Download PDF | (Jews, Christians, And Muslims From The Ancient To The Modern World 62) Sarah Stroumsa - Andalus And Sefarad_ On Philosophy And Its History In Islamic Spain-Princeton University Press (2019).
249 Pages
preface
a monograph is a narrative that connects myriad dots of disjointed data. The present monograph seeks to tell the story of speculative thought as it developed in the Iberian peninsula between the fourth/tenth and the sixth/twelfth century. Like all tales, this one can be told in more than one way. Let us begin at the beginning. The terms Andalus and Sefarad in the book’s title appear to indicate, respectively, the Muslim and Jewish cultures of the medieval Iberian peninsula. Yet medieval Jews, like their Muslim peers, often referred to the Iberian territory dominated by Islam in which they lived as “al-Andalus.” Here is a first signal, then, of the book’s approach as well as of its main argument: as both Jewish and Muslim philosophy in al-Andalus are integral parts of a single story, their history should be told as such.
In this spirit, I resisted the temptation to structure the book around pairs of separately described Jewish and Muslim thinkers, presented as Plutarchian parallel lives of sorts—although doing so would have made the book easier to write, and probably simpler to read. Instead, the reader will find a more intricate inquiry, cross-sections that discuss both Jewish and Muslim philosophers, allowing their thinking to unfold in a unitary narrative. I have made a special effort to incorporate in each of the following chapters topics that are generally examined separately in the scholarly literature. On some level, therefore, the book claims to offer a corrective picture, more comprehensive and integrative than that which is commonly painted. At the same time, this work is not meant to be a complete history of philosophy and theology in al-Andalus. I thus offer this preface as an apologia of what this book is not.
This is not a comprehensive and systematic history of philosophy in al-Andalus: it does not list all the thinkers and their works, it does not analyze all their characteristic ideas, and it leaves aside many subjects that are not only relevant, but sometimes tightly connected to the development of philosophy. Mysticism (but not mystical philosophy) remained, by and large, outside the book’s frame; so did scientific thought (except where it clarifies the development of philosophy) and legal thought, both Muslim and Jewish (except to the extent that it touches on theology and philosophy). In this book, the word “philosophy” refers broadly to systematic speculative thought. Under this heading, the following chapters will discuss Aristotelian and Neoplatonist thinkers as well as theologians, adepts of rational thought, and builders of mystical philosophical systems.
The book mines two main kinds of source material: the medieval texts themselves, and modern scholarship on them. The topics discussed herein have by no means been overlooked in the scholarly literature. The current work stands on the shoulders of these scholars; even when my own views differ, at times considerably, from those proposed by other scholars, my debt to them is enormous. While I try to acknowledge their work, at least in the notes, I have deeply engaged only with those authors whose work bears profoundly on the work at hand. Occasionally, older scholarship may turn out to be more relevant, and be cited more often, than the newest additions to the scholarly bookshelf. Earlier modern scholars of medieval thought in al-Andalus, pioneers in the field, had very little original material to work with, compared to what is available now. One often observes with awe and admiration the depth of their understanding, although they frequently had to resort to speculation, glossing over lacunae in their information.
This being said, some of their arguments are now obviously obsolete. In specific cases, where previously unknown material has come to light, it is fairly easy to revise the picture. Much harder, however, is rectifying patterns and attitudes that were set by these early scholars and have become entrenched track-lines on which modern scholarship continues to roll, such as the division into philosophical schools, the sociological concept of “symbiosis” as applicable to philosophy, and so on. It is sometimes possible to identify how the then-prevailing Zeitgeist contributed to shaping the initial mindset of these early scholars. For example, Spanish scholars of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whose works remain the cornerstone of the study of al-Andalus, were more often than not Christian Spanish nationalists—a fact that was reflected in their approach.
In some, for example, one recognizes the belief in an “Iberian genius” that managed to engender a period of efflorescence even under Islam (which they regarded as a false religion) and under the Arabs or the Berbers (on both of whom many of them looked down).1 Paradoxically, it may have been these prejudices that fostered the emergence of positive or even laudatory concepts to describe the Muslim period, like convivencia or “the golden age.” Notwithstanding the gratitude we owe these great scholars, in the following pages I will question the relevance of some of their patterns of thought. As will become clear shortly, the book primarily aims to integrate Jewish thought into the broader narrative, as this is the side that is regularly set apart from the main history of Andalusian speculative thought, and whose role in shaping it is markedly misunderstood.
Scholars of medieval Jewish philosophy usually acknowledge that it developed under the massive influence of Islamic thought, whereas the relevance of Jewish thought to the history of Muslim philosophy is too often hardly recognized by historians of Islamic thought. Correcting this oversight is one of the major goals of this book, and the imbalanced scholarly picture is probably reflected in the distribution of my effort. I reiterate, then, that the present work is in no way designed as a comprehensive intellectual history of al-Andalus, such as I myself would be waiting to read. Rather, it has a more modest—though, in my view, crucial—goal: it strives to suggest a new way to tell the old story of Muslim and Jewish philosophy in al-Andalus.
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