History Of Islamic Philosophy - Henry Corbin.pdf - Falsafa

HISTORY OF ISLAMIC PHILOSOPHY
moved to India. Needless to say, this Yemeni philosophy has been
completely absent up till now from our histories of philosophy, for
the good reason that it has long been kept under the seal of the strictest
secrecy. (We may recall that Yemen belongs officially to the Zaydi
branch of Shiism, which we cannot discuss here.) Some of these Yemeni
Ismailis were prolific authors: Sayyid-na Ibrahim ibn al-Hamidi, second
da'i (died at San'a' in 557/1162); Sayyid-na Hatim ibn Ibrahim,
third da'i{d. 596/1199); Sayyid-na 'Ali ibn Muhammad, fifth da'i
(d. 612/1215), author of twenty great works, outstanding among which
is his monumental response to al-Ghazali's attacks (see below, V,
7); Sayyid-na Husayn ibn 'Ali, eighth da'i(d. 667/1268), hitherto the
only one among them to have had a treatise translated (into French;
see bibliography). This whole Yemeni period culminates in the work
of Sayyid-na Idris 'Imad al-Din, nineteenth da'i of Yemen (d.
872/1468). Even though the last three authors specified are posterior
to the date we assigned as the limit of the first part of this study,
reference to them is unavoidable.
5. The precise significance of philosophy in Ismailism must be sought
in the Ismaili exegesis, developed in the commentary of a qasidah
by Abu al-Haytham al-Jurjani, of the following hadith of the Prophet:
'Between my tomb and the pulpit where I preach, there is a garden
from among the gardens of Paradise.' Needless to say, this saying is
not to be understood in a literal, exoteric sense (zahir). The pulpit
for preaching is precisely this literal appearance, that is to say, positive
religion with all its imperatives and dogmas. The tomb is philosophy
(falsafah), for in this tomb the exoteric aspect of positive religion and
its dogmas must undergo the decomposition and dissolution of death.
The garden of paradise which stretches between the pulpit and the
tomb is the garden of gnostic truth, the field of Resurrection where
the initiate rises again to an incorruptible life. Such a concept makes
philosophy into a necessary initiatory stage, and this is without doubt
unique in Islam: it is the whole spirit of Shiite gnosis, and the whole
point of the da 'wah, the 'Ismaili Convocation' (literally, the Ismaili
kerygma).
We are dealing here not with a more or less precarious balance
between philosophy and theology, not with the 'double truth' of the
Averroists, still less with the idea of philosophy as ancilla theologiae.
The religion which is theosophia, True Religion (din-i haqq), is reborn
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SHIISM AND PROPHETIC PHILOSOPHY
from the intermediate, from what lies between the dogma and the tomb
where dogmatic belief must die and be metamorphosed. Ta'wil is the
exegesis which transcends all known facts and redirects them to their
origin. Philosophy culminates in gnosis, for it leads to spiritual birth
(wiladah ruhaniyah). We can perceive the themes which are common
to Twelver Imamism and Ismailism, as well as the themes on which
Ismailism, particularly that of Alamut, was to differ: the relationship
between shari'ah and haqiqah, between prophecy and the Imamate.
They are not, however, themes which derive from Greek philosophy.
We cannot enter here into details—for example, the differences
between the pentadic schema of Nasir-i Khusraw's cosmology, and
the structure of the pleroma according to Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani;
or the decadic system described by the latter, which accords with those
of al-Farabi and Avicenna. We may observe, however, particularly
in the case of al-Farabi (d. 339/950), a concern with prophetic
philosophy (see below, V, 2), while for their part certain great Ismaili
works of capital importance (by Abu Ya'qub al-Sijistani and Hamid
al-Din al-Kirmani) were written prior to Avicenna (d. 429/1037). To
undertake a comparative study of the features of Islamic thought, which
is far more diverse and rich than has been hitherto supposed in the
West, and to isolate the particular context of a philosophy which does
not identify itself with the Greek contribution, is a task for the future.
Here, we can but make a brief survey of some of the themes, taking
Abu Ya'qub al-Sijistani, Hamid al-Din al-Kirmani, and the Yemeni
writers as our principal guides.
I. Fatimid Ismailism
1. The dialectic of the Tawhid
1. If we are to understand what it is that makes the Ismaili doctrine,
•• the form par excellence of Islamic gnosis, so profoundly original,
and what it is that differentiates it from the Hellenizing philosophers,
We must consider the intuition on which it is based. In order to preserve
the divine Abyss from being assimilated to any of its derivatives, the
ancient Gnostics had recourse to purely negative terms in describing
it: Unknowable, Unnameable, Ineffable, Abyss. These expressions
have their equivalents in Ismaili terminology: the Principle or Originator
(mubdi'), the Mystery of Mysteries {al-ghayb al-ghuyub), 'he who
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