THE CONCLUSIVE ARGUMENT FROM GOD: SHAH WALI ALLAH OF DEHLI'S HUJJAT ALLAH AL-BALIGHA. (original) (raw)
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Proclus and his Legacy, 2017
The extent of the influenceo fb oth the Arabica Plotiniana and Proclus Arabus on earlyA rabic philosophyi sd ifficult to determine and remains aq uestion open to study. Nevertheless,t hoser emarkable mutations of the Enneads and the Elements of Theology,earlyp roducts of the transmission of Greek scientific textsi nto Arabic,¹ each in its own wayhad significant influenceonbothArabic and Latin medieval philosophy. Their studyisboth worthwhile and likelytobefruitful, especiallyifwecome to abetter understanding of their relations to theirGreek originals.This is not to say that no excellent studies exist; quite to the contrary,exceptional work has been done on revealing the nature of the doctrines of these texts,particularlybut not exclusively by Richard Taylor and Cristina d'Ancona. However,what has been little considered as yeti sh ow the omission from Arabic Plotinus and Proclus of certain elements or doctrines found in, and crucial to, the original texts has affected the transmission of key ideas from these originals.This article is an attempt to do just that,but onlywith respect to one work in the largerc ollection sometimes referredt oa sProclus Arabus and, even then, onlywith respect to avery specific question, namely the question of the individuation of incorporeal entities, particularlys ouls.² The question arises from recent re-evaluations of Proclus' doctrine of henads which show thatt he Gods (henads) in Proclus' philosophya re primal individuals and are thus the sourceofthe individualityofall inferior beings.³ Now,itisprecisely the henads whose importance to Proclus' metaphysics is manifest in his Elements of Theology and whose absence is most conspicuous in the Kitāba l-īḍ āḥ fī l-khaira l-maḥ ḍ -the Arabic version of the Latin Liber de Causis and which Iw ill refer to as the Arabic Liber-which was derived primarilyf rom the content of the ET. It would stand to reason that,ifthe henads are the ultimateprinciples of individuation in Proclus' metaphysics,t heir absence would resulti nal oss of the conceptual means to They areg enerallya greed to be products of the circle of translators and scholars gathereda bout the philosopheral-Kindī in the late9 th century;see, e. g., d'Ancona (1995a); Endress (2007a); Endress (2007b). In this essay, Ionlyconsider the propositions contained in Badawi (1955), hereafterciteda sLiber followed by Badawi'sp agination and lineation. Id on ot consider the somewhat different arrangement of propositions in Thillet and Oudaimah( 2001-2002); nor the different collection of 20 propositions edited and commented on in Endress (1973); nor again the twoa dditional propositions in Zimmerman (1994). Butler and . Dodds alreadyi nt he commentary to his translation of the Elements of Theology had recognized the One as such as ource of individuality.
Its Matla And Harja Are Twofold In Function Form And Content in Ibn Quzmān’s «Zajal 59» and «138»
Boletín de Literatura Oral, 2011
SUMMARY. This article begins (1) by briefly contrasting the goals of those treatises on rhetoric and poetics composed in Greek, Latin and Arabic during the Ancient and Medieval periods, on the one hand, with the goals of modern, post-Romantic literary criticism, on the other, in order to highlight the fact that pre-modern treatises had, as their main purpose, that of teaching students how to write, and of correcting their mistakes when they did so. As such they were largely prescriptive, and cannot be of much use for the purposes of modern literary criticism, which is largely descriptive and interpretative in its approach. Despite this obvious fact, pre-modern methods have often been misapplied, in modern times, to the study of Arabic poetry. (2) The article proceeds to discuss the role and func- tion of the ‘initial refrain’ or maṭla‘ as well as the ‘exit’ or ḫarja in Andalusī-Arabic strophic poetry, pointing out that the function of those two elements is essentially a musical one, and stems from an oral tradition. (3 and 4) Thereafter, the article analyses two zajal poems by the renowned twelfth- century Andalusi-Arab poet Ibn Quzmān. These two poems exhibit an unusual trait: each one makes use of a single, identical text, that is repeated verbatim at the beginning and end of the poem, both as its maṭla‘ and as its ḫarja. It is suggested that this external thematic parallelism framing the poem encloses an internal patterning based on ring composition, an organizational technique of which the poet may well have been consciously aware. (5) The form this patterning takes, however, points to certain ambiguities and contradictions, inviting the reader to interpret the text by penetrat- ing beyond its surface meaning, in order to arrive at its deeper layers of significance. This technique of «allegorical» interpretation is, in turn, based on methods of Qur’anic interpretation introduced by the Mu‘tazilī school of Islamic theologians, and which had heavily influenced literary authors long before the time of Ibn Quzman. (6) Finally, it is concluded that, in this instance, the tension between the surface and hidden meaning of the text is a means of allowing the author to adopt a critical stance toward the society in which he lives. RESUMEN. Este artículo comienza por contrastar brevemente los objetivos de aquellos tratados de poesía y retórica compuestos en griego, latín y arabe durante la Antiguedad y el periodo medieval, por un lado, con los objetivos de la crítica literaria moderna y post-romantica, por otro, para subrayar el hecho de que los tratados premodernos tenían como proposito principal aquel de ensenar a los estudiantes como escribir, y corregir sus errores. Como tal, eran mayoritariamente prescriptivos, y no pueden ser de gran utilidad para el propósito de la critica literaria moderna, que es ampliamente descriptiva e interpretativa en su enfoque. A pesar de este hecho obvio, en la actualidad se han aplicado erroneamente metodos premodernos en el estudio de la poesía arabe. Este articulo prosigue discutiendo el papel y la funcion del ‘estribillo inicial’ o maṭla‘ así como la ‘salida’ o jarŷa en la poesía estrofica arabigo-andalusí, senalando que la funcion de estos dos elementos es esencialmente musical, pues surge de la tradicion oral. A partir de aquí, el articulo analiza dos zejeles del ilustre poeta arabigo-andalusí Ibn Quzmān. Estos poemas muestran un rasgo inusual: cada uno se vale de un unico e identico texto, que se repite textualmente al comienzo y al final del poema, ambos como su maṭla‘ y como su jarya. Se sugiere, por tanto, que este paralelismo tematico que enmarca el poema encierra un patron interno basado en la composicion circular, una tecnica organizativa de la cual el poeta bien podría haber sido consciente. La forma que toma este patron, no obstante, presenta ciertas ambiguedades y contradicciones, invitando al lector a interpretar el texto introduciéndose mas allá de la superficie de su significado, para alcanzar las capas mas profundas de su mensaje. Esta tecnica de interpretacion alegorica esta, asimismo, basada en los metodos de interpretacion del Al-corán introducidos por la escuela Mu‘tazilī de teologos islamicos, que había influido a diversos autores mucho antes del tiempo de Ibn Quzmān. Finalmente, se concluye que, en este caso, la tension entre la superficie y el significado oculto del exto permite al autor adoptar una postura critica ante la sociedad en la que vive.
In the Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam Ibn ʿArabī presents us with several linguistic explanations about the meanings of specific words and expressions (mostly Koranic occurrences). From a contemporary linguistic perspective, many of those explanations would be classified within the category of paretymologies or folk etymologies. In the present contribution we will examine the paretymologies in Ibn ʿArabī's Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam against some aspects of the Islamic linguistic thought, as specifically developed by Ibn ʿArabī, and try to make explicit the epistemological and theoretical framework standing behind those disputable etymologies. In so doing we will attempt to show how, far from simply being the product of popular fantasy or fanciful speculations, Ibn ʿArabī's semantic explanations appear as highly sophisticated hermeneutic practices, grounded in a thorough knowledge of various language-related branches of Islamic science, and consistent with the metaphysical vision of language emerging from the Andalusian master's speculations on the nature of the sacred text and on the linguistic structure of revelation.
Licit Magic -GlobalLit Working Papers No. 11 - Kristof D'hulster - Sitting in on an Ottoman Madrasa Course in Rhetoric. Gürānī's Interlinear Translation-cum-Commentary of the Preface of al-Qazwīnī's Talkhīṣ al-Miftāḥ, 2022
This working paper presents a 16th- or 17th-century Ottoman translation-cum-commentary of the preface and introduction of one of the classics of Islamicate rhetoric, al-Qazwīnī’s Talkhīṣ al-Miftāḥ (The Key’s Digest), a 14th-century work on rhetoric based on al-Sakkākī’s 13th-century seminal Miftāḥ al-ʿUlūm (The Key of Sciences). This particular work is translated not because of its exceptional quality, but—quite on the contrary—because of its emblematic nature, as it provides us with a glimpse of the kind of texts on rhetoric that madrasa students throughout the Ummah engaged with, and—perhaps even more importantly—with a glimpse of the way in which they did so: through interlinear translations and/or commentaries. Al-Qazwīnī as the author and Gürānī as the translator-cum-commentator walk the student through some highly condensed definitions of “eloquence” and “rhetoric”, each of which is defined first and foremost negatively and hardly ever positively (negatively as the absence of tanāfur al-ḥurūf, gharāba, mukhālafat al-qiyās al-lughawī, al-karāha fī l-samʿ, ḍaʿf al-taʾlīf, tanāfur al-kalimāt, taʿqīd, kathrat al-takrār, and tatābuʿ al-iḍāfāt; positively as muṭābaqa li muqtaḍā l-ḥāl). The text concludes with a rather confusing discussion of the branches of rhetoric and their nomenclature.
TERMINOLOGIES OF CLASSICAL UṢŪLĪTEXTS: A STUDY OF AL-SUBKĪ'S JAMʿ AL-JAWĀMIʿ
ISLAMIC INSIGHT JOURNAL OF ISLAMIC STUDIES, 2022
Classical literature in various Islamic disciplines has a tremendous treasury of knowledge that are very relevant to contemporarydiscourse in each subject. Their wider availability has attracted many researchers to study their content and style. One should comprehend their language, structure, style, and terminologies, which are entirely different from the present practice, to have a comprehensive understanding of such texts. The present study attempts to analyse the terminologies employed by mutakallimūn scholars in uṣūl al-fiqhtexts based on Tāj al-Dīn al-Subkī'sJamʿ al-Jawāmiʿ. The text represents the genre of uṣūl al-fiqh literature as it has summarised the quintessence of early discussions and greatly influenced the later development of the discipline. It focussed on the jargon denoting the validity of opinions and scholars. It found that the author has used about twenty terminologies, each one of which has a unique meaning, such as categorically denoting the preferred opinion, clearly invalidating an opinion and merely reporting a disagreement. He usually mentions scholars with short names, some of which are standard usage in the madhhab while few are unique.
A LINGUISTIC STUDY OF YAHYĀ IBN SALLĀM'S VIEW ON QUR'ANIC VOCABULARY
Fourth International Symposium on Rethinking the Qur’ān: Qur’ānic Studies in the First Three Centuries -Ankara, 2018
Understanding the meaning of the Qur'anic vocabulary is the first and fundamental step in the interpretation of the Qur'anic text. Numerous works of the Islamic scholars in this field, from the early Islamic centuries till now, are indisputable evidence of this. Yahyā ibn Sallām, a Muslim exegete of the second century AH, is one of the Quranic scholars, who the proximity of his time to the period of Quranic revelation, increases the importance of the methodology of his works in the field of Semantics of the Qur'anic vocabulary. Therefore, in this article, we have studied two of his works reflecting his views on this field; the first work is titled Al-Tasārif, which deals with the issue of Wujūh al-Qur'ān, and the second one is Tafsir. These two works, especially the first one, are full of semantics instances of the Qur'anic vocabulary. There is no doubt that one of the characteristics of the interpretative tradition in the early Islamic centuries, is the domination of narration and its acquired feature that is noticeable in the two previously mentioned works of Yahyā ibn Sallām, especially in his Tafsir. However, it seems that Yahyā ibn Sallām deals with the semantics of the Qur'anic vocabulary in many cases. Accordingly, the aim of the present study is to apply some recognized concepts and terms of semantics to describe and analyze the meaning of Quranic terms in the two aforementioned works, in order to clarify the method used by one of the earliest scholars of Quranic studies in this area. This study shows that he has paid attention to the "context", "etymology", "syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations", "homographs", "hyponymy" and "semantic opposition". In addition, he points to the metaphorical concepts of these terms in the semantic analysis of those Quranic terms belonging to the abstract issues, which reminds the «conceptual metaphors» in modern linguistics.
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The Arabic terminological tradition is remarkably unique for the application of a single referential word to a variety of concepts across subjects. One such term is lahn, which, in the sense of a terminus technicus, became a familiar topos in philological, jurisprudential, literary, and Qur'anic discourses. The present study reexamines the referential terrain of the term, taking as its point of departure, Johann Fück's (d. 1974) seminal discussion of it. An entirely new area to which the term came to be applied relates to the aesthetic genres; namely, the poetic and prose forms where particular manipulation of meanings or expressions became interpretable as rhetorical lahn. From Ibn Durayd (d. 321/933) down to Ibn Rashıq (d. 456/1063), this study examines the trajectory of the evolution and formalization of the term lahn in the context of allusive tropes established by theorists and literary legislators. The study also demonstrates that its strong referential attachment to incorrect idiom notwithstanding, the application of the term lahn to other phenomena in the scholarly discourse was all the more remarkable in regard to the literary, theoretical tradition where the elasticity of the terminological convention is once more established.
A Medieval Conception of Language in Human Terms: Al-Farabi
With regard to the new directions in the Humanities, here I am going to consider and examine the approach of al-Farabi as a medieval thinker in introducing a new outlook to "language" in difference with the other views. Thereby, I will explore his challenges in the frame of "philosophical humanism" as a term given by Arkoun (1970) and Kraemer (1984) to the humanism of the Islamic philosophers and their circles, mainly in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Al-Farabi's conception of philosophical humanism, in which philosophy is thick and religion is thin, makes its agony with the other versions of humanism and also orthodox Islam. It means that his introduction of a humanistic understanding of language should be placed in such a multi-level contested environment. According to al-Farabi, language as a universal category has relation with reason that logic should function as its proper instrument. As a result, there is no specific privileged predetermined language, but the position of any language is shaped by its relation with human reason and formal logic that is something human-made. And such a conception means language in human terms.