 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of King's College London and the Leverhulme Trust. Online at www.historyoffilosophy.net. Today's episode, Undercover Brothers, Philosophy in the Buyid Age. In the past 15 episodes, I've been discussing the confrontation between Hellenic philosophy and the Arabic-speaking culture spread by Islam. As we've seen, that confrontation played itself out in the works of Jews and Christians as well as Muslims. As if that hasn't been complicated enough, I'd now like to pay tribute to another culture that I've mentioned only in passing, but which had immense significance in the story of philosophy in the Islamic world, Persia. Persia tends to play the role of the great Other in European historical narratives. They are the rivals of the Greeks, heroically defeated when the invading army of Xerxes was repelled in the 5th century BC. After being the base of the Seleucids, one of the imperial powers that emerged after the death of Alexander the Great, Persia became a rival of the Romans too. First the Parthians, then the Sassanids, went through cycles of war and peace with the Roman Empire and the Byzantines. In fact, one reason the Persians succumbed to the Arab armies in the mid-7th century was that they had been badly weakened by conflict with the Greek Christians of the Byzantine Empire. But even as Persia passed into the hands of Muslim rulers, its proud culture continued to assert itself. There was literary rivalry between the Persian and Arabic languages, and the Zoroastrianism of the Persians lived on within the Muslim Empire. As late as the 930s, it was possible for a warlord of Iran to reject the authority of the Abbasid caliphs and the faith of Islam and attempt to proclaim a Zoroastrian revival. More than a century earlier, Persian culture had probably helped to spark the translation movement which rendered Greek works of philosophy and science into Arabic. Already under the Sassanids, scientific works from India, on topics like mathematics and astronomy, were rendered into Persian. At this same time, we see Greek texts being translated for the Sassanids. Of particular interest for the history of philosophy is the Sassanid ruler Anush-e-Ruan, who reigned in the mid-6th century. He offered shelter to the Neoplatonist philosophers who left Athens after the Emperor Justinian closed down the academy there. He was also the recipient of works on Aristotelian logic by a man we call Paul the Persian. Among medieval scholars, the only one whose name brings a smile to my lips more easily than Paul the Persian is the wonderfully named Arabic-Latin translator Hermanus Alemanus, which means Herman the German. In light of these earlier developments in Sassanid Persia, we can even say that the early Abbasid caliphs were simply continuing their policy when they sponsored the translation movement. Carrying on the cultural activities of the Sassanids was a way for them to claim authority for their new imperial rule. In the later Abbasid Caliphate, the Persians could exert not just cultural influence, but also political power. This was especially true in the 10th century and the first half of the 11th century, a time dubbed the Iranian Intermezzo by one historian. In much of this period, the Central Asian lands of Khurasan and Transoxania were controlled by the Persian Empire known as the Samanids, while in the Islamic heartlands of Iraq and Iran, a new force came to be dominant, the Buyids. The Buyids began as three sons of a fisherman from the region around the Caspian Sea. Not content with fishing expeditions, the three brothers turned to military expeditions instead, and were so successful that the Buyid clan became the real power of the Abbasid Empire for more than a century. There was still a caliph, but what authority he retained was strictly religious. Military and political power was now in the hands of the Buyids. Both the Samanids and the Buyids revived Persian political practices, for instance by claiming for themselves the traditional Sasanian title King of Kings. Unlike the Samanids, the Buyids were Shi'ite Muslims. In other words, they recognized a sequence of Imams beginning with the prophet's cousin Ali and passing down through the family line. It's interesting that they were nonetheless content to allow the Abbasid caliphs to remain on their thrones. This may be because they feared the backlash from non-Shi'ite Muslims if they deposed the caliphs, or because they would not have been able to control a caliph who could claim descent from Ali's family, as they did with the Abbasids. The reign of the Persian Buyids and Samanids provides us with a context for understanding philosophy during this time. Philosophy in the 9th century is epitomized by al-Kindi, an Arab and native of Iraq and an intimate of the caliphs who reigned at the height of Abbasid power. In the 10th and early 11th centuries, Iraq continued to be a center for philosophy, not least thanks to the labors of Ibn Adi, Al-Farabi, and the rest of the Baghdad school. But this was also a time when philosophy was blossoming in Persian cities like Ra'i and still further east, including places under the dominion of the Samanids. Philosophers in this period often hailed from these cities, tended to travel throughout the empire, and attach themselves to the courts of local rulers as political power became more fragmented. Furthermore, at this time we see a growing relationship between philosophy and Shi'ite Islam. All of this is evident if we look at the impact of al-Kindi himself and of the texts translated in his circle. Two of his most important followers hailed from the eastern province of Balkh, where the Samanid rulers also originated. One of them was Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi, the greatest astrologer of Islamic history. Supposedly, Abu Ma'shar was first an enemy of al-Kindi's, but al-Kindi won him over to the mathematical arts, and from there his career was, so to speak, written in the stars. The other was al-Kindi's student Abu Zayd al-Balkhi, who wrote on a variety of philosophical issues. We looked briefly at his writing on ethics in the last episode. Abu Zayd was in turn the teacher of al-Ameri, the most significant member of this group of thinkers we might call the Kindian tradition. Like al-Kindi's students from Balkh, al-Ameri came from the Persian province of Khurasan, in this case hailing from the city Nishapur. He complained of the prejudice against Easterners he encountered when visiting the Abbasid capital of Baghdad, and was glad to return home. The Kindian tradition helped to bring about a shift of philosophy towards the East, especially the Neoplatonic philosophy that had been translated in the Kindi circle. Al-Ameri, for instance, was fascinated by the Arabic version of Proclus that would later be influential in Latin as the Liber de Causis, or Book of Causes. You know that game Telephone, where a row of children whisper a message into each other's ears one after another and then giggle at the much different version that results at the end? Something similar happened here with Proclus, as the Kindi circle's reworking of his elements of theology was reworked again by al-Ameri. The Kindi circle's version brought Proclus into line with the simpler Neoplatonic system of Plotinus, and with Islam too, by making the first cause into a creator. In al-Ameri's hands, the Islamization is made yet more explicit. For instance, the intellect and soul of the Neoplatonic hierarchy are given the Quranic names pen and tablet. And, the emanation of all things from God now occurs not automatically, like light from a source or water from a fountain, but instead by a divine command. If we follow this Kindian tradition down to the 11th century, we come to another man we met already in the last episode, Abu Ali Miskowy. He was born in Ra'i, the home of everyone's favorite heretical doctor, Ar-Razi. Miskowy was no heretic, and no doctor either, although he knew at least some works by Galen. In fact, he knew some works by just about anyone you'd care to name, having been in charge of a library at Ra'i that belonged to a vizier of the Buyids. As one of the best-read scholars of the era, Miskowy wrote extensively on history, and was well placed to write philosophical works on ethics and metaphysics that combined Aristotle with the Neoplatonic texts produced by the Kindi circle. Like al-Kindi, Miskowy saw the resulting philosophical synthesis as fully compatible with Islam. One of his more interesting treatises, called On Soul and Intellect, presents and refutes the views of an impressively skeptical and idiosyncratic philosopher. This man proposed that we can explain all the things we see in the world around us by appealing to the physical forces of heat and light, instead of immaterial entities like soul and God. To prove that heat is the principle of life, he pointed out that a heart removed from the body of an animal will continue to beat if thrust into hot ashes. Kids, don't try this at home. Unfortunately, Miskowy does not tell us who this other author was, but contends himself with reasserting the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic doctrines that had become standard within this Kindian tradition. This is typical of him. Miskowy was not a particularly original thinker. But then again, he wasn't trying to be. He is interesting precisely because he so clearly represents what philosophy was becoming under the Buyids. Like the Buyids themselves, he was a Shiite from Persia, and he enjoyed the support of patrons of the day, who built up impressive libraries and enjoyed the company of intellectuals. At this time, a court philosopher could be a kind of status symbol, the 11th century equivalent of an expensive artwork that is admired, but not necessarily understood. As we'll see in a few episodes, no less a thinker than Avicenna spent much of his life within this kind of patronage relationship. Could we imagine such a thing nowadays, with fabulously rich patrons lavishing their wealth on philosophers of all people, choosing one to be the star attraction of a luxuriously well-paid entourage? To be honest, I'm imagining it right now. Philosophers like Miskowy moved in refined circles not only in socioeconomic terms, but also in terms of literary style. Miskowy was not just a philosopher, but also a historian. On this score, he might be compared to the ancient writer Plutarch. This attitude towards philosophy, where it is just one of numerous topics a cultivated author might discuss, is typical of the Buyid age. We do find more professional philosophers, in particular the members of the Baghdad school. But the less technical Islam-friendly philosophy embraced by the Kindian tradition was more culturally prevalent. We see it not just with Miskowy, but also with Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi, one of the great literary figures of the age. He seems to have known almost everyone, and his gossipy works are a rich source of anecdotes and witty remarks. In fact, he's our source for the report of the debate over the merits of logic and grammar between the Baghdad philosopher Abu Bishr and the grammarian Al-Sirafi, which I mentioned in the episode on the Baghdad school. He also tells us stories involving people like Al-Amari and Miskowy, and wrote a series of questions on philosophical topics which were answered by Miskowy in an exchange which still survives today. With Miskowy and al-Tawhidi, we see the interpenetration of philosophy and adab, the refined and improving culture I mentioned in the episode on music. Authors had been combining intellectual speculation with stylish Arabic prose since the 9th century. The best example here is the outstanding writer Al-Jahiz, a student of Wathazilite theology who became one of the most imitated and important figures of early Arabic literature. This phenomenon of philosophical adab may have been the most significant vehicle for the cultural dispersion of ideas drawn from the Greek Arabic translation movement. Al-Tawhidi tells of learned exchanges at court and elegant excursions into the countryside, where the participants might, for instance, debate the meaning of remarks ascribed to the pre-Socratic Empedocles. In polite society, it was the done thing to quote the wise remarks and clever witticisms of ancient Greek philosophers. In the ancient world, philosophy had been a way of life. Now, it was a way of spicing up your dinner conversation. Then again, the same had already been true in the world of the Romans, as we saw when we talked about rhetoric and the second Sophistic. In both periods there was direct interaction between the committed philosophers and those who appropriated philosophy for more elegant literary productions. Ancient aristocrats might frequent the school of an Epictetus or Plotinus. Now, in the age of the Buyids, Al-Tawhidi could back up his style with substance if he chose to do so. He had attended the lessons of Ibn Adi in Baghdad. The themes we've been pursuing in this episode, Persian culture and literary culture, and the integration of philosophy with Islam, come together spectacularly in a collection of writings by a group of anonymous authors called Ikhwan al-Safa, the Brethren of Purity. Not since the Pseudo-Dionysius have we come upon such interesting unnamed philosophers. They composed a set of 52 epistles, each one devoted to a specific topic or branch of knowledge. The epistles begin with the mathematical sciences, which include geography and, as we saw in a previous episode, music. The Brethren then proceed through the departments of natural philosophy, dealing with everything Aristotle had covered and more, with treatises on minerals and plants. A third group of epistles deals with soul and intellect, and a final section treats religious questions and magic. The Brethren thus bring together an unparalleled range of material and provide a valuable window into the state of various arts in the age of the Buyids. It would be nice to be more specific about when the epistles were written, but there is no scholarly agreement on that. Nor, as I say, do we know for sure who these Brethren of Purity were. A Tahidi, ever a source of intriguing hearsay, preserves the most specific and plausible account. He identifies several of the Brethren, and puts them in the Iraqi city of Basra, in the company of an official of the Buyid government. Some scholars today are skeptical about the details of this story, but for our purposes, it's enough to note that the Brethren are, in their own right, to some extent typical of the philosophical culture of their day. Though they seem to have worked in Iraq, they may have had an Eastern cultural background. For one thing, they occasionally use Persian terminology. And then there is their name. The phrase Brethren of Purity derives from a collection of animal fables that was, in Arabic, called Qalilah wa-Dimna. Here we have another example of playing telephone. It was an ancient Indian work, which was translated into Persian, and then Syriac, and finally into Arabic. The Brethren take their name from a passage in the fables, which refers to some birds of a feather who decide to flock together and call themselves pure brothers. The most celebrated epistle in the collection by the Brethren is itself a zoological fable. It imagines a debate between humans and the other animals, in which the animals attempt to persuade a neutral judge, a benevolent king of demons, that they should no longer be oppressed by humans and subjected to maltreatment at their hands. What follows is an inventive, amusing, and richly detailed discussion amongst the animals, in which groups like the insects, the birds, and the predatory animals put forward their claims to equality or even superiority relative to humans. The result is one of the most favorable portrayals of non-human animals in Arabic literature, one which occasionally ascribes to them a kind of rationality and even the ability to worship God. The animals claim several times to be convinced monotheists and even Muslims. The cries of some creatures are said to be prayers in praise of God, which humans of course fail to understand. In the end, the humans prevail in the contest, not because they alone are rational, but because the other animal species have not produced the outstanding saintly figures boasted by humankind, rare those such human individuals may be. All this may remind us of the late ancient author Porphyry and his argument that animals are rational and so should not be used for food. But the prologue of this epistle presents a much more traditional contrast between rational humans and non-rational animals. So maybe the more favorable portrayal of animals in the fable is occasioned by the literary context, rather than any deeply held views on animal psychology. In the end, the brethren seem most interested in commenting indirectly on humankind, as when they show the animals debating the nature of perfect kingly rule. That brings us to another controversial question about the brethren. What sort of Muslims were they? Their works contain numerous clues that they may have been Shiites of some kind, and the epistles were later avidly read by Ismailis. The Ismailis were a branch within Shiite Islam, which achieved a remarkable political success around the time that the Buyids dominated in the Abbasid realm. The Fatimid Caliphate, which held control of Egypt from the early 10th until the later 12th century, was Ismaili. This unprecedented success for Shiite Islam created a base from which missionaries could be sent into the rest of the Muslim empire, seeking converts. It's possible that the brethren of purity were themselves Ismailis, and if so, they were not the only philosophers of the time to subscribe to this variety of Shiism. Several of the Da'is, or proselytizers, who promoted the cause of Ismailism drew on Hellenic philosophy to provide a systematic account of their religious beliefs. We have already met one of them, Abu Hatim Ar-Razi, the sparring partner of Abu Bakr Ar-Razi, who accused his fellow townsmen of rejecting the validity of prophecy. In Abu Hatim, and even more so in two other early Ismaili thinkers named An-Nasafi and Asijestani, we find a range of distinctive philosophical and theological positions that take as their starting point the Neoplatonic system known from Plotinus and Proclus as translated in the Kindi circle. They accept the production of a universal intellect and soul from God. Like Al-Ameri of the Kindian tradition, these Ismailis apply Quranic epithets like throne and pen to the Neoplatonic entities. The Ismailis are determined to emphasize the transcendence of God, and find even Plotinus's Neoplatonic system insufficient for this purpose. In a presumably unwitting replay of a move made by the later Greek Neoplatonist Demascius, they interpose a further level between the highest ineffable one and the intellect. In the case of the Ismailis, this additional level is called God's Word or Command, echoing passages in the Quran that describe God saying the word be to whatever He wants to create. Abu Hatim proposes another method for ensuring God's transcendence, which in this case recalls an idea put forward by the Pseudo-Dionysius. His method is to go beyond denying attributes as inappropriate to God and to deny even these denials. Thus, God is not only not perfect, but also not not perfect. Abu Hatim's proposal was taken up by a Sijestani, who spoke of worshipping God through the expression La wa la la, not and not not. For a Sijestani, this provides a correction to the simpler negative theology of thinkers like al-Kindi and the Mu'ath-Tazilites, who were content simply to deny the appropriateness of human language in God's case. But why would saying not not perfect, for instance, be any better than saying simply not perfect? I think a Sijestani's point must be that the double negation brings home to us the complete inapplicability of human language and concepts to God. The sense in which God is not perfect is like the sense in which the color blue is not heavy. For something like a color, the question of heaviness does not even arise. So it would be misleading to say that blue is not heavy, as if it might have been heavy but happens not to be, like a piece of furniture. Rather, the color blue is not even not heavy. The same rationale applies to God, but for any concept or word you care to name, because of his total transcendence beyond language and thought. The Ismaili philosophers faced a challenge other Neoplatonizing thinkers of their day did not. They needed to explain the need for guidance from an imam. This was, after all, what made them Shiites. They did so by integrating the imam into a hierarchical system of reality, which has a series of prophets laying down bodies of legislation as a concrete realization of the truths of the universal intellect. This sounds very like the view of prophecy we find in Al-Farabi, and indeed, at least one Ismaili thinker seems to have been powerfully influenced by him. This is the somewhat later al-Kirmani, who shifted away from the more traditional Platonist-style Neoplatonism of figures like a Sijestani to embrace a system more like that of Al-Farabi with his series of celestial intellects. But, despite these points of disagreements, the Ismailis generally would have agreed with one another, and disagreed with Al-Farabi in holding that a law handed down by a prophet is not enough. This law also needs to be interpreted, which is the role of subsequent figures who explain the inner meaning of the prophet's revelation. In the case of the Islamic revelation, the needed interpretation was of course brought by Ali and his descendants. These claims were robustly attacked by some other Muslims. They accused the Ismailis and other Shiites of demoting the importance of the prophet himself by suggesting that his revelation would be useless without guidance from later divinely appointed interpreters. And, they accused the Ismailis of having an esoteric view of Islam. All that really mattered was the inner meaning of the revelation, which could be known only to the Imams, who must be followed blindly by normal folk who lack their divine insight. Against this, Ismailis like a Sijestani and Al-Kirmani were careful to insist on the importance of the outer aspects of Islam. By this they meant above all ritual practices such as prayer, and following the letter of the law as laid down by the prophet. In an echo of the famous logic vs. grammar debate, a Sijestani compared this relation of inner and outer religion to the relation between a conceptual meaning and its verbal expression. For all this intellectual sophistication though, the Ismailis would not prevail. They did not manage to convert the lands of the Buyids and Samanids to Ismaili belief. To the contrary, in the middle of the 11th century, the Buyids would give way to a new political hegemony, and now it would be Sunni Muslims who would take charge. In two episodes, we'll be turning to the theological underpinnings of this Sunni revival, as we look at the Asherites. But, the Ismailis represent such an interesting moment in the intersection of Islam and philosophy that it will be worth spending one more episode in their company. I'm glad to say that we will have a guide of our own for this topic, a scholar who has done more than anyone to enrich our understanding of the Ismailis and their history. So, do not not join me for an interview with Farhad Daftari, here on The History of Philosophy, without any gaps.