The history of classical Arab-Islamic philosophy is a part of the cultural history of the Arab Caliphate, which, under the aegis of Islam—the new monotheistic religion proclaimed by the Prophet Muhammad—had extended its power over a broad area from the banks of the Indus and the Amu-Darya to the Atlantic coasts of North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. Within this vast empire, integrating Arabs, Persians, Turks, Berbers, and other peoples of three continents, extensive economic development took place. While in the Christian West a natural economy (individual peasant holdings) dominated in the Islamic world practically everywhere highly diversified professions promoted production on the basis of which commerce could be widely developed. The rise of handicrafts and trade stimulated the development of cities, as many as 400 to 500 in the Arab world. The population in urban settings was high. For example, in the three largest cities of Sabada (South Mesopotamia) and in two towns in Egypt, there lived about 20 percent of the population. In the 8th to 9th centuries, cities with more than 100,000 residents in Mesopotamia and Egypt exceeded populations in the highly urbanized, 19th century, West European countries, such as the Netherlands, England, Wales, and France. At that time, Baghdad contained about 400,000 inhabitants, and cities such as Fustat (Cairo), Cordoba, Alexandria, Kufa, and Basra had from 100,000 to 250,000 people. (1, p. 184).

Like later medieval cities, the Arab cities had crowded streets, squares, and markets and overcrowded rooming houses of six or seven floors—in Fusta there were houses with 14 floors. The atmosphere was polluted with what Ibn Sina defined as "a mixture of smoke fumes," closely corresponding to today’s "smog." However, the surrounding countryside had no such medieval attributes as castles for feudal lords because the elite lived with their servants in the cities.

The economic development of the cities did not depend solely on income from selling handicrafts. As administrative and political centers, these cities often gathered considerable wealth from extortionary taxes. The riches that flowed to the Abbasids’ capital, Baghdad, were especially extravagant. Any feudal lord could hardly have had such gigantic sums as the Abbasids had at the period of their might: More than 400 million dirkhems (about 1,160 tons of silver) entered Baghdad each year. By comparison, the total income of the Russian empire in 1763 equated to 140 million dirkhems" (1, p. 185-186). Local dynasties separated from Baghdad also had considerable wealth. For example, the annual income of the Samanids, whose capital was Bukhara, might run about 45 million dirkhems. The concentration of wealth from commerce and taxation in cities led to the further population growth. The surplus product was further redistributed among different strata of townsmen, forming, like the medieval intelligentsia, professional classes for the intensification of spiritual life and for the development of sciences, literature, and the arts.

Such extensive development was possible because for the first time after the epoch of Alexander the Great, Arabs could unite under their rule both East and West, the Hellenic Mediterranean and the Indo-Persian worlds, thus creating preconditions for the mutual enrichment and cooperation of cultures. The representatives of the Arab-Islamic civilization adapted those elements of the assimilated culture necessary for their practical needs, particularly medicine, astronomy, and mathematics. These sciences satisfied the needs of the state and the conditions for public health needed in their overcrowded cities. The synthetic character of the Ancient Greek and Hellenic populations as well as the growing spiritual needs of the Islamic writers also led to increasing interest in ancient philosophy, including the science of the ultimate causes of being, metaphysics. (In several decades after the rise of Islam, its philosophical doctrines, in the 7th century, became too narrow for their worldview.) They grasped ancient science in a relatively integrated form that answered their interest in theology, as was characteristic of Christian scholars of the early Middle Ages.

F. Rozental, devoted to the role of knowledge in the medieval Islamic civilization, came to the conclusion that knowledge acquired an importance that had "no equal in other civilizations" (2, p. 324). The knowledge analyzed here is both secular and religious, but its high position in the value system of Medieval Islamic society is significant because it means that in this society there were many educated people. "In spite of the fact that books were copied by hand," as A.B. Khalidov writes regarding the book culture of the Islamic Middle Ages, "books were produced in a great number that was absolutely improbable for medieval Europe. Even professionals do not always realize the genuine scale of Arab book production: the small part of old manuscript treasures that came to us through all the reversals of history is estimated at the hundreds of thousands." (3, p. 215).

One could judge the values of the educated in medieval Islamic society by a group considered the embodiment of the features required of a cultured person. The Adibs were well educated and well brought up, with knowledge of philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, and proper behavior. At the same time, they maintained a relative independence of an adib intellect from religion and theology.

In the given context, it is important to underline that adab and philosophy (falsafa, wisdom) aimed at the ancient standards of philosophical thought) were closely connected. Philosophers (falasifa) considered their science to be the highest goal of a humanitarian education and a means of "salvation" (nadjat), that is, of the highest human perfection and achievement of happiness. According to Miskawayh, one of at-Tawhidi’s contemporaries (died about 1010), an ideal upbringing, leading to the title "true adab" (al-adab al-hakiki), included educating a child in religion before studying ethics, arithmetic, and geometry. Finally, the child must be taught truthfulness and rhetoric.

A model of a philosophical program of education that does justice to grammar, poetry and rhetoric, can be found in the adab version of Aristotle’s biography, where it is said:

When [Aristotle] reached the age of eight, his father brought him to Athens, the city that was the gathering place for the philosophers and sages. His father turned him over to the tutelage of poets, grammarians (schoolmasters) and rhetoricians. He learned [what they taught] thoroughly in nine years. It happened that at this place there was then a group of philosophers, who disparaged the learning of these people (poets, etc.) and chided those who studied with them and prided themselves in their arts. Among them were Epicurus and Pythagoras. They claimed that their (e.g., the grammarians) branch of learning required nothing of philosophy, and that those who studied this were not philosophers. For the grammarians were merely teachers of youth; the poets masters of prattle, lying and obscenity; and the rhetoricians masters of obsequiousness, contentiousness, viciousness and deceit, although they were the ones who were the judges and the arbiters at that time. Learning of this, Aristotle was seized with indignation on their behalf. He defended them, corroborating their contentions, saying: ‘Philosophy cannot dispense with these branches of learning, for logic (mantiq) is an instrument (organon) for their knowledge. And poetry, rhetoric, grammar and brevity embellish logic. And [Aristotle] said that man’s superiority over beasts is in speech (mantiq/logos), and the most worthy of humanity (insaniyya) is the most accomplished in his speech and the most skilled in self-expression. After this he is able to arrange everything properly so that he attains the supreme [level] of philosophy at the ultimate [stage] of humanity. For philosophy is the noblest of the arts and the chief of the sciences. And it must be expressed by means of the most valid reasoning and noblest expression, furthest from defect, vulgarity and solecism. For such would undermine demonstrative proof and the light of wisdom and may fall short of what is required, confuse the listener, corrupt meaning, and inculcate doubt. When [Aristotle] reached this point, having commanded all we have mentioned and having thoroughly mastered the arts of grammar, poetry and rhetoric, he applied himself avidly to the study of [ethics, politics, physics, mathematics and metaphysics]. He then attached himself to Plato.’ (4, p. 153-154).

 

The importance of the philosophical theory of education (elucidated in the classification of sciences of the Eastern Peripatetics) will become particularly evident if we take into account the Greek-Arabic Gnostic literature. This vast depository of popular wisdom was destined for a wide circle of readers that considerably outnumbered philosophers, the intellectual elite, and even the court. Adab literature widely cited aphorisms and anecdotes of ancient sages, reflecting their lives and doctrines. In this connection, it is proper to quote the ruler of Sijistan, Abu Jaafar ibn Banuvaih (ruled in 906-963) on Gnostic literature, whose words had been reserved by the philosopher al-Sijistani:

[Abu Jaafar] used to preserve (or memorize) the sayings, anecdotes, biographies, and affairs of the Greeks in a way I have seen in no one else. He used to say, ‘These are gold nuggets and like uncast raw metal.’ The anecdotes of the Greeks caused him such wonder that he would say; ‘What will be thought of a people whose jesting, conviviality, and relaxation are such, when they become serious and resolutely realize their natural powers?’ Then he said: ‘I am fond of something ascribed to Democratus: The one, who swims in our sea, has no shore but himself.’ (4, p. 155)

 

This example is typical of Islamic medieval culture. The value system of Adibs whose best representatives possessed philosophical wisdom, set the tone in the "elite" circles. Their ideals also characterized the feudal circles that formed, as has been said above, were part of the city populations of the medieval Islamic world. The same could be said about the Caliphs, among whom were pious people who devoted themselves to religion, especially in their old age, as well as persons who were not devote Muslims.

Many of the companions of the Prophet were alive when the rule of the Umayyads began (661-750) in Damascus, the new capital city of the Caliphate. Because of the new political and cultural conditions and the vast expansion of the empire, the Umayyads paid greater attention to institution building, rather than to religious matters. In a sense, this was inevitable at the stage owing to the fast expansion of the Empire, although many of the "old guard" Muslims viewed themselves as less religious, especially during the reign of Al-Walid Ibn Al-Yazid (ruled in 743-744). Among other things, the grave weakening of spirituality during and after his reign, contributed to the downfall of that dynasty.

With the advent the Abbasids and the transfer of the capital from Damascus to Baghdad, immigrants from Iran began replacing the patrimonial Arab aristocracy. The culture of the Caliphate received powerful impulse for further development under the influence of this ancient Persian civilization. When "the Translators Movement" began to bear its first fruits, the Caliphs and the elite found great pleasure in the intellectual sphere. Al-Mamun, in particular, belonged to such a group. He encouraged free discussions at his court on theological and philosophical themes, with the participation of representatives of different religious and nonreligious views. He also supported the Mutazilites against the orthodox traditionalists by establishing the institution of Mihnaa—a sort of inquisition.

The Caliph’s common subjects followed a more practical approach to religion. This practice was favored because, from the beginning, Islam was "politicized" and viewed as a state religion. Religion satisfied not only their spiritual needs, but also the practical requirements of society as a basis for social, political, moral, legal, and family relations among the people. As a rule, theological trends, sects, and movements in Islam also had a clearly expressed political cause. However, a purely utilitarian approach to the problems of belief was typical of numerous neophytes among the earlier Pagans, Christians, and Jews who adopted Islam exclusively for such practical considerations as evading payment of taxes, protection from the Muslims, and to be upward mobility in the social hierarchy.

Of great importance, was the fact that the Middle East and Central Asia became the arena of collisions of a multitude of beliefs, including the three revealed religions: Islam, Christianity and Judaism. This situation created a favorable basis for the development of non-theistic thinkers in three ways: first, it neutralized the conviction in the exclusiveness of one’s own belief. Second, it stimulated the wish to compare these religions, which also undermined the idea of exclusivity and raised doubt concerning the monopoly of truth by one’s faith. Third, as a result of confessional pluralism, a vast doxographical literature appeared that inclined to compare religions. The works of al-Naubakhti, al-Masudi, al-Muhasibi, Abu Mansur, Ibn Hazm, al-Iranshahi, al-Biruni, and al-Shahrastani represented this literature. The further result was the appearance of works that not only compared dogmas, but also promoted arguments aimed at revealing the contradictions among religions. In this sense, different trends of Islamic theological and philosophical thought competed with one another, although the rulers of different Caliphates preferred one or another school in different periods.

During the era of the Ghaznavids and Seljugs, when Arabic-Islamic philosophy flourished, "orthodox Islam" struggled against "heretical" movements. But in reality, this seems unlikely. Besides the Baghdad Caliphatethere existed the Cordova caliphate of the Fatimids. The Islam of the Ismailites was considered "orthodox," while in Baghdad the teaching of the Ismailites qualified as apostasy. In short, in the Islamic world no single "orthodox teaching" prevailed.

Even at the time of Frederic Hohenstaufen, the power of a Caliph was compared only with that of the Pope. "The sovereign of true believers" theoretically embodied the unity of both secular and religious powers that presupposed the dominance of theocratic principles in the Islamic East and, hence, the supremacy of a certain orthodox system. However, practically, the situation differed. The process of the separation of secular and religious powers was completed in the middle of the 10th century. The Baghdad Caliph preserved only religious powers, while the former, that is, secular power, passed into the hands of the Emirs and Sultans. Thus, in the Islamic East, religion assumed the same role as in the Christian world, but with one essential difference: It carried out its function with no organized church, no hierarchical and territorial structured net of clergymen, and no church councils whose decrees would be obligatory for all. Instead, numerous teachings within the framework of Islam achieved the status of doctrine officially adopted by the regime, either due to their concrete political aims, their ability to unite the rivals and enemies of the regime, or the popularity of the doctrine among those strata of the population whose support and tranquility were necessary to the regime. During the whole history of the Baghdad Caliphate, "the sovereigns of true believers" only twice used their religious power for actions that resembled attempts to impose "orthodox" ideas on their subjects. The first such action took place in the 9th century when al-Mamun declared a thesis on the creation of the Qur’an to be "a state doctrine." This thesis made it possible to distinguish al-Mamun’s supporters and the members of opposition, the traditionalists, who were on the side of his brother al-Amin, contending for the Caliph’s throne. Pursuing the same political aims, al-Mamun openly favored the Mutazilites, though he was not a Mutazilite, and the Mutazilites were not anxious to serve him. The thesis on the creation of the Qur’an, proclaimed by al-Mamun and supported by his successors (al-Mutazim, ruled 833-842, and al-Wasik, ruled 842-847), was declared untrue in 849, and Mutazilism was then prosecuted. This radical change in the religious policy of Baghdad took place under the Caliph al-Mutawakkil (ruled 847-861). As P. Juse wrote, such a change "had a purely political character"(9, p.81). That was clear if only from the fact that al-Mutawakkil "was a respected Mutazilite"(9, p.81). But on the eve of his accession to the throne in the capital of the Caliphate riots broke out. To save his throne, he was obliged to make concessions to the dogmatists and traditionalists, who had great influence on the majority of the people of Baghdad (amma).

The second attempt to define "official dogma" by the Abbasids took place under al-Kadir (ruled 991-1031), when the Caliph’s power hardly spread beyond his residence in Baghdad. In the disintegrated Caliphate, centrifugal forces became stronger, and, in order to enhance their freedom, these forces fostered different forms of heterodoxy: Mutazilitism, Shiism, and, especially, the Ismailite trend of the latter that was also supported by dangerous rivals of the Abbasids, the Egyptian Fatimids. Under these conditions, al-Kadir organized ceremonial readings of Qadiriyah. In his palace, a new creed condemned heterodox views (including the thesis on the creation of the Qur’an) as contradicting the views of the "Salaf," the first Muslims who were honored as experts of the Holy texts. But neither in Baghdad nor in the provinces did the Caliph have sufficient power to attach the necessary authority to this new creed in the eyes of his people. The only appreciable result of the publication of Qadiriyah was the fact that on the pretext of its defense, the Ghaznawids and, after them the Seljugis, extended their property, to the territory of the emirates that broke off from the Abbasid state. However, when the political situation required, these two Turkic dynasties accepted some trends (excluding the Shiite-Ismailite ones) that were condemned in Qadiriyah.

This feature of Islam analyzed here was the fact that Islam from the very beginning was oriented to the creation of a community intended to embody a "theocratic" state, whereas in reality, a public system, combining both religious and secular power, appeared impractical in the Islamic East. The absence of an institution for the solution of questions provided the opening for the Ijtihad, the independent solution of these questions on the basis of free interpretation of the Qur’an and Sunnah. In a wide sense, Ijtihad meant also the right to independent interpretation of the holy texts with its philosophical content. These texts had a much clearer and monosemantic character in those parts dealing with juridical problems, but even there Islam did not succeed in establishing a single view. In social life, the canonization of a law was the immediate problem. One can believe the legend that, at the beginning of the 9th century, 500 schools of law disappeared, and in the next century, only the juridical schools of the Shafites, Malikites, Saurits, Hanafites, and Zakhirids continued to function. After the 10th century, when the so-called "Gates of Ijtihad" (in the sense of unlimited freedom in the creation of law) were closed, four main schools of law retained the right to function in Sunnite jurisprudence. Shiite Islam, held that the "abolition" of Ijtihad was impossible in principle because it expressed the opinion of the "secret" Imam, at least juridically.

As to problems of speculative theology and of the interpretation of the ultimate basis of being, canonization did not take place and "the Gates of Ijtihad" remained open. Here, to be a true Moslem, it was enough to recognize a single God, his messengers and Holy Scriptures, angels, the Resurrection, and the Day of Judgement. But each of these subjects of faith allowed the most diverse interpretation, and such interpretations appeared in large quantities, giving birth to many new doctrines, theological schools, and sects. For example, some people said that everyone who recognized the prophetic mission of Muhammad could be considered a Moslem. According to others, a Moslem was one who pronounced the formula: "There is no God besides Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger." A third group considered a Moslem the one who offered prayers five times a day, oriented toward the Kaaba. (7, p. 230-231). The Murji’ites went still further holding that belief was kept in the inmost recesses of the human heart, where it can be known only by God. In these terms, nonconformists early worked out an optimal variant for expressing their views. Representatives of quite different ideological trends resorted to ta’wil (the symbolic-allegoric interpretation of Holy texts). As a result, many regarded the Qur’an as an arsenal supplying them with means for their arguments. (5, p. 165).

As in Islam, there was neither church nor clergy in the strict sense of these words. For the Islamic community, the highest level of authority was represented by the community itself (Umma), by its collective, unanimous opinion (Ijma). But, of course, no one could take opinion polls in the multimillion "collective" of true believers. Even if this were possible, it is hardly probable to find unanimity in people divided by social, political, and cultural barriers. In practice, the function of expressing public opinion was carried out by the Ulama, religious figures, experts in the Islamic sciences, among whom the ruling position belonged to the Faqihs, legal scholars. The activity of the Ulama was concentrated, first of all, in working out the laws (Fiqh), and also in such religious disciplines as Tafsir, the interpretation of the Quran (mainly lexical), Hadith studies, and so on. In fact, various schools of law treated the Moslem right to think independently differently, but they were united in retaining their function as mediators between the powers and the masses.

The idea of unanimous public opinion, marked by the term Ijma, was always indefinite. As the French Islamist, Godfrois-Demonbin, wrote, "Ijma is an unstable expression, a kind of a secret truth from the Quran and expressing God’s will. Agreement of the scientists-thinkers on this doctrine (the date of its achievement is difficult to define) was not officially confirmed, and nobody declared it to the public. In this doctrine, adopted after long and passionate debates, the total absence of general principles was staggering" (10, p. 89-90). Because the mechanism for deciding on the basis of Ijma was never established, the character of these decisions depended on the conditions of time and place, so that something that was thought inadmissible, bida, in time became a generally accepted custom (Sunnah). The lawfulness of such decisions was fully defined by the authority of the Ulama and by their important state-administrative and cultural functions, carried out by jurists in the society. Everywhere they played the role of liaison between the rulers and the people, advising on religious problems both for simple people and for the secular power. In the role of guarantors of Islamic piety, they not only reflected but also created public opinion. This fact, together with their great influence on the population, made the rulers listen to them and "formalize" their informal negative sanctions against those who disagreed.

Quite naturally, many Muslim scholars of speculative theology and philosophy treated most of the jurists and, particularly the Ulama, as traditionalists whose main concern was to uphold the literal meaning of the Holy texts (Qur’an and Sunnah), and not to diverge from the popular beliefs of the Amma.

The development of speculative and philosophically reflexive forms of more liberal thinkers among the Muslims of those times symbolized a qualitatively new stage in its evolution, though socio-culturally it is connected with the previous era.

The fact that early Islam, in contrast with Christianity, was formed without the cultural influence of Hellenism considerably preordained the content of its religious knowledge. The latter arises and is formed mainly as the means of understanding and interpreting the Qur’an and Sunnah, and its practical aim is to regulate the life of the Umma (the Islamic community). So, in Islam, the traditionally religious sciences of interpretation of the Holy texts (tafsir, etc.) and jurisprudence (Fiqh) developed in close contact with the primordially "Arabic" sciences of grammar, lexicography, philology and history.

The absolutization of this knowledge by the Sunnite traditionalists is manifest, first of all, in the character of theology (usul ad-din). Until the 10th century, it existed in the context of Fiqh as an applied discipline, reinforcing traditional Islamic sciences. At the same time, it gave birth to a dichotomy between the traditional and originally "Arabic" sciences, the ancient "first" sciences (ulum al-awail, ulum dakhila), and the natural sciences of logic and philosophy (falsafa). From the point of view of Sunnite traditionalists, applying reason to religious problems was invading the sphere of the sacred with imperfect human knowledge, while theology never seriously aimed to justify faith by reason. But the aspiration of harmonizing the intellectual and sacred spheres of knowledge can be traced even to early Shiism, where the idea of the inner and outer meaning of Holy Scripture spread. On the basis of this idea, a method of symbolic-allegorical interpretation of the Qur’an developed. In Ismailism, this method became an inalienable part of esoteric teaching; in Sufism and in falsafa, it was one of the main means of legalizing doctrine; for Kalam, it was a way to rationalize theological teachings, to comprehend them by conceptual means that, however, led to an affirmation of the superiority of reason over authorities (taqlid).

The formation of philosophical knowledge was conditioned by the assimilation of the Syrian-Christian philosophical tradition and guaranteed by "the Translators’ Movement" that began in the 8th century and intensified during the next century, especially when Caliph al-Mamun opened "The House of Wisdom" in Baghdad in 833. As a result of the translators’ activity, in which Syrian Nestorian scientists played a leading role, the Islamic bookmen were associated with a wide range of ancient philosophical teaching. Falsafa or philosophy, oriented toward Hellenic-Hellenistic traditions, developed mainly in the form of peripatetism based on Aristotle’s philosophy and using the achievements of Hellenistic thinkers, most of all the late ancient commentators: Porphyry, Phemisty, John Philophon, and Simplicius. The traditions of the Alexandrian and Athenian schools of Neoplatonism greatly influenced the composition of the doctrines of the falasifa, which schools were used for the establishment of formal "agreement" between religion and philosophy. Following Simplicius’ tradition affirming the principle of the unanimity of ancient sages on the problems of the ultimate basis of being, the falasifa (philosophers), who opposed the dogmatic tradition, supported the idea of the unity of ancient wisdom in understanding truth (as reflected in Al-Farabi’s work On the Unity of View of the Two Sages - Divine Plato and Divine Aristotle).

The ideas of Aristotle were supported by the Eastern Peripatetics on the basis of their logic, physics, and metaphysics. The ideas of Plato on the basis of politics, was founded on ethics, in turn, depended on the Nichomachean Ethics of the Stagirit. The psychology of the falasifa also fell under the influence of Plato’s division of the spirit into three parts, but mainly on the Aristotelian treatise, On the Soul (De Anima). The Eastern Peripatetics learned about Neoplatonism from the so-called Aristotle’s Theology, representing a paraphrase of Parts 4-6 of Plotinus’ Enneads, as well as from The Book of Reason, ascribed to Aristotle (extracts from Proclus’ Elements of Theology). The content of Proclus’ treatise, On the Eternity of the World, became known thanks to the rebuttal by John Philoponus. In the development of this philosophy with its accent on the natural philosophy of Aristotle’s teaching, a great role was played by the acquaintance of the falasifa with the treatises of Alexander of Aphrodisis. His analysis of time revealed considerably more influence on the ideas of Stoicism on the falasifa than had previously been thought. Genetic ties of Eastern peripatetism, with the later ancient commentators, influenced the form of the philosophical works in Eastern peripatetic philosophy, which had the character of commentaries, though in reality they were not always such. The point is that although parts of these encyclopaedic works were entitled according to Aristotle’s works, this does not mean that they were interpretations of Aristotle. On the contrary, close acquaintance with their content shows that they often deviated from the content of Stratigite’s works. The interpretation of falsafa as mere commentary, as if developed in terms of exegetics, is not consistent with the structure of Islamic learning.

The Hellenic-Hellenistic element in the culture of the Islamic Middle Ages did not present something from the outside or alien, because these elements were present even in the pre-Islamic culture in many ethnic and confessional groups incorporated into the Arab Caliphate. Indeed, the natural and exact sciences developed as a whole unimpeded and, as a rule, were encouraged by the authorities. Nevertheless, the elaboration of the problems of the ultimate basis of being, and sometimes even the study of logic, aroused suspicion and hostile actions by the traditionalists. That is why falsafa, as a professional activity, was cultivated mainly in favorable political conditions and was limited to a relatively narrow group of intellectuals. In the East of the Islamic world, its flourishing was often connected with the activity of the falasifa. Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina lived at the court of the sovereigns and were in opposition to Sunnite traditionalism. Some joined movements against Sunnit traditionalism, as well as against the Abbasid dynasty, supported by traditionalists (e.g., "Brethren of Purity"). In the West, the development of falsafa was conditioned by a short period of liberalization of intellectual life during the era of the Almohades, who tried to limit the absolute power of the Malikite’s jurists. It was also not incidental that the great falasifa (who mainly were Peripatetics) had the possibility of concentrating on their sciences without any limitation under the patronage of this or that Caliph, emir, or vizier, under whom they served as advisers and doctors. This limitation made their position unstable and subject to the mutability of the political situation, because their philosophical concepts served as a paradigm not only for the natural sciences, but also for civil and moral-political knowledge. This constituted a challenge to the "divine law" (Shari’a) and to the authority of the Ulama as pillars of the Islamic community, based on the monopoly of the interpretation by the law (12, p. 3-33).

At the same time, the elite character of Eastern peripatetism as well as of falsafa in general made impossible its becoming an ideology for a mass movement, which in the Medieval epoch generally had a religious character. Hence, the originality of their solution to the problem central to the medieval philosophy—the problem of the correlation of faith and reason— could be approached in terms of the correlation of the falasifa’s views with those of the heterodox trends in the intellectual life of the Islamic Middle Ages, which were more or less closely connected with the falsifa.

A first such trends both in time and in influence was Mutazilism. Its origin was in a large degree conditioned by "a dialogue" between Islam and Christianity, as well as by the struggle against Manichaean movements. This was an early form of Muslim speculative theology that was soon transformed into one of the main forms of philosophical reflection.

The Mutazilites, ideologically associated with the educated circles of middle class, emerged as one of the religio-political parties opposed to the Umayyads. Their sympathy with the Zaydites defines their negative attitude towards the Abbasids, under whom they were first persecuted. But under the educated Caliph al-Mamun, loyal to the Zaydites, and under his two successors, al-Mutasim and al-Wasit (ruled 813-847), their situation changed. Some held responsible posts, and the adoption of the thesis, common to the Mutazilites and Jahmits, about the created character of the Qur’an was regarded as a criterion of the theologians’ loyalty to the regime. Under Mutawakkil (ruled 847-881), the Mutazilites were persecuted again, but they appeared in the political arena in the reign of the Bueids (ruled 945-1055). Their activity promoted the formation of philosophical thought, oriented toward the ancient tradition. The "Arab philosopher," al-Kindi was the first representative of such thought.

In the strict monotheism of the Mutazilites, affirming the identity of the divine attributes with each other and with the essence of God emphasized the leading role of the attribute of knowledge. This entailed subordination of the irrational volitional beginning to a reasonable beginning. At the same time, the Mutazilites’ recognition of the transcendence of God, with the absence of any similarity between him and created things, appears to be a genuine immanentism expressing a pantheistic view on the correlation of the creator and his "creatures." With the help of such notions as "non-existent" (ma’dum) and "hidden under-existence" (kumun), they tried to bring their onthological views in line with Islamic theism: ma’dums compose a particular world, homologous to the sensually perceived world, but devoid of the characteristics of time and space. Thus, the creation of things was as if a transformation by God from a "non-existent" state to a state of existence, that is, an unfolding in time and space. Later thinkers, Ibn Rushd included, quite correctly compared the Mutazilites’ conception of "non-existent" with the Peripatetics’ idea of the prime matter. The difference between them was that the Peripatetics’ maadum, on the contrary, is essentially something nonexisting, but accidentally existing.

Al-Ashari (ruled 873-935), who came from the Mutazilite milieu, was a theologian and the founder of a strain of Islamic theology called "Asharism." This trend in Islamic theology represents a compromise of the position of the Mutazilites and the traditionalists. For example, in the Asharite conception concerning the problem of the relation of the Creator and his creatures, there is a tendency towards negating the theists’ positing of the co-presence ("ryadopolaganiye") of God and the world in space and time, affirming His immanentness to the world. This is reflected in the theory that "God exists near everything and in everything, that is, He is connected with a thing through His being" (13, v. 1, p. 180). The majority of the Asharits denied the existence of natural causality, but this did not mean for them a transition to the standpoint of occasionalistic indeterminism. The Asharites explained the natural character of the processes taking place in the world by "a custom" (‘ada) that was introduced by God and never broken by Him, because the order of the Universe "was predetermined" by the eternal knowledge of Allah. The Asharites also advanced "the principle of permissiveness," ("all that is imaginable is also permissible for thought"). This is a typical variety of the medieval way of philosophizing—the method "of imaginary assumption"—that possessed heuristic potentiality in different fields of knowledge, as well as for the development of a non-Aristotelian philosophy of nature, as asserted by al-Biruni in his polemics with Ibn Sina (14, p. 39).

The difference between the Asharites and the Mutazilites consists in a more careful answer to a number of questions, specific to Kalam. For example, they recognized the eternity of some divine attributes, and deny "the creativeness" of the Qur’an as regards "meaning." In this connection, they distinguished a "verbally expressed," "sensual" speech and an "internal" speech or speech "for oneself. They recognized the possibility of some righteous persons beholding God and denied the possibility of explaining how this is practiced.

The Ismailites’ were closer to falsafa and the falasifa from the point of view of their orientation on ancient philosophical and scientific traditions. Their teaching had considerable influence in the emergence of Eastern peripatetism. Ismailism, is a branch of Shiism and also was the ideological banner of different movements in opposition to the Abbasids’ regime. As a theological teaching, it was based on the distinction of the outer, exoteric meaning (zahir) of the divine word, and its inner, esoteric (batin) meaning. The outer side of Scripture, incarnate in its letter, is destined for the ignorant "crowd" (al-Jumhur), while its sacred meaning is comprehended only by the spiritual leaders of the Ismailites, the imams. But between the knowledge of the imams and that of simple believers, there is no impassable border. Wide masses of believers sink into the ocean of ignorance that covered the Earth from the time of the Flood, before the true word of God was incarnated in the letter of Holy Book. But the fall into the depths of ignorance is not inevitable, because there is a "Noah’s ark" of knowledge, in which everyone can find salvation for him- or herself, by associating with this knowledge under the guidance of mentors or teachers.

The teaching of the Ismailites represented a combination of the ancient wisdom with the religious and philosophical worldviews of the people of the East. Ties with Neoplatonism, in particular, could be found in the Ismailite cosmology: The divine beginning created the world of reason by eternal action from which the prehistoric world soul produced matter and animate nature. Like the Mutazilites, the Ismailites described the divine beginning using negative terms: God, in their understanding, exists beyond existing and nonexisting.

Both in ideological and political respects the Ismailite movement was divided into radical and moderate trends. The radical wing was formed by the Qarmathians under whose egalitarian slogans—at the end of the 9th century and in the first half of the 10th century—anti-feudal uprisings of peasants, nomads and the urban poor of the Middle East occurred. At the Eastern part of Arabia, the Qarmathians founded their own state, basing social life on the principles of egalitarianism (combined with the forced work of slaves). The Qarmathians openly called Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad deceivers who sought, allegedly, to enslave people by their Mecca, captured the Black stone, and plundered the treasures of the Kabba.

Under the Fatimids, who reigned in Egypt in 969-1171, the Ismailites became reconciled to the idea that their community must continue to live in the bosom of Shari’a. They postponed to the indefinite future the abolition of the divine laws and the proximate coming of Kaim, the last or (seventh) Imam. He was to reveal once and for all the world truth, not disturbed by religious dogmas, and to establish an order based on reason and justice. Henceforth they understood the word Kaim simply as a name of the spiritual leader of the Ismailites, their Imam.

Originally Sufism, appeared as an opposition trend. Like the Mutazilites and Ismailites, on the problems of God’s attributes the Sufis took the position of negative philosophy subjecting the Qur’an to allegorical interpretation and approaching philosophical conclusions which were pantheistic in character. The specific character of Sufism consisted in the fact that, on the one hand, it propagated ascetism and, on the other hand, confirmed the possibility of knowing God through mystic intuition.

The Mutazilism, Ismailism and Sufism in various aspects and degrees made contact with falsafa; but the doctrines worked out by their representatives, remained theological (or theosophical) in effect, because conceptually they studied more "practical" than "theoretical" fields of knowledge. The falasifa, on the contrary, were first of all interested in theoretical sciences taken from the ancient heritage. This stage of development of falsafa is represented in the works of Al-Kindi (about 801-870), Ahmad ibn al-Tayyib al-Sarakhsi (killed in 896), and Abu Bakr ar-Razi (865-925). Under the patronage of al-Mamun and his successors to the Caliph’s throne, al-Kindi aimed to acknowledge the alien sphere of knowledge. He was the first among the falasifa to bring the main ideas of ancient philosophy into general use in intellectual life, above all Aristotelism as well as Platonism, Neoplatonism, and Neopythagoreanism. However, he did not produce a more or less systematic teaching, which is why the opinion that he was the founder of the Eastern Peripatetism must be taken as an exaggeration. Confirming the priority of scientific over theological knowledge, al-Kindi defended the right of philosophers to truth, fighting against traditionalists. At the same time, he formally acknowledged the superiority of prophetic knowledge over any other, including the philosophical. But his statements in this respect did not necessarily express his personal view.

At this stage of its evolution, falsafa, according to the needs of the society, which was in a process of political and cultural development, was interested mainly in logic, natural sciences, medicine, mathematics, and other branches of "theoretical science." The question concerning the place of philosophy in social life had not arisen. Thus, the falasifa determined their attitude towards the dominant ideology more from the point of view of the theoretical, than that of practical reason. They either negated, or only formally recognized, "the question of the possibility of sharing philosophical knowledge with the broad population, not to mention the ability of philosophy to play a practical role in social and political life."

Falsafa of the 10th century represented quite a different picture in the works of The Brethren of Purity (Ikwan as-Safa) and of the founder of Eastern peripatetism, Abu Nasr al-Farabi (870-950). His doctrines reflected the ideology of political circles opposed to the Abbasids and involved the Shiits-Ismailites movement.

The Treatises of the Brethren of Purity and the True Friends was written by a secret scientific-philosophical organization that considered its own community a prototype of a "state of good," that was to substitute for the "state of evil," embodied in the Abbasids’ Caliphate. This multivolume encyclopedia was intended by the Brethern of Purity for those followers, who turned from blind confidence in religious authorities and were on their way to a higher knowledge that transcended the differences among religions and had at its basis ideas of Aristotelism, Platonism, Neoplatonism, and Neopythagoreanism. At their meetings, called "madjalis" and resembling the Mutakalims’ "discussion club," the Brethren of Purity exposed the prophets with the same ardor as had the Qarmathians. But in their encyclopedia, they published articles for the readers’ independent thinking, lest they should pass from faith to atheism in the process of the dialectic debate used in Kalam.

In al-Farabi’s philosophical heritage, attention also focused, first of all, on the thinker’s conviction that philosophy is destined to provide a theoretical basis not only for the natural sciences, but also for politics. The intent was to help organize social life on the moral principles required to establish the civil and theoretical virtues needed for the free development of the sciences and for the active participation of philosophers in politics. His main works includes: A Treatise on the Views of the Virtuous City Inhabitants, Politics, The Aphorisms of a Statesman, On Acquiring Happiness, and A Book of Letters. One can see that his philosophy is oriented simultaneously to the education of his contemporary readers and to the future realization of an ideal "virtuous city," built according to Plato’s model on reasonable principles. That is why his treatise, al-Farabi, expands the correlation of philosophy, theology, and religion that became a basis for the following generations of falasifa to solve the problem of the interconnection between faith and knowledge, between practical and theoretical reason.

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