Abstract This article examines three debates in the 8th/14th-century Eastern Islamic world regarding a specific divine attribute. They involve Kamāl al-Dīn al-Andukānī (fl. 777/1375), a Māturīdī theologian, and three students of ʿAḍud al-Dīn al-Ījī (d. 756/1355) discussing the nature of divine speech. These debates illuminate an understudied aspect of al-Ījī’s doctrinal development and his immediate 14th-century reception through the lens of a Māturīdī author. A close reading of the testimonies of the historical figures involved reveals that, despite al-Mawāqif being al-Ījī’s magnum opus , it does not represent his final position on the nature of divine speech.
Abstract The “one in number” that the falāsifa inherit from Aristotle undergoes philosophically interesting transformations in their works. By tracing these transformations in the metaphysical work of al-Fārābī, Yaḥyā Ibn ʿAdī, and Avicenna, it is possible to see how central the “one in number” is for Yaḥyā Ibn ʿAdī’s and Avicenna’s ontology of essence. This will also allow to shed new light on the relation between essence and unity in Avicenna. He creates the basis for his systematic separation of essence and unity by hypostatizing the unity of individuals in external reality through the “one in number.”
Abstract This article reexamines the problem of dating the Longer Theology of Aristotle on the basis of newly identified textual evidence. Drawing on the Judeo-Arabic manuscripts preserved in the Second Firkovich Collection of the National Library of Russia, together with medieval Arabic sources, it identifies previously unnoticed quotations from the Longer Theology in al-Tīfāšī’s Surūr al-nafs and demonstrates that the treatise was already in circulation by the 13th century. The article also establishes a terminus post quem by identifying a series of verbatim and near-verbatim parallels between the Longer Theology and Ibn Suwār’s Maqāla fī baqāʾ al-nafs al-nāṭiqa , arguing that the compiler of the pseudepigraph incorporated substantial portions of Ibn Suwār’s treatise into his own work. Finally, the absence of specifically Avicennian terminology and doctrines, together with the intellectual milieu shared by Ibn Suwār, al-Tawḥīdī, and Miskawayh, provides new evidence for dating the work. It is argued that the Longer Theology was most probably compiled within Miskawayh’s circle between the 970s and the 1030s.
Abstract This article presents and analyzes a twelfth-century philosophical correspondence between Rashīd al-Dīn Waṭwāṭ and Sharaf al-Zamān al-Īlāqī concerning Avicennan modal logic. Their debate focuses specifically on the conversion ( ʿaks mustawī ) of the universal negative conventional proposition. By examining their exchanges, the paper highlights the intellectual friction and terminological ambiguities prevalent in post-Avicennan logic. The correspondence reveals how mutual misunderstandings ultimately led to a logical stalemate. Furthermore, this study underscores the historical significance of their debate for the development of Arabic logic and includes a critical edition of the texts in the appendix.
Abstract This article outlines how post-Avicennian logicians in the 12th to 14th centuries debated and reformulated the traditional account of assent ( taṣdīq ), the epistemic counterpart to conception ( taṣawwur ). Certain comments by Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī prompted a number of mid-13th-century logicians to revisit the conception–assent division with careful attention to the question of whether assent can strictly be counted as knowledge. In the late 13th century, two logicians answered in the affirmative by proposing novel accounts of assent that treated it as apprehension ( idrāk ) of the factuality or non-factuality of a propositional relation. The discussion culminates in the 14th century in Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s analytically precise theory of idhʿān (“acceptance”). Throughout, the article highlights the specific problems at stake relating to the ontology of assent and the very structure of logic, and it shows how the participants in the debate prefigured certain aspects of the ethos of “verification” ( taḥqīq ) that characterized later post-classical scholarship.
