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The Formation of Post-​Classical
Philosophy in Islam
 The Formation of
Post-​Classical
Philosophy in Islam
FRANK GRIFFEL

1
 3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© Frank Griffel 2021

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a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
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address above.

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and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Griffel, Frank, 1965– author.
Title: The formation of post-classical philosophy in Islam / Frank Griffel.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021009024 (print) | LCCN 2021009025 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190886325 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190886349 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Islamic philosophy—History.
Classification: LCC B741 .G675 2021 (print) | LCC B741 (ebook) |
DDC 181/.07—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021009024
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021009025

DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190886325.001.0001

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
für Claudia
Knowledge desired by some may mean ignorance and stagnation for
others.
—​Franz Rosenthal, Knowledge Triumphant (1970)

Denn eigentlich unternehmen wir umsonst, das Wesen eines Dinges

auszudrücken. Wirkungen werden wir gewahr . . .

—​J. W. Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre (1810)

 Contents

Introduction  1
Conventions  20

I . P O S T-​C L A S SIC A L P H I L O S O P H Y
I N I T S I SL A M IC C O N T E X T

First Chapter: Khorasan, the Birthplace of Post-​Classical

Philosophy, a Land in Decline?  25
The madrasa System  27
The Cities of Khorasan and Its Surrounding Provinces  33
The First Half of the Sixth/​Twelfth Century: Seljuq Rule  44
The Second Half of the Sixth/​Twelfth Century: Khwārazmshāhs
and Ghūrids  53
Other Patrons: Qarakhanids, the Caliphal Court in Baghdad,
and the Ayyubids in Syria  60
Second Chapter: The Death of falsafa as a Self-​Description
of Philosophy  77
Falsafa as a Quasi-​Religious Movement Established by
Uncritical Emulation (taqlīd)  79
Falsafa as Part of the History of the World’s Religions  85
Three Different Concepts of Philosophy in Islam  94
Ḥikma as the New Technical Term for “Philosophy”  96
Third Chapter: Philosophy and the Power of the Religious Law  108
The Legal Background of al-​Ghazālī’s fatwā on the Last Page
of His Tahāfut al-​falāsifa  112
Persecution of Philosophers in the Sixth/​Twelfth Century  122
ʿAyn al-​Quḍāt’s Execution in 525/​1131 in Hamadan  127
Shihāb al-​Dīn Yaḥyā al-​Suhrawardī’s Execution c. 587/​1192
in Aleppo  138
Was al-​Ghazālī’s fatwā Ever Applied?  152
viii Contents

II. PHILOSOPHERS AND PHILOSOPHIES:

A B IO G R A P H IC A L H I S T O RY O F P H I L O S O P H Y I N
T H E SI X T H / T ​ W E L F T H C E N T U RY I SL A M IC E A S T
The Principal Sources for Sixth/​Twelfth-​Century History of
Philosophy in the Islamic East  162
The Early Sixth/​Twelfth Century: Avicennism Undisturbed  176
Avicennism Contested: The Early Decades of the Sixth/​Twelfth
Century  191
The Outsider as Innovator: Abū l-​Barakāt al-​Baghdādī
(d. c. 560/​1165)  203
Two Ghazalians of Transoxania: al-​Masʿūdī and Ibn Ghaylān
al-​Balkhī (both d. c. 590/1194)  226
Majd al-​Dīn al-​Jīlī: Teacher of Two Influential Philosophers
Trained in Maragha  240
Al-​Suhrawardī (d. c. 587/​1192), the Founder of the “School of
Illumination”  244
Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī (d. 606/​1210): Post-​Classical Philosophy
Fully Developed  264

I I I . T H E F O R M AT IO N O F Ḥ I K M A A S A
N EW P H I L O S O P H IC A L G E N R E

First Chapter: Books and Their Teachings  307

Al-​Rāzī’s “Philosophical Books” (kutub ḥikmiyya)  316
What Books of ḥikma Do: Reporting Avicenna  326
First Perspective: Teachings on Epistemology  336
What Books in ḥikma Also Do: Doubting and Criticizing
Avicenna  341
Knowledge as a “Relational State”  351
Knowledge as “Presence”: The Context in al-​Suhrawardī  355
Knowledge as Relation: Abū l-​Barakāt al-​Baghdādī’s Key
Contribution  359
Knowledge as Relation: Sharaf al-​Dīn al-​Masʿūdī  369
Knowledge as Relation: Origins in al-​Ghazālī and Avicenna  373
Do al-​Rāzī’s “Philosophical Books” Teach Philosophical
Ashʿarism?  384
Second Perspective: Teachings on Ontology and Theology  387
A New Place for the Study of Metaphysics within Philosophy  390
Opposing Avicenna: God’s Essence Is Distinct from His Existence  392
The Content of God’s Knowledge Understood as Positive Divine
Attributes  403
What Books of ḥikma Mostly Do: Endorsing and Correcting
Avicennan Philosophy  407
 Contents ix

Second Chapter: Books and Their Genre  417

The Eclectic Career of al-​Ghazālī’s Doctrines of the Philosophers
(Maqāṣid al-​falāsifa)  428
Al-​Ghazālī as Clandestine faylasūf: Evaluating His Maḍnūn Corpus  442
The Maḍnūn Corpus and Forgery: Two Pseudo-​Epigraphies Foisted
on al-​Ghazālī  449
Between Neutral Report and Committed Investment: al-​Masʿūdī’s
Commentary on Avicenna’s Glistering Homily (al-​Khuṭba
al-​gharrāʾ)  458
Al-​Masʿūdī’s Reconciliation of falsafa and kalām on the Issue of
the World’s Eternity  467
Post-​Classical Philosophy and Tolerance for Ambiguity  471
Third Chapter: Books and Their Method  479
Dialectical Reasoning Replaces Demonstration: “Careful
Consideration” (iʿtibār) in Abū l-​Barakāt al-​Baghdādī  482
The Background of Abū l-​Barakāt’s “Careful Consideration” (iʿtibār)  493
The Middle Way between Avicennism and Ghazalianism:
How Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī Describes His Philosophy  499
Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī’s Method of “Probing and Dividing”
(sabr wa-​taqsīm)  506
A Case Study of the New Method: Al-​Rāzī on God’s Knowledge of
Particulars  518
The Method in Books of ḥikma: Implementing the Principle of
Sufficient Reason  524
The Method in Books of kalām: Limiting the Principle of Sufficient
Reason  532
Epilogue: Ḥikma and kalām in Fakhr al-​Dīn’s Latest Works  543
Conclusions  551
The Formation of Post-​Classical Philosophy in the Islamic East
during the Sixth/​Twelfth Century  562
What Was Philosophy in Islam’s Post-​Classical Period?  565

Appendix 1: List of Avicenna’s Students and Scholars Active in the

Sixth/​Twelfth Century Mentioned in Ibn Funduq al-​Bayhaqī’s
(d. 565/​1169–​70) Tatimmat Ṣiwān al-​ḥikma (ed. M. Shāfiʿ,
1935) and in Muʿīn al-​Dīn al-​Naysābūrī’s (d. c. 590/​1194)
Itmām Tatimmat Ṣiwān al-​ḥikma (MS Istanbul, Murad Molla
1431, foll. 126b–​157a)  573
Appendix 2: Relative Chronology of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s Works
Based on Citation Relationships  577
Bibliography  579
Index of Manuscripts  635
General Index  639
 Introduction

In September 1683 a large army of soldiers from Germany, Austria, and Poland-​
Lithuania won a battle against an even larger Ottoman army that had laid siege to
Vienna, the capital of the Holy Roman Empire. That same year, John Locke fled
England to the Netherlands and entered into circles that acquainted him with the
work of the Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza. In Holland, Locke also found
time to work on the manuscript of what would become his most important phil-
osophical work, The Essay concerning Human Understanding, published eventu-
ally in London in 1689.
The last two decades of the seventeenth century marked the beginning of two of
the most important developments in modern European history: Enlightenment
thought and the military defeat of the Ottoman Empire. This was the moment
when Europeans started to think of their own history in terms that we now call
“modern.” They witnessed history as progress, understood as increasing ra-
tionalization and liberalization, as well as the creation of material wealth and
the expansion of political power. When Europeans looked at the Muslim world,
however, they saw nothing but decline.
From the early Middle Ages, central Europeans had become more and more
used to thinking about Islam as Europe’s nemesis, the absolute opposite of all that
Europe stood for. By the late seventeenth century, the threat that earlier armies
of Muslims had posed to Europe had disappeared. The Turkish siege of Vienna
in 1683—​the second of its kind after an earlier Turkish attempt in 1526—​led to a
successful counterattack of central and eastern European armies that conquered,
within a few years, almost half of the Ottoman territories on the Balkan. By the
end of the seventeenth century, the Habsburg Empire had taken lands from the
Turks that are equivalent to the modern countries of Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia,
and parts of Romania. Never again would Islamic armies pose a threat to a cen-
tral European country. Quite the opposite: within only a century a European
army stood at the gates of a major Muslim capital and routed its defenders. In
July 1798, the French army fought a decisive victory over Egyptian forces during
the Battle of the Pyramids. The defeat led to the first European colonial admin-
istration of a Muslim country. The Battle of the Pyramids was, however, only the
first of many defeats that were inflicted upon almost all Muslim countries in the
period between 1798 and 1920. After the Battle of Maysalun before the gates of
Damascus in 1920, every Muslim country, with the exception of Turkey, Iran,

The Formation of Post-​Classical Philosophy in Islam. Frank Griffel, Oxford University Press. © Frank Griffel 2021.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190886325.003.0001
2 Introduction

Afghanistan, and several principalities on the Arabian peninsular, was ruled by

Europeans.
Triggered by an increasingly critical attitude toward Western writings on
Islam, scholars in the 1990s began to see a connection between the early modern
European experience of a continuous progress in their societies and the Western
narrative of Islam’s decline. Starting with the seventeenth century, European his-
tory was considered a process of advancement and improvement. “Europe’s his-
tory, despite all temporary setbacks,” wrote the Danish environmental historian
Peter Christensen in 1993, “was characterized by progress, understood as cumu-
lative change for the better in material as well as moral terms.” At the same time
Europeans thought of Islam and the Middle East as the opposite of Europe, its
inverted reflection. “So it followed logically,” Christensen continued, “that the
opposite of progress, decline, must characterize the history of [the] Middle East.
With such a premise, it was not difficult to find confirming evidence.”1
The material and moral decline of the region that Europeans diagnosed was
ascribed, ultimately, to defects inherent in Muslim society: “The Europeans had
come to see progress as a virtual natural process. If a society had not evolved in
the same positive way as Europe did, there had to be something wrong with it.”2
One of the postulates of European thinking about the Middle East was that the
religion of Islam is so heavily imprinted upon its societies that it can ultimately
explain everything that had occurred, or failed to occur. Enlightenment thought
also made a close connection between Europe’s rapid political and economic
progress during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and the rational-
ization it was proud to have achieved. The intellectual source of this rationaliza-
tion was sought in Europe’s tradition of philosophy. Born out of Greek culture in
antiquity, Enlightenment thinkers forged a narrative of the history of philosophy
in Europe that closely aligned with the cumulative progress that had manifested
during their lifetimes. Yet, historians of philosophy such as Edward Gibbon and
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel realized that the history of European philosophy
was not one of continuous progress. The “dark” Middle Ages stood in the way of
an uninterrupted increase of rationality in European thought. Since the reemer-
gence of philosophical activity in Europe during the thirteenth century, however,
the story they told about European philosophy was one of uninterrupted prog-
ress. If philosophy in Europe progressed, what did it do under Islam?
Together with the narrative of a rise of European philosophy after the thir-
teenth century came the story of a simultaneous decline of philosophy in Islam.
Once, Islam had a great empire and an advanced civilization with cities such as
Baghdad and Cairo that had few rivals during their prime. The Islamic Empire

1 Christensen, The Decline of Iranshahr, 9.

2 Ibid.
 Introduction 3

was seen as the last of the great civilizations of the Middle East and the Abbasid
caliphs worthy successors of the pharaohs of Egypt, the kings of Babylon, and the
khosrows of Persia. But Arabic high culture was only a very temporary phenom-
enon. In his Lectures on the History of Philosophy of 1817, Hegel (1770–​1831)
treated Arabic philosophy not as an independent tradition but merely as one that
bridges the Greeks with the scholasticism of the Latin Middle Ages.3 Arabic phi-
losophy, Hegel writes, “has no content of any interest [for us] and it does not
merit to be spent time with; it is not philosophy, but mere manner.”4 For Hegel,
Arabic philosophy is only the “formal preservation and propagation” of Greek
philosophy,5 and has worth only insofar as it is connected to it. The Arabs created
no progress in the history of philosophy and “there is not much to benefit from
it” (aber es ist nicht viel daraus zu holen).6
Hegel stands at the beginning of the Western academic study of Arabic and
Islamic philosophy. He was closely followed by Ernest Renan (1823–​92) and his
1852 study, Averroes and Averroism, the first Western monograph on the history
of philosophy in Islam.7 French Enlightenment thinking and its enmity toward
the Catholic Church heavily influenced Renan’s perspective, leading him to
apply categories to the history of philosophy in Islam that were established in the
historiography of European thought. For Renan, philosophy in Islam suffered
under the persecution of an “Islamic orthodoxy” that would eventually prevail
and crush the free philosophical spirit in Islam. Renan wrote in 1861 that with
the death of Averroes (Ibn Rushd) in 1198, “Arab philosophy had lost in him its
last representative and the triumph of the Qur’an over free-​thinking was assured
for at least six-​hundred years.”8 What relieved the Islamic world from the op-
pression of a Qur’anic orthodoxy was, in Renan’s mind, the French occupation
of Egypt in 1798.

3 Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, 19:514–​23. See the Engl. transl. in idem,

Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 3:26–​35.

4 Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, 19:517: “Sie ist nicht durch ihren Inhalt

interessant, bei diesem kann man nicht stehenbleiben; es ist keine Philosophie, sondern eigentliche
Manier.” E. S. Haldane’s translation of 1892 (Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 3:29) leaves
out this particular sentence.
5 äußerliche Erhaltung und Fortpflanzung; Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie,

19:514; Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 3:34.

6 Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, 19:522; Lectures on the History of

Philosophy, 3:26.
7 In the decade before Renan, two important studies of philosophy in Islam had already appeared.

Solomon Munk (1803–​67) wrote several articles on Arabic philosophers, both Jews and Muslims,
for the six-​volume Dictionnaire des sciences philosophique, published 1844–​52. These articles were
later incorporated into Munk, Mélanges de philosophie juive et arabe (1857–​59). In 1842, August
Schmölders (1809–​80) published his Essai sur les écoles philosophiques chez les Arabes, which is an
edition and annotated French translation of al-​Ghazālī’s al-​Munqidh min al-​ḍalāl.
8 Renan, Averroès et l’averroïsme (2nd augmented edition), 2. In the first edition of 1852

(1) this sentence did not yet have its colonialist second half: “Quand Averroès mourut, en 1198, la
philosophie arabe perdit en lui son dernier représentant.” In the second edition of 1861, Renan adds
“et le triomphe du Coran sur la libre pensée fut assuré pour au moins six cent ans.”
4 Introduction

Enlightenment thought provided the legitimization for colonizing the

Muslim world. Europeans convinced themselves that the decline they diagnosed
in the Muslim world after their military successes in the seventeenth and eight-
eenth centuries had set in much earlier and that it was connected to an assumed
absence of philosophy in Islamic societies. European historians of philosophy
created the narrative that Arabic and Islamic philosophy ended with Averroes
during the last years of the twelfth century. The Dutch historian of philosophy
Tjitze J. de Boer (1866–​1942) was the first to write a textbook on the history of
philosophy in Islam. It came out in German in 1901, with an English transla-
tion in 1903, and remained influential for many decades, up until the 1990s.9
De Boer’s presentation of Arabic and Islamic philosophy ends with Averroes,
who is followed only by a brief appendix on Ibn Khaldūn. Averroes was the peak
of the philosophical tradition under Islam. His commentaries on the works of
Aristotle were regarded as the most profound philosophical works produced by
that tradition. Yet with him ended philosophy in Islam, and with him also began
the rise of Aristotelian and thus scholastic philosophy in Europe. Averroes was
the link that connected the progress of European philosophy with the decline of
the philosophic tradition in Islam. Already in his book Averroes and Averroism,
Renan had come up with the view that European philosophers valued the quality
of Averroes’s scholarship, whereas Muslims neglected it at their own peril.10
Historians like Renan and de Boer in the nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies were working with far fewer sources than what we have available today.
Their decision to exclude a host of philosophers who wrote after Averroes from
the history of this discipline, however, is not based on ignorance about their ex-
istence. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when Europeans started
to explore the history of Arabic and Islamic philosophy, they knew otherwise.
The books produced in this period had not yet adopted a colonialist perspec-
tive on Islam and the Middle East and are free from the idea that philosophy in
Islam had ever ended. In 1743, for instance, the German scholar Johann Jacob
Brucker (1696–​1770) published a six-​volume history of philosophy in Latin
(Historia critica philosophiae), which includes more than two hundred pages
on Arabic and Islamic authors. Here, readers could find relatively long articles
on Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī (d. 606/​1210) and Naṣīr al-​Dīn al-​Ṭūsī (d. 672/​1274).
Brucker mentions numerous authors of philosophy who wrote during Islam’s
post-​classical period, and this despite the fact that unlike Renan and de Boer, he

9 De Boer’s Geschichte der Philosophie im Islam was translated into English (1903), Persian (1927),

Arabic (1938), and even into Chinese (1946). The English translation was reprinted in London 1933,
1961, and 1965; in New York 1967; in New Delhi 1983; and in Richmond (Surrey) 1994. The Chinese
version was reprinted as late as 2012.
10 Renan, Averroes et l’averroïsme, 28 (1st edition).
 Introduction 5

read no oriental languages.11 A similar picture emerges from the monumental

four-​volume work Bibliothèque orientale, published at the end of the seventeenth
century in Paris. It was generated under the leadership of the French orientalist
Barthélemy d’Herbelot (1625–​95) and is a forerunner to the large encyclopedias
of the French Enlightenment. The Bibliothèque orientale is based on an Arabic
encyclopedia of the sciences that had appeared fifty years earlier, namely Kātib
Çelebī’s (d. 1067/​1657) Disclosure of Opinions about the Sciences and Their Books
(Kashf al-​ẓunūn ʿān asāmī l-​kutub wa-​l-​funūn). Kātib Çelebī was well acquainted
with the major achievements of post-​classical philosophy in Islam. Hence, the
Bibliothèque orientale is full of information about philosophers such as Fakhr
al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī, Naṣīr al-​Dīn al-​Ṭūsī, the Iranian Mullah Ṣadrā (d. 1050/​1640),
and the Ottoman Turk Kamālpashazādeh (d. 940/​1534) and their most impor-
tant works.12
In the nineteenth century, however, that information got lost in a narrative
of decline. De Boer saw the reason for the decline of philosophy in Islam in the
works of al-​Ghazālī. The most knowledgeable and influential Western authorities
in Islamic studies, such as Ignác Goldziher (1850–​1921), Hellmut Ritter (1892–​
1971), and Edward Granville Browne (1862–​1926), taught that al-​Ghazālī’s book
The Precipitance of the Philosophers (Tahāfut al-​falāsifa) had ushered in the end
of philosophy in Islam.13 Al-​Ghazālī was, as Browne wrote in 1906, “the theo-
logian who did more than any one else to bring to an end the reign of philos-
ophy in Islam.”14 After al-​Ghazālī, and here I quote de Boer’s textbook, there
were only “epitomists” in the Eastern Islamic world. Philosophers they were, de
Boer acknowledges, but of a philosophy that was in decline, and “in no depart-
ment did they pass the mark which had been reached of old: Minds were now too

11 Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī appears under the name of “Ibnu El-​Chatib Rasi” and al-​Ṭūsī as
“Nasiroddinus”; see Brucker, Historia critica philosophiae, 3:113–​18. Other post-​classical authors
mentioned are Abū l-​ Barakāt al-​ Baghdādī (“Ebn Malca”) and al-​ Taftazānī (“Ettphtheseni”)
(3:119–​20).
12 Cf. d’Herbelot, Bibliothèque orientale, 3:116–​ 17 on Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī, and 2:684 on his
work al-​Muḥaṣṣal and its commentary by al-​Kātibī al-​Qazwīnī (2:642, 1:527); further the articles
on Abū l-​Barakāt al-​Baghdādī (2:223), Athīr al-​Dīn al-​Abharī (1:21), Quṭb al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī (3:118),
or Naṣīr al-​Dīn aṭ-​Ṭūsī (3:26) and his work Akhlāq-​i Nāṣirī (3:27) as well as his Tajrīd al-​ʿaqāʾid and
its numerous commentaries (3:385–​86). Finally, see the interesting article on the science of ḥikma
(2:233–​34).
13 Goldziher, “Die islamische und die jüdische Philosophie des Mittelalters,” 63–​64; Vorlesungen

über den Islam, 177–​78, 198; Engl. transl. 158–​59; Ritter, “Hat die religiöse Orthodoxie einen Einfluß
auf die Dekadenz des Islams ausgeübt?,” 121, 134. I follow Alexander Treiger, Inspired Knowledge,
108–​15, in his argument that the commonly accepted translation of tahāfut as “incoherence” is
wrong. The verb tahāfata means something like “to rush headlong into a seemingly beneficial but
ultimately dangerous situation,” almost like a moth that rushes toward the fire. Already in 1888, Beer,
Al-​Ġazzâlî’s Maḳâṣid al-​Falâsifat, 6, translated tahāfut as “blindly running after someone or a group
who runs fast and recklessly ahead,” “run into error.”
14 Browne, A Literary History of Persia, 2:293.
6 Introduction

weak to accomplish such a feat. . . . Ethical and religious doctrine had ended in
Mysticism; and the same was the case with Philosophy.”15
Those who work in Islamic studies know that the view of al-​Ghazālī as the
destroyer of philosophy in Islam is still very much alive, particularly in more
popular publications of our field. Today seemingly respectable publications still
present him as the final point of any discussion of philosophy in Islam,16 not to
mention the many polemical voices on the internet that fuel and are fueled by
sentiments of Islamophobia.17 Among those who work actively in the field of
the history of philosophy in Islam, however, al-​Ghazālī’s assessment has drasti-
cally changed in the past thirty years. He is no longer regarded as the destroyer
of philosophy in Islam. We now understand that his major response to the phil-
osophical movement in Islam, The Precipitance of the Philosophers (Tahāfut al-​
falāsifa), is a complex work of refutation and is not aimed at rejecting philosophy
or Aristotelianism throughout. It is concerned with twenty teachings developed
by Aristotelian philosophers in Islam, and it vigorously rejects at least three of
them, to the extent that it declares those philosophers who uphold these three
teachings apostates from Islam and threatens capital punishment. The book,
however, does not reject philosophy as a whole. In fact, it can be read—​and it was
read—​as an endorsement of studying Aristotelianism to find out what is correct
and what is wrong among the teachings of Muslim Aristotelians. In that sense,
the book is a demarcation between those teachings of Arabic Aristotelianism
that al-​Ghazālī deemed fit to be integrated into Muslim thought and those he
thought unfit.18
The reevaluation of al-​Ghazālī’s Tahāfut al-​falāsifa as a work that is not directed
against philosophy but aims to create and promote a different kind of philos-
ophy from that it criticizes is seconded by an earlier development in the field of

15 De Boer, Geschichte der Philosophie im Islam, 151; Engl. trans. 169–​70. This opinion is, for in-

stance, echoed by F. E. Peters, who wrote in 1968, “Ibn Sīnā’s disciples descended . . . into a faceless
mediocrity. . . . Both Abū al-​Barakāt (d. a.d. 1165) and ʿAbd al-​Laṭīf al-​Baghdādī (d. a.d. 1231) are
still worthy of the name of faylasuf, but the rest, if it is not silence, is not much more than a whisper”
(Aristotle and the Arabs, 230–​31).
16 A recent example from 2014 is, for instance, the presentation of al-​ Ghazālī in Starr, Lost
Enlightenment: Central Asia’s Golden Age From the Arab Conquest to Tamerlane, 406–​22. According
to Starr, al-​Ghazālī was “the dark genius” (532), who taught that “Aristotle’s logic is totally irrele-
vant to revealed religion,” regarded any talk of causality as “quackery and fraud,” and thus “gave his
students an excuse for ignoring . . . the difficult studies” connected with the rational sciences (414,
417). “Convinced that he was in possession of divine truth, [al-​Ghazālī] proceeded to pass judg-
ment on all those who, in his view, were not” (419) and branded all philosophers and freethinkers
as apostates. “In doing so, Ghazali administered the coup de grâce” to philosophy and the sciences
(419). A hundred years later his “denunciation of science and philosophy had long . . . become a best-​
seller,” and “never again would open-​ended scientific enquiry and unconstrained philosophizing
take place in the Muslim world without the suspicion of heresy and apostasy lurking in the air” (422).
17 Examples are lectures by Neil deGrasse Tyson on the history of science in Islam that are widely

available on sites such as YouTube.

18 For more on al-​Ghazālī’s strategy see pp. 81–84 and 479–82 in this book.
 Introduction 7

Ghazālī studies. Two important articles were published more than thirty years
ago, in 1987, Richard M. Frank’s (1927–​2009) “Al-​Ghazālī’s Use of Avicenna’s
Philosophy” and Abdelhamid I. Sabra’s (1924–​2013) “The Appropriation and
Subsequent Naturalization of Greek Sciences in Medieval Islam.” Frank’s ar-
ticle launched a whole new direction of research on al-​Ghazālī. Earlier Western
contributions on him highlighted his critical attitude toward the teachings of
al-​Fārābī (d. 339/​950–​51) and Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, d. 428/​1037). After Frank’s
article and a more thorough monograph published in 1992,19 books and arti-
cles appeared that investigate what al-​Ghazālī had adopted from falsafa. This
has become the dominant direction of Ghazali studies in the past twenty years.
Important books and articles made the case that many of his most original
teachings are adaptations of earlier ones by Avicenna. By adaptation we do not
mean that they are therefore no longer original to al-​Ghazālī. Rarely did he adapt
something from Avicenna without making changes. Often these were slight
changes in wording that amounted nevertheless to significant philosophical and
theological permutations. In his autobiography al-​Ghazālī points out that the
skilled expert produces the antidote to a snake’s venom from the venom itself.20
Sabra’s article offers context for Frank’s discoveries, showing that al-​Ghazālī’s
adaptation of teachings from Avicenna and al-​Fārābī was part of a much larger
phenomenon in Islam. Sabra observed that by the eighth/​fourteenth century,
sciences that were earlier called Greek and regarded as foreign had, in fact, be-
come Muslim sciences. For Sabra this happened in a two-​step development of
first appropriating Greek sciences in a process of translation and adaptation to
a new cultural context, characterized by the use of the Arabic language and a
Muslim-​majority culture, and second by naturalizing them so that the Greek
origins of these sciences were no longer visible. Although he did not work
with Sabra’s categories, Frank’s contributions of 1987 and 1992 can easily be
corresponded to Sabra’s suggestions. Whereas Avicenna’s philosophy is an ex-
pression of the process of appropriation in which the Greek origins of many of
his teachings are clearly visible and even stressed, al-​Ghazālī, who adopted and
adapted many of Avicenna’s teachings, obscured their origins and thus contrib-
uted to—​or maybe even initiated—​the process of naturalization. Sabra himself
never applied his suggestion to the fate of philosophy in Islam. It is, however, a
very fitting description of what happened during the sixth/​twelfth century and
after. The movement of falsafa can thus be regarded as the continuation of Greek
philosophy in Arabic. As Sabra’s work foregrounds, falsafa represents the ap-
propriation of a Greek science in Islam. Subsequently, the appropriated Greek

19 Frank, Creation and the Cosmic System.

20 al-​Ghazālī, al-​Munqidh, 25.19–​24, 27.7–​24. On that passage see al-​Akiti, “The Good, the Bad,
and the Ugly,” 87–​88.
8 Introduction

science of philosophy becomes naturalized as ḥikma. The work of al-​Ghazālī is,

in fact, the beginning of the naturalization process of Greek philosophy in Islam.
In some of my earlier works, particularly Apostasie und Toleranz im Islam,
published in 2000, on the development of the judgment of apostasy in early
Islam, I tried to make the case that al-​Ghazālī cannot be made responsible for the
disappearance of philosophy in Islam. In this book I advance on closer inspec-
tion a different argument: philosophy did not disappear after al-​Ghazālī. In fact,
the period after al-​Ghazālī is full of philosophical works, even if adhering to most
narrow standards of what counts as philosophy. The existence of philosophy after
al-​Ghazālī is so obvious that we must ask how it could have been overlooked for
so long. Did earlier generations of intellectual historians—​including my earlier
self—​not see that there was a thriving philosophy after al-​Ghazālī? Some did.
The German scholar Max Horten (1874–​1945), who after 1913 held various pro-
fessorial positions at universities in Bonn and Breslau, understood the impor-
tance of several Arabic works of post-​classical philosophy that were printed in
Cairo at the beginning of the twentieth century. He started to paraphrase and
analyze them and thus became the first European expert on this kind of litera-
ture.21 Horten, however, insisted on translating the Arabic technical terminology
of these books into words that he thought his readers could relate to. He chose
terms from Latin medieval philosophy and hence obscured the teachings and the
originality of post-​classical philosophy in Islam. Horten also failed to connect
the texts to their context. This and the fact that his German paraphrases did not
reach the philological standards of recent works by Goldziher and others con-
firmed an earlier impression—​voiced by de Boer and others—​that post-​classical
philosophy in Islam is repetitive and arid.
The breakthrough in this field is happening only now. It is the result of sev-
eral factors, some of which I will discuss in this book. A proper understanding
of the continuity of philosophy in Islam will not be achieved unless one realizes
the crucial error that many intellectual historians of Islam have committed—​
and that not a small number of them still commit today: for the period after the
mid-​sixth/​twelfth century, the Arabic word falsafa no longer represents the full
range of what in English is referred to as “philosophy,” in German as Philosophie,
or in French as la philosophie. All these words have their origin in the Greek
word philosophía. Identical etymology, however, does not guarantee identical
meaning.
At the beginning of this book project stands the realization, shared by almost
everybody who works in this field, that al-​Ghazālī’s Tahāfut al-​falāsifa is a work
of philosophy. This may sound like a trivial insight that even earlier researchers

21 On Horten’s work see pp. 310–12.

 Introduction 9

such as de Boer indeed shared.22 The full implications for the history of philos-
ophy in Islam, however, have yet to be drawn. Even very recent contributions to
the history of Arabic and Islamic philosophy contain statements saying that al-​
Ghazālī launched attacks “against philosophy in general, and metaphysics in par-
ticular.”23 This, however, gives the wrong impression that his attacks had come
from outside of philosophy. The quoted sentence excludes al-​Ghazālī from the
history of philosophy and suggests that he was hostile to rational inquiry and
the advancement of knowledge through reasonable and convincing arguments.
That was Renan’s view of al-​Ghazālī. Renan taught that philosophy in Islam was
attacked by outsiders like him who aimed at squashing it in the name of Islamic
orthodoxy. In reality, what we see happening at the turn of the sixth/​twelfth cen-
tury is the development of a philosophical dispute between those who defended
Avicenna’s teaching on God and His relation to this world (the falāsifa) and the
likes of al-​Ghazālī who criticized this position.24
Thinkers who followed al-​Ghazālī in his criticism of falsafa were also en-
gaged in philosophy and should be regarded as part and parcel of the history
of philosophy in Islam. They must count as active contributors to the history of
philosophy in Islam, as philosophers, albeit not falāsifa. This leads to the next
important realization: after al-​Ghazālī, philosophy in Islam was not the same as
Arab Aristotelianism. In his Tahāfut al-​falāsifa, al-​Ghazālī uses the word falsafa
to describe the kind of Aristotelianism that is taught in the books of Avicenna,
among them his most comprehensive work, The Fulfillment (al-​ Shifāʾ).25
Almost all philosophers writing in Arabic and Persian—​Muslims, Christian,
as well as Jews—​who came after al-​Ghazālī adapted this choice of language.26
Beginning with the Tahāfut al-​falāsifa, which was published in 488/​1095,27 the
word falsafa was understood in Arabic and Persian as a label for the philosoph-
ical system of Avicenna as well as for the teachings of al-​Fārābī and other ear-
lier philosophers wherever they are congruent with those of the Eminent Master

22 De Boer, Geschichte der Philosophie im Islam, 138–​50; Engl. trans. 154–​68, has a full chapter on

al-​Ghazālī.
23 Amos Bertolacci in his online article “Arabic and Islamic Metaphysics” in the Stanford

Encyclopedia of Philosophy (https://​plato.stanford.edu/​entries/​arabic-​islamic-​metaphysics/​, accessed

June 16, 2020), first published in July 2012.
24 This study does not close its eyes to the fact that one of these two philosophical parties tries to

use institutional power in the form of a religious authority to defeat the other. The point is discussed
in c­ hapter 3 of the first part of this book.
25 “Fulfillment” seems a more accurate translation of the title of Ibn Sīnā’s main work than the

oft-​used “Cure” or “Healing.” See Saliba, “Avicenna’s Shifāʾ (Sufficientia),” and Nusseibeh, Avicenna’s
al-​Shifāʾ, xv.
26 Ibn Rushd was one of the few Arabic authors who did not adopt al-​Ghazālī’s choice of language

in his Tahāfut and who argued that by focusing on Ibn Sīnā, al-​Ghazālī misrepresented the move-
ment of falsafa and neglected its various non-​Avicennan elements. Ibn Rushd was also one of a small
number of philosophers after al-​Ghazālī who claimed for himself the label of being a faylasūf.
27 See p. 417.
10 Introduction

(al-​shaykh al-​raʾīs) Avicenna. Or, in simpler terms: starting with al-​Ghazālī’s

Tahāfut, the Arabic (and Persian) word falsafa meant Avicennism. Yet Avicenna’s
philosophy—​as has just been pointed out—​was not the only philosophy that was
practiced during the sixth/​twelfth century and after. De Boer’s mistake—​and
that of many other Western historians of philosophy who followed—​was to iden-
tify philosophy in Islam with falsafa. This, however, would be—​to use a drastic
example—​like equating Western philosophy in the twentieth century with
Marxism. It may be true that in some corners of the twentieth-​century world,
such as the Soviet Union, all the philosophy that was practiced was Marxist. But
that would still not allow historians to limit the history of Western philosophy in
the twentieth century to that particular direction. Reducing the history of phi-
losophy in Islam to falsafa contributed to the diagnosis of its demise soon after
al-​Ghazālī’s Tahāfut. This reduction led with equal consequence to the neglect
of those philosophical traditions that depart from falsafa.28 Only once we re-
alize that philosophy in Islam was something much bigger than falsafa—​just as
twentieth-​century Western philosophy was much bigger than Marxism—​can we
attempt to write a true history of philosophy in Islam.
This book wishes to make a step in that direction. It will try to answer the
question of what philosophy was in the eastern parts of the Islamic world
during the sixth/​twelfth century. It makes the case that in addition to what was
then called falsafa, there existed in the sixth/​twelfth century other important
traditions of philosophy. One was the tradition that was founded by al-​Ghazālī’s
Tahāfut al-​falāsifa; another was the philosophical project of Abū l-​Barakāt al-​
Baghdādī (d. c. 560/​1165); and a third and fourth are represented by the œuvres
of Yaḥyā al-​Suhrawardī (d. c. 587/​1192) and Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī (d. 606/​1210).
All four directions of philosophy positioned themselves vis-​à-​vis the philosophy
of Avicenna.
One of the most important philosophical differences between Avicenna and
al-​Ghazālī was their opposing teachings on God and His attributes. Influenced
by Neoplatonic arguments about God’s unity, Avicenna developed a philosoph-
ical theology—​meaning a theology that is wholly based on rational arguments
without any recourse to revelation—​where God acts out of the necessity of His
being, which must be wholly one. This implies that, first, Avicenna’s God cannot
change and, second, He acts without exercising a free choice between alternative
actions. The first point implies that God cannot change from being a noncreator
to becoming a creator. This results in Avicenna’s teaching of a pre-​eternal world.
In his Tahāfut al-​falāsifa, al-​Ghazālī attacks this set of teachings by Avicenna
and argues that a pre-​eternal world is impossible. This, in turn, leads to the

28 I pointed this out in the commentary to my German translation of Ibn Rushd’s Faṣl al-​

maqāl, 61–​65.
 Introduction 11

conclusion that God must be able to change from noncreator to creator and that
He must have a free will and does exercise choice between alternatives.
This major difference between the thoughts of Avicenna and al-​Ghazālī
forms the backbone of any understanding of philosophy in the Islamic East
during the sixth/​twelfth century. Avicenna’s Creator-​God is what in the context
of the Western Enlightenment has been called the “God of the philosophers.”
The phrase is ill-​placed in Islam, as it refers to a group of mostly French public
intellectuals of the eighteenth century who had chosen the label les philosophes to
distinguish themselves as thinkers who were independent of any commitment to
Christianity and its Church. Still, their thoughts about God can help us illustrate
and understand Avicenna’s ideas about God. Many Enlightenment thinkers, and
among them many of the French philosophes, were committed to a deist under-
standing of God that developed in Europe in the wake of Baruch Spinoza’s (1632–​
77) philosophy. The connections between Avicenna’s thought and that of Spinoza
are highly interesting, but they go beyond the scope of this book. Suffice to say,
Spinoza had access to Hebrew philosophical texts—​such as those of Maimonides
(d. 601/​1204), for instance—​that were deeply influenced by falsafa.29 According
to a simplified deist understanding, God is the creator of the world, but He
cannot interfere in it. God creates the rules that govern causal connections—​
what we today might call the “laws of nature” or “laws of physics”—​through
which He governs over His creation. Hence, God creates through the interme-
diation of long chains of secondary causes, whereby each creation becomes the
intermediary for the next creation that it causes. God, however, does not choose
these “laws of nature” that govern this process of creation by secondary causes.
Rather, God Himself is governed by the necessity that these “laws” express.
Avicenna developed a highly impersonal understanding of God whereby
the deity—​who in his œuvre is most often referred to as “the First Principle” or
“the First Starting-​Point” (al-​mabdaʿ al-​awwal)—​never exercises a decision or a
choice about what to create. In Avicenna’s understanding, God is the origin of all
necessity that exists in this world, most importantly the necessity that governs
causal connections and hence determines this world. A simplified but not inac-
curate expression of Avicenna’s understanding of the deity would be to say that
God is the laws of nature that govern His creation. He does not choose them, but
He is them. Avicenna never would have chosen such language since he didn’t
think in our modern terms of “laws of nature.”30 Rather, for Avicenna, God is

29 See, for instance, Fraenkel, Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza, or W. Z. Harvey, “A

Portrait of Spinoza as a Maimonidean.”

30 For Ibn Sīnā, what we call “laws of nature” are enshrined in the “constituents” (muqawwimāt)

and the “concomitants” (lawāḥiq) of the quiddity (māhiyya) of a certain species. “Combustible if
touched by fire,” for instance, is one of the passive concomitants of the species cotton, and “igniting”
an active concomitant of fire. Once fire and cotton come together, these concomitants lead to a neces-
sary causal reaction.
12 Introduction

pure necessity—​He is the being necessary by virtue of itself (wājib al-​wujūd bi-​
dhātihī)—​meaning He is the reason for how all other things must be.31 These
“other things” are the beings that are necessary by virtue of something else (wājib
al-​wujūd bi-​ghayrihī), namely by virtue of God. Once modern European philos-
ophy understands the necessary as being expressed by laws of nature, it is only a
small step from Avicenna’s understanding of God as necessity to Spinoza’s deus
sive natura (God, meaning Nature).
If creation is an expression of the necessity that God is, then creation must last
as long as God lasts, which is from past eternity. This latter implication offered
al-​Ghazālī the philosophical angle to criticize Avicenna’s conceptualization of
God. For al-​Ghazālī, the God of Avicenna was not the God that is described in
the Muslim revelation. Motivated by his commitment to Ashʿarite Muslim the-
ology, al-​Ghazālī found in revelation an active God who chooses to create this
world among an almost infinite number of alternative ones. God’s will (irāda)
and His choice (ikhtiyār) are the two cornerstones of al-​Ghazālī’s understanding
of the divine. He faced the problem, however, that Avicenna did not deny that
God has a will and a choice, even if he meant different things with these words
than al-​Ghazālī did. Rather than quibbling with Avicenna over the meaning of
divine attributes, al-​Ghazālī chose to attack the falāsifa’s understanding of the
divine via the implication of a pre-​eternal world. If he could show that a world
without a beginning in time is impossible and that, for instance, an infinite
number of moments could never have existed in the past, then al-​Ghazālī would
have refuted Avicenna’s understanding of God. Without the possibility of a pre-​
eternal world, there would need to be a decision on the part of God to start cre-
ating. If there was that first decision about creation, many other decisions and
many other choices could follow.
While arguments about the eternity of the world were one of the philosoph-
ical battlegrounds of the conflict between Avicenna and al-​Ghazālī, the con-
flict itself was about two different understandings of God. It would, however, be
wrong to say that one party in this conflict stood on the side of revelation—​or
worse: religion—​and the other on the side of philosophy. Given that the conflict
was about our human understanding of God, it should be clear that both parties
were engaged in a process of religious thinking or, if one wants, in thinking about
religion. Producing his arguments against Avicenna, al-​Ghazālī was certainly
motivated by his Ashʿarite reading of Muslim revelation. Avicenna, however, had
also developed an understanding of revelation that was perfectly in line with his
conceptualization of God. In several of his works Avicenna writes commentaries

31 maʿnā wājib al-​wujūb bi-​dhātihī annahū nafs al-​wājibiyya. Ibn Sīnā, al-​Taʿlīqāt, 50.23 /​121.9;

see also idem, al-​Mubāḥathāt, 140.10, 142.3 (§§ 386, 391), which are quoted in al-​Rāzī, al-​Mabāḥith,
1:122.5, 123.7.
 Introduction 13

on verses and short suras of the Qur’an.32 Although he never expressed it explic-
itly, we have good reason to assume that Avicenna considered his understanding
of revelation and his conceptualization of God a sound expression of Islam and
just as Islamic as many contemporary views, including the Ashʿarite one. What’s
more, we should understand that Avicenna thought of his interpretation of Islam
and its revelation as truth. For him, other Muslim groups, such as the Muʿtazilites
and Ashʿarites, had failed to reach that truth. The clash was not between “reve-
lation” and “philosophy” but rather between different readings of revelation and
between different ways of arguing philosophically.
During the sixth/​twelfth century, that is, during the century after al-​Ghazālī’s
philosophical intervention, there were philosophers who followed Avicenna just
as there were those who followed al-​Ghazālī. What is most curious, however, and
what prompted me to write this book, is the observation that less than a hun-
dred years after al-​Ghazālī, in the last quarter of the sixth/​twelfth century, we
find authors who write one set of books that defend Avicenna’s understanding
of God and another set that defend al-​Ghazālī’s. Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī was the
first author, as far as I can see, who composed works in kalām (rational theology)
where he followed in al-​Ghazālī’s footsteps to criticize Avicenna and others in
ḥikma (philosophy), where he aimed at improving the philosophical system of
Avicenna. To be clear: the former set of books argues for different conclusions
from the latter ones. This study will trace the emergence of books on ḥikma from
al-​Ghazālī, where we find the first seeds of this genre, to its fully developed form
in Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī.
The main thesis of this book is that authors of post-​classical philosophy such
as Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī wrote books in the discipline of philosophy (ḥikma) that
are conscious in their continuation of the discourse of falsafa in Islam while
also writing books in the discipline of rational theology (kalām) that are part
of a different genre of texts and follow different discursive rules. Al-​Rāzī was
the first of a line of thinkers who in their works of ḥikma defended some of the
teachings of Avicenna, yet in their books of kalām defended Ashʿarite teachings
on the same subjects. While there are some areas of thought where Avicennism
and Ashʿarism are quite compatible with one another—​cosmology, the theory of
human acts, for instance, or ethics—​they are at loggerheads when it comes to the
conceptualization of God and His attributes. Here, there is no middle ground be-
tween Avicennism and Ashʿarism, and by extension between the results of ḥikma
and kalām. Indeed, we see that works in these two genres argue for directly op-
posing conclusions on such subjects as the world’s pre-​eternity and the closely

32 See the texts gathered in ʿĀṣī, al-​Tafsīr al-​Qurʾānī wa-​l-​lugha al-​ṣūfiyya fī falsafat Ibn Sīnā, and,

based on that, Janssens, “Avicenna and the Qurʾān,” and de Smet and Sebti, “Avicenna’s Philosophical
Approach to the Qur’an.” See also Janssens, “Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna).”
14 Introduction

related subject of divine essence and divine attributes, particularly God’s will and
His choice. And yet, these two different sets of books were written by the same
authors! Fakhr al-​Dīn’s younger contemporary Sayf al-​Dīn al-​Āmidī (d. 631/​
1233) wrote books in ḥikma (al-​Nūr al-​bāhir and Kashf al-​tamwīhāt) and books
in kalām (Abkār al-​afkār and Ghāyat al-​marām) where the same phenomenon of
opposing conclusions can be observed. In the next generation, Athīr al-​Dīn al-​
Abharī’s (d. 663/​1265) Guide to Philosophy (Hidāyat al-​ḥikma) was one of most
successful textbooks of ḥikma, attracting many commentaries that show how it
was adopted to madrasa curricula. Yet al-​Abharī also left us a book on kalām
(Risāla fī ʿilm al-​kalām). Another example is Shams al-​Dīn al-​Samarqandī’s (d.
722/​1322) highly successful textbook of techniques and strategies in disputations
(al-​Risāla fī ādāb al-​baḥth wa-​l-​munāẓara), which assumes that there were dif-
ferent ways of arguing in ḥikma and in kalām and which provides different sets of
examples for these two genres.33
The distinction between works of ḥikma and those of kalām becomes well
established in the seventh/​thirteenth century, and while this question lies out-
side the focus of this monograph, it seems to have existed continuously until the
nineteenth century, when the curricula of madrasa education in Islamic coun-
tries were replaced by those of newly founded European-​style polytechnics and
universities. If anything, these new institutions destroyed post-​classical philos-
ophy in Islam. Its home was the madrasa, which financed its activities out of
the revenues of pious endowments (sing. waqf or ḥubus) of land and real estate.
No uprising of nomadic Turkmen nor the devastations of the Mongol conquest
caused as much damage to this educational system and to the continuity of an
indigenous philosophical tradition in Islam as a single law that abolished the
endowments of the madrasas or that simply privileged personal private pro-
perty over waqf and ḥubus landownership. Yet these laws were passed in count-
less Muslim countries during the period of Western colonization. Rather than
any single Muslim opponent of falsafa, it seems that colonial domination and a
Muslim eagerness to catch up with the economic and intellectual developments
of the West caused the end of the kind of philosophical discourse explored in
this book.
Another way of presenting the goal of this study is to say that it tries to ex-
plain Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī’s two early philosophical compendia, The Eastern
Investigations (al-​Mabāḥith al-​mashriqiyya) and The Compendium on Philosophy
and Logic (al-​Mulakhkhaṣ fī l-​ḥikma wa-​l-​manṭiq). These are puzzling works
that present a philosophical system that, on the one hand, follows Avicenna
and, on the other hand, tries to alter and improve him. Why, however, would

33 al-​Samarqandī, al-​Risāla fī ādāb al-​baḥth, 88–​91. For the centrality of this work and its content,

see Belhaj, “Ādāb al-​baḥth wa-​al-​munāẓara.”

 Introduction 15

the Muslim theologian Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī, author of a massive Qur’an com-
mentary and many successful books on Ashʿarite kalām, aim to improve the
system of Avicenna’s philosophy, a philosophy that al-​Ghazālī in his Tahāfut al-​
falāsifa had condemned as unbelief and apostasy from Islam? Earlier literature
on Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī has mostly avoided dealing with the problem that these
two books pose. Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ al-​Zarkān (1936–​2013), the author of a very
impressive early monograph study on Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī, published in 1971,
dismissed his Eastern Investigations as an “early work, where al-​Rāzī got carried
away over and above the falāsifa.” Given that in all of the other works of Fakhr
al-​Dīn that al-​Zarkān examined closely he wrote like an Ashʿarite mutakallim,
this one book should be dismissed as youthful folly. Later, al-​Zarkān says, al-​
Rāzī’s positions developed into those put forward in his books on kalām.34 That
line of argument was taken either explicitly or implicitly by many scholars who
tried to establish a consistent set of teachings in Fakhr al-​Dīn’s œuvre. This line,
however, is closed to us since Eşref Altaş’s 2013 study on the chronology of al-​
Rāzī’s corpus. Altaş shows that Fakhr al-​Dīn started his career with a short book
in kalām, followed by his Eastern Investigations, when he was still in his late
twenties. This was followed by his most influential book in kalām, The Utmost
Reach of Rational Knowledge in Theology (Nihāyat al-​ʿuqūl fī dirāyat al-​usūl). All
these works precede al-​Rāzī’s Compendium on Philosophy and Logic—​his second
major book in ḥikma—​which was completed in 579/​1184, when he was thirty-​
three years old.35 Should we assume that Fakhr al-​Dīn started his career as an
Ashʿarite mutakallim, then drifted toward defending Avicenna’s philosophy, only
to return to being an Ashʿarite, and then once again falling for the temptations of
Avicenna? Such drastic reversals of opinion are implausible even for such a flam-
boyant and self-​confident thinker as Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī.
We must therefore accept that Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī and with him the tradi-
tion of post-​classical philosophy in Islam were in one way or another committed
to the teachings of both ḥikma and of Ashʿarite kalām. Which way exactly will
be one of the questions this study must answer. What prompted Fakhr al-​Dīn—​
and with him al-​Āmirī, al-​Abharī, al-​Samarqandī, and many others—​not only
to present the Avicennan philosophical system in over 1,500 pages but also to
alter and improve upon it? What were those improvements, and how should we
think about them? Finally, what does this mean for our view of the history of
philosophy in Islam? Was Fakhr al-​Dīn’s engagement with philosophy merely an
academic exercise, and was de Boer correct when he suggested more than a hun-
dred years ago that books such as al-​Rāzī’s Eastern Investigations were the idle

34 al-​Zarkān, Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī wa-​ārāʾuhū al-​kalāmiyya wa-​l-​falsafiyya, 299–​300, 301. The

book represents a master’s thesis at Cairo University that was completed in 1963 and published, ap-
parently without much revision, around 1971.
35 Altaş, “Fahreddin er-​Râzî’nin eserlerinin kronolojisi,” 97–​113.
16 Introduction

pastime (Zeitvertreib) of an intellectual elite at a time when “no one felt called
upon to come forward with independent views [and] the time had come for
abridgements, commentaries, glosses, and glosses upon glosses”?36
This book deals with the period immediately after al-​Ghazālī and studies
developments during the hundred years after his death in 505/​1111. It tells how
the philosophical tradition founded by Avicenna and criticized by al-​Ghazālī
found a new expression in the works of Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī. With this book
comes also the claim that the development from al-​Ghazālī to al-​Rāzī can be
studied as a unit and to some degree separated from what will happen in the
seventh/​thirteenth century and later. Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī’s œuvre marks a wa-
tershed in the history of post-​classical Islamic philosophy. He wrote the phil-
osophical books that influence later generations of scholars in post-​classical
Islamic thought. Nonetheless, this book is no comprehensive survey of philos-
ophy in Islam during the sixth/​twelfth century. First, I leave out the philosophical
tradition of al-​Andalus and Morocco by authors such as Ibn Bājja (d. 533/​1139),
Ibn Ṭufayl (d. 581/​1185–​86), and Averroes (Ibn Rushd, d. 595/​1198).37 Due to
the influence they had on European philosophy, the philosophers of al-​Andalus
have always attracted much attention among Western researchers. Their story
does not need to be retold. It is also significantly different from the developments
in the Islamic East, to the extent that the latter can be studied separately. As of
now, there is no sign, for instance, that any philosopher active in Iraq, Iran, and
Central Asia during the sixth/​twelfth century ever read the works of these three.
The second philosophical tradition of the sixth/​twelfth century that I cannot do
full justice to in this study is that of Yaḥyā al-​Suhrawardī. It forms the nucleus of
what will later, in the second half of the seventh/​thirteenth century, develop into
the tradition of Illuminationist (ishrāqī) philosophy. Al-​Suhrawardī was a highly
original philosopher with an extremely rich body of work. He is included in this
study, however, only as far as it is necessary to explain the development from al-​
Ghazālī to Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī.
The questions that this book tries to answer touch on many aspects of the
practice of philosophy during the sixth/​twelfth century in the Islamic East.
While the main focus lies in the development that led to Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī’s
two philosophical compendia, The Eastern Investigations and The Compendium
on Philosophy and Logic, the book also asks about the material conditions of
practicing philosophy, about the patronage that philosophers received, and
about those patrons and their motives. Another important set of questions
is connected to the relationship between philosophy and religious law. Did

36 De Boer, Geschichte der Philosophie im Islam, 151; Engl. transl. 170.

37 I describe these authors’ reactions to al-​Ghazālī in a previous work, Apostasie und Toleranz,
388–​461.
 Introduction 17

religious scholars stigmatize or even persecute those who practiced philosophy?

To answer all these questions, this book is divided into three main parts. The
first part examines the context of post-​classical philosophy in Islam during the
sixth/​twelfth century and the conditions of its practice. It starts out with a brief
chapter on the century’s political and economic history that touches on a subject
that has always loomed large in every Western discussion of post-​classical phi-
losophy in Islam, namely that of political, economic, and cultural decline. Was
the sixth/​twelfth century a period of decline in the Islamic East? Deborah G. Tor
has argued that during the mid-​sixth/​twelfth century the eastern Islamic world,
and here particularly the key province of Khorasan, experienced a “catastrophic
cultural and political eclipse.”38 Given that, according to Tor, Khorasan did “very
well until the 1150s,” that downfall was rather sudden and abrupt. It also pre-
ceded by fifty to sixty years the destruction caused by the arrival of the Mongols.
The Mongol armies under Chinggis Khan crossed the border of the Islamic
world in the spring of 616/​1219, about a decade after the death of Fakhr al-​Dīn
al-​Rāzī in 606/​1210, a date that marks the end of the period this study analyzes.
The Mongol conquest of the Islamic East has always been identified as the cause
of steep economic and cultural decline. Tor, however, predates Khorasan’s cul-
tural downturn to an event in 548/​1153. If true, this would mean that the major
steps of development toward post-​classical philosophy in Islam happened in a
context of economic and cultural crisis. This should give us pause to reconsider
how a culture or society was in decline. The first chapter of this book looks at the
evidence for decline in the eastern Islamic world during the sixth/​twelfth cen-
tury and tries to problematize the category itself.
The other two chapters of Part I are devoted to important questions relating
to the practice of philosophy. The second chapter looks at the terminological
move from falsafa toward ḥikma. Following al-​Ghazālī’s critique in his Tahāfut
al-​falāsifa, the word falāsifa acquired a distinctly denominational meaning in
the sense of a religious group with identifiable religious tenets. It hence became
similar to “Muʿtazilites” or “Ashʿarites.” This move shaped the subsequent under-
standing of falsafa as “Avicennism.” The third chapter deals with a subject that
has always played an important role in every Western analysis of philosophy in
Islam: the relationship between philosophy and the religious law (sharīʿa). In
his Tahāfut al-​falāsifa, al-​Ghazālī condemned three teachings of Avicenna as
unbelief and apostasy from Islam, potentially punishable by death. These three
teachings were the falāsifa’s view that (1) the world has no beginning in time and
exists from past eternity, (2) God’s knowledge includes only concepts and classes
of beings and no individuals, and (3) there will be no resurrection of bodies in the
afterlife. Elsewhere, I have dealt with the development in legal and theological

38 Tor, “The Eclipse of Khurāsān in the Twelfth Century,” 253.

18 Introduction

thinking that led to al-​Ghazālī’s judgment of apostasy and with the conditions
under which it was passed.39 Here in this book, I will look into the effects that this
and other condemnations had on the practice of philosophy during the sixth/​
twelfth century.
The second part of the book examines the lives of philosophers in the Islamic
East during the sixth/​twelfth century. It first presents the textual sources and
then discusses their biographies. In the historiography of philosophers during
this period there is a change from falsafa to ḥikma that happens around 540/​
1145. Philosophical authors before that date are generally described as falāsifa,
most authors after that date as ḥukamāʾ. Falsafa and ḥikma should both be trans-
lated as “philosophy,” even if they have different connotations in Arabic. The
chapter explains the change and clarifies in what way ḥikma was different from
falsafa, at least in the eyes of those authors who promote this difference. The bulk
of this chapter, however, consists of a contextualized study of the philosophers’
lives, establishes a corpus of their writing, and—​wherever it is able to do so—​
gives an overview of the chronology of their writings. The bibliography at the
end of the book begins with an inventory of philosophical works in Arabic and
Persian from the sixth/​twelfth century in the Islamic East that covers all those
texts that I am aware of.
The third part of this book deals with the philosophical books themselves.
This part starts with the question: What are the “philosophical books” (kutub
ḥikmiyya) that Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī refers to in several of his writings? This will
bring us quickly to a corpus of three major works and several shorter epistles in
which al-​Rāzī presents his ideas in the discipline of ḥikma. Most important are
his Eastern Investigations and Compendium on Philosophy and Logic. My analysis
is divided into three chapters, the first dealing with the teachings in these two
books, the second with the development of the genre of ḥikma, and the third with
the method of books of ḥikma vis-​à-​vis that of kalām. While the goal in each of
the three chapters will be to explain the teachings, genre, and methods of al-​Rāzī’s
al-​Mabāḥith and al-​Mulakhkhaṣ, they will also look at the developments that
lead toward them, focusing particularly on works by al-​Ghazālī—​his Doctrines
of the Philosophers (Maqāṣid al-​falāsifa)—​and on Abū l-​Barakāt al-​Baghdādī as
well as Sharaf al-​Dīn al-​Masʿūdī.
This book is the result of more than ten years of research that started right
after the publication of my 2009 book on al-​Ghazālī. It began that year with
a research trip to libraries in Istanbul, realized with a grant from the Andrew
Carnegie Corporation of New York. I wish to thank Yale University, the Carnegie
Corporation, and the Humboldt Foundation in Germany for their generous sup-
port. The Humboldt’s Friedrich-​Wilhelm-​Bessel Research Award allowed me to

39 Griffel, Apostasie und Toleranz, 17–​335.

 Introduction 19

spend a semester at the Ludwig-​Maximilian Universität in Munich and look over

the shoulders of its DFG-​funded project “The Heirs of Avicenna: Philosophy in
the Islamic East from the Twelfth to the Thirteenth Century.” Its young research
team addressed questions similar to mine. I am particularly grateful to Fedor
Benevich, Andreas Lammer, and the project’s leader, Peter Adamson. Peter
accompanied this book project until its very end, and his reading of the com-
pleted manuscript led to significant improvements. I am grateful for that.
Among those who helped me complete the research for this book are my
colleagues in the field of Islamic intellectual history who through their comments
at conferences and at presentations helped me refine my arguments and clarify
what I wished to say. Here I single out Caterina Bori (Bologna), Heidrun Eichner
(Tübingen), Damien Janos (Montreal), Jon McGinnis (St. Louis), Ulrich Rudolph
(Zurich), Ayman Shihadeh (London), and Sophia Vasalou (Birmingham), with
whom I had important conversations, either personally or via email, that helped
me advance my project. I received assistance and pictures of manuscripts from
various institutions, among them the Süleymaniye Yazma Eser Kütüphanesi
in Istanbul, the Majlis-​i Shūra-​i Islamī Library in Tehran, the Staatsbibliothek
Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin, the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, the
Universiteitsbibliotheek in Leiden, and the British Library in London. Mehmet
Cüneyt Kaya (Istanbul), Robert Wisnovsky (Montreal), and Jan Just Witkam
(Leiden, Cairo) came to my aid when I quickly needed pages from manuscripts.
My students at Yale University were a reliable resource for inspiration and
help. Kishore Chundi (SM ’20) wrote a lucid senior essay that helped me better
understand Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī’s epistemology. Particularly the community of
PhD students in the two programs of Islamic studies (Department of Religious
Studies) and of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale, together with
the post-​docs in those fields, assisted me in many ways. They discussed my ideas
in my classes, read chapters of the book, and helped me translate difficult passages
in Arabic. Special thanks go to Aseel Alfataftah and Salimeh Maghsoudlou
for improving my translations and saving me from making mistakes; to Ryan
Brizendine for helping me better understand al-​Ghazālī’s Maqāṣid al-​falāsifa;
and to Ahmed Tahir Nur for clarifying the notion of iʿtibār and for coming to
my aid whenever my command of Turkish turned out to be insufficient. All
PhD students and post-​docs in the Islamic studies program at Yale read parts
of the book and commented on them. Fiona Ford, Rona Johnston Gordon, and
Tanya Wiedeking read parts of the manuscript and suggested improvements. At
the final stages of the manuscript I received much help from M. Ismail Shogo in
Singapore and the team of copy editors of Oxford University Press. I am grateful
to Anthony T. Kronman and Owen M. Fiss, codirectors of the Abdallah S. Kamel
Center for the Study of Islamic Law and Civilization at the Yale Law School, for
organizing a number of talks where I could present my results and benefit from
20 Introduction

critical discussions. I also thank Eşref Altaş for allowing me to reprint the graph-
ical overview on the relative chronology of Fakhr al-​Dīn’s works in the appendix
of this book, and I thank Reclam Verlag in Ditzingen (Germany) for the use of
parts of the third chapter from my book Den Islam denken.
Needless to say that I am the only one responsible for the book’s shortcomings
and its mistakes.

Conventions

This book uses the transliteration system for Arabic and Persian established
by the International Journal of Middle East Studies, with the exception that it
employs -​ah in Persian for the tāʾ marbūṭa instead of -​ih. Dates before 1800 ce
appear in the dual format of ah/​ce (hijrī dates followed by the Common Era).
Names of locations appear in their common English spelling as found in widely
used maps, such as those in The Times Atlas of the World of 1967, unless the
places no longer exist. In the latter case places are referred to by their historical
name in transcription of Arabic or Persian.
This study focuses on a period when most written documents were in Arabic.
These documents represent the names of people in Arabic, even if their carriers
were ethnic Persians or Turks. In fact, it is remarkable that ethnicity—​so im-
portant for us today—​hardly ever figures in our sources. There are next to no
comments on whether al-​Ghazālī or Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī, for instance, were eth-
nically Arabs or Persians. We do not know what languages these two spoke at
home. Both have Arab ancestry and both wrote books in Arabic and in Persian,
depending on which kind of audience they wished to reach. In order to preserve
the ethnic neutrality of our sources I have opted to represent all names in accord-
ance with the Arabic version that appears there. This follows a practice in schol-
arship on medieval European intellectual history, where we use Latin names and
not vernaculars. Thus, someone who in Persian might be called Moʿīnuddīn
Nīshāpūri is in this study referred to as Muʿīn al-​Dīn al-​Naysābūrī, and Nejm-​e
Rāzī Dāya, for instance, is in this study Najm al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī Dāya.
Given the fact that, first, critical editions of the sources used in this study are
rare, and, second, there is often no one canonical edition used by researchers in
the field, it is sometimes recommendable to quote more than one edition. In the
case of the following texts, I refer in my notes to two editions and divide the page
references by a slash:

Ibn al-​Fuwaṭī, Talkhīṣ majmaʿ al-​ādāb, ed. M. Jawād (Damascus) /​ed. M. al-​
Kāẓim (Tehran).
Ibn Sīnā, al-​Najāt, ed. Ṣabrī al-​Kurdī 1938 /​ed. Dānishpazhūh 1983.
 Introduction 21

Ibn Sīnā, al-​Ishārāt wa-​l-​tanbīhāt, ed. Forget 1892 /​ed. al-​Zāriʿī 2002.
Ibn Sīnā, al-​Taʿlīqāt, ed. Badawī 1973 /​ed. Mūsaviyān 2013.
al-​Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-​dīn, Lajna-​edition 1937–​38 /​ed. Jedda, Dār al-​
Minhāj 2011.
al-​Ghazālī, al-​Iqtiṣād fī l-​ iʿtiqād, ed. Çubukçu and Atay 1962 /​ed. al-​
Sharafāwī 2008.
al-​Ghazālī, Maqāṣid al-​falāsifa, ed. Ṣabrī al-​Kurdī 1936 /​ed. Dunyā 1961.
al-​Ghazālī, Mishkāt al-​anwār, ed. al-​ʿAfīfī 1964 /​ed. al-​Sayrawān 1986.
al-​Ghazālī, al-​Arbaʿīn fī uṣūl al-​dīn, ed. Muḥammad Kāmil 2011 (in Jawāhir al-​
Qurʿān wa-​duraruhū) /​ed. Makrī (Dār al-​Minhāj) 2006.
al-​Sāwī, Nahj al-​taqdīs, ed. al-​Marāghī 2006 /​ed. Dādkhwāh and Karīmī
Zanjānī Aṣl 2013.
al-​Shāfiʿī, Kitāb al-​Umm, ed. Būlāq 1903–​8 /​ed. ʿAbd al-​Muṭallib, 2001.
al-​Shahrazūrī, Nuzhat al-​arwāḥ, ed. Hyderabad 1976 /​ed. Alexandria 1993.
al-​Suhrawardī, al-​Talwīḥāt al-​lawḥiyya wa-​l-​ʿarshiyya. al-​Ilāhiyyāt, ed. Corbin
1945 /​ed. Ḥabībī 2009.

As a rule, in notes the page number before a slash refers to the edition that is first
mentioned in the bibliography; the number after the slash to the one mentioned
second.
This book follows the reference system of the Chicago Manual of Style with
the addition that on occasion it includes information about the line of the page
that the relevant text can be found in. In that case, the line reference is divided
from the page reference by a period. The reference “2:260.17,” for instance,
means that the relevant text can be found on line 17 of page 260 in the second
volume of the cited work.
All translations from the Arabic, Persian, and other languages are my
own unless stated otherwise. When I use bilingual editions, such as Michael
E. Marmura’s editions with facing English translation of al-​Ghazālī’s Tahāfut al-​
falāsifa or of Avicenna’s al-​Ilāhiyyāt in al-​Shifāʾ, I try to match my own translation
to the one that exists and here acknowledge my indebtedness to the translators
of these works.
 PART I
POST-​C L ASSIC A L PH I LO S OPH Y
IN IT S ISL A MIC C ONT E XT
 First Chapter
Khorasan, the Birthplace of Post-​Classical
Philosophy, a Land in Decline?

Post-​ classical Islamic philosophy developed during the sixth/​ twelfth cen-
tury in the Iranian province of Khorasan and in regions such as Transoxania,
Khwārazm, Jibāl, and Ghūr that bordered on it. It developed out of the work of
two major thinkers of the region: Avicenna and al-​Ghazālī. The latter was born
in Ṭābarān-​Ṭūs, one of the scholarly centers of Khorasan, where he also taught
at the end of his life. Avicenna grew up in Transoxania but spent most of his
adult life in the cities of western Iran, in Jurjān (Gorgan), Isfahan, Hamadan, and
Rayy (Tehran). We are told that with the second generation of his students, the
study of his philosophy moved to Khorasan, from where it spread further.1 The
most western point of the development of post-​classical Islamic philosophy is
Baghdad, where al-​Ghazālī spent a number of important years and where Abū
l-​Barakāt al-​Baghdādī was active. Only after reaching a mature stage in the works
of Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī did post-​classical Islamic philosophy move out of the
Iranian region to upper Iraq (Mosul), Syria, Egypt, and Anatolia.
Historians of philosophy are aware that a proper understanding of intellectual
traditions without knowledge of their context is impossible. One will not un-
derstand intellectual history without knowing general history, and unfortunately
the history of the eastern Islamic world in the sixth/​twelfth century is not at all
well known among Western readers.2 Philosophy does not generate in books.
The books that we read are the material remnants of a process that involved
studying, thinking, debating, and disputing. Philosophy needs an advanced pro-
cess of division of labor where the philosophers are relieved from the burden
of immediate economic reproduction. Good philosophy needs exchanges with
other philosophers. It requires meeting points where not only friends with sim-
ilar opinions come together but also adversaries who challenge each other’s
ideas. These and other conditions for the successful pursuit of philosophy exist
first of all in societies with a high degree of urbanization. In our case, these were
the cities of Khorasan and its neighboring provinces. Their economic foundation

1 See below p. 37, 183–84.

2 Paul, Lokale und imperiale Herrschaft, 78–​88, produces a comprehensive review of Western liter-
ature available on the history of the Islamic East during the sixth/​twelfth century.

The Formation of Post-​Classical Philosophy in Islam. Frank Griffel, Oxford University Press. © Frank Griffel 2021.
DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780190886325.003.0002
26 Post-Classical Philosophy in Its Islamic Context

lay in the rich agricultural production of their surrounding countryside—​often

oases maintained by extensive irrigation—​and in trade.3
Richard W. Bulliet has shown how the rich trade community of Nishapur, one
of the four big cities of Khorasan, cooperated with its scholars and supported
their activities.4 Traders and scholars often belonged to the same families. At the
bottom of this system of public patronage lay the collective endeavor of a rich
bourgeoisie of traders to satisfy their desire for education and for prestige—​often
vis-​à-​vis other cities of the region. Islamic education transfers prestige through
a direct relationship between teacher and student where the reputation of the
master is transferred to the novice. Collectively, cities like Nishapur made efforts
to attract the most reputed teachers. Islamic scholarship, however, is highly time-​
consuming. It took many years to reach even the lowest level of accomplishment
and expertise in the scholarly establishment of Khorasan.5 Only members of rich
families had the time and resources to master the Islamic sciences. The scholars
of Nishapur, for instance, were all part of the “patriciate,” as Bulliet calls it. These
were rich merchant families who held positions as certified public witnesses,
marrying usually other insiders of this class. Having a member of the exclusive
teaching profession among one’s kin was a mark of distinction to which most pa-
trician families in cities such as Nishapur aspired.6
The economic foundation of the individual philosophers who will be studied
in this book was threefold: paid teaching activity, the practice of medicine, and
patronage from rulers. These three sources of income were often combined. Abū
l-​Barakāt al-​Baghdādī, for instance, benefited from the generous patronage of
the Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad and was also employed as one of their court
physicians. Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī received rich patronage for switching his alle-
giance from the court of the Khwārazmshāhs to that of the Ghūrids. Once he had
moved to the Ghūrid lands, his new masters built a madrasa for him in Herat
where he was expected to teach. There was also the possibility to make money
just from producing books. Since the third/​ninth century there existed in Islamic
societies a profession that combined several sources of income that related only
to book production. Shawkat Toorawa and others call these people “bookmen.”
Toorawa explains that “the availability of paper, the rise of a middle class seeking
education, and the growth of a lay readership, meant that one could support one-
self as a teacher, tutor, copyist, author, storyteller, bookseller, editor, publisher or
any combination of these.”7 These professions could be pursued without recourse

3 Bosworth, The Ghaznavids, 149–​57.

4 Bulliet, Patricians, 20–​59.
5 Ephrat, A Learned Society, 101–​24, describes what it took to enter the ranks of the ʿulamāʾ and

how one could advance to its higher career stages.

6 Ibid., 47–​60.
7 Toorawa, Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr, 123.
 Khorasan, a Land in Decline? 27

to a court or indulgence of a patron. We are told, for instance, that the philoso-
pher Ibn Sahlān al-​Sāwī made his income from producing copies of Avicenna’s
Fulfillment (al-​Shifāʾ). This information comes in the context of his asceticism as
he chose this humble job rather than dependence on patronage.

The madrasa System

Among the three principal sources of income for philosophers in the sixth/​
twelfth century, teaching proved to be the least profitable. Al-​Ghazālī famously
denounced teachers who were in that business to become rich—​or just to make a
living. He regarded knowledge as a commodity that should be generously given
to those in need of it. The teacher should not expect any monetary reward from
his students and certainly should not be motivated by monetary gains.8 The di-
rect transfer of money from a student to a teacher was frowned upon. Such a
restriction created obvious problems for a society where the transmission of
knowledge from teacher to student is an important source of competency and
prestige. The answer to this conundrum came in the form of the madrasa.
Developed in the cities of Khorasan, the madrasa was adopted by the Seljuq
state at the middle of the fifth/​eleventh century.9 A madrasa is an institution of
higher education that is supported by a steady flow of income generated from real
estate that individuals or the state gave to the madrasa. Founding a madrasa in-
volved the construction of a suitable building, the endowing of either agricultural
land or urban real estate, and the setting up of the institution’s several functions.
For small madrasas that were created by rich individuals, the latter meant little
more than supplying a teacher with the means of living for him and his family.
Larger madrasas in big cities supported the teachers as well as the students. They
had imposing buildings with high upkeep. These institutions often had a library
and also a copying workshop as well as paper production facilities. Later, in the
seventh/​thirteenth century, there were madrasas connected to observatories that
conducted important research in the natural sciences.
George A. Makdisi suggests that in the madrasa we have one of the nuclei out
of which eventually the modern university system has grown.10 The key differ-
ence between a university and a madrasa is, according to Makdisi, the latter’s
limitation to just a few select subjects of instruction, namely those directly

8 al-​Ghazālī, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-​dīn, 1:94.3–​4/​1:207.10–​11: “The second duty of the teacher is to follow

the example of the lawgiver and not to ask for a wage when he is teaching, and accept neither reward
nor thanks.” See Bell, “A Moslem Thinker,” 35; Guenther, “The Principles of Instruction,” 24–​25.
9 Makdisi, Rise of Colleges, 31–​32; G. Makdisi and J. Pedersen in EI2, art. “Madrasa,” 5:1126;

Bulliet, Patricians, 47–​49, 70–​74, 250–​55.

10 Makdisi, Rise of Colleges, 224–​40.
28 Post-Classical Philosophy in Its Islamic Context

connected to an education in Islamic law. Makdisi believes that the rational

sciences, and with that rationalist theology (kalām) and philosophy, were not
taught at Sunni Muslim madrasas.11 That view, however, can today no longer be
sustained. Since the days of Makdisi’s work between the 1960s and the 1980s,
when Islam was considered “nomocratic and nomocentric,”12 many sources
have become available that inform us about the study of the rational sciences
at madrasas. Already in 1994, Michael Chamberlain concluded that the know-
ledge studied in the madrasas of sixth/​twelfth and seventh/​thirteenth centuries
Damascus was little different from that transmitted elsewhere in the city. Scholars
developed their expertise in many fields, among them medicine, theology, math-
ematics, and the natural sciences. “[E]‌ven though many scholars were learned in
law,” Chamberlain concludes, “. . . the assertion that the madrasas were a form of
higher education intended to produce specialists in law is both overstated and
in some cases directly contradicted by the evidence.”13 Since then many studies
have contributed to debunking Makdisi’s thesis that madrasa teaching was lim-
ited to Qurʾanic studies, fiqh, and the disciplines immediately serving the latter
(tafsīr, qirāʾāt, ḥadīth, etc.).14 In 2002, for instance, Sonja Brentjes looked at evi-
dence for Makdisi’s thesis and thoroughly rejected it.15 In 2006, Gerhard Endress
studied the transmission of expertise on Avicennan philosophy at madrasas in
the Islamic East.16 The biographies of the scholars looked at in this book con-
tribute to rejecting Makdisi’s view. Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī, for instance, had his
own madrasa in Herat, and although we have in the case of this institution—​as
in all other cases of this period—​no information about what exactly was taught
there, he wrote books in philosophy that show distinct signs of being composed
for formal education in a teacher-​student setting.17 We are certain that at least
one of his students, the otherwise unknown Fakhr al-​Dīn ibn al-​Badīʿ al-​Bandahī
(d. 657/​1258–​59), taught theology and Avicennan philosophy (al-​falsafa wa-​l-​
naẓar) at madrasas in Damascus and thus triggered the ire of the city’s tradition-
alist community.18 Today there can be no doubt that philosophers benefited from
the madrasa system just as scholars in Islamic jurisprudence and ḥadīth studies
did. They did so, however, in a different way: whereas one could get a senior
teaching position at a madrasa on account of one’s expertise in jurisprudence

11 Makdisi, “Muslim Institutions of Learning,” 37; idem, Rise of Colleges, 296–​304; idem, “Non-​

Ashʿarite Shafiʿism,” 241, 246–​47.

12 Makdisi, “L’islam hanbalisant,” (1975): 76, Engl. trans., 264: “car l’islam est avant tout

nomocratique et nomocentrique.”
13 Chamberlain, Knowledge and Social Practice, 85–​86, and more generally 82–​87.
14 Makdisi, Rise of Colleges, 84, lists what he calls “the Islamic sciences”: tafsīr, qirāʿāt, ḥadīth, uṣūl

al-​fiqh, fiqh, and uṣūl al-​dīn.

15 Brentjes, “On the Location”; eadem, “The Prison of Categories,” 139–​45.
16 Endress, “Reading Avicenna in the Madrasa.”
17 See below pp. 324–25.
18 Abū Shāma, al-​Dhayl ʿalā l-​rawḍatayn, 202.10–​13.
 Khorasan, a Land in Decline? 29

or ḥadīth studies, expertise in philosophy alone would have hardly achieved

that. If the philosophers who form the subject of this book worked at madrasas
they did so because they had also expertise in other subjects that were part of
the religious sciences in Islam. Trying to distinguish between achievements in
the religious and the more philosophical sciences, however, is illusory. Fakhr al-​
Dīn al-​Rāzī’s accomplishments in theology and Qurʾan commentary were built
upon his thorough engagement with philosophy and the method he developed
therein. The generous offers he received from the Ghūrid dynasty—​which even-
tually included the building of a madrasa in Herat—​were ultimately caused by
his thorough engagement with the tradition of falsafa even if the Ghūrid rulers
themselves did not wish to promote philosophy or were even unaware of Fakhr
al-​Dīn’s philosophical accomplishments.
Unfortunately, no description of a madrasa curriculum from this period has
survived. Information about the subjects taught there remains circumstantial,
drawn from narrative sources, endowment deeds, or library catalogues. Even
that kind of information is very rare and available only for later periods. Two li-
brary catalogues from the century after the one we are focusing on have survived,
one from a small and insignificant library at Kairouan in Tunisia, and the cata-
logue of the much more important Ashrafiyya library in Damascus.19 The latter
was not a madrasa, as it lacked provisions for students, but served a number of
teaching institutions in Damascus. Endowed by the Ayyubid ruler al-​Malik al-​
Ashraf, the Ashrafiyya library was created after his death in 635/​1237 and housed
within his mausoleum. It received books from the stock of al-​Ashraf ’s personal
collection and the one he inherited from earlier rulers of Damascus.20 Situated
in the Kallāsa neighborhood, a district with many madrasas just north of the
Umayyad mosque, the library was public in the sense that its books were avail-
able for reading, teaching, and copying in nearby educational institutions. The
great mosque itself provided space for teaching the library’s books.21 Konrad
Hirschler analyzed a catalogue of this institution, written in the 670s/​1270s.22
Among the 2,138 books in the library we find works on medicine, astronomy,
philosophy, and other rational sciences next to a much larger quantity on the
religious sciences, on poetry, and on history. The librarian(s) who created this
catalogue grouped books into fifteen subject categories, two of which represent
fields within the so-​called ancient sciences (al-ʿulūm al-​awāʾil).23 About 12% of
the library’s book titles fall into this category. More informative is the fact that

19 MS Raqqāda, Centre d’Études de la Civilisation et des Arts Islamiques 289 and MS Istanbul,

Süleymaniye Yazma Eser Kütüphanesi, Fatih 5433, foll. 246a–​270a. For information on these two cat-
alogues, see Hirschler, Medieval Damascus, 5–​6, 16–​53.
20 Hirschler, Medieval Damascus, 16–​53.
21 Ibid., 91–​95.
22 Ibid., 5.
23 Ibid., 64–​80.
30 Post-Classical Philosophy in Its Islamic Context

Avicenna is well represented in the library, with eleven of his works from both
his medical and philosophical corpus, including his major philosophical ency-
clopedia, The Fulfillment (al-​Shifaʾ).24 The library held two collective volumes
with “rare advice from the philosophers” (nawādir al-​ḥukamāʾ) as well as a small
number of works by (or based on) Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle.25 Al-​Ghazālī is one
of the best-​represented authors in the catalogue, with thirty books, including his
Doctrines of the Philosophers (Maqāṣid al-​falāsifa), a faithful report of Avicenna’s
teachings in logic, metaphysics, and the natural sciences.26 Remarkably, this
work was, like another of his books on logic, put into a subject category together
with works used in fiqh, suggesting that these two philosophical works were used
for teaching jurisprudence.27 In his analysis of the catalogue, Hirschler stresses
the diversity of the library holdings and its inclusion of distinctly rationalist and
philosophical works. “In contrast to both the traditional view of the madrasa as
part of a Sunni ‘orthodox’ revival,” writes Hirschler, “. . . its shelves were equipped
with material that discussed a distinctly rationalist way of approaching theolog-
ical questions.”28
The Niẓāmiyya madrasas—​which stand at the beginning of the spread of the
madrasa—​still existed at the middle of the sixth/​twelfth century and contributed
to an important network of state-​sponsored institutions of higher learning.29
Named after the Shāfiʿite vizier Niẓām al-​Mulk (d. 485/​1092), who initiated the
system, they were established in all major cities of the Seljuq Empire.30 A ma-
drasa could provide a steady source of income for teachers of logic as well as
Islamic law or theology (kalām). These teachers could then also engage in the
natural sciences or philosophical theology (ilāhiyyāt). Madrasas also provided
a network of academic exchange, where scholars would mingle. We read about
a scholar meeting a colleague at that-​and-​that madrasa in that-​and-​that city. Yet
only bigger madrasas would provide that kind of service. Whereas Makdisi’s sug-
gestion that madrasa instruction was limited to religious subjects has now been
disproven for the whole of madrasa education in the sixth/​twelfth century, it may
still hold true for smaller institutions in towns and minor cities, if only for the
practical reason that teachers in the rational sciences were not as numerous as
those in the religious subjects. The bigger madrasas were maintained by large

24 Ibid., 113, 397 (#1471).

25 See, e.g., ibid., 214 (#515), 305 (#1143), 328 (#1214), 337 (1233b), 360 (#1292b).
26 Ibid., 113, 273 (#940).
27 Ibid., 273 (#940), 275 (#950). Both are in subject category number 3.
28 Ibid., 122.
29 The first Niẓāmiyya madrasa was established around 450/​1058 in Nishapur (Bulliet, Patricians,

73n37). The Niẓāmiyya in Baghdad, the flagship of the system, was founded in 457/​1065 and began
its activity two years later (Glassen, Der mittlere Weg, 50, 66).
30 al-​Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-​shāfiʿiyya al-​kubrā, 4:313, lists cities in which Niẓāmiyya madrasas where

built: Baghdad, Balkh, Nishapur, Herat, Isfahan, Basra, Merv, Āmul (in Ṭabaristān), and Mosul.
 Khorasan, a Land in Decline? 31

endowments whose steady income drew talent away from smaller institutions.
Like other institutions they were affected by economic crises and a lack of public
security. The network of Niẓāmiyya schools, for instance, suffered from the col-
lapse of the Seljuq state at the mid-​sixth/​twelfth century. The Niẓāmiyya ma-
drasa in Nishapur, the very first of its kind, was destroyed in the tumultuous
events of 548/​1153, never to be rebuilt.31 But since these madrasas had endowed
wealth they were able to survive without direct stipends from the government.
Most Niẓāmiyya madrasas continued to exist after the fall of the Seljuq state.
In Merv, Balkh, and Herat, they functioned at least until the destruction caused
by Mongol-​led troops in the early seventh/​thirteenth century.32 In Baghdad, the
Niẓāmiyya received a thorough renovation in 504/​1110–​11 and 580/​1185, and
subsequently a new library building in 589/​1193.33 The Niẓāmiyya madrasa in
Baghdad existed long into the Īl-​Khānid period (early eighth/​fourteenth cen-
tury) and the one in Herat—​the one used longest—​even into post-​Timurid times
(tenth/​sixteenth century).34
One of the most prolific chroniclers of the activities at madrasas during the
late sixth/​twelfth and the seventh/​thirteenth centuries was the historian Kamāl
al-​Dīn Ibn al-​Fuwaṭī (d. 723/​1323). Born in Baghdad and enslaved during the
Mongol conquest, he came to the attention of the philosopher Naṣīr al-​Dīn al-​
Ṭūsī (d. 672/​1274), who freed him and worked with him at the influential ma-
drasa observatory of Maragha, where Ibn al-​Fuwaṭī eventually served as head
librarian. Later in his life he held the same position at the Mustanṣiriyya madrasa
in Baghdad, one of the very few examples from this period where the building
has survived. Ibn al-​Fuwaṭī wrote a biographical dictionary of the great men in
history and of his era.35 Unfortunately, less than half of that work has come down
to us. In this fragment he provides information on a great number of scholars
whom he met and whose fame had reached him. In the preserved part, Ibn al-​
Fuwaṭī mentions the names of more than sixty different madrasas.36 His is the

31 See below pp. 49–50.

32 That is when the Nizāmiyya in Merv seemed to have disappeared.
33 Hartmann, an-​Nāṣir li-​Dīn Allah, 199–​200; G. Makdisi and J. Pedersen in EI2, art. “Madrasa,”

5:1127. The Niẓāmiyya in Baghdad also suffered from a fire in 510/​1116–​17; see Ibn al-​Athīr, al-​
Kāmil, 10:366–​67.
34 On Baghdad: Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, Tuḥfat al-​nuẓẓār, 2:108; Engl. trans. 2:332; Wüstenfeld, Academien

der Araber, 28–​29; Talas, La madrasa Nizamiyya et son histoire, 64, 73, 76–​77; on Herat: Allen,
Catalogue of the Toponyms and Monuments of Timurid Herat, 135.
35 On Ibn al-​Fuwaṭī’s life, see Muṣṭafā Jawād in the introduction to the Damascus edition of Talkhīṣ

majmaʿ al-​ādāb, 1:9–​40; DeWeese, “Cultural Transmission and Exchange,” 12–​13.

36 That is the number of madrasas in the index of places of Muṣṭafā Jawād’s incomplete edi-

tion of Ibn al-​Fuwaṭī’s Talkhīṣ majmaʿ al-​ādāb fī muʿjam al-​alqāb (see the index in the Damascus
ed., 4:1205–​42). In his study on the city of Nishapur, Bulliet mentions more than thirty different
madrasas (Patricians, 286–​87). For a list of more then twenty madrasas that were founded in
Baghdad during the sixth/​twelfth and seventh/​thirteenth centuries, see Ephrat, A Learned
Society, 21–​25.
32 Post-Classical Philosophy in Its Islamic Context

kind of book that will likely prove to be a rich mine for information on post-​
classical Islamic philosophy, yet it has not been studied much. Among the almost
six thousand biographies that Ibn al-​Fuwaṭī preserved is, for instance, that of
a scholar called Kamāl al-​Dīn Aflāṭūn ibn ʿAbdallāh (d. 669/​1270–​71). Either
his parents must have foreseen his later passion or he adopted the Arabized
name of Plato, Aflāṭūn. He was one of the many people, writes Ibn al-​Fuwaṭī,
who approached Naṣīr al-​Dīn al-​Ṭūsī at the madrasa in Maragha to study with
him. His talents, however, were not sufficient to do advances studies or research
(taḥṣīl). Aflāṭūn spoke incomprehensibly, wore a Mongol hat, and may have
come from as far as India. He was passionate about philosophy (ḥikma) and read
all its books. Naṣīr al-​Dīn delegated his teaching to Ibn al-​Fuwaṭī, who grudg-
ingly obliged but honored Aflāṭūn with a sympathetic description of his manners
and demeanors.37
This example for the teaching of philosophy within the madrasa system
comes from the second half of the seventh/​thirteenth century, a period that is
beyond the scope of this study. Yet philosophy was a subject that scholars at the
Niẓāmiyya madrasas were already interested in and that was pursued right from
the beginning of that institution. One often cited piece of evidence is the popu-
larity of a philosophical book by one of Avicenna’s students that was removed
from the library at the Niẓāmiyya madrasa in Nishapur some time before 475/​
1082.38 With al-​Ghazālī’s push for the study of logic and the rational sciences,
philosophy became a field that was studied at institutions such as the Niẓāmiyya
madrasas, where his thought was influential. During the sixth/​twelfth century,
however, philosophy was by no means limited to the madrasa. Philosophers such
as al-​Lawkarī and Abū l-​Barakāt al-​Baghdādī had no contact with the madrasa
system. Yet it adapted to the madrasa system and developed the kind of texts
that could be studied there. Although we know very little about the pedagogy of
madrasa education in this period, we can deduce which kinds of books enjoyed
success there.39 These insights allow us to infer the conditions that made them
successful.40 Determining the techniques that these books employ will be an im-
portant part of this study.41

37 Ibn al-​Fuwaṭī’s Talkhīṣ majmaʿ al-​ādāb (ed. Tehran), 4:131. He is not in the Damascus edition of

the book. On the underused merits of Ibn al-​Fuwaṭī’s Talkhīṣ majmaʿ al-​ādāb, see DeWeese, “Cultural
Transmission and Exchange.”
38 al-​Bayhaqī, Tatimmat Ṣiwān al-​ḥikma, 95–​96. The book was removed by Jamāl al-​Mulk, the

eldest son of Niẓām al-​Mulk, who died in 475/​1082 (cf. C. E. Bosworth in EI2, 8:72a).
39 On the little we know from direct sources, see Talas, La madrasa Nizamiyya et son histoire, 39–​40.
40 Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges, 99–​ 152, pursues a similar strategy in order to determine the
“methodology of learning” at madrasas of this period.
41 See pp. 508–16 below.
 Khorasan, a Land in Decline? 33

The Cities of Khorasan and Its Surrounding Provinces

Before we arrive at that stage, we need to understand the context of the forma-
tion of post-​classical philosophy in Islam. Thus far, the cities of Khorasan have
not been part of the history of philosophy. Nishapur, Ṭabārān-​Ṭūs, Merv, and
Herat are names that scholars of Islamic theology might be familiar with, but as
places of philosophical activity they still need to be discovered. The same applies
to Bukhara and Samarkand in Transoxania as well as Gurgānj in Khwārazm and
Fīrōzkōh in Ghūr.
Existing works on an earlier period of the history of philosophy of this re-
gion mistakenly assume that Khorasan was the name of the whole of the Islamic
East. Some assume, for instance, that Avicenna’s “eastern philosophy”—​a label
he uses in one of his books—​refers to Khorasan.42 Avicenna, however, had no
relation to Khorasan proper. It has already been mentioned that he was born
in Transoxania and spent most of his life in Jurjān and western Iran (Jibāl and
Irāq al-​ʿajamī). Bert Fragner argues that the territorial concept of “Iran” (Īrān-​
zamīn) emerged only in the Īl-​Khānid period.43 Before, there was a significant
cultural difference between western Iran and Khorasan, not the least because,
unlike western Iran, Khorasan was heavily populated by Arab settlers. Historic
Khorasan—​which is not identical with the modern Iranian provinces that in-
clude that name—​stretched over the northeast corner of the Iranian high plateau
and included the oasis of Merv and the desert-​like lowlands that surround it.44
In the south it bordered on the less significant Qūhistān province and the Dasht-​
i Kavir desert. In the east it was limited by the Hindukush mountain range in
central Afghanistan, whose western slopes still formed part of Khorasan.45 Its

42 Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, 140n41; idem, “Ibn Ṭufayl on Ibn Sīnā’s

Eastern Philosophy,” 222–​23n1+2; idem, “Avicenna’s Eastern (‘Oriental’) Philosophy,” 159n1. See
also Reisman, The Making of the Avicennan Tradition, 193n92. Pines, “La ‘Philosophie Orientale’
d’Avicenne,” 15–​16, says that Ismāʿīlite authors of the time associate mashriq, “the land of the
east,” with Khorasan. Yet Pines also clarifies that the label mashriqiyya (eastern) refers to Bukhara
in Transoxania—​and not necessarily to Khorasan—​or, in a very general way, to all lands east of
Baghdad.
43 Fragner, “The Concept of Regionalism,” 352, and idem, “Ilkhanid Rule and Its Contributions,”

72–​73. In the latter article, Fragner reviews the development of the historical term “Iran,” clarifying
that the Ilkhanid notion is built on an earlier Sasanian understanding of Iran as Īrānshahr. This is
confirmed by Fakhr al-​Dīn al-​Rāzī, al-​Maṭālib al-​ʿāliya, 8:78.12, who mentions in passing the histor-
ical “Īrānshahr,” where all people were Zoroastrians, i.e., clearly referring to Sasanian Iran.
44 Le Strange, Lands of the Eastern Caliphates, 382, clarifies the geographical meaning of

“Khorasan” and its borders. There is also, in some Western literature on Arabic philosophy, a misun-
derstanding of Khorasan’s western borders. Wakelnig, A Philosophical Reader, 4, for instance, identi-
fies Rayy as a city of Khorasan. It is, however, part of Jibāl, the high plateau of western Iran.
45 In today’s political divisions, historic Khorasan includes the three Iranian provinces North ,

Razavi, and South Khorasan, almost all of Turkmenistan (excluding its most eastern and north-
eastern regions), as well as the provinces Herat, Badghis, Faryab, Jowzjan, and Balkh in western
Afghanistan.
34 Post-Classical Philosophy in Its Islamic Context

northern border was the Amu Darya River—​known in the West by its Greek
name, Oxus—​separating it from Transoxania. In the far north Khorasan bor-
dered on Khwārazm, the fertile river delta that the Amu Darya formed before its
water opened out into the Aral Sea.46 Khwārazm was a river oasis, surrounded by
desert and steppe. Transoxania—​or in our sources “what is beyond the river” (mā
warāʾ al-​nahr)—​was the rich agricultural region of Bukhara and Samarkand, the
ancient Sogdiana (Ṣoghd), as well as the land north of it up to the Syr Darya River
(Jaxartes). The fertile Ferghana Valley, which is most easily accessible from the
region of Samarkand, was sometimes included in Transoxania. Khwārazm and
Transoxania are divided by a three-​hundred-​kilometer (two-​hundred-​mile)-​
wide desert today known as the Qızılkum, the desert of “Red Sand.”
During the sixth/​twelfth century, Khorasan’s main cities were Nishapur (today
in Iran), Merv (in Turkmenistan), Herat, and Balkh (both in today’s Afghanistan).
These were also known as the four quarters (singl. rubʿ) of Khorasan.47 Among
these four cities, only Herat survived as a major settlement into the modern pe-
riod.48 Up to the seventh/​thirteenth century, Khorasan also supported a great
number of midsize cities, such as Isfarāyīn, Sabzawar-​Bayhaq, Ṭābarān-​Ṭūs and
Nūqān-​Ṭūs (out of which grew the city of Meshed), Sarakhs, Mayhana, Abiward,
Nasa, Merv-​i Rudh, and Tirmidh. Khorasan’s prosperity resulted from its cen-
tral position on the so-​called Silk Road as well as the relative abundance of rain
that falls on its higher ground and the slopes of the Hindukush. Labor-​intensive
irrigation systems of qanāt collected water resources in the more mountainous
regions and led them toward denser populated agricultural land and the cities.
Among the historic cities of Khorasan, Nishapur is the one we know best.
Important studies by C. E. Bosworth, Richard W. Bulliet, and Heinz Halm have
focused on the city and its scholarly community.49 Nishapur was a key hub in the
network of trade connections known as the Silk Road. During the sixth/​twelfth
century, this did not mean that traders from Nishapur reached as far as China.
They probably did not. Yet Chinese luxury goods were traded in Nishapur via
a network that connected the city with Transoxania, Turkic-​speaking areas in
Shīnjāng (Xinjiang), and subsequently with cities in China. Of greater economic
importance, however, were the connections with cities closer to Khorasan,
Transoxania, and western Iran.

46 For the borders of what Rocco Rante considers “Greater Khorasan,” see his “ ‘Khorasan Proper’

and ‘Greater Khorasan,’ ” 12. At the time of writing, the Aral Sea has almost completely disappeared,
with the sole exception of a lake in its former northern part, fed by the Syr Darya. The Amu Darya no
longer discharges its waters into the Aral Sea.
47 Le Strange, Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, 382.
48 Today, Nishapur has again a population of c. 200,000. In the early 1970s, it was only at 30,000

(Bulliet, Patricians, 5), suggesting that earlier in the twentieth century it was a small town.
49 Bosworth, The Ghaznavids, 145–​ 202; Bulliet, Patricians; idem, “Medieval Nishapur”; idem,
Islam, index; Halm, Ausbreitung, 42–​70; idem, “Wesir al-​Kundurī”; le Strange, Land of the Eastern
Caliphate, 383–​88.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The royal
banner
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The royal banner

or, Gold and rubies

Author: M. H.

Release date: March 4, 2024 [eBook #73101]

Language: English

Original publication: London: T. Nelson and Sons, 1888

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROYAL

BANNER ***
Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as
printed.

THE LITTLE HAZEL SERIES

THE

ROYAL BANNER;
OR

GOLD AND RUBIES.

A Story for the Young.

By the Author of
"LITTLE HAZEL, THE KING'S MESSENGER,"
&c. &c.
 "Stand up! Stand up for Jesus
Ye soldiers of the cross,
Lift high his royal banner,
It must not suffer loss."

London:

T. NELSON AND SONS, PATERNOSTER ROW.

EDINBURGH; AND NEW YORK.

1888.

Contents.

Chap.

I. THE WISHING-WELL

II. THE OLD NURSE

III. THE DIADEM OF LEAVES

IV. NEW FRIENDS

V. AN ENGLISH HOME

VI. SCHOOL LIFE

VII. THE BANNER-BEARER IN TROUBLE

VIII. CLIMBING SCHIEHALLION

IX. TWO ANGELS

X. A HIGHLAND FIELD-PREACHING

XI. HOME LIFE

XII. SOUGHT AND FOUND

XIII. THE COUSINS

XIV. A FAMILY GATHERING

XV. THE BRIDAL DAY

THE ROYAL BANNER.

CHAPTER I.
 THE WISHING-WELL.

The well was deep, and the water,

From some mysterious spring,
Was ever gushing far below
With a tender murmuring,
And deep under ground a tiny rill
Stole on in the dark to sing.

"HOW lovely it is! Only see, Aunt Charlotte! It is mine, you

say? Oh, I wish I were old enough to wear it! The rubies are
beautiful; how they sparkle!"

The speaker herself was a pretty sight—a blue-eyed, brown-

haired little maiden of about twelve years old, dressed in a
bright-coloured print frock, with a jacket to match, finished
off at the neck and round the loose sleeves with a pretty
crimped frill. She was standing at the moment we write of,
at a window in an old-fashioned country mansion in the
Highlands of Scotland, carefully poising on her fingers a
beautiful diadem, composed of gold and rubies, which latter
glistened brightly as the rays of the autumn sun played on
them.

The lady she addressed as aunt was engaged in writing, and

hardly seemed to notice the child's words; but a bright-
looking boy, perhaps a year older than his sister—for such
she was—looked up admiringly at the costly ornament.

"Well, it is a beauty, Nora, the gold 'specially. I wish I had it,

I know—the gold, I mean, not the diadem." And he laughed
as he added, "Fancy me wearing a diadem! But it suits you
to perfection."
"Children," said their aunt, who had put aside the letter she
had been writing and come towards the couple, "take care
what you are about. Put the diadem back into its casket
carefully, and then give it to me to lock up in the old
escritoire. So you both like it?"

Two voices answered in one breath, "Oh, so much aunt!"

"Nora admires the rubies, but I like the gold," said Eric.
"But are not they both beautiful?"

The lady thus appealed to looked down for a moment,

thoughtfully, at the rich casket in which Nora had enclosed
her treasure.

"Yes," she said; "but when your own dear mamma died, and
left the diadem to me for her little daughter, she said she
hoped both she and her boys would find out that there was
something 'better than gold and above rubies.'"

"Better than gold!" repeated Eric. "Well, I think gold is

pretty good; one can do such lots of things with it."

But his words met with no response. Nora's head was bent,
and a tear had risen to her eye; for, though dimly, she still
retained a remembrance of the mother who had loved her
so fondly.

"Above rubies!" And they were so beautiful; yet her mother

hoped she would find out something more beautiful than
they. "Can there be anything more so, aunt?" she said.

Her aunt smiled. "Yes, darling, much more so, much more
valuable; and you can obtain it, my child."

"I! O aunt—"
But just then the door opened, and a pleasant-faced
gentleman entered.

"Eric! Nora! Indoors still on such a lovely day? Fie for

shame! Put away work and playthings, and off into the
glorious sunshine. Look yonder; the trees are glistening to-
day as with many-coloured gems. And, mamma," he said,
turning to the lady the children termed aunt, "as I passed
the nursery door, I heard two little voices asking, 'Where's
mamma?' You had better go and see what's wanted. But
where's Ronald? Not at his book, I hope, when to-day is a
holiday? He studies too much, and you, Master Eric, too
little."

"O uncle," said Nora, "Ronald is out-of-doors—I saw him go:

but, for all that, he had a book under his arm; he can't live
without books," she said with a smile. "And this is his last
day here for a long time. Let us go, Eric, and find out where
he is—at the Wishing-Well, I believe. Oh, it will be lovely
there to-day!" And so saying she ran off, followed by her
brother.

"What a sweet-looking girl Nora grows," said her uncle,

addressing his wife. "She daily reminds me more and more
of her dear mother when she was the same age, and I only
some five years her senior. We two were always great
companions, although there was a brother between us—
Charlie, you know, who died some years ago in Canada. Ah
well! I am glad my own loving-hearted wife yielded to my
desire to bring up dear Elenora's children when they were
left orphans. The charge has not proved too much for you,
Charlotte?"

"Oh no," was the ready response; "the three orphans have
brought joy, not sorrow, into our home, I think, Ralph; and
our own little ones love them dearly. Nora is a sweet girl;
but Ronald has the most character of them all. How I shall
miss the noble boy when he leaves us! Eric can hardly fill
his place to me yet: he is very heedless; he is the only one
who causes me a moment's anxiety. He has not the
generous nature of the other two, I fear. Still, he is young,
and I may prove wrong in my judgment of him. We need
much wisdom, Ralph, from God, rightly to train these
children and our own."

"Indeed we do; but, you know, we have the command, If

any lack wisdom, let him ask of God.'"

Just then the door opened, and a messenger from the

nursery called Mrs. Macleod away.

It was, indeed, a happy home in which the three orphan

children of whom we are mostly to write had, shortly after
their parents' death, found a warm welcome. Benvourd
House, the residence of their dead mother's brother, had
also been the home of her own young days; and very
grateful did she feel when on her death-bed, her favourite
brother, with his young wife's full consent, undertook to
bring up the little homeless children, whose father had died
in India only one year before.

Seven years had elapsed since then, and the children were
growing up quickly in their quiet Highland home, in which
three little cousins had been born since the death of Elenora
Macintosh.

Ronald, the eldest of the three orphans, was now fifteen

years old—a clever, thoughtful lad, only prevented from
being too much of a book-worm by his love of outdoor
sports, which had rendered him bold and manly. And amid
the mountain breezes, he had grown-up a strong, hardy
lad, with as gentle and loving a heart for the poor and weak
ones of earth as his own mother had possessed.

Nora was right. At the time our story begins, Ronald was
seated beside the Wishing-Well, book in hand. But the boy
was not reading just then; his heart was somewhat full. On
the morrow he was to leave his quiet home to go to a large
school in England; and from thence, at the age of
seventeen, a cousin, who was the head of a mercantile
house in London, had offered to give him a situation in it.
He hardly liked the idea. He had a soldier's spirit, and would
have chosen his father's profession (who met his early
death bravely fighting in an Indian war).

But Ronald had others to think of. He must work for his little
sister, whom his mother had left to him as his special
charge, and Eric as well. He was thinking of these things as
he sat beside the Wishing-Well, and he heaved a sigh as he
laid down the spirited account of the early Crusades which
he had been reading.

"Ah, well!" he said. "The days of the Crusades are gone. I

can no longer join the noble band who sought to free the
grave of our Lord from the hands of the Infidel, nor boldly
bear the banner of the Cross and fight under it. I wish I
could."

Was the boy thinking of the old legend of the Wishing-Well?

At all events, his amazement was great when a voice
spoke:

"Have, then, thy wish. In the name of the King of kings, I

invite you to join in the noblest crusade that has ever been
made—to rescue the thousands of prisoners held captive in
vile bondage by the Prince of Darkness. Will you join?"
The lad rose quickly, a flush on his cheek. He had forgotten
that he had spoken his thoughts aloud; and certainly
imagined he was alone in this solitary spot, forgetting that
an open pathway to the village below ran through the
copsewood close behind the well. Turning, he faced the
speaker—a young man of tall figure, and a countenance full
of intelligence and fire.

"Who are you?" said the boy. "And what do you wish me to
do?"

In a powerful yet musical voice the answer came: "I am an

ambassador of the Most High God, seeking in his name to
get recruits for his service to join the crusade I have spoken
of, which is led by the Captain of Salvation, the Lord Jesus.
Again, I say, will you, while the dew of your youth is upon
you, join the band?"

"How can I?"

"First may I ask, have you taken the Lord as your Master,
and given him your heart?"

The lad bent his head, then raised it calmly. "I have," he
answered. "By my mother's death-bed, seven years ago, I
gave myself to Jesus."

"The Lord be praised!" answered the stranger. "Then, when

the Captain calls, you are bound to fight his battles, and
display his banner fearlessly."

"But, sir, how can I? To-morrow I leave this for school."

"The very place to begin," was the earnest reply. "Help the
weak ones there, like a true Knight of the Cross, and try to
set some bond ones free. Carry the Lord's banner there,
and see to it you are a true standard-bearer. Now, farewell!
My time here is short. In the world's great field of battle we
may meet again; if not, let our trysting-place be before the
throne on high." Then, saying the words, "Inasmuch as ye
do it to the least of these my brethren, ye do it unto me,"
he strode off through the heather as silently as he came.

For a moment or two Ronald gazed after him; then sank

down once more in the moss and ferns beside the Wishing-
Well. When he again raised his head, the stranger was out
of sight.

Had it all been a dream? No; every word, every look, of the
mysterious speaker was too deeply impressed on his mind
and eyes for that. One thing was certain: he had promised
anew to live to God and for God. He had joined the great
army of the Lord of hosts; and bending his head a moment
in prayer, he asked strength from above to "endure
hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ."

Just then a loud shout rang on the air.

"Here he is, Eric! I told you we'd find him here;" and with a
bound Nora stood beside the Wishing-Well. "Reading again,
I declare, Ronald!" said the merry little maiden, catching up
her brother's book and tossing it up in the air; taking care,
however, to catch it ere it reached the ground. "Do come,
and let us have a race."

But ere Ronald could answer, the child's mood had changed
again. "No, wait a moment. I forgot, Ronald, this is your
last day, and I want a long talk with you; you know it will be
an age ere we have a nice one again."

And with the gentle look stealing over her face which so
often reminded her brother of their mother, she sat gently
down and let Ronald twine his arm round her waist.
For a moment there was silence; Nora was gazing
thoughtfully down into the waters of the well. Then she
spoke: "Ronald, what is it that is above rubies?"

"Rubies!" he said. "Little sister, what makes you think of

them?"

A shadow crossed her face. "Eric and I have been looking at

mamma's diadem; and oh, it is so beautiful! I only wish I
were old enough to wear it, the rubies sparkle so. But aunt
says mamma's wish for me was that I might obtain that
which is above rubies, and I thought I would ask you what
that is."

Ronald drew his sister very close to his side. "Yes, I know
what it is, Nora. It is the wise king who says, 'A virtuous
woman is above rubies.'"

"Virtuous!" repeated Nora. "Oh, I know! That means 'good.'

I'll try to be that, and begin at once."

Ronald's reply to her remark was cut short by Eric, who had
run off after his favourite dog Cherry, and now returned,
dashing down his cap in his impetuous way; then, telling
Cherry to lie down, he exclaimed, "Come, Aldy—" (his great
name for his brother), "as this is your last day here for ever
so long, let us all wish for some special thing beside the
well. Never mind whether the old legend is true or not. Who
knows? Let us try."

"I have wished already, Eric."

"And so have I," said Nora.

"Well, then," replied Eric, "tell out your wishes."

"Ah no, Eric!" said his brother. "Wishes are sacred. I won't
tell mine."

"Nor I," put in Nora.

Truth to tell, she had wished she might wear the lovely
diadem when she grew up, and was not sure whether her
brother would not laugh at her wish.

"What stuff!" said Eric. "What's the use of wishing, if no one

knows. I'm not ashamed of mine one bit; so here goes: 'I
do wish to get very rich, have lots of money, heaps of gold.'
Wait a bit, and see if my wish is not fulfilled."

"Heaps of gold, Eric?" And Ronald laid his hand kindly on his
brother's shoulder. "Our mother used to say she hoped we
would all find out what is better than gold."

Eric made no reply; the mention of his dead mother had

touched his heart.

Only Nora spoke. "Ronald," she said, "I've unwished my first

wish, and wished another. Can I?"

Her brother smiled. "I don't know whether it will stand

good, pet, or not; I am not in the secret of the well."

"But, at all events, Ronald, my last is my real one. I'm sure

the first was just a sort of one; but I'll keep to this one, and
see if it comes true."

She had wished that she might obtain what is "above

rubies."
 CHAPTER II.
THE OLD NURSE.

"Not yours, but His by right;

His peculiar treasure now—
Fair and precious in his sight,
Purchased jewel for this brow.
He will keep what thus he sought,
Safely guard the dearly bought;
Cherish that which he did choose;
Always love, and never lose."

ON leaving the well, the children stood for a minute or two

looking around them, Ronald especially taking in every
feature of the lovely scene before him. And although the
other two hardly then realized it would be so, yet in after-
years, in far different scenes, the memory of that day, and
even many minute details of the landscape around the
Wishing-Well, rose distinctly before their minds.

Amid the purple heather the well lay; clear and cool, soft
green moss grew close round it; and ferns hung over its
sides in graceful beauty—some tiny ones were still green
there, whilst all around had caught the autumn colours.
From the well northwards, the eye ranged over grand
mountains—some clad with trees far up their sides, others
purple and brown with heather; whilst in the immediate
background the copsewood was glowing in crimson and
golden glory, the leaves gently falling with every light gust
of wind, and strewing the ground as with gold and rubies.
Eric soon wearied, and ran off to amuse himself with his pet
rabbits; but Nora and Ronald chatted on a while, till the
nurse and two little cousins came in search of Miss Nora,
who was wanted indoors to see a lady who was calling.
Then Ronald set off alone to pay a farewell visit far down
the glen to an invalid widow who had been his mother's
nurse.

After a short walk, he reached one of the most beautiful of

Highland passes, on the opposite side of which the cottage
for which he was bent was situated. Lovely indeed did the
pass look that autumn day. Through it dashed a noisy little
river, white here and there with foam gathered as it rolled
over the high boulder stones that were deeply embedded in
its channel, and which at times almost obstructed its way;
while its banks on both sides were richly wooded—and as
the boy's eyes rested on them, they literally blazed in
scarlet and golden splendour. No wonder that his heart beat
with enthusiasm as he gazed at the scene; and he began,
with boyish fervour, to repeat the lines,—

"Breathes there the man with soul so dead,

Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land?"

And we marvel not that his heart shrank from the thought
of leaving it all for other scenes.

He received a warm greeting, chiefly in the Gaelic language,

as he entered the hut where old Peggy sat in her arm-chair.

"Come in, my young master, an' bide a wee, an' gledden the
auld woman's een wi' a sicht o' her bairn—" for such she
always termed the handsome lad.

He seated himself beside her as in olden days; but her keen

eyes noticed the tear that now and then moistened for a
second the eyes of her favourite, and told of a full heart.
Quickly she guessed the cause.

"An' so ye're leavin' us, Maister Ronald, an' gaun yer first
voyage intil the wide world? Aweel, aweel! It's little auld
Peggy kens aboot that world, she that's been quietly
fostered a' her days, as maiden, wife, an' widow, in the
Highland glen. But, O laddie!"

And she laid her hand kindly on his shoulder, "The Lord
God, the Maker o' a' the world, kens ilka turn in it; he's no
ane to leave the lad he's brocht to trust in him to lose his
road in a strange land. Ye're no gaun withoot a guid Guide,
bairn; and Ane wha never leaves his wark unfinished. 'This
God is our God for ever and ever; he will be our guide even
unto death.' Ay," she added, "an' thro' the valley also; an'
he'll no gie up the wark even on the ither side; he's guidin'
your dear mother yonder, Maister Ronald, by the crystal sea
an' the livin' fountains o' water. Ye're no feard he'll fail you,
my lad?"

"No, nursie," was the quick reply; "I've no fear of God

failing to keep his word; but oh, I fear for myself. You'll pray
I may never be 'ashamed to own my Lord,' nor ever hide
his banner. I've enlisted into his army, nursie, and by his
grace, and with his help, have promised to be a faithful
soldier and a true knight, to help the weak, and, if possible,
set free the oppressed."

The boy's eyes shone as he spoke; the old woman looked at

him with emotion.
"The Lord be praised for his work begun in your heart, my
bairn; an' may he keep you faithful thro' all temptations, an'
at last gie you the golden crown to cast at your Saviour's
feet. Your mother left her orphan children to the Lord's
care, an' he's no ane to prove faithless to such a charge,
even tho' for a while they stray in their blind ignorance afar
from him."

She was silent for a minute, then said, "You'll mind Johnnie,
my Johnnie, Maister Ronald; my dead daughter's only
bairn? Aweel, his mother gi'ed him too into the Lord's
hands, and yet—" and here a tear fell on the old cheek—"he
wearied o' his quiet hame amid our grand old hills, and left
his grannie in her auld age, and wandered off wi' an idle
companion into the wide world. And it's three years sin' I
heard frae him; an' yet tho' my heart wearies sair to see
him, I can trust him to the Lord and believe. He can and will
draw him to himself yet, even tho' my een should be closed
to earth afore then. Ay, the Lord is a promise-keeping God.
The world is wide, Maister Ronald, I ken that; but should
you ever fall in wi' Johnnie Robertson, ye'll mind him o' his
auld Grannie Cameron, and the Highland glen where he
spent his young days? He had a kind heart, the bit laddie
that I loved like my ain son; and had he ta'en heed to the
command o' the wise king, 'My son, if sinners entice thee,
consent thou not,' he'd been here still earnin' his livin', as
his faither did afore him, as an honest tiller o' the ground."

Ronald felt for the old widow. Well did he remember the
handsome lad, some four years his senior, who had been
induced about three years before by an idle cousin to leave
his home and try his fortune in London. Only once had he
written to the grandmother he had seemed really to love,
and since then no word had come from him, and none knew
whether he was living or dead; but from the lowly hut in the