314 Anke von Kügelgen
inference from one particular to another that, if it could be completed,
would reveal their common factor, might be understood as an accep-
tance of the existence of universals in rebus.
Ibn Taymiyya lays much more stress on a comparison between
the first figure of categorical syllogism (as it appears in Aristotelian
syllogistics)^255 and analogy, the main method in Islamic jurisprudence.
He wants to disprove the rationalists’ assertion that, because of its
inference from a particular to a particular, analogy is inferior to syllo-
gism and that the latter alone can lead to certainty.^256 In fact, he asserts
that the two methods can be converted into each other.^257 Al-Fārābī
had already shown the possibility of transforming an analogy into a
categorical syllogism and al-Ghazālī demonstrated it once again.^258
However, both of them and more explicitly Ibn Sīnā, probably Ibn
Taymiyya’s main source of Peripatetic logic, held syllogism in higher
esteem.^259
Analogy (qiyās al-taʿlīl or al-tamthīl), by Ibn Taymiyya’s times,
was already much advanced in comparison with the time of Aristotle
and his Greek commentators.^260 Ibn Taymiyya mainly uses the qiyās
255 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, p. 6.
256 See, for instance, Ibn Sīnā, al-Ishārāt wal-tanbīhāt, vol. 1, pp. 368–369; Avi-
cenna, Remarks and Admonitions, pp. 129–130; see also Hallaq, Ibn Taymiyya,
pp. 114 n. 190.1, 117 n. 197.1.
257 Ibn Taymiyya, al-Radd, pp. 116 (qiyās al-tamthīl wa-qiyās al-shumūl sawāʾ),
121, 299, 351–364; al-Suyūṭī, Jahd al-qarīḥa, pp. 230, 234, 314, 328–331; Hal-
laq, Ibn Taymiyya, pp. 44–45, 50, 142, 156–159.
258 Kitāb al-Qiyās, in: al-Fārābī, al-Manṭiq, vol. 2, pp. 11–64, here p. 54–55. He
already uses the example of the prohibition of khamr; idem, Kitāb al-Qiyās
al-ṣaghīr, in: ibid., pp. 65–93, here p. 68; Street, Arabic Logic, p. 539; for a
detailed analysis of al-Farābī ‘s arguments and his critique of analogy, see
Schöck, Cornelia: Koranexegese, Grammatik und Logik. Zum Verhältnis
von arabischer und aristotelischer Urteils-, Konsequenz- und Schlusslehre,
Leiden and Boston 2006, pp. 342–372; van Ess pointed out that al-Fārābī dis-
missed the method of ṭard and ʿaks (Die Erkenntnislehre, p. 391); al-Ghazālī:
Kitāb al-Mustaṣfā min ʿilm al-uṣūl, bi-sharḥ Muḥibb Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Shakūr
(al-Bihārī), Cairo, Bulaq 1322–1324/1904–1906, pp. 38–39; al-Ghazālī: Miʿyār
al-ʿilm fī fann al-manṭiq, Beirut 1983, pp. 98–100, 109, see 123–124; Marmura,
Ghazali’s Attitude, pp. 105, 110, n. 14, 17; Heer, Ibn Taymiyah’s Empiricism,
p. 113; Rudolph, Die Neubewertung der Logik, pp. 77–79.
259 Ibn Sīnā equates analogy with the Aristotelian parádeigma (tamthīl) and con-
siders it valable only for dialectical, not for demonstrative proofs (van Ess, Die
Erkenntnislehre, p. 392); see the previous note.
260 For other forms of analogical inferences in jurisprudence, see Hallaq, Ibn
Taymiyya, p. 44, n. 59.1; Bernand, M.: Ḳ iyās, in: EI^2 , vol. 5 (1986), pp. 238–
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