The Poison of Philosophy 263
still, he is not reflecting on logic and its consistency and seems to have
taken the “soundness” of reason and reasoning for granted.
3. The Fatwa of Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ
The probably most frequently quoted condemnation of logic belongs
to the Shāfiʿī jurist and well renowned Hadith scholar Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ
al-Shahrazūrī (d. 643/1245) and is inseparably linked to the condem-
nation of philosophy. In his youth, Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ had studied logic in
Mosul, but – according to Ibn Khallikān (d. 681/1282) – had to give
it up, because he was obviously unable to grasp it.^34 Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ
then reversed course and launched a fatwa against philosophy and
against logic as the preparation for it, stating that philosophy was
“the foundation of folly, the cause of all confusion, all errors and all
heresy. The person who occupies himself with it becomes colorblind
to the beauties of religious law, supported as it is by brilliant proofs”
(al-ḥujaj al-ẓāhira wal-barāhīn al-bāhira).^35 In another fatwa, Ibn Sīnā
Shāfiʿī jurist Sayf al-Dīn al-Āmidī (d. 631/1233) and the Malikite jurist Jamāl
al-Dīn Ibn al-Ḥājib (570/1174–646/1249)).
34 Ibn Khallikān: Kitāb Wafayāt al-aʿyān. Biographical Dictionary; transl. from the
Arabic by Mac Guckin de Slane, Beirut 1970, vol. 3, p. 470 (within the biog-
raphy of Abū al-Fatḥ Kamāl al-Dīn); Ibn Khallikān: Wafayāt al-aʿyān, ed. by
Iḥsān ʿAbbās, n. p. n. d., vol. 5, p. 314; Goldziher, Ignaz: Stellung der alten isla-
mischen Orthodoxie zu den antiken Wissenschaften, in: Joseph Desomogyi
(ed.): Ignaz Goldziher. Gesammelte Schriften, Hildesheim 1970 (first publ. in
1916), vol. 5, pp. 357–400, here p. 389; Ignaz Goldziher: The Attitude of Ortho-
dox Islam Toward the “Ancient Sciences”, in: Merlin L. Swartz (ed.): Studies
on Islam, New York and Oxford 1981, pp. 204–205. Ibn Khallikān (608/1211–
681/1282) further reports that he was taught logic “secretly” by Abū al-Fatḥ
Kamāl al-Dīn, who warned him that the public “consider those who apply to
this branch of knowledge as holding pernicious opinions on religious matters”
(Ibn Khallikān, Kitāb Wafayāt al-aʿyān, transl. by de Slane, vol. 3, p. 470; ed.
by ʿAbbās, vol. 5, p. 314). This statement implies that logic was not accepted
outside certain scholarly circles and somehow contradicted what has been said
in chapter two. The solution to this problem might lie in that Ibn Khallikān
was not a very reliable biographer, as Dimitri Gutas has shown in regard to his
accounts on al-Fārābī (Gutas, Dimitri: Fārābī, Abū Naṣr i. Biography, in: Ehsan
Yarshater (ed.): Encyclopedia Iranica, vol. 9, New York 1999, pp. 208–213.).
35 Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ: Fatāwā Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ fī al-tafsīr wal-ḥadīth wal-uṣūl wal-fiqh, ed.
by ʿAbd al-Muʿṭī Amīn Qalʿajī, Cairo 1403/1983, p. 70; I cite the translation of
Goldziher, which relies on a slightly shorter version, Goldziher, The Attitude
of Orthodox Islam, p. 205.
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