The Poison of Philosophy 283
Çelebi, d. 1067/1657), qualifies as a book that one ought to know.^122
Darʾ al-taʿāruḍ, in contrast, is simply characterized as “volumes”
(mujalladāt) of the Shaykh Ibn Taymiyya.^123 Prominent scholars of the
18 th century, such as Muḥammad al-Sājaqlī (Sacaqlı-zāde, d. around
1145/1733)^124 and Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī (d. 1205/1791)^125 still refer to
al-Ghazālī when denouncing falsafa. However, the history of the fate
of Ibn Taymiyya’s refutations of the rationalists remains to be written.
20 th-century apologists for Islam regard Ibn Taymiyya as a “philos-
opher,” especially on the basis of al-Radd ʿalā al-manṭiqiyyīn and Darʾ
taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql wal-naql.^126 Here, “philosophy” is no longer under-
stood as taking Greek thought to be the ultimate truth.^127 Al-Sayyid
Sulaymān al-Nadwī (d. 1953), sees in Ibn Taymiyya a forerunner of
David Hume (d. 1776) and John Stuart Mill (d. 1873),^128 whereas the
122 Ḥājjī Khalīfa, Kashf al-ẓunūn, vol. 1, p. 512; his exposition of al-Ghazālī’s
book is long in comparison with the usual size of his summaries in Kashf
al-ẓunūn.
123 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 730.
124 Reichmuth, Stefan: Bildungskanon und Bildungsreform aus der Sicht eines
islamischen Gelehrten der anatolischen Provinz: Muḥammad al-Sājaqlī
(Saçaqlı-zāde, gest. um 1145/1733) und sein Tartīb al-ʿulūm, in: Rüdiger Arn-
zen and Jörn Thielmann (eds.): Words, Texts and Concepts Cruising the Medi-
terranean Sea. Studies on the Sources, Contents and Influences of Islamic Civi-
lization and Arabic Philosophy and Science Dedicated to Gerhard Endress on
His Sixty-fifth Birthday, Leuven 2004, pp. 498–500, 511–516.
125 Al-Zabīdī, Murtaḍā: Kitāb Itḥāf al-sāda al-muttaqīn bi-sharḥ asrār Iḥyāʾ
ʿulūm al-dīn (wa-bi-hāmish Kitāb al-Imlāʾ ʿan ishkālāt al-Iḥyāʾ lil-Ghazālī),
Beirut n. d. (after 1970; reprint of Egypt 1311/1894), vol. 1, pp. 170–185; see
also above, chapter 5.
126 It is noteworthy that on the Website http://www.muslimphilosophy.com (as accessed
on January 11, 2007), Ibn Taymiyya figures prominently among “al-Ghazali,
Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, al-Kindi, al-Farabi and Muhammad Iqbal”; the Website
hosts also the online e-Journal Journal of Islamic Philosophy.
127 ʿAlī al-Wardī explicitly says this in his lectures on Ibn Khaldūn, Muqad-
dima li-dirāsat al-manṭiq al-ijtimāʿī. Manṭiq Ibn Khaldūn fī ḍawʾ ḥaḍāratihi
wa-shakhṣiyyatihi; muḥāḍarāt, Cairo 1962, pp. 222–223. In a sense of philoso-
phy that encompasses “every rational attempt to interpret the universe and
man’s place in it”, he qualifies Ibn Taymiyya as one of the “great philosophical
personalities in Islam” (ibid., pp. 57, 228).
128 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, preface, pp. fāʾ, qāf. Similarily, he states in an English
article: “In reality he (Ibn Taymiyya) was the first founder of Mill’s system of
logic and the forerunner of Hume’s philosophy.” (Nadvi, Syed Sulaiman: Mus-
lims and Greek Schools of Philosophy, in: Islamic Culture 1 (1927), pp. 85–91,
here p. 89; cited also in his foreword to Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. rāʾ). Other
authors have also outlined similarities between his critique and the British
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