Travelling autopsies: Ibn Falān and the Bulghār1

Abstract

This article is preliminary to a more comprehensive study of the role of observation and autopsy in a number of medieval Arabo–Islamic texts which antedate the mature work of al‐Bīrūnī in the first half of the 11th century ce. My aim is to allow for the re‐creation of a dialogue between a number of works and text‐types which are all too often considered in isolation from each other—travel narratives, poetry, cosmography, philosophy and scientific treatises, among others. This piece is devoted to a consideration of certain aspects of a 10th century travel work, The Account of Ibn Falān. The principal study, at present in outline, will sketch a survey of the tensions and complementarities between iyān, autopsy (together with its cognate, mushāhadah) and samā , orally and aurally transmitted authority (together with its cognate, khabar), which when accepted ‘blindly’ becomes taqlīd. At the core of the investigation will be a scrutiny of the means whereby authority can be generated in a society which is predicated upon textual, divine revelation. The survey will include writers such as Abū Nuwās, al‐Jāi, Ibn Khurradādhbih, Ibn Qutayba, Ibn Rusta and al‐Masūdi and will conclude with a consideration of al‐Bīrūnī's scientific and epistemological methodologies as presented in his work al‐Hind and his astronomy al‐Qānūn al‐Masūdī, and instantiated in his celebrated debate with Ibn Sīnā, al‐Asila wa‐l‐Ajwiba. A separate study will be devoted to a counter‐tradition of observation, the spiritual autopsy of the purified soul at the centre of the Islamic Neoplatonism of the Ninth Century and apotheosized in the so‐called ‘Doffing Metaphor’ of Plotinus celebrated in the Theology of Aristotle. This study will be conducted within the context of a survey of the accounts of the celestial ascension (mirāj) of the Prophet Muammad.