September 2013 – Page 3

ridiculing the learned measures intellectual development

About a millennium ago, Baghdad was probably the largest city on earth and arguably the center of the most advanced human civilization. Elites in Baghdad viewed contemptuously low-status groups such as school teachers, weavers, and Bedouins. Surviving classical Arabic texts disparage and ridicule “the common folks, the scum, the plebeians and the servile class.”[1] But classical Arabic texts even more frequently disparage and ridicule the learned elite.[2] Hypocrisy, affectation, solemnity, and self-interested rationalization are universal propensities of human intellectual development. More ridicule of the learned indicates a higher state of intellectual development.

Linguistic style is a means for signifying group affiliation and class distinctions. One classical Arabic text approvingly observes that a scholar avoided using Arabic words of Persian origin even when speaking Arabic to his cook.[3] But another text transmitted the humorously didactic anecdote:

I once stopped at a carpenter’s, and asked, “What is the price that this pair of doors costeth?” He retorted, “Two pieces of shitteth, oh you idioteth.” Then I swore never to talk to a common man in an unfitting manner. [4]

This anecdote extends learning in decorum to addressing the common man. In ordinary speaking, the elite apparently did not use classical Arabic “so as to avoid being classified as a tiresome and insufferable individual.”[5] An alternative was to be self-consciously a learned clown like al-Haysa Baysa.

Social status and learning were ridiculed as excuses for rapaciousness. A man who attempted to invoke his impeccable religious lineage was bluntly rebuffed from below:

A descendant of Ali {Ali ibn Abi Talib} smuggled a prostitute into his house. When he wanted {to have intercourse with} her, she said: “The money {first}!” He said: “Come off it, woe unto you; I am a relative of God’s Messenger, peace be upon him!” She replied: “Stop that! You should opt for the whores of Qumm; this won’t sell with the whores of Baghdad!” [6]

Another anecdote recounts the story of a professional Qur’an reader and a woman who paid him a loaf of bread to recite over her dead son’s grave:

The man recites: “The day when they will be pulled, faces downward, towards hellfire. Taste the touch of Hell!” {Quran 54:48} Utterly indignant, the woman reproaches him that this is perhaps not precisely the appropriate passage for recital over a grave. The man answers: “Why, what do you expect for a loaf of bread? ‘Reclining on cushions with a brocaded trimming’?! {Quran 55:54} That costs a dirham!” [7]

Elite status that means little more than privileged access to sex and money gets reduced with ridicule.

Ridicule also serves to regulate bogus learning. Religious scholars who pretended to know it all and proscribe on that basis were asked to give a legal opinion on a specific person’s genitals.[8] Learning that can easily be mocked will be:

So one day, when {that pretensious religious thinker} asked him, “What do you say, may God bring you happiness, on the terminal point of the annihilation of delusions at the prime of closeness to the reaching of the final goals?”, Husayn replied: “This is part of {the issue of} the existence of the closeness of conditionality in the manner of aspectuality, by which mutual negation and affinity take place with neither encounter nor separation.” Then the man said: “This will require some consideration and deduction.” And he replied: “Just think it over, for we have found rest at last.” [9]

So it was in Baghdad about a millennium ago. So it is today in other centers of civilization. Ridiculing the learned isn’t just fun. It’s a necessary aspect of intellectual development.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Szombathy (2004) p. 94, ft. 5, quoting al-Washsha, Muwashshà, 194-6. All quotations are Szombathy’s English translations of Arabic sources.

[2] Id. p. 95.

[3] Id. p. 110, ft. 46, citing al-Zajjaji, Amâlî, 14.

[4] Id. p. 96, quoting ibn al-Jawzi, Zirâf, 125.

[5] Id. p. 110, quoting al-Sûlî, Adah, 130.

[6] Id. p. 112, ft. 49, quoting Tawhidi, Akhlàq, 365.

[7] Id. pp. 101-2, ft. 21, quoting ibn al-Jawzï, Zirâf, 14.

[8] Id pp. 108-9, ft. 40, quoting al-Raghib, Muhâdarât, II, 11.

[9] Id. p. 110, quoting al-Tawhidi, Basa’ir, I, ii: 183-4.

[image] My photograph of Peter Coffin, Untitled (Spiral Staircase) 2007, installed on the Hirshhorn Plaza through Oct. 6, 2013.

Reference:

Szombathy, Zoltan. 2004. “Ridiculing the Learned: Jokes about the Scholarly Class in Mediaeval Arabic Literature.” Al-Qantara XXV, 1 pp. 93-117.

Wednesday's flowers

dropping yellow flower

Petrus Alfonsi on love and sharing knowledge

In his Letter to the peripatetics of France {Epistola ad peripatetics in Francia}, early twelfth-century philosopher and physician Petrus Alfonsi described love and sharing as being at the center of scholarly practice. To his fellow Christian philosophers, Alfonsi presented this ideal of scholarly collegiality:

Since it is proper that all those who have drunk of any philosophical nectar love each other, and that anyone who might have anything rare, precious, and useful which is unknown to others should impart it generously to others, so that in this way everyone’s knowledge may both grow and be extended in time: We then, wishing to observe this law, have been zealous to present something sweet and delicious to you who test through experience.

{ Quoniam omnes quocumque philosophico nectare potatos alterutrum se diligere, et si rarum quicquam preciosum et utile ceteris autem incognitum quis habeat, iustum est et honestum benigne aliis impartire, ut sic cuiusque scientia et crescat et amplificetur in horas. Nos quippe legem hanc seruare uolentes diligenter inuestigare studuimus si quid huiusmodi haberemus quod ut dulce ac deliciosum uobis experientibus presentare possemus. }[1]

Born a Jew in Muslim Spain, Petrus Alfonsi knew Hebrew, the Bible, and the Talmud. His name given at birth was Moshe. He learned Arabic and studied the leading science and literature of the Islamic world. In 1106 in Huesca, the seat of the Spanish Christian ruler Alfonso I of Aragon, Moshe converted to Christianity. He then adopted the name Petrus Alfonsi. By 1116, Alfonsi was living in England. There he taught astrology and perhaps offered medical services to King Henry I of England. Alfonsi subsequently moved to northern France, where he wrote his Epistola ad peripatetics in Francia.[2] In that letter, Alfonsi asserted the importance of astrology, demonstrated his leading astrological knowledge, and sought learned students.[3]

Alfonsi’s learning in retrospect appears to have been misguided and to have caused harm. In the pre-modern world, astrology and astronomy were nearly synonymous, and astrology was also closely associated with medicine. Astrologers claimed to be able to determine, by the position of the moon and sun, the course of diseases and the proper times for administering medicine. Alfonsi’s medical service to King Henry I most likely was as an astrologer-physician. Astrology today is not scientifically credible. No good evidence exists that astrology has any real relationship to disease and medicine.

Alfonsi also wrote Dialogues against the Jews {Dialogi contra Iudaeos}. That work is organized as dialogues between Alfonsi’s former self (Moshe) and his current self (Petrus). The dialogues attempt to discredit reasons for Jewish beliefs and for Islamic beliefs. The dialogues put forward reasoned justification for Christian beliefs. Alfonsi’s personal knowledge of Jewish beliefs and practices and his advanced philosophical and literary learning from the Islamic world gave Dialogi contra Iudaeos considerable scholarly authority in medieval Latin Europe. Alfonsi’s work contributed significantly to a more vicious anti-Semitism and intolerance for Jews in medieval Europe. Alfonsi was intellectually cosmopolitan and gracious to those he regarded as holding false beliefs. He surely valued dialogue and did not seek to promote the persecution of Jews. His sharing of his knowledge, however, had that deplorable effect.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Letter to the peripatetics of France {Epistola ad peripatetics in Francia}, Latin text and English translation from Tolan (1993) pp. 164-5, 172-3. Id. provides the full Latin text of the letter, an English translation, and a description of the sole surviving manuscript. I’ve modified slightly the last sentence quoted above for clearer sense and to place the final Latin clause as the final English clause. For an alternate translation of this text consistent with the above, see Hermes & Quarrie (1977) p. 67. Alfonsi also stated:

Since I have discovered that almost all Latins are devoid of knowledge of this art of astronomy, though I have practiced it for a long time and I have learned a small part of it, I have decided, if it pleases you, to share it with you and to present it — with diligence and kindness — as something rare, sweet, and delicious.

{ Quia igitur fere omnes Latinos artis huius astronomie uidelicet expertes inueni, ego autem in ea me diutius exercui, et partem inde nonnullam animo mandaui, uobis si placet impartire et quasi quiddam rerum, preciosum, dulce ac deliciosum diligenter ac benigne disposui presentare. }

Latin text and English translation from Tobin (1993) pp. 166, 174-5. In his prologue to Training Manual for Clergy {Disciplina Clericalis}, Alfonsi explains that he wrote it “in order that the light given to me should not be hid under a bushel.” Trans. Hermes & Quarrie (1977) p. 103. Cf. Matthew 5:15.

[2] Tolan (1993) pp. 9-11. Moshe is the Hebrew name corresponding to Moses. The name “Petrus Alfonsi” came from Moshe’s veneration for the Jewish-Christian Apostle Peter and his desire to honor Alfonso I. Alfonso I became Moshe’s godfather at his adult Christian baptism. A rubric in one thirteenth-century manuscript describes Petrus Alfonsi as “medicus” to King Henry I. Other relevant sources say nothing about such service. Id. n. 17, pp. 213-4. Alfonsi providing astrological-medical advice to King Henry I could help to explain his low profile as a physician to the King.

[3] I use the term “astrology” rather than “astronomy” above to represent better the modern understanding of the relevant type of knowledge that Alfonsi offered.

[image] Petrus Afonsi admonishing a student. Grey-tone reproduction of colored illumination from Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS. Français 726, 14th century, section 4, “L’Amonestement del pere à son fils,” p. 192. Available online through Gallica.

References:

Hermes, Eberhard and P. R. Quarrie, ed. and trans. 1977. Petrus Alfonsi. The Disciplina clericalis of Petrus Alfonsi. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Tolan, John Victor. 1993. Petrus Alfonsi and His Medieval Readers. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

literary economics of pen mightier than sword and pen

The literary economics of whether the pen is mightier than the sword seem straight-forward. To increase their patronage and prestige, authors and other representatives of the pen are likely to favor the view that the pen is mightier than the sword. In England in 1839, author Edward Bulwer-Lytton included in his play Richelieu; Or the Conspiracy the line “The pen is mightier than the sword.” That line subsequently became well-known and much quoted among writers, public intellectuals, and the educated. A writer asserting “The pen is mightier than the sword” never came to be regarded as comical and ridiculous like a writer beginning a story with “It was a dark and stormy night….” A writer asserting that the pen is more powerful than the sword is a more general application of communication economics like that of scholarly research papers concluding with a call for more research. Educated, interested writers know not to laugh at such writing.

pens by status

In a society with a high level of literary sophistication and jobs that are not institutionally well-defined, the literary economics of the pen and the sword are more complex. That was the case in the pre-modern Arabic literary world. Writing, particularly poetry, was highly valued socially. Personal status wasn’t anchored in institutional affiliations and could change rapidly. In Arabic poetry from the ninth century, comparisons of the pen and the sword were an established poetic topos. Sometimes the pen is mightier than the sword:

The penetrating swords give back their decisive power to a pen that indicates to them where they should strike. [1]

Truly a sword — a hero’s sword — is not more fearful than a secretary’s pen. [2]

In other instances, the sword is mightier than the pen:

Viziers of the realm obey it submissively: it is the habit of the sword to make the pen its servant. [3]

my pens say to me ‘Glory to the sword! There is no glory to the pen.
Write with us always after stroking with it, for we are to the sword as servants!’ [4]

The issue was not just whether a military figure or a scribal official commissioned the poem. Because the relative might of pen and sword was an established poetic topos, poets played with it to display their learning and skill. The great poet could figure his honor through both the pen and the sword:

For the horsemen know me, and the night, and the desert, and the sword, and the lance, and the paper and pen [5]

Extended literary debates between the pen and the sword appear in Arabic literature from the eleventh century.[6] Interests in the pen and the sword became not their objective correlates but their literary positions. The development of works of the pen undermined the interests of the pen. Symbolic economics overtook group interests.[7]

A richly jeweled rifle from eighteenth-century Turkey holds within it a jeweled pen case, a jeweled pen holder, and a reed pen. In elite status competition, the sword and the pen function similarly.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] From poem of al-Buhturi, ninth-century Arabic poet, trans. van Gelder (1987) p. 343.

[2] From poem of ibn al-Rumi, ninth-century Arabic poet, trans. id. p. 345.

[3] From poem of al-Buhturi, trans. id. p. 344.

[4] From poem of al-Mutanabbi, tenth-century Arabic poet, trans. id. p. 346. I’ve ignored the lineation and replaced “‘writing’ with it (viz. the sword)” with “stroking with it.”

[5] From poem of al-Mutanabbi, trans. Arberry, as cited in id. p. 347.

[6] Id. pp. 348-360. Al-Jahiz was an influential pioneer of literary debates in Arabic.

[7] Medieval clerics in Europe wrote Latin poems presenting literary debates about the relative merits of clerics and knights as lovers for young ladies. In these writings, the clerics typically emerged as the favorite. See, e.g. from Carmina Burana, “Frigus hinc est horridum…” and “Anni parte flordia…,” trans. Walsh (1993) pp. 81-4, 101-125; and The Council of Remiremont, available in English translation in Lee (1981). This poetry seems to have been written for fellow clerics as a relatively unimportant pastime. The market for Latin poetry in medieval Europe was considerably narrower and less lucrative than the market for poetry in the Islamic world. Al-Mutanabbi, for instance, earned great wealth writing praise poems for middle-class patrons. See Ali (2008).

[image] My composition incorporating a penholder (“kalam”) and reed pen from eighteenth-century Turkey. It is held in the Walters Gallery as Walters Gallery, 51.87

References:

Ali, Samer M. 2008. “The Rise of the Abbasid Public Sphere: The Case of al-Mutanabbī and Three Middle Ranking Patrons.” Al-Qanṭara. 29 (2): 467-494.

Gelder, Geert Jan van. 1987. “The Conceit of Pen and Sword: On an Arabic Literary Debate.” Journal of Semitic Studies. XXXII (2): 329-360.

Lee, Reuben Richard. 1981. A New Edition of “The Council of Remiremont.” The University of Connecticut. Ph.D. Thesis.

Walsh, Patrick Gerard. 1993. Love lyrics from the Carmina Burana. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

doubts about public debate early in Abbasid caliphate

An account of a public debate forms part of a late eighth-century Arabic book, Kitab Bilawhar wa-Budasf. It was probably written within Ismaili culture in the central-Asian region of the early Abbasid caliphate. Budasf is a figure adapted from stories of the historical Buddha. Bilawhar is a hermit-master who instructs Budasf in the way of Buddha’s asceticism. Budasf’s father, King Janaysar, strongly opposes Budasf leading an ascetic life. Conflict between worldly life and ascetic life is personalized in the opposing views of father and son. That conflict is also argued in a formal public debate. In Kitab Bilawhar wa-Budasf, personal interaction is more meaningful and more effective than formal public debate in determining persons’ courses of life.

The formal public debate is merely a ploy in Kitab Bilawhar wa-Budasf. King Janaysar’s dream-interpreter/magician/astrologer Rakis advises a two-pronged strategy to turn Budasf from ascetic life. They will arrange a public debate with Bilawhar about the relative merits of ascetic and worldly life. If that debate convinces Budasf not to follow ascetic life, then the debate will have achieved its purpose. If not, then they will secretly eliminate Bilawhar and have Rakis appear in further public debate in disguise as Bilawhar. Rakis in the figure of Bilawhar will renounce his former views and encourage Budasf to follow a worldly life. In short, the King and his adviser rig the public debate to ensure their preferred outcome.

The pretextual nature of the public debate is publicly apparent. After failing to find Bilawhar and compel him to participate in the debate, King Janaysar and Rakis move directly to the second part of their plan. Rakis pretends to be the captured Bilawhar. The King in public declares to Rakis, disguised as Bilawhar:

We will not put you to death before arguing against you. If you resolve to return to the world, we will give you leave. If you refuse to do this, we will show the people your error, and we will inflict on you both the worst of punishments and the most excruciating of deaths. [1]

King Janaysar does not propose a free, fair public debate about the merits of ascetic and worldly lives. He proposes a show trial with only one right answer.

King Janaysar pretends to modify the character of the debate in response to personal dialog between him and his son. After Budasf urges his father to study with him the ascetic way and the arguments for it, Janaysar says to Budasf:

Your words have pleased me and attracted me. But I think I should not forgo studying them attentively and examining them. If they are true, thorough examination will only augment their certitude. If they are false, it will make apparent their deceit. How I desire that we would be of one belief, you and I! I will call the people and order the royal high-priests to prepare. I will announce to the ascetics that they have my protection, and that I permit them to attend this assembly, to defend their doctrine, and to support Bilawhar, who is their head and the leader of their religion, {and who will argue on its behalf} unless you think this should be entrusted to another: in that case, designate who you want. On my part, I think that all this should be made a grand day, in public, so that, regarding this matter, no one will go say and criticize and imagine that an argument that has escaped us, but that he holds, would have given us the victory, if we had presented it, and so the people of your religion don’t go imagining the same thing. Thus the people will allow themselves to be better convinced of the outcome of the debate. [2]

Janaysar’s words reveal well-developed understanding of the value of public debate. Janaysar’s words also are duplicitous. Janaysar changes only his description of the debate. The debate remains rigged with Rakis participating in disguise as Bilawhar.

The King dramatically heightens the stakes of the debate. Before the start of the debate, King Janaysar publicly declares to his high-priests that if they convince the people of the reasonableness of their doctrine, they will be greatly rewarded. If their doctrine is revealed to be erroneous, the King declares that no one could be more culpable toward the people and more perfidious toward him. He then makes a solemn vow to God. If his priests’ doctrines are shown to be erroneous, the King will abandon his throne, shave his head, and burn the established idols. He will also kill the priests, take captive the priests’ spouses, make their children slaves, and hang the priests’ bodies on crucifixes. The King evidently makes these extreme vows because he has great confidence that his view, which his priests represent, will prevail.

By praising and then imitating the King’s extreme vow, Budasf undermines the rigged debate. Budasf vows to tear out Bilawhar’s heart and tongue and throw it to the dogs if Bilawhar loses the debate. That unexpected development traps Rakis, disguised as Bilawhar. If he renounces Bilawhar’s doctrine and loses the debate, then Budasf will dismember him. If Rakis doesn’t renounce Bilawhar’s doctrine, then he will have betrayed his secret plot with the King and will face the King’s wrath.

Rakis wavers in the face of this dilemma. The public debate goes on for a long time. Rakis seems to be prevailing. But then the King, enraged, enters the debate himself. He argues eloquently against Rakis. The high priests find additional strength, arguing together with the King. Rakis retreats. At the end of the day, the weight of the arguments are balanced, but the King is raging against Rakis.

Budasf, apparently recognizing Rakis and hoping for his conversion, intervenes to protect him. Budasf praises the King’s fairness and justice. Budasf then proposes that each side agree to embrace, support, and protect its respective standard-bearer, or the opposing standard-bearer. The King, still hoping that Rakis will come through in converting Budasf, agrees to have each side embrace its own standard-bearer. The public debate thus ends in the position in which it began.

In contrast to the duplicitous and ineffectual public debate, actual change in beliefs occurs through personal interactions. Budasf engages in lengthy dialog with his father. That dialog ultimately leads the father to adopt his son’s ascetic beliefs.[3] Rakis adopts Budasf’s ascetic beliefs after a midnight, personal conversation with Budasf. The Old Persian ascetic Bahwan adopts Budasf’s ascetic beliefs after a long personal dialog with him. These results of personal persuasion contrast sharply with the results of the public debate. Skepticism about the value of public debate seems to be an underlying theme of Kitab Bilawhar wa-Budasf.

As Kitab Bilawhar wa-Budasf was translated westward, its skepticism about public debate was muted. In Kitab Bilawhar wa-Budasf, Budasf urges his father to consider with him arguments for the ascetic life. The early ninth-century Georgian-Christian adaptation has Budasf instead propose to his father a formal public debate:

choose some learned exponent of your religion, and let us hold a formal disputation together concerning the true faith, until truth has been distinguished from falsehood [4]

The late tenth-century Greek adaptation of the Georgian-Christian version greatly expanded the public debate by inserting into it the lengthy, second-century Apology of Aristides. It also added a planned continuation of the debate on the following day.[5]

Public debate was an important aspect of court life early in the Abbasid caliphate. Public debate had less importance in early medieval Europe.[6] Nostalgia for ancient Athens seems to have better supported public debate than did actual experience in the highly cultured, multi-religious, multi-ethnic Abbasid caliphate.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Kitab Bilawhar wa-Budasf, from Arabic trans. into French, Gimaret (1971) p. 143 (all quotations from this source represent my translations of Gimaret’s French into English). Budasf is variously transliterated as Budhasaf and Yudasaf. Janaysar is also transliterated as Gunaysar.

[2] Id. p. 189.

[3] That dialog involved frank speaking. Budasf explained to his father:

we have expressed ourself severely to you {nous t’avons manifesté cette dureté}, by which we only wanted to show our respect for you, because those who lie to you do not respect you and are not your real friends.

Id. p. 175. Ibn al-Muqaffa engaged in treacherous public discussion by means of fables in his Arabic adaptation of Kalilah and Dimnah. See London (2008). Both Burzuya’s mid-sixth-century Persian Kalilah and Dimnah and ibn al-Muqaffa’s mid-eighth-century Arabic version included a Buddhist fable, “The King and his Eight Dreams.” That fable is based on the Buddhist legend of King Canda Pradyota. See Blois (1990) p. 13. The sage who advises the king in that fable is Bilar, apparently a variant of the name Bilawhar. Kitab Bilawhar wa-Budasf included ibn al-Muqaffa’s Arabic text for the fable “Man in the Well,” as well as other Arabic text from ibn al-Muqaffa’s version of Kalilah and Dimnah. Id. Ch. 5. This textual relationship underscores that Kitab Bilawhar wa-Budasf is concerned about means of communicating across differences in political power.

[4] Balavariani, from Georgian trans. Lang (1966) p. 136. In this work, Budasf becomes lodasaph; King Janaysar, King Abenes; and Bilawhar, Balahvar. In Kitab Bilawhar wa-Budasf, Budasf follows the doctrines of Budd (Buddha) against those of his father, which seem to be implicitly Zoroastrian. In the Balavariani, Iodasaph is a Christian, and his father is an “idol-worshipper.” Idol-worshipper was what Christians called person now called Buddhists. In the Georgian-Christian text, the King and Rakis’ public-debate plot assumes that Bilawhar will be defeated if he actually participates in the debate. It thus seems to assume essentially a show trial. In Kitab Bilawhar wa-Budasf, the scheme is to eliminate Bilawhar if he seems to be winning. The Georgian Christian adaptation has another person, Nakhor, act in disguise as Bilawhar / Balahvar. Nakhor “dwells outside in the wilderness.” That makes his ability to act as Balahvar more plausible. More general interpretations of these differences in the public debate aren’t clear.

[5] Barlaam and Ioasaph, from Greek trans. Woodward & Mattingly (1914) Sec. XXVII (Apology of Aristides), Sec. XXVIII (indicating that debate would be continued the following day).

[6] The Mihna, which occurred about 833-848, was high-stakes public questioning and debate about particular religious issues. On the Mihna, see, e.g. Hurvitz (2001). Political power in early medieval Europe was more diffuse than political power in the early Abbasid caliphate, and intellectual life was less developed.

[image] My photograph of Rina Banerjee’s site-specific installation Perspectives, at the Sackler Gallery through June 8, 2014.

References:

Blois, François de. 1990. Burzōy’s voyage to India and the origin of the book of Kalīlah wa Dimnah. London: Royal Asiatic Society.

Gimaret, Daniel, ed. and trans. 1971. Le Livre de Bilawhar et Būd̲āsf: selon la version arabe ismaélienne. Genève: Paris, Droz.

Hurvitz, Nimrod. 2001. “Miḥna as Self-Defense.” Studia Islamica. 2001 (92): 93-111.

Lang, David Marshall, ed. and trans. 1966. The Balavariani (Barlaam and Josaphat). Berkeley: University of California Press.

London, Jennifer. 2008. “How to do things with fables: Ibn al-Muqaffa’s frank speech in stories from Kalīla wa Dimna.” History of Political Thought. 29 (2): 189-212.

Woodward, George Ratcliffe, and Harold Mattingly, trans. 1914. St. John Damascene: Barlaam and Ioasaph. London: W. Heinemann.