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The Study of Arabic Philosophy Today

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2016

Charles E. Butterworth*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland

Extract

In recent years, scholarship concerning Abū Hāmid al-Ghazālī (450/1058–505/1111) has been directed more to the exploration of his thought than to editing or translating his vast corpus. This is not to say that there have been no editions or translations. Sulaymān Dunyā continues to publish versions of various treatises in which he replaces a critical apparatus with the explanation that he has already consulted the relevant manuscripts and selected the readings he deems sound or in which his critical apparatus consists of notes indicating that a particular word is differently rendered in some of the “sources” (uṣūl). However, other equally non-academic mass-market printings of al-Ghazali’s works apart, only a few critically edited texts have been published in the last two decades. Three years after the appearance of his al-Ghazālī bibliography, a volume that appeared as part of the millenary celebration of Abū Ḥāmid’s birth, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī published a critical edition of Faḍā’iḥ al-Bāṭinīyah. In the same year, Abū al-ʿAlā ʿAfīfī’s edition of Mishkāt al-Anwār appeared, and a year later A. L. Tibawi published his edition and translation of the small “Jerusalem Treatise” (al-Risālah al-Qudsīyah). In 1971, Fadlou A. Shehadi’s edition of The Supreme Purpose (al-Maqṣad al-Asnā) was published.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America 1983

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References

Notes

22. See al-Bāṭinīyah, Faḍā’ih ed. by cBadawī, Abd al-Raḥmān (Cairo: al-Dār al-Qawmīyah li al-Ṭibaʿah wa al-Nashr, 1964)Google Scholar; al-Anwār, Mishkāt ed. by ʿAfīfī, Abū al-ʿAlā (Cairo: al-Dār al-Qawmīyah li al-Ṭibaʿah wa al-Nashr, 1964)Google Scholar; Al-Ghazālī’s Tract on Dogmatic Theology, ed., trans., annotated, and introduced by Tibawi, A. L. (London: Luzac, 1965)Google Scholar; and al-Asnā, al-Maqṣad, ed. by Shehadi, Fadlou A. (Beirut: Dar el-Mashreq, 1971).Google Scholar See also Bouyges, Maurice, Essai de chronologie des oeuvres d’al-Ghazālī (Algazel), édité et mis â jour par Michel Allard (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1959)Google Scholar and “Notes sur les philosophes Arabes connus des Latins au Moyen Age” (I–IV) in MUSJ 7 (1914–1921), pp. 397–406.

23. See Some Moral and Religious Teachings of al-Ghazzālī, trans, by Ali, Syed Nawab (Lahore: Ashraf, 1946)Google Scholar; The Mysteries of Purity, trans. by Faris, Nabih Amin (Lahore: Ashraf, 1966)Google Scholar; The Mysteries of Almsgiving, trans, by Faris, Nabih Amin (Lahore: Ashraf, 1974)Google Scholar; and The Mysteries of Worship in Islam, trans. by Calveriey, Edwin Elliot (Lahore: Ashraf, 1977).Google Scholar See also On the Duties of Brotherhood, trans, by Holland, Muhtar (London: Latimer, 1975)Google Scholar; al-Gḥazālī’s Book of Fear and Hope, trans, by McKane, William (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1962)Google Scholar; The Revival of Religious Sciences, trans, by Behari, Bankey (Farnham: Sufi Publishing Co., 1972)Google Scholar; Ghazālī on Prayer, trans, by Nakamura, Kojiro (Tokyo: Institute of Oriental Culture, 1973)Google Scholar; and L’Obligation d’ordonner le bien et d’interdire le mal, trans, by Bercher, Léon (Tunis: N. Bascone & S. Muscat, 1961).Google Scholar

24. See al-Andalus 5 (1940), pp. 255–299; 7 (1942), pp. 1–47; and 8 (1943), pp. 1–87.

25. See Dunlop, D. M., “Ibn Bājjah’s Tadbīru ‘l-Mutawaḥḥid (Rule of the Solitary),” JRAS 1945, pp. 6181Google Scholar. Palacios’ Tadbīr al-Mutawaḥḥid was published in Madrid and Granada in 1946.

26. See Fakhry, Majid, ed., Rasā’il Ibn Bājjah al-Ilāhīyah (Beirut: Dār Al-Nahār, 1968)Google Scholar. In addition to_ re-editing the previously published Tadbīr al-Mutawaḥḥid, Risālat Ittiṣāl al-ʿAql bi al-Insān, and Risālat al-Widāʿ;, Fakhry presented his own editions of Fī al-Ghāyah al-Insānīyah, Qawl lah Yatiū Risālat al-Widāʿ, and Fī al-Umūr aliatī Yumkin bihā al-Wuqūf ʿalā al-ʿAql al-Faccāl. ’Fakhry first announced his interest in these treatises and described their manuscript sources in an article entitled “Rasā’il Ibn Bājjah al-Falsafīyah” in al-Abḥāth 17 (1964). In claiming to present a first edition of Fī al-Ghāyah al-Insānīyah, Fakhry was apparently unaware of M. S. H. al-Maʿṣūmī’s earlier edition and English translation of that work in JASP 2 (1957), as well as of Farrūkh’s, ʿUmar edition of the first half of the text in his Ibn Bājjah wa al-Falsafah al-Maghribīyah (Beirut: Mnaymnah, 1945).Google Scholar Similarly, his claim to present an edition of Ibn Bājjah’s Fī al-Umūr aliatī Yumkin bihā al-Wuqūf ʿalā al-ʿAql al-Faccāl for the first time suggests that Fakhry did not know of al-Maʿṣūmū’s earlier edition of this work in JASP 4 (1960)

27. See al-Abḥāth 23 (1970), pp. 35–52; 24 (1971), pp. –54; and 27 (1979), pp. 23–42.

28. See Ḥayy ibn Yaqdhān, roman philosophique d’Ibn Thofail, ed. and trans., Gauthier, Léon (Algiers: 1900)Google Scholar; Gauthier published a revised and improved edition of the text in 1936 (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique). See also Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy ibn Yaqzān, trans. Goodman, Lenn Evan (New York: Twayne, 1972);Google ScholarIbn Tufayl “Hayy the Son of Yaqzan,” trans. Atiyeh, George, in Medieval Political Philosophy, op. cit., pp. 134162.Google Scholar

29. See Wolfson, Harry A.Plan for the Publication of a Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem,” Speculum 6 (1931), pp. 412427, esp. pp. 421422CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “Revised Plan for the Publication of a Corpus Commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem,” Speculum 38 (1963), pp. 88–104, esp. pp. 94–95.

30. See Gätje, Helmut and Schoeler, Gregor, “Averroes’ Schriften zur Logik. Der arabische Text der Zweiten Analytiken im Grossen Kommentar des Averroes,” ZDMG 130 (1980), pp. 557585.Google Scholar

31. See Butterworth, Charles E., Averroes’ Three Short Commentaries on Aristotle’s “Topics,” “Rhetoric,” and “Poetics,” (Albany: SUNY Press, 1977).Google Scholar These works are extant only in two Judaeo-Arabic manuscripts. See also Lasinio, FaustoIl Parafrase della Poetica” in Annali delle Università toscane, Part II, 1872, Appendix A.Google Scholar

32. In this text, the only Arabic edition to be published since Wolfson’s famous call for editions of Averroes’ Corpus (see note 29 above), Blumberg uses the Arabic talkhīṣ as an equivalent of the English “epitome,” latin compendium, and Hebrew qiṣṣūr, instead of the Arabic jawāmiʿ; see his and E. L. Shield’s 1949 Latin edition of this text, his 1954 Hebrew edition, and his 1961 English translation—all published in Cambridge by the Mediaeval Academy of America.

33. Miguel Cruz Hernández corrected some of the more outstanding errors in Gómez Nogales’ bibliography and pointed to some of the omissions in Anawati’s, but displayed almost as lively an imagination as Gómez Nogales when identifying Arabic manuscripts presumed to contain works of Averroes hitherto considered to be lost; see Hernández, M. Cruz, Historia del pensamiento en el mundo Islámico (Madrid: Alianza Universidad, 1981), vol. 2, pp. 129136.Google Scholar

* I would especially like to acknowledge the long hours of patient toil through bibliographic listings put in by Garry-Eoghin Jennings; the careful and critical reading of earlier versions of this essay by Thérèse-Anne Druart, Steven Harvey, and Paul E. Walker; the thoughtful editorial hand of Theo MacKay; and the gentle prodding as well as patient cajoling of Jere Bacharach, whose idea this was in the first place.