336 Georges Tamer
To begin, it is certainly worth noting that al-Nashshār, the first author,
in a tone which can be considered representative of Islamic traditionalism,
calls the transmission of Greek logic into Islamic culture a comprehensive
“conspiracy” initiated by the Umayyads, encouraged by the Byzantines,
and secretly carried out by converted Manicheans, Zoroastrians, and ori-
ental Christians. Their goal, for al-Nashshār, was to contaminate pure
Islamic thought; their strategy was to translate works of Greek logic into
Arabic and, therewith, to destroy Islam from within.^29 Consequently, he
asserts that Greek logic, intrinsically related as it is to Greek language,
has been always alien to Arabic-Islamic culture.^30 Al-Nashshār identi-
fies Stoic elements in Ibn Taymiyya’s critique of Aristotelian logic that
are analogously alien to Islam.^31 An important source of Ibn Taymiyya’s
critique can furthermore be found in the writings of Sextus Empiricus^32 as
well as in the writings of Greek Skeptics and Sophists.^33
Even so, Ibn Taymiyya delivered the most substantial critique of
Aristotelian logic from an Islamic point of view. Utilizing “philosophi-
cal language”,^34 he brought the Islamic critique of Aristotelian logic
29 Al-Nashshār, Manāhij, pp. 5–7 et passim. According to al-Nashshār, ʿAbd Allāh
b. al-Muqaffaʿ – or rather his son Muḥammad – belongs to the earliest group
of the conspirators, as he presumably prepared the first Arabic translation of
certain books of Aristotle’s logic: ibid., pp. 21, 169. See Gabrieli, Francesco: Ibn
al-Muḳ affaʿ, in: EI2, vol. 3 (1971), pp. 883–885.
30 Al-Nashshār, Manāhij, p. 29. Despite a dramatic plot, al-Nashshār’s argument is
actually an old one popular among Muslim critics of logic, as the famous debate
which took place in 938 between the grammarian Abū Saʿīd al-Sīrāfī (d. 368/979)
and the Christian logician Abū Bishr Mattā ibn Yūnus (d. 328/940) clearly doc-
uments. The text of the debate is in al-Tawḥīdī, Abū Ḥayyān: Kitāb al-Imtāʿ
wal-muʾānasa, edited by Aḥmad Amīn and Aḥmad al-Zayn, Beirut n. d., part 1,
pp. 107–128. English translation: Margoliouth, David Samuel: The Discussion
Between Abū Bishr Mattā and Abū Saʿīd al-Sīrāfī on the Merits of Logic and
Grammar, in: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society NS, 37 (1905), pp. 79–129.
See Endreß, Gerhard: Grammatik und Logik. Arabische Philologie und griechi-
sche Philosophie im Widerstreit, in: Burkhard Mojsisch (ed.): Sprachphilosophie
in Antike und Mittelalter, Amsterdam 1986, pp. 163–299, including a German
translation of the debate, pp. 235–270, and of a text by Mattā’s student Yaḥyā
ibn ʿAdī (363/974) on the difference between logic and grammar, pp. 271–296;
Kühn, Wilfried: Die Rehabilitierung der Sprache durch den arabischen Philo-
logen as-Sīrāfī, in: Burkhard Mojsisch (ed.): Sprachphilosophie in Antike und
Mittelalter, pp. 301–402, offers an analytical study of al-Sīrāfī’s arguments.
31 Al-Nashshār, Manāhij, pp. 152, 175.
32 Ibid., p. 170.
33 Ibid., p. 159.
34 Ibid., p. 168.
Brought to you by | Nanyang Technological University
Authenticated