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THE POLITICAL CONTROVERSY OVER GRAECO-ARABIC PHILOSOPHY AND SUFISM IN NASRID GOVERNMENT: THE CASE OF IBN AL-KHATIB IN AL-ANDALUS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2015

Ali Humayun Akhtar
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Abstract

During the reign of the Nasrid sultan Muhammad V in 14th-century Granada, the renowned literary figure Lisan al-Din ibn al-Khatib rose to the office of vizier and chief dignitary. A text on Graeco-Arabic philosophy and Sufism that he wrote under court patronage, Rawdat al-Taʿrif fi al-Hubb al-Sharif (The Garden of Knowledge of Noble Love), became the centerpiece of a famous court case against him that led to his downfall. Historians have had difficulty interpreting the case because of its political context. Was Ibn al-Khatib's demise really about his philosophical and mystical ideas given his entanglement in power rivalries at the court? Scholars have suggested that Ibn al-Khatib's text was used merely as a pretext to remove him from power. In contrast, I argue that the specific power rivalry between the chief qadi and Ibn al-Khatib only escalated into a court case because, at a time when Sufis were controversial, the qadi read Ibn al-Khatib's Sufi-inspired doctrines as a claim on his religious authority. Ibn al-Khatib's ideas, rather than a pretext for prosecution, were the necessary condition for the power rivalry to erupt into a court case. This reading of the case highlights the way intellectual debates shaped contingent political processes in the medieval Islamic world.

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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , May 2015 , pp. 323 - 342
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I thank Dr. Everett K. Rowson for his feedback on an earlier version of this article and Dr. Cynthia Robinson for inviting me to participate in the Cornell-CSIC conference in Madrid, “Constructions of Devotion: The Religious Life of the Nasrids,” where I presented a paper that was the basis of this article. I also thank the four anonymous IJMES reviewers and the IJMES editors for their thoughtful and valuable feedback.

1 For an overview of Ibn al-Khatib's work and political career, see al-Maqqari, , Nafh al-Tib min Ghusn al-Andalus al-Ratib, vol. 5, ed. Abbas, Ihsan (Beirut: Dar al-Sadir, 1988), 75–112Google Scholar.

2 Gómez, Emilio García, Foco de Antigua luz sobre la Alhambra: Desde un texto de Ibn al-Jatib em 1362 (Madrid: Instituto Egipcio de Estudios Islamicos en Madrid, 1988)Google Scholar.

3 Secall, María Isabel Calero, “El proceso de Ibn al-Jatib,” al-Qantara 22 (2001): 421–61Google Scholar; Simón, Emilio de Santiago, El polígrafo Granadino Ibn al-Jatib y el sufismo: aportaciones para su estudio (Granada: Disputación Provincial y Departamento de Historia del Islam de la Universidad, 1983)Google Scholar. See also Delgado, Jorge Lirola, “Ibn al-Jatib,” in Diccionario de autores y obras andalusíes, ed. Delgado, Jorge Lirola and Vilchez, José Miguel Puerta (Granada: El Legado Andalusí, 2002), 643–98Google Scholar. Muhammad Bencherifa has argued that the nisba of the author typically referred to as al-Nubahi is actually al-Bunnahi, “al-Bunnahi la al-Nubahi,” Académia: Revue de l’académie du Royaume du Maroc 8 (1998), 17–89.

4 Key works by Maribel Fierro and Vincent Cornell on Maghribi and Andalusian Sufism in a political context include Fierro, Maribel, La heterodoxia en Andalusian Spain durante el periodo omaya (Madrid: Instituto Hispano-Arabe de Cultura, 1987)Google Scholar; Fierro, , “The Polemic about the karamat al-awliyaʾ and the Development of Sufism in Andalusian Spain Fourth/Tenth—Fifth/Eleventh Centuries,” Bulletin of the School of African and Oriental Studies 2 (1992): 236–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fierro, , “Opposition to Sufism in Andalusian Spain,” in Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversy and Polemics, ed. De Jong, Frederick and Radtke, Bernd (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 174–206Google Scholar; Cornell, Vincent, “Faqih Versus Faqir in Marinid Morocco: Epistemological Dimensions of a Polemic,” in Islamic Mysticism Contested, 207–24Google Scholar; and Cornell, , Realm of the Saint (Austin, Tex.: University of Texas Press, 1998)Google Scholar.

5 Alexander Knysh analyzes some of the text's key arguments and demonstrates its connection to a larger controversy over Ibn ʿArabi in al-Andalus in Ibn ʿArabi in the Later Islamic Tradition: The Making of a Polemical Image (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1999), 172–96.

6 On Qasi, Ibn, see Mahdisme et millenarisme en islam, ed. García-Arenal, Mercedes (Aix-en-Provence: Édisud, 2001)Google Scholar; D. R. Goodrich, “A Sufi Revolt in Portugal: Ibn Qasi and his Kitab Khalʿ al-Naʿlayn” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1978); Qasi, Ibn, Kitab Khalʿ al-Naʿlayn, ed. al-Amrani, M. (Safi: IMBH, 1997)Google Scholar; and Josef Dreher, “Das Imamat des islamischen Mystikers Abulqasim Ahmad b. al-Husain b. Qasi” (PhD diss., Universität Bonn, 1985).

7 Knysh explores important parallels between the legacies of Ibn al-Khatib and Ibn Khaldun as two statesmen responding to Ibn Qasi's tumultuous Sufi rebellion during the Almoravid period in Ibn ʿArabi in the Later Islamic Tradition, 172–96.

8 Ibn Khaldun's overview of these events is summarized in al-Maqqari, Nafh al-Tib, 5:75–112.

9 Delgado, “Ibn al-Jatib,” 643–98.

10 Secall, “El proceso de Ibn al-Jatib,” 421–61.

11 Fierro, “Opposition to Sufism in al-Andalus,” 174–206; Vincent Cornell, “Faqih versus Faqir in Marinid Morocco,” 207–24; Knysh, Alexander, “Ibn al-Khatib,” in The Literature of al-Andalus, ed. Menocal, María Rosa, Scheindlin, Raymond P., and Sells, Michael (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 358–72Google Scholar.

12 Averroes’ arguments that scholars should scale back use of Ashʿarite theological methods in the Islamic sciences in favor of Aristotelian logic and Aristotelian-Neoplatonic cosmological doctrines appear to have attracted enough scholarly criticism to cause his dismissal as chief judge. Likewise, despite al-Ghazali's public criticism of the philosophers’ doctrines about nonbodily resurrection, God's knowledge of the universals rather than the particulars, and the eternity of the world, al-Ghazali faced scholarly accusations that his works were steeped in problematic doctrines drawn from the philosophers’ and Sufis’ cosmological theories. On the controversy over Averroes’ philosophical doctrines, see the analysis offered by Albert Hourani and Charles Butterworth in Averroes, On the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy (Fasl al-Maqal), trans. George F. Hourani (London: Luzac, 1961); Averroes, , Decisive Treatise and Epistle Dedicatory (Fasl al-Maqal), trans. Butterworth, Charles. E. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 2001)Google Scholar.

13 On al-Ghazali's encouragement of integrating the logical sciences into a more philosophical form of Ashʿarite theology, and on the transmitters of al-Ghazali's work in al-Andalus, see Griffel, Frank, al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cornell, Realm of the Saint, 3–31.

14 Scholars in al-Andalus were asking this question as far back as the 10th century during the scholarly controversy over the Maliki scholar Ibn Masarra of Cordoba. His theological treatises, which were officially condemned by the caliph and a group of fellow scholars in the mid-10th century, integrated doctrines on the soul and intellect in Neoplatonic cosmology into an esoteric reading of the Qurʾan that drew for methodological inspiration on the Sufi Sahl al-Tustari's work. See Hernandez, Miguel Cruz, “La persecucion anti-massari durante el reinado de ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Nasrid li-Din Allah segun Ibn Hayyan,” al-Qantara 2 (1981): 51–67Google Scholar; and Fierro, La heterodoxia, Section 9.

15 Alexander Treiger and Vincent Cornell have shown that Sufi debates about knowledge, ritual, and authority were fundamentally scholarly debates given how much of the Ghazalian Sufi tradition was transmitted by scholars. Treiger, Alexander, Inspired Knowledge in Islamic Thought (New York: Routledge, 2011), 48–80Google Scholar; Cornell, “Faqih Versus Faqir in Marinid Morocco,” 207–24; Cornell, Realm of the Saint, 93–154.

16 Kenneth Garden, Vincent Cornell, and Delfina Serrano have traced the development of this controversy among the scholars and political rulers, highlighting its political implications. Kenneth Garden, “al-Ghazali's Contested Ihya’ ʿUlum al-Din and Its Critics in Khorasan and the Maghrib” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2005), 166–79; Serrano, Delfina, “Why Did the Scholars of Andalusian Spain Distrust al-Ghazali: Ibn Rushd al-Jadd's Fatwa on Awliyaʾ Allah,” Der Islam 83 (2006): 137–56Google Scholar; Cornell, Realm of the Saint, 1–33.

17 Treiger, Inspired Knowledge in Islamic Thought, 48–80.

18 Knysh has shown how Ibn al-Khatib and Ibn Khaldun overlap significantly in their representations of Andalusian Sufis as very philosophical, for they both indicate that the Sufis mixed philosophical and theological notions in cosmology with unique claims of religious authority. See Knysh, Ibn ʿArabi in the Later Islamic Tradition, 167–200. An important question in this context is whether Ibn al-Khatib was deliberately appropriating aspects of Andalusian Sufism's philosophical and mystical doctrines to bolster the political legitimacy of the Nasrids, who already integrated Sufism into Nasrid political ceremonial. See n. 21 on Sufism in Nasrid ceremonial.

19 On the connections between Graeco-Arabic cosmological doctrines, esoteric scriptural hermeneutics, and Fatimid Ismaʿili religious authority, see Walker, Paul, Early Philosophical Shiism: The Ismaʿili Falsafa of Abu Yaʿqub al-Sijistani (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 3–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Maribel Fierro highlights how in addition to incorporating Graeco-Arabic philosophy and Sufism into their political culture, the Almohads sidelined the Maliki scholars’ religious authority by hiring a new rank of scholars known as the ṭalaba. Fierro's work also suggests that Averroes, though Maliki in jurisprudence, may have been one of these ṭalaba. See Fierro, Maribel, “Le Mahdi Ibn Tumart et al-Andalus: l’elaboration de la legitimite Almohade,” in Mahdisme et Millenarisme en Islam, 107–24Google Scholar; and Fricaud, E., “Les ṭalaba dans la société almohade,” al-Qantara 18 (1997): 331–88Google Scholar.

21 On Nasrid patronage of Sufism and the early connections between Nasrid political legitimacy and Sufi religious authority, including the dynasty's presentation of the founder as a Sufi saint, see Boloix-Gallardo, Bárbara, De la Taifa de Arjona al Reino Nazarí de Granada (1232–1246): en torno a los orígenes de un estado y de una dinastía (Jaen: Instituto de Estudios Giennenses, 2005), 58–76Google Scholar.

22 On this text as one written under court patronage, see al-Maqqari, Nafh al-Tib, 7:100.

23 The term ḥikma (philosophy, wisdom) is a somewhat elusive term that from al-Andalus to Iraq overlapped with the term falsafa (Graeco-Arabic philosophy), the former term covering a broader semantic range. The term ḥikma covers a wide variety of movements and figures integrating theological and philosophical knowledge through methods often involving “manifest-hidden” (bāṭin-ẓāhir) scriptural esotericism. The metaphysics historically associated with ḥikma is found in a mix of fields such as mysticism, astrology, alchemy, and the elaboration of scriptural cosmology that was often presented according to this bāṭin-ẓāhir hermeneutical paradigm. Beyond the better known channels of the schools of al-Kindi, al-ʿAmiri, al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and the rest of the classical Graeco-Arabic philosophers (falāsifa), the broader philosophers or “sages” (ḥukamāʾ) seem to include figures such as al-Hakim al-Tirmidhi of Iraq, Ibn Masarra of al-Andalus, and the Ikhwan al-Safaʾ. For discussion of this term, see Van Bladel, Kevin, The Arabic Hermes: From Pagan Sage to Prophet of Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Karamustafa, Ahmet, Sufism: The Formative Period (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 44–51Google Scholar; and Sands, Kristen, Sufi Commentaries on the Qurʾan in Classical Islam (New York: Routledge, 2006), 35–64Google Scholar.

24 al-Khatib, Ibn, Rawdat al-Taʿrif bi-l-Hubb al-Sharif, ed. ʿAtaʾ, ʿAbd al-Qadir Ahmad (Cairo: Dar al-Fikr al-ʿArabi, 1968), 299Google Scholar.

25 Examples of Andalusi predecessors of this kind of understanding of ḥikma and the ḥukamāʾ include the philosopher Ibn Masarra and the Sufi Ibn Barrajan, both of whom numbered among the Islamic scholars. Ibn Masarra's 10th-century work integrates cosmological doctrines into a bāṭin-ẓāhir esoteric paradigm and attributes this knowledge to the ḥukamāʾ and ʿulamaʾ as two overlapping categories. He also points out that the philosophers (falāsifa) agree with his results despite their neglect of the “language of prophecy,” which Ibn Masarra says is “clearer” and more sound. Similarly, Ibn Barrajan's 12th-century Sufi work alludes to philosophers as “those who misunderstood ḥikma,” echoing Ibn Masarra's distinction between the philosophers and the ḥukamāʾ. Both figures characterize the philosophers as individuals whose cosmology neglected the language of prophecy regarding divine agency while correctly understanding much of the world's phenomena in their cosmology. On Ibn Masarra, see n. 14.

26 Ibn al-Khatib, Rawdat al-Taʿrif, 355.

27 On the use of Neoplatonic notions of love in Sufi soteriology both in al-Andalus and in centers to the east, see Rizvi, Sajjad, “Mysticism and Philosophy: Ibn ʿArabi and Mulla Sadra,” in The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, ed. Adamson, Peter and Taylor, Richard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 224–46Google Scholar.

28 Chen, Ludwig C. H., “Knowledge of Beauty in Plato's Symposium,” Classic Quarterly 33 (1983): 66–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reeve, C. D. C., “Telling the Truth About Love: Plato's Symposium,” The Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 8 (1992): 89–114CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 This eschatology problem moves beyond the already contested issue of the Greek philosophers’ notion of incorporeal soteriology, and this case echoes al-Farabi's eschatology excluding ignorant souls. See David Reisman, “Farabi,” 52–71.

30 Ibn al-Khatib, Rawdat al-Taʿrif, 356.

31 Ibid., 383.

32 Al-Farabi's Aristotelian taxonomy of the appetitive, sensitive, imaginative, and rational, all of which are integrated into a larger pursuit of contact with the Active Intellect, is analogous to Ibn al-Khatib's presentation of philosophical cognition. See Reisman, “Farabi,” 52–71.

33 Ibn al-Khatib, Rawdat al-Taʿrif, 384.

34 Many of these elements echo doctrines of Andalusi Sufis whom Ibn al-Khatib references. For example, in the 12th century Ibn Barrajan distinguished between corporeal realities and spiritual realities and presented the goal of the Sufis as transcending perception of corporeality in the world's ẓāhir in order to grasp the level of spiritual realities in the bāṭin—the level at which God's agency is manifest (ẓāhir). He also suggests a kind of identification with that agency in the context of a microcosm-macrocosm relationship in which individuals like prophets become similar to angels in the latter's perfect obedience to God. In some ways, this conception of agency, and this notion of mystical identification with aspects of the world, parallels al-Ghazali's discussion of the Beautiful Names as they are recognized in the created world.

35 Ibn al-Khatib, Rawdat al-Taʿrif, 379–80.

36 Perhaps what most clearly marks this as Sufi is the ritual element of dhikr as a key vehicle for the philosophical pursuit of love and manifestation of beauty. In a similar context, Rizvi discusses Ibn ʿArabi's and Mullah Sadra's integration of Neoplatonic soteriology into their mysticism. Rizvi, Sajjad, “Mysticism and Philosophy: Ibn ʿArabi and Mulla Sadra,” in Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, 224–46Google Scholar.

37 al-Khatib, Ibn, Rawdat al-Taʿrif, 384Google Scholar.

38 This debate was a contentious issue in al-Andalus and is most centrally identifiable in the controversy over saint miracles in the 11th century. Scholars appear to have assimilated notions of saintly miracles into biographical dictionaries by the 12th and 13th centuries, perhaps reflecting the growing overlap of Sufi and scholarly circles. That some political figures in the Ottoman era presented themselves as both Sufi and scholarly reflects the simultaneous importance of saintly and scholarly religious authority in Islamic history. See Fierro, “The Polemic about the Karamat al-Awliyaʾ,” 236–49; Fierro, , “La religion,” in Los Reinos de Taifas en el Siglo XI (Historia de Espana Menendez Pidal vol. 8:1), ed. Molins, M. Viguera (Madrid: Espasa Calpe, 1994), 437–550Google Scholar.

39 The hagiographical text of Tahir al-Sadafi is of particular interest. See Ferhat, Halima, “As-Sirr al-Masun de Tahir as-Sadafi: Un itineraire mystique au xiie siècle,” al-Qantara 16 (1995): 237–88Google Scholar; Fierro, “The Polemic about the Karamat al-Awliyaʾ,” 236–49.

40 Ibn Sabʿin, like Ibn ʿArabi, is an important example in this context. Even among Sufis interested in philosophical doctrines, there were debates about where those doctrines fit within the various modes of knowledge that were part of Sufism. Vincent Cornell has traced ways that individual Sufis such as Ibn Sabʿin worked out these epistemic debates, as well as how different notions of epistemology were tied up with different models of authority. Vincent Cornell, “The Circle of Knowledge (al-Ihata): Soul, Intellect, and the Oneness of Existence in the Doctrine of Ibn Sabʿin,” 31–48; Cornell, “The Way of the Axial Intellect: The Islamic Hermetism of Ibn Sabʿin,” 41–79; Cornell, “Faqih Versus Faqir in Marinid Morocco: Epistemological Dimensions of a Polemic,” 207–24.

41 Al-Maqqari, , Nafh al-Tib, 103Google Scholar.

42 Ibid., 111, 118.

43 Various philosophers and philosophical Sufis, especially in al-Andalus, were accused of ḥulūl. Ibn Sabʿin and his student al-Shushtari, both Sufis who integrated Greek philosophy and Sufism, were accused of ḥulūl. Ibn Taymiyya associated waḥdat al-wujūd with Ibn ʿArabi and accused the doctrine of promoting a kind of ḥulūl. In the form of intellectual ittiṣāl and ittiḥād, philosophers were also accused of ḥulūl. Ismaʿili Shiʿism during the Fatimid era was likewise subjected to these accusations. See Alvarez, Lourdes M., Abu al-Hasan al-Shushtari: Songs of Love and Devotion (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2009), 15–20Google Scholar; William Chittick, “Waḥdat al-Wujūd/Waḥdat al-Shuhūd,” EI2; and Marshall G. S. Hodgson, “Ghulāt,” EI2. See also Calero Sacall's discussion of this accusation in Calero Secall, “El proceso de Ibn al-Jatib,” 421–61.

44 Knysh, Ibn ʿArabi in the Later Islamic Tradition, 172–96.

45 Al-Maqqari, Nafh al-Tib, 123.

46 Ibid., 126.

47 Ibid.

48 On the widespread use of ruqya, or medicinal recitation, and the simultaneous prohibition of magic, see Toufic Fahd “Rukya,” EI2.

49 Al-Maqqari, Nafh al-Tib, 127.

50 Despite al-Ghazali's criticisms of the philosophers and Fatimid Ismaʿilis, his own philosophical theology and Sufism ironically became the object of the same kinds of accusations from critics such as Ibn Taymiyya. On al-Ghazali's accusations against philosophers over these three issues, see Marmura, Michael, “The Logical Role of the Argument from Time in the Tahafut's Second Proof for the World's Pre-Eternity,” The Muslim World 49 (1959): 306–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Marmura, , “al-Ghazali on Bodily Resurrection and Causality in the Tahafut and Iqtisad,” Aligarh Journal of Islamic Thought 2 (1989): 46–58Google Scholar; Marmura, , “Some Aspects of Avicenna's Theory of God's Knowledge of Particulars,” JAOS 83 (1962): 299–312Google Scholar; Griffel, al-Ghazali's Philosophical Theology.

51 Al-Maqqari, Nafh al-Tib, 180.

52 Ibid., 181.

53 Fromherz, Alan, Ibn Khaldun: Life and Times (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 60–97Google Scholar.

54 Al-Maqqari, Nafh al-Tib, 110.