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Ibn Hazm
Abū Muḥammad ʿAli ibn Aḥmad ibn Saʿid ibn Hazm, also sometimes known as al-Andalusi aẓ-Zahiri, (b. November 7, 994 [384 AH], Cordoba, Caliphate of Cordoba [today in Spain] – d. August 15, 1064 [456 AH], Montijar, near Huelva, Taifa of Seville [today in Spain]) was an Andalusian Muslim polymath, historian, muhaddith, jurist, philosopher, and theologian. Described as one of the strictest hadith interpreters, Ibn Hazm was a leading proponent and codifier of the Zahiri school of Islamic thought and produced a reported 400 works, of which only 40 still survive. In all, his written works amounted to some 80,000 pages. Ibn Hazm is considered to be one of the fathers of comparative religion.
Ibn Hazm's grandfather Sa'id and his father, Ahmad, both held high advisory positions in the court of Umayyad Caliph Hisham II. Scholars believe that they were Iberian Christians who converted to Islam.
Having been raised in a politically and economically important family, Ibn Hazm mingled with people of power and influence all his life. He had access to levels of government by his adolescence that most people then would never know throughout their whole lives. Those experiences with government and politicians caused Ibn Hazm to develop a reluctant and even sad skepticism about human nature and the capacity of human beings to deceive and to oppress.
Ibn Hazm's reaction was to believe that there was no refuge or truth except with an infallible God and that within men resided only corruption. He was thus known for his cynicism regarding humanity and a strong respect for the principles of language and sincerity in communication.
Ibn Hazm lived among the circle of the ruling hierarchy of the Caliphate of Cordoba government. His experiences produced an eager and observant attitude, and he gained an excellent education at Córdoba.
After the death of the grand vizier, al-Muzaffar, in 1008, the Caliphate of Iberia became embroiled in a civil war that lasted until 1031 and resulted in the collapse of the central authority of Córdoba and the emergence of many smaller incompetent states, the taifas.
Ibn Hazm's father died in 1012. Ibn Hazm was frequently imprisoned as a suspected supporter of the Umayyads. By 1031, Ibn Hazm retreated to his family estate at Manta Lisham and had begun to express his activist convictions in the literary form. He was a leading proponent and codifier of the Zahiri school of Islamic thought. His political and religious opponents gained power after the collapse of the caliphate so he accepted an offer of asylum from the governor of the island of Majorca in the 1040s. He continued to propagate the Zahiri School there before he returned to Andalusia.
As an Athari, Ibn Hazm opposed the allegorical interpretation of religious texts and preferred a grammatical and syntactical interpretation of the Qur'an. Ibn Hazm granted cognitive legitimacy only to revelation and sensation, and he considered deductive reasoning insufficient in legal and religious matters. He rejected practices common among more orthodox schools such as juristic discretion. He was initially a follower of the Maliki school of law within Sunni Islam, but he switched to the Shafi'i school at around the age of thirty. He finally settled with the Zahiri school. He is perhaps the most well-known adherent of the school and the main source of extant works on Zahiri law. He studied the school's precepts and methods under Abu al-Khiyar al-Dawudi al-Zahiri of Santarem Municipality and was eventually promoted to the level of a teacher of the school himself.
In 1029, both al-Zahiri and Ibn Hazm were expelled from the main mosque of Cordoba for their activities. Much of Ibn Hazm's substantial body of works was burned in Seville by his sectarian and political opponents. His surviving works, while criticized as repetitive, didactic and abrasive in style, also show a fearless irreverence towards his academic critics and civil authorities.
Ibn Hazm wrote works on law and theology and over ten medical books. He called for science to be integrated into a standard curriculum. In Organization of the Sciences, Ibn Hazm defines educational fields as stages of progressive acquisition set over a five-year curriculum, from language and exegesis of the Qur'an to the life and physical sciences to a rationalistic theology.
Apart from his rational works, Ibn Hazm's The Ring of the Dove (Tawq al-hamamah) is considered a major work of Arabic literature from Al-Andalus.
In Fisal, a treatise on Islamic science and theology, Ibn Hazm promoted sense perception above subjectively flawed human reason.
Perhaps Ibn Hazm's most influential work in the Arabic, selections of which have been translated into English, is now The Muhalla, or The Adorned Treatise. It is reported to be a summary of a much longer work, known as Al-Mujalla.
Ibn Hazm wrote the Scope of Logic, which stressed the importance of sense perception as a source of knowledge. He wrote that the "first sources of all human knowledge are the soundly used senses and the intuitions of reason, combined with a correct understanding of a language". Ibn Hazm also criticized some of the more traditionalist theologians who were opposed to the use of logic and argued that the first generations of Muslims did not rely on logic. His response was that the early Muslims had witnessed the revelation directly, but later Muslims have been exposed to contrasting beliefs and so the use of logic is necessary to preserve the true teachings of Islam.
In his book, In Pursuit of Virtue, Ibn Hazm urges his readers:
Ibn Hazm's teachers in medicine included al-Zahrawi and Ibn al-Kattani, and he wrote ten medical works, including Kitab fi'l-Adwiya al-mufrada.
In addition to his views on honesty in communication, Ibn Hazm also addressed the science of language to some degree. He viewed the Arabic language, the Hebrew language and the Syriac language as all essentially being one language which branched out as the speakers settled in different geographic regions and developed different vocabularies and grammars from the common root. He also differed with many Muslim theologians in that he did not view Arabic as superior to other languages since the Qur'an does not describe Arabic as such. Ibn Hazm viewed that there was no proof for claiming any language was superior to another.
Ibn Hazm was well known for his strict literalism and is considered the champion of the literalist Zahiri school within Sunni Islām. Ibn Hazm's works lightly touched upon the traditions of Greek philosophy. Agreeing with both Epicurus and Prodicus of Ceos, Ibn Hazm stated that pleasure brings happiness in life and that there is nothing to fear in death. He believed that these philosophical traditions were useful but not enough to build an individual's character properly, and he stated that the Islamic faith was also necessary.
The concept of absolute free will was rejected by Ibn Hazm, as he believed that all of an individual's attributes are created by God.
Ibn Hazm was highly critical of the Shi'a. He said about the sect:
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Ibn Hazm, in full Abu Muhammad ʿAli ibn Ahmad ibn Saʿid ibn Hazm, was one of the leading exponents of the Zahiri (Literalist) school of jurisprudence. Ibn Hazm produced some 400 works, covering jurisprudence, logic, history, ethics, comparative religion, and theology, and The Ring of the Dove, on the art of love.
Ibn Hazm was born into a notable family that claimed descent from a Persian client of Yazid, the son of Mu'awiyah, the first of the Umayyad dynasty rulers in Syria. Muslim families of Iberian (Spanish) background commonly adopted genealogies that identified them with the Arabs; scholars therefore tend to favor evidence suggesting that Ibn Hazm was a member of a family of Iberian Christian background from Manta Lisham (west of Sevilla). Hazm, his great-grandfather, probably converted to the Islamic faith, and his grandfather Saʿid moved to Córdoba, the capital of the caliphate. Ahmad, his father, a devout and learned man, held a high position under al-Mansur and his successor, al-Muzaffar, a father and son who ruled efficiently in the name of the caliph Hisham II. Living in the circles of the ruling hierarchy provided Ibn Ḥazm, an eager and observant student, with excellent educational opportunities. Indeed, the experiences in the surroundings of the harem undoubtedly made an indelible impression upon him.
Circumstances for Ibn Hazm changed drastically upon the death of al-Muzaffar in 1008 CC, when the stability that the Umayyads had provided for more than two and one-half centuries collapsed. A bloody civil war ensued and continued until 1031, when the caliphate was abolished and a large number of petty states replaced any semblance of a centralized political structure. Ibn Hazm's family was uprooted, and his father, Ahmad, died in 1012. Ibn Hazm continued to boldly and persistently support Umayyad claimants to the office of caliph, for which he was frequently imprisoned.
By 1031, Ibn Hazm began to express his convictions and activistic inclinations through literary activity, becoming a very controversial figure. With the exception of a short stay on the island of Majorca, Ibn Hazm apparently spent most of his time on the family estate in Manta Lisham. According to one of his sons, he produced some 80,000 pages of writing, comprising about 400 works. Less than 40 of these works are still extant
The varied character of Ibn Hazm’s literary activity covers an impressive range of jurisprudence, logic, history, ethics, comparative religion, and theology. His appreciation of the resources of the Arabic language and his skillful use of poetry and prose are evident in all his works. One delightful example is The Ring of the Dove (Tawq al-hamamah), on the art of love. Probably best known for his work in jurisprudence and theology, for which the basic qualification was a thorough knowledge of the Qur'an and hadith (tradition), he became one of the leading exponents of the Ẓahiri school of jurisprudence. The Zahiri principle of legal theory relies exclusively on the literal (Arabic: ẓahir) meaning of the Qur'an and hadith. Though his legal theories never won him many followers, he creatively extended the Ẓahiri -- the Literalist -- principle to the field of theology. He made a comparative study on the religious pluralism of his day, which is among the earliest of such studies and is highly regarded for its careful historical detail.
An activist by nature with a deep sense of the reality of God, Ibn Hazm lived very much in the political and intellectual world of his times. In spite of his activism, however, he was very much a nonconformist and a loner. He conversed and debated with the leading contemporaries of his area, to whom he exhibited an insatiable thirst for knowledge as well as uncompromising convictions. Most observant, careful in analysis, meticulous in detail, and devoted to the clarity of his positions, he demanded the same of others. According to a saying of the period, the tongue of Ibn Hazm was a twin brother to the sword of al-Hajjaj, a famous 7th century general and governor of Iraq. Ibn Hazm attacked, in his writings, deceit, distortion, and inconsistency. However, at the same time, Ibn Hazm also exhibited a sensitive spirit and expressed profound insights about the dimensions of human relationships.
Ibn Hazm was shunned and defamed for his political and theological views. When some of his writings were burned in public, he said that no such act could deprive him of their content. Although attacks against him continued after his death, various influential defenders appeared. Ibn Hazm was apparently easy to despise, but he also could not be ignored. He was frequently and effectively quoted, so much so that the phrase “Ibn Ḥazm said” became proverbial.
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The Ring of the Dove or Ṭawq al-Ḥamāmah is a treatise on love written in the year 1022. Normally a writer of theology and law, Ibn Hazm produced his only work of literature with The Ring of the Dove. He was heavily influenced by Plato's Phaedrus, though the bulk of the work was still his own writing, rather than an anthology of other works. Although the human aspects of affection are the primary concern, the book was still written from the perspective of a devout Muslim, and as such chastity and restraint were common themes.
The book provides a glimpse into Ibn Hazm's own psychology. Ibn Hazm's teenage infatuation with one of his family's maids is often quoted as an example of the sort of chaste, unrequited love about which the author wrote.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Hazm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ring_of_the_Dove
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ibn-Hazm
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