Ibn Ba Sciences in Al-Andalus: Doi:10.1017/s0957423906000336 2006 Cambridge University Press
Ibn Ba Sciences in Al-Andalus: Doi:10.1017/s0957423906000336 2006 Cambridge University Press
Ibn Ba Sciences in Al-Andalus: Doi:10.1017/s0957423906000336 2006 Cambridge University Press
287307
doi:10.1017/S0957423906000336 2006 Cambridge University Press
IBN BA
z JJA AND THE CLASSIFICATION OF THE
SCIENCES IN AL-ANDALUS
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I. INTRODUCTION
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S
* aid al-Andalus was a judge, but also a pure scientist, an
astronomer, who was interested in history. Merging the two
disciplines he wrote his famous Kitab T
* abaqat al-umam,13 in
which he intended to present a systematic summary of the
history of science and scientists since time immemorial. The
book deals almost exclusively with the sciences of the ancients,
and, unlike the works mentioned above, includes astrology.
However, religious sciences are omitted, as is the religious
perspective on sciences, which is at the core of Ibn H
* azm and
Ibn Abd al-Barrs classifications. As noted above, S
* aids book
is a true celebration of rational sciences. Astronomy was his
lifes work; it is the science that occupies him most in T
* abaqat,
in which he also discusses other mathematical disciplines. He
possibly had some knowledge of medicine, due, perhaps, to the
importance of the discipline in Toledo and to his personal
relationship with some of the outstanding physicians of this
city such as Ibn Wafid.
Though we do not know whether S
* aid was trained in
philosophy, he must have had some knowledge of the discipline. In the learned Toledan circles to which he belonged14
there were many people with a knowledge of philosophy and, in
12
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T
* abaqat, we can see that he held the discipline in high esteem:
he tries to draw attention to it by highlighting the works of the
few Andalus philosophers he knew at that time (namely Ibn
H
* azm and Ibn Sda, both mentioned as logicians); he describes
in great detail all the scientists who were knowledgeable of
philosophical disciplines, although they were not philosophers;
finally, he shows an adequate knowledge of the falsafa, particularly of Aristotle and al-Farab. He describes the latters books
on logic, the Ih
**sa al-ulum, and some of his most important
works,15 so accurately that he may actually have studied them.
The clearest evidence that he had read some al-Farab can be
found in the description of Aristotelian works and in the
enumeration of the Greek philosophical schools presented in
T
* abaqat, which are practically literal quotations from the
short tract Risala f ma yanbagh an yuqaddam qabla taallum
al-falsafa.16
The classification of the sciences appears in T
* abaqat in two
ways. First, directly, in S
* aids extremely favourable description of the Ih
**sa al-ulum: There had never been a book like it
and no one has tried to imitate it. No student of any of the
sciences can do without it or proceed without it;17 and second,
indirectly, in the way in which S
* aid arranges the various
disciplines and authors included in the book.18 In this connection, we should note that the Farabian order does not appear as
such, for obvious reasons: being a work of the *tabaqat genre,
the chronological criterion had to be respected; most of S
* aid
biographees were active in several disciplines, a fact that
makes a stratification science-by-science impossible; finally, an
experienced scientist like S
* aid had his own criteria and
preferences. What is really of interest to us is the idea that the
Ih
**sa is a guide for correct scientific training, even though this
book has not a pedagogic purpose. In the biography of one of
15
S
* aid, T
* abaqat, pp. 13740.
I have used the editions by F. Dieterici, Al-Farabs philosophische
Abhandlungen (Leiden, 1890), pp. 4955 and Muh
* ammad T. Daneshpazuh,
al-Mant*iqiyyat li-al-Farab, I (Qum, 1408 / 19878), pp. 110, together with the
Spanish translation by Rafael Ramn Guerrero, Una introduccin de al-Farab a
la filosofia, Al-Qant*ara, 5 (1984): 514. Compare pp. 501 of the ed. by Dieterici
and 14 of the ed. by Daneshpazuh with pp. 7681 and 923 of T
* abaqat.
17
S
* aid, T
* abaqat, pp. 2056; English translation by Semaan I. Salem and Alok
Kumar, Science in the Medieval World by S
* aid al-Andalus (Austin, 1991), p. 50.
18
On the classification of the sciences in S
* aid and al-Farabs influence, see
Balty-Guesdon, Mdecins et hommes de science, pp. 45863, and Forcada,
Biografas de cientficos, pp. 2218.
16
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S
* aid, T
* abaqat, pp. 2056; English trans., pp 812. On this author, see Jos
M Mills Vallicrosa, La poesa sagrada hebraicoespanola (Madrid, 1940), pp. 445
and 83, Eliahu Ashtor, H
* isdai ibn H
* isday, Abu l-Fad
* l, Encyclopaedia Judaica
(Jerusalem, 1972), VIII, p. 533, and section 4.1. below.
20
Balty-Guesdon, Mdecins et hommes de science, p. 459.
21
Jolivet, Classification, pp. 100910. See al-Kind, Risala f Kammiyyat
Kutub Arist*u*tals, ed. Muh
* ammad Abd al-Had Abu Rda (Cairo, 1950), I, pp. 369
and 378.
a
I
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Aristotelian classification, known through al-Kind or alFarab, was vital to the learning of the sciences; that young
students were expected to have acquired wide training in most
of the sciences; and finally, that the teaching of the sciences of
the ancients had been systematized since Abu al-Fad
*l H
* asday
ibn Yusuf ibn H
* asday learned the Physics by listening to a
master and not via his own study. Seen in connection with Ibn
Bajja, the text appears to be more than a mere description of a
given context.
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Yusuf ibn H
* asday (an Andalus physician who emigrated to
Egypt)25 in which he explains the order in which he learned
various sciences: after having mastered music, he studied
astronomy and then physics. Before starting on physics he must
have studied logic while trying to acquire a thorough knowledge of astronomy in Seville. Like Ibn H
* asday, Ibn Bajja
progressed from mathematical to philosophical matters via the
study of logic and physics, as we can see in the following lines
of the above mentioned letter:
Meanwhile [in the course of his studies of astronomy] I did not
understand properly al-Farabs treatment of the various types of
apodictic demonstration (burhan) which he enumerated, and this
remained a subject that I have only recently been able to elucidate. Then
I devoted myself to speculation on physics, which is the task I most
prefer. Of all the issues of the Physics [. . .]. I have commented it because
it contains the principles and all that comes after is its consequence.26
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The syllogistic arts are those whose object consists of being used once
integrated and perfected, and they do not have among their aims the
doing of some particular work. They are five: philosophy and its arts.
Philosophy is the art that comprehends all beings (mawjudat)37 in so far
as they are known via a certain science. Its parts are established
according to the parts of beings.
Among them, there is theology [al-ilm al-ilah], which comprehends
the beings which are the ultimate causes of anything a#ected by them,
and are neither a body nor in a body.
Among them, there is physical science [al-ilm al-t*ab], the theoretical art by which the true science in natural bodies, and in the accidents
of the essence as well, is attained. It comprehends all beings whose
existence does not originate in the human will,38 which are the bodies
composed by matter and form and their inherent accidents with respect
to matter and form.
Among them is the science of the will [al-ilm al-irad, politics], which
comprehends the beings that exist through human will and choice. They
consist of virtues and vices.
Among them are the mathematical sciences [al-taalm], which comprehend beings separated from matter but not from number and
measure. They are divided into seven classes: the first is arithmetic [ilm
al-adad], which studies the properties and characters of numbers; the
second is geometry [ilm al-handasa], which studies the line, the surface
and the body taken in themselves; the third is optics [ilm al-manaz*ir,
the science of the aspects], which studies the line, the surface and the
body in so far as they are objects of observation; the fourth is astronomy
[ilm al-nujum], which studies the quantity of movements of celestial
bodies, their structure, and the dimension of their sizes and distances;
the fifth is music, which studies the sounds and their relations, as well
as their harmony and discord, and enumerates their properties concerning their measure; the sixth is statics [ilm al-athqal, the science of the
weights] which studies either their measure or what is measured by
them, and the way of lifting and moving them from a place to another;
the seventh is the science of artifices [ilm al-h
* iyal],39 which studies the
way of making real many things that can be proved theoretically by
means of mathematical sciences. The artifice seeks to remove the
obstacles that impede its existence and also the contrary. There are
37
The term mawjudat is employed very frequently by al-Farab to designate the
object of the sciences, as we can see, for example, in the Ih
**sa in the chapter
devoted to metaphysics and Tah
**sl al-Saada (vz. pp. 89 of Hyderabads edition,
1344 / 1925; pp. 1819 of Muhsin Mahdis translation in Al-Farabs Philosophy of
Plato and Aristotle [New York, 1962]). On the equivalence of this term, see pp.
1812 in Richard Lemay, Gerard of Cremona, Dictionary of Scientific Biography,
XV (supplement I), (New York, 1978), pp. 17392.
38
The negative sense that this sentence requires is not recorded in the
editions. The whole sentence should be read, in my opinion, as: wa-huwa
yashtamilu ala al-mawjudat allat wujuduha [laysa] bi-iradati al-insan as*lan.
39
I prefer not to translate this term by its standard equivalent engineering
because in al-Farab and Ibn Bajja this word has a more general meaning, as we
will see presently.
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the commentaries to Aristotles theoretical science. This program has, in turn, a second side, whose object is the sciences
(understanding the term in its modern sense), some of which
would be revised according to the Aristotelian-Farabian
scientific method. In a sense, this aspect seems to result from a
slightly di#erent conception of the role of logic; whereas in
al-Kinds work it is placed between mathematical sciences and
philosophy, in al-Farabs Ih
**sa it is placed after the linguistic
disciplines and ahead of any of the sciences.
Since Ibn Bajja exerted a profound influence on the early
work of Ibn Rushd and on Ibn T
* ufayl, we can consider these
short lines about classification of the sciences a sort of prelude
to a new chapter in Andalus sciences, which was to reach its
highest point in the revolt against Ptolemaic astronomy.50
We know, albeit indirectly (through Maimonides), that Ibn
Bajja was a forerunner of that movement, even if the evidence
we have suggests that he was a follower of Ptolemy rather than
of Ptolemys critics.51 Nonetheless, works such as Kalam f
al-haya (whose influence can be traced in Ibn Rushds
Summary of the Almagest)52 and Ibn Bajjas concern with the
scientific method show that he (and perhaps other authors from
the Saragossan circles), may well have paved the way for Ibn
T
* ufayl, Ibn Rushd and al-Bit*ruj and their attempts to reformulate astronomy and medicine in order to make them compatible
with the fundamental tenets established by the philosophical
disciplines, particularly by Aristotles theoretical science and
logic. This conception of the sciences of the ancients as a
cohesive unit requires thorough training in most of them (if not
in all), particularly in logic and philosophical disciplines. An
50
As is well known, this expression was coined by Sabra in his The
Andalusian revolt against Ptolemaic astronomy, in Everett Mendelsohn (ed.),
Transformation and Tradition in the Sciences: Essays in Honor of I. Bernard
Cohen (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 13353 (reprinted in Sabra, Optics, Astronomy and
Logic).
51
On this subject and on Ibn Bajjas contribution, see M. Forcada, Averroes y
la ciencia, Averroes y los averrosmos. Actas del III Congreso Nacional de
Filosofa Medieval (Zaragoza, 1999), pp. 49102. This paper contains the necessary
bibliographical references, with the exception of the recent article by Jos Luis
Mancha, Al-Bit*rujs theory of the motions of the fixed stars, Archive for the
History of Exact Sciences, 58 (2004): 14382, which sheds new light on the
question, and the article by G. Endress quoted above.
52
Cf. pp. 53 and 567 of Juliane Lay, LAbrg de lAlmageste, un indit
dAverros en version hebraque, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy, 6 (1996):
2361.
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The classifications of the sciences in al-Andalus can be considered as reflections of the scientific activity of the 5th / 11th
century, in so far as all of them mirror a relevant issue in the
question. The classifications by religious scholars and theologians (Ibn Abd al-Barr and Ibn H
* azm) show the problem of the
relationship between reason and faith, between ulum aqliyya
and ulum naqliyya, in a context of relative consensus that was
favourable to intellectual debate. Philosophy is potentially
seen as a conflictive science, particularly by Ibn Abd al-Barr,
but Ibn H
* azm solves the problem by appealing to its condition
as an ancilla theologiae. S
* aid al-Andalus complements the
perception of the earlier authors with a faithful portrait of
scientific progress in al-Andalus. His work reflects a fairly high
level of accomplishment in medicine, astronomy and other
mathematical disciplines, and a notable interest in philosophy,
although no major philosopher (apart from Ibn H
* azm) had yet
appeared in al-Andalus. He describes the breeding ground on
which the great Western falsafa was to flourish in the following
century. He tells us that the Aristotelian classification of the
sciences contributed to the scientific training in a way that we
are still far from understanding completely and that al-Farabs
Ih
**sa was known. Aristotle and al-Farabs order and classification of the sciences are thus linked to the flourishing of the
Andalus sciences of the ancients, and the best lesson that one
can learn from them the unity of knowledge seems to have
been particularly well understood in Saragossa, the most
important centre of mathematical and philosophical studies at
the time. Ibn Bajja, the major representative of this school,
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