The Arabic translation movement begins among non-Arabs, non-Muslims, neo-Muslims or heretical Muslims, as one phase of a much larger process at the interface between cultures. The Greek to Syriac translating which preceded and accompanied the translation of Greek works into Arabic is another phase of the same larger process.1 A salient aspect of this great meeting of eastern and western civilizations is the Hellenization of Islam. For all the centres of intellectual activity in western Asia during the formative period of Islamic civilization – the surviving Christian centres of medical, logical, historical and Biblical learning at Edessa, Nisibin, and Qinnasrīn, the Talmudic academies of Sura and Pumpeditha, the medical centre of Jundīshāpūr, the pagan astronomical and astrological centre at Ḥarrān, the fire temples of Magian Persia, the Buddhist centres of Balkh, and the Indian observatories of Ujjain – exhibit traditions of learning centuries old and deeply imbued with the spirit of Hellenism and with detailed knowledge of the Greek sciences and arts, often studied in the original texts, or (for us even more important) in translation or adaptation.

The new Islamic civilization which presided over the dissolution of the Sasanid Persian empire and effectively sealed the “lower tier” of former Byzantine provinces against Byzantine political control, which absorbed large numbers of Jewish, Christian, pagan and Magian converts and imposed the terms for coexistence with the unconverted, was not and by the very nature of its success could not be so radically creative or destructive as to exclude all that it found in the new-won lands.

Abū Yūsuf Yaʿqūb b. Isḥāq al-Kindī (c. 180–250/795–865) flourished in particular in the reign of al-Muʿtaṣim (reigned 218–27/833–42). It is said that he served as tutor to the caliph's son Aḥmad, to whom some of his writings are dedicated. Others are dedicated to the caliph himself. Most are short didactic pieces of strictly limited scope. A few dozen survive, some in Latin or Hebrew translation. Many more titles are recorded by the bibliographers, covering an enormous range of subjects. Al-Kindī wrote on questions of mathematics, logic, physics, psychology, metaphysics and ethics, but also on perfumes, drugs, foods, precious stones, musical instruments, swords, bees and pigeons. He wrote against the false claims of the alchemists, the atomism of the mutakallimūn, the dualism of the Manichaeans, and the trinitarian dogma of the Christians. He supported astrology, calculated the duration of the Arab empire, and speculated on the causes of natural phenomena such as comets, earthquakes, tides or the colour of the sky. He also took an interest in distant countries and ancient nations, collecting information on Socrates (whom he confused with Diogenes the Cynic), the Ḥarranians and the rites of India. A similar range of topics was later covered by al-Kindī's pupil Aḥmad b. al-Ṭayyib al-Sarakhsī, tutor and boon-companion of the caliph al-Muʿtaḍid (reigned 279–89/892–902). No doubt al-Kindī, too, had played the part of a cultured polymath who, wearing his learning lightly, strove to captivate, divert and instruct a courtly public.

Unlike the changes which Muslim names frequently underwent in the Latin West, the last name of Abā Naṣr Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Tarkhān b. Awzalugh (or Uzlugh) al-Fārābī was barely altered, and it is as “Alfarabi” that it has been common to refer to him. Al-Fārābī's name, however, may be the only constant on which to seize at the moment, as contemporary scholarship challenges previous assessments of his work. Al-Fārābī appears increasingly as a disarmingly subtle thinker, an individualist with a civic conscience, a man who attempted to reconcile Plato and Aristotle, philosophy and theology, Athens and Mecca.1 The syntheses attempted, however, are neither facile nor dogmatic, and proceed from a predominantly philosophical standpoint. The exact nature of al-Fārābī's philosophical credo, moreover, is still being questioned.

The question is complicated by the lack of a sure chronology for al-Fārābī's many compositions, and an equal ignorance of the particular circumstances which prompted each work in a given genre: the motivation, purpose and intended audience. With few sure criteria of a biographical or stylistic sort to assist them, scholars are forced to choose between differing statements and emphases in related texts, and even within the same text, to determine al-Fārābī's genuine convictions. Moreover, the work of Leo Strauss, Muhsin Mahdi and others has drawn attention to the likelihood that al-Fārābī deliberately shielded essential elements of his convictions from the eyes of the uncritical reader.

Arabic didactic verse (shiʿr ta līmī) aims solely at teaching a particular genre of knowledge. Many Arab critics do not regard it as true poetry, since it is devoid of emotion and imagination, both of which are essential constituents of poetry, besides metre and rhyme. In other words, they consider it as versified prose.

Didactic verse is instructive, adding to one's knowledge and aiming at improving one's morals. It pleases the ear and aids the memory. It is known to go as far back as the dawn of Greek history. In all probability, the Greeks borrowed the idea from the Sumerians, as so much of Greek civilization is traceable to ancient Mesopotamia. But the Arabs were influenced in this, as in so many other cultural aspects, by the Greeks and the Indians, rather than by Mesopotamia. Arabic didactic verse may be categorized under the following headings:

1. 1 Epigrammatic and gnomic verses (i.e. pertaining to maxims or aphorisms) that date back to the time of the Jāhiliyyah, for which Zuhayr b. abī Sulmā, al-Nābighah al-Dhubyānī (d. AD 604) and Labīd b. Rabīʾah were well known.

2. 2 Fables, parables, songs, riddles, maxims, proverbs, monologues and dialogues, particularly of the ʾAbbasid era. An example of this kind of literature is the Dīwān of Umayyah b. abī ʾ1-Ṣalt (d. c. 9/630), whose didactic verses were turned into prose by al-Jāḥiẓ.

3. 3 Theological, medical and grammatical treatises which cover a wide range, for example, the Alfiyyah of Jamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Mālik, 1,000 verses in rajaz metre to help students to learn by heart the intricacies of Arabic grammar.

4. […]

Christian Arabic literature in its widest sense comprises all the writings of Christians whose tongue is Arabic, but here we shall be concerned principally with the religious literature of Arabic-speaking Christians. The Arabization of Christian populations in north Africa and western Asia under the empire of Islam took place over some three centuries, proceeding most rapidly in Syria and Palestine, and being substantially complete in north Africa by the fourth/tenth century.

In spite of Georg Graf's five-volume study, Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, Christian Arabic literature is still relatively unknown, and the various relevant publications are scattered. Some forty volumes have been published in the Patrologia Orientalis series (Paris) and in the Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium (Louvain) together with translations into European languages. More recently, a further ten or so volumes have been brought out in the Patrimoine Arabe Chrétien (Jounieh and Rome). The Bulletin d'Arabe Chrétien (1976–83) attempted to provide an annual bibliography, and from 1987 this task has been assumed by the review Parole de l'Orient (Kaslik, Lebanon).

Rather than follow Graf and classify the various authors in terms of their respective communities a thematic classification has been chosen here. However, given limitations of space, this may run the risk of providing little more than an inventory. The reader will find it easy enough to fill out what is said here by recourse to Graf's Geschichte (or to Nasrallah's Histoire du mouvement littéraire dans l'église melchite in the case of Melkite authors).

Having reached its peak of descriptive adequacy virtually at birth, Arabic grammar often seems little more than an endless discussion and restatement of the same immutable facts. This superficially stagnant aspect of Arabic grammar has provoked the no less superficial criticism that it is “a somewhat dismal science”, while even the medieval Arabs complained that too much study of grammar could lead to madness. This brief historical outline will therefore emphasize the variety and flexibility of grammar as it responded to social pressures and the influence of other disciplines, in order to show that it is not the monolithic and fruitlessly abstract science it has sometimes been made to appear. For convenience, the terms naḣw and naḣwī are arbitrarily rendered “grammar” and “grammarian” throughout, but it cannot be stated too firmly that the equivalence is only partial, for neither naḣw nor “grammar” have remained stable in meaning over the centuries.

To keep the topic within bounds, two limitations are imposed: as far as possible only extant works are considered, and almost exclusively from the domain of syntax. The restriction to extant works ensures greater objectivity than is achieved by relying on the copious biographical literature, which provides abundant anecdotal material but seldom anything of technical value. Moreover, even the specialized grammatical biographies include many “grammarians” who have no real claim to the title -polymaths, amateur philologists, dilettanti and others who, in the absence of any surviving texts to judge them by, are no more than names.

The closest equivalent to “theology” in Arabic is kalām. It is not an exact translation, however, so we must begin by defining what is meant by “Muslim theology”. Provisionally, this can be done negatively by distinguishing it from terms which do not designate Muslim theology and which are the subjects of other chapters of this book.

Theology is not fiqh, Muslim jurisprudence; nor, even in its juridical capacity, is it the sharīʿab, revealed law. The sunnah must be excluded too because, as an oral tradition, it is revealed, like the sharīʿab, and constitutes the source of theology, therefore, rather than theology itself. In Christianity, mysticism is a branch of theology, but in Islam not only does it fall outside the domain of theology, in the general sense in which Muslim theology is understood, but is even regarded with some suspicion by the more traditional elements. Besides which, mysticism's unique nature calls for a singularly non-rationalist methodological approach. The term millah is synonymous with “religion” as man's expression of divine revelation, or of his relationship with the Deity, and, therefore, comes no closer to conveying the sense of the word “theology”. Nor should this be confused with falsa/ah, Muslim philosophy, although arguably their content is the same, for, whereas the starting-point of philosophy in Islam is reason, that of theology is revealed faith. Yet, while Muslim theology cannot be equated with any single one of these subjects, it is rooted more or less directly in all of them.

ẒUHŪR: THE EXPANSION OF IBAḌISM

The same general conditions which allowed the ʿAbbasids to establish their power in the core of the Islamic world were also exploited by the Ibādīs (the chief sect of the Kharijites) to establish states in parts of its periphery. During the last decade of Umayyad rule their movement in Basra had been transformed into a full-scale daʿwah under the guidance of Abū ʿUbaydah Muslim b. abī Karīmah, propagating its ideology among two major disaffected groups, the Berbers of North Africa and the Yamanī tribes in southern Arabia (notably the Azd). Basran political and social networks were also exploited, particularly those of the merchants of the old Sasanid Arḍ al-Hind, so that cells of Ibadism came into being in parts of Khurāsān, Kirmān, Sijistān and al-BaḤrayn. Lesser colonies also existed in other parts of Iraq and even in Egypt: but Syria seems to have been barren ground.

Political activation of the movement in the Maghrib appears to have been precipitated by the rival propaganda of the Ṣufrīs (another Kharijite sect) in about 126/743–4, but the first full realization (ẓuhūr) of an Ibāḍī state resulted from a joint ʿUmānī-Ḥaḍramī-Yamanī expedition which established ʿAbdullāh b. YaḤyā al-Kindī (Ṭālib al-Ḥaqq) in Yemen and took the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina in the ḥajj of 129/747. ʿAbdullāh was killed shortly afterwards. Following the suppression of this uprising, a rump imamate survived for a while in the Ḥaḍramawt and a weak (ḍaʿīf) imam, al-Julandā b. Masʿūd, was brought to power in ʿUmān: both areas however, were early on brought under ʿAbbasid control.

None of the sciences received more patronage among the Arabs than that of medicine – a discipline which they acquired from the Greeks and in which they excelled most. The Arabic adage states: “al-ʿilm cilmān, ʿilm yarfaʿ wa-ʿilm yanfaʿ, fa-ʾl-rāfiʿ al-dān wa-ʿl-nāfiʿ al-ṭibb” (“science is twofold, that which exalts and that which is useful – that which exalts is religion, and that which is useful is medicine”). Islam not only put medicine on a high level but also conferred the title of ḥakīm (wise) on medical practitioners, a term used by Muslims up to the present day in many areas. The association of medicine with religious learning is noteworthy, and is a pleasing feature of Muslim life; for according to a Tradition of the Prophet: “al-ʿilm cilmān, ʿilm al-fiqh li-ʾl-adyān wa-ʿilm al-ṭibb li-ʾl-abdān” (“science is twofold, theology and medicine”).

Scientific medicine, from the death of Galen to the birth of William Harvey, was kept alive by the vigorous scḣools of the Byzantines and the Arabs. While among the neo-Latins in Europe, labouring under ignorance and superstition, it almost ceased to exist, and among the later Byzantines surviving in suspended animation rather than growth, under the rising crescent in the East we have to admire one of the most remarkable phases of the history of medicine, that which developed within the culture of Arabian civilization.

Ibn Sīnā is outstanding among Arabic authors for the unusually warm reception which he has been given in Europe. The secret of his success is to be found in the way that his writings synthesize all the most original features of Muslim philosophy.

It is often claimed in histories of philosophy that Arabic philosophy's only merit is its transmission of Greek, mainly neo-Platonic, thought. This oversimplifies the subject in a misleading way, for, by dispensing with the need to analyse Arabic philosophy in its own right, it relieves the student of all the technical obstacles to an understanding of the subject. A strange language, a different religion, an altogether foreign cultural milieu: these and numerous other considerations are dismissed at once.

Ibn Sīnā's acceptance in the West is indicative of the affinity which exists between his outlook and European systems of thought, an affinity that is less strongly felt in the cases of other Arabic philosophers, although, like Ibn Sīnā, nearly all of them lived in times of crisis. The crises experienced in Ibn Sīnā's lifetime were not only of a political nature but arose mainly from antinomies between Muslim religious principles, and those of the cultures which were being assimilated by an expanding Islamic empire. The resulting conflicts were what in Western terms would be called antagonisms between faith and reason. Ibn Sīnā's solution to this aporia captured the minds of the medieval Christian world, not only as a solution in its own right, but also on account of the influence which it exercised on later Arabic philosophers: on Ibn Rushd, for example, who was to play such an important part in the renaissance of medieval Christian thought.

Biography is one of the most extensive areas of Arabic literature. Its earliest, and characteristic form, is the biographical dictionary, although biographical writing early developed a variety of other forms.

Arabic has no single term for biography. The most widely used terms are sīrah (pl. siyar) and tarjamah (pl. tarājim). The use of tarjamah tends to be restricted to shorter biographical notices, while sīrah usually refers to biographies of substantial length. The term sīrah was first used in literature for the biography of the Prophet Muḥammad, but this did not preclude its use for the biographies of less eminent figures. In both modern and medieval Arabic sīrah may also be found in the titles of works which are not strictly biographies at all, such as the traditional story Sīrat ʿAntar and Muḥammad al-Maṭwī's history of the city of al-Qayrawān entitled Sīrat al-Qayrawān. A less common term for biography is taʿrīf Qit. “definition”), which makes its appearance in literary usage after the end of the Abbasid period. In addition there are a number of terms which are used for laudatory biography or hagiography. The most widely used of these is manāqib (virtues, feats, exploits), a word which frequently appears in the titles of biographies which are intended to present a portrait of a morally admirable person, together with a recital of his outstanding actions and achievements. This kind of laudatory biography early took on the character of hagiography.

The five centuries of the ʿAbbasid caliphate in Baghdad saw the flowering of Arabic writing over an extraordinary variety of literary fields, from poetry and humane letters to philosophy, law, history and the natural sciences. The second volume of The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature is devoted to belles-lettres in the ʿAbbasid period; the present volume takes as its province the literature of the scholarly disciplines broadly delineated by “religion, learning and science”.

Arabic scholarship began with the study of the Qurʾān, the Ḥadīth and the various fields of learning which were ancillary to these; but the translations from Greek and other languages which began in the second century after the death of Muhammad and which continued through the third/ninth century greatly extended the horizons of Arabic literature, and the resulting proliferation of learned disciplines led a number of Muslim writers to draw up lists classifying the various “sciences” or fields of learning. These classifications differ in many details, but there was a generally admitted distinction between the “religious sciences” and the “foreign sciences”. The former included Quranic exegesis, Tradition, theology, jurisprudence and all those subjects such as philology and historiography which developed from them. The “foreign sciences” included medicine, the natural sciences, mathematics, astronomy, astrology, geography, alchemy and mechanics.

In the present volume the first five chapters deal with the literature of theology and religious experience. ʿIlm al-kalām (theology, or defensive apologia) originated with the dissensions in Islam after the battle of Siffin, but it needed an external stimulus to develop fully, and this stimulus was provided by the disputations with Christian apologists and the influence of Greek thought.

Arabic philosophic writing is a form of Arabic literature. Like Arabic poetry and artful prose it employs generally accepted opinions, rhetorical reasoning and devices, and imaginative projections to persuade and move an audience with particular linguistic and cultural habits, traditions and inclinations, and it responds to particular questions and deals with particular problems, which in turn shape its style and manner of exposition. Unlike most other forms of Arabic literature, however, Arabic philosophic writing tends to respond to questions and deal with problems that have to do with the audience's beliefs and opinions about matters theoretical and practical, human and divine, which the philosopher and his audience take to be of paramount importance both for the conduct of everyday life and ultimate salvation. Thus it tends to be serious but not humourless, rational but not inattentive to the role of emotions, rigorous but not unplayful, harsh but not misanthropic. Its scope is universal, dealing with all branches of knowledge; and in this respect philosophy is often compared to dialectic, rhetoric and poetry. In fact Arabic philosophic writing uses most of the rules of dialectic, rhetoric and poetry to examine and clarify generally accepted opinions, and to persuade and arouse the audience to embrace and endorse certain views and courses of action or to reject and abhor others.

The pioneers of Shīʿī theology seem to have begun to propagate theological views during the middle of the second/eighth century. By that time, distinct branches of the Shīʿah had emerged. All of these believed that ʿAlī b. abī Ṭālib (reigned 35-40/656–61) was the most excellent (afḍal) after the Prophet and that he should have been the caliph or imam. The party which supported his claims and the claims of his family (abl al-bayt) for the leadership of the community became known as the Shīʿah (originally shīʿat ʿAlī, the party of ʿAlī). ʿAlī did eventually attain the caliphate and was succeeded briefly by his elder son al-Hasan, whose mother was Fāṭimah, daughter of the Prophet. When al-Hasan, who was forced to abdicate by Muʿāwiyah b. abī Sufyān (reigned 41–60/661–80), died, the Shīʿah called on his brother al-Ḥusayn to lead them in revolution against Muʿāwiyah. Al-Ḥusayn did not embark on action until after the death of Muʿāwiyah, when he answered the call of his supporters in Kufa to lead them in revolution against Muʿāwiyah's son Yazīd (reigned 60–4/680–3). The revolution proved a catastrophe and al-Ḥusayn and many of his close relatives were tragically killed at Karbalāʾ by vastly superior forces as they were on their way to Kufa (61/680). Only one son of al-Ḥusayn, ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn (d. 95 / 713–4), survived this disaster, and for the rest of his life he seems to have followed a quiescent policy towards the Umayyad authorities.

BIOGRAPHY AND RELIGIOUS VIEWS

Medieval authors have left confused and contradictory biographical accounts of Abū Bakr Muḥammad b. Zakariyyāʾ al-Rāzī (Rhazes), the most original physician–philosopher among the Arabic-speaking peoples. He was born in Rayy (near modern Tehran) probably in 251/865. Physicians, he believed, should practise in great cities which abound in patients and skilful medical men; hence his sojourn in Baghdad, where, in his youth, he studied and practised medicine at its hospital (bīmāristān). Later he returned to Rayy, at the invitation of its governor, al-Manṣūr b. Isḥāq, to assume responsibility as director of its hospital. To this ruler al-Rāzī dedicated his al-Kitāb al-Manṣūrīfīʾl-ṭibb (Liber ad Almansorem) and al-Ṭibb al-rūḥānī (“Spiritual Physic”). These two books were meant to be complementary: the former treats of diseases of the body, the latter, diseases of the soul.

Having achieved fame in Rayy, al-Rāzī returned to Baghdad to become head of its newly founded al-Muʿtaḍidī hospital, named after al-Muʿtaḍid (reigned 279–89/892–902). On account of political events, and in relation to high-ranking positions he had held, he resided on several occasions either in Baghdad or Rayy, but spent the last years of his life in Rayy suffering from glaucoma (al-māʾ), until he became blind and died in his birthplace around 313/925 or 320/932.

Al-Rāzī's self-restraint and modesty are best expressed in his own words, in al-Sīrah al-falsafiyjah: