304 Anke von Kügelgen
ently, only disagrees with their denomination. Ibn Sīnā explains a true
estimation as a knowledge that is not won by the senses, but triggered
by a perceptible particular, such as a sheep’s fear of a wolf without ever
having seen one before.^221 Ibn Taymiyya calls this instinctive faculty
simply “inner faculty” (quwwa bāṭina), “reason” (ʿaql), or “uncontam-
inated reason,” and regards the estimative propositions as being certain
in the innate intelligence (fiṭra) and natural disposition (jibla).^222
The multiply transmitted reports (mutawātirāt) are defined by Ibn
Taymiyya as relying on the apprehension of particulars through sight
or hearing, i. e., through immediate knowledge.^223 This knowledge,
such as the knowledge of the existence of Mecca or of the prophets
Moses, Jesus, and Muḥammad, reaches most people, but may miss
those living in very remote places.^224 Not only “earlier” kalām theolo-
gians, but also the falāsifa and the “later” kalām theologians consider
multiply transmitted reports to be certain.^225
221 Ibn Sīnā, Abū ʿAlī: Avicenna’s De Anima (Arabic Text). Being the Psychologi-
cal Part of Kitāb al-Shifāʾ, ed. by Fazlur Rahman, London, New York and
Toronto 1959, pp. 45, 184; Ibn Sīnā, al-Ishārāt wal-tanbīhāt, p. 354 (Ibn Sīnā:
Livre des directives et remarques (Kitāb al-Ishārāt wa l-tanbīhāt), traduction
avec introduction et notes par Amélie M. Goichon, Beyrut and Paris 1951,
p. 317); Ibn Taymiyya, Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql, vol. 6, p. 22 (he quotes here the pas-
sage from al-Ishārāt, but cites and discusses later on (Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql, vol. 6,
pp. 47–55) parts of Ibn Sīnā’s theory of the estimative faculty (al-quwwa al-
wahmiyya) from al-Shifāʾ (De Anima, especially pp. 167, 168–169). Some main
stages in the development of the judgments about estimative propositions in
Muslim theology and philosophy are mentioned by van Ess, Die Erkenntnis-
lehre, pp. 398–399.
222 Ibn Taymiyya, Darʾ taʿāruḍ al-ʿaql, vol. 6, pp. 50–55, 105–106.
223 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 302.
224 Ibid., p. 92; al-Suyūṭī was either working with another wording of al-Radd
ʿalā al-manṭiqiyyīn or else himself added that “the miracles of the prophets are
known through multiple transmission” and that the negation of the reliabil-
ity of the mutawātirāt leads to “heresy and unbelief” (Jahd al-qarīḥa, p. 220;
Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya, p. 32). In two passages in the edited manuscript of al-
Radd ʿalā al-manṭiqiyyīn (which contains marginals in Ibn Taymiyya’s hand-
writing), Ibn Taymiyya mentions miracles in the context of empirical matters
and says he has treated them elsewhere (al-Radd, pp. 300–301; see his Kitāb
al-Nubuwwāt). Al-Suyūṭī does not mention these hints (see Jahd al-qarīḥa,
p. 315; Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya, p. 143). Shahab Ahmed has shown that Ibn
Taymiyya had a broader understanding of tawātur transmissions of prophetic
sayings than the majority of the jurists (Ibn Taymiyyah and the Satanic Verses,
pp. 84–85).
225 See, for instance, Ibn Sīnā, al-Ishārāt wal-tanbīhāt, vol. 1, p. 349; Avicenna,
Remarks and Admonitions, p. 121; al-Ghazālī, Abū Ḥāmid: Miḥakk al-naẓar,
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