Review of Gutas festschrift

Reviews of Books 163 Yazaki ofers tidbits of translation in the midst of two chapters devoted to summarizing and commenting on the two “parts” of section thirty of the Qūt, wherein Abū Ṭālib devotes his most sustained attention to the heart’s nature and role. This is a very welcome contribution, and one that leaves the reader hankering for more extensive actual translation. Readers interested in the history of Suism (in particular) will be tantalized by Yazaki’s chapter (ive) comparing Qūt’s contents with themes in works of Abū Ṭālib’s two major contemporary “manualists,” al-Sarrāj and al-Kalābādhī; but the chapter ultimately fails to persuade or arrive at particularly illuminating conclusions. Yazaki inds that al-Sarrāj and Abū Ṭālib share a “pedagogic descriptiveness” as well as breadth of coverage, but this section is not clearly articulated and the attempt at comparing/ contrasting remains a bit confusing. The discussion of al-Kalābādhī in relation to Abū Ṭālib is a bit more convincing generally. Yazaki concludes, in light of the two contemporary works, that the latter’s “should be considered as a moral instruction book which could also be used as a Sui manual” (p. 92) but not necessarily geared speciically toward a Sui readership; while al-Kalābādhī and al-Sarrāj may indeed have aimed at non-Suis. That all three works were popular among later Suis may be the reason why they are often identiied as “Sui manuals.” Yazaki also wonders whether any of the three authors—let alone all—were themselves actually Suis (as widely assumed), and does not conclude unambiguously either way. In the following more successful and insightful chapter six, Yazaki explores Abū Ṭālib’s inluence on subsequent generations of Sui authors and on works of hadith and biographical literature, and chapter seven’s relections on his impact on Ḥanbalī authors and pre-modern Muslim scholarship are an added bonus. The irst of these surveys a Who’s Who of famous Sui authors and poets as late as the eighteenth century. But Abū Ṭālib’s impact was also much broader, meriting credit from a host of literary igures and traditionists into the seventeenth century. Abū Ṭālib never fails to surprise, as testiied by his considerable impact on important Ḥanbalī authorities, including ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī, Ibn al-Jawzī, and Ibn Taymiyya. The last two chapters (eight and nine) are devoted to a comparison of Abū Ṭālib’s work to that of an inluential medieval Andalusian Jewish author, Ibn Baquda (d. after 1080). In an intriguing way, these chapters bring the study full circle by extending Yazaki’s earlier (chap. two) overview of the “heart” theme, providing a very welcome contribution to comparative studies and a creative case study of Abū Ṭālib’s larger sphere of inluence. Some areas of minor concern: A book this rich and complex deserves an index of more than its scant three pages. As for readability, diction and syntax are often idiosyncratic (as on p. 5: “Modernday studies of Suism often glue these three works [al-Sarrāj, al-Kalābādhī, al-Makkī] as the earliest encyclopedic Suis treatises”; and “over the period of around six centuries”), and the text would have proited from more meticulous copy-editing. Finally, Yazaki has produced a creditable contribution to the history of Islamic thought on a diicult and often enigmatic igure. Her addition (in chaps. three and four) to the still-scarce supply of translations of Abū Ṭālib al-Makkī’s work is laudable and much appreciated, and raises hope that she might make further contributions of this sort. JOHN RENARD SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY Islamic Philosophy, Science, Culture, and Religion: Studies in Honor of Dimitri Gutas. Edited by FELICITAS OPWIS and DAVID REISMAN. Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science, vol. 83. Leiden: BRILL, 2012. Pp. xii + 493. $221, €161. There is little doubt that Dimitri Gutas is a major contributor to the history of Arabic-Islamic philosophy, both through his work—notably, his model study locating Avicenna in the Aristotelian tradition (Leiden: Brill, 1988)—and through the training of exemplary doctoral students who in turn have extended our understanding of the course of philosophical traditions in the world of Islam. Building 164 Journal of the American Oriental Society 135.1 (2015) on his work on the classical period, Gutas has made a strong case for why we should take the philosophical speculations and achievements of the post-Avicennan period, the so-called golden age, more seriously, while clearly, and emphatically, distancing himself from the “theosophical” approach to later ḥikma espoused by Henry Corbin and Seyyed Hossein Nasr. Many of us coming into the ield in the last twenty years and wishing to make sense of the later traditions were often caught up in the polemics of the two sides, exempliied by the argument over whether one could discern a mystical tendency, approach, or even privileging of non-discursive noetic activity in the thought of Avicenna. Part of this argument relates to deinitions of categories, and part to one’s own philosophical and ontological commitments to a vision of reality. The present volume is a itting and rich celebration of Gutas’ work, bringing together many of his colleagues and students; it was edited by two of the latter, one of whom (David Reisman) sadly passed away before it appeared. The collection demonstrates the breadth of Gutas’ interests in Arabic and Islamic studies as well as ancient thought. The twenty contributions, of which one—by Gutas’ long-standing collaborator Gerhard Endress—is in German, range over three categories: the classical heritage, Arabic sciences and philosophy, and the Muslim traditional sciences. Some of the chapters are indexical, providing useful notes and indicators for scholars to follow up. Hans Daiber presents the contribution of ʿAbd Allāh Ibn al-Faḍl of Antioch (eleventh century) as a Christian transmitter of the Hellenic tradition. Heinrich von Staden’s study of Galen of Pergamum (d. ca. 216) on anger and that of William Fortenbaugh on the Aristotelian philosopher Aristo of Ceus are on non-Arabic traditions and arise from Gutas’ engagement with and interest in the historical background to the classical Arabic philosophical tradition. Gutas and Fortenbaugh earlier collaborated on a study of Theophrastus and a major recent contribution is Gutas’ study and edition of Theophrastus’ On First Principles. Hidemi Takahashi examines the fortunes and transmission of one Syriac manuscript of Bar Hebraeus preserved in the Yale collection. David King tackles legends within intellectual history, and ofers a contribution on the invention of algebra in Yemen. Charles Burnett and Gideon Bohak jointly demonstrate how Geniza material can be exploited through careful philology to recover work of lost thinkers, in this case Thābit b. Qurra’s De imaginibus. The late David Reisman’s rather personal study of the medical ethics of Ibn Riḍwān (d. 1061 or 1068) argues for the social signiicance of the ield. Robert Wisnovsky’s presentation of one Ṣafavid manuscript from the Madrasa-yi Marvī in Tehran recovers the work of Yaḥyā Ibn ʿAdī (d. 974), a Christian Aristotelian of the classical period whose work has attracted recent attention; the codex includes ifty-three works of which twenty-four were previously thought to be lost (as enumerated in the analytical inventory of Endress published in 1977). It should be read alongside another article and partial edition by Wisnovsky dedicated to the same codex in a recently published festschrift for Hossein Modarressi, and signals the forthcoming edition of the text in the series co-published by the Institute of Islamic Studies in Berlin. It shows how the Ṣafavid interest in heritage and the preservation of classical philosophical texts has assisted modern scholars in the study of early Arabic philosophy. Endress’ study of the prefaces in the works of al-Kindī, the “philosopher of the Arabs par excellence,” suggests new ways of reading philosophical texts in context, and provides a further contribution to his work on the cultural milieu and production of the Kindī circle, which had such an outstanding impact on the formation of philosophical culture in ʿAbbāsid Iraq. Sonja Brentjes’ chapter builds upon her previous work on madrasa curricula and culture and presents a vehement critique of the decline thesis applied to the study of science in Islam. Kevin van Bladel delves into the history of astrology presented in one of the key sources for the classical period—the Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadīm. Beatrice Gruendler’s careful philological and historical study of the poet al-Ḥātimī’s reception of Aristotle’s dicta provides further evidence for the permeation of philosophical interest in belles-lettres in the ʿAbbāsid period (one is reminded of an old article by Philip Kennedy on falsafa in the poetry of Ibn Naqīb). Before moving on to the articles that address aspects of Avicenna’s thought that are closest to Gutas’s interests, I will mention three strong pieces on aspects of kalām by former students. Suleiman Mourad continues his recent interest in the category of Muʿtazilī exegesis by examining the Quranic hermeneutics of al-Ḥākim al-Jishumī (d. 1101) in al-Tahdhīb fī tafsīr al-Qurʾān. It its within a monograph that Mourad is preparing on al-Jishumī’s tafsīr and draws upon recent editions produced of works Reviews of Books 165 of Muʿtazilī tafsīr. The chapter includes a study of al-Jishumī, a critical edition and translation of the introduction to the text and commentary on the critical verse 3:7, and a preliminary investigation of his hermeneutical method. Felicitas Opwis’ study of causality in the work of legal theory (al-Maḥṣūl fī ʿilm al-uṣūl) of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210) suggests further directions for understanding his relationship to the Ashʿarī tradition as well as making sense of how legal precepts are derived and related one to the other over time. Racha El Omari studies the apocryphal Kitāb al-Ḥayda and further problematizes our understanding of Ḥanbalī theological method: despite their condemnation of dialectic, they usually adopted the kalām method of other schools. Finally, ive contributions deal with Avicenna in one way or another. Yahya Michot continues his idiosyncratic excursus into Islamic intellectual history through the lens of Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328)— one recent article examined his reception of the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ. Michot argues that Ibn Taymiyya was a critical and philosophically sophisticated observer of his times and that his judgments on intellectual history are worth taking seriously even if most have dismissed them. Michot provides translations of ive key texts on the history of philosophy to extend a theological critique of falsafa. One of his main conclusions is to show that in the eyes of Ibn Taymiyya the falsafa tradition associated primarily with Avicenna is implicated with a number of other theological confessions such as the Muʿtazila, the Twelver Shiʿa, and Ismailis, and even the Suism of Ibn Sabʿīn and Ibn ʿArabī, as attempts to weaken Sunni Islam. One of the most interesting insights worth investigating further is Ibn Taymiyya’s suggestion that the Akbārian doctrine of walāya inds its roots in Avicenna’s prophetology—a point already mentioned by Alexander Knysh in his volume on the reception of Ibn ʿArabī (1999). Tony Street’s study of Avicenna’s modal logic is a further stage in his collaboration with Paul Thom in understanding the signiicance of this area of thought and particularly in seeing the connection between logic and metaphysics in the Avicennan corpus. The basic question is whether Avicenna reads modal propositions de re or de dicta. Does his reading arise out of certain ontological commitments or can we separate his logical analysis of such propositions from his metaphysics? Interestingly, Thom has recently argued that the validity of Avicenna’s modal logic is unafected by his metaphysics and they can indeed be treated separately. Street’s presentation here, guided by reading Avicenna through the commentary of Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī on the Ishārāt, suggests the opposite. A translation of the relevant passage from al-Ṭūsī is appended to the article. It suggests useful ways in which we might formulate the relationship between logic and metaphysics in Avicenna. The three remaining studies focus on Avicenna’s metaphysics. Amos Bertolacci, the author of an impressive and wide-ranging study of the Metaphysics of al-Shifāʾ, returns to the old question of the Avicennan distinction between existence and essence in contingents discussed extensively in an earlier generation by the late Fazlur Rahman. It moves us further away from an essentialist reading of Avicenna by arguing that essences always are connected to existence as its concomitants. It is not that there is a wider pool of things/essences than that of existents, which might partly be a critique of the kalām idea of placing the category of thing (shayʾ) higher than the existent (mawjūd). The extension of existence is greater than of essence—Bertolacci highlights the signiicance of a close reading of Metaphysics I,5, linking the discussion back to logic by drawing attention to Categories II,1. Bertolacci’s contribution suggests that the existence-centered reading of Avicenna by the later tradition, not least by the Ṣafavid Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1635), has greater merit than irst thought by earlier scholars. Alexander Treiger’s study of tashkīk al-wujūd in Avicenna, which he renders as transcendental modulation of existence, can be seen as reading back from Mullā Ṣadrā as well. Treiger argues that the background to the notion of existence as a tertium quid between equivocity and univocity is already clear in the commentators on Aristotle and in the work of al-Fārābī, but that it is Avicenna who in al-Mubāḥathāt and elsewhere pinpoints tashkīk as a means for relating God and the cosmos, for linking God and contingents in a transcendental notion of existence. Al-Ṭūsī famously argued in his commentary on namaṭ IV (on existence and its causes) of the Ishārāt that two key notions for understanding Avicenna’s ontology are mental existence (al-wujūd al-dhihnī) and tashkīk (modulation of existence), and the Avicennan tradition, at least from Kitāb al-Taḥṣīl of his student Bahmanyār, understood this well. Opponents did also—in his well-known refutation of Avicennan metaphysics, Muṣāraʿat al-falāsifa (Struggling with the Philosophers), al-Shahrastānī attacked the notion of tashkīk 166 Journal of the American Oriental Society 135.1 (2015) in favor of his own Ismaili apophasis. In his refutation al-Ṭūsī pointed to a number of pre-Avicennan texts to demonstrate that Avicenna did not invent the notion of tashkīk. Treiger provides a careful and philosophically attuned historical study of modulation that is essential reading for those interested in the structure of metaphysics and later ontology in Islamic traditions. Attempts to do the same have been done previously, including by Toshihiko Izutsu, Cécile Bonmariage, and Ibrahim Kalin. Last but not least, we have the latest round in Jules Janssens’ interest in al-Taʿlīqāt of Avicenna, which is timely given the recent publication of a new critical edition of the text by Sayyid Ḥusayn Mūsavīyān that has appeared under the auspices of the Iranian Institute of Philosophy. Janssens’ painstaking study of various passages of the text suggests that, broadly speaking, it is a commentary on the Metaphysics of al-Shifāʾ, noted earlier by Mullā Ṣadrā in his Asfār. In a separate article published some years ago Janssens analyzed Mullā Ṣadrā’s reception of the text and speculated on the availability of a diferent recension of the text—suiciently distinct from the earlier edition of Badawī and the Cairo manuscript on which it is based (which we now know from Mūsavīyān’s edition is probably one of potentially four distinct “conigurations” of the text). Janssens also suggests that some passages are commentaries on the Metaphysics of the Dānishnāma-yi ʿAlāʾī, which calls for an examination of the relationship between the Dānishnāma and al-Shifāʾ. In conclusion, Janssens brings us back to Gutas’ suggestion in his pioneering work on Avicenna that al-Taʿlīqāt is probably part of a larger group of oral teachings entitled al-Lawāḥiq (The Appendices) that were penned in response to students’ inquiries on his philosophical corpus, including al-Shifāʾ. Many of these essays on Avicenna propose ways in which to comprehend the reception of Avicenna not least in the work of Mullā Ṣadrā—and I for one look forward to research in the future conducted by Gutas, his students, and colleagues precisely on the corpus of the Ṣafavid thinker. SAJJAD RIZVI UNIVERSITY OF EXETER A History of Muslim Sicily. By LEONARD C. CHIARELLI. Sta Vanera, Malta: MIDSEA BOOKS, 2011. Pp. xliv + 417. $50 (paper). The publication of a scholarly work on (medieval) Muslim Sicily is always a happy occasion given the relatively sparse archive with which we work, and Leonard Chiarelli’s A History of Muslim Sicily is a welcome addition to our small but growing library. Those seriously interested in a comprehensive study of the political and cultural history of Muslim Sicily from 827 until roughly 1250—that is, from the period of Muslim sovereignty until the end of Frederick II’s reign, broadly speaking—normally begin with the groundbreaking work of the Italian orientalist, Michele Amari (1801–1889), whose Biblioteca arabo-sicula and Storia dei musulmani di Sicilia constitute something of the “foundational texts” for the study of our ield. The irst is a collection and edition of all known texts—at the time of Amari’s life—and passages related to the subject, and the second is a massive encyclopedic survey of Sicily drawing on Arabic, Greek, and Latin sources. In the twentieth century, several attempts have been made, largely in Italian and Arabic, to reinvent or rewrite survey histories of Muslim Sicily with relatively little advancement beyond what Amari had produced. Iḥsān ʿAbbās’s literary history of Muslim Sicily (al-ʿArab fī Ṣiqilliya: Dirāsa fī l-tārīkh wa-l-adab, 1959) is arguably the most successful of its kind to date. In English, two survey histories of scholarly signiicance have been published: Aziz Ahmad’s A History of Islamic Sicily (1975) and now Chiarelli’s History, here reviewed. While both derive substantially from Amari’s work, in content and in form, the latter is a major advancement for Anglophone scholars and students on account of its sheer size and the impressively rich and up-to-date bibliography that Chiarelli has accumulated over many years. However, the ield of Siculo-Arabic studies has grown and developed in other ways, by what I would call local histories, scholarly works that set their sights on smaller parts in order to understand