POPULAR RE-ISSUE AT A UNIFORM PRICE Demy 8vo, dark green cloth, gilt. ALBERUNI: India. An Account of the Religion, Philosophy, Literature, Geography, Chronology, Astronomy, Customs, Laws, and Astrology of India, about A.D. 1030. By Dr. Edward C. Sachau. ARNOLD (Sir E.): Indian Poetry and Indian Idylls. Containing ‘The Indian Song of Songs,’ from the Sanskrit of the Gita Govinda of Jayadeva; Two Books from ‘The Iliad of India’ (Mahabharata); ‘Proverbial Wisdom,’ from the Shlokas of the Hitopadesa

BY DE LACY O’LEARY, D.D. Lecturer in Aramaic and Syriac, Bristol University London: KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD. NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. 1922 History traces the evolution of the social structure in which the community exists to-day. There are three chief factors at work in this evolution; racial descent, culture drift, and transmission of language: the first of these physiological and not necessarily connected with the other two, whilst those two are not always as

THE SYRIAC VERSION OF HELLENISM The subject proposed in the following pages is the history of the cultural transmission by which Greek philosophy and science were passed from Hellenistic surroundings to the Syriac speaking community, thence to the Arabic speaking world of Islam, and so finally to the Latin Schoolmen of Western Europe. That such a transmission did take place is known even to the beginner in mediæval history, but how it happened, and the influences which promoted it, and the modif

In considering the transmission of Greek philosophy to the Arabs we see that philosophy still as a living force, adapting itself to changed conditions but without a break in the continuity of its life. It was not, as now, an academic study sought only by a group of specialists, but a living influence which guided men in their ideas about the universe in which they lived and dominated all theology, law, and social ideas. For many centuries it pervaded the atmosphere in which Western Asia was educ

In the expedition against Mecca a militant attitude was the inevitable result of compelling circumstances. The Meccans were actively hostile and had adopted a persecuting attitude towards those who accepted the new religion. At the time the Quraysh tribe, to which Muhammad belonged, was so far in the ascendant that its adhesion was necessary for the progress of Islam in the Hijaz: the championship of some prominent tribe was essential, and Muhammad himself was deeply attached to the traditional

A curious importance also is attached to the date. The disaffection of the mawali came to a head towards the end of the first century of the Muslim era. There was a general belief that the completion of the century would see the end of existing conditions, just as in Western Europe the year 1000 A.D. was expected to mark the dawn of a new world. Dissatisfaction was at its height, especially in Khurasan, and the disaffected for the most part rallied round the `Alids. The `Alid claims which did so

Although conforming to Islam, Ibn al-Muqaffa` was generally regarded as a Zindiq , a term properly signifying a Manichæan but used loosely by the Arabic writers to denote a member of one of the Persian religions who professed outward conformity to Islam, but secretly adhered to his own creed, or as a term of abuse to denote a heretic of any sort. The word itself is a Persian rendering of siddiq or “initiate,” a title assumed by full members of the Manichæan sect. It implies the possession of eso

Ibrahim b. Sayar an-Nazzam (d. 231), the next great Mu`tazilite leader was a devoted student of the Greek philosophers and an encyclopædic writer. In this he was typical of the earlier Arabic philosophers whose endeavour was to apply Greek science to the interpretation of life and nature generally, an aim which necessarily tended to produce encyclopædic compilations rather than original studies in any one field of knowledge. Already the Mu`tazilites had reached the position that good and evil re

He accepted as genuine the Theology of Aristotle which had been put into circulation by Naymah of Emessa, and, we are told, revised the Arabic translation. The Theology was an abridgment of the last three books of Plotinus’ Enneads , and presumably al-Kindi compared this with the text of the Enneads , corrected the terminology and general sense in accordance with the original, and evidently did so without any suspicion that it was not a genuine work of Aristotle. The Theology had not been long i

Can we trace the origin of these early recluses? Von Kremer ( Herrsch , p. 67) considers this type as a native Arab growth developed from pre-Islamic Christian influences. Christian monasticism we know was familiar to the Arabs in the country fringing the Syrian desert and in the desert of Sinai: of this we have evidence both in Christian writers like Nilus and in the pre-Islamic poets, as in the words of Imru l-Qays:— The hermit’s life was known even in Arabia itself, and tradition relates that

We have cited the name of al-Ash`ari as representative of the first stage of this movement, but it is equally represented by the contemporary al-Mataradi in Samarqand and by at-Tahawi in Egypt. Of these, however, at-Tahawi has quite passed into oblivion. For long the Ash`arites and the Mataridites formed rival orthodox schools of kalam , and al-Mataridi’s system still has a certain vogue amongst Turkish Muslims, but the Ash`arite system is that which commands the widest assent. Theologians recko

Amongst the Berber tribes in perpetual conflict with the Arab garrisons there was always a refuge and a welcome for the lost causes of Islam, and so almost every heretical sect and every defeated dynasty made its last stand there, so that even now those parts show the strangest survivals of otherwise forgotten movements. No doubt this was mainly due to a perennial tone of disaffection towards the Arab rulers, and anyone in revolt against the Khalif was welcomed for that very fact. The conquest o

The fifth essay is more especially directed against the philosophers as teaching doctrines subversive of revelation. In the first place he disapproves the theory of emanations; the work of creation was directly performed by God without any intermediary; if there were emanations, why did they stop short at the lunar sphere? This refers to the descriptions given by the Arabic writers who endeavour to explain the successive emanations from the First Cause as reaching down to different spheres. He o

By this time Paris had become the centre of scholastic philosophy, which was now beginning to predominate theology. This takes its form, as yet untouched by Arabic methods, in the work of Peter Lombard (d. 1160 A.D.), whose “Sentences,” an encyclopædia of the controversies of the time but a mere compilation, remained a popular book down to the 17th century. The methods and form used in the “Sentences” shows the influence of Abelard, and still more of the Decretals of Gratian. It is interest ing

We have now traced the transmission of a particular type of Hellenistic culture through the Syrian Church, the Zoroastrians of Persia, and the pagans of Harran to the Islamic community, where it was rather compromised by the patronage of those whom the official Muslim teachers decided to regard as heretics. In spite of this censure it has left a very distinct and enduring impression on Muslim theology and on popular beliefs. After a chequered career in the East it passed over to the Western Musl

Years from the death of the Prophet Muhammad to the fall of the Muwahhid dynasty in Spain....