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to “reason, observation and deduction”; or Theodore’s foreseeable conclu-
sion, for all his rationalism, that “the Gospel alone contains what we learned
from our own nature.” Nevertheless, in tenth- century Baghdad there was still
room at the majlis not only for theologians trained in logic, but also even for
philosophers—we may imagine them among the “materialists and atheists.”^50
And these philosophers were not just the earlier ecclesiastical Aristotelians
whose concentration on logic we noted in chapter 5. The scholars of Bagh-
dad deserve credit for taking on the whole corpus Aristotelicum as studied in
the schools of Alexandria. Both Muslims and Christians might (or might
not) still read Aristotle in the light of their scriptures; but in the ninth and
tenth centuries philosophy regained, in Arabic, something of its old auton-
omy, thanks to the less clerical structure of authority in Islam and the interest
of the Abbasid elite including several early caliphs. Arabic philosophers may
not have been a very influential group in society; yet they are important to
the historian because they were in a position to achieve an overview of the
whole development of monotheism Jewish, Christian, and Muslim, but also
of Greek science and the Aristotelian strand in Greek philosophy, not to
mention the views of “Mazdeans, materialists and atheists.” Much late Pla-
tonism was subsumed too, under the name of Aristotle the “First Master.”^51
A prime motive for this openness to philosophy was the need felt by the in-
fluential Christian philosophers of Baghdad (and others, such as Elias of
Nisibis discussed already in chapter 3), to create both a neutral space, tran-
scending confessional identity, in which to go on talking to Muslim col-
leagues, and a reason- based, therefore truly humane social (as well as per-
sonal) ethic that might benefit their respective faith- communities more
generally.^52 Something similar will have motivated Jewish philosophers too.^53
The burning issues for philosophers were, after all, such as might, with
good will, be discussed without straying beyond the common ground shared
by Judaism, Christianity and Islam, or forcing participants to assume confes-
sional labels. That is to say, there might be agreed proofs and results, consis-
tent with all three scriptures, without need of quoting the divergent exegeses
those scriptures had provoked. The unity of God; providence; the eternity or
createdness of the universe—these were central, widely debated questions
50 Cf. Sklare, Samuel ben Hofni Gaon [6:73] 101: “Even though he [Ibn Saʿdī] was evidently re-
porting on a Kalām majlis rather than one which was philosophically oriented, his report reflects the at-
mosphere in the elite orbit of those connected to court society.” Note also the specific examples Sklare
adduces of scripturalist scholars open both to logic and to interfaith debate (114–18); and his parallel
with the Brethren of Purity (136–37).
51 One might see the culmination and recapitulation of this ecumenical approach in ʿAbd al- Latīf
al- Baghdādī’s (d. 1231) heavily Platonized and Islamic Aristotelianism, reacting against Ibn Sīnā’s synthe-
sis and much indebted to Kindī: Martini Bonadeo [5:176], SFIM 648–59.
52 Griffith, Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies 7 (2007) [3:91] 55–73.
53 These may have been quite numerous: Kraemer, Humanism [4:82] 82–84.