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“Therefore I Have Removed the Veil”: Disclosure of Secrets in Eleventh-Century Islam and the Literary Character of Maimonides’s Guide

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 June 2020

Omer Michaelis
Omer Michaelis*
Affiliation:
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; [email protected]
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Abstract

This article investigates Maimonides’s ethos of disclosing “secrets” and explores its Islamic origins, focusing on sources neglected by earlier scholarship concerning the Guide of the Perplexed. I turn from the prevalent method by which the Guide has been studied for decades, namely, as a work at the core of which lie strategies and an ethos of concealment. In lieu of the conventional method, I go in a very different direction by inquiring into the modes that Maimonides used in fashioning his Guide as a work that involves a self-proclaimed exceptional act of revelation of secrets and a breach of the boundaries of concealment. The resulting textual investigation demonstrates that clusters of motifs presented in these sources, as well as structures of arguments, were retained in their cultural migration. This exploration allows me to illuminate new aspects of the question of the genre of Maimonides’ Guide, its sources, and its author’s intertextual art of writing.

Keywords

Maimonidesal-GhazālīIbn Sīnāal-FārābīLeo Straussesotericismtransgressioncrisis discourse
Type
Articles
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 113 , Issue 3 , July 2020 , pp. 378 - 404
Copyright
© President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2020

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Footnotes

*

I owe a special debt to Menachem Lorberbaum, Yair Lorberbaum, Vered Noam, Sarah Stroumsa, Menachem Fisch, Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, Yossef Schwartz, Yair Furstenberg, Shalom Sadik, Ehud Krinis, Assaf Tamari, Noam Hoffmann, Uri Landsberg, Yakov Z. Mayer, Orit Malka, Hanan Mazeh, Netta Barak-Corren, Ariel Seri-Levi, Kineret Sadeh, and the anonymous referees for advice and criticism.

References

1 See Leo Strauss, “The Literary Character of the Guide of the Perplexed,” in Essays on Maimonides: An Octocentennial Volume (ed. Salo W. Baron; New York: Columbia University Press, 1941) 37–91; Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing (New York: Free Press, 1952) 38–94. A recent reprint of the article also includes Strauss’s notes; see Leo Strauss on Maimonides: The Complete Writings (ed. Kenneth H. Green; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013) 341–98. The changes in Strauss’s attitude toward Maimonides were addressed in Remi Brague, “Leo Strauss et Maimonide,” in Maimonides and Philosophy: Papers Presented at the Sixth Jerusalem Philosophical Encounter, May, 1985 (ed. Shlomo Pines and Yirmiyahu Yovel; Dordrecht and Boston: M. Nijhoff, 1986) 246–68; cf. Alfred Ivry, “Leo Strauss on Maimonides,” in Leo Strauss’s Thought: Towards a Critical Engagement (ed. Alan Udoff; Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1991) 75–91. Strauss’s thesis had already been suggested, though in a far less elaborated form, by Alexander Altmann, “Das Verhältnis Maimunis zur jüdischen Mystik,” MGWJ 80 (1936) 305−6 (in English: Alexander Altmann, “Maimonides’ Attitude Toward Jewish Mysticism,” Studies in Jewish Thought [ed. A. Jospe; Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1981] 200–201); Altmann explicitly mentions brief remarks Strauss made about Maimonides’s esotericism in Leo Strauss, Philosophie und Gesetz: Beiträge zum Verständnis Maimunis und seiner Vorlaüfer (Berlin: Schocken Verlag, 1935 [the chapter “The Philosophic Foundation of the Law: Maimonides’ Doctrine of Prophecy and Its Sources” was originally written as an article in 1931 and was first printed in 1934; see n. 2 below]) 88–89 (in English: Leo Strauss, Philosophy and Law: Contributions to the Understanding of Maimonides and His Predecessors [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995] 102–3).

2 Strauss, “The Literary Character of the Guide of the Perplexed,” 51. Strauss briefly addressed Maimonides’s esotericism in some of his earlier articles and lectures: Leo Strauss, “Cohen und Maimuni” (lecture, Academy for the Science of Judaism in Berlin, 1931; first printed in idem, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2, Philosophie und Gesetz: Frühe Schriften [ed. Heinrich Meier; Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1997] 393–436, esp. 427); idem, “Maimunis Lehre von der Prophetie und ihre Quellen,” first printed in Le Monde Oriental (Uppsala) 28 (1934) 99–139, reprinted Strauss, Philosophie und Gesetz: Frühe Schriften, 87–123, at 89–90; Leo Strauss, “Quelques Remarques sur la Science politique de Maïmonide et de Farabi,” REJ 100 (1936) 1–37, reprinted in idem, Philosophie und Gesetz: Frühe Schriften, 125–58, at 137–38, 152–53; idem, “Der Ort der Vorsehungslehre nach der Ansicht Maimunis,” MGWJ 81 (1937) 93–105, reprinted in Philosophie und Gesetz: Frühe Schriften, 179–190, at 186; idem, review of The Mishneh Torah, book 1, by Moses Maimonides, ed. Moses Hyamson, RR 3 (1937) 448–56, reprinted in Leo Strauss on Maimonides (ed. Green), 329–40, at 338; For an overview on Strauss’s early approach to Maimonides, see Ivry, “Leo Strauss on Maimonides,” 77–79.

3 Strauss’s overall approach is based on the presuppositions that the religious milieu of philosophically inclined authors has posed a danger to them and that both Jewish and Islamic thought of this period is centered on the tension between philosophy and religion. See Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, 17–19; cf. Warren Zev Harvey, “How Strauss Paralyzed the Study of the ‘Guide of the Perplexed’ in the Twentieth Century,” Iyyun 50 (2001) 387–96, at 388 (Hebrew). A fierce methodological critique of Strauss’s approach to the field of Islamic studies was leveled by Massimo Campanini, An Introduction to Islamic Philosophy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004) 68; cf. Dimitri Gutas, “The Study of Arabic Philosophy in the Twentieth Century: An Essay on the Historiography of Arabic Philosophy,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 29 (2002) 19–25. For a bibliographic list of scholars who addressed Maimonides’s esotericism with diverging levels of explicit or implicit acceptance of Strauss’s thesis, see Omer Michaelis, “It Is Time to Act for the Lord: [They] Violate[d] your Torah”: Crisis Discourse and the Dynamics of Tradition in Medieval Judaism (PhD diss., Tel Aviv University, 2019) 236 n. 807.

4 See Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, 17; cf. Moshe Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation: Esotericism in Jewish Thought and Its Implications (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007) 162–63.

5 See, for instance, Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, 21.

6 See Leo Strauss, Philosophie und Gesetz (Berlin: Schocken, 1935) 63–65; idem, Persecution and the Art of Writing, 9–10.

7 See Leo Strauss, “Farabi’s Plato,” in Louis Ginzberg Jubilee Volume: On the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday (ed. Saul Lieberman, Shalom Spiegel, Solomon Zeitlin and Alexander Marx; New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1945) 357–93; and, more concisely with some modifications, in idem, Persecution and the Art of Writing, 7–22.

8 Strauss offers a maximalist and in my opinion unconvincing reading of a line from Maimonides’s epistle to Samuel ibn Tibbon: “The books of Ibn Sina, although it is appropriate to take issue with them [lehaqšot ‘aleyhem] and [although] they are not like al-Farabi’s utterances—there is usefulness in his books and one should study his utterances and probe into their ideas”; See Leo Strauss, “Eine vermißte Schrift Farabis” [1936], in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 2 (ed. Meier), 176, cf. n. 18 below.

9 See Strauss, “Farabi’s Plato,” 9.

10 See Sara Klein-Braslavy, King Solomon and Metaphysical Esotericism according to Maimonides (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1996) 15–30 (Hebrew).

11 Ibid, 31–105.

12 On the influence of Ibn Bājja’s esotericism on Maimonides, see Lawrence V. Berman “Ibn Bajja and Maimonides, a Chapter in the History of Political Philosophy” (PhD diss., Hebrew University, 1959) 144–49 (Hebrew). With regard to Ibn Sīnā, see Klein-Braslavy, King Solomon, 23–26. On al-Fārābī see ibid., 19–22, 83. The juxtaposition of these authors with the Greek philosophical tradition overlooks the possible influence of Shīʿīte and Ismāʿīlī trends on authors such as al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā, and in any case leaves unexamined the relations between the Guide and Ismāʿīlī esotericism. On the relation and tension between Maimonides and the Ismāʿīliyya, see Alfred Ivry, “Isma‘ili Theology and Maimonides’ Philosophy,” in The Jews of Medieval Islam: Community, Society, and Identity; Proceedings of an International Conference Held by the Institute of Jewish Studies, University College, London, 1992 (ed. Daniel Frank; Leiden: Brill, 1995) 271–99.

13 Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation, 52.

14 Ibid, 53.

15 On the necessity of studying Maimonides in light of the cultural milieu in which he thought and wrote, see Sarah Stroumsa, preface to Maimonides in His World: Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009) xiii–xiv.

16 Gutas criticizes Strauss’s overall approach, and specifically his understanding of al-Fārābī’s notion of esotericism and his insistence on al-Fārābī’s centrality to the dissemination of knowledge in the Middle Ages. Nonetheless, he does not challenge Strauss’s conception of Maimonidean esotericism as being the heir of al-Fārābī; see Gutas, “The Study of Arabic Philosophy,” 19–20.

17 On Maimonides’s reception of Ibn Sīnā, see Idit Dobbs-Weinstein, “Maimonides’ Reticence toward Ibn Sīnā,” in Avicenna and His Heritage: Acts of the International Colloquium, Leuven, September 8–11, 1999 (ed. Jules Janssens and D. de Smet; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2002) 281–96; Steven Harvey, “Avicenna’s Influence on Jewish Thought: Some Reflections,” in Avicenna and His Legacy: A Golden Age of Science and Philosophy (ed. Y. Tzvi Langermann; Turnhout: Brepols, 2009) 327–40; W. Z. Harvey, “Maimonides’ Avicennianism,” in Maimonidean Studies, vol. 5 (ed. Arthur Hyman and Alfred Ivry; New York: Yeshiva University Press, 2008) 107–19; Mauro Zonta, “Maimonides’ Knowledge of Avicenna: Some Tentative Conclusions about a Debated Question,” in Die Trias des Maimonides. Jüdische, arabische und antike Wissenskultur (ed. Georges Tamer; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005) 211–22.

18 See Aḥmad Fu’ād Al-Ahwānī, Les états de l’âme par Avicenne (Cairo: Issa el Babi el-Halabi, 1952) 141–42. On the treatise and the different attributions scholars have suggested, see Dimitri Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition: Introduction to Reading Avicenna’s Philosophical Works (2nd rev. ed.; Brill: Leiden, 2014) 102–3, 477–79. Gutas indicates that the epilogue was copied in many cases as part of both the Kitāb al-S̲ h̲ ifā and the Kitāb al-Najāt, in ibid., 22.

19 Maimonides does not mention al-Ghazālī as one of the authors of works commendable for study in his epistle to Samuel ibn Tibbon, which survived only partially in the Arabic original. It is possible that Maimonides did not see al-Ghazālī as a philosopher in the fullest sense of the word but as standing between the falāsifa and the mutakallimūn. For a comparison between the different surviving versions of the Hebrew translation of the epistle, see Doron Forte, “Back to the Sources: Alternative Versions of Maimonides’ Letter to Samuel Ibn Tibbon and Their Neglected Significance,” JSQ 23 (2016) 47–90, at 83–90. See also Sarah Stroumsa’s suggestion that Maimonides’s epistle is not a reading list but a response to a list Ibn Tibbon sent to him for evaluation. If this is indeed the case, we cannot infer anything about the absence of authors from the list; Sarah Stroumsa, “Note on Maimonides’ Attitude to Joseph ibn Ṣaddiq,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 8 (1990) 33–38 (in Hebrew). For a detailed picture of scholarship on Maimonides’s reception of al-Ghazālī, see Samuel Harvey, “The Changing Image of al-Ghazālī in Medieval Jewish Thought,” in Islam and Rationality: The Impact of al-Ghazālī; Papers Collected on His 900th Anniversary (ed. Georges Tamer; Leiden: Brill, 2015) 288–302, esp. 292–96.

20 For a succinct survey of the scholarship on Mishkāt al-Anwār, see Frank Griffel, “Al-Ghazālī’s Cosmology in the Veil Section of his Mishkāt al-Anwār,” in Avicenna and his Legacy: A Golden Age of Science and Philosophy (ed. Y. Tzvi Langermann; Turnhout: Brepols, 2009) 27–50, at 28–29. On the attribution of the work to al-Ghazālī, see the detailed bibliography in Scott M. Girdner, “Reasoning with Revelation: The Significance of the Qur’ānic Contextualization of Philosophy in al-Ghazālī’s Mishkāt al-Anwār (The Niche of Lights)” (PhD diss., Boston University, 2010) 34 nn. 44–45. On the two medieval Hebrew translations of the treatise, see Erez Tsabary, “The Hebrew Translations of Mishkāt al-Anwār by Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī” (MA thesis, Bar-Ilan University, 2013); Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, The Niche for Lights: A Critical Edition with Introduction and Commentary (Old and Modern Hebrew Translation) (ed. Avi Elqayam; Jerusalem: Magnes, 2018) 150–73. On the treatise reception among medieval Jewish authors, see ibid., 173–204. For a thematic comparative study of the treatise and Maimonides’s eight chapters, see Scott M. Girdner, “Ghazālī’s Hermeneutics and Their Reception in Jewish Tradition: Mishkāt al-Anwār (The Niche of Lights) and Maimonides’ Shemonah Peraqim (Eight Chapters),” in idem, Islam and Rationality (ed. Tamer), 253–74. Cf. Griffel, “Al-Ghazālī’s Cosmology,” 38–39; even though Griffel’s remarks on Maimonides are brief, his article can serve as a fruitful model for a comparative study between Mishkāt al-Anwār and the Guide of the Perplexed.

21 Shlomo Pines, “Translator’s Introduction: The Philosophical Sources of the Guide of the Perplexed,” in Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed (2 vols.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963) lxxix. Pines’s assertion appears in a section in which he examines the influence of al-Fārābī on Maimonides. Indeed, as it will be argued, with respect to genre, Maimonides was not influenced by al-Fārābī at all but by other Islamic authors, most notably al-Ghazālī.

22 On Maimonides’s frequent omission of citations, see Sarah Stroumsa, “Citation Traditions: On Explicit and Hidden Citations in Judaeo-Arabic Philosophical Literature,” in Heritage and Innovation in Medieval Judaeo-Arabic Culture (ed. Joshua Blau and David Doron; Ramat Gan: Bar Ilan University, 2000) 167–78 (Hebrew); cf. Sarah Stroumsa, Maimonides in His World, 24–25. On patterns of citations and omissions of citations in medieval Islamic writing, see Franz Rosenthal, The Technique and Approach of Muslim Scholarship (Rome: Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, 1947) 41.

23 I follow Stroumsa’s claim that a cluster composed of an argument, a prooftext, and technical terms that appears in two contexts strongly suggests direct influence; see Sarah Stroumsa, “Comparison as Multifocal Approach: The Case of Arabic Philosophical Thought,” in Comparative Studies in the Humanities (ed. Guy G. Stroumsa; Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 2018) 133–52; eadem, “The Impact of Syriac Tradition on Early Judaeo-Arabic Bible Exegesis,” ARAM 3.1–2 (1991) 83–96.

24 See Stroumsa, Maimonides in His World, xii.

25 Stroumsa argues that intercultural dynamics do not resemble the activity of the marketplace, where ideas are transferred without changing their form. Instead, in the medieval intellectual scene, ideas migrated in a circular fashion, “modifying the system into which they were adopted, and, in the process, undergoing some transformation themselves” (Sarah Stroumsa, “Whirlpool Effects and Religious Studies: A Response to Guy G. Stroumsa,” in Dynamics in the History of Religions between Asia and Europe: Encounters, Notions, and Comparative Perspectives [ed. Volkhard Krech and Marion Steinicke; Leiden: Brill, 2012] 159–62, at 159).

26 On the patterns of indirect intercultural and interreligious influence, see Stroumsa, “Whirlpool Effects,” 160; eadem, Maimonides and His World, 98.

27 In his comprehensive study of Ibn Sīnā, Dimitri Gutas compiled and analyzed numerous texts by Avicenna that address the issue of withholding knowledge and presented a typology of Avicenna’s methods of communicating knowledge; see Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, 256–66, 335–58. Gutas opposes the idea, endorsed by numerous scholars, of an “esoteric,” mystical Avicenna that is hidden from most of his work, and especially from al-S̲ h̲ ifā, referring to it as an error that he traces back to Ibn Ṭufayl; see Dimitri Gutas, “Avicenna’s Eastern (‘Oriental’) Philosophy: Nature, Contents, Transmission,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 10.2 (2000) 159–80, at 160–66.

28 Translated by Michael E. Marmura in Avicenna, The Metaphysics of the Healing: A Parallel English-Arabic Text (ed. M.E. Marmura; Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2005) 365–66, here with minor modifications. See the alternative translation by Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, 338–39.

29 Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, 338–341; cf. Stroumsa, Maimonides in His World, 154–155; Klein-Braslavy, King Solomon, 23–27.

30 Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, 339; Arabic original in Avicenna, The Metaphysics of the Healing (ed. Marmura), 365.

31 Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, 339; Avicenna, The Metaphysics of the Healing (ed. Marmura), 366.

32 See Ḥayy b. Yaqẓān li-Ibn Sīnā wa-Ibn Ṭufayl wa-s-Suhrawardī (ed. A. Amīn; Cairo, 1952) 43.

33 See Alfred L. Ivry, “The Utilization of Allegory in Islamic Philosophy,” in Interpretation and Allegory: Antiquity to the Modern Period (ed. Jon Whitman; Leiden: Brill, 2003) 153–80, at 158–64, esp. 160. For a discussion of the dramatic quality of the work, see Sarah Stroumsa, “Avicenna’s Philosophical Stories: Aristotle’s Poetics Reinterpreted,” Arabica 39 (1992) 198–204.

34 In Ibn Ṭufayl’s retelling of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, the author indeed argues that he aims to disclose the secrets that were left hidden in Ibn Sīnā’s narrative. Ibn Ṭufayl also provides an elaborate account of his decision to act in such a manner; see Ibn Ṭufayl, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (trans. Lenn E. Goodman; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009) 3–5, 155–56. However, Ibn Ṭufayl’s discourse on the disclosure of esoteric knowledge introduces elements and arguments that are incongruent with Maimonides’s discourse in the Guide and therefore will not be analyzed here.

35 See n. 18 above.

36 Translated by Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, 22–23, modified; see the Arabic original in Aḥmad Fu’ād Al-Ahwānī, Les états de l’âme par Avicenne (Cairo: Issa el Babi el-Halabi, 1952) 141–142.

37 This method was presented by al-Fārābī in his Kitāb al-jamʻ bayna raʼyay al-ḥakīmayn Aflāṭūn al-ilāhī wa-Arisṭūṭālīs (The Agreement between Plato and Aristotle), which ascribes it to Aristotle; see Naṣr al-Fārābī, L’Harmonie entre les opinions de Platon et d’Aristote d’al-Fârâbî (ed. M. Najjar and D. Mallet; édition bilingue; Paris: Institut français du Proche-Orient, 1999) 71–77. This text was familiar to Ibn Sīnā, who subtly implemented it into several of his works and quoted parts of it verbatim; see Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, 23 n. 3.

38 For another appearance of the epistolary model in al-Ghazālī’s oeuvre, in conjunction with the genre of autobiography, see the opening passages of al-Munqid̲ h̲ min al-ḍalāl; see Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī, Deliverance from Error: Five Key Texts Including His Spiritual Autobiography, al-Munqid̲ h̲ min al-ḍalāl (ed. Ilse Lichtenstadter, trans. R. J. McCarthy; Louisville: Fons Vitae, 2000) 61.

39 See Janet Gurkin Altman, Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1982) 185–216.

40 On al-Ghazālī’s approach to exoteric and esoteric interpretations of the Qurʾān, see Martin Whittingham, Al-Ghazali and the Qur’an: One Book, Many Meanings (New York: Routledge, 2007) 55–62.

41 An interpretation that gravitates toward the inner core, bāṭin, of the apparent meaning, ẓāhir. This rendering of taʾwīl is prevalent in S̲ h̲ īʿīte and Ṣūfī modes of interpretation; see Paul E. Walker, “To What Degree Was Classical Ismaili Esotericism Based on Reason as Opposed to Authority?” in L’Ésotérisme shiʿite, ses racines et ses prolongements: Shiʿi Esotericism: Its Roots and Developments (ed. M. Amir Moezzi et al.; Turnhout: Brepols, 2016) 493–505; cf. Ehud Krinis, God’s Chosen People: Judah Halevi’s Kuzari and the Shī‘ī Imām Doctrine (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014) 21–22; Ismail Poonawala, “Ismā‘īlī Ta’wīl of the Qur’an,” in Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Qurʾān (ed. Andrew Rippin; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988) 199–222, at 214; Meir Bar-Asher, “Outlines of Early Ismāʿīlī-Fāṭimī Qurʾān Exegesis,” in A Word Fitly Spoken: Studies in Qur’an and Bible Exegesis Presented to Haggai ben-Shammai (ed. Meir M. Bar-Asher, et al.; Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 2007) 303–33, at 305–6, 312–19; Etan Kohlberg, “Trends in Early Imāmī Shīʿī Exegetical Literature and the Contribution of al-Sayyārī,” in A Word Fitly Spoken (ed. Bar-Asher, et al.) 413–46, at 414–15; Annabel Keeler and Sajjad H. Rizvi, introduction to The Spirit and the Letter: Approaches to the Esoteric Interpretation of the Qurʼan (ed. Annabel Keeler and Sajjad H. Rizvi; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016) 1–47, at 17–19.

42 al-Ghazālī, Mishkāt al-anwār (Niche of Lights): A Parallel English-Arabic Text (trans. Michael E. Marmura; Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1998) 1.

43 The reference here is to Qurʾān 3:7, which contrasts “symbolic” (mutashābih) and “determined” (muḥkam) āyāt, and addresses the challenge they pose to interpretation. The specific qurʾānic phrase is “Those rooted in knowledge” (rāsikhūna fī al-ʿilm), who are presented in opposition to those “those whose hearts are given to swerving.” In Ṣūfī anthropology, as Sara Sviri noted, the heart is “the organ in which … the divine worlds can be seen and in which understanding reside[s]”; Sara Sviri, “The Countless Faces of Understanding: On Istinbāṭ, Mystical Listening and Ṣūfī Exegesis,” in A Word Fitly Spoken (ed. Bar-Asher, et al.), 381–411, at 397–98. For a wide survey and a selection of Ṣūfī sources on the rāsikhūna fī al-ʿilm, see Kristin Zahra Sands, Ṣūfī Commentaries on the Qurʾān in Classical Islam (New York: Routledge, 2005) 23–28.

44 al-Ghazālī, Mishkāt al-anwār, 2.

45 As noted by Buchman, this ḥādit̲ h̲ does not appear in Wensinck’s Concordance, though it appears twice in al-G̲ h̲ azālī’s Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn. See al-Ghazālī, Mishkāt al-anwār, 62 n. 4; and see discussion in Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, 262 and n. 22.

46 al-Ghazālī, Mishkāt al-anwār, 2.

47 On this motif in Islamic writings from al-Andalus, see Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, 264. It is possible that al-Ghazālī’s very need for justification is related to the issue of esoteric exegesis being identified in early Islam with shīʿism. Al-Ghazālī was thus in need of defending the implementation of an esoteric approach in Sunnī discourse that had yet to integrate it. Al-Ghazālī wrote a polemical work against the Ismāʿīliyya, using the prevalent derogatory term bāṭiniyya in the very title: Kitāb Faḍāʾiḥ al-Bāṭiniyya wa-faḍāʾil al-Mustaẓhiriyya. Cf. Farouk Mitha, Al-Ghazālī and the Ismailis: A Debate on Reason and Authority in Medieval Islam (London: I. B. Tauris and the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2001); and Farhad Daftary, The Isma‘ilis: Their History and Doctrines (2nd ed.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) 8–10; For a recent reassessment of this issue, which holds a far more dialectical relationship, including both rejection and appropriation, between al-Ghazālī and Ismāʿīli thinkers, see Daniel De Smet, “L’attitude ambivalente d’al-Ġazālī envers l’ismaélisme. Éléments ismaéliens dans le Miškāt al-anwār,” in Al-Ġazālī (1058–1111) / La prima stampa armena. Yehūdāh Ha-Lēvī (1075–1141). La ricezione di Isacco di Ninive: secondo Dies Academicus, 7–9 Novembre 2011 (ed. Carmela Baffioni et al.; Milan: Biblioteca Ambrosiana; Rome: Bulizoni, 2013) 37–52; Khalil Andani, “The Merits of the Bāṭiniyya: Al-Ghazālī’s Appropriation of Ismaʿili Cosmology,” JIS 29 (2018) 181–229.

48 al-Ghazālī, Mishkāt al-anwār, 2.

49 According to Brody, the medium of responsa has been “the characteristic literary genre of the Geonic period,” Robert Brody, The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998) 60. On epistolarity in Jewish writings, focusing on halakhah, see Israel Ta-Shma, Studies in Medieval Rabbinic Literature (4 vols.; Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 2004) 1:117–25.

50 Brody remarks that “Sherira’s Epistle belongs, formally speaking … to the responsum, but it stretches the limits of this genre”; idem, The Geonim of Babylonia, 20. On Seder Rav Amram, see Ta-Shma, Studies in Medieval Rabbinic Literature, 192–93.

51 See Neil Danzig, “From Oral Talmud to Written Talmud: On Studying and Transmitting the Babylonian Talmud in the Middle Ages,” Bar-Ilan 30–31 (2006) 49–112, at 81 (Hebrew).

52 Josef van Ess notes that already in the 7th century theological ideas were “set forth in the discursive form of the epistle”; Josef van Ess, Theology and Society in the Second and Third Centuries of the Hijra (trans. J. O’Kane; 3 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 2017–2018) 1:62.

53 See numerous examples in the Sevillan philologist and Ḥadith scholar Ibn Khayr al-Ishbīlī’s (d. 1179) catalogue of works (Fihrist), published in two vols. by J. Ribera y Tarragó under the title Index librorum de diversis scientiarum ordinibus quos a magistris didicit (Saragossa, 1894–1895). On the circulation of Rasāʾil Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ in al-Andalus, see Godefroid de Callataÿ, “Magia en al-Andalus: Rasā’il ijwān al-Ṣafā’, Rutbat al-ḥakīm y Gāyat al-ḥakīm (Picatrix),” Al-Qanṭara 34.2 (2013) 297–344. Other instances of Ismāʿīlī epistolary works that feature a blend of theology, cosmology, and philosophy are the Risāla al-Mudhhiba, attributed to al-Qāḍī al-Nu’mān and printed in al-Khams rasāʾil Ismāʿīliyya (ed. ʿĀrif Tāmir; Salamiyya, 1956) 27–87; al-Kirmānī’s Risālat al-naẓm fī muqābalat al-ʿawālim (see Majmūʿat rasāʾil al-Kirmānī [ed. Muṣṭafā Ghālib; Beirut, 1983] 43–60). On the genre of the “philosophical epistle” in medieval Jewish writing, see Charles H. Manekin, “The Philosophical Epistle as a Genre of Medieval Jewish Philosophy,” in Medieval Jewish Philosophy and Its Literary Forms (ed. A. W. Hughes and J. T. Robinson; Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019) 264–87.

54 See Ibn Massara, Risālat al-iʿtibār, printed in Pilar Garrido Clemente, “Edición crítica de la Risālat al-iʿtibār de Ibn Masarra de Córdoba,” Miscelánea de Estudios Ārabes y Hebraicos 56 (2007) 81–104. See the discussion in Michael Ebstein, Mysticism and Philosophy in al-Andalus: Ibn Masarra, Ibn al-ʿArabī and the Ismāʿīlī Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 2014) 219–20.

55 See al-Baṭalyawsī’s three epistles, discussed in Ayala Eliyahu, “From Kitāb al-ḥadā’iq to Kitāb al-dawā’ir: Reconsidering Ibn al-Sīd al-Baṭalyawsī’s Philosophical Treatise,” Al-Qanṭara 36.1 (2015) 165–98, at 178–80.

56 These works were collected in Rasāʾil Ibn Bājja al-ilāhiyya (ed. Majid Fakhry; Beirut, 1991).

57 See Albert Arazi and Haggai Ben-Shammai, “Risāla,” Encyclopaedia of Islam: Second Edition (Leiden: Brill, 1995) 532–39, at 534. As the authors mention, because of the relatively unregulated literary structure of the genre, it became the “format habitually chosen by authors of monographs” in various branches of knowledge in the Islamicate world.

58 On her study of “The Silencing Epistle,” Stroumsa has shown how Maimonides capitalized on the ambiguity between public and personal modes of address; see Stroumsa, Maimonides in His World, 176–78.

59 Joseph ben Judah Ibn Shim’on fled the Muwaḥiddūn to Fusṭāṭ, where he arrived to study with Maimonides. On the identification of the addressee as Ibn Shim’on, his life and his relations with Maimonides, see Stroumsa, The Beginnings of the Maimonidean Controversy in the East, 13–15.

60 All citations from the Guide of the Perplexed are from Shlomo Pines’s translation: Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed (2 vols.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963).

61 Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, 4.

62 See, for instance, Guide of the Perplexed 2:24: “You know of astronomical matters what you have read under my guidance and understood from the contents of the ‘Almagest’. But there was not enough time to begin another speculative study with you,” 322.

63 According to Arazi and Ben-Shammai, in many cases, maqāla and risāla are equivalent terms; see Arazi and Ben-Shammai, “Risāla,” 534. Maqāla, however, emphasizes the public element and presupposes wide distribution, which is only implicit in risāla. For a list of works employing the terms maqāla or risāla in their titles, see Moritz Steinschneider, Die arabische Literatur der Juden. Ein Beitrag zur Literaturgeschichte der Araber, grossenteils aus handschriftlichen Quellen (Frankfurt a. M.: Kauffmann, 1902), index D, Arabic titles, s.v. maqāla, risāla. See, further, Ch. Vial, I. Afshar, and P. Dumont, “Maḳāla,” Encyclopaedia of Islam, 6:92–96. Strauss indicates the possibility of translating maqāla as “a speech” in Strauss, “The Literary Character of the Guide of the Perplexed,” reprinted in Leo Strauss on Maimonides (ed. Green) 352 and n. 38. In Strauss’s view, Maimonides sought to highlight the “essentially oral character of its teaching.” However, risāla also originally denoted an oral transmission of a message, as noted by Arazi and Ben-Shammai, “Risāla,” 532.

64 The treatise length prevents it from being considered as j ̲awāb. However, kitāb, and even risāla, as Arazi and Ben-Shammai noted (“Risāla,” 534), also denoted long written documents.

65 Diesendruck has argued that the Guide of the Perplexed was conceived and partly elaborated before the arrival of Joseph ibn Shim’on to Fusṭāṭ; see Zevi Diesendruck, “On the Date of the Completion of the Moreh Nebukim,” Hebrew Union College Annual 12–13 (1937−1938) 461–97. Strauss noted this, and emphatically asserts “[Maimonides’s] evident determination to write the Guide even if he had never met Joseph, or if Joseph had never left him”; Strauss, “Literary Character of the Guide of the Perplexed,” 354.

66 Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, 16–17.

67 On the legal status of the mishnaic interdiction, see Yair Lorberbaum, “Did Naḥmanides Perceive the Kabbalah as ‘Closed Knowledge’?” Zion 82.2–3 (2017) 309–54, at 319–21 (Hebrew). Lorberbaum argues that the mishnaic clause is not a formal legal prohibition, but rather, a proposition of the reasons that can establish such prohibition. Indeed, in the loci in which Maimonides refers to the predicament of transmitting esoteric knowledge (I:Intro.; I:33; I:71; III:Intro.), he does not use the term taḥrim, which is the terminus technicus for legal prohibition in the Guide. However, Maimonides does relate to legal transgression in both of the “premises” (muqaddima) mentioned in his introduction, “Let all thy acts be for the sake of Heaven” (see n. 70), and in the implicit reference to the rabbinic directive: “It is time to act for the Lord, [Violate your Torah].” Cf. Maimonides’s claims, twice in III:Intro, that it is prohibited by the sharīʿa to teach the account of the chariot except orally to one man having certain stated qualities. In light of this, I reckon that Maimonides did see Mishnah Ḥag. 2:1 as legally binding.

68 This becomes clear in light of Maimonides’s assertion in the fifth of his “eight chapters”: “The prophets, similarly, urge us on in saying, ‘In all thy ways know Him,’ in commenting upon which the sages said, ‘even as regards a transgression’ [vaʾafillu bidḇar ʿaḇerah], meaning thereby that thou shouldst set for every action a goal, namely, the truth, even though it be, from a certain point of view, a transgression. The sages of blessed memory, too, have summed up this idea in so few words and so concisely, at the same time elucidating the whole matter with such complete thoroughness… This saying is found among their precepts and is, ‘Let all thy acts be for the sake of Heaven.’” Maimonides, The Eight Chapters of Maimoindes on Ethics: Shemonah Perakim (ed. and trans. J. Gorfinkle; New York: Columbia University Press) 73–74, translation modified.

69 Maimonides refers here to a method of encoding knowledge, prevalent in Ismāʿīlī circles, termed tabdīd al-ʿilm, which involves scattering kernels of esoteric knowledge throughout the text. An attentive reader is called to discern them by noticing irregular gestures in either the structure or the sequence of the discussion. See Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, “Dissimulation,” Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān (ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe; Leiden: Brill, 2001) 1:541.

70 Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, 6 (emphasis in original).

71 See Klein-Braslavy, King Solomon, 66–76.

72 Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, 3 (translation modified).

73 The correspondence between the mishnaic terms ḥaḵam umeḇin middaʿto (wise and understanding through his own knowledge) and ra’šey peraqim (chapter headers) and the Arabic term talwīḥ is further made in Guide I:33. Cf. Maimonides, “Maqāla fi teḥiyyat ha-metim,” ed. Joshua Finkel, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 9 (New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1939) 37.

74 This specific chapter binds the large unit dedicated to the divine names and attributes and the unit addressing the proofs of existence, unity, and the incorporeality of God.

75 Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, 175–176 (emphasis added).

76 Sitrey torah is only one of the terms denoting esoteric knowledge in the Guide of the Perplexed. Other terms include asrār al-ʿilm al-ilāhī (secrets of the divine wisdom; Guide I:Intro); asrār ilāhiyya (divine secrets; Guide III:51); asrār al-wujūd (secrets of existence; Guide II:26; II:36); al-kutub al-nubuwwa (secrets of the prophetic books; Guide I:Intro); asrār al-nubuwwa (secrets of the prophets, Guide II:29); and the widely used al-sodot.

77 Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, 176 (emphasis added).

78 Maimonides elaborates on this in his introduction to Mishneh Torah, using it as a legitimizing precedent for his halakhic codification enterprise.

79 See, specifically, b. Šabb. 128b, MS Oxford 366. Discussions and remarks on forgetfulness in late-antique rabbinic literature are manifold, with inner tensions and controversies on the possibility of forgetting both oral and written Torah. See Shlomo Naeh, “The Art of Memory: Constructions of Memory and Patterns of Text in Rabbinic Literature,” Meḥqarei Talmud 3 (2005): 543–90, at 582–86 (Hebrew); Yaakov Sussman, “Oral Torah in Its Literal Sense,” Meḥqarei Talmud 3 (2005) 209–384, at 245–46, 249–50, 252 n. 30, 255–58, 359–61 (Hebrew).

80 Cf. Guide III:Introduction.

81 Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, 416.

82 Ibid., 15 (emphasis in original).

83 See, for instance, Guide I:Intro: “I do not say that this Treatise will remove all difficulties for those who understand it. I do, however, say that it will remove most of the difficulties, and those of the greatest moment”; Guide of the Perplexed, 6.

84 See Samuel Ibn Tibbon, Maʾamar Yiqqavu Hammayim (ed. Rivka Kneller-Rowe [dissertation]; Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 2011) 652; cf. Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation, 111–13.

85 See Joseph ibn Aknin’s argument in the introduction to his Inkishāf al-a’srār waṭuhūr al-anwār (The Divulgence of Mysteries and the Appearance of Lights) that no one but him has gathered the secrets which he aims to reveal in his treatise; Joseph ibn Aknin, Inkishāf al-a’srār waṭuhūr al-anwār (ed. Abraham S. Halkin; Jerusalem, 1964) 37–38; cf. 140–43; and, on Ibn Aknin’s acquaintance with The Guide of the Perplexed, see 398.

86 See, for instance, Isaac ibn Laṭif’s introduction to his Šaʿar Haššamayim (Gate of Heaven), MS Moscow-Ginzburg 89. See also Ibn Laṭif’s mode of address to an elect disciple in his Ṣurat ʿOlam (Form of the World) and his declaration of the exceptional revelation of secrets in his work; Yossi Esudri, “Studies on the Philosophy of R. Isaac Ibn Latif: Profile, Knowledge and Prophecy and a Critical Edition of Zurat ‘Olam” (PhD diss.; 2 vols.; Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2008) 2:67, 2:11.

87 In the case of Abulafia, this holds true both for his three commentaries on the Guide of the Perplexed and for his independent treatises. See, for instance, Abulafia’s assertion of the forgetfulness of divine names, which for him form the uppermost region of sitrey torah, in Abraham Abulafia, Sefer Hammeliṣ (ed. Amnon Gross; Jerusalem, 2001) 55. Abulafia’s revelation of secrets is very much affected, as Idel has claimed, by his strong messianic consciousness: see, for instance, Abraham Abulafia, Sefer Sitrey Torah (ed. Amnon Gross; Jerusalem, 2002) 16; and cf. Moshe Idel, “Abraham Abulafia’s Works and Doctrine” (PhD diss., 2 vols.; Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1976) 395–418. On Abulafia’s commentaries on the Guide of the Perplexed, see Moshe Idel, “On Sitrey Torah in Abraham Abulafia’s Kabbalah,” Religion and Politics in Jewish Thought: Essays in Honor of Aviezer Ravitzky (ed. Benjamin Brown et al.; Jerusalem: Zalman-Shazar Institute and Israel Democracy Institute, 2012) 371–458 (Hebrew); and for a list of earlier studies on this issue, see ibid., 377 n. 19.

88 In an exploration of the phenomenon of the secret, Michael Taussig argues that it is common that the dynamics of revelation and concealment not only involve inauguration and transmission of knowledge, but continuously generate more secrets; Michael Taussig, Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999) 269.