Man Versus Society in Medieval Islam

7/25/2019 Man Versus Society in Medieval Islam

1/1178


2/1178

Man versus Society in Medieval Islam


3/1178

Brill Classics in Islam

The titles published in this series are listed atbrill.com/bcii
http://brill.com/bciihttp://brill.com/bcii


4/1178


5/1178

(Above) Yusuf in prison and (below) Zuleikha as an old woman before Yusuf. Mid-17th centurySafavid period.Ink on paper H: 19.8 W: 10.4cm. Iran.( , , , ..:, 953.37)


6/1178

Man versus Society

in Medieval IslamBy

Franz Rosenthal

Edited by

Dimitri Gutas

|


7/1178

Cover illustration: Dioscurides,Materia medica. Codex medicus Graecus 1, f. 167, dating from 532.Vienna, sterreichische Nationalbibliothek.Image of (cannabis sativa), transliterated in Arabic in upper right and, in Hebrew, in lowerleft corner, and translated into Arabic asqinnab bustn, garden cannabis, in the left margin, for the benet

of the illustrator of the Arabic translation. See below, p. 155.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rosenthal, Franz, 1914-2003, author.[Works. Selections]Man versus society in medieval Islam / by Franz Rosenthal ; edited by Dimitri Gutas.

volumes cm.Includes index.ISBN 978-90-04-27088-6 (hardback : alk. paper) ISBN 978-90-04-27089-3 (e-book) 1. Islamic civilization.

2. Islamic EmpireSocial life and customs. I. Gutas, Dimitri, editor. II. Title.

DS36.85.R668 2014305.6'970902dc23

2014002472

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual Brill typeface. With over 5,100 characters coveringLatin, , Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more

information, please see www.brill.com/brill-typeface.

- ---- (hardback) ---- (e-book)

Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill , Leiden, The Netherlands.Koninklijke Brill incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhof, Global Oriental and Hotei Publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, ortransmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,

without prior written permission from the publisher.Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill providedthat the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite910, Danvers, 01923, . Fees are subject to change.Brill has made all reasonable eforts to trace all rights holders to any copyrighted material used in this work.In cases where these eforts have not been successful the publisher welcomes communications fromcopyrights holders, so that the appropriate acknowledgements can be made in future editions, and to settleother permission matters.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.


8/1178

Contents

Foreword Dimitri GutasMajor Reviews of the Reprinted Works Note on the Layout of the Volume List of Original Publications and Acknowledgments

I. Introduction: The Study of Muslim Intellectual and Social History:

Approaches and Methods 1

II. The Muslim Concept of Freedom Prior to the Nineteenth Century 21

III. The Herb: Hashish versus Medieval Muslim Society 131

IV. Gambling in Islam 335

V. Sweeter than Hope: Complaint and Hope in Medieval Islam 517

VI. The Individual and Society

I am youIndividual Piety and Society in Islam 697 Gifts and Bribes: The Muslim View 729 Cannabis and Alcohol: The Green and the Red 746 The Stranger in Medieval Islam 754 On Suicide in Islam 797

VII. Sexuality, Gender, and the Family

Fiction and Reality: Sources for the Role of Sex in Medieval MuslimSociety 839

Male and Female: Described and Compared 862 Reections on Love in Paradise 892 Muslim Social Values and Literary Criticism: Reections on the

adth of Umm Zar 909 Child Psychology in Islam 941


9/1178

VIII. Science and Learning in Society

Materials for an Appraisal of Knowledge as a Societal Force 967 Al-Asurlb and as-Samawal on Scientic Progress 1001

The Defense of Medicine in the Medieval Muslim World 1011 The Physician in Medieval Muslim Society 1026 Signicant Uses of Arabic Writing 1043 Of Making Many Books There Is No End: The Classical Muslim

View 1066

Index of Selected Arabic, Persian, and Turkish Words 1089Index of Some Terms in Other Languages 1106

Indx of Proper Names and Places 1108Index of Subjects 1133Index of Qurn Citations 1157


10/1178

Foreword

The remarkable scholarly career of the most brilliant representative of theheroic and nal stage of classical Orientalism, Franz Rosenthal (19142003),was crowned by a series of studies on the historical sociology of pre-modernIslamic civilization. In book after book and article after article for over fty

years, he studied what he called the tensions and conicts that existed be-tween individuals and society in medieval Islam, a subject to which he gavethe titleMan versus Society in Islam. Rosenthal had initially intended to treatthe subject in a single large work, but the great variety of topics that were

to be treated as well as the vastness and complexity of the available materialmade him realize that it would not be possible for [him] to bring to a satis-factory conclusion a comprehensive work such as [he] had envisaged, and hedecided to publish his various studies independently, though he cautioned thereader that the outlook and emphasis of each study may become clearer if

viewed against the background from which it originated. Though each oneof his studies on these topics is itself a highly original, thorough, and authori-tative treatment, the full force and signicance of the unitary project he orig-inally conceived, the background he speaks about which gives meaning tothe wholethe panorama of pre-modern Muslim social historycannot beproperly perceived and appreciated unless it is read in juxtaposition with theothers. To that end, but also to provide easy access to these scattered studiesand to stimulate further research, they are here reprinted collectively in a sin-glepublication, therebyrealizingRosenthals original comprehensive work andfullling a desideratum expressed by others.

The studies that form part of this projected work and are reprinted in thiscollection are, rst, four monographs, presented in chronological order:The

As I called him in my introductory essay to the reprint of hisKnowledge Triumphant, Leiden:Brill, 2007, p. xiii. Franz Rosenthal was Sterling Professor of Arabic and Semitic Studies at

Yale University(19561985). Forhis biographical memoir see my obituary inProceedingsof the

American Philosophical Society 149.3 (2005) 441446,and, in greater detail, DavidC. ReismansIn Memoriam: Franz Rosenthal. August 31, 1914April 8, 2003,Aleph3 (2003) 329342. A

bibliography of his works can be found inOriens36 (2001) xiiixxxiv. The Study of Muslim Intellectual and Social History p. 1; below, p. 3. Foreword toThe Muslim Concept of Freedom, p. viii; below, p. 24. E.g., by Ernest Gellner in his review ofThe Muslim Concept of FreedominPhilosophy, 39.147

(1964) 86.


11/1178

Muslim Concept of Freedom Prior to the Nineteenth Century (1960), originallyintended to be the rst chapter of the comprehensive work, followed byTheHerb. Hashish versus Medieval Muslim Society(1971),Gambling in Islam(1975),

andSweeter than Hope. Complaint and Hope in Medieval Islam(1983). Theseare followed by fteen articles written at diferent times, clustered under threeheadings of my own, The Individual and Society, Sexuality, Gender, and theFamily, and Science and Learning in Society. Exceptionally included underthis last heading, because of its direct relevance, is the nal section in Rosen-thalsKnowledge Triumphant(Chapter VIII,4), Materials for an Appraisal ofKnowledge as a Societal Force, which discusses, along with the other articlesthere, societys management of the production and dissemination of knowl-

edge by individual scientists, philosophers, and scholars. They are all intro-duced, as orientation, by the single article Rosenthal wrote on the method ofhis project, The Study of Muslim Intellectual and Social History: Approachesand Methods.

Rosenthals core conception and starting point for his enterprise was theage-old notiontruism, really, perhaps best expressed by Aristotle, thatman is a social animal ( ), according to which man and societyconstitute a whole with two correlative entities, one necessitating the other,one existing only through, and being incomprehensible without, the other. Butman is also an individual with the self-consciousness of an individual, with allthat that implies, making the symbiotic relationship adversarial, one of strug-gle: it is the struggle between the manifestations of thehuman constantandthe religious norms devised to tame them somehow for the good of society,and hence Rosenthals title, ManversusSociety.

Theessenceoftheadversarialrelationshiphingeson,orisidenticalwith,thecorrelative concept of freedom: man is free from something or free to do some-thing, this something being at each instant determined through the relation-

ship. Rosenthal accordingly starts on his project with a discussion of freedom,being well aware of the relative character of the concept and its centralityin his research. Indeed the concept of freedom was a pivotal concept in Exis-tentialist philosophy which dominated mid-twentieth century intellectual lifein Europe and its extension, or transfer, in the United States. The Existentialistquest for a freedom that would be beyond its correlative denition, an abso-lute freedom, leads to the concept of the absurd, and is, in the end, absolutely

The Study of Muslim Intellectual and Social History p. 6; below, p. 10; emphasis added. The Muslim Concept of Freedom, p. 2; below, p. 26.


12/1178

incomprehensible,asKarlJaspers,whomRosenthalcites,declared.Thesedis-cussions percolated into the popular press also in the United States; in a briefarticle introducing French Existentialism in the weekly magazine The Nation,

Jaspers former student and subsequent lifelong friend, Hannah Arendt, statedsuccinctly the issue that is at the heart of Rosenthals project:

The French Existentialists are united on two main lines of rebellion:rst, the rigorous repudiation of what they call the esprit srieux; andsecond, the angry refusal to accept the world as it is as the natural,predestined milieu of man. Lesprit srieux, which is the original sinaccording to the new philosophy, may be equated with respectability. The

serious man is one who thinks of himselfas president of his business, asa member of the Legion of Honor,asa member of the faculty, but alsoasfather,ashusband, or as any other half-natural, half social function. Forby so doing he agrees to the identication of himself with an arbitraryfunction which society has bestowed.L esprit srieuxis the very negationof freedom, because it leads man to agree to and accept the necessarydeformation which every human being must undergo when he is tted intosociety.

This concept of freedom, where the individual struggles against being denedonly in terms of the correlative relationship with society, against the society

which is his creature, his savior, and his oppressor (as Rosenthal eloquentlyput it), crops up in the writings of many peoples and is certainly not restrictedto the Existentialists, but it is they who discussed it most vehemently andbrought out its various shades in mid-twentieth century. Rosenthals projectandtheproblmatique inwhichitisconceivedfallswithinthisbroaderintellec-tualcontext(evenifitisirrelevantwhetherhereadtheFrenchexistentialistsor

Ibid. p. 3; below, p. 27.

I.e., spirit of seriousness, a notion elaborated upon mostly by Simone de Beauvoir, thoughthe views presented here were common to the major French Existentialists.

I.e., in the context of our discussion, the fact that man is a social animal and has meaningonly in this correlative relationship.

The Nation, February 23, 1946, p. 226. All italics are Arendts except for the last sentence

which I emphasize. The Herb, p. 2; below, p. 135. As in Herman Melvilles Bartleby the Scrivener (1853), to take an example from nineteenth

century American literature, who would prefer not to be a scrivener. Both Camus andSartre admired the American author, on whom they both wrote essays.


13/1178

not), and he sought to analyze and understand the manifold manifestationsof this perennial and universal struggle in medieval Islamic societies.

The human constant which is pitted against society Rosenthal took from

natural drives and psychological urges and attitudes. To the former belong cer-tainly the sexual drive and, if one is to follow the almost universally acknowl-edged, by now, thesis of Johan Huizinga in Homo ludens(1938), the instinctfor play. Next to the control of sex as the most pressing issue confrontinghuman society, Rosenthal beginsThe Herb, the control of the instinct andneed for play among men has been a matter of constant concern and consid-erable experimentation. Man ishomo ludens, the playing animal . Gamblingis the outstanding example of a playful ight away from harsh reality . The

consumption of stimulants or depressants in solid, liquid, or gaseous form isanother. To each of these two forms of play Rosenthal devoted a monograph,and to sexuality a number of articles (Part VII).

The psychological urges, desires, and attitudes consist of those intricateprocessesofthehumanmindbywhichmanhastriedtogainanunderstandingof and thereby at least some degree of control over his inner environment,including, for example, the specically human ability to remember and reectupon the past and to look ahead toward the future and speculate on it, thetheme of the complaint about the times which he investigated at length inhis monograph onComplaint and Hope; or, one of mankinds strongest urges,mobility, the need or desire to move over short or long distances, which hestudied in the article on The Stranger (Part VI, no. 4); or the individuals

yearning for other-identication [which] reects the search for an alternativeto social organization as mans best hope for increased personal power, thetheme he presented in the highly original article I am you (Part VI, no. 1);or mans natural desire to know (to borrow Aristotles opening line in the

Though he did read Jaspers, as already noted. And one may wonder whether it is com-pletely accidental that Rosenthals very rst article in this project, On Suicide in Islam

(1946;below, pp. 797836), andhisvery last, TheStranger in Medieval Islam (1997;below,pp. 754796), happen to be, respectively, the subject of Albert Camus classic essay,Le

Mythe de Sisyphe(1942), and the title and subject of his equally classic novel,Ltranger. It is thus quite clear that it isnoten raison de la valeur assume par la notion de libert

dans les socits modernes quil [Rosenthal] cherche analyser cette dernire dans le

mondedelIslam,asD.SourdelsuggestedinthereviewofTheMuslimConceptofFreedom,Arabica9 (1962) 91. Rosenthal was well aware of the perils of importing modern valuesystemsin thestudyof historical societies, against which he guardedhimself meticulously,as will be discussed next.

The Study of Muslim Intellectual and Social History p. 7; below, p. 11.


14/1178

Metaphysics), the social context and management of which he investigated inthe studies in Part VIII.

The method Rosenthal followed in the execution of his project was basic as

it was arduous. Given the novelty of the subject in Arabic and Islamic studiesand the almost complete lack of previous scholarship, the most immediateand needed task, he decided, was to provide information on what medievalMuslims knew about, and how they looked at all these themes that were partoftheproject.Thisinvolvedcombingandexaminingtheentirewrittenrecordin pre-modern Arabic sources. As he described his method,

The only possible approach open to us is the collection of whatever infor-

mation the sources can be made to yield, combined with the cautiousevaluation of that information on the basis of quantitative and qualita-tive indications. The main weight of the investigation has to be carried bythe sheer accumulation of evidence. It may be contended that the fol-lowing discussion is too much oriented toward verbal usage, words plainand simple, and that too little attention is paid to implicit evidence

where the thought processes underlying them can be presumed to bepresent. [I]t is hardly true that it makes no diference which wordsare used once the intended meaning is understood. Meanings becomeclear to us only after we have painstakingly connected them with certain

words. It is the words, each one of them with multiple shades of meaning,that,slogan-like,havealifeoftheirownandexerciseapowerfulinuenceupon emotions and attitudes. Therefore, our preference for words servesthe valuable purpose of bringing us as close as possible to developing afeeling forseeing things as the people of the past themselves did. It helpsus to avoid as much as possible speculation about what existed and wasactive only subconsciouslyand is perceived by us as existing only as the

result of our substituting our own ways of thinking.

The result is the presentation in this volume of a vast amount of material,expertly collected and judiciously translated to reect the meaning it had atits time, thereby enabling a historically accurate understanding of medievalIslamic societies and deecting the importation in our interpretations ofmodern views, tendencies, and ideological agenda. As Rosenthal noted, thedeveloping of interpretational generalities was not his aim for [i]t is not the

The Herb, p. 3; below, p. 136. Sweeter than Hope, pp. viiiix; below, pp. 521522; emphasis added.


15/1178

generalities but the details that count . It is more important to explain andpreserve the information provided by the indigenous sources on their ownterms, in the hope that the mosaic thus put together will form a meaningful

picture. In particular, he warned, a dogmatic hankering for general conclu-sions may merely compromise any true gains.This mosaic of a work is to be studied as much for the meaningful picture

of medieval Islamic societies which the arrangement of the pieces in this col-lection depicts as for the brilliance of each individual piece, and as much forits contents as for its method. Especially signicant are the many discussionsof terminology, thevia regiato a historical understanding of events and con-cepts, but also of feelings and emotions; they make this reprint a standard

work of reference, to be consulted on technical terms for the various subjectstreated. The indices of terms and of names and selected topics in the origi-nal monographs have accordingly been unied, and entries from the articles,not indexed before, have been incorporated. This new whole, which reects,I trust, the comprehensive work originally envisaged by Rosenthal and com-memorates the centennial of his birth, is more than the sum of its parts and

will provide new impetus and an abundant wealth of material to the study ofthe social history of the medieval Islamic world.

Dimitri GutasYale UniversityDecember 2013

The Herb, pp. 34; below, p. 136. The Study of Muslim Intellectual and Social History p. 11; below, p. 20. This lecture,

which was delivered in 1980, is Rosenthals only essay on methodology, brief discussionsin the introductions to some of his monographs apart, and it constitutes, it would seem,

his direct response both to charges that the Orientalist approach essentializes or rei-es Islam (Edward Saids Orientalismappeared in 1978) and to its misapplication by

OrientalistsSaids targetwho actually did that. He restated this understanding of thegolden mean in method in the concluding paragraph of Sweeter than Hope, p. 150; below,pp. 693694. But Rosenthal had already delivered, thirty years before Said, a scathingcritique of culturally biased, unreective, and, in the end, ignorant Orientalists in theIntroduction to hisThe Technique and Approach of Muslim Scholarship (Rome: Ponti-cium Institutum Biblicum, 1947, pp. 25), where he decried, among other failures, their

misconceptions which viewed the political history of Islam as a monotonous succes-

sionofdespots,itsculturalhistoryasanevenmoremonotonousrepetitionoftheidenticalforms and ideas, and its religious history as a petried fossil carefully handed down fromgeneration to generation.

Asastutely noted byR.B. Serjeantin his reviewofGamblinginIslam inBulletinof the Schoolof Oriental and African Studies, 40.3 (1977) 617.


16/1178

Major Reviews of the Reprinted Works

II The Muslim Concept of Freedom Prior to the Nineteenth Century.Reviewed by:

Elmer H. Douglas,Middle East Journal, 15.4 (1961) 470472.

Ernest Gellner,Philosophy, 39.147 (1964) 8586.

Ann K.S. Lambton,Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 25.1/3 (1962)

170171.

D. Sourdel,Arabica, 9 (1962) 9193.

III The Herb. Hashish versus Medieval Muslim Society. Reviewed by:

Lenn Evan Goodman,Middle East Journal, 28.1 (1974) 8687.

Sami Hamarneh,Pharmacy in History, 15.2 (1973) 98.

Fritz Meier,Oriens, 25/26 (1976) 368370.

R.B. Serjeant,Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 35.3 (1972) 633636.

Jerry Stannard,Isis, 63.4 (1972) 580581.

IV Gambling in Islam. Reviewed by:

R.B. Serjeant,Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 40.3 (1977) 617.

Reinhard Wieber,Die Welt des Islams, 18.1/2 (1977) 145148.

V Sweeter than Hope. Complaint and Hope in Medieval Islam.

Reviewed by:

M. Arkoun,Arabica, 34.3 (1987) 387388.

J. Janssens,Tijdschrift voor Filosoe, 47.4 (1985) 663.


17/1178

VI.1 I am youIndividual Piety and Society in Islam, in:

Individualism and Conformity in Classical Islam, ed. by A. Banani

and S. Vryonis Jr. Reviewed by:

Josef van Ess,Die Welt des Islams, 19.1/4 (1979) 227228.

J. Wansbrough,Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 41.3 (1978) 595.

VII.6 Fiction and Reality: Sources for the Role of Sex in Medieval

Muslim Society, in: Society and theSexes in Medieval Islam, ed. by

A. Lut al-Sayyid Marsot. Reviewed by:

C.E. Bosworth, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1 (1981)

7778.

Valerie J. Hofman, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 41.4 (1982) 315316.

G.H.A. Juynboll, Journal of Arabic Literature, 12 (1981) 161163.

Albert Perdue, Journal of Asian History, 14.2 (1980) 149150.

VII.8 Male and Female: Described and Compared, in:Homoeroticism in

Classical Arabic Literature, ed. by J.J. Wright and E.K. Rowson.

Reviewed by:

Amila Buturovic,International Journal of Middle East Studies, 31.2 (1999) 291293.

Miriam Cooke,Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, 34.1 (2000) 9596.

Sabine Schmidtke,Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 62.2 (1999)

260266.

Seth Ward,South Atlantic Review, 64.1 (1999) 173176.

VIII.15 Signicant Uses of Arabic Writing,Ars Orientalis 4 (1961) 1523,

repr. in hisFour Essays on Art and Literature in Islam. Reviewed by:

Yolande Crowe,Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 2 (1973)

164165.

Richard Ettinghausen,Artibus Asiae, 34.4 (1972) 353354.

Gza Fehrvri,Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 35.3 (1972) 687.M.J. Zwettler, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 95.3 (1975) 488490.


18/1178

VIII.16 Of Making Many Books There Is no End: The Classical Muslim

View, in: The Book in the Islamic World. The Written Word and

Communication in the Middle East, ed. by G.N. Atiyeh. Reviewed by:

James M. Dening,Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, 30.1 (1996) 7879.

Tammy Lynn Johnson,The Library Quarterly, 66.4 (1996) 476478.

James E. Montgomery, Journal of Arabic Literature, 27.3 (1996) 272273.

William Smyth,Journal of the American Oriental Society, 117.3 (1997) 588589.

Paul Starkey,British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 25.2 (1998) 329330.

Roberto Tottoli,Oriente Moderno, 16 (77), No. 1 (1997) 133134.


19/1178

Note on the Layout of the Volume

All works reprinted in this volume have been typeset anew from the originalpublications whose text they reproduce exactly. Minor misprints have beentacitly corrected. The occasional references and remarks whose addition in thenotes was indispensable are placed in square brackets and signed as Ed[itor].

The numbering of footnotes, wherever it was continuous within a chap-ter or article in the original publication, was also reproduced exactly. In thethree cases where the numbering of the footnotes in the original publicationresumed anew on each page (in works III, VIII.11 and VIII.15), the numbering

in this reprint was changed to continuous, but the original number of the notewas also included in small superscript numbers just before the note. In the caseof VIII.11, the original numbers given in superscript are those of the rst editionof the work (1970); in the 2007 reprint, however, the numbers were changed tocontinuous, but these were necessarily omitted.

Each reprinted monograph bears a Roman numeral, and each reprintedarticle a Roman numeral followed by an Arabic numeral, as listed in the Tableof Contents. The page numbers of the original publications are entered in themargins of this reprint to help identify earlier references.

The original indexes to each separate monograph have been combined inthis reprint, together with new entries from the articles which had not beenindexed. They have been edited for accuracy in this combined format, to helpidentify individuals with similar names and locate the signicant terms dis-cussed, but also forconcision, toavoid expansion beyond measure inan alreadybulky volume: all material in the body of the text has been included in theappropriate index, but references in the footnotes to reference works (Brock-elmann, Sezgin,EI, etc.,) have not been included, while mere citations in the

footnotes, without discussion, to secondary literature and to primary sourcebooks (historical and biographical works, poetic collections, etc.) have beenincluded only selectively. In the Index of Proper Names personalities are listedaccording to the most commonly used part of their name and cross referencesto the other parts have been kept to a minimum. The transliteration system oftheEncyclopaedia of Islam Threewas used in the indexes, given the variationin the original transliteration of Arabic names, inevitable in works publishedoverhalfacenturyinpublicationswithvaryingtransliterationconventionsand

guidelines; it is hoped that this will present no problems to the reader.

DG


20/1178

List of Original Publications and Acknowledgments

The publishers and I gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint the workswhich originally appeared in the following publications:

I [Introduction]. The Study of Muslim Intellectual and Social History: Ap-proaches and Methods (The Third Annual United Arab Emirates Lecturein Islamic Studies, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, October 9,1980), Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan, 1981. 14pp.

II The Muslim Concept of Freedom Prior to the Nineteenth Century, Leiden:

Brill, 1960. 133pp.III The Herb. Hashish versus Medieval Muslim Society, Leiden: Brill, 1971.218pp.

IV Gambling in Islam, Leiden: Brill, 1975. 192pp.V Sweeter than Hope. Complaint and Hope in Medieval Islam, Leiden: Brill,

1983. 160pp.

VI. The Individual and Society

I am youIndividual Piety and Society in Islam, in: Individualismand Conformity in Classical Islam, ed. by A. Banani and S. Vryonis Jr.(Fifth Giorgio Levi della Vida Biennial Conference), Wiesbaden: OttoHarrassowitz, 1977, 3360.

Gifts and Bribes: The Muslim View,Proceedings of the American Philo-sophical Sociery108 (1964) 135144.

Cannabis and Alcohol: The Green and the Red, in:Marihuana biological

efects, ed. by G.G. Nahas and Sir W.D.M. Patton, Oxford; New York: Perga-mon Press, 1979, 739745.

The Stranger in Medieval Islam,Arabica44 (1997) 3575. On Suicide in Islam,Journal of the American Oriental Society66 (1946)

239259.

VII. Sexuality, Gender, and the Family

Fiction and Reality: Sources for the Role of Sex in Medieval MuslimSociety, in:Society and the Sexes in Medieval Islam, ed. A. Lut al-Sayyid


21/1178

Marsot (Sixth Giorgio Levi della Vida Biennial Conference), Malibu, Cal-ifornia: Undena Publications, 1979, 322.

Male and Female: Described and Compared, in:Homoeroticism in Clas-

sical Arabic Literature, ed. J.W. Wright Jr. and Everett K. Rowson, N.Y.:Columbia University Press, 1997, 2454. Reections on Love in Paradise, in:Love and Death in the Ancient Near

East: Essays in Honor of M.H. Pope, ed. by John H. Marks and RobertM. Good, Guilford, Connecticut, and Los Angeles: Four Quarters Pub. Co.,1987, 247254.

Muslim Social Values and Literary Criticism: Reections on the adthof Umm Zar,Oriens34 (1994) 3156.

Child Psychology in Islam,Islamic Culture26 (1952) 122.

VIII. Science and Learning in Society

Materials for an Appraisal of Knowledge as a Societal Force, fromKnowl-edge Triumphant, Leiden: Brill, 1970, Chapter VII.4, pp. 298333.

Al-Asurlb and as-Samawal on Scientic Progress,Osiris9 (1950) 555564.

The Defense of Medicine in the Medieval Muslim World,Bulletin of theHistory of Medicine43 (1969) 519532.

The Physician in Medieval Muslim Society,Bulletin of the History ofMedicine 52(1978) 475491.

Signicant Uses of Arabic Writing,Ars Orientalis4 (1961) 1523, repr. inhisFour Essays on Art and Literature in Islam(The L.A. Mayer Memo-rial Studies in Islamic Art and Archeology, vol. II), Leiden: Brill, 1971, 5062.

Of Making Many Books There Is no End: The Classical Muslim View,in:The Book in the Islamic World: the Written Word and Communication inthe Middle East, ed. G.N. Atiyeh (Papers presented at a conference heldNov. 89, 1989, at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.), Albany, N.Y.:State University of New York Press, 1995, 3355.

We would also like to acknowledge our gratitude to the sterreichische Nation-albibliothek in Vienna and to the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., for

permission to reproduce the cover image and the frontispiece, respectively.A personal and warm word of thanks is due to Koninklijke Brill NV for the

realization of this project. I am particularly indebted to Joed Elich and Kathyvan Vliet, who eagerly embraced my idea to bring Rosenthals envisaged work


22/1178

onMan versus Societyto actuality by reprinting all the related works in onevolume and supported it throughout, and to Renee Otto, Ellen Girmscheid andtheir team of type-setters and indexer who saw it through the process and

brought it to fruition with expertise and professionalism.

Dimitri Gutas


23/1178


24/1178

, , | : ./_

Introduction


25/1178


26/1178

The Study of Muslim Intellectual and 1

Social History: Approaches and Methods

Iwanttospeakhereaboutacomplexofsubjectsthathasreachedthestatusofascience only in this century. It was not dened and studied before as a widelycultivated coherent body of knowledge set apart from other sciences. Althoughit may lay claim roughly to the name of historical sociology, it remains ratheramorphous. With respect to the past history of Islam, its principal concernis with the interaction and efect of intellectual, psychological, and societal

phenomena. My topic here, which I approach with due hesitation, deals withsome of the directions which Islamicists have shown themselves familiar within their work but might do well to follow with increased seriousness in years tocome.

The modern history of this research had, of course, no sudden beginningat any one given moment. Like any other intellectual endeavor, it developedslowly over several centuries. Even in Islamic studies, a relative newcomerin Western scholarly activity, occasional research along what can be calledsociological lines was done already in the seventeenth century. It continuedto nd attention when Islamic studies started their forward march around thesecond half of the nineteenth century. While their development since then hasbeen tremendous, it has, on the whole, been quite haphazard. This is nothingto be astonished, chagrined, or indignant about. Islam as an object of researchis after all an enormously vast expanse for scholarship to roam in, one muchlarger than most, and certainly not smaller than any other, elds of research.Thinking of Islam as the common denominator for scholarship is in itself asort of hubris or, perhaps more accurately, an admission of ignorance. Thus,

whatever research has been done could not help being partial and incomplete.It need hardly be said that many undiscovered or underutilized areas of studyexist and are still to be staked out.

For a long time now, the key word that governs any worthwhile scholarlyactivity has been progress. Intellectual work of any description might just as

well be left undone if it cannot be viewed as somehow constituting progress.ThemeaningofwhatwecallprogresswasnotleftentirelyundebatedinIslam.Understandably it was submerged there under the more obvious phenomenon

of change. Temporal change was commonly seen as cyclical, but thinkers suchas Ibn Khaldnand he was not alonefelt that there was a slow accumula-tion of material and intellectual growth in the historical process, constituting asort of, as we might put it, intermittent progress. The nature of progress has


27/1178

4 . []

recently become again a subject of much forceful discussion. In the naturalsciences, it is basically understood as the process of accumulating more andmore knowledge unavailable before. This appears also to be the easiest way

to dene progress in the humanities. Here, however, the newness of any workdone is much harder to assess, since research in the history of the past is inthe rst place a process of recovery. It is always a legitimate question whetherthe recovered material constitutes progress in that it not merely adds usefulinformation to existing knowledge but inuences, if ever so little, its total com-plexion. A scientist may very well complain about the unrelievedly deplorablestory of earlier medicine and contend that there was, practically speaking,no medical knowledge before the later nineteenth century. If this were so, we

humanistsmightverywellaskourselveswhatcouldbethepointin|publishing2 long forgotten medical works. The simple answer must be that every recov-ered bit of the past has at least the potential of stimulating an expansion ofknowledge and insight and thereby contributing to progress. In a more pro-found and, indeed, fundamental sense, it has sometimes been contended inrecent years that the very idea of progress is, at best, an illusion and, at worst,mankinds shorcut to extinction and that there are limits and verities discov-ered long ago but distorted and abandoned that determine how far mankindcan prudently go in its quest for intellectual and material betterment. If thereis anything to these contentions, which I nd hard to believe, it might perhapsbe assumed that the truth as always lies somewhere in the middle. Progress ispossible and necessary, but it is not straightforward and often leads into darkand polluted blind alleys. As far as the mere accumulation of knowledge as ameans of progress is concerned, it can happen that quantity increases at timestoo rapidly at the expense of quality and, even worse, may reach a stage whereit becomes overpowering. There is little doubt in my mind that the enormousgrowth of knowledge during the early centuries of Islam played an important

role in producing the much discussed relative stagnation of intellectual life inlater centuries, which impresses us as failure, even if it possessed all the out-

ward appearances of increasing subtlety and sophistication. There simply wasso much knowledge to be preserved with very restricted means of preserva-tion that scholars were kept busy with devising ways of preserving it. Theycould justly be proud of and satised with the skilful mastery of their greatheritage and be deceived, they themselves as well as their audience, into for-getting the need for going beyond formality and accumulationthe need for

progress.

Cf. Lewis Thomas, inDaedalus, 106, 3 (summer 1977), 163.


28/1178

5

One of the most successful approaches to producing not only an illusionof progress but, with skill and luck, some reality of it was the classicationof knowledge. Its starting point, the specialization of human activity, is coex-

tensive with human development and observable in the earliest times. As aconscious means of inuencing intellectual development, the classication ofknowledge made its appearance in Greek civilization. Aristotles name and

work were the outstanding symbol for its power and steady growth. It wasnaturally taken over but then rened to an unprecedented degree by Muslimscholars, secular and religious thinkers alike. Through it all, the unity of allknowledge remained a concept that was defended in epistemology as well asmetaphysics. It held a strong attraction in a world view that was fundamentally

unitarian. The philosophical and religious underpinning of the classicationof knowledge in Islam customarily was the unity of all knowledge, and theinterdependence of all sciences was always stressed. Knowledge is one anddesirable, even though its individual manifestations difer in value. The ubiq-uity and variety of classication schemes indicates that they were the rulingforce in Muslim scholarship. A noticeable tendency to come up with more andmore subdivisons can be discerned in the course of time. More and more sci-ences in their own right were built into the system until their number reachedinto the hundreds. The more important a subject matter was in Muslim eyes,the greater was the number of disciplines to which it gave rise. For instance,scholars would outdo themselves in ascribing innumerable subdivisions to theQurnic sciences. Their efort also shows how deeply ingrained was the dan-gerous assumption that subdivision and classication constituted an avenuetoward understanding. If, the unspoken argument went, you devote special-ized attention, a specialized, quasi-independent science, to each letter of theHoly Book, you stood a better chance to fathom its mysteries and understandit | bettera fallacy if ever there was one. The independence of most of these 3

disciplines was, of course, not absolute. They continued to be cultivated inclose dependence upon the major elds of knowledge to which they origi-nally belonged. Yet, an impressive framework for expansion and progress wascreated. Not unexpectedly, the elds of knowledge most relevant to Muslimsocietycontinuedtoreceivebyfarthegreatestshareofattention,asattestedbythe mountains of books devoted to them. The natural sciences were unable tokeep up and compete with them. The humanities and societal sciences, alwaysstrong, were the greatest beneciaries.

The same process of subdivision with a view toward autonomy for newlyestablished elds of research has dominated the development of intellectualactivity in Europe. It has now taken on greater dimensions than ever before.Our modern university organization is the most obvious beneciary, and


29/1178

6 . []

victim, of the process. The idea of efecting progress through setting up specialkindsofknowledgeasdisciplinesintheirownrighthastakenholdandappearsto be here to stay. The unity of all knowledge is still viewed with awe by some as

the ultimate truth, one, however, that is innitely remote from the normal lifeand work of scholars whose vision of potential progress is necessarily restrictedto their respective disciplines.

Historians of the past must not, even if they could, disregard the concerns ofthe present, if their eforts are to achieve their full measure of efectiveness.This means trying to keep in touch with conceptual progress made. In ourparticular case, it means becoming involved with methods and approachesthat become visible in new disciplines, provided they are arguably more than

passing fashions. In this endeavor, in which Islamic historians have becomeinvolved in recent years, an indispensable precondition is concern for thepreservation of the integrity of the past. In studying, for instance, the economicfactors in society, we must not forget that the very fact that they commandedlimited attention in Muslim sources indicates that they were viewed as muchless central than we are inclined to view them and that, therefore, they areindeedlesscentralforanunderstandingofMuslimsociety.ThevastmajorityofMuslim thinkers stressed the obvious material basis of human life but beyondthatcaredlittleformaterialfactorsasbuildingblocksofsocietyandhistory.Forthem, these factors were less signicant, and while we may regret the resultingrelative scarcity of available data, it is the decisive point. Still, there are thoseareas of research, particularly of a sociological and psychological nature, whichin modern times tend to be considered as independent sciences, somethingthey were not in the past. Giving them their proper due in our research is atask that to a large part lies still ahead of us.

The source situation must be our rst and foremost consideration. Ulti-mately, any historical research is determined by the sources that are, or may

become, available. Straying all too far aeld is counterproductive. Jurispru-dence, theology, poetry, philology, philosophythese, in approximately de-scending order, are the most productive sources for the Islamicists labors. Theypresent us, moreover, with large, well-established and highly developed sets ofconstantly discussed problems. Since the particular information we are look-ing for here does not belong into this mainstream, it cannot be expected tobe as plentiful and as easily accessible. It is, on the contrary, widely scatteredand requires a painstaking and often frustrating efort of collecting, piecing

together, and ghting, against great odds, for some acceptable synthesis. Giventheinevitablescarcityofinformation,ifmeasuredagainstthegeographicalandhistorical | sweep of the Muslim world, we will always have to be satised with4suggestive fragmentary sketches rather than complete and coherent pictures.


30/1178

7

The realization that full success will never be within our grasp should be nodeterrent. After all, this is more or less the fate of all historical research. Even if

we shall never be able to ascertain, for instance, the precise amount of money

spent anywhere in the past on drugs such as hashish, this does not mean thatwe should not raise the question of the economic importance of hashish con-sumption forMuslimsociety or refrain fromspeculation abouttheexistingpos-sibilities, no matter how uncertain and in the end presumably inconclusive itmay be. The important thing is to nd enough source material to justify raisingthe problem, regardless of the likelihood or unlikelihood of nding a solution.

Where, we may ask, do we have the best chance of success when we look forinformation on societal problems of obvious concern to us but not important

enoughformedievalMuslimsmostofthetimetohavereceivedtheirundividedattention? Fortunately, their curiosity and powers of observation were variedenough to have left many traces and clues. The search for universal traitsin the human psyche as well as in human social organization has produced,among other things, the vast collection of miscellaneous but not unconnectedtopics calledadabliterature. If theseadabworks are addressed with the rightquestionsthat, of course, being the questions we wish to nd answers for,they will inevitably yield some information and, moreover, often indicate themost promising directions for our search to take.

Adabessays and encyclopaedias nearly always place heavy reliance uponpoetical quotations. While this reects literary style and tradition, it has itsintrinsic justication. Poetry, more than anything else, served to express basichuman feelings and attitudes, and these were also often feelings and attitudesocially frowned upon by society and thus given short shrift as if they werenon-existing. It was the poets who were allowed to talk freely about drinking

wine or about sexual behavior in a manner that would have been unaccept-able in serious discussion and was therefore included in scholarly literature

only under special circumstances and rather rarely. The correlation betweenfeelings and attitudes poetically expressed and societal reality and practice isclearly a matter of speculation, but in Muslim creative writing, the world ofimagination has a truth of its own which is more revealing than the knowledge

whether or not a given poet did live up to his bacchantic ecstasies and frivolousthoughts.

Linguistic conventions in all their variety, the working capital of Arabicpoetryandartisticprose,mayalsobeilluminating.Forexample,inIslamwhere

play was banned from serious consideration by adults as it largely was, thepoets constant striving for recalling and modifying inherited metaphors thatmade use of play, or even inventing new ones, is remarkable for those inour time who suspect that a fundamental insight lies in the view of man as


31/1178

8 . []

homo ludens, the playful animal. Valuable indications from linguistic usageare, of course, not restricted to poetry and artistic prose but may be foundeverywhere in a civilization distinguished by its great reverence for language.

Specialized linguistic works are useful by the way they dene words and bythe attempts to establish subtle distinctions in their meanings. And, althoughit is a risky enterprise and the necessary qualications for it are nowadaysno longer commonly found among Islamicists, the implications of etymologyderived principally from the comparative study of the Semitic languages arenot without heuristic value.

Whileadabliterature, popular literature, and poetry are the main treasuretroves | of information, some, often a good deal, of it may be found nearly5

everywhere one looks. Jurisprudence had much contact with the realities oflife, no matter how much weight it put upon traditional formulation. Thecomparatively rare collections of actual, not just theoretical, fatws remain tobeexplored.Thelawbookscanalsoteachusalotbywhattheychosetodiscussseldom or disregarded entirely. The abundance of historical and biographical

works still awaits analysis of the data they more conceal than exhibit in the wayof evidence for economics, societal organization, social attitudes, and the like.Needless to say, there is, in fact, no document of the past that might not yield

valuable bits of information for our quest. Material relics and, in particular,works of art such as paintings can also be extremely useful for our purposes;even the lack of them or their failure to provide an answer to a questionaddressed to them may be meaningful.

Since the building blocks for our work are not found together but have tobe collected from many potential sources, which are almost overwhelmingin number and size, this is the kind of research for which technical assis-tance seems highly desirable and may even turn out to be indispensable. Astrong case can be made for computerization. Some obviously useful rst steps

have been taken in this direction in other elds of Islamic studies, such as,for instance, with respect to the indexing of proper names in the large andimportant French-sponsored project,Onomasticon Arabicum. Lexicographicalstudies are next in line as in the attempt just begun in Germany under theleadership of G. Endress to work up comparative Graeco-Arabic word lists anddictionaries.Inourparticularcontext,thersttaskwouldseemtobetheindex-ing of a large number ofadabworks of all descriptions, in order to get at theoften incidental information they contain. As I once tried to demonstrate for

a couple of pages of one of them, nearly every page of this literature pro-

Cf.Oriens, 20 (1967), 240.


32/1178

9

vides details on all sorts of topics of sometimes major, usually, of course, minor,importance for social and intellectual historians. Only when all the relevantdetails are collected as comprehensively as possible will it be possible to ana-

lyze them and assess their signicance. This is a task which unaided humanpower can accomplish at best only to a very limited extent. It will be necessaryto enlist the mechanical devices available for it. This will inevitably happen,but the time to begin with it, perhaps rst with one of the adabencyclopae-dias or, say, one of the essays of al-Ji, appears to have come. Initially, andmost importantly, it will be necessary to dene the topics for which evidenceshould be identied and registered. The choice will naturally vary accordingto the prevailing conditions of intellectual life in a given period. If a scholar

had approached the task a century ago, his choice of topics would no doubthave been diferent from what it is likely to be today, and todays choice will nodoubt be criticized by future generations. But it is imperative to try to gain clar-ity at least in outline about the areas which can be expected to enrich futuretreatment of Islamic intellectual and social history.

Economics would clearly seem to be one of them. Muslim biographicalinformation is extraordinarily rich, but an understanding of how, for instance,scholars and civilian ocials, to name only the best documented segment ofthe population, provided for their livelihood and how much they earned isstill limited to general observations. In Mamlk times, a young student from amerchant family (Ibn ajar) would travel with a caravan ostensibly on businessbut, in fact, use the opportunity as a sort of travel and study grant. A scholar

with a large family to support (Ibn Qulbugh) would have to | rely on legal 6work of some sort and occasional grants to make ends meet. Such stray items wehave,butdetailsandguresarestillmissing.Thebiographicalliteraturedidpaysome but not much attention to such matters, as they were considered trivialand, any way, self-evident. It remains for us to dig up all the evidence we can.

Modern scholarly interest in economic matters has expectedly been great andmuch important work has been done, helped by the fortunate circumstancethat at least some documentary material is also available. But much remainsto be learned from the scattered references, for instance, in histories aboutadministrative and military expenditures or about the efects of ination andtaxation, and many other related subjects. All of it involves a still greater andconcerted efort.

For some studies of the biographical literature for quantitative purposes, cf. F.M. Douglas, inStudia Islamica51 (1980), 138, n. 2.


33/1178

10 . []

A part of economics, if you will, but something probably even more impor-tant for the general historian is quantitative population research. The sporadiceforts made so far to establish the facts and efects of population density have

laidthegroundworkbutwithunevenresults.Therelativenumericalstrengthofthe urban and rural population and its changes over shorter and longer periodsof time, the question, for instance, of the ratio of physicians to population, the

vexing problem of numerical strength and distribution in the armed forces, theold irritant of round and exaggerated guresall these matters require muchfurther research. What answers will be forthcoming and how satisfactory they

will be, depends on the individual subject and is dicult to foresee, but theattempt to exhaust the evidence hidden in the sources will have to be made.

Another aspect of population research of a qualitative nature must also be stud-ied much more intensively. It largely concerns the organization of classes insociety. Continued eforts must be made to clarify our understanding of socialstratication in Muslim society and the conict of Islamic ideals in this respect

with inherited non-Islamic theories and the given reality. The great variety ofcrafts, professions, and groups at the fringes of society can, as has been shown,be proled much more sharply from the sources now available.

There is hope that contemporary documents, which are needed to esh outwhatever can be gathered from literary sources, will become available in largernumbers when an intensied search is made for them. Every medievalist isby now aware of the documents from the Jewish Geniza in Egypt masterfullyexploited by S.D. Goitein with great benet for Islamic studies. We must admit,though, that documentary evidence gives the students of the European Middle

Ages their one great advantage over their Islamicist colleagues. It is safe to saythatnomatterhowmuchmoredocumentarymaterialwillbediscoveredintheNear East, it will not come close in quantity, and often also in quality, to whathas been preserved from medieval Europe.

By contrast, we are fully competitive, if not actually at an advantage, withrespect to the study of the changing, or unchanging, attitudes that existedtoward society and religion, toward beliefs and institutions. The struggle be-tween the manifestations of the human constant and the religious normsdevised to tame them somehow for the good of society has left many cleartraces in the sources. One has only to follow them in order to discover situa-tionsnotonlyofsignicanceforthestudyofMuslimsocietybutalsoofgeneralapplicability to the human condition. The problems of man and society were

oftenclearlyrevealedinocialattitudesandnotinfrequentlydiscussedwidely

Cf.Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 52 (1978), 479f. [See article VIII.14, p. 1026 below. Ed.]


34/1178

11

and in depth. It remains for us to study the relationship of action and factto these attitudes. The diculties and potential rewards are quite similar tothose well-known | to the students of Muslim jurisprudence. As has already 7

been mentioned, the legal norms are expounded in a massive literature, buthow they were applied, or not applied, in life is a matter of debate. For this,there exists no extensive source literature, but it has to be ascertained by theslow and devious collection and study of widely scattered clues. Hardly morethan a beginning has been made with the careful investigation of the manyareas in which the known or presumed ocial attitudes and rules remained inpainful conict with reality, or of the rarer areas in which they did not conictbut on the contrary succeeded in shaping reality in their image, at least to some

degree. As an example each for the two situations, wemight refer tothe sociallyimportant attitudes toward suicide and the use of certain drugs. In the formercase, it appears that ocial Muslim attitudes largely asserted themselves. Inthe second, they were by and large inefective.

A subdivision within this large eld is the study of themes that we know, or atleast believe we know, determine in a most decisive manner the way in whichsociety functions in the long run. Their universal human character makes itunlikely that they would have remained unnoticed in Islam where intellectu-als have always been highly sensitive and observant in probing psychologicalphenomena. Those intricate processes of the human mind by which man hastried to gain an understanding of and thereby at least some degree of controlover his inner environment have naturally always been operative, even whenlimitations of a technical nature curtailed systematic expression. It admits oflittle doubt that the general mood created by them has the power, commen-surate in each case to its intensity, to inuence the workings of society andthus indirectly the course of history. The kind of attitude, for instance, that istaken toward change and progress, clearly determines action to a large extent.

The political climate created by views on the respective rights of governmentand individual is beyond a doubt the most powerful agent of history and withrespect to Islam deserves more study than has been devoted to it so far. A fun-damental determinant of individual and societal behavior and of the properutilization of the opportunities of the present derives from the specicallyhuman ability to remember and reect upon the past and to look ahead towardthe future and speculate on it. The manner in which this ability was viewed inMuslim civilization and analyzed by Muslim thinkers has many aspects also

found elsewhere, but also some of its own. It has seemed to me worthwhile inrecent years to see how much can be found about this subject.

Thus, the theme of the complaint about the times winds its path throughMuslim literature. It includes views on the good old days, on the enjoyment


35/1178

12 . []

of the present, on the problems of an independently active or manmade fate.On the whole, it leaves us with the impression of the predominance of a ratherpessimistic mood. How pervasive this mood really was and in which way and

to what extent it determined actionthese are the real questions. They aremore easily raised than answered. Indeed, they call forth generalizations andapodictic conclusions which are to be approached with the greatest caution.

The view of the future is possibly determinative of human behavior, individ-ual and collective, to an even greater degree than the view of the past. Withregard to the future, the word hopewhich happens to have sharply dened

Arabic equivalentsis the operative concept. In Islam, hope was rightly seenas intimately connected with many other concepts such as wishing, desiring,

expecting, and so on, and with its opposites | such as fearing and despair-8 ing. The aspects of hope attested in the sources are manifold. Among otherthings they show a clash between the religious and secular points of view anda marked tension between Islam and the pre-lslamic Arabian heritage. Here,for once, our sources are comparatively plentiful as well as explicit, and I feelcondent that the available material will eventually enable us to learn aboutand clarify attitudes that had a denite measure of historical import.

Another relevant theme is that of the role of competitiveness in Muslimsociety on which I would like to make a few suggestions here. Clearly, thestrengthofthecompetitivedriveandtheformsittakesinagivensocietyshapethe lives of individuals in relation to their fellow human beings and to theirsociety.

Little as we know about pre-lslamic Arabian society, it seems rather certainthat it was imbued with a highly competitive spirit. The famous boastingand love of contests, indicated by the term mufkharah and tafkhur, wasapparently much more than the literary topic as which it is so prominentlyattested. It is the expression of a competitive spirit so deeply rooted in society

that it came to be enshrined in intellectual activity. The very existence of theqtala/taqtalaformation may be seen as having signicance in this context.From a social point of view, it seems to be indicative of a strong tendency tostress the competitive nexus between an individuals feelings and actions andhis position in society. This impression is in a way strengthened and, perhaps,conrmed by the unprecedented expansion this verbal formation enjoyed inMuslim times, which went far beyond the requirements of simple linguisticcommunication.

More on the subject of complaint and hope will be said in an essay soon to be completed.[Work V, pp. 517694 below. Ed.]


36/1178

13

The predilection shown for comparisons to establish the most poetic ofpoets or the most admirably poetic verse of poetry has the same psychologicalbackground.Suchcomparisonsareverymuchinthenatureofliterarylife,or,at

least, so it seems touswho are conditioned bylongtradition toconsider itnatu-ral to ask whether Homer or Hesiod was the greater poet. What is remarkable,is their long preservation and constant repetition all through Muslim literatureas if these comparisons touched upon something more basic than mere poeticrivalry.

The popularity ofafalproverbs shows the same desire to establish a com-petitive rank order. A tenth-century littrateur tells us that some people hadsucceeded in being acknowledged as most outstanding in some respect. The

connection in which this statement is made is amusing but perhaps also in away signicant. It should be considered noteworthy, our author says, that suchafalproverbs existed for everything except reason. Noaqal-minmore intelli-gentthanproverbwassupposedlycoinedbytheArabs.Heconfessestobepuz-zled. Perhaps, he says, they did not consider anyones reason and intelligencetobeperfect.ABedouinwhowasaskedtodenereasonreplied:HowcouldIdene it when I have never seen it perfect in anybody? In fact, though, it maybe argued that these proverbs were neither coined nor used as exemplars forthediscussionofsuperlativeperfectionbuttheyembodiedawideawarenessofthecompetitivecomponentinhumanactivity.Bythetimeofourauthorreason

was well established in its pivotal position in Muslim intellectual speculationand was felt to be a gift outside of the competitive struggle of human beings.

Thecompetitionofpoetsintheashar-min spirit continued in Islamic times.The new class of writers and littrateurs saw it personied in the gure of thehostile and malicious critic. Fault can be found in every bit of poetry, andcritics are mostly untalented competitors whose motives are often in no wayconnected with literature but | conditioned by the never-ending competition 9

for a patrons favor. Al-Ji comes rst to mind in this connection as theauthorofthemostmemorablestatementsexpressingsuchsentiments.Al-Jican also be cited as witness to the fact that the idea of competitiveness wasintimately bound up with the concept called asadenvy. In the Jiianspirit, Ab ayyn at-Tawd asked for protection of his work from the eyesof censorious enviers and competitive spoilers (al-mufsidnal-munsn),and

Cf.Gnomologium Vaticanum, ed. L. Sternbach, no. 514 (reprint Berlin 1963). Cf. Ab Hill al- Askar,Dwn al-man, I, 142 (Cairo 1352). Cf. Ab l-Faraj al-lfahn,Kitb al-Aghn, II, 46, 48 (Blq 1285),Aghn, II, 165, 169. Cf. Ab ayyn at-Tawd,Kitb al-Imt wa-l-munasah, ed. Amad Amn and Amad

az-Zayn, II, 1 (Cairo 19391944).


37/1178

14 . []

a later saying would speak of a person as moulded from the clay of envy(asad)andcompetition(munfasah). Envy had a long pre-lslamic historyas a quality with a strongly negative connotation. In the Muslim political

struggle, it was seen as the root of evil competition. In the ethics of Islam,later on reinforced by the Hellenistic tradition, it continued its deserved pariahexistence in the realm of ethical values. It was the primeval sin practiced atleast since man was created; in accordance with the Qurn, Ibls is alwaysreferred to as the rst individual to be afected by it. An exception to theunderstanding of envy as always bad appears already in the old and oftenquoted adth that exempts tasudfrom opprobrium if it takes the formof competition with respect to virtue. The two basic examples are envy with

respecttopropertythatcouldbespentforgoodpurposesandenvywithrespectto the assiduous recitation of the Qurnthat is, envy of anothers charity andpiety. The ancient Greeks, it may be noted, had also conceived of praiseworthyaspects of envy. In fact, most of the Muslim views of envy have their parallelsin Greek literature.

Tasudwas associated withtanfusalready in the ancientadth.Tan-fusappears to be the Arabic term closest to our competition. The idea is alsoexpressed by other terms such astasbaqa, tabh, tabr, etc., which in a

Cf. al-usr,Zahr al-db, ed. Al M. al-Bijw, I, 203 (Cairo 1389/1969). Since both com-petition and envy are not material but psychological qualities, someone like Ab ayynat-Tawd might easily have been dissatised with the saying. For him, mans lazinesscomes from his clay (n), while his active energy comes from his soul. Now, clay is moreforceful than soul. Cf.lmt, II, 194.

A particularly good and probably quite old, if ctitious, example is the brief letter ofMuwiyah to Al, beginning with Give up envy and ending with a reference to Qurn

113:5, cf.Nar b. Muzim al-Minqar, Waqat ifn, ed. Abd-as-Salm M. Hrn, 123(Cairo1365). Envy is rarely found ascribed to Satan in medieval Europe, where it was one of the seven

cardinalsins,cf.MortonW.Bloomeld, TheSevenDeadlySins,419,n.239(reprintMichigan

State University 1967). Cf. the large selection of passages in the chapter on envy (phthonos) in the orilegium of

Stobaeus, ed. C. Wachsmuth and O. Hense, III, 708721 (reprint Berlin 1958). Hippias (5thcentury )distinguished betweenjust andunjustenvy, theonedirected against badmen,the other against good men.

Cf. A.J. Wensinck, et al.,Concordance et indices de la tradition musulmane, VI, 506b35(Leiden 19361969). These terms were already mentioned together by al-Musib, Riyah, ed. Margaret

Smith, 305f. (London 1940,E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Series, N. S. 1 5), ed. Abd-al-Qdir AmadA, 570f. (Cairo 1390/1970).


38/1178

15

sense were more specialized originally as they referred to particular areas ofcompetition but were then employed quite generally. Munfasahwas even-tually dened as the greatest possible desire for something by way of com-

petition with others (ghyat ar-raghbah f ash-shay al wajh al-mubrh li-ghayrika). It so happens thattanfasaoccurs in the Holy Qurn, and thisoccurrence set much of the tone for the future discussion. Srah83:26 says:wa-f dhlika fal-yatanfas-i-l-mutansnaTo this (just described Paradisia-cal bliss) let everybody aspire. English aspire, incidentally, ts the possibleif debated etymology oftanfasa, but it leaves unexpressed the connota-tion of competition inherent in the verbal formation. Here, as in other uses ofthetaqtalaconjugation, this connotation might have been weakened. It was,

however, certainly seen as present by the later commentators on the passage.The intended competition is one for bliss in Paradise, but the commentators,and well-attested general usage, do not leave us in doubt that competition ascommonly practiced by human beings was to gain material advantages and agreater share in the worlds alleged goods. The divine commandment is meantto counteract this common human failure and to channel competition, whichis ingrained in human nature, into the proper direction. It is to be a competi-tion for values approved as true and lastingthe good which, the Qurn usingthe roots-b-qreminds us, should be the goal of mans every efort.

Cf. a-afad,Tamm al-mutn f shar Rislat Ibn Zaydn, ed. Muammad Ab l-FalIbrhim, 281 (Cairo 1389/1969).

Although no proof is possible, it seems that the meanings of valuable and envious in therootn-f-smay go back to the emotional and physical efort expanded that leads to attach

value to something and to be envious of it. Cf. the relationship of roots denoting zeal,efort to envy, as in Syriac-n-n, and below, n. 28.

Whenthe Qurnwas translated inthe West, this implication of 83:26 escaped L. Marracci,who translated: et ad hoc aspirent aspirantes ad felicitatem (Marraccis italics). Theitalicized addition was preserved by C. Sale and M. Pickthall (and no doubt others). Theblissaspiredtoisexpresslystatedin fdhlika ad hoc, andMarracciwas probably misled

bycommentatorswhowentintosomedetailastothemeritoriousworkthe tanfusshouldconsist of. Aspiration/competition washeldto be, clearly already in the Qur n, normallythe common human concern with worldly matters.

Most of the translations I have checked unidiomatically reproduce the Arabic way ofexpressing an indenite subject, as, for instance, A.J. Arberrys let the strivers strive. An

accurate if inelegant translation is theoneby N.J.Dawood (PenguinClassics, London 1956,p. 49): For this let all men emulously strive.It may be noticed that among the designations for the Last Day we nd yawm al-

musbaqah, yawmal-munqashah,andyawmal-munfasah, cf. al-Ghazzl,Ihy, IV, 439,I. 2 (Cairo 1352/1933).


39/1178

16 . []

The identication ofasadand munfasahwas discussed in a signicantmanner already in the ninth century by al-Musib. On the basis of theQurnic passage, he distinguished between the forbidden categories of envy

(asad) and the permissible categories of competition (munfasah). In orderto be permissible, competition should take place with respect to what isgoodthat is, ethically goodin this world and | the other world. It is10permissible to be envious of the niam, the benets bestowed by God uponones fellow men, and to try to become equally worthy of them and use themproperly. There can also be competition for high moral aims as when broth-ers compete for the love of their parents. It is not permissible to compete forsupposed niam thataresinfulandusedforforbiddenpurposes,anditisabom-

inableasadplain and simple to wish that someone be deprived of the niamhe enjoys and sufer misfortune. Most important, however, is al-Musibsrm acknowledgement of the necessity of competition. It always exists and isstrongest where individuals of similar concerns and stations in life are in con-tact with one another. Thus, scholars are interested in competing with scholars,merchants with merchants, heroes with heroesas Hesiod (Erga26) hadalready observed, beggars with beggars, bards with bardsand there can beno envy of strangers. In general, human beings innately possess a dislike ofbeingunabletoattainsomeoneelsesstationandalikingforequalityandkeep-ing up with others. Their competitive aspirations should be tempered by theabsence of wishing ill to those others with whom they compete, but the spiritand practice of competition are ineradicable.

It seems that for more than two centuries al-Musibs discussion did nothave much of an echo, but it was resumed in its entirety by al-Ghazzl in theIy. Al-Ghazzls own contribution was merely formal. His presentation is,

Riyah, ed. Smith, 305323, ed. A, 570605. Riyah, ed. Smith, 314 f., ed. A, 590. Cf. the verse of Manr al-Faqh, in Ibn Ab l-add,Shar Nahj al-balghah, I, 256 (Beirut 1963): The munfasah of a young man with respectto what is passing indicates deciency in his ambition (himmah).

Riyah, ed. Smith, 312 f., ed. A, 585. Riyah, ed. Smith, 310, ed. A, 579. Riyah, ed. Smith, 311, 313f., ed. A, 581f., 587f. In order to forestall a misunderstanding,

let me make it clear that the reference to Hesiod is an addition of mine. It is not found inal-Musib or the other authors who make the same point thatasadis strongest where

there is personal contact, as, for instance, Ibn Qutaybah, Uyn al-akhbr, III, 10, 11. 16f.(reprint Cairo 19631964). Riyah, ed. Smith, 307, ed. A, 574:Karhat at-taqr an manzilat ghayrih wa-maabbat

al-muswh wa-l-luq bih. Cf. al-Ghazzl,Iy, III, 162f.


40/1178

17

as usual, better organized and, one might say, more precise in its prolixness. Hewould thus refer to the legal categories of necessary, recommendable, and per-missible in his discussion of permitted competition. It was, however, through

al-Ghazzl that these views on competition found no doubt a wide distribu-tion giving them a sort of ocial status.The moralizing approach toward competition also found acceptance in the

popular philosophical segment of Muslim civilization. Thus, a saying ascribedto Socrates in Graeco-Arabic wisdom literature warns against envy but recom-mendsmunfasah, provided it aims at things lasting and enduring. Sincecompetition was so strongly at work in society, it was felt necessary to put reli-gious restraints on it. However, awareness and acceptance of the Arabian com-

petitive spirit continued. The literary concern with the ancientmufkharahand poetical competition continued unabated, despite religions objections toit. Verses that praised being the object of envy as a sure measure of success anda clear indication of excellence remained popular.

I am envied. May God increase the envy of me!May nobody live one day without being envied!

A man is envied for his virtues:Knowledge and wit, courage and generosity.

And, it was said, being pitied is much worse than being envied; indeed, it showsthe extent of a mans misfortune that those who once envied him now pityhim.

Cf. al-Mubashshir, Mukhtr al-ikam, ed. Abd-ar-Ramn Badaw, 116, 11. 9f. (Madrid1958).

Cf. al-ur,Zahr al-db, I, 203. The poet is said to have been the eighth-century Man b.Zidah. Later poets provided their own numerous variations on the subject.There were many may you not cease (l zilta) being envied verses, cf. ar-Rghib

al-Ifahn,Muart al-udab, I, 162 (Blq 12861287), and even al-Ghazzl includes

one in his discussion inIy, III, 171, which states that only he who is envied is perfect.The relevant verses are also cited, for instance, by Ibn Abd-al-Barr, Bahjat al-majlis, ed.M. Murs al-Khl and Abd-al-Qdir Qu, I, 406f., in the chapter on envy (Cairo, n. y.).

Onemightevenspeakofthepleasureoftheenviedman(ladhdhatal-masd),asdidUmrah al-Yaman, ed. H. Derenbourg, I, 214 (Paris 18971904,Publ. de Lcole des Langues

Or. Vivantes, IV, 1011). Cf. Ibn Qutaybah,Uyn, II, 9, III, 60; al-Marzubn, Mujam ash-shuar, ed. Abd-as-Sattr Amad Farrj, 357 (Cairo 1379/1960); al-Qushayr,Rislah, 73 (Cairo, n. y.) ed. Cairo1385/1966,I,357(notethatthisandtheotherverseslooselyattachedtoal-Qushayrschap-ter onasadalso occur in that of Ibn Qutaybah); ar-Rghib al-lfahn,Muart, I, 161;


41/1178

18 . []

Today, we are pitied by those who envied us.Today, we follow those who were our followers.

And if one wishes for a telling characterization of radically worsened circum-stances, it would be expressed in Arabic in four words: We spent the nightbeing envied and, in the morning, came to be pitied (bitn nusadu wa-aban nuramu).

a-afad,Tamm al-mutn, 24, 121, 279f. The verse is from one of the elegies of Muam-madb. Ubaydallhal- Utb (d.228/842843, cf.Fuat Sezgin, GAS,I,371f.)onhissons.They

aresaidtohavebeensixsohandsomethattheymadetheeyesofenvierspopout.Accord-ing to al-Marzubn, op. cit., they died during the pest in al-Barah in 229 or before, butal-Marzubn himself (unless it is a later addition) stated in another of his works thatal-Utb died in the year 228, cf. Nr al-Qabas, ed. R. Sellheim,Die Gelehrtenbiographiendes Ab Ubaidallh al-Marzubn, 195 (Wiesbaden 1964,Bibliotheca Islamica23a). Thecommon jeu desprit of turning an idea around was also practiced here. Thus, a-afad,Tamm, 280, concludes praise of a benefactor with this verse: Mankind were pitying mebefore, but you made them later my enviers.

The contrasting in the above verse of the roots-s-dandr--mcalls to mind the fre-

quent pairing ofesedandraammin the Hebrew Bible. The posibility of an etymolog-ical connection of Hebrewesedand Arabicasadhas been much discussed, cf., mostrecently, Katharine D. Sakenfeld,The Meaning of Hesed in the Hebrew Bible, 1619 (Mis-soula, Montana, 1978,Harvard Semitic Monographs17), who comes out in favor of it. It is

very well possible that some emotional process originally indicated by the root-s-dtooka strongly positive connotation (and occasional negative connotation) in one place anda strongly and exclusively negative connotation in another. In the same vein, it should be

observed that the comparatively close agreement in meaning between Arabicasadandour envy is not something to be taken for granted but is, on the contrary, rather excep-

tional as internalpsychological processes rarely aredened linguistically in identical waysin diferent languages. It is not impossible that Greekphthonosinuenced pre-lslamicOriental thought no less than it inuenced Latininvidiaand our envy and that this hadsomething to do with the situation we encounter with respect to Arabic asad. For the

situation in the Near East before it became part of Hellenistic civilization, it is signicantthat the Greek wordphthonosdoes not occur in the Greek translation of the preservedHebrew Bible (cf. Hatchs concordance of the LXX). The Hebrew terms, which under cer-taincircumstancessuggestenvytous,wererightlyconsideredasnottrulycorrespondingtophthonos. The usual translation chosen for them waszloszeal. Even theTheological

Dictionary of the New Testament, edited by G. Kittel (trans. G.W. Bromiley [Grand Rapids,Michigan, 1964]), disregardsphthonosand discusses envy in the entryzlos. Cf. al-Ji,Rislat fal m bayn al- adwah wa-l-asad, ed. P. Kraus and M. h al-jir,

Majm Rasil al-Ji, 123 (Cairo 1943). Cf. al-Ji, loc. cit.


42/1178

19

With the growth of scholarly and scientic activity, competition found an 11even wider scope. The production of something that others had not done orthought of before was its most important aim. It was quite generally contended

that competition was the custom among men of excellence (munfasahjarat al-dah bi-mithlih bayn al-fual), and it was taken for granted thatcompetition in scholarship was a good thing.

The alleged pagan unrestraint and furor of competition were put on thedefensive by the religion of Islam, but even the new religious norms had torecognize the fact of competition. Moreover, no matter how ethical and high-minded these norms were, they contained in their own way a strong incentiveto competition as useful social behavior.

This brief and incomplete digression into a specic topic illustrates some ofthe problems of our approach. We must somehow try to transcend the limita-tions imposed by our sources but never so much as to substitute untrammeledimagination for missing information. This may mean not infrequently that wehave to admit ignorancenot a bad thing for any historian to do. It may alsomean that we have to take the risk of disappointing certain justied but possi-bly unfulllable expectations not only of specialists but even more so of gen-eralists in intellectual history. It will, however, be a gain for Islamic studies, ifthese eforts make it clear to the generalists that topics deemed important bythem werenot disregarded in Muslimcivilization and that their Islamic aspectsdeserve attention, and not the customary neglect.

The problem of historical sequence and development within Islam is anoth-er diculty we have to cope with as best as we can. As in the case of competi-tion, pre-Islamic conditions can rather easily be compared with later Muslimattitudes to show changes that took place within a large time frame and toallowustogaugetheinuenceofIslam,althoughevenhere,therearepitfallstobe avoided. Within Islam, the situation is very clouded. Much of the principal

source material belongs to a stock that was preserved by constant repetition.It seems that wherever we are able to check its history, we nd ourselves backin rather early periods of Islam. But the very frequency of repetition, especially

Cf.a-afad, Wf, Vol. XII, ed. Raman Abd-al-Tawwb, 75 (Wiesbaden 1979,Bibliotheca

Islamica 61), with reference to Abl-Faraj al-Ifahn andas-Srf. IbnKhallikn, Wafayt,ed. Isn Abbs, II, 79 (Beirut 1972), also has the reference to custom. Others, such as

Yqt,Irshd al-arb, ed. A.F. Rif, VIII, 148 (Cairo 1357/1938), and as-Suy, Bughyah,222(Cairo 1326), do not. (The cited text of the Bughyahhas the homographtanqush

fortanfus). It is possible but uncertain that Ibn Khallikn was the one to formulate thestatement in the form quoted above.

Cf. Ibn Bassm,Dhakhrah, I, i, 112, I. 4 (Cairo 1358/1939). See also p. 114, II. 11f.


43/1178

20 . []

if someday it can be more accurately computed, gives at least a valid indica-tion of the extent to which the repeated ideas were adopted. Thus, if we cannottrace a direct and convincing line of development, we can measure to some

degree the width and depth occupied by such ideas in society. With renedtechniques allowing scholars to recover and quantify the available evidence,the slow emergence of a better sense of historical development of a large vari-ety of intellectual currents can be expected to result eventually.

The most delicate problem is how to develop generalizations from the in-sights gained. It will, I am afraid, always be with us and require the most judi-cious handling. Theories based mainly on defective information, such as theonce famous uncompromising fatalism of Islam, have fortunately become

curious relics of a scholarly past that by now is rather remote, but the veryfact that they once were possible and popular should warn us that the mostcautious approach to generalization is necessary. For instance, it will not doto maintain, on the basis of the information discussed here, that Islam was anunusuallycompetitivesocietyalwaysandeverywhereandthatitshistorycouldand should be explained largely from this angle. The possibility seems to bethere, but a dogmatic hankering for general conclusions may merely compro-mise any true gains.

When I spoke in the beginning of future directions for Islamic research, I12did not mean to detract from the importance of a steady continuation and,indeed, acceleration of work in the traditional elds where so much remains tobedone.PerhapsIalsoshouldnothavepresumedtospeakofthefuturewhenIhave done hardly anything more here than retraced some of the lines of work Ihave attempted to follow for many years. Be this as it mayAb l Athiyah wasneithertherstnortheonlyMuslimpoettodenemanasdhamaltheownerof hope, the hopeful animal being distinguished by the capacity to hopefrom all other animals, one who could always gain strength from an optimistic

anticipation of the future. There is hope and, more than that, the well-foundedexpectation that additional windows will open up into a great past that needsto be viewed in much greater detail and much more comprehensively than ithas been so far.

Cf. Ab l- Athiyah,Ashruh wa-akhbruh, ed. Shukr Fayal, 319 (Damascus 1384/1964),and my forthcoming essay (above, n. 5).


44/1178

, , | : ./_

The Muslim Concept of Freedom

Prior to the Nineteenth Century


45/1178


46/1178

Contents

Foreword 24[vii]

I. The Problem 26[1]

II. The Linguistic Terminology 31[7]

III. Denitions of Freedom 37[14]

IV. Legal and Sociological Aspects of the Concept of Freedom 51[29]a. Slavery 51[29]b. Deprivations of Freedom 55[34]

Imprisonment 55[35]Forced Labor 90[77]

V. Philosophical Views on Freedom 94[81]a. Freedom as an Ethical Concept 94[81]b. Freedom in Political Theory 110[98]c. Freedom in Metaphysical Speculation 117[105]

VI. Concluding Remark 129[120]


47/1178

ForewordVII

Most authors who have something of importance to say are involved in theproblem of freedom. Even if they are not expressly concerned with it, their atti-tude toward freedom can be reconstructed from their works. This applies alsoto authors writing within the boundaries of Muslim civilization. In particular,philosophers, theologians, historians, jurists, poets, and littrateurs have ampleoccasion to refer to situations and attitudes concerned with freedom. Works inthese elds constitute the bulk of Muslim literature. The task of disentanglingthe thought of major Muslim authors on the subject of freedom from the mass

of their preserved works is an important and formidable one. It has not beenattempted in the following discussion.Thequestionsoffreewillandoftheattitudetowardfreedomfromordepen-

dence upon tradition (ijtihd/taqld) call for a study of Muslim theology in itsentirety and, with it, of the basis of all Muslim intellectual life. On a smallerscale, a detailed discussion of free will, for instance, might also necessitate acomplete investigation of the running battle between the defenders and theopponents of astrology. This little book does not aim at anything remotely asambitious.

Instead, the much more modest course of collecting explicit statements onthe concept of freedom, found scattered here and there in Muslim literature,hasbeenfollowed.Nocompleteness,ofcourse,hasbeenachieved.Ofnecessity,much important material, and very many minor illustrations of individualtopics, must have escaped me. However, I hope that a useful beginning for thestudy of the subject has been made.

Some of the material discussed may not seem to belong under | the headingVIIIof explicit statements on freedom. The presence of such material has, in part,

its reason in the fact that the discussion of freedom was originally intended tobe the rst chapter of a large work dealing with Man versus Society in Islam,that is, with the tensions and conicts that existed between individuals andsociety in medieval Islam (as they do, in some form or other, in any society).Thevarioustopicsthatweretobetreatedinthatworkarenotdiculttoguess.Some material has been collected by me, and the one or other of the relevanttopicswill,perhaps,betreatedbymeinthecourseoftime.Itiscertainlyhopedthatotherscholarswillworkonthem.ButIdonotthinkthatitwillbepossible

for me to bring to a satisfactory conclusion a comprehensive work such as Ihad envisaged. I have, therefore, decided to publish this introductory chapter,

which I feel can stand on its own feet. Its outlook and emphasis may becomeclearer if viewed against the backgrou

Documents

Man Versus Society in Medieval Islam