Coptica 15, 2016

Alexander among Medieval Copts

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his stead: the Kitāb al-Siyāsah fī tadbīr al-riʾāsah (“The Book of administration: On the ordering of governance”) 19 —a very well-known work, by the way, that had a long career under the title The Secret of Secrets ( Sirr al-asrār or Sōd ha-Sōdōt or Secretum secretorum ) and long served as a kind of manual on political administration. 20 Now, Jirjis is giving us this information because he wants to use a single anecdote from this pseudo-Aristotelian book, one that comes from the chapter on physiognomy, the science of judging character from bodily features. 21 The anecdote is about Polemon, the great authority on this science. One day, Jirjis relates, the students of the philosopher Hippocrates had made a portrait of their master and brought it to Polemon, with the request that he study it and tell them about the morals of the person depicted. Polemon did so and pronounced that this was a person who was deceitful and full of ignorance and lewdness. Hippocrates’ students were greatly offended and even wanted to kill Polemon. But when they reported the matter to their master Hippocrates, rather than being offended, he replied that Polemon was absolutely correct! He explained that it was only by learning to restrain his soul, to control his passions without giving way to them, while gaining in strength by means of the intellect, that he had been able to gain the attributes of the wise person. 22 For Jirjis, this anecdote provided evidence for his contention that human beings possess the capacity for freely-willed action (an argument that he was making over against the predeterministic views of some of the Islamic theological schools). 23 Hippocrates may have been born with a certain coarseness of character; but human beings are in fact free to grow, to learn to control the passions, and to achieve virtue, through sustained philosophical and ascetic endeavor. 19 al-Mawsūʿah al-lāhūtiyyah , I: 176. 20 See Mahmoud Manzalaoui, “The Pseudo-Aristotelian Kitāb Sirr al-asrār : Facts and Problems,” Oriens 23-24 (1974): 147-257. There is a large literature on this work and its influence, including, for example: W.F. Ryan and Charles B. Schmitt, eds., Pseudo-Aristotle, The Secret of Secrets : Sources and Influences , Warburg Institute Surveys 9 (London: Warburg Institute, 1982); Steven J. Williams, The Secret of Secrets : The Scholarly Career of a Pseudo-Aristotelian Text in the Latin Middle Ages (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2003); Catherine Gaullier-Bougassas et al., eds., Trajectoires européennes du Secretum secretorum du Pseudo-Aristote (XIII e -XVI e siècle) , Alexander Redivivus 6 (Tournhout: Brepols, 2015). 21 Pseudo-Aristotle, Kitāb al-siyāsah fī tadbīr al-ri’āsah , Arabic text (of the “Long Form” in ten books): ed. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Badawī, al-Uṣūl al-yūnāniyyah li-l-naẓariyyāt al- siyāsiyyah fī l-Islām (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat Dār al-kutub al-miṣriyyah, 1954), 65-171; the chapter on physiognomy is at pp. 117-24, with an introduction at pp. 116-17. 22 al-Mawsūʿah al-lāhūtiyyah , I: 177; cf. al-Uṣūl al-yūnāniyyah , 117, summary English translation in Williams, Scholarly Career , 13 (and note pp. 246-47, 284-85, on medieval Latin readers of the anecdote). 23 Mark N. Swanson, “Christian Engagement with Islamic kalām in Late 14 th -Century Egypt: The Case of al-Ḥāwī by al-Makīn Jirjis Ibn al-ʿAmīd ‘the Younger’,” Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 2 (2014): 214-26, here pp. 219-20.