Wahm in Arabic and Its Cognates

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Wahm in Arabic and Its CognatesAuthor(s): D. B. MacDonaldReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, No. 4 (Oct., 1922),pp. 505-521Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25209934 .

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JOURNAL OF THEROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY

1922Part IV.?OCTOBER

Wahm in Arabic and its CognatesBy D. B. MACDONAL1)

T T may safely be said that every one who has had to do withtechnical Arabic has had difficulty with wahm and itscognates. Some recent investigations have led me to examinethe meanings of these in detail and I endeavour in this paperto give my results. It will be understood that this is not acomplete lexicographical handling of the whole root, but onlyan attempt to discover the more technical uses of some ofits phases. In the arrangement of the material I fear thatI have not always avoided logical cross-division ; but thesubject is complicated and will call for reading backwardas well as forward. Also I make no attempt to trace the originof these Arabic psychological conceptions, whether in Greek,Syriac, or elsewhere, or to compare them with any parallelconceptions in modern psychology. Such few referencesas I may make, of the one kind or the other, are simply toillumine wahm itself.

I. The classical uses, which must be taken as a basis, canbe learned best from the Sih?h and the Lis?n (xvi, pp. 130 f.),Lane's notes on this root in the supplement to his lexicon(p.. 3061) are illuminating, but have been slightly affected bymedieval and modern usage. In classical usage Stems I, II,IV (both awhama and at-hama) and VIII occur, and there is

JRAS. OCTOBER 1922. M


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506 AVAHMIN ARABIC AND ITS COGNATES

the folloAving range of meanings : to err ; to occur to one'smind Avhilemeaning to think of something else ; to imagineto be, to guess at, to conjecture ; to suspect (some one of ...) ;to drop (something) completely out (by error) ; to beunmindful of, disregard. The Lis?n equates tawahhamawith tal?hayyala and tamathlhala, evidently in the sense " to

imagine to be, to guess at " ; also Avith tafarrasa, taivassama,and tabayyana, evidently in the sense " to scrutinize,investigate ". Zuhair's Mu*allaqa, 1. 4 (cf. 'Antara's

Mu'allaqa, 1. 1) is quoted, and N?ldeke (F?nf Mo'allaq?t,ii, p. 15 ; iii, p. 14) renders these passages Avith " vermuthen ".

The Lis?n says of the noun wahm that it is one of the movements (khatar?t) of the mind ; that the mind has a wahmAvhich imagines a thing to be such and such, Avhether the thingexists or not. Also la wahma min kadha = la budda, meaning,apparently, " there is no conceivable Avay out, real or unreal."It is plain, then, that the root indicates sub-conscious or semiconscious movements of the mind, not under the control ofconscious reason, and so liable to error and to sudden lapses ofattention. On another side, such awh?m may give rise tosuspicions, founded or unfounded. In all cases the actualityor possibility of error is strongly marked. It is unnecessaryto enter upon the uses of wahm as an epithet for a road (clear,plain), a camel (big, poAverful, Avell-broken), and a man(poAverful) ; whatever their origin, they have no connexionAvith the present subject. Finally, Avith a vieAV to future

developments, the equation tawahhama = takhayyala is ofimportance. In the Q?m?s (see, too, Lane, Supplement,

p. 3061c), a common and medieval meaning is reached ;wahm, of two extremes betAveen Avhich one Avavers, is thatAvhich is outAveighed in probability ; zann, on the other hand,is a preponderant opinion, although not absolutely certain(Lane, p. 1925a ).II. The broad medieAral and modern usage may now besketched. It is to be learned from Lane, Supplement ;Dozy,

Suppl?ment ; and the lexicons of Ha va and Salmon? ; opinion


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WAHM IN ARABIC AND ITS COGNATES 507or idea outweighed in probability ; imagination ; fancy ; conjecture tending to chimera ; fear and disquietude ; feint inwrestling ; the fifth stem is very frequent in the sense " toimagine, fancy " of empty, unreal imagination. Dozy addsthe seventh stem from Bocthor, with the meaning " to bepreoccupied, prepossessed, prejudiced ". Hava adds theseventh and tenth, with the meanings " to be scared,perplexed, afraid (of a child). Hava and Salmon? bothequate wahm and " instinct ". Ihn Khaldfm, Prolegomena,ed. Quatr. iii, 74, 1. 3 from below, ii, 77, 1. 2 from below ;79, 1. 5, uses the fourth stem " to arouse suspicion of something ". Horten (Theologie des Islam, p. 273) gives aseries of usages from theological writers all suggesting errorand improbability. Carlos Quir?s Rodr?guez, in his ed. ofAverroes' Metaphysics (Madrid, 1919, p. 307) giveswahnii as " hipot?tico, supuesto, mental ". He adds noreferences, and I have not gone through his text to find them.III. I now turn to more detailed examination of some usesof xoahm in philosophy and logic. Al-Ghazz?l?, in his Ilj?m(ed. Cairo, 1303, -p.56, 11. 13 ff.) says that wahmx proofs are" scholastic (kal?mlya), based upon conceded (musallama)

positions believed because of their notoriety (ishtih?r) amongthe great 'Ulama, and because of the obloquy of denying themand because of natural shrinking from entering upon controversy as to them." " Scholastic," here, refers to thearguments of the mutakallims, the scholastic theologians whoupheld the atomic scheme and wrere opposed by al-Ghazz?l?as a Neoplatonic Aristotelian (see article Kal?m in the LeydenEncyclopedia of Islam). This is made clear by al-Ghazz?l?himself in his Mihakk an-nazar fi-l-mantiq (Cairo, Adab?ya,pp. 47 f?. n.d.). In it he divides propositions and judgmentsin the logical sense (muqaddim?t, qaddyd) the materials out,of which syllogisms are constructed, according to their originand certainty, into seven classes, (i) Awwally?t, " axioms,"in exactly our sense ; (ii) Mush?had?t b?tina, " internalobservations," e.g. hunger, thirst, fear, joy ; (iii) Mahs?s?t


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508 WAHM IN ARABIC AND ITS COGNATES

zafara, " external sense-perceptions," e.g. milk is Avhite, themoon is round ; (iv) Tajarrubiy?t, " experiments," alsocalled Ittir?dal-'?d?t, " regularity of occurrence," our " reignof laAv", e.g. fire burns, a stone falls in the direction of theearth ; (v) Ma'l?m?t biUaw?tur, " things knoAvn byunanimous tradition," e.g. the acknoAvledged facts of historyand geography ; (vi) Wahmvy?t, judgments on the part ofthe wahm, see beloAv ; (vii) Mashh?r?t, " Avidely spread andknoAvn," i.e. conventional principles of conduct (cf. ishtih?rabove).

This analysis, although in a treatise on logic, is evidentlypsychological and not logical ; it deals Avith the substance(m?dda) of propositions and not Avith their form (s?ra). Inconsequence nothing corresponding with it will be foundin such formal treatises on logic as that of Ab?-s-Salt ofDenia (a.h. 460-529), edited with a Spanish translation byPalencia (Madrid, 1915), or that of Ibn Tumlfis of Alcira(d. a.h. 620), edited Avith a Spanish translation by As?n(Madrid, 1916). But there does occur an even more detailedanalysis of a similar kind, giving six classes of certain (yaqtnl)propositions and six of uncertain ((?hair yaqtnt), as anappendix to the Ris?la Shams?ya on logic of al-K?tib? alQazw?n? (d. a.h. 675). This A\raspublished by Sprenger Avithan English translation as an appendix to his invaluableI)iclio7tary of Technical Terms ; see in it pp. rV f. and 34 f.There is also an excellent Cairo edition of a.h. 1311, with thecommentary of ar-R?z? (d. a.h. 766) and the h?shiya on thelatter, of al-Jurj?n? (d. a.h. 816) ; see in it pp. 127 ff. Almostthe same analysis into six and six is given in a short form inthe Ish?gh?ji of al-Abhar?; it Avas probably his source; itgoes back to theEt(ray(M)y>) of Porphyry. See the collectionof Mut?n published by the Ham?d?ya Press, Cairo, 1323,pp. 377 f.I give these details in order to guard against any idea thatthe doctrine of wahm? propositions AArasn any Avay peculiarto Ghazz?l?. Al-Abhar?, al-K?tib? and ar-Raz? are in essential


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WAHM IN ARABIC AND ITS COGNATES 509accord with him. There is no h?shiya by al-Jurj?n? on thepassage, but Jurj?n?'s definitions in his Ta'rlf?t (ed. Cairo,1321, pp. 175 f.) show that his doctrine was the same. Toreturn to al-Ghazz?l??three of the above classes, he says, theAwwally?t, the Wahmly?t, and the Mashh?r?t are alike inbeing immediate and intuitive ; they are reached by noprocess of consideration or reflection. But the Awwally?t(axioms) are intuitions of reason ?aql), and are thereforecertainly true ; they are absolute yaqlniy?t. And they dependupon reason only ; if a man were to think away from himselfeverything but reason, the Axvwaliy?t would remain. The

MaM?r?t, on the other hand, would drop away from him ;they are a product of environment, teaching, and training,and submission to them is often from a desire of peace and theneed of adjusting one's self to one's world. They may thusbe true or false ; but the firmness with which they are plantedin the mind is no proof of their truth. For Muslim writers thestandard example of a false Mashh?ra is the prohibition ofthe slaughter of domestic animals (bahd'im) and of the eatingof their flesh. Further, the Mashh?r?t differ from the

Wahmly?t in that they do not spring from the primary constitution of mankind (al-fitra ; see this in the LeydenEncyclopedia of Islam) but from accidental causes. As the

Wahmly?t have such an origin it is exceedingly difficult todistinguish between them and the Awwally?t, and the truthor falsity of each xvahml proposition can be discovered onlyby testing it by means of reason. Sometimes the two classescoincide ; it is both a xvahml and an awwall proposition thatan individual cannot be in two places at the same time. Butit is a wahml proposition and false that an entity (mawj?d)is always in space and in a direction so that we can point at it.So long as the wahm deals with objects of sense (mahs?s?t),as in the mechanical and arithmetical sciences, its judgmentsare true, for the wahm i? a corporeal power belonging to manin his animal psyche (nafs) and perceives the particulars whichare derived from objects of sense. But the wahm tries to go


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farther, and deal with things that are not objects of sense asthough they Avere objects of sense, and then its results arefalse. The wtfs of man, that is his animal nafs, is very directlyunder the influence of sense and wahm and to such an extentthat his nafs often does not distinguish betAveen the

Wahmty?t and the Awwalty?t. So the reason must enterand judge.It AvilinoAV be plain, I think, that this wahm, thus acting inthe animal nafs of man, is really the instinctive perception ofthe loAver animals Avhich continues in him, but Avhich he mustcontrol by reason and must especially prevent from meddlingwith super-sensible things and the Avorld of abstract universalsgenerally. Thus it belongs to man's primary constitution ;but it can be trusted only Avithin those limits. And justbecause it belongs

to this primary constitutionof man

al-Ghazz?l? is very explicit as to the difficulty in distinguishingbetAveen its results and the AwwaXiy?t. It has led to theposition of the sceptics that Ave can never reach certainty,and that there must ahArays remain a balance or equality(tak?fuy) of proofs, one against another. But al-Ghazz?l?suggests that Ave might apply doubt as to this very"

equality ",x As for wahm he gives tAvomethods of dealingwith it. One, a general method, is to apply wahm to itself,Avhen it Avould have to deny itself, as it takes account onlyof concrete qualities like thickness, amount, colour ; or toconfront it Avith such thought-qualities as poAver, knoAvledge,Avili,when it Avould picture each of them in concrete terms,and if it Avere obliged to combine these qualities could do itonly in terms of space. Thus the general Aveakness of wahmwould be exposed. To test the particular cases that may arise,the only Avay is to use reason and turn one result of wahmagainst another. This method can be put most shortly andsimply in an illustration AArhich r-R?z? gives. Wahm teaches

1 It will be remembered that the basis of Ghazz?li's pragmaticposition was the application of the methods of scepticism to puremetaphysics.


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WAHM IN ARABIC AND ITS COGNATES 511fear of a dead body ; but it also teaches, in agreement with,reason, that a dead body is only a jam?d, a piece of lifelessmatter, and a jam?d is not to be feared. Thus instinctiveattitudes can neutralize one another. Finally, it is clear thatal-Ghazz?l? considered that the mutakallims made use ofuntested wahml propositions just as the canon lawyers intheir dialectic made use of the Mashh?r?t. Thus themutakallims had a natural shrinking (nafarat at-tab') fromthe saying of the Aristotelians that beyond the world therewas neither void nor plenum (laisa war?* al-'?lam l? khal?*wa-l? mal?y), and taught an infinity of space. This was, ofcourse, because they were atomists (cf. Lucretious, i, 958 ff.,and Munro's commentary), but al-Ghazz?l? considered it awahm fallacy on their part and brings dialectic against it.It may be well to add here, with a view to the sequel, thatthe Ris?la Shamslya and ar-R?zfs commentary thereon, withthe Is?ghuj? and the TaWlf?t of Jurj?n? give a class of noncertain propositions which are called Mukhayyal?t. They area product of the imagination (al-khaydl) ; by attractive orrepulsive metaphors and comparisons they produce in thenafs pleasure or disgust, and thus play upon it to stimulateits desires and dislikes ; combined in a syllogism they makepoetry (shi'r), which is aided in its effect on the nafs by metreand melody. It will be remembered that the Lis?n givestakhayyala in the classical language as a synonym oftawahhama. In logic and psychology they are quite different,but in rhetoric, as we shall see, they again come close to oneanother. These Mukhayyal?t come in oddly in a logicaltreatise ; but their presence there is evidently due to theschematic tendency of scholasticism. "Wine is liquidrubies " is, in form at least, a proposition or judgment ; it

must, therefore, be possible to use it in a syllogism ; poetry,therefore, can be called a syllogism. Al-Ghazz?l?, who usedscholastic nv {hods, but was not ridden by them, recognizedthe pathetu lacy of argument by metaphor ; but did nottherefore clarify poetry under syllogism.


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Also, it may be Avell to add that there ismuch more on thisanalysis of propositions in al-Ghazz?l?'s Mi'y?r al-'ilm (ed.%Cairo, 1329), Avhich is an introduction to logical analysisand intended to explain his Tah?fut. The subject runs throughthe Avhole book ; but he deals especially on pp. 112 ff. withpremises Avhich are not certain and which cannot be used forabsolute proof (burh?n) ; on pp. 115 if., pp. 129 if. Avithwahmy?t ; and on pp. 131 ff., 136 and 142 f. Avithwahm. Thebook is thus a very remarkable study in practical logic. Itgives (pp. 112 ff.) a classification of six kinds of propositionsuncertain because of content, Avhich seems to lie behind thatof the Ris?la Shams?ya ; but it is not scholastic at all, and isof great value for the clarifying of thought. The six of theShams?ya are (i)Mashh?r?t (see above), (ii)Musallam?t(admissions for dialectic purposes, (iii)Maqb?l?t (beliefs

onfaith or authority), (iv) Mazn?n?t (fallible opinions andpresumptions), (v) Mukhayyal?t (see above), (vi) Wahn?y?t.Al-Ghazz?l? divides his six into tAvomain groups, three Avhichmay be used in practical applications of canon laAv (fiqh),but not for absolute demonstration and three which lead onlyto confusion and error. The first three are (i), (iii), (iv),of the Shamsxya ; the second three are (vi) of the Shams?yawith the AAreak nd erroneous side of (i), (ii), (iv), (v) of theShams?ya, and a class of absolute confusions and mistakes.It Avilibe noticed that he completely rejects the pure wahm,i.e. Avhen it is not backed by the reason, as a basis for eventhe practical questions of canon laAv.IV. But to make all this entirely plain it will be necessaryto go into further psychological detail, and I have throAvninto the form of a comparative table, in chronological order,analyses of the inner senses or poAvers (haw?ss b?tina, quiv?b?tina) of the animal soul (nafs hayaw?nlya) as given by fiveauthorities. These are (i) Ibn S?n? (d. a.h. 428), Hadiyatar-ra'is, ed. by S. Landauer in ZDMG., xxix, pp. 335-418,see especially pp. 358 ff., and by EdAvard van Dyck, Cairo,a.h. 1325, pp. 51 ff. ; (ii) al-Ghazz?l? (d. a.h. 505), Maq?sid


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(i) Ibn

S?n?(d..h.28)1) al-hissl-mu*hlarakrU-mutasawicira,hecommonense*'fAristotle,a


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al-fal?sifa, ed. Cairo, 1331, pp. 284 ff. ; (iii) al-Qazw?n?(d. A.H. 682). 'Aj?'ib al-maUd?q?t, ed.W?stenfeld, pp. 358 f.,cf. De Sacy in Chrest. ar., iii, p. 488 ; (iv) al-?j? (d. a.h. 75G),

Maw?qif, ed. B?l?q, 1266, with comm. of al-Jurj?n? (d. a.h.816), pp. 433 ff. ; (v) Ibn Khald?n (d. a.h. 808), Prolegomena,ed. Quatrem?re, i, pp. 175 ft., transi. De Slane, i, pp. 199 ft.,cf. the present writer's Religious Attitude and Life in Islam,pp. 56 ff.

Elsewhere Ibn S?n? divides between the " common sense "and its memory. His quw?, then, are five : (i) the hissmushtarak ; (ii) the musaivwira, called also al-khay?l ; (iii) the

mxitaldkaijyila or mufakkira ; (iv) the wahmlya ; (v) thehdfiza (?hdkira. He calls, also, (i) bant?siy?, i.e. (?xivraata.See Shahrast?n?, ed. Cureton, pp. 416 f., ed. on margin ofIbn Ilazm, Cairo, 1320, iii, pp. 196 f., transi. Haarbriicker,pp. 314 f. and Landauer's note on p. 403 in his article citedabove.

V. It may now, perhaps, be simplest to take the applicationof xvahm inMagic. Dozy quotes from Humbert, Guide de laconversation arabe, p. 33, xvahm = ombre, spectre. This is

modern Algerian Arabic, but Dozy quotes also from the" Vocabulista ", medieval Arabic of the east of Spain, thefirst and fifth stems, constructed with min and fl, in themeaning " mirari in prestigiis ". Combining this, as Dozysuggested, with Ducange's article

"miratores ", I have nodoubt that the reference is to some form of crystal-gazing orthe ink mirror as described by Lane, Modern Egyptians,chap, xii, and so I conjecture that tawahhama min . . .? . . .meant " to conjure up an appearance to one's self from acertain ritual in regard to a question submitted ". But in thelocus classicus, for Arabic, on this art, in Ibn Khalddn's

Prolegomena (ed. Quatr. i, pp. 191 ff., transi. De Slane, i,pp. 218 ff., my Religious Attitude, pp. 93 ff.), this term isnot used except Quatr. p. 196,1. 9, where itmay mean simply"

imagine falsely ",There is also a use of xvahm and tawahhum, in the sense of


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WAHM IN ARABIC AND ITS COGNATES 515

instinctive, automatic panic Avhich evidently connects closelyAvith this. Ibn Khald?n, in his Prolegomena (Quatr.iii, 132; De Slane, iii, 182; Religious Attitude, p. 116),develops his theory of magic as a psychical force producingphysical effects ; an influence, that is, of the nafs ins?niya.He shoAA'sby the direct influence Avhich the psyche exerts onits OAvnbody, that it can exercise such a poAver apart fromnatural and physical causes. Thus joy produces physicalAvarmth. But, still more, the forming a picture to one's selfin the nafs of something (tasawwura nafs?nrya) may causean instinctive, automatic panic (wahm and tawahhum), as inthe case of one AArhoAvalles on the top of a AArall.His feet donot need more room than Avhen he Avalks on the ground, buton the Availhe is sure to fall, unless this tendency to panic isovercome

by practice. This sIioavs thatit is an affection of the

rtafs Avhich can, and should, ah\rays be disciplined. The theoryand position of Shahrast?n? (d. a.h. 548), two centuries and ahalf earlier, had been the same (Milal wan-nihal, ed. Cureton,p. 448, ed. on margin of Ibn Ilazm, iii, p. 243) ; this 0ArerpoAA'ering, instinctive fear he, too, calls wahm. Further, he,too, is dealing with magic, in this case the magic of Indianascetics, and he calls them

"people of wahm and meditationl/?tr)."1Ibn Khaldun does not seem, as I have said, to use wahm of

the magical poAArer; but he does use filer of the " meditation "by an augur on birds or animals before giving his decision(Quatr. i, p. 195 ; De Slane, i, p. 222). Al-B?r?in? (d. 440), inhis India (chap, vii) discusses the same phenomena and

methods at greater length and in a more abstract andphilosophical manner ; his Avord for the essential" meditation " isfikr, and I do not think he uses wahm. ButMas'ud? (d. 345), in his Muriij (Paris ed. ii, pp. 266 f.), indealing Avith Alexander in India and a magical cup AA'hichhe found there, speaks of a science of tawahhum AA'hich theIndian sages asserted that they possessed. Still earlier Ibn

1 Professor M. H. Ananikian drew my attention to this passage.


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Khurdfidhbih (wrotebetw. 230 and 234) gave, inhisMas?likwal-mam?lih (Bibl. Geogr. Arab, vi, pp. vi f.) a statement thatthe people of India asserted that they possessed al-wahmwal-fikr and so could loose and bind, hurt and help, producepuzzling " appearances " (takh?yil), which we now call" visual hallucinations ", keep off rain and hail and makepoison innocuous ; generally do by spells whatever theywished. In the Fihrist (completed by 400) the second Fannof the fourth Maq?la is devoted to magic in the broadestsense. In it we are told (p. 309,1. 12) " the Indians especiallypossess the science of tawahhum ; they have books on it,some of which have been translated into Arabic." On p. 312,11.24 f., a certain Indian ismentioned whose name in the MSS.is illegible, and it is said : "He was of the ancients and hismethod in enchantments (nlranj?t, a very broad word) wasthat of the Indians ; there is a book by him in which hefollows the course of the people of tawahhum." Finally,Ibn Batuta (d. 779) gives details of wonders he had seen inIndia and China. He is a good witness as to facts just becauseof his Pepys-like quality of detailed truthfulness, howeverthe story might bear upon himself ; but it is also to beremembered that he had a great liking for miracles of saints(kar?m?t), even of the most insignificant character. He was

prepared to meet the supernatural at any time. So he hadseveral adventures with Yogis, whom he calls Juklxja andwhom, because of their wonders, he feels compelled to regardas crypto-Muslims (Paris ed., vol. iv, pp. 72 and 277 ff.).On the second of these two occasions he is told a story aboutthe yogi in question, for him a Muslim Shaykh, which is astraight case of hypnotic suggestion like that told by Laneat the end of note 15 to chapter i of his Arabian Nights.A phrase used by the narrator isworth notice in this context :

fa-khuyyila U yannl, " then there was made to appear to methat I . . ." ; compare tal?h?yll above. But Ibn Batutahad no theory about all this ; it

wasonly part of the

constantsupernatural with which life, for him, was surrounded. So


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WAHM IN ARABIC AND ITS. COGNATES 517Avhen he uses the Avordwahm, as he does at least twice, it isof instinctive, automatic panic. On one occasion (iv, pp. 38 f.)it is AArhen yogi raises himself into the air, squatting therecross-legged (mutarabbi'). Ibn Batt?ta falls fainting Avithwahm and palpitation of the heart (khafaq?n al-qalb). Thesame palpitation of the heart is produced by a juggler (musha'widh) in China (iv, pp. 290 ff.), avIio performs the rope trick,but on that occasion he does not speak of wahm, perhaps byaccident. His other use of wahm is for the fear at lookingdoAvn a deep cliff in climbing Adam's Peak in Ceylon (?Ar,180) ;

this is like the illustration given by Ibn Khald?n.In all this the interesting point is the association of wahm,on the one hand} Avith automatic instinct and, on the other,Avith intentional meditation (fikr) ; the animal connecting Avifchthe rational. It Avili be remembered, from the psychologicaltables given above, that the quwwa mittakhayyila searches outand Avorks Avith the memory pictures contributed by the" common sense " and the ideas draAvn by the quwwa wahmlya.

But Avhen this goes on in the mind of a man and not of ananimal?-that is, is under the rule of reason ('aql, quwwan?tiqa)?this poAver is called the quwwa mufakkira or

mutafakkira,"

the meditative poAver," not the quwwamutaf?hayyila, " the power that produces for itselfappearances." So, as man is both an animal (hayaw?n)and rational (n?tiq), both wahm, simply reproductiA'-e andnon-creative imagination, and fikr, intentional meditation,are at Avork in him. Thus " imagination " may often be usedas a rendering of wahm, if Ave are careful to exclude theColeridgean use of that Avord.VI. TJ?3 leads naturally to wahm inRhetoric. I draw uponGarcin de Tassy's Rh?torique et Prosodie des Langues deVOrient musulman, ii ed., 1873 ; A. F. Mehren's Die Rhetorikder Araber, 1853 ; Friedrich R?ckert's Grammatik, Poetikund Rhetorik der Perser, 1874, Avhich are all based on verycareful use of the native manuals and render it unnecessaryto go back to these. The first use is an ordinary development


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of the meaning of wahm as a deceptive illusion. 'Ihammeans literally" to produce a deceptive illusion/9 it may beof contrast (tad?dd) or of relation (tan?sub). A word has two

meanings, one common and the other rare ; you are led up tothe word in such a manner that you expect the common

meaning ; 'lham is, then, to use it in the rare sense (De Tassy,pp. 81, 83, 85, 90, 112 ; Mehren gives four varieties and alsotawhlm, pp. 99, 101, 105-7, 177; Riickert, pp. 279-85).

Compare, also, in Dozy (Suppl., ii, 846a), 'Ih?m?t, " writingswhich are said to exist ; but which do not exist in reality."The second use is a division of Comparison (tashblh) intokhay?ll and wahml. A khay?ll comparison is the building upof a new compound out of memory-pictures of objects of thesenses ; the picture is thus strictly sensuous (hissl), althoughit as a whole may never have been a sense object. A wahmlcomparison, on the other hand, is mental ((aqll) for itselements, even, have never been perceived by the senses.The standard example of the first is to compare red anemonesswaying in the wind to flags made of rubies on lances ofchrysolite ; and of the second, to compare sharp blue arrowpoints to the dog-teeth of gh?ls (De Tassy, pp. 9, 10, 11, 13,23 ; Mehren, pp. 20, 21, 58, 72). Riickert does not seem tohave found anything corresponding to this in his Persianauthorities. The origin of this distinction is plain in thepsychological tables given above. The khay?l is the memorywhich treasures up pictures of sense percepts, while thememory connected with the wahm preserves particularideas which have never been sense percepts, but which havebeen gained by an internal sense, the quxmva xmhmlya, fromsense percepts. So this is apparently an attempt at stating akind of sensuous imagination which yet does not use sensepictures and is ultra-rational.VII. In Mysticism there are at least two uses, one of whichis quite clear, while the other is by no means clear. IbnKhald?n in his Prolegomena gives, as we have seen, for theordinary meaning of xvahm, that it is one of the perceptions


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AVAIIMIN ARABIC AND ITS COGNATES 519

Cidr?k?l) leading to knoAvledge of different kinds ('ul?m,ma'?rif), Avhich perceptions are classified as

"certain

''{yaqin), " fallible opinion " (zann), " doubt," (shakk) andwahm. See further, and especially, Quatremere's text, iii,p. 60,1. 4, from beloAv, p. 68,1. 8, p. 72,1. 2. From the contextwahm appears, in these cases, to mean " instinctiveperception ", as also tawahhum, p. 72,1. 8. But he explicitlydistinguishes from this general use a usage peculiar to theabsolutely pantheistic Sufis (aid al-wahda al-mutlaqa). Theseuse the term wahm and its plural awh?m in the sense of " pureillusions" (ed. Quatr. iii, p. 68, 1. 8 ; De Slane, iii, p. 97;ed. Quatr. iii, p. 72, 1. 1), applying it to the objects of thesenses and of reason, the real separate identities of Avhich(al-yhairiya) they deny.

The other use inMysticism is exceedinglyobscure because

it belongs, on one side, to those "fables and endless genealogiesAvhich ", as St. Paul says, "minister questions"; and, onanother, to the realities reached after by emotional religiousexperience. The origin, both in Christendom and in Islam,Avas the one and same Gnosticism. In Islam there had groAvnup a doctrine of the Person of Muhammad, that lie Avas thefirst created of all creatures, and that from him all othercreatures Avere produced. This is given in greatest detail?itcannot be said, in greatest clarity?in the Ins?n al-k?mil ofal-J?l?, Avhich has been so admirably analysed by Dr. 11.A.Nicholson in his Studies in Islamic Mysticism, chapter ii.I have not access to al-J?l?'s Arabic text, but the essentialparts, for my present purpose, are given in the Dictionary ofTechnical Terms, pp. 1513 f. I put together Avhat folloAvspartly from Dr. Nicholson's statement and partly from thequotations given in the Dictionary. The doctrine is : AvhileGod produced all created things from the Spirit (ruh) andLight {nur) of Muhammad, He produced especially certainbeings from certain faculties (qiiiv?) of Muhammad. Thestatement of these faculties is confused and contradictory andagrees only in part Avith the psychological scheme given above.


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But the xvahm stands out amongst them. It, in Muhammad,was created from Allah's name al-Kdmil, "the Perfect One,"and from Muhammad's louhvi was created in turn Azrael,the Angel of -Death. These three things?the Perfection of

Allah, the xvahm of Muhammad and Azrael are essentiallyrelated. The Light of the Perfection of Allah ismanifested inexistence in Muhammad, in "the garment of subjugation"(qahr) ; the faculty al-wahm overcomes all the others, reason(a^


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WAHM IN ARABIC AND ITS COGNATES 521man in this is " Nature's priest ". Further, we have seenthat if a man is walking on some narrow edge and wahmseizes him?that is, if he cannot control his xvahm?it makeshim fall. Here, conversely, through the strength of his xvahm,when he controls it, he can do these miraculous things. Thiscomes very close to our concept of " faith ", the power whichputs an idea before one in such away that it becomes absolutelycertain and real, a primitive fact, " the substance of thingshoped for, the evidence of things not seen." By faith ye shallremove mountains ; by faith Peter walked upon the water.

But, again, this wahm must be strictly controlled ; it is agood servant but a bad master. In that it is like the nafs,the appetitive soul, which Allah has put into man and therule and discipline of which Allah has imposed upon man.It is part of the symmetrical structure of man that in hiscreated nature lie hidden both his vices and his godly fear ;Allah has made man " gulp down " his nafs with all thesethings in it (Qur. xci, 7, 8 ; xcv, 5). On this see Ilh?m inthe Leyden Encyclopedia of Islam and my Religious Attitude,pp. 228 ff.

That there has been some obscure contamination ofmeanings between xvahm and 'ilh?m, seems to me almostcertain ; 'ilh?m and '?hdm especially, would suggest oneanother. But their origins were entirely different. Thesource of xvahm I have traced above in I ; the source of9ilh?m is the a-nat; Xeyo^ievov in Qur. xci, 8, fa'alhamaha.

Both come together in " created instinct ".

JRAS. OCTOBKK 1922. 34

Documents

Wahm in Arabic and Its Cognates