Bonadeo-The First Proclean' Section (Chapter 20) of Abd Al-La Īf Al-Baġdādī's Book

The First ‘Proclean’ Section (Chapter 20) of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s Book on the
Science of Metaphysics. Is the Pure Good of the Maḥḍ al-ḫayr Aristotle’s First
Principle, Intellect in Actuality?
Author(s): Cecilia Martini Bonadeo
Source: Oriens , 2017, Vol. 45, No. 3/4 (2017), pp. 259-305
Published by: Brill
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26572332
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Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305
brill.com/orie
The First ‘Proclean’ Section (Chapter 20) of

ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s Book on the Science of
Metaphysics. Is the Pure Good of the Maḥḍ al-ḫayr
Aristotle’s First Principle, Intellect in Actuality?*
Cecilia Martini Bonadeo

Department of Historical and Geographic Sciences and the Ancient World,
Università degli Studi di Padova
cecilia.martini@unipd.it
Abstract
The first ‘Proclean’ section (Chapter 20) in ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s Kitāb fī ʿilm mā
baʿd al-ṭabīʿa is titled Fī mā qāla l-ḥakīm fī kitāb īḍāḥ al-ḫayr. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī
presents his epitome of the Maḥḍ al-ḫayr. He reproduces all the propositions except
numbers 4, 10, 18, and 20 in the same order. He adds Proclus’s proposition 54, On the
difference between eternity and time (Mā bayn al-dahr wa-l-zamān), which is recalled
twice, and passages from Metaphysics Lambda and the pseudo-Theology. Using a Fara-
bian model, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s aim is to establish the identification between the First Cause,
One and Pure Good, as presented in the Liber de causis, and the Aristotelian First
Principle, Unmoved Mover and Intellect in actuality, described in his paraphrase of
Metaphysics Lambda. Not surprisingly, however, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf is unable to reach this
goal. Dissatisfied with the Avicennian summae, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf gathers in his Book on the
Science of Metaphysics a syllabus of the ancient doctrines, the foundational sources of
falsafa plus al-Fārābī. This syllabus inevitably reflects the antinomy of its sources con-
cerning the nature of the First Principle, i.e. the antinomy of the two main doctrines at
the origin of falsafa, the Plotinian One and the Aristotelian Intellect in actuality.
* A first draft of this paper was read in Paris (February 2016) at the International Colloquium
‘Les Éléments de théologie et le Livre des causes du ve au xviie siècle’ organized by Dragos
Calma and Marc Geoffroy. I would like to thank Oriens for having accepted my article,
my anonymous reviewer for his/her precious comments, and Elisa Coda for her valuable
help with the Hebrew text of Themistius’ paraphrase of Metaphysics Lambda. This paper is
dedicated to Prof. Dr. Gerhard Endress with all my gratitude.
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/18778372-04503001

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260 martini bonadeo
Keywords
Liber de Causis – First Cause – Pure Good – First Intellect – Divine Science
Introduction
In this paper I try to show through the study of the first ‘Proclean’ section
(Chapter 20) of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s Book on the Science of Metaphysics
(Kitāb fī ʿIlm Mā baʿd al-ṭabīʿa)1 his effort to combine the description of the
First Cause, the One and the Pure Good, which he found in the Maḥḍ al-ḫayr
attributed to Aristotle, with the genuine Aristotelian doctrine of Metaphysics
Lambda.
The Book on the Science of Metaphysics is preserved in two manuscripts:
one housed in Cairo in Dār al-kutub (Aḥmad Taymūr Pāšā, Ḥikma, 117, pp. 16–
178); and another in İstanbul in the Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi (Carullah, 1279,
fols 140v–187v).2 Only a small part of this important treatise on metaphysics has
been edited so far, namely the part concerning the first two books of the Meta-
physics ( faṣl 1); the compendium of book λ of the Metaphysics ( fuṣūl 13–16);
the summary of the Liber de Causis ( faṣl 20), and the four last chapters which
include materials from the Proclus Arabus, the pseudo-Theology of Aristotle and
other sources ( fuṣūl 21–24).3
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī was born in Baghdad in 1162 and died there in 1231.4
His life was a pilgrimage all over the Islamic world looking for knowledge in
1 The ‘Proclean’ sections include also Chapter 21, cf. my ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s Philosophical
Journey: From Aristotle’s Metaphysics to the ‘Metaphysical Science’, 251–4.
2 Cf. Angelika Neuwirth, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s Bearbeitung von Buch Lambda der aristotelis-
chen Metaphysik (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag gmbh, 1976), 4–10 for the description of
the two manuscripts.
3 Neuwirth, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s Bearbeitung von Buch Lambda der aristotelischen Meta-
physik ( fuṣūl 13–16); Angelika Neuwirth, “Neue Materialen zur Arabischen Tradition der bei-
den ersten Metaphysik-Bücher,” Die Welt des Islams 18.1–2 (1977–78): 84–100 ( faṣl 1); ʿAbdur-
raḥmān Badawī, Al-Aflāṭūniyya al-muḥdaṯa ʿind al-ʿArab (Cairo: Maktabat al-Nahḍa al-
Miṣriyya, 1955), 248–256 ( faṣl 20), reprint Kuwait: Wikālat al-Maṭbūʿāt, 1977; ʿAbdurraḥmān
Badawī, Plotinus apud Arabes. Theologia Aristotelis et fragmenta quae supersunt (Cairo: Mak-
tabat al-Nahḍa al-Miṣriyya, 1955), 199–240 ( fuṣūl 21–24).
4 We are informed about ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s life and education through his autobiography (sīra). The
latter was, in all likelihood, part and parcel of a larger work no longer extant which he wrote
for his son Šaraf al-Dīn Yūsuf. The sīra is contained in the Sources of Information on the Classes
of Physicians by Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa [Kitāb ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ, ed. by August
Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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ʿabd al-laṭīf al-baġdādī’s chapter 20 261
philosophy and medicine. He studied Avicenna, al-Ġazālī, and al-Suhrawardī

and enjoyed the support of many prestigious men of his age. His stay for long
periods in many different places allowed him to absorb the best of their cultural
environments: Baghdad, Mosul, Aleppo, Damascus, Jerusalem, the circles in
Anatolia, and mostly Cairo.5
Müller (Cairo: al-Maṭbaʿa al-wahbiyya, 1882–1884), ii, 201–13; Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, Kitāb ʿUyūn
al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ, ed. by Nizār Riḍā (Bayrūt: Dār Maktabat al-ḥayāh, 1965), 683–
96]; ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s autobiography in a different redaction survived in his Book of the Two
Pieces of Advice (Kitāb al-Naṣīḥatayn): see Dimitri Gutas, “Philosophy in the Twelfth Century:
One View from Baghdad, or the Repudiation of al-Ghazālī,” in In the Age of Averroes: Arabic
Philosophy in the Sixth/Twelfth Century, ed. by Peter Adamson (London–Turin: The Warburg
Institute—Nino Aragno Editore, 2011), 9–26; Martini Bonadeo, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s
Philosophical Journey, 107–208; Peter Joosse, The Physician as a Rebellious Intellectual. The
Book of the Two Pieces of Advice or Kitab al-Nasihatayn by ʿAbd al-Latif b. Ibn Yusuf al-Baghdadi
(1162–1231). Introduction, Edition and Translation of the Medical Section (Frankfurt am Main:
Peter Lang, 2014). Other passages from ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s autobiography have been preserved by
al-Ḏahabī’s History of Islam (Taʾrīḫ al-Islām); see Josef von Somogyi, “Ein arabischer Bericht
über die Tataren im “Taʾrīḫ al-Islām” von aḏ-Ḏahabī,” Der Islam, 24.2 (1937): 105–30; Claude
Cahen, “ʿAbdallaṭīf al-Baġdādī, portraitiste et historien de son temps, Extraits inédits de ses
Mémoires,”Bulletin d’Études orientales, 23 (1970): 101–28. Further information on ʿAbd al-Laṭīf
can be found in the report of his journey in Egypt titled Book of the Report and Account of the
Things Which I Witnessed and the Events Seen in the Land of Egypt (Kitāb al-Ifāda wa-l-iʿtibār fī
al-umūr al-mušāhada wa-l-ḥawādiṯ al-muʿāyana bi-arḍ Miṣr), a compendium extracted from
his own history of Egypt, lost to us; see The Eastern Key: Kitāb al-Ifādah wa-l-iʿtibār of ʿAbd
al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī (‘Abd al-Laṭīf Ibn-Yūsuf Ibn-Muḥammad al-Baġdādī), ed. by Kamal Hafuth
Zand and John A. and Ivy E. Videan (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1965). Cf. Cecilia
Martini Bonadeo, ʿAbd al-Latif al-Baghdadi, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://
plato.stanford.edu/entries/al-baghdadi/ (accessed September 9, 2015).
5 From ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s autobiographies we know that he spent his formative years in Baghdad
until 1189. In Baghdad, he studied Islamic sciences and medicine with many renowned schol-
ars of his time: Kamāl al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥman al-Anbārī (d. 1181), a professor of fiqh, adab-
literature, ḥadīṯ and Arabic grammar at the Niẓāmiyya madrasa; Waǧīh al-Wāsiṭī (d. 1215), a
professor at the Ẓafariyya Mosque; Ibn Faḍlān (d. 1199), an outstanding legal scholar versed in
ḫilāf and dialectic, and leader of the Šāfiʿīs in Iraq; ʿAbd Allāh b. Aḥmad b. al-Ḫaššāb (d. 1171),
master of ḥadīṯ, grammarian, mathematician, expert in farāʾiḍ and nasab; Raḍī ad-Dawla Abū
Naṣr (d. ca. 1182), son of the well-known physician Amīn ad-Dawla Ibn al-Tilmīḏ, professor
of medicine. In his hometown, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf took his first steps in philosophy studying al-
Ġazālī’s Maqāṣid al-falāsifa (Intentions of the Philosophers), the Miʿyār al-ʿilm fī fann al-manṭiq
(Measure of Science in the Art of Logic), the Mīzān al-ʿamal (Criterion of Action on Ethics), and
the Miḥakk al-naẓar fī l-manṭiq (Touchstone of Reasoning in Logic). Then he turned to Avi-
cenna’s books including the Kitāb al-Naǧāh (Salvation), the Šifāʾ (Cure), the Qānūn fī l-Ṭibb
(Canon), and the Kitāb al-Taḥsīl (Validation) by Bahmanyār, a pupil of Avicenna. In Baghdad,
Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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262 martini bonadeo
In Cairo ʿAbd al-Laṭīf discovered the Arabic Aristotle and his philosophy, as
well as the works of Aristotle’s commentators Themistius, Alexander, and al-
Fārābī.6 See the following incisive passage in his autobiography as reported by
Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa:
One day I found myself in the mosque and around me there was a large
crowd, when a master entered, badly-dressed, but with a bright and
friendly face. The crowd started to pay their respects to him, greatly
esteeming him, I however carried on with my speech. When the lecture
was over, the imām of the mosque came over to me and said: ‘Do you
know this master? He is Abū al-Qāsim al-Šāriʿī’. I embraced him and said
to him: ‘It is you I seek’. I then took him to my accommodation and we
had lunch together and discussed questions of Ḥadīṯ and I found that he
was precisely what I desired, what satisfied my eyes. His behaviour and
appearance were that of a true learned man and philosopher. He was con-
tent with necessary goods and was not attached to any worldly goods that
could distract him from his search for the most excellent realities. Later
he had studied Indian mathematics, Euclid’s geometry, and many books on alchemy by Ǧābir
b. Ḥayyān, but then he abandoned this discipline which he considered an irrational practice.
At the age of 28, in 1189, he left Baghdad and began a long period of travel. First he was in
Mosul for a year. There he heard people saying great things about al-Suhrawardī. He came
across al-Suhrawardī’s treatises: the Talwīḥāt (Intimations), the Kitāb al-Lamaḥāt (The Glim-
mers), and the Kitāb al-Maʿāriǧ (Ascending Steps), without however finding the knowledge
he was looking for. He left Mosul for Damascus, where he joined the grammarian al-Kindī al-
Baġdādī (d. 1216) and he worked on a certain number of grammatical treatises. In Damascus,
he distanced himself more and more from the study and practice of alchemy. Then ʿAbd al-
Laṭīf went to Jerusalem and subsequently to Saladin near Acre. There he got in touch with
Saladin’s entourage and obtained a safe-conduct document to go to Cairo.
6 From ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s autobiographies we know that in Egypt ʿAbd al-Laṭīf met Yāsīn al-Sīmiyāʾī,
a little-known alchemist, and Moses Maimonides, the famous Jewish philosopher, theologian,
and physician, born in Cordoba in 1135. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf refused to work with the former because
of the senselessness of his teaching, but found the latter excellent, though dominated by
the desire to excel and to lend his services to men in command and of prominence. Then
in Cairo ʿAbd al-Laṭīf met Abū l-Qāsim al-Šāriʿī, perhaps the master in the science of ḥadīṯ
Abū l-Qāsim al-Buṣayrī (d. 1202), who had expert knowledge of the works of Aristotle and
his ancient commentators Alexander and Themistius and of those of al-Fārābī. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf
refers to these commentators in his works more than once. These quotations are often literal;
thus, it is a fair guess that he had direct access to some of these commentaries or paraphrases,
even though it should be stressed that the historische Schichten (cf. Neuwirth, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf
al-Baġdādī’s Bearbeitung von Buch Lambda der aristotelischen Metaphysik, 162–91) of ʿAbd al-
Laṭīf’s text are much more complicated than this. Cf. below note 12.
Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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he was inseparable from me and I found that he had an expert knowl-

edge of the works of the ancients and those of Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī. On
the other hand, I had no idea of any of those writings, since I thought
that Ibn Sīnā held all philosophy in him and that his books exhausted it.
When we discussed Ḥadīṯ, I had the better of him in dialectic ability and
refinement of language, but he had the better of me in the force of his
argumentation and the clarity of his doctrine. I did not give up however
until I found myself in agreement with him and I did not deviate from
my line of thought and my conviction to follow him. He began to present
to me, one after the other, passages taken from the works of Abū Naṣr
and Alexander and Themistius thus subduing my repugnance and more-
over calming my recalcitrant temperament until my attitude towards him
became that of a man who takes one step forwards and one step back.7
Finally, in his early 40’s he taught Koranic and traditional Islamic sciences in
the most important madāris of his time: at al-Azhar mosque in Cairo, al-Aqṣā
mosque in Jerusalem, the ʿAzīziyya madrasa in Damascus, and eventually in
Aleppo.
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī was a prodigious writer, as attested by the earliest list
of his works, which enumerates 173 works, including brief essays and treatises.8
Among the listed works which came down to us there is his treatise Book on the
Science of Metaphysics.
In this work ʿAbd al-Laṭīf tries to set a synthesis of the metaphysical knowl-
edge of the past, which, according to him, was the result of an uninterrupted
process from Aristotle’s Metaphysics to his times—a progression that was
potentially compromised by Avicenna’s philosophy. For this reason, this book,
as I have suggested elsewhere, cannot be understood without bearing in mind
both al-Kindī’s and al-Fārābī’s philosophy.9
F.W. Zimmermann maintains that ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s synthesis is very
close to the set of Greek writings which had been translated or paraphrased in
Arabic under al-Kindī’s impulse. From ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s text a ‘Kindī’s
metaphysics file’ can be reconstructed.10 ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī endorses the
7 Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, Kitāb ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ, ed. by August Müller, ii, 206.1–
11; Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, Kitāb ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ, ed. by Nizār Riḍā, 688.1–10.
8 Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, Kitāb ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ, ed. by August Müller, ii, 211.1–
213.16; Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa, Kitāb ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ, ed. by Nizār Riḍā, 693.2–
696.10.
9 Martini Bonadeo, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s Philosophical Journey.
10 Fritz W. Zimmermann, “The Origins of the So-called Theology of Aristotle,” in Pseudo-
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264 martini bonadeo
metaphysical ‘theologizing’ project worked out by al-Kindī in his First Philoso-

phy: the knowledge of the causes coincides with that natural theology which
investigates the first principle. The first motionless and perfect principle of
Book Lambda is at one and at the same time also the true One, the provident
creator. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī draws
from Alexander of Aphrodisias’ De Providentia, from the De Causis, the Arabic
version of Proclus’s Elements of Theology, and the pseudo-Theology; his goal
is to put forward a unitary ordered synthesis of Arabic-Islamic metaphysical
thought, whose first teacher was Aristotle.
Al-Fārābī was always an intellectual and literal source of inspiration for ʿAbd
al-Laṭīf. He often paraphrases al-Fārābī’s writings in his own works. From al-
Fārābī he draws the very notion of ‘science’, a systematic corpus capable of
integrating Islamic and ancient knowledge, which he never sees as contradic-
tory. On the contrary, the sciences of the ancients were harbingers of a useful
method for the scholars of the Koranic sciences.
Chapter 20: Sources and Documentation
Chapter 20 of the Book on the Science of Metaphysics is titled On What the

Wise Man Said in the Book of the Exposition of the Good (Fī mā qāla l-ḥakīm
fī kitāb īḍāḥ al-ḫayr).11 ʿAbd al-Laṭīf presents his own epitome of the Book of
Aristotle in the Middle Ages. The Theology and Other Texts, ed. by Jill Kraye, William F. Ryan,
and Charles B. Schmitt (London: The Warburg Institute, 1986), 113.
11 The title of Chapter 20, What the Wise Man Said (Fī mā qāla l-ḥakīm) in the Book of the
Exposition of the Good is interesting. Where does it come from? Could it be a reference
to doxographical materials at ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s disposal? The existence in the Arabic dox-
ographical literature of sayings attributed to a Greek Sage (al-šayḫ al-yūnānī) has been
known since the edition of Šahrastānī’s Book of Religious and Philosophical Sects, ed. by
Rev. William Cureton (London: Society for the Publication of Oriental Texts, 1842–6),
334.5–337.13. In the 1950s, Franz Rosenthal devoted a study to the sayings of the Greek
Sage which he found in the Oxford manuscript, Bodleian Library, Marsh 539 [Franz Rosen-
thal, “Aš-Šayḫ al-Yūnānī and the Arabic Plotinus Source,” Orientalia 21 (1952): 461–92; Franz
Rosenthal, “Aš-Šayḫ al-Yūnānī and the Arabic Plotinus Source,” Orientalia 22 (1953): 370–
400; Franz Rosenthal, “Aš-Šayḫ al-Yūnānī and the Arabic Plotinus Source,” Orientalia 24
(1955): 42–65]. Rosenthal transcribed the sayings and compared them with the other tes-
timonies already known: that of the above-mentioned Book of Religious and Philosophical
Sects (Kitāb al-Milal wa-l-niḥal), and that of another doxographic collection, the Deposi-
tory of Wisdom Literature (Ṣiwān al-ḥikma), which is lost to us and of which we possess the
Abridgment [Muntaḫab Ṣiwān al-ḥikma: Abū Sulaymān al-Siǧistānī, Muntaḫab Siwān al-
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the Exposition of the Pure Good, the Liber de causis of the Latin Middle Ages.
He reproduces all the propositions except numbers 4, 10, 18, and 20, and fol-
lows the same order in which they are set out. He adds Proposition 54 of Pro-
clus’s Elements of Theology, On the difference between eternity and time (Mā
bayn al-dahr wa-l-zamān), which is recalled twice. In a second part of the
same chapter he presents passages from a heavily adapted version of Meta-
physics Lambda 10 and its critical doxography. In a third part, he quotes some
passages from the first Chapter of the pseudo-Theology and devotes a closing
paragraph to the nature of divine science which is the ‘Science of Sovereignty’
ḥikma wa-ṯalāṯ rasāʾīl, ed. by ʿAbdurraḥmān Badawī, (Tehran: Intišārāt-i Bunyād-i Farhanǧ-
i Īrān, 1974); Douglas Morton Dunlop, The Muntakhab Ṣiwān al-ḥikmah of Abū Sulaimān
al-Sijistānī (Paris–New York–The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1979)] as well as a Supple-
ment (Tatimmat Ṣiwān al-ḥikma), and other writings that derive from the Ṣiwān [Muḥam-
mad Šafīʿ, Kitāb Tatimmat Ṣiwān al-ḥikma (Lahore: Panjab University Oriental Publica-
tion Series, 1935); Muḥammad Kurd ʿAlī, Taʾrīḫ ḥukamāʾ al-Islām (Damascus: Maṭbaʿat
al-Taraqqī, 1946); Ẓahīr al-Dīn al-Bayhaqī, Tatimmat Ṣiwān al-ḥikma, ed. by Rafīq al-ʿAǧam
(Beyrouth: Dār al-Fikr al-Lubnānī, 1994)]. Cf. also an Abridgment (Muḫtaṣar Ṣiwān al-
ḥikma) by ʿUmar b. Sahlān al-Sāwī (half of the xii cent.) recorded by Franz Rosenthal,
“From Arabic Books and Manuscripts vi. Istanbul Materials for al-Kindī and as-Sarakhsī,”
Journal of the American Oriental Society 76 (1956): 27–31, esp. 29, note 3, and the Muḫtār
min kalām al-ḥukamāʾ al-arbaʿa al-akābir, ed. by Dimitri Gutas, Greek Wisdom Literature in
Arabic Translation. A Study of Graeco-Arabic Gnomologia (New Haven, ct: American Ori-
ental Society, 1975). Ṣiwān al-ḥikma dates back to the time of Abū Sulaymān al-Siǧistānī
(d. around 983) to whom the Ṣiwān had also been attributed before scholars raised doubts
about his authorship [Wadād al-Qāḍī, “Kitāb Ṣiwān al-ḥikma: Structure, Composition,
Authorship and Sources,” Der Islam 58 (1981): 87–124]. From all the texts which somehow
derive from the Ṣiwān al-ḥikma we may assume that it was a collection of doxographical
materials. The Abridgement (Muntaḫab Ṣiwān al-ḥikma) presents a chronological series
of opinions of Greek and Muslim scholars (ḥukamāʾ). Those of the Greek Sage feature
after those of Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander the Great and Diogenes the
Cynic, and before those of Theophrastus and Eudemus; the Greek Sage is thus a succes-
sor of Aristotle and Diogenes. The sayings of the Greek Sage occupy the same position
in the Book of Religions and Sects of al-Šahrastānī. In the Oxford manuscript, Bodleian
Library, Marsh 539, which has been recently studied again, edited and translated [Émily
Cottrell, “L’Anonyme d’ Oxford (Bodleian Or. Marsh 539): bibliothèque ou commentaire?,”
in The Libraries of the Neoplatonists, ed. by Cristina D’Ancona (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 415–51;
Elvira Wakelnig, A Philosophy Reader from the Circle of Miskawayh (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2014)], the order seems not to be chronological, but rather follows “the
Neoplatonic hierarchy of being which descends from One, via intellect, soul and nature to
the human body”; cf. Wakelnig, A Philosophy Reader from the Circle of Miskawayh, 8–17, in
particular 9. However, in ʿAbd al-Laṭīf there is something more: not a list of sayings, but a
reworking of different doctrines in order to present a coherent and unitary metaphysical
system.
Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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266 martini bonadeo
(ʿilm al-rubūbiyya).12 This last paragraph introduces ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s last chapters
devoted to the pseudo-Theology, in which he also includes materials from
Proclus arabus.
In the Appendix, I present the edition of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s Chapter 20, which
was edited for the first time in 1955 on the basis of the single Cairo manuscript,
Dār al-kutub, Aḥmad Taymūr Pāšā, Ḥikma 117, pp. 140.12–147.7, by Badawī.13
One year later, Father Anawati, in his “Prolégomènes à une nouvelle édition du
‘De causis’ arabe,” drew extensively from ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s epitome and suggested
that it should be used for the critical edition of the Maḥḍ al-ḫayr in a limited
number of passages quoted by ʿAbd al-Laṭīf.14 To give a precise idea of what he
had in mind, Father Anawati provided parallel passages from the Maḥḍ al-ḫayr
and ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s text, in particular concerning Propositions 13 and 16. In 1981,
Richard Taylor, in his critical edition of the Arabic text of the Maḥḍ al-ḫayr, also
used ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s epitome “as an occasional valuable witness to a twelfth or
thirteenth century Arabic manuscript of the Maḥḍ al-ḫayr.”15
For ʿAbd al-Laṭīf to cut and paste the sources in his metaphysical treatise is
a very common practice. I would like to discuss an example of the degree of
dependence on the source that this practice produces (this applies also to the
pseudo-Theology, as I hope to have proved elsewhere).16 The following table
12 One may wonder whether all these sources present in ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s Chapter 20, different
in their origin, have been put together for the first time in the Kitāb fī ʿIlm Mā baʿd al-ṭabīʿa,
or they were already grouped together in a doxographical source, unknown to us, which
was at ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s disposal. Neuwirth (ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s Bearbeitung von Buch
Lambda der aristotelischen Metaphysik, 162–191) raises this question about the sources of
Chapters 13–16, and she attempts to identify the various levels of the genesis of the text
(historische Schichten) chapter by chapter. In this chapter as elsewhere, I think that ʿAbd
al-Laṭīf most likely depends upon a ‘common context’ in which the sources used are for
the most part already integrated with each other. Nonetheless he sets for himself a clear
goal: the construction of a coherent and unitary science of metaphysics. For this reason,
reducing his work to a collection of sources seems unfair.
13 Badawī, Al-Aflāṭūniyya al-muḥdaṯa ʿind al-ʿArab, 248–56.
14 Georges Chehata Anawati, “Prolégomènes à une nouvelle édition du “De causis” arabe
(Kitāb al-Ḫayr al-maḥḍ),” in Mélanges Louis Massignon (Damas: Institut français de
Damas, 1956), 73–110.
15 Richard C. Taylor, The Liber de Causis (Kalām fī maḥḍ al-ḫayr). A study of Medieval Neopla-
tonism (Toronto: PhD Thesis, 1981); Richard C. Taylor, “ʿAbd al Latif al-Baghdadi’s Epitome
of the Kalam fi Mahd al- Khayr (Liber de Causis),” in Islamic Theology and Philosophy: Stud-
ies in Honor of George F. Hourani, ed. by M.E. Marmura (Albany, ny: State University of New
York Press, 1984), 286–323, in particular 320, note 13.
16 Cecilia Martini Bonadeo, “Readers of the Arabic Plotinus. Part Two: ʿAbd al-Laṭīf b. Yūsuf
Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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‫‪ʿabd al-laṭīf al-baġdādī’s chapter 20‬‬ ‫‪267‬‬
‫‪presents: 1) the incipit of the Maḥḍ al-ḫayr, and 2) the incipit of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s‬‬
‫‪Chapter 20. Both are related to Proclus’ Proposition 1. The verbatim quotations‬‬
‫‪by ʿAbd al-Laṭīf which closely reflect the text of the Maḥḍ al-ḫayr are signalled‬‬
‫‪in bold, in both Arabic and English versions.‬‬
‫‪Otto Bardenhewer, Die pseudo-‬‬ ‫‪ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s On What‬‬

‫‪aristotelische Schrift Über das reine Gute‬‬ ‫‪the Wise Man Said in the Book of the‬‬
‫‪bekannt unter dem Namen Liber de‬‬ ‫‪Exposition of the Good, Appendix,‬‬
‫‪causis (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder,‬‬ ‫‪35.3–9.‬‬
‫‪1882; reprint Frankfurt am Main 1961),‬‬
‫‪58.3–61.9, Proposition 1.‬‬
‫ل علة أولية فهي أكثر فيضا ًعلى معلولها من العلةّ‬

‫ك ّ‬ ‫كل علةّ كلية أولى فهي أكثر فيضا ًعلى معلولها من‬
‫ت قو ّتها الكل ّي ّة الثانية فإذا رفعت العلةّ الكليّ ّة الثانية قو ّتها عن‬
‫العلةّ الكلية الثانية فإذا فرضنا العلةّ الثانية رفع َ ْ‬
‫ن العلةّ الكل ّي ّة الأولى لا ترفع قو ّتها عنه‪.‬‬

‫الشيء‪ ،‬فإ ّ‬ ‫عن الشيء لم يلزم أن ترفع العلةٌ ُالأولى قو ّتها عنه‪،‬‬
‫ن العلةّ الكل ّي ّة الأولى تفعل في معلول العلةّ‬

‫وذلك أ ّ‬ ‫لأن العلةّ الأولى تفعل في معلول العلةّ الثانية قبل أن‬
‫الثاني قبل أن تفعل فيه العلةّ الكل ّي ّة الثانية التي تليه‪.‬‬ ‫تفعل فيه العلةّ الثانية فإذا فعلت العلةّ الثانية التي تلي‬
‫ن‬
‫فإذا فعلت العلةّ الثانية التي تلي المعلول‪ ،‬لم يستغَ ْ ِ‬ ‫المعلول لم يستغن فعلها عن العلةّ الأولى التي فوقها‪،‬‬
‫فعلها عن العلةّ الأولى التي فوقها‪ .‬وإذا فارقت العلةّ‬ ‫وإذا فارقت الثانية معلولها لم تفارقه الأولى لأّنها علةّ‬
‫الثانية المعلول الذي يليها‪ ،‬لم تفارقه العلةّ الأولى التي‬ ‫لعل ّته وهي أشُّد علةّ لً لشيء من علتّ ه القر يبة التي تليه‪.‬‬
‫فوقها لأّنها علةّ لعل ّته‬ ‫ي والإنسان‪ :‬فإذا ارتفع‬

‫نمثل ذلك بالآنية والح ّ‬
‫فالعلةّ الأولى إذن اشّد علةّ للشيء من عل ّته القر يبة‬ ‫ي‪ ،‬وإذا ارتفع الحي بقيت الأن ّي ّة‪،‬‬
‫الإنسان بقي الح ّ‬
‫التي تليه‪.‬‬ ‫ي والإنسان‪ .‬فالع ّلة‬

‫وإذا ارتفعت الأن ّية ارتفع الح ّ‬
‫البعيدة أكثر إحاطة وأشُّد علةّ للشيء من علتّ ه القر يبة ونحن ممثلّ ون ذلك بالأن ّي ّة والح ّ‬
‫ي والإنسان‪.‬‬
‫… فقد بان ووضح أ ّ‬

‫ن العلةّ الأولى البعيدة هي أكثر‬ ‫كما أوضحنا‬
‫‪al-Baġdādī,” in Pseudo-Theology of Aristotle. Text, Translation, History, and Doctrine. Vol. i,‬‬
‫‪Prolegomena, ed. by Cristina D’Ancona. Vol. ii. Philological Introduction, Arabic Text,‬‬
‫‪French Translation, Commentary, Indexes, ed. by Cristina D’Ancona. Vol. iii. The so-called‬‬
‫‪Longer Version of the pseudo-Theology of Aristotle, ed. by Paul B. Fenton (in preparation).‬‬
‫‪Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305‬‬
‫‪This content downloaded from‬‬

‫‪41.250.96.253 on Thu, 06 May 2021 23:51:27 UTC‬‬
‫‪All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms‬‬
268 martini bonadeo
(cont.)
Otto Bardenhewer, Die pseudo- ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s On What

aristotelische Schrift Über das reine Gute the Wise Man Said in the Book of the
bekannt unter dem Namen Liber de Exposition of the Good, Appendix,
causis (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 35.3–9.
1882; reprint Frankfurt am Main 1961),
58.3–61.9, Proposition 1.
‫إحاطة ً وأشّد علةّ للشيء من عل ّته القر يبة … فقد بان‬
‫ن العلةّ الأولى هي أشّد علةّ لً لشيء من عل ّته‬

ّ ‫ووضح أ‬
‫ وأّنها تفيض قو ّتها عليه وتحفظه ولا‬،‫القر يبة التي تليه‬
ً ‫تفرقه مفارقة عل ّته القر يبة وقد تبقي فيه وتلزمه شديدا‬
‫على ما بينّ اّ وأوضحنا‬
Every First Cause pours forth more Every universal First Cause pours forth
abundantly on its effect than does the more abundantly on its effect than does
universal second cause. And if the the universal second cause. And if we
second universal cause removes its suppose that the second cause removes
power from the thing, it is not necessary its power from the thing, it is not
that the First universal Cause remove necessary that the First Cause remove
its power from it, because the First its power from it, because the First
universal Cause acts on the effect of Cause acts on the effect of the second
the second cause before the second cause before the second cause acts on it.
universal cause, which is adjacent to the So when the second cause which is
effect, acts on it. So when the universal immediately adjacent to the effect acts,
second cause, which is adjacent to the its act is not able to do without the First
effect, acts, its act is not able to do Cause which is above it. And when the
without the First Cause which is above second separates itself from the effect,
it. And when the second cause separates the First does not separate itself from it
itself from the effect, the first cause because It is a cause of its cause and
which is above (the second cause) does is more a cause of the thing than its
not separate itself from it (the effect), proximate cause which is immediately
because the First Cause is cause of its adjacent to it. We use as examples of
(the effect’s) cause. that, being, living and man. For when
The first cause, therefore, is more the man is removed, living remains; and
cause of the thing than its proximate when living is removed, being remains;
Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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Otto Bardenhewer, Die pseudo- ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s On What

aristotelische Schrift Über das reine Gute the Wise Man Said in the Book of the
bekannt unter dem Namen Liber de Exposition of the Good, Appendix,
causis (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 35.3–9.
1882; reprint Frankfurt am Main 1961),
58.3–61.9, Proposition 1.
cause which is immediately adjacent to but when being is removed, living and
(the thing). man are removed. So the remote cause is
We use, as examples of that, being, more encompassing and more a cause of
living and man. the thing that is its proximate cause, as
… So it has become clear and evident we have shown (English Translation by
that the remote first cause is more Richard Taylor, 1984).
encompassing and more a cause of the
thing than its proximate cause.
… Thus, it has become clear and evident
that the remote first cause is more a
cause of the thing than its proximate
cause which is immediately adjacent to
(the thing) and that it emanates its power
on it and conserves it and does not
separate itself from it with the separation
of its proximate cause, but rather it
remains in it and strongly adheres to it in
accordance with what we have shown.
Most of the text of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s epitome of the Maḥḍ al-ḫayr, presented
in the first part of his Chapter 20, follows the same pattern: the epitome is
quite faithful to its source, with the exception of a single important doctrinal
difference: as we will see, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf identifies the One, First Cause and Pure
Good, with the First Intellect.
Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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Is the Pure Good the First Principle, Intellect in Actuality, Which

Aristotle Describes at the End of His Metaphysics?
At the beginning of the chapter, in the passage above, we have read that ʿAbd al-
Laṭīf stresses the primacy of the most universal cause, the most remote from its
effect. The example he gives is taken from Proposition 1 of the Liber de causis, in
which the ontological priority of the most remote cause is demonstrated by the
relationship between being, the living being, and man. Once man is eliminated,
what remains is that which is living; once the living is eliminated, what remains
is that which is. But when this latter is removed, nothing remains. The remote
cause is the cause of its effect more than the proximate cause of the effect is.17
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf argues this point by a description of the hierarchy of the intelli-
gible realities modelled on Propositions 2 and 3 of the Maḥḍ al-ḫayr. The First
Cause is above time and eternity; indeed it is the cause of eternity. As for the
intellect, which is the second cause, it is with eternity and above time. The first
heavenly body, on the other hand, is in a sense with time, but in another it is
the cause of time and hence it is too with eternity. The beings, whose coming
into being is accompanied by movement fall under time; there is also a degree
of reality which is related to time but does not fall under it. Rather, it is the
cause of time; it is the cosmic Soul.18 The Soul is an effect of the First Cause
through the mediation of the intellect; it has three powers, and it carries out
three actions in virtue of those powers.19
Then ʿAbd al-Laṭīf pauses to consider the First Cause and paraphrases Propo-
sition 5. The First Cause transcends our possibility of knowledge. Since every-
thing is known in its true nature only by way of its cause, and by definition, the
First Cause has no causes. It is unknowable, transcends description, and is not
illuminated by any other light.20
This theory of the ineffability of the First Cause is followed by a long descrip-
tion of intellect which has a First Cause and is knowable in its true nature. On
the model of Propositions 6 and 7, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf states that Intellect is with eter-
nity, above time, and is not subject to division, because everything which is
divisible is divisible in magnitude, in number, or in motion, and all these kinds
17 Cf. Martini Bonadeo, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s Philosophical Journey, 244.

18 Cf. Elvira Wakelnig, Feder, Tafel, Mensch: Al-ʿĀmirī’s Kitāb al-Fuṣūl fī l-Maʿālim al-ilāhīya
und die arabische Proklos-Rezeption im 10. Jh. (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006), 155.
19 Martini, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s On What the Wise Man Said in the Book of the Exposition
of the Good, Appendix, 35.13–16. Cf. Wakelnig, Feder, Tafel, Mensch, 184–5.
of the Good, Appendix, 36.1–6.
Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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of division fall under time. This is impossible in the case of the Intellect, whose
form, substance, and operation are one. It is one, insofar as it is the first thing
which arises from the First Cause, but it is multiple because of the multiplic-
ity of the gifts that it receives from the First Cause. The intellect knows what
is above it—these gifts—and what is below it—the things of which it is the
cause. The Intellect knows its cause and its effect through its substance, i.e.,
intellectually. It intellectually grasps both the intellectual things and the sen-
sible ones. The First Cause, which is the Pure Good, pours all that is good into
intellect and into all that which exists through the mediation of the intellect.
At this point, although ʿAbd al-Laṭīf is still following his model, namely
Proposition 8 of the Liber de Causis, he parts company with it and claims that
the First Cause is the First Intellect. Proposition 8 affirms that: “Every intellect
has its existence and subsistence by the Pure Good, that is, the First Cause,”21
and that “The First Cause is neither intellect, nor soul, nor nature, but it is
above intellect, soul, and nature, because it is the creator of all things.”22 It is
true that in the same Proposition we read that “The Divine Knowledge is not
like the intellectual knowledge nor like the knowledge of soul, but rather it is
above the knowledge of intellect and the knowledge of soul because it is the
creator of all types of knowledge. And Divine Power is above every intellectual,
psychic and natural power because It is cause of every power.”23 It is, in all
likelihood, this passage that suggests to ʿAbd al-Laṭīf that if there is such a
thing as Divine Knowledge, this is because the First Cause, Pure Good, is the
Divine First Intellect. Knowledge on the part of an immaterial entity entails
that that entity is an Intellect. He states that “The stability and subsistence
of the intellect is through the Pure Good which is the First Intellect. And the
power of the intellect is more unitary than all the things which follow it because
it is the cause of them and their governor and their sustainer through the First
Power which is in it.”24
21 Bardenhewer, Die pseudo-aristotelische Schrift Über das reine Gute, 76.2:

.‫كل عقل إنما ثباته وقوامه بالخـير المحض وهي العلةّ الأولى‬
22 Bardenhewer, Die pseudo-aristotelische Schrift Über das reine Gute, 78.2–4:
‫ بل هي فوق العقل والنفس والطبيعة لأّنها مبدِعة ٌ لجميع‬،‫س ولا طبيعة‬
ٍ ‫والعلةّ الأولى ليست بعقل ولا نف‬
.‫الأشياء‬
23 Bardenhewer, Die pseudo-aristotelische Schrift Über das reine Gute, 78.5–8:
‫والعلم الالاهيّ ليس كالعلم العقلي ولا كعلم النفس بل هو فوق علم العقل وعلم النفس لأن ّه مبدع العلوم‬
.‫ل قو ّة‬
ّ ‫ل قو ّة عقلي ّة ونفساني ّة وطبيعي ّة لأّنها علةّ لك‬
ّ ‫والقو ّة الالاهي ّة فوق ك‬
Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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272 martini bonadeo
As Richard Taylor has it, “This emphasis, however, is easily understandable

in the light of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s belief that the author of the Maḥḍ al-ḫayr is ‘the
Philosopher’, that is, Aristotle who clearly taught in Book Lambda of his Meta-
physics that the highest reality is the divine substance which is intelligence in
pure actuality.”25
One can go even further and add that ʿAbd al-Laṭīf in his paraphrase of
Book Lambda 6–10 takes inspiration from Themistius’s paraphrase. He quotes
several passages from this work which are otherwise only preserved in their
Hebrew translation.26 The least that one can say is that ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s solution
to the problem of God’s knowledge of individuals and that of Themistius in his
paraphrase of Book Lambda are very similar.
of the Good, Appendix, 36.16–17; Taylor, “ʿAbd al Latif al-Baghdadi’s Epitome of the Kalam
fi Mahd al- Khayr (Liber de Causis),” 240. Taylor translates ʿaql as intelligence.
25 Taylor, “ʿAbd al Latif al-Baghdadi’s Epitome of the Kalam fi Mahd al- Khayr (Liber de
Causis),” 237.
26 Themistius’ paraphrase of Metaphysics xii is lost in Greek; fragments are transmitted via
Simplicius and other late antique authors: see Thémistius. Paraphrase de la Métaphysique
d’ Aristote (Livre Lambda), ed. by Rémi Brague (Paris: Vrin, 1999), 15–6. It was translated into
Arabic. The sources partly disagree about the Arabic translation of Themistius’ paraphrase
of book Lambda. In the Fihrist, [cf. Ibn al-Nadīm, Kitāb al-Fihrist, ed. by Gustav Flügel,
Johannes Rödiger, and August Müller (Leipzig: Vogel, 1871–2), 251.29–30] Ibn al-Nadīm says
that Abū Bišr Mattā b. Yūnus translated book Lām with Themistius’ paraphrase. However,
in a manuscript of the Hebrew translation of Moses ben Samuel ibn Tibbon, which was
completed in 1255, and which is partially edited [Themistii In Aristotelis Metaphysicorum
librum λ paraphrasis hebraice et latine, ed. by Samuel Landauer, cag v.5 (Berlin: Reimer,
1903), v] and in manuscript Damascus, Ẓāhiriyya 4871, which preserves the beginning of
the complete Arabic version, it is maintained that Isḥāq translated and Ṯābit corrected it.
The beginning of the complete version, preserved in the above-mentioned manuscript,
was edited by ʿAbdurraḥmān Badawi, Arisṭū ʿind al-ʿArab. Dirāsāt wa-nuṣūṣ ġayr manšūra,
(Cairo: Maktabat al-Nahḍa al-Miṣriyya, 1947), 329–33. The abridged version, perhaps the
one translated by Abū Bišr Mattā b. Yūnus, is preserved in ms Cairo, Dār al-Kutub, Ḥikma 6
and it was edited by Badawī, Arisṭū ʿind al-ʿArab, 12–21. Cf. Shlomo Pines, “Some distinctive
metaphysical conceptions in Themistius’ Commentary on Book Lambda and their place
in the history of philosophy,” in Aristoteles, Werk und Wirkung, ed. by Paul Moraux and
Jürgen Wiesner (Berlin–New York: De Gruyter, 1987), ii, 177–204; reprint in The Collected
Works of Shlomo Pines, (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1996), iii, 267–94. Landauer edited
also the Hebrew-into-Latin translation, made by Moses Finzi in 1558. The parts extant in
Hebrew contain more material than the corresponding chapters of the Arabic translation.
The relationship between the Arabic Hebrew texts is still unclear [see the discussion in
Thémistius. Paraphrase de la Métaphysique d’Aristote (Livre Lambda), 16–9]. Cf. Neuwirth,
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s Bearbeitung von Buch Lambda der aristotelischen Metaphysik,
16–59: in the footnotes to the Arabic text ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s quotations from Themistius’s
Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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According to Aristotle, the first principle, the Pure Act who only thinks of
itself (Metaph., λ 9, 1074b33–1075a10), has no knowledge of anything outside
himself, and all the more so in the case of individuals. Even if I cannot sum up
here a long and complex development, let me at least recall that for Plotinus,
self-reflection characterizes νοῦς, namely the second principle on his hierarchy
of the causes (Enn. iv 4[28], 2, 11).27 If we turn to Themistius, we find that God
knows all at once himself and all the things of which He is the principle.28
paraphrase are compared with the Hebrew version by Ibn Tibbōn and the two fragmentary
Arabic versions edited by Badawī. References to Finzi’s Latin translation are given in the
footnotes to the German translation of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s text.
27 In addition, in the Plotiniana Arabica, the First Cause is Pure Actuality as Aristotle held
regarding his own First Cause of Metaphysics Lambda. On the notion of actuality in
Plotinus and the Plotiniana Arabica with particular reference to Enneads vi.8 [39], see
Richard C. Taylor, “Aquinas, the Plotiniana Arabica, and the Metaphysics of Being and
Actuality,” Journal of the History of Ideas 59 (1998): 217–39, 235–6: “It is God who originates
the beings and forms of things, but He originates some of the forms directly and some of
them indirectly. The reason why He originates the beings and forms of things is that He
is the thing truly existing in actuality: indeed He is the Pure Actuality, and when He acts
He does but look at Himself and perform His activity simultaneously. As for the mind,
even though it is what is in actuality, since there is something else above it the power of
that thing extends to it and consequently it desires to become like the First Agent, who is
pure actuality. When it wishes to act it does but look at what is above it and perform its
activity in the utmost purity. Similarly, even though the soul is what it is in actuality, since
the mind is above her something of its power reaches her, and when she acts she does but
look at the mind and do what she does. Now the First Agent, who is pure actuality performs
His activity looking at Himself, not at anything outside Himself, for there is nothing else
outside Him, that is higher or better than He”.
28 Cf. Badawī, Arisṭū ʿind al-ʿArab, 21.10–11: “It has become evident from all this that God is
the First Principle and He knows together Himself and all the things of which He is the
principle.”
ً.‫وقد تبين من جميع ذلك أن الل ّٰه هو المبدأ الأول وأنه يعلم ذاته وجميع الأشياء التي هو لها مبدأ معا‬
On Themistius’ interpretation of divine intellection as it is accounted for in Book Lambda
of Metaphysics and its influence on the medieval Arabic and Jewish philosophers see
the seminal article by Pines, “Some distinctive metaphysical conceptions in Themistius’
Commentary on Book Lambda and their place in the history of philosophy,” in partic-
ular 189–90 for the idea that Aristotle’s God is both the cause of the cosmos and the
Nomos ruling over the cosmos. As for the influence of Plotinus’s νοῦς on Themistius’ con-
ception of the Aristotelian God in his paraphrase of Book Lambda of Metaphysics see
Shlomo Pines, “Les limites de la métaphysique selon al-Fārābi, Ibn Bājja et Maïmonide:
sources et antithèses de ces doctrines chez Alexandre d’Aphrodise et chez Themistius,”
Miscellanea Mediaevalia 13, no. 1 (1981): 211–25. Brague [Thémistius. Paraphrase de la Méta-
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Hence He knows all that which is knowable. Themistius describes the relation-
ship between God and the world by saying that God is the law and the order
of the world, i.e. its condition of intelligibility.29 I have shown elsewhere30 that
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, following Themistius, claims that the self-reflection of the divine
thought does not entail multiplicity within the First Principle, because in it the
thinking principle, the act of thinking, and the object are one and the same
thing:
He (the First Principle) thinks intelligibles, which are with him, because
they are him and he is them.31
He thinks of beings not as if they were external to him or again as if
they were effects alien to him, but he is the law. He possesses eternal life
and the most perfect life is that of the intellect.32
According to ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, once again referring to Themistius, the First Prin-
ciple does not possess everlasting life and eternal existence; rather, he is Life,
Existence, Supreme Beauty. It is the Pure Good, the Absolute Simple, Its essence
physique d’ Aristote (Livre Lambda), 37] maintains that the topic that God knows every-
thing by knowing himself is reminiscent of the Neoplatonic formula “who knows him-
self knows everything”: cf. e.g. Hermiae Alexandrini in Platonis Phaedrum Scholia, ed. by
Paul Couvreur (Paris: Librairie Émile Bouillon, Éditeur, 1901), 31.15. It should be noted
that Themistius puts some emphasis on God’s knowledge of the existents as identical
with his self-knowledge also in his Paraphrase of the De Anima [cf. Themistii in libros
Aristotelis de Anima commentaria, ed. by Ricardus Heinze (Berlin: Reimer, 1899), 99.24–
25]. Cf. also Pines, “Some distinctive metaphysical conceptions in Themistius’ Commen-
tary on Book Lambda and their place in the history of philosophy,” 187 and n. 44 with
references to the relevant passages in Malcom Cameron Lyons, An Arabic translation
of Themistius Commentary on Aristoteles De anima, (London: Cassirer, 1973) as well as
in Verbeke’s edition of Moerbeke’s Latin translation of this paraphrase (Leiden: Brill,
1973).
29 Cf. Badawī, Arisṭū ʿind al-ʿArab, 18.4–5: “God is the Nomos and the cause of the order and
the arrangement of the existent things. He is a Living Nomos.”
.ّ‫ وهو ناموس حي‬.‫وذلك أن الل ّٰه ناموس وسبب نظام الأشياء الموجودة وترتيبها‬
30 Cf. Cecilia Martini Bonadeo, “God’s Will and the Origin of the World. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-
Baghdādī’s Sources and Arguments.” The Muslim World 107.3 (2017): 1–14.
31 Cf. Themistii In Aristotelis Metaphysicorum librum λ paraphrasis hebraice et latine, 20.14–
17 Landauer ⟨hebr.⟩ [= 23.14–20 Landauer, in part. li. 14–15 ⟨lat.⟩]; Neuwirth, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf
al-Baġdādī’s Bearbeitung von Buch Lambda der aristotelischen Metaphysik, 41.4–5.
32 Badawī, Arisṭū ʿind al-ʿArab, 18.3–7; Neuwirth, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s Bearbeitung von
Buch Lambda der aristotelischen Metaphysik, 43.1–2.
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is Its attribute and Its attribute is Its act.33 In his paraphrase of Lambda 9, ʿAbd
al-Laṭīf stresses that the First Principle thinks all things together because they
belong to his essence, as a shadow belongs to a person.34 With this idea in mind,
not surprisingly ʿAbd al-Laṭīf affirms in paraphrasing Metaphysics Lambda 10,
that the First Principle is Pure Good and Pure Generosity and therefore it thinks
itself in this way. It is that from which everything emanates and when it thinks
of itself, it thinks at the same time all that emanates from it.35
Here, in Chapter 20, in paraphrasing Proposition 8, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf maintains
that the knowledge of the First Cause, i.e. First Intellect, through which that
Intellect that is the first effect of the First Cause has stability and subsistence, is
above the knowledge of the intellect,36 and that the First Power, which is in the
First Intellect, is above every power.37 He says that the First Cause has no form
(‫ )حلية‬because It is only being (‫)أن ّي ّة فقط‬, but if it is said that It must have a form,
Its form is infinite. Since form involves delimitation, the notion of an infinite
form is oxymoronic and it is intentionally so.38 It is infinite because in the Maḥḍ
al-ḫayr, infinity denotes ontological simplicity. Form in matter is necessarily
finite and matter limits act, but if form exists without matter it is infinite as we
read in Proposition 16 where the more unified a spiritual substance is, the more
infinite it is. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf quotes this Proposition: “And every unitary power is
more infinite than the power which becomes multiple because the first infinite
i.e., the intellect, is near to the Pure One. And, when power begins to become
multiple, its unity begins to be annihilated; when [this] is destroyed, it loses
[its] infinity only because of its division.”39 The First Cause is the Pure Good
which pours forth all goods.
33 Badawī, Arisṭū ‘ind al-ʿArab, 18.10–11; Neuwirth, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s Bearbeitung von
Buch Lambda der aristotelischen Metaphysik, 43.3–6.
34 Neuwirth, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s Bearbeitung von Buch Lambda der aristotelischen
Metaphysik, 53.5.
Metaphysik, 57.1–5. Cf. Martini Bonadeo, “God’s Will and the Origin of the World. ʿAbd
al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī’s Sources and Arguments,” 1–14.
36 Cf. above note 22.
of the Good, Appendix, 36.19–20. Cf. note 24 above.
38 Richard C. Taylor, “Primary Causality and Ibdaʿ (creare) in the Liber de Causis.” In Wahrheit
und Geschichte: Die gebrochene Tradition metaphysischen Denkens. Festschrift zum 70:
Geburtstag von Günther Mensching, ed. by Günther Mensching and Alia Mensching-
Estakhr. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2012, 115–36.
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ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s assessment of the possibility of a perfect identity of the First

Cause, One, and the First Intellect may depend on al-Fārābī. The latter’s works
were reference texts for ʿAbd al-Laṭīf.40 In The Ideas of the Citizens of the Virtu-
ous City (Mabādiʾ ārāʾ ahl al-madīna al-fāḍila), al-Fārābī writes:
Because the First is not a matter and has itself no matter in any way
whatsoever, it is in its substance actual intellect; for what prevents the
form from being intellect and from actually thinking (intelligizing) is the
matter in which a thing exists. And when a thing exists without being in
need of matter, that very thing will in its substance be actual intellect; and
that is the status of the First. It is, then, actual intellect. The First is also
intelligible through its substance; for, again, what prevents a thing from
being actually intelligible and being intelligible through its substance is
matter. It is intelligible by virtue of its being intellect, for the One whose
being is intellect is intelligible by the One whose being is intellect. In order
to be intelligible the First is in no need of another essence outside itself
which would think it but it itself thinks its own essence. As a result of its
thinking its own essence, it becomes actually thinking and intellect, and,
as a result of its essence thinking (intelligizing) it, it becomes actually
intelligized. In the same way, in order to be actual intellect and to be
actually thinking, it is in no need of an essence which it would think and
which it would acquire from the outside, but is intellect and thinking by
thinking its one essence. For the essence which is thought is the essence
which thinks, and so it is intellect by virtue of its being intelligized. Thus
it is intellect and intelligized and thinking, all this being one essence and
one indivisible substance.41
In the Political regime (Kitāb al-Siyāsa al-madaniyya), al-Fārābī writes:
Because it (the First Cause) has no matter, not in any way, it is an intellect
by its substance. For it is material that prevents a thing from being an
of the Good, Appendix, 37.22–38.3. Taylor, “ʿAbd al Latif al-Baghdadi’s Epitome of the
Kalam fi Mahd al-Khayr (Liber de Causis),” 242.
40 Cf. Martini Bonadeo, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s Philosophical Journey, 157–73, 194–5, 214–5,
267.
41 Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī, Mabādiʾ ārāʾ ahl al-madīna al-fāḍila, ed. by Richard Walzer (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1985); reprinted (Chicago: Great Books of the Islamic World, 1998), 70–1. I
translated huwiyya as being, while Walzer translated it as identity. See Walzer’s comments
on this text at pages 343–5.
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intellect and from intellecting in actuality. And it is an intelligible insofar

as it is an intellect. For that of it which is intellect is an intelligible
for that of it which is intellect. To be an intelligible, it does not need
another external intellect to intellect it. Rather, it intellects its essence
itself. Through what it intellects of its essence, it becomes something that
intellects and in that its essence intellects it, an intelligible. Likewise, to
be an intellect and something that intellects, it does not need to procure
another essence and another thing from outside. Rather, it comes to be
an intellect and something that intellects by intellecting its essence. For
the essence that intellects is the one that is intellected.42
As noticed by Janos, the identity between intellect and the Divine essence is
one of the few unambiguous statements of al-Fārābī’s theology: the First Cause
is an eternal substance one and simple, which has an intellectual nature as
all the immaterial beings.43 It is a perfect intellect which possesses a unitary
and perfectly simple intellectual existence. It is also the highest intelligible,
hence it intelligizes itself, being thought and object of thought at the same
time, without involving multiplicity. But, even if ʿAbd al-Laṭīf found in al-Fārābī
a clear doctrine on the intellectual nature of the First Cause, he probably could
not find a clear solution concerning how multiplicity arises from unity nor
concerning how a transcendent Intellect knows particulars. On this topic, al-
Fārābī states ambiguously in the Political regime:
Now the First (Cause) intellects its essence, even though its essence is, in
some respect, all of the existents. Indeed, when it intellects its essence, it
has already intellected all of the existents in some respect because each
of the rest of the existents secures existence only from its existence.44
Janos wonders whether al-Fārābī intended this statement literally or he made

a concession to some theologians or traditionalists; the passage seems to point
42 Al-Fārābī, The Political Regime, ed. by Fauzi M. Najjar (Beyrouth: Dar El-Mashreq Publish-
ers, 19932), 45, 3–10; English translation by Charles E. Butterworth, Alfarabi, The Political
Writings, Volume ii “Political Regime” and “Summary of Plato’s Laws” (Ithaca, ny: Cornell
University Press, 2015), 40–41; al-Fārābī, Le livre du régime politique, ed. by Philippe Vallat
(Paris: Les belles lettres, 2012), 51–2.
43 Damien Janos, Method, Structure, and Development in al-Fārābī’s Cosmology (Leiden: Brill,
2012), 180–9.
44 Al-Fārābī, The Political Regime, 34.13–5; Butterworth, Alfarabi, The Political Writings, 32; al-
Fārābī, Le livre du régime politique, 18–9.
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278 martini bonadeo
in this direction. But if one assumes that al-Fārābī says what he wants to say
does it mean that the First knows universals or also particular things?45 But
even if it knows only universals, how could it be absolutely simple? Janos
suggests that this might be a relevant passage for al-Fārābī’s adherence to a
particular doctrine of divine omniscience derived from ancient commentators,
perhaps Themistius, who located all the forms in the Divine Intellect. Janos
discusses an aphorism in the Selected Aphorisms (Fuṣūl muntazaʿa), where al-
Fārābī presents three different views concerning divine knowledge: 1) the First
knows only its essence (as in Aristotle’s Metaphysics Lambda); 2) God knows all
universal intelligibles (as in Themistius’s exegesis of Lambda); 3) God knows all
the sense-perceptible particulars (in the tradition of kalām). Al-Fārābī refutes
the third view, but, according to Janos, it is not easy to decide between the first
two.
It would seem that al-Fārābī’s doctrine in this respect presents a real ambi-
guity, which may be encapsulated in the following dilemma: Either a) the
First knows all things, with the implication that whatever comes into exis-
tence is an effect of Its contemplation and knowledge of that thing, or b)
Its knowledge is restricted solely to Its own essence, in which case causa-
tion of the other existents would not be possible. Unfortunately, al-Fārābī
does not provide us with any satisfactory explanation of this problem. In
the absence of further evidence, it seems unwise to put forth a definitive
conclusion concerning al-Fārābī’s views on divine knowledge.46
Vallat, commenting on the same passage of the Political Regime in his French
translation, recalls the same aphorism from the Fuṣūl muntazaʿa, and suggests
that despite the fact that al-Fārābī seems to adopt the second solution, i.e., God
knows all universal intelligibles, his genuine doctrine is that the First intellects
only Itself.47 According to Aristotle’s teachings, knowledge is knowledge of the
45 Peter Adamson, “Knowledge of Universals and Particulars in the Baghdad School,” Doc-
umenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 18 (2007): 141–64, does not discuss al-
Fārābī’s opinion about God’s knowledge of universals or particulars, but discusses the
same problem in Yaḥyā b. ʿAdī (156–9) and Ibn al-Ṭayyib (161–3).
46 Janos, Method, Structure, and Development in al-Fārābī’s Cosmology, 188.
47 Al-Fārābī, Le livre du régime politique, 18 note 47. Cf. Philippe Vallat, “Onto-noétique:
l’ intellect et les intellects selon Farabi,” in Abū Naṣr al-Fārābi, Epître sur l’intellect, ed. by
Philippe Vallat (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2012), 65–196, where Vallat analyses the reasons
why al-Fārābī apparently adopts the second hypothesis in the Political Regime.
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cause and God is causative of all things. Hence, in knowing Himself, He knows
the cause of all things and in a certain way can be said to know all things.48
Abd al-Laṭīf’s idea that the First Cause is also the First Intellect may depend
on his Farabian readings. It is not surprising, however, that ʿAbd al-Laṭīf is
not able to hit the target. As I think I have shown, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf moved to
al-Fārābī and the Ancients—i.e., the formative sources of falsafa—because
of his dissatisfaction with Avicenna’s system of philosophical knowledge as
he presented it in his summae.49 In his Book on the Science of Metaphysics,
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf gathered a syllabus of the foundational sources of falsafa, of
which he gives accurate paraphrases. Hence this syllabus inevitably reflects
the antinomy of the two main philosophical doctrines concerning the nature
of First Principle—Plotinian One and Aristotelian Intellect in act—which are
alternative to one another.
The passage we have already analysed is not the only one in which ʿAbd al-
Laṭīf identifies the First Cause—One and Pure Good—with the First Intellect.
He does the same in his paraphrase of Proposition 21.
Before analyzing ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s paraphrase of Proposition 21, for the sake of
completeness, a brief account of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s paraphrase of Propositions 9,
11–17, 19 of the Maḥḍ al-ḫayr is in order.
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf paraphrases Propositions 9, 11 and 12, devoted to the separate
intellects. All the intellects are full of forms, but the forms are found in them in
different ways depending upon their degree of proximity to the First Principle,
the Pure One. For every intellect is able to obtain what is above it only according
to what is appropriate to itself. Hence the cause is in the effect in the manner
of the effect, and the effects are in the cause in the manner of the cause. When
the intellect knows its essence, it knows that it is cause of the effect which is
below it, and it knows in a universal way all that is below it.
48 Cf. Neuwirth, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s Bearbeitung von Buch Lambda der aristotelischen
Metaphysik, 43.3–6, where ʿAbd al-Laṭīf explains that the unmoved mover is the First
Cause for all the beings, but it is for some of them cause prima intentione (ʿalā l-qaṣd al-
awwal), and for others secunda intentione (ʿalā l-qaṣd al-ṯānī). In the first case the agent
intends and what is intended is the agent’s aim: the First Principle necessarily acts prima
intentione thinking of itself in its essence. In the second case secunda intentione the thing
which is intended is not the aim, but because of the aim: the First Principle causes all
the beings to emerge necessarily from it. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf uses this distinction speaking about
God’s providence which is not God’s primary action but secunda intentione. Cf. Martini
Bonadeo, “God’s Will and the Origin of the World. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī’s Sources and
Arguments,” The Muslim World 107.3 (2017): 1–14.
49 Martini Bonadeo, Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s Philosophical Journey.
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Paraphrasing Proposition 14, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf maintains that every knower that
knows its essence reverts to its essence completely by its operation, which is
knowledge. For the knower’s knowledge of its essence is from it, inasmuch as
it is a knower, and toward it, inasmuch as it is known. Hence intellect is self-
subsistent and stable, as intellect is a simple, self-sufficient substance.50
Following Propositions 15, 17, and 19, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf goes back to the First
Cause. Its infinite power is not something that it possesses; rather, it is itself infi-
nite power, and it does not have life and knowledge. It is Life and Knowledge,
the Pure Good, and the most brilliant Light.51 All things have being because of
the First Being by way of creation (‫)بنوع إ بداٍع‬, which belongs to the First Cause
alone.52 The First Cause governs the things to which It gives life, yet without
mixing with them, and It pours forth goodness over all things in one emanation.
Everything receives that emanation according to its own power to receive it.
The First Cause acts through Its very being (‫ )بأن ّيتّ ه فقط‬without any intermediary
between Itself and its effect, be it an instrument or an additional characteris-
tic (‫)مثل آلة أو صفة زائدة‬.53 If it was so the First Cause would be distinct from its
operation. But the First Cause is a true agent (‫ل حق‬ ٌ ‫ )فاع‬and It acts through its
very self, its very being, and its very goodness which are all one:
And every agent which acts through its being alone is such that between
it and its effect there is no connecting link or anything else intermediate
such as an instrument or an additional characteristic. For if the connect-
ing link between the agent and the effect is through a characteristic addi-
tional to the being [of the agent], then the agent would be distinct from
51 Cf. the same wording in ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s paraphrase of Lambda 1072b28–30 which reflects
Themistius’s Paraphrase (Badawī, Arisṭū ʿind al-ʿArab, 18.10–11) in Neuwirth, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf
al-Baġdādī’s Bearbeitung von Buch Lambda der aristotelischen Metaphysik, 43.3–6.
53 The idea that the First Cause acts through its very being is a key doctrine of Neoplaton-
ism: C. D’Ancona Costa, “Per un profilo filosofico dell’autore della ‘Teologia di Aristotele’.”
Medioevo. Rivista di storia della filosofia medievale 17 (1991), 83–184; C. D’Ancona Costa, “La
doctrine néoplatonicienne de l’ être entre l’ antiquité tardive et le moyen âge. Le Liber de
causis par rapport à ses sources.” In Recherches sur le Liber de causis (Paris: Vrin, 1995),
365–85; C. D’Ancona Costa, “Plotinus and later Platonic philosophers on the causality of
the First Principle.” In The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, ed. by Lloyd P. Gerson (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 356–85, at 365–7; P. Adamson, The Arabic Ploti-
nus. A Philosophical Study of the Theology of Aristotle (London: Duckworth, 2002), 124–37.
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its operation and would not govern its effect pervasively. So if there is no
connecting link between the agent and its operation, then that agent is
a true agent and a true governor which effects things with the utmost of
thoroughness and mastery and governs things in such a way that no vari-
ance or deviation afflicts [its] governance.54
It is interesting to observe that, speaking about the true agent which acts with-
out intermediary, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf identifies the connecting link or intermediary
not only with an additional characteristic, but with an instrument (‫)آلة‬. This
identification does not appear in the Arabic version of Proposition 19.55 ʿAbd
al-Laṭīf’s explicit refusal of the handcrafted model of divine causality has its
source in the Theology, where the First Principle does not need tools, but cre-
ates according to the Neoplatonic model by only being Itself. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf
knows this passage which he literally quotes in his Chapter 23 as can be seen in
the following table.
Pseudo-Theology in Badawī, Aflūṭīn ʿind ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s Chapter 23 in Badawī,

al-ʿArab, 162.11–163.8 Aflūṭīn ʿind al-ʿArab, 227.21–228.6.
ّ ‫ إ‬:‫ إنه ليس لقائل أن يقول‬:‫ونقول‬

‫ن الباري روي في‬ ‫ وهو الذي أبدع‬،‫وكيف يروي في الأشياء ثم يبدعها‬
‫ وذلك أنه هو الذي أبدع‬،‫الأشياء أولا ثم أبدعها‬ ‫الرو ي ّة؟! وكيف يستعين في إ بداع ما أبدعه! وكل‬
‫ فكيف يستعين بها في إ بداع الشيء وهي لم‬،‫الرو ية‬ ،‫صانع إذا أراد أن يعمل شيئا م َثلَه أولا في نفسه‬
‫ والرو ية لا‬،‫ ونقول هو الرو ية‬.‫تكن بعد! ـ وهذا محال‬ ‫ ثم يصنعه‬،‫وألقى بصره على بعض الأشياء الخارجة‬
،‫ و يجب من ذلك أن تكون الرو ي ّة تروى‬.‫تروى أيضا‬ ‫ وأما المبدع ـ تعالى!—فلا يصح‬.‫بالأيدي والآلات‬
َ ‫ فقد بان و‬.‫وهذا إلى ما لا نهاية له ـ وهذا محال‬
ّ ‫صح‬ ‫ وليس شيء معه ولا‬،‫عليه ذلك لأنه قبل كل قبل‬
‫ إن الباري ـ عز وعلا ـ أبدع‬:‫صح ّة قول القائل‬ ‫ وهو الذي أوجد مثال كل شيء وكل‬.‫سابق عليه‬
‫ إن الصناع إذا أرادوا‬:‫ونقول‬.‫ فكذلك ليس الأشياء من غير رو ية‬.‫ ولا يحتاج في إ بداعه إلى الآلات‬.‫شيء‬
of the Good, Appendix, 38.11–15; Taylor, “ʿAbd al Latif al-Baghdadi’s Epitome of the Kalam
fi Mahd al- Khayr (Liber de Causis),” 242.
55 Bardenhewer, Die pseudo-aristotelische Schrift Über das reine Gute bekannt unter dem
Namen Liber de causis, 96.6–11.
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(cont.)

‫صنعة شيء رّوْوا في ذلك الشيء ومثلّ وا في نفوسهم مما‬ ‫بينه و بين شيء من مبدعاته شيء يستعين به أو يروي‬
‫ وإما أن يلُقوا بأبصارهم على بعض‬، ‫رأوا وعاينوا‬ ‫ لـكنه أبدع الأشياء بأ َن ّه فقط‬،‫فيه‬
‫ فإذا‬.‫الأشياء الخارجة فيتمثلوا أعمالهم بذلك الشيء‬
‫وأما‬. ‫عملوا فإنما يعملونه بالأيدي وسا ئر الآلات‬
‫الباري فإنه إذا أراد فعل شيء فإنه لا يمث ّل في نفسه‬
‫ لأنه لم يكن شيء قبل‬،‫ولا يحتذي صنعة خارجة منه‬
‫ ولا يتمثل في ذاته لأن ذاته مثال‬،‫أن يبدع الأشياء‬
‫ ولم يحتج في إ بداع‬.‫ فالمثال لا يتمثل‬،‫كل شيء‬
‫ وهو الذي‬،‫الأشياء إلى آلة لأنه هو علة الآلات‬
.‫ فلا يحتاج فيما أبدعه إلى شيء من أبداعه‬،‫أبدعها‬
‫ فإنا‬،‫فأما إذا استبان ق ُب ْح هذا القول وأنه غير ممكن‬
‫قائلون إنه لم يكن بينه و بين خلقه متوسط يرّوي فيه‬
‫ لـكنه أبدع الأشياء بأ َن ّه فقط‬،‫و يستعين به‬
We say that no one can say that the How could the Creator think about
Creator first reflects about things and things and then originate them while, it
then originates them, for it is he that is he that originated reflection? How
originated reflection, so how can he could he enlist its aid in the origination
enlist its aid in the origination of of what originates Him? When a
anything when it does not yet exist? This craftsman wishes to fashion a thing, he
is absurd. We say that he is reflection, and first copies what he sees or he casts his
reflection does not reflect too: for it eyes on one of the external things,
would then follow that that reflection then he makes it with his hands and
reflects, and so ad infinitum, which is other instruments. Concerning the
absurd. Now it is clear and confirmed Creator—the Almighty—, this is not
how right they are who say that the correct because he is before every before,
Creator originated things without nothing is with him and nothing
reflection. We say that when craftsmen precedes him. It is He who is the pattern
wish to fashion a thing they reflect on of each and everything. He does not
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that thing and copy what they see and need any instruments in the origination
contemplate within themselves. Or they of things. Therefore there is not
cast their eyes on one of the external between Him and the things originated
things and model their works on that from him anything the help of which he
thing. When they work they work with seeks and on which he reflects, but he
their hands and other instruments, originated things by the mere fact of his
whereas when the Creator wishes to being.
make something, he does not envisage
patterns within himself, nor does he
imitate in his workmanship any
workmanship external to him, because
before he originated the things there was
nothing. Nor does he envisage patterns
within his being, for his being is the
pattern of everything and the pattern
does not envisage patterns. He does not
need any instruments in the origination
of things because he is the cause of
instruments, it being he that originated
them, and in what he originates he needs
nothing of his origination. Now that
the unsoundness and impossibility
of this doctrine are made plain, we
say that there is, between him and
his creation, no intermediate thing
on which he reflects and the help of
which he seeks, but that he originated
things by the mere fact of his being
[Geoffrey Lewis’ English Translation of
the Theology of Aristotle in Plotini Opera,
vol. 2, ed. by Paul Henry–Hans-Rudolf
Schwyzer (Paris–Brussels: Desclée de
Brouwer—L’Édition Universelle, 1959),
393–395].
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The second identification between the First Cause with the First Intellect
occurs in ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s paraphrase of Proposition 21. He maintains that the
First Intellect is above every name with which we designate it and above
perfection, as stated in the Maḥḍ al-ḫayr:
The First Cause is above every name with which It is called. The reason is
that neither the imperfect nor the perfect is suited to It. For the imperfect
is not perfect, and it is not able to act a perfect activity because it is
imperfect. The perfect, however, according to us, if it is sufficient for itself,
it is not able to create any other thing nor to emanate any other things
from itself.56
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf argues that the First Intellect is above the perfect because that
which is perfect is self-sufficient, but this is not enough to create. In order
to create, or to emanate from itself, another status, higher than perfection, is
necessary. Thus, the First Intellect is an infinite, inexhaustible good which orig-
inates perfect things.57 However, immediately after, paraphrasing Proposition
22, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf claims that since the first intellect is created (‫كان العقل الأول‬
ً ‫)مبدعا‬, it knows and governs everything inasmuch as it is divine; however, God
precedes the intellect in ruling things. He entrusts intellect with the govern-
ment of the world. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf writes: “God—may He be praised—precedes
the intellect in governance and governs all things with a governance of a more
exalted and transcendent order than the intellect’s governance because He is
one who gives the intellect the power to govern. And the things to which the
governance of the intellect does not reach, there the governance of the First
Principle does reach.”58 ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī seems to be in trouble with
the sources at his disposal in establishing a perfect conformity between the
First Cause, as presented in the Liber de causis, and the Aristotelian First Princi-
ple, described in Chapters 13–16 according to the doctrines held in Metaphysics
Lambda.
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf pauses to consider the nature of Intellect in his paraphrase
of Propositions 24, 25, and 26. First he recalls two ideas already discussed in
56 Bardenhewer, Die pseudo-aristotelische Schrift Über das reine Gute, 99.4–8.

of the Good, Appendix, 38.19–39.2; Taylor, “ʿAbd al Latif al-Baghdadi’s Epitome of the Kalam
fi Mahd al- Khayr (Liber de Causis),” 243 (with some modification).
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his paraphrase of Propositions 14 and 21: intellect is a self-subsistent and self-

sufficient substance, and it is perfect. Generation occurs from imperfection to
perfection, hence intellect as the other spiritual and intellectual substances is
not generated from something else.
Intellect does not need anything other than itself in its conceptualizing
(taṣawwurihi; ‫ )تصو ّره‬and its formation (taṣwīrihi; ‫)تصو يره‬. The origin of this doc-
trine is in Enneads v, 2 [11], 1, 6ff., where Plotinus speaks about the generation
of Intellect which consists in its act of reverting to its principle, the One, (ἐπι-
στροφή). Looking to its cause, the Intellect generates itself as thought and intel-
lect.
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf goes on to say that intellect is perfect and complete eternally,
because it has an eternal relation to its cause and in virtue of its eternal relation
to its cause, it is the cause of its formation. That relation itself is both its
formation and its perfection. Intellect is the cause of this relation, and it is the
cause of itself, being at the same time the cause and the effect.59 Intellect is
indivisible and transcends the temporal substances.
Intellect is truly being. Its eternity is subsistent and perpetual without
motion as befits the spiritual substances according to Proposition 29 of the
Maḥḍ al-ḫayr. Its acts are simultaneous and its integral completeness is through
its essence, by no means through its parts as befits the eternal things accord-
ing to Proposition 54, On the difference between eternity and time, from Proclus’
Elements of Theology.60
Following Propositions 30 and 31, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf explains that between the
eternal substances which are above time and the substances which are below
time—falling under generation and corruption—there must necessarily be an
intermediary that works as a connecting link, having something in common
with both kinds of the substance. It must be in its substance above time, but
its action belongs to the domain of time: a substance which is and comes
to be at the same time by different aspects (ٍ ‫ن معا ً بوجه ٍ ووجه‬ٌ ‫)الجوهر هو ي ّة ٌ وكو‬.61
Following Proposition 31, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf concludes that this intermediary links
the generated substance which falls under time with the Pure Being. The Pure
Being is the cause of both the eternal and the temporal substances. Therefore,
60 G. Endress, Proclus Arabus. Zwanzig Abschnitte aus der Institutio Theologica in arabischer
Übersetzung (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1973), ٢٢, 271.
of the Good, Appendix, 39.21–40.10.
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there must be the Pure True One with no other in its rank which does not
acquire Its oneness from anything else and which causes each one to acquire
its unity.
Making the Virtual Aristotle of Falsafa More Aristotelian
That ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī is trying to establish a conformity between the

First Cause as presented in the Liber de causis and the Aristotelian First Prin-
ciple, Unmoved Mover and Intellect in actuality described in his paraphrase of
Metaphysics Lambda is confirmed by the fact that he concludes his paraphrase
of Liber de causis in Chapter 20 by recalling a doctrine of Metaphysics Lambda.
First, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī states that Aristotle maintains that every thing
which is under the causal influence of the First Principle desires it, and assim-
ilates itself to it in the degree and by the natural disposition which is possible
to it.62
According to Taylor, the ultimate sources for this doctrine are Plato’s notion
of ὁμοíωσις θεῷ of Theaetetus 176b, Aristotle’s Metaphysics Lambda 7, Physics 1.9.
192a17–19, De Anima 2.4.415b1–8 and De generatione et corruptione 2.10.336b25–
34. But, still according to Taylor, the most obvious and direct sources are the
Maḥḍ al-ḫayr (Propositions 19, 22, 9, 11, 21 and 23—all already summarized by
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf) and the following passage from Book Nine, Chapter Two of Ibn
Sīnā’s Kitāb al-Šīfāʾ:63
It thus remains that the good sought through motion is a good that is
self-subsistent and is not of [a sort] that one attains. In the case of every
good which has this character, the mind seeks its imitation only to the
extent that is possible. Imitating it consists in the activity of intellectually
apprehending its essence in its perfection, becoming thereby similar to it
in that there will be realized [for the mind] the perfection possible for it in
itself, as it is realized for its object of love. Hence, for this reason, eternal
endurance in its utmost perfection necessitates a perfection for a thing’s
substance in its states and necessary concomitants. As for that whose
utmost perfection can be realized at the beginning, its imitation of [the
good] is completed through permanent immobility; [as for] that whose
of the Good, Appendix, 41.1.
63 Taylor, “ʿAbd al Latif al-Baghdadi’s Epitome of the Kalam fi Mahd al-Khayr (Liber de
Causis),” 320, note 17.
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utmost perfection is not realized from the very beginning, its imitation of
it is completed through motion.64
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s direct source is Metaphysics Lambda 7 with the exegesis of

Alexander of Aphrodisias.65
In Chapter 15 ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī paraphrases Metaphysics Lambda
10, 1075a24–1076a4. In his view, everything strives for the assimilation to the
First Principle. A classification follows of the various positions of the ancient
philosophers in their knowledge of the principles of natural beings. Some of
them thought that the principles of the natural beings in movement were the
mathematical beings, others the atoms, others a prime matter—be that one
element or all of them—others matter and form. But, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf observes,
if we eliminate matter and form, that is to say, the receptive and that which is
to be received, we eliminate the perfections, the First Agent and all the agents,
the connection between the First Agent and the beings which could not receive
It, the divine gifts and the emanation from the source. Through form the thing
becomes perfect, and through excellence it becomes perfective of something
other than itself. And the perfection of being is this: the effects that it causes,
try to assimilate themselves to it (‫ و به ٺتشب ّه المعلولات بعلتّ ها‬،‫)وهذا تمام الوجود‬.66
64 Avicenna, The Metaphysics of the Healing, ed. by Michael E. Marmura (Provo, ut: Brigham
Young University Press, 2005), 313–4.
65 Cf. Averroës’ commentary on Metaphysics Lambda 7 1072b1–4 where Averroes states: “The
first heaven is moved by this mover by means of its desire for it, I mean because it tries to
assimilate itself to it (‫ )ٺتشب ّه به‬according to its capacity (‫[ ”)بقدر ما في طاقتها‬Averroës, Tafsīr
mā baʿd al-ṭabīʿa, ed. by Maurice Bouyges, (Beyrouth: Dar el-Machreq éditeurs, 19903), iii,
1606.13–14]. The concept of imitation introduced here by Averroës for the explanation of
the movement of the first heaven is the same which Averroës refers to as typical of the
explanation of Alexander of Aphrodisias when he speaks of the final cause as a substance
external to the thing that moves towards it to assimilate itself with it. Averroës, Tafsīr
mā baʿd al-ṭabīʿa, 1605.5–1607.2. Cf. Cecilia Martini Bonadeo, “ws erwmenon: alcune
interpretazioni di Metaph. λ 7”, in Aristotele e i suoi esegeti neoplatonici. Logica e ontologia
nelle interpretazioni greche e arabe. Atti del convegno internazionale, Roma, 19–20 ottobre
2001, ed. by Vincenza Celluprica, Cristina D’Ancona, and Riccardo Chiaradonna (Roma:
Bibliopolis, 2004), 209–43. cf. Matteo Di Giovanni and Oliver Primavesi, “Who Wrote
Alexander’s Commentary on Metaphysics λ? New Light on the Syro-Arabic Tradition,” in
Aristotle’s Metaphysics Lambda—New Essays, ed. by Christoph Horm (Boston-Berlin: De
Gruyter, 2016), 11–66.
Metaphysik, 81.6.
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ʿAbd al-Laṭīf knows the doctrine of the assimilation to the First Principle
and uses the technical expression al-tašabbuh bi- in Chapter 15 paraphrasing
Metaphysics Lambda 10, 1075a31–1075b1. Here, what follows in ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s
Chapter 20 comes from a heavily adapted version of Metaphysics Lambda
10.
In the Metaphysics, Aristotle devotes the final part of the last chapter of
book Lambda to criticize the doctrines on the principle of the Presocratics and
the Platonists. This part starts with the assumption that all the philosophers
affirm that the things are generated by the contraries (Metaphysics Lambda 10,
1075a28: πάντες γὰρ ἐξ ἐναντίον ποιοῦσι πάντα; in Usṭāṯ’s translation: ‫يصيرون جميع‬
‫)الأشياء من الاضداد‬.67
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s Aristotle says that the world of coming into being is con-
structed from the contraries (‫ )عالم الـكون مبنيّ من الأضداد‬and by the prevailing
of one over the other. This conflict is commensurate with the proximity of the
heavenly bodies and with the circular motion of the sphere of the zodiac (‫فلك‬
‫)البروج‬68 and the different inclination of the stars in latitude and longitude. This
was explained by ‘Plato’ in terms of love and strife (‫)المحب ّة والغلبة‬.69
We find this expression ‘love and strife’ in ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s paraphrase of
Metaphysics Lambda 1072a4–7 in Chapter 13 where, speaking about those who
consider matter the principle of being, he states:
It is truth to assert that all those who put matter first of all, when they
have been compelled to acknowledge a cause which is in act, they did
not express themselves clearly on that. For example, some of them inter-
mingled the non-divisible parts with an eternal movement, and some
assumed love and strife, or intellect and disordered movements.70
The different positions recorded in this passage are those of Leucippus, Empe-
docles and Anaxagoras whom Aristotle mentioned by their names in the pas-
sage paraphrased by ʿAbd al-Laṭīf.
67 Averroès, Tafsīr mā baʿd al-ṭabīʿa, 1716.5–6.

68 Cf. Neuwirth, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s Bearbeitung von Buch Lambda der aristotelischen
Metaphysik, 71.1–6.
of the Good, Appendix, 41.9.
Metaphysik, 29.4–7.
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Here in Chapter 20, Empedocles’ doctrine of love and strife, which is men-
tioned in Metaphysics Lambda 10, 1075b1–7, is attributed to Plato and Plato’s
love is assimilated to Aristotle’s desire of assimilation to the First Principle.
According to ʿAbd al-Laṭīf, the First Principle is only object of love, while all
the rest loves that which is superordinate to it and is the object of love of what
is subordinate to it. In this way, harmony (‫ )ائتلاف‬reigns; but if contraries get
the upper hand, corruption is produced. This is what Plato calls conflict. There-
fore “the things that exist are composed of love and conflict” (‫كبة‬ ّ ‫الموجودات مر‬
‫)من المح َب ّة والغلبة‬, “their causes are love and conflict” (‫)أسبابها المحب ّة والغلبة‬, and “con-
flict always separates and love always unites” (‫ والمح َب ّة أبدا ً جامعة‬،‫)فالغلبة أبدا ً مفرقّ ة‬.71
One, however, must not think of love and conflict as two eternal and subsisting
substances in competition with the creating principle, God.
At this point, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf implicitly asserts that there is an agreement
between Plato and Aristotle, suggesting that Plato’s forms must be regarded not
as independently existing things, as they were considered by poor Platonists.
They considered the forms as perpetual, quiescent, everlasting, self-subsistent,
universal substances, but these are groundless statements. What Plato, the
Noble Philosopher, had in mind was that forms were ideas in the mind of the
Creator. He in fact maintains that everything that exists is in the essence of the
Creator.72
Zimmermann73 convincingly shows the analogy between the solution
adopted here by ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī and that of the Harmony between Plato
and Aristotle, the Kitāb al-ǧamʿ bayna raʾyay al-ḥakīmayn Aflāṭūn al-ilāhī wa-
Arisṭūṭālīs which some, including myself, deem to be by al-Fārābī.74
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf states, as he did in his paraphrase of Proposition 22, that the first
thing originated is the first intellect which knows its essence and the essence
of the Creator, which has in its essence all that is below it and which has simple
73 Zimmermann, “The Origins of the So-called Theology of Aristotle,” 181.
74 Cf. Al-Fārābī, L’armonia delle opinioni dei due saggi Platone il divino e Aristotele, ed. by
Cecilia Martini Bonadeo (Pisa: Plus. Pisa University Press, 2008), 69–71, 211–19. Marwan
Rashed, “On the Authorship of the Treatise On the Harmonization of the Opinions of the
Two Sages Attributed to al-Fārābī,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 19 (2009): 43–82, at 71–
6, advanced the name of a certain Ibrāhīm b. ‘Adī al-Kātib. For the topic I am discussing,
the problem of the authorship is not relevant.
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knowledge of everything. Intellect, Soul, and nature originate from the First
Principle with increasing multiplicity and imperfection. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf pauses
to stress the craftsmanship model with which the soul shapes the individual
bodies, which are innumerable because of the seminal reasons (‫)البزور والنطق‬
transmitted by the intellect to the soul.75 He closes this section saying that all
that he says in the chapter comes from Aristotle.76 Next, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf returns
to the difference between eternity and time stated in Proclus’ Elements of
Theology, Proposition 54. Eternity is the number of immovable spiritual things,
but time is the number of what is subject to generation and corruption, which
is temporal and has parts and motion.77
ʿAbd al-Laṭīf then states that intellect knows things not in time, and the
senses perceive their sensible objects not in time but with time, and he quotes
a passage from Chapter 1 of the pseudo-Theology of Aristotle:
75 Taylor, “ʿAbd al Latif al-Baghdadi’s Epitome of the Kalam fi Mahd al-Khayr (Liber de
Causis),” 323, note 102, observes that ʿAbd al-Laṭīf seems to recall here the Stoic doctrine
of the seminal reasons as adopted by Plotinus.
of the Good, Appendix, 00. Endress, Proclus Arabus. Zwanzig Abschnitte aus der Institutio
Theologica in Arabischer Übersetzung, ٢٢, 271: The eternity is the number of perpetual
things, and time is the number of temporal things (‫ والزمان‬،‫الدهر هو عدد الأشياء الدائمة‬
‫)هو عدد الأشياء الزماني ّة‬. Only these two numbers number the things, I mean, life and
movement (‫)الحياة والحركة‬. And every number numbers or part after part or the whole
together. If it is so, we say that the thing that numbers the whole is the eternity, and the
thing that numbers parts one after another is time. It has become clear that there are only
two numbers: one numbers the permanent spiritual things and it is eternity and the other
numbers the bodies which are subjects to time and it is time. Cf. Wakelnig. Feder, Tafel,
Mensch, 152–3.
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Plotino, La discesa dell’anima nei corpi ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s On What

(Enn. iv 8[6]). Plotiniana Arabica the Wise Man Said in the Book of the
(Pseudo-Teologia di Aristotele, capitoli 1 e Exposition of the Good, Appendix,
7. “Detti del Sapiente Greco”), ed. by 42.14–15.
Cristina D’Ancona (Padova: Il Poligrafo,
2003), 238.4–6.
،‫وإن أردت أن تعلم هل هذا المفعول زماني أو لا‬ ‫ فانظر إلى‬،‫ هل المفعول زماني‬:‫وإذا أردت أن تعلم‬
‫ فإن كان تحت الزمان فالمفعول‬:‫فانظر إلى الفاعل‬ ‫ فمفعوله تحت الزمان‬،‫ فإن كان تحت الزمان‬.‫الفاعل‬
‫ كان‬،‫ وإن كانت العلة زمانية‬،‫تحت الزمان لا محالة‬ .ً ‫ضرورة‬
ً ‫المفعول زمانيا ًأيضا‬
If you wish to know whether this effect When you wish to know whether the
is temporal or not, look to the agent. For effect is temporal, look to the agent. For
if it is subject to time, then the effect if it is subject to time, then its effect is
is subject to time, and if the cause is necessarily subject to time.
temporal so too is the effect.
The First Principle is above eternity and time and is the cause of them, while
the intellect and the soul are with eternity and their activities are in eternity;
the heavenly bodies are above time and with eternity as to their substance,
but their action is with time. The world of generation and corruption is below
time because time encompasses things which have parts and which are found
moment after moment successively.
Chapter 20 ends with a summary of the contents of the science that ʿAbd
al-Laṭīf is describing in his treatise, the Science of Sovereignty, the same sci-
ence of the pseudo-Theology of Aristotle. It is not a physical science that limits
itself to ascend from effects to causes, but a science which is something beyond
physics (‫)ما بعد الطبيعة‬. For when it comes close to the causes, it goes back to con-
sider the effects in greater depth and increasing discernment and knowledge,
approaching the divine knowledge of things. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf calls this science
Divine Philosophy (‫ )الفلسفة الإلهية‬and Science of Sovereignty (‫)علم الر بو بية‬.78
78 ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s On What the Wise Man Said in the Book of the Exposition of the
Good, Appendix, 42.20–43.7.
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Conclusion
Chapter 20 of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s Book on the Science of Metaphysics

is a good vantage point to study which kind of sources this author has at
his disposal and how the author works on his sources directly or through
intermediaries which are now no longer at our disposal. On one side the
sources are quoted literally. On the other, they are intertwined so deeply that
it is sometimes difficult to disentangle all the different levels of thought. Both
characteristics attest that ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s Book of the Exposition of the Pure Good
is an item of a larger syllabus of Arabic-Islamic metaphysical thought. ‘Abd al-
Laṭīf moved to al-Fārābī and the Ancients because of his dissatisfaction with
Avicenna’s system. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf gathers the foundational formative sources of
falsafa under the name of the first teacher, Aristotle. This syllabus inevitably
reflects the antinomy of the different doctrines from the different sources
which are collected within it. For this reason, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf never misses the
opportunity in his companion not only to ‘neoplatonize’ Aristotle, so to speak,
but also to make the ‘Aristotle’ of the Book of the Exposition of the Pure Good, so
to speak, more Aristotelian. The quite unsuccessful identification of the First
Cause—One of the Liber de Causis—, with the First Intellect—Pure Thought
of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, bears a testimony of this attempt, as well as the
recourse to Alexander and Themistius.
Appendix. ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s Chapter 20
Abbreviations
C İstanbul, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi, Carullah 1279, fols 175v–177v.

T Cairo, Dār al-kutub, Aḥmad Taymūr Pāšā, Ḥikma 117, pp. 140.12–147.7.
B ʿAbdurraḥmān Badawī, al-Aflāṭūniyya al-muḥdaṯa ʿind al-ʿArab (Cairo:
Maktabat al-Nahḍa al-Miṣriyya, 1955), 248–56.
Ta Richard C. Taylor, “ʿAbd al-Latif al-Baghdadi’s Epitome of the Kalam fi
Mahd al- Khayr (Liber de Causis)”, in Islamic Theology and Philosophy:
Studies in Honor of George F. Hourani, ed. by M.E. Marmura (Albany, ny:
State University of New York Press, 1984), 286–323.
⟨⟩ quod addendum esse videtur

C ms C in margine
add. addidit, addiderunt
om. omisit, omiserunt
s.l. supra lineam
Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

41.250.96.253 on Thu, 06 May 2021 23:51:27 UTC
‫الفصل العشرون‬
‫في ما‪ 79‬قال الحكيم في كتاب إ يضاح الخـير‪:‬‬

‫كل علةّ كلية أولى فهي أكثر فيضا ً على معلولها من العلةّ الكلية الثانية فإذا‪ 80‬فرضنا العلةّ الثانية‬
‫ت قو ّتها عن الشيء لم يلزم أن ترفع العلةٌ ُالأولى قو ّتها عنه‪ ،‬لأن العلةّ الأولى تفعل في معلول العلةّ‬
‫رفع َ ْ‬
‫الثانية قبل أن تفعل فيه العلةّ الثانية‪ 81.‬فإذا فعلت العلةّ الثانية التي تلي المعلول لم يستغن فعلها عن العلةّ‬
‫الأولى التي فوقها‪ ،‬وإذا فارقت الثانية معلولها لم تفارقه الأولى لأّنها علةّ لعل ّته وهي‪ 82‬أشُّد علةّ ً للشيء‬
‫ي والإنسان‪ :‬فإذا ارتفع الإنسان بقي الح ّ‬
‫ي‪ ،‬وإذا ارتفع‬ ‫من عل ّته القر يبة التي تليه‪ .‬نمثل ذلك بالأنية والح ّ‬
‫ي والإنسان ‪.‬فالع ّلة البعيدة أكثر إحاطة وأشُّد علةّ‬ ‫الح ُ ّ‬
‫ي بقيت الآنية‪ ،‬وإذا ارتفعت الآنية ارتفع الح ّ‬
‫للشيء من عل ّته القر يبةكما أوضحنا‪.‬‬
‫والعلةّ الأولى المطلقة هي فوق الزمان وفوق الدهر وهي علةّ الدهر‪ .‬وأما العلةّ الثانية‪ ،‬وهي‪ 83‬العقل‪،‬‬
‫فهو مع الدهر وفوق الزمان‪ .‬والجرم السماوي الأّول مع الزمان من وجه‪ ،‬وعلةّ له من وجه‪ ،‬وحينئذ‬
‫يكون مع الدهر‪ .‬والكائنات التي وجودها بحركة هي تالية‪ 84‬الزمان‪ ،‬والتي وجودها بغير حركة هي مع‬
‫الزمان لا فيه‪ .‬ولما كانت النفس معلولة من العلةّ الأولى بتوسط العقل صار لها ثلاث قوى وثلاثة‪85‬‬
‫أفاعيل بحسب تلك القوى‪ ،‬قوة إلاهية‪ ،86‬يصدر عنها فع ٌ‬
‫ل إلاهي به تدبر الطبيعة‪ ،‬وقوة عقلية يصدر‬
‫ل نفساني يحرك الجرم الأول وجميع‬
‫ل عقلي وهو علم الأشياء‪ ،‬وقوة ذاتية نفسانية يصدر عنها فع ٌ‬
‫عنها فع ٌ‬
‫الأجرام الطبيعية‪.‬‬
‫‪79‬‬ ‫‪ C: om. TB‬في ما‬

‫‪80‬‬ ‫‪ Ta‬وإذا ‪ TB‬وإذ ‪ C:‬فإذا‬
‫‪81‬‬ ‫‪ TB: add. CMg‬قبل أن تفعل فيه العلةّ الثانية‬
‫‪82‬‬ ‫‪ T‬فهي ‪ CB:‬وهي‬
‫‪83‬‬ ‫‪ B‬هي ‪ CTTa:‬وهي‬
‫‪84‬‬ ‫‪ CT‬ه ـ ي ـ ت ـ ا ـ ن ‪ BTa:‬هي تالية‬
‫‪85‬‬ ‫‪ T‬ثلاث ‪ C‬ث ـ ل ـ ث ‪ BTa:‬ثلاثة‬
‫‪86‬‬ ‫‪ CT‬الإلاهية ‪ BTa:‬إلاهية‬
‫‪Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305‬‬

‫‪41.250.96.253 on Thu, 06 May 2021 23:51:27 UTC‬‬
‫‪294‬‬ ‫‪martini bonadeo‬‬
‫والعلةّ الأولى أعلى من الصفة‪ ،‬لأّنها فوق كل علةّ تنير كل علةّ ومعلول وهي لا تستنير من نوٍر آخر‬
‫لأنها هي النور المح ْض الذي ليس فوقه نور ٌ‪ .‬فلذلك صار الأول وحده يفوت‪ 87‬الصفة‪ 88‬لأنه ليس‬
‫فوقه علةّ يعرف بها‪ ،‬وكل شيء إنما يوصف و يعرف من تلقاء عل ّته‪ ،‬فما ليس له علةّ ولا هو معلول‬
‫لشيء أصلا لم يعلم بعلةّ أولى‪ ،‬ولا يوصف لأنه أعلى من الصفة‪ .‬ولا يبلغ المنطق صفته لأن الصفة إنما‬
‫س‪ .‬والعلةّ الأولى فوق‬
‫تكون بالمنطق‪ ،‬والمنطق بالعقل‪ ،‬والعقل بالفكر‪ ،‬والفكر بالوهم‪ ،‬والوهم بالح ّ‬
‫الأشياء كلها وعلةّ لها‪ ،‬فلذلك لا تقع تحت واحٍد من هذه‪.‬‬
‫ولما كان العْقل مع الدهر وفوق الزمان لم يقبل التجزئة‪ ،‬لأن ك َ ّ‬
‫ل ما يتجزأ فإنما يتجزأ في الع ِظَم أو في‬
‫العدد أو في الحركة‪ .‬وكل هذه التجزئات تحت الزمان‪ ،‬والدليل على أنه لا يقبل التجزئة رجوعه على‬
‫ذاته وهو صورة لا ينقص عنها شيء‪ ،‬وجوهره وفعله واحد‪ .‬وإنما يقال إنهكثير من قبِ َل كثرة المنِ َح‬
‫الواصلة إليه من العلةّ الأولى؛ وهو إن تكثر بهذا النوع فإنه لما كان تلو الواحد كان واحدا ً‪ .‬والوحدانية‬
‫أولى به‪ ،‬لأنه أول م ُب ْد َع من العلةّ الأولى‪.‬‬
‫والعقل يعلم ما فوقه وما تحته‪ ،‬فيعلم المنِ َح التي تأتيه من فوق‪ ،‬و يعلم الأشياء التي هو علتّ ها‪ ،‬فيعلم‬
‫عل ّته ومعلوله بنوع جوهره‪ ،‬فيدرك الأشياء إدراكا ًعقليا ً ـ عقلية ًكانت الأشياء أو حسية ـ فيدرك‬
‫الأشياء على نحو جوهره وذاته‪ ،‬لأعلى نحو ما عليه الأشياء‪ ،‬فيدرك المنح الأولي عقلية‪ ،‬و يدرك‬
‫الأشياء الجسمانية عقلية أيضا‪ً.‬‬
‫والعقل إنما ثباته وقوامه بالخـير المحض وهو العقل الأول‪ .‬وقوة العقل أشُّد وحدانية من جميع‬
‫الأشياء التي تليه لأن ّه ع ّلة لها ومدب ّرها وممسكها بالقوة الأولى التي فيه‪ .‬فالعقل يدب ّرالطبيعة بالقوة‬
‫الأولى‪ ،‬والطبيعة تدب ّر الأشياء التي تحتها بقوة العقل‪ ،‬والطبيعة تحيط بالـكون‪ ،‬والنفس تحيط‬
‫بالطبيعة‪ ،89‬والعقل يحيط بالنفس‪ ،‬والعلةّ الأولى تحيط بالعقل‪ ،‬وعلمها فوق علم العقل‪ ،‬والقوة الأولى‬
‫فوق كل قوة‪ .‬والعقل ذو حلية‪ ،‬كذا النفس والطبيعة؛ وأما العلةّ الأولى فليس لها حلية لأّنها أن ّي ّة‪90‬‬
‫حليْ ة‪ ،‬قلنا‪ :‬حليتها لا نهاية لها‪ ،‬وحقيقتها أنها الخـير المحض المفيض على‬
‫فقط‪ .‬فإن قيل لا ب ُّد لها من ِ‬
‫العقل‪ 91‬جميع الخـيرات وعلى سا ئر الموجودات بتوُّسط العقل‪.‬‬
‫‪87‬‬ ‫‪ C‬تفوت ‪ TBTa:‬يفوت‬

‫‪88‬‬ ‫‪ TB: add. C‬الصفة‬
‫‪89‬‬ ‫‪ TC‬والنفس يحيط بالطبيعة ‪ BTa:‬والنفس تحيط بالطبيعة‬
‫‪90‬‬ ‫‪ CB‬أ ٌّنها ‪ CMgTa:‬أن ّي ّة‬
‫‪91‬‬ ‫‪ CTB‬العالم ‪ Ta:‬العقل‬
‫‪Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305‬‬

‫‪41.250.96.253 on Thu, 06 May 2021 23:51:27 UTC‬‬
‫والعقول كلها مملوءة صورا ً‪ .‬لـكن العقول الأو َل يكون فيها هذه الصور بنوٍع ك ُل ّي متحد‪ .‬و يكون‪92‬‬
‫في العقول الثواني بنوٍع متجزئ‪ .‬فالعقول الُأو َل أشُّد روحانية ووحدانية وأقل تك ُث ّرا لً قر بها من الواحد‬
‫المحض‪ .‬فلذلك صارت العقول الثواني تلقي أبصارها على الصور الكلية التي في العقول الأول الكلية‬
‫فتجز ّئها وتفرقّ ها‪ ،‬لأنها لا تقوى أن تنال تلك الصور على حقيقتها وصدقها إلا ّ بالنوع الذي تقوى على‬
‫نيلها أعني بالتفر يق والتجزئة‪ ،‬وكذلك كل شيء إنما يقوى على نيل ما فوقه بالنوع الذي يليق به و يمكن‬
‫في حّقه لا بالنوع الذي عليه الشيء المنال‪.‬‬
‫ض بالنوع الذي يليق أن يكون أحدهما في الآخر‪ .‬فالمعلول في العلةّ‬ ‫والأوائل كلها بعضها في بع ٍ‬
‫س في النفس بنوٍع نفساني‪ ،‬والنفس في العقل‬ ‫بنوع العلةّ ‪ ،‬والعلةّ في المعلول بنوع المعلول‪ :‬فإن الح ّ‬
‫بنوٍع عقلي‪ ،‬والعقل‪ 93‬في الأن ّي ّة بنوع أن ّي ّة ٍ والأن ّي ّة الأولى في العقل بنوٍع عقلي والعقل في النفس بنوٍع‬
‫س بنوٍع حس ّي‪.‬‬
‫نفساني والنفس في الح ّ‬
‫العقل إذا عقل ذاته عقل أنها علةّ للمعلول الذي دونه‪ ،‬فع َق َل إذن جميَع ما دونه بأمر ٍ ك ُل ّي‪ .‬وكل‬
‫ل لها‪ ،‬وكل الأشياء العقلية فيها لأنها علم ٌ لها‪ .‬وإنما صارت‬
‫نفس فإن الأشياء الحسية فيها لأنها مثا ٌ‬
‫ط بين الأشياء العقلية التي لا تتحرك‪ ،‬و بين الأشياء الحسية التي تتحرك؛ فلهذا صارت‬
‫كذلك لأنها بسا ٌ‬
‫علةّ ً للأجرام ومعلولة من العقل‪ .‬فالأشياء الجرمية المتحركة هي في النفس بنوع نفساني روحاني‬
‫وحداني‪ ،‬والأشياء العقلية المتوحّدة الساكنة هي في النفس بنوع تكثر وحركة‪.‬‬
‫ل ما‪ .‬فإذا علم العال ِم ُذاته فقد ر َ َ‬
‫جع‬ ‫كل عالم يعلم ذاته فهو راجٌع إلى ذاته رجوعا تً اما‪ ،‬لأن العلم فع ٌ‬
‫بفعله إلى ذاته‪ ،‬فإن علم العالم لذاته يكون منه وإليه‪ :‬يكون منه بأنه عالم‪ ،‬وإليه بأنه معلوم‪ .‬وإنما نعني‬
‫برجوع الجوهر إلى ذاته أنه‪ 94‬قائم ٌبنفسه ثابت لايحتاج في قيامه بنفسه إلى شيء آخر غيره يقيمه‪ ،‬لأنه‬
‫جوهر ٌ بسيط مكتف بنفسه‪.‬‬
‫ولا نقول إن العلةّ الأولى لها قوة غير متناهية‪ .‬وإنما هذه صفة العلةّ الأولى‪ .‬فأما العلة الأولى فهي‬
‫بعينها القوة التي لانهاية لها‪ .‬وكذلك لا نقول إن لها حياة ً وعلما‪ ً،‬بل هي الحياة وهي العلم وهي الخـير‬
‫ضوى‪ .‬وأما الهو ية الثانية الم ُب ْد َعة فإنها غير متناهية‪ .‬وكل قوة وحدانية فهي أكثر‬
‫المحض وهي النور الَأ ْ‬
‫‪92‬‬ ‫‪ Ta‬تكون ‪ CTB:‬يكون‬

‫‪93‬‬ ‫في الأن ّي ّة بنوع أن ّي ّة ٍ و الأن ّي ّة الأولى في العقل بنوٍع عقلي والعقل ‪ TB om.‬عقلي‪ ،‬والعقل ‪post‬‬
‫‪94‬‬ ‫‪ CTB‬لأنه ‪ Ta:‬أنه‬
‫‪Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305‬‬

‫‪41.250.96.253 on Thu, 06 May 2021 23:51:27 UTC‬‬
‫ن اللانهاية‪ 96‬الأولى‪ ،‬وهي العقل‪ ،‬قر يبة ٌ من الواحد المحض‪ .‬فإن القوة‬
‫لانهاية‪ 95‬من القوة المتكثرة‪ ،‬لأ ّ‬
‫إذا أخذت بتكثيرٍ أخذت وحدانيتها تهلك‪ .‬فإذا هلـكت فقدت اللانهاية‪ .‬وإنما فقدت اللانهاية من‬
‫أجل تجز يها‪.‬‬
‫والأشياء كلها ذوات هو يات من أجل الهو ية الأولى‪ .‬والأشياء الح َي ّةكلها متحركة بذاتها من أجل‬
‫ت علم ٍ من أجل العقل الأّول‪ .‬والهو ية الأولى ساكنة‪ ،‬و هي‬ ‫الحياة الأولى‪ .‬والأشياء العقليةكلها ذوا ُ‬
‫علةّ العلل‪ 97‬وتعطي الأشياء كل ّها هو ياتها ولـكن بنوع إ بداٍع‪ .‬فأما الحياة الأولى فإنما تعطي ما تحتها‬
‫الحياة لا بنوِع إ بداٍع بل بنوٍع صورة‪ .‬وكذا العقل يعطى ما تحته العلم بنوع صورة لا بنوِع إ بداٍع‪ ،‬لأن‬
‫الإ بداع إنما هو للعلةّ الأولى وحدها‪.‬‬
‫والعلةّ الأولى تدب ّر الأشياء المبدعة من غير أن تختلط بها‪ .‬وذلك أن التدبير لا يضعف وحدانيتها‬
‫العالية على كل شيء ولا يوهنها‪ .‬و الخـير المحض يفيض الخـيرات على الأشياء كلها فيضا ًواحدا ً‪ .‬إلا‬
‫أن كل واحٍد من الأشياء يقبل من ذلك الفيض على نحو قو ّته وأن ّيتّ ه‪ .‬وكل فاع ٍ‬
‫ل يفعل بأن ّيتّ ه فقط‪،‬‬
‫فليس بينه و بين مفعوله وصلة ولا شيء آخر متوسط مثل آلة أو صفة زائدة‪⟩.‬فإن⟨‪ 98‬كانت الوصلة بين‬
‫الفاعل والمفعول بصفة ٍ زائدة على الأن ّي ّةكان الفاعل مباينا لً فعله‪ ،‬ولا يدب ّر مفعوله تدبيرا ًمستقصي‪ .‬فإذا‬
‫ل حق ومدب ّر حق‪ ،‬يفعل الأشياء بغاية الإحكام‬
‫لم يكون بين الفاعل وفعله وصلة‪ ،‬فذلك الفاعل فاع ٌ‬
‫والاتقان‪ ،‬و يدب ّر الأشياء تدبيرا ً لا اختلاف فيه ولا اعوجاج يعتر يه‪.‬‬
‫العقل الأول فوق كل اسٍم يسمى به وفوق التمام‪ :‬فإن التمام هو المكتفي بنفسه‪ ،‬ولـكن لا يكتفي‪99‬‬
‫على إ بداع شيء آخر ولا أن يفيض عنه شيء ٌ آخر‪ ،‬فلذلك قلنا إن ّه فوق التمام لأنه يبدع‪ 100‬الأشياء‬
‫التامّة لأنه خير ٌ لانهاية له ولا نفاد‪ 101.‬و يملأ العوالم كلها خيرا ً بحسب المراتب والاستحقاق‪.‬‬
‫صة العقل هي العلم‪،‬‬
‫ن خا ّ‬
‫ولما كان العقل الأول مبدعًآ صار يعلم الأشياء و يدب ّرها بأنه إلاهي‪ ،‬لأ ّ‬
‫وكماله وتمامه أن يكون عالما‪ ً.‬والل ّٰه سبحانه يتقدم العقل بالتدبير و يدب ّر الأشياء بتدبيرٍ أرفع وأعلى رتبة ً‬
‫‪95‬‬ ‫‪ B‬أكثر لانهائية ‪ CT:‬أكثر لانهاية‬

‫‪96‬‬ ‫‪ T‬الانهاية ‪ CB:‬اللانهاية‬
‫‪97‬‬ ‫‪ B‬العقل ‪ CTTa:‬العلل‬
‫‪98‬‬ ‫‪ add. BTa‬فإن‬
‫‪99‬‬ ‫‪ add. C s. l.‬يقدر ‪ CT:‬يكتفي‬
‫‪ delevit C‬لأنه ‪ T:‬لأنه يبدع ‪100‬‬
‫‪ CT‬ولا يفاد ‪ BTa:‬ولا نفاد ‪101‬‬
‫‪Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305‬‬

‫‪41.250.96.253 on Thu, 06 May 2021 23:51:27 UTC‬‬
‫من تبير العقل لأنه هو الذي أعطى العقل التدبير‪ .‬والأشياء التي لاينالها تدبير العقل ينالها تدبير المبدأ‬
‫ل واحٍد‪ ،‬لـكن ليست الأشياء كلها بموجودة ٍ فيه على‬
‫الأَّول‪ ،‬وهو موجود في الأشياء كلها على حا ٍ‬
‫حالة ٍ واحدة لأن من الأشياء ما يقبل قوة إلاهية قبولا ًوحدانيا‪ ً،‬ومنها ما يقبلها قبولا ًمتكثرا ً‪ ،‬ومنها‬
‫ما يقبلها قبولا ًدهر يا‪ ً.‬ومنها ما يقبلها قبولا ًزمانيا‪ ً،‬ومنها ما يقبلها قبولا ًروحانيا‪ ً،‬ومنها ما يقبلها قبولا ً‬
‫جرميا‪ً.‬‬
‫وكل جوهٍر قائم بنفسه فهو غير متكون من شيء آخر‪ .‬فلذلك كانت الجواهر الروحانية والعقلية غير‬
‫ج في تصوره‬
‫ق من النقصان إلى التمام‪ ،‬والعقل غير محتا ٍ‬
‫متكوِ ّنة من شيء آخر‪ ،‬لأن الـكون إنما هو طر ي ٌ‬
‫ل دائما‪ ً.‬وإنما صار هو علةّ تصو يره وتمامه من قبِ َل‬
‫وتصو يره إلى شيء آخر غيره‪ ،‬فلذلك هو تامّ ٌ كام ٌ‬
‫نظره إلى عل ّته دائما‪ ً:‬فلذلك النظر هو تصو يره وتمامه معا‪ ً.‬ولذلك لا يقع الـكون والفساد لأنه واحدٌ‬
‫ط غير مركب وهو متصل بعل ّته اتصالا ًدائما‪ ً.‬وإنما يقع الشيء تحت الفساد من أجل مفارقته‬
‫مبسو ٌ‬
‫عل ّته‪ .‬وما دام الشيء معل ّقا بعل ّته الماسكة الفاضلة فإنه لا يبيد ولايفسد‪ .‬ولما كان العقل دائم النظر إلى‬
‫عل ّته‪ ،‬وكان هو علةّ ذلك النظر‪ ،‬كان هو علةّ نفسه وكان هو العلةّ والمعلول معا‪ ً:‬فإذن لا سبيل إلى‬
‫الدثور والتغ ُي ّر عليه‪ .‬وكل جوهر دا ثر وغير دائم فإمّا أن يكون مركبا‪ ً،‬وإما أن يكون محمولا ًعلى شيء‬
‫آخر‪ .‬والعقل ليس واحدا ًمن هذين‪ ،‬فلا سبيل للتغ ُي ّر عليه‪ .‬ولما كان العقل مبسوطا ًقائما ًبنفسه لزم أنه‬
‫لا يتج ًز ّأ‪ .‬وإذا لم يتج ًز ّأ لم يقبل الفساد‪ .‬وإذا كان كذلك لم يكن إ بداعه في زما ٍ‬
‫ن وكان أعلى من الجواهر‬
‫ن‪.‬‬
‫الزمانية‪ ،‬وهو أرفع من الزمان ومن الكا ئن في زما ٍ‬
‫الدوام نوعان‪ :‬أحدهما دهري‪ ،‬والثاني زمانيّ‪ .‬غير أن دوام الدهري قائم ٌ دائم ٌ‪ ،‬ودوام الزماني‬
‫ل ممتُّد فيه متقّدم‬
‫متحرك‪ .‬والدهري مجتمع وأفعالهكلها معا ً ليس بعض ُها قبل بعض‪ ،‬والزماني سائ ٌ‬
‫ومتأخر‪ .‬وكلية الدهري‪ 102‬بذاته‪ ،‬وكلية الزماني بأجزائه‪ .‬فالجواهر منها ما هي دائمة فوق الزمان‪ ،‬ومنها‬
‫دائمة ٌ مساو ية‪ 103‬للزمان والزمان غير فاصل‪ 104‬عنها‪ ،‬ومنها منقطعة عن الزمان والزمان يفصلها‪105‬‬
‫من فوقها وأسفلها وهي الجواهر الواقعة تحت الـكون والفساد‪ .‬ولم يكن بّد ٌ من متوّسط من الجواهر‬
‫صلة ًوجامعا بً ين الجواهر‬
‫الدائمة التي فوق الزمان و بين الجواهر التي تحت الزمان و يكون هذا الزمانُ و ُ ْ‬
‫‪102‬‬ ‫‪ T‬الدهر ‪ CB:‬الدهري‬

‫‪ add. C s. l.‬مساو يقة ‪ CTB:‬مساو ية ‪103‬‬
‫‪ CB‬فاضل ‪ TTa:‬فاصل ‪104‬‬
‫‪ B‬يفضلها ‪ CTTa:‬يفصلها ‪105‬‬
‫‪Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305‬‬

‫‪41.250.96.253 on Thu, 06 May 2021 23:51:27 UTC‬‬
‫الفاضلة‪ 106‬و بين الجواهر الدني ّة لئل َا ّ تعدم الجواهر ُ الدنية ُ فضائل الجواهر الفاضلة فتعدم كل حسن‬
‫وكل خير ولا يكون لها بقاء ولا ثبات‪ ،107‬بل ولا وجود‪ .‬فما جوهره وفعله في حي ّز الدهر بينه و بين‬
‫الشيء الذي جوهره وفعله في حي ّز الزمان موجود مشترك‪ ،‬وهو الذي جوهره في حي ّز الدهر وفعله‬
‫في حي ّز الزمان‪ .‬واللقاح إنما يكون في الأشياء المتشابهة فلا ب َُّد من جوهٍر ثالث متوّسط بين ما جوهره‬
‫وفعله فوق الزمان و بين ما جوهره وفعله تحت الزمان‪ ،‬وهو شيء فوق الزمان وفعله تحت الزمان‪ .‬ولا‬
‫يمكن أن يكون شيء فعله في حي ّز الدهر وجوهره في حيز الزمان‪ .‬وإلا فإن الفعل أكرم ُ من الجوهر‪،‬‬
‫ل‪.‬‬
‫وهذا محا ٌ‬
‫وكل شيء واقع تحت الدهر فهو هو ية حقا ً‪ ،108‬وكل شيء واقع تحت الزمان بجوهره وفعله جميعا ً‬
‫فهو كون‪ 109‬حقا‪ ً.‬وكل شيء واقع بجوهره تحت الدهر و بفعله تحت الزمان فذلك الجوهر هو ي ّة ٌ وكو ٌ‬
‫ن‬
‫معا بً وجه ٍ ووجه ٍ‪ .‬ولأجل هذه الواسطة صار الجوهر المك َو ّن الواقع تحت الزمان متعل ّ َ‬
‫ق الوجود بالهو َي ّة‬
‫المحضة التي هي علةّ الدوام وعلةّ الأشياء الدائمة والأشياء الدا ثرة‪.‬‬
‫ق هو الذي يفيد الوحدانيات وحدتها ولا يستفيد واحديته من غيره‪ ،‬ولذلك‬
‫ولا بد من واحٍد ح ٍ‬
‫صارت جميع الوحدانيات غيره فيها‪ 110‬كثرة بوجه ٍ ما‪ .‬وأقر ُ‬

‫ب الوحدانية إليه أبعدها عن طباع‬
‫الـكثرة وأبسطها وأوسعها قدرة وقوة ً ونفاذا ً‪ .‬والواحد الحق لا يمكن أن يكون في مرتبته غيره‬
‫إلا ّ بماذا ينفصل‪ 111‬عنه‪ ،‬و بماذا يشاركه و ينفرد عنه؟ ولا يمكن أن يفرض أمٌر زائد إلا ّ و يوجب‬
‫التركيب والـكثرة‪ ،‬و يحتاجان إلى واحد حق‪ .‬ولذلك نقول إن الواحد الأَّول هو واحد حق‪ .‬والواحد‬
‫الثاني هو واحد فقط غير محض‪ ،‬ووحدانيته مستفادة من الواحد الحق المحض‪ .‬وهو الذي يفيد‬
‫ل واحٍد وحدانيته ولا يستفيد وحدانيته من غيره‪ .‬ولذلك يصدق قولنا عليه إنه الواحد الحّق‬
‫ك َّ‬
‫المحض‪.‬‬
‫‪106‬‬ ‫‪ C‬الفاصلة ‪ TBTa:‬الفاضلة‬

‫‪107‬‬ ‫‪ B‬ولات ُ ّ‬
‫كون لها ولا ثبات ‪ T‬ولايكون لها ولا ثبات ‪ CTa:‬ولايكون لاها بقاء ولا ثبات‬
‫‪108‬‬ ‫‪ CTB‬هو ية فقط معا ً‪ Ta:‬هو ية حقا ً‬
‫‪109‬‬ ‫ن ‪ Ta:‬كون‬ ‫حسَ ٌ‬
‫‪َ CTB‬‬
‫‪110‬‬ ‫‪ CT‬فيه ‪ BTa:‬فيها‬
‫‪111‬‬ ‫‪ CT‬ينفعل ‪ B:‬ينفصل‬
‫‪Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305‬‬

‫‪41.250.96.253 on Thu, 06 May 2021 23:51:27 UTC‬‬
‫وأرسطو يقول إن الجميع يتقبل‪ 112‬المبدأ الأول و يشتاقه و يتشبه به على قدر استطاعته و بحسب‬
‫جبل ّته وإن عالم الـكون مبنيّ ٌ من الأضداد والتغالب بحسب قرب الأجرام السمائية و بعدها بالحركات‬
‫الدور ية على فلك البروج واختلاف ميل الـكواكب في العرض والطول‪.‬‬
‫وهذا بعينه هو الذي يقوله أفلاطون في المحب ّة والغلبة‪ .‬فالذي يعب ّر عنه أرسطو بالشوق والعشق‬
‫والتقبيل‪ 113‬هو الذي يعب ّر عنه أفلاطون بالمحبة‪ .‬فنبّدل العبارة ونقول‪ :‬إن المبدأ الأَّول محبو ٌ‬
‫ب فقط‪،‬‬
‫ب ما فوقه و يح ُب ّه ما دونه‪ .‬و بهذه المح َب ّات انحفظت‬ ‫ب ومحبوب‪ .‬فك ُ ّ‬
‫ل ما في مرتبته فإنه يح ُ ّ‬ ‫وما سواه فمح ّ ٌ‬
‫ت باق‪.‬‬
‫قوى الأزليات والدا ثرات‪ ،‬فإن ذوات الـكون ما دام بين بسائطها ائتلاف فإن الكا ئن ثاب ٌ‬
‫وذلك الائتلاف هو المحبة‪ .‬فإذا ظهر بعض الأضداد‪ 114‬على بعض فغلب الظاهر ُف َسَد المركب؛ وهذا‬
‫الذي ّسماه أفلاطون‪ 115‬الغلبة‪ .‬فحقا ً قال إن الموجودات مركبة من المح َب ّة والغلبة‪ ،‬وقال إن أسبابها‬
‫المح َب ّة والغلبة‪ :‬فما كان له المحبة الخاصية التي لا يشو بها الضُّد أصلا ً فهو با ٍ‬
‫ق بجوهره دائما؛ً وما كان‬
‫ق ما دامت أجزاؤه متهادنة ليس بينها تغال ُب‪ .‬فإذا غلب أحد الأضداد‬
‫له المح َب ّة المشو بة بالضّد فإنه با ٍ‬
‫كان الفساد‪ .‬فالغلبة أبدا ً مفرقّ ة‪ ،‬والمح َب ّة أبدا ً جامعة‪ .‬فمحبة الأزليات محضة ٌ لا يشو بها ضّد ٌ ولاغلبة‪،‬‬
‫ولذلك كانت دائمة؛ وأمّا مح َب ّة الدا ثرات فإلى وقت ما‪ .‬فلذلك كل ما يشوب‪ 116‬محبته غلبة فله ضّد ٌ‪،‬‬
‫وكل ما له ضّد ٌ فإنه يفسد‪ ،‬وكل ما لا ضد له وليس في موضوٍع فإنه لا يفسد‪.‬‬
‫وأما أن المح َب ّة والغلبة جوهران قائمان أو ذاتان منفعلان فذلك مما لا يقبله عقل ولا يسو ّغه قياس‪.‬‬
‫وكذلك القائلون بالصور والمثل و يصفونها بأّنها جواهر قائمة بنفوسها دائمة ٌ ساكنة ٌكلية أبدي ّة‪ ،‬فتلك‪117‬‬
‫أيضا ًأقول باطلة وأوضاعٌ فاسدة‪ .‬وإنما الذي يليق بالحكيم الفاضل هو أن يقول إن جميع الموجودات‬
‫في ذات الباري سبحانه موجودة ٌ وجودا ً مبسوطا ً لا يوجب في ذاتهكثرة ً ولا تعُّددا ً ولا يسوغ أن‬
‫ي ُتو َه ّم ذلك توهما‪ً.‬‬
‫‪112‬‬ ‫‪ BTa: y-t-q-i-i-l (y and t are without diacritical points) C y-t-q- i-l T‬يتقبل‬
‫‪113‬‬ ‫‪ B: wa-l-t-q-i-i-l C wa-l-t-q-i-l T‬والتقبيل‬
‫‪114‬‬ ‫‪ T‬بعد الأضداد ‪ CB:‬بعض الأضداد‬
‫‪115‬‬ ‫‪ CT‬فلاطون ‪ B:‬أفلاطون‬
‫‪116‬‬ ‫‪ B‬تشوب ‪ CTTa:‬يشوب‬
‫‪117‬‬ ‫‪ CT‬فذلك ‪ B:‬فتلك‬
‫‪Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305‬‬

‫‪41.250.96.253 on Thu, 06 May 2021 23:51:27 UTC‬‬
‫ت مبدعه علما ًروحانيا‪ .‬وإذا طالع ذاته‪ ،‬ففي‬ ‫وأول م ُب ْدٍع عنه العق ُ‬
‫ل الأول‪ ،‬وهو عالم بذاته وذا ِ‬
‫ذاته جميع ما دونه‪ ،‬فقد ع َل ِم ذلك أجمع علما ًمبسوطا‪ ً.‬وكذلك حا ُ‬
‫ل النفس عند العقل وحال الطبيعة‬
‫عند النفس‪.‬‬
‫وكل هذه وجودات روحانية‪ 118.‬وكل ما هو أرفع فهو أكثر روحانية إلى أن نصل‪ 119‬إلى المبدأ‬
‫الأّول‪ :‬فهو الوحدة الحّق والبسيط المحض ـ هذا من جهة العلو ّ‪ .‬وأما من جهة الانحطاط فكلما‪120‬‬
‫جاءت الوحدة تنقصت وكلما‪ 121‬جاءت الـكثرة اتسعت إلى أن تصل إلى الأجرام‪ .‬وعندنا لذلك مثال‪:‬‬
‫فإن الطبيب في نفسه صورة ُ الصح ّة المطلقة وهي واحدة‪ ،‬فإذا نظر إلى ذواب الهيولي صارت الصح ّات‬
‫بغير نهاية؛ والنج ّار في نفسه صورة ُ النجارة وهي واحدة مفردة‪ ،‬وهي في الهيولانيات لاتحصى أنواعها‬
‫صة لما كان عنها كا ئٌن مخصوص‪ .‬وهذا كله مما‬
‫وأشخاصها‪ .‬ولولا القوي التي في البزور‪ 122‬والنطق الخا ّ‬
‫تعلمناه من أرسطو‪.‬‬
‫والفرق بين الدهر والزمان أن الدهر عدد الأشياء الدائمة الروحانية غير ذوات الحركات‪ .‬والزمان‬
‫عدد الأشياء الزمانية ذوات الأجزاء من جهة ما لها حركات‪ .‬فالحياة يعَ ُُّدها الدهر‪ ،‬والحركة يعُّدها‬
‫الزمان؛ والكل يعُّده الدهر‪ ُ،‬والأجزاء يعُّدها الزمان‪ .‬والعقل يعرف الأشياء َ بلا زما ٍ‬
‫ن‪ ،‬والحواُّس‬
‫ن‪ ،‬لـكن مع الزمان‪ .‬وإذا أردت أن تعلم‪ :‬هل المفعول زماني‪ ،‬فانظر إلى‬
‫تدرك محسوساتها بلا زما ٍ‬
‫الفاعل‪ .‬فإن كان تحت الزمان‪ ،‬فمفعوله تحت الزمان ضرورة ً‪.‬‬
‫والمبدأ الأول فوق الدهر وفوق الزمان‪ ،‬وهو علتهما‪ 123.‬والعقل والنفس مع الدهر‪ ،‬وفعلهما في‬
‫الدهر‪ .‬والأجرام السمائية فوق الزمان ومع الدهر بالجوهر‪ ،‬وفعلها مع الزامن‪ .‬وعالم الـكون تحت‬
‫الزمان‪ .‬فأما الصور والإدراكات فوجودها مع الزمان لا فيه‪ ،‬لأنها توجد دفعة ً؛ والزمان يحوي ما‬
‫كان له أجزاء و يوجد أولا ًفأولا‪ ً.‬والزمان متصر ّم والدهر ثابت‪.‬‬
‫ونقول إن النظر في الموجودات يكون بنحو ين من السلوك‪ :‬أحدهما أن يسلك على قوانين كلية‬
‫وعبارات عامّية من جهة ارتباط المعلولات بعللها‪ .‬فإذا ارتقينا من المعلولات إلى العلل كان‬
‫‪118‬‬ ‫‪ CTB: om. Ta‬وكل هذه وجودات روحانية‬

‫‪119‬‬ ‫‪ CT‬يصل ‪ BTa:‬نصل‬
‫‪120‬‬ ‫فكل ما ‪ BTa:‬فكلما‬
‫‪121‬‬ ‫‪ CT‬فكل ما ‪ BTa:‬فكلما‬
‫‪122‬‬ ‫‪ CB‬البذور ‪ TTa:‬البزور‬
‫‪123‬‬ ‫‪ CT‬علتها ‪ B:‬علتهما‬
‫‪Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305‬‬

‫‪41.250.96.253 on Thu, 06 May 2021 23:51:27 UTC‬‬
.‫ كان ذلك ما بعد الطبيعة‬125‫ وإن أخذنا ننحّط من العلل إلى معلولات‬124ً.‫ذلك العلم طبيعيا‬
‫ ثم إذا انحططنا فلم نجد سوى‬.‫ق مناسبة ذاتيه‬
ٍ ‫ أن ننحط إذا ارتقينا على مرا‬126‫و إنما يمكننا‬
‫ و بما أشرق علينا من الضياء الأعلى انبسط نظرنا على ما‬.ٍ ‫تلك المراقي ازددنا بصارة ونفاذ معرفة‬
‫ وم َن كان له في‬.‫ل ما عداه به وصرنا نحكم على المعلولات من عللها‬
ّ ‫دونه وأمكن ٌا من تأمل ك‬
‫هذا المقام الأعلى قدم صادق واستأنس به وزال عنه الدهش وال ُذ ّْعر واعتاض عنه بالطمأ‬
‫ تأ َمّل تاك العوالم وأجزاءها واحدا ً واحدا ً ونطر في الذوات م ُع َراّ ة من النسب‬،‫نينة والآنس‬
.‫ وهذا العلم يسمى الفلسفة الإلهية وعلم الر بو بية‬.‫والإضافات ووضف كل عالم بما فيه و بالأليق به‬
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Bonadeo-The First Proclean' Section (Chapter 20) of Abd Al-La Īf Al-Baġdādī's Book

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The First ‘Proclean’ Section (Chapter 20) of ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s Book on the

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The First ‘Proclean’ Section (Chapter 20) of

Cecilia Martini Bonadeo

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2017 | doi: 10.1163/18778372-04503001

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Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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philosophy and medicine. He studied Avicenna, al-Ġazālī, and al-Suhrawardī

Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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he was inseparable from me and I found that he had an expert knowl-

Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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metaphysical ‘theologizing’ project worked out by al-Kindī in his First Philoso-

Chapter 20: Sources and Documentation

Chapter 20 of the Book on the Science of Metaphysics is titled On What the

Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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‫‪Otto Bardenhewer, Die pseudo-‬‬ ‫‪ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s On What‬‬

‫ل علة أولية فهي أكثر فيضا ًعلى معلولها من العلةّ‬

‫ن العلةّ الكل ّي ّة الأولى لا ترفع قو ّتها عنه‪.‬‬

‫ن العلةّ الكل ّي ّة الأولى تفعل في معلول العلةّ‬

‫فوقها لأّنها علةّ لعل ّته‬ ‫ي والإنسان‪ :‬فإذا ارتفع‬

‫التي تليه‪.‬‬ ‫ي والإنسان‪ .‬فالع ّلة‬

‫… فقد بان ووضح أ ّ‬

‫‪Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305‬‬

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Otto Bardenhewer, Die pseudo- ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s On What

‫إحاطة ً وأشّد علةّ للشيء من عل ّته القر يبة … فقد بان‬

‫ن العلةّ الأولى هي أشّد علةّ لً لشيء من عل ّته‬

‫ وأّنها تفيض قو ّتها عليه وتحفظه ولا‬،‫القر يبة التي تليه‬

Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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Otto Bardenhewer, Die pseudo- ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s On What

Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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Is the Pure Good the First Principle, Intellect in Actuality, Which

17 Cf. Martini Bonadeo, ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī’s Philosophical Journey, 244.

Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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21 Bardenhewer, Die pseudo-aristotelische Schrift Über das reine Gute, 76.2:

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As Richard Taylor has it, “This emphasis, however, is easily understandable

Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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ʿAbd al-Laṭīf’s assessment of the possibility of a perfect identity of the First

In the Political regime (Kitāb al-Siyāsa al-madaniyya), al-Fārābī writes:

Oriens 45 (2017) 259–305

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