On the character, content, and authorship of Itmam Tatimmat Siwan al-hikma and the identity of the author of Muntakhab Siwan al-hikma.

AuthorGriffel, Frank
PositionCritical essay

The Siwan al-hikma sequence of texts is, in its narrow meaning, a corpus of three biographical and doxographical dictionaries of philosophical and medical scholars, written between the late tenth and the early thirteenth centuries. These books are Siwan al-hikma (The Cabinet of Wisdom) itself, Tatimmat Siwan al-hikma (The Continuation of "The Cabinet of Wisdom"), authored by Zahir al-Din Ibn Funduq al-Bayhaqi (d. 565/1169-70), and Itmam Tatimmat Siwan al-hikma (The Completion of "The Continuation of the Cabinet of Wisdom"), by a yet unidentified author who is one of the foci of this article. In addition to these three texts there are several abbreviations of the original Siwan al-hikma as well as further abbreviations of these abbreviations, so that the overall number of extant works that belong to the Siwan al-hikma sequence of texts comes to at least seven. (1)

In the past, Siwan al-hikma was often ascribed to Abu Sulayman al-Sijistani (d. ca. 377/987-8), an influential philosopher and a student of Yahya ibn 'Adi (d. 363/974), whose teachings are preserved in the writings of his follower al-Tawhidi (d. between 400 and 414/1009 and 1023). In an important article in 1981, however, Wadad al-Qadi showed that Abu Sulayman could not have been the author of the book; she suggested Abu 1-Qasim al-Kirmani, the "Ghulam of al-Amiri" (d. ca. 410/1020) instead. (2) Joel Kraemer suggested that the book was "a compendium of texts that were studied in lessons or discussions in Sijistani's circle." (3) Abu 1-Qasim al-Kirmani was a member of that circle.

The abbreviated versions of Siwan al-hikma are of great importance because the original text of the book is lost. There are at least two direct abbreviations. The earlier of the two, Mukhtasar Siwan al-hikma (Abridgement of The Cabinet of Wisdom"), was written by the philosopher Zayn al-Din 'Umar ibn Sahlan al-Sawi (d. ca. 540/1145) in the early part of the sixth/twelfth century. (4) A second abbreviation, Muntakhab Siwan al-hikma (Selection from "The Cabinet of Wisdom"), was written less than one hundred years later at the turn of the seventh/thirteenth century by an unknown author, whose identity is also a target of this paper. Muntakhab al-hikma is a much more thorough work than the mukhtasar of al-Sawi and it has shaped our view of what the original Siwan al-hikma looked like. (5) There is most probably a third direct abbreviation of certain parts of Siwan al-hikma in a text known as the "Philosophical Quartet," Mukhtar min kalam al-hukama' al-arba'a al-akabir. (6)

It is worth noting that the biographical information in the Siwan al-hikma corpus had no direct influence on the best known and most widely read historians of philosophy and the sciences in Islam, i.e., Ibn al-Nadim (d. 385/995), Ibn (d. 646/1248), and Ibn Abi Usaybi'a (d. 668/1270). (7) While Ibn al-Qifti and Ibn Abi Usaybi'a represent the Syrian school of writers on the history of philosophy and the sciences in Islam, the Siwan al-hikma corpus originated in Iraq and western Iran and moved eastward--first, with the Tatimma to Khurasan, and then with the Itmam, as we will see, even further to the east. The Siwan al-hikma sequence represents an Iranian strand of the history of philosophy and the sciences in Islam that was picked up by Iranian historians such as al-Shahrastani (d. 548/1153) and very extensively by al-Shahrazuri (fl. 687/1288). (8) It remains to a significant degree independent of the Syrian tradition of Ibn al-Qifti, Ibn Abi Usaybi'a, and also Yaqut al-Rumi (d. 626/1229), which has shaped our perspective of this history. It is also worth noting that while Ibn al-Nadim, Ibn Ibn Abi Usaybi'a, and Yaqut al-Rumi make diligent efforts to inform their readers of the dates of the lifetimes of the scholars covered in their works, such dates are a rarity in the Siwan al-hikma corpus. In his Tatimmat Siwan al-hikma al-Bayhaqi makes some effort to provide historical dates for the scholars he discusses, but they are almost entirely absent from the abbreviations of Siwan al-hikma and the Itmam. (9)

The Siwan al-hikma corpus has attracted a significant amount of attention among Western scholars. Although manuscripts of some of the extant works are available in Western libraries, most prominently in London, Berlin, and Leiden, serious research only began in 1931 when Martin Plessner described three manuscripts of texts from the sequence in Istanbul libraries. (10) These manuscripts represent the most widespread configuration of texts of this corpus, bringing together in one volume Muntakhab Siwan al-hikman, al-Bayhaqi's Tatimmat Siwan al-hikma, and Itmam Tatimmat Siwan al-hikma. (11) The creator of this configuration was the compiler of Muntakhab Siwan al-hikma, a figure who is known as the muntakhib. At the beginning of this volume, he explains that he abbreviated Siwan al-hikma and added the Tatimma by al-Bayhaqi and a third short text, the Itmam, which he himself authored. The beginning of Muntakhab Siwan al-hikma reads:

The wise and virtuous man who is the selector (muntakhib) of this book--may God have mercy on him--said: (12) I decided to put down in writing historical accounts of the philosophers (hukama'), their names, some of what they have said, and their character traits. In doing so I selected (intakhabtu) from the book Siwan al-hikma the reports on the older ones (qudama'). At the end of that I wrote down the book Tatimmat Siwan al-hikma by the virtuous imam Zahir al-Din Abu 1-Hasan ibn Abi 1-Qasim al-Bayhaqi--may God have mercy on him. At the end of that I put (wada'tu) an epistle and called it Itmam Tatimma and I transmit in it the poetry of the recent philosophers (al-muta' akhkhirun min al-hukama) and with it I seal the historical accounts. (13) These words clarify that the muntakhib is the same person who authored the Itmam. Since Plessner's article of 1931 various attempts have been made in the West to identify this person, yet none has been successful. Unbeknownst to many Western researchers, however, is a suggestion Muhammad Taqi Danishpazhuh (1911-1996) made in 1959 in a Persian scholarly journal. An Iranian scholar with a famously encyclopedic knowledge of Arabic and Persian literatures, Danishpazhuh published an edition of an anonymous Arabic philosophical doxography from the seventh/thirteenth century preserved in a manuscript at the Escorial Library in Spain. (14) In the introduction to that edition Danishpazhuh makes an attempt to determine the possible sources of the short text, which leads him to a comprehensive discussion of other known philosophical doxographies and dictionaries of philosophical scholars in Islam. (15) In that context he deals with the Siwan al-hikma corpus and he describes eight manuscripts that contain texts belonging to it. (16) Danishpazhuh sought to find out who compiled the most common configuration of texts--in other words, he tried to determine the identity of the muntakhib and the author of the Itmam. He discusses the possibility that it was Abu Isbaq Ibrahim ibn Muhammad, known as Ghadanfar Tabrizi (d. ca. 690/1291). Ghadanfar Tabrizi is known for having made an excerpt of a popular medical textbook by Hunayn ibn Ishaq (d. 260/873). (17) He is also the author of al-Mushatta li-risalat al-Fihrist, a catalogue of the works of al-Biruni (d. ca. 442/1050), which he compiled in 683/1284 as an appendix to al-Biruni's own catalogue of works by Abu Bakr ibn Zakariyya' al-Razi (d. 313/925 or 323/935). (18) We will see that the muntakhib distinguishes himself by an intimate knowledge of al-Biruni's life, which will eventually lead us to his identification.

Despite his fitting numerous criteria of the muntakhib, Danishpazhuh asserted that Ghadanfar was not the compiler since Ghadanfar himself had made an excerpt from that book. Ghadanfar is the author of Ta liq min kitab Muntakhab al-hikma (Notes from the Book "Selection from the Cabinet of Wisdom"), which is preserved in a unique manuscript in Leiden. This short text is an abbreviation of the muntakhib's abbreviated Siwan al-hikma. It condenses not only Muntakhab Siwan al-hikma but also the other two texts. Tatimmat Siwan al-hikma and the Itmam, offering its readers a Miniaturbild ('miniature'), to use Martin Plessner's term, of the type of book put together by the muntakhib. The Leiden manuscript was copied by one of Ghadanfar's students, a scholar by the name of Ibn a1-Ghulam al-Qunawi, in the year 692/1293. (19) Since Ghadanfar abbreviated the Itmam along with the two other texts, it is highly unlikely that he authored the abbreviated text as well.

We will also see that Ghadanfar lived one or two generations too late. The terminus ante quem for the composition of this volume is 639/1241, the date when the oldest manuscript was copied. (20) Ghadanfar was active in the second half of the seventh/thirteenth century in what was most likely an Il-Khanid scholarly environment. Although we have no certain death date, he informs us in an autobiographical passage of his year of birth, which was 629/1232-3. (21) This disqualifies him as the author of a book that was copied just nine years later.

In his discussion of the three texts brought together in the manuscript by the muntakhih. Danishpazhuh offers an important clue in a short note where he says. "I have come to believe that Sirr al-surur of al-Ghaznawi and the Itmam are one and the same book." (22) Danishpazhuh had dealt with Sirr al-surur earlier in his article, (23) and he noted that Katib Celebi describes it as an anthology of Arabic poetry by Muhammad ibn Mahmud al-Nisaburi al-Ghaznawi. The book is not known to be extant, however. Danishpazhuh had read a short Arabic note at the end of a Persian astronomical manuscript at the University Library in Tehran in which a passage from the lost Sirr al-surur is quoted, and he had seen that very same text, which describes the author of the astronomical work, in one of the manuscripts of Itmam Tatimmat...

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