there quickly melted away, and in its place arose several independent states, Berber in blood though claiming Arab descent and bearing Arab names. Islam no longer meant foreign oppression, and it began at last to make its way. Again, in the preceding period of insurrection the Berber leaders had frequently appeared in the guise and with the claim of prophets, men miraculously gifted and with a message from God. These wild tribesmen, with all their fanaticism for their own tribal liberties, have always been peculiarly accessible to the genius which claims its mission from heaven. So they had taken up the Fatimid cause and worshipped Ubayd Allah the Mahdi. And so they continued thereafter, and still continue to be swayed by saints, darwishes, and prophets of all degrees of insanity and cunning. The latest case in point is that of the Shaykh as-Sanusi, with whom we have already dealt. As time went on, there came a change in these prophet-led risings and saint-founded states. They gradually slipped over from being frankly anti-Muhammadan, if also close imitations of Muhammad’s life and methods, to being equally frankly Muslim. The theology of Islam easily afforded them the necessary point of connection. All that the prophet of the day need do was to claim the position of the Mahdi, thatGuided One, who according to the traditions of Muhammad was to come before the last day, when the earth shall be filled with violence, and to fill it again with righteousness. It was easy for each new Mahdi to select from the vast and contradictory mass of traditions in Muslim eschatology those which best fitted his person and his time. To the story and the doctrine of one of these we now come.
IBN TUMART
At the beginning of the sixth century a certain Berber student of theology, Ibn Tumart by name, travelled in the East in search of knowledge. An early and persistent western tradition asserts that he was a favorite pupil of al-Ghazzali’s, and was marked out by him as showing the signs of a future founder of empire. This may be taken for what it is worth. What is certain is that Ibn Tumart went back to the Maghrib and there brought about the triumph of a doctrine which was derived, if modified, from that of the Ash‘arites. Previously all kalam had been under a cloud in the West. Theological studies had been closely limited tofiqh, or canon law, and that of the narrowed school of Malik ibn Anas. Even the Qur’an and the collections of traditions had come to be neglected in favor of systematized law-books. The revolt of Ibn Hazm against this had apparently accomplished little. It had been too one-sided and negative, and had lacked the weight of personality behind it. Ibn Hazm had assailed the views of others with a wealth of vituperative language. But he had been a controversialist only. There is a story, tolerably well authenticated, that the books of al-Ghazzali were solemnly condemned by the Qadisof Cordova, and burnt in public. Yet, against that is to be set that all the Spanish theologians did not approve of this violence.
A ZAHIRITE IMAMITE
Ibn Tumart started in life as a reformer of the corruptions of his day, and seems to have slipped from that into the belief that he had been appointed by God as the great reformer for all time. As happens with reformers, from exhortation it came to force; from preaching at the abuses of the government to rebellion against the government. That government, the Murabit, went down before Ibn Tumart and his successors, and the pontifical rule of the Muwahhids, the asserters of God’stawhidor unity, rose in its place. The doctrine which he preached bears evident marks of the influence of al-Ghazzali and of Ibn Hazm.Tawhid, for him, meant a complete spiritualizing of the conception of God. Opposed totawhid, he settajsim, the assigning to God of ajismor body having bulk. Thus, when the theologians of the West took the anthropomorphic passages of the Qur’an literally, he applied to them the method ofta’wil, or interpretation, which he had learned in the East, and explained away these stumbling-blocks. Ibn Hazm, it will be remembered, resorted to grammatical and lexicographical devices to attain the same end, and had regardedta’wilwith abhorrence. To Ibn Tumart, then, thistajsimwas flat unbelief and, as Mahdi, it was his duty to oppose it by force of arms, to lead ajihadagainst its maintainers. Further, with Ibn Hazm, he agreed in rejectingtaqlid. There was only one truth, and it was man’s duty to find it for himself by going to the original sources.This is the genuine Zahirite doctrine which utterly rejects all comity with the four other legal rites; but Ibn Tumart, as Mahdi, added another element. It is based on a very simple Imamite philosophy of history. There has always been an Imam in the world, a divinely appointed leader, guarded byisma, protection against error. The first four Khalifas were of such divine appointment; thereafter came usurpers and oppressors. Theirs was the reign of wickedness and lies in the earth. Now he, the Mahdi, was come of the blood of the Prophet and bearing plainly all the necessary, accrediting signs to overcome these tyrants and anti-Christs. He thus was an Imamite, but stood quite apart from the welter of conflicting Shi‘ite sects—the Seveners, Twelvers, Zaydites and the rest—as far as do the present Sharifs of Morocco with their Alid-Sunnite position. The Mahdi, it is to be remembered, is awaited by Sunnites as by Shi‘ites, and is guarded against error as much as an Imam, since he partakes of the generalismawhich in divine things belongs to prophets. Such a leader, then, could claim from the people absolute obedience and credence. His word must be for them the source of truth. There was, therefore, no longer any need of analogy (qiyas) as a source, and we accordingly find that Ibn Tumart rejected it in all but legal matters and there surrounded it with restrictions. Analogical argument in things theological was forbidden.
But where he absolutely parted company from the Ash‘arites was with regard to the qualities of God. In that, too, he followed the view of IbnHazm sketched above. We must take the Qur’anic expressions as names and not as indicating attributes to us. It is true that his creed shows signs of a philosophical width lacking in Ibn Hazm. Like the Mu‘tazilites,e.g.Abu Hudhayl, he defines largely by negations. God is not this; is not affected by that. It is even phrased so as to be capable of a pantheistic explanation, and we find that Ibn Rushd wrote a commentary on it. But it may be doubted whether Ibn Tumart was himself a pantheist. All phases of Islam, as we have seen, ran toward that; and here there is only a little indiscretion in the wording. But it may easily have been that he had besides, like the Fatimids, a secret teaching or exposition of those simpler declarations which were intended for the mass of the people. Among his successors distinct traces of such a thing appear; both Aristotelian philosophers and advanced Sufis are connected with the Muwahhid movement. That, however, belongs to the sequel.
The success of Ibn Tumart, if halting at first, was eventually complete. As a simple lawyer who felt called upon to protest—as, indeed, are all good Muslims in virtue of a tradition from Muhammad—against the abuses of the time, he accomplished comparatively little. As Mahdi, he and his supporter and successor, Abd al-Mu’min, swept the country. For his movement was not merely Imamite and Muslim, but an expression as well of Berber nationalism. Here was a man, sprung from their midst, of their own stock and tongue, who, as Prophet of God, called them to arms. They obeyed his call, worshippedhim and fought for him. He translated the Qur’an for them into Berber; the call to prayers was given in Berber; functionaries of the church had to know Berber; his own theological writings circulated in Berber as well as in Arabic. As Persia took Islam and moulded it to suit herself, so now did the Berber tribes. And a strange jumble they made of it. With them, the Zahirite system of canon law, rejected by all other Muslim peoples, enjoyed its one brief period of power and glory. Shi‘ite legends and superstitions mingled with philosophical free thought. The book of mystery,al-Jafr, written by Ali, and containing the history of the world to the end of time, was said to have passed from the custody of al-Ghazzali at his death to the hands of the Mahdi and was by him committed to his successors. If only in view of the syncretism practised by both, it was fitting that al-Ghazzali and Ibn Tumart should be brought closely together. Yet it is hard to explain the persistence with which the great Ash‘arite is made the teacher and guide of the semi-Zahirite. There must have been something, now obscure to us, in their respective systems which suggested to contemporaries such intimate connection.
The rule of the Muwahhids lasted until 667, nearly one hundred years, and involved in its circle of influence many weighty personalities. With some of these we will now deal shortly.
It has been told above how narrow in general were the intellectual interests of the West. Canon law, poetry, history, geography were eagerly pursued, but little of original value was produced. Originalityand the breaking of ground in new fields were under a ban. Subtilty of thought and luxury of life took their place. Above all, and naturally, this applied to philosophy. And so it comes that the first philosophic name in the Muslim West is that of Abu Bakr ibn Bajja, for mediæval Europe Avenpace, who died comparatively young in 533. For him, as for all, and still more in the West than in the East, the problem of the philosopher was how to gain and maintain a tenable position in a world composed mostly of the philosophically ignorant and the religiously fanatical. This problem had two sides, internal and external. The inner and the nobler one was how such a mind could in its loneliness rise to its highest level and purify itself to the point of knowing things as they really are and so reach that eternal life in which the individual spirit loses itself in the Active Intellect (νοῦς ποιητικός,al-aql al-fa‘‘al) which is above all and behind all. The other, and baser, was how to so present his views and adapt his life that the life and the views might be possible in a Muslim community.
IBN BAJJA
Ibn Bajja was a close disciple of al-Farabi, who is to be regarded as the spiritual father of the later Arabic philosophy; Ibn Sina practically falls out. In logic, physics, and metaphysics he followed al-Farabi closely. But we can see how the times have moved and the philosophies with them. The essential differences have appeared and Ibn Bajja can no longer, with a good conscience, appear as a pious Muslim. The Sufi strain also is much weaker. The greatest joy and the closest truth are to be found inthought, and not in the sensuous ecstasies of the mystic. The intellect is the highest element in man’s being, but is only immortal as it joins itself to the one Active Intellect, which is all that is left of God. Here we have the beginning of the doctrine which, later, under the name of Averroism and pampsychism ran like wild-fire through the schools of Europe. Further, only by the constant exercise of its own functions can the intellect of man be thus raised. He must live rationally at all points; be able to give a reason for every action. This may compel him to live in solitude; the world is so irrational and will not suffer reason. Or some of the disciples of reason may draw together and form a community where they may live the calm life of nature and of the pursuit of knowledge and self-development. So they will be at one with nature and the eternal, and far removed from the frenzied life of the multitude with its lower aims and conceptions. It is easy to see how the iron of a fight against overwhelming odds had entered this soul. Only the friendship of some of the Murabit princes saved him; but he died in the end, says a story, by poison.
With the next names we find ourselves at a Muwahhid court, and there the atmosphere has changed. It is evident that, whatever might be the temper of the people, the chiefs of the Muwahhids viewed philosophy with no disfavor. Their problem, as in the case of the Fatimids, seems rather to have been how much the people might be taught with safety. Their solution of the problem—here we proceed on conjecture, but the basis is tolerably sound—was that the bulkof the people should be taught nothing but the literal sense of the Qur’an, metaphors, anthropomorphisms and all; that the educated lay public, which had already some inkling of the facts, should be assured that there was really no difference between philosophy and theology—that they were two phases of one truth; and that the philosophers should have a free hand to go on their own way, always provided that their speculations did not spread beyond their own circle and agitate the minds of the commonalty. It was a beautiful scheme, but like all systems of obscurantism it did not work. On the one hand, the people refused to be blindfolded, and, on the other, philosophy died out of inanition.
In accordance with this, we find the Muwahhid chiefs installing the Zahiritefiqhas the official system and sternly stopping all speculative discussing either of canon law or of theology. “The Word so stands written; take it or the sword,” is the significant utterance which has come to us from Abu Ya‘qub (reg. 558-580), son of Abd al-Mu’min. The same continued under his son Abu Yusuf al-Mansur (reg. 580-595), who added a not very carefully concealed contempt for the Mahdiship of Ibn Tumart. All such things were ridiculous in his philosophic eyes.
IBN TUFAYL; IBN RUSHD
Under these men and in adjustment with their system lived and worked Ibn Tufayl and Ibn Rushd, the last of the great Aristotelians. Ibn Tufayl was wazir and physician to Abu Ya‘qub and died a year after him, in 531. His was a calm, contemplative life, secluded in princely libraries. But his objects were the same as those of Ibn Bajja. He has evidentlyno hope that the great body of the people can ever be brought to the truth. A religion, sensuous and sensual alike, is needed to restrain the wild beast in man, and the masses should be left to the guidance of that religion. For a philosopher to seek to teach them better is to expose himself to peril and them to the loss of that little which they have. But in his methods, on the other hand, Ibn Tufayl is essentially at one with al-Ghazzali. He is a mystic who seeks in Sufi exercises, in the constant purifying of mind and body and in the unwearying search for the one unity in the individual multiplicity around him, to find a way to lose his self in that eternal and one spirit which for him is the divine. So at last he comes to ecstasy and reaches those things which eye hath not seen nor ear heard. The only difference between him and al-Ghazzali is that al-Ghazzali was a theologian and saw in his ecstasy Allah upon His throne and around Him the things of the heavens, as set forth in the Qur’an, while Ibn Tufayl was a philosopher, of neo-Platonic + Aristotelian stamp, and saw in his ecstasy the Active Intellect and Its chain of causes reaching down to man and back to Itself.
The book by which his name has lived, and which has had strange haps, is the romance ofHayy ibn Yaqzan, “The Living One, Son of the Waking One.” In it he conceives two islands, the one inhabited and the other not. On the inhabited island we have conventional people living conventional lives, and restrained by a conventional religion of rewards and punishments. Two men there, Salaman and Asal, have raised themselves to a higher level of self-rule.Salaman adapts himself externally to the popular religion and rules the people; Asal, seeking to perfect himself still further in solitude, goes to the other island. But there he finds a man, Hayy ibn Yaqzan, who has lived alone from infancy and has gradually, by the innate and uncorrupted powers of the mind, developed himself to the highest philosophic level and reached the Vision of the Divine. He has passed through all the stages of knowledge until the universe lies clear before him, and now he finds that his philosophy thus reached, without prophet or revelation, and the purified religion of Asal are one and the same. The story told by Asal of the people of the other island sitting in darkness stirs his soul and he goes forth to them as a missionary. But he soon learns that the method of Muhammad was the true one for the great masses, and that only by sensuous allegory and concrete things could they be reached and held. He retires to his island again to live the solitary life.
The bearing of this on the system of the Muwahhids cannot be mistaken. If it is a criticism of the finality of historical revelation, it is also a defence of the attitude of the Muwahhids toward both people and philosophers. By the favor of Abu Ya‘qub, Ibn Tufayl had practically been able to live on an island and develop himself by study. So, too, Abu Ya‘qub might stand for the enlightened but practical Salaman. Yet the meaning evidently is that between them they failed and must fail. There could only be a solitary philosopher here and there, and happy for him if he found a princely patron. The people whichknew not the truth were accursed. Perhaps, rather, they were children and had to be humored and guided as such in an endless childhood.
It is evident that such a solitary possessor of truth had two courses open to him. He could either busy himself in his studies and exercises, as had done Ibn Bajja and Ibn Tufayl, or he could boldly enter public life and trust to his dialectic ingenuity and resource—perhaps, also, to his plasticity of conscience—to carry him past all whispers of heresy and unbelief. The latter course was chosen by Ibn Rushd. He was born at Cordova, in 520, of a family of jurists and there studied law. From his legal studies only a book on the law of inheritance has reached us, and it, though frequently commented on, has never been printed. In 548 he was presented to Abu Ya‘qub by Ibn Tufayl and encouraged by him in the study of philosophy. In it his greatest work was done. In spite of the shreds and patches of neo-Platonism which clung to him, he was the greatest mediæval commentator on Aristotle. It is only part of the eternal puzzle of the Muslim mind that the utility of Greek for a student of Aristotle seems never to have struck him. Thereafter he acted as judge in different places in Spain and was court physician for a short time in 578 to Abu Ya‘qub. In 575 he had written his tractates, to which we shall come immediately, mediating between philosophy and theology. Toward the end of his life he was condemned by Abu Yusuf al-Mansur for heresy and banished from Cordova. This was in all likelihood a truckling on the part of al-Mansur to the religious prejudices of thepeople of Spain, who were probably of stiffer orthodoxy than the Berbers. He was in Spain, at Cordova, at the time, and was engaged in carrying on a religious war with the Christians. On his return to Morocco the decree of exile was recalled and Ibn Rushd restored to favor. We find him again at the court in Morocco, and he died there in 595.
This is not the place to enter upon Ibn Rushd’s philosophical system. He was a thorough-going Aristotelian, as he knew Aristotle. That was probably much better than any of his predecessors; but even he had not got clear from the fatal influence of Plotinus. Above all, he is essentially a theologian just as much as they. In Aristotle there had been given what was to all intents a philosophical revelation. Only in the knowledge and acceptance of it could truth and life be found. And some must reach it; one at least there must always be. If a thing is not seen by someone it has existed in vain; which is impossible. If someone at least does not know the truth, it also has existed in vain, which is still more impossible. That is Ibn Rushd’s way of saying that theesseis thepercipiand that there must be a perceiver. And he has unlimited faith in his means of reaching that Truth—only by such capitalization can we express his theologic attitude. The logic of Aristotle is infallible and can break through to the supreme good itself. Ecstasy and contemplation play no part with him; there he separates from Ibn Tufayl. Such intercourse with the Active Intellect may exist; but it is too rare to be taken into account. Obviously, Ibn Rushd himself, who to himself wasthe percipient of truth for his age, had never reached that perception. Solitary meditation he cannot away with; for him the market-place and contact with men; there he parts with Ibn Bajja. In truth, he is nearer to the life in life of Ibn Sina, and that, perhaps, explains his constant attacks on the Persianbon vivant.
ATTACK ON AL-GHAZZALI
All his predecessors he joys in correcting, but his especialbête noireis al-Ghazzali. With him it is war on life or death. He has two good causes. One is al-Ghazzali’s “Destruction of the Philosophers;” of it, Ibn Rushd, in his turn, writes a “Destruction.” This is a clever, incisive criticism, luminous with logical exactitude, yet missing al-Ghazzali’s vital earnestness and incapable of reaching his originality. But al-Ghazzali had not only attacked the philosophers; he had also spread the knowledge of their teachings and reasonings, and had said that there was nothing esoteric and impossible of grasp in them for the ordinary mind. He had thus assailed the fundamental principles of the Muwahhid system. Against this, Ibn Rushd wrote the tractates spoken of above. They were evidently addressed to the educated laity; not to the ignorant multitude, but to those who had already read such books as those of al-Ghazzali and been affected by them, yet had not studied philosophy at first hand. That they were not intended for such special students is evident from the elaborate care that is taken in them to conceal, or, if that were not possible, to put a good face upon obnoxious doctrines. Thus, his philosophy left no place in reality for a system of rewards and punishments or even forany individual existence of the soul after death, for a creation of the material world, or for a providence in the direct working of the supreme being on earth. But all these points are involved or glossed over in these tractates.
Further, it is plain that their object was to bring about a reform of religion in itself, and also of the attitude of theologians to students of philosophy. In them he sums up his own position under four heads:First, that philosophy agrees with religion and that religion recommends philosophy. Here, he is fighting for his life. Religion is true, a revelation from God; and philosophy is true, the results reached by the human mind; these two truths cannot contradict each other. Again, men are frequently exhorted in the Qur’an to reflect, to consider, to speculate about things; that means the use of the intelligence, which follows certain laws, long ago traced and worked out by the ancients. We must, therefore, study their works and proceed further on the same course ourselves,i.e., we must study philosophy.
Second, there are two things in religion, literal meaning and interpretation. If we find anything in the Qur’an which seems externally to contradict the results of philosophy, we may be quite sure that there is something under the surface. We must look for some possible interpretation of the passage, some inner meaning; and we shall certainly find it.
THE MULTIFORM TRUTH
Third, the literal meaning is the duty of the multitude, and interpretation the duty of scholars. Those who are not capable of philosophical reasoning must hold the literal truth of the different statements inthe Qur’an. The imagery must be believed by them exactly as it stands, except where it is absolutely evident that we have only an image. On the other hand, philosophers must be given the liberty of interpreting as they choose. If they find it necessary, from some philosophical necessity, to adopt an allegorical interpretation of any passage or to find in it a metaphor, that liberty must be open to them. There must be no laying down of dogmas by the church as to what may be interpreted and what may not. In Ibn Rushd’s opinion, the orthodox theologians sometimes interpreted when they should have kept by the letter, and sometimes took literally passages in which they should have found imagery. He did not accuse them of heresy for this, and they should grant him the same liberty.
Fourth, those who know are not to be allowed to communicate interpretations to the multitude. So Ali said, “Speak to the people of that which they understand; would ye that they give the lie to God and His messenger?” Ibn Rushd considered that belief was reached by three different classes of people in three different ways. The many believe because of rhetorical syllogisms (khitabiya),i.e., those whose premises consist of the statements of a religious teacher (maqbulat), or are presumptions (maznunat). Others believe because of controversial syllogisms (jadliya), which are based on principles (mashhurat) or admissions (musallamat). All these premises belong to the class of propositions which are not absolutely certain. The third class, and by far the smaller, consists of the people of demonstration (burhan).Their belief is based upon syllogisms composed of propositions which are certain. These consist of axioms (awwaliyat) and five other classes of certainties. Each of these three classes of people has to be treated in the way that suits its mental character. It is wrong to put demonstration or controversy before those who can understand only rhetorical reasoning. It destroys their faith and gives them nothing to take its place. The case is similar with those who can only reach controversial reasoning but cannot attain unto demonstration. Thus Ibn Rushd would have the faith of the multitude carefully screened from all contact with the teachings of philosophers. Such books should not be allowed to go into general circulation, and if necessary, the civil authorities should step in to prevent it. If these principles were accepted and followed, a return might be looked for of the golden age of Islam, when there was no theological controversy and men believed sincerely and earnestly.
On this last paragraph it is worth noticing that its threefold distinction is “conveyed” by Ibn Rushd from a little book belonging to al-Ghazzali’s later life, after he had turned to the study of tradition,Iljam al-Awamm an ilm al-kalam, “The reining in of the commonalty from the science of kalam.”
Such was, practically, the end of the Muslim Aristotelians. Some flickers of philosophic study doubtless remained. So we find a certain Abu-l-Hajjaj ibn Tumlus (d. 620) writing on Aristotle’s “Analytics,” and the tractates of Ibn Rushd described above were copied at Almeria in 724. But the fate of all Muslimspeculation fell, and this school went out in Sufiism. It was not Ibn Rushd that triumphed but Ibn Tufayl, and that side of Ibn Tufayl which was akin to al-Ghazzali. From this point on, the thinkers and writers of Islam become mystics more and more overwhelmingly. Dogmatic theology itself falls behind, and of philosophical disciplines only formal logic and a metaphysics of the straitest scholastic type are left. Philosophy becomes the handmaid of theology, and a very mechanical handmaid at that. It is only in the schools of the Sufis that we find real development and promise of life. The future lay with them, however dubious it may seem to us that a future in such charge must be.
IBN ARABI
The greatest Sufi in the Arabic-speaking world was undoubtedly Muhyi ad-Din ibn Arabi. He was born in Murcia in 560, studiedhadithandfiqhat Seville, and in 598 set out to travel in the East. He wandered through the Hijaz, Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, and died at Damascus in 638, leaving behind him an enormous mass of writings, at least 150 of which have come down to us. Why he left Spain is unknown; it is plain that he was under the influence of the Muwahhid movement. He was a Zahirite in law; rejected analogy, opinion, andtaqlid, but admitted agreement. His attachment to the opinions of Ibn Hazm especially was very strong. He edited some of that scholar’s works, and was only prevented by his objections totaqlidfrom being a formal Hazmite. But with all that literalness infiqh, his mysticism in theology was of the most rampant and luxurious description. Between the two sides, it is true,there existed a connection of a kind. He had no need for analogy or opinion or for any of the workings of the vain human intelligence so long as the divine light was flooding his soul and he saw the things of the heavens with plain vision. So his books are a strange jumble of theosophy and metaphysical paradoxes, all much like the theosophy of our own day. He evidently took the system of the mutakallims and played with it by means of formal logic and a lively imagination. To what extent he was sincere in his claim of heavenly illuminings and mysterious powers it would be hard to say. The oriental mystic has little difficulty in deceiving himself. His opinions—so far as we can know them—may be briefly sketched as follows: The being of all things is God: there is nothing except Him. All things are an essential unity; every part of the world is the whole world. So man is a unity in essence but a multiplicity in individuals. His anthropology was an advance upon that of al-Ghazzali toward a more unflinching pantheism. He has the same view that the soul of man is a spiritual substance different from everything else and proceeding from God. But he obliterates the difference of God and makes souls practically emanations. At death these return into God who sent them forth. All religions to Ibn Arabi were practically indifferent; in them all the divine was working and was worshipped. Yet Islam is the more advantageous and Sufiism is its true philosophy. Further, man has no free-will; he is constrained by the will of God, which is really all that exists. Nor is there any real difference betweengood and evil; the essential unity of all things makes such a division impossible.