Touchstones Discussion Project

Transcription

1 Touchstones Alif Readings from the Arab Tradition Touchstones Discussion Project

2 TOUCHSTONES ʾALIF Readings from the Arab Tradition Texts selected, translated, and edited by Howard Zeiderman and Stefanie Takacs Published by

3 About the Touchstones Discussion Project The Touchstones Discussion Project is a nonprofit organization founded on the belief that all people can benefit from the listening, speaking, thinking, and interpersonal skills gained by engaging in active, focused discussions. Since 1984, Touchstones has helped millions of students and others develop and improve these skills in school, work, and life. For more information about the Touchstones Discussion Project, visit by Touchstones Discussion Project PO Box 2329 Annapolis, Maryland All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, displayed, or repurposed, in whole or in part, in any form without prior written consent of the authors. Photograph on the cover is Hassan II Mosque, Casablanca, Morocco 2010 by Alex E. Primos, available under a Creative Commons Attribution license. ISBN: ii TOUCHSTONES ʾALIF

4 Contents 1. The Orientation Class The Spiritual Physick: Of Repelling Anger Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-razi (al-razi) 3. The Genuine Friend Abu Uthman Amr ibn Bahr al-kinani al-fuqaimi al-basri (al-jahiz) 4. The Republic: The Ring of Gyges Plato 5. Chess and Backgammon Abu al-hassan al-masudi 6. Goha Gives His Son a Lesson about People Oral Tradition 7. On the Nature of Man Abu Zayd Abdu r-rahman ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldun Al-Hadrami (ibn Khaldun) 8. Severity to People Does Them Harm Abdullah ibn Abi Quhafa (Abu Bakr) READINGS FROM THE ARAB TRADITION iii

5 9. The Price of Pride A Folk Tale from Saudi Arabia 10. The Rhetoric Aristotle 11. On Worrying: From a Philosophy of Character and Conduct. 23 Abu Muhammad Ali ibn Ahmad ibn Sa id ibn Hazm 12. How Peoples Differ Abu Hayyan al-tawhidi 13. Two Texts The Sayings of Abu Yusuf Ya qub ibn Ishaq Al-Kind reported by Muhammad ibn Tahir al-sijistani and Analects Confucius 14. Histories Herodotus 15. On Governmental and Community Abu Zayd Abdu r-rahman ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldun Al-Hadrami (ibn Khaldun) 16. Kalila wa Dhamma Abu-Muhammad Abd-Allah Ruzbeh ibn Daduya (ibn al Muqaffa a) 17. The Life of Lycurgus Plutarch 18. Tarik's Address to His Soldiers Abu-l-'Abbas Ahmad ibn Mohammed al-maqqari 19. The Republic: The Cave Plato 20. On The Perfect State Abu Nasr Mohammad ibn al-farakh al-farabi iv TOUCHSTONES ʾALIF

6 2 Lesson The Spiritual Physick: Of Repelling Anger by Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-razi (al-razi) Anger helps one to take revenge on a person who causes him pain. However, when this anger grows too great, it causes a person to lose his reason and suffer. Then, this person s suffering may be worse than what his victim feels. It therefore helps the intelligent person to remember cases when those who have been hurt suffer more because of their own anger. Many angered people will strike out with their fists and slap and even butt a wall with their heads. Often enough, they hurt themselves more than the person who has angered them. Upon my life, there is no great difference between a man who loses his powers of thought and reflection from anger than from lunacy. If a man constantly keeps such situations in mind while he is calm, he will be able to picture them when he is angry. He should remember that those who do terrible things when they are angry only do so because they temporarily lose their reason. He ought to be sure that when he is angry, he will not do anything until after he has thought carefully. Otherwise he will hurt himself when he means to hurt another. He should not be like the animals and act without thinking. And READINGS FROM THE ARAB TRADITION 5

7 when he punishes others, he should be free of four emotions: arrogance, anger against the person he punishes, and the opposites of these two things. Arrogance and anger make his punishment and vengeance greater than the crime that was done to him. Their opposites, humility and affection, result in his being too lenient. If the intelligent man keeps these ideas in mind and controls his passion, then his anger and revenge will be just. He will be safe from injury to his soul or body in this world or the next. 6 TOUCHSTONES ʾALIF

8 12 Lesson How Peoples Differ by Abu Hayyan al-tawhidi The vizier said, The superiority of one nation over another among Persians, Arabs, Indians, and Greeks is a question over which people have contended and fought and argued for many, many years. Yet none has come to a firm settlement and an apparent agreement. I responded, This happens of necessity. For it is not in the Persian s nature nor his custom nor his origin to acknowledge the merit of the Arab, and neither is it in the nature of the Arab, nor in his habit, that he be delighted at the merit of the Persian. And the same applies to the Indian, the Greek, the Turk, and others. The consideration of merit and nobility rests upon three things. The first is the way in which one people became different from another by the choice of good or bad actions, by holding correct or erroneous opinions, and by the contemplation of the beginning and the end of life. The matter surely depends upon these traits. But secondly, in spite of these differences in every nation, there are virtues and vices, and each people has both good and bad qualities. And lastly, in every group there are members who excel and READINGS FROM THE ARAB TRADITION 27

9 also others who fall short in that group s industry and its wielding of influence. It is decreed that bounties and merits and faults are poured forth over all mankind. These are scattered among them all. The Persians have political organization. They have an elaborate system of government, restraints, and ceremonies. The Greeks have science and wisdom. The Indians have deliberation, agility, beguilement, and perseverance. The Turks have courage and boldness. The Africans have patience, the ability for hard labor, and joy; and the Arabs have bravery, hospitable reception, oratory, and a gift for explanation. Moreover, the merits mentioned above in these famous nations are not possessed by every one of their individuals but rather are wide-spread among them. There are also some in their group who are devoid of all such merits and are characterized by their opposite. The Persians, for example, find among them many men who are ignorant of politics and lacking in their manners. Similarly, the Arabs do not lack cowardly or ignorant or miserly or inarticulate men. And comparable truths hold true for the Indians, the Greeks, and others. Accordingly, when the people of merit and perfection from the Greeks are compared with the people of merit and perfection from the Persians, they are equal. There is no difference between them except in the degrees of merit and the extents of perfection, and those are general rather than specific. In a like manner, when the people of shortcoming 28 TOUCHSTONES ʾALIF

10 and vileness of one nation are compared with those of shortcoming and vileness of another nation, they also balance one another. There is no difference between them except in degrees and extents. And no attention is paid to that, nor any blame put upon it. Thus it has become clear from this list that all the nations have divided among themselves merits and shortcomings by the necessity of natural endowment and the choice of thought. READINGS FROM THE ARAB TRADITION 29

11 20 Lesson On The Perfect State by Abu Nasr Mohammad ibn al-farakh al-farabi In order to preserve himself and to attain his highest perfection, every human being is by his very nature in need of many things that he cannot provide all by himself. He is indeed in need of people, each who fills some particular need he has. Everyone is in the same relation to everyone else in this respect. Therefore man cannot attain perfection, for the sake of which he has been given his inborn nature, unless many people cooperate together. Contributions from within the whole community make it such that the things needed by everybody for existence, self-preservation, and the attainment of perfection are thereby available. Through this, human individuals have come to exist in great numbers. They have settled even in the marginally inhabitable regions of the earth, so that human societies have come to exist in it. Some of these societies are perfect, others imperfect. The most excellent good and the utmost perfection are attained in a city. They are not attained in a society that is less complete than a city, such as a small village or a family. But because good, in its real sense, is attainable through READINGS FROM THE ARAB TRADITION 49

12 choice and will, and evils are also formed from the same, it may be that a city exists that enables its people to cooperate in their attainment of evil aims. Hence happiness and perfection are not attainable in every city. Only the city where people aim through cooperative association to attain happiness in its real and true sense can be called an excellent city. The excellent city resembles the perfect and healthy body. All of the limbs cooperate to make the life of the animal perfect and preserve it in this state. Now, the limbs and organs of the body are different, and their natural endowments and faculties are unequal in excellence. There is among them one ruling organ, namely the heart, and the organs that are close in rank to that ruling organ. By nature, each organ in the body has a function that it performs properly in conformity with the natural aim of that ruling organ. The same holds in the case of the city. Its parts are different by nature, and their natural dispositions are unequal in excellence. In it, there are men who are the rulers. Others who have a disposition and a habit by which they perform in conformity with the ruler s intention are the holders of the ranks. Below them, in turn, are people who perform their actions in some accordance with the aims of those holders of the ranks. They are in the second rank, and so on. In opposition to the excellent city are the ignorant city, the wicked city, and the city which has missed the right path through faulty judgment. 50 TOUCHSTONES ʾALIF