Islamic Philosophy from Its Origin to the Present: Philosophy in the ...

Dimensions of the Islamic Intellectual Tradition 155
One of Ibn Rushd’s most important works was his response to
al-Ghazzål¥’s attack against the philosophers contained in the latter’s
Tahåfut al-falåsifah. Ibn Rushd took up the challenge of defending Islamic
philosophy and sought to respond to al-Ghazzål¥ point by point
in his Tahåfut al-tahåfut (Incoherence of the Incoherence), which is one
of the major works of Islamic philosophy. 60 This work did not have the
influence of al-Ghazzål¥’s attack, but it did not go without a further
response by later Islamic thinkers. Ibn Rushd revived Aristotle, but he
did not have the influence of the Peripatetic Ibn S¥nå, whom he criticized
in many ways. Ibn Rushd was especially opposed to Ibn S¥nå’s
theory of emanation and emphasis on the soul of the spheres, as well
as his doctrine of the intellect and the relation of the soul with the
Active Intellect. The result of Ibn Rushd’s critique was the banishment
of the angels, of the Animae caelestes, from the cosmos. The influence
of Averroes in the West could not but help in the secularization of the
cosmos, preparing the ground for the rise of a totally secularized
knowledge of the natural order.
Islamic philosophy itself, however, chose another path. It revived
Avicennan philosophy rather than following Ibn Rushd and turned to
the “Orient of Light” through the works of Suhraward¥ and set out on
a path whose first steps had been explored by Ibn S¥nå himself. With
the death of Ibn Rushd something died—but not Islamic philosophy,
as has been claimed by Western students of the Islamic philosophic
tradition for seven centuries. Philosophy began a new phase of its life
in Persia and other eastern lands of Islam, while its sun set in the
Maghrib. But even in the western lands of Islam, there appeared at
least two other major philosophical figures, ‘Abd al-¡aqq ibn Sab‘¥n,
who hailed from Murcia, spent the middle part of his life in North
Africa and Egypt, and lived the last period of his life in Mecca, where
he died around 669/1270, and Ibn Khald¨n who hailed from Tunisia.
Ibn Sab‘¥n had definitely pro-Shi‘ite tendencies and expounded openly
the doctrine of “the transcendent unity of being,” which caused him
to fall into difficulty with exoteric religious authorities both in the
Maghrib and in Egypt. Even in Mecca, where he was supported by the
ruler, he was attacked from many quarters, and the circumstances of his
death remain a mystery. Some have said that he was forced to commit
suicide, 61 others that he committed suicide before the Ka‘bah to experience
the ecstasy of union, and still others that he was poisoned.
Ibn Sab‘¥n was at once a philosopher, a Sufi, and a follower of
the Shawdhiyyah Order, which went back to the Andalusian Sufi from
Seville Ab¨ ‘Abd Allåh al-Shawdh¥ and was characterized by its mixing
of philosophy and Sufism, which we see already in Ibn Masarrah.