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The Influence of Hermetic Literature on Moslem Thought

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

A. B. Affefi
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Extract

Students of Moslem philosophy and mysticism have often observed the highly eclectic character of that type of human thought. All Moslem speculation, philosophical and theological, no less than the Sūfī literature of the more theosophical kind, as represented for instance by Ibn ‘Arabī and Suhrawardī of Aleppo, displays this eclecticism. Yet no definite answer has been given to the question how or why the main current of Moslem thinking came to be of that type of mixture in which ideas from Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Philo Judæus, the Catholic thinkers of the Christian Church, the Gnostics, and the Neoplatonists are brought into one harmonious whole and mingled together in such an extraordinary manner. Certain attempts have been made in studying individual thinkers of Islam to trace their systems back to their respective sources, for no one source can satisfactorily explain such a diversity of doctrines as we find in Moslem literature. This was done by scholars who studied, e.g. al-Fārābī, Ibn Sīnā, al-Ghazālī, and was done by myself in studying the mystical philosophy of Muhyid-Dln Ibn ‘Arabī. In each case the fundamental ideas of the Moslem thinker were traced to the special source or sources which were deemed to have influenced his thought.

One important question, however, has always been overlooked, whether it is possible that the Moslem thinkers were not themselves responsible for mixing together those irreconcilable elements of Greek philosophy with other ideas derived from the prevalent religions of the East. In other words, was the eclecticism of Moslem thought only a reappearance of another kind of eclecticism which existed long before ? Some of the aspects of this problem will be dealt with in this paper.

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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , February 1951 , pp. 840 - 855
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1951

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References

page 840 note 1 See Vacherot, Hist, critique de Vecole d'Alexandrie (Paris, 1846), vol. i, p. 97.

page 842 note 1 p. 349.

page 842 note 2 Lit. Hist, of Persia, 1909, p. 304.

page 842 note 3 Fihrist (Cairo edn.), pp. 445–6.

page 843 note 1 Ṭabaqāt al-alibbā, vol. 1, pp. 16–17; cf. Fihrist (Leipzig edn.), p. 320.b

page 843 note 2 Quoted by Chwolsson, vol. ii, pp. 409–410.

page 843 note 3 Shahrastānī (vol. ii, p. 76) holds a different view. He maintains that the name is derived from Ṣabā' which means inclined (māla), and contrasts the name Ṣābi'ah with the name Ḥanīfiyyah—a term which he seems to use for all the people of revealed religions.

page 844 note 1 Cf. Brockelmann, i, 217;Suppl. i, 384–6.

page 844 note 2 Brit. Mus. Add. 7473 (Rich), foil. 26–31.

page 845 note 1 The resemblance is apparent even in the title of the two works, not verbally, but semantically. “Poimandres” has been compared to the Mandsean Mania d'Hayye, which is the nearest thing to Ḥayy b. Yaqzān. On the derivation of the word, see Scott, ch. 1, 2; and Dodd's The Bible and the Greeks, p. 99.

page 845 note 2 The idea which underlies Ibn Ṭufayl's epistle, i.e. that the unaided human intellect can reach knowledge of the true nature of all things, is to be found in Poimandres, xiii, 15.

page 849 note 1 See Ārā ahl al-Madlna al-fādila (Cairo, 1906), pp. 38–9.

page 849 note 2 Najah, p. 162.

page 850 note 1 Mystical Philosophy of Mohijid-Din Ibn ‘Arabī (1939), Appendix.

page 850 note 2 Cf. Fuṣ. (Cairo 1946) on the question of the external and internal aspects of God, e.g. p. 54.

page 850 note 3 Cf. Fuṣ., p. 113.

page 850 note 4 Cf. Fuṣ. on the meaning of “other than God”, e.g. pp. 101–3, 106.

page 850 note 5 Cf. Fuṣ., p. 77, 1. 5.

page 850 note 6 Cf. Fuṣ., p. 83, the verse.

page 850 note 7 Cf. Fuṣ., p. 170, on “all directions are the same with regard to God”.

page 850 note 8 Cf. Fuṣ., p. 151, last line: God is the essence of a.11 the faculties and organs of man and the actual doer of everything.

page 852 note 1 See Fuṣ., p. 154.

page 852 note 2 Libellus, ix, p. 183.

page 853 note 1 Risālat Zajr al-nafs (Bairut, 1903), p. 8.

page 854 note 1 Qifti, p. 43, and Ibn Abī Uṣaybi'ah, p. 17.