Ibn Hazm Research Articles

The Byzantines in Medieval Arabic Poetry: Abu Firas’ "Al-Rumiyyat" and the Poetic Responses of al-Qaffal and Ibn Hazm to Nicephore Phocas’ "Al-Qasida al-Arminiyya al-Malʿuna" (The Armenian Cursed Ode)

<font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: normal">Up until the Crusades, it was <em>al-Rūm </em>who were universally seen by Arab writers and Arab poets in particular as the Other <em>par excellence</em>. Nowhere is this more conspicuous than in the sub-genre of <em>Al-Rūmiyyat </em>(poems about the Byzantines), namely as found in the <em>Rūmiyyat</em> of Abu Firas al-Hamdani(d.968), and in the poetic responses of al-Qaffal(d</span><span><strong>. </strong></span><span style="font-weight: normal">946</span><span style="font-weight: normal">) and Ibn Hazm(d.</span><span><strong> </strong></span><span style="font-weight: normal">1064</span><span style="font-weight: normal">) to what was described by several medieval Muslim chronicles as <em>Al-Qasida al-Arminiyya al-Malʿuna </em>(The Armenian Cursed Ode). By exploring the forgotten views of the Byzantines in medieval Arabic poetry, this article </span><span style="font-weight: normal">purports to demonstrate that </span><span style="font-weight: normal">contrary to the impression left after reading Edward Said’s groundbreaking <em>Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient</em> (1978) and other postcolonial studies, Orientals have not existed solely to be ‘orientalized’. Perhaps even before this came to be so, they too had ‘occidentalized’</span><span><strong> </strong></span><span style="font-weight: normal">their Euro-Christian Other(s)</span><span><strong> </strong></span><span style="font-weight: normal">in a way that mirrored in reverse the subject/object relationship described as Orientalism.</span></font></font> <h1 style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: center" align="center"><strong></strong></h1><h1 style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; direction: ltr; unicode-bidi: embed; text-align: center" align="center"><strong></strong></h1>

Maestros de Occidente: Estudios sobre el pensamiento andalusí (review)

Reviewed by: Maestros de Occidente: Estudios sobre el pensamiento andalusí Massimo Campanini Maestros de Occidente: Estudios sobre el pensamiento andalusí. By A. Martínez Lorca. Madrid: Editorial Trotta, 2007. Pp. 264. Maestros de Occidente: Estudios sobre el pensamiento andalusí is a collection of seventeen papers by Andres Martínez Lorca, sixteen of which were previously published in different places between 1992 and 2007. The book is divided into three parts. The first is devoted to general problems: the birth of philosophy in Andalusia, Aristotle’s philosophical language in the translations of William of Moerbeke and Michael Scot, and the Almohad Reform in the Muslim West. The second part is devoted to a wide range of Muslim thinkers and philosophers, from Ibn Hazm to Ibn Tufayl, and from Averroës and Maimonides to Ibn Khaldūn. The third part is devoted to two prominent Spanish Arabists, Miguel Asín Palacios and Emilio García Gomez. Thus, both the whole history of Arab Islamic thought in Andalusia through its protagonists and some important contributions to Spanish historiography on the same subject are covered. Martínez Lorca argues that we can understand Andalusian philosophy only if it is appropriately contextualized historically. Many of the papers here are overall reconstructions of either particular or general aspects of Andalusian thought, like the inquiries of Sa‘id al-Andalusi concerning the history of science, the pivotal role of Ibn Rushd, and the Aristotelian attitude of Maimonides on the one hand and a global philosophical overview of the same Jewish thinker on the other. One of the aims pursued by Martínez Lorca is to demonstrate the valuable contribution made by the “masters of the Islamic West” to the geographical and cultural West, that is, Europe in the so-called Middle Ages. This is the reason why he emphasizes in particular the “modernity” of Andalusian philosophy: “What did Muslim Spain bring to the common roots of Islamic pluralism? In particular, a deeper accentuation of that pluralism and the raising of a philosophical rationalism with unquestionable elements of modernity” (p. 25). Averroës/Ibn Rushd is obviously the champion of this philosophical rationalism directed toward modernity, being the philosopher who led Europe in that direction. He renewed philosophy, applying the laws of logic and a rational reflection to the data provided by the natural world, making of philosophy an autonomous science whose inner dialectics allows the correction of mistakes (p. 124). Averroës was the most important interpreter of the intellectual revolution of the thirteenth century. He changed philosophy through a new intellectual style, since after all he preferred accurate commentaries to Avicenna’s encyclopedias, and through a new role for philosophy, emphasizing its autonomy and rationality (pp. 150–151). Martínez Lorca is keen to bring out the novelty of the thinkers he studies. Thus, Sa‘id al-Andalusi is credited as the first to have written a universal history of science since ancient times. Moreover, his Tabaqat al-umam is a far better historiographical [End Page 107] work than Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Famous Philosophers (p. 103). Ibn Khaldūn elaborated a new conception of history because he did not confine himself to telling historical facts; rather he looked for the causes of the historical facts, trying to explain them (p. 218). This valuable book includes three indexes: an index of relevant Arab words and locutions, an index of Greek and Latin words and locutions, and finally an onomastic index. Massimo Campanini State University of Milano Copyright © 2009 University of Hawai'i Press

El Castellar de la Morera de Elche: ¿madina o hisn?

El proyecto de investigación arqueológica en el Castellar de la Morera (Elche) tiene como objetivo documentar uno de los yacimientos arqueológicos más interesantes, controvertidos y olvidados que el panorama de la arqueología islámica puede ofrecer en la provincia de Alicante. La investigación ha sido impulsada por el Museo Arqueológico de Alicante (MARQ), con la participación de la Universidad de Alicante y el apoyo del Museo Arqueológico y de Historia de Elche (MAHE) y ha surgido como un revulsivo ante el abandono secular de este importante yacimiento ilicitano, mencionado ya por Cristóbal Sanz en 1621 y dado a conocer por el historiador ilicitano Pedro Ibarra a finales de los años veinte del pasado siglo, pero olvidado por la investigación reciente. Su objetivo primordial es la explicación histórica del asentamiento a la luz de los convulsos procesos de la formación de una sociedad islámica entre los siglos VIII y X, entre los que se sitúa la problemática de la localización del topónimo árabe «Al-‘Askar» (el campamento), aparente trasunto de una realidad percibida como urbana por el geógrafo oriental al-Ya‘qubi en su obra Kitab al-buldan, fechada a finales del siglo IX. La eventual identificación de ese emplazamiento con el yacimiento explorado ha sido recientemente formulada por P. Guichard a partir de la confrontación rigurosa de las fuentes árabes con el valioso testimonio de la Yamhara o tratado de genealogía de Ibn Hazm, que radica en los distritos y alrededores de Elche al linaje árabe de los Banu al- ayj, famoso por sus episodios de disidencia en los castillos de Alicante y Callosa de Segura entre los años 924 y 928.

Theoretical foundations of the Islamic economic doctrine in the Middle Ages

The article describes formation and early stage of development of the Islamic economic thought. The author pays attention to the role of the Qur'an and the Sunnah in this process, and focuses on its characteristic features among which is an encyclopedical approach of early Muslim thinkers. The main part of the article is devoted to the views of the most brilliant theoreticians, who paid attention to economic issues, e.g. Abu Yusuf (731 798), Ibn Hazm (994 1064), Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058 1111), Ibn Taymiyyah (1263 1328), Ibn Qayyim (1292 1350), Ibn Khaldun (1332 1406 ). The reader gets an opportunity to get acquainted with the views of medieval Islamic scholars to various types of taxation, the role of government in the economy, pricing and the functions of money, the Islamic ban on usury, private property, etc.

Poetic Genius and Poetic Jinni: The Case of Ibn Shuhayd

Long appreciated for its combination of lyric charm and mordant wit, Ibn Shuhayd al-Andalusi's (992–1035) Risalat al-tawabiʿ wa-l-zawabiʿ (Epistle of Attendant Jinn and Whirling Demons), as I have argued recently, also offers a sophisticated treatise on poetic influence and inspiration. Composed around 1013–17, the epistle consists of the young poet's highly ironic and parodic defense against accusations of plagiarism leveled by one Abu Bakr ibn Hazm. The epistle, as edited by Butrus al-Bustani, is divided into an introduction and four chapters on the attendant jinn of poets, the attendant jinn of writers (kuttāb), the jinn of critics, and animal jinn. These are held together by the conceit of a visit by Ibn Shuhayd, conducted by his own attendant jinni (“poetic muse”), Zuhayr, to the Valley of the Jinn. During what I have termed his “initiatory journey,” Ibn Shuhayd encounters and tests himself against his major poetic and literary influences, attends a literary majlis, and finally is asked to serve as judge for the poetry of a group of asses and mules (presumably the jinn of his contemporaries/competitors). The journey, however parodic and humorous, provides a revealing allegory of the poet–littérateur's struggles with his poetic and literary forebears, critics, and competitors on the one hand and his individual poetic “genius” on the other hand.

Idrah'ū l-hudūd bi-l-shubuhāt: When Lawful Violence Meets Doubt

AbstractThis article explores the origin and diffusion of the legal saying, which stated that God's sanctions were not to be applied in cases where there was room for doubt (idra'ū l-hudūd bi-l-shubuhāt), and how it was transformed into a Prophetic saying that was employed mainly by Hanafis and Mālikīs, and rejected by the Hanbalīs and the Zāhirī Ibn Hazm. Behind these developments there is the tension between two equally compelling needs in the early Islamic period: on the one hand, the desire to avoid as much as possible imposition of the severe hadd penalties; on the other hand, the fact that such avoidance usually played in favour of the rich and the powerful.

IBN BĀJJA AND THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES IN AL-ANDALUS

Coinciding with the scientific flourishing of the 5th / 11th century, which was favoured by the cultural policy of the Andalusī kingdoms ( mulūk al-tawā'if ), Abū ‘ Umar ibn ‘ Abd al-Barr, Ibn Hazm and Sā‘ id al-Andalusī all dealt with the classification of the sciences in many works that are already known. Ibn Bājja began his career at the end of this period. In his glosses to al-Fārābī’s commentary to the Isagoge he wrote a text on this subject that has not yet been analysed. The present paper studies Ibn Bājja's classification in connection with his predecessors and with the scientific and philosophical background of Andalusī culture. In their classifications of the sciences, all these authors express and stress important factors of the evolution of Andalusī science and thought, such as the dialectic between religious and rational sciences and the importance of the scientific method derived from Aristotle's logic. Sā‘ id al-Andalusī and Ibn Bājja ( and, to a lesser extent, Ibn Hazm ) show the profound influence exerted by al-Fārābī’s works, particularly the Ihsā' al-‘ ulūm. Thus, Ibn Bājja foreshadows the evolution of sciences in the next century and the movement headed by Ibn Rushd, Ibn Tufayl and others, characterized by the search for concordance with the postulates set forth by philosophical disciplines.

The Legal Principles of Muhammad b.Ismāīl al-Bukhārī and their Relationship to Classical Salafi Islam

AbstractThis article analyzes the legal theory of al-Bukhārī as articulated in two books of his famous Sahīh and situates it within the broader framework of Sunni legal theory (usūl al-fiqh). I argue that his legal theory revolves around four themes: (1) The Qurān and the Prophet; (2) agreement and disagreement; (3) valid techniques of ijtihād; and (4) invalid techniques of ijtihād. I devote special attention to the tension between al-B ukhārī's negative attitude towards qiyās (analogical reasoning) and his acceptance of comparison (tashbīh) and indications (dalā'il). Finally, I compare some of his legal principles to those of the 5th/11th-century hadīth-scholars and jurists, al-Bayhaqī, Ibn Hazm, Ibn 'Abd al-Barr, and al-Khatīb al-Baghdādī, and argue that two types of classical Salafi Islam can be discerned in their writings on legal theory.

Power in the Portrayal: Representations of Jews and Muslims in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Islamic Spain (review)

Reviewed by: Power in the Portrayal: Representations of Jews and Muslims in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Islamic Spain Theodore Pulcini Power in the Portrayal: Representations of Jews and Muslims in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Islamic Spain, by Ross Brann. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002. 194 pp. $39.50. As tensions among Jews, Muslims, and Christians continue to manifest themselves in the Middle East and other parts of the world, academic interest in the co-existence (convivencia) of these groups in medieval Muslim Spain has surged. Popular treatments of convivencia, no doubt shaped by contemporary yearnings for peace, often romanticize this interaction. More careful studies, however, give due attention to the literary evidence of inter-communal tensions in al-Andalus. This book, by the Professor of Judeo-Islamic Studies and Chair of Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University, is clearly to be included in the latter category. Brann divides his study into five essays, which are preceded by an introduction in which he sets forth his methodological assumptions. Recognizing the complexity of the tribal, ethnic, socio-economic, factional, and, of course, religious "cleavages" that beset al-Andalus, Brann from the outset sets his scope narrowly on the relations between the Jewish minority and the Muslim majority during the "Golden Age" of Jewish civilization in medieval Spain, i.e., the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Even after thus carefully limiting his purview, he notes that the few select literary sources to be examined will enable him only to uncover "the ambivalence with which Andalusi Jewish and Muslim literary and religious intellectuals thought of, or more precisely, imagined one another," not to "advance broad or unsupportable claims for the experience of the Jews under all of Mediterranean Islam" (p. 8). Yet Brann maintains that these texts are not merely individual in their significance but rather "represent structures of sociocultural and [End Page 136] historical signification" beyond the experiences of the authors themselves (p. 8), often revealing "more about the cultural situation of the scriptor's textual community than that of the depicted subject" (p. 9). In his exegetical observations Brann shines in various ways: in his selection of texts to be examined, in his elaboration of their content, in his description of their historical context, and in his interpretation of their rhetoric. His fresh translation of significant portions of these texts, some previously unavailable in English, in itself makes this book a valuable contribution. Each of the five chapters presents either a single text or several related texts that are somehow indicative of the ways in which Muslims and Jews perceived one another in al-Andalus. The first three chapters are related in that all focus on Ismail ibn Naghrila, perhaps the most noteworthy Jew of Islamic Spain, as portrayed by various Muslim authors. Chapter 1 presents three eleventh-century texts: the Tabaqat al-umam of Ibn Said al-Andalusi, an account of Ibn Hayyan al-Qurtubi as transmitted in Ibn al-Khatib's Al-Ihata fi akhbar gharnata, and the Al-Tibyan of Abd Allah b. Buluggin. Although all of these texts depict Ibn Naghrila with a high degree of respect as a "model Jew" in the service of the Muslim state (the tendency is to transfer any negative assessments of Ismail to his son Yusuf), they manifest considerable variation, indicating the "unstable construction of the Jew in eleventh-century Andalus" (p. 53). In Chapter 2, Brann turns to perhaps the most strident of medieval Spain's Muslim commentators on the Jews, Ali ibn Hazm, who depicts Ibn Naghrila as a "composite Jew," a typological figure, a "linguistic trope"of what Ibn Hazm considers to be all of the faults and sinister proclivities of the Jewish race, especially the Jews of al-Andalus. In this, the strongest chapter of his book, Brann guides the reader through Ibn Hazm's dense polemical universe, providing a good sense of its richness without allowing his reader to get lost amid its convolutions. In Chapter 3, Brann provides a striking example of the conflicting attitudes of Andalusi Muslims toward their Jewish counterparts through an examination of Ibn Bassam's Treasury Concerning the Merits of the People of Iberia (Al-Dhakhira fi mahasin ahl al-jazira...

HETEROTOPIA AND THE WINE POEM IN EARLY ISLAMIC CULTURE

The 11th-century Andalusian author Ibn Hazm, in his treatise on love entitled Tawq al-Hamama (Ring of the Dove), strikes on a vivid analogy for illustrating the nature of the self and its propensity for wrongdoing: “[t]he righteous man and woman are like a fire concealed within ashes that doesn't burn anyone nearby unless stirred, but the unrighteous are like a blazing fire that burns up everything.” This fire that must be kept tightly enclosed is the lower self, the inner repository of insatiable desire. To release the fire is to allow an immediate and untrammeled gratification of desire that would quickly consume the self and its surroundings. Ibn Hazm's analogy derives from the normative discourse pioneered more than two centuries earlier by Ibn al-Muqaffa (d. 757) and al-Jahiz (d. 868), who, drawing on a variety of sources, developed an account of moral self-integration consonant with the courtly culture of their time. Their account complements the contemporary courtly panegyric poetry, which depicted the caliph and other figures of authority as embodiments of the normative ideal, enjoying and conferring a utopian state of bliss. In the same period, the poet Abu Nuwas (d. c. 814) developed a body of wine poetry that parodies the ideal of self-integration in a way that reveals the symbolic operations at work within it. Abu Nuwas's wine poems take advantage of the apparent contradiction at the heart of normative discourse: the blissful condition of power and pleasure sought by the desiring self can be realized only through moral self-integration, which is the suppression of the desiring self. In other words, one must master one's insatiable desire by adhering to moral norms because this is precisely the way, ultimately, to gratify desire eternally and absolutely. The goal of self-integration, whether conceived of as an ideal psychic state, a utopian community, or a condition in the afterlife, is thus the same boundless conflagration of the sinner pictured by Ibn Hazm, except that it perfects the self instead of destroying it.

Ibn Hazms Evangelienkritik: Eine methodische Untersuchung

The book presents a first attempt to investigate the criticism of the Gospels, hardly considered within the previous research work of the Islamic scholar Ibn hazm (d. 1064) referring to its methodological and socio-cultural background. After analysing the hardly accounted, however for the understanding of Ibn hazm's thought essential commentary about Aristoteles' logic, the raised reproaches by Ibn hazm against the Christians are discussed. The topics include falsification of the Gospels, the irrationality of their contents and of the whole Christian religion. In conclusion the question of the main purpose of its anti-Christian polemic arises in the light of the background of the special socio-political situation in Arabic Andalusia. It's a book written in a general way of understanding offering an interesting and new insight into the history of Islamic/Christian polemics.

Ibn Hazm on homosexuality: a case-study of Zahiri legal methodology

This article discusses the views of the teologian and legal scholar Ibn Ḥazm of Cordoba (d. 456/1064) on homosexuality. Although reference is made to his literary work Ṭawq al-ḥamāma , which is rich in anecdotes on homoerotic attraction, the article focuses on Ibn Ḥazm's multivolume legal tract Kitāb al-Muḥallā , a work written from a Ẓāhirī, or literalist perspective. A step-by-step analysis of Ibn Hazm's legal reasoning on homosexuality, both male ( liwāṭ ) and female ( siḥāq ) is provided, and comparisons with the views of other jurist, especially Mālikis, are made. Unlike his Mālikī contemporaries, Ibn Ḥazm holds that homosexuality is not to be equated with fomication ( zinā ), which incurs the death penalty. Instead, he advocates a relatively mild punishment of up to ten lashes for homosexual practices, based upon his idiosyncratic interpretation of the revealed sources which is illustrated here. Although Ibn Ḥazm is believed by some modem authors to have had homosexual leanings himself, he categorically condemns sexual contacts between members of the same sex as immoral and sinful, and believes that homosexuals should be reformed.

Culture, Science, and Technology

The Case The Ummah was built on the foundation of tawhid, istikhla! the pursuit of knowledge, and personal and communal responsibility. Although it was once a leading creator of and contributor to human civilization, over the last few centuries it has become weak and backward to the point of crisis. The awareness of the Ummah's regression is almost 1,000 years old, dating back far beyond the challenges of European colonization and west­ernization. We can trace this back to Abu Hamid al-Ghazali's lhya' · Ulum al-Din (Revival of the Knowledge and Sciences of Religion) and Tahafat al­Falasifah (The Incoherence of the Philosophers). Since then, the Ummah has produced dozens of revivalist personalities and movements, such as Ibn Hazm, fbn Taymiyyah, fbn 'Abd al-Salam, fbn 'Abd al-Wahhab, the Muwahiddun, the Murabitun, the Mahdis of Sudan, the Sanusis of Libya, the Ottoman sultan Salim lll, Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi, Muhammad 'Ali, Jamal al-Din al-Afgani, Rashid Rida, Muhammad 'Abdu ofEgypt, Shah Waliullah and Muhammad Iqbal of India, Amir 'Abd al-Qadir and Ben Bad is of Algeria, and many others. All of these individual efforts and movements helped minimize and slow down the Ummah's deterioration, and without them the Ummah's condition and chances of survival could have been much worse. Despite ...

El pensamiento griego en la lógica de Ibn Hazm. Su Kitab al-taqrib

The first book consecrated to logic, written by an andalusian author is Ibn Hazm’s Kitab al-taqrIb li-Eadd al-manðiq (“Introduction to definition of logic”). Where, the author seeks to adapt the logic to the simple language of the jurists. Here it is pointed out how this important treatise can depend on the logical school of Bagdad.

“Les sphères divisées”. D’Aristophane à Ibn Hazm

The author makes a study of the problem of love understood as meeting of the two parts of a soul-sphere. It is a Greek myth that has had a long tradition in the Arabic literature on love. The author is centered in Ibn Hazm of Cordoba.

El amor en el cine egipcio. Análisis de la relación hombre-mujer en algunas películas egipcias desde 1950 hasta 2000

Love has always played a central role in Arab cultures, whether idealized/Platonic (as in the story of Majnun and Laylâ) or earthly/carnal (as in the well-known Dove Ring. About Affinity and Friends by Ibn Hazm al-Andalusi [993-1064]). Today love is still dealt with by many Arab philosophers and poets, especially Egyptian. This article intends to show the ways in which love has been represented in Egyptian cinema during the last fifty years, through four different categories of love: physical love, Platonic love, fatherly love and love between husband and wife. This essay demonstrates that contemporary Egypt’s conceptions of love are still very much the same as in the classical era, though contemporary cinema adds the support of the moving image to our understanding of this feeling.

Reason and Reasoning in Ibn Hazm of Cordova (d. 1064)

Ibn Hazm de Cordoue (mort en 1064), representant du mouvement zâhirite, a paradoxalement developpe une theorie de la raison qu'etudie le present article. Chez Ibn Hazm, bien que la raison soit omnipresente, elle n'est jamais autonome et ne se deploie pas librement mais doit toujours rester au service de la revelation coranique. Grâce a la necessite logique, l'homme recoit une connaissance immediate des principes universels qu'il doit utiliser pour lire correctement le texte coranique, seul critere valable des valeurs morales et de l'ethique d'Ibn Hazm, proche de celle des stoiciens. Le raisonnement par analogie doit par contre etre prohibe. Cependant, pour eviter le cercle vicieux d'une revelation se justifiant elle-meme, Ibn Hazm tente d'utiliser la raison pour etablir l'authenticite de la revelation.

With Heart, Tongue, and Limbs: Ibn Hazm On the Essence of Faith

AbstractIn the Kitāb al-īmān or Book of Faith, a section from Ibn Hazm of Córdoba's major treatise on religions and heresies entitled Al-fasl fi al-milal wa al-ahwā' wa al-nihal, the author uses the exegetic techniques of Zāhirism to lay out what he believes are the essential characteristics that make one a Muslim. Those characteristics fall into three categories: belief held in the heart (tasdīq bi al-qalb), profession of belief with the tongue (iqrār bi al-lisān), and pious work of the body (amal al-jawārih). His intent in the Kitāb al-īmān is to attack the concept of religious tolerance and to reaffirm that being a Muslim means being different from Jews and Christians in thought, word, and deed. His use of Zāhirism as a guide to reading scripture directly supports his attack on Christianity and Judaism.

THE INTERDICTION OF THE SPENDTHRIFT (AL-SAFĪH): A HUMAN RIGHTS DEBATE IN CLASSICAL FIQH

AbstractA semantic equivalence between the Qur'ānic terms safīh and mubadhdhir underlies classical Islamic law's interdiction (hajr) of the spendthrift. The Qur'ān, however, is not explicit in endorsing the semantic equivalence of these two terms. To bridge this semantic gap, Muslim jurists exploited an opposition in Arabic usage between safah and rushd, extending the meaning of safīh from "one who lacks judgment" to "one who squanders his wealth". Subsequently, the safīh became the object of disagreement among the Hanafī master jurists: Abū Hanīfa placed a greater value on the sane adult's legal autonomy than on the preservation of his wealth; Abū Yūsuf and al-Shaybānī (together with Mālik, al-Shāfi ī and the Hanbalīs) held for the restriction of the adult prodigal's legal capacity. Ibn Hazm revived Abū Hanīfa's position by undertaking a lexicographical critique of the metaphorical extension of the meaning of safīh and by upholding the Muslim ideal of modest living.

Estética y teoría de la sensibilidad en el pensamiento andalusí

Understanding Aesthetics in it's etymological meaning as the "science of the perception" makes any study of the theory of the sensibility essential to understand a given aesthetics. Moreover, theories of sensibility and knowledge in Arabic and Islamic classical culture, have hardly been probed in it's aesthetic dimension. As a result of this, the spread of conceptualizations about Arabic and Islamic aesthetics has, in many cases, sunk in a sea of imprecisions and prejudgements. In the following pages, we present an approximation of these topics through works of greats thinkers from Al-Andalus such as Ibn Hazm, Ibn Bayya, Ibn Tufayl, Ibn Rusd, Hazim al-Qartayanni, Ibn 'Arabi and Ibn Jaldun, in whose works we appreciate a clear, though diverse, intention of constituting a cognizant and percipient human subject, ethically and aesthetically defined, across psychologies and concepts that we will also discover in the construction of Aesthetics in the West.