AL-MIKLĀTĪ, A TWELFTH CENTURY AŠʿARITE READER OF AVERROES

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yamina Adouhane

AbstractThe aim of this article is to present a new witness of Averroes' reception in the Muslim world, in the years that immediately followed his death. Indeed Abū al-Ḥağğāğ al-Miklātī (d. 1237) is an Ašʿarite theologian, who was born in Fez. He is the author of aQuintessence of the Intellects in Response to Philosophers on the Science of Principlesin which he aims at refuting the Peripatetic philosophers in their own field, using their own weapons. This article will first attempt to draw the portrait of this atypical theologian. It will then focus on showing that al-Miklātī – although he never mentions his name – is a reader of Averroes and in particular, of hisTahāfut al-Tahāfut, of which he makes various and unexpected uses. A close look at these uses will enable us to better define the nature of al-Miklātī's work. More importantly, this article will try to prove that al-Miklātī provides us with a key passage of Averroes' lost treatiseOn the Prime Mover. At the heart of the Rushdian criticism of Avicenna's “metaphysical” proof, this passage should throw new light on Averroes' precise understanding of this proof.

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-120
Author(s):  
Leeor Gottlieb

Abstract Many have assumed that Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (TgPsJ) is the product of first millennium Palestine. This study presents evidence suggesting that TgPsJ is neither from the first millennium, nor from Palestine. TgPsJ displays an unawareness of some basic facts with regard to the geography of the land of Israel, which makes the argument for its author being a native of Palestine unpersuasive. Excerpts from Even Bochan, a twelfth-century Hebrew lexicon written by Menachem ben Shelomo, the author of Sekhel Tov, exhibit textual similarities to statements found elsewhere only in TgPsJ. The nature of these statements lead to the conclusion that Even Bochan precedes TgPsJ and not vice versa. This suggests that the origins of TgPsJ are to be found in twelfth-century Italy.


Author(s):  
John Cooper

Al-Suhrawardi, whose life spanned a period of less than forty years in the middle of the twelfth century ad, produced a series of highly assured works which established him as the founder of a new school of philosophy in the Muslim world, the school of Illuminationist philosophy (hikmat al-ishraq). Although arising out of the peripatetic philosophy developed by Ibn Sina, al-Suhrawardi’s Illuminationist philosophy is critical of several of the positions taken by Ibn Sina, and radically departs from the latter through the creation of a symbolic language to give expression to his metaphysics and cosmology, his ‘science of lights’. The fundamental constituent of reality for al-Suhrawardi is pure, immaterial light, than which nothing is more manifest, and which unfolds from the Light of Lights in emanationist fashion through a descending order of lights of ever diminishing intensity; through complex interactions, these in turn give rise to horizontal arrays of lights, similar in concept to the Platonic Forms, which govern the species of mundane reality. Al-Suhrawardi also elaborated the idea of an independent, intermediary world, the imaginal world (alam al-mithal). His views have exerted a powerful influence down to this day, particularly through Mulla Sadra’s adaptation of his concept of intensity and gradation to existence, wherein he combined Peripatetic and Illuminationist descriptions of reality.


Author(s):  
S. M. Stern

The geographer Ibn Ḥawqal, who wrote his invaluable description of the Muslim world in the 10th century, devotes a paragraph to Sīrāf, the great port of the Persian Gulf. In the 12th century an anonymous author made an epitome of Ibn Ḥawqal's book, adding, however, a number of remarks concerning his own period. In the description of Sīrāf he interpolated the following passage:Its inhabitants are very rich. I was told that one of them, feeling ill, made his testament; the third part of his fortune, which he had in cash, amounted to a million dīnārs, not counting the capital which he laid out to people who undertook to trade with it on commenda basis. Then there is Rāmisht, whose son Mūsā I have met in Aden, in the year 539; he told me that the silver plate used by him was, when weighed, found to be 1,200 manns. Mūsā is the youngest of his sons and has the least merchandise; Rāmisht has four servants, each of whom is said to be richer than his son Mūsā. I have met 'Alī al-Nīlī from the countryside of al-Ḥilla, Rāmisht's clerk, and he told me that when he came back from China twenty years before, his merchandise was worth half a million dīnārs; if that is the wealth of his clerk, what will he himself be worth! It was Rāmisht who removed the silver water-spout of the Ka'ba and replaced it with a golden one, and also covered the Ka'ba with Chinese cloth, the value of which cannot be estimated. In short, I have heard of no merchant in our time who has equalled Rāmisht in wealth or prestige.


Traditio ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. 153-215
Author(s):  
Anthony H. Minnema

The Latin translation of al-Ghazali's Maqās˙id al-falāsifa was one of the works through which scholastic authors became familiar with the Arabic tradition of Aristotelian philosophy after its translation in the middle of the twelfth century. However, while historians have examined in great detail the impact of Avicenna and Averroes on the Latin intellectual tradition, the place of this translation of al-Ghazali, known commonly as the Summa theoricae philosophiae, remains unclear. This study enumerates and describes the Latin audience of al-Ghazali by building on Manuel Alonso's research with a new bibliography of the known readers of the Summa theoricae philosophiae. It also treats Latin scholars' perception of the figure of al-Ghazali, or Algazel in Latin, since their understanding in no way resembles the Ash'arite jurist, Sufi mystic, and circumspect philosopher known in the Muslim world. Latin scholars most commonly viewed him only as an uncritical follower of Avicenna and Aristotle, but they also described him in other ways during the Middle Ages. In addition to tracing the rise, decline, and recovery of Algazel and the Summa theoricae philosophiae in Latin Christendom over a period of four centuries, this study examines the development of Algazel's identity as he shifts from a useful Arab to a dangerous heretic in the minds of Latin scholars.


2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter C. Mundy

Abstract The stereotype of people with autism as unresponsive or uninterested in other people was prominent in the 1980s. However, this view of autism has steadily given way to recognition of important individual differences in the social-emotional development of affected people and a more precise understanding of the possible role social motivation has in their early development.


1919 ◽  
Vol 88 (2282supp) ◽  
pp. 204-205
Author(s):  
Frank E. D. Acland
Keyword(s):  

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document