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Democracy under the Caliphs: Alfarabi's Unusual Understanding of Popular Rule

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 April 2015

Alexander I. Orwin
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Abstract

The account of “democracy” presented in the writings of Alfarabi differs considerably from all other treatments of the subject, both ancient and modern. The goal of this article is to elucidate the falāsifa's view of democracy and account for its unusual character, by showing how appropriate it is to both the meaning of the term in medieval Arabic and the political situation of their own time. Questions such as internal order, war, immigration, philosophy, and their relationship to democracy as understood by the falāsifa are all duly considered. The article concludes with the suggestion that this peculiar sort of democracy nonetheless resembles modern democracy in one small but crucial respect.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 77 , Issue 2 , Spring 2015 , pp. 171 - 190
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2015 

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References

1 Alfarabi's most substantial discussion can be found in “The Political Regime,” trans. Butterworth, Charles, in Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, 2nd ed., ed. Parens, JoshuaMacfarland, Joseph C. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011), 36–55Google Scholar. Every citation will include both this English version and the Arabic edition Kitāb al-Siyāsa al-Madaniyya, ed. Najjar, Fauzi M. (Beirut: Dār al-Mashriq, 1993)Google Scholar. This will allow both Arabic and non-Arabic readers to check my references. To avoid confusion, the Arabic will be cited in square brackets. Among the medieval Islamic philosophers, Averroes (1126–1198) also provides an extensive treatment of democracy, in the form of a commentary on Plato's Republic. This work, which survives only in Hebrew, has been ably edited and translated by Rosenthal, Erwin (Averroes' Commentary on Plato's “Republic,” ed. Rosenthal, E. I. J. [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966])Google Scholar. It was translated yet again by Ralph Lerner, from whose edition I will cite (Averroes on Plato's “Republic,” trans. Lerner, Ralph [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974]Google Scholar). Space prevents me from treating Averroes's account in any detail, but I hope that a few footnotes will help to stimulate interest in it.

2 Mahdi, Muhsin, Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 144–46Google Scholar. Najjar, Fauzi M., “Democracy in Islamic Political Philosophy,” Studia Islamica, no. 50 (1980): 107–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Khalidi, Muhammad Ali, “Al-Fārābī on the Democratic City,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 11, no. 3 (2003): 379–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Other scholars who have made briefer comments on the question will also be cited. Another significant article on the subject, of which I became aware of only in the later stages of the publication of this article and am therefore unable to discuss, has been written by Malik Mufti. See Mufti, Malik, “The Many-Colored Cloak: Evolving Conceptions of Democracy in Islamic Political Thought,” American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 27, no. 2 (2010): 1–27.

3 For some useful scholarly discussions, which express widely varying points of view, see Gutas, Dimitri, “Galen's Synopsis of Plato's Laws and Fārābī's Talkhīṣ,” in The Ancient Tradition in Christian and Islamic Hellenism, ed. Endress, Gerhard and Kruk, Remke (Leiden: Research School CNWS, 1997), 101–19Google Scholar; Harvey, Steven, “Did Alfarabi Read Plato's Laws?,” Mediaevo Rivista di storia della philosophia medievale 28 (2003): 51–68Google Scholar; Parens, Joshua, Metaphysics as Rhetoric: Alfarabi's Summary of Plato's “Laws” (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Reisman, David C., “Plato's Republic in Arabic: A Newly Discovered Passage,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 14 (2004): 263–300CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This list is by no means comprehensive.

4 Shlomo Pines suggested that fragments of summaries or fragments of the Politics might have existed in medieval Islam. See Pines, Shlomo, “Aristotle's Politics in Arabic Philosophy,” Israel Oriental Studies 5 (1975): 150–60Google Scholar. Remi Brague cast doubt on some of Pines's evidence in Brague, Rémi, “Note sur la traduction arabe de la Politique, derechef, qu'elle n'existe pas,” Aristote Politique, ed. Aubenque, Pierre (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993), 423–33Google Scholar. Most importantly for our purposes, neither article cites any material from Books IV through VI, the books in which Aristotle's longest discussions of democracy occur.

5 I will cite the Republic by Stephanus numbers. I use the following editions: Plato, Republic, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1991), and Platonis Opera, vol. 4, ed. Joannes Burnet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).

6 Parens, Joshua, Introducing Alfarabi (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006)Google Scholar, 29ff.

7 As Christopher Colmo puts it, “Alfarabi recognizes more or less virtuous rulers even among the ignorant rulers” (Colmo, Christopher, Breaking with Athens: Alfarabi as Founder [Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005]Google Scholar, 92).

8 Butterworth translates this term as “traditional law.” It has some religious connotations but one may doubt whether the democratic sunna of total equality and freedom resembles the sunna or even stricter sharī‘a of Sunni Islam. Apart from this term, there is absolutely nothing resembling religious terminology in Alfarabi's account of democracy.

9 One of the most important features of the Arabic language is the derivation of most of its vocabulary from a selection of three-letter roots. We will encounter another crucial root, j-m-‘, in the ensuing argument. Butterworth translates the root f-ḍ-l as “virtuous” or “superior,” depending on the context. The phrase invariably translated as “virtuous city” is al-madīna al-fāḍila. It seems impossible to retain this connection in English translation.

10 Najjar has observed that none of the religious terms that figure in the contemporary debates about Islam and democracy appear in either Alfarabi's or Averroes's treatments of democracy, which have consequently been ignored by most contemporary Muslim scholars (Najjar, “Democracy in Islamic Political Philosophy,” 107–9).

11 Alfarabi, Alfarabi: The Political Writings, trans. Butterwoth, Charles (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001)Google Scholar, 93. See also Colmo, Alfarabi as Founder, 92–93.

12 For more on the meaning of this root, see Najjar, “Democracy in Islamic Political Philosophy,” 110. It is striking that contemporary Arabic has ceased to used this expression, preferring to import the modern European word in the form dīmuqratiyya.

13 The Arabic expression illā anna could perhaps be rendered more strongly as “except that.”

14 Mahdi describes these rulers as “functionaries who perform services for which they receive adequate financial honors or remunerations” (Mahdi, Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy, 145). While his general description is correct, the use of the term “functionaries” risks making this chaotic arrangement sound more ordered and bureaucratic than it actually is.

15 Alfarabi employs here the participle of the verb iḍṭarab, which in modern Arabic had come to signify riots.

16 Khalidi, “Al-Fārābī on the Democratic City,” 386.

17 Colmo also emphasizes democracy's virtues rather than its vices: Alfarabi “includes democracy among the most virtuous of the ignorant regimes.” Colmo then acknowledges how dependent Alfarabi's democracy is on the goods praised by the multitude (Colmo, Alfarabi as Founder, 94). He thus points to an interesting tension on which he does not elaborate. Miriam Galston states more unambiguously the tensions within democracy, which show “that the political community productive of the greatest evil can be productive of the greatest good.” But Galston, like Colmo, does not pursue the details. See Galston, Miriam, Politics and Excellence: The Political Philosophy of Alfarabi (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 179.

18 Majid Fakhry's matter-of-fact summary of the passage does not overlook this point: “Freedom in this city, verging on lawlessness, eventually generates a variety of perverse traits, pursuits, and desires, leading ultimately to widespread division and chaos” (Fakhry, Majid, Al-Fārābi, Founder of Islamic Neo-Platonism [Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2002]Google Scholar, 110).

19 Alfarabi's terminology on this point is not as clear and unambiguous as one might hope. In the passage just cited from the Political Regime (37.64 [69.16–70.4]), he uses the term ijtimā‘ to signify associations smaller than a city, and jamā‘a to signify associations larger than a city. Both terms share the same root and the difference in meaning is not evident from the context. Futhermore, in a parallel work that is often called the Virtuous City, Alfarabi uses ijtimā‘ to signify all kinds of communities, including national and multinational communities larger than a city. See Alfarabi, Alfarabi on the Perfect State (Kitāb Mabādi‘ Arā’ Ahl al-Madīna al-Fāḍila), trans. Walzer, Richard (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1985)Google Scholar, 228.11–13. The term ijtimā‘ in the discussion of the ignorant governments (Political Regime 46.94 [88.4], 47.95 [88.14], 47.96 [89.7], 47.97 [89.14], 49.104 [94.5]) seems to follow the usage of the Virtuous City. The subsequent discussion is intended to show that these imperial governments must in most cases be larger than a city.

20 In the case of the tyrannical city, one of the manuscripts reads “in the tyrannical cities” and the others read “in the tyrannical city” (Alfarabi, al-Siyāsa al-Madaniyya, ed. Najjar, 88.2–3, n3). According to the interpretation proposed here, the former reading makes more contextual sense. Butterworth seems to agree: he translates “the association of domination in the despotic cities” and “the association of freedom in the democratic city” (Political Regime 46.93 [88.2–3]).

21 Parens, Introducing Alfarabi, 83.

22 Alfarabi anticipates here a famous remark of Machiavelli: “As for the prince who goes out with his armies, who feeds on booty, pillage, and ransom and manages on what belongs to someone else, liberality is necessary, otherwise he would not be followed by his soldiers” (Machiavelli, Niccolò, The Prince, trans. Mansfield, Harvey [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998]CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 64).

23 Patricia Crone is a notable exception. She laments that in the Islamic world only Averroes and Ibn Khaldun followed up on Alfarabi's incipient efforts to scientifically analyze actual human societies. See Crone, Patricia, “Alfarabi's Imperfect Constitutions,” Mélanges de l'Université Saint-Joseph 57 (2004): 222–24Google Scholar.

24 Parens, Introducing Alfarabi, 82.

25 Alfarabi, Alfarabi: The Political Writings, 58.

26 The term “Arab” in classical times normally meant Bedouin, and that is almost certainly the case here. Alfarabi may have been of Turkish origins himself, so he would have known their habits quite well. See Mahdi, Muhsin, “Al-Fārābī,” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Gillispie, Charles Coulston (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971)Google Scholar, 4:523.

27 Butterworth has appended an extremely helpful footnote, in which he offers the alternative translation of “associational city” (Alfarabi, Political Regime 46.93n18).

28 This etymological connection would be very hard to render into readable English. Butterworth translates this verb as “brought together” and then “come together.”

29 See, for example, Montesquieu, De l'Esprit des lois, ed. Derathé, R. (Paris: Garnier, 1973)Google Scholar, 1.8.16 (135).

30 Parens, Introducing Alfarabi, 83.

31 Unlike Rome or even Athens, Alfarabi's democratic city does not establish an empire. Since authors such as Thucydides and Cicero seem to have left no traces in medieval Islam, we may wonder how much Alfarabi would have been aware of these empires.

32 As Averroes suggests explicitly: see Averroes, On Plato's “Republic,” 83.22.

33 Najjar's initial claim that Alfarabi discusses democracy “in abstraction” seems to deny this connection. And yet Najjar proceeds to note Alfarabi's talent for “authentic contemporary description” (Najjar, “Democracy in Islamic Political Philosophy,” 117–18). Does Najjar imply that Alfarabi is alluding to Baghdad? Khalidi discusses the connection between democracy and Baghdad much less ambiguously (Khalidi, “Al-Fārābī on the Democratic City,” 391–92).

34 It has been estimated that Baghdad may have had as many as 1.5 million inhabitants at its height. These were “a mixture of different nations, colours, and creeds. . . . [Baghdad's] poets, historians, and scholars are too numerous to mention” (Duri, A. A., “Baghdad,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam [Leiden: Brill, 1960]Google Scholar, 1:898–99).

35 Alfarabi was almost certainly born somewhere in Turkestan around 870. He probably studied in Bukhara and Marv before settling in Baghdad, and later spent several years studying in Constantinople and Haran. He then returned to Baghdad sometime after 910 and spent the most productive part of his career there. For as thorough a biography of Alfarabi as the fragmentary character of the sources permits, see Mahdi, “Al-Fārābī,” 523–26.

36 For a readable and informative account of Baghdad around the time of Alfarabi, see Kraemer, Joel L., Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam: The Cultural Revival during the Buyid Age (Leiden: E.J. Brill), 1992Google Scholar, 31ff.

37 Mahdi, “Al-Fārābī,” 524.

38 Averroes's democracy also suffers from military weakness, stemming from the unwillingness of the people to either pay taxes or fight wars (Averroes, On Plato's Republic, 84.17–85.7).

39 Averroes, On Plato's “Republic,” 84.14–15, 96.25–26.

40 Duri, “Baghdad,” 898, 900.

41 I therefore see more irony in Alfarabi's praise of the happiness of democracy than Khalidi does. Khalidi also takes Alfarabi's comments about unregulated sexuality rather literally (Khalidi, “Al-Fārābī on the Democratic City,” 386–87).

42 Khalidi, “Al-Fārābī on the Democratic City,” 390. How the virtuous city emerges from the city of necessity is rather mysterious. I cannot examine this question in any detail. It seems that the virtuous city emerges either from extreme diversity and luxury or bare, uncorrupt necessity.

43 Najjar, “Democracy in Islamic Political Philosophy,” 120.

44 Mahdi translates malik as “prince” rather than “king,” which seems somewhat misleading in the context of the present argument. See Alfarabi, Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, trans. Mahdi, Muhsin (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1962)Google Scholar, 43.18–19.

45 Mahdi implies a similar interpretation. He does not say that democracy helps establish the rule of the philosopher, but rather that it allows him “to pursue his desire in relative freedom” (Mahdi, Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy, 146).

46 Plato, Republic 557d1–9; cf. Khalidi, “Al-Fārābī on the Democratic City,” 380.

47 Fakhry notices the similarity between Alfarabi and Plato on this point. Both thinkers present democracy as “fertile ground for the emergence of every type of constitution” (Fakhry, Al-Fārābi, Founder of Islamic Neo-Platonism, 111).

48 Khalidi, “Al-Fārābī on the Democratic City,” 389–90.

49 Galston, Politics and Excellence, 179.