Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah: A Fourteenth Century Defense against Astrological Divination and Alchemical Transmutation

Abstract

This article is a review of the arguments of the hanbalt theologian Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah (d. 1349 A.D.) against the occult sciences that existed in Islam during his time. The article takes as its point of departure Professor Armand Abel's argument (La place des sciences occultes dans la d6cadence, in Classicisme et declin culturel dans l'histoire de l'Islam, edited by R. Brunschwig and G. E. Von Grunebaum, Paris, 1957) that the Sunni religious institution protected, and indeed sanctioned, the rising tide of occultism which, according to Abel, inundated the lands of Islam in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries of the Christian era. Ibn Qayyim, one of the great spokesmen of the Sunni tradition, devoted over two hundred pages in his Miftah Dar al-SaCadah in harshly denouncing divinatory practices, especially astrology and alchemy, which does not at all tally with the conclusions drawn by Professor Abel. Some of Ibn Qayyim's arguments appear to be original, while some, according to his own admission, definitely are not. The author of the present article deals with Ibn Qayyim's refutations of astrology and alchemy and has tried to show from what sources the theologian may have learned his arguments.