by Will Durant
Abu Bekr (Europe’s Abubacer) ibn Tufail (1107?–1185) continued the ideas of Ibn Bajja, and almost realized his ideals. He too was scientist, poet, physician, and philosopher. He became the doctor and vizier of the Caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf at Marraqesh, the Almohad capital in Morocco; he managed to spend most of his waking hours in the royal library, and found time to write, among more technical works, the most remarkable philosophical romance in medieval literature. It took its title from Ibn Sina, and (through Ockley’s English translation in 1708) may have suggested Robinson Crusoe to Defoe.
Hayy ibn Yaqzan (“Alive, Son of Vigilant”), who gives his name to the tale, was cast in infancy upon an uninhabited island. Nursed by a she-goat, he grew in intelligence and skill, made his shoes and clothes from animal skins, studied the stars, dissected animals alive or dead, and “arrived at the highest degree of knowledge, in this kind, which the most learned naturalists ever attained.”96 He passed from science to philosophy and theology, demonstrated to himself the existence of an all-powerful Creator, practiced asceticism, forswore meat, and achieved an ecstatic union with the Active Intellect.97 Hayy was now forty-nine, and ripe for an audience. Fortunately a mystic named Asal now had himself deposited on the island, seeking solitude. He met Hayy, who for the first time discovered the existence of mankind; Asal taught him language, and rejoiced to find that Hayy had arrived unaided at a knowledge of God. He confessed to Hayy the coarseness of the popular religion in the land from which he, Asal, had come, and mourned that a modicum of morality had been achieved only by promises of heaven and threats of hell. Hayy resolved to go and convert this benighted people to a higher and more philosophical religion. Arrived, he preached his pantheism in the market place. The populace ignored him, or did not understand him. Hayy concluded that Mohammed was right: that the people can be disciplined to social order only by a religion of myth, miracle, ceremony, and supernatural punishments and rewards. He apologized for his intrusion, returned to his island, and lived there with Asal in daily companionship with placid animals and the Active Intellect; and “thus they continued serving God until they died.”
It was with a rare absence of jealousy that Ibn Tufail, about 1153, introduced to the favor of Abu Yakub Yusuf a young lawyer and physician, known to Islam as Abu al-Walid Muhammad ibn Rushd (1126–98), and to medieval Europe as Averroës—the most influential figure in Islamic philosophy. His grandfather and his father had in turn been chief justice of Cordova, and had lavished on him all the education that the old capital could provide. One of his pupils has transmitted what purports to be Averroës’ own account of his first interview with the Emir.
When I was presented to the Prince of Believers I found him alone with Ibn Tufail, who … sounded my praises to him with compliments that I did not deserve…. The Emir opened the conversation by asking, “What opinion did the philosophers hold about the heavens? Are they eternal, or did they have a beginning?” I was overcome with terror and confusion, and sought some pretext for not answering … but the Emir, perceiving my trouble, turned to Ibn Tufail, and began to discourse with him on the question, recalling the opinions of Plato and Aristotle and other philosophers, and the objections that had been made to them by Moslem theologians; all with such fullness of memory as I should not have expected even of professional philosophers. The Emir put me at my ease, and tested my knowledge. When I had retired he sent me a sum of money, a riding horse, and a costly robe of honor.98
In 1169 Averroës was appointed chief justice of Seville; in 1172, of Cordova. Ten years later Abu Yaqub called him to Marraqesh to serve as court physician; and he continued in this capacity when (1184) Yaqub was succeeded by Yaqub al-Mansur. In 1194 he was banished to Lucena, near Cordova, to satisfy public resentment of his heresies. He was forgiven and recalled in 1198, but died in that year. His tomb may still be seen at Marraqesh.
His work in medicine has been almost forgotten in his fame as a philosopher; he was, however, “one of the greatest physicians of his time,” the first to explain the function of the retina, and to recognize that an attack of smallpox confers subsequent immunity.99 His encyclopedia of medicine (Kitab al-Kulliyat fi-l-tibb), translated into Latin, was widely used as a text in Christian universities. Meanwhile the Emir Abu Yaqub had expressed the wish that someone would write a clear exposition of Aristotle; and Ibn Tufail recommended the task to Averroës. The suggestion was welcomed, for Averroës had already concluded that all philosophy was contained in the Stagirite, who merely needed interpretation to be made contemporary with any age.* He resolved to prepare for each major work of Aristotle first a summary, then a brief commentary, then a detailed commentary for advanced students—a mode of progressively complex exposition habitual in Moslem universities. Unfortunately he knew no Greek, and had to rely on Arabic translations of Syriac translations of Aristotle; nevertheless his patience, perspicuity, and keen analyses won him throughout Europe the name of the Commentator, and placed him at once near the head of Moslem philosophy, second only to the great Avicenna himself.
To these writings he added several works of his own on logic, physics, psychology, metaphysics, theology, law, astronomy, and grammar, and a reply to al-Ghazali’s Destruction of Philosophy under the title of Destruction of the Destruction (Tahafut al-Tahafut). He argued, as Francis Bacon would, that though a little philosophy might incline a man to atheism, unhindered study would lead to a better understanding between religion and philosophy. For though the philosopher cannot accept in their literal sense the dogmas of “the Koran, the Bible, and other revealed books,”100 he perceives their necessity in developing a wholesome piety and morality among the people, who are so harassed with economic importunities that they find no time for more than incidental, superficial, and dangerous thinking on first and last things. Hence the mature philosopher will neither utter nor encourage any word against the established faith.101 In return the philosopher should be left free to seek the truth; but he should confine his discussions within the circle and comprehension of the educated, and make no propaganda among the populace.102 Symbolically interpreted, the doctrines of religion can be harmonized with the findings of science and philosophy;103 such interpretation of sacred texts through symbol and allegory has been practiced, even by divines, for centuries. Averroës does not explicitly teach, he merely implies, the doctrine imputed to him by Christian critics—that a proposition may be true in philosophy (among the educated) and false (harmful) in religion (and morals).104 Hence the opinions of Averroës must be sought not in the minor treatises which he composed for a general audience, but in his more recondite commentaries on Aristotle.
He defines philosophy as “an inquiry into the meaning of existence,” with a view to the improvement of man.105 The world is eternal; the movements of the heavens never began, and will never end; creation is a myth.
The partisans of creation argue that the agent [God] produces a [new] being without needing for its production any pre-existing material…. It is such imagining that has led the theologians of the three religions existing in our day to say that something can issue from nothing.106 … Motion is eternal and continuous; all motion has its cause in a preceding motion. Without motion there is no time. We cannot conceive of motion having either a beginning or an end.107
Nonetheless God is the creator of the world in the sense that it exists at any moment only through His sustaining power, and undergoes, so to speak, a continuous creation through the divine energy.108 God is the order, force, and mind of the universe.
From this supreme order and intelligence there emanates an order and intelligence in the planets and the stars. From the intelligence in the lowest of the celestial circles (that of the moon) comes the Active or Effective Intellect, which enters into the body and mind of individual men. The human mind is composed of two elements. One is the passive or material intellect—a capacity and possibility of thought, forming a part of the body, and dying with it (the nervous system?). The other is the Active Intellect—a divine influx whic
h activates the passive intellect into actual thought. This Active Intellect has no individuality; it is the same in all men; and it alone is immortal.109 Averroës compares the operation of the Active Intellect upon the individual or passive intellect with the influence of the sun, whose light makes many objects luminous, but remains everywhere and permanently one.110 And as fire reaches out to a combustible body, so the individual intellect aspires to be united with the Active Intellect. In this union the human mind becomes like unto God, for it holds all the universe potentially in the grasp of its thought; indeed the world and its contents have no existence for us, and no meaning, except through the mind that apprehends them.111 Only the perception of truth through reason can lead the mind to that union with God which the Sufis think to reach by ascetic discipline or intoxicating dance. Averroës has no use for mysticism. His notion of paradise is the quiet and kindly wisdom of the sage.112
This was Aristotle’s conclusion too; and of course the theory of the active and passive intellect (nous poietikos and nous pathetikos) goes back to Aristotle’s De Anima (iii, 5) as interpreted by Alexander of Aphrodisias and Themistius of Alexandria, transformed into the emanation theory of the Neoplatonists, and transmitted in philosophic dynasty through al-Farabi, Avicenna, and Ibn Bajja. Here at the end, as in its beginning, Arabic philosophy was Aristotle Neoplatonized. But whereas in most Moslem and Christian philosophers Aristotle’s doctrines were retailored to meet the needs of theology, in Averroës Mohammedan dogmas were reduced to a minimum to reconcile them with Aristotle. Hence Averroës had more influence in Christendom than in Islam. His Moslem contemporaries persecuted him, Moslem posterity forgot him, and allowed most of his works to be lost in their Arabic form. Jews preserved many of them in Hebrew translation, and Maimonides followed in Averroës’ steps in seeking to reconcile religion and philosophy. In Christendom the Commentaries, translated into Latin from the Hebrew, fed the heresies of Siger de Brabant, and the rationalism of the School of Padua, and threatened the foundations of Christian belief. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote his Summae to stem this Averroistic tide; but he followed Averroës in the method of his Commentaries, in divers interpretations of Aristotle, in choosing matter as the “principle of individuation,” in the symbolical explanation of anthropomorphic Scriptural texts, in admitting the possible eternity of the world, in rejecting mysticism as a sufficient basis for theology, and in recognizing that some dogmas of religion are beyond reason, and can be accepted by faith alone.113 Roger Bacon ranked Averroës next to Aristotle and Avicenna, and added, with characteristic exaggeration, “The philosophy of Averroës today [c. 1270] obtains the unanimous suffrage of wise men.”114
In 1150 the Caliph Mustanjid, at Baghdad, ordered burned all the philosophical works of Avicenna and the Brethren of Sincerity. In 1194 the Emir Abu Yusuf Yaqub al-Mansur, then at Seville, ordered the burning of all works by Averroës except a few on natural science; he forbade his subjects to study philosophy, and urged them to throw into a fire all books of philosophy wherever found. These instructions were eagerly carried out by the people, who resented attacks upon a faith that for most of them was the dearest solace of their harassed lives. About this time Ibn Habib was put to death for studying philosophy.115 After 1200 Islam shunned speculative thought. As political power declined in the Moslem world, it sought more and more the aid of the theologians and lawyers of orthodoxy. That aid was given, but in return for the suppression of independent thought. Even so, the aid did not suffice to save the state. In Spain the Christians advanced from city to city, until only Granada remained Moslem. In the East the Crusaders captured Jerusalem; and in 1258 the Mongols took and destroyed Baghdad.
IX. THE COMING OF THE MONGOLS: 1219–58
Once again history illustrated the truism that civilized comfort attracts barbarian conquest. The Seljuqs had brought new strength to Eastern Islam; but they too had succumbed to ease, and had allowed the empire of Malik Shah to break down into autonomous kingdoms culturally brilliant and militarily weak. Religious fanaticism and racial antipathies divided the people into bitter sects, and frustrated any united defense against the Crusades.
Meanwhile, on the plains and deserts of northwestern Asia, the Mongols thrived on hardships and primitive fertility. They lived in tents or the open air, followed their herds to fresh pastures, clothed themselves in oxhides, and studied with relish the arts of war. These new Huns, like their kin of eight centuries back, were experts with dagger and sword, and arrows aimed from their flying steeds. If we may believe the Christian missionary Giovanni de Piano Carpini, “they eat anything edible, even lice”;116 and they had as little repugnance to feeding on rats, cats, dogs, and human blood as our most cultured contemporaries to eating eels and snails. Jenghiz Khan (1167–1227)—i.e., the Great King—disciplined them with severe laws into an irresistible force, and led them to the conquest of Central Asia from the Volga to the Chinese Wall. During the absence of Jenghiz Khan from his capital at Karokorum, a Mongol chieftain rebelled against him, and formed a league with Ala al-Din Muhammad, the Shah of the independent state of Khwarizm. Jenghiz suppressed the rebellion, and sent the Shah an offer of peace. The offer was accepted; but shortly thereafter two Mongol merchants in Transoxiana were executed as spies by Muhammad’s governor of Otrar. Jenghiz demanded the extradition of the governor; Muhammad refused, beheaded the chief of the Mongol embassy, and sent its other members back without their beards. Jenghiz declared war, and the Mongol invasion of Islam began (1219).
An army under the Khan’s son Juji defeated Muhammad’s 400,000 troops at Jand; the Shah fled to Samarkand, leaving 160,000 of his men dead on the field. Another army, under Jenghiz’ son Jagatai, captured and sacked Otrar. A third army, under Jenghiz himself, burned Bokhara to the ground, raped thousands of women, and massacred 30,000 men. Samarkand and Balkh surrendered at his coming, but suffered pillage and wholesale slaughter; a full century later Ibn Batuta described these cities as still largely in ruins. Jenghiz’ son Tule led 70,000 men through Khurasan, ravaging every town on their march. The Mongols placed captives in their van, and gave them a choice between fighting their fellow men in front, or being cut down from behind. Merv was captured by treachery, and was burned to the ground; its libraries, the glory of Islam, were consumed in the conflagration; its inhabitants were allowed to march out through the gates with their treasures, only to be massacred and robbed in detail; this slaughter (the Moslem historians aver) occupied thirteen days, and took 1,300,000 lives.117 Nishapur resisted long and bravely, but succumbed (1221); every man, woman, and child there was killed, except 400 artisan-artists who were sent to Mongolia; and the heads of the slain were piled up in a ghastly pyramid. The lovely city of Rayy, with its 3000 mosques and its famous pottery kilns, was laid in ruins, and (a Moslem historian tells us) its entire population was put to death.118 Muhammad’s son Jalal ud-Din collected a new army of Turks, gave Jenghiz battle on the Indus, was defeated, and fled to Delhi. Herat, having rebelled against its Mongol governor, was punished with the slaughter of 60,000 inhabitants. This ferocity was part of the military science of the Mongols; it sought to strike a paralyzing terror into the hearts of later opponents, and to leave no possibility of revolt among the defeated. The policy succeeded.
Jenghiz now returned to Mongolia, enjoyed his 500 wives and concubines, and died in bed. His son and successor Ogotai sent a horde of 300,000 men to capture Jalal ud-Din, who had formed another army at Diarbekr; Jalal was defeated and killed, and the unhindered Mongols ravaged Azerbaijan, northern Mesopotamia, Georgia, and Armenia (1234). Hearing that a rebellion, led by the Assassins, had broken out in Iran, Hulagu, a grandson of Jenghiz, led a Mongol army through Samarkand and Balkh, destroyed the Assassin stronghold at Alamut, and turned toward Baghdad.
Al-Mustasim Billah, last of the Abbasid caliphs of the East, was a learned scholar, a meticulous calligrapher, a man of exemplary gentleness, devoted to religion, books, and charity: this was an enemy to Hulagu’s taste. The Mongol accused the Caliph of shelte
ring rebels, and of withholding promised aid against the Assassins; as penalty he demanded the submission of the Caliph to the Great Khan, and the complete demilitarization of Baghdad. Al-Mustasim returned a boastful refusal. After a month of siege, al-Mustasim sent Hulagu presents and an offer of surrender. Lured by a promise of clemency, he and his two sons gave themselves up to the Mongol. On February 13, 1258, Hulagu and his troops entered Baghdad, and began forty days of pillage and massacre; 800,000 of the inhabitants, we are told, were killed. Thousands of scholars, scientists, and poets fell in the indiscriminate slaughter; libraries and treasures accumulated through centuries were in a week plundered or destroyed; hundreds of thousands of volumes were consumed. Finally the Caliph and his family, after being forced to reveal the hiding place of their secret wealth, were put to death.119 So ended the Abbasid caliphate in Asia.
Hulagu now returned to Mongolia. His army remained behind, and under other generals it advanced to the conquest of Syria. At Ain Jalut it met an Egyptian army under the Mamluk leaders Qutuz and Baibars, and was destroyed (1260). Everywhere in Islam and Europe men of all faiths rejoiced; the spell of fear was broken. In 1303 a decisive battle near Damascus ended the Mongol threat, and saved Syria for the Mamluks, perhaps Europe for Christianity.
Never in history had a civilization suffered so suddenly so devastating a blow. The barbarian conquest of Rome had been spread over two centuries; between each blow and the next some recovery was possible; and the German conquerors respected, some tried to preserve, the dying Empire which they helped to destroy. But the Mongols came and went within forty years; they came not to conquer and stay, but to kill, pillage, and carry their spoils to Mongolia. When their bloody tide ebbed it left behind it a fatally disrupted economy, canals broken or choked, schools and libraries in ashes, governments too divided, poor, and weak to govern, and a population cut in half and shattered in soul. Epicurean indulgence, physical and mental exhaustion, military incompetence and cowardice, religious sectarianism and obscurantism, political corruption and anarchy, all culminating in piecemeal collapse before external attack—this, and no change of climate, turned Western Asia from world leadership to destitution, from a hundred teeming and cultured cities in Syria, Mesopotamia, Persia, the Caucasus, and Transoxiana into the poverty, disease, and stagnation of modern times.