MEDIEVAL ISLAMIC RHETORIC AND HUMANISM

AL-FARABI’S THEORY OF RHETORIC

BY

C2007
Miguel Ángel Muñoz Lobo

Submitted to the graduate degree program in Communication Studies and the

Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Kansas
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master’s of Arts

Committee members

Date defended: April, 20 2007

 ii

The Thesis Committee for Miguel Ángel Muñoz Lobo certifies

That this is the approved Version of the following thesis:

MEDIEVAL ISLAMIC RHETORIC AND HUMANISM

AL-FARABI’S THEORY OF RHETORIC

Committee:

Date approved: April, 26 2007

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Throughout the writing of this thesis, I have been blessed with the help,

support and guidance of many people and institutions. I would first like to thank

my advisor, Prof. Donn Parson, who has brilliantly mentored me both

academically and personally. His mentoring has made me a better person and a

stronger scholar. After each of our meetings, I left with constructive criticism and

a feeling of being respected and esteemed. I owe to him much of the enjoyment I

had during the process of writing this thesis. Similarly, the other two members of

my committee, Prof. Beth Manolescu and Prof. Robert Rowland, were a source of

never-ending encouragement and insightful suggestions. Also, this list would not

be complete without Prof. Amy Rossomondo, who is one of the professors from

whom I learned most and my model of excellence in foreign language teaching.

This gratitude should be extended to all my colleagues and friends at the

University of Kansas. They have all been wonderfully supportive and made my

experience at KU one of the best and most intense of my entire life. I would

especially like to thank Pinar Alakoc, Ryan Shepard and Susana Mariscal. I feel

for you as for my family and cannot think of these years without thinking of you.

Finally, I could study at KU thanks to a scholarship by the Spanish Ministry

of Education (MEC) and the Fulbright Program. The staff at all the institutions

involved (IIE, KU Office of International Programs, MEC, Spanish Fulbright

Commission) worked very hard so that I would have a wonderful experience here

at KU. I feel especially fortunate for having been advised, guided and cared for by

Hodgie Bricke, Shelley Buckwalter and Victoria Ruiz. Thank you so very much

for your professional excellence and continuous care.

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INDEX

1. The nature of the study ............................................................................. 1

2. Al-Farabi al-gharib, al-gharb and al-Farabi ............................................ 14

3. Al-Farabi: the Islamic bassoon ............................................................... 27

4. Al-Farabi and pedagogical logos ............................................................ 39

5. The rhetoric and its friends ..................................................................... 54

6. The rest is silence.................................................................................... 66

7. Bibliography ........................................................................................... 76
 1

CHAPTER I

The nature of the study

Abu Nasr al-Farabi (870-950)1 is said to have been born in Farab

(Transoxiana, modern-day Kazakhstan). As Fakhry points out “Arab biographers

are unanimous in lavishing on [… him] the highest praise” (Al-Farabi, Founder 6).

Scholars have indeed named him “the greatest political philosopher of the period”

(Mahdi 1) and “the second teacher” (after Aristotle). He lived in Damascus (where

he also died in 950), Central Asia, Egypt and Baghdad. Al-Farabi is also a

significant scholar insofar as he is the first Muslim of whom we have a substantial

number of complete works. According to Mahdi, he is also almost the only

Muslim philosopher who chose to explore the tension between the individual and

the community, “and in the process brought to the fore philosophy’s philanthropic

spirit and the philosopher’s high minded devotion to the true welfare of his

community” (62). As such, he stands as an impressive figure who deserves to be

studied.

The figure of al-Farabi has appealed to many scholars. In his 1962 annotated

bibliography, Rescher documents 184 studies. Very few of those, however,

were devoted to al-Farabi’s theory of rhetoric. In 1962 there was only one

seven-page analysis (Nagy); in 2006 there is, to the best of my knowledge,

only three more (Aouad; Butterworth "Rhetorician"; Parens). Each of them

focuses on specific aspects2 but none offers a comprehensive approach that

presents al-Farabi’s theory of rhetoric and its relationship to the rest of his

1
All dates are A.D. unless specified otherwise.
2
Aouad studies the concept of point of view in al-Farabi. Butterworth focuses on al-Farabi’s
politics with an emphasis on the figure of the ruler. Parens focuses on the relationship between
Plato’s metaphysics and al-Farabi.
 2

corpus. This fact is surprising if one heeds the plea for more research in

medieval Islamic rhetoric appearing throughout the existing literature

(Halldén 19; Netton 88; Peters vii; Rescher 127). My study aims at bridging

this gap and benefits from the 1968 French translation of al-Farabi’s treatise

on rhetoric by Jacques Langhade.

While research on al-Farabi’s rhetorical theory is scarce, the amount of

scholarship about adjacent fields such as medieval Islamic history or philosophy is

significantly bigger. I will try to relate these broader aspects to the subject of study

by way of scaffolding and framing my investigation. I will include in my study a

consideration of three aspects of al-Farabi: his medieval context, his Islamic

essence and his theory of rhetoric.

Regarding the historical context, Netton defines the age of Farabism “as

running from the birth of al-Farabi in AD 870 to the death of Abu Hayyan al-

Tawhidi3 in about AD 1023” (1). This period is centered around the Abbasid

dynasty (750 – 945) and its fall. It is roughly equivalent to the Renaissance of

Islam, “one of the richest intellectually in the entire development of medieval

Islamic thought” (ibid.). It is also, however, a period “of deep instability and

change” (2). The relationship between both of these aspects was analyzed by

Kraemer in terms of its negative correlation (the less stable a period is, the richer it

will intellectually be). Citing the European Renaissance as a parallel example, he

claims that in the face of socioeconomic distress, humanistic culture and learning

tend “to become the highest symbol of nobility” (Kraemer 27).

3
“One of the most dynamic and informative members of the group which we have termed ‘the
school of al-Farabi’” (Netton 16).
 3

Another aspect that, according to scholars, contributed to the Islamic

Renaissance was the Enlightened environment of tolerance and the endorsement of

learning during the Abbasid rule. To this extent, Gutas has stressed that under the

Abbasids “support for the translation movement cut across all lines of religious,

sectarian, ethnic, tribal and linguistic demarcation” (5). Al-Farabi would have been

a product of that very particular time whose spirit has been characterized by

Kraemer as cosmopolitan (13), secular (14) and of economic crisis:

[M]ounting inflation, rising taxation, depletion of agricultural

resources, stagnant markets. It was a time of lavish government

spending on imperial building and on armies. The armies were raised

for foreign wars of conquest and for control of the local populace. (27)

All these aspects can be said to have shaped al-Farabi’s thought. In this study,

I will heed the interplay between al-Farabi and his historical context analyzing the

Abbasids from a different perspective. I will also probe the relationship between

the Abbasids and the school of the Mutazilah. Peters categorizes the Mutazilah as

a part of the falsafah movement, which is defined as a natural, speculative

theology of a Platonic nature (Peters 169). This is relevant insofar as al-Farabi is

held to be one of the most authoritative scholars within the first generation of

falsafah,4 the other is Avicenna.

The Platonic legacy of al-Farabi will be one of the aspects of my study. In

opposition to the historical context, the degree to which Muslim scholars adopted

western thought is an unresolved question in the literature to which my research

4
Another would be Abu Bishr Matta, a Christian philosopher.
 4

aims to contribute. So far, only the relationship to Plato and Aristotle has been

examined –and it has been done inconclusively.

Let us first focus on the dyad Plato - al-Farabi. On the one hand, we have

Strauss who considered al-Farabi to be “a true Platonist” (qtd. in Colmo 2) for

whom “Plato’s philosophy was true philosophy” (369). Could al-Farabi be a

Platonist? According to Peters and Colmo, he could be a Neoplatonist but not a

Platonist because the writings of Greek scholars had

entered this new cultural ground via the translation route, and were to

some degree colored by the interpretations attached to them in their

earlier career … The Arabs received this tradition after five hundred

years of shaping in the later Greek schools and another two hundred

years at the hands of the Syrian Christians: between the corpus proper

and the falasifah stand the massive efforts incorporated into the Berlin

Academy’s Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca. (Peters 7)

Paraphrasing Peters,5 Porphyry was nearly as much the father of Platonism as

Plato himself. Therefore, it would be more advisable to look for Neoplatonic

influence in al-Farabi. In the field of philosophy, this work has been undertaken by

Morewedge and Colmo; Mahdi has also explored al-Farabi’s Neoplatonism from

the point of view of politics. My purpose will be to add a study focused on rhetoric

to this literature.

But let us first examine the positions taken by the authors above. They are

related but not identical. According to Mahdi, al-Farabi presents “an un-Platonic

5
“Andronicus of Rhodes was nearly as much the father of Aristotelianism as was Aristotle
himself” Francis E. Peters, Aristotle and the Arabs: The Aristotelian Tradition in Islam (New York:
New York University Press, 1968) 4, Charles E. Butterworth, "Ethics in Medieval Islamic
Philosophy," Journal of Religious Ethics 11 (1983).
 5

interpretation of Plato” (36), a massively political Plato “whose other-wordliness is

accidental and whose views of the relation between this-wordly affairs and other-

worldly affairs are more adequate than those of Aristotle” (ibid.).6 We have

therefore a distorted (Neoplatonic?) Plato.

Colmo accepts that al-Farabi used to a certain extent Neoplatonism as part of

his philosophical rhetoric but his philosophical system lies in square opposition to

both Plato and Aristotle’s thought. Focusing his study on al-Farabi’s trilogy The

Two Philosophies, he claims that the two philosophies to which al-Farabi alludes

are not the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, but, on one hand the combined

philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, and al-Farabi’s philosophy on the other.

Furthermore, Colmo establishes a dichotomy between, first, a Hegelian approach

to an idealized philosophy according to which “philosophy and religion have the

same aim […] Philosophy is the original that religion imitates insofar as

philosophy seeks the truth of which religion is an imitation” (166) and, second, an

approach that “denies our access to the veritable or eternal and denies that these

are proper standards by which to judge our knowledge” (167).

Colmo’s thesis is similar to Parens’, who counters the Heideggerian view of

Plato as a metaphysical dogmatist. Merging both Colmo and Mahdi, he argues that

Plato did “not ground his account of politics on metaphysical presuppositions”

(144). In his view, al-Farabi’s account of Plato would be more Platonic than

Neoplatonic; and Plato would be a phenomenological thinker (ibid.), distorted by

Western tradition and the Enlightenment (xi). It was the West, and not al-Farabi,

that had misunderstood a Plato as oriented toward man and its context.

6
For a similar view, cf. Majid Fakhry, Al-Farabi, Founder of Islamic Neoplatonism (Oxford:
Oneworld, 2002) 22.
 6

Something similar happened with Aristotle. The influence here is more

obvious in the sense that complete translations and commentaries of his works are

extant. Still, just as it was the case with Plato, the Arab reception of the Organon

was not unmediated: it was received from both Alexandria and Constantinople. Al-

Farabi was related to the former in that he was a product of the Baghdad branch of

the school of Alexandria, which moved first to Antioch (ca. 720), then to Harran,

and from there to Baghdad (ca. 900).

With regard to Aristotle, it was Druart who suggested that al-Farabi took

liberties with the Stagirite’s theory (135), modifying it so that it met his views. For

example, al-Farabi had to go beyond Aristotle’s theory of metaphysics, which did

not include theology and posited proximity with the active intellect as the

touchstone of man’s ultimate happiness. The result would be a distorted Aristotle.

It seems that, even if distorted, scholars have found and analyzed relationships

between the West and the East in the field of philosophy. This study will

contribute to this comparative scholarship with a focus on rhetoric, broadened to

include other systems such as that of Isocrates. To that extent, I should stress that

the relationship between East and West is not unidirectional: just as the effects of

introducing Aristotle and Plato into Islam “were manifold … upset[ting] the

equilibrium of the Islamic community” (Peters xxi), it seems that Islamic

scholarship was “not a mere clone of Greek thought” (Netton). Indeed, as Halldén

pointed out, “the influence of Greek rhetoric … does not, however, [… mean] that

Arab Islamic rhetoric is simply an amalgam of traditions that somehow are the
 7

property of Western culture and civilization” (28). Rather, the Greek tradition was

adapted to the special needs and the situation of Muslim society.7

This is not a negationist statement of Greek influence: as Peters points out,

this influence is “as patent as the Greek etymology of falsafah” (135). Yet, I would

take issue with his claim that “Hellenism created philosophy in Islam” (ibid.),

which he supports suggesting that falsafah is “the only word the Arabs had to

describe this utterly new phenomenon” (ibid.). Two remarks should be made about

that argument. First, I would stress the fact that he used “Hellenism” instead of

“Greece.” Indeed, as Cameron has suggested, the ancients may not have felt the

distinction between “Greek” and “Semitic” culture with the same force as we do.

To that extent, Halldén himself acknowledges that

The presupposition that ancient Greece was a “Western” society

has lost its former credibility, and this should be taken into

serious consideration when it comes to the history of rhetoric.

“Greek” culture itself (both ancient and classical, to say nothing

of its Hellenistic permutations) was the product of a composite of

influences, some of which emanated from the East (ancient

Babylon, Egypt, etc.). (30)

Second, we should also consider not only the tradition of kalam, but also

research documenting pre-existing public speech and preaching practice in Islamic

contexts prior to the advent of Greek scholarship. This study will not deal with

this body of pre-existing theories but will analyze the school of kalam (the

7
We see, again, the relevance of taking the historical context into account.
 8

Mutazilah) and its interplay with Greek scholarship as well as certain features of

Islamic culture.

With regard to this point, one could well wonder what these characteristics of

Islamic culture are. I contend that the features that will prove relevant to this study

are the following:

1. Blurred distinction between what is lawful and what is aesthetically pleasant

or effective. Sharia functions as the overall “definer of decorum in human

behaviour” (Halldén 23).

2. “The Muslim community is never satisfied with the present. It looks to the

future, but only insofar as it is called upon to bring about the revolution that will

suppress its own rebellion” (Mahdi 17). This point can be said to be shared with

Judeo-Christian thought, something classical antiquity lacked.

3. “Man is the central concern of both philosophy and divine law: philosophy

is a human activity and the divine law is addressed to man … both call on man to

reach for something higher than himself, to become divine” (Mahdi 18).

4. Philosophy is “understood by analogy to the human arts whose practice is

demanded by the divine law, but a divine law that left man free to perfect these

arts according to his natural light” (Mahdi 27). According to Islamic philosophy,

those capable should pursue free inquiry according to the best available method

(Adamson in Bragg).

5. Islam is a “political, this-worldly religion” (Mahdi 36). This point

summarizes previous aspects. Morewedge makes a similar claim stressing “the

political dimension of the philosophical teacher [… as] fully accepted and

expanded in Islamic political theory” (68).

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6. “Islam is a religion of theocracy; collectivism is presupposed as an implicit

premise in its political philosophy. The sage, the religious leader and the ruler of

the community are all variations of the perfect man” (Morewedge 68). Both Aouad

and Morewedge also make this point.

7. Muslims are conscious of their inability to know the whole. Their frustration

from (and acceptance of) this fact derives into prayer “with a view to persuading

the power who rules the whole to order the whole in accordance with the vision we

have of it” (Parens xvi).

8. Islam is an inclusive culture with the ability to encompass within itself

sophisticated minorities and external influences (Peters xix).

My claim is not to have gathered a comprehensive list of attributes of Islamic

cultures. Rather, I have collected a list of characteristics which, according to my

research hypotheses, influenced al-Farabi’s rhetorical theory. My purpose in the

study will be to analyze to what extent and how it was affected by these features.

With regard to al-Farabi’s rhetorical theory, this is the focus of very few

studies. I will expand my review to literature related to other fields such as the

other syllogistic arts (focusing on poetics, philosophy, and dialectics), plus two

areas that have proved significant in my review: politics and religion. I will

concentrate on al-Farabi and their interconnections with his rhetorical theory.

Fakhry (Al-Farabi, Founder 26) presents us with a clear schema of the aims of

each art. While poetry is concerned with imagination, science with demonstration

and dialectic with opinion, rhetoric is the art of persuasion. As it is usually the case

with clear schemata, the lines drawn are more defined than they are in reality. As

we will see, al-Farabi’s very special theory of opinion is subsumed under the
 10

frame of his rhetoric and encompasses both certainty and supposition. Also, just as

opinion is not the exclusive realm of dialectics, persuasion takes place in other

fields such as politics, religion and philosophy. To this extent, rhetoric can be said

to play a part in those fields and this study also proposes to analyze the relations

between each of the pairs. Scholars (Butterworth "Rhetorician"; Mahdi) have

already suggested the existence of interplay among all these areas in Medieval

Islam. Butterworth and Parens have done this from a political point of view;

Mahdi did the same with a focus on philosophy; whereas Kemal and Aouad and

Schoeler centered their investigation around the poetics. This study contributes to

that conversation with a focus on rhetoric and the figure of al-Farabi. My research

questions are derived from the gaps and unresolved controversies I have found in

the literature.

1. How is the historical context of the Abbasid dynasty related to al-Farabi’s

theory of rhetoric?

This question arises in part from my New Historicist bias as a scholar. To that

extent, it is important to me and my practice as a researcher. Furthermore, the

question is relevant to understand al-Farabi’s theory insofar as it can be said to be

a product of the Renaissance period of Islam. It seems therefore reasonable to

claim, together with Kraemer and the postulates of New Historicism, that, without

the Humanist structure of that time and place, al-Farabi could not have written his

works. Building upon the historical studies of Kraemer and Gutas, I will analyze

the historical context in which al-Farabi’s theory of rhetoric developed.

2. How are the eight characteristics of Islamic culture described above related to

al-Farabi’s theory of rhetoric?

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This question is relevant in the face of scholarship (Langhade; Bohas,

Guillaume and Kouloughli; Smyth, qtd. in Hallén 20) that questions the Islamic

nature of al-Farabi’s thought and those who adopt his views. Previous literature

has already addressed this issue but it has not answered what is Islamic about the

rhetoric of al-Farabi. The fact that it be Islamic, as opposed to Western, is an

essential point: there are alternatives to contemporary Islamic societies that do not

imply losing their identity.

3. How is al-Farabi’s rhetorical theory related to Platonic, Neoplatonic,

Aristotelian and Sophistic rhetorical theory?

I find this to be a very exciting and motivating question. As I suggested in my

review of the literature, previous scholarship has inconclusively analyzed the

writings of al-Farabi either from a Platonic or an Aristotelian perspective. I find al-

Farabi’s historical context to be similar to the one that allowed the sophists to

flourish in ancient Greece. Also, several studies point to a phenomenological al-

Farabi (Mahdi; Parens). Putting both aspects together, I expect to find an internal

(rather than external) relation between the sophists’ positions and al-Farabi’s

thought.

4. What are the relationships established by al-Farabi in his writings between

rhetoric on one side and philosophy, politics, dialectic, poetics and religion on the

other?

This question aims at presenting a broad and framing picture of al-Farabi’s

theory of rhetoric. To that extent, I will analyze the relationship between rhetoric

and the other syllogistic arts, with a focus on philosophy, dialectic and poetics.

This study will not probe the relationship between rhetoric and sophistry because
 12

of a lack of a primary text on the latter. Instead, I will complement my study with

an exploration of the relationship between rhetoric, politics and religion.

I think that the best way to answer these questions is to understand, together

with McKeon, al-Farabi’s theory of rhetoric as an argument for what rhetoric

should be. With this aim, a careful close analysis of the argument al-Farabi makes

in his texts will help us understand the context (RQ1), discover its structure (RQ4),

identify the arguments (RQ3) and signal the inherent values of the position (RQ2).

Accordingly, chapter two will explore the dynasty of the Abbasids and the

cultural revolution they espoused. Thanks to it, almost all non-literary and non-

historical secular Greek scholarship was translated into Arabic (Gutas 1). The

chapter will also expose darker aspects of the Abbasids; especially their strategies

to create a closed society where dissent is not allowed. At this point, the chapter

will also feature a presentation of the intellectual opposition force that the

Abbasids faced: the Mutazilah. Chapter three will examine the claim that al-

Farabi’s thought is not external to Islam or Islamic society by analyzing to what

extent al-Farabi can be presented as a scholar who fits within the frame of that

culture and society. This chapter will also study al-Farabi’s approach to Sharia.

Chapter four will present al-Farabi’s theory of rhetoric and his

conceptualization of the enthymeme. It will also consider any possible links

between al-Farabi’s theory of rhetoric and that of three classical Greek scholars

(Plato, Aristotle and Isocrates). Chapter five will situate rhetoric within the

structure of al-Farabi’s thought. This chapter will explore the relations between

rhetoric on the one hand and philosophy, dialectic, poetic, religion and politics on

the other. Finally, chapter six explores future research possibilities that can spring
 13

out of this study and points at possible obstacles one could find to that extent. It

will also summarize the argument that this study tries to make about al-Farabi’s

theory of rhetoric.
 14

CHAPTER II

Al-Farabi al-gharib, al-gharb and al-Farabi

One of the events [of this year] was the spread of the Qarmatian movement

in the Kufan countryside. Shibl, a page of Ahmad b. Muhammad al-Tai,

was sent against them. He was ordered to search for them, seize all of them

that he might come upon, and bring them to the Caliph's court. He came

upon a leader of theirs known as Ibn Abi al-Qaws. He was sent with the

others to Baghdad. On al-Muharran 22, 289, (January 8, 902), al-Mutadid

summoned him and interrogated him. He then ordered his teeth knocked

out. Thereafter, his (limbs) were dislocated by stretching one of his hands

with a pulley while a rock was attached to the other hand. He was left in

this state from midday to evening. The next day, his hands and feet were

cut off, and he was decapitated. His corpse was hung on the East Side.

After several days, it was carried to al-Yasiriyyah, where it was hung

together with the Qarmatians who had been hung there. (Al-Tabari 99)

This event took place only a couple of months after the arrival of al-Farabi

from Farab to Baghdad in 901; this move and the situation in Baghdad marked his

period of old age and full maturity. While it has traditionally been held that al-

Farabi “devoted himself entirely to contemplation and speculation and kept

himself aloof from political and social perturbations and turmoils” (Sharif 450), I

would like to show that his rhetorical theory reflects the socio-political

controversies and debates of his time. A presentation of these is therefore in order

for us to better understand both their presence in al-Farabi’s work and the positions

he favored. To that extent, this second chapter will probe the dynasty during whose
 15

caliphate al-Farabi lived: the Abbasids and their competing persuasive forces, the

Mutazilites. Counter to the traditional depiction of the Abbasids as a paradigm of

humanist rulers, I will argue for an alternative understanding which, though

acknowledging their project to revitalize Greek (and Persian) knowledge, also

draws our attention to their self-perpetuating, repressive strains.

The Abbasids overthrew the Umayyad dynasty in 750, when the Abbasid

general Abdullah invited eighty Umayyad leaders to a banquet at abu-Futrus

(ancient Antipatris) and killed them in what is known as the Abbasid massacre

(Hitti 285). This feast of blood followed the fall of the leading city of al-Kufah, in

749. Gibbon’s analysis of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, according to

which it was due to the loss of civic virtue among its citizens, has also been

applied to the fall of the Umayyads,8 against whom the Abbasids presented their

theocratic and orthodox program.

The establishment of the Abbasids involved a Copernican change in several

aspects other than religious reformism. The geopolitics of the Middle East

underwent a shift from the Arab and Byzantine-oriented Umayyads to the more

international and Persian-oriented Abbasids. This change can be observed in the

base of the new empire: Baghdad. Its etymology leads us to "the two ancient

Persian words Bagh, ‘God,’ and Dâdh, meaning ‘founded’ or foundation –whence

Baghdad would have signified the city 'Founded by God'" (Le Strange 11). The

italics are mine and they remind us of the Persian and theocratic foundations of the

Abbasid Empire.

8
Hitti records how “the characteristic vices of civilization, especially those involving wine, women
and song, had seized upon the youthful Arab society” (280)
 16

This Persian influence cut through all aspects and layers of society9 and meant

a cultural revolution. For the Umayyads, Gutas tells us, "the prevailing high

culture, especially among those Greek-speaking [Byzantine] groups with whom

the Umayyads were in direct contact, was the Greek Orthodox Christianity

espoused in imperial Constantinople" (18), which looked down on Hellenism as

"the defeated enemy, to be treated with contemptuous indifference because it was

irrelevant" (ibid.). Thus, the cultural orientation of the caliphate changed with the

transferal of the capital from Damascus to Baghdad. That is relevant in as much as

the Abbasids allowed interest in the Hellenist heritage which would have never

taken place in the Umayyad Empire. Indeed, had al-Farabi not lived within the

realm of the Abbasids and their promoted translation movement,10 it would be

doubtful whether he would have written both his commentary on Aristotle’s

Rhetoric and his treatise on rhetoric.

The orientation of the Abbasids towards Persia and classical Greece was not

disinterested: it was a means of legitimizing their ruling power. In order to clarify

this point and suggest how it can be linked to both the opening quotation of this

chapter and al-Farabi’s rhetorical theory, I will analyze both of the following

fragments:

9
Hitti tells us how "Gradually Persian titles, Persian wines and wives, Persian mistresses, Persian
songs, as well as Persian ideas and thoughts, won the day. Al-Mansur, we are told, was the first to
adopt the characteristic Persian head-gear … in which he was naturally followed by his subjects."
(294)
10
This movement was espoused by the Abbasids and took place mainly in Baghdad between the
middle of the eighth century to the end of the tenth. It consisted in the translation of “almost all
non-literary and non-historical secular Greek books that were available throughout the Eastern
Byzantine Empire and the Near East” Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture : The Graeco-
Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early Abbasid Society (2nd-4th/8th-10th Centuries)
(London ; New York: Routledge, 1998) 1.
 17

Confusion now hath made his masterpiece! If the caliph is killed the whole

Most sacrilegious murder hath broke ope universe is disorganized, the sun

The Lord's anointed temple, and stole thence hides its face, rain ceases and

The life o' the building! plants grow no more

The fragment on the right is uttered by Macduff in Macbeth’s second act, third

scene, upon the discovery of the assassination of King Duncan. The one on the left

is taken from Ibn at-Tiqtaqa’s Kitab al-Fakhri (190), a source contemporary to the

fall of the Abbasid dynasty. Despite the temporal and geographical differences,

both texts share the same conception of the divinity of the body politic. Thus, just

as Claudius entrenched himself in the “divinity [that] doth hedge a king” (Hamlet,

IV.5), the Abbasids used Persian Zoroastrian texts to construe the conception that

their ascent to power was protected and commanded by God. Hence their usage of

such texts as Abu-Sahl’s Kitab an-Nahmutan, where subjects were reminded that

The people of every age and era acquire fresh experiences and have

knowledge renewed for them in accordance with the decree of the stars and

the signs of the zodiac, a decree which is in charge of governing time by the

command of God Almighty. (8 qtd. in Gutas 46)

Gutas suggests that the Abbasids interpreted from passages such as the one above

that God had commanded them to renew the sciences just as the Sasanians had

previously done. Invested with such a divine protection, they set to confront their

opponents through dialectic as a means to produce proofs against them and their

socio-cultural foundations.

Al-Mahdi was the first caliph to command the theologians who used

dialectic disputation (al-gadaliyyin) in their research to compose books

 18

against the heretics and other infidels we have just mentioned. The

theologians then produced demonstrative proofs against the disputers

(mu’anidin), eliminated the problems posed by the heretics, and expounded

the truth in clear terms to the doubters (al-Mas’udi 3447, qtd. in Gutas 65)

The disputers of the Abbasids were the Umayyads, who were trying to regain

power, and return to their cultural foundations: Byzantium (the eastern part of

what once was the Roman Empire) and the Greek orthodox Christians. Both of

these foundations were the targets of Abbasid dialectic, which was used to

establish the pre-eminence of their Hellenistic counterparts with arguments such as

the following:

Both in their spoken and written language the Byzantines follow in the

footsteps of the Greek, though they never reached their level either in the

essential purity or absolute eloquence of the language. The language of the

Byzantine is inferior in comparison to that of the Greeks and its syntax, in

the way in which it is expressed and in the customary manner of address, is

weaker. (Al-Mas’udi 664, qtd. in Gutas 89)

During the time of the ancient Greeks, and for a little while during the

Byzantine [i.e. in this case, Roman] empire, the philosophical sciences kept

on growing and developing, and scholars and philosophers were respected

and honored … The sciences continued to be in great demand and

intensively cultivated until the religion of Christianity appeared among the

Byzantines; they then effaced the signs of philosophy, eliminated its traces,

destroyed its paths, and they changed and corrupted what the ancient
 19

Greeks had set forth in clear expositions. (Al-Mas’udi 741, qtd. in Gutas

89)

Both of these fragments prove for Gutas the rationalistic policy of the

Abbasids, which was a result of Sasanid thought according to which

there can never come together in a single state a concealed religious leader

and a declared political leader without the religious leader usurping the

power from the political leader, because religion is the foundation and royal

authority is the pillar, and he who controls the foundation is in better

control of the entire edifice than he who controls the pillar. (Al-Abi 89, qtd

in Gutas 81)

In other words, "the king ought not to concede to worshippers, ascetics, and the

pious that they are worthier of the religion, more fond of it, and more angry on its

account than himself" (ibid.). Consequently, according to Gutas, Abbasid caliphs

favored a rationalist intellectual elite over religious leaders. I would like to show,

however, that their rationalism is not as strong as Gutas suggests. Indeed, when

Claudius’ sentence above is put in its context, an uncomfortable sense of

uneasiness can be perceived:

Let him go, Gertrude; do not fear our person:

There's such divinity doth hedge a king,

That treason can but peep to what it would,

Acts little of his will. (Hamlet IV.5)

This is relevant insofar it debunks the confidence asserted by a body politic

that endows those in power with a halo of infallibility and perfection. The same
 20

uneasiness can be felt in the reassuring mantra that Ali repeated to himself the

night before he was assassinated in 661:

It is reported that ‘Ali had kept watch that whole night before the murder

and that he kept repeating as he paced from the door to his bedroom, ‘God

knows I have never lied, nor been accused of lying. (Al-Mas'udi 423 qtd. in

Mernissi 28)

Again, Ali’s disquiet counters the divinity that hedges the body politic and

hints at the opposition to a fallible ruler. What is more, his assassination11 takes us

closer to the irrationality and violence of the opening quotation from al-Tabari

than to Gutas’ rationalism. Indeed, upon a reading of al-Tabari's or al-Mas'udi's

histories it is hard to defend Gutas' benign account. To this extent, I would favor

Fatima Mernissi’s approach, according to which the Abbasids did recruit an

intellectual elite; but this elite was drawn from a specific tradition of thought: that

of the Sharia, which was understood as a banning reflection and as based on Taa

(obedience). This interpretation of the Sharia differs from the original meaning of

Sharia which, as the historical dictionary Lisan al-Arab records, denotes “going to

the source of water.” The mythological value of water in the Arabic culture has an

element of life and energy but I suggest that the Abbasids turned to blood rather

than water.

11
“On the night of Friday 13 Ramadan [January 20, 661] that woman withdrew for prayer under a
sort of mosquito net within the walls of the great mosque ... She brought a piece of silk which she
cut into strips and put around the men's foreheads, while the men took their swords and went to sit
facing the door through which ‘Ali would enter the mosque, as he did every morning at the first call
of the muezzin … [then] ‘Ali came out of his house and called out in a loud voice, 'Muslims, come
to prayer, come to prayer!’ Ibn Muljam and his accomplices threw themselves on him ... Ibn
Muljam struck him a sword blow on the top of his head” Al-Mas'udi, Muruj Al-Dhahab (Beirut:
Dar al-Ma'rifa, 1982) 423.
 21

Similarly, Mernissi contends that “in order to serve the needs of the Abbasid

palace, the Sharia was stripped of its questioning, speculative dimension” and

“[t]he Imam became a bloodthirsty despot” (37). This is illustrated in the inaugural

discourse by Abu al-Abbas, the first Abbasid caliph, where he referred to himself

as al-saffah, the bloodshedder (Al-Tabari 30). That self-appellation is a powerful

indicator of the degree of turmoil and political instability reached during this

period.12 A brief analysis of al-Farabi’s lifetime results in a bleeding list of

rebellions: he was born the first year of the Zanj revolt, a 14-year slave rebellion in

which half a million people died (Hitti 468); he also experienced the uprising of

the 13 vizirs against al-Muqtadir (908-32), who had succeeded his second cousin,

Abdullah ibn al-Mutazz, upon being killed the day after he assumed the caliphate

(December 17, 908).

What can be learned from all the facts and events above? Khomeini’s religious

orthodoxy and repressive tactics of any opposition was not unprecedented in the

history of the Islamic Middle East. Indeed, these can already be found in the

Abbasids. And yet, there are various differences between Khomeini and the

Abbasids. One of the most significant ones is that while the Abbasids could not

suppress the idea of there existing an opposition, Khomeini had enough media

power as to present a monolithic social depiction. The song Comme d’Habitude

provides us with an analogous situation. Claude François created it but it was Paul

Anka who made it world known. Also, while in François’ song the story is about a

couple and the narration is focused on the other partner, on “you”; in Paul Anka’s

12
Hitti points out that “the incoming dynasty [the Abbasids], much more than the outgoing [the
Umayyads], depended upon force in the execution of its policies. For the first time in the history of
Islam the leathern spread beside the caliph's seat, which served as a carpet for the use of the
executioner, became a necessary adjunct of the imperial's throne” (288).
 22

version, the other vanishes under a monolithic I-speaker (which does not mean that

it does not exist: it is simply hidden). In any case, both Khomeini (less

conspicuouly) and the Abbasids (more conspicuously) repressed their opposition.

To this extent, it is useful to cite Khallikan’s account of Hallaj’s execution:

He received a thousand blows and didn't utter a word (...) the executioner

cut off his hands and feet, cut off his head, which he kept aside, and then

burned the body. When it was nothing but ashes, he threw it into the Tigris

and planted the head on Baghdad's bridge. (140, qtd. in Mernissi 20)

His crime? He would insist that the human being was a creature of God,

capable of self-guidance. This is relevant insofar as it hints towards the existence

of movements and ideas in line with what will be called much later in Europe the

Renaissance. For the time being, I will focus my analysis on an emerging pattern:

the Claudius-like Abbasid obsession and/or fear of opposition. To this extent, it

should be noted that such opposition did exist and manifested itself in two

different ways. One of the ways was intellectual. This was the trend followed by

the Mutazilites. The other way was violent and was adopted by the Kharijites.

According to Mernissi, there is a relevant difference between both of these ways.

While the former “proposed a profound reflection on the nature of humanity and

the nature of the divine, thus bringing up the question of the place of reason and

personal opinion, as did the western philosophers of the Enlightenment” (21), the

latter “never dreamed of changing the relationship between the leader and the

community; they simply thought that by rebelling against the imam and sometimes

killing him they could change things” (ibid.).

 23

Each tradition has a certain vocabulary. Thus, Sharia is the core word for the

Kharijites, who understand it is their duty to watch that the leader of the

community stays within the hudud (Allah’s limits). On the other hand, the

keywords for the Mutazilites are reason (aql) and personal opinion (ray). Their

goal is to apply both of these concepts to the political sphere. The relevance of the

Mutazilite approach is suggested by Mernissi: it allows all the people who are

capable of reasoning to enter the realm of the political and play an active role. Al-

Masudi explained thus the Mutaliza as follows:

The Mutazilah and other schools maintain that the title of imam is obtained

by the [free] vote of the nation. God and his prophet, they say, did not

designate a particular imam, and the Muslims were not obliged to give their

vote to any specially designated man. (236, qtd. in Mernissi 35)

This fragment debunks the divinity halo that the Abbasids, as Claudius,

asserted to have. Similarly, one of the best definitions that I have found of

Mutazilah (Fackenheim's) stresses the attempt to debunk mystical and religious

doctrines to what seems to be the requirements of reason. And yet, the philosophy

of the Mutazilah transcends that characteristic and materializes in five different

ideas, which Nader describes: First, the unity of God (al-tawhid). This is very

important because al-tawhid could be argued to be the ultimate touchstone of the

Islamic nature of any religious group. Indeed, this is the only characteristic that all

Islamic groups share13 and as such it is a relevant element to be taken into

13
I would however note that this feature is not exclusive to Islam. Besides, the interpretations of
tawhid vary across Islamic groups. Thus, Nader alludes to the controversial Mutazilite
interpretation of the attributes of God (attributes are not extrinsic to the Divine essence).
 24

consideration in the examination of the alleged unislamic essence of this

movement.

A second feature of the movement is Divine justice (al-adl). The Mutazilah

heralds the liberum arbitrium of man basing its position both in what Isaiah Berlin

would call the principle of alternative possibilities14 and in a Koranic interpretation

favoring verses such as "The truth is from your Lord: let him then who will,

believe; and let him who will, disbelieve" (The Quran 18: 28) over others such as

“and whom God shall please to guide, that man’s breast will He open to Islam; but

whom He shall please to go astray, strait and narrow will He make his heart” (6:

125). Nader focuses on these two characteristics but, in the context of this study, I

would stress the value of a different one: the intermediate position (al-manzilah

bayna al-manzilatayn).

Such a position is so relevant that the name of the movement is derived from

this root (Itizal). Itizal means separation and I will illustrate its meaning with an

example that unites both features: divine justice and the intermediate position. It

concerns the founder of the movement, Wasil ibn Ata. He separated himself from

the circles of thought existing during his time regarding the characterization of

great sinners (fasiqun). According to some they were unbelievers; according to

others they were believers. Wasil ibn Ata was able to break out of the dichotomy

and propose a Guiddens-like third way: their essence was neither believing nor

unbelieving but a middle position between the two. The impact of this frame of

thought is not to be belittled.

14
"A person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise" In
Harry G. Frankfurt, "Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility," The Importance of What
We Care About (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988) 1.
 25

Neither are its consequences -and it should be noted that not all of them are

positive. Indeed, the Mutazilite ideas presented above unsettled the Abbasid

caliphs and religious imams alike. According to Mernissi, their reaction was to

shroud their ideas in the chador of foreigness. With her sociological background,

she analyses the metaphorical-mythological value the West, al-gharb, has in the

frame of Arabic cultural assumptions:

Gharb, the Arabic word for the West, is also the place of darkness and the

incomprehensible, always frightening. Gharb is the territory of the strange,

the foreign (gharib). Everything that we don’t understand is frightening.

“Foreignness” in Arabic has a very strong spatial connotation, for gharb is

the place where the sun sets and where darkness awaits. It is in the West

that the night snaps up the sun and swallows it; then all terrors are possible.

(13)

In order to better understand Mernissi’s definition, I propose to complement it

with Susan Sontag’s idea of illness. According to Sontag, illness is commonly

explained as a consequence of natural law that relates to the sick person’s psyche

and morality. Consequently, illnesses are categorized by spiritual and moral

attributes rather than by physical symptoms. Indeed, one of the things that struck

me most during my conversations with Moroccans was that they saw Western

society not only as foreign, but also ill, poisoned from a fast-food moral system.

Attaching the Mutazilah and all its ideological system (moral responsibility,

rationalism, third-way strategies, etc.) to the foreign and ill West was one of the

most successful moves of the fearful (and feared) Abbasids. Mernissi argues that

their successors (political and religious leaders) have succeeded in consolidating

 26

the view that humanism and Islam are unrelated terms. In the chapters ahead, I

plan to show not only how the rhetorical theories of al-Farabi share a common

territory with the Mutazilah but also how close their tenets are to an Islamic

identity.

I have contributed towards that goal in this chapter by presenting the historical

context in which those theories developed. To that extent, I have introduced the

Abbasids as the dominant players in a game where, feeling vulnerable and afraid,

they resorted to violence and the stigmatization of their opponents. With regard to

their opponents, I have focused on the Mutazilites because al-Farabi’s theories of

rhetoric will mirror their philosophies.

 27

CHAPTER III

Al-Farabi: the Islamic bassoon

The Abbasid stigmatization of the Mutazilah began with al-Mutawakkil (847-

861). In contrast to both his brother, al-Wathiq (842-847), and his father, al-

Mutasim (833-842), he was more interested in power and magnificence than in

knowledge. Thus, he is usually remembered for being the commissioner of the

great mosque of Samarra -at its time, the largest and most fanciful in the world,

covered with mosaics of dark blue glass and having a spiral minaret of 180 feet.

The magnificence of this construction left very little space remaining in al-

Mutawakkil's frame of thought for the Mutazilah, which, in Jakobson’s

terminology,15 suddenly gained the status of markedness and was presented as

something strange and foreign to the Islamic tradition. Thus, they ironically shared

the same condition the Greeks had suffered under the Umayyads.

The sad part of the story is that more than a thousand years later, the Mutazilah

and what it stands for, still carry a scarlet F, for foreign, which continues to burn.

This is relevant in as much as al-Farabi has also been condemned to wear that sign

of markedness. Thus, Langhade in his introduction to al-Farabi’s rhetoric claims

that it is not an Arabic work. He then opposes the two terms in Arabic to talk about

rhetoric: khataba and balagha concluding that “the true Arabic rhetoric will only

be found in the Balagha” (Al-Farabi Rhetoric 27). Al-Farabi’s own translator and

editor will characterize him as foreign to the Arabic tradition! He does not

however make explicit which are the specific elements that make him a stranger to

15
Roman Jakobson introduced the theory of markedness according to which dichotomies have a
neutral, transparent side opposed to a marked one. The pair unmarked/marked has been likened to
the pair norm/deviation.
 28

Arabic culture and Islam other than his supposed abstractness. In this chapter I will

counter-argue Langhade’s (and the Abbasids’) conceptualization of al-Farabi’s

theory of khataba as foreign to Islamic culture. Instead, I will present al-Farabi as a

truly Islamic scholar in whose conception of the ideal Islamic society rhetoric is

called to play a central integrative role.

I will begin by addressing Langhade’s terminological claim about the

khataba/balagha dichotomy. Here, it is useful to cite Halldén, who reminds us that

the word in Arabic for public speech is al-khataba rather than al-balagha, which is

backed by the fact that the words sermon (khutba), public discourse (khitab) and

preacher or orator (khatib) are derived not from balagha but from khataba. What is

more, “al-khataba was something for the rational mind to reflect on” (23). Indeed,

rationality (one of the pillars of the Mutazilah) is therefore linked to al-khataba and

is characterized as a central element of Arab-Muslim culture. Consequently, al-

Farabi’s Kitab al-Khataba (Book of Rhetoric) can indeed belong to the true

tradition of Arabic rhetoric.

To probe the relationship between al-Farabi and the Islamic tradition, I will

describe the extent to which the eight major characteristics of Islam outlined in

chapter one can be found in al-Farabi’s work. The first characteristic alluded to

Sharia as the overall “definer of decorum in human behavior” (Halldén 23). Yet it

is necessary to point out that Sharia is a concept with different sides (Gallagher).

Indeed, Sharia is a polysemous concept and it means different things to different

people. Thus, while for orthodox scholars it means the fixed doctrine of the Koran

and the Sunna; for Ramadan it means “the path of fidelity to the principles of

Islam” (Ramadan "The Way toward Radical Reform" 5), which implies that both
 29

the Koran and the Sunna can be reinterpreted in accordance to each particular

context. Finally, Mernissi cites the entry in Manzur’s historical dictionary Lisan al-

Arab for Sharia according to which its etymology would stem from the concept of

“going toward the source of water … toward the element that assures life and

renews energy” (33). This last definition, again, allows for a reinterpretation of the

sacred texts contradicting orthodox doctrine. What is more, the guidelines for that

reinterpretation spring not from Islam directly (as in Ramadan) but from human

happiness, harmony and prosperity.

Does Sharia appear in the works of al-Farabi? If so, what is the position that he

takes in this regard? I contend first, that one can find a theory of Sharia in his

works. Second, I suggest that al-Farabi’s concept of Sharia is not a fixed corpus.

He will make this reinterpretability clear throughout his work. One of the most

explicit passages in this sense is when he states how it can be modified in

accordance with the current circumstances:

the successor [of the first ruler] will be the one who determines what the

first did not determine. And not only this, but it is also up to him to alter

much of what the first had legislated and to determine it in another way,

when he knows that it is best for his time -not because the first erred, but

because the first made a determination according to what was best for his

time and this one makes a determination according to what is best

subsequent to the time of the first, this being the kind of thing the first

would alter also, were he to observe it. ("Religion" 99)16

16
Throughout this survey the terms Sharia and law will be used interchangeably in accordance with
the practice most extended among al-Farabi’s translators.
 30

Both Ramadan and Manzur offer a flexible approach to Sharia. In my opinion,

al-Farabi's conceptualization is closer to the meaning expressed by Manzur. This

can be seen in his figure of the statesman, whom he describes as someone who

“should be able to lead people well along the right path to felicity and to the

actions by which felicity is reached” (Al-Farabi Perfect State 247). Al-Farabi’s

text follows very closely the conceptualization of Sharia as a path toward the

source of life and energy. Something similar is affirmed at the beginning of his

Book of Religion:

If the first ruler is virtuous and his rulership truly virtuous, then in what he

prescribes he seeks only to obtain, for himself and for everyone under his

rulership, the ultimate happiness that is truly happiness; and that religion

will be virtuous religion. If his rulership is ignorant, then in what he

prescribes he seeks only to obtain, for himself by means of them, one of the

important goods ... to win that good, be happy with it to the exclusion of

them, and make those he uses to arrive at his purpose and to retain in his

possession. ("Religion" 33)

I will stress two themes from the citation above. First, that al-Farabi’s

conception of ruling restricts more the ruler than the ruled. Rulers are charged with

the responsibility of leading everyone to happiness and are warned against abusing

power for their own exclusive benefit. In this sense, al-Farabi classifies rulers in

two types: virtuous and non-virtuous -ignorant- ("Religion" 93), laying the

foundations for a critical attitude towards rules and rulers who are not infallible.

This attitude, in spite of what rulers would rather have people believe, is Islamic

insofar as the Prophet himself stated that “those who put in a position someone
 31

who they know unworthy betrays God, the Prophet and the entirety of the

community” (Ramadan Islam & Société np). Indeed, as Ramadan points out “if

you are in front of God, develop a law that pleases God and God does not like

injustice” (ibid.). It is the responsibility of the Muslim to make sure that the most

honest and competent people rule the community. Therefore, there is a trend in

Islam to warn against bad rulers, and suggest that there can be such a thing. This

trend can be seen in al-Farabi’s work in his commentary about the ignorant rulers.

Second, al-Farabi's warning against exclusion is very much in line with Peters’

conception of Islam as “an inclusive culture with the ability to encompass within

itself sophisticated minorities and external influences” (Peters xix). Indeed, for al-

Farabi, there is a close relationship between the community and religion. Thus his

treatise on religion starts placing religion within the domain of actions and

opinions within the frame of a community.17 This is relevant inasmuch as it

provides us with a distinction between Islam and al-Farabi, and other more-

individual-focused religions and scholars. Furthermore, the communal aspect of

religion is especially relevant from a rhetorical point of view because language

will play a crucial role in regulating relations in the community.

This role of rhetorical speech can be seen when al-Farabi describes the ideal

ruler, deeming it important for him to "be good at guiding the people by his speech

to fulfill the laws of the first sovereigns as well as those laws which he will have

deducted in conformity with their principles after their time" (Perfect State 252-

53). Similarly, in Aphorisms, rhetoric is defined as “the ability to speak to others

17
“Religion is opinions and actions, determined and restricted with stipulations and prescribed for a
community … The community may be a tribe, a city or district, a great nation, or many nations”
(93).
 32

by means of statements that are excellent in persuading about each and every one

of the possible matters that are such as to be preferred or avoided” ("Aphorisms"

35). Rhetoric thus becomes a powerful and indispensable element in the society

about which al-Farabi writes. He envisions a virtuous society in which the

rhetoricians are called to be the second pillar.18 Similarly, in his description of the

statesman he acknowledges that “it is difficult to find all these qualities united in

one man” (Perfect State 249)19 so he agrees to dropping some of the characteristics

of the best statesman but the quality of good public speech will never be discarded:

he needs to be a rhetorician. In this sense, out of the 12 characteristics the ideal

ruler should have, al-Farabi deems six to be essential:

(1) He will be a philosopher, (2) He will know and remember the laws and

customs… (3) He will excel in deducing new law by analogy… (4) He will

be good at deliberating and be powerful in his deductions to meet new

situations for which the first sovereigns could not have laid down any law;

when doing this he will have in mind the good of the city. (5) He will be

good at guiding the people by his speech… (6) He should be of tough

physique (Perfect State 251-253)

This recognition of the impossibility of finding a platonic philosopher king is

significant and will be further explored in the next chapter. In this chapter, I would

however like to stress that in accordance to the political, this-wordly nature of

18
“There are five parts of the virtuous city: the virtuous, the linguists, the assessors, the warriors
and the moneymakers. The virtuous are the wise, the prudent, those who have opinions about major
matters. Then are the transmitters of the creed and the linguists; they are the rhetoricians, the
eloquent, the poets, the musicians, the scribes, and those who act in the same way as they do and
are among their number” (“Aphorisms” 37).
19
This cite matches aphorism n. 97. Some scholars claim this is a spurious addition to the text.
While the present study does not aim at determining the status of this aphorism, it should be noted
that it seems to be in accordance to the spirit of the rest of the text as the citation above shows.
 33

Islam (characteristic number five in chapter one) and its awareness of the

impossibility for man to know the whole (seventh characteristic of Islam in chapter

one), al-Farabi does show both the awareness of the inability of humans, and an

inclination towards a practical, this-wordly, approach to science and praxis. He

states this point explicitly and clearly:

The virtuous regime is the one through which … the ruled gain virtues with

respect to their this-worldly life and the afterlife that they could not gain

except by means of it. With respect to their this-worldly life, it is [a] that

the body of each one have the best conditions possible for its nature to

receive, [b] that the soul of each one have the best conditions possible for

its individual nature and for its power to obtain the virtues that are the

reason for happiness in the afterlife, and [c] that their subsistence be better

and more pleasant than all the sorts of life and subsistence that others have

("Aphorisms" 58)

This practical, down-to-earth bias will show in all levels of al-Farabi’s work

and contradicts Langhade’s vague claim that his is an abstract approach. Thus, at

an epistemological level, he favors the use of inference as the basis for

discernment,20 and induction as the foundations for practical intelligence.21 What

is more, actual customs and practices become a heuristic element in the

establishment of Sharia and valid knowledge:

20
Discernment is the ability to light upon the correct judgment with respect to recondite opinions
that are disputed and the power to verify it. So it is excellently inferring what is sound in opinions
and is, therefore, one of the kinds of prudence (“Aphorisms” 31)
21
Defined as “the faculty by which a human being -through much experience in matters and long
observation of sense-perceptible things- attains premises by which he is able to seize upon what he
ought to prefer or avoid with respect to each one of the matters we are to do” (“Aphorisms” 31)
 34

He [the jurist] must be cognizant of what is generally accepted and what is

customary. ("Religion" 100)

Stupidity is when someone's imaginative grasp of generally accepted things

is unimpaired and he has preserved experiences … his deliberation

inevitably makes him imagine that what does not lead to that [particular]

goal does lead to it or makes him imagine that what leads to the contrary of

that goal leads to it. So his action and advice are in accordance with what

his corrupt deliberation makes him imagine. ("Aphorisms" 34)

The assumption underlying these quotations illustrates the sixth characteristic

of Islam, which can also be conspicuously found in al-Farabi’s work: collectivism

is ingrained in Islam. In this sense, al-Farabi describes as stupidity not acting in

accordance with general knowledge and customs. He also posits again poetic

imagination as bringing people apart in contrast to rhetoric, which is seen as

fulfilling an integrative function (“Aphorisms” 36). The emphasis is, again, on the

community rather than on the individual. As it has already been suggested, the

community is responsible for the critical observation of the ruler and the

touchstone against which the rules are to be measured.

An example of the importance of collectivism in Islamic culture is the fact that

the traditional political system in Islamic countries is, according to Sluglett, the

republic. Madzur’s Lisan al-Arab traces back the origins of the word republic

(jumhuriyya) to the verb jamhara, “gathering together.” Jumhuriyya would mean

in this context "the majority of the people.” Mernissi quotes Manzur's example of

this use of the term: “jumhuriyya wine: ‘a wine that makes one very drunk’; it is

called jumhuriyya because ‘most people consume it.’ So we conclude that

 35

jumhuriyya describes a certain consensus, a unity within the colletivity” (Manzur,

qtd. in Mernissi 72). Another example of the importance of collectivity can be seen

the first pillar of Islam, the Shahada,22 the Islamic profession of faith. It was what

the Prophet asked from the Quraysh council to pronounce so that they could rule

over both Arabs and non-Arabs. At that point, the council rejected Muhammad’s

request forcing him out of Mecca. When he came back from Medina, the Prophet

imposed the Shahada ending the adoration of multiple idols. Abdullah bin Masud

narrates the episode in the Hadith of Bukhari:

The Prophet entered Mecca and (at that time) there were three hundred-and-

sixty idols around the Ka'ba. He started stabbing the idols with a stick he

had in his hand and reciting: "Truth (Islam) has come and Falsehood

(disbelief) has vanished." (Bukhari 3:658)

Individuality was in this way destroyed in the Islamic society. It has

traditionally been assumed that this factor is of major relevance because it allowed

Islam to expand as quickly as fire. As Mernissi puts it, they substituted freedom

for rahma;23 and rahma “made Islam a peaceful, unobtrusive traveler circulating in

all simplicity, without armies or swords, using established trading routes” (110).

Rhetoric will play a key role in the establishment of social cohesion and as such it

is opposed to imagination:

Excellence in imaginative evocations [takhyil] is other than excellence in

persuasion. The difference between the two is that what is intended by

excellence in persuasion is for the hearer to do something after assenting to

22
“There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is His Prophet.”
23
Rahma is a rich concept with multiple facets: sensitiveness (al-riqa), tenderness (al-ta’attuf), and
also forgiveness (al-maghfira). It is everything that is sweet and tender, nourishing and safe, like a
womb (Mernissi 88).
 36

it. What is intended by excellence in imaginative evocation is to inspire the

soul of the hearer to seek or to flee the thing imaginatively evoked, or to

have an inclination or loathing for it, even if he has not assented to it.

(“Aphorisms” 36)

Takhyil in Arabic is related to ikhtiyal (arrogance) and it is contrasted by al-

Farabi to persuasion as unifying force. He is, in this respect too a most Islamic

scholar emphasizing the role of fraternity and social bonding in a collectivist

Islamic society. Hazlewood defined the bassoon as a great homogenizer, an

instrument which brings the sounds of other instruments together and it links them

in a pool of sound. It seems that rhetoric is for al-Farabi the bassoon of Islamic

society.

Another feature of Islam is the fact that philosophy is “understood by analogy

to the human arts whose practice is demanded by the divine law, but a divine law

that left man free to perfect these arts according to his natural light” (Mahdi 27).

Indeed, God commands in the Koran to read and to learn (The Quran 96.1).

Similarly, the first task that Ramadan proposes to Muslims is education together

with the development of a critical attitude which he finds lacking in today's Islam

but was a core element of the Prophet's life (“he argued with everyone”). Al-Farabi

will show a similar approach going as far as to posit religion as a part of

philosophy:

Jurisprudence about the practical matters of religion therefore comprises

only things that are particulars of the universals encompassed by political

science; it is, therefore, a part of political science and subordinate to

practical philosophy. And jurisprudence about the [theoretical or] scientific

 37

matters of religion comprises either particulars or the universals

encompassed by theoretical philosophy; it is, therefore, a part of the

theoretical philosophy and subordinate to it. ("Religion" 101)

Knowledge is an axiological virtue in al-Farabi’s work. Thus the opposite of a

virtuous ruler is not a vicious but an ignorant one. Similarly, he likens the ideal

statesman to a physician knowledgeable of his art. To this extent, Ramadan

complained that Muslim countries today “do not do put much effort in research

about and diffusion of past intellectual works” ("Entrevista" 4); they seem more

interested in arming themselves with weapons than with knowledge. Al-Farabi

reminds us of the importance of the latter.

There is an interesting interplay between this characteristic and the seventh

one, according to which Muslims are conscious of their inability to know the

whole. Indeed, it is contradictory to a certain extent to claim on the one hand that

humans must know, and state that humans cannot know on the other. Al-Farabi

clears up this controversy in his Rhetoric allowing for an intermediate position

(back again to the Mutazilah) drawn from his collectivist ideology: “Opinion can

be strengthened or weakened and it is to that extent that man does not perceive the

contrary or he does perceive it, which he can find by himself or through

conversation with the others” (36). That is to say: the strength of any claim

depends not on a factual determination of its Truthfulness but on the fact that it

stands in opposition to counterclaims presented against it.

Therefore, it can be seen how all the pieces of the puzzle fit to create an

Islamic scholar and an Islamic approach to rhetoric. Throughout this chapter, I

have tried to counterargue the conception that al-Farabi’s theory of rhetoric is

 38

foreign to the Islamic tradition. Using a musical analogy, al-Farabi’s thought is not

foreign to the harmony of Islam: His collectivist, practical approach in which

philosophy, critical thought, and law are key, situate him within the frame of an

inclusive and unpositivist Islam as defined by the authoritative scholars in this

period. In the next chapter I move to analyze whether his melody is also in tune

with Greek classical thought and the type of relationship to three major classical

scholars: Aristotle, Plato and Isocrates.

 39

CHAPTER IV

Al-Farabi and pedagogical logos

While al-Farabi’s poetics, politics and philosophy have been studied and

written about extensively, his rhetoric is the least studied part of his corpus. In the

present chapter, I aim at exploring this territory. I will firstly probe al-Farabi’s

treatise on rhetoric to uncover his conception of rhetoric, and its major procedures,

with a focus on the enthymeme. Secondly, I will compare his theory to three main

figures of classical Greek thought: Plato, Aristotle and Isocrates.

Al-Farabi’s theory of rhetoric

Introducing the history of the text at this point may help understand the scarce

treatment that it has received. There are two manuscripts of the text. One was

found by Ahmed Ates in 1951 at the Hamidiye library of Istanbul while Dr. Karel

Pretraçek discovered the other in 1960 at the University of Bratislava. This is to

date the only extant text on rhetoric directly written by al-Farabi. It is not,

however, the only one he wrote. We know, for example, that he wrote two other

commentaries, one long and another middle,24 on Aristotle’s rhetoric, but we do

not have any manuscript of either so we only have references to them and partial

translations of them in the works of other authors. Thus, for example, Averroes

referred to al-Farabi’s long commentary as the only satisfying one (Averroes and

Aouad 26). The Book of Rhetoric was first (and only) translated into French in

1968 by Jacques Langhade. As such, both the fact that it was discovered less than

24
Aouad distinguishes between long and middle commentaries. While both types cite and explain
the source text, in the latter there is no distinction between explanation and citation. In opposition
to the comprehensive approach of both of those types, the short commentary is restricted to the
most important and necessary parts only. Averroes and Maroun Aouad, Commentaire Moyen À La
Rhétorique D'aristote (Paris: Vrin, 2002) 26.
 40

60 years ago and that it has not been translated into more languages can be said to

have played a role in the limited modern repercussion of the text. As I try to show,

the fact that the text has not been properly explored before is not due to it being of

little relevance.

The treatise begins with an invocation to Allah, “the Most Gracious, Most

Merciful,” which is the standard prayer recited by Muslims at the beginning of any

endeavor. Then, al-Farabi first describes and situates the art of rhetoric as a

syllogistic art. As such, his treatise of rhetoric will be the seventh of his eight

books on logic. According to al-Farabi, logic is “the art which includes the things

which lead the rational faculty toward right thinking” (Al-Farabi and Dunlop 230).

On the other hand, syllogistic arts “are those which, when their parts are integrated

and perfected have as their action thereafter the employment of syllogism” (ibid.).

The syllogistic arts are five: “philosophy, the art of dialectic, the sophistic art, the

art of rhetoric, and the art of poetry” (ibid.). Following the steps of Black, who

studied the conceptualization of the poetic syllogism in al-Farabi, I will try to

analyze his theory of the rhetorical syllogism -the enthymeme- in al-Farabi but

before that I will present his definition of rhetoric.

As it was mentioned in chapter 3, al-Farabi describes rhetoric as “the ability to

speak to others by means of statements that are excellent in persuading about each

and every one of the possible matters that are such as to be preferred or avoided”

("Aphorisms" 35). Three elements are worth considering in that definition. First,

the notion of persuasion. Persuading in all fields25 is the goal of rhetoric:

“persuasion is indeed, the ultimate goal of the acts of rhetoric” (Deux Ouvrages

25
“In all the ten genres” Al-Farabi, Deux Ouvrages Inédits Sur La Rhétorique, trans. Jacques
Langhade and Mario Grignaschi (Beyrouth: Dar el-Machreq, 1986) 30.
 41

30). The question that arises is whether persuasion is the only goal. It seems that

al-Farabi’s answer is positive. To this extent, he affirms that “rhetoric has been

instituted only to convince” (58).26 And yet, related to persuasion there is a net of

other functions that al-Farabi will not deny. One example is the creation of

necessary and possible opinions, which the author characterizes as the proper task

of rhetoric. Also, rhetoric enlarges our thought and expands our viewpoints. In this

sense, al-Farabi (opposed to the repressive and closed conception of society

envisioned by the Abbasids) notes that “persuasion, even when it achieves the

strongest stage, necessarily lends space for the opposition, more or less [space],

conspicuous or hidden” (36).

A second element of this definition to be taken into account is the relationship

between rhetoric and probability. In his Risalah on Logic, al-Farabi contends that

“rhetorical discourse seeks to satisfy the hearer by what will partially content his

soul, without reaching certainty” (231). In his treatise on rhetoric he will stress this

again: “persuasion is a type of opinion; and opinion, in general is to believe

regarding that a thing is or it is not; and what one believes can be different from

the thing itself” (30). Opinion is opposed to certitude, which is “to believe in the

truthfulness of that which cannot be refuted” (ibid.) Contrary to what they might

seem, they are the two sides of the same coin: “they are both [opinion and

certitude] a point of view” (32); that is to say they both believe “that a thing is

such or is not such” (ibid.). The difference is that while certitude is expressed only

in necessary propositions, opinion can be expressed in both necessary and possible

26
Al-Farabi does not make a distinction between “persuade” and “convince.” In Langhade’s
translation to French these terms are used interchangeably for the Arabic root “‫”ﻗﻨﻊ‬. I argue below
that the connotations of this term bring al-Farabi closer to the meaning of conviction than to
persuasion.
 42

ones27. This is relevant insofar as al-Farabi conceptualizes rhetoric as an art

capable of achieving certainty and knowledge.

Necessity

Opinion
(persuasion)

Possibility

Point of
view

Certitude Necessity

Fig. 1 Opinion and certitude in al-Farabi

The third aspect of the definition is the importance of “the other.” This element

gains a special relevance for al-Farabi as it is related to both persuasion and

certainty because “the firmest opinion is defined in relation to each particular man

and not in relation to itself” (Deux Ouvrages 40). Persuasion does not take place in

the realm of universal abstract Truth but on personal everyday encounters (36).

Furthermore, the relevance of the audience can be seen in the Arabic term for

persuasion: Iqna (‫)اﻹﻗﻨﺎع‬, which translates literally as “contentment.” In this sense,

this Arabic term seems to stress the role of the listener. Paraphrasing Perelman, it

seems the listener is content with the reasoning of the speaker rather than

persuaded by it. Thus, according to al-Farabi the process of persuasion is as

follows:

When someone discusses some thing, he examines it and forms a point of

view about it, then he examines it further as much as he can. If, in this way

the opposed to this point of view does not appear, nor does the truthfulness
27
Al-Farabi establishes a dichotomy between these two terms: “propositions in which discourse is
expressed and which form discourse are either necessary (‫ )ﺿﺮؤرﻳﺔ‬or possible (‫( ”)ﻣﻤﻜﻨﺔ‬Rhetoric 32)
 43

of its opposite, due to the fact that the opposed to his point of view is

hidden -hidden regarding him- then he has proven this point of view

according to his capacity. (Deux Ouvrages 38)

Al-Farabi will present the same process again at other points of his treatise (36,

60, 62). The emphasis on this process of investigation suggests first that al-Farabi

did not envision rhetoric as short-circuiting thought and examination. Indeed,

“persuasion is not diminished by the fact that one perceives opposition to it” (ibid.

36). Instead, it is strengthened “when one has researched and has not found

opposition or opposition has been refuted” (ibid. 40). Therefore, the listener plays

a very important and active role in the rhetorical situation, exerting a search for

opposition to any idea. This search is understood as something positive for

persuasion.

The importance of the listener is also conspicuous in al-Farabi’s second part of

the treatise, which is about the aspects that lead to persuasion. There are twelve

procedures or aspects that cause persuasion: 1) the enthymeme and comparison,

which I will consider later; 2) “the moral excellence of the speaker and the defect

of his adversary” (70); 3) psychological influence over the listeners “to incline

their hearts to adhere to the speaker and to consider as false what the adversary

says” (72); 4) filling the listeners with enthusiasm and making them change their

points of view to what is traditionally accepted; 5) presenting the topic as bigger,

smaller, more beautiful or uglier than it is; 6) the written habits which should be

either stressed if they are in tune with one’s claims or declared false if they work

against them; 7) testimonies “by another man who inspires trust or by a

 44

trustworthy group” (76); 8) the desire of the speaker because he will expect a

benefit if he speaks the truth and fear a harm if his lie is discovered. Thus,

if we see someone persisting on his point of view and we promise him a

benefit if he yields it and harm if he keeps it, we will think that he is

truthful if he has not yielded his position. Similarly, if a man is threatened

with great harm for making and keeping a position, if he keeps the position

he is sincere. (78)

The ninth point al-Farabi briefly mentions are challenges. To this extent, he

cites Galen who is said to have bet 10,000 dinars to whomever could show him

that the beginning of the nerve was in the heart. Related to this point, is aspect

number ten: “the oath of the speaker to back his affirmation” (78). The last two,

and most probably least,28 aspects are related to the canon of delivery: 11) “the

facial expression of the speaker, his physiognomy, the attitude of his members and

their aspect, or what he makes while he speaks” (ibid.); and 12) “the way of

speaking, the voice and intonation that accompany the declaration” (79).

There are several ideas that should be noted about al-Farabi’s catalogue of

persuasion devices. First, it merges together many of the aspects that Greek and

Roman classical scholars had rigidly tried to separate and analyze separately. In

this sense, his list combines not only technical and non-technical proofs, but also

elements of logos, pathos and ethos, and elements of invention, style and delivery.

Also, he emphasizes the importance of the listener again in his enumeration of the

aspects that cause persuasion. This importance can be seen in his theory of the
28
Al-Farabi implies there is a hierarchy of persuasion elements at the top of which is the
enthymeme and the comparison (Cf. below). He does not, however, make any further specifications
about the ranking of each element but the fact that he starts his enumeration with the enthymeme
may be taken as a sign of the fact that the enumeration may indeed be presented in order of
importance.
 45

enthymeme., I argue that the audience is a major part of his conceptualization of

this persuasion device.

The enthymeme, together with the comparison, goes “by far, before all the

other persuasive genres” (80). According to al-Farabi, there is a hierarchy of

persuasive elements and these two elements are “the first among the things that

persuade.” Thus, their nature and dignity is superior by far and they are the

elements by which the art of rhetoric gains its coherence. Also, the other ten

features “are used as a help for the enthymemes and the comparisons” (ibid.).

Accordingly, he will focus the second part of his treatise on the enthymeme, which

precedes comparison because it is closer to the syllogism, demands more

necessary conclusions as results, and serves as the foundations for comparisons,

which are established through enthymemes (82). The enthymeme is defined as

follows:

The enthymeme is an affirmation composed of two conjoint premisses

which one uses omitting one of these two conjoint premisses. We call it

enthymeme29 because whoever uses it hides (yudmir) some of these

premisses and he does not declare them; he uses it in relation to what is to

be found in the conscience of the listener which is supposed to know the

premisses which the speaker has hidden. (62) (my italics)

One can wonder whether this definition differs much from Aristotle’s notion of

the enthymeme and I would argue that the answer is no. The crux is, however, that

there are several interpretations of the Aristotelian enthymeme. In this sense, it

29
Damir. It is related to the root “conscience” in Arabic. It means “hidden.”
 46

seems that al-Farabi is close to Bitzer’s reading of Aristotle.30 Hence the

importance of the audience and the conception of the enthymeme as a full -rather

than truncated- syllogism, where one of the premisses is not cut off but hidden to

be completed by the listener. Also, together with Bitzer, and in opposition to

McBurney, al-Farabi will stress the possibility of reaching certainty through the

enthymeme: “the enthymemes comprise what is syllogism in truth and what is

syllogism only in appearance” (84). This adds to the discussion of point of view

presented above positing rhetoric as an art that can lead to certainty.

The fact that enthymemes can reach valid knowledge as the logical syllogism

is of relevance in the context of medieval Islamic rhetoric. Traditionally, it has

been posited that al-Farabi is accounting for the validity of the Prophet

Muhammad’s rhetoric.31 I do not contest that. I do, however, think that al-Farabi’s

project is broader and we need to understand the controversy between Islamic

jurisprudential scholars and logicians over the validity of qiyas. A small

contextualization is in order. Islamic law (Sharia) is composed of two sacred

elements: the Quran (book of revelation) and the Sunna (the traditions instituted by

Muhammad). Both of these elements work to dictate how men should behave.

Thus, for example, the Quran says that one should engage in daily prayers and the

Sunna specifies how the prayer should be conducted. Nevetheless, the Quran and

30
Bitzer understands the production of enthymemes as follows: “The speaker draws the premises
for his proofs from propositions which members of his audience would supply if he were to
proceed by question and answer.” Thus, the successful construction of an enthymeme is a product
of “the joint efforts of speaker and audience” Lloyd F. Bitzer, "Aristotle's Enthymeme Revisited,"
Quarterly Journal of Speech 45 (1959): 408.
31
Al-Farabi tries then “to provide for Muhammad’s rhetoric. This inclusion (…) permits
him to contend that some rhetorical propositions, such as those offered by Muhammad,
might have the certitude attached to necessity” Charles E. Butterworth, "The Rhetorician
and His Relationship to the Community: Three Accounts of Aristotle's Rhetoric," Islamic
Theology and Philosophy, ed. Michael E. Marmura (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 1984) 115.
 47

the Sunna together do not account for the whole range of human acts and it is at

that point that Fiqh plays a role.

Fiqh interprets both the Quran and the Sunna and provides a guide whenever

there is no regulation in either of them. To do that it has to deduce new law from

previous one. This is a syllogistic process and consequently the major process of

Fiqh is qiyas, which is the term al-Farabi uses to refer to the syllogism. Then, as

Smirnov points out, there was a school in Islam that negated the ability of reason

to gain new knowledge (437). Al-Farabi himself alludes to the “negators of the

syllogism” (82). According to this school you cannot generate new valid

information so syllogistic reasoning is ruled out.32 Al-Farabi defended the validity

and integrity of the syllogism throughout his work. In his Book on Rhetoric he

specifically defended the rhetorical syllogism. Thus, he did not only back the

soundness of Muhammad’s rhetoric but also (as it was already introduced in

chapter 3) the possibility of a flexible interpretation of Sharia and the soundness of

Fiqh. To this extent, it should be noted that qiyas is not the only source of Fiqh; the

second source is ijma (consensus). If we understand al-Farabi’s rhetoric within the

frame of the controversy about Fiqh, it will be easier to grasp and contextualize not

only his defense of the enthymeme (the rhetorical syllogism) but also his emphasis

on the importance of the listener, community and common sense. Thus, his theory

of the enthymeme can be understood as a defense of Fiqh and of a flexible

approach to Sharia.

32
Aristotle establishes that the conclusion of a syllogism must be different from the premisses. The
invalid leap that negators of the syllogism denounce is thus inlaid in the definition of deduction: “A
deduction, then, is an argument in which certain things being supposed, something different from
the suppositions result of necessity through them” Aristotle, Robin Smith and Aristotle, Topics.
Books I and Viii, with Excerpts from Related Texts, Clarendon Aristotle Series (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1997).
 48

Relation to Greek classical figures

Al-Farabi did not invent his theory of rhetoric out of the blue; he

acknowledged his debt to both Plato and Aristotle.33 I argue that analyzing the

extent to which each of them influences al-Farabi can help us better understand his

theory and context. Furthermore, it may contribute to counter the main trend in

scholarly work about al-Farabi, which is centered around al-Farabi’s politics and

philosophy and posits him as a interpreter of Plato (Colmo; Mahdi; Morewedge;

Strauss. Cf. Chapter one). This study adds the perspective of al-Farabi’s rhetorical

writing, which is nevertheless constructed upon the work of Aristotle. As it has

been mentioned before, rhetoric for al-Farabi is one of the syllogistic arts and, as

such, a part of logic. Al-Farabi thought of himself as a continuator and a promoter

of Aristotelian logic.34 In this sense his conceptualization of rhetoric as the art of

persuasion and the structure of his treatise, which self-acknowledgedly follows

Ishaq Ibn Hunayn’s translation of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, make him more of an

Aristotelian figure than scholars usually claim.

Thus, the possibility of reaching certainty through the enthymeme moves al-

Farabi away from what is traditionally understood to be Plato’s stand (an idealist

and positivist for whom philosophy was superior to rhetoric and other arts). It

33
“These two sages are the fountainheads of philosophy, the originators of its beginnings and
fundamentals, the fulfillers of its ends and branches. We depend upon them for what is minor and
for what is major with respect to it” Al-Farabi, Alfarabi's Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, trans.
Muhsin Mahdi, Agora Editions (New York, N.Y.: Free Press of Glencoe, 1962) 126.
34
“That which was taught [in logic] at that time was up to the end of the assertoric figures [of the
syllogism]. But Abü Nasr al-Farabi says about himself that he studied with Yühannâ ibn Hailân up
to the end of Anal. Post (kitab al-burhan), The part [of the two Analytics] which comes after the
assertoric figures (of the syllogism [i.e., which comes after Anal. Pr., I, 7]) was called "the part
which is not read" [i.e., in the lecture-curriculum] until [the time when] one read that; for it became
standard [in logical study] afterwards. When the matter came to Muslim teachers one read from the
assertoric figures as far as a man was able to read. And thus Abu Nasr [al-Farabi] says that he
himself read [i.e., under a teacher] up to the end of Anal. Post.” Ibn Abi Usaibia, Uyun Al-Anba Fi
Tabaqat Al-Tibba, August Müller ed. (Farnborough: Gregg International Publishers, 1882).
 49

should be noted, however, that this need not be al-Farabi’s understanding of Plato.

Indeed, al-Farabi wrote a whole treatise on the harmonization of “the two sages:

Plato the divine and Aristotle” to counter the claim that there is disagreement

between the two ("Harmonization" 125). Thus, he for example analyzes the stance

of Plato and Aristotle on the syllogism. According to Themistius and his school,

Plato would only declare as necessary the conclusions of a syllogism where both

premisses were necessary, while Aristotle accepted that the syllogism whose

premisses are a mixture of necessary and contingent, with the major being

necessary, the conclusion will be necessary too. Al-Farabi’s response was to affirm

that “there is no statement at all of Plato’s in which he explicitly declares that

conclusions such as these [Aristotle’s] are either necessary or contingent” (138).

Both Najjar and Fakhry ("Reconciliation") have probed this part of al-Farabi’s

corpus. They have suggested that al-Farabi’s goal was to assure Islamic scholars

that the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle were not antithetical to Islam35 and

with that goal he freely interpreted the Greek philosophers adapting their thought

to the Islamic context.

Indeed, his response about the Platonic stance on the enthymeme may not be

very accurate but it shows that al-Farabi did not understand the Plato / Aristotle

dichotomy as an either-or situation but as a both-and one. As such, he would have

likely perceived his treatise on rhetoric as a combination of both philosophers. On

the one hand we have rhetoric as an art which mainly uses the enthymeme and

comparison to persuade. On the other, he would posit a political use of the rhetoric

35
In this sense, that al-Farabi’s interpretation goes along the lines of Medieval interpretations of
classical heritage in Europe that try to show the compatibility of classical thought with Christianity
(Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas).
 50

related to the figure of the Islamic ruler which he would most probably understand

as Platonic. This Platonic inspiration can be seen even in the way he referred to the

ruler: the “king in truth” (“Aphorisms” 37). I will argue, however, that this figure

is more Isocratean than al-Farabi acknowledged.

Al-Farabi delineated his version of the philosopher king all across his work. In

the previous chapter, I outlined his characterization, duties and attributes with a

focus on his Islamic essence. I presented him as someone whose responsibility is

to lead the community towards happiness through knowledge. I would now like to

emphasize another aspect of this figure: how he should exercise his power:

He who possesses such a great power ought to possess the capacity of

realizing the particular instances of it in nations and cities. There are two

primary methods of realizing them: instruction and the formation of

character. To instruct is to introduce the theoretical virtues in nations and

cities. The formation of character is the method of introducing the moral

virtues and practical arts in nations. Instruction proceeds by speech alone.

The formation of character proceeds through habituating nations and

citizens in doing the acts that issue from the practical states of character by

arousing in them the resolution to do these acts; the states of character and

the acts issuing from them should be as it were enraptured by them. The

resolution to do a thing may be aroused by speech or by deed. (Philosophy

35)

Again, speech plays a preponderant role in the construction of a community.

For al-Farabi, rhetoric is an art “of major usefulness … that guides the

community” (Deux Ouvrages 150-1). Furthermore, it should be noted that this

 51

logos can be said to be of a specific nature: it is a pedagogical logos. Indeed, the

ruler’s role is that of an instructor. This instructor introduces national and citizen

virtues. I have already pointed out in chapter two the value of community in Islam,

a religion in which, unlike in Protestantism, individuality is not fostered.36 Plato

could have been a major influence in al-Farabi’s ruler but it is not the Plato that

Popper criticized in The Open Society. Popper’s Plato created a closed society

where criticism is not given any space. Nevertheless, as it was put forward in

chapters two and three, the Islamic leader in al-Farabi is indeed exposed to

criticism. Perhaps it is the Plato of the Republic who complained that education

was not in the hands of the philosophers (606e1-5), though it has been suggested

that “the political dimension of the philosophical teacher was totally lost on

Neoplatonism” (Morewedge 68) and indeed one of the most common analysis of

al-Farabi’s political thought is that he presents a distorted, “un-Platonic

interpretation of Plato … For he presents a decidedly political Plato. In short, from

a historical point of view, al-Farabi’s Plato or Platonic politics had not existed

earlier. It was al-Farabi’s own creation or recreation” (Mahdi 36).

One solution to the puzzle could be to look for a different source. In this sense,

Isocrates, the educator, provides us with an excellent match for al-Farabi’s theory.

On the one hand, he shared the Islamic sense of responsibility for which the ruler

is to be held accountable (To Nicocles 4). On the other hand al-Farabi’s

pedagogical logos fits very well within Isocrates’ frame of the educated city. Thus

in his Antidosis, Isocrates posited education as the cornerstone of the Athenian

36
Cf. Al-Farabi’s conception of imagination in chapter 3. Hamlet could not have been inspired in
an Islamic country.
 52

fame and structure.37 What is more, this education is to be a source of

community.38 His striving for a Pan-Hellenism would very well fit the Arabic

situation. There is a parallelism in both situations: while “with an exalted

patriotism always in mind, Isocrates, as a teacher, labored to perfect the minds and

the characters of his fellow-citizens” (Neserius 314), the Prophet Muhammad had

“laboriously assembled [a nation] from disparate loyalties and beliefs” (Peters

136). In both cases, al-Farabi’s and Isocrates’, this idea of a Pan-nation was in

trouble and one can understand their rhetorics and their emphasis on the societal

aspect of language as a response to their situation.

This interpretation of an Isocratean al-Farabi opens a new way in the study of

Medieval Islamic Rhetoric, which as has been presented acknowledges only the

legacy of Plato (or Neo-Platonism) and Aristotle. On the basis of such an influence

questions arise (as the problem of a decidedly political Plato to which Mahdi

referred in the cite above). I suggest that al-Farabi’s pedagogical logos is not fully

accounted either on the basis of a Platonic/Aristotle approach to the relationship

between the West and the Middle East. My study advances the study of Muir, who

was the first (and only) scholar to hint in 2001 at a possible relationship between

Isocrates and Medieval Islam. His focus was on politics and on al-Ghazali (1058-

1111) and Ibn Khaldoun (1332-1406), scholars posterior to al-Farabi. I argue that

the influence of Isocrates can already be found in al-Farabi’s theory of a

pedagogical logos and of a rhetoric, that presents education as a political goal to be

achieved “by speech or deed.”

37
“For you must not lose sight of the fact that Athens is looked upon as having become a school for
the education of all able orators and teachers of oratory” (Antidosis, 265)
38
“Like the sophists, he glorified rhetoric’s capacity to bring and hold people together” J.
Poulakos, Sophistical Rhetoric in Classical Greece (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina
Press, 1995) 113.
 53

In conclusion, this chapter has analyzed al-Farabi’s conception of rhetoric as a

syllogistic art capable of attaining certainty where the values of the community

and the role of the listener are heightened. I also analyzed the elements that create

persuasion with a focus on al-Farabi’s cornerstone: the enthymeme. A relation

with the context was established that posited al-Farabi as a defender of syllogism

and Fiqh. I also countered the traditional approach to al-Farabi as a Platonic

scholar. Instead, I emphasized his Aristotelian influence and argued in favor of a

relation to Isocrates which helps us better understand both the context and the

rhetorical theory of our Islamic author. In the next chapter, I will not analyze the

external but the internal relations between rhetoric and the other arts and fields of

al-Farabi’s thought.
 54

CHAPTER V

The rhetoric and its friends

In the previous chapter I introduced rhetoric as one of the five syllogistic arts

and probed the relationship between al-Farabi and Greek classical figures. In this

chapter I will analyze first the relations within al-Farabi’s corpus, i.e. between

rhetoric and three other syllogistic arts: philosophy, dialectic, and poetics. Second,

I will explore the relationship between rhetoric, politics and religion. My aim is to

deepen and expand our understanding of al-Farabi’s rhetoric by comparing and

contrasting it with the other parts of his work.

Let us start with philosophy which is one of “the human things through which

nations and citizens attain earthly happiness in this life and supreme happiness in

the life beyond” (Philosophy 13). This goal is not exclusive of philosophy. Indeed,

it permeates the whole of al-Farabi’s corpus. Thus, all the other arts will share the

final aim of achieving happiness (“theoretical virtues, deliberative virtues, moral

virtues and practical arts”).39 The contribution of philosophy to that aim is,

however, distinct and essential. As I will try to explain, philosophy is the main

purveyor of wisdom which is related to virtuous action and happiness. Al-Farabi

defines philosophical knowledge as follows:

When one acquires knowledge of the beings or receives instruction in

them, if he perceives their ideas themselves with his intellect, and his

assent to them is by means of certain demonstration, then the science that

comprises these cognitions is philosophy. But if they are known by

imagining them through similarities that imitate them, and assent to what is

39
Apodeictics, sophistics, rhetoric and poetics.
 55

imagined of them is caused by persuasive methods, then the ancients call

what comprises this cognition religion. (Philosophy 44)

Thus, al-Farabi does not limit knowledge to the domain of philosophy. Indeed,

as we saw in the previous chapter, the capacity to produce valid knowledge of

other fields such as rhetoric or religion is accepted. Nevertheless, al-Farabi will

distinguish knowledge of a philosophical nature from other types of knowledge

and subsequently rank philosophical knowledge in a hierarchical position of

precedence. Other types of knowledge are “an imitation of philosophy”

(Philosophy 44). These other types of knowledge will follow philosophy (Letters

89). What is more, philosophy can serve as a touchstone against which we can

measure them.

This relationship is complex and is sometimes reversed. In this sense, al-Farabi

has a very realistic approach to philosophy and acknowledges that in many cases

“philosophy has not reached yet maximal excellence through apodictic

demonstration” (ibid.). In those cases, it can resort to rhetoric, dialectic or

sophistry to test its opinions (ibid.). This point is also explained in his treatise on

rhetoric with the assertion that “rhetoric has in common with the dialectic, and

sophistry that, in all the three, one investigates and false points of views are

unveiled” (Deux Ouvrages 62). It can therefore be concluded that while rhetoric

and the other arts reach knowledge and discern false opinions, their intellectual

power is inferior to that of philosophy.40 Reaching knowledge is important for al-

40
To this extent, Kemal notes how rhetorical ploys in al-Farabi “stand in need of a philosophical
analysis to explain their use by clarifying their nature, validity and potential” Salim Kemal, The
Philosophical Poetics of Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes : The Aristotelian Reception (London ;
New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003) 9.
 56

Farabi because of his conception of human behavior and happiness. Al-Farabi

notes how philosophy determines virtuous behavior:

Practice is virtuous and correct only when a human being has become truly

cognizant of the virtues that are truly virtues, become truly cognizant of the

virtues that are presumed to be virtues yet are not like that … This is a state

that is to be attained or perfected except after becoming sophisticated.

("Aphorisms" 61)

In a most Socratic fashion, al-Farabi makes virtuous behavior dependent on

knowledge. Once people know about what ought to be preferred and avoid what

ought to be avoided, they will prefer and avoid accordingly. Thus, virtue is

dependent upon knowledge. Also, Colmo has noted, happiness in al-Farabi is

dependent upon virtue (2). Al-Farabi’s quotation above also shows the fact that

knowledge needs not be only about the virtues themselves but also about how the

virtues are perceived. This ties very well with the importance of the audience that

al-Farabi introduced in his rhetorical theory. We shall see it also ties very well

with his theory of politics and language.

The elements that relate rhetoric, philosophy, and politics are again virtue and

happiness. Political science investigates both of these concepts41 because neither of

them can be pursued alone; they can only be reached in society:

It is not possible to reach the purpose of voluntary actions and dispositions

[i.e. happiness], unless they are distributed among a very large association

of people … so that the groups in the association cooperate, through the

41
“Political science investigates happiness first of all … Then it investigates the voluntary actions,
ways of life, moral habits, states of characters, and dispositions” Al-Farabi, "Book of Religion,"
trans. Charles E. Butterworth, The Political Writings: Selected Aphorisms and Other Texts, ed.
Charles E. Butterworth (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2001) 101.
 57

actions and dispositions in each, to perfect the purpose of the whole

association in the same way that the organs of a human being cooperate,

through the capacities in each, to perfect the purpose of the whole body.

("Religion" 102)

In this sense, al-Farabi follows the steps of al-Kindi, who understood

knowledge as a collective enterprise.42 Paredes Gandía has studied this aspect of

al-Farabi’s thought in his introduction to al-Farabi’s Book of Letters. His

conclusions suggest that it is communities and not individuals that require

knowledge. Knowledge should be shared by the whole community. What is more,

“this sharing of a common wisdom is the source of happiness, solidarity, and

cooperation among the citizens” (28). Hence the interrelation between philosophy,

politics and happiness: happiness can only be reached in the virtuous city. Next, I

would like to highlight the central role that rhetoric plays in that triangle.

I have already alluded to the fact that rhetoricians are one of the cornerstones

in al-Farabi’s virtuous city. I related it to the figure of the ideal ruler, who should

be a rhetorician, eloquent enough to explain himself to the community (Aphorisms

37). He should also persuade the citizens about “each and every one of the possible

matters that are such as to be preferred or avoided” (Aphorisms 35). Now that al-

Farabi’s theories of knowledge and persuasion have been introduced, we can

complement them. To that extent, it should be noted that knowledge is, using

Paredes Gandía’s term, a collective enterprise that should engage the whole of

society. Thus, it should reach not only the cultural elite but all the citizens.
42
Paredes Gandía (26) notices how this idea of investigation as a shared partnership was already
present in Aristotle but he contends that al-Farabi advanced Aristotle’s idea positing that all races
of all times should be part of this voyage: “He who looks for truth cares for nothing else but it, truth
is not degraded nor loses its value due to whoever pronounces or transmits it” Al-Kindi and A.
Ivry, Al-Kindi's Metaphysics (Albany: SUNY Press, 1974) 58.
 58

In this context rhetoric is crucial because “Rhetoric is the best to persuade the

common people about the things that they attend to, to the extent of the knowledge

it has, and according to the premisses and principles common to everyone”

(Letters 80). It should be noted that al-Farabi is not devaluing knowledge or

rhetoric: rhetorical knowledge in al-Farabi is not faulty merchandise whose price

needs to be put on sale. Rather, as Colmo suggests, knowledge in al-Farabi is a

human good rather than a divine one. Therefore, it is defined in terms of and

serves human happiness and as such it should reach everyone in the virtuous city

(2).

Rulers should make sure knowledge reaches everyone and to that extent al-

Farabi conceptualizes rhetoric first as an indispensable political tool which is

integrated within the political structure of the virtuous city. It reflects the

foundations of his theories of philosophy and politics through its definition as a

syllogistic art capable of knowledge and its focus towards the listener. Thus al-

Farabi’s corpus creates a coherent and cohesive whole where parts are interrelated

and interdependent. This feature will differentiate him from the situation we have

today as interpreted by Fatima Mernissi, who longs for an Islamic humanism in

which philosophy and politics are not separate. I am arguing that such a world can

not only be found in al-Farabi, it can also be expanded if we heed his integration of

the five syllogistic arts.

Both the art of rhetoric and the art of poetry are syllogistic. The rhetorical

syllogism (the enthymeme) was introduced in the previous chapter. Al-Farabi

defines it and explains it explicitly. The situation is different with the poetic

syllogism. As Deborah Black has argued, there is no textual proof that al-Farabi
 59

ever conferred a specific and distinctive form (Black "Imaginative Syllogism").

Indeed, al-Farabi very loosely defines the poetic syllogism

The poetical statement is that which is neither demonstrative, nor

dialectical, nor rhetorical, nor sophistical, and which is, despite this,

reduced to one of the species of syllogism, or what is posterior to the

syllogism. By ‘what is posterior to it’ I mean induction, example,

physiognomy, and the like, among the things having the force of a

syllogism. (Qawanin al-Shir 268, qtd. in Black “Imaginative syllogism”

252)

The definition is mainly in the negative though al-Farabi makes it clear that

there is such thing as a poetical syllogism. This is of relevance because the logical

status of poetics will not be inferior to the other arts. To this extent, many authors

have noticed how important language is for the Islamic culture, especially for its

leaders. The Prophet Muhammad was born in the Quraishi tribe, which was

famous for the beauty of its Arabic dialect, and was raised by the Banu Saad, who,

again, are reputed for their speech. Also, Muhammad will refer to himself as the

most Arab in the sense that his language is the best cared for (Paredes Gandía 30).

Following Muhammad, the ruler will also be expected to have both an excellent

poetic and rhetoric ability.

There is a very close relationship between poetics and rhetoric. Al-Farabi

conceives of rhetoric and dialectic as sister arts of language. He makes this point

explicit in his theory about the specificity of language that relates to the

philosophical fight between grammar (the art of right expression) and logic (the art

of right thinking) over the control of the faculty of language. The Islamic bassoon
 60

(al-Farabi) mediated between both sides and posited that logic rules over the

faculty of language in general while grammar rules over the actual implementation

of the faculty in every community. Logic would therefore relate to universal

aspects of language while grammar would act in the domain of specific languages

and communities. It is within this second domain of specificity that poetics and

rhetoric are created (Letters 80).

Poetics is thus very closely related to rhetoric but there are also differences

between them. In this sense, I presented in chapter three al-Farabi’s distinction

between the binding, cohesive power of rhetoric, which induces assent, as opposed

to the separating force of the imagination, which makes the soul of the hearer to

flee ("Aphorisms" 36). Also, in his Risalah on Logic, al-Farabi deepens on the

differences between poetry and the other syllogistic arts (of which rhetoric is a

part). First, he defines poetical discourse as that which “seeks to represent the

object and suggest it in speech, as the art of sculpture represents different kinds of

animals and other objects by bodily labours” (231). Then, he differentiates it from

the other arts:

The relation of the art of poetry to the other syllogistic arts is as the relation

of sculpture to the other practical arts, and as the relation of chess-playing

to the skilful conduct of armies. Similarly those who represent with their

bodies, limbs, and voices represent many things in what they do.

For al-Farabi, imaginative poetical discourse is an imitation of reality. Greek

scholars had in fact the same conception (poetry as mimesis). As such, it is

different from rhetoric insofar as it creates reality through the enthymeme.

Nevertheless, the relationship between both rhetoric and poetry is very strong; so
 61

strong that they sometimes interact. In this sense, as Kemal points out, poetry can

get validity as a rhetorical ploy (9).

The last syllogistic art whose relationship to rhetoric I will discuss is dialectic.

Its discourse is related to rhetoric: “Dialectical discourse seeks to overcome the

interlocutor in the things which are known and notorious” (Al-Farabi and Dunlop

231). Thus, both rhetoric and dialectic act on the hearer and their points of view.

This is in line with al-Farabi’s previous affirmation that rhetoric, dialectic and

sophistry can be used to test opinions (Letters 89) because they investigate points

of view discerning those that are false (Deux Ouvrages 62). The difference

between both of them is that while dialectic strives for certainty, rhetoric can work

both on the domain of certainty and on the one of possibility.

Another difference between rhetoric on the one hand and dialectic on the other

is how dialectic functions. Al-Farabi notes that

If dialectic and sophistry are transferred to a nation in which there is a

firmly established credo, both of them will be opposed to religion and will

be scorned by the believers because their strength depends in the proof of

something and in the refutation of that. When dialectic and sophistry begin

to be applied to the ideas that have been firmly established among the

followers of a religion, these will lose strength, and will be put in doubt.

(Letters 92)

Again we encounter the investigative power of rhetoric, dialectic and

sophistry. But there seems to be a difference between the two latter and the former

in the sense that they can go counter the established beliefs in a community while

rhetoric would work from them. Thus, its domain is circumscribed within the local
 62

established beliefs. This contributes to a view of rhetoric as a binding bassoon that

was introduced in al-Farabi’s theory of politics. Nevertheless, the context-

boundedness of rhetoric is not exclusive; all logical arts are to that extent a

combination of form and meaning. As Kemal suggested in his discussion of the

controversy between logic and grammar “where language deals with intelligible

meanings, there it follows the rules of grammar and logic” (al-Farabi, qtd. in 15)

Finally, al-Farabi introduced another syllogistic art: sophistry, but he did not

develop it as a treatise and it is only possible to find sparsely scattered information

throughout his other works. Sophistry is attributed intellective and discerning

powers but one does not have enough information as to analyze any further the

differences and similarities in relation to rhetoric. I have tried, however, to show

the differences and similarities among rhetoric on the one hand and three other

syllogistic arts (philosophy, poetics and dialectic) on the other. Something that all

these arts have in common is their contribution to human happiness, which is al-

Farabi’s major goal. This search for happiness, relates them to religion. In the

remainder of the chapter, I will examine the relationship between religion and the

syllogistic arts with a focus on rhetoric.

Religion is defined by al-Farabi as “opinions and actions, determined and

restricted with stipulations and prescribed for a community by their first ruler, who

seeks to obtain through their practicing a specific purpose with respect to them or

by means of them” ("Religion" 93). Two points should be noticed. First, the

circumscription of religion to the sphere of opinions and actions ties it to the art of

rhetoric: they both occupy themselves with the same material. Second, this

material is related to humans: religion is not focused towards the divinity but
 63

towards humans. As a consequence we have a picture of religion that shares much

with rhetoric but there are differences too, especially the stress al-Farabi places on

the first ruler. While rhetoric made the listener central, it seems that the central

element in religion is the speaker, the first ruler. Nevertheless, the ruler loses

neither the connection to the community nor the responsibility in front of them: “If

the first ruler is virtuous and his rulership truly virtuous, then in what he prescribes

he seeks only to obtain, for himself and for everyone under his rulership, the

ultimate happiness that is truly happiness; and that religion will be virtuous

religion” (ibid.).

The opposite of the virtuous ruler is the ignorant one. He will either pursue

ignorant goods or will pursue them for himself only. This is relevant inasmuch as

it suggests what scholarship about al-Farabi’s theory of religion has mainly

focused on: the relationship between knowledge (philosophy) and religion. Also,

knowledge presides over religion and in that sense it corroborates Colmo’s

assertion that “al-Farabi makes philosophy, not revelation, the judge of truth and

falsehood” (95). Within this frame, religion is, like rhetoric, at the service of

knowledge: “the two parts of which religion consists are subordinate to

philosophy” (Religion 97). In its turn, religious knowledge is dependent upon the

individual: “Thus the determined opinions in the virtuous religion are either the

truth or a likeness of the truth. In general, truth is what a human being ascertains,

either by himself by means of primary knowledge, or by demonstration” (ibid.).

This is another characteristic that relates rhetoric and religion because both share a

judging element of the listener (Cf. chapter 5).

 64

The importance of the context and the listener is central in both religion and

rhetoric. This reminds us of the fact that knowledge does not exist in a sterile-ized

vacuum: it breathes and sweats. I argue that it even loves. Gómez Nogales

suggested that “love is the source and goal of knowledge” in al-Farabi (98). He

cites the description al-Farabi made of the soul’s faculties where he put the heart

as the principal organ due to the fact that it regulated the heat that all the other

powers of the human body need to work properly. Al-Farabi equates love and

happiness (happiness being the goal of the syllogistic arts): “the more something

enjoys its own essence and the greater pleasure and happiness it feels about it the

more it likes its essence and the greater is the pride it takes in it” (Perfect State 87).

His study concludes that “none of the faculties can be deemed perfect if it is not

accompanied by love.”43

The triangular relationship love-religion-rhetoric is pertinent to my study

because it shows that happiness is related to love, and love brings in the socio-

personal element that rhetoric provides in its theory of the enthymeme. The focus

on rhetoric on shared, communal knowledge stresses the bounding, bassoon-like

power of rhetoric and as such it contributes not only to the creation of knowledge

but also to the creation of love and a feeling of community. Opposed to this

concrete and earthly love, we have a pan-Arab religious love which is the ultimate

love to be reached in the afterlife. There is a distinction, then, with the more

pragmatic rhetoric of love.

43
“The reason for the nutritive power in man is no other than service to the body; also, external
senses and imagination serve both the body and intellectual power” Al-farabi, qtd. in Salvador
Gómez Nogales, La Política Como Única Ciencia Religiosa En Al-Farabi, Cuadernos Del
Seminario De Estudios De Filosofía Y Pensamiento Islámicos (Madrid: Instituto Hispano-Arabe de
Cultura, 1980) 99.
 65

In conclusion, this chapter has analyzed the relationship between rhetoric on

the one hand and three other syllogistic arts together with religion on the other. To

this extent, rhetoric is related to philosophy in that the latter precedes the former.

Rhetoric usually follows and is checked by philosophy, though this trend can be

reversed. Then, rhetoric is related to poetics in that both arts pertain to the realm of

the specific and the concrete rather than the universal. They however differ in the

fact that rhetoric creates a communal reality while poetics imitates it with a focus

on the individual. Finally, rhetoric is related to dialectic in that both act on the

hearers and their points of view discerning valid from invalid positions. While

dialectic works its discernment in the domain of certainty, rhetoric works both in

certainty and possibility. Also, rhetoric is related to politics in that the former is an

indispensable political tool of the virtuous city that facilitates the sharing of

knowledge and community-building. The characteristics of rhetoric in al-Farabi

that we presented in the previous chapter (rhetoric as a contextual, communal and

knowledge-producing art) have been reinforced. We have also introduced a new

element, the function of love in al-Farabi’s corpus and its relation to happiness,

which relates rhetoric and religion in their focus on the individual as a member of

a community and in their subordination to philosophy.

 66

CHAPTER VI

The rest is silence

I framed this study as an exploration of al-Farabi’s theory of rhetoric.

Throughout the previous chapters I have analyzed both the argument al-Farabi

constructs and hinted at its implications. This chapter puts together al-Farabi’s

approach to rhetoric with a stronger focus on its implications. At the same time I

position this study in relation to further research possibilities, not only suggesting

directions but also reflecting on possible obstacles on the way.

My first research question targeted the context out of which al-Farabi’s theory

of rhetoric developed. To that extent, I presented the Abbasids. In opposition to

Gutas’ sympathetic portrayal of the leaders of the translation movement, I

emphasized their efforts to create a closed society, a society where there is no

space for dissent. In this sense, they resorted to Persian and Greek scholarship to

quell the Umayyad cultural background. On the one hand, this had the positive

side effect of introducing Greek classical learning to the Islamic world. On the

other hand, the Abbasids only supported that interpretation of Persian and Greek

knowledge that legitimized their ruling. Paraphrasing Gloucester in King Lear, as

flies to wanton boys were any dissenters to the Abbasids. Following Mernissi, I

suggested that rather than for sport, the Abbasids killed their opposition for fear of

loosing their power. What is more, the Abbasids not only killed their opponents,

they also stigmatized them as external to the Islamic tradition. One of the

movements that suffered this ostracism was the Mutazilah.

Throughout this study I have tried to present aspects of al-Farabi which relate

him closely to the Mutazilah. I have especially focused on the third-way approach
 67

from which the Mutazilites derive their name. Accordingly, I have defined al-

Farabi as a bassoon, a great homogenizer who blended in his theory of rhetoric

different stances and elements to create a third-way rhetoric. This merging is made

explicit and clear in his catalog of persuasion devices, his harmonization of Plato

and Aristotle, or his inclusive approach to an Organon that features both the

poetics and the rhetoric. Similarly, al-Farabi’s both-and rhetoric allows for

certainty and possibility, for persuasion and opposition, for the individual and the

community.

These three both-ands define a rhetoric which does not shun knowledge or

reflection upon knowledge: rhetoric is a tool in the quest for and the spread of

knowledge and in this sense the main aspect of al-Farabi’s logos is its pedagogical

nature. Rhetoric instructs civic and national virtues in the inhabitants of the city. It

contributes decisively to the formation of a sense of community. Nevertheless, the

community heralded by al-Farabi is not closed in the Popperian sense. In other

words, it is not as Abbasid as it is Mutazilite -and therefore open. This openness

can be seen, first, in al-Farabi’s demand that persuasion allows space for

opposition; secondly, in his flexible approach to the interpretation Sharia, which I

presented as in line with the purest etymologically sense of “going to the source of

water;” and, thirdly, in his blend of the individual and the community in his

community-based but individually driven rhetoric. Such a theory of rhetoric calls

for a reinterpretation of the influence Greek scholarship had on al-Farabi stressing

the figure of Isocrates.

Structurally, rhetoric -as a syllogistic art- is subsumed in al-Farabi under logic.

Philosophy stands in a hierarchically superior position to the other syllogistic arts

 68

(rhetoric, dialectic, poetics and sophistry). In its turn, all knowledge is dependent

upon love. Dante ended his Divine Comedy stating in Paradise that it is “love

which moves the sun and the other stars,” a sentence that could have been uttered

by al-Farabi, for whom love is equated to happiness, the ultimate goal of al-

Farabi’s system. Rhetoric contributes to this end first with the creation of a

community; second with a focus on the other; third with the allowance for a space

of dissent in which no voice is silenced. The aim of rhetoric for al-Farabi is to

convince rather than to persuade. In contrast, Jean Anouilh’s Antigone

conceptualized tragedy as

The silence inside you when the roaring crowd acclaims the winner—so

that you think of a film without a sound track, mouths agape and no sound

coming out of them, a clamor that is not more than picture; and you, the

victor, already vanquished, alone in the desert of your silence.

Al-Farabi’s rhetoric is closer to the bright Humanism of Dante’s Divine

Comedy than to the bleak perspective of Jean Anouilh’s tragedy. A rhetoric whose

intellective and communal power offers a tool for the people, of the people, and by

the people. Such a rhetoric would disquiet Claudius-like Abbasids and their

successors, whose strategy was to impose upon it a scarlet F. I have tried to show

that al-Farabi’s thought is not foreign to the Islamic tradition. Instead, it stands as a

model for modern day Islamic scholars, who can turn to this theory of rhetoric in

order to reflect towards a more open and brighter society which does not lose its

Islamic essence. To this extent, al-Farabi provides us with a model of thought that

matches Mernissi’s and Ramadan’s call for a Humanist Islamic society and

culture.
 69

The applicability of al-Farabi’s thought in today’s world shifts the focus of the

study from the past to the present and on to the future. Accordingly, I will now

present two future research possibilities that spring from this study. The first one

leads to other Medieval Islamic scholars such as Avicenna and Averroes. One can

well wonder whether al-Farabi’s conception of rhetoric dies with al-Farabi. I

suggest that the answer is negative. Avicenna, who is considered al-Farabi’s

“immediate spiritual disciple and successor” (Fakhry Al-Farabi, Founder 4), would

be the most logical continuation of a research agenda on Medieval Islamic

rhetoric.

Avicenna (980-1037) was born in Bukhara (Iran). From his autobiography, we

learn that his father was “entrusted with the governing of a village in one of the

royal estates of Bukhara” (17). As such, Avicenna was able to benefit from an

excellent education that matched his Wunderkind-like thirst for knowledge. He

also had access to the learned circle of Sultan Nuh ibn Mansur. This friendship

with the ruling class created problems for him when the Turkish Qarakhnids allied

with the governor of Khorasan against Nuh ibn Mansur in 999. Due to the period’s

instability, he had to forsake Bukhara (Avicenna and Jauzajanai 43) and live in

several places of eastern and central Iran for the rest of his life.

Avicenna’s theory of rhetoric is different from al-Farabi’s. The former presents

a theory closer to Aristotle than the latter. For example, there is a clearer

distinction between artistic and non-artistic proofs and within artistic proofs:

And the proofs can be natural, not artificial, like witnesses and contracts;

and some are non-natural artificial and these are rhetorical proofs. And

rhetorical proofs take place because of three: the speaker’s personality and
 70

his appearance and the appearance of his enemy, and the alluring of the

audience towards persuasion. And these two are external persuasives.

(Kitab Al-Khataba)

Nevertheless, there are many similarities between both approaches. Both

circumscribe rhetoric as an art capable of reaching logical knowledge through the

syllogism. Furthermore, Avicenna’s theory of the rhetorical enthymeme is built

both upon social instruction, knowledge, and intuitive elements:

the intelligible truths are acquired only when the middle term of a

syllogism is obtained. This may be done in two ways: sometimes through

intuition [divine spirit], which is an act of mind by which the mind itself

immediately perceives the middle term … but sometimes the middle term

is acquired through instruction … all knowledge can be reduced ultimately

to certain intuitive principles. (Psychology 36)

In this way, Avicenna introduces a divine element into humans, for their

intuition acts as a divine spark which relates them with the divinity. This divinity

of man is Avicenna’s focus and contribution to Medieval Islamic thought.

The dichotomy intuition / intellect is mirrored by the further subdivision of the

rational soul into “a practical and a theoretical faculty, both of which are

equivocally called intelligence” (Psychology 32). Avicenna describes the former

as “the principle of movement of the human body, which urges it to individual

actions characterized by deliberation and in accordance with purposive

considerations. This faculty has certain correspondence with the animal faculties

of appetence, imagination and estimation, and a certain dual character in itself”

(ibid.). On the other hand, theoretical intelligence is the part that “forms the
 71

ordinary and commonly accepted opinions concerning actions, as, for instance,

that lies and tyranny are evil and other similar premises which, in books of logic,

have been clearly distinguished from the purely rational ones” (ibid.). Avicenna

finds again within the human soul a double nature: Intuitive and divine on the one

hand (the theoretical faculty); earthly and pragmatic on the other (the practical

one).

This is relevant in terms of his rhetorical theory because it humanistically

endows man not only with divinity but also with self-sufficiency insofar as the

process of inventio originates and relates to human affairs. As Avicenna proposes,

the form of all things contained in the active intelligence are imprinted on

his soul either all at once or nearly so, not that he accepts them merely on

authority but on account of their logical order which encompasses all the

middle terms. For beliefs accepted on authority concerning those things

which are known only through their causes possess no rational certainty.

This is a kind of prophetic inspiration, indeed its highest form and the one

most fitted to be called Divine Power; and it is the highest human faculty.

(Psychology 37). my emphasis

Once again, Avicenna places within a characteristic related to man and his

earthliness (intelligence) a divine element. At the same time, he also lays the

foundations for the fact that the art of rhetoric as persuasion, as a syllogistic

reasoning, is to be preferred over arguments ex cathedra.

This aspect can also be seen in prophets, who combine judgment and intuition

-rationality and divinity. Indeed they are the paramount of eloquence insofar as
 72

they are, in a Pentecost-like fashion, called by God to persuade their fellowmen to

convert on the basis of their eloquence and not of their authority.

The Book which bears no falsehood before or behind it, the revelation of the

Allwise and Allpowerful speaks in much the same sense: Call men unto the

path of thy Lord [God instructs His prophet] –that is, the true religion- with

wisdom –that is by way of proof – that is for those who can handle it – and

with fair persuasion – that is, rhetoric, for those who cannot manage

philosophic rigor; and engage them in argument with whatever is best.

(Avicenna Al-Shifa 2 qtd. in Goodman "Avicenna" 212)

Persuasion is a requisite for the prophet who, in turn, is the prototype of human

divinity. Both elements are to be heeded. Indeed, one cannot separate the

humanness from the divinity of the prophet and the law. In this sense, Avicenna

comments that anyone who establishes rules and social regulations “must be in the

position to speak to men, and to constrain them to accept the code; he must

therefore be a man” (Theology 42, my emphasis). This concerns the prophet but

also normal citizens.44 In this way, men are made to share God’s divinity and are

to function on their own creating law and regulation based on their society.

In this society, citizenship is enacted through speech and rhetoric. What is

more, man is defined by eloquence, which can be seen in how the Koran describes

God’s creation of man with the paratactic structure “He created man, He taught

44
This is the word Avicenna uses. This word relates, again, Avicenna to Isocrates. For Isocrates
and citizenship see L. Massey, "On the Origin of Citizenship in Education: Isocrates, Rhetoric, and
Kairos," Journal of Public Affairs (1997), Takis Poulakos, Speaking for the Polis: Isocrates
Rhetorical Education (Columbia, SC.: University of South Carolina Press, 1997), Takis Poulakos
and David Depew, Isocrates and Civic Education (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004).
 73

him eloquent speech” (The Quran 55.2-3), juxtaposing the creation of man and his

eloquence.45

Thus, I would not claim that Avicenna (nor al-Farabi) make theology

subservient to rhetoric. Instead, they certainly establish eloquence as a very worthy

art which is, to a certain extent, needed by religion; and which, again to a certain

extent, validates it.46 Thus the eloquence of the Koran is its hallmark of

authenticity:

And if you are in doubt as to what we have revealed to our servant then

produce a sura like it. (The Quran 2.21-23 qtd. in Makdisi 142)

Or do they say, ‘this man has forged it’? answer them: ‘bring then a sura [a

Koranic verse] like it and call to your aid anyone who can besides God, if it

be it you speak the truth. (The Quran 10.38-9, qtd. in Makdisi 142)

The aspects I have introduced above suggest that there are differences between

al-Farabi and Avicenna -for example, the latter stresses more the divine-intuitive

(Platonic?) side of man. But there seems to be as well enough material as to

hypothesize a relation, whose exploration would further shape Medieval Islamic

rhetoric. The figure of Averroes provides us with another step in the investigation.

Another fascinating area of study that could develop from this study is the

influence of Greek classical scholars other than Plato and Aristotle. My hypothesis

is that the Isocratean flavor that I found in al-Farabi can also be savored in other

Medieval Islamic theories of rhetoric such as those of Avicenna or Averroes.

45
To this respect, Razi claims that “[i]t is as though God performs the act of creating man only
when He has taught him eloquence” In George Makdisi, The Rise of Humanism in Classical Islam
and the Christian West : With Special Reference to Scholasticism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press, 1990) 143. It is also suggested that eloquence is “applied solely to God and to
man as taught by God, [it] is not an attribute of any other creature, not even the angels” (143).
46
“The notion of eloquence in Islam is not simply a literary notion; it is a basic religious doctrine.”
Makdisi, Rise of Humanism 141.
 74

Indeed, Avicenna’s communal aspect of rhetoric and his focus on communal

values that I have hinted at above resonate with an Isocratean echo. As in al-

Farabi, politics and ethics are intrinsically related in Avicenna. This can be seen in

the control the ideal ruler should exert over the city regarding virtues and vices:

“Some citizens are negligent or spend extravagantly. This man [the ruler] should

prevent this from happening. And he should be able to force them to work and

prevent them from spending extra-money.” (Khataba 35) We have here a

paternalistic (pedagogical) public control over personal issues that may scare many

scholars which is geared towards the betterment of society and the common

wealth. Isocrates suggested a similar control in his Aeropagiticus when he claims

that “laws and orators and private citizens must assimilate themselves to” the soul

of the city (14). To which extent can an Isocratean presence be felt in Medieval

Islam? Which is the channel that connected him with Islamic scholars? These

questions present an exciting research possibility.

I do not claim, however, that these directions for further research are obstacle-

free. In the remainder of the chapter I will expose some of the problems I have

found in my own research. A relevant one is the fact that not all texts are extant.

As an example, al-Farabi’s grand commentary on the rhetoric of Aristotle is lost.

This problem can easily be turned into an asset if we have faith in the possibility of

finding new texts. In this sense, al-Farabi’s Book of Rhetoric was found only sixty

years ago. Also, the texts that we do have are not usually translated into English.

In this study I have translated fragments into English from Spanish, Arabic,

French, German and Latin because there were no English translations. Again, this

need not be a problem. I have experienced this translation work as an opportunity

 75

to improve my skills in other languages. Still, it is a factor one should take into

account before going into the field.

Related to the problematic of language, there is the problematic of culture. To

study Islamic theories of rhetoric, I had to learn about Islam and Islamic culture

(Fiqh, Sharia, the Mutazilah, etc.) This is not a problem. Somewhat more

problematic was to approach my study without ethnocentrism. Regarding this

point, I have tried to adapt a reflective approach that guards against biases from

my cultural background. I am not all too sure that I managed to escape that

terministic screen -my cultural references are mainly western: Shakespeare, Dante,

etc. In this sense, these references suggest to me that on the one hand, the East is

not so far from the West; on the other hand, my status of outsider can give me an

insight on Islam and Islamic culture that I would lack if I was part of it.

These directions and obstacles-that-can-turn-into-assets present a width of

future research possibilities that I find exciting and enriching. Judging from my

experience with this study, it promises thrill and fun for the scholar willing to

embark in this voyage beyond the shores of Greece.

 76

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