A Dictionary of Islam Being a cyclopedia of the...

“There was a man of the children of Israel, who killed ninety-nine people, after which he came out, asking if his repentance would be accepted; and having met a monk, he asked him, ‘Is there acceptance for my repentance?’ The monk said, ‘No.’ Then the man killed the monk, and stood asking people about the approval of his repentance. And a man said to him, ‘Come to such a village.’ Then the signs of immediate death were upon him, and he tried to reach the village upon his knees, and died on the way. Then the angels of mercy and punishment disputed about him. Then God ordered the village towards which the man had attempted to go to be near to the corpse; and the village which he had fled from to be far away from him. Then God said to the angels, ‘Compute, and measure the distance between the two villages.’ And it was found that the village towards which he was going was nearer to him by one span. And he was pardoned.”

“Verily, when a true believer commits a sin, a black spot is created in his heart; and if he repents and asks pardon of God, the black spot is rubbed off his heart; but if he increases his sins, the black spot increases, so that it takes hold of the whole heart. Then this spot is a rust which God has mentioned in the Qurʾān, ‘their hearts became rusty from their works.’ ”

“Verily there were two men of the children of Israel who had a friendship for each other. One of them was a worshipper of God, and the other a sinner. The worshipper of God said to the sinner, ‘Give up sinning.’ He said, ‘Leave me to my Lord.’ At length he found him committing a very great sin, and said, ‘Give up sinning.’ The sinner said, ‘Leave me to my Lord. Were you sent as a guard over me?’ The worshipper said, ‘I swear by God He will not always forgive your sins, nor will He bring you into Paradise.’ Then God sent an angel to them, who took both their souls, and they both appeared before God together. And God said to the sinner, ‘Come into Paradise.’ And he said to the other: ‘What, can you prevent My compassion on my servant?’ He said, ‘I cannot, O my Lord.’ And God said to the angels, ‘Carry him to the fire.’ ”

PARENTAGE. The periods of six months and of two years are fixed as the shortest and longest periods of pregnancy, and consequently any child born within those periods is assumed to be the child of the woman’s husband, even though she be either a widow or divorced. This strange ruling of Muslim law is founded on a declaration of ʿĀyishah, who is related to have said, “The child does not remain in the womb of the mother beyond two years.”

If a person acknowledge the parentage of a child who is able to give an account of himself, and the ages of the parties are such as to admit of the one being the child of the other, and the parentage of the child be not well known to any person, and the child himself verify the statement, the parentage is established. (Ibid., vol. iii. p. 169.)

PARENTS, Duty to, is frequently enjoined in the Qurʾān; for example, Sūrah xvii. 24, 25: “Thy Lord hath decreed that ye shall not serve other than Him, and that ye shall be kind to your parents, whether one or both of them reach old age with thee; and ye must not say, ‘Fie!’ (Uff) nor grumble at them, but speak to them a generous speech. And lower to them the wing of humility out of compassion, and say, ‘O Lord! have compassion on them, as they brought me up when I was little!’ ”

PARISH. In connection with the mosques of cities and villages there are appointed districts not unlike English parishes. Within these districts the Imām of the mosque is hold responsible for the marriages and burials of the people, and his services can be claimed for these ceremonies, for which he receives customary fees. Any other Maulawī performing marriages or burials, is expected to obtain the permission of the Imām of the parish. In fact, the position of the Imām of a mosque is similar to that of a beneficed clergyman. He receives the marriage and burial fees, fees at the ceremony of circumcision, thank offerings on the birth of a child, or on recovery from sickness, presents on the festival days, &c., as well as the waqf, or endowment, of the mosque.

PESTILENCE. Arabic t̤āʿūn (طاعون), wabāʾ (وباء). According to the teaching of Muḥammad in the traditions, a pestilence is a punishment sent by God, it is also an occasion of martyrdom, and that Muslim who abides in the place where he is at the time of a pestilence, and dies of it, is admitted to the rank of a martyr. It is also enjoined that Musalmāns shall not enter a place where there is a pestilence raging, but remain where they are until it is passed. (Mishkāt, book v. ch. 1.)

Al-Baiẓāwī says Firʿaun was the common title of the kings of Egypt, just as Cæsar was that of the Roman Emperors, and that the name of Pharaoh, according to some, was al-Walīd ibn Muṣʿab, and according to others Muṣʿab ibn Raiyām, and according to others Qābūs, and that he lived 620 years. Abū ʾl-Fidāʾ says that Muṣʿab being 170 years old, and having no child, whilst he kept his herds, he saw a cow calf, and heard her say at the same time, “O Muṣʿab, be not grieved, thou shalt have a son, a wicked son, who shall be cast into hell,” and that this son was the wicked Firʿaun of the time of Moses.

In the Qurʾān, Sūrah xxxviii. 11, he is surnamed Firʿaun Ẕū ʾl-Autād, or “Pharaoh the master of the Stakes, who called the Apostles liars.” Some say the stakes refer to the strength of his kingdom, others that they were instruments of torture and death which he used.

PHILOSOPHY, MUSLIM. Arabic falsafah (فلسفة), or ʿilmu ʾl-ḥikmah (علم الحكمة). The following account of Arabian philosophy is taken with permission from Professor Ueberweg’s History of Philosophy, translated by G. S. Morris, M.A. (Hodder and Stoughton), vol. i. p. 405:—

“The whole philosophy of the Arabians was only a form of Aristotelianism, tempered more or less with Neo-Platonic conceptions. The medical and physical science of the Greeks and Greek philosophy became known to the Arabs especially under the rule of the Abassidæ (from A.D. 750 on), when medical, and afterwards (from the time of the reign of Almamun, in the first half of the ninth century) philosophical works were translated from Greek into Syriac and Arabic by Syriac Christians. The tradition of Greek philosophy was associated with that combination of Platonism and Aristotelianism which prevailed among the last philosophers of antiquity, and with the study by Christian theologians of the Aristotelian logic as a formal organon of dogmatics; but in view of the rigid monotheism of the Mohammedan religion, it was necessary that the Aristotelian metaphysics, and especially the Aristotelian theology, should be more fully adopted among the Arabs than among the Neo-Platonists and Christians, and that in consequence of the union among the former of philosophical with medical studies, the works of Aristotle on natural science should be studied by them with especial zeal.

“Of the Arabian philosophers in the East, the most important were Alkendi (al-Kindī), who was still more renowned as a mathematician and astrologer; Alfarabi (al-Fārābī), who adopted the Neo-Platonic doctrine of emanation; Avicenna (Abū Sīnā), the representative of a purer Aristotelianism and a man who for centuries, even among the Christian scholars of the later mediæval centuries, stood in the highest consideration as a philosopher, and, still more, as a teacher of medicine; and, finally, Algazel (al-G͟hazzālī), who maintained a philosophical skepticism in the interest of theological orthodoxy.

“The most important Arabian philosophers in the West were Avempace (Ibn Badja), Abubacer (Abū Bakr Ibn T̤ufail), and Averroës (Ibn Rashīd). Avempace and Abubacer dwell in their works on the idea of the independent and gradual development of man. Abubacer (in his ‘Natural Man’) develops this idea in a spirit of opposition to positive religion, although he affirms that positive religion and philosophical doctrine pursue the same end, namely, the union of the human intellect with the divine. Averroës, the celebrated commentator of Aristotle, interprets the doctrine of the latter respecting the active and the passive intellect in a sense which is nearly pantheistic and which excludes the idea of individual immortality. He admits the existence of only one active intellect, and affirms that this belongs in common to the whole human race, that it becomes temporarily particularized in individuals, but that each of its emanations becomes finally reabsorbed in the original whole, in which alone, therefore, they possess immortality.

“The acquaintance of the Mohammedan Arabs with the writings of Aristotle was brought about through the agency of Syrian Christians. Before the time of Mohammed, many Nestorian Syrians lived among the Arabs as physicians. Mohammed also had intercourse with Nestorian monks. Hareth Ibn Calda, the friend and physician of the Prophet, was a Nestorian. It was not, however, until after the extension of the Mohammedan rule over Syria and Persia, and chiefly after the Abassidæ had commenced to reign (A.D. 750), that foreign learning, especially in medicine and philosophy, became generally known among the Arabs. Philosophy had already been cultivated in those countries during the last days of Neo-Platonism, by David the Armenian (about 500 A.D.; his Prolog. to Philos. and to the Isagoge, and his commentary on the Categ, in Brandis’ Collection of Scholia to Arist.; his works, Venice, 1823; on him cf. C. F. Neumann, Paris, 1829) and afterwards by the Syrians, especially Christian Syrians, translated Greek authors, particularly medical, but afterward philosophical authors also, first into Syriac, and then from Syriac into Arabic (or they, perhaps, made use also of earlier Syriac translations some of which are to-day extant).

“During the reign and at the instance of Almamun (A.D. 813–833), the first translations of works of Aristotle into Arabic were made, under the direction of Johannes Ibn-al-Batrik (i.e. the son of the Patriarch, who, according to Renan [l.l., p. 57], is to be distinguished from Johannes Mesue, the physician), these translations, in part still extant, were regarded (according to Abulfaragius, Histor. Dynast., p. 153 et al.) as faithful but inelegant.

“A man more worthy of mention is Honein Ibn Ishak (Johannitius), a Nestorian, who flourished under Motewakkel, and died in 876. Acquainted with the Syriac, Arabic, and Greek languages, he was at the head of a school of interpreters at Bagdad, to which his son Ishak Ben Honein and his nephew Hobeisch-el-Asam also belonged. The works not only of Aristotle himself, but also of several ancient Aristotelians (Alexander Aphrodisiensis, Themistius, and also Neo-Platonic exegetes, such as Porphyry and Ammonius), and of Galenus and others, were translated into (Syriac and) Arabic. Of these translations, also, some of those in Arabic are still existing, but the Syriac translations are all lost. (Honein’s Arabic translation of the Categories has been edited by Jul. Theod. Zenker, Leips. 1846.) In the tenth century new translations, not only of the works of Aristotle, but also of Theophrastus, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Theomistius, Syrianus, Ammonius, etc., were produced by Syrian Christians, of whom the most important were the Nestorians, Abu Baschar Mata and Jahja ben Adi, the Tagritan, as also Isa Ben Zaraa. The Syriac translations (or revisions of earlier translations) by these men have been lost, but the Arabic translations were widely circulated and have in large measure been preserved; they were used by Alfarabi, Avicenna, Averroës, and the other Arabian philosophers. The Republic, Timæus, and Laws of Plato, were also translated into Arabic.

Averroës (in Spain, about 1150) possessed and paraphrased the Rep., but he did not the Politics of Aristotle; the book existing in MS. at Paris, entitled Siaset (Siyāsah), i.e. Politica, is the spurious work De Regimine Principum s. Secretum Secretorum; the Politics of Aristotle is not known to exist in Arabic. Farther, extracts from the Neo-Platonists, especially from Proclus, were translated into Arabic. The Syrians were led, especially in consequence of their contact with the Arabs, to extend their studies beyond the Organon; they began to cultivate in the Arabic language all the branches of philosophy on the basis of Aristotle’s works, and in this they were afterwards followed by the Arabs themselves, who soon surpassed their Syrian teachers. Alfarabi and Avicenna were the scholars of Syrian and Christian physicians. The later Syrian philosophy bears the type of the Arabian philosophy. The most important representative of the former was Gregorius Barhebræus or Abulfaragius, the Jacobite, who lived in the thirteenth century, and was descended from Jewish parents, and whose compendium of the Peripatetic philosophy (Butyrum Sapientiæ) is still of great authority among the Syrians.

“Alkendi (Abu Jusuf Jacub Ibn Eshak al Kendi, i.e. the father of Joseph, Jacob, son of Isaac, the Kendæan, of the district of Kendah) was born at Busra on the Persian Gulf, where later, in the tenth century, the ‘Brothers of Purity’ or the ‘Sincere Brethren,’ who collected in an Encyclopedia the learning then acceptable to the Arabians, were located. He lived during and after the first half of the ninth century, dying about 870. He was renowned as a mathematician, astrologer, physician, and philosopher. He composed commentaries on the logical writings of Aristotle, and wrote also on metaphysical problems. In theology he was a rationalist. His astrology was founded on the hypothesis that all things are so bound together by harmonious causal relations, that each, when completely conceived, must represent as in a mirror the whole universe.

“Alfarabi (Abu Nasr Mohammed ben Mohammed ben Tarkhan of Farab), born near the end of the ninth century, received his philosophical training mainly at Bagdad, where he also began to teach. Attached to the mystical sect of the Sûfi, which Said Abul Chair had founded about A.D. 820 (under the unmistakable influence of Buddhism, although Tholuck [“Ssufismus.” Berlin, 1821, and Blüthensammlung aus der Morgenländ. Mystik, Berlin, 1825] assigns to it a purely Mohammedan origin), Alfarabi went at a later epoch to Aleppo and Damascus, where he died A.D. 950. In logic Alfarabi follows Aristotle almost without exception. Whether logic is to be regarded as a part of philosophy or not, depends, according to Alfarabi, on the greater or less extension given to the conception of philosophy, and is therefore a useless question. Argumentation is the instrument by which to develop the unknown from the known; it is employed by the utens logicus; logica docens is the theory which relates to this instrument, argumentation, or which treats of it as its subject (subjectum). Yet logic also treats of single concepts (incomplexa) as elements of judgments and argumentations (according to Alfarabi, as reported by Albertus M., De Prædicabil. i. 2 seq., cf. Prantl, Gesch. der Log., ii. p. 302 seq.). Alfarabi defines the universal (see Alb. M., De Praed., ii. 5) as the unum de multis et in multis, which definition is followed immediately by the inference that the universal has no existence apart from the individual (non habet esse separatum a multis).

It is worthy of notice that Alfarabi does not admit in its absolute sense the aphorism: singulare sentitur, universale intelligitur, but teaches that the singular, although in its material aspect an object of sensible perception, exists in its formal aspect in the intellect, and, on the other hand, that the universal, although as such belonging to the intellect, exists also in sensu, in so far as it exists blended with the individual (Alb., An. post. i. l, 3). Among the contents of the Metaphysics of Alfarabi, mention should be made of his proof of the existence of God, which was employed by Albertus Magnus and later philosophers. This proof is founded on Plat., Tim., p. 28: τῷ γενομένῳ φαμὲν ὑπ’ αἰτίου τινὸς ἀνάγκην εἶναι γενέσθαι, and Arist., Metaph., xii. 7: ἐστι τοίνυν τι καὶ ὁ κινεῖ, etc., or on the principle that all change and all development must have a cause. Alfarabi distinguishes (Fontes Quæstionum, ch. 3 seq., in Schmölders’ Doc. Phil. Ar., p. 44), between that which has a possible and that which has a necessary existence, just as Plato and Aristotle distinguish between the changeable and the eternal. If the possible is to exist in reality, a cause is necessary thereto. The world is composite, hence it had a beginning or was caused (ch. 2). But the series of causes and effects can neither recede in infinitum, nor return like a circle into itself: it must, therefore, depend upon some necessary link, and this link is the first being (ens primum). This first being exists necessarily; the supposition of its non-existence involves a contradiction.

It is uncaused, and needs in order to its existence no cause external to itself. It is the cause of all that exists. Its eternity implies its perfection. It is free from all accidents. It is simple and unchangeable. As the absolutely Good it is at once absolute thought, absolute object of thought, and absolute thinking being (intelligentia, intelligible, intelligens). It has wisdom, life, insight, might, and will, beauty, excellence, brightness; it enjoys the highest happiness, is the first willing being and the first object of will (desire). In the knowledge of this being, Alfarabi (De rebus studio Arist. phil. præmitt. Comm., ch. 4, ap. Schmölders, Doc. ph. Arab., p. 22), sees the end of philosophy, and he defines the practical duty of man as consisting in rising, so far as human force permits it, into likeness with God. In his teachings respecting that which is caused by or derived from God (Fontes Quæst., ch. 6 seq.), Alfarabi follows the Neo-Platonists. His fundamental conception is expressed by the word emanation. The first created thing was the Intellect, which came forth from the first being (the Νοῦς of Plotinus; this doctrine was logically consistent only for Plotinus, not for Alfarabi, since the former represented his One as superior to all predicates, while Alfarabi, in agreement with Aristotle and with religious dogmatics, recognized in his first being intelligence). From this intellect flowed forth, as a new emanation, the Cosmical Soul, in the complication and combination of whose ideas the basis of corporeality is to be found.

Emanation proceeds from the higher or outer spheres to the lower or inner ones. In bodies, matter and form are necessarily combined with each other. Terrestrial bodies are composed of the four elements. The lower physical powers, up to the potential intellect, are dependent on matter. The potential intellect, through the operation (in-beaming) of the active divine intellect, is made actual (intellectus in actu or in effectu), and this actual intellect, as resulting from development, may be called acquired intellect (intellectus acquisitus, after the doctrine of Alexander of Aphrodisias, concerning the νοῦς ἐπίκτητος). The actual human intellect is free from matter, and is a simple substance, which alone survives the death of the body and remains indestructible. Evil is a necessary condition of good in a finite world. All things are under divine guidance and are good, since all was created by God. Between the human understanding and the things which it seeks to know there exists (as Alfarabi teaches, De Intellecto et Intellectu, p. 48 seq.) a similarity of form, which arises from their having both been formed by the same first being, and which makes knowledge possible.