The prominent Ismāʿīlī thinker and the proof (ḥujjat) of Khurāsān, Nāṣir-i Khusraw (d. ca. 462/1070), was the only Fāṭimid philosopher who exclusively wrote in Persian. While he is often known in the west for his iconic Book of Travels (safar-nāma) (e.g., Brown, 1905; Thackston, 1986), and his philosophical contributions were sometimes undervalued (e.g., Ivanow, 1948; Pines, 1954; Madelung, 1961), there have been emerging scholarship on his philosophical thought (Corbin, 1982; Hunsberger, 1992; Hunsberger, 2000; Virani, 2005; Lewisohn, 2007; Andani, 2016). In this presentation, I discuss Nāṣir-i Khusraw’s original articulation of the resurrection (qiyāma), which does not seem to have any parallel in the works of his Ismāʿīlī predecessors. While Nāṣir-i Khusraw generally follows the Neoplatonic scheme of Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī (fl. 4th/10th), the esteemed Iranian luminary (al-dāʿī), by accepting the cosmological dyad of the First Intellect (al-ʿaql al-awwal) and Universal Soul (al-nafs al-kulliyya) as the first created beings, his interpretation of the resurrection is significantly Aristotelian. Nāṣir-i Khusraw uses the Aristotelian four causes, namely, the material, formal, final, and efficient causes, to explain the Universal Soul’s journey towards its perfection, which will be fully accomplished in the resurrection. He regards the material cause (ʿillat-i ḥayūlānī) of the world to be the four elements, the efficient cause (ʿllat-i fāʿila) or its demiurge to be the Universal Soul, and the formal cause (ʿillat-i ālatī) to be the heavens and stars, which are the means (dast-afzār) of the Universal Soul. With regards to the fourth cause or what he identifies as the final or completing cause (ʿillat-i tamāmī), Nāṣir-i Khusraw states that it is hidden from people and once it is achieved, the world “returns to that from which it appeared” (Nāsir-i Khusraw, 1959, p. 15). He further explains that while the Intellect originated as a complete being (tamām), the Universal Soul lacks this completion due to which it gives rise to the motion. The Universal Soul then becomes the demiurge (ṣāniʿ) of the world in the hope that once the world reaches its final completion, which occurs once the lord of the resurrection or the Messiah arrives, the Soul will also receive its own completion (tamāmī) and is united with the Intellect (e.g., see Nāsir-i Khusraw, 1959, p. 69-73). My presentation, thus, aims to demonstrate that Nāṣir-i Khusraw marries the Aristotelian notion of the four causes with the Neoplatonic cosmology he inherited from Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī to explain his theory of the resurrection.

Ibn Sīnā’s theory that God knows particulars “in a universal way” has attracted considerable attention from both scholars of the traditional sciences and historians of philosophy alike. The discussion of God’s knowledge of particulars continued in the commentaries and super-commentaries on al-Ghazālī’s The Incoherence and became a subject of numerous independent treatise that discuss the issue of God’s knowledge in general and God’s knowledge of particulars specifically. These independent treatises continued under different titles such as God’s detailed (tafṣīlī) knowledge, God’s knowledge of individuals, or God’s knowledge of infinite (lā mutanāhī). In the seventeenth centaury in the Ḥijāz, the Sufi and theologian Ibrāhīm b. Ḥasan al-Kūrānī (d. 1101/1690) received a question related to the topic of God’s knowledge of particulars. Al-Kūrānī discussed this topic in several of his works, always through an Akbarian perspective and using Akbarian terms. This paper discusses al-Kūrānī’s argument for God’s knowledge of particulars and his attempt to address one of the main philosophical arguments by appeal to Ibn ʿArabī. Intellectual life in the seventeenth-century Ḥijāz, in continuity with philosophical discussions in various parts of the Islamic world, displays the impact that Ibn ʿArabī’s thought had on philosophical discussions and the great overlap that occurred between philosophy, theology, and Sufism in post-classical Islamic thought.

An Arabic treatise by the Damascene physician, ethicist, and legalist Ibn Ayyūb al-Qādiri (d. 1463) survives in only a single manuscript (CBL AR 5162) yet documents the substantial professional esteem late-Mamluk scholars accorded knowledge of medicine and the natural sciences. Written in the early-fifteenth century and entitled Preventing the Harm Caused by Teaching Causal Efficacy, al-Qādirī describes his work as “an exercise for students of the natural sciences, though teaching certain of its doctrines is discouraged.” Here thereby situates his text within a medieval Islamic intellectual controversy over the reality of causality and contagious disease. Scholarship of the twentieth century characterized Muslim intellectuals of this period as rejecting the concepts outright in favor of occasionalism, or the theological position that God individually determines the course of all events such that the direct causality inherent to occurrences like the outbreak of contagious disease must be rejected. Using this overlooked manuscript I argue that the subject was in fact understood with far greater nuance by some scholars of the fifteenth century, whose criticisms of contagion were motivated less by its lack of logical demonstration and more by the clinical observation and theorization of physicians. This is certainly true of al-Qādirī’s treatise, which he presents as a guide for lay scholars and apprentice physicians alike, as well as a reasoned meditation on the multiple benefits and hard limits of the sciences in the premodern era. Indeed, the text discusses topics that range from the logical bases for contagion and causality to extended passages on scholarly sexuality, diet, and self-care. A more sustained analysis of this digest alongside better studied treatises on the topic will shed much needed light on a medieval controversy of immediate relevance. It will likewise bring modern scholarship beyond assertions of the medieval ulema’s religious motives, and toward an appreciation for the robust intellectual standards of their scholarly society.

Aristotle’s selfconsciously daring maxim that the pursuit of truth take precedence over personal attachment to cherished convictions and revered teachers was transmitted to Islam in the author’s own discursive formulation (Nicomachean Ethics 1096a11-15), but perhaps with more resonance, also in late antique gnomic condensations. In whichever version it was passed on, its reception has, to this very day, been decidedly mixed, ranging from enthusiastic embrace to disdainful rejection. Abū Bakr al-Rāzī and Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (and in his wake Rashīd Riḍā) may be cited as representing opposite positions. Across the entire gamut, Aristotle’s maxim in Arabic certainly never achieved the concision of the Latin Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas, variously quoted in European letters. Expanding on Franz Rosenthal (The technique and approach of Muslim scholarship, 1947), the presentation envisaged for Montréal will examine various argumentative uses Aristotle’s appeal to value truth above all else has been put to by Arabic and Persian authors. The main focus will be on the import, or non-, of his postulate in pronouncedly authority-bound Islamicate socio-cultural contexts.