Coptica v. 16 2017

Fakhr al-Dawlah ibn al-Muʾtaman

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Old Cairo), he compiled the massive work that we usually call al-Ḥāwī 49 (which we could almost translate as The Encyclopedia ); this is now available to us in a four-volumes set prepared by a monk of Dayr al-Muḥarraq. 50 As a theologian, it is inevitable that Ibn al-ʿAmīd would defend Christian doctrine against specifically Islamic challenges. And so he does, in quite interesting ways. For example, his Book 1, Chapter 1, Part 3 is an essay in defense of the Christian doctrine of free will. 51 In the first part of the argument, he marshals the biblical evidence for the doctrine. 52 But then he brings what he seems to consider a knock-down argument—which rather surprisingly comes from a passage in a work attributed to Aristotle (the Kitāb al-Firāsah or Book of Physiognomy ). 53 And then, in a third move, he locates the Christian doctrine in a kind of grid made up mostly of Muslim thinkers: for him, the Christian doctrine is not that of the Ashʿarites (who emphasized the divine determination of human actions), but more like that of the Muʿtazilah, in particular “the elders” ( mashāyikh ) of the Muʿtazilah (who defended the capacity of the human actor in the origination of human actions). 54 Ibn al- ʿAmīd knows, on the one hand, that Muslims make claims that Christians must disagree with and defend against. On the other hand, on selected issues he can take a position alongside certain Muslim thinkers in contrast to others. This literature review has been far too quick and superficial to say too much with any authority, but I would like to share some impressions. In the first place, the literature of the period is not devoid of recurring themes and tropes. The figure of the Muslim ruler who admires the patriarch 49 The work is called Mukhtaṣar al-bayān fī taḥqīq al-īmān , but is also known as al-Ḥāwī al- mustafād min badīhat al-ijtihād , which is regularly abbreviated to al-Ḥāwī. 50 al-Mawsūʿah al-lāhūtiyyah (see note 13 above). For comments on this edition, see Mark Swanson, “Discerning the True Religion in Late Fourteenth-Century Egypt: Pages from the Dayr al-Muharraq Edition of al-Hawi by al-Makin Jirjis ibn al-ʿAmid,” in Christianity and Monasticism in Middle Egypt: al-Minya and Asyut , ed. Gawdat Gabra and Hany N. Takla (Cairo and New York: American University in Cairo Press, 2015), 133-44. 51 The passage in question is found in al-Mawsūʿah al-lāhūtiyyah , 1:168-85. I have described this passage in some detail in 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. 52 al-Mawsūʿah al-lāhūtiyyah , 1:171-76; Swanson, “Christian Engagement,” 218-19. 53 al-Mawsūʿah al-lāhūtiyyah , 1:176-80; Swanson, “Christian Engagement,” 219-20. 54 al-Mawsūʿah al-lāhūtiyyah , 1:180-82; Swanson, “Christian Engagement,” 221-23. This “grid” can be traced back to the Kitāb al-Arbaʿīn of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, as was pointed out to me by Gregor Schwarb. See now Schwarb’s “The Coptic and Syriac Receptions of Neo- Ashʿarite Theology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology , ed. Sabine Schmidtke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 547-66, where Ibn al-ʿAmīd is mentioned at pp. 559- 60. Discussion and Conclusion