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An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines



' OTHER WORKS BY THE AUTHOR IN EUROPEAN LANGUAGES



Three Muslim Sages, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1964; New York: Caravan Books, 1976. Ideals and Realities of Islam, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1971; Boston: Beacon Press, 1972; Italian translation as ldeali e rea/ita dell' Islam, Milan: Rusconi Editore, 1974; French translation as Islam, Perspectives et rea/ites, Pa~is: Buchet-Chastel, 1975. Islamic Studies, Beirut: Librairie de Liban, 1967. Science and Civilization in Islam, Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1968; New York: Mentor Books, 1970. Jaliil al-Din Rami, Supreme Persian Poet and Sage, Tehran: Supreme Council for Culture and Art, 1974. Sufi Essays, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1972; Albany: State University of New York Press, 1973; I ta!ian translation as II Sufismo, Milan: Rusconi Edit ore, 1975. An Annotated Bibliography of Islamic Science, in collaboration with W. Chittick, Tehran: Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy, vol. I, 1975; vol. II, 1977. Man and Nature, The Spiritual Crisis of Modern Man, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1976; French translation as L'Homme et Ia nature, Paris: BuchetChastel, 1977; Italian translation as L'uomo e Ia natura, Milan: Rusconi Editore, 1977. Islam and the Plight of Modern Man, London and New York: Longman, 1976. Islamic Science- An Illustrated Study, London: World of Islam Festival Publishing Co. and Thorsons Publishers Ltd., 1976. Sacred Art in Persian Culture, Ipswich (U.K.): Golgonooza Press, 1976. Western Science and Asian Cultures, New Delhi: Indian Council for Cultural Relations, 1976. Edition and translation of 'AIIamah Tabataba'i, Shi'ite Islam, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1975; London: George Allen and Unwin, 1975. Collaboration with H. Corbin, Histoire de Ia philosophie islamique, vol. I, Paris: Gallimard, 1964.



An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines CONCEPTIONS OF NATURE AND METHODS USED FOR ITS STUDY BY THE SINA IKHW AN AL-~AFA', AL-B IRUN I, AND IBN



Revised Edition



Seyyed Hossein N asr



TH AM ES AN D HU DS ON



Any copy of this book issued by the publisher as a paperback is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated, without the publisher's prior consent, in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition including these words being imposed on a subsequent purchaser. Revised edition published in Great Britain by Thames and Hudson Ltd, 1978 Copyright © 1964 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College Copyright ·~ 1978 Seyyed Hossein Nasr All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed and bound in Great Britain at The Pitman Press, Bath



Dedicated in Humble Gratitude to my Parents Seyyed Valiallah and Ashr af Nasr to Emad Kia and to Sidi Ibrahim 'Izz al-Din al-'Alawi



Contents page



Preface by H. A. R. Gibb



xm



Preface to the Revised Edition



x1x



Introduction



xx1



List of Transliterations



xxv



Prologue-Islam and the Study of Nature Cosmological Sciences and the Islamic Revelation The Study of the Cosmological Sciences in Islamic History The Intellectual Dimensions in Islam and the Class of Seekers of Knowledge



PART



l.



1 1 11 18



THE IKHWAN AL-SAFA'



1. The Rasii'il of the Ikhwan al-Safa'-Their Identity and Content The lkhwan and Philosophy Identity and Significance of the Ikhwan The Sources of the Rasii'il The Organization of the Rasii'il 2. The Principles of the Study of the Cosmos and the Hierarchy of the Universe The Pythagorean Notion of Arithmetic and Geometry The Hierarchy of Being The Relation between God and the Universe The Universal Intellect and Soul Matter Nature The Spheres and the Elements Time, Space, and Motion The Analogy of Microcosm and Macrocosm and the Great Chain of Being



25 33 35 .,37 40 44 47 51 53 55 58 60 61 62 66



viii



CONTENTS



3. The Individual Cosmological Sciences Astronomy and Astrology The World of Generation and Corruption Meteorology Geology and Geography The Three Kingdoms 4. The Microcosm and Its Relation to the Universe



PART



ll.



III.



84 84 87 89 96



AL-BiRUNi



5. The Life, Works, and Significance of a!- Biriini 6. The Creation of the World and fts Subsequent History 7. The Role of Nature and the Methods of Its Study On Nature and Its Function The Methods Used to Study Nature 8. The Universe and Its Parts The Heavens The Sublunary Region Man and the World 9. The Wedding of Heaven and Earth in Astrology Principles of Astrology AI-Biriini and His Attitude Toward Astrology 10. The Attitude of a!- Biruni Toward Philosophy and Learning The Role of Learning in Islam



PART



75 75



iBN



107 116 122 122 125 132 132 139 149 151 151 163 166 173



SINA



11. The Life and Works of Ibn Sinii and His Significance Ibn Sina and the Islamic Religion 12. The Anatomy of Being Being and Its Polarizations The Generation of the Universe The Relation between God and the Universe 13. Principles of Natural Philosophy Form and Matter Motion On Causes Ibn Sinii and the Study of Nature



177 181 197 197 202 212 215 218 226 229 231



'



CONTENTS



ir Relation 14. The Universe, Ma n, and The Th e He ave ns Co rru ptio n Th e Wo rld of Ge ner atio n and m cos The Co nst itut ion of the Mi cro iverse Un the Sym pat hy between Ma n and Recitals 15. Na tur e and the Visionary of the Na rra tive Cycle ting Bac kgr oun d and Set



ix



236 236 240



251 260



263 263 275



Co ncl usi on s Ap pen dix : Ast rolo gic al Symbol



285



A Selected Bib liog rap hy Sup ple me nta ry Bibliography



303



Index



287 309



Tables page I. The numerical value of letters according to the Ikhwan alS~~



~



II. The planetary distances according to the Ikhwan alSafa' 78 III. The relative size of planets in the Rasii'il 19 IV. Size of the planetary orbits and planetary volumes according to al-Biruni 134 V. The four natures and the Zodiacal signs 155 VI. The exaltation and depression of the planets 161 VII. The heavens and their generating Intellects according to Ibn Sina · 204



Illustrations page 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.



71 The cosmic hierarchy according to the lkhwan al-Safa' 88 The seven climates and the planets 90 The four natures and the mercury-sulphur theory 129 earth the of Al-Biriini's measurement of the circumference 137 Planetary motion and the Zodiac 140 The elements in the sublunary world 144 The geography of the Earth according to al-Biriini 146 Al-Biriini's representation of th~ seven climates 152 The ecliptic 153 The twelve-fold differentiation of the circle 154 Relations between the Zodiacal signs 155 Equipollent signs and those with corresponding courses 156 The signs and the directions 157 The signs and the elements and natures 161 The domiciles of the planets 161 The exaltations and depressions of the planets 211 The first magic square 253 natures and The four humors and the elements ~·,



Figures 5, 7, 11, 12, 13, and 15 are reproduced from al-Birimi's Elements of Astrology, translated by R. Ramsey Wright. Figure 16 is reproduced from an article by W. Hartner, "The pseudoplanetary nodes of the moon's orbit in Hindu and Islamic iconographies," in Ars lslamica 5:118 (1938); also in W. Hartner, Oriens-Occidens, Hildesheim, 1968, pp. 349-404.



Preface This study opens up a relatively unexplored, hence unfamiliar, aspect of Islam. The ~ajority of mo?ern Muslim ration~lists will no doubt join in chorus with the formalist orthodox theologians to deny that its subject can be identified with Islam "in any true sense." But their perspective is false. The theme of Seyyed Hossein Nasr's study is one no less vital than the tracing out of one line in the complex process by which the Islamic Community gradually discovered its own nature and habitat. To most Western readers also this study may appear no less paradoxical. It is commonly held that all scientific thought and writing in the medieval Islamic world was derived from the legacy of Greek thought, as modified by a number of orientalizing factors in the later Hellenistic age. So much has been written about the great Arabic scientists and philosophers and their influence upon the awakening mind of Europe that it comes as something of a shock to be confronted with the thickening web of "irrational" elements in the writings of such a personality as Avicenna. It would be impossible within the compass of a preface to elucidate these paradoxes in detail. Its more limited aim must be to outline, for both Muslim and Western readers, a particular view of Islamic thought as it developed in the first seven centuries of Islamic history (the seventh to thirteenth centuries of our era), and to hope that, seen in the light of this development, the historical and religious significance ofSeyyed Hossein Nasr's analysis will be more fully appreciated. In the common exposition of both Eastern and Western scholars, the history of Islam is presented in a series of stages. After the first century or so of simple piety and political conflict, the energies of the Islamic Community were for a space of two or three centuries centered on the development of the schools of law and on theological dispute. Owing to the intellectual ferment resulting from the impact of Hellenism, the third and fourth centuries were the "Golden Age" of Islamic culture, when literature and science widened out in every direction, and economic prosperity also reached its climax. By the fifth century the legal and theological structures of both the Sunni and Shi'ite wings had been rigidly consolidated, and political issues



xiv



PREFACE



had largely been removed from the sphere of controversy by the expanding hegemony of the Turks. The sixth century saw the beginnings of the process of decay, simultaneously with the infiltration of ~iifi mysticism into the general religious life of the Community; and with the Mongol invasions of the seventh century its course was irretrievably set toward a general intellectual and religious decadence. The question raised by this presentation is whether these concepts of progress and decadence do not rest upon partial criteria which fail to take adequate account of the complexities and contradictions inherent in any society, and not least in Muslim society. From an ecumenical religious point of view, for example, one can scarcely doubt that the moral integration of the Christian West was far greater in the fourteenth century than in the twentieth; on this criterion, then, the Renaissance initiated a process of gradual decadence. So also in Islam, the course of moral and religious integration and the progress of the Community toward a deepening self-consciousness and universality call for entirely different standards of measurement than those by which the intellectual breadth or economic prosperity of the Islamic civilization in its "Golden Age" is judged. From the beginning of its existence the Community was made aware (and daily reminded) by the Qur'iin of the purpose for which it was created and the destiny to which it was called. It was to represent on earth, before the eyes of all mankind, the principle of Divine Justice, that is to say, of integral Reality, Harmony and Truth. Justice in this sense has little or nothing to do with the political or judicial application of man-made laws. It is a principle of order and wholeness: that all elements, endowments, and activities of life shall be in harmonious relation with one another, each fulfilling its proper purpose and ends in a divinely-appointed system of interlocking obligations and rights. If the Community were to fulfill its purpose, three needs must be continuously and adequately met. One was the continuing need of a spiritual intuition that should maintain its perception of the universals. The second was the bikmah, the "wisdom" to discern by the use of reason their proper application to particular cases. The third was the function of government to protect the integrity of the Community and the peaceful and harmonious coordination of other functions with it. In the cold light of History, the Community was manifestly falling far short of this ideal. Spiritual intuition was too often dulled or replaced by theological disputes and formularies. The efforts of the jurists to define the applications of divine justice had produced, in the Shari'a, magnificent (if rival) corpora of legal doctrine, but their legal



PREFACE



XV



logic was limited to prescription and contaminated by casuistry, while in other fields human reason was asserting itself as absolute and being exercised without restraint. The institution of government had been still more profoundly corrupted by the power of the sword and vitiated by theories and practices that disregarded even the Shari'a, and the Community as a whole was unable to take effectual action to reform it because in all its social relationships also simple justice was sadly imperfect. In spite of all this, however, the consciousness of its divine calling remained profoundly rooted within the Community. Although there is little evidence that in the early centuries it regarded itself as a sacral organization, there persisted an inner conviction that somehow and ·somewhere within it there was a continued effusion of divine Grace and divine Guidance. The idea was not yet conceived, much less defined, in metaphysical terms; its essence lay beyond human understanding, and it was perceived only in direct or indirect material indices, particularly in the form of barakiit. This was, again perhaps somewhat vaguely, connected with the idea of divine Justice. One might say that the barakiit were manifested, in exemplary fashion, to correct specific instances of disregard of justice, of disharmony. There was thus an intimate link between it and the growth of Sufism, in both its spiritual and its social aspects, and with the victory of Sufism it broke through on a new and grandiose scale. All of the vital religious forces and ideas were swept into the Sufi movement and received in it their new and comprehensive formulation. The pragmatic historian of Islam may again see in this the onset of a "decadence,'' a loss of freedom of thought and flexibility, a "sta.$nation" in the Islamic Community. What really happened was that from the sixth century the Community decisively turned away from the rationalizing and secular elements in the Hellenistic tradition to become more fully, what it had been in essence from the first, a Near Eas~ern religious community. Greek fa/safah was replaced by Near Eastern /:likmah, and the persistence of the basic constructions of N~ Eastern religious thought is nowhere more strikingly evidenced ~n. by the new Sufi metaphysics. From the very dawn of articulated religious thought in ancient Sumer, the cosmos is regarded as one ~e~ entity which embraces the whole of being, so that human SOCieties but reflect the society of the Gods. But ancient Near Eastern ~ought had been transformed by many influences before the rise of ~m. l_'he later Islamic cosmology is thus a highly refined version of . ~astc concept. Its cosmos is now the Ptolemaic structure of concentnc spheres, its elements are the Aristotelian elements of fire,



xvi



PREFACE



water, earth, and air, combined with the Plotinian emanations of pure intelligences and souls, transformed into or combined with the angels of the monotheistic religions, and controlled by the One Supreme Necessary Being, from whom all being is derived, being their origin and principle, and to which the whole creation yearns to return. The Muslim concept of Justice, Harmony, and controlled Order is extended to the whole cosmos, all of whose elements are maintained in that state of equilibrium which is appropriate to their nature, and operate in an ordered hierarchy, from the ninth heaven to the lowliest minerals. With the elaboration of this cosmology the Islamic Community acquires a new and central importance, not only in the terrestrial world but in the cosmos as a whole. For the "Perfect Man," the cosmic individual in whom all its faculties are realized, is Mul}.ammad, and his Community inherits from him a kind of spiritual prerogative which invests it with special significance. The locus of the Divine Grace is the whole Community, to which the ·Charisma of Mul}.ammad is transferred, giving it a supra-terrestrial extension. Material realizations cease to be of prime importance; the true realities are spiritual, apprehended through symbols, and not necessarily articulated in external structures. This transformation from the "laic" concentration of the early centuries upon the Community in this world into a mystical and charismatic Community was necessarily accompanied by a corresponding development of symbolism. Of course the daily business of life was still conducted in plain unmystical man-to-man relations, but the Muslim now lived in a world surrounded by symbols. The Shari'a became a symbol of cosmic relations in the spiritual world, and the Qur'an itself, like the sensual pleasures of love and wine at a lower level, acquired new ranges of symbolic meanings. The imperfections of the terrestrial community find their compensations in its spiritual counterpart in the "World of Similitude" ('iilam al-mithiil). More especially, for the great mass of Muslims, the scandal of its earthly governments is redeemed. The real government is not in the hands of temporal sultans but in the care of God's chosen ones, the unknown saints in their hierarchy, headed by the Pole, the Qutb, who by Divine command and with the powers placed at their disposal supervise the affairs of the terrestrial world and protect the interests of the Community. Such a mystical cosmology was not, however, the immediate creation of Sufism. Whence it came and how it entered ~iifi thought is here set out for the first time by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, in full and scholarly detail. It is almost a startling revelation that its foundations were laid



PREFACE



xvii



other the "G old en Age," and tha t no lophi l>Y the philosophical schools of an teli sto Ari of cond master" than Avicenna himself, the "se logical symbolism. Th at it was the mo cos its h g of sophy, furnished it wit o generated the final flowerin heirs of Hellenistic culture wh greatest paradox of all. It can only Illuminationist Sufism seems the ressions of an inner reason within all exp be explained by the working h one an inner reason which led eac boraof Islamic thought and culture, ela its contribution to the final of them unconsciously to make tion of its central theme. H. A. R. GIBB



Preface to the Revised Edition Some two decades have passed since this book was first conceived. But even during this relatively short period many changes have taken place in the West both within modern science itself and in attitudes toward the way traditional societies have studied nature. Twenty years ago everyone in academic ~~rcles still spoke o~ modern scienc.e as the science and relegated traditiOnal cosmology either to the position of an early and naive attempt to explain the findings of modern science or to that of mere superstition and fantasy. The last few years, however, have witnessed .a very rapid decomposition of the monolithic structure of modern thought with all its claims to exclusiveness, and an earnest desire on the. part of many to rediscover tradition and that "forgotten knowledge" whose loss is so deeply felt by those who understand the more profound causes of the crisis of the modern world. In this quest for the rediscovery of tradition, the revival of interest in cosmology has played an important role. Numerous recent works have been devoted to the traditional cosmologies of Hinduism, Buddhism, the Kabbala, Taoism, the Egyptian tradition and even the remarkable teachings of the American Indians. There have also been attempts to "create" new cosmologies resembling the traditional ones but without the metaphysical foundations and the traditionar matrix within which cosmology alone reveals its true meaning. Thus there have appeared a whole series of cosmological studies ranging from serious works based on the traditional view to the "joyous cosmology" of certain contemporaries in quest of spiritual experience without recourse to tradition, as if one could benefit from the nourishment of food by simply hearing it described. In any case, whether in ~ serious or frivolous vein, there has been a major reawakening of Interest in traditional cosmology. . Yet, it is strange that during this period there has been so little mter~st in Islamic cosmology and so few new works in this field despite the rise of interest in Sufism and Islamic philosophy in the West. With the exception of a few detailed studies devoted to specific



XX



PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION



aspects of cosmology, there has been no new study of the general field of Islamic cosmology since our introduction to the subject was printed by the Harvard University Press some dozen years ago. Since this earlier edition has been out of print for some time, and since many have asked us to make it available once again, we took it upon ourselves to prepare a new edition which includes certain modifications and corrections of the text as well as a supplementary bibliography containing a list of relevant works which have been published since the appearance of the earlier edition. We hope that this new edition will help those seeking to study the traditional cosmology of Islam from its own point of view as well as those whose interest lies in the relation between the Islamic revelation and the cosmos created by the Islamic tradition in which men have lived and died in full awareness of the truths of that revelation. It is also our hope that this book, which is itself an introduction to the subject, will incite further studies in Islamic cosmology as well as in the arts and sciences which are so closely related to it.



SEYYED HoSSEIN NASR



Tehran ~afar 1397 A.H. (Lunar) Bahman 1355 A.H. (Solar) January 1977 A.D.



Introduction Most of the studies made currently by Western orientalists as well as by contemporary modem M_uslim scholars of the c~smologic~l and natural sciences in the Islamic world have been earned out With the aim of establishing a relation between these sciences and those cultivated in the modern world. Only rarely has attention been turned to the general world view of the Muslims themselves, a view in whose matrix they studied the particular sciences of Nature. Our aim in this book, which is a revised and elaborated version of a thesis presented to the Department of the History of Science and Learning at Harvard University in 1958, is to clarify some of the cosmological principles and to bring into focus the contours of the cosmos in which the Muslims lived and thought, and which to a certain extent still provides the framework in which they envisage the world. Of course we do not in any way deny the validity and significance of the historical studies which on the one hand relate the Muslim sciences to their BabyJonian, Egyptian, Greek, Indian, Chinese, and Persian origins, and on the other clarify the role which these sciences had to play in the formation of Latin scholasticism and the study of the natural sciences in the Western world from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries. But our aim in this book is primarily to study the Muslim cosmological sciences in themselves, and to try to envisage the world in its totality in the manner seen by those who cultivated thes~ sciences, and not as viewed by one who stands on the outside and seeks to dissect the Muslim world view into its constituent elements according to the historical sources from which they were adopted. The Muslim cosmological and natural sciences are as closely bound to the metaphysical, religious, and philosophical ideas governing Islamic civilization as the modern sciences are related to the religious and philosophical background which in the sixteenth and seventeenth ce~turies brought these new sciences into being and which has sustamed and nourished them ever since. This close relation is best observed in the case of Muslim students who, upon the most cursory contact with the modern sciences, usually lose their spiritual footing and no longer feel in harmony with their tradition, whereas the same students might have studied traditional mathematics and the natural



xxii



INTRODUCTION



sciences for years without being in any way alienated from the Islamic revelation. The difference lies in the manner and perspective in which the materials and facts of the sciences are interpreted in each case, although sometimes the facts are the same in both instances. Consequently, the knowledge of the general Islamic vision of the cosmos provides not only a key for a true understanding of the Muslim sciences and a necessary background for any basic study of the history of medieval science, but also the principles which, being intrinsically bound with the immutable and nonhistorical essence and spirit of the Islamic Revelation, must guide the Muslims in judging all other sciences of Nature with which they come in contact. Only when the contour of the Islamic conception of the cosmos is clearly delineated will the Muslims be able to absorb and integrate those elements of foreign sciences which are in conformity with the spirit of their tradition into their own world view. The Muslim world until now has had no need to be conscious of the cosmos in which it has lived. But now faced with the challenge of the modern sciences which are the fruit of a totally different conception of the world, the Muslims must bring into light the Islamic conception of the cosmos if they are to avoid the dangerous dichotomy which results from a superficial "harmony" between the Islamic perspective and the modern sciences to be seen so often in the writings of modern Muslim apologists. If the modern sciences are going to be anything more than an artificial "tail" grafted upon the body of Islam or even an alien element, the ingestion of which may endanger the very life of the Islamic world, the Muslims must find the universal Islamic criteria in the light of which the validity of all sciences must be judged. As the title of this work implies, it is no more than a humble introduction to the study of the Islamic cosmological sciences. We have taken but a few steps, hoping that in the future further studies will correct and complete the elementary study undertaken here. We are most grateful to Professors H. A. R. Gibb, H. A. Wolfson, and I. B. Cohen of Harvard University under whose direction this study was first undertaken. We are also thankful to Messrs. T. Burckhardt, L. Massignon, H. Corbin, and L. Gardet for their useful suggestions and for permission to quote from their works. We likewise humbly thank our masters in the traditional sciences in Persia, Sayyid Mul).ammad Ka~im 'A~~ar, Mul).ammad I:Iusain Tabataba'i, Sayyid Abu'l-l:lasan Qazwini Rafi'i, Jawad Mu~lil)., and Murtac;la Mutahhari who have taught us many things not contained in books. The staff of Widener Library was most kind in its assistance as



INTROD UCTION



xxiii



were the staffs of the libraries in Tehran, and especially Mr. M. T. Danishpazhuh, the director of the central library in Tehran University. We are also deeply grateful to Professor YusufT . K. Ibish, Miss Maude Harriso n, Mr. Mehran Nasr, and Dr. E. Daenecke for proofreading the text, and toM. Kathleen Ahern of the Harvar d University Press for copy-editing the manuscript. SEYYED HOSSEIN NASR



Faculty of Letters Tehran University Safar 1380 A.H. (Lunar) Shahriwar 1339 A.H. (Solar) August 1960 A.D.



List of Transliterations



Anabic charocters



,.



~



b



.:;.I



r!;l



th



gh



~



short vowels



,



a



,



~



q



.!5



k



u



J



z,



z;



t



~



-z;



kh



>



d



r c.)



m



Diphthongs



, ~--



n



I



c$_



)



0



dh



,



h



w



-e-' w



..



j



~ z



I



Jl



(J



c.}



ai (ay) iy (final form i)



~



y



J



aw



uww (final form ii)



y ah; at (construct state) (article) al- and 1- (even before the anteropalatals)



Persian letters added to the Arabic alphabet



~



p



o-



~



ch



~



.:.



zh



sh



Q



• J;



t



~



long vowels



cSI



a



,



ii



..



c5



I



"',



..J



g



~~



The world consists of the unity of the unified, whereas the Divine Independence resides in the Unity of the Unique.



Ibn 'Arabi-a l-Futiil) at al-rnakkiyah



In the Name of God Most Merciful and Compassionate



PROLOGUE



Islam and the Study of Nature Cosmological Sciences and the Islamic Revelation



In a traditional civilization like that of Islam the cosmological sciences are closely related to the Revelation because in such civilizations the immutable revealed principle, or the "presiding Idea," manifests itself everywhere in social life as well as in the cosmos in which that civilization lives and breathes. In such civilizations the cosmological sciences integrate the diverse phenomena of Nature into conceptual schemes all of which reflect the revealed principles and the central Idea of which they are so many applications in the domain of contingency. In this manner cosmology repeats the process of traditional art which likewise selects from the multiplicity of forms those that are in conformity with the spirit of the tradition in whose bosom it has come into being. The relation between Revelation and the people who are its receptor is much like that of form to matter in the Aristotelian theory of hylomorphism. Revelation, or the Idea in its manifested aspect, is the form while the mental and psychic structure of the people who receive it acts as the matter upon which this form is imposed. The civilization which comes into being in this manner, from the wedding of the above "form" and "matter," is dependent upon the psychic and racial qualities of the people who are its bearers in two ways. The first is that the Revelation is already spoken in the language of the people for whom it is meant, as the Quran insists so often; and ,the second, that the "matter" of this civilization plays a role in its crystallization and further growth. The Truth in its unlimited and infinite essence is thus particularized by the specific form of the Revelation as well as by the characteristics of the people who are destined to receive it. This particularization of the Truth has a direct bearing upon the study of Nature and the w?ole cosmological perspective which is concerned for the most part Wtth the world of forms. 1 Unlike pure metaphysics and mathematics 1 • ~!though Nature is often considered by the ancient and medieval cosmologists as the r,nnc 1ple of change and is therefore related to the world of corporeal and subtle mani~tabon, so~etimes it is universalized into a principle transcending the world of forms ~eogeth~r _as IS seen In the writings of Ibn 'Arabi on Universal Nature (!abi'at al-kull) in nat Fu;,u?at al-makklyah and other texts. See T. Burckhardt, "Nature can overcome ure m Burckhardt, Alchemy, trans. W. Stoddart (Baltimore, 1971), pp. 123-138.



1



2



PROLOGUE



which are independent of relativity, cosmological sciences are closely related to the perspective of the "observer" so that they are completely dependent upon the Revelation or the qualitative essence of the civilization in whose matrix they are cultivated. And even within the same civilization several cosmological sciences may exist which study the same domain but according to different perspectives. In traditional civilizations the study of Nature may be made for the sake of utility as is seen in ancient and medieval technology where aspects of Nature were studied with the aim of discovering the qualities which might make them useful to the daily needs of the society. Or such a study may be made with the aim of integrating cosmic existence into a pervasive rational system as with the Peripatetics, or into a mathematical system as with Archimedes. Or it may be with the aim of describing in detail the functioning of a particular domain of Nature, as in the biological works of Aristotle, and the medieval natural historians, or, again, in connection with the making of objects in which process art and industry before the machine age were always combined as in the medieval guilds and the branches of Hermeticism connected with them. Finally, Nature may be studied as a book of symbols or as an icon to be contemplated at a certain stage of the spiritual journey and a crypt from which the gnostic must escape in order to reach ultimate liberation and illumination, as is seen in the writings of llluminationists and ~iifis like Suhrawardi and Ibn 'Arabi. 2 Moreover, all of these different manners of studying Nature are sometimes superimposed upon each other in the writings 1 In Islam where the Revelation has taken the form of a sacred book, the symbolism of the word is of special significance. The Quran often calls Nature a book which is the macrocosmic counterpart of the Quran itself and which must be read and understood before it can be put away. The 8th/14th century ~ilfi master 'Aziz al-Nasafi, in his Kashf al-baqa'iq, compares Nature to the Quran in such a way that each genus in Nature corresponds to a surah, each species to a verse, and each particular being to a letter. Concerning this book of Nature he writes: "Each day destiny and the passage of time set this book before you, sura for sura, verse for verse, letter for letter, that you may learn the content of these lines and letters .... But he who finds for himself the eye of the eye and the ear of the ear, who transcends the world of the commandment (spiritual world), he obtains knowledge of the whole book in one moment, and he who has complete knowledge of the whole book, who frees his heart from this book, closes the book and sets it aside. He is like one who receives a book and reads it over and over until he finally knows its content; such a man will close the book and set it aside. This is the sense of the words 'On that dav We will roll up the heavens as one rolleth up written scrolls' (Sura 21 :104), and that ;ther passage: 'And in his right hand shall the heavens be folded together' (Sura 39:67) whence it can be seen that the people of the left have no share in the folding together of the heavens." F. Meier, "Nature in the monism of Islam," Spirit and Nature (New York, 1954), pp. 202--203.



ISLAM AND THE STUDY OF NATURE



3



of a single author, especially in the Islamic civilization which forms the subject of our present study. The symbols used to interpret and unde.rstan~ Nat~:~r~ _de~end up_on the form of the Revelation, or Idea, dommant m a clVlhzation which sanctifies and emphasizes a particular set of symbols as distinct from the general symbol~ inherent in the ~ature. of things. 3 As for the symbols which are m the nature of thmgs, hke the colors of plants and flowers, or the light and heat of the Sun, they are independent of the subjectivism of the individual observer but are rather ontological aspects of things, enjoying a reality that is independent of our subjective whims. 4 Therefore, any basic study of the cosmological sciences of a civilization must take into account not only the historical borrowing of ideas and facts from earlier cultures but also this intimate connection between Revelation and the symbols used to study Nature. Only in this way will one come to understand why each civilization chooses a particular set of phenomena out of the multiplicity of Nature as a subject for study, and why it develops a particular set of cosmological sciences to the exclusion of other possibilities. Despite the difference in the forms of the ancient and medieval cosmological sciences, there is an element which they shared in common, this element being the unicity of Nature which all of these sciences sought to demonstrate and upon which they are all based. " This unicity is the natural consequence of the Unity of the Divine Principle which formed the basis of all the ancient "Greater 3 "Moreover, a distinction must be made between two kinds of symbols; those of nature and those of Revelation. The first have spiritual efficacy only by virtue of their 'consecration' or 'revalorisation' by the Avatara, or the revealed Word, or by virtue of a very exalted degree of knowledge which restores to them their fundamental reality. Befor: the Fall, every river was the Ganges, and every mountain was Kailasa, for--the ~tion was still 'interior,' 'the knowledge of good and evil' not having yet 'exteriorised' or 'materialised' it; likewise for the sage every river is still a river of Paradise. Na~ural symbolism, which assimilates, for example, the sun to the divine Principle, de~v~s f;om ~ :horizontal' correspondence; revealed symbolism, which makes this ass';Jllllatlon spmtually effective-in ancient solar cults and before their 'petrifaction'denves from a 'vertical' correspondence; the same holds good for gnosis, which reduces ~healnomena to 'ideas' or archetypes." F. Schuon, Stations of Wisdom, trans. G. E. H. mer (London, 1961), pp. 96-97. . 4"The SCience of symbols-not simply a knowledge of traditional symbols-proceed s ti rom the qualitative significances of substances, forms, spatial directions, numbers, ~tural phenomena, relationships, movements, colours and other properties or states of hings; we are not dealing here with subjective appreciations, for the cosmic qualities are order~ ~