purple motes

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.

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Read more:

• al-Jahiz mocks tedious scholarly seriousness
• Alphabet of Ben Sira ridicules everything
• World Values Survey as sexist self-parody

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.

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.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• Jewish scholars’ study of non-Jewish medical knowledge
• sun and moon in medieval Hebrew medical astrology
• medieval scholars viciously battling over relative warmth of chick and chicken

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.