The Wellsprings of Wisdom: A study of Abu Ya qub al-Sijistani's Kitab al-Yanabi Including a Complete English Translation with Commentary and Notes on the Arabic Text.

AuthorStroumsa, Sarah

The author of the tenth-century Kitab al-Yanabi, Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani, is a prominent figure of the early Is-mailiyya. He is also, for the time being, the earliest author of this school whose work can be studied in the original, and not only from quotations by later writers. In a recent publication (Early philosophical Shiism: The Ismalii Neoplatonism of Abu Yaqub al-Sijistani [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993]), Walker introduced al-Sijistani's philosophy in a comprehensive, systematic way. The present publication goes one step further and offers us a thorough study of one of al-Sijistani's works.

Al-Sijistani represents the Neoplatonist school of the Ismai-liyya. This development was initiated by al-Sijistani's predecessor, Muhammad al-Nasafi, but, according to Walker, it is al-Sijistani who expresses the high water-mark of the Neo-platonist approach. Walker endeavors to demonstrate that the importance of al-Sijistani, "perhaps the foremost Muslim Neo-platonist theologian and philosopher of his era," extends well beyond the sectarian and doctrinal issues involved (p. 17). As an example of the impact that al-Sijistani's thought may have had on the development of medieval Islamic philosophy, Walker dwells, in particular, on its possible influence on Avicenna. As another, not less important example, one may mention the Longer Version of the so-called Theology of Aristotle. Walker alludes to the striking similarities between al-Sijistani's emanational theory and that of the Longer Version, and in particular to the concepts of the divine will or the Logos which both compositions have in common, and which are not to be found in the Enneads or in the Shorter Version of the Theology. The question of the origin of the Longer Version is still open to debate: did it originate in Ismaili circles, as suggested by Shlomo Pines ("La longue recension de la theologie d'Aristote dans ses rapports avec la doctrine ismaelienne," REI 22 [1954]: 7-20), or was it only adopted by the Ismailis, as suggested by Fritz Zimmerman ("The Origins of the Theology of Aristotle," in Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages: The Theology and Other Texts, ed. Jill Kraye et al. [London: The Warburg Institute, 1986], 109-295), or perhaps it is the product of Jewish Neoplatonists who were influenced by the Ismailis, as suggested by Paul Fenton ("The Arabic and Hebrew Versions of the Theology of Aristotle," in Psuedo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages, 241-64). The study in...

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