A new standard for Avicenna studies.

• Author: Reisman, David C.
• Position: Ibn Sina, lettre au vizir Abu Sa'd: Editio princeps d'apres le manuscrit de Bursa - Book Review

1. MICHOT'S INTRODUCTORY ESSAY

IN THE PAST FIFTEEN YEARS, research into the life, times, and philosophy of Avicenna has witnessed a resurgence among scholars of medieval Islamic intellectual history. This resurgence can be traced in part to the 1988 publication of Dimitri Gutas's Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition (1) in which scholars were treated to an evaluation of work on Avicenna since the millennary celebrations of the 1950s, an assessment of the then current state of research, and a detailed map--in Gutas's own study of Avicenna's intellectual inheritance and innovation--of the methodology and goals that would be necessary for further progress. It is often assumed that a name that looms as large across the horizon of intellectual history as that of Avicenna has surely been accorded enough scholarly activity to render the ambitions of new generations of scholars irrelevant. In fact, it is significant that of the fourteen texts forming the Avicennan corpus from which Gutas drew his references to the Aristotelian tradition (chapt er one) not a single one was then or is now available in a properly critical edition. Indeed, of these fourteen texts and the twelve texts that Gutas designated "Major Philosophical Works" (with some common entries in the two sets), not one has even received the thorough study into the manuscripts, recensions, and textual history so fundamental to the task of critical editing. (2) It is a wonder that any good work at all is done on Avicenna, considering the sorry state of his corpus.

So much for the texts. The other area toward which all good philologists direct their talents is context, however conceived (historical, social, political, intellectual, etc.). Here the efforts of Yahya (formerly Jean) Michot stand almost unparalleled. The investigation of the historical context, broadly apprehended, in which Avicenna lived and worked is certainly fraught with some dangers. While it was once thought that scholars of Avicenna were blessed with not only the master's autobiography, but also a biography by his disciple a1-Juzjani, careful study of these texts highlights the importance of taking into account the rhetorical (or crassly put, the propagandistic) nature of medieval genres of writing. (3) Undoubtedly there is much fact to be winnowed out of these writings, but it would be short-sighted to embrace all their particulars unreflectively. The historical evidence for the life and times of Avicenna that falls outside the writings of the master and his disciples brings additional problems, ch ief among which is its very paucity, at least of those pieces of evidence that can truly be identified as contemporaneous and thus, presumably, to be accorded sufficient evidentiary weight. However, it is becoming more and more clear that the outer margins of the Avicennan corpus contain much in the way of incidental (i.e., conversational or narrative-based) information that may help resurrect areas of historicity for our understanding of his life and times. Such "incidentalia" have the added benefit of being less mindfully constructed than the "facts" of the very self-conscious autobiography and biography. Here, with the exception of the correspondence that makes up Avicenna's al-Mubahathat, we are wholly outside the corpus Gutas deemed major."

This reconstruction of previously unstudied aspects of Avicenna's intellectual career has been the province of Yahya Michot's research to date. In many ways, his latest study represents the culmination of nearly ten years of research. In 1991, he first signaled, in great detail, his discovery of the codex Bursa Huseyin Celebi 1194, copied in 675/1276-77 by [Abd.sup.[subset]] Allah b. Muhammad b. [Umar.sup.[subset]] al-Khatib, which contains some thirty of the smaller treatises of Avicenna. (4) Among them is an untitled letter from Avicenna to one Abu [Sa.sup.[subset]]d (who, however, is not named in the letter itself) which was unknown to the major bibliographers of Avicenna's manuscripts up to that time (Michot referred to Ergin, (5) Anawati, (6) and Mahdavi (7)); Michot dubbed it Dernande de mediation. In the following year, Michot made a first attempt at summarizing (and partially translating) the Letter and discussing its historical context. (8) He noted that al-Bayhaqi, in his Tatimmat siwan al-hikma, provides a brief accou nt of one Abu 'l-Qasim al-Kirmani with whom Avicenna engaged in a debate that degenerated into insult and accusation, as a result of which Avicenna wrote to the vizier Abti [Sa.sup.[subset]]d al-Hamadhani requesting that formal judgment be passed on Abu 'l-Qasim. (9) Apparently, Avicenna was close enough to Abu Sacd to have dedicated to him his al-Adhawiya ft 'l-[ma.sup.[subset]]ad sometime before the debate. (10)

In the same study, Michot first suggested an identification for this little-known Abu 'l-Qasim al-Kirmani as the ghulam of the philosopher al-[Amiri.sup.[subset]] (d. 381/991) mentioned by al-Tawhidi as the author of a short work on logic sent to him sometime between 373-75/983-85. (11) Of even greater importance, Michot drew out the connection between Abu 'l-Qasim and Miskawayh that Avicenna makes in a letter to Bahmanyar in the Mubahathat, and he noted that the animosity Avicenna displays toward Abu 'l-Qasim in that letter (and in fact throughout the various texts of the Mubahathat) accords with the poor relations between the two evident in the Letter to the Vizier. Michot also went on to identify this Abu 'l-Qasim as the messenger who brought the questions on logic from the scholars of Shiraz to Avicenna; this, however, is less likely. Considering the social status of Abu '1-Qasim, both with regard to his age and his intellectual reputation, both apparent in Avicenna's own epithets of him (see Letter to the Vizi er, ed. Michot, 1), it is very difficult to believe that he would serve in such a capacity. (12)

In the same 1992 article, Michot also tentatively identified the recipient of the Letter to the Vizier as Abu [Sa.sup.[subset]]d Muhammad b. [Isma.sup.[subset]]il b. al-Fadl, mentioned by Hilal b. al-Mahassin al-Sabi (d. 448/1056) in the extant remains of his History as vizier of the Buyid Majd al-Dawla in 392/1002. This Abu [Sa.sup.[subset]]d later served Badr b. Hasanawayh, Kurdish amir in Hamadhan, for which service we have the date 393/1003 again from Hilal. (13) Finally, Michot localized and dated the Avicenna-Abu 'l-Qasim al-Kirmani debate and the resulting Letter to the Vizier to Rayy in 405/1014--15. In the present work and as a result of further research in the Avicenna corpus, particularly the Letter to the Scholars of Baghdad, which also gives an oblique account of Avicenna's meeting with Abu 'l-Qasim, Michot revises his earlier conclusion and now, rightly it seems, maintains that the debate and the subsequent letter occurred in Hamadhan. (14)

That Abu 'l-Qasim al-Kirmani was involved in the philosophical correspondence that constitutes the Mubahathat, albeit through the mediation of Avicenna's student Bahmanyar, was brought into further focus in Michot's 1997 translation of one of the letters in that collection. (15) In the introduction to his translation, Michot presented in full detail for the first time his theory concerning the chronology of the texts that bear on the Avicenna-Abu 'l-Qasim al-Kirmani relationship. Much of his chronology theory is left implicit in his latest work, so a few words should be said about it, lest it become the object of scholarly consensus.

In contradiction to the conclusions of Dimitri Gutas, (16) who maintained a relatively late dating for the Mubahathat, Michot has argued for an earlier dating, at least of the letter al-Mubahatha al-thalitha (Mubahatha III). His argument rests on the facts that it contains references to Abu 'l-Qasim and that Avicenna's disparagement of Abu 'l-Qasim therein is similar to his tone in the Letter to the Vizier. Now, since, the Letter to the Vizier was most likely written in 405/1014--15 (and there is relatively goad evidence for this), so too, according to Michot, the Mubahathat, or at least Mubahatha III, was probably written around 406/1016. (17) This theory requires a huge leap of faith, not only because topicality should never be allowed, a priori, to determine chronology but also, more importantly, in many cases it is in direct conflict with other information we have about the dating of Avicenna's works. Thus, because the discussions in Mubahatha III, composed supposedly in 406/1016, address problems found only in Kitab al-Nafs of the [Shifa.sup.[contains]], and this work is referred to regularly in it, Michot would have us believe that that book of the [Shifa.sup.[contains]] was written prior to 406/1016. (18) Even more unlikely is Michot's argument that Avicenna's statement at the beginning of the Mubahatha III concerning a "promise" that he has fulfilled for Bahmanyar refers to his composition of the Isharat wa'l-tanbihat. (19) With this slim evidence, Michot believes that the Isharat itself must have been written just after Kitab al-Nafs. But because Avicenna actually refers to one section of the Logic of the [Shifa.sup.[contains]] in the Isharat, that part of the [Shifa.sup.[contains]] must have been written before the Isharat. (20) His chronology for these texts, then, is Kitab al-Nafs of the [Shifa.sup.[contains]]--Logic parts of the [Shifa.sup.[contains]]--al-Isharat--Mubahatha III. (21) Clearly, the faulty first premise of Michot's theory (i.e., since Abu 'l-Qasim plays a role in both the Letter to the Vizier and Mubahatha III, both texts must have been writt en around 406/1016) produced an alternate chronology for much of Avicenna's corpus that cannot be reconciled with the internal and external facts of that tradition.

This theory underlies much of Michot's introductory discussion in Ibn Sina, lettre au vizier Abu [Sa.sup.[subset]]d. (22) And while it cannot be seriously entertained, the impetus behind...