The origin and inspiration of philosophy in Islam are quite different from those of Islamic theology. Philosophy developed out of and around the nonreligious practical and theoretical sciences, it recognized no theoretical limits other than those of human reason itself, and it assumed that the truth found by unaided reason does not disagree with the truth of Islam when both are properly understood. Islamic philosophy was not a handmaid of theology. The two disciplines were related, because both followed the path of rational inquiry and distinguished themselves from traditional religious disciplines and from mysticism, which sought knowledge through practical, spiritual purification. Islamic theology was Islamic in the strict sense: it confined itself within the Islamic religious community, and it remained separate from the Christian and Jewish theologies that developed in the same cultural context and used Arabic as a linguistic medium. No such separation is observable in the philosophy developed in the Islamic cultural context and written in Arabic: Muslims, Christians, and Jews participated in it and separated themselves according to the philosophic rather than the religious doctrines they held.

The background of philosophic interest in Islam is found in the earlier phases of theology. But its origin is found in the translation of Greek philosophic works. By the middle of the 9th century, there were enough translations of scientific and philosophic works from Greek, Pahlavi, and Sanskrit to show those who read them with care that scientific and philosophic inquiry was something more than a series of disputations based on what the theologians had called sound reason. Moreover, it became evident that there existed a tradition of observation, calculation, and theoretical reflection that had been pursued systematically, refined, and modified for over a millennium. The scope of this tradition was broad: it included the study of logic, the sciences of nature (including psychology and biology), the mathematical sciences (including music and astronomy), metaphysics, ethics, and politics. Each of these disciplines had a body of literature in which its principles and problems had been investigated by Classical authors, whose positions had been, in turn, stated, discussed, criticized, or developed by various commentators. Islamic philosophy emerged from its theological background when Muslim thinkers began to study this foreign tradition, became competent students of the ancient philosophers and scientists, criticized and developed their doctrines, clarified their relevance for the questions raised by the theologians, and showed what light they threw on the fundamental issues of revelation, prophecy, and the divine law.

Although the first Muslim philosopher, al-Kindī, who flourished in the first half of the 9th century, lived during the triumph of the Muʿtazilah of Baghdad and was connected with the ʿAbbāsid caliphs who championed the Muʿtazilah and patronized the Hellenistic sciences, there is no clear evidence that he belonged to a theological school. His writings show him to have been a diligent student of Greek and Hellenistic authors in philosophy and point to his familiarity with Indian arithmetic. His conscious, open, and unashamed acknowledgment of earlier contributions to scientific inquiry was foreign to the spirit, method, and purpose of the theologians of the time. His acquaintance with the writings of Plato and Aristotle was still incomplete and technically inadequate. He improved the Arabic translation of the Theology of Aristotle but made only a selective and circumspect use of it. Devoting most of his writings to questions of natural philosophy and mathematics, al-Kindī was particularly concerned with the relation between corporeal things, which are changeable, in constant flux, infinite, and as such unknowable, on the one hand, and the permanent world of forms (spiritual or secondary substances), which are not subject to flux yet to which human beings have no access except through things of the senses. He insisted that a purely human knowledge of all things is possible, through the use of various scientific devices, learning such things as mathematics and logic, and assimilating the contributions of earlier thinkers. The existence of a “supernatural” way to this knowledge in which all these requirements can be dispensed with was acknowledged by al-Kindī: God may choose to impart it to his prophets by cleansing and illuminating their souls and by giving them his aid, right guidance, and inspiration; and they, in turn, communicate it to ordinary human beings in an admirably clear, concise, and comprehensible style. This is the prophets’ “divine” knowledge, characterized by a special mode of access and style of exposition. In principle, however, this very same knowledge is accessible to human beings without divine aid, even though “human” knowledge may lack the completeness and consummate logic of the prophets’ divine message.

Reflection on the two kinds of knowledge—the human knowledge bequeathed by the ancients and the revealed knowledge expressed in the Qurʾān—led al-Kindī to pose a number of themes that became central to Islamic philosophy: the rational–metaphorical exegesis of the Qurʾān and the Hadith; the identification of God with the first being and the first cause; creation as the giving of being and as a kind of causation distinct from natural causation and Neoplatonic emanation; and the immortality of the individual soul.

The teachings of Abū Bakr al-Rāzī

The philosopher whose principal concerns, method, and opposition to authority were inspired by the extreme Muʿtazilah was the physician Abū Bakr al-Rāzī (flourished 9th–10th centuries). He adopted the Muʿtazilah’s atomism and was intent on developing a rationally defensible theory of creation that would not require any change in God or attribute to him responsibility for the imperfection and evil prevalent in the created world. To this end, he expounded the view that there are five eternal principles—God, Soul, prime matter, infinite, or absolute, space, and unlimited, or absolute, time—and explained creation as the result of the unexpected and sudden turn of events (faltah). Faltah occurred when Soul, in her ignorance, desired matter and the good God eased her misery by allowing her to satisfy her desire and to experience the suffering of the material world, and then gave her reason to make her realize her mistake and deliver her from her union with matter, the cause of her suffering and of all evil. Al-Rāzī claimed that he was a Platonist, that he disagreed with Aristotle, and that his views were those of the Ṣābians of Harran and the Brahmans (the Hindu priestly caste).

Ismāʿīlī theologians became aware of the kinship between certain elements of his cosmology and their own. They disputed with him during his lifetime and continued afterward to refute his doctrines in their writings. According to their account of his doctrines, he was totally opposed to authority in matters of knowledge, believed in the progress of the arts and sciences, and held that all reasonable human beings are equally able to look after their own affairs, equally inspired and able to know the truth of what earlier teachers had taught, and equally able to improve upon it. Ismāʿīlī theologians were incensed, in particular, by his wholesale rejection of prophecy, particular revelation, and divine laws. They were likewise opposed to his criticisms of religion in general as a device employed by evildoers and a kind of tyranny over human beings that exploits their innocence and credulity, perpetuates ignorance, and leads to conflicts and wars.

Although the fragmentary character of al-Kindī’s and al-Rāzī’s surviving philosophic writings does not permit passing firm and independent judgment on their accomplishments, they tend to bear out the view of later Muslim students of philosophy that both lacked competence in the logical foundation of philosophy, were knowledgeable in some of the natural sciences but not in metaphysics, and were unable to narrow the gap that separated philosophy from the new religion, Islam.

The teachings of al-Fārābī Political philosophy and the study of religion

The first philosopher to meet this challenge was al-Fārābī (flourished 9th–10th centuries). He saw that theology and the juridical study of the law were derivative phenomena that function within a framework set by the prophet as lawgiver and founder of a human community. In this community, revelation defines the opinions the members of the community must hold and the actions they must perform if they are to attain the earthly happiness of this world and the supreme happiness of the other world. Philosophy could not understand this framework of religion as long as it concerned itself almost exclusively with its truth content and confined the study of practical science to individualistic ethics and personal salvation.

In contrast to al-Kindī and al-Rāzī, al-Fārābī recast philosophy in a new framework analogous to that of the Islamic religion. The sciences were organized within this philosophic framework so that logic, physics, mathematics, and metaphysics culminated in a political science whose subject matter is the investigation of happiness and how it can be realized in cities and nations. The central theme of this political science is the founder of a virtuous or excellent community. Included in this theme are views concerning the supreme rulers who follow the founder, their qualifications, and how the community must be ordered so that its members attain happiness as citizens rather than isolated human beings. Once this new philosophical framework was established, it became possible to conduct a philosophical investigation of all the elements that constituted the Islamic community: the prophet-lawgiver, the aims of the divine laws, the legislation of beliefs as well as actions, the role of the successors to the founding legislator, the grounds of the interpretation or reform of the law, the classification of human communities according to their doctrines in addition to their size, and the critique of “ignorant” (pagan), “transgressing,” “falsifying,” and “erring” communities. Philosophical cosmology, psychology, and politics were blended by al-Fārābī into a political theology whose aim was to clarify the foundations of the Islamic community and defend its reform in a direction that would promote scientific inquiry and encourage philosophers to play an active role in practical affairs.

Interpretation of Plato and Aristotle

Behind this public, or exoteric, aspect of al-Fārābī’s work stood a massive body of more properly philosophic or scientific inquiries, which established his reputation among Muslims as the greatest philosophical authority after Aristotle, a great interpreter of the thought of Plato and Aristotle and their commentators, and a master to whom almost all major Muslim as well as a number of Jewish and Christian philosophers turned for a fuller understanding of the controversial, troublesome, and intricate questions of philosophy. Continuing the tradition of the Hellenistic masters of the Athenian and Alexandrian philosophical schools, al-Fārābī broadened the range of philosophical inquiry and fixed its form. He paid special attention to the study of language and its relation to logic. In his numerous commentaries on Aristotle’s logical works, he expounded for the first time in Arabic the entire range of the scientific and nonscientific forms of argument and established the place of logic as an indispensable prerequisite for philosophic inquiry. His writings on natural science exposed the foundation and assumptions of Aristotle’s physics and dealt with the arguments of Aristotle’s opponents, both philosophers and scientists, pagan, Christian, and Muslim.

The analogy of religion and philosophy

Al-Fārābī’s theological and political writings showed later Muslim philosophers the way to deal with the question of the relation between philosophy and religion and presented them with a complex set of problems that they continued to elaborate, modify, and develop in different directions. Starting with the view that religion is analogous or similar to philosophy, al-Fārābī argued that the idea of the true prophet-lawgiver ought to be the same as that of the true philosopher-king. Thus, he challenged both al-Kindī’s view that prophets and philosophers have different and independent ways to the highest truth available to human beings and al-Rāzī’s view that philosophy is the only way to that knowledge. That a person could combine the functions of prophecy, lawgiving, philosophy, and kingship did not necessarily mean that these functions were identical; it did mean, however, that they all are legitimate subjects of philosophic inquiry. Philosophy must account for the powers, knowledge, and activities of the prophet, lawgiver, and king, which it must distinguish from and relate to those of the philosopher. The public, or political, function of philosophy was emphasized. Unlike Neoplatonism, which had for long limited itself to the Platonic teaching that the function of philosophy is to liberate the soul from the shadowy existence of the cave—in which knowledge can only be imperfectly comprehended as shadows reflecting the light of the truth beyond the cave (the world of senses)—al-Fārābī insisted with Plato that the philosopher must be forced to return to the cave, learn to talk to its inhabitants in a manner they can comprehend, and engage in actions that may improve their lot.

Impact on Ismāʿīlī theology

Although it is not always easy to know the immediate practical intentions of a philosopher, it must be remembered that in al-Fārābī’s lifetime the fate of the Islamic world was in the balance. The Sunni caliphate’s power hardly extended beyond Baghdad, and it appeared quite likely that the various Shiʿi sects, especially the Ismāʿīlīs, would finally overpower it and establish a new political order. Of all the movements in Islamic theology, Ismāʿīlī theology was the one that was most clearly and massively penetrated by philosophy. Yet, its Neoplatonic cosmology, revolutionary background, antinomianism (antilegalism), and general expectation that divine laws were about to become superfluous with the appearance of the qāʾim (the imam of the “resurrection”) all militated against the development of a coherent political theory to meet the practical demands of political life and present a viable practical alternative to the Sunni caliphate. Al-Fārābī’s theologico-political writings helped point out this basic defect of Ismāʿīlī theology. Under the Fāṭimids in Egypt (969–1171), Ismāʿīlī theology modified its cosmology in the direction suggested by al-Fārābī, returned to the view that the community must continue to live under the divine law, and postponed the prospect of the abolition of divine laws and the appearance of the qāʾim to an indefinite point in the future.

The teachings of Avicenna

The “Oriental Philosophy”

Even more indicative of al-Fārābī’s success is the fact that his writings helped produce a philosopher of the stature of Avicenna (flourished 10th–11th centuries), whose versatility, imagination, inventiveness, and prudence shaped philosophy into a powerful force that gradually penetrated Islamic theology and mysticism and Persian poetry in Eastern Islam and gave them universality and theoretical depth. His own personal philosophic views, he said, were those of the ancient sages of Greece (including the genuine views of Plato and Aristotle), which he had set forth in the “Oriental Philosophy,” a book that has not survived and probably was not written or meant to be written. They were not identical with the common Peripatetic (Aristotelian) doctrines and were to be distinguished from the learning of his contemporaries, the Christian “Aristotelians” of Baghdad, which he attacked as vulgar, distorted, and falsified. His most voluminous writing, Kitāb al-shifāʾ (“The Book of Healing”), was meant to accommodate the doctrines of other philosophers as well as hint at his own personal views, which are elaborated elsewhere in more imaginative and allegorical forms.

Distinction between essence and existence and the doctrine of creation Avicenna had learned from certain hints in al-Fārābī that the exoteric teachings of Plato regarding the forms, creation, and the immortality of individual souls were closer to revealed doctrines than the genuine views of Aristotle, that the doctrines of Plotinus and later Neoplatonic commentators were useful in harmonizing Aristotle’s views with revealed doctrines, and that philosophy must accommodate itself to the divine law on the issue of creation and of reward and punishment in the hereafter, which presupposes some form of individual immortality. Following al-Fārābī’s lead, Avicenna initiated a full-fledged inquiry into the question of being, in which he distinguished between essence and existence. He argued that the fact of existence cannot be inferred from or accounted for by the essence of existing things and that form and matter by themselves cannot interact and originate the movement of the universe or the progressive actualization of existing things. Existence must, therefore, be due to an agent-cause that necessitates, imparts, gives, or adds existence to an essence. To do so, the cause must be an existing thing and coexist with its effect. The universe consists of a chain of actual beings, each giving existence to the one below it and responsible for the existence of the rest of the chain below. Because an actual infinite is deemed impossible by Avicenna, this chain as a whole must terminate in a being that is wholly simple and one, whose essence is its very existence, and therefore is self-sufficient and not in need of something else to give it existence. Because its existence is not contingent on or necessitated by something else but is necessary and eternal in itself, it satisfies the condition of being the necessitating cause of the entire chain that constitutes the eternal world of contingent existing things.

All creation is necessarily and eternally dependent upon God. It consists of the intelligences, souls, and bodies of the heavenly spheres, each of which is eternal, and the sublunary sphere, which is also eternal, undergoing a perpetual process of generation and corruption, of the succession of form over matter, very much in the manner described by Aristotle.

The immortality of individual souls There is, however, a significant exception to this general rule: the human rational soul. One can affirm the existence of one’s soul from direct consciousness of one’s self (what one means by “I”), and one can imagine this happening even in the absence of external objects and bodily organs. This proves, according to Avicenna, that the soul is indivisible, immaterial, and incorruptible substance, not imprinted in matter, but created with the body, which it uses as an instrument. Unlike other immaterial substances (the intelligences and souls of the spheres), it is not pre-eternal but is generated, or made to exist, at the same time as the individual body, which can receive it, is formed. The composition, shape, and disposition of its body and the soul’s success or failure in managing and controlling it, the formation of moral habits, and the acquisition of knowledge all contribute to its individuality and difference from other souls. Though the body is not resurrected after its corruption, the soul survives and retains all the individual characteristics, perfections or imperfections, that it achieved in its earthly existence and in this sense is rewarded or punished for its past deeds. Avicenna’s claim that he has presented a philosophic proof for the immortality of generated (“created”) individual souls no doubt constitutes the high point of his effort to harmonize philosophy and religious beliefs.

Philosophy, religion, and mysticism Having accounted for the more difficult issues of creation and the immortality of individual souls, Avicenna proceeded to explain the faculty of prophetic knowledge (the “sacred” intellect), revelation (imaginative representation meant to convince the multitude and improve their earthly life), miracles, and the legal and institutional arrangements (acts of worship and the regulation of personal and public life) through which the divine law achieves its end. Avicenna’s explanation of almost every aspect of Islam is pursued on the basis of extensive exegesis of the Qurʾān and the Hadith. The primary function of religion is to assure the happiness of the many. This practical aim of religion (which Avicenna saw in the perspective of Aristotle’s practical science) enabled him to appreciate the political and moral functions of divine revelation and account for its form and content. Revealed religion, however, has a subsidiary function also—that of indicating to the few the need to pursue the kind of life and knowledge appropriate to rare individuals endowed with special gifts. These individuals must be dominated by the love of God to facilitate the achievement of the highest knowledge. In many places Avicenna appears to identify these individuals with the mystics. The identification of the philosopher as a kind of mystic conveyed a new image of the philosopher as a member of the religious community who is distinguished from his coreligionists by his otherworldliness, dedicated to the inner truth of religion, and consumed by the love of God. Avicenna’s allegorical and mystical writings are usually called “esoteric” in the sense that they contain his personal views cast in an imaginative, symbolic form. The esoteric works must, then, be interpreted. Their interpretation must move away from the explicit doctrines contained in “exoteric” works such as the Shifāʾ and recover “the unmixed and uncorrupted truth” set forth in the “Oriental Philosophy”—the existence of which, as noted above, is spurious. This dilemma has made interpretation both difficult and rewarding for Muslim philosophers and modern scholars alike.

The Western philosophers Background and characteristics of the Western Muslim philosophical tradition Andalusia (in Spain) and western North Africa contributed little of substance to Islamic theology and philosophy until the 12th century. Legal strictures against the study of philosophy were more effective there than in the East. Scientific interest was channelled into medicine, pharmacology, mathematics, astronomy, and logic. More general questions of physics and metaphysics were treated sparingly and in symbols, hints, and allegories. By the 12th century, however, the writings of al-Fārābī, Avicenna, and al-Ghazālī had found their way to the West. A philosophical tradition emerged, based primarily on the study of al-Fārābī. It was critical of Avicenna’s philosophic innovations and not convinced that al-Ghazālī’s critique of Avicenna touched philosophy as such, and it refused to acknowledge the position assigned by both to mysticism. The survival of philosophy in the West required extreme prudence, emphasis on its scientific character, abstention from meddling in political or religious matters, and abandonment of the hope of effecting extensive doctrinal or institutional reform.

The teachings of Ibn Bājjah Theoretical science and intuitive knowledge Ibn Bājjah (died 1138) initiated this tradition with a radical interpretation of al-Fārābī’s political philosophy that emphasized the virtues of the perfect but nonexistent city and the vices prevalent in all existing cities. He concluded that the philosopher must order his own life as a solitary individual, shun the company of nonphilosophers, reject their opinions and ways of life, and concentrate on reaching his own final goal by pursuing the theoretical sciences and achieving intuitive knowledge through contact with the Active Intelligence. The multitude live in a dark cave and see only dim shadows. Their ways of life and their imaginings and beliefs consist of layers of darkness that cannot be known through reason alone. Therefore, the divine law has been revealed to enable human beings to know this dark region. The philosopher’s duty is to seek the light of the sun (the intellect). To do so, he must leave the cave, see all colours as they truly are and see light itself, and finally become transformed into that light. The end, then, is contact with Intelligence, not with something that transcends Intelligence, as taught by Plotinus, Ismāʿīlism, and mysticism. Ibn Bājjah criticized the latter as the way of imagination, motivated by desire, and aiming at pleasure. Philosophy, he claimed, is the only way to the truly blessed state, which can be achieved only by going through theoretical science, even though it is higher than theoretical science.

Unconcern of philosophy with reform Ibn Bājjah’s cryptic style and the unfinished form in which he left most of his writings tend to highlight his departures from al-Fārābī and Avicenna. Unlike al-Fārābī, he is silent about the philosopher’s duty to return to the cave and partake of the life of the city. He appears to argue that the aim of philosophy is attainable independently from the philosopher’s concern with the best city and is to be achieved in solitude or, at most, in comradeship with philosophic souls. Unlike Avicenna, who prepared the way for him by clearly distinguishing between theoretical and practical science, Ibn Bājjah is concerned with practical science only insofar as it is relevant to the life of the philosopher. He is contemptuous of allegories and imaginative representations of philosophic knowledge, silent about theology, and shows no concern with improving the multitude’s opinions and way of life.

The teachings of Ibn Ṭufayl The philosopher as a solitary individual In his philosophic story Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (“Alive, Son of Wakeful”), the philosopher Ibn Ṭufayl (died 1185) fills gaps in the work of his predecessor Ibn Bājjah. The story communicates the secrets of Avicenna’s “Oriental Philosophy” as experienced by a solitary hero who grows up on a deserted island, learns about the things around him, acquires knowledge of the natural universe (including the heavenly bodies), and achieves the state of “annihilation” (fanāʾ) of the self in the divine reality. This is the apparent and traditional secret of the “Oriental Philosophy.” But the hero’s wisdom is still incomplete, for he knows nothing about other human beings, their way of life, or their laws. When he chances to meet one of them—a member of a religious community inhabiting a neighbouring island, who is inclined to reflect on the divine law and seek its inner, spiritual meanings and who has abandoned the society of his fellow human beings to devote himself to solitary meditation and worship—he does not at first recognize that he is a human being like himself, cannot communicate with him, and frightens him by his wild aspect. After learning about the doctrines and acts of worship of the religious community, he understands them as alluding to and agreeing with the truth that he had learned by his own unaided effort, and he goes as far as admitting the validity of the religion and the truthfulness of the prophet who gave it. He cannot understand, however, why the Prophet Muhammad communicated the truth by way of allusions, examples, and corporeal representations or why religion permits human beings to devote much time and effort to practical, worldly things.

Concern for reform His ignorance of the nature of most people and his compassion for them make the solitary hero insist on becoming their saviour. He persuades his companion to take him to his coreligionists and help him convert them to the naked truth by propagating among them “the secrets of wisdom.” His education is completed when he fails in his endeavour. He learns the limits beyond which the multitude cannot ascend without becoming confused and unhappy. He also learns the wisdom of the divine lawgiver in addressing them in the way they can understand, enabling them to achieve limited ends through doctrines and actions suited to their abilities. The story ends with the hero taking leave of these people after apologizing to them for what he did and confessing that he is now fully convinced that they should not change their ways but remain attached to the literal sense of the divine law and obey its demands. He returns to his own island to continue his former solitary existence.

The hidden secret of Avicenna’s “Oriental Philosophy” The hidden secret of Avicenna’s “Oriental Philosophy” appears, then, to be that the philosopher must return to the cave, educate himself in the ways of nonphilosophers, and understand the incompatibility between philosophical life and the life of the multitude, which must be governed by religion and divine laws. Otherwise, his ignorance will lead him to actions dangerous to the well-being of both the community and philosophy. Because Ibn Ṭufayl’s hero had grown up as a solitary human being, he lacks the kind of wisdom that could have enabled him to pursue philosophy in a religious community and be useful to such a community. Neither the conversion of the community to philosophy nor the philosopher’s solitary life is a viable alternative.

To Ibn Ṭufayl’s younger friend Averroës (Ibn Rushd, flourished 12th century) belongs the distinction of presenting a solution to the problem of the relation between philosophy and the Islamic community in the West, a solution meant to be legally valid, theologically sound, and philosophically satisfactory. Here was a philosopher fully at home in what Ibn Bājjah had called the many layers of darkness. His legal training (he was a judge by profession) and his extensive knowledge of the history of the religious sciences (including theology) enabled him to speak with authority about the principles of Islamic law and their application to theological and philosophic issues and to question the authority of al-Ghazālī and the Ashʿarīs to determine correct beliefs and right practices. He was able to examine in detail from the point of view of the divine law the respective claims of theology and philosophy to possess the best and surest way to human knowledge, to be competent to interpret the ambiguous expressions of the divine law, and to have presented convincing arguments that are theoretically tenable and practically salutary.

The divine law The intention of the divine law, he argued, is to assure the happiness of all members of the community. This requires everyone to profess belief in the basic principles of religion as enunciated in the Qurʾān, the Hadith, and the ijmāʿ (consensus) of the learned and to perform all obligatory acts of worship. Beyond this, the only just requirement is to demand that each pursue knowledge as far as his natural capacity and makeup permit. The few who are endowed with the capacity for the highest, demonstrative knowledge are under a divine legal obligation to pursue the highest wisdom, which is philosophy, and they need not constantly adjust its certain conclusions to what theologians claim to be the correct interpretation of the divine law. Being dialecticians and rhetoricians, theologians are not in a position to determine what is and is not correct interpretation of the divine law so far as philosophers are concerned. The divine law directly authorizes philosophers to pursue its interpretation according to the best—i.e., demonstrative or scientific—method, and theologians have no authority to interfere with the conduct of this activity or judge its conclusions.

Theology On the basis of this legal doctrine, Averroës judged the theologian al-Ghazālī’s refutation of the philosophers ineffective and inappropriate because al-Ghazālī did not understand and even misrepresented the philosophers’ positions and used arguments that only demonstrate his incompetence in the art of demonstration. He criticized al-Fārābī and Avicenna also for accommodating the theologians of their time and for departing from the path of the ancient philosophers merely to please the theologians. At the other extreme are the multitude for whom there are no more convincing arguments than those found in the divine law itself. Neither philosophers nor theologians are permitted to disclose to the multitude interpretations of the ambiguous verses of the Qurʾān or to confuse them with their own doubts or arguments. Finally, there are those who belong to neither the philosophers nor the multitude, either because they are naturally superior to the multitude but not endowed with the gift for philosophy or because they are students in initial stages of philosophic training. For this intermediate group, theology is necessary. It is an intermediate discipline that is neither strictly legal nor philosophic. It lacks their certain principles and sure methods. Therefore, theology must remain under the constant control of philosophy and the supervision of the divine law so as not to drift into taking positions that cannot be demonstrated philosophically or that are contrary to the intention of the divine law. Averroës himself composed a work on theology, Kitāb al-kashf ʿan manāhij al-adillah (“Exposition of the Methods of Proofs”), to show how these requirements can be met. In the Latin West he was best known for his philosophical answer to al-Ghazālī, Tahāfut al-tahāfut (“Incoherence of the Incoherence”), and for his extensive commentaries on Aristotle, works that left their impact on medieval and Renaissance European thought.

The Western tradition in Islamic philosophy formed part of the Arabic philosophic literature that was translated into Hebrew and Latin and that played a significant role in the development of medieval philosophy in the Latin West and the emergence of modern European philosophy. Its impact on the development of philosophy in Eastern Islam was not as dramatic but was important nevertheless. Students of this tradition—e.g., the prominent Jewish philosopher Maimonides (flourished 12th century) and the historian Ibn Khaldūn (flourished 14th century)—moved to Egypt, where they taught and had numerous disciples. Most of the writings of Ibn Bājjah, Ibn Ṭufayl, and Averroës found their way to the East also, where they were studied alongside the writings of their Eastern predecessors. In both regions thinkers who held to the idea of philosophy as formulated by the Eastern and Western philosophers thus far discussed continued to teach. They became isolated and overwhelmed, however, by the resurgence of traditionalism and the emergence of a new kind of philosophy whose champions looked on the earlier masters as men who had made significant contributions to the progress of knowledge but whose overall view was defective and had now become outdated.

Traditionalism and the new wisdom

Resurgent traditionalism found effective defenders in men such as Ibn Taymiyyah (13th–14th centuries), who employed a massive battery of philosophic, theological, and legal arguments against every shade of innovation and called for a return to the beliefs and practices of the pious ancestors. These attacks, however, did not deal a decisive blow to philosophy as such. It rather drove philosophy underground for a period, only to re-emerge in a new garb. A more important reason for the decline of the earlier philosophic tradition, however, was the renewed vitality and success of the program formulated by al-Ghazālī for the integration of theology, philosophy, and mysticism into a new kind of philosophy called wisdom (ḥikmah). It consisted of a critical review of the philosophy of Avicenna, preserving its main external features (its logical, physical, and, in part, metaphysical structure, and its terminology) and introducing principles of explanation for the universe and its relation to God based on personal experience and direct vision.

Characteristic features of the new wisdom

If the popular theology preached by the philosophers from al-Fārābī to Averroës is disregarded, it is evident that philosophy proper meant to them what al-Fārābī called a state of mind dedicated to the quest and the love for the highest wisdom. None of them claimed, however, that he had achieved this highest wisdom. In contrast, every leading exponent of the new wisdom stated that he had achieved or received it through a private illumination, dream (at times inspired by the Prophet Muhammad), or vision and on this basis proceeded to give an explanation of the inner structure of natural and divine things. In every case, this explanation incorporated Platonic or Aristotelian elements but was more akin to some version of a later Hellenistic philosophy, which had found its way earlier into one or another of the schools of Islamic theology, though, because of the absence of an adequate philosophic education on the part of earlier theologians, it had not been either elaborated or integrated into a comprehensive view. Like their late Hellenistic counterparts, exponents of the new wisdom proceeded through an examination of the positions of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus. They also gave special attention to the insights of the pre-Socratic philosophers of ancient Greece and the myths and revelations of the ancient Middle East, and they offered to resolve the fundamental questions that had puzzled earlier philosophers. In its basic movement and general direction, therefore, Islamic philosophy between the 9th and 19th centuries followed a course parallel to that of Greek philosophy from the 5th century bce to the 6th century ce.

Critiques of Aristotle in Islamic theology

The critique of Aristotle that had begun in Muʿtazilī circles and had found a prominent champion in Abū Bakr al-Rāzī was provided with a more solid foundation in the 10th and 11th centuries by the Christian theologians and philosophers of Baghdad, who translated the writings of the Hellenistic critics of Aristotle (e.g., John Philoponus) and made use of their arguments in commenting on Aristotle and in independent theological and philosophic works. Avicenna’s attack on these so-called Aristotelians and their Hellenistic predecessors (an attack that had been initiated by al-Fārābī and was to be continued by Averroës) did not prevent the spread of their theologically based anti-Aristotelianism among Jewish and Muslim students of philosophy in the 12th century, such as Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī (died c. 1175) and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī. These theologians continued and intensified al-Ghazālī’s attacks on Avicenna and Aristotle (especially their views on time, movement, matter, and form, the nature of the heavenly bodies, and the relation between the intelligible and sensible worlds). They suggested that a thorough examination of Aristotle had revealed to them, on philosophic grounds, that the fundamental disagreements between him and the theologies based on the revealed religions represented open options and that Aristotle’s view of the universe was in need of explanatory principles that could very well be supplied by theology. This critique provided the framework for the integration of philosophy into theology from the 13th century onward.

Synthesis of philosophy and mysticism Although it made use of such theological criticisms of philosophy, the new wisdom took the position that theology did not offer a positive substitute for and was incapable of solving the difficulties of “Aristotelian” philosophy. It did not question the need to have recourse to the Qurʾān and the Hadith to find the right answers. It insisted (on the authority of a long-standing mystical tradition), however, that theology concerns itself only with the external expressions of this divine source of knowledge. The inner core was reserved for the adepts of the mystic path whose journey leads to the experience of the highest reality in dreams and visions. Only the mystical adepts are in possession of the one true wisdom, the ground of both the external expressions of the divine law and the phenomenal world of human experience and thought.

Primary teachers of the new wisdom The teachings of al-Suhrawardī The first master of the new wisdom, al-Suhrawardī (12th century), called it the “wisdom of illumination.” He rejected Avicenna’s distinction between essence and existence and Aristotle’s distinction between substance and accidents, possibility and actuality, and matter and form on the ground that they are mere distinctions of reason. Instead, he concentrated on the notion of being and its negation, which he called “light” and “darkness,” and explained the gradation of beings as gradation of their mixture according to the degree of “strength,” or “perfection,” of their light. This gradation forms a single continuum that culminates in pure light, self-luminosity, self-awareness, self-manifestation, or self-knowledge, which is God, the light of lights, the true One. The stability and eternity of this single continuum result from every higher light overpowering and subjugating the lower, and movement and change in it result from each of the lower lights desiring and loving the higher.

Al-Suhrawardī’s “pan-lightism” is not particularly close to traditional Islamic views concerning the creation of the world and God’s knowledge of particulars. The structure of his universe remains largely that of the Platonists and the Aristotelians. And his account of the emanation process avoids the many difficulties that had puzzled Neoplatonists as they tried to understand how the second hypostasis (reality) proceeds from the One. He asserted that it proceeds without in any way affecting the One and that the One’s self-sufficiency is enough to explain the giving out that seems to be both spontaneous and necessary. His doctrine is presented in a way that suggests that it is the inner truth behind the exoteric (external) teachings of Islam as well as Zoroastrianism, indeed the wisdom of all ancient sages, especially Iranians and Greeks, and the revealed religions as well. This neutral yet positive attitude toward the diversity of religions, which was not absent among Muslim philosophers and mystics, was to become one of the hallmarks of the new wisdom. Different religions were seen as different manifestations of the same truth, their essential agreement was emphasized, and various attempts were made to combine them into a single harmonious religion meant for all humankind.

Al-Suhrawardī takes an important step in this direction through his doctrine of imaginative-bodily “resurrection.” After their departure from the prison of the body, souls that are fully purified ascend directly to the world of separate lights. The ones that are only partially purified or are evil souls escape to a “world of images” suspended below the higher lights and above the corporeal world. In this world of images, or forms (not to be confused with the Platonic forms, which al-Suhrawardī identifies with higher and permanent intelligible lights), partially purified souls remain suspended and are able to create for themselves and by their own power of imagination pleasing figures and desirable objects in forms more excellent than their earthly counterparts and are able to enjoy them forever. Evil souls become dark shadows, suffer (presumably because their corrupt and inefficient power of imagination can create only ugly and frightening forms), and wander about as ghosts, demons, and devils. The creative power of the imagination, which as a human psychological phenomenon was already used by the philosophers to explain prophetic powers, was seized upon by the new wisdom as “divine magic.” It was used to construct an eschatology, to explain miracles, dreams, and other saintly theurgic (healing) practices, to facilitate the movement between various orders of being, and for literary purposes.

The teachings of Ibn al-ʿArabī The account of the doctrines of Ibn al-ʿArabī (12th–13th centuries) belongs properly to the history of Islamic mysticism. Yet his impact on the subsequent development of the new wisdom was in many ways far greater than was that of al-Suhrawardī. This is true especially of his central doctrine of the “unity of being” and his sharp distinction between the absolute One, which is undefinable Truth (ḥaqq), and his self-manifestation (ẓuhūr), or creation (khalq), which is ever new (jadīd) and in perpetual movement, a movement that unites the whole of creation in a process of constant renewal. At the very core of this dynamic edifice stands nature, the “dark cloud” (ʿamāʾ) or “mist” (bukhār), as the ultimate principle of things and forms: intelligence, heavenly bodies, and elements and their mixtures that culminate in the “perfect man.” This primordial nature is the “breath” of the Merciful God in his aspect as Lord. It “flows” throughout the universe and manifests Truth in all its parts. It is the first mother through which Truth manifests itself to itself and generates the universe. And it is the universal natural body that gives birth to the translucent bodies of the spheres, to the elements, and to their mixtures, all of which are related to that primary source as daughters to their mother.

Ibn al-ʿArabī attempted to explain how Intelligence proceeds from the absolute One by inserting between them a primordial feminine principle, which is all things in potentiality but which also possesses the capacity, readiness, and desire to manifest or generate them first as archetypes in Intelligence and then as actually existing things in the universe below. Ibn al-ʿArabī gave this principle numerous names, including prime “matter” (ʿunṣur), and characterized it as the principle “whose existence makes manifest the essences of the potential worlds.” The doctrine that the first simple originated thing is not Intelligence but “indefinite matter” and that Intelligence was originated through the mediation of this matter was attributed to Empedocles, a 5th-century-bce Greek philosopher, in doxographies (compilations of extracts from the Greek philosophers) translated into Arabic. It represented an attempt to bridge the gulf between the absolute One and the multiplicity of forms in Intelligence. The Andalusian mystic Ibn Masarrah (9th–10th centuries) is reported to have championed pseudo-Empedoclean doctrines, and Ibn al-ʿArabī (who studied under some of his followers) quotes Ibn Masarrah on a number of occasions. This philosophic tradition is distinct from the one followed by the Ismāʿīlī theologians, who explained the origination of Intelligence by the mediation of God’s will.

The teachings of Twelver Shiʿism and the school of Eṣfahān After Ibn al-ʿArabī, the new wisdom developed rapidly in intellectual circles in Eastern Islam. Commentators on the works of Avicenna, al-Suhrawardī, and Ibn al-ʿArabī began the process of harmonizing and integrating the views of the masters. Great poets made them part of every educated person’s literary culture. Mystical fraternities became the custodians of such works, spreading them into Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent and transmitting them from one generation to another. Following the Mongol khan Hülagü’s entry into Baghdad (1258), the Twelver Shiʿah were encouraged by the Il Khanid Tatars and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (the philosopher and theologian who accompanied Hülagü as his vizier) to abandon their hostility to mysticism. Muʿtazilī doctrines were retained in their theology. Theology, however, was downgraded to “formal” learning that must be supplemented by higher things, the latter including philosophy and mysticism, both of earlier Shiʿi (including Ismāʿīlī) origin and of later Sunni provenance. Al-Ghazālī, al-Suhrawardī, Ibn al-ʿArabī, and Avicenna were then eagerly studied and (except for their doctrine of the imamate) embraced with little or no reservation. This movement in Shiʿi thought gathered momentum when the leaders of a mystical fraternity established themselves as the Ṣafavid dynasty (1501–1732) in Iran, where they championed Twelver Shiʿism as the official doctrine of the new monarchy. During the 17th century, Iran experienced a cultural and scientific renaissance that included a revival of philosophic studies. There, Islamic philosophy found its last creative exponents. The new wisdom as expounded by the masters of the school of Eṣfahān radiated throughout Eastern Islam and continued as a vital tradition until modern times.

The major figures of the school of Eṣfahān were Mīr Dāmād (Muḥammad Bāqir ibn al-Dāmād, died 1631/32) and his great disciple Mullā Ṣadrā (Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Shīrāzī, c. 1571–1640). Both were men of wide culture and prolific writers with a sharp sense for the history and development of philosophic ideas.

The teachings of Mīr Dāmād Mīr Dāmād was the first to expound the notion of “eternal origination” (ḥudūth dahrī) as an explanation for the creation of the world. Muslim philosophers and their critics had recognized the crucial role played by the question of time in the discussion of the eternity of the world. The proposition that time is the measure of movement was criticized by Abū al-Barakāt al-Baghdādī, who argued that time is prior to movement and rest, indeed to everything except being. Time is the measure or concomitant of being, lasting and transient, enduring and in movement or rest. It characterizes or qualifies all being, including God. God works in time, incessantly willing and directly creating everything in the world: his persistent will creates the eternal beings of the world, and his ever-renewed will creates the transient beings. The notion of a God who works in time was of course objectionable to theology, and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī refused to accept this solution despite its attractions. Al-Rāzī also saw that it leads to the notion (attributed to Plato) that time is a self-subsistent substance, whose relation to God would further compromise his unity. Finally, al-Rāzī explained that this self-subsistent substance will have to be related to different beings in different ways. It is called “everlastingness” (sarmad) when related to God and the Intelligences (angels) that are permanent and do not move or change in any way, “eternity” (dahr) when related to the totality of the world of movement and change, and “time” (zamān) when related to corporeal beings that make up the world of movement and change.

Mīr Dāmād returned to Avicenna and sought to harmonize his views with those of al-Suhrawardī on the assumption that what Avicenna meant by his “Oriental” (mashriqiyyah) philosophy was identical with al-Suhrawardī’s wisdom of “illumination” (ishrāq), which he interpreted as a Platonic doctrine that asserted the priority of essence (form) over being (existence). Time, for Mīr Dāmād, was neither a mere being of reason nor an accident of existing things. It belongs to the essence of things and describes their mode and rank of being. It is a “relation” that beings have to each other because of their essential nature. There must, therefore, be three ranks of order of time corresponding to the three ranks of order of being. Considered as the relation of God to the divine names and attributes (Intelligences or archetypes), the relation is “everlastingness.” Considered as the relation between the Intelligences, or archetypes, and their reflections in the mutable things of the world below, the relation is “eternity.” And considered as the relation between these mutable things, the relation is “time.” Creation, or origination, is this very relation. Thus, the origination of the immutable Intelligences, or archetypes, is called “everlasting creation,” the origination of the world of mutable beings as a whole is called “eternal creation,” and the generation of mutable things within the world is called “temporal creation.”

The teachings of Mullā Ṣadrā Mullā Ṣadrā superimposed Ibn al-ʿArabī’s mystical thought (whose philosophic implications had already been exposed by a number of commentators) on the “Aristotelian”-illuminationist synthesis developed by Mīr Dāmād. Against his master, he argued with the Aristotelians for the priority of being (existence) over essence (form), which he called an abstraction; and, with Ibn al-ʿArabī, he argued for the “unity of being” within which beings differ only according to “priority and posteriority,” “perfection and imperfection,” and “strength and weakness.” All being is thus viewed as a graded manifestation, or determination, of absolute, or pure, Being, and every level of being possesses all the attributes of pure Being, but with varying degrees of intensity or perfection.

Mullā Ṣadrā considered his unique contribution to Islamic philosophy to be his doctrine of nature, which enabled him to assert that everything other than God and his knowledge—i.e., the entire corporeal world, including the heavenly bodies—is originated “eternally” as well as “temporally.” This doctrine of nature is an elaboration of the last manifestation of what Ibn al-ʿArabī called “nature” or prime “matter” and is articulated on philosophic grounds and within the general framework of Aristotelian natural science and defended against every possible philosophic and theological objection.

Nature for Mullā Ṣadrā is the “substance” and “power” of all corporeal beings and the direct cause of their movement. Movement (and time, which measures it) is therefore not an accident of substance or an accompaniment of some of its accidents. It signifies the very change, renewal, and passing of being—itself being in constant “flow,” or flux. The entire corporeal world, both the celestial spheres and the world of the elements, constantly renews itself. The “matter” of corporeal things has the power to become a new form at every instant; and the resulting matter–form complex is at every instant a new matter ready for, desiring, and moving toward another form. Human beings fail to observe this constant flux and movement in simple bodies not because of the endurance of the same form in them but because of the close similarity between their ever-new forms. What the philosophers call “movement” and “time” are not, as they believed, anchored in anything permanent—e.g., in what they call “nature,” “substance,” or “essence”; essence is permanent only in the mind, and nature and substance are permanent activity. Nature as permanent activity is the very being of natural things and identical with their substance. Because nature is “permanent” in this sense, it is connected to a permanent principle that manifests activity in it permanently. Because nature constantly renews itself, all renewed and emergent things are connected to it. Thus, nature is the link between what is eternal and what is originated, and the world of nature is originated both eternally and temporarily.

Mullā Ṣadrā distinguishes this primary “movement-in-substance” (al-ḥarakah fī al-jawhar) from haphazard, compulsory, and other accidental movements that lack proper direction, impede the natural movement of substance, or reverse it. Movement-in-substance is not universal change or flux without direction, the product of conflict between two equally powerful principles, or a reflection of the nonbeing of the world of nature when measured against the world of permanent forms. It is, rather, the natural beings’ innate desire to become more perfect, which directs this ceaseless self-renewal, self-origination, or self-emergence into a perpetual and irreversible flow upward in the scale of being—from the simplest elements to the human body–soul complex and the heavenly body–soul complex (both of which participate in the general instability, origination, and passing of being that characterizes the entire corporeal world). This flow upward, however, is by no means the end, for the indefinite “matter” (Ibn al-ʿArabī’s “cloud” and the mystics’ “created Truth”) is the “substratum” of everything other than its Creator, the mysterious pure Truth. It “extends” beyond the body–soul complex to the Intelligences (divine names) that are Being’s first, highest, and purest actualization or activity. This “extension” unites everything other than the Creator into a single continuum. The human body–soul complex and the heavenly body–soul complex are not moved externally by the Intelligences. Their movement is an extension of the process of self-perfection. Having reached the highest rank of order of substance in the corporeal world, they are now prepared, and still moved by their innate desire, to flow upward and transform themselves into pure intelligence.

Impact of modernism The new wisdom lived on during the 18th and 19th centuries, conserving much of its vitality and strength but not cultivating new ground. It attracted able thinkers such as Shāh Walī Allāh of Delhi and Hādī Sabzevārī and became a regular part of the program of higher education in the cultural centres of the Ottoman Empire, Iran, and the Indian subcontinent, a status never achieved by the earlier tradition of Islamic philosophy. In collaboration with its close ally Persian mystical poetry, the new wisdom determined the intellectual outlook and spiritual mood of educated Muslims in the regions where Persian had become the dominant literary language.

The wholesale rejection of the new wisdom in the name of simple, robust, and more practical piety (which had been initiated by Ibn Taymiyyah and which continued to find exponents among jurists) made little impression on its devotees. To be taken seriously, reform had to come from their own ranks and be espoused by such thinkers as the eminent theologian and mystic of Muslim India Aḥmad Sirhindī (flourished 16th–17th centuries)—a reformer who spoke their language and attacked Ibn al-ʿArabī’s “unity of being” only to defend an older, presumably more orthodox form of mysticism. Despite some impact, however, attempts of this kind remained isolated and were either ignored or reintegrated into the mainstream, until the coming of the modern reformers. The 19th- and 20th-century reformers Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī, Muḥammad ʿAbduh, and Muḥammad Iqbāl were initially educated in this tradition, but they rebelled against it and advocated radical reforms.

The modernists attacked the new wisdom at its weakest point; that is, its social and political norms, its individualistic ethics, and its inability to speak intelligently about social, cultural, and political problems generated by a long period of intellectual isolation that was further complicated by the domination of the European powers. Unlike the earlier tradition of Islamic philosophy from al-Fārābī to Averroës, which had consciously cultivated political science and investigated the political dimension of philosophy and religion and the relation between philosophy and the community at large, the new wisdom from its inception lacked genuine interest in these questions, had no appreciation for political philosophy, and had only a benign toleration for the affairs of the world.

None of the reformers was a great political philosopher. They were concerned with reviving their nations’ latent energies, urging them to free themselves from foreign domination, and impressing on them the need to reform their social and educational institutions. They also saw that all this required a total reorientation, which could not take place so long as the new wisdom remained not only the highest aim of a few solitary individuals but also a social and popular ideal as well. Yet, as late as 1917, Iqbāl found that “the present-day Muslim prefers to roam about aimlessly in the valley of Hellenic-Persian mysticism, which teaches us to shut our eyes to the hard reality around, and to fix our gaze on what is described as ‘illumination.’ ” His reaction was harsh: “To me this self-mystification, this nihilism, i.e., seeking reality where it does not exist, is a physiological symptom, giving me a clue to the decadence of the Muslim world.”

To arrest the decadence and infuse new vitality in a society in which they were convinced religion must remain the focal point, the modern reformers advocated a return to the movements and masters of Islamic theology and philosophy antedating the new wisdom. They argued that these, rather than the “Persian incrustation of Islam,” represented Islam’s original and creative impulse. The modernists were attracted, in particular, to the views of the Muʿtazilah: affirmation of God’s unity and denial of all similarity between him and created things; reliance on human reason; emphasis on human freedom; faith in human ability to distinguish between good and bad; and insistence on human responsibility to do good and fight against evil in private and public places. They were also impressed by the traditionalists’ devotion to the original, uncomplicated forms of Islam and by their fighting spirit, and by the Ashʿarīs’ view of faith as an affair of the heart and their spirited defense of the Muslim community. In viewing the scientific and philosophic tradition of Eastern and Western Islam prior to the Tatar and Mongol invasions, they saw an irrefutable proof that true Islam stands for the liberation of the human spirit, promotes critical thought, and provides both the impetus to grapple with the temporal and the demonstration of how to set it in order. These ideas initiated what was to become a vast effort to recover, edit, and translate into the Muslim national languages works of earlier theologians and philosophers, which had been long neglected or known only indirectly through later accounts.

The modern reformers insisted, finally, that Muslims must be taught to understand the real meaning of what has happened in Europe, which in effect means the understanding of modern science and philosophy, including modern social and political philosophies. Initially, this challenge became the task of the new universities in the Muslim world. In the latter part of the 20th century, however, the originally wide gap between the various programs of theological and philosophic studies in religious colleges and in modern universities narrowed considerably.

A basic social teaching of Islam is the encouragement of marriage, and the Qurʾān regards celibacy definitely as something exceptional—to be resorted to only under economic stringency. Thus, monasticism as a way of life was severely criticized by the Qurʾān. With the appearance of Sufism (Islamic mysticism), however, many Sufis preferred celibacy, and some even regarded women as an evil distraction from piety, although marriage remained the normal practice also with Sufis.

Polygamy, which was practiced in pre-Islamic Arabia, was permitted by the Qurʾān, which, however, limited the number of simultaneous wives to four, and this permission was made dependent upon the condition that justice be done among co-wives. The Qurʾān even suggests that “you shall never be able to do justice among women, no matter how much you desire.” Medieval law and society, however, regarded this “justice” to be primarily a private matter between a husband and his wives, although the law did provide redress in cases of gross neglect of a wife. Right of divorce was also vested basically in the husband, who could unilaterally repudiate his wife, although the woman could also sue her husband for divorce before a court on certain grounds.

The virtue of chastity is regarded as of prime importance by Islam. The Qurʾān advanced its universal recommendation of marriage as a means to ensure a state of chastity (iḥṣān), which is held to be induced by a single free wife. The Qurʾān states that those guilty of adultery are to be severely punished with 100 lashes. Tradition has intensified this injunction and has prescribed this punishment for unmarried persons, but married adulterers are to be stoned to death. A false accusation of adultery is punishable by 80 lashes. The general ethic of the Qurʾān considers the marital bond to rest on “mutual love and mercy,” and the spouses are said to be “each other’s garments.” The detailed laws of inheritance prescribed by the Qurʾān also tend to confirm the idea of a central family—husband, wife, and children, along with the husband’s parents. Easy access to polygamy (although the normal practice in Islamic society has always been that of monogamy) and easy divorce on the part of the husband led, however, to frequent abuses in the family. In recent times, most Muslim countries have enacted legislation to tighten up marital relationships. Rights of parents in terms of good treatment are stressed in Islam, and the Qurʾān extols filial piety, particularly tenderness to the mother, as an important virtue. A murderer of his father is automatically disinherited. The tendency of the Islamic ethic to strengthen the immediate family on the one hand and the community on the other at the expense of the extended family or tribe did not succeed, however. Muslim society, until the encroachments upon it of modernizing influences, has remained basically one composed of tribes or quasi-tribes. Despite urbanization, tribal affiliations offer the greatest resistance to change and development of a modern polity. So strong, indeed, has been the tribal ethos that, in most Muslim societies, daughters are not given their inheritance share prescribed by the sacred law in order to prevent disintegration of the joint family’s patrimony.

The state Because Islam draws no distinction between the religious and the temporal spheres of life, the Muslim state is by definition religious. The main differences between the Sunni, Khārijite, and Shiʿi concepts of rulership have already been pointed out above. It should be noted that, although the office of the Sunni caliph (khalīfah, one who is successor to the Prophet Muhammad in rulership) is religious, this does not imply any functions comparable to those of the pope in Roman Catholicism. The caliph has no authority either to define dogma or, indeed, even to legislate. He is the chief executive of a religious community, and his primary function is to implement the sacred law and work in the general interests of the community. He himself is not above the law and if necessary can even be deposed, at least in theory. Sunni political theory is essentially a product of circumstance—an after-the-fact rationalization of historical developments. Thus, between the Shiʿi legitimism that restricts rule to ʿAlī’s family and the Khārijite democratism that allowed rulership to anyone, even to “an Ethiopian slave,” Sunnism held the position that “rule belonged to the Quraysh” (the Prophet’s tribe)—the condition that actually existed. Again, in view of the extremes represented by the Khārijites, who demanded rebellion against what they considered to be unjust or impious rule, and the Shiʿah, who raised the imam to a metaphysical plane of infallibility, Sunnis took the position that a ruler has to satisfy certain qualifications but that rule cannot be upset on small issues. Indeed, under the impact of civil wars started by the Khārijites, Sunnism drifted to more and more conformism and actual toleration of injustice. The first step taken in this direction by the Sunnis was the enunciation that “one day of lawlessness is worse than 30 years of tyranny.” This was followed by the principle that “Muslims must obey even a tyrannical ruler.” Soon, however, the sultan (ruler) was declared to be “shadow of God on earth.” No doubt, the principle was also adopted—and insisted upon—that “there can be no obedience to the ruler in disobedience of God”; but there is no denying the fact that the Sunni doctrine came more and more to be heavily weighted on the side of political conformism. This change is also reflected in the principles of legitimacy. Whereas early Islam had confirmed the pre-Islamic democratic Arab principle of rule by consultation (shūrā) and some form of democratic election of the leader, those practices soon gave way to dynastic rule with the advent of the Umayyads. The shūrā was not developed into any institutionalized form and was, indeed, soon discarded. Soon the principle of “might is right” came into being, and later theorists frankly acknowledged that actual possession of effective power is one method of the legitimization of power.

In spite of this development, the ruler could not become absolute, because a basic restraint was placed upon him by the Sharīʿah law under which he held his authority and which he dutifully was bound to execute and defend. When, in the latter half of the 16th century, the Mughal emperor Akbar in India wanted to arrogate to himself the right of administrative–legal absolutism, the strong reaction of the orthodox thwarted his attempt. In general, the ʿulamāʾ (religious scholars) jealously upheld the sovereign position of the Sharīʿah against the political authority. The effective shift of power from the caliph to the sultan was, again, reflected in the redefinition of the functions of the caliph. It was conceded that, if the caliph administered through wazīrs (viziers or ministers) or subordinate rulers (amīrs), it was not necessary for him to embody all the physical, moral, and intellectual virtues theoretically insisted upon earlier. In practice, however, the caliph was no more than a titular head from the middle of the 10th century onward, when real power passed to self-made and adventurous amīrs and sultans, who merely used the caliph’s name for legitimacy. Education Muslim educational activity began in the 8th century, primarily in order to disseminate the teaching of the Qurʾān and the Sunnah of the Prophet. The first task in this endeavour was to record the oral traditions and collect the written manuscripts. This information was systematically organized in the 2nd century ah, and in the following century a sound corpus was agreed upon. This vast activity of “seeking knowledge” (ṭalab al-ʿilm) resulted in the creation of specifically Arab sciences of tradition, history, and literature. When the introduction of the Greek sciences—philosophy, medicine, and mathematics—created a formidable body of lay knowledge, a creative reaction on the traditional religious base resulted in the rationalist theological movement of the Muʿtazilah. Based on that Greek legacy, from the 9th to the 12th century ce a brilliant philosophical movement flowered and presented a challenge to orthodoxy on the issues of the eternity of the world, the doctrine of revelation, and the status of the Sharīʿah.

The orthodox met the challenges positively by formulating the religious dogma. At the same time, however, for fear of heresies, they began to draw a sharp distinction between religious and secular sciences. The custodians of the Sharīʿah developed an unsympathetic attitude toward the secular disciplines and excluded them from the curriculum of the madrasah (college) system. Their exclusion from the Sunni system of education proved fatal, not only for those disciplines but, in the long run, for religious thought in general because of the lack of intellectual challenge and stimulation. A typical madrasah curriculum included logic (which was considered necessary as an “instrumental” science for the formal correctness of thinking procedure), Arabic literature, law, Hadith, Qurʾān commentary, and theology. Despite sporadic criticism from certain quarters, the madrasah system remained impervious to change. One important feature of Muslim education was that primary education (which consisted of Qurʾān reading, writing, and rudimentary arithmetic) did not feed candidates to institutions of higher education, and the two remained separate. In higher education, emphasis was on books rather than on subjects and on commentaries rather than on original works. This, coupled with the habit of learning by rote (which was developed from the basically traditional character of knowledge that encouraged learning more than thinking), impoverished intellectual creativity still further. Despite these grave shortcomings, however, the madrasah produced one important advantage. Through the uniformity of its religio-legal content, it gave the ʿulamāʾ the opportunity to effect that overall cohesiveness and unity of thought and purpose that, despite great variations in local Muslim cultures, has become a palpable feature of the world Muslim community. This uniformity has withstood even the serious tension created against the seats of formal learning by Sufism through its peculiar discipline and its own centres. In contrast to the Sunni attitude toward it, philosophy continued to be seriously cultivated among the Shiʿah, even though it developed a strong religious character. Indeed, philosophy has enjoyed an unbroken tradition in Iran down to the present and has produced some highly original thinkers. Both the Sunni and the Shiʿi medieval systems of learning, however, have come face to face with the greatest challenge of all—the impact of modern education and thought.

Organization of education developed naturally in the course of time. Evidence exists of small schools already established in the first century of Islam that were devoted to reading, writing, and instruction in the Qurʾān. These schools of “primary” education were called kuttābs. The well-known governor of Iraq at the beginning of the 8th century, the ruthless al-Ḥajjāj, had been a schoolteacher in his early career. When higher learning in the form of tradition grew in the 8th and 9th centuries, it was centred around learned men to whom students travelled from far and near and from whom they obtained a certificate (ijāzah) to teach what they had learned. Through the munificence of rulers and princes, large private and public libraries were built, and schools and colleges arose. In the early 9th century a significant incentive to learning came from the translations made of scientific and philosophical works from the Greek (and partly Sanskrit) at the famous bayt al-ḥikmah (“house of wisdom”) at Baghdad, which was officially sponsored by the caliph al-Maʾmūn. The Fāṭimid caliph al-Ḥākim set up a dār al-ḥikmah (“hall of wisdom”) in Cairo in the 10th–11th centuries. With the advent of the Seljuq Turks, the famous vizier Niẓām al-Mulk created an important college at Baghdad, devoted to Sunni learning, in the latter half of the 11th century. One of the world’s oldest surviving universities, al-Azhar at Cairo, was originally established by the Fāṭimids, but Saladin (Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Ayyūbī), after ousting the Fāṭimids, consecrated it to Sunni learning in the 12th century. Throughout subsequent centuries, colleges and quasi-universities (called madrasah or dār al-ʿulūm) arose throughout the Muslim world from Spain (whence philosophy and science were transmitted to the Latin West) across Central Asia to India. In Turkey a new style of madrasah came into existence; it had four wings, for the teaching of the four schools of Sunni law. Professorial chairs were endowed in large colleges by princes and governments, and residential students were supported by college endowment funds. A myriad of smaller centres of learning were endowed by private donations. Cultural diversity Underneath the legal and creedal unity, the world of Islam harbours a tremendous diversity of cultures, particularly in the outlying regions. The expansion of Islam can be divided into two broad periods. In the first period of the Arab conquests, the assimilative activity of the conquering religion was far-reaching. Although Persia resurrected its own language and a measure of its national culture after the first three centuries of Islam, its culture and language had come under heavy Arab influence. Only after Ṣafavid rule installed Shiʿism as a distinctive creed in the 16th century did Persia regain a kind of religious autonomy. The language of religion and thought, however, continued to be Arabic.

In the second period, the spread of Islam was not conducted by the state with ʿulamāʾ influence but was largely the work of Sufi missionaries. The Sufis, because of their latitudinarianism, compromised with local customs and beliefs and left a great deal of the pre-Islamic legacy in every region intact. Thus, among the Central Asian Turks, shamanistic practices were absorbed, while in Africa the holy man and his barakah (an influence supposedly causing material and spiritual well-being) are survivors from the older cults. In India there are large areas geographically distant from the Muslim religio-political centre of power in which customs are still Hindu and even pre-Hindu and in which people worship a motley of saints and deities in common with the Hindus. The custom of suttee, under which a widow burned herself alive along with her dead husband, persisted in India even among some Muslims until late into the Mughal period. The 18th- and 19th-century reform movements exerted themselves to “purify” Islam of these accretions and superstitions. Indonesia affords a striking example of this phenomenon. Because Islam reached there late and soon thereafter came under European colonialism, the Indonesian society has retained its pre-Islamic worldview beneath an overlay of Islamic practices. It keeps its customary law (called adat) at the expense of the Sharīʿah; many of its tribes are still matriarchal; and culturally the Hindu epics Ramayana and Mahabharata hold a high position in national life. Since the 19th century, however, orthodox Islam has gained steadily in strength because of fresh contacts with the Middle East. Apart from regional diversity, the main internal division within Islamic society is brought about by urban and village life. Islam originally grew up in the two cities of Mecca and Medina, and, as it expanded, its peculiar ethos appears to have developed in urban areas. Culturally, it came under a heavy Persian influence in Iraq, where the Arabs learned the ways and style of life of their conquered people, who were culturally superior to them. The custom of veiling women (which originally arose as a sign of aristocracy but later served the purpose of segregating women from men—the purdah), for example, was acquired in Iraq. Another social trait derived from outside cultures was the disdain for agriculture and manual labour in general. Because the people of the town of Medina were mainly agriculturists, this disdain could not have been initially present. In general, Islam came to appropriate a strong feudal ethic from the peoples it conquered. Also, because the Muslims generally represented the administrative and military aristocracy and because the learned class (the ʿulamāʾ) was an essential arm of the state, the higher culture of Islam became urban-based.

This city orientation explains and also underlines the traditional cleavage between the orthodox Islam of the ʿulamāʾ and the folk Islam espoused by the Sufi orders of the countryside. In the modern period, the advent of education and rapid industrialization threatened to make this cleavage still wider. With the rise of a strong and widespread fundamentalist movement in the second half of the 20th century, this dichotomy was decreased.

The Arabs before Islam had hardly any art except poetry, which had been developed to full maturity and in which they took great pride. As with other forms of culture, the Muslim Arabs borrowed their art from Persia and Byzantium. Whatever elements the Arabs borrowed, however, they Islamized in a manner that fused them into a homogeneous spiritual-aesthetic complex. The most important principle governing art was aniconism—the religious prohibition of figurization and representation of living creatures. Underlying this prohibition is the assumption that God is the sole author of life and that a person who produces a likeness of a living being seeks to rival God. The tradition ascribed to the Prophet that a person who makes a picture of a living thing will be asked on the Day of Judgment to infuse life into it, whether historically genuine or not, doubtless represents the original attitude of Islam. In the Qurʾān (3:49, 5:113), reflecting an account in a New Testament apocryphal work, it is counted among the miracles of Jesus that he made likenesses of birds from clay “by God’s order,” and, when he breathed into them, they became real birds, again, “by God’s order.”

Hence, in Islamic aniconism two considerations are fused together: (1) rejection of such images that might become idols (these may be images of anything) and (2) rejection of figures of living things. The Greek philosopher Plato and the Roman philosopher Plotinus had also dismissed representative art as an “imitation of nature”—i.e., as something removed from reality. The Islamic attitude is more or less the same, with the added element of attributing to the artist a violation of the sanctity of the principle of life. The same explanation holds for the Qurʾānic criticism of a certain kind of poetry—namely, free indulgence in extravagant image mongering: “They [poets] recklessly wander in every valley” (26:225).

This basic principle has, however, undergone modifications. First, pictures were tolerated if they were confined to private apartments and harems of palaces. This was the case with some members of the Umayyad and ʿAbbāsid dynasties, Turks, and Persians—in particular with the Shiʿah, who have produced an abundance of pictorial representations of Muhammad and his family. Second, in the field of pictorial representation, animal and human figures are combined with other ornamental designs such as fillets and arabesques—stressing their ornamental nature rather than representative function. Third, for the same reason, in plastic art they appear in low relief. In other regions of the Muslim world—in North Africa, Egypt, and India (except for Mughal palaces)—representational art was strictly forbidden. Even in paintings, the figures have little representational value and are mostly decorative and sometimes symbolic. This explains why plastic art is one of the most limited areas of Islamic art. The only full-fledged plastic figures are those of animals and a few human figures that the Seljuqs brought from eastern Turkistan. Much more important than plastic art were paintings, particularly frescoes and later Persian and Perso-Indian miniatures. Frescoes are found in the Umayyad and ʿAbbāsid palaces and in Spain, Iran, and in the harem quarters of the Mughal palaces in India. Miniature paintings, introduced in Persia, assumed much greater importance in the later period in Mughal India and Turkey. Miniature painting was closely associated with the art of book illumination, and this technique of decorating the pages of the books was patronized by princes and other patrons from the upper classes. (Miniature painting is also discussed below; see Illustration of myth and legend.)

Music Instrumental music was forbidden by the orthodox in the formative stages of Islam. As for vocal music, its place was largely taken by a sophisticated and artistic form of the recitation of the Qurʾān known as tajwīd. Nevertheless, the Muslim princely courts generously patronized and cultivated music. Arab music was influenced by Persian and Greek music. Al-Fārābī, a 10th-century philosopher, is credited with having constructed a musical instrument called the arghanūn (organ). In India, Amīr Khosrow, a 14th-century poet and mystic, produced a synthesis of Indian and Persian music and influenced the development of later Indian music.

Among the religious circles, the Sufis introduced both vocal and instrumental music as part of their spiritual practices. The samāʿ, as this music was called, was opposed by the orthodox at the beginning, but the Sufis persisted in this practice, which slowly won general recognition. The great Sufi poet Jalāl al-Dīn al-Rūmī (died 1273)—revered equally by the orthodox and the Sufis—heard the divine voice in his stringed musical instrument when he said, “Its head, its veins (strings) and its skin are all dry and dead; whence comes to me the voice of the Friend?”

Literature

In literature, drama and pure fiction were not allowed—drama because it was a representational art and fiction because it was considered akin to lying. Similar constraints operated against the elaboration of mythology. Story literature was tolerated, and the great story works of Indian origin—Alf laylah wa laylah (The Thousand and One Nights) and Kalīlah wa Dimnah—were translated from the Persian, introducing secular prose into Arabic. Didactic and pious stories were used and even invented by popular preachers. Much of this folklore found its way back into enlarged editions of The Thousand and One Nights and, through it, has even influenced later history writing. Because of the ban on fictional literature, there grew a strong tendency in later literary compositions—in both poetry and prose—toward hyperbole (mubālaghah), a literary device to satisfy the need of getting away from what is starkly real without committing literal falsehood, thus often resulting in the caricature and the grotesque. Poetry lent itself particularly well to this device, which was freely used in panegyrics, satires, and lyrics. As a form of effective expression, poetry is eminently characteristic of the East. Arabic literature in general displays a strong and vivid imagination not easily amenable to the rigorous order that reason imposes upon the mind. This borderline attitude between the real and the unreal was particularly favourable to the development, in all medieval Islamic literatures of the Middle East, of the lyric and panegyric forms of poetry wherein every line is a self-contained unit. Much more importantly, it afforded a specially suitable vehicle for a type of mystical poetry in which it is sometimes impossible to determine whether the poet is talking of earthly love or spiritual love. For the same reason, poetry proved an effective haven for thinly veiled deviations from and even attacks on the literalist religion of the orthodox.

Architecture

Architecture is by far the most important expression of Islamic art, particularly the architecture of mosques. It illustrates both the diversity of cultures that participated in the Islamic civilization and the unifying force of Islamic monotheism represented by the spacious expanse of the mosque—a veritable externalization of the all-enveloping divine unity, heightened by the sense of infinity of the arabesque design. The arabesque, though ornately decorative, spiritually represents the infinite vastness of God.

Among the earliest monuments are the mosque of ʿAmr built in Egypt in 641–642 and the famous Dome of the Rock of Jerusalem (finished in 691), which, however, is not a mosque but a monument, a concentric-circular structure consisting of a wooden dome set on a high drum and resting on four tiers and 12 columns. The Umayyad ruler al-Walīd (died 715) built the Great Mosque at Damascus and Al-Aqṣā Mosque at Jerusalem with two tiers of arcades in order to heighten the ceiling. The early Syro-Egyptian mosque is a heavily columned structure with a prayer niche (miḥrāb) oriented toward the Kaʿbah sanctuary at Mecca.

In Spanish and North African architecture these features are combined with Roman-Byzantine characteristics, the masterpieces of Spanish architecture being the famous Alhambra Palace at Granada and the Great Mosque of Córdoba. In the famous Persian mosques, the characteristic Persian elements are the tapered brick pillars, the arches (each supported by several pillars), the huge arcades, and the four sides called eyvāns. With the advent of the Seljuqs in the 11th century, faience decoration (glazed earthenware) of an exquisite beauty was introduced, and it gained further prominence under the Timurids (14th–16th centuries). In the number and greatness of mosques, Turkey has the pride of first place in the Muslim world. Turkey’s earliest mosques show a Persian influence and then later Syrian in the 13th and 14th centuries, but Turkey developed its own native style of cupola domes and monumental entrances. The Turkish architects accomplished symmetry by means of one large dome, four semidomes, and four small domes among them. In the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent, Muslim architecture first employed Hindu architectural features (e.g., horizontal rather than arcuate, or bowlike, arches and Hindu ornamentation), but later the Persian style predominated.


Source: Encyclopedia Britannica