Maimonides in His World. Portrait of a Mediterranean Thinker

A CRITICAL MIND 147

“they invented the notion that it can be done by fl ying rather than walk-
ing, and they imagined a fl ying human being, or else they believed in its
existence.”^109
Fantastic combinations of things that exist separately in this world are,
for the phi losophers, the specifi c role of the faculty of the imagination. It
is this faculty that is responsible for dreams and hallucinations; a favorite
example of its operation is the idea of a fl ying heavy body, be it a ship, an
animal, or a human being.^110 Thus Avicenna describes astrology as “rav-
ings” without actually calling it so.
Compositions such as Avicenna’s Epistle against Astrology could have
infl uenced Maimonides’ concept of “ravings.” We cannot be certain that
the technical use of hadhayan was Maimonides’ own development.^111 What
we can say with certainty is that in Maimonides’ usage of this word be-
came a shibboleth, marking all pseudo- science and sham philosophical
rigmarole as distinct from the true science, based on rigorous reasoning.

Several other instances in which Maimonides employs this term may
help us understand the meaning it carried for him. The fi rst instance ap-
pears in the context of Maimonides’ discussion of the reasons for the
commandments:

The generalities of the commandments necessarily have a cause....

But no cause will ever be found for the fact that one par ticular sac-

rifi ce consists in a lamb and another in a ram.... Accordingly, in

my opinion, whoever occupies himself with fi nding causes for any of

these particulars is stricken with a prolonged madness (yahdhi had-

hayanantawilan)^112 in the course of which he does not put an end to

incongruity, but rather increases the number of incongruities.^113

Maimonides’ criticism seems to be addressed to those whose zeal for a
rationalistic interpretation of the commandments goes too far. But the

(^109) Ibid., 51.
(^110) See, for instance, Maimonides, “Eight Chapters,” Commentary on the Mishnah, Neziqin,

375. For another example of Avicenna’s fascination with imaginative combinations of the
     human body, see S. Pines, “La conception de la conscience de soi chez Avicenne et chez
     Abu’l Barakat al- Baghdadi,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age 21
     (1954): 25 (reprinted in Pines, Collected Works, Vol. 1, Studies in Abul-Barakat al-
     Baghdadi, Physics and Metaphysics [Jerusalem and Leiden, 1979], 185).

(^111) The word hadhayan is not found in al- Jurjani’s Kitab al- ta
rifat, ed. G. Flügel (Leipzig,
1845) or in al- Tahanawi’s Dictionary of Technical Terms (Kashshaf istilahat al- funun
[Cairo, 1963]).
(^112) Pines’s translation here emphasizes the fact that the hadhayan in this case does not con-
sist of a single occurrence of raving and babbling, but rather has become a chronic infi rmity
of these people. See below, apud note 125.
(^113) Guide 3:26 (Dalala, 370, esp. lines 17– 18; and cf. Pines’ translation, 508– 9).