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Review: [untitled] Author(s): Muhsin Mahdi Reviewed work(s): Al-Frb: Ful al- Madan ("Aphorisms of the Statesman") by D. M.

Dunlop Source: Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2, (Apr., 1964), pp. 140-143 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/543683 Accessed: 14/06/2008 07:38
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140

JOURNAL

OF NEAR

EASTERN

STUDIES

al-Fdrabi: Fusul al-Madani ("Aphorisms of the Statesman"). Edited with an English

translation, introduction, and notes by


D. M. DUNLOP. "University of Cambridge

Oriental Publications," No. 5. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1961. Pp. 208. $14.50. The present work should be welcomed as the first major text by al-Farabi to be edited in the Anglo-Saxon world and translated into English. Dr. Dunlop (who is also the editor and translator of some of al-Farabi's shorter
works on logic, see Islamic Quarterly, III-V

[1956-59]) published an English translation of the Aphorisms on the basis of the Bodleian MS, Hunt. 307, fols. 91b-109a (=B), in Iraq, XIV (1952), 93-117. Subsequently, Professor Arberry identified a further manuscript copy of the same work in the Chester Beaty MS, No. 3714 (=A), which proved that the Bodleian manuscript is defective and incomplete. Dr. Dunlop's edition is based on the collation of these two manuscripts. In addition, it offers a list of "variants and readings" from the Hebrew version contained in two Bodleian MSS, Mich. 370, fols. 102b120a, and Poc. 280, fols. 69b-91a (see pp. 20-21). The Hebrew version appears to have been collated throughout, but not with the intention of utilizing it to reconstruct the corrupt portions of the Arabic original or to fill in the missing portions; Dr. Dunlop confines himself to referring to the Hebrew variants in certain crucial places where the Arabic original remains defective or doubtful. In those passages where the Aphorisms contains the same text as the Attainment of Happiness, Dr. Dunlop uses the only available edition (Hyderabad, A.H. 1345) to control the manuscripts of the Aphorisms, and in a number of cases he actually corrects his text on the basis of that edition, relegating the readings of his manuscripts to the notes. (The available manuscripts of the of the manuscripts of the Aphorisms against the Hyderabad edition.) On the whole, the editor has worked diligently and produced a serviceable edition. If the text remains defective and incomplete, this is primarily
Attainment of Happiness confirm the readings

due to the fact that the manuscripts available to the editor were defective and incomplete. The editor has recognized this fact and indicated the possibility of missing portions in some of the sections. Apart from making a fuller use of the Hebrew version, only the identification of other and superior manuscripts of the Arabic original could provide a more solid basis for "the attempt to recover what al-Farabi wrote" (p. 21). Since the publication of this text, the reviewer had the opportunity to examine a large group of manuscripts of al-Farabi's works in the public libraries of Turkey. Two further manuscripts of the Arabic original of the Aphorisms were identified. The first is in Istanbul (Millet Kitiiphanesi, Feyzullah, No. 1279, fols. 114b-65b). It is written in careful Maghribi script and bears no date
(probably seventh-eighth centuries
A.H.).

The

folios are not numbered in the manuscript. Quite a few of them are misplaced (fol. 154 is to be inserted between fols. 129 and 130; fols. 133-52 belong to al-Ghazali's Mizan al-cAmal). It contains (following Dunlop's enumeration) sections 1-61 and supplementary sections 93-95 (omitting supplementary section 92 with the Hebrew version); and part of section 56 (Dunlop, pp. 139:5140:12) is repeated at the end (fol. 155). In general, this manuscript presents the same text as the two manuscripts utilized by Dr. Dunlop, although it offers better readings in certain places and fills in a few blanks in Dr. Dunlop's text, The second manuscript is in Diyarbekir (Umumi, No. 1970, fols. 34b-68a). It is written by an exceedingly careful and expert hand (Maghribi or Eastern Christian?) before A.H. 681. It provides by far the most complete and perfect version of the Aphorisms that is known, and it is most unfortunate that Dr. Dunlop was not in a position to utilize it in his edition. It does not support the division of the text into two Parts, and it excludes supplementary sections 92-95. It contains ninety-six sections, numbered consecutively by means of letternumerals. Sections 3, 15, 23, and 40 in the Diyarbekir manuscript are totally missing in

BOOKREVIEWS
Dr. Dunlop's text, and section 71 begins with al-mawjiddt in section 66 (p. 148:5) in Dr. Dunlop's text. In addition, missing portions of a number of other sections (including some that were suspected by the editor) can now be retrieved. There is little room for doubt that any serious study and interpretation of the Aphorisms will have to await a new edition based on the Diyarbekir manuscript, relegating the variants supplied by the other known Arabic manuscripts and by the manuscripts of the Hebrew version to the notes, except in those rare cases where they might provide a better reading. The English translation will have to be revised to conform to the text of the new edition. Dr. Dunlop's English version is readable and useful to the student who tries to puzzle out a difficult Arabic text without expert help. It is true that the reader who does not have access to the Arabic text may not appreciate fully the meaning of a passage like the following: He whose customary deed are in agreement with what is good at first sight in the common opinion of all will not be prevented by his custom from learning the speculative sciences, nor from his deeds coming to be in agreement with what is good in reality, since first sight necessitates that he does what is good in reality and obligatory more than that he does what is at first sight uncriticized opinion. What in reality is opinion is opinion which has been criticized and confirmed after criticism, and first sight necessitates that opinion which has been criticized is truer than first sight. (P. 77.) But he ought to remember that the translation of Arabic philosophic texts into English has hardly begun, and that the lack of an established tradition in this field, combined with the difficulty of al-Farabi's style, conspire to make a first translation a hazardous task. The title of al-Farabi's Aphorisms indicates the work's literary character and subject matter. As Dr. Dunlop points out in his the writing of "aphorisms" introduction, (fusul) was an established tradition prior to al-Farabi's, especially in the field of medicine (this is not unrelated to the fact that al-

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Farabi's Aphorisms made "a wider application to the art of government of the metaphor of medicine..." [p. 9]); and perhaps the most interesting passage in Dr. Dunlop's introduction is the quotation from the introduction of Maimonides' Medical Aphorisms, where Maimonides explains the purpose of and refers to earlier works, aphoristic medical works written in this form and to al-Farabi's Aphorisms (Paul Kahle, "Mosis Maimonidis Praefatio et Aphorismorum

Excerpta," in Galeni in Platonis Timaeum


Commentarii Fragmenta ["Corpus Medicorum Graecorum I] [Berlin, Supplementum," [German translation], 1934], pp. 91-93 93-96 [Arabic text]). According to Maimonides, the aphoristic form is designed especially to meet the reader's need to "retain" a host of "general as well as particular, almost individual" ideas, aphoristic works being "undoubtedly easy to retain and helpful to the reader in understanding their intentions." He stresses also what aphoristic works do not attempt to achieve: they are not meant to be "sufficient" or "comprehensive," and they do not include "all the axioms" needed in a particular He suggests, discipline. further, that an aphoristic work, at least his own Medical Aphorisms, is not an altogether original work, but that it is meant to serve as an aid to memory for the author himself as well as for the reader: "I do not say that I have composed these aphorisms that I have written down, but rather that I selected them For I picked them (ikhtartuhd). (iltaqattuhd) from Galen's statements..." He then explains how he will identify the statements of Galen and distinguish them from his own, and answers possible objections against including certain passages and not others: "A man does not select such aphorisms for others; he selects them for himself. I selected these aphorisms for myself, an aid to memory as it were. In the same way, all those who know as much as I or less, will benefit from them." These remarks by Maimonides show that, while "in theory" an aphoristic work on a subject "is a convenient way of treating the salient points of an existing body of

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JOURNAL OF NEAR EASTERN STUDIES character of his assumption to such an extent that he is willing to assume that, not "six," but "ninety-six" was the number intended this by Ibn Abi Usaibi'ah. He abandons assumption on the ground that "There is no evidence that the original number [of the Aphorisms] was ninety-six" (ibid.). Since the Diyarbekir manuscript supplies this evidence, one may think it worthwhile to pursue this assumption further. An examination of the manuscripts of the Virtuous City, however, shows that such an investigation cannot lead anywhere. For they preserve the complete text of the "Six Sections," inserted at the beginning of the Virtuous City. If one reads these "Six Sections," he will see that they have nothing whatever to do either with the Aphorisms or with the Political Regime, which Dr. Dunlop presents as the next likely candidate (See (pp. 11-13). Siileymania [Istanbul], Kili9 Kiitiphanesi Ali Papa, MS, No. 674, fols. lb-6a.) We must then examine the "other grounds" upon which Dr. Dunlop attempts to date the Aphorisms. He assumes that the Aphorisms was written after the Attainment of Happiness on the ground that the Aphorisms contain "quotations" from the Attainment of Happiness. The sole basis for this statement is the fact that there are certain passages, sentences, and phrases, that are found in both the Attainment of Happiness and the Aphorisms, which is no more proof that the Aphorisms "quotes" the Attainment of Happiness than that the Attainment of Happiness the Aphorisms. "the "quotes" Finally, Fusul al-Madani [Aphorisms] introduces two occur important terms, which apparently nowhere else in his [al-Farabi's] political writings and seem to be new (p. 13). The first of these two terms is jih&d (Dr. Dunlop insists that it must mean "'holy' war") and the second is malik al-sunna ("king [ruling on the basis] of the law"). As for jih&d, it occurs in various forms in the Attainment of Happiness (Hyderabad, A.H. 1345), pp. 22:8, 24:5, 25:3-6. (Dr. Dunlop must have been misled by Dieterici's text of the Virtuous the military City, p. 59:7-8, regarding function of the First Chief. Kilig Ali Paga

knowledge" (Dunlop, p. 10), in practice its literary character demands as much attention as a work written in epistle (risala) or book (kitdb) form. al-Farabi is less explicit about his Aphorisms: the title merely says that nuntazaca) they consist of "extracts" (fuisl that include [not "all," cf. Maimonides, but] numerous axioms from the statements of the Ancients...." (p. 103). Therefore one is to what he justified in paying attention chooses to extract and what he leaves unextracted. Also, since all of al-Farabi's aphorisms are "extracts" from the statements of the Ancients, one is justified in wondering why he takes the trouble in some of these extracts to remind us again that they represent the opinions or judgments of the "Ancients" or of "a certain group," especially when the extracts in question deal with such crucial matters as the distinction between a "divine" and a "bestial" human being (Dunlop, section 11) or the precise meaning of the "afterlife in which man sees his Lord" (Dunlop, section 76). The Aphorisms announces itself as a political work. It thus invites comparison with al-Farabi's other major political works, expecially the Virtuous City, the Political Regime, and the Attainment of Happiness. This task presupposes an adequate study of these works, based on adequate editions, which we do not have. Of the three, Dieterici's edition of the Virtuous City is the only edition properly so called; yet it was responsible for side-tracking Dr. Dunlop into a futile excursus regarding the possible identity of the Aphorisms and the "Six Sections" written by al-Farabi in Egypt in A.H. 337 to show the divisions of the subject matter treated in the Virtuous City: The natural assumption is that the fusufl of which Ibn abi Usaibicah is here speaking are those of the Fusuil al-Madani [Aphorisms] which, since it deals with the same subject as the Madinah Fddilah [Virtuous City] in schematic form, may reasonably be supposed to have been written later, and on other grounds appears to have been a late work of al-Farabi (p. 11). Dr. Dunlop is impressed by the "natural"

BOOK REVIEWS MS, No. 674, fol. 46b:10-11, reads: wa-an takuna lahu maCa dhdlika judatu ta'attin bi-badanihi li-mubdsharati :l-harbi.) And the term malik al-sunna occurs in the Political Regime, as attested by the best and most complete manuscript of that work (Feysullah, MS, No. 1279, fol. 101a:5 = (Hyderabad, A.H. 1346) p. 51:6, which gives the corrupt reading: tilka al-sunna), as well as in the Virtuous Religion MS, Leiden, Cod. Or., No. 1002, fols. 56b: 1-2, 58a:20; note also the term hijra in fol. 65a:12, cf. Dunlop, p. 15). As far as the reviewer is able to judge, this the sum of the evidence upon constitutes which Dr. Dunlop bases his assumption of the "late" date of the Aphorisms, which in turn serves as a basis for the assumptions that the work represents "a substantially different point of view" than the "earlier" works; that it has "a contemporary reference" to events in Sayf al-Dawlah's career which "form a framework into which various matin the Fusuil al-Madani ters mentioned [Aphorisms] may easily be fitted"; and so forth (pp. 13 ff.).
MUHSIN MAHDI

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translated by GEORGET. SCANLON. Cairo: The American University of Cairo Press, 1961. Pp. viii 130 [Arabic text] 1-97. $4.50. Dr. Scanlon begins his edition and what he calls "its somewhat problematic translation" (p. 21) with an account of the literature on Muslim warfare, noting its "puzzling aspects" and especially the many "technological and problems" it presents. The terminological choice of this particular work seems to have resulted from the presence of a copy of it in the Yahudah Collection (No. ELS 3954) at Princeton University. The edition collates this MS with that of Fatih, No. 3483, now in in Istanbul. The work the Siileymania "proposes to do no more than bring to the attention of the scholarly community one more original source-book on the subject of Muslim warfare" (ibid.), and it is hard to and deny it this merit. The translation, the "Preliminary of especially Glossary Muslim Military Terms" (pp. 123-30), point to the amount and difficulty of the research that has to be done before we could claim to possess an adequate philological foundation for, let alone an adequate treatment of, this aspect of Islamic civilization. MUHSIN MAHDI University of Chicago

A Muslim Manual of War, Being Tafrij alKurub fi TadbZr al-Hurib by CUmar Ibn Ibrdhim al-Awsi al-Ansdri. Edited and

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