Early Medieval Arabic Polymathy: A Preliminary Sketch

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• Early Medieval Arabic PolymathyA Preliminary Sketch
• Ahmed H. al-Rahim (bio)

By perfect polymath (perfectam polymathian) I mean knowledge of various subjects, collected from all kinds of studies, overflowing with fullness, and wandering freely through all the fields of the disciplines as far as the human mind is able to pursue with tireless energy.

—Johann von Wowern (d. 1612), De polymathia tractatio (Basle, 1603), 16f.^*

I took the word philology in the sense of the ancients (le sens des anciens), as a synonym for polymathy.

—Ernest Renan (d. 1892), L'Avenir de la science (Paris, 1890), 506n69.

I. Introduction to Medieval Arabic Polymathy

Nearly all the celebrated scholars of the Islamic tradition have been described as polymaths. Yet the intellectual history of medieval Arabic polymathy per se has received only a modicum of attention in the field of Islamic studies.¹ This is true as much for the educational paradigm of polymathy as for its appeal as a scientific methodology and sociopolitical ideal of Islamic intellectual history and civilization. Polymathy refers to knowledge of the various sciences and arts mastered by one scholar, the polymath. It was the normative standard and scholarly model for the attainment of knowledge ('ilm) in the Arabo-Islamic intellectual tradition of the Middle Ages.² However, this knowledge may also be described as a form of encyclopaedism that is not necessarily (to take a modern definition of polymathy) focused on the solution of any one single theoretical or practical problem.³ Three [End Page 1323] principal factors were fundamental to the rise of Arabic polymathy and polythematic knowledge, that is, knowledge dealing with more than one field or discipline. First, there was the early introduction of the Platonic methodology of analysis by division (Gk. diairesis, Ar. qisma), Aristotelian genus-differentia definition (ḥadd), and the Porphyrian branched tree (musšağğgar), by which the sciences, or knowledge, were (sub)classified into discrete disciplines (tartīb) and the varied genres in which they were to be expounded.⁴ Second, there was scholasticism as a method of learning, or pedagogy, which, for the acquisition of true knowledge, emphasized dialectical reasoning, or disputation, argued according to strict logical rules, particularly as adopted by Muslim theologians (mutakallimūn) and jurisconsults (fuqahā').⁵ And third, there was the professionalization of knowledge, that is, scholars or epistemic communities (ahl al-'ilm) who established individual intellectual guilds (ṣunūf aṣ-ṣinā'āt), alongside those of the artisanal crafts (ṣinā'āt aṣḥab al-minhan), which defined—but also in the processes blurred—the boundaries of the sciences and, correspondingly, the constituents of polythematic knowledge of the polymath.⁶

The professionalization of scientific guild affiliations, it may be argued, culminated in the rise of Sunnī-endowed colleges (madāris), which were primarily centered on teaching the jurisprudential sciences (al-'ulūm aš-šar'īya) and scholastic theology (kalām). Importantly, these colleges also taught numerous ancient sciences, such as logic and medicine, as well as observational astronomy, which was essential to timekeeping for regulating the ritual prayer times, the direction of prayer (toward Mecca), and calculating the phases of the lunar calendar for the various religious festivals.⁷ These colleges as well as the newly founded libraries were part of the Sunnī revival patronized by the Salğūqid (r. 429–590/1038–1194) and Ayyūbid (r. 564–658/1169–1260, Egypt and Damascus) dynasties (see Fig. 1).⁸ In devising polythematic curricula, these Sunnī colleges standardized teaching and learning, sanctioning the constituents of knowledge itself.⁹ Command of these scientific corpora would have been presumed of anyone laying claim to the title of scholar ('ālim), or polymath.¹⁰ While much medieval collegiate pedagogy took the commentarial form—whether in the religious or philosophical sciences—pupils were in general assured by their professors that the base textbooks they studied and glossed were the "state of the art" or "bestsellers" in their disciplines (see Fig. 2). The syllabi informed the nature and breadth of medieval Arabic polythematic knowledge, covering topics such as the propaedeutic Arabic grammar, rhetoric (balāġa), dialectical logic (ādāb al-baḥṯ) or disputation theory ('ilm al-ḫilāf)—that is, the trivium—as well as advanced principles of Islamic...