A030 - Jamal al-Din Rumi

 Rumi, Jalal al-Din

Rumi, Jalal ad-Din (Jalal ad-Din Rumi) (Jalal al-Din Rumi) (Mawlana) (Jelaluddin Balkhi) (Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī) (Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī) (Mowlānā) (b. c. September 30, 1207, Balkh [now in Afghanistan] — d. December 17, 1273).  Paramount mystical poet of Islam in the Persian language and the founder of the Mevlevi Order (the “Dancing Dervishes” or the “Whirling Dervishes”). 

Persians and Afghanis call Rumi “Jelaluddin Balkhi.”  He was born on September 30, 1207, in Balkh, in north Afghanistan, which was then part of the Persian Empire.  The name Rumi means “from Roman Anatolia.”  He was not known by that name, of course, until after his family, fleeing the threat of the invading Mongol armies, emigrated to Konya, Turkey, sometime between 1215 and 1220.  His father, Bahauddin Walad, was a theologian and jurist and a mystic of uncertain lineage.  Bahauddin Walad’s Maarif, a collection of notes, diarylike remarks, sermons, and strange accounts of visionary experiences, has shocked most of the conventional scholars who have tried to understand them.  He shows a startlingly sensual freedom in stating his union with God.  Rumi was instructed in his father’s secret inner life by a former student of his father, Burhanuddin Mahaqqiq.  Burhan and Rumi also studied Sanai and Attar.  At his father’s death, Rumi took over the position of sheikh in the dervish learning community in Konya.

Jalal ad-Din, who had been partially trained in mystical and traditional scholarship by his father, succeeded Baha ad-Din and remained at Konya, except for one brief journey, until his own death.

The life of Jalal ad-Din turns on a dramatic meeting in 1244 with the itinerant Dervish Shams ad-Din Tabrizi (Shams al-Din of Tabriz).  Shams moved into Rumi’s home and so dominated his life and thought that many of his writings, including a vast collection of poems, were dedicated to Shams and written under the pen name Shams.  Shams disappeared from Rumi’s life in 1248 as mysteriously as he had entered it, but, by that time, Rumi had begun an irreversible spiritual odyssey. 

With regards to the initial meeting with Shams, Rumi’s life seems to have been a fairly normal one for a religious scholar -- teaching, meditating, helping the poor -- until in the late fall of 1244 when he met a stranger who put a question to him.  That stranger was the wandering dervish, Shams of Tabriz, who had traveled throughout the Middle East searching and praying for someone who could “endure my company.”  A voice came, “What will you give in return?” “My head!” “The one you seek is Jelaluddin of Konya.”

The question Shams spoke made the learned professor faint to the ground.  We cannot be entirely certain of the question, but according to the most reliable account Shams asked who was greater, Muhammad or Bestami, for Bestami had said, “How great is my glory,” whereas Muhammad had acknowledged in his prayer to God, “We do not know You as we should.”

Rumi heard the depth out of which the question came and fell to the ground.  He was finally able to answer that Muhammad was greater, because Bestami had taken one gulp of the divine and stopped there, whereas for Muhammad the way was always unfolding.  There are various versions of this encounter, but whatever the facts, Shams and Rumi became inseparable.  Their friendship is one of the mysteries.  They spent months together without any human needs, transported into a region of pure conversation.  This ecstatic connection caused difficulties in the religious community.  Rumi’s students felt neglected.  Sensing the trouble, Shams disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared. 

Word came that Shams was in Damascus.  Rumi sent his son, Sultan Velad, to Syria to bring his friend back to Konya.  When Rumi and Shams met for the second time, they fell at each other’s feet, so that “no one knew who was lover and who the beloved.”  Shams stayed in Rumi’s home and was married to a young girl who had been brought up in the family.  Again the long mystical conversation (sohbet) began, and again the jealousies grew.

On the night of December 5, 1248, as Rumi and Shams were talking, Shams was called to the back door.  He went out, never to be seen again.  Most likely, he was murdered with the connivance of Rumi’s son, Allaedin.  If so, Shams indeed gave his head for the privilege of this mystical friendship.

The mystery of the Friend’s absence covered Rumi’s world.  He himself went out searching for Shams and journeyed again to Damascus.  It was there that he realized, Why should I seek? I am the same as he.  His essence speaks through me. 

I have been looking for myself?

The union became complete.  There was full fana, annihilation in the Friend.  Rumi’s devotion to Shams unleashed a torrent of rapturous lyric poems, many written in the name of the vanished dervish, with whom, as the “mirror” reflecting the Godhead, Rumi had come to identify himself.  Indeed, Rumi called the huge collection of his odes and quatrains Divani-i Shams-i Tabriz -- The Works of Shams of Tabriz.  After Sham’s death and Rumi’s merging with him, another companion was found, Saladin Zarkub, the goldsmith.  Saladin the Friend to whom Rumi addressed his poems, not so fierily as to Shams, but with quiet tenderness.  When Saladin died, Husam Chelebi, Rumi’s scribe and favorite student, assumed this role.  Rumi claimed that Husam was the source, the one who understood the vast secret order of the Mathnawi, that great work that shifts so fantastically from theory to folklore to jokes to ecstative poetry.  For the last twelve years of his life, Rumi dictated the six volumes of this masterwork to Husam.  Comprising six books and some 27,000 couplets, the Mathnavi (Mathnawi-i Ma‘nawi) sets forth loosely connected themes, often narrated as parables or anecdotes in picturesque, highly alliterative verse.  Among mystically minded Muslims, the Mathnavi is known as “the Qur’an in Persian.”  Commentaries on it, imitations of it, works relating to it or inspired by it abound in various languages throughout the Muslim world.

Rumi also inspired an independent Sufi order (a tariqa), the Mawlawiya (Mevlevi), named after the respectful

title mawlana accorded the Shaikh by his disciples.  The order was later publicized among European travelers as the “Whirling Dervishes,” a name that reflects the prominent role of ritual dance in the Mawlawis’ weekly observance of sama’ -- congregational music.

Jalal ad-Din Rumi died on December 17, 1273.  He was buried beside his father at Konya.  His shrine, around which the Mevlevi (Mawlawi) conventicle grew up, remains, even under the secular Turkish republic, a revered place of pilgrimage.

Rumi see Rumi, Jalal ad-Din
Jalal ad-Din Rumi see Rumi, Jalal ad-Din
Jalal al-Din Rumi see Rumi, Jalal ad-Din
Mawlana see Rumi, Jalal ad-Din
Jelaluddin Balkhi see Rumi, Jalal ad-Din
Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī see Rumi, Jalal ad-Din

A029 - Mu'awiya ibn Abi Sufyan

  Mu‘awiya I ibn Abi Sufyan

Mu‘awiya I ibn Abi Sufyan (Mu'awiyah I) (Moawiyah) (b. 602, Mecca, Arabia - d. April/May 680, Damascus).  Founder of the Umayyad dynasty of caliphs based in Syria (r.661-680).  He had been a crypto-Muslim since 628, and made his Islam manifest in 630.  His sister Umm Habiba was married to the Prophet.  He functioned as a commander against the Byzantines, and in 646 Syria and al-Jazira were under his control.  Against the Byzantines, he established strong garrisons along the coast and instituted Arab maritime warfare in the Mediterranean.  The Caliph ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan, while being besieged in his Medinan residence in 656, sent word to Mu‘awiya asking for help, but the relief force turned back on learning that ‘Uthman had been killed.  Thereafter Mu‘awiya bided his time while the Prophet’s son-in-law ‘Ali sought to establish himself as leader.  After the Battle of the Camel, ‘Ali elicited Mu‘awiya’s oath of allegiance, but, with the support of ‘Amr ibn al-‘As, Mu‘awiya decided to fight ‘Ali, alleging vengeance for ‘Uthman.  After the Battle of Siffin in 656, Mu‘awiya was recognized as caliph by the Syrians and by ‘Amr ibn al-‘As, who then went to conquer Egypt.  While ‘Ali’s position grew weaker in Iraq fighting the Kharijites, Mu‘awiya again bided his time.  ‘Ali was murdered by a Kharijite in 661, and Mu ‘awiya became caliph.  To posterity, his image is ambivalent.  He was seen not just as the man who perverted the caliphate into kingship, but also as a clever and successful ruler.  He is either cursed or venerated, the legitimacy of his caliphate being a far more important issue than its historical nature.

Muʿāwiyah I was an early Islamic leader and founder of the great Umayyad dynasty of caliphs. He fought against the fourth caliph, ʿAlī (Muhammad’s son-in-law), seized Egypt, and assumed the caliphate after ʿAlī’s assassination in 661. He restored unity to the Muslim empire and made Damascus its capital. He reigned from 661 to 680.

It is ironic that a man who was to become the political-religious head of Islam was born into a clan (ʿAbd Shams) that rejected the Prophet Muhammad in his home city, Mecca, and continued to oppose him on the battlefield after he had emigrated to Medina. Muʿāwiyah did not become a Muslim until Muhammad had conquered Mecca and had reconciled his former enemies by gifts. Possibly as a part of Muhammad’s policy of conciliation, Muʿāwiyah was made a scribe in his service. But Muʿāwiyah’s contributions to Islamic history are wholly associated with his career in Syria, which began shortly after the death of the Prophet, when he, along with his brother Yazīd, served in the tribal armies sent from Arabia against the Byzantine forces in Syria.

Upon the death of Yazīd in 640, Muʿāwiyah was appointed governor of Damascus by the caliph ʿUmar and gradually gained mastery over other areas of Syria. By 647 Muʿāwiyah had built a Syrian tribal army strong enough to repel a Byzantine attack and in subsequent years to take the offensive against the Byzantines in campaigns that resulted in the capture of Cyprus (649) and Rhodes (654) and a devastating defeat of the Byzantine navy off the coast of Lycia in Anatolia (655). At the same time, Muʿāwiyah periodically dispatched land expeditions into Anatolia. All these campaigns, however, came to a halt with the accession of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib to the caliphate, when a new and decisive phase of Muʿāwiyah’s career began.

As a kinsman of the slain caliph ʿUthmān, Muʿāwiyah bore the duty of revenge. Because ʿAlī neglected to apprehend and punish ʿUthmān’s murderers, Muʿāwiyah regarded him as an accomplice to the murder and refused to acknowledge his caliphate. Thereupon ʿAlī marched to the Euphrates border of Syria and engaged Muʿāwiyah’s troops at the famous Battle of Ṣiffīn (657). Muʿāwiyah’s guile turned near defeat into a truce. Resorting to a trick that played upon the religious sensibilities of ʿAlī’s forces, he persuaded the enemy to enter into negotiations that ultimately cast doubt on the legitimacy of ʿAlī’s caliphate and alienated a sizable number of his supporters. When these former supporters—the Khārijites—rose in rebellion against ʿAlī, Muʿāwiyah took advantage of ʿAlī’s difficulties in Iraq to send a force to seize control of Egypt. Thus, when ʿAlī was assassinated in 661, Muʿāwiyah held both Syria and Egypt and, as commander of the largest force in the Muslim empire, had the strongest claim to the caliphate. ʿAlī’s son Ḥasan was persuaded to remove himself from public life in exchange for a subsidy, which Muʿāwiyah provided.

During his 20-year governorship of Syria and during the war against ʿAlī, Muʿāwiyah had succeeded in recruiting and training a large Arab tribal army that was remarkably loyal to him. It was therefore natural that he should base his caliphate in Syria, with Damascus as the new capital of Islam. But, if Muʿāwiyah’s chief support came from the tribes of Syria, the tribes of other areas posed the chief threat to his reign. It is not surprising then that early Umayyad government followed certain tribal principles as a means of retaining and winning the loyalty of the Arabs. The clearest examples of such a policy are provided by Muʿāwiyah’s adoption of two tribal institutions: the council of notables—the shūrā—which was convoked by the caliph for consultation and the delegations—wufūd—which were sent by tribes to keep the caliph informed of their interest. Within this context, Muʿāwiyah ruled as a traditional Arab chieftain. Although he may not have consciously encouraged renewed warfare against non-Muslim territory as a means of directing Bedouin aggressive tendencies into channels that would aggrandize Islam and stabilize his own power, there is no doubt that warfare served these purposes during his reign, and in this respect it is significant that Muʿāwiyah used the Syrian army only for domestic defense and for campaigns against the Byzantines, who threatened the borders of Syria.

During the civil war, Muʿāwiyah had purchased a truce with the Byzantines in order to free his army for the struggle against ʿAlī. Soon after his accession to the caliphate, however, he curtailed the payment of tribute and sent expeditions against the Byzantines almost yearly. These campaigns served both to fulfill Muʿāwiyah’s obligation to conduct holy war (jihad) against unbelievers and to keep his Syrian troops in fighting trim. Otherwise, the war against Byzantium was inconclusive. Even though two expeditions reached the vicinity of Constantinople, the Arabs never succeeded in permanently occupying territory in Asia Minor beyond the Taurus Mountains. Troops stationed in other parts of Muʿāwiyah’s empire were sent on campaigns into remote areas. In North Africa, raids were conducted as far west as Tlemcen in present-day Algeria. More permanent, however, was the conquest of Tripolitania and Ifrīqīyah, which was consolidated by the foundation in 670 of the garrison city of Kairouan, soon to become the base for further expansion later in the Umayyad period. At the same time, a vigorous campaign was being conducted in the east by means of which Muslim borders were extended to the Oxus River and Khorāsān was established as an Umayyad province.

It had become apparent during the reigns of the first caliphs that tribal tradition and the practices of Muhammad in Medina were inadequate resources for administering a vast empire. To solve this problem, Muʿāwiyah resorted to a solution that lay at hand in Syria—that is, the imitation of administrative procedures that had evolved during centuries of Roman and Byzantine rule there. Although the process by which the borrowing took place is not fully known, it is clear that Muʿāwiyah initiated certain practices that were apparently inspired by the previous tradition. Basically, he aimed at increased organization and centralization of the caliphal government in order to exert control over steadily expanding territories. This he achieved by the establishment of bureaus—dīwāns—in Damascus to conduct the affairs of government efficiently. Early Arabic sources credit two dīwāns in particular to Muʿāwiyah: the dīwān al-khatam, or chancellery, and the barīd, or postal service, both of which were obviously intended to improve communications within the empire. Prominent positions within the nascent bureaucracy were held by Christians, some of whom belonged to families that had served in Byzantine governments. The employment of Christians was part of a broader policy of religious tolerance that was necessitated by the presence of large Christian populations in the conquered provinces, especially in Syria itself.

Such administrative innovations coupled with the observance of tribal traditions caused historians of a later period to deny Muʿāwiyah the religious title of caliph and to characterize him as a king (malik) instead. As a symbol of the increasingly secular nature of the caliphate, derived in part from a non-Islamic tradition, the title is apt for Muʿāwiyah and for most of the Umayyads. It is particularly appropriate for the most startling of all of Muʿāwiyah’s innovations, the one by which he secured the allegiance of the tribes for the caliphate of his son Yazīd and thereby established the practice of hereditary rule in Islam. As an alternative to the various unreliable precedents for selecting a caliph, this measure was certainly consonant with Muʿāwiyah’s policy and achievement as caliph, which, in summary, consisted of invigorating the theocratic origins of Islamic governance with borrowings from other traditions better adapted to the demands of tribesmen and the needs of an empire.

Muʿāwiyah stands out as one of the few caliphs who is depicted both in Muslim historiography and in modern scholarship as a decisive force in Islamic history. Undoubtedly one reason for the prominence that is assigned to him is that he was a controversial figure. Pious scholars of the dominant Sunni sect of Islam, together with writers of the minority, dissenting Shīʿites, have always heaped opprobrium on Muʿāwiyah: the Sunni because of his deviations from the pattern of leadership set by the Prophet Muhammad and the “rightly guided” caliphs, the Shīʿites because he had usurped the caliphate from ʿAlī.

Although Muʿāwiyah has been and still is condemned for his sins from these two quarters, he has also been the subject of lavish praise in Arabic literature as the ideal ruler. Unlike most of the other caliphs, Muʿāwiyah looms large in Islamic history because he has consistently aroused partisanship at different extremes. But, beneath the biased portraits given in traditional Muslim historiography, there is a person whose actual accomplishments were of great magnitude quite apart from partisan value judgments and interpretations. These accomplishments lay primarily in political and military administration, through which Muʿāwiyah was able to rebuild a Muslim state that had fallen into anarchy and to renew the Arab Muslim military offensive against unbelievers.



Mu'awiyah I see Mu‘awiya I ibn Abi Sufyan
Moawiyah see Mu‘awiya I ibn Abi Sufyan

A028 - Al-Kindi

 Kindi, Abu Yusuf Ya‘qub ibn Ishaq al-

Kindi, Abu Yusuf Ya‘qub ibn Ishaq al- (Abu Yusuf Ya‘qub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi) (Yaqub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi)(Alkindus) (c.801-873).  Arab scholar and philosopher.  He was a companion of the ‘Abbasid Caliphs al-Ma’mun and al-Mu‘tasim, and probably had a tendency towards Mu‘tazilism.  He is known as “the philosopher of the Arabs,” and has survived as a universal scholar and as an astrologer.  He is among a small number of Muslim scientists who made original contributions in many various fields.  Al-Kindi was a philosopher, astronomer, physician, mathematician, physicist, and geographer.  He also was an expert in music.

Al-Kindi was born Abu Yusuf Ya‘qub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi in Basra [Kufa?] in what is today Iraq.  His father worked for Khalifah (Caliph) Harun al-Rashid. He was educated in Baghdad.  It was in the latter city that he spent his life and died. Acclaimed  “philosopher of the Arabs,” he is said by one famous medieval biographer to have been renowned for his excursions into Greek, Persian, and Indian wisdom and for his detailed knowledge of astronomy.  Another medieval biographer claims that al-Kindi was exceedingly knowledgeable in medicine, philosophy, arithmetic, logic, and geometry, in addition to being skilled as a translator and editor of Greek philosophical works.  Moreover, in a famous medieval collection of wisdom literature, it is reported that al-Kindi served in the Abbasid court under the caliphs al-Ma’mun (r. 813-833) and al-Mu‘tasim (r. 833-842) as a tutor and was pre-eminent as an astrologer.  The list of his books is extensive and, although he is not known to have been schooled in the traditional Islamic sciences, includes works that focus on subjects of a theological and jurisprudential character.

Al-Kindi was the first physician who systematically determined the dosage for most drugs.  It greatly helped in the development of dosage standards (prescriptions) for patients.  In the field of Chemistry, al-Kindi argued that base metals cannot be converted to precious metals and that chemical reactions cannot produce transformation of basic elements.  He made important contributions to the Arabic system of numerals.  In addition, he contributed to spherical geometry while assisting al-Khwarizmi in astronomical studies.  Al-Kindi’s original work provided the foundation for modern arithmetic.  He also made original contributions to geometrical optics, a special field of physics, and wrote a book on it.  Several centuries later, al-Kindi’s work inspired Roger Bacon.

Al-Kindi researched on the scientific aspects of music.  He stated that the various notes that combine to produce harmony have a specific pitch, and the degree of harmony depends on the frequency of notes.  Further, he provided a method for the determination of pitch.  Al-Kindi stated that when a sound is produced it generates waves in the air, which strike the eardrum.

Al-Kindi wrote more than two hundred forty books.  Among them are sixteen books on astronomy, twenty-two each on medicine and philosophy, twelve on physics, thirty-two on geometry, eleven on arithmetic, nine on logic, four on the number system, seven on music and five on psychology.  In addition, he wrote monographs on astronomical instruments, tides, rocks and precious stones.

Gerard of Cremona translated many of his scientific books into Latin. These books include Ikhtiyarat al-Ayyam, al-Mosiqa, Risalah dar Tanjim, Ilahyat-e Aristu, Mad-o-Jazr and Adviyah Murakkaba.  Al-Kindi’s influence on the development of physics, mathematics, medicine, philosophy and music lasted for several centuries. 

Although he is credited with over 200 works, less than a tenth have come down to the present.  Today, al-Kindi is remembered primarily as the author of a treatise on metaphysics, Fi al-Falsafat al-Ula (On First Philosophy).  However, it is his Treatise on the Utterances of Socrates -- his Risala fi Alfaz Suqrat -- which is all but ignored, that contains the seminal foundation of Islamic political thought.  

The Risala fi Alfaz Suqrat can be characterized as a turning back from the apparent assuredness of Aristotle to the tentative probing of Socrates.  Differently stated, al-Kindi’s reflections on Plato and Aristotle led him to praise the life of Socrates, the Socrates who had renounced physical and metaphysical speculation in order to concentrate on the day-to-day speech and actions of his fellow citizens.  This choice allowed al-Kindi to provide for a limited kind of philosophical inquiry and at the same time to vouchsafe the claims of revelation.  Al-Kindi’s observations about Aristotle and Socrates may have influenced al-Razi’s later portrait of Socrates in the justly famous Kitab al-Sira al-Falsafiyya (Book on the Philosophic Life), thereby setting in motion the series of reflections that lead to al-Farabi’s founding of Islamic political philosophy. 

In the Risala fi Kammiyyat Kutub Aristutalis wa ma yuhtaj ilaih fi Tahsil al-Falsafa (Treatise on the Number of Aristotle’s Books and What Is Needed to Attain Philosophy), al-Kindi admits his inability to provide a rational account of human existence or its end and thus to ground political inquiry.  Even his Risala fi al-Hila li-Daf’ al-Ahzan (Treatise on the Device for Driving Away Sorrows), with its allegory of human existence, ends in a similar admission.

The allegory of the ship in al-Kindi’s Treatise on the Device for Driving Away Sorrows makes the broad point that all possessions, not merely superfluous ones, cause sorrow and threaten to harm us.  Our passage through this world of destruction, al-Kindi says, is like that of people embarked upon a ship “to a goal, their own resting place, that they are intent upon.”  When the ship stops so that the passengers may attend to their needs, some do so quickly and return to wide, commodious seats.  Others -- who also tend quickly to their needs but pause to gaze upon the beautiful surrounding sights and enjoy the delightful aromas -- return to narrower, less comfortable seats.  Yet others -- who tend to their needs but collect various objects along the way -- find oly cramped seating and are greatly discomforted by the objects they have gathered.  Finally, others wander far off from the ship, so immersed in the surrounding natural beauty and the objects to be collected that they forget their present need and even the purpose of the voyage.  Of these, those who hear the ship’s captain call and return before it sails, find terribly uncomfortable quarters. Others wander so far away that they never hear the captain’s call and, left behind, perish in horrible ways.  Those who return to the ship burdened with objects suffer so, due to their cramped quarters, the stench of their decaying possessions, and the effort they expend in caring for them, that most become sick and some even die. Only the first two groups arrive safely, though those in the second group are somewhat ill at ease due to their more narrow seats. 

For al-Kindi, those passengers who endanger themselves and others by their quest for possessions are like the unjust we encounter in daily life.  Conversely, the just must be those who attend to their needs or business quickly and do not permit themselves to become burdened with acquisitions or even to be side-tracked into momentary pleasures.  The passengers are all bound for their homeland, but it is not clear where they are heading.  At one point, al-Kindi claims that we are going to “the true world” and at another that the ship is supposed to bring us to “our true homelands.”   There is no doubt, however, that whether the destination be one or many, it can be reached only by acquiring the habits that eschew material possessions. 

The allegory emphasizes the voyage and the conduct of the passengers. But the vessel is no ship of state nor the captain its governor.  The ship is merely a vehicle of transport here, and the captain evinces no desire to police the passengers.   Nor is anything said about the route followed by the ship.  As one who calls to the passengers, however, the captain may be compared to a prophet.  Like a prophet, he calls only once.  Those who do not heed the call are left to their misery, even to their perdition.  Yet the content of the call is empty; it merely warns about the imminent departure of the ship.  The captain offers no guidance about what to bring or leave.  He merely calls. 

The compilation of sayings ascribed to al-Kindi in the Muntakhab Siwan al-Hikma and those he sets down in his Risala fi Alfaz Suqrat (Treatise on the Utterances of Socrates) also encourage the pursuit of the ascetic life.  In this work, al-Kindi and Socrates are portrayed as men aloof from the worldly concerns of most people.  As men who have learned to turn their thoughts away from possession and to think about how to live a truly free human life.    Each account consists of anecdotes and pithy statements attributed to Socrates and to al-Kindi respectively, some of which reinforce things said in the treatise about Aristotle’s philosophy and in the treatise about the avoidance of sorrows.


Abu Yusuf Ya'qub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi see Kindi, Abu Yusuf Ya‘qub ibn Ishaq al-
Yaqub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi see Kindi, Abu Yusuf Ya‘qub ibn Ishaq al-
Alkindus see Kindi, Abu Yusuf Ya‘qub ibn Ishaq al-
The Philosopher of the Arabs see Kindi, Abu Yusuf Ya‘qub ibn Ishaq al-

A027 - Nizam al-Mulk

 Nizam al-Mulk, Abu ‘Ali al-Hasan

Nizam al-Mulk, Abu ‘Ali al-Hasan (Abu ‘Ali al-Hasan Nizam al-Mulk) (Abu Ali al-Hasan al-Tusi Nizam al-Mulk) (Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk al-Tusi) (1017/1018 – October 14, 1092) (1017/1018-1092).  Vizier of the Saljuq sultans Alp Arslan and Malik Shah.  Nizam al-Mulk (literally “order of the realm”) was the honorific title of Abu Ali Hasan ibn Ali Tusi, the vizier to the Seljuk sultans Alp Arslan and Malikshah.    Nizam al-Mulk was also a writer on the art of government.

Nizam al-Mulk was born near Tus, where his father was a minor official.  The Ghaznavid sultan Mas‘ud ibn Mahmud having been defeated by the Saljuqs at Dandanqan in 1040, Nizam al-Mulk left the Ghaznavids for the Saljuqs.  Nizam al-Mulk served the Seljuk prince Chaghri Beg and gained the regard of his son Alp Arslan, then governing Khorasan for his father. 

Nizam al-Mulk was Alp Arslan’s right hand man throughout his reign (1063-1072), and upon the accession of his young son Malik-shah (1072-1092) became the virtual ruler of the empire.  After the assassination of Alp Arslan in 1072, Nizam al-Mulk, for the next twenty years, was the real ruler of the Saljuq Empire, residing with the young Malik Shah at Isfahan.  He was a champion of orthodoxy and a generous patron of learning, fostering both by founding the Nizamiyya College in Baghdad.

His relations with the ‘Abbasid caliphs al-Qa’im bi-Amr Allah and al-Muqtadi were strained, but after he had been received graciously at Baghdad in 1086, he became a champion of the caliphate, while relations with Malik Shah and the princely family deteriorated.  His vigorous repression of heresy led to his murder by an emissary of the “Assassins” of Alamut. 

Nizam al-Mulk was assassinated in 1092, probably by an emissary of the Nizari Isma‘ili al-Hasan ibn al-Sabbah, who had obtained possession of Alamut.  He was a lavish patron of religious men and poets.  In 1091 and 1092, he wrote a monarch’s primer, in which he deals with dangers that threatened the empire, in particular from the Isma‘ilis.  After his death, members of his family, known as Nizamiyya, held office under princes of the Saljuqs for the next sixty years, except for a gap between 1123 and 1134.

Nizam al-Mulk’s Siyasat-nama, written in unadorned Persian prose in 1091 at the invitation of Malik-shah and somewhat expanded by a later editor, is a practical manual of statecraft, illustrated by historical anecdotes.

Nizam al-Mulk is generally regarded as the principal architect of the Seljuk state.  He began his administrative career under the Ghaznavids, from whom he would draw inspiration for both theory and practice throughout his life.  Then, following the victories of the Seljuks, he entered their service in Khurasan, becoming Alp Arslan’s vizier and succeeding with him to imperial power.

Nizam al-Mulk combined his administrative skills with the military ventures of his sovereign to consolidate Seljuk authority from the Mediterranean to beyond the Oxus River.  Although he was able to dominate the young Malikshah, Alp Arslan’s son and successor, the vizier and the sultan later fell out, probably because of Nizam al-Mulk’s arrogance as well as resistance at the court, due in part to his extensive use of nepotism.

Nizam al-Mulk’s greatness lies in his championing of traditional Perso-Islamic practices of government and his attempt to adapt them to the new context of the Islamic Middle Ages.  His goal was to return substantial power to a civilian Persian bureaucracy.  Here he was unable to reverse the trend toward Turkish military dominance.  Ironically, he contributed to the growing autonomy of local military leaders.  By introducing reforms in the land grant (iqta) system, he institutionalized it to the point that it would serve as a basis for their expanded power, influence, and independence.  He was able, however, to contribute to the spread of a common educational and intellectual standard throughout Islam by supporting his own schools for Islamic scholars, the Nizamiyya madrasas.

Nizam al-Mulk’s practice was complemented by his theories, which were articulated in the Siyasatnama (Book of Government), a collection of advice, quotations, traditions, sayings, anecdotes, longer stories, contemporary events, and historical narratives, written in the last five years of his life.  The Siyasatnama takes a well-deserved place in both the development of Persian literature and the refinement of Islamic political theory.

The first part of the book contains chapters about the king’s public function (“Concerning assignees of land and inquiry into their treatment of the peasantry,” “On obtaining information about the conduct of tax-collectors, judges ...”) as well as his more personal life (“Concerning boon companions and intimates ...,” “Concerning the rules and arrangements for drinking parties ...”).  The second part is foreboding, dealing almost exclusively with heresy and various revolts, in particular with the contemporary activities of the Isma‘ilis.

Nizam al-Mulk’s pessimism was warranted.  He was assassinated in 1092 by an Isma‘ili, possibly with the complicity of the enemies he had gathered at court over three decades.  Malikshah died shortly thereafter.  These dual voids would not be filled.  Thus the decline of the Seljuk Empire in favor of smaller regional and local states was ensured.



Abu ‘Ali al-Hasan Nizam al-Mulk see Nizam al-Mulk, Abu ‘Ali al-Hasan
Abu Ali al-Hasan al-Tusi Nizam al-Mulk see Nizam al-Mulk, Abu ‘Ali al-Hasan
Khwaja Nizam al-Mulk al-Tusi see Nizam al-Mulk, Abu ‘Ali al-Hasan

A026 - Ibn Taymiyya

 Ibn Taymiyya

Ibn Taymiyya (Taqi ad-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyya) Taqī al-Dīn Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Salām ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muḥammad ibn Taymiyyah) (1263, in Harran, Mesopotamia - September 26, 1328, in Cairo).  Hanbalite theologian and jurist.  Ibn Taymiyya was born in Harran to a family of Hanbali scholars (including his paternal grandfather, uncle, and father).  Ibn Taymiyya was himself a Hanbali in many, though not all, juridical and theological matters, and a Salafi on a wider plane.  He has had a strong influence on conservative Sunni circles and, in the modern period, on both liberals and conservatives.

Ibn Taymiyyah was one of Islam’s most forceful theologians who, as a member of the Pietist school founded by Ibn Ḥanbal, sought the return of the Islamic religion to its sources: the Qurʾān and the sunnah, revealed writing and the prophetic tradition. He is also the source of the Wahhābīyah, a mid-18th-century traditionalist movement of Islam.

Ibn Taymiyyah was born in Harran, Mesopotamia. Educated in Damascus, where he had been taken in 1268 as a refugee from the Mongol invasion, he later steeped himself in the teachings of the Pietist school. Though he remained faithful throughout his life to that school, of whose doctrines he had an unrivalled mastery, he also acquired an extensive knowledge of contemporary Islamic sources and disciplines: the Qurʾān (Islamic scripture), the Ḥadīth (sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad), jurisprudence (fiqh), dogmatic theology (kalām), philosophy, and Ṣūfī (Islamic mystical) theology.

The life of Ibn Taymiyyah was marked by persecutions. As early as 1293 Ibn Taymiyyah came into conflict with local authorities for protesting a sentence, pronounced under religious law, against a Christian accused of having insulted the Prophet. In 1298 he was accused of anthropomorphism (ascribing human characteristics to God) and for having criticized, contemptuously, the legitimacy of dogmatic theology.

During the great Mongol crisis of the years 1299 to 1303, and especially during the occupation of Damascus, he led the resistance party and denounced the suspect faith of the invaders and their accomplices. During the ensuing years, Ibn Taymiyyah was engaged in intensive polemic activity: either against the Kasrawān Shīʿah in Lebanon; the Rifāʿīyah, a Ṣūfī religious brotherhood; or the ittiḥādīyah school, which taught that the Creator and the created become one, a school that grew out of the teaching of Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 1240), whose monism he denounced.

In 1306, Ibn Taymiyyah was summoned to explain his beliefs to the governor’s council, which, although it did not condemn him, sent him to Cairo. There he appeared before a new council on the charge of anthropomorphism and was imprisoned in the citadel for 18 months. Soon after gaining his freedom, he was confined again in 1308 for several months in the prison of the qāḍīs (Muslim judges who exercise both civil and religious functions) for having denounced the worship of saints as being against religious law (Sharīʿah).

He was sent to Alexandria under house arrest in 1309, the day after the abdication of the sultan Muḥammad ibn Qalāwūn and the advent of Baybars II al-Jāshnikīr, whom he regarded as a usurper and whose imminent end he predicted. Seven months later, on Ibn Qalāwūn’s return, he was able to return to Cairo. But in 1313 he left Cairo once more with the Sultan, on a campaign to recover Damascus, which was again being threatened by the Mongols.

Ibn Taymiyyah spent his last 15 years in Damascus. Promoted to the rank of schoolmaster, he gathered around him a circle of disciples from every social class. The most famous of these, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawzīyah (died 1350), was to share in Ibn Taymiyyah’s renewed persecutions. Accused of supporting a doctrine that would curtail the ease with which a Muslim could traditionally repudiate a wife and thus ease the ill effects of the practice, Ibn Taymiyyah was incarcerated on orders from Cairo in the citadel of Damascus from August 1320 to February 1321.

In July 1326, Cairo again ordered him confined to the citadel for having continued his condemnation of saint worship, in spite of the prohibition forbidding him to do so. He died in prison, deprived of his books and writing materials, and was buried in the Ṣūfī cemetery amid a great public gathering. His tomb still exists and is widely venerated.

Ibn Taymiyyah left a considerable body of work—often republished in Syria, Egypt, Arabia, and India—that extended and justified his religious and political involvements and was characterized by its rich documentation, sober style, and brilliant polemic. In addition to innumerable fatwās (legal opinions based on religious law) and several professions of faith, the most beautiful of which is the Wāsitīyah, two works merit particular attention. One is his As-Siyā-sat ash-sharʿīyah (“Treatise on Juridical Politics”), available in French and English translations. The other, Minhāj as-sunnah (“The Way of Tradition”), is the richest work of comparative theology surviving from medieval Islam.

Ibn Taymiyyah desired a return to the sources of the Muslim religion, which he felt had been altered too often, to one extent or another, by the different religious sects or schools. The sources were the Qurʾān and the sunnah: revealed writing and the prophetic tradition. The ijmāʿ, or community consensus, had no value in itself, he insisted, unless it rested on those two sources. His traditionalism, however, did not prevent Ibn Taymiyyah from allowing analogical reasoning (qiyās) and the argument of utility (maṣlaḥah) a large place in his thought, on the condition that both rested on the objective givens of revelation and tradition. Only such a return to sources, he felt, would permit the divided and disunited Muslim community to refind its unity.

In theodicy (the justification of God as good when evil is observable in the world), Ibn Taymiyyah wished to describe God as he is described in the Qurʾān and as the Prophet did in the sunnah, which led him to side with theological schools in disagreement with contemporary opinion. This position was the point of departure for a critique, often conducted with very subtle argument, of the ideas of such dogmatic theologians as al-Ashʿarī or Fakhr ad-Dīn ar-Rāzī, such philosophers as Avicenna and Averroës, or such mystics as Ibn al-ʿArabī.

Concerning praxes (practices), Ibn Taymiyyah believed that one could only require, in worship, those practices inaugurated by God and his Prophet and that one could only forbid, in social relations, those things forbidden by the Qurʾān and the sunnah. Thus, on the one hand, he favored a revision of the system of religious obligations and a brushing aside of condemnable innovations (bidʿah), and, on the other, he constructed an economic ethic that was more flexible on many points than that espoused by the contemporary schools.

In politics, Ibn Taymiyyah recognized the legitimacy of the first four caliphs, but he rejected the necessity of having a single caliphate and allowed for the existence of many emirates. Within each emirate he demanded that the prince apply the religious law strictly and rely on it for his legal opinion, and Ibn Taymiyyah demanded from those under the prince’s jurisdiction that they obey the established authority except where it required disobedience to God, every Muslim being required to “will the good and forbid the bad” for the benefit of the common welfare.

Though Ibn Taymiyyah had numerous religious and political adversaries in his own time, he has strongly influenced modern Islam for the last two centuries. He is the source of the Wahhābīyah, a strictly traditionist movement founded by Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1792), who took his ideas from Ibn Taymiyyah’s writings. Ibn Taymiyyah also influenced various reform movements that have posed the problem of reformulating traditional ideologies by a return to sources.

Ibn Taymiyyah left a considerable body of work (350 works listed by his student Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya and 500 by another student al-Dhahabi). His work extended and justified his religious and political involvements and was characterized by its rich content, sobriety, and skillful polemical style.

Extant books and essays written by Ibn Taymiyyah include:

    * A Great Compilation of Fatwa — (Majmu al-Fatwa al-Kubra) This was collected centuries after his death, and contains several of the works mentioned below
    * Minhaj as-Sunnah an-Nabawiyyah — (The Pathway of as-Sunnah an-Nabawiyyah) — Volumes 1–4
    * Majmoo' al-Fatawa — (Compilation of Fatawa) Volumes 1–36
    * al-Aqeedah Al-Hamawiyyah — (The Creed to the People of Hamawiyyah)
    * al-Aqeedah Al-Waasittiyah — (The Creed to the People of Waasittiyah)
    * al-Asma wa's-Sifaat — (Allah's Names and Attributes) Volumes 1–2
    * 'al-Iman — (Faith)
    * al-Jawab as Sahih li man Baddala Din al-Masih (Literally, "The Correct Response to those who have Corrupted the Deen (Religion) of the Messiah"; A Muslim theologian's response to Christianity)—seven volumes, over a thousand pages.
    * as-Sarim al-Maslul ‘ala Shatim ar-Rasul—The Drawn Sword against those who insult the Messenger. Written in response to an incident in which Ibn Taymiyyah heard a Christian insulting Muhammad. The book is well-known because he wrote it entirely by memory, while in jail, and quoting more than hundreds of references.
    * Fatawa al-Kubra
    * Fatawa al-Misriyyah
    * ar-Radd 'ala al-Mantiqiyyin (Refutation of Greek Logicians)
    * Naqd at-Ta'sis
    * al-Uboodiyyah — (Subjection to Allah)
    * Iqtida' as-Sirat al-Mustaqim' — (Following The Straight Path)
    * al-Siyasa al-shar'iyya
    * at-Tawassul wal-Waseela
    * Sharh Futuh al-Ghayb — (Commentary on Revelations of the Unseen by Abdul-Qadir Gilani)

Some of his other works have been translated to English. They include:

    * The Friends of Allah and the Friends of Shaytan
    * Kitab al Iman: The Book of Faith
    * Diseases of the Hearts and their Cures
    * The Relief from Distress
    * Fundamentals of Enjoining Good and Forbidding Evil
    * The Concise Legacy
    * The Goodly Word
    * The Madinan Way
    * Ibn Taymiyya against the Greek logicians

A025 - Ibn Sina

Ibn Sina

Ibn Sina (Abu 'Ali al-Hussain ibn Abdallah Ibn Sina) (Abu ‘Ali al-Husayn ibn Sina) (Abū ‘Alī al-Ḥusayn ibn ‘Abd Allāh ibn Sīnā') (Abū Alī Sīnā) (Avicenna) (c. 980 - 1037). Persian polymath and the foremost physician and philosopher of his time. Known in the West as Avicenna, he was also an astronomer, chemist, geologist, logician, paleontologist, mathematician, physicist, poet, psychologist, scientist and teacher.

Ibn Sīnā studied medicine under a physician named Koushyar. Ibn Sina wrote almost 450 treatises on a wide range of subjects, of which around 240 have survived. In particular, 150 of his surviving treatises concentrate on philosophy and 40 of them concentrate on medicine. His most famous works are The Book of Healing, a vast philosophical and scientific encyclopaedia, and The Canon of Medicine, which was a standard medical text at many medieval universities. The Canon of Medicine was used as a text-book in the universities of Montpellier and Louvain as late as 1650.

Ibn Sina was born near Bukhara (now in Uzbekistan), which was then the capital of the Persian Samanid dynasty.  The son of a government official, Ibn Sina studied medicine and philosophy in Bukhara.  Endowed with extraordinary intelligence and intellectual independence, he was largely self-taught and by the age of eighteen had mastered all the then known sciences.

At the age of 18, Ibn Sina was rewarded for his medical abilities with the post of court physician to the Samanid ruler of Bukhara.  He remained in this position until the fall of the Samanid Empire in 999. After that, Ibn Sina traveled extensively.  He spent the last fourteen years of his life as the scientific adviser and physician to the rulers of Isfahan, first with Shams al-Dawla, and later with Sama’ al-Dawla.  In these last years of his life, Ibn Sina made astronomical investigations.

Ibn Sina died at Hamadhan, where a monument was later erected to celebrate the millennium of his birth.  

Regarded by Muslims as one of the greatest Islamic philosophers, Avicenna is an important figure in the fields of medicine and philosophy.  Ibn Sina’s work The Canon of Medicine was long pre-eminent in Southwest Asia and North Africa and was used in Europe as a textbook.  It is significant as a systematic classification and summary of medical and pharmaceutical knowledge up to and including Ibn Sina’s time.  The first Latin translation of the work was made in the 12th century of the Christian calendar, the Hebrew version appeared in 1491, and the Arabic text in 1593, the second text ever printed in Arabic.

Ibn Sina’s best known philosophical work is Kitab al-Shifa (“Book of Healing”), a collection of treatises on Aristotelian logic, metaphysics, psychology, the natural sciences, and other subjects. Ibn Sina’s own philosophy was based on a combination of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism.  Contrary to orthodox Islamic thought, Ibn Sina denied personal immortality, the existence of any individual soul, that God has an interest in individuals, and that there had been any creation of the world in time.  Ibn Sina believed that there was a dualism of mind and matter, where matter was passive, and creation had been an act of instilling existence into the passive substance.  For Ibn Sina, the only place where there was no such dualism was in God.  Because of his views, Ibn Sina became the main target of an attack on philosophy by the Islamic philosopher al-Ghazzali.  Nevertheless, Ibn Sina’s philosophy remained influential throughout the Middle Ages.

Ibn Sina’s Kitab al-Najat (“Book of Salvation”) is a compendium of his work in metaphysics.  In spite of Ibn Sina’s interest in metaphysics, he remained an orthodox Muslim, and wrote a number of books on theology.  In his later years, Ibn Sina also wrote some allegorical mystical works.  These works were important in the development of Sufism.

Most scholars agree that Ibn Sina was the most renowned and influential philosopher of medieval Islam. Ibn Sina’s works united philosophy with the study of nature.  Over a hundred of Ibn Sina’s works have survived.  His texts cover such subjects as philosophy and science as well as religious, linguistic and literary matters.  Ibn Sina’s works are not the product of a man who simply lived in books, since most of his energies were taken up with the day-to-day affairs of state.

In 1954, 131 authentic and 110 doubtful works were listed in his bibliography.  Known primarily as a philosopher and physician, Ibn Sina contributed also to all the sciences that were accessible in his day: natural history, physics, chemistry, astronomy, mathematics and music.  He wrote on economics, politics, moral and religious questions, Qur’anic exegesis, and poetry.  Ibn Sina’s influence on medieval European philosophers such as Michael Scot, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Duns Scotus, and Thomas Aquinas is undeniable.

Ibn Sina was born in August or September of 980, in Afshena, Transoxiana Province of Bukhara to Abd-Allah of Balkh (now in Afghanistan).  Abd-Allah was the well-to-do governor of Transoxiana Province under the Samanid ruler Nuh II ibn Mansur.  Ibn Sina may have descended from a Turkish family on his father’s side, but his mother, Sitara, was clearly Persian.

After his brother, Mahmud, was born five years later, the family moved to Bukhara, one of the principal cities of Transoxiana and capital of the Samanid emirs from 819 to 1005.  Exhibiting an early interest in learning, young Ibn Sina had read the entire Qur’an by age ten.  His father was attracted to Isma‘ili Shi‘ite doctrines, preached locally by Egyptian missionaries, but Ibn Sina resisted his father’s influence.  There was much discussion in his home regarding geometry, philosophy, theology, and even accounting methods.  Ibn Sina was sent to study with an Indian vegetable seller who was also a surveyor.  It was from him that Ibn Sina became acquainted with the Indian system of calculation, making use of the zero in computations.

A well-known philosopher came to live with the family for a few years and had an extraordinary influence on the young scholar.  Abu ‘Abd Allah al-Natili stimulated Ibn Sina’s love of theoretical disputation, and the youth’s earlier readings in jurisprudence enabled him to tax al-Natili’s powers of logic daily.  The tutor convinced Abd-Allah that Ibn Sina’s career should be an academic one.  Ibn Sina was studying Aristotelian logic and Euclidean geometry when the teacher decided to move to a different home.  Undaunted, Ibn Sina soon mastered texts in natural sciences and metaphysics, then medicine, which he did not consider very difficult. He taught physicians, even practicing medicine for a short time.  At the age of sixteen, he was also engaging in disputations on Muslim law.

For the next year and a half, Ibn Sina returned to the study of logic and all aspects of philosophy, keeping files of syllogisms and praying daily at the mosque for guidance in his work.  So obsessed did he become with philosophical problems and so anxious to know all that he hardly took time for sleep.  Aristotle’s Metaphysica (Metaphysics) became an intellectual stumbling block until his reading of a work by Abu Nasr al-Farabi clarified many ideas for him.  Soon all of Aristotle became understandable, and Ibn Sina gave alms to the poor in gratitude.

When Sultan Nuh ibn Mansur of Bukhara became ill, he sent for Ibn Sina, upon the advice of his team of physicians.  Because of his help in curing the ruler, Ibn Sina gained access to the palace library, thus acquainting himself with many new books.  When not studying, Ibn Sina was given to drinking wine and satisfying a large sexual appetite which he retained to the end of his life.  Ibn Sina claimed that after the age of eighteen he learned nothing new, only gained greater wisdom.  When the palace library was destroyed in a fire, critics blamed Ibn Sina, who, they said, wished to remove the sources of his ideas.  There is no proof of that charge.

Ibn Sina’s writing career began in earnest at the age of twenty-one with al-Majmu (1001), a comprehensive book on learning for Abu al-Hasan, a prosodist.  Then he wrote al-Hasil wa al-mahsul (“The Sun and Substance” -- c. 1002), a twenty-volume commentary on jurisprudence, the Qur’an, and asceticism.  There soon followed a work on ethics called al-Birr wa al-ithm (“Good Works and Evil” -- c. 1002).  However, the sponsors made no copies of them.

Ibn Sina's father died in 1002, and Ibn Sina was forced to enter government service.  He reluctantly left Bukhara for Gurganj, the capital of Khwarazm, where he met Emir 'Ali ibn Ma’mun.  From Gurganj, he moved to Fasa, Baward, Tus, Samanqan, and thence to Jajarm on the extreme end of Khurasan.  He served Emir Qabus ibn Wushmagir until a military coup forced Ibn Sina to leave for Dihistan, where he became ill.  After recovering, he moved to Jurjan.

In Jurjan, Ibn Sina met his pupil and biographer, Abu ‘Ubaid al-Juzjani, who stayed with him throughout much of the remainder of his life.  Juzjani thought him exceptionally handsome and wrote that when Ibn Sina went to the mosque on Friday to pray, people would gather to observe at first hand “his perfection and beauty.”  While in Jurjan, Ibn Sina wrote al-Mukhtasar al-awsat (The Middle Summary on Logic), al-Mabda’ wa al-ma‘ad (The Origin and the Return), and al-Arsad al-kulliya (Comprehensive Observations).  There also Ibn Sina wrote the first part of al-Qanun fi al-tibb (Canon of Medicine), Mukhtasar al-Majisti (Summary of the Almagest), and other treatises.  One modern scholar lists one hundred books attributed to Ibn Sina.  Another says that the list of Ibn Sina’s works includes several hundred in Arabic and twenty-three in Persian.

From Jurjan, Ibn Sina next moved to al-Rayy, joining the service of al-Saiyyida and her son, Majd al-Dawlah.  Civil strife forced him to flee to Qazwin.   From there he moved to Hamadhan, where he managed the affairs of Kadhabanuyah.  He was called to the court of Emir Shams al-Dawlah to treat the ruler for colic, after which Ibn Sina was made the vizier of his emirate.  Because of a mutiny in the army, however, the emir was forced to discharge him.  After matters calmed down, Ibn Sina was called back and reinstated as vizier.  During this period, public affairs occupied his daytime hours, and he spent evenings teaching and writing.  When the emir died, Ibn Sina went into hiding, finishing work on his Kitab al-shifa (Book of Healing).  He was arrested for corresponding with a rival ruler, but when Emir ‘Ala’ al-Dawlah attacked Hamadhan four months later, Ibn Sina was set free.

Ibn Sina left Hamadhan for Isfahan with his brother, two slaves, and al-Juzjani to serve Emir ‘Ala’ al-Dawlah.  The emir designated every Friday evening for learned discussions with many other masters.  However, excluded from the gatherings was a famous scholar and rival of Ibn Sina, Abu al-Rayhan al-Biruni, with whom he carried on a rather bitter correspondence.  They had been clients at many of the same courts, but never at the same time.  At Isfahan, Ibn Sina completed many of his writings on arithmetic and music.  He was made an official member of the court and accompanied the emir on a military expedition to Hamadhan.

When he was rebuked by the emir’s cousin, Abu Mansur, for feigning expertise in philology, Ibn Sina was so stung by the criticism that he studied this subject frantically, compiling his discoveries in a book entitled Lisan al-‘Arab (The Arab Language).  During these years, he also continued other experiments in medicine and astronomy.  He introduced the use of medicinal herbs and devised an instrument to repair injured vertebrae.  He understood that some illnesses arose from psychosomatic causes, and he wrote extensively on the pulse, preventive medicine, and the effects of climate on health.  On May 24, 1032, he observed the rare phenomenon of Venus passing through the solar disk.

When he became ill in Isfahan, one of his slaves filled his meal with opium, hoping for his death and an opportunity to steal his money.  But Ibn Sina managed to recover under self-treatment.  Soon, however, he had a relapse.  He died in 1037.  Most authorities say that he died and was buried in Hamadhan.

Ibn Sina’s Canon of Medicine remained a principal source for medical research for six centuries, perhaps second only to the Christian Bible in the number of copies produced.  Between 1470 and 1500, it went through thirty editions in Latin and one in Hebrew; a celebrated edition was published on a Gutenberg press in Rome in 1593.  Ibn Sina’s principal literary contribution was the invention of the Rubaiyat form, quatrains in iambic pentameter, later made famous by Omar Khayyam.  Most important of all, Ibn Sina’s philosophical system helped to stimulate a genuine intellectual renaissance in Islam that had enormous influence not only in his own culture but in Western Europe as well.  Thomas Aquinas, Averroes (Ibn Rushd), John Duns Scotus, Albertus Magnus, and Roger Bacon learned much from Ibn Sina, even though they disagreed on some particulars.

Most intriguing to the medieval Scholastics were Ibn Sina’s insistence upon essences in everything, the distinction between essence and existence (a notion derived from al-Farabi), the absence of essence in God (whose existence is unique), and the immortality of the soul (which animates the body but is independent of it).

According to some scholars, Ibn Sina’s insistence upon observation and experimentation helped to turn Western thought in the direction of the modern scientific revolution.  His theories on the sources of infectious diseases, his explanation of sight, his invention of longitude, and his other scientific conclusions have a truly remarkable congruence with modern explanations.  The application of geometrical forms in Islamic art, his use of the astrolabe in astronomical experiments, and his disputations on the immortality of the soul demonstrate Ibn Sina’s universal genius. 


Abu 'Ali al-Hussain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina see Ibn Sina
Abu 'Ali al-Husayn ibn Sina see Ibn Sina
Avicenna see Ibn Sina
Abū ‘Alī al-Ḥusayn ibn ‘Abd Allāh ibn Sīnā' see Ibn Sina
Abū Alī Sīnā see Ibn Sina

A024 - 'Abdul Qadir Gilani

 Gilani, 'Abdul Qadir

ʿAbdul Qādir Gīlānī, known by admirers as Muḥyī l-Dīn Abū Muḥammad bin Abū Sāliḥ ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Gīlānī al-Ḥasanī wa'l-Ḥusaynī, was a Hanbali Sunni Muslim preacher, ascetic, mystic, jurist, and theologian, known for being the eponymous founder of the Qadiriyya tariqa (Sufi order) of Sufism.

He was born on 1 Ramadan 470 AH (March 23, 1078) in the town of Na'if in Gilan, Iran, and died on Monday, February 21, 1166 (11 Rabi' al-Thani 561 AH), in Baghdad. He was a Persian Hanbali Sunni jurist and Sufi based in Baghdad. The Qadiriyya tariqa is named after him.

The honorific Muhiyudin denotes his status with many Sufis as a "reviver of religion".  Gilani (Arabic al-Jilani) refers to his place of birth, Gilan.  However, Gilani also carried the epithet Baghdadi, referring to his residence and burial in Baghdad.

Gilani's father, Abu Saleh Moosah, was from a Sayyid lineage, tracing his descent from Hasan ibn Ali, a grandson of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.  Abu Saleh was respected as a saint by the people of his day. Gilani's mother, Ummul Khair Fatima, was also a Sayyid, having been a descendant of Muhammad al-Jawad, himself descended from Husayn ibn Ali, the younger brother of Hasan. 

Gilani spent his early life in Gilan,  the province of his birth. In 1095, at the age of eighteen, he went to Baghdad. There, he pursued the study of Hanbali law under Abu Saeed Mubarak Makhzoomi and Ibn Aqil. He studied hadith with Abu Muhammad Ja'far al-Sarraj. His Sufi spiritual instructor was Abu'l-Khair Hammad ibn Muslim al-Dabbas. (A detailed description of his various teachers and subjects are included below). After completing his education, Gilani left Baghdad. He spent twenty-five years wandering in the deserts of Iraq.

Al-Gilani belonged to the Shafi'i and Hanbali schools of law. He placed Shafi'i jurisprudence (fiqh) on an equal footing with the Hanbali school (madhhab), and used to give fatwa according to both of them simultaneously.  

He established Qadiriyya tariqa order, with its many offshoots, is widespread, various parts of the world, and can also be found in the United Kingdom, Africa, Turkey, Indonesia, Afghanistan, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Balkans, Russia, Palestine, China, and East and West Africa.  

The Qadiriyya flourished, surviving the Mongolian conquest of Baghdad in 1258, and remained an influential Sunni institution. After the fall of the Abbasid Caliphate, the legend of Gilani was further spread by a text entitled The Joy of the Secrets in Abdul-Qadir's Mysterious Deeds (Bahjat al-asrar fi ba'd manaqib 'Abd al-Qadir) attributed to Nur al-Din 'Ali al-Shattanufi, who depicted Gilani as the ultimate channel of divine grace and helped the Qadiri order to spread far beyond the region of Baghdad.

By the end of the fifteenth century, the Qadiriyya had distinct branches and had spread to Morocco, Spain, Turkey, India, Ethiopia, Somalia, and present-day Mali. Established Sufi sheikhs often adopted the Qadiriyya tradition without abandoning leadership of their local communities. During the Safavid dynasty's rule of Baghdad from 1508 to 1534, the sheikh of the Qadiriyya was appointed chief Sufi of Baghdad and the surrounding lands. Shortly after the Ottoman Empire conquered Baghdad in 1534, Suleiman the Magnificent commissioned a dome to be built on the mausoleum of Abdul-Qadir Gilani,  establishing the Qadiriyya as his main allies in Iraq. 

In 1127, Gilani returned to Baghdad and began to preach to the public. He joined the teaching staff of the school belonging to his own teacher, al-Mazkhzoomi, and was popular with students. In the morning, he taught hadith and tafsir, and in the afternoon he held discourse on the science of the heart and the virtues of the Qur'an.  He was said to have been a convincing preacher and converted numerous Jews and Christians. He was able to reconcile the mystical nature of Sufism with the sober demands of Islamic Law.

Gilani died on February 21, 1166 (11 Rabi' al-Thani 561 AH) at the age of 87. His body was entombed in a shrine within his madrasa in Babul-Sheikh, Rusafa on the east bank of the Tigirs in Baghdad, Iraq.

During the reign of the Safavid Shah Ismail I, Gilani's shrine was destroyed. However, in 1535, the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent had a dome built over the shrine, which still exists.

1 Ramadan is celebrated as Gilani's birthday while his death anniversary is on 11 Rabi' al-Thani, although some scholars give 29 Sha'ban and 17 Rabi' al-Thani as his birth and death days. In the Indian subcontinent, his 'urs, or death anniversary, is called Giwaryee Shareef, or Honoured Day.

‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani see Abdul Qadir Gilani

8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

Qadiriyya
Qadiriyya (Qadiriyah) (Qadiriyyah Qadri) (Qadriya) (Qadriyya) (Qadria) (also transliterated Kadri, Elkadri, Elkadry, Aladray, Adray, Kadray, Qadiri or Qadri), i.  Arabic term which refers to a Muslim brotherhood which spread throughout the Muslim world.  The Qadiriyya  was an order of dervishes named after ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani who died in Baghdad in 1166.  Theoretically both tolerant and charitable, the order spread from Baghdad to North Africa and is known for its symbols and rites.

Qādirīyah,  probably the oldest of the Muslim mystic (Ṣūfī) orders, was founded by the Ḥanbalī theologian ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (1078–1166) in Baghdad. Al-Jīlānī may have intended the few rituals he prescribed to extend only to his small circle of followers, but his sons broadened this community into an order and encouraged its spread into North Africa, Central Asia, and India. The order, which stresses philanthropy, humility, piety, and moderation, is loosely organized, allowing each regional community to develop its own ritual prayers (dhikrs). The main body (the Qādirīyah proper) maintains an orthodox and peaceful Ṣūfī system and is governed by a descendant of al-Jīlānī, who serves as the keeper of his tomb in Baghdad. A smaller group in North Africa, the Jīlālīyah, worships al-Jīlānī as a supernatural being and combines Islāmic mysticism with pre-Islāmic beliefs and practices.

Qadiriyyah Qadri, Qadriya, Qadriyya, Qadria, (also transliterated Kadri, Elkadri, Elkadry, Aladray, Adray, Kadray, Qadiri or Qadri), is one of the oldest Sufi tariqas in Sunni Islam. It derives its name from Abdul-Qadir Gilani (also transliterated as "Jil lani" or "Jailani" and "Jilali" in the Maghreb) (1077-1166), a native of the Iranian province of Gilan. In 1134 he was made principal of a Sunni Hanbalite school in Baghdad.

The Order is the most widespread of the Sufi Orders (Sunni) in the Islamic world and can be found in Afghanistan, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Turkey, the Balkans, China, as well as much of the East and West Africa, like Morocco. 

There are even small groups in Europe and the Americas. The famous traveler and writer Isabelle Eberhardt also belonged to the Qadiri order.

The founder of the Qadiriyyah order, Abdul-Qadir Gilani, first became publicly known in Baghdad in the late 11th century for his passionate public preaching. By this time, he was already a reputable Hanbalite scholar, having been a pupil at the madrasah of Abu Sa'id al-Mubarak Mukharrami.

After Mukharrami's death in 1119, leadership of the school passed to Gilani. Being the new shaykh, he and his large family lived comfortably in the madrasah until his death in 1166. His son, Abdul al-Wahab, succeeded his father as shaykh.

It was not until after Gilani's death that his reputation changed from a respectable Sufi to the founder of a prestigious Sufi order. At the time of Gilani's death, the Sufi tradition led by Abu Ishaq Umar al-Suhrawardi was gaining prominence. When the caliph al-Nasir came to power in 1180, al-Suhrawardi allied himself with al-Nasir. Gilani's son, Abdul al-Razzaq, then began laying the foundation that his father was the founder of a distinct Sufi order in an attempt to emphasize the independence of the Sufi tradition from the caliphal. He accomplished this by publishing a hagiography of his father.

The newly-formed Qadiriyyah order continue to flourish and grow, even surviving the Mongolian conquest of Baghdad in 1258. From hereon, the Qadiriyyah order remained an influential Sunnite institution, despite the fact control of Baghdad during this time was held by non-Muslims. During the Safavid rule of Baghdad from 1508 to 1534, the shaykh of the Qadiriyyah madrasah was appointed chief of Baghdad and the surrounding lands. Shortly after the Ottoman Turks conquered Baghdad in 1534, sultan Suleiman the Magnificent commissioned a dome to be built on the tomb of Gilani, establishing the Qadiriyyah order as his main allies in Iraq.

The legend of Abdul-Qadir Gilani was most widely spread by a text attributed to Nur al-Din 'Ali al-Shattanufi entitled Bahjat al-asrar fi ba'd manaqib 'Abd al-Qadir (The Joy of the Secrets in Abdul-Qadir's Mysterious Deeds). After the fall of the 'Abbasid caliphate in the thirteenth century, al-Shattanufi made it his goal to establish the belief that Gilani is the ultimate channel of divine grace. The deeds depicted in al-Shattanufi's work helped the Qadiriyyah order to spread far beyond the region of Baghdad.

By the end of the fifteenth century, the Qadiriyyah not only already had distinct branches within the order, but had spread into Morocco, Spain, Turkey, India, Ethiopia, Somalia, and present-day Mali. By the sixteenth century the Qadiriyyah had spread into China and Malaysia as well. Koja Abdul Alla, a shaykh of the Qadiriyyah and descendant of Muhammed, is reported to have entered China in 1674 and traveled the country preaching until his death in 1689. One of Abdul Alla's students, Qi Jingyi Hilal al-Din, is said to have permanently rooted Qadiriyyah Sufism in China through his preaching. He was buried in Linxia City, which became the center of the Qadiriyyah's presence in China.  By the seventeenth century, the Qadiriyyah had stretched as far as Ottoman-occupied areas of Europe.

One of the ways in which the order spread was that the already-established shaykhs would simply adopt the Qadiriyyah tradition without abandoning leadership of their local communities.

    * Qadiriyyah leadership is not centralized. Each center of Qadiriyyah thought is free to adopt its own interpretations and practices of the tradition.
    * An emphasis on the struggle against the evil desires of the inner self. Gilani described it as "The greater holy war." The aim of is inner struggle is repentance, which is attained in two stages: first, repudiating evil deeds forbidden by religious law, and two, overcoming evils such as greed, vanity, and fear.
    * The belief that a true seeker of God should overcome all desires other than wishing to be taken into God's custody.
    * The belief that the wali (saints) are God's chosen spiritual guides for the people, but the Prophet's sunna is the ultimate source of religious guidance.
    * The belief that Sufi shaykhs are not necessarily divinely inspired guides, but they responsible for guiding their disciples regardless.

Aside from the Qu'ran and Hadith, there are several texts important to the Qadirriyah order.

    * Futuh al-Ghayb (Revelations from the Invisible World) - This work consists of seventy-eight of Gilani's maqalat ("essays" or "articles." Singular: maqala) compiled by his son, Abdul al-Razzaq Gilani. Despite being labeled as "articles," these pieces tend to be short statements regarding Islamic doctrines and Sufi belief.
    * Fath al-Rabbani wa al-Fayd al-Rahmani (Revelation from the Lord and the Outflow of His Mercy) - This work contains sermons he delivered over a period of sixty-two sessions held in his madrasah. This text was most likely recorded by one of his disciples.
    * al-Ghunya li Lalibi Tariq al-Haqq (That Which is Indispensable for the Seekers of God's Path) - Also attributed to Gilani, this if the largest of his three known books. It is separated into five parts, each dealing with a different branch of Sufi learning: fiqh (jurisprudence), 'aqa'id (tenets of the faith), majalis wa'z (preaching sessions), a'mal (works), and tasawwuf (Sufism).

Qadiriyah see Qadiriyya
Qadiriyyah Qadri see Qadiriyya
Qadriya see Qadiriyya
Qadriyya see Qadiriyya
Qadria see Qadiriyya
Kadri see Qadiriyya

8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

A023 - 'Umar ibn 'Abd al-'Aziz

 Umar ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Marwan

‘Umar ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Marwan (Umar ibn Abdul Aziz) (Umar II) (November 2, 682 - February, 720).  Umayyad caliph (r. 717-720).  In 706, he became governor of the Hejaz and settled at Medina where he formed an advisory council.  He became famous for his piety and frugality, feeling no obligation to spread Islam by the sword.  He preferred peaceful missionary activity, which method proved successful among the Berbers and in Sind.  He adopted a kindly attitude towards the ‘Alids, the Christians, the Jews and the Zoroastrians, and reduced discrimination against non-Arab converts to Islam.  His most important measure was the reform of taxation.  The ever-increasing conversion to Islam of non-Arabs led to more and more subjects being exempt from taxation.  Furthermore, agriculture suffered to a great extent as a result of many converts settling in the cities.  Al-Hajjaj therefore had imposed the land-tax (in Arabic, kharaj) also upon Muslim landowners and prohibited immigration to the cities. ‘Umar, however, adhered to the principle that Muslims should pay no tribute and propounded that conquered land was the common property of the Muslim community and conquered land was the common property of the Muslim community and could not be transformed into immune private property by sale to individual Muslims.  In 718, he forbade Muslims to buy land which should pay tribute and permitted immigration of new converts into the cities.  In course of time a whole cycle of pious legends gathered round his name.  Even the historians of the ‘Abbasid period give him the highest praise, and his tomb at Dayr Sam‘an near Aleppo was left undisturbed after the ‘Abbasid triumph.

Umar ibn Abd al-Aziz was an Umayyad caliph who ruled from 717 to 720. He was also a cousin of the former caliph, being the son of Abd al-Malik's younger brother, Abd al-Aziz. He was also a great-grandson of the companion of the Prophet Muhammad, Umar ibn Al-Khattab.

Umar was born around 682. Some traditions state that he was born in Medina while others claim that he was born in Egypt.

According to a Sunni Muslim tradition, Umar's lineage to Umar ibn al-Khattab stems from a famous event during the second Caliph's rule. During one of his frequent disguised journeys to survey the condition of his people, Umar overheard a milkmaid refusing to obey her mother's orders to sell adulterated milk. He sent an officer to purchase milk from the girl the next day and learned that she had kept her resolve; the milk was unadulterated. Umar summoned the girl and her mother to his court and told them what he had heard. As a reward, he offered to marry the girl to his son Asim. She accepted, and from this union was born a girl named Layla that would in due course become the mother of Umar ibn Abdul Aziz.

Umar would grow up in Medina and live there until the death of his father, after which he was summoned to Damascus by Abd al-Malik and married to his daughter Fatima. His father-in-law would die soon after, and he would serve as governor of Medina under his cousin Al-Walid I.

Unlike most rulers of that era, Umar formed a council with which he administered the province. His time in Medina was so notable that official grievances sent to Damascus all but ceased. In addition, many people emigrated to Medina from Iraq seeking refuge from their harsh governor, Al-Hajjaj bin Yousef. This angered Al-Hajjaj, and he pressed al-Walid to remove Umar. Much to the dismay of the people of Medina, al-Walid bowed to Hajjaj's pressure and dismissed Umar from his post. However, by this time, Umar had developed an impeccable reputation across the Islamic empire.

Umar continued to live in Medina through the remainder of al-Walid's reign and that of Walid's brother Suleiman. Suleiman, who was Umar's cousin and had always admired him, ignored his own brothers and son when it came time to appoint his successor and instead nominated Umar. Umar reluctantly accepted the position after trying unsuccessfully to dissuade Suleiman, and he approached it unlike any other Ummayad caliph before him.

Umar was extremely pious and disdainful of worldly luxuries. He preferred simplicity to the extravagance that had become a hallmark of the Umayyad lifestyle, depositing all assets and finery meant for the caliph into the public treasury. He abandoned the caliphate palace to the family of Suleiman and instead preferred to live in modest dwellings. He wore rough linens instead of royal robes, and often went unrecognized.

According to a Muslim tradition, a female visitor once came to Umar's house seeking charity and saw a raggedly-dressed man patching holes in the building's walls. Assuming that the man was a servant of the caliph, she asked Umar's wife, "Don't you fear God? Why don't you veil in the presence of this man?" The woman was shocked to learn that the "servant" was in fact the caliph himself.

Though he had the people's overwhelming support, he publicly encouraged them to elect someone else if they were not satisfied with him (an offer no one ever took him up on). Umar confiscated the estates seized by Ummayad officials and redistributed them to the people, while making it a personal goal to attend to the needs of every person in his empire. Fearful of being tempted into bribery, he rarely accepted gifts, and when he did; he promptly deposited them in the public treasury. He even encouraged his own wife—who had been daughter, sister and wife to three caliphs in their turn—to donate her jewelry to the public treasury. He is widely known for reinforcing the Zakat and according to Muslim tradition, at the end of his rule, there were scarcely any poor people to receive the charity money.

At one point Umar almost ordered the Great Umayyad Mosque in Damascus to be stripped of its precious stones and expensive fixtures in favor of the treasury, but he desisted on learning that the Mosque was a source of envy to his Byzantine rivals in Constantinople. These moves made him unpopular with the Umayyad court, but endeared him to the masses, so much so that the court could not move against him in the open.

Umar made a number of important religious reforms. According to both Sunni and Shi'i sources, he abolished the long-standing Umayyad and Khawaarij custom of cursing Ali ibn Abi Talib, at the end of Friday sermons and ordered the following Qu'ranic verse be recited instead:

- Surely God enjoins justice, doing of good and giving to kinsfolk.

In addition, Umar was keen to enforce the Sharia, pushing to end drinking and bathhouses where men and women would mix freely. He continued the welfare programs of the last few Umayyad caliphs, expanding them and including special programs for orphans and the destitute. He would also abolish the Jizya tax for converts to Islam, who were former dhimmis, who used to be taxed even after they had converted under other Umayyad rulers.

Generally, Umar II is credited with having ordered the first collection of hadith material in an official manner, fearing that some of it might be lost. Abu Bakr ibn Muhammad ibn Hazm and Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri, are among those who compiled hadiths at `Umar II’s behest.

Though Umar did not place as much of an emphasis on expanding the Empire's borders as his predecessors had, he was not passive. He sent Ibn Hatim ibn al-Nu'man to repel Turks invading Azerbaijan. He faced a Kharijite uprising and preferred negotiations to armed conflict, personally holding talks with two Kharijite envoys shortly before his death. He recalled the troops besieging Constantinople. These were led by his cousin Maslama. This Second Arab siege of Constantinople had failed to take the city and was sustaining heavy losses at the hands of allied Byzantine and Bulgarian forces. Its defeat was a serious blow to Umayyad prestige.

Umar's reforms in favor of the people greatly angered the nobility of the Umayyads, and they would eventually bribe a servant into poisoning his food. Umar learned of this on his death bed and pardoned the culprit, collecting the punitive payments he was entitled to under Islamic Law but depositing them in the public treasury. He died in February, 720, in Aleppo.  He was succeeded by his cousin Yazid II.

Although Umar's reign was very short (three years), he is very highly regarded in Muslim memory. He is considered one of the finest rulers in Muslim history, second only to the Four Rightly Guided Caliphs. In fact, in some circles, he is affectionately referred to as the Fifth and the last Rightly Guided Caliph.

Umar ibn Abdul Aziz see ‘Umar ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Marwan
Umar II see ‘Umar ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Marwan