Before and After Muhammad The First Millennium Refocused

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Abū Bishr Mattā (d. 940) or his pupil yahyā ibn ʿAdī (d. 974),^45 appealed to
the universality of reason compared to particular languages, while its oppo-
nents pointed out that it was formulated in Greek, and Arabs do not think like
Greeks.^46 Fārābī held that religion addresses itself, through rhetoric and poet-
ics (disciplines which were part of the full Organon) and varying images and
similitudes, to differing peoples, whereas philosophy directly approaches the
single intellectual truth that is universal.^47 One also finds in certain contempo-
rary Jewish thinkers a conviction of the universality of reason. For moderates
this meant that revelation, being known to us through reason, is also both
universal and obligatory (and the Torah therefore not abrogated by Islam). To
extremists it entailed religious relativism and skepticism, and excused neglect
of traditional religion.^48
One might also compare an arresting passage where Theodore Abū Qurra
imagines himself a mountain dweller who descends to the cities of the plain,
where he finds polytheists (there were notoriously some left in Theodore’s
see, Harrān), Mazdeans, Samaritans, Jews, Christians, Manicheans, Marcion-
ites, Bardaisan in person (!), and lastly some Muslims, all claiming they alone
know the truth. Theodore was not the first to become a comparative reli-
gionist under the pressure of life in the Fertile Crescent. He concludes that
the answer is rational reflection. He isolates three points all both agreed and
disagreed on: God (but with what attributes?), plus commandments and re-
wards/punishments (but which, and for what?). Next he recommends that

we must lay the books to one side and inquire of the mind how, from

the likeness of human nature, we might know God’s attributes [also his

commandments and rewards].... When we have discussed and come to

understand these subjects, we shall compare those books that are in our

possession. If we find a book with these things in it, we shall know that

it is from God. That book we shall confess and accept.

Theodore then describes how we may proceed from examining human na-
ture to drawing conclusions about God, who transcends our condition in
every respect.^49
We must not be so impressed by the circles Ibn Saʿdī describes that we
forget his own negative judgment, echoing the influential Ibn Hanbal or per-
haps the emerging, more moderate Ashʿarite consensus, on their attachment

45 G. Endress, “Der arabische Aristoteles und seine Lehrüberlieferung in Bagdad,” and “yahyā ibn
ʿAdī,” PIW 290–324.
46 Kraemer, Humanism [4:82] 110–15.
47 J. W. Watt, Rhetoric and philosophy from Greek into Syriac (Farnham 2010) XVI.
48 The discussion by Sklare, Samuel ben Hofni Gaon [6:73] 99–165, repays detailed study.
49 Theodore Abū Qurra, On the existence of God and the true religion [ed. I. Dick (Rome 1982); tr.
J. C. Lamoreaux, Theodore Abū Qurrah (Provo, Utah 2005) 165–74, 1–25, 41–47 (sic)] 200–40
(Dick)/1–18 (Lamoreaux).