REASON AND REVELATION
OR A PHILOSOPHER’S SQUIB
(THE SIXTH MAQĀMA OF IBN NĀQIYĀ)*
Ibn Nāqiyā (d. 1092) is far less
well-known than Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī (d. 1008),
creator of the maqāma genre and luminary of the Arabic literary
canon. After al-Hamadhānī our attention turns normally to al-Ḥarīrī
(d. 1122), who refined certain (mainly linguistic) features of the genre and
who has subsequently eclipsed the fame of other authors. Ibn Nāqiyā
comes chronologically midway between al-Hamadhānī and al-Ḥarīrī;
he amplifies more the irreverent tone than the linguistic register of
al-Hamadhānī. The sixth maqāma of Ibn Nāqiyā (one of ten surviving pieces) shows in the author a
quite detailed knowledge of falsafa, and from it we sense the
growing tension between falsafa and orthodox Sunni theology in the
eleventh century C.E. This constitutes more than just the social and discursive
backdrop to the text: the dichotomy structures the text whose statement of
fatalism is as erudite (in an Aristotelian scheme) as it is facetious—and
therefore ultimately incoherent. This article lays bare in a close reading the
nature and tone of the parody in this burlesque piece.
Preamble
The question
of the genesis of the maqāma genre has provided a focus of
attention for scholars of medieval Arabic literature. Despite their reiterative
nature, discussions have been and remain fruitful, for they have forced
consideration of a more pertinent issue—and one that is coming incrementally to be better understood—namely, the overlapping and manipulation of
literary categories in classical Arabic literature in general, and especially
anecdotal[1]
prose literature. Recent studies (too numerous to adduce in detail here) speak [85] variously of: literary “palimpsests”; literary “codes”; “parody”; “models” and “analogues”; and “allusion.”[2] These terms
express important nuances of the same fundamental, and of course broadly
operative, literary design: for the maqāma in its classic form (the
collections of al-Hamadhānī [d. 1008] and al-Ḥarīrī
[d. 1122]) would seem to constitute, in large measure, an arch manipulation of
pre-existing material. And no answer about the genesis, and more significantly,
about the impulse behind the genre can be arrived at without consideration of
this somewhat “rainbow” classification of influence.[3]
The
nature of the maqāma’s audience is
in certain respects a related issue; for the very self-fashioning bridge which
the genre effects between popular and high
literature goes some way to answering one of the questions left hanging
from the above synthetic account (the question being: Why did the author(s) feel the need to redress pre-existing
material in his/their own highly embellished style?).
All this
would suggest that the content of the maqāma does not defer
its significance to form. The largely aureate diction of the maqāmāt
to which I allude is well-known. One recent account of the maqāma
in al-Andalus[4] attempts to correct the definition of the genre
provided implicitly by the Andalusian
authors in their apparent aping of the Ḥarīrian epideictic style (where sajʿ and other embellishments such as internal rhyme, lipograms, etc.,[5]
eclipse the narrative content of these idiosyncratic picaresque [86] vignettes). El-Outmani’s analysis of the Maqāma of
Ibn
Nāqiyā
(1020–92 C.E.)—the author of
the maqāma interpreted below—provides a very useful insight into how al-Hamadhānī’s model was received and perceived by his
contemporaries.[7] He was a
neophyte and provides a significant personal view of the lines of demarcation
for the new genre: al-Hamadhānī had clearly established a model whose
main stylistic ingredients were not the creation of an original story (Ibn Nāqiyā’s tenth maqāma shows that he manipulated pre-existing
material in the manner of al-Hamadhānī),[8]
but the [re‑]telling of picaresque or burlesque (Wild’s term) anecdotes: a) in sustained yet not
over-obtrusive sajʿ; b) in which
there features the anagnorisis of a single and named anti-hero (in Ibn
Nāqiyā’s case, one
al-Yashkurī). But significantly—and perhaps
by way of authorial signature—Ibn
Nāqiyā’s narrator is
anonymous and each narrative is not so conspicuously identified with a
different location:
Stefan Wild
has provided an engaging and clear summary of the content and tone of the
author’s ten surviving maqāmāt.[9]
This supersedes the article [87] in EI2
(with its somewhat misleading second paragraph[10]),
and complements the cursory accounts of the author in Blachère[11]
and Kilito.[12] Wild’s account clarifies what ʿAbbās (the editor of the maqāmāt) obfuscates by naïve misrepresentation:[13]
the fact that Ibn Nāqiyā develops his model by pushing the moral
antagonism and ambivalence of al-Hamadhānī to the limits of what
could be tolerated under the label of adab—and hence by that class of society
(both religious and secular) which adab represented and catered to. This
has to be the case, in some measure, since elements of the ten narratives could
not be understood or appreciated fully by anything other than a reasonably
erudite audience (the challenging vulgarity of a work such as Abū Dulaf’s Qaṣīda Sāsāniyya
stems from a specific, marginal and to some degree, therefore, solipsistic
subculture—the maqāmāt
tap into something shared more generally by society at large). Nowhere is this
more clear in its dual aspects than in the sixth maqāma in which
the indelicacy of a shockingly amoral posture is offset by the erudite
sophistication of its allusions and the overall quality of its structure.
It is an articulated
narrative (i.e., a narrative in two parts), and shares in this respect a
feature of the second maqāma. In the latter the author develops the
moral duplicity of the Hamadhānian model[14]
by evoking a perverse antithesis: a grave robber—whose macabre vocation has been vividly depicted—eludes his pursuers by assuming the role of preacher in an adjacent
mosque. There is, of course, a nicely conceived logic connecting the narrative’s high [88] relief points
(grave robbing and preaching), since few people are more qualified to preach
homilies based in notions of mortality than a man who spends his nights
despoiling tombs. The author has stretched his model to a breaking point of
moral tension; conversely, however, the whole is yet more tightly held together.
This manner of structural symmetry will emerge as a feature of the sixth maqāma.
The impetus
to analyse the sixth maqāma has been provided finally by an
unsatisfactory view of the text articulated expansively by Ḥasan ʿAbbās. Though his edition is an admirable work
of scholarship, I cannot accept the filter through which he presents this
particular narrative. Wild has already observed in his review (p. 78) that the
editor “tries too
hard in his long and thoughtful muqaddima to ‘defend’ Ibn
Nāqiyā from his detractors and does not always seem to be aware of
Ibn Nāqiyā’s irony.” This is entirely consonant with what we find on
pages 33–35 of the
introduction, in which ʿAbbās
reiterates the view—already
expressed on pp. 12 and 18—that it was
with reference to the sixth maqāma that the medieval sources
ascribed to him a non-extant pamphlet (maqāla) on Greek Philosophy.[15]
ʿAbbās thus solves the contradiction which
otherwise obtains if Ibn Nāqiyā is to have denigrated falsafa
in one text (the 6th M.) yet have championed it in another (the lost
Maqāla mentioned by Ibn Khallikān). In this way ʿAbbās can view the sixth maqāma as
a critique of materialist heterodoxy and a pious championing of orthodox Islam.[16]
A close analysis of the text does not lead me to share this opinion. Its
literary craftsmanship—the
well-measured balancing of two antithetical dialogues—seems to bespeak the author’s design more
than any earnest supposition.
Translation[17]
A mutakallim
told me of the following [encounter which he had had]: I once entered a garden
towards the middle of the day (ʿinda qāʾimi l-nahār), leaving behind me the
quarters [of my tribe] (khārijun[i] l-diyāra).[18] It was [89] just
such a time as keeps the stranger away from the outlying land [because of the
inclement heat] (wa-qad muniʿa l-barra jānibu-hu).
The
crickets produced their [shrill] cacophony and shadows were short, whilst the
mirage shone deceptively. Suddenly there was [before me] a man[19]
in the shade of a grape-vine who had before him a pitcher. He was incoherently
drunk and muttered verses of poetry to himself. Yet I stifled my rage for fear
of the effects of the terrible midday heat. I greeted him and sat down. He was
most welcoming and I began to enjoy the intimacy of his company.[20]
He ladled some wine for me which was like a firebrand.[21]
He then spoke the words of al-Akhṭal: “How wonderful is this wine once it has been slain” (fa-aḥbib bi-hā maqtūlatan ḥīna
tuqtalu)[22] [i.e.,
once it has been mixed with water]; he mixed [the wine] and filled [the cup],
then said: “Do have some!” (dūna-ka-hā).[23]
So I said to him, “I am a
speculative theologian (anā rajulun min aṣḥābi
l-kalām)—one of those
men involved in religious debate (wa-mimman la-hu naẓarun[24]
fī l-dīn); and this is a drink that has been proscribed.”[25]
[90] At which he asked, “What do you
opine about this cup, more specifically the state of the water and wine it
contains? Are they both stable together (a-thābitāni maʿan) or does one of them cease to be (baṭala
aḥadu-humā)? Or is it that the one enters the other (this is
expressed more elliptically in the Arabic: am dakhala fī l-ākhari)?
Yet it is not possible for either one to cease from being, for there is both
water and wine before us (li-anna hā hunā khamran wa-māʾan); and neither one of the two
enters wholly into the other so as to become part of it. Rather they both
remain stable. And it is by means of
mixing that change and mutation occurs (wa-bi-l-ikhṭilāṭi
waqaʿa
l-taghayyuru wa-l-istiḥāla). Neither being (‘coming to be’ in the Aristotelian sense) nor perishing can exist without change.[26]
Nature is of two kinds (wa-l-ṭabīʿatu
thnatāni):[27]
one which transcends ‘coming to be’ and ‘perishing’ and the other whose parts[28]
are exposed to it (i.e., fasād). Man is made up of both (wa-l-insānu
murakkabun min-humā): he lives by virtue of the growing soul (al-nafsu
l-nāmiya), and moves (yantaqilu) by virtue of the moving soul (al-nafsu
l-mutaḥarrika) and knows by virtue
of the distinguishing [91] soul (al-nafsu l-mumayyiza).[29]
The soul in the body is equivalent to ‘form’ in ‘matter’ (wa-l-nafsu fī l-ajsāmi bi-manzilati l-ṣūrati fī l-hayūlā)[30]
and imparts motion to bodies.[31]
[In the same way] this wine imparts motion to the soul; she (the wine) is
indeed an archetype (wa-hiya qibsun li-kulli qansin)”:[32]
[He then quoted Abū Tammām:] “In quality [the wine] is like a follower of Jahm b. Ṣafwān,
though they have [contrarily] given her as a
sobriquet ‘the essence of all things (jawharu l-ashyāʾi). . . .’” He [paused to] take a sip from his cup then continued his demon
mutterings (wa-ʿāwada
wasāwisa-hu):[33]
“Movement is at the root of natural existence (i.e.,
of living organisms) and is of two types (wa-la-hā maʿnayāni; i.e., it [92] manifests itself in two ways): desire/appetite[34]
and action.”[35] He then
proceeded to expand on the matter (akhadha fī basṭi dhālika
wa-nashri-hi) and to provide a detailed exegesis of what he meant (wa-sharḥi-hi
wa-fasri-hi); he went on to speak of the [ontological] qualities (al-maʿānī l-kayfiyya), [that is,
those ontological qualities set out in Aristotle’s] Categories,[36]
then added: “How well the
great Aristotle spoke when he said: ‘Since Man
cannot survive individually (lammā lam yakun li-l-insāni an
yabqā bi-shakhṣi-hi), he strives at least to survive in Form
[here in the sense of “species”] (ishtāqa ilā an yabqā bi-ṣūrati-hi).’” And he was led inevitably from this to say other
things—not content in all with allusion and dissimulation—until he recited [in the manner of a conclusion]
the following two verses of Abū Nuwās:
My
tongue pronounced the most closely held secret,
namely
that I believe in Fate;
There
is no Resurrection after death,
rather
death is like an infertile egg.
bāḥa
lisānī bi-muḍmari l-sirrī
wa-dhāka
annī aqūlu bi-l-dahrī
wa-laysa
baʿda
l-mamāti munbaʿathun
wa-inna-mā
l-mawtu bayḍatu l-ʿuqrī
[93] I was, of course, horrified by the notions of
his sect which he was led inevitably to articulate (fa-rāʿa-nī mā ntahā ilay-hi min
madhhabi-hi) and aggrieved by the evil turn he
had taken (wa-sāʾa-nī mā raʾaytu min munqalabi-hi) as the wine
took over his reason (wa-qadi stawlati l-khamru ʿalā l-ʿaqli). . . . [37]
So I said to him: “Whoever you
are (yā hādhā), beware of straying into error and
adopting the embellished doctrines of the absurd (wa-l-akhdhi fī
zakhārifi l-muḥāl). And, besides, for what is it that you
deny the Resurrection (wa-mā lladhī tunkiru la-hu amra l-maʿādi)—[this thing]
which leads you to a corrupt and heathen creed? Is it for the sake of[38]
an inexorable procession towards perdition and a scattering of your parts over
the ground (wa-tafarruqi l-ajzāʾi fī l-tharā)? Yet is it
not so that a grain only sprouts once it has become mouldy and diminished (a-wa-laysa
l-ḥabbatu lā tanbutu illā baʿda l-ʿafani wa-l-iḍmiḥlāl);[39]
further, an egg will only hatch after it has been destroyed (or ceases to
exist) and has altered its humour (wa-l-bayḍatu lā tufrikhu illā baʿda l-fasādi[40] wa-l-infiʿāl)!”[41] I made other
clear and instructive analogies then recited from the Koran (thumma talawtu ʿalay-hi) [36:33]: “The dead land is a sign for them, for we have given
life to it and caused to grow therefrom [each] grain such that you can eat from
it” (wa-āyatun la-humu l-arḍu l-maytatu
aḥyaynā-hā wa-akhrajnā min-hā ḥabban fa-min-hu
taʾkulūna). And I
continued [until I reached] the following [94] verse of Holy Writ [36:39]: “We have set
out the progress of the moon in stages until it returns to the state of an old
and arched palm-bough” (wa-l-qamaru
qaddarnā-hu manāzila ḥattā ʿāda ka-l-ʿurjūni l-qadīmi). He was
quick to object (iʿtaraḍa
mubādiran), enquiring as to the meaning [of āya
36:39]: “‘It is not
proper for the sun to overtake the moon’ (lā l-shamsu yanbaghī la-hā an tudrika l-qamara),
and yet, [he observed], during ‘the absence
of the moon in the last three nights of a lunar month (fī awāni
kulli miḥāqi)’ overtaking
or overlap occurs (yaqaʿu
l-idrāku wa-l-liḥāqu); further, during a solar eclipse [this kind of]
overlap is [undeniably] real (thumma fī l-kusūfi l-shamsiyyi
yakūnu l-idrāku l-ḥaqīqiyyu).” I answered, “God forbid! (hayhāta)
[reciting Koran 34:52] ‘How can they
return from such a distant spot?’” (wa-annā
la-humu l-tanāwushu min makānin baʿīdin).[42]
And
[then I quoted the hemistich of Abū Nuwās], “You have grasped something but things more essential escape you!”[43] [I
explained:] “The sun does
not overtake [95] the moon in
the [same] heavenly sphere, but rather in the sense that it travels much faster
(wa-inna-mā huwa bi-surʿati sayri-hi
yudriku-hā);[44] this is
testified by those who witness [an eclipse].” And then I recited [by way of interjection, Koran 6:45]: “So the last remnant of those who did evil was cut off.
Praise belongs to God the Lord of all Being” (wa-quṭiʿa dābiru
l-qawmi lladhīna ẓalamū wa-l-ḥamdu li-llāhi rabbi l-ʿālamīn).
He replied: “Go gently (ʿalā risli-ka)! For what then is the meaning
of [Koran 36:40]: ‘And the Night
cannot precede the Day’ (wa-lā
l-laylu sābiqu l-nahār): what is the evidence for the Day having
precedence (wa-mā l-dalīlu ʿalā khtiṣāṣi l-nahāri
bi-l-sabq)?” So I
explained: “The meaning
is that neither one of the two moves in the [manner] of its
counterpart (lā yadhhabu aḥadu-hum bi-maʿnā ṣāḥibi-hi), that is, the one who ‘rides by turns’ with the
other (or the one who alternates with the other) behaves consistently with
respect to the other. . . .[45]
One [Koranic] phrase performs the equivalent function of the other (wa-nābat
iḥdā l-jumlatayni ʿani
l-ukhrā);[46] this is
one of the [figures of speech] in the language of the Arabs (hādhā
madhhabun min madhāhibi l-ʿarabi fī
l-kalām) in which the Koran was revealed (alladhī nazala bi-hi l-qurʾān): ‘Falsehood comes not to it from before it nor from behind it; a sending
down from One All-wise, All-laudable’;[47]
equally Day has precedence (ka-mā anna l-sabqa mina l-nahāri [96] wāqiʿun) since when God Almighty created the sun He
created the day by virtue of its existence (lammā khalaqa l-shamsa awjada
l-nahāra bi-wujūdi-hā), and yet the time before [this] was
not called the night (wa-lam yakuni l-zamānu qabla-hā yusammā
laylan); so when the distinction between and separation of [the two][48]
occurred, day and night came into being. Day deserved precedence since from it
comes the [ability] to distinguish (wa-staḥaqqa l-nahāru l-sabqa
li-anna l-dalīla min-hu). As God Almighty has said (Koran 25:45): ‘Do you not see how your Lord stretched out the shadow? [and, scilicet, caused it to be extended gradually
following the movement of the sun]? Had He willed He would have made it still.
Then We appointed the sun, to be a guide to it’” (a-lam
[97] Commentary
If, as is
claimed by Ibn Khallikān in Wafayāt al-aʿyān, Ibn Nāqiyā did indeed write a work on the
philosophy of the Ancients (Greeks), then his knowledge of their jargon and
concepts—in their
Arabic versions—would have
been relatively profound. This is borne out by the text (as we shall attempt to
highlight below). It does not mean, however, that he would necessarily have
been induced to purvey a clear picture: in the first half of the maqāma
he evokes the field, and confuses the lay reader—for this is a subject, with its hair-splitting arcana, that is eminently
capable of confusing. Yet though the author is both ambivalent, ambiguous and
at times unclear in his evocations, one distinction must not be missed: this
(the first half of the narrative) is falsafa and not kalām; the
point that must be stressed is that the distinction between the two at this
juncture in Islamic history (eleventh century) is essential.[52]
Indeed, it is principally in the minds of those modern [98] scholars who pay only cursory attention to this aspect of Islamic
thought that the two disciplines are loosely viewed, somewhat over-generally,
as aspects of the same intellectual phenomenon. Some of those who have glossed
this maqāma have described it solely as a parody of the discourse
of a mutakallim.[53]
This is only half the truth; indeed, it is somewhat misleading, for the first
part of the narrative is—certainly by
design—anathema to kalām as it had come to be
defined in the wake of al-Ashʿarī (d.
935–36) and on the eve of al-Ghazālī’s weighty attack on Greek materialist philosophy.
The two sides of the dialogue are radically different and consciously distinct.
It is the extent to which either of the two forms a coherent localised
discourse that may help one gain access to the sentiments and sympathies of the
author—or may help one to gauge the ultimate rhetorical
design and temperament of the piece.
The Presence of Aristotle
(a) Mixis. The
inebriated philosopher’s interest in
the mixing of water and wine is not fortuitous; it would seem rather to be
based in a very detailed knowledge of falsafa, and in particular, in the
discussion about mixing (μίχις) which forms chapter 10 of
Aristotle’s De generatione et corruptione;[54] i.e., the
influence of Aristotle in the
faylasūf’s effusions is
detectable long before his actual name is mentioned.
[99] Mixing, as a philosophical issue, is predicated on concern with change;
in the preamble to his own ideas Aristotle distinguishes between generation and
alteration, outlining the views of the pre-Socratics, with emphasis on the
Empedoclean view: “There is no
such thing as the birth of anything, . . . only mixing and the
separation of what has been mixed.” Though
Aristotle’s view is
somewhat more nuanced, this quotation illustrates the basic relevance and
importance of mixing to a developed ontology. In his own words (that is, when
he is not explaining the ideas of his predecessors) Aristotle is even more
pertinent to this text, which on a purely rational level asks a very apposite
question. The relevant train of thought can be represented thus: wine is
proscribed by Islam (in the words of the mutakallim: wa-qad ḥuzira
ʿalay-nā
hādhā l-sharābu); this proscription in general terms must be
acceded to; however, when wine is mixed with water (as is always the case in
Islamic society when it is imbibed[55])
is the resultant mixture still wine? In Aristotelian terms, since mixing
involves the alteration or change of entities (substances?), it is not
unreasonable to pursue the question on the lines of a well-established
philosophical model.[56]
And, furthermore, in Aristotle’s own account of mixis it is quite striking that
the mixing of water and wine is adduced to illustrate an aspect of his
argument:
We have to
enquire what mixing is, what a mixture is, to which of the things that are it
belongs, and how; and furthermore, whether there is such a thing as mixing or
whether this is false. For it is impossible for one thing to be mixed with
another, according to what some people say; for supposing that the things after
being mixed still are and have not been altered, they say that now they are no
more mixed than they were before, but are just the same; and that if one of the
two things is destroyed, they have not been mixed, but one exists and the other
does not, whereas mixing is of things in the same condition; and that it is no
different if, when the two things have come together, each of the things being
mixed is destroyed, because [100] they cannot be things that have
been mixed if they cannot be said to be at all. Now what this argument is after
seems to be to clarify the difference between a mixture and a thing that ‘comes
to be’ or ‘ceases to be’. . . . [57]
A drop of
wine is not mixed with ten thousand pitchersful of water, for its form (?)
dissolves and it changes into the totality of the water [!]. But when the two
are more or less equal in strength, then each changes from its own nature in
the direction of the dominant one, though it does not become the other but
something in between and common to both. So it is clear that of agents, those
are capable of being mixed which have a contrariety (for it is these which are
capable of being acted upon by one another).[58]
Williams’ explanatory notes highlight the essential change (istiḥāla
or taghayyur; Greek ἀλλοίωσις) that takes
place in the Aristotelian view:
Mixing is what
gives rise to homoeomers, and the nature of a homoeomer, as the word itself
indicates, is to be such that every smallest part of it is the same character
as every other, and as the whole. Wine mixed with water produces a liquid every
smallest part of which is the same mixture as before.[59] A
level is never reached at which a minute drop
of ‘pure’ wine is found next door to a minute drop of pure water.[60]
Aristotle’s view of mixing depends on the distinction between
actuality and potentiality. This makes it hard to see how the difference
between mixing and corruptibility is to be maintained. His doctrine of mixing
is that the [101] things survive the mixing, only as potential
existents. Wine mixed with equal parts of water ceases actually to be wine,
but now is potentially wine.[61]
Ibn
Nāqiyā’s own view,
or gloss, on the original, is clearly that with mixing (ikhtilāṭ)[62]
a change (istiḥāla/taghayyur) takes place. Instead, however,
of explaining the precise way in which he understands this bewildering topic, he elects to change the subject by
association: he progresses neatly from wine to the soul—only later, by clever literary allusion, to hint at
their analogous properties.[63]
The topic of
mixing has not been exhausted with the above transition; indeed, this narrative
operates rhetorically through literary (and scriptural) allusion.[64]
One of the most pertinent allusions is contained in the verse of poetry cited
from a qaṣīda by Abū Tammām:[65]
jahmiyyatu l-awṣāfi illā anna-hum / qad laqqabū-hā
jawhara l-ashyāʾī.
This is from a poem which we should examine in some detail; it exhibits a
fine synaesthetic linking of the nasīb with khamr (the
vinous theme). For lines 8 ff. (khamr) echo faintly [102] line 2 (wherein a familiar request for the anonymous censurer’s clemency): lā tasqi-nī māʾa l-malāmi fa-inna-nī. . . . Water—used here to produce an image which is quite independent of any established
convention—has an
unusually high profile in the nasīb. Further, a common posture of
this poetry is couched in the following manner of formulation “Do not give me [this] to drink, give me rather wine!” (or vice-versa in Antaresque effusions which would
certainly be inappropriate here); lā tasqi-nī, in short,
evokes bacchism and therefore prefigures, as a purely linguistic evocation, the
khamriyya proper; this in itself forges a connection—which already exists by convention—between
water and wine. This manner of viewing the poem’s parts may be too mechanistic. What is clear
is that the opening passage (2–6)
celebrates water; lines 12–17
celebrate wine as a mixing of water and wine.
The latter
passage deserves some analysis: the extremely original line 12 contradicts the
force of Ibn Nāqiyā’s
philosophical discussion of μίχις (where by artful sophistry wine is rendered
analogous to the soul). Yet in the antithetical symmetry which obtains between
the verse and the erudite discussion there is—perhaps—a clin d’oeil: ṣaʿubat wa-rāḍa l-mazju sayyiʾa khulqi-hā / fa-taʿallamat min ḥusni khulqi l-māʾī (She was a recalcitrant [wine] but the mixing
tamed her bad temperament, and she learnt from the good qualities of the
water). The conceit of line 13 (a typically cerebral conceit of badīʿ poetry) also sits well with the abstract
formulations into which the verse is implicitly and obliquely contextualized
(by allusion): kharqāʾu yalʿabu bi-l-ʿuqūli ḥabābu-hā / ka-talaʿʿubi l-afʿāli bi-l-asmāʾī (She was a coarse and ignorant wine whose bubbles
befuddled the mind, in the way that verbs manipulate nouns). With this eschewal
of the more normal idealisation of wine, line 13 also extends the intertextual
antithesis begun in line 12: this striking dissonance requires no comment when
we remind ourselves that the faylasūf’s wine acquires (as we shall discuss below) the very elevated status of
the Active Intellect.[66]
In
al-Tibrīzī’s commentary
of Abū Tammām’s Dīwān
an extended note is attached to verse 15—the verse quoted by Ibn Nāqiyā:[67]
[103] The Jahmiyya are a group of mutakallimūn who take
their name from Jahm [b. Safwān] and who believe that Man is incapable of
acting yet is responsible—i.e., is liable to punishment—for his deeds;[68]
herein is a contradiction (bi-dhālika l-munāqaḍatu).
. . . Al-Ṭāʾī (i.e., Abū Tammām)
appears to follow the creed of Jahm, for he attributes no action to the wine (yajʿalu
l-khamra lā fiʿla la-hā; i.e., line 13); yet he claims that it intoxicated him and instilled
desire (shawwaqat-hu). . . . The phrase jawharu
l-ashyāʾi is a figure of speech known as tawriya (double-entendre)
by the literary critics, for by mentioning a group of mutakallims—whose
business it is to speak of jawhar (substance) and ʿaraḍ
(attribute/accident)—he evokes for the reader the sense of jawhar
understood by [these] theologians, whilst in fact he means jawhar where
it is the purest, most essential part of something (rawnaqu l-shayʾi
wa-ṣafāʾu-hu).
From
al-Tibrīzī’s remarks it
remains unclear exactly how one should translate the verse;[69]
however, in its adapted role—relocated in
the philosopher’s discourse—it gives an added twist to the figure of speech (tawriya);
for the meaning that Ibn Nāqiyā evokes must be the one that fits the
agenda of falsafa—substance.
The latter is the first of the Aristotelian Categories, and insofar as the
duality of form-matter may have its analogue in substance-attribute, substance
must be deemed analogous to form not matter. If wine is, effectively, the form
of the body, it is implicitly (then expressly in the text) the substance instantiated
through the mixing of body and soul.[70]
In all, [105] Abū Tammām’s verse provides a well-judged and
very wry quotation; it both manipulates and is manipulated by its prose
context.
Ibn
Nāqiyā’s adduction
of poetry lends a chiastic structure to the narrative:
the philosopher cites a verse which evokes kalām (in the person of Jahm b. Ṣafwān);
contrariwise, the mutakallim cites a verse which evokes philosophy (in
the phrase qul li-man yaddaʿī
fī l-ʿilmi
falsafatan). The theologian’s recourse to
poetry thus establishes the symmetry of the two halves of the narrative, and
confirms the very nature of the players’ roles in this piece (the mutakallim pitted against the faylasūf).
(b) Materialism
and the Immortality of the Soul.
For those familiar with the falsafa-kalām antagonism
in the eleventh century the two verses attributed to Abū Nuwās voice
the received view of an essentially materialist Greek philosophy. “Al-qawl bi-l-dahr” is ascribed to the falāsifa by al-Ghazālī; his view is well summarised—for example’s sake—in a brief passage of the Tahāfut al-falāsifa (which is itself
quoted in Ibn Rushd’s counterpoint
text, the Tahāfut al-tahāfut) that bears the title:[71] fī
bayāni ʿajzi-him ʿan iqāmati l-dalīli ʿalā anna li-l-ʿālami ṣāniʿan wa-ʿillatan wa-anna l-qawla bi-l-dahri lāzimun
la-hum.
But in setting out or tapping into this received view Ibn
Nāqiyā has teased his audience; for the issue stems
essentially from the debate about the immortality of the soul. Indeed, it is
through his treatment (or evocation) of this subject that the author paved the
way for the rhetorical crescendo in his impish metaphysical tract. The
immortality of the soul was one of three important issues in the kalām-falsafa
controversy,[72] and it
is the key issue here. In his earlier statements Ibn Nāqiyā
sets out the Aristotelian view—one which is abrogated not through careless self-contradiction
but due to the heterodox momentum in his dialogue. We sense here the well-conceived literary blue-print and
design of the author’s maqāma.
As we can
read in the EI2: “The
Aristotelian analysis of the human soul as given
in De Anima, and handed on by Alexander of Aphrodisias and
Porphyry, had been adopted with little modification by the Muslim philosophers,
such as al-Kindī, al-Fārābī . . . , and Miskawayh.”[73] Jonathan Barnes [106] provides a
clear summary of this Aristotelian view:[74]
That the
soul—or certain parts of it, if it is divisible into parts—is not separable from the body is not unclear. Fulfilments cannot
exist apart from the things that are fulfilled. Souls are fulfilments of
bodies. Hence souls cannot exist apart from bodies, any more than skills can
exist apart from skilled men. Plato had held that souls pre-existed the birth
and survived the death of those bodies they animated. Aristotle thought that
that was impossible. A soul is simply not the sort of thing that could
survive.[75]
How could my skills, my temper or my character survive me? Aristotle’s general
view of the nature of souls is elaborated in his detailed accounts of the
different life-functions: nutrition, reproduction, perception, movement,
thought.
The latter
are the “faculties” of the soul and are the same as those set out in
al-Fārābī’s outline of
the Perfect State;[76]
they are evoked—in a much [107] reduced and almost unrecognisable form—when Ibn Nāqiyā speaks of al-nafs al-nāmiya, al-nafs
al-mumayyiza and al-nafs al-mutaḥarrika.
There is a
faint echo of a Platonic notion in Ibn Nāqiyā’s phrase lammā lam yakun li-l-insāni an yabqā bi-shakhṣi-hi
ishtāqa ilā an yabqā bi-ṣūrati-hi. Barnes’ explanation of an aspect of Platonic thought makes
this clear: “Plato’s ontology was contained in his theory of Ideas or
Forms. According to that theory, the ultimate realities—the things on which the reality of everything else is dependent—are abstract universals. It is not individual men
and individual horses . . . but the abstract forms of Man or manhood
or of Horse or horseness which constitute the basic furniture of the real
world.” However, the nuances of the soul, which make
possible a vision of both immutable death and resurrection (of some kind), are
elements of an essentially and consciously distinct Aristotelian system.[77]
The Individuality of the Soul
The basic
Aristotelian view is that the “immaterial
nature of souls means that they cannot be individual at all”; the problem rears its head in Averro¦es’ commentaries:[78]
“As an Aristotelian he would regard the possibility
of personal immortality as being a difficult
notion to comprehend. Matter, the principle of individuation, is
precisely the substance which is corruptible and perishes when we
die. . . .” Immortality
is a collective phenomenon (this is [108] not expressed
in Ibn Nāqiyā’s Arabic
phrase ishtāqa an yabqā bi-ṣūrati-hi, but it is
implied in its protasis lammā lam yakun li-l-insāni an yabqā
bi-shakhṣihi):[79]
“For Averro¦es every form in matter is material, and
so an immortal soul cannot possibly be in the body, with the implication that
there is no sense in talking about personal immortality.”[80] The
materialist fatalism which concludes the philosopher’s apparently—and
deliberately challenging—atheistic
discourse (one which in fact contradicts his earlier assurance that one of the
two “natures” of the soul
transcends “coming to be” and “perishing” [mustaʿliyatun ʿalā l-kawni wa-l-fasād]) is simply
a rhetorical allusion to this philosophical conundrum—one which was certainly misunderstood and disliked by orthodox
theologians (as indeed it posed problems for Christian scholastics in the
Middle Ages). The latter could not brook the shades of distinction with regard
to resurrection and immortality imposed by a composite psychology.[81]
The quotation of Abū Nuwās to articulate
these blasphemous notions shows no desire on the part of the author to hush up the problems posed; rather he has
tarried in an opaque ontology, allowing these notions to emerge by
increments of association; these are exploited—not felt as embarrassing—and in the
crescendo towards a blasphemy which this half of the maqāma
displays we must sense, in effect, a well-chiselled
rhetorical and literary artifice.
[109] The
Exegetical Counter-Argument
The
theologian, shocked by the materialist’s trenchant
views, begins his own discourse with some conspicuous lexical echoes: fasād,
which is used in the philosophical sense in
the phrase al-kawn wa-l-fasād, is countered by the mutakallim’s straightforwardly homiletic
notion of fasād al-iʿtiqādi
wa-l-ilḥād (in another
instance of purely lexical echoes, the faylasūf’s muʿarraḍatu l-ajzāʾ is resumed in the phrase: tafarruq al-ajzāʾ fī l-tharā). More
significant is the irony of the mutakallim’s aside to the audience: wa-qadi stawlat min-hu l-khamru ʿalā l-ʿaql. For if in the philosopher’s utterances wine has been rendered an analogue of “form” and “soul” (more
specifically that part of the soul that is immortal, or transcends “corruption”), then it
has been given a role analogous with reason (which is that faculty of the soul
that is immortal): wine is reason, effectively. The mutakallim
ignores the implicit irony and contradiction of his more mundane accusation.
Beyond these
exiguous, and at most only mildly rhetorical echoes, the two halves of the
narrative exhibit an antithetical symmetry. The weight of the mutakallim’s riposte lies in the force of Koranic quotation.
Indeed, the first verse to be quoted is aptly chosen. The theologian makes the
mistake of quoting 34:39, which incites the drunkard’s quasi-demonstrative refutation of the Koranic “proposition.” In this
dangerous posture he both enacts and utters blasphemy; what is essential, if
there is rhetorical design in all this, is that he has drawn the theologian off
course, for this exchange does nothing to refute the materialist notions that
have triggered the theologian’s defence. In
most instances I have already suggested that the quotation of an āya
may evoke its immediate scriptural context (see the footnotes to the individual
āyas in the translation). That the author manipulates these
evocations in any particular way can only be
tentatively put forward. Two separate Koranic passages require some
analysis:
(i) The
theologian quotes first of all 36/Yā Sīn:33–39 (the actual text of verses 34 to 38 and then 40 is adduced only in
the subsequent exchange); the first of these āyas (33) is aptly
chosen: it reminds the materialist that God revives the dead land; that is: He
gives life to inanimate physical matter. Āyas 34 to 36 expand on
the subject of 33 and are not irrelevant to the thrust of the theologian’s pious argument. However, there may be a very
oblique irony in 34 (a glimpse of the author lurking): jaʿalnā fī-hā [al-arḍ]
jannātin min nakhīlin wa-aʿnābin wa-fajjarnā fī-hā mina l-ʿuyūn (And We made therein gardens of palms and vines,
and therein We caused fountains to gush forth);
for it is a Koranic verse similar to this that provides an early and
positive evocation of wine (16:67): wa-min thamarāti l-nakhīli
wa-l-aʿnābi [110] tattakhidhūna
min-hu sukran wa-rizqan ḥasanan in fī dhālika la-āyatun
li-qawmin yaʿqilūna (And [We
give you] the fruits of the palms and the vines from which you obtain an
intoxicant as well as wholesome food; surely in this is a sign for people
who understand). Aʿnāb occurs only
nine times in this formulaic manner, thus verse 16:67 would not be far from the
mind.
Sūra 36 is well chosen on an even broader level: verses
33 to 83 are dominated by the subject of eschatology and resurrection.
Further, the early part of the Sūra (āya 12) contains the
divine statement: innā naḥnu nuḥyī l-mawtā.
However we shall not labour this point since these notions are, of course,
pervasive in the Koran.
Āyas 36–40 which treat the separation of Night and Day are
irrelevant to the refutation of the dahrī stance and thus must be
understood to exercise the two interlocutors disproportionately. The point can
be illustrated through analysis of another relevant cluster of verses:
(ii) Koran
25:45 (the last of the āyas quoted in the narrative) is set into a
Sūra that gives warning to those who have rejected the signs of God;
important here is the recurrence of the theme of night and day; further, the
paired themes again evoke their virtual
metonyms, the sun and the moon; also mentioned is the separation of the
two seas: the sweet and the bitter. I give below a substantial passage (with
ellipses) from Arberry’s translation
before commenting on its possible relevance
to Ibn Nāqiyā’s narrative (Koran 25:45–62):
Hast thou not regarded thy Lord, how He has
stretched out
the shadow? Had He willed,
He would have made it still.
Then we appointed the sun, to be a guide to it;
. . .
It is He who appointed the night for you to be a garment
and sleep for a rest, and day
He appointed for a rising . . . and We
sent down from Heaven pure water
so that We might revive a dead land.
. . .
And it is He who let forth the two seas, this one
sweet,
grateful to taste, and this
salt, bitter to the tongue,
and He set between them a barrier, and a ban
forbidden. . . .
Blessed be He
who has set in heaven constellations, and has set
among them a lamp, and
an illuminating moon.
And it is He who made the night and day a
succession.
Treatment of
the Resurrection together with the less common notion of [111] the
separation (or unmixed and unmixable state) of two liquid bodies (in this case
two seas) provides a no more than faint echo of aspects of the philosopher’s ramblings. It would be rash to force this tentative interpretation beyond this
point. Furthermore, even if we are to accept that there may be authorial
intent behind these echoes they do not support the materialist’s argument (other than to suggest that both men are
ultimately arguing with an equal measure of incoherence).
The
rhetorical and literary fabric of this piece is one based on contrast and
antithesis. This feature encompasses the two parts of the dialogue; it is also
enhanced on a “micro”-level by elements of the imagery within each half:
for the extended deliberations that unfold
from the Koranic verses about Night and Day / Sun and Moon[82]
together with the discussions of Water and Wine, and Body and Soul, help to
sustain and modulate the dichotomy so essential to the narrative. Some manner
of “fractal” structure
operates here, such that a moral anarchy cannot be seen to undermine fully the
aesthetics of literary construction. This maqāma must also be
viewed essentially as containing a narrative that unfolds: the whole is
generated by a series of associations and only locally logical sequiturs:
in a sense the entire dialogue has its seeds in the very first question.
Falsafa was
quintessentially elitist. The irony, given that the falāsifa were
condemned for denying the resurrection of the body (and hence immortality), is
that in the formulations of some it was only through philosophy that the soul
could achieve its final salvation. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī’s description of the philosophy of Muḥammad
b. Zakariyyā al-Rāzī illustrates the point well:[83]
“L’homme ne peut atteindre
le monde véritable que par la philosophie. . . . Les âmes restent dans ce monde jusqu’à ce qu’elles soient éveillées par la
philosophie au mystère et dirigées vers
le monde véritable.”[84] Such a view would obviously not have been shared by many outside this
circumscribed discipline. Few who were not themselves philosophers or theologians can have delved into the intricate
intellectual system of falsafa.
For the orthodox masses, this maqāma would have made some sense: it
would have been read (or heard) as an attack on philosophy [112] more than on kalām.[85]
Yet an engaged analysis of falsafa
forces one to reserve judgment, for there is greater rhetorical force
and coherence in the dialogue of the philosopher than there is in the unfocused
exegesis of the mutakallim.[86]
Or perhaps the whole is a deliberate evocation of Tahāfut. As Umberto Eco has written: “In order to talk nonsensical, you even become Aristotelian.”[87]
Postscript
The material
in this essay was presented at the Columbia Seminar in Arabic Studies in April
1999. Discussion was animated and some disagreements with the above analysis
should be noted here. It was noticed that the Koranic verses quoted by the mutakallim
in fact make perfect sense astronomically: the verses are consistent with the
astronomical phenomena discussed in the [113] text. It was suggested,
therefore, that the narrator/mutakallim understands what is going on and
feels obliged to explain this to the drunken and would-be philosopher who has
adopted an empty philosophical posture. Seen in this light, the contrast
between the two men is the following: the narrator gives a very clear
explanation of the Koranic celestial spheres and their behaviour, while the
philosopher for his part has failed to pursue coherently the Aristotelian
subjects he has brought up in conversation. This may be true; it is also
perhaps missing the point, since the philosopher may simply be teasing the
theologian, moving from problematic topic to problematic topic. We must own, of
course, that he does not present a cohesive argument, but he does proceed by a
series of associative steps to make a gallingly blasphemous and fatalist/dahrī
statement. And as a drunkard, he is perhaps beyond caring.
* I
am grateful to Dr Fritz Zimmermann for insights into kalām and falsafa
without which this paper would not cohere at all.
[1] Fictional would be too loaded a term to use here; however,
it is the conscious gloss of fiction which
seems to set the maqāma apart
from the literary stock of which it is constituted. See Rina Drory, “Three
Attempts to Legitimize Fiction in Classical Arabic Literature,”
[2] Consult
the following works: Abdelfattah Kilito, Les Séances (Paris, 1983); id.,
L’Auteur et ses doubles (Paris, 1985); Daniel Beaumont, “The Trickster
and Rhetoric in the Maqāmāt,” Edebiyât 5, no. 1 (1994);
J. T. Monroe, The Art of Badīʿ az-Zamān
al-Hamadhānī as Picaresque Narrative (Beirut, 1983); Julia
Ashtiany Bray, “Isnāds and Models of Heroes,” Arabic and Middle
Eastern Literatures 1, no. 1 (1998); Philip F. Kennedy, “Some Demon Muse:
Structure and Allusion in al-Hamadhānī’s
Maqāma Iblīsiyya,” Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures, 2,
no. 1 (1999).
[3] To
evoke Harold Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence is not entirely
inappropriate.
[4] See
Ismāʿīl El-Outmani’s “La Maqāma en al-Andalus” in La
Sociedad Andalusí y sus Tradiciones Literarias (special issue of Foro
Hispánico),
ed. Otto Zwartjes (Amsterdam, Atlanta, 1994).
[5] For
a handy recent definition of the genre and its characteristics see Robert Irwin’s
review of Shirley Guthrie’s Arab Social Life in the Middle Ages: An
Illustrated Study (
[6] The
fault here lies not with al-Ḥarīrī but scholars who are duped
by the overt form into ignoring his engaging narrative techniques.
[7] There
are now two editions of Ibn Nāqiyā’s ten extant maqāmāt:
1) Oskar Rescher’s Beiträge zur Maqamen-Literatur (
[8] See Stefan Wild’s “Die zehnte Maqāma des Ibn Nāqiyā: eine Burleske aus
Baghdad,” in Festschrift Ewald Wagner zum 65. Geburtstag, Band 2: Studien zur
Arabischen Dichtung, ed. W. Heinrichs and G. Schoeler (Beirut, 1994), pp.
427–38. See esp. p. 432,
where Wild writes: “Dabei gehört das Thema teilweise zum alten Adab-Inventar.”
[9] “Die zehnte
Maqāma des Ibn Nāqiyā” together
with Wild’s earlier review of Ḥasan ʿAbbās’s edition of
these maqāmāt (Journal of Arabic Literature 23 [1992]:
76–78) provides the best existing introduction and analysis of Ibn
Nāqiyā’s work.
[10] See
“Ibn Nāḳiyā” by J.-C. Vadet. The narratives described in this
paragraph are not those of Ibn Nāqiyā, a fact which is not made
entirely clear.
[11] See Régis Blachère and Pierre
Masnou, Choix de maqāmāt, traduites de l’arabe avec une étude sur le genre (Paris,
1957). They make the following succinct comment about Ibn Nāqiyā (pp.
39–40): “Il est permis de croire que les continuateurs de
Hamadhānī ont suivi leur modèle jusque dans la diversité du conte et
des procédés de narration. Les Séances dues à la plume du poète-epistolier de
Bagdad Ibn Nāqiyā (mort en 485/1092) apportent sur ce point un
témoignage décisif: chez cet auteur la pluralité des «récitants» et des héros [sic],
considérée comme une liberté dans l’imitation, pourrait fort bien n’être, en dernière analyse, qu’une marque de respect vis-à-vis du modèle. Chez Ibn Nāqiyā d’ailleurs . . . les
rapports du genre nouveau et de l’adab restent très apparents.
. . .”
[12] Les
Séances, pp. 156–69.
[13] Or
the desire to render the author acceptable to a conservative audience.
[14] We
should note that the bi-partite narrative also exists in
al-Hamadhānī; i.e., in the Maqāma of Ḥulwān,
the Khamriyya, the Mawṣiliyya and, of course, the more
problematic Asadiyya.
[15] This
is a reference to the entry on Ibn Nāqiyā in Ibn Khallikān’s Wafayāt
al-aʿyān, which contains the following statement (ed. Iḥsān
ʿAbbās [
[16] See
p. 35: yuqālu inna bna nāqiyā abāha l-khamra wa-ankara
l-baʿtha fī hādhihi l-maqāmati; inna-hu tahāmulun wa-ẓulmun
kabīrun li-bni nāqiyā lladhī addā ilay-nā
maqāmatan fī-hā l-kathīru mina l-difāʿi ʿani
l-dīni wa-ʿan āyi l-kitābi l-ʿazīzi
wa-wājaha fī-hā man yunkirūna l-baʿtha fī
basāṭatin wa-iqnāʿin. . . .
[17] I
have in the main translated the Arabic text of Ḥasan ʿAbbās’s
edition (op. cit., pp. 93–98).
[18] The
MS has al-dīnāra, which does not appear in this exact form in
Yāqūt’s Muʿjam al-buldān. It may, however, be a
reference to the Sikkatu l-Dīnār in
[19] Idhā
bi-rajulin (or any similar formulation) must be viewed as a topos of
encounter anecdotes.
[20] This
would appear to be another topos of narratives of encounter.
[21] ʿAbbās
reads miqbās for miqyās; the latter, if correct, would
perhaps mean “he scooped up for me a whole measure (i.e., a large measure) of
wine”: lit., the cup is so large as to be a measuring cup.
[22] This
is the first hemistich of a verse which begins fa-qultu qtulū-hā ʿan-kum
bi-mizāji-hā.
[23] Ironically
this can also have the meaning of “beware!”
[24] A
gloss on the significance of this word is desirable here. F. E. Peters
observes in Aristotle and the Arabs: The Aristotelian Tradition in Islam
(p. 151): “The third source of knowledge, speculation (naẓar or fikr
= dianoia), is the sticking point of the entire falsafa–kalām
controversy. Is the reasoning process a source of new and necessary knowledge?
The falāsifa, grounded in the Aristotelian doctrine of syllogistic ananke,
maintained that it was; the mutakallimūn, starting from an
affirmation of divine omnipotence, denied the causal principle implicit in naẓar
and hence the autonomy of the naẓar.” It is clearly a very loaded
term; in some measure—subliminally—it provokes
the controversy that ensues. For naẓar in the system of the
arch-faylasūf Ibn Rushd, see EI2 (R. Arnaldez, p.
912): “The Law establishes the legitimacy of rational speculation, whose method
reaches perfection with demonstrative syllogism (burhān). . . . It is contrary to the Law to
forbid such an examination, provided that the person carrying it out possesses dhakāʾ
al-fiṭra and al-ʿadāla al-sharʿiyya accompanied
by ethical virtue, that is, a religious and moral qualification defined by the
Law.”
There is speculation in this maqāma. There
is also, in the second half, taʾwīl; it is clearly an
exegetical posture that the mutakallim adopts with respect to the
Koranic verses that are cited. In this regard we should note the following
remark made by Arnaldez (in EI2) about Ibn Rushd (p. 912): “He
attacks the takfīr that al-Ghazālī launched against the falāsifa.
Then he reverses the positions and shows that it is often the mutakallimūn—the
theologians—who make undue use of taʾwīl.”
[25] It
does not require one to be a theologian to know this: there is perhaps some
irony here. In a sense only the contrary would be worthy of comment: it would
require the sophistry of a religious scholar to find an excuse for wine.
[26] In
the context of Aristotelian ontology this phrase is highly tautologous: the De
generatione et corruptione seeks to analyse and explain change; of course,
interest in the latter has its roots in—indeed is one of the major concerns of—pre-Socratic
naturalist philosophy.
[27] The
word ṭabīʿa is used here loosely, that is, it does not
appear to correspond exactly or specifically to any Greek philosophical term;
the sense which the author has given to the term is clear only after the brief
but very technical discussion of the soul. With the sense of “that which
exists,” or “the natural world,” ṭabīʿa is used
frequently in kalām. See Marie Bernand’s “La critique de la notion de nature (ṭabʿ) par le
Kalām,” Studia Islamica 51 (1980): 59–109.
[28] This
probably has the sense of “faculties,” given the nature of the discussion that
follows. It appears not to be a reference to juzʾ, which is used in
a technical sense in both falsafa and kalām to mean “atom.”
[29] In
the light of the author’s discussion of two natures—i.e., the suggestion that
the soul’s nature is essentially dichotomous—the fact that three souls are
mentioned here is at a first reading confusing. What the author is apparently
alluding to, however, are the faculties of the soul as set out in some detail
in Aristotle’s De anima and known to the falāsifa. These,
then, are the faculties of the soul that function essentially in conjunction
with the body and that are, therefore, aspects of the ṭabīʿa
(in the terminology of this particular text) that are subject to “corruption”
or extinction when the living person dies.
[30] This
corresponds exactly to the Aristotelian view set out in the De anima: “Soul
and body are aspects of a single substance, standing to one another in the
relation of form to matter.” Cited in D. J. Allan, The Philosophy
of Aristotle (
[31] This element of Aristotelian psychology is
essentially repeating the idea expressed with less rigour in the
preceding phrase, yantaqilu bi-l-nafsi l-mutaharrika; this point is not
explicitly set out but it is the only obvious way to make sense of the
inconsistencies in the text; it is, in fact, not the system of thought that is
loose here—Aristotle is fairly well represented in and by this text—but the
terminology where the author glosses common philosophical notions in his own
words. In any case, this sort of loose but intelligible unfolding would be
typical of oral disputation and demonstration.
[32] Lit.
“the origin of every root”; this whole phrase perhaps expresses the same notion
as the Greek ἀρχή;
I have been unable to find this terminology used in Arabic in a technical sense
elsewhere; however, the notions alluded to here are reminiscent of aspects of
Aristotle’s discussion in De anima, esp. the following phrase ἔστι δὲ ἡ ψυχὴ τοῦ ζώντος σώματος αἰτία καὶ ἀρχή (“The
soul is the cause and first principal of the living body”). Aristotle, De anima (The Loeb
Classical Library), trans. W. S. Hett, Cambridge Mass. (1986), pp. 86–87. We
should note, of course, that the usual rendering of αἰτία in Arabic is
ʿilla.
[33] The
sinister sense of waswasa is, of course, Koranic and unequivocal.
[34] A
gloss drawn from Aristotle’s Psychology explains what appears to be referred to
here (even though the discussion is, at this stage, moving towards treatment of
the Categories); see, for example, D. J. Allan, The Philosophy of
Aristotle, p. 76 (from a chapter on Soul and Mind): “The general name for
the motive force to which animals are subject is desire (orexis), and
this presents itself in three forms—wish, or desire [i.e., shawq] for
something conceived as good, anger, and desire for pleasure.”
[35] The discussion at this point resumes treatment of
the faculties of the soul already outlined above, for the appetitive
faculty (the notion clearly behind use of the word shawq as it occurs
here) is an aspect essential to the functioning of a living organism; it is an
aspect of the soul shared by all animals but which distinguishes the latter
from plants (which live only in accordance with the function of the vegetative
faculty, the nafs nabātiyya).
[36] Rescher appears not to have
noticed an improper word division (op. cit., p. 140), since in his printed edition al-qāṭā
is written at the end of one line whilst
ghūriyāsiyyah begins the next line. He certainly does not help his reader to make sense of an unfamiliar term—one
which was kindly established for me by Dr Fritz Zimmermann. Oddly, ʿAbbās
gives, in his far better critical edition, al-fāṭāghūriyāsiyyatu—qāf
is wrongly replaced by fāʾ. Since
he does not provide an explanatory note to make sense of the resulting term, it
is impossible to determine whether this is a simple misprint, or an attempt to
produce a form that approximates to the name Pythagoras (?).
[37] Here
ʿAbbās emends an uncertain phrase in the MS (and thus also in Rescher’s
edition) to wa-khatarat bayna l-dhuʾābati wa-l-naʿli,
that is (?), “It [scil. The wine] befuddled (him) from top to toe.”
[38] For
this phrase Rescher has the Arabic am; ʿAbbās emends this to a-mā;
both, in my view, make little sense, thus my tentative reading: a-min ajli.
One cannot be certain about this reading: Rescher’s edition has a shadda over
the jīm, hence the whole phrase might be am ujjila l-maṣīru
ilā l-bilā (Has our destiny in death and destruction been
postponed?).
[39] This observation does not at face value correspond
to plant science—fungus has no part to play in the sprouting of a seed
except in rare cases (i.e., in the case of Orchids); however, seeds which have
particularly thick shells require some help in the form of naturally occurring
abrasion (which may include the effect of fungus) in order to sprout. In any
case, the image evoked is simply that the seed must effectively be destroyed or
decomposed in order for it to produce a seedling.
[40] The reappearance of the term fasād is arresting: is the mutakallim only clumsily aping the jargon and
concepts of the faylasūf? Or
is this a deliberate, well-conceived and mildly wounding squib?
[41] There may be a measure of deliberate bathos here in
the awkward use of infiʿāl.
[42] Tanāwush
is glossed by the exegetes in two different ways (see Suyūī, al-Durr
al-manthūr (Beirut, 1990) 5:454): it means either “to reach (easily)” (tanāwul) or “to return" (radd),
thus the sense given is either: “How can those who have disbelieved
attain/reach salvation?” or “How can they return to life or faith once they are
in a distant place after death?” The verse (certainly in the context of this
disputation) must be understood with an eye to the
verse which follows (34:53): “Yet before [this]
they had refused to believe in Him and spurned notions of the Afterlife from a distant place (wa-qad kafarū bi-hi min qablu wa-yaqdhifūna bi-l-ghaybi min makānin baʿīdin)”:
Suyūṭī, loc. cit., >
Qatāda (R): inna-hum kānū fī l-dunyā
yukadhdhibūna bi-l-ākhirati wa-yaqūlūna lā baʿtha
wa-lā jannata wa-lā nāra. The relevance of the scriptural
context of 34:52 to the dispute between the faylasūf and the mutakallim
is clear; it is not clear whether or not the mutakallim intended this
allusion; however, if he did not, then Ibn Nāqiyā certainly
did—as evinced by the juxtaposed hemistich of Abū Nuwās’s famous Hamziyya
(“Daʿ ʿan-ka lawmī”): ḥafiẓta shayʾan
wa-ghābat ʿan-ka ashyāʾū; this is, of course, the
second hemistich of a verse beginning fa-qul li-man yaddaʿī
fī l-ʿilmi falsafatan (see the commentary below).
[43] The
double irony of this verse—the exact value of which is impossible to establish—is
that it is culled from one of the most eloquent defences of wine in Arabic
literature (it is certainly the most celebrated poem with this rhetorical
design); further, there is irony in the pleasing symmetry of the unfolding
dispute: the atheistic couplet of Abū Nuwās incites the well-judged
and manipulated quotation of a verse by the same poet; also ironic, though
perhaps only to the modern—essentially retrospective—reader is the fact that
Ibrāhīm al-Naẓẓām (Abū Nuwās’s original
interlocutor), though accused of—at the very least associated with—falsafa
in the first hemistich, was a Muʿtazilite mutakallim. This brings
home to us the fact that by the eleventh century C.E. falsafa and kalām
had come to exist on either side of a largely antagonistic and polemical
divide; this is part of the very relevant socio-historical background of the maqāma
(see below).
[44] In
another sphere, this exegesis prefigures the citation of Koran 36:40 three
lines further on.
[45] The phrase here is
awkwardly tautologous—thus my ellipsis; the
sense conveyed is that the two never
cease from alternating or acting by turns: they are consistently at one
remove from each other; as the Koran states: wa-kullun fī falakin yasbaḥūna
(this particular element of 36:40 is only evoked by the discussion).
[46] That
is, the Koranic wa-lā l-laylu sābiqu l-nahār reiterates
the sense of the preceding phrase, wa-lā l-shamsu yanbaghī
la-hā an tudrika l-qamar. The mutakallim explains here the
metonymic or synecdochic relationship between the two phrases; and in the
following comment he hints at the cultural provenance of this figure of speech.
The dialogue as a whole is developed by association.
[47] This
is Koran 41:42 and evokes āyas 40–41: “Those who blaspheme Our
signs are not hidden from Us. What, is he who shall be cast into the Fire
better, or he who comes on the Day of Resurrection in security? . . .”
Thus the argument of the mutakallim works subliminally; indeed, in some
respects, it is more coherent on the subliminal level than on the surface level
of meaning; for the discussion about the sun and moon does not coagulate in any
particular way to support the mutakallim’s view (i.e., it does not refute
the philosopher’s professed materialism), though it does, as we shall observe,
echo quite conversely and uncannily the Aristotelian mutterings of the faylasūf
to enhance the overall symmetry of the text.
[48] That
is, night and day. N.B. The Koran in 36:37 states “And
a sign for them is the night; We strip it of the day and lo, they are in
darkness,” i.e., the one was separated from the other.
[49] The argumentation in this final section is very
loose, a point which can be appreciated by considering the weak
contextual link between wa-staḥaqqa l-nahāru l-sabqa li-anna
l-dalīlu min-hu and thumma jaʿalnā l-shamsa ʿalay-hi
dalīlan.
[50] The
ungainliness of rounding off the narrative in this way is mitigated by a
literary allusion: ʿAbbās has found a possible source for the image
produced here in three lines from the Muḥāḍarāt
al-udabāʾ (see p. 98, n. 3).
[51] The tribe of ʿAbd al-Qays are mentioned
because they were notorious for their flatulence.
There are many references; suffice it to mention the idiom in
Maydānī’s Majmaʿ al-amthāl (ed. Naʿīm Ḥusayn
Zarzūr [
[52] By the eleventh century the hostility—notably even
within the Muʿtazilite community—that had developed with regard to falsafa
is perhaps best illustrated by the plight of Abū l-Ḥusayn al-Baṣrī
(d. 1044); indeed it may not be absurd to suggest that this satire is a
conscious refraction of the controversy in which Abū l-Ḥusayn was
involved. See Wilferd Madelung’s article in EI2 (Supplement 1–2,
p. 25): “In his doctrine, Abū l-Ḥusayn
al-Baṣrī was deeply influenced by
the concepts of the philosophers and
diverged from the Bahāshima, the school of Abū Hāshim
al-Djubbāʾī represented by his teacher ʿAbd
al-Djabbār. He was therefore shunned by the Bahāshima, who accused
him of refuting his Muʿtazilī shaykhs in an unfair and injurious manner. This charge is
repeated by al-Shahrastānī, who maintains that he was really a
philosopher in his views (falsafī al-madhhab), but the Muʿtazilī
mutakallimūn were not aware of this fact. Ibn al-Ḳifṭī,
too, suggests that he concealed his philosophical views under the forms of
expression of the kalām theologians in order to guard himself from
his contemporaries.”
Of course, the major players in the falsafa-kalām
controversy (as it was played out between the tenth and twelfth centuries) are
al-Ghazālī (d. 1111), who attacked the views of Ibn Sīnā
and other philosophers, and Ibn Rushd (d. 1198), who responded to
al-Ghazālī’s Tahāfut al-falāsifa with his equally
strident Tahāfut al-tahāfut. The dominant perception that the falāsifa
necessarily espoused a rejection of the soul’s
immortality is the aspect of this controversy relevant to Ibn
Nāqiyā’s maqāma and is discussed below.
F. E. Peters provides a useful summary of the
antagonism (in Aristotle and the Arabs, p. 189–90): “Al-Ghazālī
realised that kalām is in its essence philosophical and differs
from falsafa only in that it will not blindly follow reason into areas
where revelation and tradition have spoken. And this is his quarrel with the falāsifa:
he wants these to retreat from the infidel theses: 1) there is no resurrection
of the body; 2) God knows the universals but not the singulars; and 3) the
universe is eternal a parte ante and a parte post. In all else the falāsifa
are no worse than the Muʿtazilites: temerarious innovators but
still orthodox.”
[53] For example, Stefan Wild, in his
engaging and informative essay on Ibn Nāqiyā—“Die zehnte Maqame des Ibn
Nāqiyā”—glosses this piece (p. 433): “Die Parodie auf die dialektischen Theologen (mutakallimūn)
und ihre gelehrten Dispute und haarspalterischen Koranauslegungen in der
sechsten Maqame ist gespickt mit Koranversen.” One does not get the sense here of the maqāma’s
dichotomy, falsafa against kalām; both halves of the
narrative would appear to be understood as part of the theologian’s gelehrte
Dispute. I would argue that the same
lack of distinction obtains in the following observation (ibid., p. 437): “In der Sechsten Maqame spielt al-Yaškurī einen dialektischen Theologen (mutakallim),
der so lange weintrinkend über Substanz and Akzidens
von Wein und Wasser philosophiert, bis er seinen Gesprächspartner, einen
echten mutakallim, an die Wand argumentiert hat.”
[54] For
a history of this text in the Arab tradition see F. E. Peters, Aristoteles
Arabus (Leiden, 1968), pp. 37–38, esp. p. 37: “The philosopher and author
of a doxography [Kitāb al-ārāʾ wa al-diyānāt],
al-Ḥasan ibn Mūsā al-Nawbakhtī (fl. ca. A.D. 913),
made an abridgment of the De generatione and the Muʿtazilite
Abū Hāshim al-Jubbāʾī (m. A.D. 933) wrote an
attack upon it. A commentary by al-Fārābī (m. A.D. 950)
is known only from its citation by Ibn Rushd, but Ibn Sīna’s (m. A.D.
1037) résumé is extant.”
[55] See J. Bencheikh’s “Poésies bachiques d’Abū Nuwās: Thèmes et personnages” in Bulletin d’Etudes Orientales 18 (1963–64); pp.
41–47 are devoted to various aspects of “Le Mélange”: “Rapports de l’eau et du vin,” “Le contact,” “Les effets du mélange,” “Les bulles,” “L’écume,” “L’éclat.” We should
note, therefore, that in the treatment of mixing the philosopher is engaging in
and developing a topos; the question “What happens when you mix water and wine?”
was addressed in a very different and far less dispassionate way by Abū
Nuwās, who produced vivid verses such as
the following: bayna l-mudāmi wa-bayna l-māʾi
shaḥnāʾū / tanqaddu ghayẓan idhā mā massa-hā
l-māʾū.
[56] That
the author could do so in a sustained manner is testimony to the fact that he
was capable of having written a (non-extant) book/maqāla on the “madhhab
al-awāʾil.”
[57] Aristotle’s
De Generatione et corruptione, trans. with notes by C. J. F. Williams (
[58] Ibid.,
p. 35. This is one of two references to the mixing of water and wine in the De
generatione; the other less relevant example is in a section on Growth (p.
18): “The thing added and the thing to which it is added are both larger, just
as when you mix wine with water—each increases in the same way. Is it because
the substance of the one persists but not that of the other, namely the
nourishment? For in the other example too it is the ingredient which prevails
in the mixing which the result is said to be, that is, wine, since the
mixture as a whole does the work of the wine, not that of the water.” The
italicised phrase would suggest that al-Yashkurī was somewhat rash to have
brought up the subject.
[59] This
is perhaps better explained by G. E. R. Lloyd in Aristotle: The Growth and
Structure of His Thought (
[60] Ibid.,
p. 142.
[61] Ibid.,
p. 144.
[62] Mizāj
and imtizāj are also terms used in the Arabic philosophical texts;
see the indexes in Amélie Goichon Lexique de la langue philosophique d’Ibn
Sīnā (Paris, 1939) and Maurice Bouyges (ed.) Averroès: Tahafot al-tahafot (Beirut, 1930).
In passing we should note that Ibn Nāqiyā’s
refutation of the notion (as an explanation of change) of one substance
entering into the other (whereby one substance effectively cancels the other
out) is reminiscent of a Stoic doctrine, krasis, which, in the words of
L. E. Goodman (Avicenna [London, 1994] p. 154) “had allowed one body to
pervade or perfuse another, putting one body in the same as another”. The
similarity between the two doctrines is perhaps only fortuitous.
[63]63 The
transition is deftly effected: wa-bi-l-ikhtilāṭi waqaʿa
l-taghayyuru wa-l-istihālatu wa-lā kawna
wa-lā fasāda illā bi-l-istihālati wa-l-ṭabīʿatu
thnatāni ihdā-humā mustaʿliyatun ʿalā l-kawni
wa-l-fasādi wa-l-ukhrā muʿarraḍatu l-ajzāʾi
li-dhālika wa-l-insānu murakkabun min-humā wa-huwa yahyā
bi-l-nafsi l-nāmiya. There is an associative link between the words
or phrases rendered in Roman type: mixture leads to change, which is an aspect
of “coming to be” and “perishing,” to which Man is subjected; this leads to the
subject of the twin aspects of the soul: that which is perishable and that
which is immortal. Where the author does in fact manipulate the text to “force”
the transition is in the phrase wa-l-ṭabīʿatu thnatān.
For ṭabīʿa does not, strictly, pick up on anything that
precedes it; indeed, it is used somewhat loosely in that it is hard here to
identify it with a technical term in Aristotle’s system.
[64] N.B.
It is with a hemistich of al-Akhṭal that the subject is first introduced.
[65]65 Dīwān
Abī Tammām (bi-sharḥ al-Khaṭīb
al-Tibrīzī), vol. 1 (of 4), ed. Muḥammad ʿAbduh ʿAzzām
(
[66] The
evidence of a negative attitude to wine in Abū Tammām’s poem is even
more pronounced in the following verse (14): wa-ḍaʿīfatun fa-idhā aṣābat furṣatan
/ qatalat ka-dhālika qudratu l-ḍuʿafāʾī (She is weak, and so strikes a fatal blow whenever
the chance presents itself—such is the strength of the weak). That the wine
should “slay” the imbiber is a topos; to depict it as “weak” goes against the
norms of bacchic description. N.B. Abū Tammām’s wine “slays”: Ibn
Nāqiyā has said (borrowing the words of al-Akhṭal) that he has “slain”
the wine.
[67] Dīwān
Abī Tammām, p. 35.
[68] This
sentence evokes for me (by inverse association) the intriguing observation made
by J.-C. Vadet about Ibn Nāqiyā in EI2: “It may be
that in the licence and disorder of Ibn Nākiyā is to be seen the
influence of the malāmatiyya, a sort of Muslim Jansenism which
places no value on deeds and attaches importance only to sincere faith. Thus
Ibn Nāḳiyā’s work would seem to be . . . the
paradoxical expression of a type of doctrine of ‘justification by faith.’”
[69] Al-Marzūqī’s commentary is possibly the
one which best suits the verse as a commentary of the passage which
precedes it in the maqāma (Dīwān Abī Tammām,
p. 35): kāna jahmu bnu ṣafwāna yamtaniʿu min an nusammiya llāha taʿālā shayʾan
wa-yaʿtaqidu anna hādhihi l-lafẓata inna-mā tuṭlaqu ʿalā
l-muḥdathāti: al-jawāhiri wa-l-aʿrāḍi
fa-yaqūlu raqqat hādhihi l-khamratu ḥattā kādat
takhruju min an takūna ʿaraḍan wa-jawharan wa-an tusammā
shayʾan illā anna-hā li-fakhāmati shaʾni-hā
luqqibat jawhara l-ashyāʾi.
[70] The
awkward relationship between Substance and Form-Matter (as it is arguably
hinted at in the text of the maqāma) is explained in the following
passage by Jonathan Barnes (p. 48): “Aristotle observes that substances—material
bodies—are in a sense composite. A house, for example, consists of
bricks and timbers arranged in a certain structure; a statue consists of marble
or bronze carved or cast into a certain
shape; an animal consists of tissues (flesh, blood and the rest) organised on certain
principles. All substances thus consist of two ‘parts’, stuff and structure,
which Aristotle habitually calls ‘matter’ and ‘form’. Matter and form are not
physical components of substances: you cannot cut up a bronze statue into two
separate bits, its bronze and its shape. Rather, matter and form are logical
parts of substances: an account of what substances are requires mention of both
their stuff and their structure.”
Whether substance could be associated in particular
with either matter or form was addressed by Aristotle himself. See D. J. Allan
(op. cit., p. 110): “There are, [Aristotle] says, good grounds for treating the
matter of a thing as the substantial element within it; yet, if we mean by
substance something definite, the notions of matter and substance are opposed.
He nowhere properly explains this paradox, but seems to hold that it is only
when invested with some degree of form that matter begins to appear
substantial.” As G. E. R. Lloyd (see Aristotle: the Growth and Structure of
His Thought [Cambridge, 1968]) has implied, substance (Greek ousia)
is hopelessly ambivalent; however (p. 131): “The root idea of substance is ‘the
what it is to be’ or the form.”
The close association between
soul and substance—in some instances—is illustrated by Avicenna (I quote
from Amélie Goichon, Lexique de la langue philosophique d’Ibn
Sīnā (Paris, 1938), p. 398: “La définition de l’âme au second sens est: une
substance (jawhar) non corporelle qui est perfection d’un corps qu’elle meut à son choix d’après un principe rationel, c’est-à-dire intellectuel.”
Ibn Nāqiyā’s treatment of the soul may
well be deliberately chiastic in the arrangement of material. This influences
the meaning to be inferred from jawhar and the implicitly ethereal value
given to wine: the first type of soul mentioned is that aspect (or “nature”) of
it which transcends kawn and fasād; the faculties of the
soul are then described in relative detail and the discussion is rounded off with
a clear suggestion that wine is superior to these faculties (for whilst the
soul imparts motion to the body, wine imparts motion to the soul—this is
reminiscent of the hierarchy of the faculties in al-Fārābī’s Perfect
State; see pp. 106-107 below and n. 76); there is a sense of transcendence
re-emerging here and this leads to the verse that gives wine the equivalence of
jawhar; we have thus the following schema: transcendent soul →
bodily soul → bodily wine → transcendent wine. This is admittedly all very
fanciful; however, we should pursue the notion to its logical conclusion
and therefore make a note, in this context, of the most ethereal possible
aspect of substance in the Aristotelian system as understood by the Arabs: (see Djawhar in EI2, 2:
493) “It is one of the characteristics of
Aristotle’s system that reality is regarded as having
degrees . . . ; first there is the sublunar world of
transitory things, then beyond it is the
heavenly eternal world of the incorruptible in which there is this mysterious substance, the active intellect, . . . al-ʿakl al-faʿʿāl, ungenerated and immortal, the immaterial form which in combination with the
passive reason activates the thoughts
in human beings. Still higher are the intellects, pure immaterial forms or
substances, which are the movers of the celestial spheres, and at the pinnacle
is God, the most real, substance in the truest sense” (emphasis
mine). Abū Tammām was denigrating about wine in the original
poem; however, by sensitive contrivance Ibn Nāqiyā comes as close as
any ʿAbbāsid ever came to articulating the divinity of wine in the period before the somewhat overwrought
imagery of the later mystic poets gave voice to a similar reverence.
[71] Bouyges,
op. cit., 415:4.
[72] See
above, n. 52.
[73] From
the article “Nafs” by E. E. Caverley (2: 881).
[74] Jonathan
Barnes, Aristotle (
[75] Simon van den Bergh highlights the ambiguity of the
word “soul” (see Averroës’ Tahāfut
al-tahāfut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence) (
[76] See
chapter 10 of Mabādiʾ ārāʾ ahl al-madīna
al-fāḍila, revised text with intro., trans., and commentary by
Richard Walzer (
The purely Aristotelian
hierarchy of faculties is provided by Lloyd (op. cit., p.
188); the six main faculties are: nutrition and reproduction (threptikon);
sensation (aisthetikon); desire (orektikon); locomotion (kinetikon);
imagination (phantasia) and reason (nous).
[77] The
clearest summary account of the problem of the soul and immortality in falsafa,
as it developed between the tenth and twelfth centuries, is to set out in Oliver Leaman’s An Introduction to Medieval
Islamic Philosophy (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 87–107); see esp. p. 88: “Aristotle
actually expressed himself in this sort of way: Just as in the whole physical
world there is, in each class, on the one hand matter (i.e. what is potentially
all those things) and, on the other, something else which is the efficient
cause, in that it makes them all (e.g. a craft in relation to its material), so
in the sphere of the soul there must exist this distinction. One intellect is
such as to become all things, the other such as to make them all, a kind of
positive state, like light; for in a sort of way light makes potential colours
actual colours (De anima 430 a 10).” This allows Aristotle to
distinguish himself from the Platonic view: “[For Plato] knowledge is dependent
upon self-subsistent forms or abstract entities, [whereas Aristotle refers] to
something like an agent intellect that ‘illuminates’ the potential
intelligibles concealed in sense objects rather as light reveals the colours of
objects which are also ‘hidden’ in the dark[; this] suggests that in a sense
the concepts are already ‘there’ in the things, and all they need is lighting
up.”
[78] Ibid.,
p. 98.
[79] Ibid.,
p. 101.
[80] Cf.
Ibn Rushd, Tahāfut al-tahāfut, trans. Van den Bergh (
G. E. R. Lloyd (op. cit.) provides what may be the
clearest succinct account of the soul, body and immortality problem (pp. 186–87):
“[Aristotle’s] general theory excludes the possibility of the soul as a whole
being separable and immortal, for if it is the actuality of the body, it
clearly cannot exist except in conjunction with the body of which it is the
actuality. Yet [he] qualifies this theory in one very important respect: he
makes an exception to his general rule that the soul cannot have separate
existence in the case of one of its faculties, namely reason. Already in De anima (II, ch. 2, 413 b 24 ff) he says: ‘Concerning
reason and the faculty of contemplation nothing is clear as yet. But it seems
that this is another kind of soul, and that this alone is separable as that
which is eternal from that which is perishable. But as far as the other parts
of the soul are concerned it is evident from what we have said that they are
not, as some hold, separable, although it is clear that they are
distinguishable in definition.’”
[81] The
Koranic enunciation of bodily resurrection and individual immortality is set
out conveniently in Chapter 1 of Ovey N. Mohammed’s Averroes’ Doctrine of
Immortality; see pp. 29–40, which outline “The Qur’anic
Anthropology.”
[82] I am reminded of Abdelfattah Kilito’s stimulating
analysis of the imagery of Sun and Moon / Night and Day in the fifth maqāma
of al-Ḥarīrī; see al-Ghāʾib: Dirāsa fī
maqāma li-l-Ḥarīrī (Casablanca, 1987), pp. 7–14. In a
very imaginative way Kilito highlights the symbolism of Good and Evil.
[83] See Histoire de la philosophie en Islam, vol. 2 (Paris,
1972), p. 588.
[84] Similarly
elitist and exclusivist notions are set out in chapter 16
(On the Afterlife) of al-Fārābī’s Mabādiʾ
ārāʾ ahl al-madīna al-fāḍila.
[85] In
this way the blasphemy contained in the text is justified. Kilito has pursued this issue by discussing the Islamic heresiographical
tradition (Les Séances, pp. 167–68): “Dans les ouvrages hérésiographiques, les croyances étrangères au dogme
islamique (et, à l’intérieur de l’Islam, les croyances jugées condamnables par telle tradition de pensées)
sont citées, mais en vue d’être réfutées.” The author’s understanding of Ibn Nāqiyā’s quasi-heresiographical intentions is explained
thus: “. . . le discours profanateur de Yachkurȋ est enveloppé par la désapprobation du narrateur et l’énoncé de ce
que celui-ci considère comme vrai. Yachkurȋ
est dans l’«égarement» (ḍalâl); ses paroles
sont des “obsessions diaboliques” (wasâwis), des indices de la “corruption de la foi” (fasâd al-‘aqȋda) et de l’«impiété» (kufr).” But one must add an important
remark which highlights the ambivalence of the text: “L’attitude réprobatrice du narrateur est claire, mais l’attitude de l’auteur reste indéterminée, . . . en
tout cas, l’attribution du discours hérétique à un
bouffon, ivrogne de surcroȋt, dévalorise du même coup ce discours. . . .” Kilito asserts an epistemological view of the role of the outsider
and the outsider’s discourse: it is this which helps to demarcate the area
subsumed by orthodoxy. Falsafa’s role in medieval Islam fits into this view (it is only in this context
that Kilito discusses the most striking elements of the narrative): “La falsafa, en effet,
était à la fois rejetée et acceptée, ou bien alternativement rejetée et
acceptée selon les conjonctures, et le philosophe était de son côté écartelé
entre la nécessité d’adhérer au «nous» et la tentation de s’en évader.”
[86] It
is perhaps wise to leave the question about who won the debate unanswered.
Indeed, a different question is possibly more relevant in that it uncovers
another layer of irony: Why is the mutakallim telling this story in the
first place? Obviously he would only be retelling this episode if he considered
himself to have outshone his rival. However, since the maqāmāt
are an ambivalent genre, the author’s view is far from settled.
[87] The Island of the Day Before (