Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s Philosophical
Download 4.03 Mb. Pdf ko'rish
|
|
¯d ). Al-Juwaynı¯ uses both concepts in his comprehensive summa of Ash ¶arite theology 82 as well as in his more con- cise directory. 83 In one of his last works, a small textbook of Ash ¶arite theology written to honor his mentor Niz.a¯m al-Mulk, al-Juwaynı¯ expounds a proof for the existence of God that is infl uenced by that of Avicenna. “This is a method,” al-Juwaynı¯ writes, “that is more useful and nobler than those gathered in many volumes.” 84 He starts his proof by introducing the distinction of objects of knowledge into necessary, contingent, and impossible. Nothing in the created world is necessary by virtue of itself. In fact, everything can be different, and this illustrates that everything that exists in this world is contingent ( mujaw-
mining agent” ( muqtad.ı¯ ) who chooses the state of things. This “determining agent” must be continuously active and sustaining the world, which is not able to sustain itself. 85
ing infl uence on Ash ¶arite theology. For the young al-Ghaza¯lı¯, plunging into this sea of knowledge must have been an unforgettable moment, one he still vividly remembered forty years later in his conversation with Sanjar. In 2003, Jules Janssens suggested that there was a period in the life of the young al- Ghaza¯lı¯ when he was an adept of the philosophical school and a follower of Avicenna. Janssens suggested that The Intentions of the Philosophers ( Maqa¯s.id al-fala¯sifa ) was written during that period and that the brief preface and the short conclusion ( kha¯tima ) of the book were added later after the appeal of falsafa had waned. 86 None of al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s biographers mentions such a period. However, in at least one passage of his works, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ himself seems to indicate his past attraction to philosophy. In the Incoherence of the Philosophers , he portrays the Muslim followers of the fala¯sifa as a group that “is convinced to be distinct from the companions and peers by virtue of a special clever- ness ( fi t.na ) and quick wit ( dhaka¯ 7 ).” He describes the followers of falsafa as rejecting the duties of Islam, namely, the acts of worship and ritual purity, and a l ife b e t w e e n p ubl ic a nd p r i vat e ins t r uc t ion 3 1 belittling the devotions and ordinances prescribed by the divine law. 87 They
do so because they look down on religious people, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ claims; they see their own intelligence and methods of inquiry as making them superior to pious people who rely on revelation. In his later book, The Jewels of the Qur 7an ( Jawa¯hir al-Qur 7a¯n ), al-Ghaza¯lı¯ seems to admit that he himself was once part of such a group: We saw among the groups of those who have a high opinion of them- selves ( mutaka¯bisu
(z. a¯hir ) of revelation. They became engaged in quarrels among them, opposing each other, and pompously presenting to one another what the groups disagreed upon. Subsequently this destroyed their belief in religion and led them to the inner denial of bodily resurrection, heaven and hell, and the return ( ruju ¯ ¶ ) to God the Exalted after death. They profess this in their innermost soul ( f ı¯ sara¯ 7irihim ). They are loose from the reins of fear of God ( taqwa¯ ) and the bounds of piety. They are free from restraint in their pursuit of the vanities of this world. They eat what is forbidden, follow their passions, and are eager for fame, wealth, and worldly success. When they meet pious people they look down on them with pride and contempt. When they witness piety in someone whom they cannot beat intellectually because of his abundant knowledge, perfect intelligence, and pen- etrating mind, they bring him to a point where his goal becomes de- ception ( talbı¯s ), to win over the hearts [of these people], and to change [their] attitude towards him. When they witness piety in other people it only increases their error in the long run; while when people of religion witness piety it is one of the strongest confi rmations for the convictions of the believers. (. . .) And because they do not believe in the unknown ( ghayb ) the way ordinary people believe in it, their smartness is their perdition. Ignorance is closer to salvation than the faulty cleverness and defective smartness [of these people]. We were ourselves not far from this, for we had stumbled upon the tails of these errors for a while due to the calamity of bad com- pany and our association with them until God has distanced our- selves from their errors and until He had protected us from their predicaments. 88
There is a scarcity of information about the years between al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s entry into the Niz.a¯miyya madrasa in Nishapur and his own appointment to the Niz.a¯miyya in Baghdad more than twenty years later. ¶Abd al-Gha¯fi r al-Fa¯risı¯ covers this period with a single sentence, saying that al-Ghaza¯lı¯ stayed with al-Juwaynı¯ until the latter’s death, that he left Nishapur afterward, and that he became part of the traveling court ( mu ¶askar ) and of the assembly of scholars 3 2 a l - gh a z a ¯ l 1
¯ ’ s ph ilosoph ic a l t h e olo g y ( majlis ) that the vizier Niz.a¯m al-Mulk kept around him. 89 Later historians add nothing to this description. In earlier Turkish tradition, the court of the Seljuq sultan and his vizier would travel through the open country. The sultan’s military and political strength depended on the livestock kept by his nomadic warriors, and he had to lead it through fertile pastures in order to survive. With time, however, the sultan became detached from his troops and accustomed to a more urban life- style. By the time Sultan Maliksha¯h came to power in 465/1072, the court spent much of its time in Isfahan and visited Baghdad in regular intervals. When al-Ghaza¯lı¯ arrived in Baghdad in 484/1091, he came from Isfahan. Indeed, a comment in his letter to Sanjar suggests that he had spent the years after leaving Nishapur and before arriving in Baghdad exclusively in Isfahan. Talking about himself, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ wrote to Sanjar: Know that this applicant ( da¯ ¶ı¯ ) has reached fi fty-three years of age, forty years of which he has dived in the sea of religious scholarship so that he reached a point where his words are beyond the under- standing of most of his contemporaries. Twenty years in the days of the martyred Sultan Maliksha¯h passed, while in Isfahan and Bagh- dad he remained in favor with the sultan. Often he was the mes- senger ( rasu¯l ) between the sultan and the caliph in their important affairs. 90
ure 1.1) is most probably exaggerated. Maliksha¯h reigned almost exactly twenty lunar years between Rabı¯ ¶ I 465 / January 1073 and Shawwa¯l 485 / November 1092, and these words suggest that al-Ghaza¯lı¯ served him throughout his whole period in offi ce. With this address, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ aimed to impress Maliksha¯h’s son Sanjar and to suggest that he had paid his dues of servitude to the Seljuq family. Still, these words propose that al-Ghaza¯lı¯ entered the court early in Maliksha¯h’s reign, probably many years before al-Juwaynı¯’s death in 478/1085. One of al- Ghaza¯lı¯’s students reports that Maliksha¯h commissioned one of his works in Persian; the Proof of Truth in Responding to the Isma¯ ¶ı¯ lites ( H . ujjat al-h.aqq fı¯ l-radd ¶ala¯ l-ba¯t.iniyya ), which unfortunately is lost. 91
During the exchange with the vice-regent Sanjar, which took place shortly after 501/1108, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ mentions that one of his earliest books, The Sifted among the Notes on the Methods of Jurisprudence ( al-Mankhu¯l min ta ¶lı¯qa¯t al-us.u¯l ), was published about thirty years before. 92 That would put the publication of this book, which is an extracted version of al-Juwaynı¯’s course curriculum ( ta ¶lı¯ qa ) for Islamic law, in the years around 471/1078. 93 Ibn al-Jawzı¯ confi rms that the book was published during al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s teacher’s lifetime; it even mer- ited a jealous comment by al-Juwaynı¯. 94 Despite disagreeing with his teacher on some legal points, The Sifted among the Notes on the Methods was written in close cooperation with al-Juwaynı¯, who is honored in numerous references. Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ says that he “took great pain to organize the book into sections and chapters in order to facilitate the understanding when the need for consulta- tion arises.” 95 The clear and detailed organization of his material is a feature of figure 1.1 Sultan Maliksha¯h among his court. Miniature from the Arabic transla- tion of Rashı¯d al-Dı¯n T.abı¯b’s (d. 718/1318) Persian Compendium of Chronicles ( Ja¯mi ¶
MS Arab 20, fol. 138a). 3 4 a l - gh a z a ¯ l 1
¯ ’ s ph ilosoph ic a l t h e olo g y all of al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s writings, and al-Juwaynı¯ might have understood how much his own teaching activity could benefi t from it. Ibn al-Jawzı¯’s story of al-Juwaynı¯’s jealousy is part of an admiring but criti- cal account of how al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s intellectual brilliance was also combined with a signifi cant amount of hubris. Ibn al-Jawzı¯ gives the impression that the young al-Ghaza¯lı¯ was disrespectful toward his teacher. Given Ibn al-Jawzı¯’s antago- nism toward al-Ghaza¯lı¯, one might question whether his analysis is unbiased or mere scandalmongering. Yet an earlier and more reliable source also men- tions that al-Juwaynı¯ was not entirely happy with his master student. ¶Abd al- Gha¯fi r al-Fa¯risı¯, who knew both and who may have witnessed what he reports, says that al-Juwaynı¯ admired al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s intelligence, his eloquence, and his talent for disputations, yet “secretly ( sirr
al-Ghaza¯lı¯.” 96 Like ¶Abd al-Gha¯fi r himself, al-Juwaynı¯ disliked the young al- Ghaza¯lı¯’s rush toward judgement and what many thought was an inborn sense of superiority. “He also was not pleased with [al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s] literary composi- tions,” ¶Abd al-Gha¯fi r continues, “even though he had been trained by him and was associated with him.” Outwardly, however, al-Juwaynı¯ boasted the achieve- ments of his master student and held him in high esteem. 97
In Juma¯da I 484 / July 1091, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ entered Baghdad as a newly ap- pointed professor at the Niz.a¯miyya madrasa. The appointment was a decision by Niz.a¯m al-Mulk. Before he left Isfahan, Niz.a¯m al-Mulk had bestowed upon him two honorary titles, “Brilliance of the Religion” ( zayn al-dı¯ n ) and “Emi- nence among the Religious Leaders” ( sharaf al-a 7imma ). 98 Later, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ may have also received the title “Proof of Islam” ( hujjat al-Isla¯m ). This latter honorifi c was already used during his lifetime and overshadowed all others, which might indicate that the caliph—and not a sultan or his vizier—conferred it on him. During his court days in Isfahan, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ had obtainted a number of precious robes whose opulence made a signifi cant impression in Baghdad. A contemporary noted: “When Abu ¯ H . a¯mid entered Baghdad [in 484/1091] we estimated the value of his clothing and mount to be 500 dinars. After he turned ascetic, traveled, and returned to Baghdad [in 490/1097], we valued his cloth- ing to be worth fi fteen qira¯t. .” 99 The scholars of Baghdad must have understood the importance of al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s appointment to the Niz.a¯miyya, since two teach- ers had to leave their posts to make room for him. 100 By this time, it appears that he had already published his long compendium, The Extended One ( al-Bası¯ t. ), on the individual rulings in Sha¯fi ¶ite fi qh , and the somewhat shorter Middle One ( al-Wası¯
reached the capital. 101 When he came to Baghdad, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ brought with him a companion and perhaps also students from Isfahan. 102
Al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s appointment to the most prestigious and most challenging teaching position of his time threw him squarely into the public light. From this point forward, there is no dearth of information about his life, and all his movements are well accounted for. Ibn al-Jawzı¯ reports appreciatively that all major scholars of Baghdad, among them the leading H . anbalı¯ jurists, sat at his feet and “were astonished by his words; they believed these teachings had great merits, and they used them in their own books.” 103
Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ himself also at- a l ife b e t w e e n p ubl ic a nd p r i vat e ins t r uc t ion 3 5 tended the teaching sessions of other eminent professors at the Niz.a¯miyya. 104
As his comments in the letter to Sanjar suggest, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ was close to the caliph’s court and attended its major functions. 105
In addition to being the most prominent teacher of Muslim law and theology, al-Ghaza¯lı¯ was also an offi cial of the Seljuq Empire, someone who, as he later put it critically, “consumed the riches of the ruler.” 106
The number of books he is thought to have written during this period is stag- gering. Al-Ghaza¯lı¯ himself brags about his achievements in a letter to Sanjar: before he gave up teaching in 488/1095, he writes, he had already fi nished seventy books. 107 In his autobiography, he claims that even while teaching three hundred students, he still found the time to study the works of the fala¯sifa and compose a refutation to them within three years. 108 Such lines should be read skeptically, as they are intended to counter the accusation that al-Ghaza¯lı¯ had fa- miliarized himself with philosophical teachings even before he had learned the religious sciences. It makes little sense to assume that al-Ghaza¯lı¯ arrived in Baghdad in the summer of 484/1091 with empty notebooks, so to speak, with- out having written or drafted at least parts of the many books he would publish between his arrival at the Niz.a¯miyya in Baghdad and his departure four and one-half years later. In their work on the dating of al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s works, Mau- rice Bouyges and George F. Hourani were reluctant to assume that al-Ghaza¯lı¯ had completed many of his works before the year 484/1091. They follow his autobiography and date the composition of Incoherence of the Philosophers and the many books that surround this key work in the years after 484/1091. This assumption need not be the case. The text of manuscript London, British Li- brary Or. 3126 illustrates that al-Ghaza¯lı¯ studied the works of fala¯sifa such as Avicenna, al-Fa¯ra¯bı¯, and Miskawayh in an extremely close manner. Whether he composed the Incoherence of the Philosophers during or after this study is an interesting question that we do not have the information to answer. 109 Even if one were to assume that al-Ghaza¯lı¯ did not compose these works before ar- riving in Baghdad, there was enough time for his intense preparatory study during the twenty years between his studies with al-Juwaynı¯ and his arrival in Baghdad. The speedy and linear process of studying and refuting, as described in his autobiography, seems overly streamlined. It is more likely that periods of philosophical study were interspersed with other activities and occupations, fi nally leading to the very clever response of the Incoherence of the Philosophers , which was published in Baghdad. Other works that came out of the study of falsafa such as The Standard of Knowledge in Logics ( Mi ¶ya¯r al- ¶ilm fı¯ fann al-
text of manuscript London, British Library Or. 3126, and even The Balanced Book on What-To-Believe ( al-Iqtis.a¯d fı¯ l-i ¶tiqa¯d ) may have been written or at least signifi cantly drafted during the years before al-Ghaza¯lı¯ arrived in Baghdad. Similarly, al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s refutations of the propaganda of the Isma¯ ¶ı¯lite move- ment, which he laid down in such books as The Scandals of the Esoterics and the Virtues of the Followers of Caliph al-Mustaz.hirı¯ ( Fad.a¯ 7ih. al-ba¯t.iniyya wa-fad.a¯ 7il al- Mustaz.hiriyya ), The Weak Positions of the Esoterics ( Qawa¯s.im al-ba¯t.iniyya ), or The 3 6 a l - gh a z a ¯ l 1
¯ ’ s ph ilosoph ic a l t h e olo g y Straight Balance ( al-Qist.a¯s al-mustaqı¯m ), may have been conceived or written in the period before al-Ghaza¯lı¯ arrived in Baghdad. One of his refutations of the Isma¯ ¶ı¯lite teachings was written in response to a question put to him in Ha- madan, probably in the period before he came to Baghdad. 110 During the years before their takeover of the Elburz Mountains in Daylam 483/1090, Hamadan and particularly Isfahan were main centers of Isma¯ ¶ı¯lite activity. 111 His having developed a comprehensive response to Isma¯ ¶ı¯lism may have been one of the elements that qualifi ed al-Ghaza¯lı¯ for his prominent position at the Baghdad Niz.a¯miyya madrasa. Many of the books written or drafted before al-Ghaza¯lı¯ came to Baghdad were indeed published during his tenure at the Niz.a¯miyya. A manuscript of the most important book from this period, the Incoherence of the Philosophers , for instance, says that it was concluded on 11 Muh.arram 488 / 21 January 1095. 112
A second book that was certainly published within these years is The Scandals of the Esoterics and the Virtues of the Followers of Caliph al-Mustaz.hirı¯ . The work was commissioned by the caliph’s court. 113 Both the ¶Abba¯sid caliph’s as well as the Fa¯t.imid caliph’s names appear in the book, and since their reigns only briefl y overlapped, we know that the publication of the book fell in the year 487/1094. 114
The years of al-Ghaza¯lı¯’s teaching activity at the Baghdad Niz.a¯miyya were tumultuous for the city and the Seljuq Empire as a whole. 115
On 10 Ramad.a¯n 485 / 14 October 1092, Niz.a¯m al-Mulk was murdered during the court’s travel from Isfahan to Baghdad. A young man who appeared to be an Isma¯ ¶ı¯lite from Daylam assassinated him, his name recorded in the annals of the Isma¯ ¶ı¯lites. 116
Maliksha¯h, who continued on his route to Baghdad, appointed Ta¯j al-Mulk, a longtime rival of Niz.a¯m al-Mulk, as his new vizier. Earlier, Maliksha¯h had already distanced himself from Niz.a¯m al-Mulk and the ¶Abba¯sid caliph. 117
Now, after the death of his long-serving vizier, Maliksha¯h demanded that the caliph move from Baghdad to another city of his preference, leaving Baghdad to the Seljuqs as their capital. The caliph al-Muqtadı¯ asked to have at least ten days to prepare for his move, “like it is granted to any man from among the popu- lace.”
118 During this grace period, Maliksha¯h went hunting and returned with a fever that killed him on 16 Shawwa¯l / 19 November, about a month after Niz.a¯m al-Mulk’s murder. Maliksha¯h’s sudden death prompted his six eligible minor sons and their backers to engage in a fi erce struggle for the sultan’s succession. The sons were from three different mothers, and each mother attempted to build her own power base. The Seljuq generals (singl. amı¯r ) and the so-called “ Niz.a¯miyya ”—the family and the clients of Niz.a¯m al-Mulk and their loyal slave- troops—followed Maliksha¯h’s wishes and prepared for the appointment of his oldest son Berk-Yaruq, who was thirteen years old and whom they had taken to Rayy. Meanwhile in Baghdad, one of Maliksha¯h’s widows, known as Terken Kha¯tu ¯n, convinced the caliph to appoint her fi ve-year-old son, Mah.mu¯d, as sul- Download 4.03 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
|