Depiction of Maimonides teaching students about the 'measure of man' in an illuminated manuscript.
Plaque of Maimonides at Rambam Medical Center, Haifa.
Manuscript page by Maimonides. Judeo-Arabic language in Hebrew letters.
18th-century portrait of Maimonides, Maimonides Moses ben Maimon.
Scholars at an Abbasid library, from the Maqamat of al-Hariri by Yahya ibn Mahmud al-Wasiti, Baghdad, 1237 AD.
Entrance to the Qawaloon complex which housed the notable Qawaloon hospital in Cairo.
The eye, according to Hunain ibn Ishaq, from a manuscript dated circa 1200.
Introductory summary overview map from al-Idrisi's 1154 world atlas (note that South is at the top of the map).
Plaque of Maimonides at Rambam Medical Center, Haifa.
Manuscript page by Maimonides. Judeo-Arabic language in Hebrew letters.
18th-century portrait of Maimonides, Maimonides Moses ben Maimon.
Scholars at an Abbasid library, from the Maqamat of al-Hariri by Yahya ibn Mahmud al-Wasiti, Baghdad, 1237 AD.
Entrance to the Qawaloon complex which housed the notable Qawaloon hospital in Cairo.
The eye, according to Hunain ibn Ishaq, from a manuscript dated circa 1200.
Introductory summary overview map from al-Idrisi's 1154 world atlas (note that South is at the top of the map).
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Arabic: أبو البركات هبة الله بن ملكا البغدادي
Abu'l-Barakāt ibn Malkā al-Baghdādī was born in 1080, in Balad, near Mosul, present-day Iraq. Abu'l-Barakāt was originally known by his Hebrew birth name Baruch ben Malka and was given the name of Nathanel by his pupil Isaac ben Ezra before his conversion from Judaism to Islam towards the end of his life.
Abu'l-Barakāt was an older contemporary of Maimonides, and learned from the most prolific and influential Torah scholars of the Middle Ages. Talmud was studied intensively, its contents being elaborated and developed to meet the varied conditions of economic, social, and political life. Talmud constitutes the most central collection of interpretation, explication, and commentary on the commandments in Torah, traditionally held to be six hundred and thirteen in number. Knowledge of Talmud, study of it, commentary upon it, and following its guidance bound Jews together as a people in covenant with God.
In addition to being an expert on scripture and Talmud, Maimonides was an important judge and legal official in the Jewish community in Egypt. He was a physician in the Muslim court in Egypt and had extensive correspondence with Jews far and wide, writing detailed responses to questions of Jewish law and scriptural interpretation. Those of his works that are categorized as ‘philosophy’ reflect interests he had in addition to his religious commitments.
The prospects of medieval Jewish communities often depended upon the disposition of the Christian or Islamic rulers of the areas in which Jews lived. As is the case for several other important medieval Jewish philosophers, the larger intellectual culture in which Maimonides lived and worked was Islamic rather than Christian.
As a renowned physician, Abu'l-Barakāt served at the courts of the caliphs of Baghdad and the Seljuk sultans. In his physics Abu’l-Barakat employs a method similar to the one he utilized in his psychology. Like his tenth-century predecessor Abü Bakr al-Razi (by whom he may have been influenced, although there is no evidence either way) and in contrast with the Aristotelians, he relies in his physical theories, just as he does in his doctrine of the soul, on what he regards as self-evident, i.e., immediately perceived truths that are not dependent upon empirical data. Applying this method, he rejects the Aristotelian contention that time is the measure of movement. According to him, the notion of time is ontologically prior to the notion of movement. Nor does he regard time as being merely a subjective phenomenon. It is in fact the measure of Being, and as such it should not be regarded as external to Being. Comparisons between the lengths of two or more durations are, however, due to a mental comparison between the two.
The fundamental connection that Abu’l-Barakat establishes between time and Being leads to his denying the existence of the two other higher modes of temporality postulated in Avicenna’s philosophy: according to him there is no eternity (sarmad) and no aevum (dahr). Time is real even with regard to God.
Abu’l-Barakat’s theory of space, or of place - in the medieval philosophical vocabulary the two notions are designated by one and the same term - resembles his doctrine of time in its rejection of the Aristotelian conception, which was based on empirical data. For the Aristotelian view, according to which place (or space) is the inner surface of the surrounding body (and consequently bidimensional), Abu’l-Barakat substitutes the conception that there exists a tridimensional space that in itself is empty; in physical reality it is generally (although, according to some passages, which assert in certain cases the existence of vacuums, not always) occupied by bodies. In the mind, however, the conception of a tridimensional empty space is prior to the conception of a plenum. Abu’l-Barakat also refutes the arguments used by the Aristotelians to prove that infinite space is impossible. According to him, space is infinite because it is impossible for man to conceive a space that has a limit.
In his explanation of the movement of projectiles, Abu’l-Barakat, like Avicenna, subscribes to the doctrine positing a “violent inclination” (mayl qasri; the notion is similar to, or identical with, the impetus of the Schoolmen). “Violent inclination” - opposed to the “natural inclination,” in virtue of which bodies removed from their natural place tend to return - is regarded as having been imparted by the mover to a body in a slate of violent motion (for instance, to a stone thrown upward or to an arrow shot from a bow). The notion of violent inclination is used to account for the continuation of violent motion after the separation of the projectile from the mover. Contrary to Avicenna, Abu’l-Barakat regards “violent inclination” as self-expending; it is used up in the very process of violent motion.
The acceleration of the motion of falling bodies is attributed by Abu’l-Barakat to two causes:
(1) He holds that a violent and a natural inclination can simultaneously coexist in a projectile. Thus, when a body begins to fall, a residue of violent inclination still subsists in it and opposes the natural inclination that causes the body to descend, slowing down its fall. The acceleration of the fall is due to the gradual weakening of the violent inclination.
(2) The second cause of the acceleration of the motion of falling bodies is that the force (i.e., gravity) generating natural inclination resides in the falling body and produces a succession of natural inclinations in such a way that the strength of the inclination increases throughout the fall.
Abu’l-Barakat’s conception of the second cause seems to anticipate in a vague way the fundamental law of classical mechanics, according to which a continually applied force produces acceleration. According to Aristotelian mechanics such a force produces a uniform motion.
While there is no concrete evidence to show that Abu’l-Barakat exercised a significant influence on Jewish philosophers, Fakhr al-DTn al-RazI (d. 1210), a celebrated Muslim author, was his professed disciple.
His influence appears to have extended also to other Muslim philosophers.
Al-Baghdadi's major achievement was that he deeply influenced Islamic philosophy of his time. His extensive and unique philosophical theories, especially his theories in the particular sciences, were seen as a major challenge for the traditional conceptions of the Aristotelian school of thought during and after this period.
One of his most noted writings include Kitab al-Mu'-tabar, his main work (the title may be translated as “The Book of What Has Been Established by Personal Reflection”); a philosophical commentary on the Ecclesiastes, written in Arabic in Hebrew characters; and the treatise “On the Reason Why the Stars Are Visible at Night and Hidden in Daytime.” Al-Baghdadi's most significant accomplishment in psychology concerns human self-awareness.
Of Jewish origin, Abul-Barakat was converted to Islam late in life - according to one report, in reaction to a social slight inflicted upon him because of his Judaism; according to another, in order to counter a threat to his life.
Abu'l-Barakāt was an older contemporary of Maimonides. According to Abu’l-Barakat’s own account, which is on the whole quite plausible, Kitab al-Muztabar consists in the main of critical remarks jotted down by him over the years while reading philosophical texts and published, at the insistence of his friends, in the form of a philosophical work. From the formal point of view, its composition closely follows that of the Logic, Naturalia, and Metaphysics of Avicenna’s voluminous Kitab al-Shifa' (the Sufficientia of the Latins), which seems to have been the principal philosophical text studied in Abu’l-Barakat’s time in the Islamic East. The genesis of Kitab al-Muztabar as an accumulation of notes may account for various doctrinal inconsistencies in the work; Abu’l-Barakat’s many bold deviations from Avicenna’s physics and metaphysics appear to be at variance with his complete acceptance of considerable portions of his predecessor’s views.
In his psychology as well as in his physics, AbuT-Barakat bases his views on what he regards as immediate certainties rather than on an assessment, made by discursive reasoning, of empirical data. The use of this method clearly renders both the Aristotelian approach and many Aristotelian theories unacceptable to him, and Abu’l-Barakat is not chary of proclaiming his disagreement with the then dominant philosophical tradition, which he declares to be a corruption of the true doctrines of ancient philosophers. Nonetheless, the starting point of his psychology is identical with that of Avicenna and is obviously taken overfrom the latter. Like Avicenna, AbuT-Barakat considers that immediate self-awareness, the awareness of one’s own existence and of one’s own actions, constitutes an unchallengeable proof of the existence and activity of the soul (identified with the ego). But unlike Avicenna, he does not try to fit this insight into the categories of Peripatetic psychology.
According to Abu’l-Barakat, man is aware that his intellectual, imaginative, sensory, and motor activities, and any other psychic activities he may have, are due to one and the same agent: namely the soul. This awareness, accompanied as it is by a sense of certainty, may be relied upon to provide the truth. Abu’l-Barakat uses this intuition in order to deny the existence of a variety of psychic faculties. He goes even further; he rejects the distinction (fundamental to Aristotelianism) between the intellect and the soul. There is no place in his doctrine for the speculations of the Peripatetics concerning the active, the passive, and the other intellects.
Abu’l-Barakat regards the soul as an incorporeal entity, linked with the body but not located in it or anywhere else. Not being restricted by position in space, it is able to perceive anything that exists or occurs anywhere in the universe—but only one thing at a time. Thus, according to a conception that is reminiscent of Bergson, it has to choose among the multitudinous external impressions liable to impinge upon it; this choice, the sifting of these potential impressions, is done by the body—more precisely, by the sense organs, which circumscribe the perceptive activities of the soul.
The primordial role played by consciousness and self-awareness in Abu’l-Barakat’s conception of the soul impels him to try to explain the existence of unconscious psychic activities, inter alia, the organic ones (for instance, digestion) and latent memories (which, contrary to the Aristotelians, he does not regard as preserved in a part of the brain in the form of corporeal impressions, but as being incorporeal). One of these explanations is centered upon the notion of attention; some of the unconscious activities of the soul are considered as those to which the soul pays no attention.
Abu’l-Barakat’s conception of God seems to be modeled to a considerable extent upon his view of the soul. His God, unlike the Aristotelian one, is not a pure intellect but an entity that, like the human ego but with much greater powers, is engaged in many different activities and has knowledge of particulars (but not of an infinity of particulars at the same time, because the notion is self-contradictory). When His attention is engaged, He may intervene in the course of events. In other cases, this course may be regarded as causally determined, if one envisages only one chain of causes and effects. In fact, however, a large proportion of events is determined by chance, the latter notion being defined by Abu’l-Barakat as an encounter of two mutually independent chains of causes and elfects. He gives as an example the encounter of a scorpion and a man crossing a street; the direction and the speed of both are strictly determined; yet their meeting, which may lead to the man killing the scorpion or to the scorpion stinging the man, is due to chance. A similar theory of chance is set forth by Boethius, who could not have influenced Abu’l-Barakat, and is hinted at by Plotinus. These seem to be the only known precursors of Abu’l-Barakat on this point.
Quotes from others about the person
The scholar Y. Tzvi Langermann writes:
"Dissatisfied with the regnant approach, which treated time as an accident of the cosmos, al-Baghdadi drew the conclusion that time is an entity whose conception (ma'qul al-zaman) is a priori and almost as general as that of being, encompassing the sensible and the non-sensible, that which moves and that which is at rest. Our idea of time results not from abstraction, stripping accidents from perceived objects, but from a mental representation based on an innate idea. Al-Baghdadi stops short of offering a precise definition of time, stating only that 'were it to be said that time is the measure of being (miqdar al-wujud), that would be better than saying [as Aristotle does] that it is the measure of motion'. His reclassification of time as a subject for metaphysics rather than for physics represents a major conceptual shift, not a mere formalistic correction. It also breaks the traditional linkage between time and space. Concerning space, al-Baghdadi held unconventional views as well, but he did not remove its investigation from the domain of physics."
On his contributions to Islamic psychology, Langermann writes:
"Al-Baghdadi's most significant departure in psychology concerns human self-awareness. Ibn Sina had raised the issue of our consciousness of our own psychic activities, but he had not fully pursued the implications for Aristotelian psychology of his approach. Al-Baghdadi took the matter much further, dispensing with the traditional psychological faculties and pressing his investigations in the direction of what we would call the unconscious."
The famous theologian and philosopher Fakhr al-Din al-Razi was one of Abu'l-Barakāt's eminent disciples.
