Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy pdf download

Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY

Abdullatif Al-Baghdadi

Between the eighth and ninth centuries, the production of original philosophical and scientific treatises became dominant with respect to the study of Greek philosophical and scientific literature in Arabic translation.

This is due to the contribution of the translators and al-Kindi’s thoughts, as well as to the experience of the teachers in the tenth-century Aristotelian circle of Baghdad, mostly al-Fārābī.

All had the intention to classify the sciences, to return to a literal commentary of the Aristotelian text following the Alexandrine model, and to single out the nature of falsafa and the Greek-Arabic sciences in their relationship with the Qur’ānic sciences – an approach that extends from the end of the eleventh, throughout the twelfth, and up to the beginning of the thirteenth century.

It is enough to mention Avicenna to get an idea of this development in the Arabic–Islamic philosophy and medicine of these centuries. The claim has been made that this generated a sort of “purist” reaction (Gutas 1998), best exemplified by Averroes and his program of going back to Aristotle and the Greek tradition.

Such a phenomenon took place not only in al-Andalus but also in the East of the Islamic world: Muwaffaq al-Dīn Muḥammad ‘Abd al- Latīf ibn Yūsuf al-Bagdādi would be the best representative of this current of thought. 

‘Abd al-Latīf al-Bağdādī has been considered a pedantic scholar, whose approach to science and philosophy was scholastic and legalistic rather than experimental and creative.

Nevertheless, the labels of “purist” and “compiler” are not suitable for describing the intellectual life of this writer. ‘Abd al-Latīf al-Bagdādī cannot be considered as a supporter of a sort of coming back to Aristotle or Galen sic et simpliciter.

True, he claimed in his autobiography the necessity to go back to the Greek sources. Still, the reader must go beyond this claim and try to see what corresponds to it in the historical reality of ‘Abd al-Latīf al-Bağdādi’s sources.

In doing so, he will realize that ‘Abd al-Latīf al Bağdādī’s sources are by no means the Greek scientific and philosophical texts in themselves – too far from him – but those produced by the assimilation of the Greek thought in Islamic culture, that have been reworked by ‘Abd al Latīf al-Bagdādī not without originality. 

We possess two coeval biographies of him. The first is embedded in Ibn Abi Uşaybi ́a’s biographical work, the Sources of Information on the Classes of Physicians (“Uyūn al-anbā’ fī țabagāt al-ațibbā‘). The second is an autobiography, survived in a manuscript of Bursa, and its title is Book of Two Pieces of Advice (Kitāb al-naşīḥatayn).

Finally, further information on ‘Abd al-Latīf al-Bağdādī can be found in the report of his journey in Egypt entitled Book of the Report and Account of the Things Which I Witnessed and the Events Seen in the Land of Egypt (Kitāb al-ifāda wa-l-i’tibār fi-l-‘umūr al-mushāhada wa-l-ḥawādith al mu’ayana bi-‘ard mișr). From these (not wholly concordant) texts, some elements emerge, that shed light on ‘Abd al-Latīf al-Bagdādi’s activity and philosophical and scientific doctrines, between the Ayyübids’ and Mameluks’ages.

‘Abd al-Latīf al-Bagdādī’s activity was often characterized by violent controversies, as well as by the independence of his convictions, slowly matured but passionately put forward in his writings, and, finally, by his dedication to diverse fields of research. We can follow his purposes and interests, the paths of his education – thanks to the names of the schools, of his teachers, and of the travels done – the library he had at his disposal, his encyclopedic work on medicine and philosophy, his attitude towards both the ancient philosophers and his contemporaries.

‘Abd al-Lațīf al-Bagdādī was born in Baghdad in 1162 and died there in 1231, after 45 years of absence during which he traveled all over the Islamic world looking for a good teacher in philosophy, under whose guidance he could resolve the problems aroused in him by his reading of the works of Avicenna and those on alchemy.

As for his education, we know that he got solid training in Islamic sciences such as grammar, lexicography, and law, and also that then he turned to natural sciences, medicine, philosophy, and alchemy, albeit in a critical vein.

 His spasmodic search for a teacher in philosophy brought him to meet, directly or through their writings, Avicenna, al-Ġazālī, and Suhrawardī. Many schools’ teachers weighed heavily on his education, and many different environments: Baghdad, Mosul, Halep, Damascus, the centers in Anatolia, and mostly Cairo.

Cairo represented for ‘Abd al-Latīf al-Bağdādī the much-desired goal of his pilgrimage, the place where he finally met Aristotle and his philosophy, that of his commentators Themistius and Alexander, and where he finally met the greatest Arabic Aristotelian commentator of the East, al-Fārābī, who was for him the first to be able to integrate the Islamic and Greek knowledge and to lay the foundations of a new system of sciences.

The experience of Cairo also meant for ‘Abd al-Latīf al-Bağdādī the progressive abandon of Avicenna’s philosophy, which, in the years of his education, he had held to be the only possible one and which, after he gave allegiance to the Peripatetic tradition, he vehemently criticized.

He had many patrons and came into contact with many prime order men of his era: scholars, philosophers, physicians, and leaders including Saladin and his secretary ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Kātib al-IȘfahānī, Maimonides, and Ibn Sanā’ al-Mulk. He was one of the few Arab authors known in Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

As a matter of fact, the Kitāb al-ifāda wa-l-i’tibār, i.e., the description of one of his journeys to Egypt, which he undertook after 1189, is preserved in an autograph manuscript (Oxford, Bodleian Library 1149), was translated into various European languages.

Abd-al-Latīf al-Bagdādī was a versatile scholar and a prodigious writer: he wrote several medical and philosophical treatises, still little studied up to now.

Many of his works were destroyed in the wave of the religious fanaticism of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries or are still in manuscript form, and in this case, the whereabouts of only a few manuscripts in the various libraries of the Near East, Asia, and Europe are known.

The oldest list of ‘Abd al-Lațīf al-Bagdādī’s works is that given to use by Ibn Abī Uşaybiʻa at the end of his biography of our author. A later list is found in the Fawāt al-Wafayāt by Ibn Shakir al-Kutubī. The list presented by Ibn Abi Uşaybiʻa numbers 173 works, including brief essays and treatises. The subjects are extremely varied and reflect the variety of the author’s interests.

Thirteen writings are listed, which deal with the Arabic language, lexicography, and grammar, two with fiqh, nine with literary criticism, 53 with medicine, ten with zoology, three on the science of tawḥīd, three on history, three on mathematics and related disciplines, two on magic and mineralogy, and 27 on other themes.

There are 48 works concerning philosophy: 19 on logic, ten on physics, eight on metaphysics, and nine on politics. Two general works are also mentioned, subdivided into three sections:

 logic, physics, and metaphysics; one of these is in ten volumes and was completed by the author over a span of 20 years. Ibn Shakir al-Kutubī’s list numbers 15 discourses by ‘Abd al-Latīf al-Bağdādi which are not mentioned by Ibn Abī Uşaybiʻa, and 81 works, all mentioned, with one exception, in the previous list. 

Among the works that have come down to us – or at least those contained in manuscripts so far identified – the following are really significant to understand ‘Abd al-Latīf al-Bağdādī’s approach to medicine, science, and philosophy:

the Commentary on the Advantages of Knowledge According to Hippocrates, the Commentary on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates; the Commentary on the Questions of Hunayn, the Book of that Which is Evident in Indian Mathematics; the Essay on the Senses, the Two Questions on Their Function and Natural Questions; the Book on the Science of Metaphysics.

Besides these works, other important treatises are preserved – among which the Kitāb al-Nașīḥatayn already mentioned – in the miscellaneous manuscript Husayn Çelebi, 823, discovered in Bursa in 1959 by S. M. Stern and described by him.

These treatises are the following: ‘Abd al-Latīf al-Bağdādī’s criticism of the notes written by Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, the Khatīb of Rayy, on several passages from the Kulliyyāt section of Avicenna’s Qānūn; the treatise On the Quiddity of Space According to Ibn al Haythamı; the Dispute Between an Alchemist and a Theoretical Philosopher; the treatise On Minerals and the Confutation of Alchemy; the treatise On Diabetes.

From the analysis of ‘Abd al-Latīf al-Bağdādī’s huge production the conclusion can be reached that he never held Islamic wisdom to be in contradiction with that of the ancients; indeed he thought that the critical awareness of the appropriate method for the science under examination came to the scholar of the Qur’ānic sciences precisely from the wisdom of the ancients. His criticisms of Fakhr al-Dīn