Ibn Babawayh - also known as al-Shaykh al-Saduq - was a prominent Twelver Shi'i scholar of hadith. Writing within the first century after the vanishing of the twelfth imam, al-Saduq represents a pivotal moment in Twelver hadith literature, as this Shi'i community adjusted to a world without a visible imam and guide, a world wherein the imams could only be accessed through the text of their remembered words and deeds. George Warner's study of al-Saduq's work examines the formation of Shi'i hadith literature in light of these unique dynamics, as well as giving a portrait of an important but little-studied early Twelver thinker. Though almost all of al-Saduq's writings are collections of hadith, Warner's approach pays careful attention to how these texts are selected and presented to explore what they can reveal about their compiler, offering insight into al-Saduq's ideas and suggesting new possibilities for the wider study of hadith.

This is the first study to compare the philosophical systems of secular scientific philosopher Mario Bunge (1919-2020), and Moroccan Islamic philosopher Taha Abd al-Rahman (b.1945). In their efforts to establish the philosophical underpinnings of an ideal modernity these two great thinkers speak to the same elements of the human condition, despite their opposing secular and religious worldviews. While the differences between Bunge's critical-realist epistemology and materialist ontology on the one hand, and Taha's spiritualist ontology and revelational-mystical epistemology on the other, are fundamental, there is remarkable common ground between their scientific and Islamic versions of humanism. Both call for an ethics of prosperity combined with social justice, and both criticize postmodernism and religious conservatism. The aspiration of this book is to serve as a model for future dialogue between holders of Western and Islamic worldviews, in mutual pursuit of modernity's best-case scenario.

This book offers a new edition, with English translation and commentary, of the Kitab al-Madhal, which opens Avicenna's (d. 1037) most comprehensive summa of Peripatetic philosophy, namely the Kitab al-Sifa'. For the first time, the text is established together with a stemma codicum showing the genealogical relations among 34 manuscripts, the twelfth-century Latin translation, and the literal quotations by Avicenna's first and second-generation students. In this book, Avicenna's reappraisal of Porphyry's Isagoge is examined from both a historical and a philosophical point of view. The key-features of Avicenna's theory of predicables are analyzed in the General Introduction and in the Commentary both in their own right and against the background of the Greek and Arabic exegetical tradition. Readers shall find in this book the first systematic study of the Madhal which, in addition to being the only logical work of the Sifa' ever transmitted in its entirety both in Arabic and in Latin, is crucial for understanding Avicenna's conception of universal predicables at the crossroads between logic and metaphysics.

Persia is home to one of the few civilizations in the world that has had a continuous tradition of philosophical thought for over two and a half millennia. As Islamic theology developed in the Middle Ages, many of its schools interacted with existing Persian philosophical currents and evolved into a distinctive philosophical 'Kalam', or dogmatic theology. Among the definitive masters of both Shi'i and Sunni theologians were numerous Persians, chief among them Al-Ghazzali and Fakhr al-Din Al-Razi, who are prominently represented here. Important selections from both Shi'i and Sunni theological schools (including Mu'tazila and Ash'ariyya) are included in the volume, many of which have never before been available in translation in the West until now.

This is an era when the Islamic World is making a range of attempts to redefine itself and to grapple with the challenges of modernity. Many schools of thought have emerged which seek to position modern Islam within the context of a rapidly changing contemporary world. Exploring and defining the relationship between religion and knowledge, Ismail Rafi Al-Faruqi, a distinguished 20th century Arab-American scholar of Islam, formulated ideas which have made substantial contributions to the Islam-and-modernity discourse. His review of the interaction between Islam and knowledge examines the philosophy behind this relationship, and the ways in which Islam can relate to our understanding of science, the arts, architecture, technology and other knowledge-based fields of enquiry. This book includes contributions from Seyyed Hossein Nasr, John Esposito, Charles Fletcher and others, and will prove an essential reference point for scholars of Islam and students of philosophy and comparative religion.

This book offers for the first time a comprehensive study of the reception and reworking of the Peripatetic theory of the soul in the Kitab al-Nafs (Book of the Soul) by Avicenna (d. 1037). This study seeks to frame Avicenna's science of the soul (or psychology) by focusing on three key concepts: subject, definition, and activity. The examination of these concepts will disclose the twofold consideration of the soul in Avicenna's psychology. Besides the 'general approach' to the soul of sublunary living beings, which is the formal principle of the body, Avicenna's psychology also exhibits a 'specific orientation' towards the soul in itself, i.e. the human rational soul that, considered in isolation from the body, is a self-subsistent substance, identical with the theoretical intellect and capable of surviving severance from the body. These two investigations demonstrate the coexistence in Avicenna's psychology of a more specific and less physical science (psychologia specialis) within a more general and overall physical one (psychologia generalis).

This book is a comparative study of two major Shi'i thinkers Hamid al-Din Kirmani from the Fatimid Egypt and Mulla Sadra from the Safavid Iran, demonstrating the mutual empowerment of discourses on knowledge formation and religio-political authority in certain Isma'ili and Twelver contexts. The book investigates concepts, narratives, and arguments that have contributed to the generation and development of the discourse on the absolute authority of the imam and his representatives. To demonstrate this, key passages from primary texts in Arabic and Persian are translated and closely analyzed to highlight the synthesis of philosophical, Sufi, theological, and scriptural discourses. The book also discusses the discursive influence of Nasir al-Din Tusi as a key to the transmission of Isma'ili narratives of knowledge and authority to later Shi'i philosophy and its continuation to modern and contemporary times particularly in the narrative of the guardianship of the jurist in the Islamic Republic of Iran.

In this book the author argues that the Falasifa, the Philosophers of the Islamic Golden Age, are usefully interpreted through the prism of the contemporary, western ethics of belief. He contends that their position amounts to what he calls 'Moderate Evidentialism' - that only for the epistemic elite what one ought to believe is determined by one's evidence. The author makes the case that the Falasifa's position is well argued, ingeniously circumvents issues in the epistemology of testimony, and is well worth taking seriously in the contemporary debate. He reasons that this is especially the case since the position has salutary consequences for how to respond to the sceptic, and for how we are to conceive of extremist belief.

This study is the first comprehensive analysis of the physical theory of the Islamic philosopher Avicenna (d. 1037). It seeks to understand his contribution against the developments within the preceding Greek and Arabic intellectual milieus, and to appreciate his philosophy as such by emphasising his independence as a critical and systematic thinker. Exploring Avicenna's method of "teaching and learning," it investigates the implications of his account of the natural body as a three-dimensionally extended composite of matter and form, and examines his views on nature as a principle of motion and his analysis of its relation to soul. Moreover, it demonstrates how Avicenna defends the Aristotelian conception of place against the strident criticism of his predecessors, among other things, by disproving the existence of void and space. Finally, it sheds new light on Avicenna's account of the essence and the existence of time. For the first time taking into account the entire range of Avicenna's major writings, this study fills a gap in our understanding both of the history of natural philosophy in general and of the philosophy of Avicenna in particular. This monograph has been awarded the annual BRAIS - De Gruyter Prize (Kulturpreis Bayern) in the Study of Islam and the Muslim World and the Iran World Award for Book of the Year (2020).

Crossing continents and running across centuries, Key Concepts in World Philosophies brings together the 45 core ideas associated with major Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Islamic, African, Ancient Greek, Indigenous and modern European philosophers. The universal theme of self-cultivation and transformation connects each concept. Each one seeks to change our understanding the world or the life we are living. From Chinese xin and karma in Buddhist traditions to okwu in African philosophy, equity in Islamic thought and the good life in Aztec philosophy, an international team of philosophers cover a diverse set of ideas and theories originating from thinkers such as Confucius, Buddha, Dogen, Nezahualcoyotl, Nietzsche and Zhuangzi. Organised around the major themes of knowledge, metaphysics and aesthetics, each short chapter provides an introductory overview supported by a glossary. This is a one-of-a-kind toolkit that allows you to read philosophical texts from all over the world and learn how their ideas can be applied to your own life.

This book explores how Ibn al-'Arabi (1165 1240) used the concept of barzakh (the Limit) to deal with the philosophical problem of the relationship between God and the world, a major concept disputed in ancient and medieval Islamic thought. The term "barzakh" indicates the activity or actor that differentiates between things and that, paradoxically, then provides the context of their unity. Author Salman H. Bashier looks at early thinkers and shows how the synthetic solutions they developed provided the groundwork for Ibn al-'Arabi's unique concept of barzakh. Bashier discusses Ibn al-'Arabi's development of the concept of barzakh ontologically through the notion of the Third Thing and epistemologically through the notion of the Perfect Man, and compares Ibn al-'Arabi's vision with Plato's.

This study of Sayf al-Din al-Amidi's (d. 631/1233) teachings on creation offers close analysis of all of his extant works of falsafa and kalam. Some of these were not known to previous scholars, yet they bear witness to key facets of the interaction between the historically inimical traditions of Hellenic philosophy and rational theology at this important intellectual moment. Al-Amidi is seen to grapple with the encounter of two paradigms for the discussion of creation. On the one hand, Ibn Sina's metaphysical concept of necessity of existence is the basis of his doctrine of the world's pre-eternal emanation. On the other, for the mutakallimun, the physical theory of atomism bolsters the view that God created the world from nothing. This study is of interest to scholars of Ibn Sina and Ash'arism alike, as it advances our understanding of the ongoing tradition of rational theology in the Islamic world, long past Abu Hamid al-Ghazali's (d. 505/1111) famous attack on the philosophers.