This paper examines central problems regarding Avicenna’s (d.1037) famous proof for the existence of God and explores how it became a central topic on the agenda of the early modern reformists, including Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī (d.1897) and Muḥammad ‘Abduh (d.1905). The nature of Avicenna’s proof of God has been widely contested in both Islamic intellectual history and contemporary scholarship. H. Davidson (1987) and M. Marmura (1980) argue that the proof is cosmological in nature, while others such as P. Morewedge (1979) and F. Rahman (1963) argue that it is ontological— that is, a proof that proceeds simply from an analysis of the concept of necessary existence without reference to any physical facts about the external world (in contrast to cosmological proofs). However, these works have not considered a version of the proof that appears in Avicenna’s compendium, the Salvation, which goes unmentioned in the literature. My paper examines this version with special attention to what it reveals with respect to the nature of Avicenna’s proof of God. Specifically, I look at his argument that objects in the world require not just a cause to bring them into existence, but a cause to maintain them in existence as well, in order to draw out the a priori or a posteriori nature of the premises he relies on. I argue that his proof is cosmological in nature, depending upon a very particular — and highly contested — cosmology and physics. Avicenna’s proof was important to the modern reformists like ‘Abduh and al-Afghānī who were exploring the classical Islamic intellectual tradition as a response to European philosophical discussions about God and his existence. By closely examining a cryptic but revealing chapter in the Salvation, this paper not only complicates what has become the standard reading of Avicenna’s proof, but sheds light on a largely unexplored gloss by ‘Abduh on an important work on theology. The analysis investigates how ‘Abduh’s positions in the gloss were greatly informed by the philosophical teachings of his guide al-Afghānī.

A common challenge in the study of classical civilizations is the confrontation with a complex notion for which there is no single rendering in modern discourse. The Greek 'logos' and 'mimesis' are famous examples. In the Arabic tradition 'bayān' is a case in point. Two decades ago Wolfhart Heinrichs remarked that “the notion of bayān ‘clarity’, ‘distinctness’ [is] a notion that is not clear and distinct at all and in dire need of a monograph.” While advances in the study of bayān have been made since the publication of von Grunebaum’s article in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, Heinrichs’ words still largely hold true today. Some legal aspects of the term have been studied by Lowry, Montgomery and Vishanoff, with a special focus on al-Shāfiʿī (d. 204/820). Skarżyńska-Bocheńska, Suleiman and Behzadi have concentrated on al-Jāḥiẓ (d. 255/868 or 9), interpreting the notion as a theory of communication akin to modern semiotics. Montgomery and Lowry see a link between al-Jāḥiẓ’s conception of the term and that of al-Shāfiʿī, but otherwise bayān has usually been studied in isolation. In this paper I offer a comprehensive investigation into the notion, starting from its lexical meaning(s) and early occurrences in poetry, the Qurʾān and ḥadīth. In addition to revisiting the texts of al-Shāfiʿī and al-Jāḥiẓ I look at the perspectives of fourth/tenth- and fifth/eleventh-century thinkers like Ibn Ḥazm, Ibn Wahb al-Kātib, Ibn Fāris, al-Rummānī, Abū Hilāl al-ʿAskarī and ʿAlī b. Khalaf al-Kātib. I identify four strands of meaning of bayān: the legal-hermeneutic, the philosophical, the philological and the scribal. A case will be made for a polygenetic origin of these meanings, stemming from the various lexical meanings of the word. While the legal-hermeneutic and philosophical meanings will be interpreted as epistemological mechanisms due to the semantic affinity between bayān and dalāla ‘signification’, the philological and scribal ones will be understood as instantiations of ‘eloquence’. Montgomery’s creative interpretation will be rejected on account of al-Jāḥiẓ’s work being assertoric in nature rather than deontic. Some light will be shed not only on early religious and literary thinking regarding the term, but also on the later appellation of the discipline called ʿilm al-bayān.

Recent discussions regarding the Islamic state and modernity unfold predominantly along two strands; the first emphasizes the difficulty of transplanting the classical Islamic model of governance and legal derivation into modern state structures, while the second highlights ways in which the classical Islamic mode of governance can be seen as promoting the same ideals of modern nation states. Both avenues of inquiry remain important and acknowledge that the presence of an Islamic state remains a political possibility as well as a religious ideal in the minds of many. My paper, while broadly engaging with these issues, steps back to analyze the one argument for the absence of the Islamic state which was put forward by the classical jurist and theologian Abū Maʿalī al-Juwaynī (d. 478/1085). In one of al-Juwaynī’s works, al-Ghiyāth al-Umam, he hypothesizes about a weak Islamic state which eventually collapses to leave individuals without formal government. With the absence of formal government, al-Juwaynī argues that individuals will continue to live orderly and meaningful lives around Sharīʿa norms which have become imbricated within society to the extent that individuals are naturally governed by them. In this state, while government is absent, the Sharīʿa is able to still provide mechanisms of governance that support society. Though this is by no means a political or legal ideal for al-Juwaynī, it presents an alternative mode of understanding the Sharīʿa and governance which is removed from the realm of formal government and highlights the roles of custom, continuous practice of the Sharīʿa and a notion of ijtihād which evolves to the contours of legal knowledge present in any given moment.

This paper examines the transmission of a segment of Avicenna’s De Anima (al-haywiyya) from Arabic, to Latin, to Middle English in order to demonstrate the impact of his theory of the imagination on late-medieval English culture. By demonstrating the evolution of Avicenna’s terminology as it was adapted to shifting intellectual contexts in late-medieval England, this argument offers a new methodology for the study of literary and intellectual history that does justice to the Arabic inheritance of Western thought. The critical term “New Aristotelianism” is symptomatic of a modern tendency to credit Arabic philosophers with having transmitted the works of Aristotle to the medieval Western world, but to oversimplify and diminish the impact of the Arabic sources themselves in the process. This oversimplification perpetuates the claims made by the earliest Latin translators of Avicenna’s The Healing (al-shifā’), who packaged the Arabic text as little more than a vehicle for Aristotle’s metaphysics. In fact, Avicenna’s revisions of Aristotle’s philosophy to accord with Islamic monotheism enabled it to permeate medieval Christian theology. Indeed, his theories were widely influential in their own right on later-medieval science, philosophy, and medicine. This study takes as its focus the trajectory of the concept of the ‘imagination’ (khyāl) as it moved from Arabic, to Latin, to Middle English. In the Middle Ages, imaginativa refers specifically to the cognitive process through which the mind transforms sensory experience of the physical world into units of memory and processes of reasoning. Avicenna placed uncommon weight on the importance of engaging with and evaluating the evidence available in the temporal world, a view that challenged the traditional Neoplatonic opposition between the physical senses and the intellect. As Avicenna’s closer alignment between sensory experience and the power of reasoning became more widely known, it complicated the established belief that the world was a site of temptations to be avoided. In the context of Latin scholasticism, this contentious idea led to intense theological and political backlash. In the context of Middle English poetry, it led to unprecedented creative freedom. By asserting that the physical world provided evidence that could be learned from, Avicenna’s theories enabled those without ‘authority’ in the traditional sense to validate themselves as interpreters of the world around them. By examining the various strategies through which translators adapted Avicenna’s theory to new contexts, this paper illuminates the nuances of cultural interactions between Arabic natural philosophy and medieval English culture.