A CRITICAL MIND 149
InGuide 2:25, Maimonides sets down the reasons for his denial of the
eternity of the world and his refusal to interpret the verses that contradict
this belief allegorically. He says that Aristotle’s position, according to
which
no nature changes at all, and... the customary course of events can-
not be modifi ed with regard to anything, destroys the Law in prin-
ciple, necessarily gives the lie to every miracle, unless, indeed, one
interprets the miracles fi guratively also, as was done by the Islamic
internalists (ahl al- batin min al- islam); this, however, would result in
some sort of crazy imaginings (darb min al- hadhayan).^116Pines’ translation here attempts to convey the gap that exists between
this interpretation of the miracles and the truth: hadhayan is the “imag-
inings” of crazy people and has no connection to the facts as they are.
Indeed, for Maimonides the word hadhayan no longer denotes only the
fact of raving or hallucinating, but also points to an ingrained intellectual
defi ciency of certain approaches. Allegorical interpretation of miracles
can take a variety of forms, but Maimonides makes plain that the variety
he fi nds objectionable in this context is that of ahl al- batin min al- islam,
which probably denotes here the Ismailiyya. In Ismaili theology, the
miracles performed by the prophets are often explained as resulting from
the prophets’ superior knowledge of the nature of the world and its com-
ponents.^117 In other words, Ismailitawil incorporates miracles in a gen-
eral theurgical system, which claims to control and manipulate the world
by scientifi c methods. For Maimonides, this whole system is false and
accordingly deserves to be labeled as “ravings.”
The systems of thought of the Sabians, of Razi, and of the Ismailis all
constitute for Maimonides hadhayan par excellence. But his use of the
term is not limited to the par ticular fallacies of these people. He also uses
(^116) Guide 2:25 (Dalala, 229:22– 26; cf. Pines, 328).
(^117) See I. K. Poonawala, “Ismailitawil of the Quran,” in G. R. Hawting and A. A. Shareef,
eds.,Approaches to the Quran (London and New York, 1993), 199– 222. On the Ismaili
interpretation of miracles, see, for example, Al-Risala al- jamia, ed. J. Saliba (Damascus,
n.d.), 2:83; see also P. E. Walker, Early Philosophical Shiism: The Ismaili Neoplatonism of
Abu Yaqub al- Sijistani (Cambridge and New York, 1993), 60; Y. Marquet, La philosophie
des lh
̆
wan al-safa (Algiers, 1973), 485– 91. Although the Ismaili texts discussed in these
studies date from around the tenth century, Maimonides’ view of Ismailitawil seems to
agree with these early texts. See also Maimonides, Epistle on Resurrection (Epistles, 334),
where he explains that the tawil of miracles he has in mind in this chapter of the Guide is
indeed the one that would explain the miracles as a natural phenomenon. In the same
Epistle (Epistles, 335) he also mentions the Sabians as the nation that rejected the possibil-
ity of miracles.