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Ibn Masarra, Muhammad ibn 'Abd
Allah (883-931)
Ibn Masarra, Muhammad ibn ‘Abd Allah (883-931)
Muhammad
ibn Masarra is said to be
responsible for the first
structuring of Andalusian
Spanish
Muslim philosophy.
The thrust of his
philosophy was to show the agreement
between
reason and revelation. The two paths
taken by honest philosophers and
prophets
lead
to the same goal of reaching the
knowledge of the oneness of God. We
can only know
that God exists but not what His nature is. Ibn Masarra held that the
divine attributes of
knowledge, will and power are a distinct
aspect of the simple and ineffable
essence of God,
and
the Neoplatonic theory that all
beings have emanated from him
through the First
Intellect
and are either invisible or
apparent. There are two sciences,
one of the invisible,
transcendental world, the other of the apparent and
sensible world.
The inner meanings
in
the sciences can be
learned through the science of
letters. By studying the enigmatic
letters
at
the beginning of the Qur’anic
surahs, one can decipher the secret
knowledge of the
truth symbolized by them. 1 Life and times
Muhammad
ibn ‘Abd Allah ibn Masarra was
born in Cordoba, Spain, in AH 269/AD
883 and died in
AH 319/AD 931. In a hermitage he had founded for
his friends and disciples in the
Sierra of
Cordoba,
Ibn Masarra undertook to instruct
them in his doctrines, to initiate
them into the use of
esoteric knowledge and to practice zuhd
(asceticism) through acts of penance
and devotion. His
success
came from a Socratic style of
pedagogy as well as a charismatic
personality and skill in
communication. After his death the jurists carried
out a veritable persecution of his
disciples; who
had
formed themselves into an ascetic
order, the Masarriya, in Cordoba and
later in Almeria.Two of Ibn Masarra’s four works, Kitab al-i‘tibar
(On Reflection) and Kitab khawass
al-huruf (Characteristics of
Letters), were published in 1982.
Both are short tracts which have
provided
a better understanding of his
thought, but because of their
conciseness they raise new
questions. It is still not possible to reconstruct
his philosophical system until the
remaining works
are
found, especially his Tawhid al-muqinin
(The Certain Profession of the
Oneness of God),
where he discussed God’s attributes.
2
Doctrines
M. Asيn
Palacios, the Spanish scholar who
first reconstructed an integral
account of Ibn
Masarra’s
life and thought, concluded that he
was the first Andalusian to
structure Spanish
Islamic philosophy (hikma) and that he conveyed his
doctrines in a series of batini
(inward)
esoteric
images and symbols (Asيn
Palacios 1972). The centrepiece of
Asيn’s
thesis, however,
was
the elaboration of a whole theory of
Ibn Masarra’s inspiration from a
pseudo-Empedocles,
who had developed a peculiar form of
Plotinian ideas on the One and the
five eternal substances
of
Primal Matter, Intellect, Soul,
Nature and Secondary Matter.
According to Asيn,
Ibn Masarra
was the founder of a
philosophical-mystical school which
influenced Jewish, Christian and
Muslim
medieval
philosophers. Andalusian Sufism from
Isma‘il al-Ru‘ayni (d.
AH 555/AD 1268) to Ibn
al-‘Arabi
by way of Ibn al-‘Arif (d. AH
536/AD 1141) sprang from the Masarri
school.
The
thrust of Ibn Masarra’s philosophy
is to demonstrate the agreement of
reason and revelation.
Each takes a different path leading to the same
goal, al-tawhid, the knowledge of
the oneness of
God.
By using ‘aql, the intellect with
which God endowed human beings, they
reflect on God’s
signs and rise step by step to the knowledge of the
Truth. Those who ascend by way of
reason
proceed
from the bottom up and discover the
same truth the Prophets have brought
down from on
high. In fact, the Qur’an invites us to reflect
on the signs of his creation.
Reflection (i‘tibar) only
confirms
prophecy; what is learned by
authority (sama‘) is confirmed by
investigation. Ibn
Masarra admits, however, that the philosophers and the ancients had
attained the knowledge of
the true One well before the age
of prophecy and without its
mediation, a position not acceptable
to
the religious scholars.
Ibn Masarra conceives of two sciences both
created by God. One, the science of
the invisible and
intelligible
reality (‘ilm al-ghayb), which
cannot be grasped by the senses, is
created whole, entire
and at once. The other is the science of the
apparent and sensible reality (‘ilm
al-shahada)
(Surah
6: 73). The Qur’an, the speech of
God, is one whole in its divine
essence, but diversified
(mufassal) with respect to creation.
It displays
three aspects, each the subject of a
different
science:
the science of divinity
(rububiya), its signs,
evidences and certainty; the science
of
prophecy
with its demonstrative arguments,
signs and necessity; and the science
of tribulation
(mihna) with its laws, promises and threats.
3
God’s attributes
God transcends all human thought and all we can
know about his nature is that he
exists. His
attributes
are distinct from him, that is, from
his essence (dhat). They are,
however, related to
eeach other. Strangely enough, Ibn Masarra
concludes from that relationship the
finitude or
creation
of the attributes. Like many
Mu‘tazilite theologians of his
time in the East, he
distinguished between the attributes of the essence, which are eternal,
and the attributes of action,
which are created. This was a
way to which the Mu‘tazilites
resorted in order to assert the
oneness
and ineffability of God while
maintaining human free will and
responsibility. God’s
knowledge is only of universals; were he to know
particulars, his oneness would be
jeopardized
and
our moral responsibility denied.
In making the distinction
between God’s essence and his
action, Ibn Masarra established
three
hierarchical
attributes, the highest of which is
connected to God’s essence and the
other two to
his actions.
These are divinity (aluhiya), royalty
(mulk) and grace (ni‘ma) or
creation (khalq),
through
which God the Artificer (al-sani‘)
is manifested. This hierarchy is
reflected in the way
human society is organized.
4
God’s creation
All beings are divided into four categories, some
nobler than others in accordance
with the
following scheme. First,
there is the Being, or essence of
God (dhat), separate, unique,
ineffable,
infinite
and motionless; it is the ultimate,
the visible and the invisible. The
remaining beings are the
signs that point to Him.
Second
is the Universal Intellect (al-‘aql
al-kulli), which is the
conception
or idea of things. It is spiritual
by nature and permanent. It is the
Mother of the Book
(umm al-kitab)
(Surah 3: 6), and the
Preserved Tablet (al-lawh al-mahfuz)
(Surah 85: 21) on
which all things are inscribed. The totality of
what is in the Book is the idea (mithal,
Eidos) of the
universe,
whatever was, is or shall be. It is
also the Throne (Surah 10: 2) which
incites motion in
response to God’s volition and will. The
relationship of the Intellect to God
is similar to the relation
of
the sun’s light to the sun. Third
is the Great Soul (al-nafs al-kubra)
that carries the body of
the universe. The relation of the Soul to the
Intellect is like the light of the
moon to that of the sun.
Through
this Soul, immersed in materiality,
Royalty (mulk) is constituted and
the celestial spheres
are held. To Royalty are predicated government and
politics. Finally, lower than the
Great Soul is
the
Physical Soul (al-nafs al-tabi’iya),
which is completely immersed in
corporeality and is the
efficient cause of corporeal beings. The
Throne encloses the invisible world
(‘alam al-ghayb)
and
the Great Soul encloses the visible
(‘alam al-shahada).
The
origination of the cosmos has been
achieved in time by the command
‘Be’ (kun), expressing
the volition and will according to knowledge.
When
the One wants to do something, he
causes it to
appear
in the Preserved Tablet. This in
itself is the command (amr) to set
the idea into action by
his willing. God, according to him, is concealed
from creation by two veils from the
perspective of
his
creation, inasmuch as nothing can
conceal him from the perspective of
his essence. Motion is
then set by the Throne, since no action ad
extra can be attributed to the One.
Unlike the pseudo-Empedocles,
who conceived of love and discord as
the driving force of
creation,
Ibn Masarra talked about capacity
and power designating them as truth
(haqq) (Surah 2:
72). In the final analysis God is the Aristotelian
unmoved mover, but in Neoplatonic
style all
creation
emanates from him. Unlike Plotinus,
Ibn Massara finds that the processes
of emanation
and creation are the results of God’s will (irada)
and deliberate action.
Both he and Plotinus
agree
on the intermediary roles played by
the Intellect and the Soul in the
creation of the material
world, but whereas Plotinus believed in involuntary
emanation, Ibn Massara retained the
Islamic
view
of voluntary creation (see
Neoplatonism; Neoplatonism in
Islamic philosophy).
The
principles from which all creatures
have come are fourteen in number,
ten of which are in the
sublunar world: chaos (al-‘ama’), primordial
dust (al-haba’), which is
considered by some as the
materia
prima, air, wind, atmosphere, water,
fire, light, darkness and clay. The
remaining four, the
Pen (qalam), the Tablet, the Command and the
Spiritual locus (makan) exist in the
world above.
From
the fourteen are made the Throne,
paradise, hell, the seven heavens,
the earth, the angels,
the jinn, human beings, animals and vegetation.
5
Esoterism and mysticism
In his work Kitab khawass al-huruf (Book of
the Characteristics of Letters), Ibn
Masarra
appears
as an esoteric (batini) philosopher
investigating the esoteric meanings
of the nuraniya,
the fourteen separate letters which introduce
certain surahs of the Qur’an,
basically following the
tradition
of Islamic gnosis. The mysterious
letters, according to the Batini
school, represented the
universe so that its entirety is a book whose
letters are God’s words. The
‘science of letters’
followed
by Ibn Masarra had nothing to do
with divination or magic; it is
merely a path to the
discovery of the truths hidden behind the symbols.
In this he was inspired by the work
of Sahl
al-Tustari
(d. AH 283/AD 896), the author of a
similar work on the science of
letters.
Reflection
(i‘tibar) allows us to decipher
the principles of all beings. The
basic idea is to show
that the different degrees that constitute beings
in general correspond to the
surah’s fawatih
(opening
letters) as well as to the order of
being.
The letters are twenty-eight
in number, equal to
tthe length of the lunar phases. Fourteen are
exoteric and the remaining fourteen
are esoteric.
These
are used by God to manifest his
knowledge: their secret meanings
have been bestowed
upon the Prophet Muhammad as expressed in the
Qur’an, and consequently the
Qur’an is the
source
of all knowledge, old and new. The
steps leading to paradise and
salvation are equal in
number to the Qur’anic verses and to the number
of God’s beautiful names,
excepting the great
name
of Allah.
The first letter, alif, is the alpha and omega of
all letters inasmuch as it
represents the principle of
all
things. It is the first
manifestation of God and his will;
it is a metaphor for the production
of
things (takwin), the emergence of justice and the
permanent and unchanging primordial
decree
(al-qada’
al-awwal). It never rests and
continuously causes generation and
corruption. This
decree has two aspects.
A prior aspect (sabiq) is connected to the
Preserved Tablet, the tablet of
the Universal Intellect where
all things are inscribed. This is a
decree that does not respond to
invocation.
The second aspect, the diversifier (mufassil),
particularizes all things that are
not
permanent. Like the other attributes, the two
decrees manifesting God’s
knowledge and power
are
other than God, although they are
not created in time. The concept of
huduth, or coming to
be, is realized only in time; but God’s
knowledge, according to Ibn Masarra,
whether it is
knowledge of the
universals or particulars, is not in
time. Coming to be in time is the
particularization
of beings found in a locus performed
by that decree that particularizes
things and
responds to invocation. Human salvation can be achieved
through either the via reflectiva or
the via prophetica, an idea
cconsidered
heretical by most Muslim theologians
(see Islamic theology). In both
cases, individuals
have to follow certain rules in order to free their
souls from the bondage of
materiality. Ibn
Masarra
distinguishes clearly between the
soul
(ruh) and spirit (nafs), with
the latter being the
prototype
(mithal) of the first.
There is a tradition in Andalusian
literature to the effect that Ibn
Masarra enjoyed great respect
and
veneration in spite of the fact that
his teachings were criticized and
refuted. On the other
hand, his disciples were persecuted. Transformed
into an ascetic society, his
disciples first in
Cordova
and later in Almeria put into
practice his Sufi and esoteric
teachings. He is certainly one
of the first mystical-philosophical Andalusians.
His Sufi teachings as well as his
works continued
to
circulate and to be studied for
centuries. His influence on Ibn
al-‘Arabi is attested by the many
references to him in the latter’s works
and by similarity in a number of
ideas, especially in the
continuous
use of similes of light and
illumination to describe the essence
of God.
See
also: Ibn al-‘Arabi; Mystical
philosophy in Islam; Neoplatonism in
Islamic philosophy
GEORGE N. ATIYEH
Routledge
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version
1.0, London: Routledge
List of works
Ibn Masarra (883-931) Kitab al-i‘tibar (On
Reflection), ed. M.K. Ja‘far, Min
al-turath
al-falsafi
li-ibn Masarrah: 1. Risalat al-i‘tibar,
2. Khawass al-huruf, Cairo,
1982.(One of
Ibn Massara’s two surviving works.)
Ibn
Masarra (883-931) Kitab khawass al-huruf
(Characteristics of Letters), ed.
M.K. Ja‘far,
Min al-turath al-falsafi li-ibn Masarrah: 1.
Risalat al-i‘tibar, 2. Khawass al-huruf,
Cairo, 1982.(One of Ibn
Massara’s two surviving works.)
References and further reading
Addas,
C. (1992) ‘Andalusi Mysticism and
the Rise of Ibn Arabi’, in S.K.
Jayyusi (ed.) The
Legacy of Muslim Spain, Leiden: Brill.(A well-written study on Sufism in
Spain including a
sizeable section on Ibn Masarrah’s
mystical teachings.)
Asيn
Palacios, M. (1972) The Mystical
Philosophy of Ibn Masarra and His
Followers, trans.
E.H.
Douglas and H.W. Yoder, Leiden:
Brill.(Still the major work on Ibn
Masarra, although
some of the conclusions have been challenged.)
Arnaldez,
R. (1960) ‘Ibn Masarra’, in The
Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd edn, vol.
3: 868-72.
(Concise
account of Ibn Masarra’s life and
thought.)
Cruz
Hernلndez,
M. (1981) ‘La Persecuciَn
anti-Masarri durante el reinado de
‘Abd
al-Rahman
al-Nasir li-Din Allah segْn
Ibn Hayyan’ (The Anti-Masarri
Persecution During the
Reign of ‘Abd al-Rahman
According to Ibn Hayyan), al-Qantara
II (182): 51-67.(An analysis
of
the account of Ibn Hayyan’s al-Muqtabas
concerning the persecution of the
disciples of
Ibn Masarrah, concluding that it does not differ substantially from that
of Asيn.)
Goodman,
L. (1996) ‘Ibn Masarra’, in S.H.
Nasr and O. Leaman (eds) History of
Islamic
Philosophy,
London: Routledge, ch. 20,
277-93.(The role of Ibn Masarra in
creating a
distinctive
philosophy and form of mysticism in
al-Andalus.)
Stern,
S.M. (1983) ‘Ibn Masarra, Follower
of Pseudo-Empedocles - An
Illusion’, in F.
Zimmerman
(ed.) Medieval Arabic and Hebrew
Thought, London: Variorum.(A
criticism of
Asيn’s
theory.)
Ternero, E. (1993)
‘Noticia sobre la publicaciَn
de obras inéditas de ibn Masarra’
(Review of
the Publication of Ibn
Masarra’s Unedited Works), al-Qantara
XIV: 47-64.(A summary of
the
two works of Ibn Masarra, published
for the first time in 1982.)
Routledge
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version
1.0, London: Routledge
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