Abstract This article outlines how post-Avicennian logicians in the 12th to 14th centuries debated and reformulated the traditional account of assent ( taṣdīq ), the epistemic counterpart to conception ( taṣawwur ). Certain comments by Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī and Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī prompted a number of mid-13th-century logicians to revisit the conception–assent division with careful attention to the question of whether assent can strictly be counted as knowledge. In the late 13th century, two logicians answered in the affirmative by proposing novel accounts of assent that treated it as apprehension ( idrāk ) of the factuality or non-factuality of a propositional relation. The discussion culminates in the 14th century in Quṭb al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s analytically precise theory of idhʿān (“acceptance”). Throughout, the article highlights the specific problems at stake relating to the ontology of assent and the very structure of logic, and it shows how the participants in the debate prefigured certain aspects of the ethos of “verification” ( taḥqīq ) that characterized later post-classical scholarship.

Abstract This article examines Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s (d. 606/1210) theory of the relationship between supplicatory prayer ( duʿāʾ ) and astrology. Rāzī’s text on astrological elections ( Kitāb al-Ikhtiyārāt al-ʿalāʾiyya ) ends with a chapter on the most astrologically propitious time to perform supplicatory prayer ( duʿāʾ ) based on an epistle written by Yaʿqūb ibn Isḥāq al-Kindī (d. ca. 870). Through a close reading of this chapter in the Ikhtiyārāt , Kindī’s source text, and select passages from Rāzī’s Kitāb al-Sirr al-maktūm, al-Jāmiʿ al-ʿulūm , and al-Maṭālib al-ʿāliya , the article shows that Rāzī’s theory of prayer ( duʿāʾ ) is closely connected to his theory of planetary invocation ( daʿwat al-kawākib ).

Abstract The present article provides a new interpretation of the theory of ḥudūth dahrī associated with the Iranian philosopher Mīr Dāmād (d.1631) and his followers. Relying mainly on a treatise by Mīr Dāmād’s student Mullā Shamsā Gīlānī (d.1654), I emphasize the closeness of the theory to the view, advocated by Islamic theologians, that the world and time are not pre-eternal and came into existence ex nihilo. By contrast, I argue that the doctrine of “the primacy of essence” and Neoplatonic notions of “higher time” or “meta-time” are inessential to the theory.

Abstract Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa’s (d. 668/1270) ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ depicts Ayyubid Damascus as a flourishing intellectual scene where philosophy was regularly studied alongside other sciences, most often medicine. In that context, the court physician and statesman, Faḫr al-Dīn Riḍwān Ibn al-Sāʿātī (d. 618/1221), transcribed and collated dozens of Avicenna’s (d. 428/1037) philosophical works. In doing so, Ibn al-Sāʿātī made a concerted effort to correct scribal errors and textual corruptions that had been introduced in earlier manuscripts. His position in the scholarly networks of the period afforded him access to reliable manuscripts, some of which were Avicenna’s holographs, while others had been transcribed or corrected by Avicenna’s students. Ibn al-Sāʿātī also wrote extensive glosses on the Manṭiq of Avicenna’s Naǧāt. Taken together, Ibn al-Sāʿātī’s codices provide concrete examples of how philosophy was studied and practiced in the Ayyubid context.

Abstract Philosophers of the Islamic world developed an extensive theory of immediate judgements (badīhiyyāt), viz., those judgements known to be true independent of reasoning (fikr). They posed and answered several questions: How does immediate knowledge come to be in the mind? Is it possible to mistake an immediate judgement for a mediate judgement – be it true or false – and vice versa? If so, are there ways to distinguish between them? How is it possible that skeptics deny immediate judgements in the first place? Must there be consensus on all immediate judgements? Can one always know immediately that a judgement is immediate? Or can one instead sometimes prove that an immediate judgement is in fact immediate? After a review of some of the tradition’s responses to these and other questions, the article concludes with a list summarizing some important properties of immediate judgements.

Abstract The paper claims that Avicenna authored a thus far unknown treatise on existence, following a hint in Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s Jawābāt al-masāʾil al-bukhāriyya. Al-Rāzī informs us about the doctrinal content of the treatise–Avicenna held that existence does not have a second-order existence–as well as about its textual history–a portion of the treatise was preserved in Bahmanyār’s Taḥṣīl. Al-Rāzī’s report is confirmed by several manuscript witnesses of the Taḥṣīl, which contain an anomalous layer of text corresponding to his description. Additional evidence comes from comparing the doctrines defended in the text to other Avicennian works, as well as to al-Khayyām’s own treatise on existence. This leads to the additional conclusion that Avicenna’s treatise (or the portion preserved by Bahmanyār) is among the sources of al-Khayyām’s. Finally, the paper outlines the content of the available portion of the treatise, highlighting its connections to other Avicennian and early post-Avicennian works.

Abstract In Maqāla fī Ḥarakat al-iltifāf, Ibn al-Hayṯam transformed Ptolemy’s mechanism of oscillating epicycles into a solid-sphere model. This innovation led him to reinvent the Eudoxan couple, a device originally developed by Eudoxus in the fourth century BCE and later incorporated by Aristotle into his cosmic system. The treatise became among Ibn al-Hayṯam’s most influential astronomical works. Yet, for modern historians of astronomy, the treatise was believed to be lost until the recent discovery of an incomplete manuscript. This paper presents a critical edition, an English translation, and an analysis of the extant parts of Maqāla fī Ḥarakat al-iltifāf.

Abstract This article discusses how Plotinus’ use of the Presocratics in Enneads IV 8[6] has been creatively reworked in its Arabic translation-cum-adaptation known as the Plotiniana Arabica. While Plotinus interprets the archaic views of Heraclitus, Empedocles and Pythagoras through the prism of Platonic eschatology, the Arabic paraphrase boldly remolds the Greek source text in conformity with the teachings of the Qurʾān. Accordingly, the “Presocratic” eschatology of the Arabic Plotinus is further juxtaposed here with the related doxography of Pseudo-Ammonius, which likewise projects Islamized Neoplatonic teachings onto various Presocratic thinkers. The ingenious changes introduced into the Plotiniana Arabica and the artful fabrications of Pseudo-Ammonius not only reveal the original philosophy underlying these treatises, but also reflect their common ideological objectives.