{"collection":"Islam","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/isl/mishkat/msh09.htm","path":"isl/mishkat/msh09.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/isl/mishkat/msh09.htm","text":"After this it will cause no surprise that it is this figure of the Vicegerent (al-Mut\u00e2` . . . alladh\u00ee amara bi tahr\u00eek il-sam\u00e2w\u00e2t) who excited the curiosity and suspicion of thinkers in the century after Ghazz\u00e2l\u00ee's death. The passage is at least twice singled out, once by Ibn Rushd in the treatise already cited, and once by Ibn Tufail in his Hayy ibn Yaqz\u00e2n.\n(1) Ibn Rushd uses the passage to level at Ghazz\u00e2l\u00ee a direct accusation of gravest hypocritical insincerity over a matter which Ghazz\u00e2l\u00ee had ostentatiously singled out as the prime test of orthodoxy, namely.. the doctrine of emanation. According to Ibn Rushd the passage about the Vicegerent was the explicit teaching of this doctrine of the Philosophers, for which,\n{p. 18}\nelsewhere, Ghazz\u00e2l\u00ee can find no words strong enough to express his censure and contempt. The words of Ibn Rushd are as follows:\n\"Then he comes on with his book known as Mishk\u00e2t al-Anw\u00e2r, and mentions therein all the grades of the Knowers of Allah; and says that all of them are veiled save those who believe that Allah is not the mover of the First Heaven, He being the One from Whom this mover of the First Heaven emanated: which is an open declaration on his part of the tenet of the philosophers' schools in the science of theology; though he has said in several places that their science of theology (as distinct from their other sciences) is a set of conjectures.\"[1]\nIt is not within the scope of this Introduction to follow in detail the evidence for and against the truth of this radical accusation. This has been done at length and with considerable minuteness in the monograph in Der Isl\u00e2m, which has already been cited (pp. 133-145). The\n[1. Op. cit., ed. M\u00fcller, p. 21, Cairo edition, p. 59. The treatise was written before A.H. 575; date of Mishk\u00e2t c. 500.]\n{p. 19}\nreader must be referred to that; and it must suffice here to say that after the full consideration of all the evidence the verdict given there. is Not Guilty. On the other hand, the existence of an esoteric doctrine in regard to this Vicegerent and his function is undeniable (and undenied); and it is clear, from the comparison of the Mishk\u00e2t itself with the Munqidh, that that doctrine differed vitally from the one professed by Ghazz\u00e2l\u00ee exoterically (Munqidh, p. 11). Ghazz\u00e2l\u00ee himself, in a passage of remarkable candour,[1] admits that every \"Perfect\" man has three sets of opinions (madh\u00e2hib), (a) those of his own environment, (b) those he teaches to inquirers according as they are able to receive them, and (c) those which he believes in secret between himself and Allah, and never mentions except to an inner circle of friends or students.\nIbn Rushd's accusation was an attempt to identify the figure of the Vicegerent, al-Mut\u00e2` with that of Al Ma`l\u00fbl al Awwal, the First Caused, in the emanational scheme of the Neoplatonizing[2] philosophers of Isl\u00e2m, with\n[1. M\u00eez\u00e2n al `Amal, p. 214.\n2. The unquestionable Neoplatonism of much of the forms and expression of Ghazz\u00e2l\u00ee's thought, if not of the thought itself {footnote p. 20} Contd. (see especially pp. 15, 16. 29, 47 seq.]), exposed him in a very special way to this charge of emanational pantheism. And it cannot have made it easier for him to steer clear of such dangers in fact.]\n{p. 20}\nal-F\u00e2r\u00e2bi and Ibn Sin\u00e2 at their head. This was the Demiurge, the Being who first emanates from the Absolute Being, and mediates between It and all the lower stages or relational existence, with their increasing limitedness and grossness, thus relieving the predicateless Absolute from all part in the creation or administration of the universe.\nThere can be no doubt that whatever Ghazz\u00e2l\u00ee's doctrine of the Vicegerent was, and whatever else his esoteric doctrine contained, the emanational theory formed no part of that doctrine. For this particular piece of pseudo-metaphysics he appears to have had a very particular dislike and contempt; and if Ibn Rushd was really serious in levelling his accusation he can hardly be acquitted of being blinded by his bitter prejudice against \"Ab\u00fb H\u00e2mid\". The only possible ground for Ibn Rushd's accusation which I have been able to discover is as follows:--it is a fact that the extreme (ghul\u00e2t) Im\u00e2mites did identify al-R\u00fbh \"The Spirit of\n{p. 21}\nAllah\" with the First Emanation[1]. If, as is contended hereafter, Ghazz\u00e2l\u00ee identified al-Mut\u00e2` with Al-R\u00fbh, and Ibn Rushd was aware of this, he may have thought, or been pleased to think, that Ghazz\u00e2l\u00ee therefore thought that al-Mut\u00e2` was the First Emanation. This would be an indirect confirmation of the identification which it is attempted presently to prove, namely, al-Mut\u00e2` = al-R\u00fbh.\n(2) We now pass to the other criticism of the passage, by Ibn Rushd's contemporary Ibn Tufail, in the introduction to his philosophical romance entitled Hayy Ibn Yaqz\u00e2n.[2]\nIbn Tuf\u00e2il's allusion to this perplexing passage is as follows:--\n\"Some later writers[3] have fancied they have found something tremendous in that passage of his that occurs at the end of al-Mishk\u00e2t, which (they think) impales Ghazz\u00e2l\u00ee on a dilemma from which there is no escape. I mean where, after speaking of the various degrees of the\n[1. Massignon, Hall\u00e2j, p. 661.\n2. Ed. Gautier, pp. 14-15, transl. 12-14.\n3. Or \"a later writer\" presumably Ibn Rushd himself, in the passage already cited and discussed.]\n{p. 22}\nLight-Veiled, and then going on to speak of the true Attainers, he tells us that these Attainers have discovered that this Existing One possesses an attribute which negates unmitigated Unity; insisting that it necessarily follows from this that Ghazz\u00e2l\u00ee believed that the Absolute Being has within His Essence some sort of plurality: which God forbid!\"\nThe excursus on this passage in the article cited from Der Isl\u00e2m (pp. 145-151) can only be summarized here. It seems to have escaped the critics quoted by Ibn Tufail, that the Unveiled, according to Ghazz\u00e2l\u00ee himself, abandoned the position of the last of the Light-Veiled just because of this dread, viz. that the identification of al-Mut\u00e2` with Allah would endanger \"the unmitigated Unity\" of Deity. Ibn Tufail himself, though he admits the serious contradictions which appear in Ghazz\u00e2l\u00ee's books, flatly refuses to see in this passage anything so monstrous, or anything sinister at all.\nUnfortunately he does not give us his own exegesis of the passage; but it may perhaps be inferred from his own schematization of the\n{p. 23}\ngrades of being. In this he makes elaborate use of the schema of reflectors, and reflectors of reflectors, which Ghazz\u00e2l\u00ee has already suggested in this book (pp. [15, 16]). \"The essences of the Intelligences of the Spheres\" are represented as successive, graded reflections of the Divine Essence. The highest of them is not the essence of the One Real nor is he the Sphere itself, nor is he other than both. He is, as it were, the image of the sun which appears in a polished mirror; for that image is neither the sun, nor the mirror, nor other than them both.\" It is probable that Ibn Tufail, who professed to have won through to his position after studying al-Ghazz\u00e2l\u00ee and Ibn S\u00een\u00e2 (the juxtaposition is singular!), would have more or less equated this conception of the highest Essence of the Intelligences of the Spheres with the conception of al-Mut\u00e2` in the Mishk\u00e2t, though he says nothing about the business of Heaven-moving in relation to this Being. It need not follow that al-Ghazz\u00e2l\u00ee would have accepted this explanation[1]; though both men were evidently striving equally to avoid a total pantheism, and both\n[1. Though his \"mirror\" schema in Mishk\u00e2t, p. [15], is near Ibn Tuf\u00e2il's meaning.]\n{p. 24}\ndisbelieved in the emanational theory as taught by al-F\u00e2r\u00e2b\u00ee and Ibn Sin\u00e2.","title":"V. The Problem Of The Vicegerent In Ibn Rushd And Ibn Tufail","type":"page"}